Time: Modern Day
Location: Paris, France

As soon as they received news of Jean's arriving safely in Sydney, Layla and Mal got the next available flight from Paris to Sydney.

They planned their attack on the plane. Margot had led them in a seance with the ouija board to try and contact Carter but despite several hours of trying, multiple approaches, nothing seemed to open the portal. Either that or perhaps Carter's spirit had moved on having accomplished the warning of the Chevals and saving Layla and Mal's lives in Syria.

Mal tried not to speculate but all the while had this sinking feeling that Carter might be pissed with him hooking up with Layla. He looked across at her and smiled a wry smile.

"What?" she asked.

"Oh nothing, just wondering . . ."

Wondering what?" she pressed.

Mal struggled to change the subject until fate stepped in. He had been watching past episodes of After Dark in order to catch up before going back to work. There was Carrie Fisher doing a pretty good job, as it turned out, as solo anchor after Carter's death. The network had decided that, since Layla wasn't comfortable about stepping into Carter's shoes, they would not replace him just yet and plough on with a single anchor format.

Carrie was pulling it off much to everyone's surprise.
Maybe her catch cry. "You can never keep a good Kiwi down" had some merit.

"Holy Shit!" Mal exclaimed loudly. The other passengers in First gave him the look down their noses glance. Mal had gotten First Class tickets for Layla and himself thinking if they were going to go out, they would go out in style. Also if the plane crashed for some unknown reason they probably stood the best chance of survival in First Class.

Isn't that Peter, the priest Monique visited in Rome, who turned out to be Carter's real Dad?

Sure enough there was a picture of Father Peter Margate in front of the Sistine Chapel.

The byline read "Australian Priest questioned in relation to injuries sustained in an incident following the assassination of top Vatican official, Cardinal Enrico.

The story switched to a local story about water contamination.

"Is that all. You've got to be kidding me. No mention of Monique travelling to confront him regarding Carter?
No attempt to connect any dots? Something fishy there. Soon as we get back I'm fronting Ed and the After Dark crew, especially Carrie, she should be all over this, don't you think Mal?"

"Yeah, agree. I think we should speak to Carrie before we see Ed. I'll ring her while we are waiting for the luggage, and set something up."

"I'm also wondering how pissed Ed is with us." he laughed. "He must know we are still digging into Carter's death."

They made their way to the luggage carousel after disembarking safely at Sydney International Airport.

"Hi Carrie, Mal . . . you too . . . Layla's fine . . . just waiting for our bags. Yeah . . . just landed.

We saw last week's After Dark on the plane. What was that about Peter in Rome?'

Carrie explained her understanding of what happened in Rome.

"Did any of the team fly out to interview him? No? Why not?"

Carrie explained that when she tried to bring it up at an editors meeting Ed just about bit her head off so she dropped it.

'Well, we will bring it up with him again. We have a meeting, a debrief, with him tomorrow . . . Yeah . . . well that's your opinion. I know you liked Carter but we are a bit more invested in finding out what happened to him than most people . . . but thanks for the warning . . . yes, see you at work. Bye."

Mal sidled up alongside Layla and planted a kiss on the back of her neck.

"Get away Mal! I told you, not in public. Not yet."

"We're not back here again are we? I thought you loved me?"

"I do, just not in public. Not just yet . . . okay?"

"You're the boss," Mal laughed.

"And don't you forget it! What did Carrie have to say for herself?"

Mal explained how Ed had shut her down.

"He better not try that with me." Layla warned.

"So now, there's the bags. Let's get out of here."

Layla and Mal decide on the taxi ride home, to confront Tony who is now head of both the criminal investigation Bureau (CIB) and Homicide. They have a number of questions about why the investigations seem to have stalled.

That night, before going to bed, Mal and Layla laid out the story board they'd been working on with Amanda. Mal said, "Hey honey, I just remembered what Amanda had told us about her Criminal Justice lecturer at Uni and what he had said about Ockham's Razor.

"Essentially many complex problems could have been solved had you cut away the complicating factors and concentrated on the more obvious as the likely answer.

"As I remember she believed that once you had three common aspects of a particular problem occurring or recurring then it logically followed, that it's most likely they would lead you to the correct answer."

"Look at you Professor Mal of Ockham." Layla said mocking him mercilessly then laughing to ensure he knew she was just joking around.

"Look at this, here, where Amanda was connecting.the dots. Look at the . . . we won't call them murders when we speak to Tony, but say, call them suspicious deaths. First Amelia, then Carter, then Monique."

"Look, Carter - priest
Monique - priest
But Amelia, no priest until now. Peter, the father.

"Look, Carter - skull ring
Monique - skull ring.

"And now look at the photo of this Andre guy the night Amelia died - skull ring.

"Priest, priest, priest
Ring, ring, ring.

"I'm betting it's no coincidence. All the deaths are related in some way and have something to do with the Church and those rings. I'll stake my life on it. Oh shit! Syria - the bomb warnings from Carter, the flights. I think we already have.

#word count: 5827#