Raymond Jeremy Doyle, Agent 4.5, late of the Met, drugs squad and dry cleaners, loped down the hallowed halls of CI5 (Criminal Intelligence, Criminal Investigations or Criminals, Inc. depending on the Cow's mood). He was the best shot in England and he knew it. He'd have probably been the fastest runner, too, if his jeans didn't cut off the circulation to his legs.

"'Ere now, suns'ine," Doyle called out as he saw his priapismic partner, William Andrew Philip Bodie, Y.H.I.S.O.B (You Half-Irish Son of a Bitch, as Ray so fondly called him), come out of Interrogation Room 4. "Wot you bin doin', suns'ine? 'Ad yoursel' an 'ot date last night, you did, din't ya." Doyle giggled for no apparent reason.

Bodie looked at his elfin partner smugly. He decided that expression didn't fit the situation, so he switched to his other one, innocence.

"Sunshine--"

"I 'ear t'e Cow wants us t' go up t' 'Artford t' see 'ow many 'orses 'ave been stolen--"

"Sunshine...."

"--'E's gone off 'is top, 'e 'as, if 'e t'inks I--"

"Sunshine!"

Doyle turned pond scum green eyes toward his ex-mercenary partner. "Wot?"

"Have you forgotten how to say your H's again?" Bodie asked patiently, as he craned his neck to get a peek at Doyle's oxygen-starved bum.

Doyle borrowed a goosed owl's eyes for a second before answering. "Don't you want to talk like that, then?"

"Not particularly."

"Oh. All right."

The two figures continued down toward the Cow's den. Since the zoo wouldn't let him in anymore, they figured they probably had a better chance of finding him in his office.

"Ach, come in," the ginger-haired, tough-but-firm (if a little finicky) Scot said as they entered his office. "Would ya ha' a drink?" Major George Cowley burred.

Doyle patted the pockets of the ugliest plaid jacket he could find to wear. "Not on me, sir," he said with a chipped-tooth grin. Bodie kept telling him he should get the tooth capped. He was cutting himself on it all the time. It hurt Doyle once in a while, too.

"It will be if ya don' sit down, laddie," Cowley said, pulling a bottle of pure malt scotch and a bootleg video cassette of Brigadoon out of his desk drawer. He turned a benevolent smile on Bodie. "And what about you, Bodie?"

Bodie gulped quietly. It always made him nervous when the Cow looked at him that way. Almost as if he were missing a classical dilemma of some sort. "Sir, no, thank you, sir."

Cowley got down to business without further delay. "I want you two to infiltrate the Orion Club. The owner of the club, Jeffery Graves, has been involved in white slavery, prostitution, drug smuggling, stealing telephone books from hotel rooms, assassinations, taking the tags off mattresses, and worst of all--" Cowley paused for effect. "--Burned every copy of the great old musicals about Scotland he could find."

Bodie and Doyle gasped in unison.

"Doyle, I want you to go into the club as a hooker. That should be easy enough for you."

Doyle nodded in agreement. It was well-known that he moonlighted as a streetwalker, having long ago given up on Cowley ever clearing his expense chit, let alone his rise.

"Bodie, you are to go in looking for a job as a bouncer. Well, on your bikes."

The two agents found themselves out in the hall before either could say Bonnie Jean.

"You know what, sunshine," Doyle said longingly into his partner's blue eyes as they headed towards the door.

"What, sunshine?" Bodie leered back as he held open the door for the little golly.

"I think I'm going to enjoy this assignment, sunshine." Doyle stopped to turn a seductive look on the taller butch of a partner. "How would you like to be my first customer of the day, sunshine?" he rasped out.

Bodie stopped dead. With the proper resuscitation procedures, however, he recovered. "You mean, you feel the same way for me as I do for you, sunshine?" the Liverpudlian said in wonder.

"Yes, sunshine, yes," Ray said emphatically.

"Oh, Raymond!" Bodie gasped.

"Oh, William!" Doyle sighed.

"Oh, brother!" Murphy gagged, as he passed them.

The two tough CI5 agents proceeded to try and swallow each other's faces. The case would have to wait for now. Now was the time for love.

To Be Continued....
(If the ransom's not met.)

Originally published in Chalk and Cheese 9, Whatever You Do, Don't Press! (Agent with Style), October 1991