So, funny story. At about this time last week, I decided to give up writing. And then... this idea popped into my head. So after much encouragement from people on twitter and tumblr, and lots of conversations with 5A7AH that ended up discussing methods of torture, and her begging me to torture Caroline Price, chapter one has emerged.

Chapter 1: Race

"My name is Jennifer Waters. I am twenty-seven years old. If you do not find me in the next sixty minutes, he will kill me."

No. Not again, this couldn't be happening again. In the past month, two men had rung him in the exact same way.

"What's going on love? Where are you?"

A new voice came on the phone, deep and threatening. "You don't really think I'd give away my position, do you Hunt? You have sixty minutes to find her. Here's your clue. She's on the street that has no friends. White three up, one down. Your sixty minutes starts now." The line clicked off, and as much Gene wanted to bury his face in his hands, he couldn't. He only had sixty minutes to find the woman with a clue that was no help at all.

CID silenced as Gene stepped outside his office a look of grim determination on his face.

"No," his DI whispered.

Gene merely nodded. "Jennifer Waters, twenty-seven. Same terms as last time. Sixty minutes to save her."

"What was the clue?" Alex asked, picking up a pen and paper.

"She's on the street with no friends," Gene said, thinking. "White three up, one down."

"What the hell's that supposed to mean?" Ray exclaimed. "Bloody hell Guv, how are we supposed to find people with all that to go on and only 60 minutes to find them?"

Gene looked at the clock. They had already lost a minute of the precious hour. Bolly was poring over a map, as was most of CID, looking for 'a street with no friends.'

Gene joined in, knowing that this time they needed a different result. The previous two had died long before they had found them. This case was the most feared, but the only one that anyone could think about.

It had all started two weeks earlier. He had arrived to work that day with a feeling of dread in his stomach. Gene Hunt knew that this was not a good sign. Very rarely in his career did he go to work with apprehension curling at his aura, and every time he did, something bad happened. The last time he had had this feeling, Sam had been killed in the jewellery blag.

As he entered into his office, everything had seemed normal. CID was quiet, it being too early for most to arrive. It was certainly too early for Bolly, unless she had spent the night there, like she sometimes did. Gene wondered about how lonely she truly was. She always put on the tough exterior, but to see her here in the mornings, her head on her desk, unconscious on one file or another, made him think she wasn't all she appeared to be.

On the days she hadn't spent the night in CID, she was usually fifteen minutes late. Gene didn't know why he put up with it. Certainly, if it had been one of the lads, he would have shouted himself blue after the second late arrival in a row.

But there was something about Bolly that prevented him from disciplining her, no matter what she had done.

Slowly, CID had filtered in, until Bolly arrived, throwing her jacket over her chair looking too much like she was recovering from a hangover.

So everything was normal then.

That was when the phone had rung.

Gene had picked up his phone, and a male had left a message much like Jennifer had only minutes ago.

"My name is Trevor Beatty. I am thirty-three years old. I am being held against my will, and he says if you do not find me within an hour, I will die."

At first, Gene had wanted to take it as a joke. He had hoped it was. But then the second man, the kidnapper had come on the phone and given him the clue to try and find Trevor. Try as they might, the clue was too vague to be able to find Trevor in time. They had stumbled in three hours after the limit, and all that remained was a body, covered in massive amounts of blood.

Gene had been a copper for years, but it had been a sight that disturbed even him. A fingernail and a toenail had been missing from each hand and foot. One molar had been pulled out, and was lying on the floor next to the body. Cigarette burns were on various parts of the body. But the worst sight of all was what was on the man's chest. Words, smeared by blood, but standing out by their jagged edges, had been carved into his chest. The two small words had been easy to read, and filled Gene with immense guilt and rage.

'TOO LATE'

The cause of death had been clear. In the middle of the second O, there was a stab wound, which had gone all the way through the body.

Then, a week later, the same thing happened. His name was Rory Jenkins and he was twenty-nine years old. They had done better that time, but they had still missed the mark by an hour.

What Gene didn't understand was why the killer had suddenly switched to a female victim. He could almost hear the cogs whirring in Alex's head as she tried to work it all out.

Gene looked up at the clock. They had forty five minutes left. He exchanged a look with Alex. The bastard would be phoning soon.

As if on cue, Gene's phone started ringing. Gene picked up the receiver. "Hunt," he said shortly, knowing what to expect.

"My name's Jennifer Waters. Please, help me." Her voice was laced with pain. Gene knew what was slowly happening to her, which made it all the worse. Pathology had determined that the carving to the chest had occurred last. She was on the first ten or fifteen of what would become 47 burns, and she had probably lost a nail by now.

The man's voice came on the phone. "Forty-five minutes, Hunt," he said as she cried out.

The phone clicked off again. Gene slammed the phone down, kicking his rubbish bin for good measure. CID didn't even look up, continuing to pore over the maps of London they had all been given.

"Guv!" Alex cried twenty minutes later. "This one! A street with no friends. Peerless?"

"I think you may be onto something Bolly," Gene said, feeling a slight relief before adrenaline coursed through his veins once more. "Let's fire up the Quattro."

Alex, Ray and Chris followed him out of the office, Alex holding onto the paper on which she had written the clue. He watched as her eyes scanned it over and over again, the little wrinkle in her forehead getting deeper as she thought.

"White, three up, one down," she mumbled. "What the hell could that mean?"

There was a tense silence in the Quattro as they approached Peerless Street. Gene looked down at his watch. Ten minutes. Plenty of time. They had plenty of time.

His radio crackled. "Please!" he heard Jennifer's voice cry. "No more!" The words tailed off into a moan of pain.

"Ten minutes," the man said.

Ray and Chris cringed at the sound, but Alex had hardly noticed it. She was too caught up in the clue, repeatedly looking down at the paper and then up at the houses before she suddenly broke into a wide grin.

"White, three up, one down. White house. Three from the corner, one level down."

Alex stared at the houses on the street and her triumphant smile faded. Every single house was white. They had four options and only seven minutes.

"Ray, Chris, you two take the houses down there. Bolly and I will take these two. Stay paired up. I don't want him to get his hands on one of you lot either."

Chris and Ray nodded, and Alex and Gene got out of the car to let them out. The two men started running down the street. Gene looked at Alex and nodded before they barged into the first house.

As the door banged down, Gene's radio crackled to life again. "Five minutes, Hunt."

He and Alex looked desperately for stairs. Alex moved from the foyer into the next room and he heard her exclaim as she no doubt found the stairs. He was in the room in a flash, nearly knocking them both down as they barrelled down the steps. They reached the lower level, looked around for less than three seconds and started running back up the stairs again. There was no one there.

As they ran across the street to the house opposite, Gene's radio crackled once more. "Two minutes."

They raced across the street, running at breakneck speed now. They had to save her. They were too close to lose the girl now.

Gene rammed the door with his shoulder, but it did not give as easily as the last door did. He and Alex looked at each other. Ding dong.

Gene continued to beat down the door, throwing all his weight against it. Alex started helping when it wouldn't budge. Finally after what seemed like forever, they got the door open.

As the door crashed into the wall, Gene's radio crackled to life. "Zero." A scream sounded from below them, cutting off quickly. Gene and Alex raced downstairs, but there was no one there except a woman, tied up to a chair and barely breathing. Alex rushed over to her.

"Jennifer? Jennifer, can you hear me?"

There was no reply. Alex turned to Gene. "Well are you gonna just stand there? Call a bloody ambulance!" she yelled, starting to untie the woman.

Gene quietly ordered an ambulance, but he knew it was too late. Guilt and sadness washed over him in waves. If the door had opened ten second sooner, she would have been alive and the man arrested.

He sat on the bottom of the stairs, wondering how he was going to tell this woman's family that they had only missed saving her life and catching her captor by seconds.

~(*)~

"Forty seven burn marks."

Alex looked at Gene, who was brooding miserably over a pint. Plod had searched every house on the street, but the man had disappeared. There was nothing they could do at the moment.

"One mark a minute, for an hour," Gene continued, as if he didn't notice Alex was even there. "Seven letters, five other injuries, and the fatal wound."

For the first time she could remember, Alex was speechless. She didn't know how to console him, as she was feeling the exact same way. Indeed, the mood in Luigi's was extremely morose. The Italian was wandering around with an expression of sorrowful comprehension. He had learned that when the men didn't take the piss out of him, a case had gone badly wrong. Oftentimes this led to more drinks over fewer hours, and most of CID stumbling out at an early time of night.

"Thirty seconds," Gene said dolefully, looking up at Alex. "Thirty fucking seconds, and we could have caught the bastard behind this. Now, we get to sit and wait for forensics to do all the work. Or until he takes someone else."

"He won't take anyone else, Gene. We'll catch him before that," Alex promised him.

Gene merely looked at her.

"Will we Bolls?"

She couldn't answer. She didn't have an answer. There was a part of her which believed the false confidence, but the majority knew that it was a lie. Instead, she looked down at her wine, which had magically refilled from the last time she had taken a sip.

"Why do you think he switched to girls?" Gene asked suddenly.

"I don't know. It may just be a pattern, to even things out. Like in schools, how they sometimes make the children sit boy, girl, boy, girl. Only with him, its two men and then possibly two women. And then after the second woman, he'll start over with men again."

"Makes no sense to me. Why would you want to do that to someone anyway?" he asked, once more staring morosely at his beer.

Alex stared at him for a moment, fighting the urge to wrap her arms around him as a comfort. For, once again, Gene Hunt had rendered her speechless.

They had to find the man. Soon. For everyone's sake.

~(*)~

"Please, no. Not again! Please!"

"Describe it for me. What does it feel like?"

"It hurts!"

"But what does the hurt feel like?"

He stopped the Dictaphone, moving over to his TV to watch the tape of that afternoon. It had been very close today. Hunt had nearly gotten him. It was a good thing he had decided to pack up his video recorder before the ten minute mark. Hunt and his team were on the street at that time. He would have never gotten away if he had had to lug that away. Instead, Jennifer Water's last moments were recorded on his Dictaphone.

He made a note in his notebook and closed it, smiling.

One more woman. He only needed one more woman, and then his research would be complete. One more week, and his experiment would be finished.

to be continued.

(if my muse does)