Note: Man Without a Past has a fairly complex plot, so this epilogue may be confusing unless you've seen the episode. I've tried to include some of the pertinent bits in the narrative, but an overview can't hurt. Briefly, Bodie and his date, Claire, are caught in a restaurant bombing. The bomb was delivered by Arthur Pendle, lackey of Peter Crabbe. Crabbe has been hired by American mobsters to kill Brian Forrest, an FBI protected witness now living in Britain. In reality, Forrest has also hired Crabbe to instigate several "near misses" so that the FBI will once again give him a new identity in a new country. The American mob, suspicious of Crabbe's failure, arrive to take matters into their own hands.

Also, please note the series originally aired in the late 70s, when language was a bit less pc than nowadays.

Requested by Shellie. A huge thanks to Elsa for a quick beta, and my apologies to her for taking so dang long to post it.

Safe At Last
(epilogue to Man Without a Past)
by Linda S. Maclaren

Just his rotten luck, the first to arrive was a panda load of uniformed coppers. Of course, if he'd needed backup, the first bunch into the garage would have been the fire brigade. What he really wanted to see was the ambulance.

The backup was nice, of course. Kept things tidy. He'd intended simply to handcuff Crabbe and the Yank around some convenient support pillar, and whichever one survived would get hauled off to the nick. Just as well he hadn't done it, though; Cowley would have had a --

Now there was a productive thought.

"Handcuff these two but keep 'em separated," he said briskly to the first constables within earshot. Already, he was heading for the door that led from the underground garage to the lift, so he had to shout the rest over his shoulder. "Two of you come with me. There're more upstairs to deal with. And check on that damn ambulance. There's an injured man up there."

Chafing impatiently while the lift made its slow, grumbling ascent, Bodie finally made it to the flat where he'd left his partner. It had occurred to him that Doyle had to free himself from the kitchen in order to call an ambulance for himself, an act which required him to shift a large, toppled rack blocking the doorway. Of course, Doyle was hardly in any sort of shape to accomplish that task or he wouldn't have needed the ambulance in the first place.

The two men Bodie had left unconscious in the tiny foyer were only now beginning to stir. There was some satisfaction in that. He'd been worried about leaving his injured partner alone in the flat with two thugs, but there hadn't been many options. With two factions of armed hooligans to sort out by himself, Bodie hadn't been in much of a position to observe the nicety of seeing to Doyle's injuries. No, he'd been too busy trying to figure out who'd been shooting at whom and keeping his own tender body parts out of the line of fire.

He gestured the constables in the direction of the criminals, then ducked under the toppled rack of shelves to enter the kitchen. Briefly, he noted the entire room looked as if it had been ransacked by a burglar, but his attention quickly focused on Doyle, who was sitting on the floor, his back against a cabinet door, his arms folded protectively over his stomach.

Bodie sank down beside him. "You still look like hell," he said, careful to keep any trace of anxiety out of his tone. Doyle did look like hell: his face was a pallid grey that glistened with a sickly sheen, and the skin around his eyes was tight with pain.

Doyle's breathing was fast and shallow, but he managed a smile. "Yeah, well I got run over by a car, didn't I?"

Bodie felt his chest tighten in sympathy. "Yeah? When did that happen?"

"Dunno...hours ago? Days? Don't know what day it is."

"Same day you went missing."

Doyle nodded. "Okay, this morning then. I tracked down Arthur Pendle but about the time I caught up with him, Crabbe caught up with me in that flash Yank car of his."

This time, Bodie couldn't hide his concern. "The Lincoln?" Jesus, this could be more serious than he'd first thought. Doyle could be bleeding internally, and that meant every moment counted. Aggravated that his R/T wasn't on the same frequency as the local constabulary, he shouted for one of the uniformed officers outside in the foyer.

When the man stuck his head around the door, Bodie asked, "What's the word on that ambulance?"

"It's on its way," the man assured, sounding faintly aggrieved. "Apparently, no one had put in a call for one."

Bodie swung an accusing gaze at Doyle. "And whose fault is that?"

Doyle almost laughed, but he stopped himself in time, apparently deciding it would hurt too much. "Couldn't seem to manage the effort."

Bodie looked him over with feigned casualness. "Where does it hurt?"

"Pretty much everywhere," Doyle admitted with a wry grimace." Broke a couple of ribs for sure." He spoke in short spurts, gasping in shallow breaths between. "And that bastard Pendle kicked me a time or two for good measure "

'Yeah,' Bodie thought despairingly, 'and probably bruised your spleen or a kidney or something'. But he wisely refrained from saying it out loud.

He felt a brief flash of satisfaction that Pendle lay dead in a pool of blood on the cold, hard floor of the underground garage, although he regretted he hadn't been the one to put him there. He hesitated with indecision. "You want to stay where you are, or d'ya want to lie down?"

Doyle was silent for a minute. "Think I'll just stay where I am, thanks."

Bodie's jaw clenched in frustration that he couldn't do something to ease his partner's pain. The only thing he could think of was to try to keep him distracted from his injuries. "Why'd they bring you here to Crabbe's flat?"

Doyle winced as he shifted his weight slightly. "Dunno."

It wasn't much of a bridge for sustaining conversation, and Bodie was trying to think of something else to say when the constable stuck his head back through the door. The young man looked decidedly alarmed.

"Did you know there's a bomb on the floor?"

Bodie blinked, momentarily speechless. He looked at Doyle, who looked apologetic.

"Sorry, forgot to mention that little detail."

"Some detail," Bodie grumbled, turning back toward the officer. "Is it ticking?"

"Uh, no."

"Then don't touch it and call for the bomb squad." He turned his attention back to his partner. "Any other little details you forgot to mention?"

"Don't think so." Doyle shifted again, clearly suffering as each passing minute awakened new pain. "But you can tell me something."

"What's that?"

"I traced the restaurant bomb to Pendle, and Pendle to Crabbe. But just who the hell were all these other blokes who burst in with guns blazing?"

The restaurant bomb. Bodie winced at the memory. It had been the catalyst for the whole complicated mess, resulting in his best friend and partner sitting badly injured and possibly dying on the floor beside him.

A swell of guilt momentarily overrode his control, but he thrust it aside angrily. There would be time for feelings of guilt later, when Doyle was safely tucked up in hospital. Bodie had been at ground zero when the bomb had gone off in the restaurant. His girlfriend, Claire, had been badly injured by the blast. George Cowley, his boss in CI5, had rightly surmised Bodie's that intensely personal interest in the investigation would complicate things and ordered him to stay clear. Naturally, he hadn't obeyed.

It wasn't his fault that Doyle had been working alone on the investigation, but it was his fault that he'd withheld valuable information that might have saved him from getting hurt.

These thoughts flashed through his mind in the space of a second before he focused on Doyle's question. "It's a complicated mess involving American organised crime, the FBI, a renegade protected witness, and too many double-crosses to explain properly."

Doyle frowned in concentration. "So the party-crashers are American gangsters?"

"Got it in one. Let's save the rest for a bedtime story, all right?" He really didn't like the way Doyle's eyes were starting to glaze, as if he was losing the battle to stay alert.

The sound of the fallen rack being shifted brought his head around. He was about to snap a question at the constable when he saw an ambulance attendant hovering anxiously behind. "Ambulance is here, sunshine," he said with relief.

Doyle didn't look particularly relieved. Perhaps he was imagining how much it was going to hurt being shifted to the stretcher and carried down to the waiting ambulance.

"He's got some broken ribs and possible internal injuries," Bodie explained quickly as the attendant and a companion squeezed into the tiny space.

"That's all right, we've got him now," the man assured him, crouching over Doyle.

The next few minutes were a nightmare. It was difficult moving in the confined area, and preparing Doyle for transport and lifting him onto the stretcher took considerable effort. Doyle's breath hitched in his chest and his lips tightened with the effort to keep from crying out. Convulsively, he reached out for something to hold onto, and Bodie caught his hand without hesitation. Doyle's grip was like iron, but beneath it, he could feel the tremor of muscles stretched taut with agony.

The ride to the hospital seemed interminable. Bodie rode in the back and tried to stay out of the attendant's way while Doyle's vital signs were checked and notes taken concerning his injuries. Again frustrated by his inability to do anything useful, he listened to his partner's shallow breathing and anxiously watched the deepening furrows of pain etching their way into the too-pale skin.

Once at the hospital, events moved swiftly and Bodie was shunted aside as Doyle was wheeled into casualty. Although he felt as if he paced for a lifetime, it was less than an hour before a doctor came into the waiting room to update him on his partner's condition.

"Mr. Doyle is a very lucky man," the doctor stated, and Bodie exhaled a long breath of relief. "He has several broken ribs, but none of them punctured a major organ. He has extensive bruising which will cause him considerable discomfort, but I don't see why he can't be released to go home within a day or two."

"When can I see him?" Bodie asked, his anger and sense of urgency fading away at the good news.

"We gave him something for the pain, so he's resting comfortably at the moment. There's little point in waiting around. I doubt he'll wake before morning."

Morning. It was hours away, but at least it would give Bodie time to tie up the few remaining loose ends of the investigation.

Satisfied his partner was safe at last, he went outside and used his R/T to check in with HQ. As usual, Cowley seemed to have all the pertinent information already. Did Bodie want to participate in the final act of the unfolding plot?

Bodie did. As the doctor had said, he wouldn't accomplish anything useful by haunting the hospital.

Later, when all that remained was the final paperwork, he couldn't resist the urge to slip back to the hospital. It was long past regular visiting hours, so he crept like a thief along the silent corridors until he found Doyle's room. Easing quietly inside, he tiptoed over to the bed and looked down at the peacefully sleeping figure.

Drugged and oblivious, Doyle's face was free of pain, and a bit of colour was back in his cheeks.

Satisfied, Bodie carefully picked up the visitor's chair and moved it next to the bed. Then he sat down. He didn't plan on staying long; just long enough to assure himself that Doyle was going to be all right. Verbal reports were one thing, but they couldn't beat first-hand observations.

He jerked awake sometime later, aware that he'd unintentionally dozed off. For a moment, he didn't know where he was, but then his sleep-blurred eyes brought the dull, utilitarian hospital room into focus. What had brought him awake so abruptly?

His gaze snapped immediately to his partner, who was no longer sleeping peacefully. Doyle's body twitched beneath the covers, and sweat beaded his face. His hands fisted urgently in the blanket, and Bodie reached out impulsively to capture one in his own.

"It's all right, Ray," he said softly. "You're safe in bed. Crabbe's in gaol, and that big Lincoln of his is on its way to the wrecking yard." This last bit wasn't exactly true, but Bodie suspected the images plaguing Doyle's sleep were of the massive front grill of the car as it bore down on him the moment before impact.

Whether his guess was right or not, his words had the desired effect, and Doyle relaxed.

A few seconds later Doyle opened his eyes and looked around in bleary confusion. "Wot's't?" he murmured inarticulately.

Bodie frowned as he tried to translate the question. "It's three a.m. and all's well."

"Yeah?" Doyle didn't look convinced. "Then how come yer holdin' my hand?"

"You were having a bad dream." Smiling, Bodie released his grip and straightened in the chair. "What's wrong? Afraid I'll queer your chances with the nurses?"

Doyle returned the grin. "In a manner of speaking. How's your lady friend?"

"Recovering, just like you," Bodie said, feeling content for the first time in a long while.

"That's all right then." Doyle closed his eyes. "You need to go home and get some rest."

"I'll do that." Bodie stood up and stretched his muscles, which were cramped from sleeping in the uncomfortable hospital chair. "You want me to bring you anything?"

"Just the full story," Doyle mumbled as he drifted off. "I still don't know what all this was about."

"Okay, sunshine." He smoothed the blanket where Doyle's hands had bunched it. "Prepare to be amazed."

Even while falling asleep, Doyle managed a snort of incredulity. Grinning, Bodie headed for the door.

As he'd said, all was well.

THE END