Detective Shay Fanahan - had better watch out - Nora has her eye on him!

Nora, assistant chief in the force, wondered again who Fanahan had crossed, or who was afraid of him, or some information he had or could get.

Sometimes at night alone, in her lonely bed, empty since she had kicked her drunk of a partner out, she thought of Fanahan. Did she hate him, or did she fancy him. As the men in her life could attest – she liked a bit of rough, not rough sex, just a rake, that's what her mother would have said. Nora finds rakes in any dancehall in the countryside and tries to change them. Mother was right: the danger beckoned to her. Maybe that was why she choose a life in policing. God knows in her early career shd arrested enough thugs, had enough interaction with criminals to cure her. Maybe it did since it had been a long time since she found another rake attractive. Fanahan was a rake, no doubt about that. Would she bed him, younger and lower in rank than she was? Would he bed her? With enough drink in him he would bed anyone. But not her it seems. When they were younger and in the same station, but mostly when she was in the station and Fanahan was out doing his detective work; at a party one night another colleague asked Fanahan would he take Nora out. He laughed out loud and offered an opinion that not even the tide would take her out.

Was that why she tried to implicated him in the hacking? No! It was because she had to work hard as a woman in the force to get ahead, to a place where her ego and ambition thought she should be. Fanahan on the other hand did f-all real work, real police work, and kept landing on his feet. Imagine! Falling over a serial killer dressed in drag and solving the biggest serial killer case ever in Ireland..

Senior management wanted to promote him to Superintendent Rank and give him a large team of detectives to manage. While advancing up through the ranks Nora had buried a few skeletons, or knew where others buried their dirty cases, ones where the wrong criminal was in prison while police informers went free, to inform again. She threatened people and the newly promoted Inspector Fanahan was now doing a desk job. Now new procedures being considered would give his jobs to a civilian. Then he would be back on the streets.

But it might be that her interference and overstepping her instructions on the hacking debacle, might be against her. She was feeling a chill wind of a sideways move blowing.

The way to protect herself would be to discover who, in what position in the Department Of Justice or Government were pulling the strings. For that she might have to make serious peace with Fanahan and use him.

While climbing the ranks, Nora was never adverse, to a bit of coat-tailing. Taking credit for a subordinates' efforts.

At home one evening, alone, except for her companion John Jameson she hatched a plan to protect herself, her position. The attempt to smear Fanahan could find a route back to her, particularly if the senior Commission needed a scapegoat. Her friend Jameson after some time persuaded her she should find out why she was asked to get Shambles, she liked that Shamus, Shamie, Shambo, Shambles, back to his day job.

I Wonder, is there any way, I can get him reporting to me on a special project...