Life on Mars: Get Cartwright

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

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

‘Is that the same as Bombay bum?’

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

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

‘Frisk him, Tyler, he won’t mind,’ Gene urged him.

Wincing, Sam reached his hand towards the body. He touched the chest – it was cold and damp and encrusted with brick dust. Lifting a soggy mass which might have been the remains of a jacket, or might have been shredded human tissue, he saw a square object nestling against the corpse’s ribs. Using his fingertips, Sam removed it.

‘What you got, Tyler?’

‘A wallet, Guv.’

‘Anything in it?’

‘A fiver,’ said Sam. ‘And a driving licence.’

‘Name on the licence?’

Sam had to clear away a revolting dollop of red goo to read it – and then, when he saw the name, he felt his stomach muscles tighten.

‘Well, Tyler? Who is it?’

‘Walsh,’ said Sam, looking now at the terrible, mutilated remains of the man’s face.

Without warning, a sense of panic and claustrophobia welled up inside him. He turned and scrambled frantically back through the narrow opening.

‘It’s him, it’s DI Pat Walsh,’ he panted, throwing the wallet to Gene.

‘Well, well, well,’ mused Gene. ‘Carroll kills Walsh, dumps the body here, then holes up in a church – is that the story?’

Sam couldn’t speak. His mind was reeling, recalling Mickey Carroll’s high, desperate voice howling at him: ‘I’m not going to end up like Pat! I’m not going to end up that way! No, no, no, no ...!’

‘What you reckon, Tyler – nervous breakdown? Carroll goes daffy and whacks his old DI – not that there’s anything too daffy about wanting to do that – then trots off to the God squad like loonies always do. Adds up for me, Sammy boy.’

‘It’s not what happened …’ Sam muttered, almost to himself. And then, louder, he added: ‘For one thing, if Carroll did dump Walsh’s body here, how did he get it inside the chimney? That hole in the base was cut afterwards by the steeplejack. You’re not going to tell me Carroll climbed to the top and dropped Walsh down the hole?’

As he spoke, Sam recalled the awful shadow that had confronted him outside the Roxy cinema. He imagined it loping through this blighted wasteland of rubble and shattered masonry, hauling Walsh’s flayed corpse behind it. In his mind’s eye, he saw it passing freely through the brickwork at the base of the chimney, as freely as it had passed through the solid façade of the cinema, and he pictured Walsh’s body sharing for a moment in that shadowy incorporeality as it too passed through the solid chimney wall and vanished inside.

This twisting and morphing of reality made Sam’s head swim. He forced himself to keep a clear brain; to stay focused, not to let such bizarre unreality undermine him.

‘Somebody brought Walsh here, Guv,’ he said with conviction, ‘but it wasn’t Carroll.’

‘No?’ said Gene, peering at him. ‘You sound very certain.’

‘I am. Because Carroll didn’t kill Walsh.’

Gene took a step closer, narrowed his sharp eyes and said: ‘If you know something I don’t …’

‘I know a lot of things you don’t, Guv. Things that would rock your world.’

There was a sudden fall of bricks from the chimney, landing noisily just a few feet from where Sam and Gene were standing.

But Gene ignored it. He loomed over Sam: ‘You say Carroll didn’t kill Walsh? What makes you think that?’

‘It’s not an … an easy thing to explain.’

‘Have a stab.’

Sam sighed and threw up his hands. But Gene drew closer still, keeping his beady eyes fixed on him.’

‘It’s them old police files, isn’t it,’ the Guv’nor said in a low voice. ‘Them ones your tart keeps going through. I’m serious, Tyler, if you and her have got information from them pertaining to this case …’

Sam turned away, trying to think, trying to piece together what was happening here.

It’s Gould did this. He killed Pat Walsh and dumped the remains here – and he’d have done the same to Mickey Carroll, except that Carroll got away. But why? Why would he kill these men – and why would he mutilate the bodies?

‘Don’t you ignore me, Tyler!’ Gene was growling at him.

Carroll saw what happened – or at least, he saw Gould arrive and attack Walsh. What guise did Gould take? Did he appear to them like the Devil in the Dark? No wonder Gould’s holed up in a church – he must feel he’s got the Prince of Darkness coming after him!

‘Tyler! You bloody well turn round and answer me!’

‘Carroll, Walsh, Darby,’ Sam said, suddenly facing Gene. ‘Three bent coppers, Guv. Three members of CID back in the sixties, all of them corrupt. Walsh is now dead, and Carroll only narrowly avoided the same fate. The third of them – Darby – he’s in line for the same treatment too, you mark my words. They’re all connected, Guv! Each one of them’s connected to –’

He broke off. He’d already said too much.

‘Connected to what, Tyler?’

‘To a … a murder, back in the sixties.’

‘Whose murder? What’s the matter, Sam, why are you being so chary about this?’

Sam sighed: ‘There was a man. PC Cartwright. No relation to Annie.’ He swallowed down that lie, and completely glossed over the death of James McClintock at the same time, and kept talking. ‘Cartwright was murdered in the early sixties. His death was covered up by DCI Carroll, DI Walsh, and a man called DS Ken Darby. They falsified reports, brushed the whole thing under the carpet, because they were paid to do it. There was a villain, he had half of CID in his pocket – including Carroll, Walsh and Darby. That’s what Annie’s unearthing in those old files.’

Gene’s face was very pinched and serious. Slowly, he said: ‘Do you remember our little chat in my office? The one about letting sleeping dogs lie?’

‘I do, Guv. But the dog isn’t sleeping, is it. It’s up and about and running round town biting ex-coppers.’

‘And your soppy tart with the files, she’s the one what woke it up. Just like I said.’

‘Annie’s not responsible, she’s just uncovering the back-story.’

‘Oh aye? And she just happened to uncover that back-story about a bunch of ex-coppers right before somebody pops up and starts knocking ’em off? Or are you going to tell me it’s just a coincidence?’

Sam looked for an answer, but couldn’t find one. He knew that Gould was drawing closer and ever closer to Annie, and that Annie – with all her researches and her slowly recovering memories – was drawing steadily towards him. Gene was right; it was no coincidence. But it was too complicated and too cosmic and too damned surreal for Sam to have a hope of explaining to him.

Trying to sound like he meant it, Sam said: ‘It’s a coincidence, Guv.’

‘And the fact that this copper whose death got covered up was called PC Cartwright, that’s just a coincidence an’all, is it?’

Feebly, Sam nodded.

‘Then why, Tyler, did she say this private investigation of hers was – and I quote – personal?’

Gene was edging towards violence. His rough, unshaven cheeks were flushed red, and his eyes were glittering dangerously.

‘Why didn’t you step in, Sam? Why didn’t you stop her before she sparked this whole thing off? Thinking with your dick, that’s what you’ve been doing!’

‘It’s more complicated than that.’

‘So you keep telling me!’

‘Guv, I … I don’t think right here, at the bottom of a bloody great chimney that’s about to come down, with a flayed corpse grinning at us, is the time and the place to have this conversation.’