Tom Graham

Blood, Bullets and Blue Stratos

CHAPTER ONE

OUT OF THE RUINS

The man in the black leather jacket picked his way across a bleak terrain of broken buildings and burnt-out cars. Reaching the top of a low hill that was all smashed rubble and pulverized concrete, he glanced for a moment at the pale disc of the sun, then stumbled his way down into a dead valley where overturned lorries smoked and smouldered. Brick dust kicked up and clogged his nostrils. An acrid wind gusted along the valley, stinging his eyes. Half blind and choking, he sought shelter in the skeletal remains of a building that rose ominously from the wreckage.

He found himself inside a roofless ruin, all broken walls and empty, gaping windows. And yet, something in the layout of this place stirred up memories. This building had once been familiar to him. It had buzzed and thrived with life. He recalled uniforms, and desks, mountains of paperwork, banter, and bullying, and a rough camaraderie. Had it once been his school?

A sharp voice suddenly cut through the silence. ‘What you standing around like that for? This ain’t a bleedin’ bus stop.’

The man jumped and spun round. Behind a pile of stone and timber that may once have been a desk, a woman was staring sourly at him. That expression — unimpressed, implacable, not-in-the-mood-for-any-of-your-bloody-nonsense — was shockingly familiar.

‘I know you …’ the man muttered. ‘I know your name.’

‘Well bully for you, luv! Award yourself ten points.’

‘Phyllis. Your name’s Phyllis! We knew each other.’

‘In the biblical sense? In your dreams, sonny. Now shift your arse before I stick you in cell 3 with Dirty Dougie Corrigan. There’s a puddle of old sick in cell 3, and I’ve been told Dirty Dougie’s just dropped a shit in the middle of it, so unless you fancy getting handy with a mop and bucket then sling ya hook!’

Phyllis impatiently ushered him through a smashed doorway into the gutted remains of a large room. The ghostly echo of a clacking typewriter drifted through the dead building, a long-gone telephone rang, and the man in the leather jacket said out loud, ‘I worked here. I worked right here.’

He imagined his desk, his telephone, his chair — and then, unbidden, the image came into his mind’s eye of other desks ranged nearby, steel cabinets bulging with files, and police mugshots of wanted men pinned to the walls, jostling for space amid the photos of Page 3 girls and bygone footballers.

Without warning, a young man appeared, spectre-like, seated at his desk, his dark hair parted above his pale, not-quite-mature face. He studied something on his desk, some piece of paperwork, his eyes narrowing and his brow furrowing like a studious schoolboy hard at work.

‘What do you think?’ the young man said suddenly. ‘Looks a bit rough, this one. Reckon you could handle it, Ray?’

Another figure appeared behind him — older, stouter, with a blond moustache, sharp blue eyes and the hard edge of a man well used to showdowns and violence. He cracked his knuckles and leant over the younger man’s desk to examine the paperwork.

‘There’s nowt so rough it puts the frighteners on me, Chrissie-boy,’ he said. ‘Let’s have a close-up.’

He swept up the paper from the young man’s desk and scrutinized it. It was a dog-eared copy of Soapy Knockers magazine.

‘Not so rough as all that, Chris — not with the lights out an’ all. Yeah, I reckon I’d have a little go on this one, if she were drippin’ for it an’ that.’

‘I know you two,’ said the man in the black leather jacket. The two ethereal figures looked round at him. ‘Chris Skelton. Ray Carling. I know you … both of you …’

‘Both of us?’ asked Chris.

‘Or both of these?’ asked Ray, turning the magazine to reveal a massive pair of soapy breasts.

‘We worked together,’ the man in the jacket insisted. ‘In this room. Your desks were here — right here — and mine was here, and just over there was a … there was a woman … dark hair … her name was … her name was … oh, dammit, you boys remember. She was one of us and her desk was right there and she was called …’

His mind reeled, but the name would not come.

‘Why can’t I remember her name? Why can’t I remember?’

Ray exchanged a knowing look with Chris, then tapped the side of his head with his finger.

The man in the jacket saw the gesture and shouted, ‘There’s nothing wrong with my sanity. I know who I am.’

‘If you say so, boss.’

‘I know what’s real and what’s not. And I know that woman’s name. She sat right there and here name was … her name was …’

Furiously, the man grabbed a brick and hurled it against the remains of a wall.

‘Got a temper on ’im, this lad,’ winked Ray.

‘P’raps he should go up against big ’Enry,’ said Chris.

‘That’s what you said before.’ The man in the leather jacket jabbed his finger at Chris. ‘When I first came here, you said — you said I looked like I’d gone ten rounds with big Henry. It’s what you said when I first walked through that door.’

‘What door, boss?’ asked Chris.

Where the door had once been there was now only a ragged hole and heaps of rubble.

‘Ain’t no door here,’ said Ray, chewing his gum. ‘Ain’t nothing no more.’

‘All broken,’ said Chris.

‘All gone.’

‘Busted.’

‘Like you, boss. Broken, and busted.’

The man in the jacket looked from Chris to Ray and back again. ‘What do you mean by that?

‘There’s nothing here for you,’ said Ray, fishing out a cigarette from his breast pocket and sparking it up. ‘You could have gone back where you belong. You had your chance. But you threw it away. You threw yourself away. Don’t you remember?’

Chris turned his fingers into a pair of walking legs and mimed them running, jumping, plummeting. He made a long, descending whistle that ended with a splat.

The man in the jacket backed away, his hands clutching the sides of his head. His mind was reeling. Memories were swilling wildly about inside his skull: of standing atop a high roof with the city laid out all around him; of making a decision, and then starting to run. He remembered sprinting, leaping, falling, an expanse of hard concrete rushing up to meet him.

‘Topped yourself, boss,’ said Chris, taking back his copy of Soapy Knockers and leafing through it. ‘Smashed yourself to pieces.’

‘And everything else along with you,’ put in Ray, letting smoke trail from between his lips. ‘Just look around. See what you done.’

‘I remember …’ the man stammered, trying to piece together the jostling fragments in his mind. ‘The year was … It was 2006. There was an accident. I got … I got shot …’

‘Run over,’ Chris corrected him. ‘Very nasty.’

‘Run over … yes, yes,’ the man said, starting to see the pattern of events forming. ‘And I woke up … But it wasn’t 2006 any more … It was nineteen … It was nineteen-seventy … nineteen-seventy …’

‘… three,’ Chris and Ray intoned together.

‘Nineteen seventy-three. Yes, that was it,’ said the man. ‘I didn’t know if I was mad, or dead, or in a coma …’

‘Or a mad, dead bloke in a coma,’ piped up Chris. ‘Three for the price of one.’

‘But I did know I had to get back home, back to my own time, back to 2006. And I did it. I got there. But then, it was like … It felt like …’

‘Being dead?’ suggested Ray.

‘Being in a coma?’ added Chris. ‘Being a mad dead bloke in a coma all over again?’

‘Yes,’ said the man in the jacket. ‘It did feel like being a mad dead bloke in a coma. And I realized then I didn’t belong there after all. I belonged here, in 1973.’

‘But this ain’t 1973, boss,’ said Ray, staring flatly at him. ‘It ain’t nowhere.’

‘Hell, maybe,’ shrugged Chris.

‘Same thing,’ said Ray.

‘No,’ said the man. ‘No, that’s not true. I came back to 1973. I jumped off a rooftop in 2006, and I landed here — in ’73 — where I belong.’

‘You landed nowhere,’ said Ray. ‘Sorry, boss — you ballsed it up. You should’ve stayed in your own time. There’s nothing here for you — no life, no future. Still … Too late now. Too late.’

The man in the jacket seemed about to faint. He reached out to a desk for support, found it was as insubstantial as a wisp of smoke, stumbled, and fell against a broken wall.

‘He’s done his head in, Chris,’ said Ray, a grin just beginning to flicker beneath his moustache. ‘Must have been when he hit the ground.’

Chris nodded sadly. ‘Bumped his noodle. Concussion.’

‘And then some.’

‘Skull would have shattered like a vase.’

‘Brains all over the place.’

‘Scrambled eggs.’

‘Stewed tomatoes.’

Ray winced. ‘And his dear old mum called in to identify the scrapings.’

‘Bet that did her head in,’ Chris suggested.

Ray nodded, drawing deeply on his cigarette, narrowed eyes fixed on the man in the jacket. ‘Bet it did. Still — he reckons he did the right thing.’

‘I … I did the right thing,’ the man in the jacket said, straightening up and trying to sound as if he believed it. ‘I had to come back here … I had to.’

‘If you say so, boss,’ shrugged Chris.

‘It was important to come back. I–I know it was important …’

Ray laughed. ‘You know nowt. Not even your own name.’

‘I know who I am.’

‘Tell us then. Who are you? Eh? Go on.’

The man in the jacket opened his mouth, but was silent. Ray snorted with derision, and then Chris began laughing too. And, as they laughed, a cold wind moaned, and, like pillars of sand, the figures of Chris and Ray evaporated, along with the desks and filing cabinets.

‘Don’t you go!’ the man in the jacket cried out. ‘I know who I am!’

‘You ain’t no one, not any more,’ grinned Ray, and with that he and Chris were gone.

‘I know who I am!’ the man yelled into the empty room. ‘We were a team. There were you two, and me, and the woman over there … And a fella. A big fella. The boss. Our boss. The guv’nor. That’s it! He was our guv. And we were all coppers. You remember. You remember me. My name’s … Oh, for God’s sake, you remember my name, it’s … My bloody name is …’

He stuttered, stammered, then punched the air in fury. What the hell had happened to him? Why couldn’t he remember? Was his mind as smashed and broken as everything else round here?

Smashed … Broken …

As if reading his thoughts, the roofless walls about him groaned and shifted. Great cracks shot across the bare plaster like zigzags of lightning, filling the air with choking clouds of dust. Masonry began to topple and crash. Even the floor heaved and fractured.

Covering his mouth and nose with one hand, and wildly fending off the cascades of shattered brickwork coming down about him, the man in the leather jacket stumbled his way back into the bleak valley. Throwing himself clear, he turned and watched the shell of the police station crumple in on itself, like the brittle remains of an Egyptian mummy crumbling away on exposure to the air. In seconds, there was nothing standing — just another mound of rubble amid many, wreathed in an aura of concrete dust that began slowly to settle.

As the man in the leather jacket got back on his feet, there came an unearthly noise, very different from the crack and blast of collapsing masonry. It was a weird, scraping, groaning sound that instantly released a flood of memories in the man’s mind: teatime; waiting for the telly to warm up; a whirling tunnel of light; a terrifying theme tune that sounded like the scream of a killer robot; a sofa behind which he felt compelled to hide.

The man glanced anxiously about, then clambered frantically to the crest of a heap of twisted girders to get a wider view. A blue police box slowly materialized in the flat base of a valley amid the wreckage. The sound ceased, and for some moments the box sat silent and inert. Then the door opened, and a woman emerged — the woman, the woman whose face he could see in his mind’s eye but whose name had completely eluded him.

‘Annie …’ The man breathed, and his heart leapt at the sight of her. ‘Annie Cartwright …’

But she was not quite as he remembered her. Her dark hair had turned mousy blonde; she was dressed in a drab pinafore dress and dull, floral-pattern blouse the man was sure he had never seen her wear before. Why? Why had she made herself look like Jo Grant from some old episode of Doctor Who?

‘Where are we?’ she said, speaking to somebody behind her. ‘Doctor?’

Like Annie, Jon Pertwee had changed too. The grey bouffant was the same, as was the velvet smoking jacket, ruffled shirt and floppy bowtie; but the gut was stouter, the chest more barrel-like, the stance more confrontational, the aftershave more potent. The hair and costume were the Doctor’s, but the man inside them was an altogether different animal.

The man in the leather jacket felt a sickening lurch of recognition. That was him, that was the fella — it was the guv.

‘What is this place, Doctor?’ Annie asked.

‘A chuffing shite-hole, luv,’ Doctor Hunt replied, scowling about at the bleak landscape. ‘Looks like I’m going to have reprogram the TARDIS’s intergalactic coordinator circuits with the toe of my size-twelve boot.’

‘We’re not staying, then?’

‘Not unless you fancy taking a slash in the gravel like a white-arsed collie. C’mon, luv — bounce your clout back in the box and get us a brew on the go.’

He smacked Annie’s backside as she disappeared back into the TARDIS, then jammed a half-smoked panatella into his gob as he took one last, unimpressed look around.

‘Gene!’ the man in the leather jacket cried out, the name coming to him in flash. ‘Gene Hunt! Guv. Wait. Don’t go.’

Gene sucked on the cigar, oblivious of the man’s cries.

‘Gene! Please! Don’t leave me here!’

Gene disappeared inside the TARDIS and slammed the door. A heartbeat later, the police box began to dematerialize.

‘No! Wait, Guv! It’s me! Don’t leave me here! We’re a team! We’re a team, you rotten bastard!’

Just before the TARDIS disappeared entirely, the doors opened enough to reveal Gene’s hand, two fingers flicking a ‘V’, before they and the blue police box evaporated entirely.

‘Don’t leave me here. I want to go home!’

All at once he was struggling against something that smothered and suffocated him, and in the next moment he found himself caught up in tangled bed sheets, his face sunk deep into a sweat-soaked pillow. He sat up, getting his breath back, and glared about him, momentarily shocked to find that the wasteland of rubble had been replaced with the familiar surroundings of his flat: beige and brown wallpaper, flower-patterned lampshades, a huge black-and-white TV with clunky buttons, a hot-water boiler that took forever to warm up. Beyond his nicotine-coloured curtains, a cold grey day was dawning over Manchester. From some distant street came the wail of a panda car. Somebody in a nearby flat was playing ‘Whiskey in the Jar’ on a tinny transistor radio.

Home.

The man clambered slowly from the tangled sheets, padded across the rough nylon carpet, and confronted himself in the bathroom mirror. What he saw was a face just the right side of forty, with narrow, thoughtful features starting to bear the lines of too many worries, too many unresolved dilemmas, too many restless nights.

‘It was just another bad dream,’ the face told him. ‘Don’t let it rattle you.’

He ran his hand across his close-trimmed hair, ruffled the jagged fringe running across his high forehead.

‘You know exactly who you are. Your name is Sam Tyler.’

Above his narrow, thoughtful eyes, the brows knotted anxiously. He rubbed at them to smooth out the lines.

‘You are Detective Inspector Sam Tyler of CID, A-Division.’

Detective Inspector. The rank still irked him. Back in 2006, he had been a fully fledged DCI — a detective chief inspector. It had been DCI Tyler who had pulled his car over to the side of the road, David Bowie blaring out of the dashboard MP3 player. It had been DCI Tyler who had stepped out of the car, trying to clear the tumultuous whirlwind of his thoughts, too preoccupied with his worries to even notice the other vehicle bearing down on him. It had been DCI Tyler who had felt the sudden impact of that vehicle, followed at once by the equally sudden impact of the tarmac. It had been DCI Tyler who had lain there, eyes unfocused, his consciousness ebbing away, the voice of Bowie penetrating the blankness that seemed to be overtaking him.

And her friend is nowhere to be seen

As she walks through a sunken dream

‘You know who you are and where you are,’ Sam told himself, looking his reflection firmly in the eye. ‘You are where you belong. Right here. This is your home.’

His home. Nineteen seventy-three. How strange and alien it had felt when he had first crash-landed here, alone and disoriented like a man from Mars. He had hunted through his pockets for the familiar props of the twenty-first century — the mobile, the BlackBerry, the sheaf of plastic debit cards — and found nothing but ten-pence pieces the size of doubloons and an ID card informing him that he was no longer a DCI but a detective inspector transferred down to Manchester from Hyde. He had tugged at his winged shirt collars and the tops of the Chelsea boots that he found himself wearing, and blundered like a zombie through the once-familiar police station that should have been buzzing with PC terminals and air-conditioning units but was now heavy with the clacking of typewriters and the sparking-up of cigarette lighters.

‘This is my office — here!’ he had bellowed, surrounded by blank, uncomprehending faces. ‘This is my department! What have you done with it?’

The answer had not come from the men staring at him. It had come in the form of a deep, phlegmy rumble, and the sound of heavy feet scraping across the floor. The man had turned, and there, lurking like an ogre in the smoke-filled den of his office, had been his new DCI — Gene Hunt, the guv — the shaven stubble of his neck red and inflamed from the raw alcohol that passed as aftershave, his belly bulging at the buttons of his nylon shirt, his stained fingers forever reaching for the next packet of fags, or the next glass of Scotch, or the next villain’s windpipe. He had introduced Sam to his new department with a breathtaking blow to the stomach — ‘Don’t you ever waltz into my kingdom acting king of the jungle!’ — and oriented him in Time and Space with a little less technical detail than Einstein or Hawking. ‘It’s 1973. Almost dinnertime. I’m ’avin’ hoops.’ And Sam, slowly but surely, had come to realize that he could be happy here. This place had life — hot, stinking, roaring, filthy, balls-to-the-wall life.

It also had Annie.

Sam ran water into the basin and splashed it across his face, thinking of Annie Cartwright. From the very moment he’d first met her, he had felt a connection, a conviction that, of all the strange characters populating his new world, she was the one he could trust the most. And in time she had become the bright heart of his universe around which everything else orbited. It was her as much as anything else in this place that he had missed so bitterly when he had returned to 2006, and it was her face that had been foremost in his mind when he had leapt so joyfully from the rooftop and plunged back into 1973. The future — his future — was with her. No question of that. He had thrown away his own time and his old life to ensure that.

And yet, night after night, the dreams battered away at him, always telling him the same thing: that he had no future, least of all with Annie; that coming back here had been a terrible mistake, far more catastrophic than he could imagine; that what life he had here in 1973 was destined to end in ruin and pain and utter despair.

‘Just dreams,’ he told his reflection. ‘Meaningless.’

But something deep within him seemed to say, Ah, but you know that’s not the case.

‘I have a future.’

You know that’s not true.

‘And it’s with Annie. We’ll be together. And we’ll be happy.’

Sam, Sam, you can’t kid yourself for ever.

‘We’ll make it, me and Annie — no one, and nothing, is going to stop us.’

Bash! Bash! Bash!

A fist pounded massively at the door like gunfire.

‘Who the hell is it?’ Sam shouted.

An all-too-familiar voice bellowed through the keyhole back at him. ‘Sorry to interrupt any intimate encounters you might be enjoying with Madam Palm and her five daughters, Sammy, but I just thought you might find the time to nick a few villains.’

Sam sighed, padded over to the front door and opened it. Filling the doorway loomed a barrel-chested grizzly bear dressed in a camelhair coat and off-white tasselled loafers. The reek of stale Woodbines and Blue Stratos shimmered about him like a heat haze. His black, string-backed driving gloves creaked as his implacable hands flexed and clenched. Peering down at Sam as if unsure whether to ignore him completely or batter him into the ground like a tent peg, this rock-solid, monstrous, nylon-clad Viking narrowed his cold eyes and jutted out his unbreakable chin.

This was him. This was the man. This was the guv. This was DCI Gene Hunt. Up close to him like this, eclipsed by his massive shadow, Sam felt vulnerable and absurd dressed in nothing but a T-shirt and shorts.

‘Fetchin’ little outfit, Sambo,’ Hunt intoned. ‘Are you trying to seduce me?’

‘Actually, Guv, I was contemplating a metaphysical dilemma.’

‘I hope you flushed afterwards.’ He swept past Sam and planted himself in the middle of the flat. The room seemed too small to contain him. He glared around him, his brooding glance seeming almost powerful enough to shatter windows. He rolled his shoulders, stuck out his chest and tilted his head, making the vertebrae of his neck give off an audible crack. ‘Excuse the early-morning house call, Tyler, but duty is calling. We got a shout. A to-do. A right bleedin’ incident.’

‘What sort of incident?’ asked Sam, hopping into his trousers.

‘Terrorists.’

‘IRA?’

‘No — disgruntled Avon ladies. Of course it’s the bloody IRA, Sam. Now zip your knickers up and get yourself decent.’

‘Any chance of you giving me a few details about what’s happening, Guv?’ asked Sam, shrugging on his black leather jacket. ‘Or have we got another couple of hours of sarcasm to get through first?’

‘Don’t get shirty, Mildred,’ said Gene, turning on his heel and leading the way out through the door. ‘I’ll fill you in on the way. It’ll take your mind off my driving.’

CHAPTER TWO

A MESSAGE IN RED

Tyres screamed. Grey, urban streets flashed past. Gene floored the gas as Sam floored an imaginary brake pedal.

‘Right, pay attention,’ Gene ordered, flinging the wheel recklessly back and forth as he weaved through the traffic. ‘We got a warning phoned through a little under an hour ago saying there was a pack of high explosives rigged up and ready to go pop in the local council records office.’

‘Was an IRA codeword given?’ asked Sam.

‘No, but we’re not taking any chances,’ said Gene. ‘There’s been a lot of angry Paddies on the move recently. We’ve been waiting for something like this to happen, so we’re assuming it’s the real thing.’

‘That makes sense,’ said Sam. ‘But what about Bomb Disposal?’

Gene shrugged.

‘And what does that shrug mean, Guv? We need Bomb Disposal down here. They should be dealing with this.’

‘We’re still waiting for them bone-idle bastards to get ’emselves out of bed,’ growled Gene, flagrantly roaring through a red light.

‘So what are we going to do?’

‘Well, until they deign to show up and start snipping wires, this is our shout.’

‘Guv, we’re not qualified to start messing about with explosives.’

‘And neither are they. You ever met any of them Bomb Disposal ’erberts? Half of ’em can’t even read.’

‘We need to cordon off the records office and keep the area secure until Bomb Disposal and Special Branch show up,’ said Sam. ‘It’s a terrorist incident. That’s their jurisdiction.’

‘Their “jurisdiction”? Nicking villains, Sammy-boy, that’s my jurisdiction, no matter what shape, size, colour or flavour they come in. Bombs and bastards and big blokes with shooters, it’s all the same to me. And I don’t plan sitting around on my pert and perfectly formed arse waiting for Special Branch to saunter over, not when things are kicking off right under my nose. So if you don’t mind, Tyler’ — the Cortina tilted noisily onto two wheels as Gene belted round a tight corner and Sam gripped the dashboard — ‘just remember which one of us two is the boss. You diddlin’?’

‘Guv, you can’t muck about, not where Special Branch are concer-’

Gene threw the Cortina ferociously around another tight bend, cutting Sam off in mid-sentence.

‘You didn’t answer my question, Tyler. I said are you diddlin’?’

Sam backed down. ‘I’m diddlin’, Guv.’

‘Lovely lad.’

The Cortina howled on, bouncing and veering at breakneck pace, until the drab, grey shape of the council records office appeared up ahead, standing out against the hard Manchester sky. Police cars were skewed across the road. Uniformed coppers were busy stringing up blue police cordons and trying to shepherd the already growing crowd of curious gawpers.

Gene gunned the engine, powering forward recklessly and sending people scattering out of the way like frightened rabbits. When he hit the brakes and brought the car to a lurching stop, Sam found that he had been holding his breath.

Gene shot him a glance. ‘Woken up now, have we?’

‘It still feels like a nightmare to me,’ said Sam, as he clambered out of the car.

Striding with Gene through the uniformed officers and rubbernecking sightseers, Sam spotted DS Ray Carling and DC Chris Skelton. Ray had wrenched his tie loose and flung open the top two buttons of his blue, wing-collared shirt to reveal a masculine flash of blond chest hair. He was in his element, barking orders at the uniformed coppers and snapping at the public to get their ruddy arses back, back, back! Beside him was the youthful Chris, his dark hair flopping anxiously across his left eye, his knitted tank-top already darkening with sweat as he rushed about assisting Ray. He looked overwhelmed and fretful, as if he was expecting the crowd to suddenly rise up and lynch him at any moment, or for the council offices to suddenly go nuclear and blow them all to kingdom come.

For a moment, Sam recalled how Chris and Ray had appeared to him in his nightmare. Their taunts echoed momentarily through his mind:

You’re not in 1973. You’re in hell.

And then he saw Chris struggling to stop a kid on a Chopper bike from getting under the police cordon, and Ray shovelling stick after stick of Juicy Fruit into his mouth as he strutted about aggressively jabbing his finger and bellowing orders, and all at once the menace they had possessed in the dream evaporated like morning dew.

Forget those damned dreams, Sam told himself. It’s just Chris and Ray, your old team. And you, Sam, you’re a copper, you’ve got a job to do.

Gene cruised forward, shoulders pushed back, belly sucked in. He back-handed the kid on the Chopper out of the way, ducked under the police tape, and surveyed the records office.

‘Speak to me, Ray. What’s the score? Anyone inside that place?’

‘The building’s evacuated, Guv,’ said Ray. ‘Leastways, it’s meant to be. Chris reckons he saw somebody up at one of the windows.’

‘I can’t swear to it,’ said Chris. ‘I thought I saw a bloke up there moving about, dead calm like.’

‘Could be one of the morning cleaners,’ said Sam.

‘Maybe,’ said Chris, frowning and looking confused. ‘Or it might just have been a reflection … You know, a seagull or summat like that.’

‘A seagull?’ snapped Ray. ‘You never said you thought it was a seagull.’

‘I didn’t think it was a seagull, not at the time.’

‘You said it were definitely a bloke, Chris.’

‘Yeah, I did. It were definitely a bloke — or a seagull.’

‘Can’t you tell the difference?’

‘Normally. But the more I try to remember, the less certain I am.’

‘Well, did it have a mop and bucket or a beak and bloody wings?’

‘I don’t know now, Ray. It’s doing my head in. I wish I hadn’t said anything.’

Sam peered hard at the rows of windows, and then, quite suddenly, he glimpsed something move.

‘You were quite right, Chris,’ he said, pointing. ‘There’s a fella up there. Second floor, three windows in from the edge of the building.’

Everybody looked. A man was moving about in a second-floor window, making no attempt to hide himself.

Chris’s expression went from one of screwed-up confusion to self-satisfaction in an instant. ‘See? See? I were right. I said it were a bloke, Guv. I said so. Dead observant, me — eagle-eyed, you know.’

‘Eagles, seagulls,’ muttered Gene. ‘Cancel Bomb Disposal and get Johnny Morris down here, pronto.’

Up on the second floor, a window opened and the figure leant out. It was a man, dressed in black overalls, his face completely hidden beneath a black balaclava. In the eyeholes of the balaclava glinted little circles of light — he was wearing a pair of wire-framed John Lennon glasses.

At the sight of him, Sam felt a cold shiver run up his spine. That was no cleaner, and it was certainly no early-morning council worker going through the files. It was a terrorist.

‘What the hell’s he still doing in the building?’ Sam said.

‘Planting a bomb?’ suggested Chris.

‘Well obviously, Chris — but the IRA prefer blowing up other people rather than themselves.’

‘The dopey Paddy must’ve ballsed it up,’ growled Ray.

‘Maybe he’s new,’ said Chris. ‘Hasn’t quite got the hang of it.’

‘And maybe you lot should shut up and take cover,’ Gene suddenly intoned. ‘Get your heads down!’

The man in the balaclava had suddenly thrust the long muzzle of an assault rifle out of the open window and was peering through the sight directly at them. Sam threw himself to the left; Ray and Chris threw themselves to the right. Gene stood motionless, unblinking, as bullets whined down and smacked into the pavement about his feet. Rounds slammed into the police patrol cars parked across the road; the titchy, mint-coloured police Austin 1300s rocked and shuddered as wing mirrors shattered and tyres blew out.

The crowd of gawpers now screamed and surged back; coppers lost their helmets in the crush; the police cordon was ripped and went trailing away like fallen bunting.

‘Get everybody back!’ yelled Sam, scrambling behind a police car for cover. ‘Gene! For God’s sake, get down!’

Unhurriedly, Gene strode over to the car and crouched behind it; all the time, he kept his eyes fixed on the man with the rifle.

‘Stinking Paddy bastard,’ he said. ‘There’s no bomb in that building. It was just a trap to get us in close so he could take pot shots.’

Already his black-gloved hand had reached beneath the folds of his coat to grasp the solid stock and trigger of his Magnum.45. He straightened up, steadied his aim on the roof of the patrol car, and squeezed off two shots in rapid succession. The Magnum roared and kicked. Glass exploded from the open window. The man in the balaclava ducked away.

‘I’m taking control of this situation,’ intoned Gene. ‘Right now.’

Holding aloft the smoking Magnum, he went to rush forward, but Sam grabbed his arm and hauled him back.

‘Guv, wait.’

‘Mitts off the camelhair, Tyler.’

‘We need to keep everything contained and under control,’ Sam urged him. ‘We need to clear the area of civilians, ensure the gunman remains inside the building, set up a cordon and sit tight until Bomb Disposal and armed backup arrive.’

‘Cobblers, you faggot. All we need is this’ — Gene waved the Magnum in Sam’s face — ‘and a little of that ol’ Genie black magic.’

‘Guv, stop behaving like a bloody-’

But Hunt had heard enough. He tore free of Sam and went racing forward, his camelhair coat billowing after him like a huge set of nicotine-stained wings.

‘Gene, don’t be a bloody hero,’ Sam cried after him. ‘Wait for Special Branch. Guv! Guv!’

But even as he called out, he knew that he had no choice, that there was only one thing he could do. Cursing his guv’nor under his breath, he grabbed a state-of-the-art, police-issue radio from Ray. It was bigger than a house brick. Sam wedged the cumbersome contraption into his belt.

‘Wait here,’ he ordered. ‘Be on standby. And keep everybody back.’

And before he could change his mind, he broke cover, sprinting after Gene.

As he ran he saw Gene up ahead, charging like a bull elephant, the Magnum raised and straining for action. The guv slammed into the front doors of the record office and disappeared inside. Sam pounded in after him, drawing his own pistol and tensing for trouble. He darted through the doors and skidded to a halt in the deserted hallway. From outside came the sounds of panic and screaming and bellowing policemen.

Gene gave Sam a sour look. ‘If you think I’m gonna stand here listening to yet more of your Mary, Mungo and Midge about waiting for backup, you’re even dopier than the front of your head suggests, Tyler. I’m going right up them stairs to nail me a Paddy bastard, and that, Samuel, is called law enforcement.’

‘I know I can’t stop you, Guv,’ said Sam. ‘But I can’t let you deal with this alone.’

‘Very neighbourly. But if you’re going to tag along, Sammy-boy, you’re going to have to try keeping your cakehole zipped, you read me?’

‘I read you, Guv.’

‘I don’t want no messing about, Sam,’ hissed Gene, suddenly leaning close. ‘No warnings, no orders to freeze. We find that murdering Bogside bastard, we blag him, we go for a pint. Got it?’

‘We can’t do that,’ Sam said.

‘You told me you’d keep it zipped, so zip it!’

‘We can’t open fire without giving due warning, Guv. That’s procedure.’

‘We’re CID, you milky tit. We’ll do what we have to.’

‘No, Gene — unlike the IRA, we play by the rules. That’s what makes them the bad guys and us the law.’

‘I am the law, Bo Peep, and you’ll damn well play this my way.’

‘But Guv, there’s a bomb in this building, primed to explode.’

Gene puffed out his chest and said, ‘You bet your bollocks there is, and he ain’t in the mood to argue. Now — cover me.’

He strode to the staircase and bounded up it two steps at a time. Sam raced up after him, his nervous system tight and jangling, alert for any hint of the man in the balaclava.

On the first-floor landing they found empty corridors and silent offices. Gene edged forward, past desks cluttered with bulky typewriters and heaped in-trays of paperwork. He slipped past a set of pneumatic tubes for the ferrying of internal mail and tucked himself against a row of metal filing cabinets. He tilted his head and tasted the air like a jungle cat, his eyes narrowing, his gloved finger tensing on the steel trigger of the Magnum. Then, without warning, he rushed on up the staircase, making barely a sound in his tasselled loafers.

By the time Sam caught up with him on the second floor, his heart was hammering in his chest. He found Gene striding about boldly, peering into offices, sticking his nose round doors, swinging the Magnum in all directions as if it were an extension of his body.

Something moved, and Sam and Gene both reacted instantly. They spun round, aiming their weapons along the length of the corridor, just as Balaclava Man appeared, round-lensed glasses glinting blankly, his assault rifle raised military-style with its stock nestling high against his shoulder.

‘Freeze! Police!’ yelled Sam, years of police training kicking in automatically.

Gunfire raked the walls. Gene answered with a shot powerful enough to punch a hole the size of a dinner plate through a door panel. A second shot flung what was left of the door entirely off its hinges. Balaclava Man vanished from sight.

‘I said no warnings, Tyler,’ Gene snarled.

‘We’re coppers,’ Sam spat back. ‘This is no time to start playing Charles flamin’ Bronson.’

Gene slammed fresh rounds into the hot breech of the Magnum in a way that suggested that he thought otherwise, then strode briskly through the drifting layers of blue gun smoke. He kicked away the shattered remains of the door, smacked the gun barrel back into the housing and took aim — but the room was empty.

‘The four-eyed Murphy’s legged it,’ he whispered back at Sam. ‘Head through them offices and try and cut him off. I’ll go after him this way.’

‘Guv, I don’t think splitting up is such a g-’

‘For Christ’s sake, Tyler, do you want to play cops and robbers or not?

And, with that, Gene was gone, striding off in pursuit of his quarry.

‘Damn you, Hunt!’ hissed Sam, dashing back along the corridor and through a series of empty offices, trying to keep his bearings as to where Gene and Balaclava Man might be.

Silently, he slipped into a long, drab office and saw the shattered window from which the gunman had first opened fire on them. On the floor, he saw a splattered line of blood leading across the room. But, as he followed it, Sam saw that it wasn’t blood at all but paint — thick, shiny, blood-red paint. The trail led to a far wall, where the crude image of a hand had been daubed, the palm outwards, the fingers spread. The letters ‘RHF’ were sloppily scrawled beneath it.

We’re meant to see this, thought Sam. That’s why he lured us in here. He wanted us to see this emblem. But what the hell does it mean? What the hell is the RHF? Is it some IRA splinter group?

Whatever the truth was, now was not the time to start puzzling it out. Sam heard the harsh clatter of the assault rifle, and the shuddering, cannon-like reply of the Magnum. A door crashed open, and Sam dropped behind a desk, aiming his pistol and preparing to fire. But his trigger finger relaxed at the sight of Gene lumbering into sight, Magnum raised.

‘Where’d he go? Sam, where the hell did he go?’

Gene glared all about him, anger rising like bile at the realization that he had been cheated of his quarry, that Balaclava Man had given him the slip.

‘Bastard!’ he spat, and punched a Britt Ekland calendar off the wall.

Sam stood up from the desk and fished out his police radio. ‘Ray? Are you reading me? The gunman’s got away from us — my guess is he’ll try to make a break for it. Keep the entire building cordoned off. Seal off every street. Set up a “ring of steel”. I don’t want so much as a cockroach being able to make it out of here without being picked up, you got that? … Ray? Ray, are you there? Speak to me, Ray!’

‘I’m here, boss,’ came Ray’s voice at last.

‘Did you hear what I just said?’ asked Sam.

‘Um … Kind of,’ muttered Ray. ‘I weren’t really listening.’

‘Why the hell not?’

‘Because I’m … sort of … looking at Chris.’

‘And what’s Chris doing?’

‘Sitting on a bomb. As in, right on it. Right on it, boss. With his arse.’

Sam and Gene exchanged a blank look, then Gene grabbed the radio.

‘Speak, Raymondo — and this time, start making some chuffing sense.’

They found Ray down on the ground floor, hovering about in a corridor and anxiously chewing his Juicy Fruits.

‘We thought you might need a spot of backup,’ he said, ‘so we followed you in here. And then Chris got nervous — said he needed the khazi …’

‘The khazi? You mean this one here?’ asked Gene. Ray nodded. Gene said, ‘It’s the ladies.’

‘I know. I think he found the idea … exciting.’

Sam opened the door and went in. Chris was in one of the cubicles, sitting on the toilet seat, staring at him with a face sweaty and bloodless from terror. His bare knees were shaking.

Gene pushed his way in, loomed over Chris, and, after a few silent moments said flatly, ‘Explain.’

‘I got caught short,’ Chris stammered. ‘All this running about, it went to me guts. So I came in here for a … you know.’

‘Get on with it.’

‘I’d just sat down, Guv — I didn’t even get a chance to start ’coz, like, I suddenly realized …’

He looked down. So did everyone else. There were wires visible just under the rim of the toilet seat, one black and one red, running away into the bowl.

‘I heard a click,’ said Chris, ‘and then I saw the wires, and that’s when I knew …’

‘Looks like we’ve found our explosive device, folks,’ said Gene. ‘Chris — I never want to have say these words to you ever again, but open your legs for me, nice and slowly.’

Shaking and sweating, Chris nervously obliged. Gene peered into the toilet bowl.

‘What can you see down there, Guv?’ asked Ray.

‘Shipyard confetti,’ Gene replied.

‘That ain’t true, Guv,’ whined Chris. ‘I haven’t dropped anything yet, I’ve kept it all in.’

‘That’s not a euphemism, you pillock — that’s the kind of bomb you’re sitting on,’ said Gene. ‘There’s a wad of explosives down there the size of a house brick; it’s been packed with nails and metal splinters and ball bearings — a little concoction the IRA call “shipyard confetti”. You’ve primed the detonator by plonking your cheeks on the seat, Chris.’

‘Oh my God! Get me out of here, Guv! Please!’

‘You’ll just have to wait for Bomb Disposal,’ said Gene. ‘If you try to stand up you’ll trigger the mechanism and next thing you know you’ll get half a ton of metalwork shooting right up your Fray Bentos.’

‘I really needed to go when I came in here,’ grizzled Chris, ‘and now I really, really need to go, like, urgent, like.’

‘Shit on it, you might defuse it,’ said Gene. ‘Ray, stop standing about like a spare prannet and get this place sealed off. Our gunman’s probably a mile away by now but have the whole area shut down just in case.’

‘Will do, Guv.’

‘And get onto those lazy sods at Bomb Disposal and tell ’em to get their arses down here double pronto!’ Gene called after Ray as he hurried away. ‘I do not intend to lose one of my officers today, even if it is just this dopey doughnut.’

‘Sit tight, Chris,’ said Sam. ‘You’ll be okay as long as you don’t move.’

‘You’re not going to leave me here, are you?’ Chris cried.

‘And give up spending time with you in the ladies’ bogs?’ asked Gene. ‘After all the years I’ve dreamt of this moment?’

‘We’ll stay with you, Chris, don’t worry,’ said Sam, patting Chris’s shoulder. ‘Gene, I don’t get it. This doesn’t feel like the IRA.’

‘It bloody does to me,’ put in Chris.

‘Not their usual way of operating, I’ll grant you that,’ said Gene.

‘We’ve been lured in here on purpose,’ said Sam. ‘This booby trap here, it’s meant to make a point. And that gunman, he wanted us to see what I found upstairs — a red hand, Gene, painted on the wall, and the letters RHF. Mean anything to you?’

‘Sam, as your superior officer, may I suggest that we discuss the finer details of this situation at a more conducive moment? Right now, I’m more worried about the ruddy great bomb primed to explode under our colleague’s rear quarters.’

‘Don’t keep mentioning it,’ Chris wailed.

‘Hard not to, Christopher, it does rather dominate.’

Chris buried his face in his hands and started to rock backwards and forwards.

‘Chris, sit still,’ said Sam. ‘You’re safe as long as you don’t move.’

Peering at the two visible wires, Gene mused, ‘Red wire … black wire …’

‘Don’t even think about it, Gene,’ said Sam.

‘It’s fifty-fifty. Worth a punt, you reckon?’

‘Leave it to Bomb Disposal. That’s what they do.’

‘Bomb Disposal!’ Gene scoffed. ‘If them nobbers can defuse one of these things then how hard can it be?’

‘Gene, don’t start tampering. I mean it.’

‘I can’t stay here,’ Chris was moaning into his hands.

‘Keep calm, Chris,’ said Sam, trying to sound calm himself. Gene was eenie-meenie-miney-mowing between the red wire and the black one.

‘I don’t want to die like this,’ Chris cried.

‘Nobody’s going to die, Chris! Gene, leave them bloody wires! Chris, keep still!’

But panic was starting to set in. Chris was shaking, rocking, staring out through his fingers with wild eyes. Sam planted his hands on Chris’s shoulders to keep him where he was, but that just seemed to make things worse, as Chris howled that he was too young to die and began fighting to get out. He clawed at Sam and shoved him away, leaping up from the seat and instantly tripping over the trousers that were coiled around his ankles.

Sam heard himself cry out, ‘Chris, no!’ and instinctively threw himself backwards, covering his face with his arms, bracing his body for the shattering impact of the explosion, the agony of a thousand nails ripping into his flesh at high speed.

But no explosion came. There was just silence, and the sound of Chris stumbling and tripping frantically away along the corridor outside.

Lowering his arms, Sam found himself looking up at Gene, who was holding the snapped end of the red wire in his gloved hand.

‘If only I had the same luck with the gee-gees,’ Gene said.

CHAPTER THREE

A NIGHT AT THE ARMS

‘Bombs, bullets, and bogs that go bang in the night,’ intoned Gene. ‘It’s a tough ol’ world out there. But somehow, ladies, we’ve made it through another day. Time to get hammered.’

No arguments there.

Gene, Sam, Ray and Chris bundled out of the hard Manchester night and in through the swing doors of the Railway Arms. The moment he crossed the threshold, Sam felt the familiar warmth and stink of the place enclosing him, reassuring him, like a boozy, nicotine-saturated placenta. The cold, grey world outside was held firmly at bay. He glanced about at the crumpled dog ends smouldering in the heaped ashtrays, filling the air with the rich and manly incense of Senior Service, Embassy Gold, Player’s No. 6. The bar glittered with its array of welcoming poisons — the friendly faces of Courage, Whitbread and Flowers on draught; the rich, dusky promise of Guinness, Mackeson and Watney’s Cream Label; and there, primping and preening in that foul hinterland of pissy lagers, stood the shameless nonce drinks, off-limits to real men: Harp and Skol and the androgynous abomination of Double Diamond. All the world seemed to be contained in that wondrous selection of kegs and bottles.

And, stationed as ever behind the bar, like a skipper at the helm of his ship, was Nelson, all gleaming teeth and proud dreadlocks and overflowing Jamaican charm. He looked up as Gene, Sam, Ray and Chris bundled noisily into his pub, and, like an actor on cue, he immediately fell into his regular routine. He grinned like a big, black Cheshire cat, planted his heavily bejewelled hands in readiness on the beer pumps, and sang out, ‘Well, here dey are again, da boys in blue. You must really love dis place.’

‘Home from home,’ growled Gene, planting himself at the bar. ‘You got four horribly sober coppers on your premises, Nelson. Remedy the situation — pronto.’

‘Sober coppers?’ said Nelson from behind the bar, rubbing his chin and raising his eyes in a mime of deep thinking. ‘Sober coppers? Now dare’s a thought.’

Ray lounged casually beside Gene, fishing an untipped Woodbine from behind his ear and sparking it up. Chris hovered uncertainly nearby, still quiet and withdrawn after his morning of undignified trouserless adventures.

But Sam felt distant. He had no heart for drinking with the boys tonight, not even after the deadly events of that morning. Cheating death had pumped Gene and Ray up nicely, leaving them feeling indestructible, like a couple of fag-stained Mancunian James Bonds. Chris had been badly shaken up, but was stronger and more resilient than even he himself believed, and would soon be back to his usual youthful self. But for Sam, the whole business with the shootout and the bomb had heightened his sense of vulnerability. It had stirred up deep and yet nameless feelings that he could not share with the boys. Annie was the one who would understand him. And, if she didn’t understand, then she would at least listen to him without constantly interrupting and taking the piss.

He had tried to make his excuses and avoid coming out with the lads tonight, but his presence at the Railway Arms this evening had proved to be non-negotiable. In the end, it was easier just to give in than keep arguing.

‘You go ahead and join them for a drink, Sam,’ Annie had told him, leaning across his desk in CID. ‘I’ll drop by the Arms later, once you boys have wetted your whistles.’

The sudden close proximity to her had made Sam’s heart turn over. She was fetchingly turned out in a salmon-pink waistcoat neatly buttoned over a cream turtleneck sweater; nothing showy, nothing sexy — practical work clothes for a day at CID — and yet somehow all the more alluring for their ordinariness.

‘But I want to talk to you, Annie,’ Sam had said.

‘Then talk to me.’

She subtly flicked her chestnut hair and the abundant curls above her shoulders bounced gracefully. Sam swallowed.

‘I can’t talk here,’ he said.

‘Okay. We’ll talk later, at the pub.’

‘At the pub? With Gene and Ray looking over our shoulders? And Chris banging on about his near-death experience in the toilet?’

‘I see what you mean.’

‘We need some real time, Annie. You-and-me time.’

‘Then we’ll make time, Sam — one way or another.’

At that moment, Annie had looked up at him with such a sweet and serious expression that Sam had felt the sudden reckless compulsion to lean forward and kiss her. And, if the boys in the department shrieked and wolf-whistled like a pack of adolescent schoolboys, so what?

But his nerve failed him and he hesitated. By then the moment had passed and Annie had turned and headed back to her desk, the opportunity — as ever — lost. As she walked away from him, Sam had felt that same pang of loss he always experienced when she was away from him. To be apart from her was far harder than being apart from the world he’d once come from — the yet-to-be world of 2006 that existed only in his memory, the world he had striven so painfully to return to, believing it to be home, only to find when he got back there that it was a foreign country, devoid of feeling and vitality, a place without meaning, without colour, without life. The shoddy, backward, nicotine-stained world of 1973, for all its faults and flaws, was at least alive — and, what was more, it had Annie in it, the bright, steady light at the centre of his strange and dislocated life.

But, even so, something was troubling him. It was a feeling he could not put into words, a vague but persistent sense that something was calling to him, summoning him, urging him to move on. It continually preyed on his mind. In the thick of his police work he could forget all about it, focus solely on his job — but the moment he glimpsed Annie the feeling would return.

And now, in the aftermath of their brush with death, those same feelings had returned with a vengeance. Here in the smoky confines of the Railway Arms, with Nelson grinning knowingly at him from behind the bar, he felt that sense of longing deep within him, a feeling like homesickness, or nostalgia, but at the same time unlike them. Indescribable. Unfathomable.

Sam’s reverie was shattered as Nelson slammed down four pints of bitter.

‘Here ya go, gentlemen,’ he grinned. ‘That’ll put hair on ya chest.’

‘Hear that, boys?’ said Gene, lifting his pint. ‘I’ll make a man of you all yet.’

‘Not if you get us shot first,’ Sam said, looking wearily into the froth of his beer. ‘You’re a liability, Guv, the way you carry on.’

‘Oh, do put a sock in it, Samuel. If I’d listened to you this morning, we’d all still be sitting around waiting for Bomb Disposal to show their faces.’

‘You’re not the sheriff of Dodge City, Guv. You can’t just go running in, blazing away, whenever you feel like it.’

Gene glugged his pint, licked away a beer moustache, thought for a moment, and said, ‘Actually, Sam — I can.’

‘No, you can’t. Running around like Clint Eastwood puts everyone in danger. You’ve got a duty of care to fellow officers as well as the public.’

‘I sometimes wonder why you got into this job, boss,’ Ray put in, halfway through his pint already. ‘It’s almost like you don’t enjoy it.’

‘I know I’m banging my head against a brick wall with you guys, but things have got to change in this department,’ Sam said. ‘You understand what I’m saying, Chris, surely.’

‘Why me, boss?’ Chris frowned.

‘Because you nearly died today.’

‘Don’t remind me!’

‘But that’s the point,’ Sam ploughed on. ‘This job, it ain’t a joke. It’s serious. People get hurt — and not always the ones that deserve it.’

‘I think we’ve all had enough of your speeches for one day, Tyler,’ Gene put in. ‘This is a pub, not a bloody pulpit. Save the sermons for that soppy bird Cartwright you’re always sniffing after. Nelson, we need chasers with these pints. Doubles — on the double!’

Nelson reached towards the optic holding an upturned bottle of Irish whiskey.

‘I ain’t touching that stuff!’ pouted Chris. ‘I ain’t touching anything Irish, not never again — whiskey, spuds, leeks …’

‘Leeks are Welsh,’ said Sam.

‘Don’t care. I’m not taking any chances.’

‘And I’m not dying of thirst just because you tripped over your own knickers this morning,’ declared Gene. ‘Nelson — four Scotches. Scotches, Chris, you listening? Jock water, not Paddy piss.’

Nelson obliged with four shot glasses of Scotch whisky.

‘Scots are as bad as the Irish,’ muttered Chris, but he grudgingly agreed to join the others in knocking them back.

‘Your prospective bit of leg-over Annie’s been earning her pennies today,’ said Gene, blowing smoke at Sam through his nostrils. ‘She’s been doing some productive police work — unlike some, Christopher.’ Again, Chris averted his face. ‘Looks like she’s come up with a juicy lead, a possible link in the Paddy chain.’

‘The what chain?’ frowned Ray.

‘I’ll show you,’ said Gene, and he planted an empty whisky glass on the bar. ‘This glass is a bunch of Paddies over in Ireland, stashing up guns and explosives. And over here’ — he plonked down another glass, twelve inches from the first — ‘is another bunch of Paddies, but this lot’s on the mainland, all Guinnessed up and looking to blow eight barrels of shite out of anything with a Union Jack fluttering out the top of it. What links this bunch of Paddies to this one is this’ — he placed a smouldering dog end between the two glasses — ‘the link in the chain, the couriers fetching the goodies from over the water and supplying the terrorist cells on the mainland. Now, Annie’s dug up a likely ID for that middle link, a husband-and-wife double act, and — no surprises here — Paddies an’ all. Looks like they might have been involved in supplying the fireworks for this morning’s fun and games.’

‘If it was the IRA,’ said Sam. ‘I’m not so sure it was anything to do with them.’

Gene threw his head back and rolled his eyes to the fag-stained ceiling. ‘Oh, Christ, not all this again.’

‘Think about it, Guv,’ Sam pressed on. ‘The hand painted on the wall — the letters RHF …’

Gene exhaled smoke like a bored and rather tetchy dragon. Sam looked to Chris and Ray for support, but neither of them looked much impressed.

‘I’m sticking to my guns on this,’ Sam insisted. ‘We’re dealing with some kind of terrorist organization, but it’s not the IRA. Even the way the explosives were rigged up — in a toilet for God’s sake! It doesn’t smell of the Provos to me.’

‘Chris was certainly smelling of the Provos when he jumped off that khazi,’ grinned Ray.

‘That ain’t fair, I was keeping it in,’ protested Chris.

‘We all saw the inside of your drawers this morning, Christopher,’ put in Gene. ‘Barry Sheene don’t leave so many skid marks.’

Nelson leant close to Sam’s ear and whispered, ‘I’d not be botherin’ tryin’ to talk sense to these boys, Sam — not tonight I wouldn’t. They ain’t in da mood.’

‘You’ve got that right, Nelson,’ said Sam, and he took a slug of bitter.

It was at that moment that Annie appeared, stepping out of the night into the warm glow of the pub. She had wrapped herself in a brown leather coat, pulling the wide collar up around her neck to keep out the cold. As if to greet her, the Rolling Stones’ ‘Angie’ sobbed from the loudspeakers behind the bar:

Seeing her round face, with its Harmony hairsprayed curls and warm, mischievous eyes, Sam once again felt a sudden stirring of his heart. He told himself to stop being so adolescent, that he was too old for such gushing, seething emotions.

But then Annie glanced across at the bar, caught his eye, and at once her face lit up. It made Sam’s heart beat a little faster — for a brief second, he felt he was the king of the world — and he forgave himself such a schoolboy response to her. It felt too good to feel bad about.

Annie clip-clopped over in her heeled boots and examined the four pints and four empty shot glasses crowding the bar.

‘Taking it easy tonight, are we?’ she said.

‘Nelson — another round of pints!’ ordered Gene. ‘And some sort of poofy squash for the bird.’ Turning to Sam he said, ‘Don’t let us stop you taking your pint and totty to another corner, Sam.’

‘Why’d you say that?’

‘A lifetime in the force, Sammy — it’s made me sensitive to picking up vibes. And I’m picking up vibes right now — ones that say you and her would rather be alone just now.’

‘Well, Guv, I would like a chance to be with Annie in private. You know, for a little tete-a-tete.’

‘I’ve never heard it called that,’ muttered Ray. Chris sniggered.

‘Here you go,’ grinned Nelson, passing over drinks. ‘A rum and Coke for the lady of my dreams, and a fresh pint o’ me finest for me good friend Samuel.’

‘Clear off with her and have your chinwag — you’re bugger all company tonight,’ Gene ordered. ‘Just make sure you’re both bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in the morning — we’ve got an IRA arms-smuggling chain to break.’

‘The incident this morning, Guv — it wasn’t the IRA,’ said Sam.

‘Discuss it with WPC Crumpet,’ Gene replied flatly. ‘I’ve got a liver to abuse.’

And, as Sam and Annie carried their drinks away, he lifted his glass in a toast to them, growled, ‘Cheerio, amigos,’ and tossed three fingers of neat whisky down his gullet.

‘Sometimes,’ Sam whispered as they walked away, ‘sometimes, Annie, I really do think seriously about killing him.’

‘The guv?’ Annie smiled back. ‘You’d have your work cut out. I reckon you’d need a silver bullet. Or a stake through the heart.’

‘Or an atom bomb,’ said Sam. ‘Come to think of it, he’d probably survive — him and the cockroaches.’

‘And he’d be radioactive. He might go all big like Godzilla.’

‘Oh, God, Annie, not even in jest …’

They settled themselves into a corner, the Rolling Stones still weeping from the speaker on the wall above them.

‘Well then,’ said Annie, ‘here we are, having our moment, just the two of us.’

‘I was hoping for something a little bit more … A little less …’

They both glanced briefly at Gene, Ray and Chris sharing a filthy joke only feet away. Ray was using his hands to describe the shape of some sort of enormous saveloy in the air.

‘Just carry on like they’re not there,’ said Annie. ‘Believe me, Sam, that’s what I do. Every day. You think I’d have stuck this job so long if I didn’t?’

Sam played agitatedly with his pint glass. ‘It’s crazy, isn’t it? I’ve been going on and on about us two finding the time to sit and talk — and now we’re here, I don’t know how to say what’s on my mind.’

‘The job getting you down?’

‘It’s not the job, Annie. It’s … It’s like … Ach, I don’t know how to put this without sounding like an idiot.’

‘Well, say it anyway. You can’t sound more like an idiot than some people I can think of.’

‘I’ve been dreaming,’ said Sam at last.

‘Oh, aye?’

‘No, not like that. Stupid dreams. I’m always alone. I’m always lost, stuck somewhere I shouldn’t be, unable to get home. Everything’s broken … Like the world’s come to an end and I’m lost, and …’ He shrugged and threw up his hands. ‘I told you I’d make myself sound like an idiot.’

‘These dreams you keep having,’ said Annie, ‘the way they make you feel. Does that feeling stay with you, even when you wake up?’

‘Yes. Yes, it does.’

‘Is it the feeling that you ought to be somewhere else? Somewhere really important?’

‘Yes.’

‘But you don’t know where it is, or why you need to be there. And that feeling doesn’t go away, even when you ignore it and tell yourself it’s just the job or you’re having an off day. It keeps coming back, creeping up on you, all the time.’

Sam leant forward, looking intently into her face. ‘Annie, it’s like you’re reading my mind.’

‘It’s like you’re reading mine, Sam. I know the feeling you’re talking about. I have it too.’

‘You do? Annie, you never said.’

‘Yes I did. Just now.’

‘But … Why didn’t you tell me this before?’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

Sam squeezed her hand, and she squeezed back. He could feel the warmth of her skin, catch the hint of her Yardley perfume, see the light reflecting from her eyes as she looked intently at him. It was a quietly intense moment — a real moment, more real by far than anything he could recall from his old life amid the laptops and iPods, satellite channels and Bluetooths.

‘What does it mean, Annie? Why do we feel like this?’

He could feel it right now, and he supposed that Annie could, too. A restlessness. A deep feeling of a job to do, a train to catch, an appointment to be met, important business to be concluded. Holding Annie’s hand, he looked back across the pub towards the bar. There was Ray, grinning and joking, the empty glasses piling up in front of him; and there was Chris, looking youthful and uncertain as he squirmed from the good-humoured bullying. And, looming over them, there stood Gene — solid, rocklike, wreathed in blue fag smoke that caught the light and glowed all about him like an aura.

But now Sam become acutely aware of Nelson standing just beyond them, pumping bitter into a pint glass and grinning at some inane comment from his CID regulars. Without changing his expression, Nelson glanced slowly up at Sam and Annie; knowingly, he tipped them both a wink.

For a brief moment, Sam felt the sudden conviction that everything here in this crappy, filthy pub was alive with meaning — the bar, the ashtrays, the rings of sticky beer on the tables, and, even more so, the people: Chris and Ray and Gene. Annie too, and Sam himself. And Nelson most of all.

We’re all here for a reason, Sam thought. There’s a plan at work here — and we are all part of it.

And in the next heartbeat, everything faded back into drab normality, the sense of imminent revelation gone. Gene, Ray and Chris were just three mouthy coppers sharing a drink. Nelson was just Nelson. The pub was just yet another reeking Manchester boozer.

‘What’s going on in that noggin of yours, mm?’ Annie asked, leaning closer to him.

‘I was thinking,’ Sam breathed softly. ‘I was thinking that I thought I was here to stay. This place. This life. I thought it was home. But now I’m starting to suspect home’s somewhere else.’

‘Me too,’ murmured Annie.

‘I can’t explain it better than that.’

‘Me neither.’

‘But I do know one thing,’ said Sam, and he looked into Annie’s eyes. ‘Wherever I go, I won’t be able to call it home without y-’

But, before he could say anything more, Ray’s boozy voice cut across them, ‘Look out, lads, it’s Brief En-bloody-counter over there.’

Chris placed a limp hand to his heart, fluttered his eyelids, and gave his best Celia Johnson impression. ‘Oh, dahling, I do so frightfully love you and all that. Merry meh — at once. Oh, do say you’ll merry meh.’

Gene shut him up with a clout to the back of the head, like a headmaster cuffing an unruly schoolboy. For a moment, he seemed unsure why he’d done it — then he turned his back on Sam and Annie and complained to Nelson that he wasn’t drunk enough. Not half drunk enough!

‘Is this a conversation for another day?’ Annie asked, very quietly.

Sam sighed and nodded. The moment was broken. He would have to wait for another.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE PADDY CHAIN

More fag smoke, more unshaven coppers, more testosterone hanging in the air like the scent of musk — but it wasn’t the Railway Arms this time, it was A-Division at Greater Manchester CID. Harsh strip lights burned in the ceiling, casting their unblinking glare over the criminal mugshots and Page 3 pinups Sellotaped over the drab grey walls. Telephones chimed, typewriters clacked, mountainous heaps of paperwork leaned perilously from trays.

Hung over and bleary-eyed, Chris propped himself up at his desk, not even pretending to be fit for work. Across from him, Ray chewed gum and lounged about.

‘Feeling a bit ropy this morning, Chrissie-boy?’

‘I can handle it,’ murmured Chris.

‘Had half a sherbet too many, eh?’

‘I just copped a dirty glass, that’s all.’

Ray grinned and stretched in his chair, flexing his arms and pushing out his chest. ‘Me — I’m laffin’. Fit as a flea. And I matched you drink for drink last night, Chris, which only goes to show …’

‘Lay off, will ya,’ Chris muttered.

‘You gotta learn to manage your drinking,’ Ray went on. ‘You can’t call yourself a bloke, not a real bloke, until you can confidently down it, absorb it, and piss it up a wall like a pro. You think Richard Harris poofs it up like you after a couple of swift ones?’

‘He might do if had my metabolism,’ muttered Chris. ‘Anyway, he’s Irish. I don’t want no mention of anything Irish.’

‘Take my advice, young ’un — stay well within your limits, and leave the heavy stuff to us grown-ups.’

‘I’ll admit it, I might have had one or two more than was good for me,’ said Chris. ‘But I’m a man in trauma. I can’t get that image out of my head — the khazi of doom, all set to blow half a ton of Semtex up me Rotherhithe. It’s haunting me, Ray. Just imagine if that lot had gone off.’

‘You’d’ve ended up feeling no worse than you do right now,’ suggested Ray.

‘God, ain’t that the truth?’ Chris groaned, and slowly sank forward until his ashen forehead rested against his desk.

Without warning, the door to Gene Hunt’s office slammed open, and the guv himself appeared, glaring and brooding like a grizzly bear with a right monk on.

‘DI Tyler, Brenda Bristols, the pleasure of your company, if you please.’

Exchanging looks, Sam and Annie stepped into Gene’s office and shut the door behind them. Gene prowled about behind his desk, not even bothering to conceal the glass of Scotch amid the paperwork. Hair of the dog. His morning pick-me-up. It may be wrecking his liver, but it didn’t seem to be impairing his police work.

‘As you know,’ he intoned, ‘the gunman we so valiantly risked our arses trying to apprehend yesterday managed to elude us. Not only that, he also managed to elude the Keystone Kops outside and their impenetrable “ring of steel”, all of which means I’ve been getting it in the neck from Special Branch for not leaving the operation to them. They’re saying — and I quote — that we made a “right pigging balls-up”. Black mark for A-Division. Black mark for me. And me not well pleased, children, me not well pleased at all.’

He stopped pacing and glowered intensely at Sam for a moment, daring him to come out with an ‘I told you so, Guv’. But Sam knew when to keep it buttoned.

After a few moments, Gene resumed pacing and said, ‘On the plus side, however, our keen cub reporter Annie Cartwright has supplied us with a useful lead. Go on, luv, tell us what you got.’

On cue, Annie produced some typewritten pages and read from them: ‘Michael and Cait Deery. Husband and wife. Irish nationals residing somewhere in Manchester. There’s been a Home Office file on them for months now. It seems pretty certain they’re acting as couriers between Ireland and the mainland, shipping in firearms, ammunition and plastic explosives to supply IRA cells.’

‘If the Home Office know about them, why haven’t they been arrested?’ asked Sam.

‘Because they’re more valuable left alone to do their thing,’ said Gene. ‘The contacts they meet, the people they deal with. It might all just reveal the whole chain, connecting bomb factories in Dublin to attacks being planned on the mainland.’

‘How sure are we that they were anything to do with what happened at the council records office?’

‘For want of anything better to go on I’m working on the assumption that the Deerys are involved,’ said Gene. ‘If there’s an IRA unit at work on our patch, we’ll find it through them. And bagging an IRA unit might just make up for yesterday’s fiasco. Um, excuse me, DI Tyler, but did somebody drop the marmalade in your pants this morning? What’s that gormless face for?’

‘You’re working on the assumption that what happened yesterday was the work of the IRA,’ said Sam.

Gene sighed. ‘Oh, God, Sam, not this Old Mother ’Ubbard again!’

‘I know you’re resistant to my line of reasoning …’

‘To put it poncily.’

‘But I’m telling you, Guv, we’re going to find out sooner or later that what kicked off yesterday had precious little to do with the IRA.’

‘A bomb, a bloke in a balaclava and a certain negativity expressed towards the British constabulary — now, I’m the first to admit I’m not Sherlock bloody Holmes, but-’

‘I’ve already told you, Guv, I’m not convinced,’ said Sam. ‘That bomb in the toilet — it was a message of some kind. It meant something. It was more symbolic than a genuine threat.’

‘Unlike this,’ snapped Gene, raising a balled fist in front of Sam’s face.

Sam ignored him and carried on: ‘And what about the red hand painted on the wall, and the letters RHF?’

‘And what about the report I found on my desk this morning from Bomb Disposal?’ countered Gene. ‘They’ve examined the explosives from the khazi and confirmed it’s a classic bit of IRA kit.’

‘Maybe it is,’ said Sam, shrugging. ‘But I’m still sceptical.’

‘I don’t care what you are,’ barked Gene. ‘I’m still head honcho round here and until you convince me otherwise I’m going to pursue this investigation on the not unreasonable assumption that it’s the Paddies we’re after and not the bloody RHF. What is the bloody RHF anyway, for God’s sake? Royal Horticultural Faggots?’

‘Red Hand something?’ suggested Annie, suddenly. ‘Just a guess. What do you reckon?’

‘Red Hand something — of course!’ cried Sam. ‘Of course!’

‘Red Hand something?’ said Gene, looking unimpressed. ‘So what’s the F stand for?’

‘I know what F stands for,’ put in Ray suddenly, sticking his head round the door and winking at Annie. He flapped a sheet of paper onto Gene’s desk. ‘Here you go, Guv. The Deerys’ address. Dowell Road on the other side of town.’

‘Nice work, Raymondo,’ said Gene. ‘Right, playmates, let’s start proving to Special Branch that we know how to behave like proper grown-up coppers. Annie, see if you can find out what the letter F stands for. It sounds like a task of about your level. Use Chris’s wooden bricks with the letters on ’em if it helps. Sam, you’re coming with me. We’re going to pop round the Deerys’ place and see if anything’s cooking.’

‘Want me to drive, Guv?’ Sam asked.

Gene looked blankly at him and said, ‘And why the hell would I want you to drive?’

‘Well, you know, seeing as you’ve … You’ve had a couple of, um …’

Sam was going to say something about the Scotch glass on Gene’s desk, then reminded himself that nobody gave a toss about that sort of thing, not here. There was some part of him, some corner of his brain, that would always be 2006, no matter how long he lived in 1973.

‘Sorry, Guv. Forget I said anything.’

‘I always do,’ said Gene, jangling his car keys and grabbing his coat.

They sat in the Cortina at the end of Dowell Road. Number 14, the home of Michael and Cait Deery, was a just another unremarkable semidetached among many, with a trim little garden and a Vauxhall Cresta parked in the driveway.

‘Are we going in?’ asked Sam.

Gene flexed his hand on the wheel, making the leather of his driving glove creak ominously.

‘Nope, we’re staying put,’ he said. ‘If the Deerys are middlemen in the IRA chain, let’s sit back and observe, just like the Home Office recommended. Sooner or later they’ll lead us to the terrorist cell they’re supplying.’

‘Guv, I know you’re not interested in this, but I don’t think what happened yesterday-’

‘-was the work of the IRA. I know, Sam. You think it was part of the Pinky Palm Brigade’s campaign against khazis. Maybe it was. Fact remains, our boys across the water have pissed rather too heavily in the hornets’ nest and stirred up trouble. If we can blag an IRA unit by trailing the Deerys, that scores me and my department a handful of much-needed Brownie points.’

‘Um, Guv, I didn’t quite follow all that. What did you mean about “pissing in the hornets’ nest”?’

Gene turned his head and stared at him, and then said, as if speaking to a deaf idiot, ‘Bloody. Sunday. You. Dozy. Pillock.’

Bloody Sunday. Of course. For Sam, Bloody Sunday was something very much from the past, like the Apollo moon landing or Blue Peter in black and white. But here, in the world of Gene Hunt, it was fresh news, a raw and open wound. In 1972 — only last year — the British Paras opened fire on a civil-rights march in … Belfast, was it? Or Ulster? Or Derry? Damn it, he couldn’t remember. Wherever it had taken place, it had left a dozen or more dead and brought the IRA right out on the offensive. The repercussions of ‘pissing in the hornets’ nest’ would still be reverberating in the far future — even in 2006, when a young detective from CID, recently recovered from a life-threatening accident that had left him in a coma, would inexplicably jump from a rooftop to his death.

Sam shook these thoughts from his head. He was here now — in 1973 — with a job to do, a duty to fulfil, a life to lead. The future was history. All that mattered was the here and now.

‘You know, Sam,’ said Gene, ‘now we’ve got a cosy moment together, just the two of us, I’d like to have a little chat with you about summat.’

‘Yes, Guv?’

‘I was thinking about what you said the other day in the pub, about the way I handle cases. You said I was irresponsible. You said I treated the job like a game.’

‘What I said, Guv … What I meant was that I was brought up with a very different approach to policing than you. I was taught — and I’ve always believed — that the rules of conduct and behaviour laid down for us aren’t there to make our job difficult or give villains the opportunity to get off the hook. Those rules are there because they’re right, and they’re fair, and they stop people getting killed.’

‘Go on, Tyler, I’m listening.’

‘I know it sounds poncy to you, Guv, but if the police don’t play by the rules what’s the point? We might as well bring back lynch mobs and string fellas up in the street just because they come across as wrong ’uns.’

‘And you wouldn’t go for that, then?’

‘Would you?’

Gene thought for a moment, then said, ‘Depends on whose feet end up dangling. I can think of some right naughty boys I wouldn’t shed no tears over.’

‘You’re just saying that, Guv. You don’t really believe it. Look, the point I was making is that I don’t want to end up dead, any more than you do, or Chris or Ray or any of us. And, as much as it offends your freewheeling sensibilities, Gene, I think that sticking to the rules — at least, to the spirit of the rules — is the best way of keeping us alive. We’re not here to take undue risks, we’re not here to dish out justice from the end of a gun, and we’re certainly not here to make ourselves feel more like real men.’

‘That’s what you think I’m about, is it?’ Gene asked, without sarcasm. He seemed to genuinely want to know. ‘You think I’m trying to prove something?’

‘Sometimes, Guv, yes.’

Gene thought about this, nodded to himself, and said, ‘I was right about you Tyler. You do talk and think a right load of shite.’

Sam sat back in his seat. He’d tried. He really had.

‘Right, boyo, let’s get our minds back on the job,’ said Gene. ‘Keep your eyes fixed on the Deerys’ gaff. Let me know the moment you see anything.’

‘Why? Where are you going?’

‘Nowhere,’ said Gene, fishing out a folded copy of the Mirror and flicking it open. ‘I want to catch up on me paperwork.’

He disappeared into the sports pages. Sam shook his head — then his eye was caught by the front page of Gene’s paper.

TUC CALLS FOR MASS STRIKE ACTION IN PROTEST AGAINST PRICE RISES AND PAY RESTRAINTS — OVER 1.5 MILLION WORKERS CALLED OUT

MASSIVE DISRUPTION TO RAIL SERVICES DUE TO INDUSTRIAL ACTION — ASLEF CALLS FOR DRIVERS AND STATION STAFF NOT TO CROSS PICKET LINES

Protests, mass unrests, trains up the spout. Some things don’t ever change, thought Sam. He continued to skim-read:

CAR PLANTS, COAL MINES, AND SHIPPING YARDS BROUGHT TO A HALT

FIRE BRIGADE UNIONS THREATEN MASS INDUSTRIAL ACTION

ARMY ON STANDBY TO MAN FIRE STATIONS

COUNTRY ON THE BRINK OF CHAOS

I vaguely remember all this, he thought: the strikes, the power cuts. I was only four years old — it all seemed like a world away from me back then. I never realized just how bad things got.

HEATH ADMINISTRATION IN CRISIS TALKS WITH UNIONS

JACK JONES, LEADER OF THE TRANSPORT AND GENERAL WORKERS’ UNION, WARNS THAT GOVERNMENT WOULD BE ‘FOOLISH TO IGNORE NOT ONLY THOSE PROTESTING TODAY BUT THOSE MILLIONS WHO ARE FED UP WITH THE CONTINUING PRICE RISES’

‘Stop reading my bloody paper,’ Gene growled from behind his Mirror.

Sam obediently fixed his attention on the Deerys’ house. Moments later, he saw the front door open.

‘Eh up, Guv, we’ve got movement.’

A young couple were emerging from the door of Number 14. Michael Deery was a nondescript-looking man — dark-haired, clean-shaven, dressed in a checked, wing-collared shirt and corduroys; his wife Cait had hair like a young Cher — very dark and straight — and wore a beige corduroy pinafore dress that made Sam think of Play School presenters.

‘They look so ordinary,’ said Sam. ‘Hard to believe they’re gunrunners for the IRA.’

‘What were you expecting? T-shirts with “Bugger the British” printed across ’em?’

Together, the Deerys hauled a heavily taped-up package from the house and stowed it in the boot of the Cresta.

‘What do you reckon that is, Guv?’

‘It’s not meals on wheels, Sammy-boy, I’ll put money on that,’ muttered Gene.

The Deerys glanced about, got into their car, and reversed out into the road. Gene chucked his paper into the back seat and started the Cortina.

‘Don’t make it obvious we’re tailing them,’ said Sam. ‘Keep it low-key.’

‘Is that the way it’s done, is it? Oh, thank you for informing me, Samuel, I was just about to put the blue light on and start beeping me horn.’

‘I just meant-’

‘I know what you meant, Doxon of Dick Green. Now zip your cakehole and let me drive.’

They followed the Deerys out of Dowell Road and soon found themselves heading west. Gene trailed them from a distance, at times allowing cars to get between the Cresta and the Cortina, but he never lost sight of them. Once, he jumped a red light to ensure that he didn’t lag behind, and, when a man in a sporty MG blared his horn and yelled at him to watch where he was bloody going, Gene replied with a one-handed gesture.

‘We’re heading out of town,’ said Sam.

‘Open country — moorland — somewhere deserted away from prying eyes,’ growled Gene. ‘It’s a handover, Sammy, you mark my words.’

‘But not necessarily a handover with the IRA.’

‘You just won’t drop it, will you, Tyler?’

‘As a police officer, I’m obliged to inform my superior officer of my feelings about a given case,’ said Sam.

Gene shot him a sideways glance. ‘You can’t half be an uptight little twonk, Samuel.’

They were leaving the grey suburbs of the city and approaching a desolate, flat landscape of drab grass and wind-flattened trees.

‘There are fewer cars on the road,’ warned Sam. ‘If we’re going to be spotted it’ll be out here. Ease off, Gene.’

‘And risk losing them? No way.’

‘We’ll lose them anyway if they realize we’re following them.’

‘Tyler, I would appreciate it if you stopped addressing me like I was new to policing. I have done this sort of thing before, you know.’

‘Guv, if you’re right and they’ve got explosives in that car, they’ll be on red alert for a police tail. Just ease off, that’s all I’m saying.’

Gene grudgingly pulled over. They watched the Deerys’ car moving away along the road — and then, quite suddenly, after a hundred yards or so, it turned and vanished behind a scrappy knot of trees and did not reappear.

‘That’s it,’ breathed Gene. ‘That’s the rendezvous.’

‘There’s a white van coming up behind us,’ said Sam.

Gene sat bolt upright in his seat, his senses tingling, nerve endings crackling.

‘That’s the contact,’ he muttered as the van drew closer. ‘I can feel it. I can smell it.’

And Sam knew, in the marrow of his bones, that Gene was right. The guv was on form. The booze had not dulled him, nor had the sixty Rothmans a day diminished him. He was a racist, sexist, borderline-alcoholic Neanderthal who flagrantly disregarded protocol and basic human rights — but, whatever Gene Hunt was made of, it was the right stuff for a good copper.

The white van rattled past the parked Cortina. They caught a fleeting glimpse of the driver as he went by.

‘See that, Sam? See what he was wearing?’

‘I saw, Guv. Little round glasses. Just like the gunman yesterday.’

As they watched, the white van turned off the road and disappeared into the same copse of trees as the Deerys.

‘Still convinced there’s no connection between yesterday’s little shindig and the IRA, Sam?’ Gene asked, firing the ignition and creeping the Cortina stealthily forward.

‘To be honest, Guv, no, I’m still not convinced.’

‘You should be. We know the Deerys are couriers for the IRA. They don’t ship in guns and bombs just to hand ’em out like Smarties.’

‘Still doesn’t explain the red hand on the wall,’ said Sam.

‘Bollocks to the red hand on the wall. I want that John-Lennon-faced bastard, Tyler — I want him. He ain’t giving us the slip again, not today he ain’t. I’m gonna have him and his cargo of whiz-bangs safe and sound in my lockup by teatime, ’coz that’s what real coppers do, Sammy-boy, they nick villains — and you can use a red-painted finger to shove the meaning of the mystery F up your word-puzzling, crossword-solving arse, Tyler. Am I communicating my sentiments with sufficient clarity, mm?’

‘Sometimes, Guv,’ said Sam, ‘you’re on the cusp of being some sort of poet.’

‘Only a poet of justice, Sammy-boy,’ Gene intoned as he edged the Cortina forward. ‘Now, stop talking like a ponce and let’s nick ourselves a murdering IRA scumbag.’

CHAPTER FIVE

HANDOVER

Gene killed the engine and let the Cortina idle silently to a stop.

‘So what’s the plan now?’ whispered Sam.

‘We sit here and do the crossword,’ Gene whispered back. ‘What do you think, Tyler you dope? We get over there and cop a gander. Don’t make a sound. Don’t even fart.’

Gene slipped silently out of the Cortina, and Sam followed him, crouching low as they made their way to the knot of trees up ahead. Through the branches they could make out the side of the white van, parked just off the road; closer still, they began to make out voices.

‘We want proof you haven’t done anything.’ It was a male voice, the accent richly Northern Irish. Surely it was Michael Deery.

‘Because if you have done something, you’ll regret it, you bastard — I swear to God, you’ll regret it.’ Female. Irish. That was Cait.

A very different voice replied, ‘The trouble with you types is that you’re too used to getting your own way. You think you can intimidate everyone. Well — not me. Not us.’

This third voice was English — very English. It had the tones of a middle-class Southerner, not the usual voice of an IRA hitman. Sam and Gene, crouching unseen amid the trees, exchanged a glance, then crept closer.

‘I’m not making threats, Cowper,’ Michael said. His voice was tight and constrained, as if he were speaking through gritted teeth. Barely suppressed violence crackled from him. ‘I’m not threatening ya, I’m tellin’ ya. If you bastards do anything — anything at all — we’ll be after you, you hear? And not just you. We’ll be after your kids. We’ll be after your families. We’ll dig up your parents’ bloody graves and desecrate them an’ all. We’ll rip your stinkin’, filthy houses down with all you bastards inside ’em, and burn ’em to ashes, and bury ’em under lime. Everything you are, everything you hold dear, will be blown to pieces — by us — by me.’

‘I find all that most fanciful,’ laughed Cowper. ‘But, really, you can keep your hair on, both of you. We haven’t done anything untoward. Not a thing. Not yet, we haven’t.’

‘Prove it,’ Cait suddenly cried out.

‘You’ll just have to take my word for it, I’m afraid.’

‘We’ve kept our side of the bargain. We want proof you ain’t done nothing.’

‘I don’t have any proof,’ said Cowper.

‘Then get proof!’ spat Cait.

Cowper sighed, theatrically, and said in a weary voice, ‘We appear to be going round in tedious circles. I can’t offer you any proof of anything. I can only offer you my word. And that, I know, means nothing to you. But really — why would we damage our prize asset when it’s paying such dividends for us? We are very happy with the situation at present and see no reason to change it. So, if you’ll be so kind, shall we get on to the business at hand? I’d like to see the goods. I take it they’re in the boot of your car?’

‘You get nothing from us until we get proof you ain’t done nothing.’

Hiding behind a tree, Sam peered out. He could see the Deerys standing by the open boot of their car, Cowper positioned across from them, his shoulder resting against the side of his van, round glasses glinting. Even from a distance, Sam could feel the air between Cowper and the Deerys fizzing with animosity. Hatred seemed to spark like electricity from Cait Deery’s icy, glaring eyes; Michael Deery’s jaw muscles were tensing convulsively, his hands balling into tight fists, as if he were about to spring forward and beat the living crap out of the Englishman at any moment. But Cowper was relaxed, half-smiling, a man very much in control, showing not the least sign of being alarmed or threatened. Sam examined him closely. He was young, with fair hair that reached the collar of his denim jacket; his face was lean, intelligent, made more studious by the round-lensed glasses that perched high on his narrow nose.

Cowper … Cowper …

Sam was turning the name over and over in his mind, seeing if he could place it. But it meant nothing to him.

‘My patience is wearing perilously thin,’ Cowper said, and a hard edge had crept into his tone. He glared at Cait and Michael in turn. ‘In fact, I’m starting to suspect some sort of subterfuge.’

‘We just want to know the-’

‘I know full well what you want. And you know full well my answer. Why can’t you understand the situation? You have no bargaining power over us. None whatsoever. You will comply with the terms of our arrangement, and you will do so without argument or complaint. Now, if you don’t hand over what’s ours, I’ll report back that you’re failing to cooperate. You know what’ll happen. And you don’t want that to happen, do you? Of course not. So let’s get on with the business of the day, shall we? I trust you’ve brought the merchandise with you. Would you be so kind as to let me take a peek, please?’

After a tense pause, the Deerys leant into the boot of their car and together hauled out the package.

‘I want to see inside,’ said Cowper mildly.

‘It’s what you asked for,’ said Michael.

‘I’m sure it is. But no harm to make sure.’

‘You think we’d risk anything?’ snapped Cait. ‘You’d think we’d be so stupid?’

‘If it’s what we asked for, then you’ll have no objection to my taking a look,’ smiled Cowper. ‘So open it.’

What we asked for, Sam noted. Unless Cowper was using the royal ‘we’, this suggested that he was part of a bigger organization. And it certainly wasn’t the IRA.

He’s with the RHF, surely, Sam thought — whatever the RHF actually is.

Michael Deery reached into his pocket and produced a flick knife. The blade shot out menacingly. Sam could see Michael fighting the urge to thrust it into Cowper’s heart — and so could Cowper, who smiled, daring Michael to strike. Michael’s hand shook. Cait whispered something to him that Sam couldn’t hear.

‘Your wife’s right,’ said Cowper, insufferably smug. ‘Now, get on with it.’

Michael stuck the blade into the side of the cardboard box and cut a rectangular flap. Not even bothering to take his hands out of his pockets, Cowper sauntered over and put his eye to the hole. If Michael’s rage had got the better of him and he decided to strike with the knife, Cowper was wide open, completely unprotected. But from his attitude it was clear that he knew Michael would not strike — that he would never strike — because Cowper had an aura about him, an air of being untouchable. Whatever hold he had over the Deerys, it was unbreakable.

This isn’t an IRA handover, Sam thought. This is something else entirely. Surely even Gene can see that for himself now.

Cowper smiled at what he saw in the box, then straightened slowly. ‘Well, everything looks very much in order. Excellent. Tiptop. Now be so kind as to stash it carefully in the back of the van.’

‘You’re not the boss of us, you stinking English bastard,’ Cait hissed.

‘Au contraire,’ Cowper replied. ‘As long as we’re babysitting for you, we most definitely are “de boss o’ yous”.’ He spoke these last four words in a mocking Irish accent.

Babysitting? thought Sam. He shot a glance across at Gene, but his guv’nor was intently focused on the scene in front of him.

For a few moments, Michael Deery didn’t move, just stood glaring at the Englishman, and Sam could see that his self-restraint was at breaking point. At any moment, he’d attack. But, suddenly, tears of rage and frustration welled up in Michael’s eyes, and in the next moment all the fight had gone out of him. He hung his head and painfully swallowed down his tears.

‘If the histrionics are now all over and done with, perhaps we might get on with the job at hand,’ said Cowper. ‘Get that box into the van, and let’s have no more shilly-shallying.’

Obediently, but burning with resentment, the Deerys carried the box across to the van and stowed it.

‘Nice job, very well done,’ grinned Cowper. ‘I think that just about concludes matters for the time being, yes?’

Cait Deery paused to fix the Englishman with a look of pure hatred, standing almost nose to nose with him. Michael gently tugged her arm, but for some seconds she wouldn’t budge.

The Englishman smiled a slow, cold smile, then said, ‘Can you even imagine what they’ll do if you lay so much as a finger on me?’

Cait’s face flushed scarlet with rage. Moments later, the colour drained from it entirely, leaving her cheeks and even her lips ashen and bloodless. Cowper patted Cait’s shoulder in a mocking pretence of friendship, then turned away, his John Lennon spectacles sparkling insolently, and climbed back into the cab of his van as if he had all the time in the world.

‘Top o’ the mahnin’ to de pair o’ ya,’ Cowper called out to them mockingly, and started the engine.

Suddenly Gene tapped Sam’s shoulder, and indicated with a jabbed thumb that they were to get back to the Cortina double pronto.

‘That’s it,’ said Gene as he settled himself behind the wheel. ‘We’re following that long-haired southern poofter. We’re sticking to him like glue.’

‘The Deerys might be IRA, but there’s no way Cowper is,’ said Sam, watching the white van trundle backwards onto the road, turn, and start heading back the way it had come. ‘What was all that about babysitting?’

‘Worry about it later,’ growled Gene. ‘Right now, we’re playing “Follow the Bastard”. Get ready to call for backup — it’s likely he’s going to lead us right to his IRA playmates.’

‘Guv, he’s not IRA. How many more times? He’s part of the RHF.’

‘Oh, yes, those made-up baddies you keep banging on about.’

‘Come on, Gene, open your eyes. Whoever Cowper is, he’s certainly no friend of the Deerys. He’s coercing them to hand over guns or explosives that are meant for the IRA. He’s blackmailing them so he can supply the RHF with them instead. You can see that, Guv. Surely you can see that.’

‘If I was to go along with you, Sam, I would first have to admit that I was wrong, and then — even worse — that you were right, and I’m not prepared to do that.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because you’re an irritating smart-aleck tit and I’m not in the mood to be gracious. Now, get ready to call for backup in case things start getting frilly.’

Gene let the van get a good couple of hundred feet headway on them, then hit the gas and followed. Sam glanced back and caught a glimpse of the Deerys. They appeared briefly by the side of the road, comforting each other, hugging, sobbing, until he lost sight of them entirely.

The van made its way back into town and began a long, meandering crawl through the grim suburbs and rundown industrial outskirts. Gene held back, keeping his distance, but, as time dragged on, he grew impatient and tetchy. He started nosing the Cortina up close to the van as if he were about to ram it in frustration.

‘Chuffin’ Nora! Is this twat taking the scenic route or what?’

‘Don’t get too close, guv. Play it cool.’

‘Play it cool? You’re not about to break into West Side bloody Story, are you, Sam?’

‘If you tailgate him like this he’ll clock us clear as daylight.’

‘I know what I am doing,’ declared Gene. ‘Now give your chops and my ear’oles a rest, Samuel. This is worse than having a bird in the car.’

Sam threw his hands up in frustration and fell silent. But then he looked out of the window.

‘Guv!’

‘I told you to pipe down and let me drive.’

‘But, Guv-’

‘I am this close to hitting the ejector seat.’

‘Guv, we passed that factory ten minutes ago.’

‘What factory?’

‘The one we’re passing again right now. I remember that corrugated roof and the two chimneys.’

‘Is this some pathetic attempt to impress me with your powers of observation? Because if it is, Tyler, I can assure you that-’

‘Guv, Cowper’s driving in circles. You know what that means.’

Gene fell silent. He knew very well what that meant. Driving in circles — it was a standard means of checking to see whether the car that was always in your rear-view mirror really was following you.

‘He’s clocked us,’ said Sam.

‘Then let’s stop fannying about and nick him,’ barked Gene, and without warning he floored the gas. The Cortina lurched forward and plunged into the oncoming lane. Horns blared and cars ducked out of the way. Sam found himself grabbing frantically at the wheel.

‘You’re going to kill us.’

‘Get your flippers off my ruddy motor!’ Gene bellowed. He shoved Sam back and pulled the Cortina alongside the white van at high speed. ‘Nick him, Tyler! Bloody nick him!’

Sam wound down his window and waved his police ID about.

‘Police!’ he yelled. ‘Pull over!’

Cowper was visible in the cab of the van. He glanced across at them, that same infuriating smile still on his lips.

‘Pull over! Police! I won’t tell you ag-’

Cowper jerked the wheel to the right. The van veered into them, crashing against the passenger side and bouncing the Cortina hard on its suspension.

‘Cheeky little sod,’ Gene growled, hitting the brakes and tucking the Cortina back in behind the van again. ‘Right, he’s done his bit — now it’s my go.’

He pulled the Magnum from beneath his coat, leant out of the window, and squeezed off a shot. Fire spat from the muzzle of the gun. The van’s rear tyre exploded. Strips of rubber flew across the road as the shredded remains wrapped themselves crazily around the spinning axle. The van veered, crossed into the oncoming lane, struggled drunkenly back.

‘For God’s sake, Gene, you’re going to cause a pile-up.’

But Gene couldn’t give less of a toss what Sam thought he was going to cause. He stamped on the gas. The Cortina roared forward, tearing up recklessly on the inside of the van. Steering with one hand, Gene got himself positioned alongside the cab and took careful aim. Cowper had time to look round, saw the light glinting along the barrel of the Magnum, and at last the smug bloody smile vanished from his face.

The guv’nor squeezed the trigger. ‘Say cheese.’

Gene bullseyed the front tyre, shredding it. The van lurched madly and swung violently in front of them. Gene slammed on the brakes; the van missed the Cortina’s bonnet with an inch to spare, and slammed into the hard shoulder. Crashing through a barrier, it went cascading down an embankment towards a dry gravel pit.

With a piercing screech of rubber on tarmac, the Cortina slewed to a wild stop, and in a heartbeat Gene was out and running, the smoking Mangum in his hand. Sam flung open his door and belted after him. They threw themselves down the steep embankment, fetching up by the van that lay overturned in the gravel, fountaining steam from its shattered engine block. Gene leapt onto the cab and stood astride the upturned window, aiming the barrel of the Magnum directly down at the man in the cab.

‘Well?’ he intoned. ‘Do ya? Punk?’

There was a flash of light and the sharp crack of a bullet, and for a split second Sam thought Gene had actually blown Cowper away, executing him in cold blood. But in the next moment he realized the shot had come from inside the cab. Gene threw himself backwards, landing heavily in the gravel.

Sam drew his own gun and raced to cover Gene, who was already scrambling furiously to his feet. Cowper appeared, popping up from the open window of the overturned cab, blood smeared over his face, his long hair in wild disarray, a pistol in his hand.

‘Stop! Police!’ Sam screamed, levelling his firearm straight at Cowper.

Cowper fired without hesitating, his shot going wide and kicking up a sharp shower of gravel just past Sam’s feet. Sam replied with a shot of his own; it clipped Cowper hard in the shoulder, flinging him backwards and sending the pistol spinning from his hand. Cowper cried out, furiously clutching his upper arm as it spurted with blood, then slid back down into the cab, groaning.

‘The suspect’s disarmed,’ Sam yelled. Then, ‘You okay, Guv?’

‘Happy as a sandboy,’ Gene said. But then he took in the state of his camelhair coat, encrusted with a layer of filthy gravel. ‘Correction: make that “mortally offended”.’

He strode across to the van, clambered onto its upturned side, flung open the door and jumped inside. From within the cab came a series of desperate screams — Aaargh! Aaiiee! No! No! Nooooaaaaghh! — as Gene Hunt explained to Cowper the importance of treating camelhair with the proper respect.

CHAPTER SIX

AN AUDIENCE WITH GENE HUNT

Cowper sat silently in the Lost and Found Room, staring blankly though the cracked lenses of his glasses, his gaze fixed on a point in space eighteen inches from the front of his bloodied nose. He was surrounded by unclaimed bicycles, forgotten briefcases, mysteriously abandoned stereos and wallets and prosthetic limbs and prams, great stacks of dusty detritus, labelled and shelved, logged and left to moulder year after year, unclaimed, unwanted. Manchester’s flotsam and jetsam all washed up here eventually — and, with his broken glasses and blood-streaked face, Cowper fitted in perfectly: just another piece of junk in need of a home.

Does the same go for me? thought Sam, trying to keep his thoughts focused on the interview instead of on himself. Am I just another bit of lost luggage? Is that why I feel this urge to move on? Am I no more at home here than all this forgotten junk? He shook his head to clear it. Concentrate. You’ve got a job to do.

Sam sat himself down across from Cowper and placed a set of typed pages neatly on the table in front of him. But Gene Hunt was in no mood for sitting. He paced, tigerlike, up and down, back and forth, behind Cowper’s back. His eyes glowered dangerously. If he’d had a striped tail, he would have swished it menacingly. His blood was still up after the chase and the shootout, and he was making no effort to calm himself down. It was only a matter of time before he’d kick off, and the interview would degenerate into a chaos of clenched fists and loosened teeth and squished testicles. But, for as long as he could manage it, Sam was determined to see that some degree of professionalism was adhered to.

‘Right, then,’ said Sam, maintaining a controlled, neutral tone. ‘Your name is Cowper. At present, that’s all we know about you. We want to know a lot more. So let’s start at the beginning. Would you state your full name, please?’

Cowper kept his eyes fixed on the dead air in front of his face. He twitched not so much as an eyelid.

‘Come on, let’s not muck about,’ Sam prompted. ‘Your full name, Mr Cowper.’

Nothing.

‘Are you refusing to state your full name, Mr Cowper?’

Silence.

‘I see. Would you be willing to cooperate with this interview if you had a solicitor present? It’s your right to request one.’

Not a flicker.

‘Mr Cowper, you do understand that keeping silent will do you absolutely no good whatsoever,’ Sam went on. ‘Eventually, with or without your cooperation, we will obtain all your personal details — who you are, where you live, who you associate with. Sitting here in silence, you’re achieving nothing but wasting everybody’s time.’

‘And winding one or two of us up,’ put in Gene, pausing for a moment to glare down at Cowper. ‘Winding one or two of us right up.’

After a menacing pause, Gene resumed his slow, dangerous pacing.

But Cowper said nothing, didn’t move a muscle, barely even blinked.

Sam sighed and opened the police file on the table in front of him. ‘Very well, then, Mr Cowper. If you won’t answer questions directly, let’s see if we can coax you into responding by some other means. I have here an inventory of items recovered from your van. It’s quite an Aladdin’s cave. Allow me to read it to you. If you want to respond at any time, please do. Okay?’ He paused. Still nothing. ‘Okay, then. At the time of your arrest you were found to be in possession of — and this is an impressive list, Mr Cowper:

‘Item one: a Steyr fully automatic pistol with four rounds unfired and three spare clips of ammunition. That’s the gun you discharged at DCI Hunt at the arrest scene.

‘Item two: an AR-18 ArmaLite assault rifle. The old IRA favourite, the “Widowmaker”. Now that’s the one you discharged at both DCI Hunt, myself, our fellow officers and various members of the public two days ago in the council records office. We know because the rounds recovered from the crime scene positively match the fifty-three rounds found in your van. Feel like telling us anything about that? Do you want to deny that it’s yours? Were you looking after it for a friend? Mm? Still don’t want to say anything? Then we shall continue.

‘Item three: six and a half pounds of Semtex plastic explosive, delivered to you by the Deerys just prior to your arrest. Again, it’s identical to the Semtex found in the ladies’ toilet at the records office.

‘Item four — you still don’t want to say anything, Mr Cowper? Okay. Item four: ten detonators and eight coils of electrical wire, which — no surprises here — also match the detonators and wire found at the council office.

‘Item five: a balaclava, identical to the one worn by the mystery gunman in the council office.

‘Item six; a jacket, also identical to the one worn by the mystery gunman in the council office.

And, just on a hunch, Mr Cowper, I’m going to add one more item. Item seven: you, Mr Cowper — the mystery gunman himself. Same height, same build, same round glasses, and a mass of evidence to directly link you to the crime scene. Now then, given everything that I’ve just explained to you, can you now see how it would be in your interests to start talking, Mr Cowper? You’re in serious trouble. Silence won’t help you.’

‘You’re wasting your time, Tyler,’ Gene growled. ‘Cowper’s the strong silent type. Leastways, he thinks he is. But I’ll get him talking. ’Coz you see, Cowper, you ain’t down South no more, poncin’ about with all them Financial Times-reading, wine-drinking, Play for Today-watching sausage jockeys. This is Manchester, son. This is CID. This is A-Division. This is my manor.’

Gene slammed his massive fist down on the table.

‘You’ve heard the evidence, you toffee-nosed dipstick! So, if you wanna keep your ball sac attached to the rest of your anatomy instead of residing somewhere uncomfortably far down your oesophagus, drop the Trappist-monk routine and start talking. Name. State your name. In full. Say it!’

Arrogantly, completely unconcerned, Cowper tilted his head and coldly observed Gene through two circles of fractured glass.

‘Name, Cowper. Say your name. Say your chuffin’ name!’

Cowper opened his mouth, paused for few moments, and then, with a joyless smile, said quietly, ‘You’ll start bashing me again whether I cooperate or not. That disinclines me to make things easier for you.’

‘Bashing?’ breathed Gene, bringing his face close to Cowper’s. ‘Who said anything about bashing? I don’t bash. I’m not a basher. I’m more a sort of … Well, hard to put into words, really. It’s simpler if I demonstrate.’

Gene moved suddenly and with surprising speed. In the blink of an eye, his powerful hand was clamped vicelike around Cowper’s genitals. Cowper scrambled awkwardly to his feet, his cheeks and forehead flushing in agony, the chair clattering over behind him. Gene tightened his grip as if he were squeezing juice from a lemon, and then, in a well-honed manoeuvre, gave such a ferocious twist that it sent Cowper sprawling to the floor, sweating and gasping.

‘Bet you’re wishing you’d agree to have a brief present now, am I right?’ said Gene, sniffing the palm of his hand and then wiping it contemptuously on the back of Cowper’s shirt. ‘On your feet.’

Cowper groaned and moved. With effort, he began to drag himself upright. But suddenly Gene launched a ferocious kick to his chin that snapped Cowper’s head backwards and sent him slamming into the wall. His glasses shot off and skittered away across the floor.

‘I said on your feet, you idle sod!’ Gene barked.

This time, Cowper glowered up at him hatefully, a reddening bruise starting to spread across his chin. His mouth worked silently for a moment, then out fell a fragment of tooth.

‘You’d have waited six months for that on the NHS,’ said Gene. ‘Now, get yourself off the floor. And pick that chair up. I won’t have my interview room looking like a tip.’

Slowly, painfully, Cowper set the chair back on its legs, all the time keeping his eyes on Gene in expectation of another blow. But Gene was controlled now, his breathing regular, the volcano of his temper once more under some sort of control.

‘Put your specs back on,’ Gene ordered.

Hunched and stiff-jointed like a man three times his age, Cowper hobbled over to where his John Lennon glasses lay on the floor. As he reached down for them, Sam noticed that Cowper’s hands were shaking.

He’s getting scared now, thought Sam. Gene’s getting to him. But damn it! This isn’t any way to carry out an interview.

It was only with effort that Cowper managed to hook his spectacles back over his ears and settle them on his nose. He looked across at Gene, then at Sam, and then back at Gene — and allowed a slow, insolent smile to tug at his lips.

Have I read Cowper wrong? Sam wondered, watching that smile. Is he in mild shock? Is that why his hands were shaking? Is he prepared to endure anything Gene dishes out to him and still keep his mouth shut? Or is that smile all a front?

‘Right, then,’ said Gene. ‘You’ve got your eyes back. Now, sit yourself down.’

Cowper did so, wincing.

‘Lovely. Now then, let’s try over again. My name’s DCI Gene Hunt. This is my colleague, DI Sam Tyler. And who, pray, might you be, young man?’

Cowper made a weak, gravelly, croaky noise.

‘Speak up, son, I got waxy sylph-likes.’

‘Brett … Brett Cowper.’

‘Brrrett Cowper,’ Gene declared, deliciously rolling the r. ‘We got there in the end. Brrrett Cowper. What an enchanting name. I can’t imagine why you’ve been so shy about sharing it.’

‘You’re not Irish, are you?’ put in Sam.

‘English. London.’

‘So what’s your connection with Michael and Cait Deery?’

Cowper gave Sam a sullen look. ‘What’s my connection? Isn’t it obvious?’

‘Well, what is obvious is that the Deerys are supplying you with IRA weapons and explosives,’ said Gene. ‘And if your name was Paddy O’Reilly and you had a voice loik dat noyce Val Doonican fella I’d have no hesitation in banging you up as a Provo. My colleague, however, has suspicions that you’re something else entirely, something with a fancy logo and letters I can’t remember.’

‘The RHF,’ said Sam. ‘You painted those letters in red on the council office wall, along with a red hand. What’s all that about? What does it mean?’

Cowper’s eyes flicked between Gene and Sam, and then, through a mask of dried blood and developing bruises, he smiled. A cold, lopsided, impertinent smile. It was enough to trigger Gene’s fuse and he lunged forward, ignoring Sam’s protests, and dragged Cowper up by his neck, bringing him close enough to kiss him. But, before he could speak, Cowper beat him to it.

‘Do it, fascist! You can break every bone in my body but you won’t break my will. I’m a soldier of the Red Hand Faction. All you can do is make a martyr of me. I’m ready to die for the cause of freedom. So go on then, you bastard, do it! Do it!’

Gene threw Cowper back down into his chair. For a moment, Sam thought he would lay into him with both fists, perhaps grab hold of Cowper’s arm where Sam had shot him and rip the wound wide open. But, although Gene was breathing heavily through his nostrils like an enraged bull, he somehow restrained himself.

‘Keep talking, Cowper,’ he panted. ‘The Red Hand Faction — what is it? Who else is involved? What are you — a bunch of bomb-chucking Trots, is that it?’

But Cowper suddenly began to sing — coldly, confrontationally — words to the tune of the Socialist ‘Internationale’.

And if those cannibals keep trying

To sacrifice us to their pride,

They soon shall hear the bullets flying,

We’ll shoot the generals on both sides.

Gene shook him as if he meant to break his spine. ‘Names. I want names, not sing-a-long-a-Lenin.’

So comrades, come rally,

And the last fight let us face.

The Red Hand Faction

Unites the human race.

Now Gene had been provoked beyond the limits of self-control. He hurled Cowper against a set of shelves. Cowper crashed to the floor, a torrent of unwanted junk cascading down onto him.

‘I don’t much go in for pinky anthems,’ Gene said, planting himself squarely over Cowper’s prone body, noisily cracking his knuckles. ‘I prefer Max to Marx. Good ol’ Bygraves. That’s my kind of singsong. Classics, like “The Ballad of Davy Crockett”.’

He grasped Cowper’s hair and dragged him to his feet.

And meet me on the corner …

A blow to the stomach doubled Cowper up.

And fings ain’t wot they used to be …

A blow to the face knocked him back against the wall.

‘And then there’s me favourite, “The Cowpuncher’s Cantata”,’ said Gene.

Perhaps the third blow would have broken Cowper’s jaw or shattered his already bloodied nose — perhaps Gene would have smacked away those little round glasses and pressed his thumbs against Cowper’s eyeballs — but Sam intervened. This was a police station. This was CID. This was England, damn it, not a Gestapo torture chamber. And the thought that Gene might break into a rendition of ‘You Need Hands’ was more than he could bear.

‘That’s enough now, Guv,’ said Sam.

‘Enough? I’m just getting going, Tyler. I ain’t even got on to “Gilly Gilly Ossenfeffer Katzenellen Bogen by the Sea” yet. And he likes that one — don’t you, lad?’

‘I said that is enough, Gene. Lay off him. Let him speak.’

‘Let him speak?’ Gene snarled. ‘I don’t even feel inclined to let this shite-bag breathe. I’ve seen what bastards like him can do, Sam. Blokes blown to pieces. Women with their faces hanging off. Kiddies lying dead in the street. All so some jumped-up toerag who calls himself a soldier can say he’s struck a blow for freedom.’

Prising Gene away, Sam pushed Cowper back into his chair. He sat there, panting and dripping blood, his hair all over his face, the wire frames of his glasses now twisted into crazy corkscrews.

‘Okay everybody, let’s all just calm it down now, shall we?’ said Sam, seating himself opposite Cowper once again. ‘So, Brett, you’re not working for the IRA, you’re part of this Red Hand Faction. What are you guys, then — communists?’

Cowper snorted in derision.

‘Anarchists?’ Sam asked.

‘Students?’ prompted Gene. ‘Worse than students?’

Slowly, Cowper raised his head and said, ‘I’ll tell you what we’re not. We’re not cowards. We’re not obedient little sheep being led to the abattoir. Nor are we lackeys of the bourgeois fascist state and its corporate plutocratic overlords, growing fat on the blood of the world’s workers.’

Gene nodded to himself, satisfied. ‘Students, then.’

‘We’re not willing slaves to the elite neocolonial puppet-masters who keep jackbooted bullyboys like you dancing on the military-economic strings that dangle from the tips of their oligarchical fingers.’

Gene frowned, said, ‘Are you getting this, Sam? Can you translate for me? My Norwegian’s a bit rusty.’

‘World revolution — is that your thing?’ asked Sam.

‘Our thing?’ sneered Cowper. ‘Oh, listen to the little policeman. Yes, it’s our thing, if that’s how you want to phrase it.’

‘So how come you’re getting access to IRA arms?’ Sam persisted. ‘They’re not handing them over out of the goodness of their hearts. The Deerys certainly aren’t sympathetic to you.’

‘I would say their demeanour towards you was positively chilly,’ added Gene. ‘You’ve got leverage over them. What is it?’

Cowper closed his swollen mouth and kept it closed.

‘We overheard your meeting with the Deerys,’ said Sam. ‘You said you were “babysitting” for them. What does that mean? You’ve got something they want — what is it? Is it a thing, or a person? Brett, it’s in your interests to cooperate. I can’t emphasize enough just how deep the shit is that you’re in right now. Helping us is helping yourself. Now tell us, Brett — what’s the deal between you and the Deerys?’

Silence.

‘Who else is in this Red Hand Faction of yours?’

Silence.

‘Where are they based? Where do they stockpile their arms? Where are they planning to strike?’

‘You said something just now,’ Cowper said quietly. ‘Something about the depth of the shit I was in.’

‘It’s a technical term,’ said Gene. ‘Police jargon. It means you’re in a pickle.’

‘You were right to say it,’ Cowper went on, ignoring Gene and keeping his attention fixed on Sam. ‘It’s the correct phrase. The only thing I’d add is that it’s not me who’s in the shit — it’s you. It’s both of you. It’s all of you. Everyone.’

‘The bomb in the toilet,’ said Sam. ‘Symbolic. A message. Society’s a toilet, and your RHF buddies are going to blow it all to smithereens. Am I right?’

‘What a bright little fascist you are,’ said Cowper. ‘You know, thirty years ago over in Spain, the anarchists fighting Franco used to hide bombs in bunches of flowers. We thought we’d rethink that little number for our own struggle — after all, like them, we’ve got a fascist dictatorship to bring down.’

‘Edward Heath?’ said Gene, incredulous. ‘A fascist? He’s a plummy twat, I’ll give you that, but fair play to the fella.’

‘A bomb in the toilet bowl,’ Cowper continued, ‘blasting away the scum and the filth; obliterating establishment vermin such as yourselves; ridding the world of the monetarist leeches and their truncheon-swinging lickspittles, in readiness for a new age of equality and justice.’

‘We’re not here to listen to political speeches, Cowper,’ said Sam.

‘Not Mr Cowper any more?’ smiled Cowper. ‘Is that the cue for your gorilla to lay into me again?’

‘I’m nobody’s bloody gorilla,’ barked Gene. ‘Least of all his. I’m the guv’nor.’

‘So, then, your Red Hand Faction is a paramilitary terrorist organization,’ continued Sam, ‘siphoning weapons and explosives off the IRA — God knows how — and equipping itself for an armed campaign.’

‘We can make better use of the IRA’s munitions than they themselves can,’ said Cowper proudly. ‘We have broader aims than they do. Besides, they don’t frighten us.’

‘So, you’re going to teach the IRA how to really blow up civilians?’

‘There are no civilians,’ said Cowper. ‘Not in this war. The battlefield is right here — right here, on these very streets — and the men and women of this city are the frontline soldiers. Manchester, Liverpool, London, it’s all the same. You’re either with us or against us. Nothing in between. No opting out, no conscientious objectors. There’s a line, you understand? There’s a line, and if you’re not on this side of it, then you’re on that side of it. It’s all very, very simple.’ And, looking directly at Gene he added, ‘Black or white. Right or wrong. Nothing in between.’

‘Oh yes there is,’ said Gene in a low, dangerous voice. ‘There’s me. I’m in between.’

And with that he turned and strode to the door.

‘Phyllis! One suspect ready for transfer to the cells.’ he boomed into the corridor.

Sam watched Cowper drag himself slowly and painfully to his feet. He scraped the sweaty hair from his face, peeling the strands from the sticky blood on his cheeks and around his mouth. Carefully — like a bookworm in his study — Cowper resettled the round glasses on his nose. Battered, bleeding and bang to rights, Brett Cowper stood tall — unrepentant, unafraid. Sam looked at him, and realized he was looking at a man every bit as motivated, fanatical, and single-minded as any IRA hitman. The Red Hand Faction were clearly deluded. They were most probably nothing more than a tinpot ragbag of misfits, political extremists and out-and-out lunatics, but they had bombs, and they had guns, and they had men like Brett Cowper to make up their numbers — men mad enough to blackmail the IRA, for God’s sake!

This RHF might be mad, but they’re dangerous, thought Sam. They’re every bit as dangerous as the IRA. Is this the storm we’ve got brewing? Two sets of bombing campaigns to deal with at once? Two sets of terrorists? Is that what we must face? Can we face it?

‘I said get this joker out of my sight and banged up in a cell!’ Gene yelled again, and this time officers came running, keys jangling. ‘I’d hate to lose my temper with him. I might find myself using intemperate language, and that would never do.’

CHAPTER SEVEN

LETTERS OF BLOOD

A heavy door clanged, a key rattled in the lock, and Brett Cowper was left to ponder on the class struggle in the confines of a cell. Sam noticed that, on being escorted out of the Lost and Found Room, Cowper had left a trail of blood spots all along the tiled floor. Looking down at them, Sam felt intense discomfort; as long as coppers like Gene Hunt interrogated suspects with their fists, how could they confidently take the moral high ground over the likes of Brett Cowper? It was hard to counter accusations of fascism when officers insisted on behaving like the Gestapo.

‘Somebody’s doughnut’s been dripping,’ Gene intoned, suddenly looming over Sam and smearing a dot of blood with the toe of his patent-leather loafer. ‘Don’t fret, Sam. That dotty bird with the hearing aid and the mop’ll sort it out in the morning. You’ll be able to eat your dinner off that floor by the time she’s done.’

Sam shrugged and moved away. He wasn’t in the mood to lock horns with Gene again. He was getting sick of the same old routine of trying to explain acceptable police procedure while Gene posed and postured and came back at him with insults.

‘Whatever, Guv,’ he said as he headed along the corridor. ‘Whatever.’

‘Hey, don’t you walk away from me, Tyler,’ Gene said. ‘It were the crash that split him open. And it weren’t me who stuck a pellet in him, if you recall.’

Again, Sam shrugged, but Gene wasn’t satisfied. He loped round and positioned himself in front of Sam, blocking him.

‘Don’t you get the hump with me,’ he said. ‘I know what’s bugging you. You’re soft, Sam. Worse than a girl — like a bloody … a bloody …’

He cast around, struggling to find the right word.

‘Faggot?’ suggested Sam, his voice tired. ‘Ponce? Poofter? Nancy boy?’

Gene stuck out his chest, raised himself grandly to his full height, and glowered.

‘I only tapped him in there. He weren’t cooperating. And he was getting decidedly cheeky.’

‘Save it, Gene — I’m not Discipline and Complaints, you don’t have to justify yourself to me.’

‘Nor to anyone else, neither,’ Gene said, straightening his none-too-straight tie. ‘You want angels with snow-white wings, you’ll have to wait for Christmas. Next time some murdering scumbag sets off a bomb in the local shopping centre and we’re scraping some poor kiddy’s mummy off the ceiling, ask yourself then how much respect the Brett Cowpers of the world deserve.’

‘Guv, like I said, I’m not D amp;C. Let’s see if we can dig up anything on the Red Hand Faction.’

They swept into the CID room. It was a thrumming hive of policing. Chris was hard at work frowning blankly at a pile of paperwork that had got muddled beyond all hope. Ray was unsuccessfully hiding a tatty magazine full of big tits behind a telephone directory, which he suddenly pretended to scrutinize for a number.

‘The thin blue bloody line,’ Gene muttered, glaring about at his team as he strode through to his office. ‘Listen up, ladies. The Red Hand Faction. I want facts, I want figures, I want anything you can dig up about them. Who are they? Where’d they come from? Do they like broccoli? Are they leg or tit men? I want everything you can give me, capisce? I shall be waiting patiently in my boudoir. Do not disappoint.’

He stomped into his office and back-kicked the door shut behind him.

‘Boudoir?’ asked Chris, looking up from his confused paperwork and frowning even deeper. ‘What’s wrong with his office?’

‘It’s French for “office”, you pillock,’ said Ray.

‘I thought that was “bureau”.’

‘A bureau’s a thing with drawers in it.’

‘Drawers? You mean like knickers?’ And then suddenly Chris’s face brightened and he cried out, ‘French knickers! French knickers go in the bureau de la boudoir! Eh, that sounds dead exciting, like.’

Sam felt his energy draining out of him. He was not in the frame of mind to listen to this. He headed for the canteen and, thankfully, found it practically deserted. The gloomy array of pasties and rolls that sat yellowing behind a sheet of grubby glass did not appeal to him, so he slotted a five-pence piece into the drinks machine and punched the button. The machine gurgled like a vomiting tramp and puked out tepid brown liquid into a tiny paper cup. Sam looked down at the filthy brew and thought longingly of frothing cappuccinos, thick rich americanos, creamy lattes.

I never thought I’d see the day when I missed Starbucks, he thought.

His body suddenly yearned for a big fat frappuccino, smothered in caramel sauce, dripping with cream.

Anything to eat with that, sir?

I’ll have a chicken-and-pesto ciabatta. No, make that a ham, tomato and mozzarella toasty. And one of those big fat cookies with milk chocolate chunks in it.

‘It’ll rot your teeth, that will.’

Annie had appeared beside him, and it was only then that he realized he was pouring an endless torrent of white sugar into his lukewarm coffee.

‘And if the sugar doesn’t rot them there’s always the guv,’ said Sam, thinking of Cowper dribbling out the shattered fragments of his teeth in the Lost and Found Room.

Annie frowned at him, not comprehending, but Sam just waved his comment away.

‘Ignore me, Annie. I’m just letting things do my head in. I tell you, the intellectual level in this department hovers somewhere between the Beano and Carry On Camping. Present company excepted, of course.’

‘But of course. Mind if I pull up a pew?’

‘Be my guest.’

Annie seated herself beside him. ‘You look like you’ve got the worries of the world on your shoulders.’

‘It can certainly feel like that.’

‘Do you want to talk about it, Sam? You were going to say something to me the other night, when we were in the Arms. Something important.’

Sam nodded, shook his head, then shrugged.

‘What’s the matter, Sam? Don’t you want to say it now?’

‘Not now, Annie. I mean, not right now, not here. And not in the bloody Railway Arms either, with all those herberts leering over us.’

‘Then we need to find somewhere else, then, don’t we? Somewhere a bit more private. I mean, if there’s something special you need to say.’

The doors to the canteen banged open and a couple of uniformed coppers strode in, braying with laughter at some filthy joke. Sam sighed. Annie reached across and laid her hand on his.

‘If you haven’t spotted it,’ she said quietly, ‘I’m trying to get you to invite me out on a date.’

‘And if he don’t fancy you, luv, I’m free next Thursday,’ one of the uniformed prats put in, and his mate bared his teeth at this and hee-hawed like a donkey.

Sam pulled his hand away from Annie and swigged back the last of his coffee in one mouthful.

‘That tasted like crap,’ he spat, wiping his mouth with a napkin. ‘This place doesn’t know the first thing about a decent cup of coffee. Hey, you!’ And he shot an angry glance across at the unformed coppers. ‘Either of you know what a cappuccino is? Eh? Tell you what, a fiver to either one of you who can even spell “cappuccino”.’

‘For a fiver, you’re on,’ the donkey-toothed bobby answered back. ‘Right then. What was it again?’

‘Cappuccino.’

‘Easy. K-a-p-o-’

‘The Beano and Carry On flamin’ Camping!’ Sam yelled, hurling his crumpled coffee cup aside and storming out.

‘Well it’s gotta start with K, don’t it?’ the copper called after him.

Sam strode down a corridor, then stopped. He waited for Annie to catch him up, which eventually she did.

‘This place …’ he said to her.

‘Don’t let it do your head in, Sam.’

‘I don’t. I really don’t. Well actually, I do. I try not to. But even so, Annie — this place!’

‘If a soppy bird like me can hack it here without going off her trolley, then I’m sure a big, hairy, muscleman like you can manage.’ Annie smiled at him. ‘You think I take it to heart, the crap that flies around me every day I come in here? You think I rise to the bait every time I get a stupid comment or a hand up my skirt or rubber jonnies left on my desk?’

‘Rubber jonnies? Jesus, Annie! If that’s Ray up to his old routine again-’

‘Sam, shh.’

‘I mean it, Annie, I’ll have him up before a bloody tribunal. I’ll have him bumped straight back to uniform and send him back out on the beat like a-’

But Annie silenced him with a finger rested against his lips.

‘You’re not listening, are you?’ she said softly. ‘I survive here because I keep my head clear. I’m me, no matter what the guv says, or Ray or Chris or whoever, and don’t forget that for one second. I keep myself sane, Sam. And I want you to keep sane, too.’

Hesitatingly, with reluctance, she removed her finger from Sam’s lips.

‘If I’m sane,’ Sam said, looking her in the eyes, ‘and some days that’s a pretty big if — but if I am sane, Annie, I know who I can thank for it.’

Sam found that Annie’s face was only inches from his own. With her eyes fixed on his she gently chewed her bottom lip.

‘Let’s talk, Sam — just you and me,’ she whispered.

‘Yes. Let’s do that. But not here.’

‘No. Another time.’

‘Another time … Always another time.’

‘Don’t be like that, Sam,’ Annie breathed. ‘All good things to them who wait.’

‘To them who wait …’ he said, under his breath. ‘Yeah. So they reckon.’

Very carefully, he lifted his hand and touched the sleeve of her jacket. Slowly, he ran his fingers down her arm, lightly the skimming the cheap polyester of her sleeve, until he reached the warm skin of her wrist.

‘Well, then,’ Annie breathed. ‘What about that date?’

He felt her hand slip comfortably into his, felt their fingers interlace, felt the soft pressure.

And then, quite suddenly, he had disengaged his hand from hers and took a step back. Annie frowned.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Sam. ‘I don’t want any more moments between us ruined by this place. You … You matter too much to me for that.’

He saw her face flush with colour, and for a moment she averted her eyes, self-conscious but flattered. It pleased him to see her react like this.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s get back to work before the gorilla realizes we’re playing hooky and starts rattling the bars of his cage.’

Sam fought the instinct to take her hand again. Instead, he held the door open for her so she could go ahead of him. She smiled, as much with her eyes as with her mouth, and led the way. They returned to the CID room in silence.

‘We’ve drawn a blank, Guv,’ Ray declared. ‘We’ve been digging up files from all over — Home Office, MI5, the works — and not a thing on these Red Hand Whatsits. Zilch.’

Grim-faced and scowling, Gene was behind his desk, leaning back in his seat, his barrel chest and rounded gut straining at the nylon of his shirt. Sam, Annie, Ray and Chris were all crowded into his office.

‘No record of them anywhere?’ asked Gene. Ray shook his head. ‘Can we be totally sure they really exist? How do we know they’re not just a figment of Cowper’s nasty little imagination?’

‘I think the Red Hand Faction is very real,’ said Sam. ‘There’s enough of them to put Michael and Cait Deery over a barrel. The Deerys supply arms to the IRA — they know what they can expect if they start siphoning those arms off to anyone else. Whatever the Red Hand Faction is, it’s big enough and scary enough to coerce the Deerys into playing along. They wouldn’t be frightened by Cowper if he was just some delusional clown working on his own. They certainly wouldn’t start dishing out rifles and Semtex to just anyone without a damn good reason.’

‘Or a damn bad one,’ said Annie.

‘And what’s that supposed to mean, Brenda?’ asked Gene.

‘It means the Deerys wouldn’t give in to open threats, Guv. It stands to reason. Nobody pushes the IRA around. But what if the RHF had some hold over the Deerys that was personal — something they’d risk their own lives for? What if the Red Hand Faction was holding a member of their family or something?’

‘Cowper said something to the Deerys about “babysitting”,’ said Sam. ‘He could have been referring to a hostage.’

Gene mulled this over, knocked back another Scotch and said, ‘So, we’ve got an influx of illegal guns and Semtex flooding in from over the Irish Sea. We’ve got not one but two lots of terrorist organizations, both wanting to blow the Fred Bassets out of the lot of us — plus a possible kidnap case. And all I’ve got to work with is you four.’ He glugged out a refill of Scotch. ‘And you wonder why I need a tipple at teatime.’

‘Guv, I’ve been thinking,’ said Annie. And, getting in there quick before Gene or Chris or Ray could make a sarcastic remark, she said, ‘This Red Hand Faction. You know they make me think of? The Baader-Meinhofs.’

‘You shouldn’t be thinking of them, you dirty mare,’ sniggered Ray. But then he caught Gene’s eye, saw that blokey comments weren’t currently being appreciated, and shut himself up. ‘Sorry, Guv.’

Annie went on, ‘The Baader-Meinhof gang. The terrorists in Germany, Guv. Left-wing anarchists or whatever.’

‘They claimed a lot of high-ranking Nazis escaped justice after the war and disappeared into well-paid jobs in finance and industry,’ Sam said. ‘So they decided to bring the whole government down.’

‘They spout the same sort of stuff as Brett Cowper,’ said Annie, ‘about smashing the state, calling the police fascists.’

‘Eh up? Fascists? The police?’ piped up Chris, looking genuinely hurt. ‘But we’re the good guys.’

‘Depends which side of the fence you’re standing,’ said Ray.

‘I think Annie’s onto something,’ said Sam. ‘If it’s a revolution the RHF is after, they’ve picked the right time. The country’s in a mess. Strikes, industrial action, inflation going through the roof. Anyone looking to cook up a popular uprising could find a lot of support out there.’

‘Uprising?’ Chris frowned, looking concerned. ‘Revolution? Give over! It couldn’t happen here.’

‘Maybe not,’ said Sam, ‘but that won’t stop them trying.’

‘Kidnapping,’ Gene mused, looking into his Scotch glass. ‘Blowing things up. Killing people.’ He knocked back his drink and reached for yet another refill. ‘We’ve got to nip these loonies in the bud. The IRA are more than enough for us to be dealing with, and, besides, they got there first. I’m not having these Kraut-inspired, Red Handed Adolf-come-latelys goose-stepping their pinko lederhosened arses all over the pitch an’ all.’

‘Guv, your racism’s becoming confused,’ commented Sam.

‘And so would yours in all this excitement,’ Gene yelled. ‘I want this Red Hand mob stamped out. Crushed. Like insects.’

He swilled back his Scotch and slammed the empty glass down hard on the desk, making Chris jump.

‘Get to it,’ he barked. ‘Leads. Names. You don’t nick villains by standing around in my office playing pocket billiards all day. Ray, take Chris and stake out the Deerys’ place. Stick to them like glue — I want to know everywhere they go, everyone they meet.’

‘Wilco, Guv,’ said Ray, mock-saluting, and he and Chris bustled out.

‘Annie!’

‘Yes, Guv?’

‘Get the hoover out. CID’s a bloody disgrace.’

Exchanging a knowing look with Sam, Annie said, ‘Yes, Guv’ and headed for her desk. Sam was about to follow her out when Gene told him to hold his horses.

‘You and me are going to have another word with Brett Cowper,’ he said, flexing his hands in readiness. ‘I want to know which one of the Deerys’ nearest and dearest they’re holding.’

‘You’re wasting your time with Cowper,’ said Sam. ‘Threatening him won’t get you anywhere.’

‘Who said anything about threatening?’

‘Guv, you’ve seen what he’s like. He’s expecting the bullyboy treatment from us. It’s why him and the RHF want to bring down the country. He’s a fanatic. He’d rather die a martyr than tell us anything.’

‘He’s also our prime lead,’ said Gene, ‘and I don’t intend to let him cool his heels in a police cell when he could be of use to us. The Deerys led us to Cowper, now Cowper can lead us to the Red Hand Whatchamacallits. We follow the links in the chain, Sam — it’s either that or we all sit about on our arses waiting for the bombs to start going off.’

Sam followed Gene out of his office and along the corridor, making for the cells.

‘He won’t talk, Guv.’

‘I’ll use my dusky charm.’

‘This isn’t the way to get information out of him.’

‘It’s worked wonders in the past.’

‘This is different. Maybe Annie should have a crack at him.’

Gene stopped dead in the corridor, fixed Sam with a look, and said, ‘Don’t let your gentleman’s appendage get in the way of you thinking like a copper, Sam.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Oh yes you do. This is isn’t a game we’re playing here. If we don’t start clamping down on this situation people are going to die, Sam. Innocent people — families, kids, fluffy bunnies hopping to the Co-op to pick up their weekly carrots — all blown to smithereens by bastards like Cowper in the name of some nutty revolution. The last thing you should be thinking about is improving your chances of a spot of leg-over with DC Bristols.’

‘That’s not fair, Guv, all I meant was-’

‘I know what you meant. You want me to see your potential bit of crumpet in action. You want me to slap a gold star onto her none-too-ample titty as a reward for good conduct and get you one step closer to the contents of her knickers. That’s what you’re thinking. Whereas me, Sam, I’m thinking about the job that needs doing. I’m thinking about the duty I’ve been entrusted with. I’m thinking about how to stop a bloodbath — a bloodbath on my streets, in my patch, right under my nose. So for the time being, Sammy-boy, sew your pants shut and start acting like a copper. You reading me?’

Gene turned sharply and strode towards the cells, yelling for the duty sergeant to get Cowper’s door open. The sergeant leapt up and unlocked the heavy cell door. The moment it opened, the sergeant gasped.

Gene stared into the cell and, after a few moments said, flatly and without emotion, ‘Oh botherino.’

‘What?’ said Sam. ‘Guv, what is it?’

He hurried forward, reached the open cell door, and looked in. Brett Cowper was lying face up in a pool of congealing blood, his eyes open and unfocused, his left wrist slashed. He had used a large, broken shard of his John Lennon spectacles, digging it into the flesh just below the heel of his hand and dragging it deeply along the length of his arm almost to the elbow. The artery had been split lengthways, like a segment of rubber hose.

‘A martyr to the cause,’ said Gene. ‘He weren’t bluffing.’

‘He’s still smiling,’ said Sam, looking down at the smug grin frozen on Cowper’s pale lips.

‘Loyal to the last. Like all fanatics.’

‘You’d have to be pretty devoted to your cause to blackmail the IRA.’

It was then that they noticed Brett Cowper’s last act before dying: his suicide note, his final political declaration. Beneath the small, barred window high up in the cell wall, a red handprint had been deliberately imprinted on the painted brickwork. Beneath it, also in blood, an R and an H had been shakily daubed in dribbling, running letters. The F was an illegible scrawl that trailed away. He had collapsed before completing it. But it didn’t matter. His point had been made, his martyrdom had been accomplished — and, in his way, Cowper had escaped from the clutches of the law for ever.

CHAPTER EIGHT

TEST CARD

Sam was dreaming — but this time, he knew he was dreaming.

Out of a veil of smothering darkness he found himself walking across an black-and-white-tiled floor that stretched away endlessly in every direction. Above him hung a dark, oppressive sky, relieved here and there by the dull light of exhausted stars. All was still. All was silent.

Sam stopped, looked slowly about him, and then called out, ‘If something’s going to happen, then let’s have it.’

His voice drifted away into infinity and was lost.

‘Come on, come on. You want to show me something? Then show me something.’

If his subconscious heard him, it made no sign.

‘What’s it going to be, then, eh? More heaps of rubble? Another bloody TARDIS? Well, bring it on, then.’

He flung out his arms in an open-handed gesture that said, I’m right here — do your worst!

His only answer was the silence, and the surrounding gloom, and the lonely glimmer of the stars.

‘You want me to wait? Fine. I’ll wait.’

He clasped his hands behind his back and started to pace back and forth. Looking down at the tiled floor, he paused, tilted his head, and squinted. Now that he looked more carefully, the pattern wasn’t so much black and white, but, rather, grey. Moving on, he found sets of parallel strips set diagonally against the gridded tiles. It all seemed strangely familiar. He had seen this same array of grids and lines before — but the associations they stirred up were not good.

Death, he thought. Despair. Oblivion.

At the very limit of his hearing, there was music. A military band. Straining to make it out, Sam recognized the familiar tune of ‘God Save the Queen’.

‘What’s this?’ he called out to his subconscious. ‘You want me to stand to attention and salute?’

The national anthem plodded to its stately close. Then a man’s voice was heard, speaking as if from a thousand light years away: ‘That’s all from the BBC for this evening. Thank you for watching, and please remember to switch off your set.’

At once, there was a new sound, emanating from somewhere far away. It was an incessant whistle — an inhuman, flat, dead tone — like a single sustained note played on a cheap electric organ.

‘Closedown,’ muttered Sam. ‘Is that what you’re saying? The programmes are all over? There’s nothing more?’ He shook his head and stood firm, raising his voice and yelling, ‘It’s not closedown yet, you hear me? There’s plenty more telly left in me. I ain’t switching my set off, not yet I’m not. Sam Tyler’s set is staying on.’

As if in angry response, there came a sudden clattering that made Sam spin round with a start. He saw something that resembled a collapsed deckchair lying in a heap a few yards to his right. Stepping warily towards it, he nudged it with the toe of his boot. It was inert; no apparent booby traps. But who could be sure — who could be really sure — of anything in a dream?

He lifted the thing up. It was a flimsy wooden easel. Attached to it was a small blackboard, upon which a game of noughts-and-crosses had recently been commenced; a grid of nine squares — a single nought, a single cross.

At the sight of it, Sam recalled at once where he had seen that grey and white pattern on the floor before. A blackboard. Noughts and crosses. Grids and lines. Graded squares.

‘I see,’ he said, letting the easel and blackboard fall from his hands. ‘So it’s you, is it? Of course it is.’ He raised his voice. ‘Show yourself, then. Come on. You’ve done your theatrics, now let’s see you face to face.’

Again, silence.

‘You’re wasting your time if you think you’re freaking me out, you little brat! I’ve had it up to here with your bloody mind games. So let’s get on with it. Show yourself. I said show yourself!’

And it was then that she did — popping into existence without a sound.

Despite his bravado, Sam felt a sudden tightening of the throat, an icy tingling of the nerves along his spine at the sight of the whey-faced little girl who now suddenly stood before him. She had been haunting him ever since his accident in 2006. She had insinuated herself into his coma, emerging from some foul and gloomy basement of the psyche, smiling her Mona Lisa smile as she urged Sam, over and over, to give up, to die, to let go of his frail grasp on life and allow death to wash over him. She had made her entrance into his mind via the television screen, emerging like a wraith from the TV test card, the dead signal that broadcast no message but its own emptiness. And, even now, in the depths of his dreams, she wrapped herself in the same blank iconography: the grey and white tiles, the striped diagonals, the easel, the blackboard, the sparse chalk zero and cross.

The props were the same, but now that the coma was over, and Sam was for ever in the world of 1973, the Test Card Girl herself had changed. Gone was the bright-red dress and matching headband. She was dressed all in black now — mourning black — with a big painted teardrop on each cheek. Changed too was the green dolly with a clown’s face she had always clutched. It was now swaddled in filthy, blood-speckled bandages from head to foot, like a hospital patient in a bad sitcom.

‘Something’s wrong with him,’ the girl said, looking down mournfully at her doll. ‘He fell from the shelf and now he’s all broken.’

The girl began to sing a lullaby to her bandaged baby:

Poor little dolly,

Wasn’t very jolly,

So he jumped and he fell

And he ended up in hell

Where he cried and he cried like a silly old molly.

From behind her, a bulbous black shape the size of a human head floated upwards. After a few feet it stopped, bobbing and rocking on the end of the string that tethered it to the girl’s wrist. Sam saw now that it was a jet-black helium balloon, like a novelty prize carried home from death’s fairground.

‘You’ve done it this time, Sam,’ the girl said, raising infinitely sad eyes towards him. ‘You threw it all away. No going back now. All broken. All dead. You poor little dolly. You weren’t very jolly. So you jumped and you fell and you ended up in-’

Sam cut her short by grabbing the wooden easel and blackboard and hurling them hard against the tiled floor. The flimsy wooden limbs of the easel shattered.

‘Always breaking things, aren’t you, Sam?’ the girl said.

‘I want you out of my life,’ Sam said, aiming his finger at her. He squared his shoulders and glared at her.

‘But you don’t have a life, Sam.’

‘Oh yes I do. More than I’ve ever done. And I’m not going to let you waltz into it, playing king of the jungle.’

‘Are you trying to sound tough, Sam? Are you trying to sound like him?’

‘I’m not trying to sound like anyone. This is me talking, you understand? I’m telling you you’ve had your chance with me. You’ve been onto me right from the start, hounding me to give up and die. But I beat you. I beat you.’

‘But you didn’t beat me, Sam. You’re dead. You died.’

‘Open your eyes, you spiteful rat!’ Sam bellowed at her, seeing through the little-girl disguise and perceiving the dark, deadly reality burning within. ‘I’m still here, see? I’m still here! So you can take your blackboard and your toys and your pathetic innuendoes and get back to the filthy subconscious cesspit you crawled out of!’

‘Your poor mother,’ the girl said softly.

‘My mother’s nothing to do with you.’

‘She has to live with what you did.’

‘I did what I had to do.’

‘All the time, she asks herself, “Was there something I could have done? Was there something I could have done?”’

‘I know what you’re doing, you conniving little bitch, and it’s not going to work, you hear me?’

‘She blames herself, Sam. She’ll never stop blaming herself. You broke her poor heart.’

‘I know what you are,’ Sam said, keeping his voice low and controlled. ‘I know what you’re doing. It’s all you can manage, isn’t it — sticking the knife in, twisting it? Guilt. Regret. Fear. That’s all you’ve got to work with. But you see? I’m not listening. I’m not listening!’

‘She didn’t deserve to have her heart broken, Sam. Not your poor old mum.’

‘I told you to scram!’ Sam bellowed, and turned sharply away — and at once was confronted by the Test Card Girl standing directly in front of him. He let out a cry and jumped back.

‘And then there’s poor Maya,’ she said. ‘You think it didn’t affect her too, you killing yourself? You and she had been so close, Sam. How could it not have hurt her, what you did?’

Maya. Maya Roy. It was a name from the past — or, rather, the future. It was Maya he had been with in 2006, the two of them working together and living together, their relationship buckling under the strain of never being apart. Sharing an office, sharing a home, sharing a bed, sharing the tensions and boredoms and frustrations of life in CID had worn their relationship down until there was nothing left but raw nerves and bickering. Sam and Maya had ended up feeling more like cellmates than lovers, cooped up together round the clock, the strain of their work hammering the hell out of whatever bond there was between them.

‘Even if you didn’t think of your mum, you should have thought of poor Maya, Sam,’ the girl said. ‘You should have given her a thought, before you did what you did. Before you jumped.’

‘I was thinking of Maya,’ Sam answered. ‘I was thinking of Maya when that bloody car slammed into me in 2006 and put me here in the first place. I knew it was over between us — or as near as damn it. I didn’t want to face the end. I didn’t want to believe that I was just like all those other coppers I knew, with their wrecked marriages and buggered-up family lives. I wanted to believe the job wouldn’t split us up. I wanted to believe that me and Maya had something stronger than that.’

‘Maybe Maya wanted to believe that too.’

‘No. She knew it was over. At least, later on she did. She left me, when I was in the hospital, when I was unconscious. She came to the bedside, I heard her, she told me it was over. She- Wait a bloody minute, you’re eight years old. What the hell do you know about relationships?’

Rocking the sick dolly in the cradle of her arms, the Test Card Girl said very softly, ‘I’m not eight, Sam. I’m very, very old.’

‘Maya and me, it’s finished,’ said Sam defensively. ‘I didn’t want to hurt her or anyone else by coming back here. I just wanted … I just wanted to find …’

‘Annie.’

‘Yes. And other things. But Annie most of all.’

‘Do you want her to be your girlfriend?’

The Test Card Girl sang the word almost mockingly: giiirl-fwend.

‘What’s it to you, you little maggot?’ snapped Sam. ‘You’re just a wretched gremlin running round my head trying to make me give up.’

She was indeed — and she was good at her job. Sam could already feel the seeds of doubt taking root in him. Had he done the right thing coming back here? Was there really any future for him and Annie? If he worked to build a relationship between them — if they became a true couple, if they moved in together and began making commitments — would it all simply turn into a sad replay of his life with Maya? Would the job get between them? Would the same mistakes be made, the same unhappiness befall them? Were the chances of their having a life together doomed from the start?

‘No. No, we’re not doomed,’ Sam said with conviction. ‘Not this time. This time, I’m going to play it right. I came back to 1973 for a reason. I’m not going to throw it all away.’

‘Throw it all away,’ the Test Card Girl echoed. ‘You threw it all away when you jumped, Sam. No going back now. All broken. All dead.’

‘Get out of my head, you little creep. I’m warning you.’

The black balloon bobbed ominously above her head as the girl’s voice went from a singsong tone to a bell-like chime: all broken — all dead — all broken — all dead.

‘Get out and stay out!’

All broken — all dead — all br-

The chiming voice resolved into the incessant ringing of a telephone. Sam found himself crunched up at the foot of his mattress, tangled in a net of damp blankets. He sat for a moment staring into the darkness, the telephone trilling at him harshly. Then he disentangled himself from the blankets, padded across the floor and reached the phone just as it rang off.

‘Shit!’

He lifted the receiver and dialled 1471 — then remembered where he was, that number recall was still many years in the future, that this was still the bloody Dark Ages. He slammed down the phone.

Touching his forehead, he found he was pouring with sweat, so he headed into the little bathroom and freshened himself up. In the mirror, his face stared back at him, pale, hollow-eyed, like a man on his sickbed.

‘I’m through with sickbeds,’ he told his reflection. ‘It’s time to live, now. To really live.’

Dashing cold water on his face, he found himself using thoughts of Annie to blot out the memory of his horrible dream. He wished, deeply, that she were here with him tonight, that he would find her tucked up and sleeping soundly in the bed when returned to it.

Checking the time, he saw that it was barely 3 a.m., way too early to call her.

Unless that was her just now, he thought, trying to call me.

All at once, he felt certain that it had been. With a sudden rush of excitement, he hurried out of the bathroom and over to the phone, dialling Annie’s number and listening hopefully to the ring tone.

‘You knew it was me, didn’t you,’ she said when she picked up. ‘Are you psychic or something?’

‘I don’t need to be psychic,’ said Sam. ‘I can always tell when it’s you who’s calling. The ring tone always sounds prettier.’

‘That’s the greasiest chat-up line I’ve had in years. Have you been taking lessons from Ray?’

‘Let’s not talk about Ray. How are you, Annie? Can’t sleep?’

‘Not for long. Can’t settle. Nightmares.’

‘About what, Annie? Do you remember?’

‘Sort of. Bits and pieces.’

‘Was there a little girl? With a doll and a balloon?’

‘No,’ said Annie. ‘I don’t know. It was just daft stuff, Sam, I can’t remember what happened. I just remember how it made me feel — really sad, like I was lost and far away from home. I know it sounds childish.’

‘It doesn’t sound childish at all,’ said Sam. ‘Believe me.’

‘I didn’t like it,’ Annie went on. ‘I woke up frightened.’ She laughed. ‘I’m in CID, I nick villains for a living, I have Gene Hunt for a guv’nor, and what frightens me the most is some silly dream I can’t even remember. I haven’t been so scared by a dream since I were a kid, Sam. And that’s why I rang you. I just had to hear your voice.’

‘I’m glad you called, Annie. I need to see you. Right now. We need to talk.’

‘Then let’s do it, Sam. Instead of just talking about talking, let’s actually do some talking.’

‘It’s a deal,’ Sam grinned.

‘Stay right there, I’m coming over,’ said Annie.

‘No, you’re not,’ said Sam. ‘I’m coming over to you.’

He couldn’t let her see his place like this — it was a total pigsty.

‘I can’t let you see my place, Sam,’ said Annie. ‘It’s a total pigsty.’

‘Then it sounds like we’re made for each other.’

‘I mean it, Sam. I’d die of shame.’

‘I promise I won’t be shocked. Stay right there, Annie, I’ll be as quick as I can.’

‘If you come over now, at three in the morning, does that count as a date? I mean, officially?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Sam. ‘Depends what transpires.’

‘Well, I thought we were going to do nothing but talk.’

‘Yes. Yes, we are. Of course we are.’

‘You sound disappointed now,’ said Annie, and he could hear that she was grinning. ‘Were you hoping for something more?’

‘I can’t imagine what you’re talking about.’

‘Well, you know, scary dreams and all that. Makes you want to have somebody close by to cuddle.’

‘It does,’ said Sam. ‘But I can’t talk about this over the phone. Let’s discuss it further round at your place. I mean, we make a good team at CID.’

‘We do.’

‘Maybe we might make a good team in other ways.’

‘A dynamic duo,’ Annie suggested.

‘Batman and Robin,’ Sam added.

‘Laurel and Hardy,’ said Annie.

‘Morecambe and Wise,’ countered Sam.

‘Abbot and Costello.’

‘Little and Large.’

‘Who?’ asked Annie.

Sam laughed and said, ‘Absolutely, Annie! Who indeed?’

From outside came a dull, resonant boom. The flat shuddered. The lampshade hanging from the ceiling slowly rocked, shaking free a small cloud of dust. Sam froze, listening. The sound rolled away like thunder. But it hadn’t been thunder.

‘Did you hear that, Annie?’

‘I heard something. What was it?’

‘Sounded like an explosion.’

Holding the phone, Sam rushed to the window and peered out into the dark night. Far away, he glimpsed a hint of orange light flickering against the starless sky.

‘Something’s kicked off,’ said Sam.

‘IRA?’

‘Or Red Hand Faction, take your pick. God, it looks serious. Call the guv. I’m going straight there to see what’s happened. Tell him I’ll meet him there.’

‘I’ll meet you there, too,’ said Annie.

‘No.’

‘Why not? I thought we were Batman and Robin?’

‘Please, Annie. Stay put. I don’t want you there.’

‘No place for a soppy bird, is that it?’

‘Annie, you know that’s not-’

‘I know, I know, I’d get in the way of you boys.’

‘For God’s sake, Annie, I’m not Gene Hunt,’ said Sam, clamping the phone between his jaw and his shoulder as he struggled to get dressed. ‘Please — I’d be much happier knowing you were well out of it.’

Sirens began wailing in the street outside, racing to the scene of the explosion. Sam fought his way into his shirt while still trying to speak into the phone.

‘Will you do this for me, Annie? Will you stay put?’

‘Only if you promise to take care of yourself out there, Sam,’ said Annie.

‘I promise,’ said Sam.

‘Don’t say it like that, Sam. It sounds patronising.’

‘I promise — I promise. Now get onto the guv and tell him we’ve got trouble.’

‘Do be really careful, Sam,’ said Annie, and she put down the receiver.

Sam ran through the dark streets, making for the dull orange glow lighting up the sky ahead. Reaching a main road, he saw flashing blue lights, fire engines, streams of water blasting from hoses, the dark shapes of firemen hurrying to and fro in front of a burning building. Across from the fire, the wrecked skeleton of a parked car was ferociously ablaze, its twisted bonnet thrust upwards, doors flung open from the force of the explosion that had burst from within.

As he drew closer, Sam saw the familiar shape of the Cortina parked defiantly in front of the inferno. Standing beside it was the solid, slablike silhouette of Gene Hunt, his thumbs hooked into his belt, a slim panatella clamped between his teeth, his gaze fixed on the blazing chaos before him.

Panting, Sam raced up to him.

‘Investment bank — what’s left of it,’ Gene intoned, his teeth clenched around the end of his cigar.

‘A blow against the capitalist system?’ suggested Sam. ‘The Red Hand Faction showing some muscle?’

‘IRA, RHF, what’s the bloody difference?’ said Gene. ‘A car bomb blows people’s arms and legs off just the same, no matter which loony hits the trigger.’

‘Casualties?’

‘Amazingly, it doesn’t look like it. Won’t know for sure until the emergency boys sift through this mess. But for now it looks like the place was empty. But just imagine all that lot going off in the rush hour, Sam — or in the middle of Old Trafford, or down the Arndale Centre on a Saturday afternoon.’ He snorted smoke angrily from his nostrils like a bull about to charge. ‘Barbarians,’ he said.

‘Gene, this is escalating into a mainland war,’ said Sam. ‘The Red Hand Faction want to out-IRA the IRA. This city’s on the way to becoming a battleground.’

‘I’m not going to let that happen, Sam,’ Gene said. His voice was low and steady and hard as iron. ‘Nobody turns my manor into bloody Horisheemo.’

‘Hiroshima,’ Sam corrected him.

‘I’m stopping this, Sam. I’m drawing a line in the sand. That’s what I do. That’s what I was built for — to draw bloody great lines in the sand.’

Gene brooded for a moment, chewing hard on his panatella, then suddenly ducked inside the Cortina and emerged again clutching his police radio.

‘Ray — you still awake over there?’

‘One of us is, Guv,’ answered Ray over the radio. The sound of Chris’s voice blearily asking, ‘What, who?’ was heard. ‘We’re still outside the Deerys’ place keeping them under obs. The downstairs lights are on.’

‘Any sign of movement?’

‘Not yet, Guv.’

‘Let me know the moment you see anything, Ray. And I mean anything.’ Gene turned to Sam and said, ‘I’ve got Ray and Chris staking out that Paddy couple, the Deerys. I’m not letting them out of my sight from now on. With Cowper out of the picture, they’ll have to make their drops to some other member of the RHF. And when they do we’re going be right there.’

‘But this time we won’t let them know we’re following them,’ said Sam pointedly. ‘Will we, Guv? We’ll be more careful, won’t we, Guv? We won’t give ourselves away like we did last time, Guv?’

‘There’s a bonfire right over there needs a Guy on the top of it — want to be volunteered for the part, Samuel?’

Sam raised his hands and backed off. Gene spat out the smouldering remains of his cigar, pushed back his shoulders and flexed his black-gloved fingers. He was focusing himself, drawing upon whatever restless force it was that burned deep within him and channelling it throughout his body. His manor had been invaded, his castle had been breached. It made no difference to him what motivated the men he was up against, what creeds and manifestos inspired them to plant bombs and pull triggers. He was an agent of the law in a lawless land, a dirty cop in an even dirtier town — and he would see his duty done before the end.

Sam looked at him, saw Gene’s immobile face as it stared at the flames, saw the orange light of the burning wreckage playing across him, the dancing, shifting blackness of his long shadow flung out behind him. For a moment, it seemed that they stood together on the very brink of the world, surrounded by void and calamitous destruction, engulfed by an infinite night where all the stars had collapsed, all the planets evaporated. And, at the same moment, Gene’s shadow shimmering across the tarmac seemed, just for a heartbeat, to become the silhouette of the Test Card Girl, cradling her dolly and trailing her jet-black balloon.

Don’t lose it, Sam, he told himself, shaking his head to clear it. When he looked again, Gene’s shadow was just Gene’s shadow, and what had seemed to be the dead infinity of a collapsed universe all about them was once again just Manchester — a battered, bomb-blasted Manchester, but nothing more alien than that.

The police radio crackled. Ray’s voice came through: ‘Guv! Guv!’

‘I’m right here, Ray.’

‘We’ve got movement, Guv. The Deerys have just come out and got in their motor. They’ve put something in the boot — a box or a package.’

‘That’s it — it’s another drop-off,’ said Sam.

‘They’re driving off now, Guv,’ said Ray. ‘You want us to follow them?’

‘Like flies after a cow’s turdy arse!’ Gene bellowed. ‘And don’t you bloody let them see you’re following.’

He glanced at Sam, daring him to comment, but Sam was already climbing into the Cortina.

‘They’re heading north, along Tennyson Road,’ Ray said.

‘Keep me posted, Ray,’ demanded Gene, leaping behind the wheel and firing the engine. ‘We’ll intercept them as soon as we can and take over the pursuit.’

Gene tossed the radio to Sam, gunned the engine, and roared off, executing the fiercest and most terrifying three-point turn Sam could imagine. In moments, the blazing building and burning car were vanishing specks of orange light in the rear-view mirror, then they were gone.

No — not gone, thought Sam, looking sideways at Gene as he floored the gas and flew them recklessly through the Mancunian night. The fire’s still very much burning, right there, in Gene’s blood. Night and day. Twenty-four/seven.

CHAPTER NINE

INTO THE LION’S DEN

They passed through silent streets, the orange glow in the sky behind them fading as it receded. Ray’s voice sporadically came through over the radio, keeping them informed as to the Deerys’ progress.

‘Parker Street … Freyermont Way, heading north, joining the new flyover …’

Gene powered the Cortina through the night at a fierce lick, hurtling down side streets and streaking along dual carriageways until he had overtaken the Deerys’ position and could sit in wait for them to arrive.

‘Back off, Ray,’ he ordered over the radio. ‘They’ll be driving by us any minute now. We’ll take it from there.’

‘Understood.’

The radio went dead. Sam and Gene sat silently, the Cortina tucked away in an unlit lay-by, waiting. A set of headlights approached. Gene’s hands tightened on the wheel. He let the Deerys’ Cresta go past, counted slowly to ten, then unobtrusively fell into pursuit.

The Deerys pressed on, heading north, always north. At times they slowed to a crawl to read road signs, and at least twice they stopped entirely to peruse a map by the overhead light in the car.

‘They’re not familiar with the route,’ said Sam. ‘You think they’ve been given directions by the RHF for a new rendezvous point?’

‘I was off sick when we did mind reading at school, Sam, so I can’t answer that,’ answered Gene. ‘But I know this: whatever it is, it’s not a picnic hamper they’ve got in the back of that motor.’

Gene drove cautiously, allowing plenty of space between them and the Deerys’ car up ahead. From time to time he even let them move out of sight for a few moments, then stamped on the gas and caught up again. He was determined not to be spotted this time.

‘How you doing, Guv?’

It was Ray coming over the radio again.

‘No probs, Raymondo,’ Gene replied. ‘But I’m killing the radio now, for safety’s sake. I don’t want to be spotted talking into it and I don’t want you piping up noisily at an inopportune moment. You and Chris, keep on standby in case we need you.’

‘We’ll be waiting for your call, Guv. Good luck.’

Gene clicked off the radio, then felt inside his coat for the reassuring bulk and weight of the Magnum. Sam found himself checking that his own pistol was safely in place.

They had followed the Deerys through what had started to feel like an endless suburb of drab houses and tower blocks, but now they were entering a bleak landscape of looming warehouses and industrial storage depots. The Deerys drove uncertainly, stopping from time to time, trying to get their bearings. Gene killed the Cortina’s headlights and crept ahead in almost total darkness, sticking as close as he dared to the Deerys’ rear lights.

‘The sort of place you could stash arms and explosives,’ said Sam, looking about at the anonymous sheds and storage yards.

‘And the sort of place you could stash a hostage, too,’ put in Gene.

‘You think that’s what we’ll find here?’

‘You tell me. Whatever the Deerys have come here for, it’s not drinks and nibbles. Keep your eyes peeled, Sam. Much as you grate on my nerves, I’d hate to lose you just yet to a bullet in the back.’

The Deerys’ brake lights flared. They had pulled up outside a tall set of wooden gates that were firmly secured with chains and padlocks.

Twenty yards behind them, Gene silenced the Cortina.

There was a pause. Nothing happened. Gene’s finger began to tap nervously on the wheel.

‘Come on,’ he murmured under his breath. ‘Come on …’

Moments later, the Deerys emerged from their car. Michael strode up to the wooden gates, rattled the heavy chain, and then shouted, ‘Open up, you stinking bastards! We’ve got your lousy package. Get your filthy English arses down here and collect it!’

‘I think he’s the same bloke who delivers my post every morning,’ murmured Gene.

Cait opened the boot of the car, and together she and Michael hauled out a large box, secured all over with heavy tape.

There was movement and the sound of chains rattling, and then the wooden doors slowly swung open. A man appeared, kitted out in black overalls, an assault rifle raised combat-fashion and trained on Michael Deery. Moments later, a second figure appeared, dressed in camouflage trousers and khaki shirt, brandishing a semi-automatic pistol. He waved it in a get-your-hands-up gesture, and the Deerys reluctantly complied. While the man with the rifle kept them covered, the man in fatigues frisked Michael, then Cait, found them clean of weapons, and indicated curtly towards the package. The Deerys said something, but the man with the pistol shook his head. When Cait moved towards him, imploring him with her hands, the man thrust the barrel of the gun in her face. The man with the rifle tensed, as if preparing to open fire.

‘Do we intervene?’ Sam breathed, already reaching for his firearm.

‘We sit tight,’ muttered Gene. ‘Don’t take it seriously. It’s all show. You’ll see.’

Michael and Cait backed away from the armed guards, exchanged a look, then together lifted the taped-up package and carried it through the open gates and out of sight.

‘Told you,’ said Gene. ‘The Deerys are worth far more to them alive than dead.’

The two guards followed the Deerys inside, and the gates swung shut behind them. With much clanking and clanging, the padlocks were secured once again.

At once, Gene slipped the Magnum from its chest holster and released the safety.

‘Let’s go, Sammy-boy.’

‘Where? You want to check out the Deerys’ car?’

‘Check out their car? We’re CID, Tyler, not Currie bloody Motors. I want to get past them gates and have a right ol’ snoop about inside. That’s where the action is. There’s chuff all going on out here.’

Sam thought hard for a moment. Gene was right, of course: it was pointless to come all this way to reach what seemed to be the very threshold of the RHF, and then do nothing. But, then again, there were armed men on the far side of those gates. Heavily armed men. And, if Brett Cowper was anything to go by, they were fanatics.

‘We’re taking a big risk going in there, Guv,’ said Sam. ‘Do you think it’s wise?’

‘Unless you’d rather sit here playing “I Spy” till they come out again,’ said Gene. ‘Come on. It’s like when you’re a kid on the high diving board: if you think about too much, you never jump. So let’s jump.’

They got out of the Cortina, Sam slipping the pistol from under his jacket. If Gene was going to jump, Sam would jump with him. He wouldn’t sit in the car while the guv went it alone.

‘Feeling like a good Boy Scout?’ Gene asked.

‘Ready for anything, Guv.’

‘You’d better be.’

‘Gene, keep it low-key,’ Sam urged him. ‘We mustn’t get into a shooting match. We’ll just observe, see what’s what, and call for backup.’

‘Well obviously, you pillock. I haven’t come here for target practice. Now, zip your cakehole and follow the master.’

Keeping low, making barely a sound, they crept through the shadows towards the Deerys’ parked car. Around them were the menacing shapes of storage buildings, deserted car parks, empty truck yards. Above them, a black and starless sky seemed to press down on them, reminding Sam momentarily of his dream. He pushed images of the Test Card Girl and her insinuations of hopelessness out of his head, and focused instead on getting himself and Gene in and out of this place alive and unharmed.

They reached the wooden gates and found them firmly chained.

‘We need to get in there,’ Gene hissed in Sam’s ear.

‘No,’ Sam whispered back. ‘It’s too dangerous. I’ll call for backup.’

‘No backup, Sam. Not yet.’

‘Why the hell not?’

‘Because, Samuel old chum, the Deerys are leading us to all the right people,’ Gene growled back, spelling it out for Sam as though he were simple. ‘They’ve led us to the Red Hand Wotsits, they can lead us to their IRA contacts too. They’re a bloody goldmine.’

‘But Guv-’

‘If we swoop now, that’s it — they’re kaput. The Deerys are worth too much to us to piss ’em away by nicking ’em. You understand? No backup, no raid — just you and me, keeping it quiet, observing from the shadows. Am I making myself clear?’

‘Crystal, Guv.’

‘Primo. Right, Sam, follow me.’

Gene ducked away, moving from shadow to shadow until he had disappeared from view. Sam steadied his breathing, calmed his heart, unwound his tightening nerve endings, and then dashed into the shadows after Gene.

Keeping well under cover, Sam and Gene moved about the high perimeter fence that enclosed the compound. They could see the roofs of various buildings rising above the level of the fence — warehouses, storage sheds, workshops — and the bright glare of security lights. At one point they stopped and listened, alerted by the sound of raised voices.

‘We’ve brought you what you wanted,’ Cait Deery was shouting. ‘Now we want to see her. You promised. You promised we could see her, you lying English scum!’

A man’s voice responded to her. Like Cowper’s, it was English, well-modulated, very middle-class. ‘Tonight’s not a good night for social visits.’

‘But you promised.’

‘I have a war to pursue,’ said the Englishman coolly. ‘I have to prioritise.’

Instantly, there were the sounds of a scuffle, and Michael Deery could be heard hurling threats and abuse.

‘That’, said the Englishman, ‘is not the way to earn privileges.’

‘She’s our daughter, you stinking English bastard!’ Michael spat back. ‘We don’t need to earn no privileges to see her.’

‘We supply you with everything,’ Cait shouted. ‘Without us, you’d have no war. You owe us.’

‘I owe you nothing at all,’ the man replied. ‘We’re in the middle of operations. We made a strike tonight. My duties lie with my soldiers, not with you. Surely you of all people can understand that.’

‘We’re not leaving here until we’ve seen her,’ Cait said flatly.

The Englishman, without any emotion in his voice at all, said, ‘Would you like us to start sending your daughter back to you one little piece at a time?’

‘You wouldn’t do that,’ Cait said.

‘I’ll do whatever I have to in the name of the revolution,’ said the Englishman. ‘Nothing is more important than the cause. You understand that. Now, go home, and await further instructions.’

Somebody spat, but, whether it was Michael or Cait, Sam couldn’t tell.

‘Be very careful,’ the Englishman said in a low, threatening voice. ‘Your daughter is at present all in one piece. That can change.’

There was movement, and scuffling feet, and the people on the far side of the fence moved away. Moments later, Sam and Gene heard the Deerys’ car doors slamming, the engine rev up and the vehicle move away back into the night.

‘Annie was right,’ whispered Sam. ‘It’s a hostage situation. The RHF’s coercing the Deerys by holding their daughter.’

‘Time for a good ol’ nose-about, Sammy-boy,’ said Gene, eyeing the height of the fence and calculating whether he could make it over.

‘It’s too high,’ said Sam. ‘And they’d see us the moment we reached the top.’

‘Us? Who said anything about you, pale face?’

Gene hurried over to the stretch of fence he intended to scale and beckoned Sam over with the barrel of the Magnum.

‘See?’ he said, pointing at a roof just visible above the fence. ‘There’s a building up close. I can monkey up the fence and get on the roof.’

‘I can’t imagine you monkeying anywhere, Guv.’

‘When the mood takes me I can monkey like a good ’un, you saucy tit, now listen up. No one will see me on the roof if I keep me head down. I’ll have a good ol’ shufty, see what’s occurring in there, then hop back down and we can leg it.’

‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Guv.’

‘The beauty of being your boss, Tyler, is that I don’t have to give a tinker’s what you think. Now, give me a bunk-up.’

Unsure quite what he was doing, Sam moved vaguely to put his hands under Gene’s armpits and push him skywards, but Gene irritably indicated that Sam was to make a stirrup by linking his fingers. Once Sam had complied, Gene planted his patent-leather loafer onto Sam’s locked hands, and braced for the jump.

‘You won’t let me down, Sam.’

‘I won’t let you down, Guv.’

‘Right then. One — two — three!’

Sam heaved. Gene’s weight bore down on his hands like an elephant, breaking his grip. Gene crashed onto him, and together they sprawled on the ground like a couple of half-arsed circus acrobats. But the sound of their bodies tumbling was masked by the bellow and cough of a large diesel engine firing up in the compound courtyard.

‘You could’ve broken my neck,’ hissed Gene.

‘You could’ve broken my hands,’ Sam hissed back.

‘My neck’s worth more than your flippers, Sam.’

The wooden gates of the compound were opened, and a truck moved out, trundling away into the darkness.

‘They’re on the move,’ said Sam. ‘More bombs and booby traps, you think?’

‘We won’t know if we don’t get in there and have a look,’ Gene growled back. ‘Right, Sam, seeing as you’re a prick-fingered pansy what can’t be trusted, looks like you’re the one gonna have to shinny up that wall.’

The clanging of the wooden gates as they were shut and relocked covered the sound of Gene jockey-lifting Sam up the fence. He practically threw Sam into the air, so powerfully did he lift him. Sam reached out and grasped the top of the fence, hauling himself up while trying to remain hidden from view behind the tall building next to him. He could see down into the courtyard — it was a wide space, with several vehicles parked in it, bathed in the bright glare of the security lights. A man with an assault rifle was locking the gates from the inside; two other men were carrying the package the Deerys had brought, heading for one of the various low-roofed buildings bounded by the perimeter fence. The security lights clicked off, the armed men disappeared; all that remained were a few windows dotted around with lights burning inside them.

‘Well?’ Gene hissed up at him. ‘What can you see?’

Sam gestured at Gene to shut up and keep quiet, and peered around him. He leant forward, squinting through the darkness at the registration plates on the parked vehicles — and then, sickeningly, he felt his balance shift. He reached out for something to steady himself, found nothing at all, slid, toppled, and fell.

The next thing he knew he was slamming to the ground on the wrong side of the fence. Pain surged through his body and he bit his tongue to stop himself crying out.

There was a voice, the sound of footsteps, a noise that might have been an assault rifle being cocked. Ignoring his pain, Sam scrambled for cover, squeezing himself into a tight space between towers of stacked pallet crates. He held his breath and waited.

If anybody had indeed been there, they were gone now. Silence. All Sam could hear was the furious beating of his heart.

He looked about. There was no getting back over the fence, not without noisily dragging pallets about and climbing up them. The wooden doors out of which the truck had driven were firmly chained. Even if Sam could reach them, somebody would see him, and then he’d be caught in the full glare of the security lights with nowhere to run. Given how determined and reckless the RHF were, they’d gun him down first and worry about who the hell he was later. And, even if they didn’t gun him down, he could not expect a friendly welcome if captured, especially once they discovered he was from CID.

That’s it, he thought — no way out, and no way of speaking to Gene without drawing attention to myself. I’ll just have a prowl about, hope to God nobody notices me, see what I can, and find a means of escape somewhere.

He renewed the grip on his gun — and then realized that he had no gun.

Where is it? he thought. Where the hell is it?

He looked about wildly, but there was no sign of it anywhere.

Damn it! I must have lost it when Gene fell on top of me. The damned thing’s on the other side of the fence.

He glanced about. There were lights on in the windows of a low cabin away to his left; from time to time, he glimpsed moving figures. Sam crawled, keeping to the shadows, until he reached the cabin and flattened himself against the wall. Inching up, he reached the level of the window and dared to peer inside.

The interior of the cabin was very spartan, with a couple of naked light bulbs burning in the ceiling. A number of rifles were lined up against a wall, above which a map of the north-west of England had been pinned to a board. The map was marked with lines and notes Sam couldn’t read — areas around Blackpool, Fleetwood, Morecambe Bay and the Cumbrian coast all bore scribbled information.

Targets for future attacks? Safe houses? Rendezvous points and meeting places?

He risked lifting his head further to see more clearly, but at that moment a figure stepped directly in front of him, only inches away on the other side of the glass. Sam instantly ducked back down, holding his breath, his heart hammering.

Too risky here, he thought. I have to move.

Without leaving the shadows, it was possible for him to reach an open-fronted shed just across from the cabin. Sam inched his way towards it. Peering all around, he could see no sign of movement, so he made a dash for it. He flung himself into the deep darkness of the shed and waited. No voices were raised, no lights snapped on.

My luck won’t last, thought Sam. I can’t creep around here all night. Where’s Gene? What’s he doing? Posing with his Magnum and chewing on a cigar? Damn him to hell! He’d better be calling for backup.

Sam was an unarmed officer, alone and in trouble. Gene was duty-bound to summon help. It was the correct procedure. Gene would follow the correct procedure. He would. He would.

God, I wish I could believe that.

Looking out from his hiding place, he saw movement. A door opened, and a young woman sauntered into the courtyard, a cigarette burning between her fingers. She was slim, neat, very youthful — perhaps no more than twenty-one — with her long blonde hair tied into plaits on either side of her face like Heidi. Unlike Heidi, however, she sported a large semi-automatic tucked into the belt of her camouflage trousers.

It was a strange sight, this delicate, attractive young woman all kitted out for war. Was she, like Brett Cowper, another educated, middle-class college graduate seduced by the RHF’s crazy mix of anarchism and world revolution? Was she high on the Red Hand Faction the way other girls her age were high on the Bay City Rollers or their latest boyfriend? Did a life on the run, planting bombs and shooting at policemen, give her the sort of thrills that the privileged existence she was born into could never hope to achieve? Was she spiting her parents by joining the RHF? Was she looking for kicks? Did she really believe all this rubbish the RHF stood for? What had motivated her to become an urban guerrilla, hazarding her life for a hopeless, violent cause?

Looking at her pretty face with its clear complexion and bright, intelligent eyes, Sam might have been looking at a young air hostess, a wannabe actress, a singer of pop songs; perhaps even a rookie detective new to the job and not yet hardened to the sexism and endless blokey bullshit of the force. He could not imagine her killing in cold blood.

The girl finished her cigarette. She placed it carefully on the floor, ground it beneath her boot — and then picked up the crushed dog end to dispose of it properly in a rubbish bin. She had embraced violent anarchism, but she had been brought up not to drop litter.

These people really are mad, thought Sam, crouching in the shadows. Perhaps that’s all the explanation there is.

He turned his attention away from the girl and tried to figure a means of getting out of the compound. There seemed to be no way over the fence from here, so Sam decided to keep moving and hope an opportunity presented itself. He ducked behind one truck after another, making for a set of workshops and lockups on the far side of the cabin. His hand kept reaching instinctively for his gun and finding nothing but an empty holster under his jacket.

I’m probably the only person in the compound who isn’t carrying a firearm, he thought. Unless the Deerys’ daughter is here somewhere.

Michael and Cait certainly thought she was here. If Sam found her, and saw a way of getting her out, what should he do? His instinct, of course, was to save her, but, if he did, the RHF would find her gone and realize CID were trailing their munitions suppliers. They’d go to ground at once, disappear — and only resurface again when they managed to trigger a bomb somewhere.

But if he found the hostage and didn’t take her with him, what then? He was a police officer — he had a duty to that girl, no matter the violent activities of her parents and no matter Gene’s views about running this operation. He couldn’t leave a young girl here in the hands of these lunatics. How could he face himself if he did?

I’ll do what I have to do, Sam told himself as he dodged and crept his way past the cabin. The moral debates will just have to wait for another day.

He reached a workshop. It was locked, and dark inside, but Sam could see rusty tools hanging from hooks by the window.

A short distance away, some sort of lockup shed was visible, its stout metal doors firmly bolted, the only window a tiny, thick-paned opening covered with a metal grille. As Sam looked, a light came on, and for a brief moment a small girl’s face appeared wretchedly at the grille. She peered out with sunken eyes — she was perhaps ten years old, twelve at the most — and then disappeared from sight.

Sam remained crouched in the darkness, hidden, thinking hard.

The moral debates will have to wait for another day, he told himself again. I’ll just have to do what I have to do.

He glanced about the compound, could see no sign of anybody moving, braced himself, and then dashed towards the lockup.

CHAPTER TEN

CAPTIVE

Through the tiny, barred window, Sam could see her — a young girl, unwashed and dishevelled, sitting wretchedly beneath a naked light bulb. She had a bare mattress for a bed, beside which stood an empty cup and bowl. The girl hugged her knees and stared blankly ahead.

Sam’s first instinct was to tap on the window — but then he hesitated. What if the girl panicked, started screaming? Who could say what state she was in, being held by these lunatics, locked up all alone in a filthy shed, away from her parents? Her nerves would be in tatters. She might do anything.

He had to be cautious. Cautious and quick.

He looked around. There seemed to be no activity in the compound. Lights were still burning in the cabin windows, but there was no sign of movement.

Without wasting a moment, Sam darted round the front of the shed and examined the lock that secured the door. It was a heavy, internal mechanism, impossible for him to either pick or force. In a good light and given plenty of time, he might have had a chance of cracking it, but under these conditions, in almost total darkness and with armed maniacs poised to appear at any moment, he wasn’t even going to risk it.

Feeling through his pockets, he found a scrap of paper and a pen. He scribbled, ‘My name is Sam — I’m here to get you out — trust me,’ on the paper and fed it under the door, then crept back to the window to observe.

The girl had seen the note appear, but she was making no move to pick it up. She just sat there, staring dumbly at it.

Take it, Sam urged her silently. Go on — take it!

Was she in a state of shock? Had she been drugged? Why wasn’t she doing anything?

A voice momentarily drifted across the compound, and Sam squeezed himself into the shadows behind the shed. Several armed men trooped across the courtyard, all of them carrying heavy assault rifles. They were dressed in a motley array of military fatigues, homemade paramilitary attire adorned with ammo belts and even the odd hand grenade. There was an amateurishness about their get-up that sharply contrasted with the very serious firepower they were toting. They were like a militant students’ union — uniforms from Oxfam, armaments from the IRA.

Sam watched the knot of men stride across the yard and move out of sight. After a few moments, when they did not reappear, he edged back to the window. Peering in, he saw that the girl was now standing under the bare light bulb, staring at the note in her hands. For what felt like minutes she did nothing but look at it, motionless, blank-faced. And then, quite suddenly, she turned and looked directly at Sam. Sam smiled, the friendliest, least panic-inducing smile he could manage. He had a horrible feeling he might actually be leering.

But the girl didn’t scream. She didn’t react at all. She just stood there, looking at him with dark, sullen eyes.

Sam indicated for her to come closer and open the latch on the inside of the window. Stiffly, the girl shuffled over and obeyed. With effort, she forced the rusted window open. The hinges creaked; it was like the sound of a siren echoing across the courtyard. Sam gritted his teeth and flinched, expecting shouts and gunfire at any second.

‘Hi,’ he whispered through the metal grille. ‘I’m Sam. What’s your name?’

The girl stared, blinked once, then at last said in an Irish accent, ‘Mary.’

‘That’s a lovely name,’ said Sam. It wasn’t the most inspired response, but there wasn’t time for anything more subtle. He needed to win the girl’s trust, free her from this locked shed, then somehow get the two of them out of this sealed compound without raising the alarm. It was impossible. And yet he had no choice but to try.

‘Mary, listen to me — I’m a policeman. I’m going to get you out of here, get you back to your mum and dad. You’re going to have to trust me, okay?’

The girl shook her head.

‘What’s the matter?’ asked Sam.

‘I don’t trust you,’ said Mary.

‘Why not?’

‘Your voice.’

‘What’s wrong with my voice?’

‘You talk like them.’

‘Like who, Mary?’

‘Like them. The English. They’re bad people, the English are.’

‘Not all English people are bad.’

‘Bad enough,’ said Mary, earnestly. ‘Mum and dad say so. You kill people.’

‘No,’ said Sam. ‘Some of us try to save people. That’s why I’m here. To save you.’

Mary’s face remained impassive.

‘I know what your mum and dad must have told you,’ Sam whispered. ‘There are English people who do bad things, just like there are Irish people who do bad things.’

‘Yes,’ said Mary. ‘Protestants.’

‘And Catholics, Mary. There are bad people everywhere, on all sides — like the bad people who’ve locked you in here. But there are good people, too. Like you. And me. And that’s why I’m going to get you out of here and get you back home where you belong.’

Sam’s heart was pounding in his chest and he could feel the sweat running down his back under his clothes. There was only so long his luck could last. Daylight was coming; the RHF would be on the move, carrying out their operations, and at some point somebody would head out here to check on the hostage. The clock was ticking.

‘Mary, you have to listen to me,’ said Sam, his voice low and urgent. ‘Your parents sent me. Your mum and dad. Didn’t you hear their voices earlier?’

‘Yes,’ said Mary. ‘I heard Mummy shouting.’

‘That’s right. She was shouting. And your daddy was here too. But those bad Englishmen sent them away. So your parents sent me in here to get you. That’s how I knew you were here.’

The girl frowned, trying to imagine her parents trusting an Englishman.

‘Did they really send you?’ she asked.

Sam nodded urgently, thinking, Trust me. Just trust me. For God’s sake just trust me!

Mary’s expression softened. Through her fear and loneliness and confusion, the image of her mum and dad sending somebody to save her came as a sudden beacon of hope.

‘Your mum and dad sent me, Mary — and you trust them, don’t you?’

Mary nodded.

‘So — will you trust me?’ Sam asked.

At last, Mary nodded again.

‘That’s good,’ whispered Sam. ‘Now, listen to me very carefully. We’re in a real hurry. I don’t think I can open the door to this shed, but I reckon I can get the grille off this window. If I do that, will you be able to climb out?’

‘I think so.’

‘Good girl. Now what I need you to do is stay as quiet as a mouse. There’s a workshop just over there with tools in it. I’m going to get those tools and use them to get this grille off. The very second I manage it, you jump straight out through this window and come with me. Understand?’

‘Of course I understand,’ Mary said. And then, ‘Please hurry, Sam. I want to go home.’

‘I know you do.’ Sam smiled, trying to calm her. ‘So do I.’

He dropped down into the shadows. Silently, he slipped back across to the workshop. The door was secure and wouldn’t budge, but the filthy panes of glass in the window were loose in the frame. If he could crack one, the whole pane could be slipped out, and he could reach inside for the pliers and hammers hanging from the rack.

But how to break the glass without alerting the whole compound?

Sam felt in his pocket and produced the door key to his flat. Carefully, he prised it between the glass and the frame, and then, very slowly, he began to lever it outwards. The pane creaked and groaned as the stress on it increased. All Sam needed was a hairline crack to appear and then he could, in almost total silence, snap the glass, remove the pane, and reach inside.

Crack!

The window pane shattered, exploding inwards in a sudden cascade. Sam’s heart leapt into his mouth. His blood froze in his veins.

Don’t just stand there, you idiot! he told himself. Act! Fast!

Blindly, he grabbed the first tools he could get his hands on — a claw hammer and a broad-bladed chisel — and sprinted back to Mary’s shed.

But, before he reached it, he heard noises. Doors flew open. There were shouts. Torch beams flashed into life and raked wildly about the compound.

Sam tried to empty his mind of everything except the job at hand. Get the grille off the window. Get the girl out. Get both of them the hell out of this place, before the bullets started flying.

Don’t think, just act. Like jumping off the high board — don’t think — just act!

He raced to the little shed and skidded wildly to a halt.

‘Mary! Get back!’

The girl ducked away as he swung the claw hammer with all his strength. It smashed into the metal grille, loosening the screws that held it in place.

There was a blinding glare as the security lights blazed on, dazzlingly bright. Sam heard the sound of rifles being cocked, of ammo being smacked into place, of booted feet rushing across the yard.

He aimed a second blow at the grille — and a third, then a fourth. Wood splintered, heavy metal screws went flying and the grille crashed down onto the shed floor.

‘Mary! Quick! Jump! Jump!’

Mary raced forward, sprang at the window, and, as she did, the shadows of running men flickered across the illuminated wall of the hut. Sam reached wildly for the girl as she appeared in the window, then felt a sickening impact to his spine, right between the shoulder blades, that pitched him forward as if he’d been struck by an express train. He struck the hard wall of the shed and bounced off, slithering to the ground in a half-dazed confusion of tangled limbs.

I’ve been shot, through the spine … That’s it, I’m finished, it’s over.

He rolled groggily onto his side and looked down at himself. Lit up brightly by the search beams, he could see his crumpled body sprawled on the ground, but there were no traces of blood on him. If it had been a bullet that had torn into him, half his spine should be hanging out.

It was then that he saw the pair of army boots — rather small and expensive-looking army boots — planted beside him. He looked up, and saw the girl with the blonde plaits standing over him, the semi-automatic in her hand, ready to club him again with the butt of the hand-grip the moment he tried to move.

Pistol-whipped, Sam thought. So that was it. Good God, it hurts even more than I’d imagined.

The claw hammer must have gone flying from his hand when he was struck, but Sam became aware that he still had the broad-bladed chisel in his jacket pocket. He grasped it, thrust upwards wildly, and at once felt a boot slamming into his wrist, kicking the chisel out of his hand. The next thing he knew, the blonde girl was leaning close to him, her plaits brushing his face. She seemed almost about to kiss him. Sam tried to grab her throat, but the girl stopped him by ramming the cold metal of the semi-automatic’s muzzle roughly between his teeth and against the roof of his mouth.

‘You’ve had your warning,’ the girl said in clipped, convent-school tones. ‘Try anything funny, and this time I’ll blow your brains out.’

Sam lay there, staring upward at his sweet-faced assailant. He heard Mary cry out momentarily, and then fall silent at the command of a male voice. Armed men were rushing about in the overlit courtyard. One of them was roughly shoving Mary back through the window and replacing the metal grille; others were hurrying about the compound, hunting for more intruders.

That’s it, thought Sam. I blew it. It’s over.

‘Who are you? Who else is with you?’ asked the girl with plaits. She removed the gun from his mouth just enough to let him speak. ‘Come on, speak up. Or would you like me to smash your teeth with this?’

‘I’m alone.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘You won’t find anyone else. It’s just me. I’m unarmed. I only came here for the girl.’

‘I still don’t believe you.’

‘Believe what you want. It’s the truth.’

The girl pressed the pistol hard against Sam’s nose.

‘Don’t be clever with me or I’ll be forced to kill you.’

‘I’m not being clever,’ Sam said calmly. ‘I’m just being straight with you.’

‘Straight!’ the girl laughed. ‘And what does that mean, coming from a fascist?’

‘What makes you think I’m fascist?’

‘Who else would feel threatened by us enough to break in here and snoop about? But enough of all this chitchat. I want you to stay perfectly still and silent until ordered, otherwise you’ll regret it.’

She got to her feet, keeping the gun pointed right at him, as a man strolled casually up to join her. He was dressed in combat fatigues, with an IRA ‘Widowmaker’ slung over his shoulder. But what stood out most was the suave — almost too suave — moustache; Sam would have called it a ‘Hulk Hogan’, but back here in the seventies it would perhaps be better understood as a ‘Jason King’ — showy, self-conscious, the ’tash for a playboy.

‘Made a catch, Carol?’ the man with the moustache asked breezily, and Sam recognized his voice at once. It was the same man he and Gene had overheard talking to Michael and Cait. His tone was the same here — educated, middle-class, superior, and very English.

‘He says he’s alone,’ said Carol.

‘Does he, indeed?’

‘And he’s English. I don’t think he’s IRA, Captain.’

‘English, eh?’ mused the Captain, and he unslung the ArmaLite and aimed it at Sam’s stomach. ‘So what’s the story, hmm? MI5’s finest, are we?’

‘CID,’ said Sam, struggling to raise his still-spinning head from the ground. ‘Kill me, and you’ll never see the light of day again.’

‘Oh, I’m not one for the sunshine anyway,’ said the Captain. He pulled back the firing bolt on the rifle. ‘Get up.’ Sam began to get to his feet, but the Captain suddenly yelled at him, ‘Slowly, slowly, for God’s sake! You’re making me jumpy, Mr CID.’

As Sam very slowly straightened, he could see that the Captain was smiling, enjoying himself. Carol kept glancing across at him, admiringly, all the while keeping her semi-automatic trained on Sam.

An armed man ran up and said, ‘No sign of anyone else, Captain. The compound’s secure.’

‘Any vehicles lurking outside?’

‘No, Captain.’

No vehicles? thought Sam. Not even the Cortina? Has Gene gone already? What’s he most likely to do? Get clear, call for backup, and wait for it to arrive. But how long will it take for help to get here?

He looked at the rifle and the semi-automatic, both pointed straight at him.

How long have I got?

The Captain muttered something to the other man, who nodded and hurried off. Then he turned his attention back to Sam.

‘Well, Carol,’ he said. ‘It looks like we’ve got ourselves a prisoner. We’ve already got a hostage, but a prisoner’s even better. Hostages need to be kept more or less in one piece, but we can have fun with a prisoner. Shall we do that, Carol? Shall we have fun with our prisoner?’

‘When I’m reported missing,’ said Sam, ‘they’ll storm this place. Special Branch. Armed Response Units. SAS. The works. It’s not in your interests to let anything happen to me, or the girl.’

‘That’s the sort of thing I’d say,’ put in Carol, ‘if I was in his predicament.’

‘Which thankfully you’re not,’ said the Captain. He raised the rifle to his shoulder, military fashion, as if about to fire.

Sam forced himself not flinch, not to run, not to cry out. Keeping control of his voice he said, through gritted teeth, ‘Think about it. Killing me is only going to make things worse for you all.’

The Captain motioned briskly with the barrel of the rifle — a gesture that said, Get moving, that way. With his hands above his head, Sam obeyed. Slowly, he turned in the direction the Captain indicated. Ahead of him, he saw the workshop, a menacing array of sharp-edged tools still visible in the broken window.

‘We’ll be more comfortable in there, Mr CID.’ The man smiled, squinting at Sam through the rifle gun sight. ‘Then we can talk at leisure. With no need to rush. Taking our time.’

‘If anything happens to me, you do realize that-’

But he had already said too much. Carol brought the butt of her semi-automatic crashing down once again, this time on the base of Sam’s skull. He was unconscious before he even hit the ground.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

GIRL WITH A GUN

Am I still unconscious?

Blackness. That’s all there was.

Am I still alive?

Still just blackness.

Tentatively, he raised a hand to the back of his head. Where Carol had brought the butt of her pistol down on him he felt nothing — no blood, no swelling, not even a dull ache. He flexed his shoulders, and they too felt fine, despite the frightful blow to the spine that had sent him sprawling only moments before.

‘Something’s wrong,’ he said out loud. ‘To feel this right, something must be wrong.’

He peered into the darkness, unsure if the vague hints of colour and form were just his eyes playing tricks on him.

With infinite care, he shuffled blindly forward, feeling the way ahead of him with his foot, wary of obstacles or sudden, cavernous drops. Where the hell was he? Had the R-H-F locked him in a lightless cellar? Had they buried him alive somewhere? Would they be back for him, or was this it? Was he abandoned? Was he doomed to die here, alone in the dark, screaming for a help that would never come, starving, dehydrating, slowly rotting away?

‘Hello? Anybody there?’

The more he squinted, the surer he was that the murky smudge he perceived ahead of him was real, not imagined. It seemed to move independently of him, edging away from him as he drew closer, almost circling him, like a wary opponent in a boxing ring.

‘Hey! Who’s there? Who are you?’

Sam reached out, groping in the darkness. The figure in the gloom stood still and let him inch his way towards it. But as Sam got closer, he began to doubt what he was seeing. Out of what he had taken to be the torso of the figure there glared two wide, narrow, animal eyes. A gaping, snaggle-toothed set of fangs were bared right across where the belly should be. Whatever it was that glared at him silently from the darkness, it wasn’t human.

Instinctively, Sam drew back. But this time the thing in the shadows lumbered forward after him, closing the distance.

‘Stay back! Stay away from me!’

Sam tripped over himself, fell, landed heavily and scrambled backwards on his heels and elbows. The devil bore down on him, its eyes still fixed and unblinking, the mouth unmoving. He felt large, powerful hands clamp around his neck, and then he was clawing at muscular forearms, prising desperately at the implacable fingers that were choking his windpipe and sending the blood ringing through his ears.

Even in his panic, the ringing of his blood recalled to Sam the high-pitched dead tone of the Test Card Girl.

Is that what this is? Another of her bloody nightmares? But this one feels different … It feels worse!

His lungs were bursting. His tongue became fat and bloated with trapped blood. His vision filled up with sickly green light as his brain became starved of oxygen. The strength began to ebb from his clawing hands. And still his ears sang and sang with that interminable whistling tone.

‘This is how I finished her,’ came a deep, male voice, just audible through the suffocating chaos in Sam’s mind.

Who? Finished who?

‘Slowly … I did it slowly …’

With the dregs of his strength, Sam tugged at the iron fingers around his throat, then felt his arms flop limply at his sides.

‘And then …’ The voice went on, ‘when she passed out … I let her go.’

The fingers relaxed, and Sam fell against the hard floor. On the verge of death he gasped and groaned for air, gulping down oxygen into his agonized lungs, feeling it bring the strength back to his numbed and trembling limbs. He choked and spluttered, tried to struggle onto his feet, but suddenly felt those ogre’s hands slipping round his neck once again.

‘And then, when she’d recovered … I’d start all over again.’

The hands tightened. Sam’s windpipe was squeezed shut. Again, he began to claw at the hands around his throat, as hopelessly as before.

‘Over and over … Again and again … For hours … Until her heart gave out.’

Sam’s own heart was pounding crazily within him.

‘So now you know how it ended for her,’ the monster breathed in his ear in its low, guttural voice. ‘Now you know.’

On the threshold of death, Sam was released once more. He fell limply to the floor, choking, gagging, greedily sucking in great lungfuls of air.

‘Don’t forget this, Tyler,’ the disembodied voice whispered, very close to Sam’s ear. ‘I want you to remember it when next we meet — what I did to her, and what I’ll do again, when I come back for what’s mine.’

Sam struggled to speak: ‘Who … What are you … What’s the …’

‘For what’s mine, Tyler.’

The leering devil face filled his vision. Was it a huge mask? Was it painted? It wasn’t real. Surely it wasn’t real!

‘Until the next time.’

The monstrous hands that had been choking him now landed heavily on Sam’s shoulders; with a single, powerful push, they shoved Sam backwards — but instead of hitting the floor, he found himself tumbling through darkness, down, down, and still further down, into a pitch black void. Some deep and animal part of him sensed the hard, unyielding ground rushing up to meet him.

I’ll break my back when I hit … Or my rib cage will be shattered … Or my skull …

There was a rush of air, a terrible split second of certainty — this is it, this is it! — and then, with a sudden and shocking impact, he was smashing head first into a hard floor. The power of the concussion seemed to numb him, depriving him of any sense of his body or physical being.

Am I still unconscious?

Blackness. That’s all there was.

Am I still alive?

Blackness — and then pain, tingling first at the base of his skull, then growing, spreading, until it was washing through him in steady, sickening waves. It was pain like he’d never known before.

I’m alive — and conscious. With pain like that, I’m most definitely alive and conscious …

If the devil in the dark had been some terrible fantasy of the mind, what he was experiencing now was all too real. His skull felt as if it had been shattered. Every nerve ending was screaming. With effort, and still unable to see, he tried to make sense of where he was and what shape he was in. Through the nausea of his pain he became aware that he was sitting upright in a hard chair, his hands behind him. When he tried to raise his arms, he felt the hard bite of handcuffs at each wrist, holding him firm. Feebly, he tested their strength.

‘They’re secure,’ said a feminine voice.

Sam tried to speak, but his tongue felt thick and heavy. His lips were gummed together with dry blood.

I’m conscious, I’m alive … But where the hell am I?

With effort, he created a mental picture of his situation. He was manacled to a chair, probably in one of the little sheds or workshops dotted about the compound. He was blindfolded, very tightly. Carol, the girl with the gun and innocently plaited hair, was standing somewhere close by, her semi-automatic either aimed at his head or sitting snug and ready in the holster at her waist. Was she alone, or was that man still with her — the one with the Jason King moustache, the one they called Captain?

‘Mnnnmn … Nanmnmnnm …’ said Sam. His fat, dry tongue moved sluggishly in his mouth. The effort of speaking increased the pain, intensified the nausea.

‘Don’t make a noise,’ ordered Carol. ‘I’m authorized to keep you under control by any means necessary.’

‘Water …’

‘No.’

‘I need water …’

‘Do you want me to hit you again?’

Sam let his head loll on his chest. His dry mouth tasted vilely of beef extract. How much time had passed since his capture? Most likely it was just a few minutes, but how could he really be sure? He might have been stuck in this chair for hours — perhaps even days. And if so, where the hell was Gene? Was he still lurking about outside the perimeter fence? Or had he come climbing into the compound after Sam? And if he had, what had become of him? Was he too sitting in a shed somewhere, cuffed to a chair, blindfolded and under armed guard? Were they working him over before starting on Sam? Or had things turned out very differently for the guv? Was his bullet-filled body packed into the boot of a car somewhere? Were the R-H-F driving him down to the nearest canal, his bloodstained camel hair coat weighted down with rocks?

‘Mary …’ Sam muttered.

‘Are you praying?’

‘Mary … The little girl …’

‘She’s secure, back where we want her,’ said Carol. ‘You wasted your time breaking in here. What did you think you could accomplish all on your own, you idiot?’

All on my own!

Sam felt a glimmer of hope. Wherever Gene was, he wasn’t in the clutches of the R-H-F. Not yet, at any rate.

He’ll have seen the lights come on in the compound, heard the shouting, and figured I’ve been taken captive. He’s a half-psychotic, alcoholic bastard with the sensibilities of an overgrown adolescent, but he’s not stupid. For once in his life he’ll have no choice but to follow procedure; he’ll call for back-up, get an armed response team deployed on the site, and ensure the safe release of his fellow officer. He’s probably already radioed through for support and is sitting tight just outside the compound waiting for them to roll up.

Just hang on in there, Sam. Put your faith in Gene Hunt.

That last thought sent a tremor of doubt through him.

You’ve got no choice. You’ve got to trust that Gene will do the right thing, that he’ll get you out of here. Have faith. Just keep buying yourself time and have faith.

Sam worked his mouth to get some feeling back into. He felt the flakes of dry blood on his lips crack and break.

‘Carol,’ he said. ‘It is Carol, isn’t it?’

‘I said be quiet.’

‘What time is it? How long have I been here? Carol, you can’t blame me for trying to get my bearings.’ His voice was broken and rasping. He sounded like a man who’d just crawled out of the desert. ‘If you won’t let me have water, Carol, what about taking this blindfold off?’

‘Don’t be stupid.’

‘Please, Carol, what’s the point in doing this to me?’ No answer. ‘Carol. Please speak to me, Carol.’

‘Stop using my name like that,’ she said. ‘I know what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to establish a rapport. You think it’ll make you safer. You think it will make you seem more human to me.’

‘I’m a policeman, Carol. I’ve had training. Anyway, you’d do the same in my position.’

‘Actually, I wouldn’t,’ Carol said, her young voice sounding chipper and perky, as if she were discussing her favourite pony. ‘I’d keep my mouth shut, except to spit at the fascist policemen who were torturing me.’

‘I told you before, I’m not a fascist,’ said Sam. ‘I wonder if you even know the meaning of the word.’ Keep her talking. Build a bridge between the two of you, however slight. Just keep her talking! ‘What is it that’s made you so anti the police? Did you get busted for smoking dope at uni? Is your dad chief constable or something?’

Carol laughed. Under different circumstances it would have been a delightful, tinkling, girlish laugh. But here — handcuffed, blindfolded, with a mouthful of blood and the dark threat of torture to come — it sounded cold and cruel.

‘What’s so funny?’ Sam asked.

‘You,’ said Carol. ‘You’re funny, for a fascist.’

Good. Let her find me funny. No matter the reason.

‘I’m just some fella,’ Sam said. ‘I’m just trying to do my job.’

‘Like I’m doing mine. Except I’m on the side of the good guys. And I don’t do it for money.’

Away to Sam’s left came the sudden clatter of boots, and the sound of a door being flung open.

‘The compound’s secure,’ came a man’s voice, as young and educated-sounding as Carol’s. ‘No sign of any other intruders. Looks like he really was alone.’

They’ve just finished searching the compound — that means I can only have been unconscious for a few minutes. Gene’s probably on the radio right now this minute, yelling for the armed response team to get their arses down her double-pronto. Just hang on in there, Sam!

‘The Captain will be over shortly,’ the man in the doorway said. ‘You happy looking after the pig until then?’

‘More than happy,’ said Carol.

The door pulled closed and the boots tramped away. Sam heard Carol moving about the shed. She ran a tap and filled a glass. The sound of water sharpened Sam’s terrible thirst unbearably.

‘Are you doing that to be cruel?’ he asked.

To his surprise, he felt the glass touch his dry lips. Foul, rusty water poured across his tongue, but he was grateful for it.

‘Thank you,’ he said when the glass was withdrawn.

‘You won’t thank me when the poison kicks in,’ said Carol.

‘You didn’t poison me. You wouldn’t do that.’

‘What makes you so sure?’ she asked. ‘I’m more than prepared to shoot you. Why not slip you a little something and watch you die?’

‘You need me alive, at least for the time being,’ said Sam. ‘Your Captain wants to interrogate me. He might even try and use me as a hostage to coerce the police — though he’d be wasting his time playing that game. I’m completely at your mercy, Carol. There’s no point in poisoning me.’

‘No, you’re right, there isn’t,’ Carol conceded. ‘Later, maybe. Poison, or … Something more imaginative.’

‘You’re playing mind games with me,’ said Sam. ‘Increasing my sense of vulnerability. Softening me up for questioning.’

‘You’d know all about that, being in the police,’ said Carol. ‘When we bring down the government, we’ll shoot all the policemen and pull down all the prisons.’

‘Carol, just listen to yourself. You’re too smart to be playing revolutionaries with that bunch of losers out here. How the hell did you get tangled up with them in the first place?’

‘I read the papers and watched the news. I saw the way the country was going. I could see that things have to change — and the R-H-F could see that too. Are you aware how many people work more than fifty hours a week and still can’t afford their own home?’

‘I’m just a copper,’ shrugged Sam. ‘And you should see my place. It’s hardly the Ritz.’

‘Ordinary people can’t afford to live anymore. While the idle rich enjoy their luxuries, the workers struggle to survive.’

‘I don’t suppose it’s ever been any different, Carol. But that’s no excuse to start planting bombs.’

‘The government’s veering way off to the right,’ Carol went on. ‘It knows it’s losing control of the country, that the common people — the decent, salt of the earth working men and women who make up the backbone of our society — won’t stand for peasant wages and sky-rocketing inflation. Already the forces of reaction are being armed and assembled to subdue the proletariat by brute force and wanton oppression.’

‘You sound like you’re reading from a student pamphlet,’ said Sam.

‘We’re not students, we’re serious,’ Carol said, primly, and Sam suddenly realized that she was reading from a pamphlet — no doubt one of the R-H-F’s homemade fliers, or perhaps its private manifesto, typed up in student digs somewhere by some adolescent have-a-go Garibaldi with a head full of Marx.

Carol read on. ‘Crippled with strikes and civil unrest, struggling with a crumbling socio-industrial infrastructure, and facing a groundswell of public protests and mass civil disobedience, the generalissimo of the fascist junta has started to respond.’

‘Ted Heath? "Generalissimo of a fascist junta"?!’

Even in these horrible circumstances, Sam had to laugh.

But Carol ploughed on regardless. ‘Hiding behind the facade of its so-called ‘democratic mandate’, it is already entrenching itself behind a barricade of riot police, rubber truncheons, and state-sanctioned terrorism.’

‘This stuff might sound great in the bar at the student union, Carol, but out in the real world it’s — ’

‘Trades unions have been infiltrated with secret policemen. Telephone lines are routinely tapped. Mass surveillance is being insinuated into the fabric of society right under the unsuspecting noses of the population …’

‘Carol, I’m too old for this sort of thing.’

‘The media pumps out its diet of lies and distortions masquerading as the truth, and fills the heads of the impoverished workers with desire for the decadent capitalist playthings they can never hope to afford.’

‘You’re going to love the stand-up comedians ten years from now, Carol, believe me.’

‘You’re part of the fascist machinery,’ Carol said, matter-of-factly. ‘And no, I’m not reading this bit out. The country’s falling apart. The government is turning to more and more extreme measures to stay in power. There will be swastikas flying over the Houses of Parliament any day soon, you’ll see. And you, Mr. CID-man, you are part of that regime. You’re a Nazi stooge. You’re the Gestapo.’

‘But here comes you and the Red Hand Faction to seize the day and save the workers,’ said Sam. ‘More fun than cramming for your Eng Lit, is it?’

‘You’re like my daddy. You’d have me back in the Chichester Academy for Young Ladies, all dressed up in my pretty frocks and making eyes at suitable boys.’

‘Is that so bad?’

‘If you think it was fine for Emperor Nero to sit playing the fiddle while Rome burnt all around him, then no,’ said Carol. ‘But you see, Rome is burning. Our Rome. And it’s time to take sides. The pretty frocks had to go on the fire, along with all those bourgeois schoolbooks and everything else that kept me tied to the corrupt capitalist system that brought about our current state of crisis in the first place. The revolution is just around the corner. It needs soldiers, not debutantes.’

‘You’re preaching again,’ said Sam. ‘I’ve heard speeches like this before. Where I come from, there’s too many people talk like you do. They use different words, and different languages, but they’re saying the same thing. They say the world needs to be pulled apart and remade, and to do it they put bombs in buses — and saw people’s heads off — and fly planes into cities.’

‘Planes into cities!’ Carol cried out, delighted. She even clapped her hands together, like an excited girl at a gymkhana. ‘Only a fascist would think of that!’

‘I didn’t think of it. God, I didn’t think of it! It was …’

‘But you know, it’s not a bad idea. Just imagine it, all those pampered capitalist leeches, strapped into their seats, howling and hollering as down they go!’

‘If only you knew what you were really saying.’

‘And then … Kaboom!’ Carol mused, enjoying her fantasy. ‘Smash, crash, right into — where, do you think? The Houses of Parliament? Buckingham Palace? Or what about the Chichester Academy for Young Ladies! Ah, yes please! Or am I letting pleasure get in the way of business? Whatever. The point is, a revolution’s coming whether you like it or not. You know that. And the R-H-F will ensure that it stays on track.’

‘Carol, Carol,’ sighed Sam, shaking his blindfolded head. ‘I know I’m going to come across sounding like your dad, but you’re throwing your life away. You should be back at college, studying for your exams and making new friends and getting ready for the rest of your life.’

‘The Red Hand Faction is my university,’ said Carol, predictably. ‘Its soldiers are my friends. And the rest of my life will be spent in furtherance of the revolution.’

Sam gave up. It was like debating with a Dalek. She was drunk on idealism, with the cast iron self-assurance that only comes with youth and ignorance. Sam imagined her with a Che Guevara poster pinned up on her bedroom wall, worshipping him the way others girls her age worshipped Lennon or Bolan or the Bay City Rollers. No doubt she envisaged the revolution as some sort of freewheeling rock concert, with crowds surging and chanting and cheering, the air buzzing and crackling with joyous excitement. The bad guys would be vanquished and the red flags of freedom would be unfurled across the land. And after that? After that, the sun would be shining every day, and there would be justice for all. The kids would all be barefoot in the park, forever. And the grown-ups would not be there to spoil things.

‘You know what I hope, Carol?’ said Sam. ‘I hope you don’t get yourself killed before you grow out of all this nonsense. I really do hope that.’

‘That’s big of him.’

Sam recognized him the man’s voice at one. It was that swaggering fool with the moustache. The Captain. At once, Sam tensed. He yearned to rip the blindfold off, to at least be permitted to see what guns were leveled at his head, what instruments of torture were being prepared.

‘Has he been giving you any trouble, Carol?’ the Captain asked.

‘He’s been talkative,’ said Carol. ‘He keeps trying to make friends with me.’

‘Well he would. He’s in a pickle and he knows it. Getting pally with us is his only hope. Still, he seems to have gone a bit quiet now, though, hasn’t he.’

‘Take this blindfold off,’ Sam boldly demanded. ‘Whatever you’re going to do to me, at least be man enough to look into my eyes while you’re doing it.’

‘He’s trying to assert some sort of authority over us,’ the Captain, said, sounding amused. ‘No doubt they train them to do that in Gestapo school.’

‘I said take off this blindfold and face me like a man!’

There was a pause, during which Sam could hear nothing but the sound of his own rapid breathing. Then, without warning, he felt somebody tugging roughly at the knot of the blindfold. The cloth was yanked away, and at once harsh light flooded Sam’s vision, burning into his retinas. He screwed up his eyes in pain, felt renewed waves of agony pulsing through his brain from where Carol had whacked him. His eyes smarted, pouring tears down his blood-caked face.

‘He does look a bit of a state,’ he heard Carol say.

‘If you think he looks a state now,’ laughed the Captain, ‘just wait until we’re finished with him!’

CHAPTER TWELVE

BLACK & DECKER

A naked light bulb burned from a trail of flex, bathing the hammers and screwdrivers, drills and bolt cutters, rusting tips of boathooks and old fish-gutting knives, in a sickly yellow glow. Young Carol, with her Heidi plaits and gentle, pretty face, stood over him, playing with the semi-automatic as if it were a toy. The Captain had leant his ArmaLite carefully against a wall, rolled up his sleeves, and was now leaning casually against a wooden workbench, fixing Sam with a long look. Pensively, he ran his finger and thumb repeatedly along the contours of his Jason King moustache.

‘Can you see now?’ he asked.

‘I can see,’ said Sam, forcing his streaming eyes to open.

‘I’m assuming that you know who I am.’

Sam said nothing, admitted nothing, gave nothing away.

‘How did you find out about our little hidey-hole, hmm?’

Sam tried to look as blank and noncommittal as possible.

‘Whatever information you have about us, it gave you confidence enough to break in and try to make off with our little hostage, Mary Deery,’ said the Captain. ‘And that makes me think you must be rather more in the know about the RHF than is good for you.’

Beside him, arrayed on the workbench, were pliers, chisels, a rusty, gap-toothed saw. Sam tried not to look at them, tried to forget the pain throbbing through his head and the feel of dry blood congealed on the side of his face. All that mattered was to keep them talking — talking about anything, even if it was just this insane revolution claptrap — in the hope that, out there, somewhere, Gene was arranging his rescue.

‘Will you say something?’ the Captain asked, his voice mild, his eyes hard. ‘Or do I have to make you say something?’

‘We have one of your boys in custody,’ said Sam. ‘Brett Cowper.’

‘I know that.’

‘He’s talking. He’s telling us everything. He’s cooperating fully.’

‘Not any more, I should imagine,’ said the Captain.

‘What do you mean?’

‘He’s not likely to last long in one of your Gestapo dungeons. Admittedly, he’s not black, so that might extend his life expectancy for a few days. But …’ He shrugged.

‘We’re not the Gestapo,’ said Sam. But in his mind he could see Gene laying into Cowper in the Lost and Found Room, and the red dots speckling the floor outside the holding cells, and Cowper’s dead face lying there, smiling, surrounded by a slowly spreading pool of his own blood.

Put all that out of your head, Sam, he thought. Don’t give these fanatical bastards a single sliver of credibility. They’re the bad guys, you’re the good guys, and don’t let these buggers mess with your head. Stay focused. Stay sharp. And buy yourself as much time as you can …

‘Cowper’s in a cell,’ said Sam. ‘He doesn’t want to go down for thirty years for his involvement with you lunatics, so he’s giving us all sorts of inside information. The game’s up with the Red Hand Faction. We know all about you. It’s only a matter of time before we round the lot of you up.’

‘Oh, dear!’ said the Captain. ‘Is that why they sent you here — all on your own — to sneak about in the dark? Is that why they’re bursting in now to rescue you and arrest all of us?’

‘He’s not very good at bluffing, is he?’ said Carol.

‘You can’t really blame him,’ smiled the Captain. ‘You gave him quite a thwack back there, Carol. It can’t be easy trying to think straight with the sort of whopper migraine he must be having right now.’

The Captain began fiddling idly with a lethal spike from a boathook, turning it back and forth between his fingers.

‘Brett Cowper’s not said anything to you, has he?’ he said quietly. ‘He’s dead. If you lot haven’t finished him, he’ll have finished himself.’

‘He’s alive and cooperating.’

Ignoring him, the Captain continued. ‘Nobody knows you’re here. You followed up some lead, didn’t you? On your own. You thought you’d win yourself some kudos with your Gestapo buddies. You thought you were James Bond. But I think in doing show he made a shilly mishtake, Mish Moneypenny.’

Carol laughed.

‘You’re right: I did come here alone,’ said Sam. ‘But very soon I’ll be reported missing.’

‘Most likely,’ said the Captain. ‘But I don’t think anyone will know where to look for you.’

‘It won’t take them long to work it out.’

‘I don’t believe you. I don’t think anyone’s going to come here, not until it’s too late.’ The Captain, still smiling, looked very deeply into Sam’s eyes. ‘No one’s going to help you. You’re in something of a jam, Mr CID.’

‘My name’s Sam.’

‘He’s trying to appeal to us as fellow human beings,’ said Carol, and the Captain nodded.

‘My name is Sam,’ he said again. ‘Sam Tyler.’

‘I don’t care what you’re called,’ said the Captain. ‘Your name isn’t destined for history. Mine, however …’

The Captain lifted his face, letting the creamy light from the naked bulb fall across it. He seemed to be dreaming his insane dreams, while Carol watched him adoringly. After a moment, he seemed to recall where he was and what he was doing. He put down the old boathook and turned his attention back to Sam.

‘We could go round and round in circles all night,’ he said. ‘But I’ve got a war on my hands and really can’t spare the time. So, we’ll get on with the business at hand. Sam Tyler, or whatever your real name is, I’m going to use you. I’m going to use you as a courier. I’m going to entrust you with a message to take to your fascist paymasters.’

‘You’re going to let me go?’ said Sam.

‘Yes,’ the Captain said, running his hands over the array of tools on the bench. ‘In a manner of speaking.’

He picked up a long, sharp-tipped screwdriver. Carol grinned, her cheeks flushing with excitement. Sam secretly tested the strength of the handcuffs, the sturdiness of the chair he was manacled to, but found both cuffs and chair were solid.

‘My name is Peter Verden,’ the Captain said. ‘Remember it. Tell it to your pig-dog bosses when you get back. Better still, I’ll write it down for you. On you. So you won’t forget.’

And he made carving motions in the air with the screwdriver.

‘I’ll write “Peter Verden”, across your … back, do you think? Your stomach? What about across your forehead? And then I’ll write the name of this delightful creature standing beside you — the last woman you’ll ever see, alas, because I’m going to have to send you out of here without any eyes, I’m afraid. I’ll write “Carol Waye” on your … backside? Oh, no, that’s unbecoming for a lady. Maybe I’ll write “Carol” on your left forearm and “Waye” on your right.’

‘I don’t mind if you write it on his cock,’ Carol suggested, the vulgar language sitting oddly with her cut-glass accent.

‘But will there be enough space?’ Verden mused.

‘What’s the point of all this, Verden?’ Sam asked, glaring up at him. ‘I thought you were a revolutionary, not a sadist.’

‘I want your owners to see our names. Names that will rewrite history — or at least sow the seeds that will ultimately bring down the corrupt police state that you collect blood money to uphold, Mr CID. And, with your fascist regime swept aside, the new age of freedom can begin.’

‘I’ve heard all this before,’ said Sam.

‘Heard but not listened,’ said Peter Verden. ‘Had you listened, you wouldn’t be sitting here right now. You’d be on our side. The winning side. Fighting with us.’

He looked down at the screwdriver, changed his mind about it, picked up a large power drill instead.

‘You’re no idiot, Verden,’ Sam said, wondering where the hell Gene was and why he was taking so bloody long about it. ‘You know you can’t bring down the state just by setting off a few bombs and cutting up coppers like me. If it was that easy, the IRA would have beaten you to it long ago.’

‘The IRA!’ laughed Verden. ‘All they care about is their rotten little patch of bogland over the Irish Sea. Small fry. Papist lunatics, as bad as you fascist police thugs.’

‘We’re not fascists and you know it. We uphold the law.’

‘Does the black community agree with you on that? And what about the Asians? And the homosexuals? And anyone too poor and lowly to enjoy the protection of the goitred aristocrats who carve this country up between themselves like it was a side of roast beef?’

‘I …’ stammered Sam. ‘I don’t know the word “goitred”. And I won’t deny that there’s prejudice and corruption in the force. God knows, where I come from three-quarters of my department would be doing time themselves the way they carry on. But all that’s changing. Coppers like me are changing it — from the inside.’

‘Oh, well, in that case, everything’s fine, we can all go home,’ grinned Verden, and fired up the drill. It howled. Carol licked her lips in anticipation. Sam’s mouth went dry. The drill fell silent, and Verden said, ‘Coppers like you won’t change anything. But the glorious Red Hand Faction will.’

‘By blowing up banks like you did tonight? You’re kidding yourself.’

‘We’ve got explosives. We’ve got guns. We’ve got men — and women.’ He flashed a smile at Carol. ‘And we’ve got conviction. And we’re not going to stop. Our little car bomb this evening was to show we’re not bluffing. It was to show the likes of you that, when we say we can strike, we’re serious. Tomorrow, we’ll hit a courthouse perhaps. The day after that, a police station. Or a petrol station. Or what about one those big, shiny, expensive public schools that groom all those fee-paying baby fascists to inherit the regime? How does hitting a public school sound to you, Carol? Any suggestions which one we should take a crack at?’

‘Chichester Academy for Young Ladies,’ said Carol.

‘Aah, a personal grudge, I think,’ smiled Verden, winking to Sam. ‘The truth is, there’s no telling where we’ll pop up next. But we’ll pop up somewhere. And then, while you’re scooping up the bodies, we’ll pop up somewhere else. And we’ll keep on popping up — in hospitals and underground trains, at airports and in shopping centres — until the ordinary people of this filthy, capitalist, abomination of a country start to realize that you and your corporate masters can’t save them, and they rise up and rip you to pieces.’

‘You’ll kill the very people your revolution is supposed to save.’

‘Omelettes and eggs,’ said the Captain dismissively. ‘We’re playing the long game. Between now and the glorious day, there’s a lot of tough decisions to be made. But we’re prepared for that. And, once the common man — and woman — understands what we’re doing, they’ll be right alongside us, every one of them.’

‘It’ll never happen,’ said Sam.

‘Not in my lifetime or yours,’ said Verden. ‘But our names will go down in history as the ones who started the ball rolling. We will inspire new generations with our example, and they will take up the torch when we’re dead and gone, until, one day, in a thousand years …’

Verden trailed off, lost in his imagination. Carol gazed at him, drinking in every word of her hero’s madness. Sam glanced wildly about, looking for inspiration. There must be some way he could get out of these cuffs. He fought down the rising panic that threatened to overwhelm him. He began struggling.

Verden fired up the power drill again.

‘Time to turn you into a walking manifesto for the Red Hand Faction,’ he said, coming closer.

Sam fought against the cuffs, but they held firm.

‘This is pointless!’ he cried. ‘Think, Verden! You’ve got the law against you, you’ll have the army against you, Interpol against you — damn it all, you’ve even managed to piss off the IRA!’

‘So?’

‘For God’s sake, Verden, what kind of idiots actively piss off the IRA?’

Verden thought for a moment, then said, very mildly, ‘The British?’

It was hopeless. Peter Verden and his Red Hand Faction were living in a nightmare Alice in Wonderland world where logic had broken down, and all that existed was political fanaticism, car bombs and dreams of a glorious death in a hail of police bullets.

‘I’m going to drill out your front teeth,’ said Verden. ‘Top ones first, then the bottom ones. Just to get us all nicely warmed up.’

‘If you want a hostage, take me!’ Sam yelled at him. ‘Let the little girl go! I’ll sit in that shed instead of her, if that’s what you want.’

‘I’ve told you what I want,’ Verden said calmly. ‘I want you to carry my message back to your owners.’

‘Verden, listen to me!’

Carol jabbed the pistol against his head to shut him up, but Sam ignored it.

‘Verden, for God’s sake!’

The electric drill screamed.

Carol watched intently.

Verden nodded to himself, said, ‘Teeth first. Then eyes.’

From outside, there came a hard, concussive noise — the sound of splintering wood, the clang of a chain being hurled powerfully across the compound. There were shouts, the sudden clatter of automatic fire, the crazy whine of an over-revved engine, the mad blast of full-beam headlights flooding the workshop.

Peter Verden and Carol Waye both looked up, wide-eyed, open-mouthed, as the silver letters of the word ‘Ford’ came ploughing into the side of the workshop, destroying the wall in a cascade of shattered timbers and tumbling tools. Sam flung himself over, fell hard against the floor, still manacled to the chair, as the air directly above him exploded with gunfire.

I know those bullets, he thought. It’s the Magnum.

A leather-clad hand grabbed him and hoiked him up. There was a powerful crash as the chair he was chained to was smashed with a single kick, freeing him. Then Sam felt himself being thrown roughly against the reeking leather of the Cortina’s back seat.

Bullets screamed in from all sides and the Magnum offered resounding replies, rending the air with a succession of deafening roars. Moments later, the Cortina was hurtling about insanely, tyres screaming, the suspension howling, rifle rounds smacking into the bodywork, boot and rear bumper as it tore back out of the compound through the shattered doors and shrieked away into the brightening dawn.

Face down on the back seat, Sam heard the rattle of gunfire rapidly receding. With an effort, he managed to lift his head. Craning his neck, he could make out the bulk of Gene Hunt at the wheel, the Magnum smoking and sliding on the dashboard as the Cortina flew along the narrow service roads of the industrial complex, making for the city. Sam tried to speak, but Gene sensed he was about to say something and got in there first.

‘Next time you decide to fall off a bloody fence, Sam, choose a better side to land on. Am I coming through loud and clear?’

‘Loud and clear, Guv,’ said Sam, his strength ebbing away, his mind drifting. ‘Oh, and Guv?’

‘What?’

‘Cheers for that.’

‘And cheers for wrecking my motor, you ponce. Now zip your hole and dream of bunny rabbits while Uncle Genie concentrates on his driving.’

Sam zipped his hole as he was told, and he did indeed dream, but not of bunny rabbits. He dreamt of a girl in black dress watching him sadly from across a wide room, a black balloon tugging free from her little hand, floating through the open window, and drifting away across a bleak landscape still untouched by the light of the rising sun.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

EMPTY LAIR

‘You’ll survive,’ said the prim, narrow-eyed doctor who was examining Sam’s head wound. ‘No fractures, just surface tissue damage. Minor blood loss. You were lucky.’

Sam was sitting up on a hospital trolley, sealed off from the rest of the ward by green plastic curtains drawn on all sides. The doctor aggressively peeled off his latex gloves and dropped them into a pedal bin.

‘You just need a couple of stitches,’ he said. ‘I’ll send for Dr Thanatos.’

He looked Sam over coldly, as if he were some sort of vile specimen the doctor was forced to deal with, and then he batted his way through the plastic curtains and vanished.

Sam sat on the trolley, looking down at his hands. They were still covered in dried blood. Nobody had bothered to wash him. He would have to find a basin and clean himself up, and if this Dr Thanatos didn’t show up straightaway he’d look for a phone, call Annie, tell her he was okay.

He climbed stiffly down off the trolley and searched for a gap in the curtains. But there was none. He smacked and pawed and tugged at the plastic sheets draped all about him, but they seemed to be continuous, unbroken, impenetrable. There was no way through. Panic started to rise in his chest.

‘What’s going on here?’ he cried out. ‘Hey! Doctor! Somebody!’

Something moved above him. He looked up, and saw a black balloon bobbing gently above the curtain rail. Through the plastic sheeting, the silhouette of a child was visible, moving steadily closer, whispering to him.

‘Stitches, stitches, I’ve come to give you stitches.’

Sam stumbled back and fell heavily against the trolley.

‘A stitch in time saves nine times nine …’

A dark shape became visible, looming on the far side of the curtain. It pressed itself against the translucent plastic, revealing wide, glassy eyes and a monstrous, snaggle-toothed mouth.

Sam screamed, sat up sharply, and found himself on a hospital bed, surrounded by green plastic curtains, a prim, narrow-eyed doctor examining his head wound.

‘You’ll survive,’ the doctor said. ‘No fractures, just surface tissue damage. Minor blood loss. You were lucky.’

The doctor aggressively peeled off his latex gloves and dropped them into a pedal bin.

‘You just need a couple of stitches,’ he said. ‘I’ll send for Nurse Ambrose.’

Sam glanced about anxiously, his heart pounding, waiting for something to happen.

The doctor paused before heading through the curtains.

‘Is there a problem, Mr Tyler?’

‘You said I was lucky,’ said Sam. ‘A couple of stitches, nothing worse. No — no brain damage, then?’

‘Brain damage? No, Mr Tyler, I can assure you there’s nothing like that.’

‘Concussion?’

Humouring him, the doctor held up three fingers, said, ‘How many fingers?’

‘Nine,’ said Sam.

The doctor held up one finger.

‘Now how many?’

‘Nine times nine.’

The doctor offered a tight smile and said, ‘Sit tight, Mr Tyler. Nurse Ambrose will be along to give you a couple of stitches, and then you can be discharged.’

And, with that, he disappeared through the curtains.

Sam looked down at his hands, saw that they must have been washed by a nurse.

‘No blood …’ he said, and held up his palms. ‘All clean …’

But Sam couldn’t relax. He slid down off the trolley, crossed warily to the curtains, reached out and pulled them aside — revealing a bustling accident-and-emergency ward. No little girls, no black balloons, no monstrous devil faces with strangling hands — just a ruddy-cheeked woman in a white coat striding briskly towards him, carrying a needle and surgical sutures.

‘Something the matter, Mr Tyler?’ Nurse Ambrose beamed at him.

‘Nothing,’ Sam smiled back. ‘Absolutely nothing at all.’

Stitched up, repaired, and ready for duty, Sam strode out of the A amp;E doors into the grey light of a Manchester morning. A boxy, primitive-looking ambulance hurried by, blue light flashing feebly, and as it passed it revealed Annie standing ten yards away, waiting anxiously for him.

‘You promised you’d look after yourself,’ she said coldly.

‘I’m fine, Annie.’

‘Only just. I heard what might have happened to you.’

‘But it didn’t happen. My guardian angel stepped in, just in the nick of time.’

He moved forward to kiss her, but she stepped back. Sam frowned, and Annie made a head movement towards the battered Cortina parked across from the hospital, Gene Hunt leaning against the bullet-riddled wheel arch, puffing on a cheroot.

‘Not in front of your guardian angel,’ Annie said, unsmiling, and together they headed over to Gene.

‘Managed to stick all the necessary bits back together, did they?’ Gene intoned as Sam approached him. ‘The Cortina has more need of urgent medical attention than that oversized bollock you use as a head, Tyler. Them bastards nearly killed my motor. And nobody kills my motor.’

The three of them got into what was left of the Cortina, and Gene hit the gas, narrowly avoiding an old lady with swollen legs being helped to walk by a young nurse. The car rattled and shuddered as it reached the main road — a valiant veteran, battle-scarred but struggling on.

‘While you’ve been enjoying bed baths and carbolic washes, Samuel, the rest of the department has been getting on with some police work,’ said Gene. ‘We called in the goon squad and raided that compound. Properly raided it, with an armed response team and blokes in riot gear — not some go-it-alone twonk in a poofy leather jacket leaping in there like John Wayne.’

‘I didn’t leap, I fell, Guv,’ said Sam. ‘It was you who wanted me to climb the fence in the first place.’

Gene ignored him. ‘Our boys stormed the place but found chuff all. The RHF had cleared out — packed up their guns and ammo and their hostage onto those trucks in the yard and buggered off out of it.’

‘Any idea where?’

‘Nope. The place had been well and truly cleared out before we stormed it. They had plenty of warning we were onto them — thanks to you, Sam — so they didn’t hang about. We could have had ’em, Tyler. If you hadn’t ballsed up the operation, we could have had ’em.’

‘Guv, I don’t know how many more times I have to say it — it was an accident,’ Sam protested. ‘Do you really think I’d have jumped in there on purpose?’

‘What do you think, Bristols?’ asked Gene over his shoulder. ‘Would your fella play the hero to save a poor little girlie from the bad guys?’

‘He might,’ said Annie from the back seat, her voice cold. ‘And he’s not my fella, Guv.’

Sam turned round to look at her, but she turned her face away and gazed out the window.

‘So, the RHF know we’re onto them and they’re playing hard to get,’ Gene continued. ‘At least we got something out of last night — names. Peter Verden and Carol Waye. Annie, I want you to get stuck into the files, see if you can dig up anything about those two. Sam, if you can put your Lone Ranger mask back in your dressing-up box for ten minutes, perhaps you would be so good as to assist me in locating the Red Hand Faction and stopping them before they blow up anything else. Everybody happy with that?’

‘Yes, Guv,’ muttered Sam, settling back in his seat, his back to Annie.

‘Yes, Guv,’ muttered Annie from the back, still looking out the window.

‘Right, then,’ said Gene, and he flung the wheel, stamped on the gas and carried both Sam and Annie with him on his hurtling drive north.

They arrived at the compound on the outskirts of town and found it cordoned off with great fluttering steams of blue police tape. Patrol cars blocked the entrance to the industrial estate. Gene held up his badge and was ushered through. The place was bustling with activity — uniformed coppers, plainclothes police, firearms officers, forensic photographers, explosives experts.

Gene drove up to the smashed door of the compound, wrecked after his explosive forced entry the night before.

‘You know what them gates did to the front of my motor?’ he chided Sam.

‘It couldn’t have been half as bad as what Peter Verden was about to do to me,’ Sam replied.

But Gene just scowled at him. ‘If that’s an attempt to elicit sympathy, Tyler …’

‘I nearly had my face drilled off — why should I be fishing for sympathy?’ said Sam, throwing up his hands in despair. ‘I’ll just sit here and let everyone hate me, how’s that?’

‘Sounds good to me,’ muttered Gene. ‘Sound good to you, Bristols?’

Annie said nothing. But even with her face turned away from Sam, she gave off enough negative vibes to make her feelings more than clear. Sam was desperate to take her to one side, to convince her that he hadn’t been playing the hero last night, that he hadn’t put himself recklessly in danger for the sake of some sort of masculine one-upmanship over Gene. But a quiet word in private was even less possible here, trapped inside Gene’s bullet-riddled Cortina, than back at the station or in the reeking fug of the Railway Arms. Sam sighed, and tried to put his feelings to one side.

They passed through the smashed doors of the compound and drove into the courtyard. All the RHF trucks were gone, replaced by an assortment of police vehicles. Sam peered through the Cortina’s chipped windscreen and made out the wrecked remains of the workshop where he had been held. The sight of the place made his blood run cold.

Gene stopped the car and wrenched up the handbrake.

‘That’s the shed the girl was being held in,’ Sam said, pointing. CID and MI5 officers were going in and out of what had once been Mary Deery’s prison. ‘And that cabin over there was the operations room.’

‘What did you see in there?’ asked Gene. ‘Anything useful?’

‘A map, up on the wall,’ said Sam. ‘A map of the north-west coast.’

‘Any markings on it? Pins stuck in it?’

‘There were markings, Guv, but I couldn’t read them. I assumed they were planning areas they wanted to attack.’

‘Or picking a site for a new HQ,’ said Gene. ‘Either way, it doesn’t really narrow things down for us. We already know they’re somewhere in the north-west. Can’t you be more specific about what you saw, Sam? Cast your mind back.’

‘I’m sorry, Guv. I only had a glimpse. There were people around, I was trying not to be seen.’

Gene peered at him darkly, flung open the car door and prowled away.

Sam turned to Annie, said, ‘What’s up with you? Why are you off with me?’

‘Do they make you feel more like a real man?’

‘Do what make me feel more like a real man?’

‘Those stitches.’

‘Oh, Annie, please.’

‘What did you think you were doing, playing Clint Eastwood and running around here all on your own?’

‘You’ve been listening to Gene too much.’

‘They could have killed you. Worse than killed you. I thought you had more sense than that. You know as well as I do what happens to coppers who think they’re indestructible.’

‘Annie, you’re being unfair.’

‘I’m being unfair? Didn’t you spare a single thought for me when you broke in here last night and started acting all macho?’

‘I didn’t mean to break in here. It was an accident.’

‘You broke in by accident? I’ve nicked teenagers who give excuses like that.’

Sam rolled his eyes, exasperated. But Annie misread his frustration for arrogance.

‘Oh, the bird’s giving you some grief, is she?’ she said, her voice as hard as her expression. ‘And you say I’ve been listening to Gene too much.’

‘Annie, I-’

‘Excuse me, boss, I’ve got to go.’

‘Annie, please, can’t you just-’

But she had already thrown open the passenger door and clambered out.

‘Annie, as your superior officer I order you to stay right here and-’

Slam!

Sam sat alone in the Cortina.

‘There’s some people would give me a medal for what I did last night,’ he told the dashboard. But the dashboard didn’t give a damn, any more than anyone else round here.

Suddenly, he spotted a uniformed officer hurrying over to speaking to Gene. The officer pointed, and Gene went striding purposefully away. Sam climbed out of the car and hurried after him.

‘Guv? What is it?’

Gene was heading for the entrance to the industrial estate. As they approached the police blockade, Sam heard screaming — a woman’s voice, shrieking hysterically. It was Cait Deery, scarlet-faced, struggling to break the grip of the two officers restraining her.

‘You stupid murdering English bastards! You’ve killed her! You’ve killed her!’

Gene cruised towards her, his face set, his shoulders back. Cait saw him and sensed at once that he was somebody she could focus her hatred on. Her eyes blazed — but Gene’s blazed right back at her. Cait opened her mouth, drew breath to scream — but Gene cut right across her.

‘You!’ he commanded. ‘Woman! Shut it!’

Cait spat in Gene’s face.

Gene spat in hers and said, ‘Your go again.’

‘My daughter was in there!’ Cait screeched at him.

‘We know,’ Gene intoned back.

‘She’s twelve years old and you raided the place anyway.’

‘Try shutting your trap and listening, you bog-brained Murphy. I will not get into a shouting match with you.’

‘I want my daughter,’ Cait howled. ‘You don’t care about her, You stinking child killers!’

‘That’s great, that is, coming from an IRA bitch like you,’ Gene snapped back.

‘What have you done with her body, you devils?’

‘Your daughter was long gone by the time we arrived.’

‘She was in there and you went in anyway, guns blazing, just like you English always do.’

‘And you keep on screaming like a bloody loon and not listening to word anyone’s saying just like you Irish always do!’ Gene bellowed back. ‘Now shut it!’

‘I want my daughter’s body.’

‘Shut! It!’

‘I want my daughter’s body.’

Cait struggled furiously to attack him, then spat again. This time Gene wiped the saliva from his face with a gloved hand, and used that same hand to smack Cait Deery hard across the face. She took the blow like a man.

‘A pansy English slap!’ she hissed.

‘Oh aye? Room for some more?’

‘You’ll be getting more than that from us.’

‘Take note of that, lads,’ said Gene to the coppers who were restraining her. ‘That’s the way these lousy savages think. Blow up your kids and weep for their own.’

Sam raced over. The situation was getting out of control.

‘Mrs Deery, I saw your daughter last night,’ he said.

Cait turned the full blazing power of her wrath onto Sam, stopping him dead in his tracks.

‘Murderer!’

‘She’s alive and well,’ Sam said. ‘I spoke to her, Mrs Deery. Listen to me! I tried to get her out of that place. I nearly managed it, but I was caught.’

Cait thrashed like a wild cat, insane with grief and rage. Sam tried to grab her clawing hands and get through to her.

‘Mrs Deery, listen to me! They took your daughter away from here before our boys moved in. They’ve still got her, do you understand? And they’ll keep her — alive — for as long as they can use her to blackmail you and your husband. Mary’s alive, Mrs Deery, they haven’t touched her. We’re going to find her, and we’re going to bring her back to you.’

For a few moments, Cait’s eyes burned into him. Sam thought she would break free from the restraining officers and hurl herself at him, ripping him to pieces with her bare hands. But all at once she covered her face with her hands and howled, the fight in her giving way to anguish, and she slumped to the ground.

Gene looked coldly at her as she wept, then turned to one of the uniformed officers and said, ‘Stick her in a wagon and take her back to CID. I want to continue this little chinwag in private.’

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

IRISH EYES AREN’T SMILING

Cait Deery was sitting quietly in the Lost and Found Room, turning a crumpled tissue over and over between her fingers. Across from her sat Sam and Gene. She refused to make eye contact with either of them.

‘Mrs Deery,’ said Sam, ‘you’re not under arrest.’

‘But that don’t mean you can go nowhere, though,’ put in Gene abruptly.

‘You and your husband have been under police surveillance,’ Sam continued. ‘We’ve been watching you. We know you receive arms and explosives from Republicans in Ireland and supply IRA units on the mainland. We also know that you’ve been supplying to the RHF — under duress.’

‘We knew you bastards were watching,’ Cait said, eyes narrowed, but still refusing to look up at them.

‘You knew?’

‘Why else do you think we kept leading you straight to them?’

Sam and Gene exchanged a look, and then Gene leant forward and said, ‘So, you knew we were trailing you last night?’

‘Of course.’

‘And that’s why you led us straight to the Red Hand’s hideout?’

‘You’re getting the picture.’

‘And what were you hoping to achieve?’ Gene went on. ‘A big police raid, the RHF hauled off in chains, your little princess freed and reunited with her gunrunning, IRA-supporting, murdering-shite parents, is that it?’

‘If it’s murdering shites you’re after you should have been in Derry last year — you’d’ve seen plenty of murderers there, dressed in British Army uniforms, firing British Army rifles at unarmed Irish civilians on a civil-rights march.’

‘Whoa, whoa!’ said Sam, trying to keep things calm. ‘We don’t want to start getting into a big discussion about Bloody Sunday.’

‘We’ve noticed that about you Brits,’ snapped Cait.

‘Mrs Deery, I’ve heard a lot of angry political talk over the last twenty-four hours,’ said Sam. ‘And, frankly, I’ve had my fill. I’m a copper. So is DCI Hunt here. Whatever you think about us, we’re here to uphold the law. All I’m concerned with here is the safety of your daughter, and putting the Red Hand Faction out of the picture. If you cooperate with us, we can get Mary back where she belongs — back home, with you and your husband.’

Cait shuffled uneasily. Gene noticed this.

‘And where is your husband?’ he asked.

‘Why? You want to give him a going-over in the cells for being a Paddy?’

‘I wouldn’t be averse to that particular pleasure as it happens, missus, but in this instance I’m asking because you seemed uncomfortable when my colleague mentioned him just now.’

‘I wasn’t uncomfortable.’

‘Pull the other one, luv, it pours out Guinness.’

‘I wasn’t uncomfortable.’

‘Then where is Michael Deery?’

‘I don’t have to tell you,’ Cait said. ‘And if you want to take that as some sort of admission of guilt, I can’t bloody stop you, can I?’

‘Now, why would I take that as an admission of guilt?’ said Gene. ‘Bit of an odd thing to say, don’t you reckon?’

‘Don’t play so bloody daft, you know what I mean,’ snapped Cait. ‘If Mickey ain’t here, then he must be running guns to the boys, ’coz that’s what us Paddies do.’

‘Well? Is he?’

Cait sneered at Gene, then turned to Sam. ‘We didn’t support the armed struggle, not really, not until last year. When you lot gunned down innocent, unarmed men in the streets — just because they was marching, for God’s sake — well, after that things changed. We couldn’t just stand by and do nothing. We knew that waving banners and making speeches weren’t going to shift one British soldier out of Northern Ireland — and we knew that if we didn’t start arming ourselves we was nothing but sitting ducks for you lot.’

‘You weren’t the only ones to feel that way,’ said Sam. ‘After Bloody Sunday, the IRA was flooded with volunteers. You think blowing up people in pubs is the answer?’

‘If that had been your daddy, or your brother, gunned down by Irish soldiers just for carrying a protest banner through the streets of Manchester, how would you have felt?’ Cait asked.

‘Well, like I said Mrs Deery, we’re not here to discuss all that,’ said Sam.

Gene suddenly piped up. ‘The way you filthy bastards justify yourselves never ceases to turn my stomach.’

‘Guv, please!’

Gene fixed his eyes intently on Cait, but he kept his mouth shut.

‘Mrs Deery,’ Sam said, keeping his voice calm and level. ‘The RHF has been blackmailing you. We understand that. But we’re still unclear as to who the RHF actually are. Can you tell us anything about them? Peter Verden and Carol Waye? What do you know about them?’

‘Posh eejits,’ shrugged Cait. ‘Heads full of dreams of a worker’s state or whatever. We don’t pay attention to the crap they spout.’

‘How big an organization is the RHF? How many members does it have?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Is anyone else supplying them with arms, or is it just you and Michael?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What about any plans they have, any future targets they want to hit?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know nothing about them. All I know is they snatched our Mary.’

‘Mrs Deery, do you have any idea at all where they might be based now?’

‘No.’

Gene breathed in noisily through his nostrils.

Cait looked at him and said, very deliberately, ‘I don’t have any idea.’

Gene sighed loudly and leant back in his chair, making it creak.

‘Why would I lie?’ Cait asked. ‘Why the hell would I lie?’

‘’Coz you hate our guts,’ suggested Gene.

‘My daughter’s life is at stake.’

‘It don’t change the way you feel about us, though.’

‘I don’t care who nails them bastards,’ Cait cried. ‘And I don’t care who brings my baby back home — just so long as she does come home.’ Cait turned from Gene to Sam and said, ‘If I knew where they were holding Mary, I wouldn’t have gone back to the industrial estate, would I? I’d have been out there, wherever she is being held.’

‘I’m sure you would,’ said Sam. ‘But why didn’t your husband come with you this time?’

‘We quarrelled.’

‘What about?’

Cait laughed bitterly and said, ‘Well, young ’un, we’ve been under a bit of strain recently, what with one thing and another.’

‘Answer my colleague’s question,’ intoned Gene.

‘So I am under arrest, am I?’ said Cait.

‘Not yet.’

Cait pulled a disgusted face at Gene and muttered, ’Teigh transa ort fein.’

Gene suddenly banged the table with both hands and rose swiftly to his feet.

‘I’m getting right narked with you, missus,’ he bellowed. ‘In fact, I’m starting to think you’re playing games with us lot. Silly bloody buggering games. I’m starting to think you knew damned well that your kiddy was nowhere near that industrial estate. I’m starting to think you turned up there to keep our attention diverted from where the real action’s happening.’

Cait looked hatefully at him, and then said to Sam, ‘Your big fella here needs his head looking at.’

‘The Red Hand Faction pinch your sprog,’ Gene boomed. ‘You try and buy her back by giving them what they want. You hand over stacks of IRA supplies. They renege on the deal and start demanding more. You realize they’ve got you by the short-’n’-curlies and are never going to give your kiddy back, leastways not in once piece. So you try and lead us to their compound to raid the place and save your daughter. That plan goes to crock. So you switch to Plan B.’

‘And what is “Plan B”?’ Cait asked mockingly.

‘Plan B is for you to divert police attention away from where they should be looking, so your fella Michael can get together a little posse of his IRA pals to sort this matter for themselves, without getting nicked by us in the process.’ Gene slammed his hands down on the table again, leant close to Cait and demanded, ‘Am I close, eh? Am I warm?’

‘Ta tu glan as do mheabhair,’ Cait said under her breath.

‘Knock it off with the bleedin’ Polish!’ Gene roared.

‘I said, you’re insane,’ Cait replied.

‘Then where’s your bloke right now?’ yelled Gene.

‘I don’t know,’ Cait yelled back.

‘That’s bollocks.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘That’s bollocks!’

‘I! Don’t! Know!’

‘That’s! Boll! Ocks!’

Gene hammered his fist against the tabletop, then swept from the room. The door slammed behind him. Sam and Cait sat silently across from each other, until Sam at last said, very quietly, ‘Well? Was he right? Are you diverting our attention?’

‘I want to go home now,’ said Cait Deery, wiping her eyes with the tissue.

Sam caught up with Gene in a corridor.

‘I think you’re right about her, Guv,’ he said.

‘What’s she said in my absence?’

‘Nothing. That’s the point. If she and her husband had just had some domestic squabble there’s no reason for her not to tell us, not when their kid’s life is on the line. She was trying to cover for him — and not doing a very good job of it, either. I think you flustered her, Guv.’

‘That was the intention,’ said Gene.

‘If we’re right about this — if Michael Deery’s out there somewhere with an IRA unit looking for his daughter — we could arrest them and the Red Hand Faction, all in one go.’

‘I know, drippy drawers, that’s exactly what I’m trying to do.’

‘Yes, Guv, and she knows that too. We won’t get a squeak out of her. She’s already siphoned off arms from the IRA to pay the RHF ransom — if she gets an IRA unit shopped as well, she and her old man’ll be for the chop.’

Gene prowled up and down the corridor, hands in his pockets, his mouth chewing silently as he thought.

‘The map you saw at the compound,’ he said suddenly. ‘Can you really not recall any details about it, Sam?’

‘Just that it was of the coastline,’ said Sam.

‘From where to where?’

‘From the mouth of the Mersey up to the Solway Firth.’

Gene pictured this in his mind’s eye: ‘Liverpool … Preston … Blackpool …’ He was imagining the coastline and working his way north. ‘Morecambe Bay … Barrow-in-Furness … That bit along Cumbria where ponces like you go on holiday …’ Then he drifted inland. ‘The Pennines … Bradford … Burnley, God help us … Leeds … Huddersfield … then Manchester, Manchester, home again Manchester …’ He stopped pacing and exhaled loudly. ‘It’s a big patch of land, Sam. Easy to vanish in. Assuming the RHF has decamped up there somewhere, and that Michael Deery and his IRA unit are after them, we’d be looking for two needles in a ruddy great haystack.’

‘Boathooks,’ said Sam suddenly.

‘You said it, Sammy-boy.’

‘No no, Guv, I mean: boathooks. There were boathooks. And fish knives.’

‘Translate, Tyler.’

‘In the workshop,’ Sam cried, pacing about now, inspired. ‘The place I was being held, Guv — the workshop you got me out of-’

‘Daringly, and in the nick of time.’

‘Yes, yes, yes. There were sailing things there. Bits from boats.’

‘So what you saying? Are they blackmailing Popeye an’ all?’

‘And they called Peter Verden “Captain”. Guv, they’re anarchists. No leaders. They didn’t mean “captain” as in military captain — he’s the captain of a boat!’

‘Well rub-a-dub-bloody-great-dub, Sammy. Why the hell am I listening to this?’

‘The map in the cabin showed the north-west,’ said Sam. ‘And there were marks and notations on it. They were on the sea, Gene — all the notes had been made on the area of the map that was the sea. Now, I thought they’d done that because it was clearer than writing on the land — it’s all just blue, right, not cluttered with place names and roads like on the land?’

‘I understand how maps work, Samuel.’

‘What if the RHF’s new headquarters wasn’t on the mainland at all? What if they had a boat, Guv? What if Peter Verden was the skipper of a boat? The captain! Think about it: they could move about more freely, they’d see anyone trying to raid them from a mile off, they could disappear up into Cumbria or round the Scottish islands or even over to the Isle of Man. Or Ireland itself.’

‘A floating base?’ said Gene, looking unimpressed. ‘You’ve been watching too much James Bond, Sam.’

‘If I’m right, Guv, it’d narrow the field down. Right now, Peter Verden and the RHF would be somewhere off that stretch of coastline, all conveniently packaged together on a boat. We could have ’em. What’s more, Michael Deery and his IRA team will be making straight for the coast, Guv. To get themselves a boat. And we could have them, too.’

Gene squinted at Sam, unconvinced. At that moment, Annie appeared, carrying a slim file of papers in her hands.

‘I’ve got what I can about Peter Verden, Guv,’ she said. ‘It’s not much. And there’s nothing at all in our records on Carol Waye. Shall I put it on your desk and see if I can have any better luck looking elsewhere?’

‘Boats,’ said Gene, addressing Annie, but keeping his eyes fixed on Sam. ‘Was there anything about boats?’

Annie paused, said, ‘Peter Verden’s boat, you mean?’

‘Does he have one?’

‘He got arrested back in …’ She flipped through the file. ‘August, ’67. Drugs bust. That’s how his name cropped up on our records, guv. He gave his address as the Capella. It’s his boat. Looks like he was a bit of a playboy. Family money. But he never showed up in court. Did a bunk.’

‘Captain Verden just sailed away …’ Gene mused.

‘Sailed away, Guv, yes,’ said Annie. ‘Is this useful information?’

But Gene didn’t answer. He turned on his heel and strode swiftly away, making for his office. Annie turned anxiously to Sam.

‘Did I say the wrong thing?’

Sam grinned at her. ‘You said all the right things. I could kiss you.’

‘Well, save it for some other “bird”, boss.’

She turned away, uninterested.

‘Annie, please listen to me.’

She kept walking. Sam had had enough of this cold-shoulder routine. He grabbed her, spun her round and planted a kiss on her mouth. She pushed him back. They stared at each other in silence for a few moments.

‘Would you let me try that again?’ said Sam quietly. ‘It’s important.’

Annie said nothing. Sam leant forward and kissed her, gently. This time, she didn’t resist.

‘That,’ he said, ‘is by way of an apology. I wasn’t trying to be a hero last night. The whole thing was a ghastly cock-up. I really did fall off the fence and end up in that compound by mistake. I’d never have done it deliberately and I certainly wasn’t being macho. Don’t look at me like I’m Gene or Ray. I’m different.’

‘I know you are,’ said Annie, softening. ‘I heard about what happened to you when they caught you. What nearly happened to you — and it frightened me.’

‘It frightened you? Annie, I was sweating cobs.’

‘And dropping a few too, I imagine.’

‘Put it this way, the dry cleaning bill’s astronomical.’

They laughed. Gallows humour. It thawed the atmosphere between them. They each considered whether it was time for another kiss.

But the moment was broken by the bellowing voice of Gene Hunt resounding down the corridor. ‘Samuel! Get your swimming trunks packed and fetch your bucket and spade. Uncle Genie’s taking you for a trip to the seaside.’

Annie looked enquiringly at Sam.

‘Looks like me and the Guv are off on a jaunt,’ he said to her. ‘Verden’s taken to the high seas. I suggested the idea, and then you backed it up just now — and it looks like Gene’s convinced.’

‘So you’re off to track him down?’

‘Him and the IRA hit squad we think are after him. It’s going to be … challenging.’

‘Any room for a girl in this boys’ outing?’ Annie asked.

‘I don’t see why not,’ said Sam. ‘No harm in asking. The guv can only say no.’

‘No!’ Gene barked.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

INTERCEPTOR

Men crowded into the CID room. Real men. They crammed in, en masse, filling the air with the reek of stale tobacco, underarm odour and Blue Stratos. There were gruff comments, coarse jokes, braying laughs, resounding farts. Chairs were pulled up, and when the chairs ran out blokes sat themselves heavily on desktops and filing cabinets, sweeping aside the paperwork to make room for their arses. Packets of fags were fished out from breast pockets — Lamberts, Embassies, Benson amp; Hedges, Senior Service. Lighters clicked and sparked. Thick, rich, fag smoke billowed out, draping the CID room in a volcanic haze. So much smoke and manliness packed into one room pushed the temperature up, and soon sweat began to glisten from the five o’clock shadow and thickets of bushy sideburns. Ties were pulled loose. Top buttons were flung undone. Wiry chest hairs were revealed.

Gene loomed over this hastily assembled meeting of officers and detectives from all over the city, hands planted firmly on his hips, his gut thrust confidently forward, the leather straps and harness of his Magnum body holster openly displayed. Sam and Annie were jostled together amid the crush of male bodies. Ray stood comfortably amid the beer guts and stubble, a man among men, while Chris’s face could be glimpsed bobbing up and down at the rear of the crowd as he trampolined about, trying to see what was happening at the front of the room.

‘Right!’ Gene intoned, glaring round at the faces about him. ‘The reason I’ve scrambled you gentlemen is that we have a shitload to do and bugger-all time to do it in. We’ve got a mess on our hands. A right mess. Imagine you sicked up on your own bag of chips, then pooped yourself, then sat in it — that, gentlemen, gives you some inkling of the sort of mess we’re facing right now.’

A blokey murmur ran through the room, then there was quiet.

‘Our old playmates the IRA are gearing up to give us a kicking,’ Gene continued. ‘But now we’ve got a new mainland threat to contest with an’ all. They’re called the RHF — the Red Hand Faction. But don’t bother trying to understand their demands: it’s all a load of student bollocks. All that matters is that they’ve been getting their mitts on IRA munitions in order to conduct a full-blown campaign of bombings and terror. They’re going to bring this country to its knees. Well, that’s what they think. But they’re not going to get the chance, because we are going to stamp them out — right out — right now!’

He brought his mighty fist down hard on the table for emphasis. Gene’s words, emphatic tone and prominently displayed firearm won him macho approval from the men packed into the room.

‘The RHF is on the move,’ Gene went on. ‘We’ve routed them out of one little rat hole and it looks like they’re making for another one, somewhere along the north-west coast. I’ve got traffic cops and PC Plods on pushbikes keeping a close eye on all the major roads heading north out of here — so far, we’ve had a number of reports of trucks moving in convoy that might well be the RHF. You gentlemen are going to follow up every single one of those reports. Get this into your noggins — we cannot afford to let them bastards give us the slip again. We’ve already got more riled Paddies charging around than on a building site with no tea urn — we do not need a bunch of long-haired college kids planting bombs an’ all. Am I making myself sparklingly crystal?’

A deep-throated, gruff ‘Yes, Guv’ growled out in response. Somewhere in the middle of it, Annie’s softer, more feminine ‘Yes, Guv’ stood out on its own.

‘Every lead, every suspicion of the RHF’s whereabouts, every possible glimpse or glimmer I want followed up and checked out — no cutting corners, no sweeping under the carpet what you can’t be arsed to chase up. This will not be a regular police investigation — it’ll be a masterclass. Future generations will look back on what we’re about to accomplish in the coming hours and say, “Chuffin’ Nora! How the bollocks did they manage that?” Are you reading me, loud and clear?’

As one they answered, ‘Yes, Guv.’

‘Super-duper,’ said Gene, glaring round at them all slowly, a beer-bellied Napoleon surveying his troops. ‘One more thing, gentlemen. Just to spice things up, we thought it might be fun to throw a wildcard into the game. The RHF has got a hostage — Mary Deery. She’s twelve years old. Her parents are middlemen in an IRA arms-supply chain. We strongly suspect that Michael Deery and an IRA unit are out there somewhere trying to locate the RHF’s new headquarters before we do. Deery wants his little princess back, and the IRA want to stop these Red Hand tossers pilfering any more of their fireworks. Now, then, given a few recent cock-ups in this department, Tyler …’

Gene glared at Sam. Everybody else turned to look at him too. Sam made a silent Hey, why the hell are you picking on me, Guv? expression.

‘We thought it would do our credibility no harm at all if we were to nick the RHF and an IRA hit squad in one fell swoop. Gold stars all round. Everyone’s a hero. Pay rises. Knighthoods. Blowjobs from adoring birds. Are you with me, gentlemen?’

‘With you, Guv,’ the assembled men growled back.

‘Then let’s get rolling,’ Gene commanded. ‘We’ve got a huge area to cover and possible RHF leads to follow up all over place. So we’ll divvy the investigation up, get you working in pairs, dispatch you to as many places in the north-west as possible. Me and DI Tyler will be looking for the Capella, a rather tasty pleasure boat we strongly suspect the RHF leaders are using as their HQ. Our typist Annie’s on the case here, writing up all this info so you don’t get confused.’

Annie’s cheeks flushed and she lowered her eyes at the word ‘typist’. Sam secretly squeezed her hand.

‘It’s a complex operation,’ Gene said. ‘But if we all keep talking to each other, and keep each other well posted, we can come out of this smelling of a bloody great bunch of roses.’

There were shouts from the doorway and everybody turned to see a young officer frantically waving a sheet of paper.

‘Sir! Sir!’

‘What the hell do you want, wonder boy?’ Gene snapped.

‘Car bomb, sir,’ the young officer cried. ‘Outside the county court. Went off three minutes ago. It’s major, sir.’

A second messenger came bursting into the room right after the first. ‘Shots fired from the roof of a building in Calbeck Street, sir! Reports of casualties!’

‘Guv, Guv! A coded warning’s been phoned through — there’s a bomb in a shopping centre. No location given. It could be anywhere. The codeword’s a recognized IRA signal, Guv. It’s the real thing.’

The CID room began to erupt into a chaos of babbling voices. The assembled coppers and DIs from various divisions were surging in all directions, rushing back to their desks and offices to coordinate their responses to the sudden crisis. No time for chasing baddies across Cumbria — there was blood on the streets, right here, right now.

Gene stood silently in the middle of the confusion, glaring ahead, motionless, as his assembled forces dissipated under his very nose.

Sam came over to him.

‘It’s deliberate, Guv!’ he said, raising his voice to be heard. ‘They’re hitting us from every angle. We’re being run ragged!’

Gene narrowed his eyes but said nothing.

‘They’re draining us of manpower so we can’t come looking for them,’ Sam said. ‘This is what they said they’d do — get us running like maniacs from one bomb site to another until the department collapsed under the strain.’

Still, Gene said nothing.

‘We can’t go scouring the country looking for them, Guv. We can’t spare the men, not now, not with all this kicking off.’

Gene suddenly turned and grabbed Sam’s lapels. ‘Stop telling me what I already know, Tyler!’

‘What are we going do, Guv? We can’t just let the RHF slip through our fingers.’

‘Then we stick to our plan,’ Gene snarled back. ‘You and me, Sam — looking for that bastard Verden and his bloody pirate ship. If we can’t spare the blokes then we can’t spare the blokes. Bollocks to it — we’ll do it ourselves.’

‘Needle in a haystack,’ Sam cried. ‘Guv, it’s hopeless.’

‘Hopeless?’ The word seemed to add an edge to Gene’s rage that took it into a whole new dimension. His anger became streamlined, focused like a laser beam. He aimed that laser beam directly at Sam, scorching him with it. ‘Don’t ever use the word “hopeless” with me, Sam Tyler.’

He looked about the room. Where once his assembled army had stood, there were now only Chris and Ray, Sam and Annie.

‘The players have somewhat thinned out but the game’s still the same,’ intoned Gene. ‘Ray, Chris, I want you here, monitoring all the reports we’re getting about possible RHF sightings in the north. Annie, keep typing it all up so we don’t lose track of anything, and make sure that kettle keeps whistling. Sam, as far as we’re concerned, nothing’s changed. We’re hitting the road, heading north. We’ll find that bloody boat, free that hostage, and have the pleasure of arresting your old pal Peter Verden on the very deck of his battleship bloody Potemkin!’

He swept from the room, jangling his car keys.

‘We’re going to scour the whole coast — in the Cortina?’ asked Sam incredulously. ‘Guv, it won’t even make it as far as Blackpool.’

‘The Cortina’s phoned in sick,’ said Gene. ‘In her absence, I have procured a replacement.’

Gene strode across the car park towards his stand-in motor.

‘I’ve just fallen in love,’ drooled Chris.

‘Put one on me Christmas list,’ muttered Ray, gawping.

‘It’s nice,’ said Annie, shrugging.

‘Where the hell did you get it, Gene?’ asked Sam. ‘They don’t have them down at Dodgy Dan’s Used Motors.’

The broad, grilled bonnet of the dark teal Jensen Interceptor gleamed regally beneath the drab Manchester sky. Gene rested an elbow on the roof, bouncing the keys in his gloved hand.

‘It’s all a matter of knowing the right people,’ said Gene. He cast his eyes over the shining bodywork. ‘I called in a very big favour.’

He slid himself behind the wheel, fired her up, and furiously gunned the powerful V8 engine.

‘Don’t pretend you ain’t getting a woody listening to that, boss,’ Ray said to him, jabbing his elbow against Sam’s ribs.

‘I can see why he ain’t going to let anything stop him tear-arsing off round the Lake District — not when he’s gonna do it in that,’ murmured Chris, drinking in every detail of the Jensen. ‘And you get to go with him, boss. Lucky, lucky bastard!’

Gene thrust his head out and yelled, ‘Move yourself, Tyler! Time is of the proverbial!’

Sam was about to rush over and get in the motor when he noticed Annie looking at him. He paused, ducked close to her, and said, ‘This time, I really will be careful.’

‘You’d better,’ she said, fixing him with her eyes.

If he hadn’t been so aware of Gene and Ray and Chris all looking at him, he would have kissed her. But he didn’t want that kiss ruined, sniggered at, dredged up later as the source for beery jokes in the Railway Arms.

‘See you later,’ said Sam, winking as he clambered into the leather upholstery next to Gene. The powerful engine was vibrating into his body through the seat. ‘So, um, guv — I take it we’re going to share the driving?’

‘Like bollocks we are,’ said Gene, and the Jensen sprang away like a panther with a rocket up its jacksie.

They powered through the streets of Manchester, heading north. Red lights were run. One-way streets were ruthlessly violated. Sam noticed the way Gene caressed the wood-rimmed steering wheel as it slid, power-assisted, beneath his black-gloved hands.

‘It’s winning your heart, this motor,’ he said. ‘You won’t want to go back.’

‘It’s just a fling,’ Gene growled. ‘Don’t tell the Cortina.’

They swept out of the city and hurtled through the suburbs, making for open country. The police radio babbled and gabbled continually, picking up huge amounts of anxious cross-talk between police units. The city they were leaving behind was in turmoil, with streets sealed off, hospitals on full alert, every copper who could be mustered deployed and working flat out. A county courthouse had been wrecked by a 200-pound. car bomb; there were five dead bodies at the scene and scores of wounded being ferried away from the carnage. The IRA bomb in the shopping centre still hadn’t been located, and, despite rumours flying about that it was a hoax, nobody was taking any chances. The sniper in Calbeck Street was now racing around the city, playing on the confusion caused by the bomb, giving everyone the slip — there just wasn’t the manpower available to hem him in. There were reports coming in of explosives found in public parks, outside schools, in the back seats of buses; reports of masked men with guns were being claimed from one side of Manchester to the other. The police radios were full of panic, rumour and counter-rumour.

‘It’s Verden,’ said Sam. ‘This is what he promised. He said he’d bring us all to our knees. This is what the RHF is all about.’

‘We’ll have their balls for breakfast, Sam, just you wait. And, as for that bird that’s with him, I’ll have her tits on toast for elevenses.’

‘How the hell are we going to find them, Guv?’

‘Easy. They’ll be stuck on the front of her body, sitting side by side.’

‘No, Guv, I mean the RHF. The Capella could be anywhere — and that’s assuming they’re even on board. We’re working blind, Guv.’

‘Speak for yourself,’ Gene said. ‘While you’ve been fiddling with the radio, I’ve had my eyes on the road. And I’ve spotted just what I was looking for.’

Sam frowned. He looked ahead, out at the wide motorway along which they were cruising. A number of vehicles were on the road ahead of them.

‘Three cars ahead,’ said Gene. ‘See anything familiar?’

Sam leaned forward, squinting. He could see the back of the car Gene was referring to — a totally ordinary Vauxhall Cresta, beetling along.

‘Hang about,’ Sam gasped suddenly. ‘The Cresta! That’s Michael Deery’s car!’

‘And that’s Mickey Deery himself at the wheel. Guess where he’s going, Sam. Go on. Have a stab.’

‘You think he knows where Verden is?’

‘Who else is Verden going to get his explosives from, Sammy-boy? They’ve still got the kid. They’re not going to give her up now, not in the middle of their big campaign. If we pulled Deery over right now, we’d find an Aladdin’s Cave of IRA goodies in the boot of that Cresta. He’s heading north to make another delivery. But this time, instead of taking the missus, he’s brought a few mates along.’

Sam looked, but he could see no one else in the Cresta with Deery.

‘Uh-uh,’ said Gene, shaking his head. ‘Have a gander at the Triumph Herald that’s been sticking to him like glue for miles.’

The Herald was cruising along directly behind Deery’s car and, now that Sam looked, he saw that it was crammed with four very large men, all black-haired and thickset.

‘Did you ever see so many Paddies packed into a motor, Sam?

‘Is that them, Guv? Is that the IRA unit the Deerys have been supplying?’

‘Well, I don’t think they’re the local bowls club. Not unless bowls has got a lot rougher in recent years.’

So they had been right. Either the Deerys or their IRA masters had had enough of being blackmailed by the RHF. Michael Deery was going to make a delivery of guns and explosives to the Red Hand’s new HQ somewhere to the north, but this time it was going to be an ambush. The men in the Triumph Herald would be waiting, armed to the teeth, ready to eradicate Peter Verden and his entire outfit in a blaze of IRA bullets and rid the Provos of these upstart parasites.

‘Guv,’ said Sam.

‘If you’re about to start accusing me of not knowing how to tail a suspect, Samuel, then I’ll remind you that Deery won’t be on the lookout for this particular motor. We’re anonymous, so you can untwist your knickers and enjoy the ride.’

‘It wasn’t that, Guv. It’s just … Well, we’re getting ourselves into a very dangerous situation.’

‘That’s what we do. Hadn’t you noticed?’

‘Shouldn’t we have backup, guv? This is going to get very rough.’

‘Backup is otherwise engaged, Sam. Manchester’s on fire. We’re the only ones they can spare.’

‘But Guv … I’m not sure that … Well, I don’t feel right about …’

‘Stop spoiling the moment!’ Gene snapped, shutting Sam up. And Sam knew at once that Gene and the Jensen were enjoying each other’s company too much to allow Sam to ruin it.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

SAM TYLER, RIP

The sun was sinking behind the wide hills of Cumbria, casting the expansive landscape into deepening shadow. Sam was starting to feel hypnotized by the monotony of staring at the two cars in front — Michael Deery’s Cresta, and the Triumph Herald trailing it — and only realized he had nodded off when he noticed that the cars ahead had mysteriously disappeared, and a vast flotilla of black helium balloons were drifting across the gloomy, storm-laden sky.

Sam turned his head. Gene was no longer driving: she was, the little girl in black. Her face was completely hidden by a heavy black veil. Her little legs dangled above the pedals.

‘I want you to leave me alone now,’ Sam said to her, calmly, clearly.

The girl ignored him and continued to drive, even though she was barely able to see over the wheel.

‘You won’t make me regret my decision to come back here,’ Sam said. ‘You’re wasting your time tormenting me like this.’

The girl turned her black veil towards him, then nodded in the direction of the back seat of the car. Craning round, Sam saw that the Jensen was no longer the Jensen. The dream had transformed it into a hearse, with a coffin stowed in the back. A flowery wreath was propped up on the coffin, facing away from Sam so that he saw the letters of the deceased’s name in reverse.

A wave of nausea passed through him. His skin became cold and clammy.

‘No going back now,’ the little girl said, from beneath her veil. ‘Burnt your bridges, haven’t you?’

‘I’ve made my choice,’ Sam stammered, suddenly finding it a struggle to speak.

‘But was it the right choice, Sam? Was it? Was it really?’

Sam tried to answer her, but his head was spinning, his mouth bone dry, his tongue fat and swollen and lifeless.

‘Oh, Sam, what have you done? What have you done, Sam?’

His vision darkened as the strength flowed out of him. Sam felt as if he was sliding away into death. A coffin seemed to be materializing all around him, sealing him in, entombing him. He tried to cry out, but he could not make a sound. Feebly, he raised his hands and pressed against the inside of the coffin lid that now closed itself over him.

‘Sam, what have you done? What have you done, Sam?’

In the next moment, what had been the inside of his coffin lid was now just the dashboard of the Jensen, against which he found himself sleeping. He sat up sharply and looked about. It was nighttime. The Jensen was parked up on a rough, unlit track, away from the main road, engine silent, lights off. Gene’s door was open and Gene himself was visible as a dark shape standing immobile against the night sky, gazing across a stretch of bleak landscape towards distant lights.

Sam sat alone, shaking, sweating. He looked at his hands. They were trembling.

My funeral, he thought, numb with horror. I just glimpsed my funeral. It’s taking place right now.

Did this explain the dreams, the nightmares, the continual feeling that he was in the wrong place doing the wrong thing, that there was somewhere far more important that he had to be? Was he being called to his own funeral?

I jumped from that rooftop in 2006 because I wanted to live, not die!

He began patting and slapping the dashboard and seats of the Jensen, feeling the surfaces — the hard wooden dashboard, the soft leather seats, the gearstick, the wheel.

‘Real!’ he cried out to the unseen Test Card Girl. ‘Real! Real!’

He clamped a hand to his chest, felt his heart pounding away beneath his ribs.

‘Alive! Real and alive!’

He flung open the car door and clambered out, drawing in great lungfuls of cold night air.

‘Real, and alive, and my decision,’ he muttered. ‘Two thousand and six is dead. Nineteen seventy-three is alive. End of story.’

But, as he said this, he saw it — a black balloon, dancing on the wind against the raw, inky sky.

‘I don’t regret my decision!’ Sam hissed at it. ‘You won’t make me regret it!’

The balloon popped, silently. Sam strode up the grassy bank and joined Gene at the crest of the slope.

‘Guv?’

‘Didn’t want to wake you,’ Gene said quietly, not looking at him. ‘You’ve taken a battering of late. You’ve earned forty winks, I reckoned.’

‘I don’t want to sleep any more,’ said Sam.

‘You sure? I’ll need you fighting fit, Sam. We’re not up here for a camping trip.’

‘I’ve slept enough, Guv. I’m wide awake now. I’m ready for anything.’

Gene turned, considered him with great seriousness, nodded once, then said, indicating with his finger, ‘Over there, Sam. Look.’

Sam followed Gene’s gaze to where two sets of stationary headlights were visible, several hundred yards away in the darkness.

‘They stopped by a phone box in the middle of nowhere,’ Gene said. ‘Michael Deery’s waiting in the box; his pals are still sitting in the Herald. My guess is that Deery’s receiving directions from the RHF.’

Sam could just see the little call box illuminated from within and Michael Deery standing inside it, waiting for the phone to ring.

A man in a box, thought Sam. Sealed in. Entombed.

‘I’ve made my choice!’ he growled under his breath. When Gene frowned at him he said, ‘Looks like we’re getting close, Guv. It’s going to be a race to the finish. Can we get to the RHF before they do?’

‘If we don’t, there won’t be nothing to nick but a pile of corpses,’ said Gene,

‘And even if we do reach Peter Verden first, what then? Whatever happens Guv, we’re outnumbered by everyone. The two of us against the RHF and the IRA?’

Gene snorted his contempt of such odds. He’d take on the world if that was what was required of him.

Yes, thought Sam, looking at proud, arrogant, thick-skulled, opinionated, bigoted, contradictory, high-principled Gene Hunt. He would take on the world. I’ve made the right choice being here. It’s not about logical reasons. It’s about something much more profound.

‘Looks like Deery’s had his call,’ said Gene.

The two cars could be seen pulling away from the phone box and heading off along the road. Gene tapped Sam’s shoulder, and together they scrambled back down the slope and climbed into the Jensen.

‘Feeling up to this, Sam?’ Gene asked. A straight question. No banter. No sarcasm.

‘I’m up to this, Guv,’ said Sam.

Gene nodded. ‘Right, then.’

The Jensen purred, and Gene touched the gas. In the next moment, they were cruising through the darkness, once more in pursuit.

The new drop-off point was a craggy stretch of cliffs overlooking the sea. The sky was starting to lighten when they arrived, and with a shock Sam realized he’d lost all track of time. The night was passing, and the first glimmerings of dawn were beginning to appear on the eastern horizon.

The Vauxhall Cresta was labouring up a steep, rough track towards an ominous brick building sitting squarely on the edge of the cliffs. The Triumph Herald had vanished somewhere into the night, switching off its lights and melting away into the bleak landscape. Gene took this as a sign that trouble was about to kick off.

‘The IRA boys have made themselves scarce,’ he said, sitting beside Sam in the motionless Jensen. ‘That means Deery’s about to make his drop-off. When he does, those Paddies’ll pounce, you mark my words.’

‘What are we going to do?’ asked Sam.

‘Difficult one to answer, that,’ said Gene. ‘But whatever we end up doing, we won’t be doing it here.’

And, with that, he flung open the door and swung himself out of the car. Sam jumped out too, and together they crept stealthily up the incline. The building at the top where Deery had pulled up was charmless and functional, seemingly abandoned for some time before the RHF had claimed it as their new arms dump. The wide, grey sea seethed and surged as a backdrop, sending in blasts of biting wind that cut through Sam cruelly. Above them, the sky was slowly growing brighter.

Michael Deery hauled a heavy box from the boot of his car and carried it towards the brick building. Suddenly, he stopped. Two men approached him, aiming rifles at him as they came.

Sam and Gene ducked down behind a patch of coarse brush, instinctively drawing their weapons.

The two RHF gunmen strode towards Deery and positioned themselves in front of him — one was lanky, the other stocky. The stocky gunman began pointing, giving orders, while Lanky kept his rifle trained in readiness.

‘Keep yourself out of sight,’ whispered Gene. ‘Them IRA boys’ll pop up any moment — they catch sight of us, we’ve had it.’

‘I can’t see them,’ breathed Sam, peering about at the bleak countryside.

‘They’re out there.’

‘Maybe they won’t do anything. Maybe they’ll hang back.’

Gene shook his head. ‘It’s a trap. They haven’t come all the way up here for the view, Tyler. This is all about putting their foot down. They’ve been pushed about quite long enough by Verden and his travelling band of Lefty dick-wits. It’s payback time.’

At that very moment, shots rang out. Michael Deery jumped aside as Lanky took a succession of bullets to the chest that sent him jerking backwards; he dropped his rifle, turned on his heel as if he were executing a ballet move, then toppled forward, straight and stiff-backed.

Sam ducked lower behind the screen of the bush, peering hard at what was happening on the top of the hill. He could see the stocky man swinging his rifle about wildly, looking for a target but not finding one. He fired blindly all around him, and then started to run. Gunfire crackled in every direction — the IRA team had spread out and surrounded the brick building, and now they were rushing in from all sides. Stocky took a hit to the leg that blew his kneecap away; his leg bent backwards, the bones breaking so loudly that Sam and Gene heard the crack from where they were hiding.

‘That’ll sting,’ muttered Gene.

Stocky went down, firing hopelessly into the air as he went. At once, Michael Deery rushed over to him, drawing a pistol. He kicked away Stocky’s rifle, grabbed him by the neck and leant over him, shaking him, shouting, thrusting the barrel of the pistol into his face. Something enraged him, and he leapt up and stamped hard on Stocky’s shattered leg.

‘That,’ whispered Gene,’ is called “interrogating in a hurry”.’

Deery stamped again, and the stocky man’s scream of pain echoed out across the lonely landscape. It was taken up and mocked by the shrieking gulls. Stocky feebly raised his hand and Deery bent low to listen to what he had to say. A few moments later, Deery straightened, looked out to sea, then turned back. Without hesitation, he pressed the muzzle against Stocky’s chest and blew his heart out.

Sam felt a sudden twinge in his own heart, as if he were experiencing an echo of Stocky’s death. He gritted his teeth and forced the pain away, just as he forced away the sudden image of the black-clad Test Card Girl that drifted into his mind.

The IRA members, converging from all sides, were now meeting up on the crest of the hill. Without speaking a word, they rushed straight at the ugly brick building, smashed the door down and rushed inside. A muffled shot was heard, and a few moments later a body was dragged out and thrown across the other two.

‘Thorough, methodical, coordinated,’ said Gene, nodding to himself like a connoisseur of violence. Perhaps he was imagining what use he could put such a team to if they were on his side instead of the enemy’s.

‘I guess we can’t do anything,’ said Sam. ‘We can’t go charging up there to nick them — we’ll end up as just two more bodies on the pile. We should get back to the car and follow them where they go next. C’mon, Guv.’

Crouching low, moving with the utmost care, Sam led the way back down the slope to the Jensen. As he went, he began to wonder just what the two of them could achieve here, trailing after Deery and his team and watching them execute the RHF in a series of bloody firefights. If this was policing, then it was a form of the job Sam had never experienced. But what else could they do? He hadn’t thrown away a life in 2006 just to do the same here. That IRA team would have no reservations about adding a couple of British coppers to the day’s body count — if anything, they’d relish the opportunity.

‘We need a better plan, Guv,’ said Sam, reaching the car. ‘But I’m damned if I can think of anything. Guv? Guv!’

It was only then that Sam realized Gene had not followed him back to the car. Instead, the guv was walking slowly up the hill, heading for the brick building at its summit, making no effort to disguise his approach. He had removed his body holster and was holding it aloft, the Magnum stowed inside it, swinging it above his head as he walked, like a man surrendering to a superior force.

‘Jesus, Gene!’ Sam hissed.

The men at the top of the hill saw Gene approaching. Moving as one, they raised their rifles, military fashion, nestling the stocks against their shoulders and peering through the gun sights at him, ready to blow him to pieces.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

TOGETHER WE STAND

‘Wait!’ Michael Deery ordered. ‘Hold your fire!’

The men with the raised rifles remained completely motionless. Gene stopped, holding up the holster and the Magnum. Sam froze too, half crouched behind the Jensen, hardly daring to breathe.

There was a silent pause, broken only by the hiss and wash of the sea at the foot of the cliffs. The slow light of dawn began to filter across the landscape.

The game of statues came to an end when Michael Deery took a few steps forward, eyeing Gene coldly.

‘So,’ he said. ‘It’s you, is it? You’re the copper been following me and the missus around all this time?’

‘One of ’em, yes,’ Gene replied. ‘The other’s right over there.’

Sam felt his blood turn to ice.

Good God, Gene! he thought. What the hell are you doing?

Two of the rifles swivelled round and aimed at Sam. He instantly put his hands up, his body tensed in anticipation of the hail of bullets.

‘Drop the gun,’ ordered Deery. Gene obeyed. Deery peered across at Sam and said, ‘You too.’

Sam carefully held out his firearm, placed it on the ground and stepped back from it.

Deery muttered something to his companions, then came striding down the slope towards Gene, his own pistol still in his hand. He beckoned Sam over. As Sam obeyed, he watched the two sets of rifles that were trained on him track him carefully as he walked.

‘You can put your hands down,’ said Deery quietly. ‘Try anything, and the two of yous will be dead in a second. But you know that.’

‘And you know why we’re here,’ said Gene. ‘My colleague tried to spring your daughter from the compound last night. He nearly got his gums Black amp; Deckered for his troubles.’

Michael looked intensely at Sam, his face hard and hostile, as if he blamed Sam for his daughter’s plight.

‘Mary was okay when I saw her,’ said Sam. ‘Physically and mentally. She’s holding up. She’s strong.’

‘Anyone touched her?’ Michael asked aggressively.

‘I don’t think so.’

‘She getting enough grub?’

‘She’s no use to them dead,’ said Sam. ‘They’ll keep her alive and in one piece — just so long as they can keep squeezing guns and explosives out of you and your wife. Your daughter’s in no danger if you keep paying the ransom.’

‘But we can’t keep paying,’ said Michael, his voice low. ‘That’s why we’re here. We’re not here on a regular assignment. This is a private matter. No need for police involvement. You’re better off turning a blind eye till we’re through.’

‘Can’t do that, Mickey,’ said Gene. ‘It’s not the Wild West. We’re still the law round here — me and him, not you boys.’

‘The law doesn’t apply here today,’ said Deery. ‘Let me and my lads finish this. None of us want word of this to get out. What’s been happening of late don’t put me in a good light, nor the boys up there. And it don’t do the Cause no favours neither. Just leave us to deal with it. No one’ll miss them Red Hand bastards. This whole thing can be sorted — like it never happened.’

Gene shook his head slowly. ‘I want Peter Verden and his merry band of playmates behind bars, Mickey, not lying in body bags.’

‘Behind bars?’ said Michael with a cold smile. ‘They wouldn’t be the only ones you’d be looking to bang up, though, would they? You’d be after me and them fellas up there too. Can’t let that happen.’

‘You seem to have got the mistaken idea into your head that I’m negotiating with you,’ growled Gene. ‘I’m not asking for anything, Deery — I’m telling. You and your spud-suckers don’t dictate terms, not to CID they don’t; not to me. Am I getting through to you, Murphy?’

Sam felt his stomach clench. For this time and place, and with these people, Gene’s tone was all wrong. They weren’t dealing here with a bunch of bank robbers with stockings on their heads and their eyes on the wages van. These men were a different breed altogether. What motivated them was something far deeper than the desire for loot. They were idealists. They had the British Army on the ropes, and were destined to keep them there for decades to come. Damn it, this was the IRA.

And yet, as well as fear, Sam felt pride. Gene had come here as a representative of the law — and no amount of guns pointing at him was going to make him swerve from his sworn duty. He was no more going to roll over in the face of superior numbers than Michael Deery or his IRA companions up there on the hill. The unstoppable force was meeting the immovable object. Both sides saw themselves as being on the side of right. Neither side saw any need to capitulate.

‘There’s a lot of issues at stake here,’ said Sam. ‘But the top priority is your daughter, Mr Deery. Even if we accomplish nothing else here today, we’re not leaving without Mary. We’re going to bring her home to you, Mr Deery — safe and well, no matter what.’

‘I appreciate that,’ said Deery, keeping his voice low. ‘But we don’t need you two. We can deal with it ourselves. I give you my word — I swear on the Holy Blood of Our Lord — we’re just here to get my kid back and give them bastards what they’ve got coming to them. That’s all. No British targets to hit. No politics dimension. It’s private business.’

‘I don’t like you lot,’ Gene said suddenly, sticking his chest out. ‘In fact, I despise you for the cold-blooded, murdering scum that you are.’

‘The feeling’s mutual, I can assure you of that,’ said Deery.

‘But I’m a little strapped for manpower just at the moment,’ Gene went on. ‘I’ve got a hostage to release and a bunch of crazed pinko hippies with guns to bring home in chains, and there’s just me and him free to do it.’ He indicated Sam with a nod of the head. ‘But watching you and your lads in action just now, making short work of them herberts up on the hill, it got me thinking. I figured that, if we could temporarily put aside our differences, we might just get this job done — together.’

‘I already said, we don’t need you. Get back in your motor and go home.’

‘You’re not seeing the situation clear enough, Deery,’ Gene growled, leaning closer to Michael and eyeballing him fiercely. ‘You want to watch your kiddy growing up from between the bars of a prison cell? Well, do you? Because that’s what you can look forward to. Behind bars — that’s where you and your missus will be. I can have you both banged up for so long that by the time you get out your daughter’ll be celebrating your release in her bloody old people’s home.’

‘If you won’t go nicely, like I told you,’ said Deery, his voice cold and level, ‘then we’ll have to remove you from this business forcibly.’

‘Murdered coppers attract a lot of attention,’ said Gene. ‘And how much attention do you really want brought to the fact that you, Mickey, and your bleedin’ harpy of a wife have been pinching bombs from the IRA to supply to the RHF? Won’t you and Cait and your four mates up there get into hot water with your high command if they find out the right royal balls-up you’ve been making of things?’

‘They won’t find out,’ said Deery, a flash of real fear in his eyes. ‘Like I said, it’s a private matter.’

‘But it won’t stay private if you whack me and him,’ said Gene. ‘Your masters will know you’ve been siphoning off arms. Stealing, Mickey boy. Pilfering. Thieving. From your own people. And you know better than me the internal IRA disciplinary procedures. What’ll they do to you and your old lady, eh, Mickey? A kneecapping? A going-over with baseball bats? Something nasty in the eyes? Or will they want you both out of the picture altogether? Maybe they’ll pay you the ol’ three a.m. house call and march you and the missus off to the woods, where you’ll find two shallow graves conveniently waiting for you. Maybe they’ll just drown you in your own bathtub — ladies first, of course, so you can watch your wife snuff it, before it’s your turn. Maybe you’ll find yourselves looking up a rope. I don’t know, Mickey, I’m not the expert — but something tells me you know what you can expect.’

Michael Deery’s face went ashen. Sam realized for the first time just how desperate both he and Cait must have been — desperate to get their daughter back, desperate for word of the blackmail not to reach IRA high command, desperate not to find themselves in line for some serious punishment at the hands of their masters.

‘There’s no way a Republican unit can work with the British police,’ said Deery.

‘You know where your daughter is, don’t you?’ said Sam. ‘That fella up there told you, before you shot him.’

Deery looked at Sam for a few seconds, then gave a curt nod.

‘Tell us,’ said Sam. ‘Wherever she is, we’ll get her out of there.’

‘We’ll get her out of there while you boys cover us,’ added Gene. ‘I need backup and I ain’t got anyone else to draw on but you, you bloodstained pack of murdering bog-hoppers.’

Deery’s eyes narrowed as his brain worked feverishly. He could see the deal on the table: he would get Mary back, CID would get Verden and the RHF, and the whole sorry business of blackmail and misappropriated IRA arms would disappear. Everybody gets what they want — but only if they can all stomach working with their sworn enemies, just for one day.

As the dawn light grew stronger, Deery paced up and down, chewing his nails and swinging the pistol about nervously. The four gunmen up on the hill began to exchange looks.

‘Make up your mind, Mickey,’ Gene urged him. ‘Your friends are waiting.’

Deery ignored him, ran a hand through his unwashed black hair, then made a decision. He straightened, lifted his head, looked confrontationally at both Sam and Gene, and said, ‘My daughter’s right over there.’

He pointed. Half a mile or so from the rugged shore, a large cabin cruiser was becoming visible in the morning light.

‘Apparently there’s a couple of dinghies down on the cove,’ Deery added. ‘Take one. Leave the other for us.’

And with that, he turned to go. But Sam stopped him.

‘Mr Deery,’ he said, and Deery turned and looked at him. Sam held out his hand. Deery made no move to take it. ‘Please. Michael. For Mary’s sake.’

Sam waited, his hand still offered. Deery suddenly laughed bitterly, turned away, shaking his head, and headed back up the hill. In moments, he and the IRA team were gone, taking the bodies of the men they’d shot with them. All that remained was the ominous brick building overlooking the sea, and the distant white speck that was the Capella.

‘Jesus, Guv, you took a gamble there,’ breathed Sam when they were alone.

‘You reckon, Sam?’ said Gene, stretching his limbs and filling his huge lungs with air. He scooped up his holster and strapped it back across his chest. ‘I preferred our odds of getting them bog-brains on side than of going up against the RHF with just the two of us.’

‘I know Guv, but even so …’

‘Keep your hair on, Margaret,’ Gene grinned. ‘I told you before: we get paid to take risks. That’s what we do. We’ve all got to go someday, Sam — but it’s not today, not for neither of us.’

At those words, Sam felt his throat tighten, his chest gasp for air. As he watched Gene leading the way down to the cove, he felt for a moment that he was suffocating, that he would pass out entirely. Gulls cawed and shrieked in the air above him, and for a fleeting instant their calls became the cries of mourners following a coffin to its final resting place.

What have you done, Sam? he asked himself. Sam, what have you done?

‘Shift yourself, you idle sod!’ Gene called up at him.

Sam forced the bracing sea air into his lungs, defied the shadow of death that kept sweeping across him, grabbed his firearm from where he had dropped it and followed Gene down towards the rugged foot of the cliffs.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

EAT MY BULLETS

The stocky gunman had not lied to Michael Deery. Down on the cove at the foot of the cliffs, where the sea fretted along a stony enclave, not two but three small motor launches were beached.

‘Oh, very professional!’ grinned Gene, heartily amused by the Red Hand logo stuck on the prow of each one — the RHF’s deluded attempt to feel like a real army, with real insignia. ‘Look out, Sam, they’ve got stick-on transfers!’

‘Don’t underestimate them,’ warned Sam as they dragged one of the launches down to the surf. ‘They’re deluded and pathetic, but they’re still dangerous.’

‘It’s funny, ain’t it, Sam, what turns a fella on? I mean, if I had Verden’s money I wouldn’t be wasting it on this old bollocks.’ Gene paused and looked out to sea. The Capella was sitting half a mile or more out from the shore, the hazy half-light of dawn filtering over it. ‘Yes to the boat, no to the world revolution. Yes to the birds, no to the long-haired hippies with shooters. What goes on in his head, do you reckon?’

‘According to the files Annie dug out, he was busted for drug possession back in ’68,’ said Sam. ‘Perhaps he inherited the family dough, scrambled his brains on magic mushrooms, and came out the other side thirsting for world domination. Whatever he did, he’s certainly found enough fellow loonies who think the same way.’

‘Youth and money,’ said Gene, shaking his head. ‘It’s wasted on the young and wealthy.’

They reached the line of the surf where it hissed and rolled over the shingle. Sam felt the cold seawater washing over his boots, freezing his feet. As he did, his vision blurred, and once again he felt as if he was passing out. The sound of the tide seemed to carry with it a human voice, low and solemn, its words broken and fragmented: ‘Commit his body to … the midst of life we are in … to ashes, dust to …’

Sam grabbed a handful of cold seawater and dashed it over his face to revive himself.

‘Wash and brush-up, is it, Sammy?’ he heard Gene saying. ‘Making yourself presentable for the big showdown? Nice touch. Classy.’

As Gene shoved the dinghy into the water and cumbersomely clambered aboard, Sam staggered for a moment, fighting to get breath into his lungs. The gulls were circling above him, screaming and screeching louder than ever.

Two thousand and six is history! he told himself. What’s happening there doesn’t concern me any more. I’m dead there, but here I’m alive! All that matters is the here and now. This place — right here!

It took a physical effort to wrench himself out of the state of suffocated semi-consciousness he was being dragged into. He sucked down fresh salty air, strode into the cold surf, and went to climb into the dinghy.

And then he saw her, standing up to her waist in the water, bedraggled in her stained dress, black veil draped with seaweed, cradling her bandaged dolly in the crook of her dripping arm.

‘You don’t belong here, Sam. You should have stayed where you were meant to be.’

Sam pushed straight past her, ignoring her.

‘What have you done to yourself, Sam? No going back … No going back …’

It’s a dream, Sam told himself. She’s not real — only the here and now is real!

He leapt into the dinghy just as Gene fired up the outboard motor, sending them bucking against the incoming waves. As they bounced their way out to sea, Sam dared to glance round. The girl was still there, standing in the water, but now she was lifting her drenched veil, revealing a bone-white face, fleshless and eyeless.

Sam shut his eyes tight.

I don’t want to see! I don’t want to see!

‘Good God, Sam, you’re not getting bloody seasick already, are you?’

‘I’m fine,’ grunted Sam through gritted teeth. ‘If you just leave me alone I’ll be fine.’

‘Last of the great outdoorsmen, eh?’ growled Gene. ‘The Fletcher Christian of CID.’

‘I said just leave it, Gene!’

He took mouthful after mouthful of air, fighting the horrible sensation of claustrophobia, of smothering, of choking that threatened to overwhelm him. Thankfully, the feeling started to recede. And, when he opened his eyes again, the girl in the black dress was gone.

Sam forced his mind back to the job at hand. Up ahead, in the misty light of dawn, the Capella was slowly becoming more visible. She was a sleek cruiser, gleaming white, designed and built for luxurious pleasure. Whoever Peter Verden was and wherever he came from, he certainly wasn’t short of a few bob.

But how could they reach the Capella without being spotted? If they came under fire from the deck, they’d have no option but to turn and flee.

It was then that Sam saw, away to his left and far off to his right, the other two dinghies, racing forward, skimming the waves. The dinghy to their right curved round and overtook them, and Sam saw the two men seated in it, their faces hidden behind balaclavas, their assault rifles over their shoulders. To the left, there were two more masked gunmen, and Michael Deery was with them, too. Sam could recognize him despite his mask, because he was still carrying his pistol, not a rifle like the rest of the unit.

Across the grey water, Sam and Deery made eye contact. Would Deery wave to him? Would he salute? Would he perhaps just incline his head in acknowledgement of the risks Sam had taken, and was still taking, to free his daughter from the clutches of the Red Hand Faction?

Deery did nothing. He turned his head, and the dinghy beetled ahead.

This is a marriage of convenience, Sam thought. It’s loveless, and it won’t last.

‘With luck, they’ll think it’s their guys returning from the handover, bringing home the supplies,’ said Gene.

‘They’ll soon twig there’s far more of us than there should be,’ replied Sam. ‘We’ll just have to see how close we can all get before the penny drops.’

The two dinghies to their sides homed in on the Capella, getting well ahead of Sam and Gene. Gene became angry, complained he’d been saddled with the poofiest boat of the three, began blaming the engine for not being as powerful as the others, the prow for being less streamlined, Sam’s presence for inexplicably being responsible for slowing their progress.

‘If you weren’t weighing us down I’d be there already,’ he bleated. ‘I should chuck you overboard as ballast.’

‘Just keep your hand on the tiller, Captain Bligh, and get ready to start shooting if we’re rumbled,’ Sam snapped back, drawing his weapon and trying to see if there was any movement on the deck of the Capella.

‘Who’d have thought it, eh, Sam?’ said Gene. ‘You and me, teamed up with the scum of the earth.’

As he spoke, Sam watched the IRA unit drawing closer to the cruiser.

‘It’s a funny old world, Sam. Still, any port in a storm, no pun intended. If them bog-brained Guinness-swillers can draw their fire long enough, we might get ourselves a real result today. I want him, Sam. I want Verden — and that bird he’s with. I want the pair of ’em. When the smoke clears, Sam, I want ’em alive.’

‘When the smoke clears, I want us all alive,’ put in Sam.

‘You and me’ll be okay,’ Gene declared, arrogant as a Greek warrior at the walls of Troy. ‘Can’t speak for no one else, though.’

Sam peered ahead. ‘Look, Guv! They’re getting right up close now!’

The two other dinghies had slowed and were now bobbing towards the Capella, making for the rope ladders swaying down from the deck rail. One of the gunmen reached out and caught hold of a ladder.

‘They’re going to make it aboard, Guv! They’re actually going to ma-’

Figures appeared on the deck of the Capella, and instantly there was gunfire. The IRA man climbing the rope ladder jerked and fell, became tangled, and hung limply, his arm trailing into the sea. One of the dinghies roared away in a gush of foam while the man still in the other returned fire, driving the RHF guards back.

‘That’s it!’ bellowed Gene. ‘Time to play us some tic-tac-toe, Sammy-boy!’

He opened the throttle on the outboard motor and steered the boat straight for the thick of the action. With his left hand on the tiller, he drew the Magnum with his right. As they approached the Capella, he squinted along the huge barrel, caught sight of movement on deck and squeezed off a shot. The Magnum spat fire and recoiled. There was an agonized cry, and a guard toppled from the cruiser, bouncing off the hull as he went and leaving a splash of red on the pristine white.

Sam focused on the swaying rope ladders that were almost in reach. He shoved his pistol back into its holster and grabbed at the ladders with both hands, managing to catch hold. With all his strength he heaved himself up the rungs — and at once there were hostile shouts from the deck above. Sam heard the clatter of a rifle, felt bullets whine and scream within inches of him and go impacting into the sea below, heard wild cries and shouts and sudden explosions.

‘Smoke this, hippy!’ Gene bellowed, as the Magnum blasted a hole through the ribcage of a long-haired guard at the deck rail. The guard spun round, slumped across the deck rail, and fell; Sam just had time to see his body, jetting blood and plummeting downwards, before it slammed into him. The impact was astonishing — more like a falling anvil than a man — and Sam was hurled backwards. He felt his hands grasping blindly at empty air, and in the next moment he struck the water and went under.

Down he went into the freezing sea, turning over and over, submerged, drowning, all sense of direction utterly lost — up, down, it was all the same. Sam panicked. He thrashed his arms and legs, fought against clothes and boots that were now filled with water and dragging him down, felt his lungs exploding as they rapidly exhausted the small pockets of oxygen they contained.

Suffocating. Choking.

He could hear the rush of water in his ears, but it transformed into a drier sound — the sound of earth falling onto the wooden lid of a coffin. But the sound was muffled, claustrophobic — as if heard not from the graveside but from inside the coffin itself.

Buried. I’m buried for ever.

Blackness engulfed him, swallowed him — the blackness of the Test Card Girl’s dress of mourning; the blackness of the hellish balloon that bobbed so sadly on the string in her hand.

I’m lost! Sam thought. I should never have come here! I was alive, but I chose death! Why didn’t I stay where I belonged? What made me choose this place? What the hell’s here for me? What?

Out of the depths of the water, something came moving towards him, cruising upwards from the lightless deep like a shark. The saltwater was burning Sam’s eyes — his dying, oxygen-starved brain was shutting down, his vision breaking up into sickly swirls of blue-green splotches — and yet, in these final moments before unconsciousness and oblivion carried him away for ever, he caught a final glimpse of a devilish face, with narrow eyes and a wide, snaggle-toothed sneer.

The devil had found him again. And this time it would have him.

Sam’s final thoughts tumbled through his mind in a confused rush. Annie … Home … I shouldn’t have come back … Dead, dead … All over now … Annie, I’m sorry Annie, I’m-

A hand grasped him roughly, and Sam felt himself being hauled upwards. He broke the surface of the water and greedily snatched huge mouthfuls of air as he floundered and thrashed. His hands found the end of the rope ladder and he grabbed hold with every ounce of strength he had left. Through streaming eyes, he caught a blurred glimpse of Gene. The dawn light misted around him, like the corona that surrounds an eclipse. The stinging saltwater reduced Sam’s vision so that all he could see was Gene’s shape — featureless, anonymous, the majestic opposite number to the snaggle-toothed monster from the deep, boldly silhouetted against the aurora of light, one hand still grasping Sam’s collar and lifting him clear of the water, the other pumping blast after powerful blast from the muzzle of the Magnum.

Sam blinked. The water finally cleared and there was Gene Hunt — clear as day, in focus, shockingly vivid, extraordinarily there.

‘Get your arse up that ladder!’ Gene commanded, releasing his hold on Sam’s jacket. Sam found himself scrambling upwards with renewed will, renewed strength, renewed vigour. Hand over hand he went, hauling himself towards the deck, and at every step he snarled to himself, ‘Not dead yet! Not dead yet! Not dead yet!’

CHAPTER NINETEEN

SHOWDOWN

Freezing cold, sopping wet, Sam stumbled onto the deck and glared wildly about him. While he has been floundering in the sea, a massacre had been taking place on the deck of the Capella. The IRA cell had mercilessly slaughtered most of the RHF members, leaving their bodies sprawled about in heaps, draped over their own weapons, blood pouring from open wounds and congealing in dark pools about them. Realizing his own firearm was lost to the sea, Sam grabbed a revolver from the dead hand of a guard and snapped open the housing. It had four unfired rounds still in it. Sam hoped that would be four more than he’d need to get Mary free and Peter Verden under arrest.

Guns were going off up and down the Capella. The remains of the IRA team were blazing away and frantically scrambling up the rope ladders, but none of them had made it aboard yet. Sam was the first to get on deck, with Gene coming in a close second, looming up over the rail and planting his foot firmly onto the boat as if declaring it as his own.

‘Have we plugged ’em all?’ he enquired. In response, bullets shrieked around them, peppering the deck and throwing up chunks of woodwork.

Sam glimpsed an armed man in a black T-shirt, a red hand painted brazenly across the chest. He fired at him, but the shot went wide and the man ducked behind a wooden casement, frantically reloading his rifle. The casement suddenly exploded, blown to pieces by the might of the Magnum, and the man was flung two yards across the deck. He reached desperately for his rifle with a bloodied hand, but a second blast from the Magnum flipped him over and left him face down and motionless.

‘Scruffy ’erbert,’ muttered Gene.

Sam heard a sound from below decks — the terrified scream of a small girl.

‘She’s down there!’ Sam shouted, and he raced across the blood-splattered deck, barged through a set of swing doors and dived down a steep set of wooden steps. Gene pounded heavily after him. Together, they clattered into a narrow, wood-lined corridor off which led a number of doors.

‘She could be anywhere,’ whispered Sam.

From above them came heavy bangs and crashes: the IRA had made it aboard and were fighting their way fiercely across the deck.

‘This is our shout,’ Gene declared. ‘Them Paddies ain’t gonna beat us to it.’

He pushed past Sam and kicked the first door he reached clear off its hinges. It revealed a cramped cabin packed with boxes of plastic explosives — enough to wage a campaign of terror from now until the New Year.

Sam flung open another door, and there was a stack of ‘Widowmakers’, fresh from the IRA. Crates full of rounds were piled around them.

‘Unbelievable,’ Sam breathed.

Then they heard the girl screaming again, the sound coming from deeper within the boat.

‘Mary!’ Sam yelled from the rifle room. ‘Mary, we’re coming!’

He dashed back into the corridor, straight into a hail of gunfire. The woodwork around him shattered and splintered as bullets raked the walls. Sam hurled himself back into the cabin.

‘Verden? Is that you?’ he shouted.

‘I know that voice,’ Verden said from somewhere down the corridor. ‘It’s my old chum Mr CID. Now, there’s a turn-up.’

‘Give it up, Verden. It’s over.’

Keeping well undercover, Sam peered out through the open door of the cabin. On the other side of the corridor, Gene was slamming fresh rounds into the Magnum, readying himself to leap out and blow Verden away.

‘No, Guv!’ Sam hissed. ‘The girl! It’s too dangerous. Don’t do it!’

But Gene ignored him, springing into the corridor and levelling the Magnum in a two-handed stance. He paused, and Sam heard Mary screaming hysterically. A door slammed. Gene snarled and lowered the Magnum.

‘Bastard was using her as a shield.’

‘He’ll kill her, Guv.’

‘Not on my watch he won’t.’

Sam scrambled out of the cabin and tore along the corridor in pursuit of Verden, Gene thundering along behind him. They reached a door and burst through it, finding themselves at the head of a set of metal steps that plunged down into the engine room of the Capella.

Sam leapt down the steps, taking the whole drop in a single bound. Landing heavily, he was instantly aware of somebody directly to his right. He ducked, and felt, rather than heard, a bullet rip through the air above him. Furiously, he lashed out, using the butt of his pistol to crack his shadowy assailant a ferocious blow across the side of the head. He saw Carol Waye, her golden plaits now spattered with blood, being sent crashing heavily against a wall. She slid to the floor and lay there, unconscious.

‘There! See how you bloody like it!’ Sam bellowed at her, and then he was looking all about him, lost in a maze of pipes and machinery. ‘Verden. It’s finished. You can’t get away. Let the girl go and give yourself up.’

No answer. Sam renewed his grip on the revolver.

‘I said, give it up. Verden! There’s no point going on with this. You hear what’s going on up on deck? That’s the last of your army being wiped out. There’s just you now, Verden. And you’re cornered. The revolution’s over.’

Aiming his pistol in all directions, Sam began moving warily through the engine room. He heard Gene lumbering about behind him, and then rapid footsteps from above, followed by the clatter of boots on the metal stairs. A man in a black balaclava came rushing down — he ripped the hood from his face to reveal Michael Deery, flushed and sweating, eyes wild.

‘Where is she?’ he cried. ‘Where is she? Where’s my baby girl?’

‘Right here,’ Verden said, his voice cool and calm.

Everybody turned and raised their weapons — Sam, Gene, and Deery, all in a line, all aiming pistols straight at Verden as he stepped into view, pushing Mary ahead of him. The girl was moving awkwardly, shaking as if from intense cold, taking tiny steps at every prod and nudge from Verden.

‘Mary, it’s Daddy!’ Michael cried out.

‘D-d-daddy!’ Mary stammered out through chattering teeth. Her nerves, tough as they were, were obviously now shredded.

In a heartbeat, Michael Deery went from distraught father to IRA killer. He cocked the pistol, aimed at Verden, and braced himself to fire. No words, no threats, just instant death.

‘Not so hasty,’ smiled Verden, and raised his hand. Instead of a gun, it contained a wire, the other end of which was looped loosely around Mary’s neck. It was then that they saw the plastic explosives she was holding in her trembling hands. ‘See this little device, gentlemen? It’s a dead man’s handle. Anything happens to me, and my thumb comes off this little switch here. And when it does …’

‘You’ll burn in hell for this, you English bastard!’ Michael roared.

Verden smiled at him. ‘Frankly, Deery, I don’t give a damn. But, if you want to blow me and your darling daughter to smithereens, then go right ahead. Shoot me. Shoot me, and see what happens.’

Mary stared at her father with round, terrified eyes. Her hands were now shaking so much that she seemed about to drop the Semtex she was carrying.

‘Don’t drop it, Mary!’ Sam urged her.

‘That’s right, Mary — don’t you drop it!’ Verden laughed. ‘For heaven’s sake, don’t drop it or we’ll all go. We’re on a hair trigger here. A hair trigger …’

Deery glared along the barrel of his gun, keeping Verden in his sights but not daring to take the shot. The rage sparked out of him like electricity.

‘Verden, this is pointless,’ said Sam. ‘The Red Hand Faction’s history. They’re all dead. It’s just you.’

‘Just me,’ said Verden, nodding emphatically. ‘It all started with just me, and I built up an army. I can build a new one. A better one. All I need is me. Me is enough to change the world!’

‘He’s crackers,’ said Gene flatly. ‘Verden, you’re a bloody great Battenberg is what you are.’

‘You let my daughter go, Verden, or I swear — I swear — I’ll have you begging for mercy before the end,’ said Michael Deery. He sounded as if he meant it.

‘I’d love to listen to more of your sparkling discourse, gentlemen,’ said Verden, ‘but I’ve really got to be going. And I know none of you are stupid enough to try to stop me.’

He looked from Deery to Gene to Sam, all the time smiling insufferably, willing them to open fire or try to rush him. But nobody could drag their attention away from the Semtex in Mary’s small, quaking hands, and the wires trailing from it — or the dead man’s handle sitting in Verden’s right fist.

‘Good,’ said Verden. ‘I think everyone’s going to behave. Now — very carefully, Mary — you lead the way. Go past your daddy, up the stairs, up to the lifeboat. And then we’ll go for another little journey.’

‘Like hell you will,’ growled Gene. Leaning towards Deery he continued, ‘Lower your gun, Mickey. The best you can do is kill him — and even if that Semtex doesn’t go off and you get your kiddy back in one piece, you’ll kick yourself for wasting that bastard’s life so quickly. Thing is Mickey, if you let me nick him, I can see he goes away for ever — not a nice, cosy little prison like Strangeways or the Scrubs, but a rough one — a hard one — one where the screws will turn a blind eye to the beatings he’ll get by day, and all the buggerings he’ll get by night. Believe you me, a good-looking fella like him, prancing around C-wing with that posey ’tash, he’ll have more randy cons after him than the communal copy of Playboy.’

Deery continued to glare down the barrel of his pistol at Verden, his jaw muscles clenching convulsively.

‘Don’t zap him, Mickey,’ Gene went on. ‘Let me nick him. Let me put him away. And then, Mick, you can enjoy the satisfaction of knowing that every minute of every day, year in, year out, the toerag who snatched your baby is living in hell. As Mary grows up, Verden will grow old in prison — battered, buggered, despised, alone, just him and his shredded arsehole, wishing they’d never been born.’ Gene turned to look at Deery, and said, ‘That’s why I don’t want you to plug him, Mick. That’s why I want to nick him. Call me old-fashioned, but in my book that’s justice.’

Michael hesitated, even as Verden nudged Mary forward a few more steps, and then he nodded. He wouldn’t kill Verden. That would be letting him off far, far too lightly. Slowly, he lowered his pistol.

‘I’m on side with you,’ Deery said quietly to Gene.

‘Attaboy,’ Gene replied.

While this was happening, Sam’s mind had been working frantically. He could see the detonator in Verden’s hand, his thumb holding down the switch. Was there any way of disconnecting before he could release the trigger? The wire was looped around the girl’s neck. If he grabbed it and tried to wrench it free, he’d garrotte her.

It’s no good trying break the wiring, he thought, but, if I could grab the detonator from him, I could keep the trigger held down. Could I do that? Is it possible?

Verden was very close to him now, confident that he would either get away with his hostage, or else they would all go out together in a blaze of Semtex.

If I make a grab at the detonator, it’s all or nothing, Sam told himself. If I fail — if I let him release the trigger — I’ve killed us all.

Mary looked up at Sam with wide, terrified eyes — and, as she did, Sam saw with a jolt that she had a painted teardrop on each cheek. The Semtex she held was a dolly, wrapped in bandages. The wire about her neck led not to a detonator, but to a bobbing black balloon.

‘You’re dead, Sam,’ the Test Card Girl said sadly. ‘You can’t keep running from it. You’re dead and buried. Time to go. It’s better that way.’

‘You’d love me just to give up like that, wouldn’t you?’ said Sam.

‘It’s not giving up, Sam. It’s just accepting what you can’t change.’

‘You’re wrong. I’m not dead.’

‘But they buried you, Sam. There’s a gravestone and everything.’

‘They buried who I used to be,’ said Sam. ‘But that’s not me. This is me. And you know what?’

‘What, Sam?’

‘I’m going to pop that bloody balloon of yours.’

Sam lunged, so fast that he surprised even himself. He let the pistol fall from his hand and grasped the Test Card Girl’s black balloon — and found himself grasping Peter Verden’s hand, enclosing it and the detonator tightly between his own. They struggled, shoving each other back and forth, Sam clamping his hands together so tightly that he felt the bones would break.

Let them break! It doesn’t matter — anything, anything so long as it keeps that detonator switch held down.

There was a moment of confusion and then Gene’s fist powered in, hard as a piston, and slammed into Verden’s face. Verden’s head rocketed backwards, cracking hard against a steel pipe, and down he went, senseless. Gouts of blood ran from his nose and dripped thickly into the bristles of his moustache.

‘I’ve still got the detonator!’ Sam called out. He had his own hands clamped tightly around Verden’s fist, inside which was the detonator, its dead man’s handle still depressed.

Michael Deery rushed forward. Without hesitation he swept the Semtex from his daughter’s hand and pulled free the firing cable. He’d handled enough explosives to know exactly what to do.

‘You can let go of that now,’ he said calmly to Sam.

Sam released Verden’s hand and it fell limply to the floor. The detonator tumbled out, the trigger released. Nothing happened.

Everybody stood panting for a moment, motionless, silent — and then Mary suddenly dashed forward and threw her arms around her father.

Gene looked at Sam, said, ‘Good work, Sam.’

‘Thanks, Guv.’

‘But, um — next time you want to risk everybody’s lives like that, give us some warning, yes?’ He turned to Michael Deery, who was busy hugging his daughter and said, ‘Well, Mickey, you’ve got your kid back safe and sound as promised, and we’ve got what we came for — Peter Verden. You go your way, spud — you and your buddies up on deck — and let us go ours, and we’ll say no more about it, comprende?’

‘That’ll do for me,’ said Deery.

‘Right, then,’ said Gene. ‘Take your brat, clear off, and teach her how to kill British soldiers, you filthy bastard.’

‘Maybe I’ll teach her something better than that,’ said Deery, hugging Mary even tighter. He looked from Gene to Sam, and for a moment he seemed on the brink of saying thank you. But, suddenly, his jaw dropped.

A shot rang out and Peter Verden’s face exploded, flinging blood and brains up the wall he was slumped against. A second later, Carol Waye stuck the barrel of the gun into her mouth, clicked back the hammer with her thumb, and pulled the trigger. Her head jerked back, and down she went. She had saved her beloved idol from captivity, cheated the sworn enemy of their prize and their vengeance, and then joined him in the glamour of a martyr’s death.

In the ensuing moments of stunned silence, the only sound was Mary’s hysterical crying, muffled as Michael pressed her face into his body to hide her eyes from the scene.

Gene looked from Verden’s corpse to Carol’s, and back again.

‘Bloody hippy student pinko cowards!’ he roared, and stormed out, clattering noisily back up the metal staircase to hurl more racist abuse at the IRA men up on deck.

CHAPTER TWENTY

MIND GAMES

Sam and Annie, Chris and Ray, and of course DCI Gene Hunt had convened — where else? — at the Railway Arms. The job was done. The case was closed. All that remained was to get hammered.

From the speakers on the wall, John Lennon sang about ‘Mind Games’.

‘So, Guv,’ said Ray, passing out pints to the boys and a vinegary white wine to Annie. ‘The Jensen. Are you two going steady now?’

‘Ships that pass in the night,’ said Gene. He jangled the keys to the repaired and refitted Cortina, then planted them firmly back in his pocket. ‘We’ll say no more about it.’

‘Pity,’ said Chris. ‘The Interceptor’s a beautiful motor, Guv. Great curves.’

‘You’ll find as you get older that great curves aren’t everything, Chris,’ Gene intoned wisely. And then, to Annie, ‘Not that great curves are anything you need to worry about, Olive.’

‘That’s no way to talk to a lady,’ put in Sam. ‘You’re an ill-mannered sod, Gene, with all the chivalry of a pork scratching.’

‘But the body of a latter-day Adonis, so no one’s complaining,’ announced Gene. With great manliness he lifted his pint, quaffed half of it, and smacked his frothy lips.

Listening to Lennon in the background singing about ‘peace on earth’, Sam found himself thinking of Michael Deery and the three survivors of his IRA team. For a brief, deluded moment, when they were all together on the bloodstained deck of the Capella after the shootout, Sam had believed — really believed — that their fleeting alliance might last. Having fought side by side for a common cause, could these two implacable enemies find some scrap of unity between them? Could they start talking instead of shooting and bombing? Could the course of the bloody, violent, grief-stricken years between now and the future Good Friday Agreement be changed? Could this momentary alliance between IRA and CID be the beginning of the end of the Troubles?

It had been a dream. Michael Deery and his team had vanished, taking their fallen comrade with them. They had also taken the guns and explosives that the RHF had blackmailed them out of.

‘Them bullets,’ Gene had said, watching one of the IRA men loading up crates full of rounds. ‘Got the names of British soldiers on ’em, haven’t they?’

The IRA man had fixed him with a silent look, eyes glinting in the holes of his balaclava. It was beneath him to trade insults with a British copper.

Sam had tried to find a moment to speak to Mary, to tell her how brave she’d been, to wish her well. But the girl had shrunk away from him when he’d approached, howling and hugging her father.

‘She still doesn’t like my accent,’ Sam said.

‘Neither do I,’ Michael Deery had replied. But something about him had changed. Perhaps he’d lost his belly for fighting and bloodshed — God knew, there’d been enough of that aboard the Capella. Perhaps he’d turn away from the armed struggle, and encourage his daughter to do the same. But, if that was the case, he wasn’t about to admit to it, not here, not with his IRA unit looking on.

Now, in the smoky snug of the Railway Arms, Sam clinked glasses with Annie and the boys, and secretly toasted a better future. The world’s troubles were too big for Sam Tyler to sort out, and even too big for Gene Hunt. All they could do was play their part, however small, and hope for the best.

From the loud speakers above the bar, Lennon urged them to keep playing those mind games, to have faith in the future …

‘You said it, John.’

‘What was that, Sammy-boy?’

‘Nothing, Guv.’

Nelson kept the pints coming and the evening got boozier. Gene and Ray got louder. Chris got unsteadier. Annie made her ghastly wine last for hours, and was obviously keen to be with Sam in private. Sam was about to suggest that the two of them sidle over to a quiet corner away from the boys, when he caught sight of something at the window. It was a small, pale face, looking in from the night — a little girl’s face, with a teardrop painted on each cheek. The girl pouted and lifted her hand. She held up a limp length of string, on the end of which dangled the popped remnants of her black balloon.

Sam looked across the pub at her, but this time he felt no fear, no panic, no suffocation. He even smiled.

What’s done is done, he thought. I’ve made my choice, and no one can change that. The future Sam Tyler is asleep in his grave, but that’s not me. I’m here, I’m awake, I’m alive — I’m alive, and I’m going to stay that way for as long as possible.

The girl in the window slowly shook her head as she retreated and vanished into the darkness outside.

I’m free now, Sam thought. That feeling of not belonging, of needing to be somewhere else — somewhere important — has gone. It was the call of the future, trying to drag me into the grave. But I resisted. And I won! I can be me now. I can be at home here. I can live.

He looked at Annie and smiled. She smiled back.

We can live. Together. Me and Annie. It’s going to be fine. It’s going to better than fine. It’s going to be wonderful!

He opened his mouth to speak, but as he did he felt a sudden iciness sweep through him. The sounds in the pub receded, became muffled. Everything was running in slow motion. The light became hazier. Behind the bar, Nelson turned and fixed Sam with a strange and knowing look.

As if moving through treacle, Sam struggled to turn to Annie — but, as he did, he glimpsed something that made his heart freeze in his chest. Annie was sitting right beside him, holding her glass of wine; but now the glass was filled not with wine but with blood. It curdled and began foaming over the edge of the glass, pouring over Annie’s hand and running down her arm. Still smiling, still looking right at him, Annie lifted her glass in slow motion and took a drink. The thick blood gushed down her chin, drenching her blouse. Over her shoulder, a black balloon bobbed at the window.

‘No!’ Sam cried, and he lunged forward.

White wine went flying all over Annie’s blouse. Everybody stopped and stared. Sam froze.

‘What the hell was that?’ Annie cried at him, leaping to her feet. Her drink was dripping off her. Where it had drenched her top the fabric clung to her body, clearly revealing her bra beneath.

‘I can see her bazookas!’ Chris shouted, gawping without shame.

‘If you just can’t wait, boss, at least take her off to the bogs,’ grinned Ray.

Gene said nothing; his expression was inscrutable.

Annie flashed a furious, confused look at Sam, then grabbed her handbag and made a dash for the ladies’.

His head still spinning from his vision, Sam called after her, ‘Annie! Annie, I love you! I don’t want to lose you! I’m frightened that’s what I was seeing — that I was losing you! I panicked! Don’t go! I love you, Annie!’

The door of the ladies’ banged shut. Sam found himself standing in the middle of a now silent pub, surrounded by staring faces. He turned, very slowly, and faced his work colleagues at the bar. For once, they said nothing — just stared, a row of wordless faces. Silently, Sam stared back.

‘White folks!’ said Nelson, shaking his dreadlocks, and he whacked up some Bob Marley to get everyone back in the drinking mood.

Content

Tom Graham
Blood, Bullets and Blue Stratos

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY