Door 314 looked as normal as all of the other doors along the corridor, but Laura found that several minutes had passed before she was able to bring herself to knock. There was a brief pause before she heard footsteps on the other side, but she was surprised to see a tearstained, drawn face peering at her through the crack as the door opened just a little. Kim stared at her, a frown creasing the skin of her forehead; then she smiled and opened the door all the way. The drawn, tired look had gone, and the haunted shadows vanished from her eyes. "Hello. I was expecting the police." She smiled a jaunty, friendly smile. "Come on in." "You're so kind." Laura followed her into the room, feeling as though she were descending into the lair of some evil creature. She killed the thought, determined to remain calm and collected. Kim had no argument with her, after all. "What can I do for you?" Pouring them each a brandy, Kim perched on the edge of her paper-strewn desk and handed a glass to her guest. "I'm supposing that you've been to see Chris?" "Have you?" "Me?" Kim laughed. "Are you kidding? I spend my whole life trying to keep away from him. Why the hell would I want to go and visit him?" She shrugged. "Actually, I did stop by the station, but I didn't go to the cells. My business was elsewhere." A smirk crossed her face, and Laura's eyes widened. "You bribed them." She felt that she had Kim's measure now; as though she knew what was going on in the other woman's head; to a degree at least. Kim shrugged. "I was afraid," she said, her voice filled with mock worries. "He's a violent man. He was going to take my son away from me, and I was worried that he would get out before I had a chance to make alternative living arrangements." Her tone of voice changed abruptly. "You needn't worry. I'm not planning to let this go to trial." "I'm glad to hear it." Laura stared into her brandy. She wanted it, but she didn't want to share a drink with Kim. "Have you any idea what that prison is like? They didn't let him make any phone calls. I only found out where he was by accident. Have you any idea what was going through my mind when he didn't come home? I was scared stiff! Anything might have happened!" "No such luck." Kim stood and moved away from the desk, staring out of the window. "You don't know anything, Laura. You don't understand, so don't pretend that you do. This isn't about you." "I know." The intensity of emotion in her voice surprised her, and she hesitated before continuing. "But just what is it about? Revenge? Some stupid little feud? Why?" She shook her head. "You broke the law, Kim. Did you expect him to sit by and do nothing? When he saw through you, did you expect him to just let you get away with it all? He was only doing what he thought was right." "That's rubbish, and you know it." There was no emotion at all in Kim's voice, in stark contrast to the impassioned appeal in the voice of her guest. "Chris never did anything because he thought it was right. He came after me because he hated me. He thought that I killed his father. He thought that I was responsible for every bad thing that ever happened to him. He didn't know that I was behind that insurance fraud. He didn't know anything. He just wanted it to be true, and set out to prove that it was, regardless of the truth. Whatever you think of Chris Tate, you can't believe that he's that much of an angel. This - all of this - is just so that he can make one more step up the greasy pole, to try and be half the man his father was. Stop deluding yourself, Laura." "I know why Chris went after you." Laura knew that so much of what Kim had said was true, but she knew other things as well, and would not leave them unsaid. "I know that wishful thinking is part of what put him on to you. But that's not what kept him at it for so long; and it certainly isn't what made you hate him so much. This is all about some stupid contest between the two of you; to try and see who can win this next round. It's all a game of one-upmanship. He's the only person in the whole of Emmerdale who was your match. The only person who was ever a threat to you. That's why you hate him. Because he's so much like you. Well I won't see you tear him apart just because you want revenge for what he did. You didn't have to leave Emmerdale because of him. You left because of your own greed. Because you stole that horse. He didn't make you steal it." "Chris is not my match. He's just a spoilt little rich boy, trying to follow in daddy's footsteps." Kim turned around, facing Laura again for the first time in several minutes. "This isn't about revenge. This is just about getting him out of my hair." "He may be a spoilt little rich boy, but what does that make you - you're just like he is. A spoilt little rich girl, full of temper tantrums, getting all angry at the world when things don't go her way." Laura smiled, knowing that she was right. She could see it in Kim's eyes. "Revenge is all you care about, isn't it." "Yes." Kim was smiling again, showing a surprising light in her eyes. She had always liked Laura, for her tendency to speak as she found, and not to beat about the bush. It was strange just how much she seemed to like the women in Chris Tate's life. "Okay, so I hate Chris. I hate the fact that he saw what other people didn't. I hate the fact that he never lets go. I hate the fact that we seem to think the same way, to work the same way. But most of all, I hate the fact that he is who he is." She frowned, staring into the clear, grey eyes of the woman before her. "But I didn't really want to kill him. I know he thinks that was what I wanted, but I didn't. Maybe part of me wanted him dead, butÉ" She looked far away. "You know, last year, the day we left Home Farm, Steve was out for blood. He was going to hit Chris - I mean, he was really going to go for it, I could see it in his eyes. But I stopped him. He would have beaten Chris into the ground given half a chance, but I wasn't going to let him try." She shrugged. "Maybe, for all the hate, part of me wouldn't be me without Chris." Her smile grew again. "Just don't tell him that." "You have to let him go, Kim. That prison is killing him." "Don't talk rubbish. It's just a prison cell." She sat down before her desk, beginning to glance through the untidy piles of paper strewn about its surface. "I wouldn't do anything to him that could be all that bad. What do you take me for? Some kind of monster? He's got you believing all that rubbish he spouts, hasn't he." "No." Laura began to feel herself giving in, and she sat down on the edge of the desk, taking a sip of her brandy. Before the final culmination of events leading to Kim's departure from Emmerdale, she had come to like the woman, in so many ways. She liked her calm competence, her capability. "Look, I know he getsÉ carried away. I know he's rather inclined to blame you for everything going." She finished her drink and put the glass down, the warming effect that it had on her body seeming to warm her feelings as an after-effect. "I don't believe that you wanted to kill him when you left. You panicked, and you hit him. That's understandable. I understand that you were prepared to do anything to stay with James, and to look after him; that's understandable too. But this isn't the way, Kim. That prison is like a torture chamber." She stared into the other woman's eyes. "Tell the police that it was all a misunderstanding. I'll take Chris back to Yorkshire, and we won't bother you again. I promise." "It's not your promise I'm looking for." Kim sighed, turning over what looked like an important official document only to find a rough crayon sketch on the back, clearly the work of James. She smiled and held it up for Laura to see, her face no longer that of the steady-headed ice queen, but instead filled with something rather more basic and gentle. "He's hounding me, Laura. I - I don't know how much more of it I can take. How can I make him believe that his father's death was just one of those things? I wasn't even there at the time. There was nothing I could have done to help Frank." A lone tear found its way through one eyelid and she blinked it away, staring at her guest with eyes that glittered with the promise of more crying to come. "I'm at my wits end, Laura. It's - it's as though I'm going to have to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder, with him always there waiting for my next mistake. It's tearing me apart." She breathed in, a long, shuddering breath. "I know that I did wrong. I know I did. I - I was stupid. It was all Steve's idea, and I trusted him. When he hit Kathy, I - I don't know. I wanted to go to the police, but I was so scared. I thought that they would lock me away too, as an accessory, and then I would have lost James. I'd do anything to keep him. You can understand that, can't you?" "I suppose." Laura had no children of her own, but she had plenty of friends who did. She had seen the look in Kathy's eyes when playing with her foster daughter, and the same spark in the face of Lisa Dingle when she was holding her baby. She thought that she understood how Kim felt. "Look Kim, I know that you didn't kill Frank Tate. Why would you have wanted to? It would have been silly. I could no more believe that of you than - than think that you really meant to kill Chris. I know that you didn't want to hurt Kathy, and she knows that too, I'm sure. Which is why, if you will get the police to let Chris go, I'll make sure that he leaves you alone. I know - of course I know - that he's no angel. I know he can be narrow-minded, and pigheaded, and I know that he's got it into his head that you're some kind of demon in disguise. But I can see through that, and I'll make him leave you alone." "Cruella." Kim's voice sounded distant, sad and deeply hurt. "That's what he called me. Cruella." She wiped another lone tear away. "It hurts, Laura." "Yeah." It was strange, she thought, how different people saw such different sides of Chris Tate. To her he had never been anything short of charming, and to Kathy too. But others, such as Rachel and also Eric Pollard - to say nothing, naturally, of Kim herself - seemed to have been exposed to some mad monster, that none of them liked or trusted. "I'm sorry, Kim. Really I am. And I'm glad I came here to have this talk with you. But you have to understand that you can't let this go on. He's going crazy in that prison. Please make them let him go. They won't listen to anybody else." "I'll think about it." She stood up, heading for the door, and opened it. Laura took that as a blatant indication that she should leave. It certainly looked as though Kim had plenty to think about. "I have to pick James up from the hotel cr�che now, so I'll - I'll be seeing you. Thanks for coming. I, er--" she wiped another tear away. "I'm sorry about the waterworks, I just, I get carried away. It all gets to me sometimes. But I appreciate your support, and it means a lot to me." "No problem." Laura gave her hand a brief squeeze. "I'll see you around." "Yeah, bye." Kim closed the door on her, and Laura walked away down the corridor, back to the lift. Not for the first time, she felt angry and frustrated at Chris. What was it with him? Why was he so determined to make Kim's life so hard? He had even had her believing in the poor woman's guilt for a while. There were times when she felt that she could happily have tried her hand at knocking some sense into him. It was just as Kim had said - he acted like a spoilt little boy. But through it all, she loved him, and she was willing to overlook those faults. She just wished that she could make him see Kim for what she really was; a woman caught up in a tide of events over which she had no control. Back in her hotel room, Kim stared at the door for several moments after it had closed. She was thinking about Laura, and everything that they had said to one another. A smile broke out on her face, rapidly turning into a grin. What was it about Chris's girlfriends, that they were all so gullible? So delightfully easy to manipulate, just like everybody else in Emmerdale. Her expression hardened. Everybody except Chris. She thought about him for a moment, and wondered whether or not she really should go and see him. After all, even bribed policemen wouldn't keep him locked up forever without a proper reason. She picked up her bag and headed for the door. She would pick up James, and spend the day with him, and then enjoy the dinner that she had arranged with a particularly rich (and sadly ill) businessman. After that, she would see how she felt. Maybe she would go and see Chris in the morning.

Chris Tate awoke to the bang of the cell door, and looked up to see a policeman standing over him, a tray held in one hand. Its contents looked somewhat unappetising, but he sat up all the same, not wanting to antagonise a man who looked as if he belonged in a gorilla suit rather than a police uniform. The man put the tray down on the bunk beside Chris, watching dispassionately as the other man pulled his legs around, so that he could sit facing the cell. His dark, shadowed eyes looked from the prisoner to the empty wheelchair in the outer room, a frown showing on his face; but he made no offer to fetch it. Chris tried to speak to him, but received nothing but a blank stare in reply. He vaguely remembered how to ask for two beers in Spanish, and also instructions on how to get to the town square, but nothing that would be of any use to him in the here and now. Phrase books never seemed to contain useful phrases, such as Fetch me my wheelchair or I'll sue your uniformed backside off! Typical really. The policeman gone, Chris stared without either interest or enthusiasm at the tray beside him on the bed, then picked it up and pushed it onto the room's only other piece of accessible furniture - a rickety shelf beside the bunk which seemed to house half the continent's spider population. There was a table and a chair a few feet away, both out of reach; the chair well screwed down as he had already observed, and the table bearing two or three magazines. He wondered if any of them were even remotely interesting, and then remembered that he probably wouldn't have been able to read them anyway. They were almost certainly in Spanish, and he wasn't in the mood for looking at pictures. He wasn't really in the mood for doing anything. So far he had been incarcerated for some forty-eight hours, in a world of blinding tediousness, which seemed to have endless monotony and dreary despair hammered into its every brick. The anger of the previous evening appeared to have worn off to a certain degree. He still felt it, smouldering away inside his heart, but he no longer wanted to tear everything apart. His hands still hurt from his last brainstorm, the knuckles skinned and marked with dried blood, and he knew that a repeat performance would get him nowhere. Right now he did not so much want to destroy as to just ignore. He wanted to close up on himself, and shut the rest of the world out. He wanted everybody and everything to go away. Boredom had taken the last vestiges of his indignation, and replaced it with more misery. He was sick of the cell, sick of the bad light, and sick to the back teeth of his bloody bunk. He felt his anger rising again, almost welcoming it as a change from what had held him before. He slammed the palm of his hand on the shelf next to the bed, and watched the breakfast tray leap across the room. Bread scattered itself about the floor, and a broad arc of coffee sprayed itself over everything. The plastic mug it had come in rolled away, eventually making its escape through the bars and into the outer room beyond. His eyes followed it, watching it move in wobbly, uneven lines, until it eventually came to rest against one of the wheels of his chair. Rage exploded through him. Damn it - damn the stupid, pointless little lump of plastic! It had made its escape and reached his goal - the thing he wanted more than anything else right now - and it didn't know or care anything about its ridiculous achievement. He slammed both fists against the bars of his cell, taking some comfort from the violence of the act. Futile it might have been, but then so was everything else that he was capable of doing right now.

"He still sounds dangerous." The voice was Kim's, and he heard it at the same moment that he heard the key turn in the doorway of the outer room. He looked up, staring towards the door, his eyes burning. Maybe he would get lucky. Maybe she would come within the range of his tense and ready hands. He actually felt that he would welcome the chance to throttle her at that moment. "He hasn't exactly been a model guest." He recognised the second voice as that of the faultlessly polite policeman with the fluent English, who had been behind his original arrest and incarceration. He didn't trust the man. For all his patient smiles and calm air of efficiency, there was something inherently untrustworthy about him, as though his smiles and abilities were there to hide something else. The door opened. "I'll leave you alone. Call if you want me." "Thankyou." Kim smiled, stepping further into the room and waiting for the door to shut behind her before she looked around. Her eyes surveyed the damp walls and the cold floor, and she shivered. It was impossible to get warm in a room such as this one. Its dampness and its frigidity were of the kind that sunk in, and could not be shaken off. She looked towards the one, tiny window, and then up at the single, inefficient light bulb. Maybe Laura had been right after all. She caught sight of the wheelchair too, and went to it. A layer of dust had already started to settle on its wheels. "Chris?" She turned in a quarter-circle, and spied him through the bars. For a second he thought that he saw a look of concern in her eyes, but it was gone before he could be certain that it was even there. "Hello." "What do you want?" He was aware that he must look a sight, and that annoyed him. He liked to meet her on a rather more common footing than this, when he could press some kind of emotional and psychological advantage. Here she had the upper hand, as clearly as though she had possession of the only key to the cell. She frowned at him, taking in the creased clothes and the black eye, as well as the two-day growth of stubble. His eyes looked framed with dark shadows, and she thought that his skin was rather paler than usual. "How did you get the black eye?" she asked him. He was silent for several seconds. "When they took my chair," he told her finally. "I objected rather." "So I would imagine." She went to it, running a hand across the back. It had taken so long to get used to seeing him in it, and now he seemed strange to see him without it. It had become a part of him. If it meant that to her, how much more must it mean to him? She could only wonder at the frustration and anguish it must cause to be without it. He could not do anything, save move up and down the bunk. "I'm sorry. That wasn't in the plan." "Well naturally that makes me feel so much better." He glared at her, surprised at the lack of venom in his voice. Such was the level of his boredom, he found that he was actually almost pleased to see her. Anything to dispel the tedium. "Just what was the plan exactly?" "To get you out of my hair of course." She smiled. "I called the police from the lobby before I went up to my room. The maid that you spoke to told me you were up there. It was easy. I was rather proud of myself." Her smile grew, and she toyed with the chair, watching the dust that drifted from it as she moved it to-and-fro. "It didn't cost me much either. These people can't earn very much. They took my first offer, and I was prepared to go much higher." "You bribed them." It was clear now, why they had kept him here so long without bothering to charge him with anything, or even to speak to him. He felt his hatred rise. To have been left here for so long, like this, was one thing when there was the possibility of criminal prosecution; but for it all to have been just some plot of Kim'sÉ He knew that she could see the hatred and the anger in his eyes, for she smiled at him; that small, gentle smile that was designed to infuriate him. "Of course I bribed them. What did you think?" She shrugged. "Still, I'm prepared to tell them it's over. You can be out of here in less than an hour." "How?" His eyes narrowed. "What do you want?" "You really do have a low opinion of me, don't you Chris." She smirked. "It's simple. All that you have to do is agree to leave me alone. I get them to release you, and you take the next plane back to the UK and never come after me again. Agreed? There's only one catch; if you try to do anything against me, I'll have you back in here again before you can say 'Home Farm'." "You mean I should leave you to enjoy the money? Leave you to bring up James, after having murdered his father? My father?" He shook his head. "No chance." "You really want to spend any longer in here? Like this?" She waved her hand about the room in indication of its limits and its distinct lack of virtues. "This time tomorrow you can be back in Britain, back in Emmerdale, and never have to so much as think about this place again. Isn't that worth a few small sacrifices?" He leaned back, letting his head drop against the cold metal bars behind him. It hurt. To think that he might have to agree to her deal, just to get out of this hellhole, hurt more than anything else he could think of. How was it that she always managed to draw him into these traps? How was it that she always managed to win? He knew that he was her intellectual match, able to keep up with her twists and turns and her lies and insinuations better than anybody else. Yet she always managed to find a way past people. She always managed to get them on her side, and against him. It had happened with Zo‘, and with Rachel, and with everybody else from the police to the jury in her recent trial. Now she was pulling the same trick all over again with these policemen. "Come on Chris. You know you can't win. You know I've got you." Her voice stung him, and he let her see the full force of the hatred in his stare. She merely smiled. She had always loved to toy with him in this way, and to make him lose his temper. He had to admit that that wasn't exactly difficult. "If we were the last two people left in the world, you might have a chance. But so long as there are others about, you're just not going to get close. You have the people-skills of a tiger shark, Chris. They just don't take to you. They'll believe anything I say, just like they always haveÉ" She smirked, moving closer to the bars. "Give it up, Chris. Say yes. Agree to leave the country and you can be out of here by lunch time. Cut your losses. Just admit defeat for once in your life." "I'll think about it." It was hopeless, and he knew it. It was possible that they would keep him here for days yet, if she asked them to, and he knew that he could not face that. But to agree to her demands might just be even worse than spending another forty-eight hours in prison. At least this way he had his dignity. But did he even have that when he was trapped on this bunk, in this cell, unable to even see out into the world beyond the walls? Even Steve, in prison back home for attempted murder, faced better conditions than this. He closed his eyes. "I'll give you a few hours to think about it." She was heading for the door even as she spoke, her movements showing that she could not wait to get out of the dark little room. She needed to feel the sunshine on her face again, and smell air that was not tainted with the dreadful ancient fustiness of the prison. He envied her for her freedom of movement. If there were any justice in the world, he told himself, something would happen - and he would switch places with her now, leaving her to sweat things out in this horrible little prison cell, sinking into the frustration and mute rage in which he himself was currently locked. But there was no justice, and he watched her knock on the door; saw it open; saw her being let out, into the rooms and the fresh air beyond. He rubbed his hand over his stubble-roughened jaw, and thought about her offer. Was it really so bad? The answer was obvious; yes it was. She had murdered his father. How could even he think about agreeing to her demands to be left alone? And yet he could not help entertaining the thought. After all, a promise made to Kim was nothingÉ And if he had to leave her now, he could always find her again later. Maybe not in this town - maybe not even in this country. But he had found her this time, and he would find her again. Maybe the deal wasn't really such a bad one after all. He sighed, and quelled a sudden irrational desire to hit something again. He had had enough of hitting just now. He wanted to get out. Outside. In the absence of any other possibilities, Kim's deal might just be worth considering. It wouldn't keep him down for long.