Get Cartwright (6 page)

‘She don’t belong here, Tyler,’ he said. ‘She ain’t made of the right stuff. Take her off my hands, will you.’

‘Take her off your hands?’

‘Give her something else to do. Dick her senseless. Marry her, if you can face the prospect. Stick her in the kitchen. Get her pushin’ a pram. Sell her to a brothel and piss the proceeds up a wall. Frankly, I don’t give a wet fart in the deep end of the swimming pool
what
becomes of her, just so long as she’s not cluttering up my nice, clean shiny department no more.’

‘Guv? What are you saying?’

‘I’m reviewing her suitability as a copper.’

Sam took a step forward: ‘You can’t do that, Guv.’

‘On reflection, Tyler, I think you’ll find I
can
.’

‘Just because she honked your stupid horn and walked out in a huff?!’

‘There is
nowt
stupid about my bloody horn!’ Gene bellowed. And then, calming down, he leant back in his chair and said: ‘I ain’t made a final decision yet. The ball is still in play. But if I get wind of any further abuses of police records, or conducting interviews without my say-so – or if she so much as
glances
at my horn – I will have her suspended and investigated. She can lose her job. She can go to prison.’

‘Oh, don’t be so stupid!’ Sam scoffed.

‘Gross misuse of official police records! Using her standing as a police officer to conduct private affairs! That ain’t just a slap on the wrist, Sammy boy, that’s the full disciplinary. Now – I think you’d better go out there and get them files off her. Put ’em all back on the shelves where they belong and forget all about them. Tell her to chuck that list of ex-coppers in the bin. And get her doing something useful round here, like dusting that plant with the big leaves outside the canteen – have you seen it? It’s a state.’

Sam threw up his hands: ‘You’re mad, Guv! Annie’s one of the best coppers you’ve got! And you’re going to flush her and her career and her life down the pan just because …’ He broke off, furrowing his brow, thinking hard. Almost to himself he said: ‘Wait a second …’

‘Don’t bother trying to change my mind on this, Tyler. Cartwright’s been a disruption in this department from day one. Her recent behaviour’s just the final straw.’

‘Wait, wait, wait a second,’ said Sam, realization dawning on him. ‘This isn’t just about Annie’s behaviour. It’s about what you’re frightened she’s going to dig up in those files!’

Gene stared at him, unblinking, fierce. In a menacing voice, he said: ‘There are dogs out there, Tyler. Big ones. Big, bastard ones with bad teeth, bad breath, and bad manners. And right now this very moment, them big, bad bastard dogs are fast asleep and dreaming of bunny rabbits – and whilst
they’re
asleep, so are all their grubby secrets, you see?’

‘You know there’s a cover-up in those files, Gene,’ said Sam, looking him straight in the eye.

‘Of course there’s a cover-up in them files,’ Gene answered in a low voice. ‘Hundreds of ’em. This is CID, what do you ruddy expect? But whatever Cartwright’s digging up is ancient history. It’s done with. So let’s leave them big, bad doggies snoozing, yes? Coz if some ’erbert steps on the wrong tail and wakes one of ’em up, then somebody somewhere’s gonna get bit. ’Orribly. Where it ’urts.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Glancing round, Sam recognised him at once.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘You can call me Sam.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘How? How did I do that?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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