Life on Mars: Get Cartwright

‘Those sleeping dogs,’ Sam said, meeting Gene’s gaze. ‘One of them isn’t you by any chance, is it?’

Gene leapt to his feet and slammed his hands down on his desk. And then, with effort, he got control of his temper.

‘I’m ruddy Snow White compared to some,’ he breathed, shaking with rage.

And Sam could see that he meant it. He could also see that the Guv knew, or guessed at, some of the skeletons in CID’s cupboards. Perhaps he had some inkling about what went on back in the sixties, when Clive Gould had half the coppers in this place safely on his payroll.

The more Annie picks through those files, the further she walks out into a minefield – and Gene knows it, Sam thought. Maybe the Guv’s more concerned for her safety than he can bring himself to let on.

Not wanting to rile Gene up any further, Sam took a breath, pitched his voice low and level, and said: ‘I’ve heard what you had to say, Guv, and I’ve fully taken it on board. Leave it with me. I’ll see that everything’s taken care of.’

Gene glowered at him for a moment, then slowly sank down into his chair. The tension in the room eased – but only slightly.

‘Make sure you do take care of everything, Tyler,’ he said. And with that, he dismissed his DI with an imperious wave of the hand. He had things to get on with. The racing pages didn’t read themselves.

CHAPTER FIVE: GARY COOPER

Long after the sun had gone down, and a cold night had settled over the city, Sam found himself drawn back to the church where Michael Carroll was still holed up with his hostages. The police laying siege to the place were bored, sitting in their patrol cars or pacing around, smoking. The lights inside the church were on, visible in the coloured glass of the stained windows, but apart from that there was no hint of life.

Sam flashed his CID badge and strode past the coppers, stopping at the edge of the churchyard. He felt a powerful compulsion to go up to the door, go inside, and confront Michael Carroll, and not just in order to break the siege. Sam wanted to know what Carroll had seen, what form Clive Gould had taken when he turned up, and what – if anything – Gould had said. His own future, and Annie’s too, were bound up with the events going on inside that church, with the mysterious fate of Pat Walsh, and the horrors that Michael Carroll had witnessed at first hand. Sam had to speak to him.

It was taking one hell of a risk to walk up to that door. Carroll had been half out of his mind when he’d first gone bursting in there – what state would he be in now? Would he be delirious from lack of sleep? Paranoid? Psychotic? At the first sight of Sam, would he start opening fire on the hostages like he’d threatened?

I’m risking a blood bath if I go in there … and yet, I can’t stay away. I need to speak to him.

Sam hesitated, nerving himself to move forward – and then heard a noise from behind him. The uniformed coppers were challenging a man who had drawn too close, telling him to move back behind the police cordon.

Glancing round, Sam recognised him at once.

‘It’s all right, I know that man,’ Sam announced, striding over to him. ‘And I believe he knows me.’

McClintock did not look at all surprised to see him. The House Master was dressed very soberly, in a dark coat worn over a dark suit, with a dark tie knotted tightly at its crisp white collar. And yet, in a way that Sam could not explain, McClintock just didn’t look right. He looked somehow depleted in civvies, like a demobbed officer. He was a man born to wear a uniform.

The two men – Sam and McClintock – stood looking at each other for a moment.

‘I know an absolutely revolting café just across the way,’ Sam said. ‘Would you care for a coffee?’

McClintock nodded slowly: ‘Aye, Detective Inspector Tyler, I would. And a wee chat too, if you could spare the time.’

They sat together in Joe’s Caff, Joe himself still frying eggs despite the late hour. The man seemed never to sleep.

Sam sipped a strong, bitter coffee. McClintock looked at the tepid brew in front of him, but never touched it. Up close, Sam could see just how severely starched his white shirt was. He wore his tie very tight, like a noose, and his collar was held in place with immaculate silver collar studs.

For some moments, neither of them spoke – until McClintock leant forward and said in a low voice:

‘I don’t know what brought me to that church. Something compelled me. And then, when I saw you, Detective Inspector, I felt not the slightest surprise.’

‘You can call me Sam.’

‘I’d rather not. I’ve never been comfortable with first names. It’s either what attracted me to a life in uniform, or else a symptom of too many years in that world.’

‘Very well, then, Mr McClintock,’ said Sam. There was something strangely endearing about this man’s need for formality. Perhaps it was the glimpse of vulnerability that it betrayed, the hint of the nervous little boy hiding in the heart of the man. ‘Our paths crossing here tonight – it’s no coincidence, is it.’

‘It’s no coincidence. Something drew us together before, in Friar’s Brook, and it has done so again this evening. I think we both understand each other.’

Sam hesitated, then said with care: ‘Understand each other how?’

‘This place we’ve found ourselves in,’ McClintock said, ‘it only appears to be 1973. But it isn’t. Not really. Is it.’

‘No. It’s not really 1973. It’s somewhere between Life and Death.’

‘Yes,’ McClintock nodded slowly. ‘A strange place. Betwixt two worlds. We’re nae the living nor the dead.’

Sam nodded, and said quietly: ‘It’s such a relief to speak to somebody who actually realises that.’

‘Yes. A relief for me too. It is a … burden to know such things. It is a source of great loneliness.’

‘When I first met you, in Mr Fellowes’s office in Friar’s Brook borstal – did you know then?’

McClintock shook his head: ‘No. Not then. I had forgotten I had a life before this one. But it all started coming back to me a little later.’

‘But why, Mr McClintock? Nobody else here remembers. Just me … and now you. Why?’

McClintock stared thoughtfully into his wretched coffee for a few moments before replying. When he spoke, it was with slow, measured words.

‘For a time, when first I arrived here, I could recall my past with clarity, just as you can, Detective Inspector. I remembered the fire that consumed me, I remembered the pain. Like you, I knew that I was dead – or leastways, I was something very much like being dead. But again, like you, though I had lost my old life I had at least gained a new job. I was no longer DS McClintock of Manchester CID, but House Master McClintock of Friar’s Brook borstal. A new post for a new existence.’

‘And what happened?’ Sam asked. ‘You could remember your past life at first ... but then?’

‘The memories started to fade. No, that doesn’t quite describe it. It was more like … I felt less and less inclined to think of the past, what I had once been. When I did think back, it was only in vague terms. And over time, the inclination grew less and the vagueness grew greater until at last … well, until it was as if the past had ceased to exist. I thought no more about it than one thinks of the moment of one’s birth; we were most certainly there, but we recall nothing, not even a gap in our memory. It’s as if it never happened.’

Sam thought of Annie, how she had first reacted when he had once pressed on her past, her family, her parents. It was just as McClintock had described – the total lack of inclination for her to recall her early life, the vagueness of her recollections, the inability to connect with her own memory.

‘Our paths have crossed, Detective Inspector Tyler – and I do not believe for one moment it’s by mere chance,’ McClintock went on. ‘There may be other reasons for your appearance in this so-called 1973, but I believe that one of them was to act as an alarm clock – for me. You woke me up, Detective Inspector Tyler. You saved me from that slow sink into forgetfulness.’

‘How? How did I do that?’

‘It was during that awful siege, when Donner was holding us hostage,’ said McClintock. ‘When I was sitting there, with that knife halfway down my throat, waiting to die, I’ll not pretend to you that I wasn’t terrified. I was certain Donner would kill me, and I was just as certain that it would not be a quick death or a painless one. My mind was spinning, and maybe that was what made me start to remember. Who knows? All I can say is that as I heard you talking about that fob watch, and about the past, memories started to come back to me, confused at first; glimpses – disjointed images … but then, later, when the siege was all over and I was lying in a hospital bed recovering, with nothing to do but stare at the ceiling and think, I started to fit those fragments together and make sense of them. And as I did, I recalled who I used to be … and who I still am.’

‘But what are we?’ Sam asked, leaning forward intently. ‘I once thought we were dead men, and that everyone else here was dead too. But that can’t be. My mother. I met her. I met her here, but I know she’s alive! Right now this very minute she’s alive somewhere.’

‘Time, Space, Life, Death, and all the grey bits in between,’ said McClintock. ‘It’s too big a matter for the mere likes of us to fathom it. But I will say this, Detective Inspector – I have come to think that being dead overlaps with being alive. One state somehow blends with the other, and affects it, influences it. Maybe we all have a foot in both camps. Maybe the living are partly in the world of the dead, and the boundaries of death overlap with those of life. Your mother’s presence here suggests this is so, as do these burned hands of mine. See these scars. They were inflicted in life … and yet here they still are, in this place beyond life. And that trinket also – the watch – the fob watch.’

Sam reached into his pocket and drew out the fob watch, holding it by its chain so that it hung suspended between him and McClintock.

‘Why is it here, Detective Inspector? It has no right to be. It’s a relic from the life I had before this one. And yet here it is, just as real and as solid in this afterlife we find ourselves in as it was before. Ticking away. Still keeping perfect time.’

Sam watched the watch turning slowly on the end of its delicate chain, and again he felt that strange conviction come over him that this little fob watch was important, that it was freighted with a significance that was very real but somehow elusive.

‘The police files dealing with Tony Cartwright’s death have been tampered with,’ Sam said. ‘The facts of his murder have been concealed. And your name has been erased completely. There’s no mention of you. Like you never existed.’

‘Like I never existed …’ McClintock repeated thoughtfully. ‘It’s strange. Perhaps … Perhaps here, in this simulacrum of 1973, I never died in that fire. Perhaps only PC Cartwright died. Perhaps he has moved on to a better place, while I am retained here to complete the task I failed at before. Perhaps … perhaps …’ He shrugged, and fixed Sam with his narrow, pale eyes and added, ‘We’re just coppers, Detective Inspector, we’re nae philosophers. Or priests. Or poets. Or whatever it takes to make sense of ourselves.’

‘Then let’s leave sense to the poets and get back to what we can do,’ said Sam. ‘There’s work to be done. Unfinished business from the lives we’ve left behind.’

McClintock nodded slowly: ‘Yes. I think so. Unfinished business.’

‘Clive Gould,’ said Sam. ‘We’re here to destroy him.’

‘It looks that way to me.’

‘Can we do it? Is it possible?’

‘One must presume so, Detective Inspector, otherwise what point is there in our being here?’ McClintock narrowed his eyes, drew a slow, deep breath, and said: ‘I’ll take any opportunity I can to break Clive Gould. He was always a filthy, rotten creature. It will be a pleasure to destroy him. Back in the sixties, he used his clubs and casinos as a front for all his criminal activities. He tried his hand at all the usual rackets – extortion, robbery, prostitution – and paid out massive bribes to keep the police off his back. And those he didn’t pay off he bumped off – business rivals, debtors, upstarts, traitors, those who crossed him, those who irritated, those whom he decided to make an example of … He chalked up quite a body count, though nobody can put an exact figure to it. Every canal and waterway in this city must have a sludge of his old victims at the bottom.’

Sam wondered if it was one of these anonymous bodies that was dredged up and passed off as Anthony Cartwright. No wonder Carroll refused to let the widow see the corpse.

‘I want to see Gould destroyed as much as you do,’ Sam said. ‘But what happens if we manage it? If we finish this business with Gould once and for all, what then? What becomes of us?’

‘Now you’re asking the big question, Detective Inspector,’ answered McClintock. ‘Very big. I’ve thought about it, turned it around in my mind, considered possibilities. When our work here is done, will we happen? Will we remain in this place? Or will our tenancy here be terminated? Will we be obliged to move on elsewhere? And if so, where? And then again, what if we fail in our enterprise? What if it is not us who defeat Gould, but him who defeats us? What is the price of failure here? If we were to perish, Detective Inspector, what then? Where do the dead go who die a second time?’

Sam thought of all those he had seen die here in 1973. He recalled Mr Fellowes, the governor at Friar’s Brook, lying in the corridor with his windpipe hacked out, and Andy Coren, the escaped borstal boy who had perished so horribly in the scrap yard. He thought of Patsy O’Riordan, the tattooed brawler from the fairground, burning to death in the ghost train – and the suicidal boxer Spider dying right on top of him. He thought of the fanatics from the Red Hand Faction – Peter Verden, with his Jason King moustache, and baby-faced Carol Waye with her innocent-looking Heidi plaits, who blew Verden’s brains out before turning the gun on herself. He thought of Brett Cowper with the John Lennon glasses, who slashed his wrists and bled to death in his police cell – and he thought of all the others who had died since his arrival here, and he wondered what now had become of them? Was death here permanent? Was it the end of the road? Was this strange, unworldly 1973 the Last Chance Saloon?

McClintock shrugged heavily, said, ‘Very big questions. And I can’t answer them any more than you can, Detective Inspector Tyler. I have my thoughts … and my fears … but I prefer to keep these to myself. All I can say is this: we are here for a purpose, and we had best not fail in that purpose.’

Sam and McClintock looked wordlessly at each other. The only sound was the sizzling of eggs in the pan, and Joe’s radio burbling away.

‘This watch is a trump card of some kind,’ Sam said at last.

‘You feel that too?’ asked McClintock.

Sam nodded: ‘I can’t say why. I just sense it. It’s a weapon, Mr McClintock. A means of attacking Gould. He once possessed it, held it in his hands … It links him to the murder of Philip Noyes, his old rival. It’s the evidence you were going to use to convict him – and somehow, you can still use it! I know it! I feel it!’

‘Yes, I think you’re right. But how to make use of it?’

‘Maybe it’s … Perhaps it could …’ Sam racked his brain and his imagination for inspiration. But he found nothing. The watch was just a watch. There was no way it could hurt anyone, least of all Gould. He shrugged. ‘I haven’t the faintest idea how to use it.’

‘Maybe that’s because it’s my job to use it,’ said McClintock. ‘I failed before. Now, I’ve been given a second chance. And perhaps, it’s my final chance.’

‘We’re in this together,’ said Sam. ‘You and me against Clive Gould. You’re not alone.’

‘I don’t think you’re right there, young Detective Inspector. I think … I sense that I am very alone, that your task was to remind me of what I must do, and that you have now fulfilled your purpose so that I can fulfil mine.’

‘Rubbish. We stand shoulder-to-shoulder in this.’

‘Not if a higher power decrees otherwise,’ said McClintock, and his clipped Scottish accent made these words sound like a sermon from the pulpit. ‘I do not think that Mr Gould will be defeated by strength of arms, or by superior numbers. Something tells me that this is not to be a fight of that sort. Do not think I fail to appreciate your courage in offering to face this foe alongside me. I am moved by it … deeply. But something within me speaks louder than your offer of support. It tells me that I am here to stand against Clive Gould and this time to defeat him. And that I am to stand alone. But more than that, Detective Inspector, I simply cannot say.’

Fresh eggs sizzled noisily in the pan. Joe pulled a lever on his coffee machine and vented a loud jet of steam.

Sam sat looking at McClintock for several moments, and then, with deliberation, he snapped shut the watch’s gold-plated casement, wrapped the chain around it, and held it out to McClintock.

‘It’s yours, Mr McClintock,’ he said. ‘It came here with you. Take it.’

McClintock hesitated.

‘If … If one of us gets into trouble,’ he said, his voice so low it was almost inaudible, ‘if there’s … difficulty of some kind … then we should try to get a message to the other. Any way we can. Even if we’re far apart.’

Sam nodded: ‘Agreed. We’re in this together. We’re brothers in arms, Mr McClintock.’

McClintock thought for a few moments, then reached out with one of his scarred hands and took it. He sighed, and said: ‘Taking that watch from you makes me feel like …’

‘Like what?’

McClintock gave a wry smile: ‘Like the sheriff in a Wild West movie, pinning on his tin star before heading out to face the bad guys alone …’

‘Gary Cooper,’ said Sam. ‘High Noon.’

‘Aye, it might well have been.’

‘He had a little help, but he got the bad guys in the end. All of them.’

‘I’m sure he did, Detective Inspector Tyler. But he was Gary Cooper.’

CHAPTER SIX: HUMAN REMAINS

Broken buildings. Rubble. An industrial wasteland in a rundown part of town. A row of ripped posters fluttered in the chill wind, advertising the attractions of a nearby stock car rally, with 'big-name' racers like Dougie Silverfoot, Tarmac Terry, and three-time medal winner Duke of Earles.

The Cortina came to a violent halt, throwing a cloud of dust across the posters. Gene emerged, planting his off-white leather loafer manfully on the shattered masonry that lay scattered everywhere. He reached into his inside pocket, pulled out a hip flask, and swigged it dry.

Sam appeared from the passenger side, peering about. ‘And what, precisely, are we doing here, Guv?’

‘Following up a lead,’ announced Gene, hunting for a second hip flask. ‘That chimney –’ – he indicated with the flask towards the one vertical thing in this otherwise flattened location – ‘– is due to be demolished by that grease-monkey.’ And he indicated towards the short, round steeplejack standing a dozen or so yards away. ‘Only, aforesaid grease-monkey reckons he’s found human remains.’

‘Do you think it could be Walsh?’

‘Well, we won’t find out standing here yacking, will we, Tyler? Now let’s see what’s what before plod starts swarming in.’

They strode over to the steeplejack. He was a round-bellied man with filthy hands, dressed in filthy overalls, a filthy cloth cap perched on his filthy head. He stared through thick-lensed spectacles which were as filthy as all the rest of him. Sam was sure he’d seen this man before.

‘Yes, we’re the fuzz,’ announced Gene, striding up to the steeplejack and waving his ID about. ‘Okay, so what did you find?’

‘A dead fella, all mushed-up like, at base o't'chimney,’ the steeplejack explained, pushing back his cloth cap to scratch his brow with a permanently oil-stained hand. His voice, with its rich, warm Lancashire accent, was even more familiar to Sam than his appearance. ‘Nigh on ’ad ’eart attack when I copped sight o’ that!’

‘Base of the chimney, you say. If we have a poke around, is that thing going to come down on our bonces?’

‘Nay, lad, it’ll stand there till doomsday if I don’t light kindlin’,’ the steeplejack assured him. ‘’Ave no fear, you poke an’ prod to your ’eart’s content. Just don’t ask me to clap eyes on that poor fella a second time!’

‘Leave it to us, we’re used to it,’ said Gene, jutting out his jaw in a manly, unshockable way. He wrapped his camel hair coat about him and marched towards the chimney.

But Sam hesitated before following him. He looked sideways at the steeplejack, frowned, squinted.

The man grinned at him. ‘You all right, lad?’

‘Excuse me, but … is your name Fred Dibner?’

‘Aye, tha’s right. We met, a’ we?’

‘No, no, I remember you on the telly.’

‘I nowt been on’t telly, lad, not wit’ face like mine!’

‘No. No, of course not. I meant that … you should be on the telly.’

‘As what? One o’ Pan’s People on’t Top o’ t’ Pops? Give over! I’d look like right tit, prancin’ wit’ ’em lasses.’

‘Well, if one day somebody comes knocking from the BBC … just have a think about it,’ suggested Sam, and then he followed Gene over towards the chimney.

‘You think that bloody thing’s really gonna stay up while we have a snoop?’ asked Gene, sizing up the chimney. Close up like this, it looked huge. Huge, and precarious. The bricks at its base had been mostly hacked out and replaced with stout wooden props, then heaped with kindling; a fire, once ignited, would burn through the props and bring the chimney crashing down upon itself.

‘It’ll be okay, Guv. The steeplejack said it would be okay.’

‘Mmm. I ain’t so sure that pot-bellied inbred knows what the chuff he’s doing. Smacks of a ’erbert, to me.’

‘Fred Dibner? Gene, I assure you – he is the man.’

Gene shrugged: ‘Well then – since you got such faith in ’im ...’

He indicated that Sam was to lead on.

With dignity, Sam pulled his jacket straight and ran a hand nonchalantly through his hair: ‘Certainly, Guv – seeing as you’re chicken.’

Sam strode up to the base of the chimney and peered in between the wooden props. Inside, half obscured with rubble and brick dust, was a mangled corpse. Its skin had been so shredded that its face was an anonymous red mask. It was impossible to tell what was ripped flesh and what was torn clothing, the two had become so matted.

‘My God …’ Sam muttered.

‘What is it, Tyler? A stiff?’

‘What’s left of one.’

Sam crawled gingerly through the gap and stood upright. Glancing up, he saw the chimney rising up above him, the grey sky forming a bright circle a hundred feet up.

All at once, the severe, looming perspectives seemed to overwhelm him. He felt trapped, like a man stranded at the bottom of a deep well. For a moment, Sam experienced a giddy sense of vertigo, as if the chimney were swaying. Shutting his eyes tight, he took a slow, deep breath.

‘What you doin’ in there, Tyler?’ Gene barked through the gap in the bricks.

‘Just having a moment of metaphysical angst, Guv,’ Sam replied, placing a hand on his chest and willing his heart to slow down.

‘Is that the same as Bombay bum?’

‘The symptoms are curiously similar, Guv … It’s okay, I’m fine now.’

Pulling himself together, Sam approached the corpse. Its red, fleshless face stared back at him with empty eye sockets, grinning a ghastly, deathly grin.