It was the dead dog in front of Doyle's door that was the last straw.

Bodie and Doyle had spent the week after the Ulrike debacle attending funerals, and at the time they ran into the straw and the proverbial camel's, they were on their way to a rendez-vous with a long-promised drink in Doyle's flat. Doyle needed it. They both did.

CI5 had been banned from Cook's funeral, of course, despite the fact that they'd paid for it. That bit of news hit Doyle particularly hard; he'd looked like a kicked spaniel when Cowley had imparted the not-so-joyous tidings in his office. Bodie intended to pour enough liquor down his mate to wipe that look off.

And now this. There were days, Bodie thought, when the universe could use a particularly good kicking.

"It's a dead dog," he said, belabouring the obvious. Doyle simply stood there in gob-smacked silence. Right. O-kay. This needed a joke. Definitely time to lighten the atmosphere. Bodie elbowed his mate in the golly's washboard ribs and tried again, "You piss off some Mafia Don, or something? I mean, I hear it's supposed to be a horse's head in your bed, but maybe this is the best they could do in the middle of Chelsea, eh? Ray? Ray, are you listening to me?" Doyle wasn't.

Bodie winced at the thud of Doyle's knees onto the floor as he simply folded up like a toast rack next to the sad canine heap.

"Hey, hey Ray, you all right?" Right. Of course he wasn't. How could anybody be all right after a week like this? Definitely Prizewinner in the Top Stupid Questions of All Time, a field in which Bodie regularly placed and won. Bodie winced again as he put the knees of his good suit into the dust of the hall and knelt down next to Doyle.

Ray looked at him out of dazed green eyes and said, "I didn't think she'd really do it. I said I'd take him, find someone to look after him for a while, anything, just so she wouldn't have to put him down... Christ, she really did it!"

"Who really did what, Ray? Even you can't get up some bird's nose bad enough to deserve a dead dog on your doorstep!"

"Not some bird--June."

"June who?"

"June Cook." Ray's green eyes now held the pain of the world in them. Shit. This was worse than when his birds cried. Desperately Bodie tried for clarity.

"This is COOK'S dog?"

"Yes."

"Dead?"

"Yes."

" On your doorstep."

"Yes."

"For Christ's sake, WHY?" This was worse than a Monty Python panto.

"She said it was my fault...Cookie getting killed." Oh, it was really getting bad now. Doyle was having to gulp to keep the tears back.

"What were you supposed to've done, put a gun to his head?!"

"Worse. Signed him up with our mob--CI5."

"Shit."

"Yeah."

Bodie knew there was probably a gap of about six sentences and a leap of female logic he could never hope to surmount missing from Doyle's story, but then Ray always had been succinct in his reports. The facts were plain. June felt Doyle was somehow responsible for her husband's death, and had murdered the family dog and placed it and the blame squarely on Doyle's doorstep. It was clear that Doyle blamed himself. Sodding Cow should never've sent him to tell a mate's wife her husband was dead. It was always 'shoot the messenger' in this sad old world, wasn't it? And Doyle looked like he'd been gutshot.

The sobs were coming in earnest now, even buried as they were in dirty dog fur. Bodie knew he should feel repulsed or at the very least embarrassed, watching his partner and best mate bawl his eyes out over a dead mutt. No feelings, please, we're British, and all that. Stiff upper was what the paras had taught him. Appropriate for all occasions. But all he could feel was as gutted as Doyle.

The mutt was getting its cold muzzle soaked with salt water now. Bodie couldn't take much more of this. And then he abruptly couldn't take any more at all, and acted, as per usual, without giving a tinker's damn for the consequences.

Bodie hauled his sobbing mate off the dog's corpse and used his not inconsiderable strength to bury Doyle's grief twisted face against his shoulder, and then he held him. Just held him, the way he'd always wanted to when Doyle got this bad.

Twenty minutes later, by Bodie's Superman watch, the crying had subsided to a couple of surprised sniffs. Then,

"Bodie.." Doyle's voice, low and rough from crying.

"O.K. now?" Bodie kept his arms wrapped around Doyle. Too good to pass up, this was.

"Um, yeah. Better. Why'd you--" Oh that lovely, suspicious copper's nose, and the warm and welcome feeling that his grotty Sherlock of a partner was back in semi-working order again.

"Tell you all about it over a drink.. AFTER we sort the pooch out, Sherlock," Bodie promised. "O.K.?"

Doyle the sophisticated copper knuckled the wetness out of his eyes like any grubby nine-year-old and gave the only possible response.

"O.K."

---

Two stiff drinks later, the deceased reposed in an old oilcloth dug out of the boot of Doyle's car, and Bodie was dialing through the phone book.

"What ARE you doing?" Doyle asked.

Bodie gave him a goggle-eyed look.

"I'm making the arrangements, of course. What does it look like I'm doing?"

"Arrangements?" Doyle repeated

Bodie bent a kindly look on him, and clearly making allowances for a man with two scotches under his belt, enunciated clearly "Arrangements. To inter the deceased. I mean, you weren't planning on burying him in your allotment, were you?! And I think the landlord would object if you tried to tip him under a paving stone. Anyway, the kids deserve to know where their dog is."

"Mine ended up in a cardboard box in someone's back garden," Doyle said wistfully. "Used me mum's best road atlas as a headstone. Thought she was gonna bury me there too, for a bad moment or two."

"Here lies Raymond Doyle and his pup--" Bodie shut his mouth with a snap. No. Too close to home to even joke about.

"So what are you doing?"

"Ah, here we are!" Bodie said. Doyle raised a patient eyebrow. "RSPCA of course. They'll know."

"Know what?" But Bodie was already having a fruitful conversation with someone on the other end of the phone, biro in hand,

"Right. Right. O.K. Sunshine Sanctuary for Little Doggies. Got it." And Bodie jotted a number down on a scrap of paper unearthed from God-knew-where. He dialed the phone again, making violent shushing motions in Doyle's direction. Doyle, sipping at his third scotch, settled down to enjoy Bodie being Bodie. 3.7 was certainly waging a charm offensive on whoever was on the other end of the receiver this time. Probably a bird, Doyle thought morosely.

"You do?" Bodie was saying to the possible bird. "Great, really great. That's wonderful. Thank you so much. See you in thirty minutes." He rang off, and turned to Doyle with a pleased and proud expression on his face. Doyle could never resist him when he wore that look.

"O.K., Houdini, what'd you do?"

"Found a pet cemetery that does pick-ups. They'll be here to collect poor old Fido in thirty minutes. I said there'd been a sudden death in the family. Well, it's true."

"Pet cemetery?"

"American fad. Caught on here oh, about two years ago."

"How do you know so much about buryin' pets?" Then Doyle caught himself in time to chorus with Bodie "Had a bird that was interested in animals!" He took another slug of scotch and managed a watery smile.

"Might've known, Superman. And how much is this going to cost me?"

"Ray, Ray, how can you think of money at a time like this?"

"Christ, that much?!"

"That much." And Bodie raised a sardonic and consoling eyebrow.

---

The Sunshine Sanctuary for Little Doggies turned out to comprise a battered old estate car and a veddy veddy upper class bird with a two mile back garden that she couldn't think of any better use for. Her--Doyle couldn't think of any more appropriate word than estate--turned out to be some ways out of town, so he and Bodie had a l-oooo-ong drive in which to get to know her. Doyle was thanking God for the three scotches he'd had before they'd gone two miles.

"Just-call-me-Sybil" had tossed Fido into the back of her estate car with a rough and forthright efficiency that reminded Doyle of the St John's ambulance men.

"Oh, you mustn't mind that!" she chirped cheerily at Bodie's flinch. "Your little doggie is far beyond feeling any pain now. Gone to Doggie Heaven, you know, and of course I have just the right Special Place for us to put his Earthly Remains! And your donation is VERY much appreciated and will of course save MANY a deserving dog from an Unfortunate Fate! Would you like a brochure?"

"Oh, Christ," moaned Bodie sotto voce to Doyle, "I've hired a Valkyrie!"

"Appropriate," allowed Doyle.

Sybil was twice Bodie's weight at exactly his height, wore bright pink overalls with green wellies, and as it turned out, drove her own backhoe. Before they were quite ready, Bodie and Doyle found themselves looking at a small patch of freshly turned earth and at a complete loss for words.

"I am dreadfully sorry," Sybil said. "We usually have the local vicar say a few words--he's VERY ecumenical, you know--but he's got laryngitis at the moment! Desperately inconvenient, but these things happen!" At their combined glare, even Sybil faltered a moment, and then said brightly, "Well, I'll just leave you to say what ever words you feel are appropriate!" The General's daughter (they'd got her pedigree in the car and it had taken six miles just for the recent twigs on her family tree) then beat a hasty retreat in good order.

"Well, that was helpful." Bodie stared for a while at the rolling lawn, the ornamental garden, and the ha-ha. It was overcast, and growing dark. "What DO you say at a dog's funeral?"

Doyle thought about this for a bit, and then dropped to one knee in front of the freshly turned soil.

"Sorry, mate. You deserved better," he said.

"And that has been the epitaph of many a poor soul," sighed Bodie. "Right. Now what about that drink?"

---

The-General's-Daughter-Just-Call-Me-Sybil turned out to be a bit of all right once she'd gotten a few belts under her overalls. She'd offered to drive them all the way back to town, but they'd only made it as far as the local pub. Doyle, in a fit of generosity, bought the first round, and by the third, Bodie figured 'Sybbie' deserved the full story behind the dog. Surprisingly, she was quite understanding about the whole thing.

"It happens more often than you might think" she sighed. Doyle watched the billow of her full bosom underneath the pink overall top with detached amazement.

"Really," he said noncommittally, then flinched when Bodie kicked him in the ankle.

"Oh, yes," she said, ignoring the by-play under the bar's counter. "When it all goes pear-shaped, it's usually the animals in a family that suffer. Sometime the owners simply forget to feed them. Sometimes this sort of thing happens. Grief makes people do strange things."

"Yeah. Yeah, it does," Doyle said, and the expression that accompanies sudden epiphanies bloomed on his face. Some of the pain that had been dogging him since Cook's death eased away. Bodie watched it happen, and could have kissed Sybil for that alone. He did kiss her, several drinks later, as she was pouring him and Doyle into a cab.

"Sybil," he said to her pink overalled bosom, "you're a hell of a woman!"

She giggled. "How sweet! That's what Daddy always said!" At which point Doyle almost disgraced himself laughing.

---

Morning arrived painfully bright, as mornings have a way of doing when you've spent the night before drowning your sorrows at the bottom of a pint, and Bodie flinched his way into Doyle's sunny kitchen. There he found awaiting him coffee, aspirin, and Sherlock Doyle.

"O.K." Bodie said. "At least let me get the coffee and aspirin in me first. Then you can ask me anything you like."

Doyle waited in cat-like and expectant silence while Bodie applied the traditional panacea for a hard night. Then he said one word.

"Why?"

Bodie cast about for an appropriate response, then said "Because," and proceeded to kiss the stuffing out of Doyle. Having gained not an uppercut, but instead his partner's whole hearted and enthusiastic cooperation, he then ventured "I love you. That's why. Clear enough for you?"

"Crystal," said Doyle, and proceeded to return the kiss with hard interest. They broke for a mutual gasp of air and Doyle said with a wide grin, "That was clear last night, you daft git, when you were helping me bury the damn dog. I meant, what took you so long?!"

"Oh." And they adjourned to the bedroom, where they made ample and enjoyable use of Doyle's bed.

Afterwards, when Bodie was happily holding--just holding!--Doyle, Ray said thoughtfully into 3.7's shell-like, "You know, June was wrong."

"What about?'

"She said I'd got no one. But she was wrong. I've got you."

"You've always had me, sunshine. Always."

"Well, 'til death do us join' then."

"They can put us next to that damn dog!" Which romantic line earned him a pillow full in the face, after which Bodie kissed Doyle long and hard and gave no further thought to their future.

-- THE END --

January 2007