Table of Contents

Title Page

Chapter One: World of Sport

Chapter Two: Stella’s Gym

Chapter Three: Slapper

Chapter Four: Get Her to the Greek

Chapter Five: Tracy

Chapter Six: Toffee Apples

Chapter Seven: Lord of the Ring

Chapter Eight: A Frightened Man

Chapter Nine: Spider

Chapter Ten: Gene Pisses on a Plan

Chapter Eleven: Can the Can

Chapter Twelve: Chez Patsy

Chapter Thirteen: A Hot Shower

Chapter Fourteen: A Fallen Idol

Chapter Fifteen: The Man Who Would Be King

Chapter Sixteen: Britt Ekland’s Nightie

Chapter Seventeen: Wired

Chapter Eighteen: Big Men, Big Trouble

Chapter Nineteen: An Even Hotter Shower

Chapter Twenty: Princess

Chapter Twenty-One: Ghost Train

Chapter Twenty-Two: The Devil in the Dark

Gene Hunt will return in Borstal Slags

About the Author

Also by Tom Graham

Copyright

About the Publisher

TOM GRAHAM
A Fistful of Knuckles

CHAPTER ONE: WORLD OF SPORT

Sam Tyler stood alone on the high roof of the CID building, the uncaring wind roaring in from across the city and battering him.

That’s where I’m going to die, he thought. Right down there.

Inching forward, he peered over.

An eight storey drop. The cold air rushing over me as I fall. Glimpses of sky, of glass, of buildings out there on the horizon, flashing by as I fall – and then the shattering impact as I slam into the concrete.

Sam found himself edging his feet further over the brink, as if the abyss was drawing him into itself.

Thirty-three years from now, I’ll run across this rooftop … and jump from this very spot … and die, right there … right down there.

A pair of uniformed coppers strolled casually across the exact spot Sam was looking at, their voices just audible;

‘What do you say to a bird with two black eyes?’

‘I dunno. What do you say to a bird with two black eyes?’

‘You shouldn’t have to say nuffing, you’ve told her twice already.’

As the coppers’ coarse laughter reached him, Sam leant forward, teetering, almost daring himself to fall. His thoughts were reeling.

The year is 1973, but I remember 2006 … the future is also the past … I can recall my own death, leaping from this rooftop, and yet here I am, more alive than I’ve ever been …

Sam shut his eyes and tried to clear his mind of the turmoil. He focused on the here and now, on the physical reality of where he was; he felt the bite of the Manchester wind as it cut through his jacket, the sharp sting of the early autumnal cold already hinting at the harsh winter to come, the roar of his blood as it pounded through his ears, the steady beating of his own heart. These things were real. The world he was in was real. That was all that mattered.

Annie’s real too. And she is what matters most of all.

He had stood here before, on this very brink, back when he’d first arrived in this strange time and place. Looking for a way home, he had believed he would find it here. His plan had been to jump, to jolt himself back into 2006, and escape the alien planet of 1973 upon which he was marooned.

But as he had stood there, nerving himself for the plunge, Annie had suddenly appeared, her hair blowing across her anxious face as she reached out her hand to him.

‘We all feel like jumping sometimes, Sam,’ she had said. ‘Only we don’t, me and you – coz we’re not cowards.’

‘No – we’re not,’ he said to himself now, bracing his body against the anger of the wind. ‘We’re many things, but we’re not that.’

And so, that time around, he had not jumped. He had saved that jump for the future. But it would not be cowardice that would drive him to hurl himself from this precipice, nor would it be despair. He would jump for a reason. He would jump so that he could escape the emptiness of existence in 2006 and return here, to the strange, maddening, exhilarating world of ‘73. He would jump so he could be with Annie.

I was right to come back here, he told himself. I belong here. 1973 is my home. No doubts – no regrets – I made the right choice to come back.

If he had made the right choice to come back here, why did he feel, deep inside, that there would be no happily ever after for him and Annie? Why did he fear that what lay ahead was not life but darkness and death – and maybe something worse than death?

He knew the source of his fear. It came from her, the blank-faced brat who had floated out of his TV screen whispering words of doom and despair ever since he had pitched up here. The Test Card Girl, that incessant gremlin from the deep pit of his subconscious, would not let him go. She haunted him, taunted him, forever wheedling him to give up and die.

‘You have no future,’ she told him, over and over. ‘You have nothing to look forward to but misery and hopelessness and oblivion …’

Sam felt himself slowly falling forwards, giving himself up to the lure of the drop. At once, he pulled himself back, stumbling away from the edge, his heart racing. He drew in huge lungfuls of cold air and forced his tumultuous thoughts to calm down.

‘Everything’s going to be all right,’ he told himself, looking out across the grey Manchester cityscape spread out all around him. ‘Everything’s going to work out fine …’

Movement caught his eye. Three dark specks were travelling slowly and steadily across the autumnal skyline, passing over the city towards him. It was a trio of light aircraft, flying in formation, trailing behind them banners printed with bright red letters. Sam peered and squinted, trying to make out the word on the first banner.

‘World …’

He shielded his eyes and tried to decipher the second banner.

‘Of …’

World of – what? Leather? Opportunity? Adventures?

Before the third plane’s banner came into view, a man suddenly began speaking in a cheery and familiar voice directly behind Sam’s back.

‘Hello, and a very warm welcome to World of Sport.’

Sam spun round. The rooftop had transformed into a TV studio, with typewriters clacking and reporters bustling; behind a desk sat a man smiling warmly beneath his moustache – a man whose face and voice were straight out of Sam’s memories of childhood Saturdays.

Dickie Davies shuffled the sheaf of papers on his desk and announced brightly: ‘And in a full line up this afternoon we’ve got exclusive live coverage from CID A-Division, including all the latest shoddy police practice, professional incompetence and casual sexism from regulars Ray Carling and Chris Skelton – plenty of action there – plus we’ll be bringing you the highlights of the week’s heavy-drinking, chain smoking, and nig-nog baiting from DCI Gene Hunt, so make sure you stay tuned for all that.’

Dickie Davies now raised his eyes to stare directly at Sam, the good-natured light going out of them.

‘But right now we’re going over live to the rooftop of Manchester CID where Detective Inspector Sam Tyler is once again trying to convince himself that he has any sort of a future with Annie Cartwright. Of course, the two of them have about as much chance of being happy together as Evel Knievel has of clearing a jump without breaking every bone in his back … and deep down Tyler knows it. But until he stops kidding himself and starts facing up to the awful reality of the situation, then I’m going to have to keep on popping up like this and having words with him.’

Dickie stood up from behind his desk, and as he did his moustache vanished, his body shrank, his suit became a black dress, and his face morphed in the small, round, pale face of a twelve year old girl, with a big teardrop painted on each cheek.

‘Awful things are going to happen,’ the Test Card Girl said sadly. ‘You should never have come back here.’

The TV sports’ studio melted away. There was just Sam and the Test Card Girl, high up atop CID, the city of Manchester spread out all about them and the grey sky reeling over their heads.

Sam clenched his fists and said: ‘You don’t scare me anymore. I know what you are. I know what you’re playing at.’

‘I’m just telling you the truth, Sam …’

‘Oh no you’re not. You’re trying to mess with my head. But you’re nothing! You’re not even real!’

‘But I’m very real, Sam. And so is the horrible fate that’s in store for you and Annie.’

‘I’m done listening to you. You’re just a bad dream. Go back to where you came from.’

The Test Card Girl listened mournfully, shaking her head with infinite sadness. She hugged her little teddy bear doll, rocking it – and then, quite suddenly, she hurled it over the edge of the roof.

‘And there it goes,’ she said. ‘Better off out of it. Better off dead than facing what you and Annie have to face …’

‘You’re wasting your time,’ Sam said. ‘You won’t make me give up. You won’t make me despair.’

‘It’s not looking good, Sam. It’s all going to end in tears. Your tears. For ever. And ever. And ever.’

‘I’m not listening.’

‘Shall I tell you what’s going to happen?’

‘Get out of my head!’

‘Don’t you want to know the truth, Sam? Don’t you want to know what I know … about Annie?’

‘I said get out!’

‘She has a past, Sam. Like you have a past. But it’s a very different sort of story from yours, Sam. Shall I tell you about it? Shall I? Shall I, Sam? Shall I?’

‘Damn you, get out of my head!’ Sam bellowed, and at that moment the air was ripped apart by a deafening roar. Dark shadows swept across him; glancing up, he saw the trio of planes shriek overhead, recklessly low, their banners streaming behind them – but now the lettering had changed. It read: Terry Barnard’s Fairground.

When he looked back down, the rooftop was empty. He was alone again. The planes dragged their advertisement for the fairground away across the rooftops of Manchester. The wind cut through him like a knife. Looking down, he saw that his hands were shaking.

‘Don’t let her get to you,’ he gently told himself. ‘The little bitch isn’t real. She’s just messing with your mind.’

Suddenly, the door to the roof flew open and an overexcited Chris Skelton burst out.

‘You see that, Boss!’ he cried, pointing at the planes as they veered away. ‘Pretty nifty, eh? You reckon we could get one of them for CID? Eyes in the sky! Do they come with guns on? Now that’s the future of policing, Boss. You think they’d train me up?’

He grinned at Sam, the huge, round-ended collars of his blue nylon shirt flapping and fretting like cherub wings in the harsh Manchester wind. But as he read Sam’s expression, his grin faltered.

‘Hey, boss, you all right?’

‘I’m fine,’ said Sam, sticking his hands in his pockets and clenching them into fists to stop them shaking. ‘I just … needed a few minutes alone to think about stuff.’

‘No time for thinking, Boss. The guv’s yelling for you. We got a shout.’

From far below, the Cortina’s horn brayed angrily for Sam to move his arse – pronto. The Guv was impatient. There was a big, bad city out there that needed its sheriff.

‘Dead body in a bedsit in Greeton Street,’ Chris said. ‘A big bloke, beaten to a pulp, ‘pparently. Very nasty. Sounds like a good ‘un.’

The Cortina honked again, more threateningly. Only Gene Hunt could be so expressive with a car horn. This time, Sam obeyed his guv’s summons; he moved his arse – pronto.

The big bloke in the bedsit in Greeton Street had indeed been beaten to a pulp. And just as Chris had predicted, it was very nasty. DCI Gene Hunt stepped into the room carefully, so as not to get congealing blood on his off-white leather loafers. He moved about the room in his camel hair coat, his tie knotted loosely beneath the raw, aftershave-inflamed turkey flesh of his throat. Sam followed him. The bedsit’s fat, string-vested landlord watched from the open doorway.

‘What’s his name again?’ Gene asked, looking down at the dead man.

The landlord said: ‘Denzil Obi. A darkie name. He were one of them half-castes. You know, half-coloured, half-normal. Mongrel type.’

‘Mixed race,’ Sam corrected him. ‘Please – it’s not “half-caste”, it’s not “mongrel” – it’s mixed race.’

‘Don’t make no difference now,’ observed the landlord. ‘Can you take him with you, lads? I want to let the room as soon as possible, like.’

‘Meat wagon’s on the way,’ said Gene.

‘Do you boys clean up too? I mean, look at them carpets.’

‘I’ll Brasso your flamin’ knick-knacks on me way out an’ all. What state was the front door in when you found him? Had it been forced?’

‘No. I had to use my key. I came up because Denzil was behind on the rent, which weren’t like him. He were regular, you know. A good lad, for a coon.’

‘Please!’ Sam insisted irritably, speaking over his shoulder as he looked around the flat. ‘Can we knock it off with the BNP language.’

Gene shot a glance at the landlord: ‘No, I don’t know what the flamin’ chuff he’s on about either.’

The landlord scratched at the hairy dome of his stomach through the holes in his string vest. ‘I was just sayin’ that Denzil were okay, that’s all. He didn’t deserve this.’

Sam looked at the front door; it was fitted with three sturdy bolts and a spyhole for seeing who was on the other side of it.

‘Security conscious,’ said Sam.

He stepped carefully across the blood-splattered floor and examined the window.

‘No sign of this being forced either, Guv. Looks like Denzil opened the door and let his killer walk right in.’

What little furniture was in the room lay overturned. Clothes and possessions were strewn about the floor. There were bloodstains on the bed and up the walls. There were even splatters of red across the ceiling.

‘He didn’t go quietly,’ said Sam. ‘Must have been a hell of a fight.’

‘And this lad looks like he could handle himself,’ said Gene, indicating Obi’s muscular arms and torso. ‘Body builder, was he?’

‘Boxer,’ said the landlord.

‘Who beats a boxer to death?’ asked Sam, shaking his head.

‘Another boxer?’ shrugged the landlord.

‘Or a whole gang of ‘em,’ put in Gene.

Sam looked about the room: ‘Not much room in here for a lynch mob, guv. Barely enough room for the body.’

‘You saying this place is small?’ piped up the landlord, looking defensive. ‘It’s cosy. People like it.’

‘Any of your other cosy tenants hear anything?’ asked Gene. ‘This whole building must have been shaking like a fun house at the fair when this boy got walloped.’

‘No other tenants, not here. Downstairs is empty.’

‘What about the flat above this one?’

‘Just a couple of layabouts up there, but they’ve buggered off to India or something. Students.’

‘Pity,’ said Gene, flexing his hands and making his leather driving gloves creak. ‘I’m in the mood for questioning students.’

Sam peered down at what remained of Denzil Obi. He had been beaten into anonymity, his nose and eyes reduced to swollen puddings of battered flesh. His mouth had been battered into a misshapen, toothless hole. He was barely even recognizable as a human being. The only identifying mark Sam could make out was the large spider tattooed on the dead man’s neck, its spiky legs reaching up towards the remains of Denzil’s ear.

Suddenly, something else caught Sam’s attention – something inside of Denzil’s slack, gaping mouth. He leant closer.

‘You’re getting unpleasantly intimate with the victim, Tyler,’ Gene said gruffly. ‘Your little woman not keeping you satisfied?’

‘Guv, there’s something in the back of his throat.’

‘His pelvis, probably, given the pasting he’s had.’

‘No, Guv, it looks like something metallic.’

‘His fillings?’

Sam peered closer, trying to see without touching the body. Gene loomed over him.

‘Well? What is it?’

‘I can’t quite see, Guv. Whatever it is, it’s gone down his throat.’

‘Don’t be squeamish, Sammy-boy. Have a rummage.’

‘I can’t do that,’ Sam protested.

Gene loomed closer: ‘Think of it like a first date – stick your fingers in and see what you can find.’

‘For God’s sake, Guv, I’m not qualified to conduct an autopsy!’

‘You don’t need ten years in medical school to fish out a ball bearing, Sam. Dive in, he won’t bloody bite.’

‘Guv, this is a crime scene, and we’re going to act professionally, and we’re not going to start mucking about with the body, and we’re not going to-’

Gene ripped off his driving glove, elbowed Sam aside, and thrust his hand into Obi’s mouth. After a spot of blind fumbling, he produced something and held it up with bloodied fingers. It was a bullet.

‘Blimey …’ murmured the landlord. ‘Is that what did him in?’

‘If it is, then Denzil Obi choked to death,’ said Gene. ‘This round hasn’t been fired.’

Sam squinted closely at the bullet. It was indeed perfectly intact.

‘Somebody shoved it down his throat,’ he said.

‘Either that or the coon got peckish,’ said Gene. And then, with enough sarcasm to sink a battleship: ‘Sorry, Tyler. Mixed. Race.’

The coroner peeled off his latex gloves, dropped them into a pedal bin, and belched like a walrus.

‘Beg pardon. I had whelks,’ he said, patting his flabby chest and growling out more gas.

This put into Sam’s mind the ghastly image of the fat coroner’s digestive system clogged with semi-digested seafood. He felt his own stomach heave uncomfortably. How the hell could the coroner talk like that, here of all places? Damn it all, they were at a morgue not a restaurant!

Unmoved and unconcerned, Gene Hunt lounged against a wall, his arms folded, his manner casual: ‘So Doc, what’s the story with Rocky Marciano? Anything for us to go on?’

‘Denzil Obi’s been dead about two or three days,’ said the coroner. ‘He suffered a prolonged and powerful attack, almost exclusively to the face and head. Massive fractures to the parietal and zygomatic regions.’

‘That bit and that bit,’ translated Gene for Sam’s benefit, pointing to the side of his head and then his cheek.

‘Nice to see you’re picking up the lingo, Inspector,’ said the coroner, impressed.

‘I’m not just looks and charm,’ growled Gene. ‘So what was the weapon used? Iron bar was it? Baseball bat?’

‘Interestingly, no. The nature of the skull fractures are inconclusive, but the contusions to the face and head bear very clear imprints of a human fist. Punch marks, gentlemen.’

‘Well that makes sense,’ put in Sam. ‘Denzil Obi was a boxer. Are you sure these weren’t old bruises?’

The coroner smiled condescendingly and said: ‘I flatter myself, young man, that I can tell an old contusion from a cause of death. Denzil Obi was punched – repeatedly, and with impressive force,’ he fought to suppress another deep, whelky belch, ‘until he died from cerebral haemorrhaging.’

‘But … whoever did this must have hands the size of anvils!’ Sam said.

Again, the coroner shook his head: ‘Quite the opposite. A broad fist wouldn’t inflict quite this degree of concentrated damage; the force of the blows would be more widely dissipated. The man who killed Obi had small hands – small, with strongly condensed bone structure, rock solid, packed tight. I measured the bruises; the man who inflicted them has fists slightly less than three inches across the knuckles – about the same length as your index finger, Inspector Tyler. Every punch would have been like an intensely focused hammer blow.’

‘One bloke, you reckon?’ asked Gene. ‘Just one bloke to overpower Obi and beat him to death?’

‘It’s perfectly feasible,’ said the coroner. ‘I could find no evidence that the victim was restrained in any way during the attack, and all the injuries he sustained are consistent with an attack from a single assailant. One man attacked him. One man killed him.’

Gene pulled a sceptical, pouting expression, but the coroner smiled and went on. ‘A single blow, powerful enough and delivered in the right place, could leave even a professional boxer reeling. If the victim was dazed and semi-conscious, his assailant could rain blows on him unresisted. In this case, though, Obi didn’t go quietly. He fought back – at least for a while. His hands were freshly cut and bruised. The struggle may have lasted some minutes.’ He grunted up a noisy bubble of stinking air. ‘Like the struggle between me and these whelks. Excuse me, gentlemen – if I don’t get some liver salts down me I’m going to be the next one on the slab.’

‘But what about the bullet?’ asked Sam as the coroner pushed past him.

‘Shoved down his throat after he died,’ the coroner called back as he strode away down the corridor. ‘A tantalizing mystery for you sleuths to puzzle over.’

And then, with one last resounding belch, he was gone, leaving Sam and Gene alone.

‘Denzil was a boxer,’ said Sam. ‘Whoever killed him was a boxer too – somebody who knows what they’re doing with their fists.’

‘Most likely,’ said Gene. ‘A boxer with a grudge – and very small hands.’

Without warning, Gene reached out and roughly grabbed Sam’s hand.

‘Guv, what the hell are you doing?!’

‘The length of your index finger, he said,’ growled Gene, peering at Sam’s finger. ‘It’s gonna be like Cinderella and the glass slipper; whoever owns the fist that matches your pink little manicured digit, he’s our man.’

‘I’m not playing Prince Charming for you, Guv! You’re not using my finger as a measuring stick for murderers!’

‘I thought you’d always wanted to give me the finger, Sammy-boy.’

‘Give over!’

Sam wrenched himself free from Gene’s powerful grasp.

‘Let’s at least try and behave like professional coppers, Guv,’ he said. ‘Denzil knew his killer. That would explain why he let him into the flat. They quarrelled – fought – after a few minutes, Denzil was overpowered, and the killer pummelled him to death. But why stick a bullet down his throat afterwards?’

Gene shrugged: ‘Symbolic. I dunno. We’ll ask the killer when we nick him.’

‘And how are we going to do that, guv? Where are we going to start?’

‘Somewhere conducive to contemplation, where the mighty Gene Hunt noggin can work its magic.’

‘And where’s that, guv?’ asked Sam.

Gene looked at him flatly and said: ‘Where’d you think, dumb-dumb? And you’ll be the one getting them in.’

The Railway Arms was quiet at this time of day. The atmosphere seemed poised, ready for the crush of drinkers, the clamour of manly voices, the braying of blokey laughter that would fill the place come evening time. The familiar pumps gleamed along the bar, promising Watney’s, Flowers and Courage on draught. The ashtrays sat clean and expectant, like baby birds awaiting feeding. The floor was not yet sticky underfoot with spilt beer. And Nelson, resplendent in his flowing dreadlocks and a gaudy shirt depicting the sun setting over a Caribbean island, seemed nicely mellowed, perhaps conserving his energies for the bustle and bullshit of the evening crowd.

‘Very thirtsy coppers today,’ he observed, glancing at his watch as Gene strode in through the door, Sam in his wake. ‘What’s the reason for dis early visit? Are we celebrating victories or drownin’ our woes?’

‘One of your lot just got whacked,’ announced Gene, leaning against the bar and sparking up a fag. ‘We need a moment to cogitate on the clues. Two pints of best, and make it snappy.’

‘What you mean, one o’ my lot?’ asked Nelson as he pulled the pints.

‘A black,’ said Gene, speaking around the cigarette clamped between his lips. Sam literally cringed. Gene glanced at him, ‘All right then, a ‘mixed race black’. ‘Appy now, Tyler? Whatever you call him, he was mashed to smithereens like a blood pudding under a steamroller.’

‘Is dat so?’ said Nelson, raising his eyebrows but playing it very cool. ‘Terrible. It’s a terrible world we’re livin’ in.’

‘It is,’ put in Sam. ‘There’s terrible things that get done. And said. Nelson, I apologise on behalf of my DCI. He isn’t really a pig-ignorant National Front scumbag racist, he just sounds like one.’

‘Who you calling an NF scumbag?’ retorted Gene. ‘I’m colour blind, me. I know all the words to the Melting Pot Song. Gonna get a white bloke, stick him in a black bloke …’

‘That really is enough, Gene!’ Sam silenced him, and he meant it.

But Nelson was laughing: ‘Blue Mink! Now I tink I got that stashed away some place.’

‘You see?’ growled Gene, gulping down a mouthful of beer and giving himself a froth moustache. ‘Nelson knows what’s racialist and what ain’t. The trouble with you, Tyler – well, apart from all the other troubles with you – is that you think screaming like a nancy with a stinging dick at what normal blokes say makes you some sort of saint. Well it don’t. It just makes you a mouthy get with no sense of what’s what.’

‘It’s a little thing called political correctness, Guv. It’s all to do with treating diversity with respect.’

‘“Diversity with respect”!’ sneered Gene, downing another frothy draught. ‘Kid gloves is for butlers and snooker refs, Tyler. You can’t wear ‘em in the street. Or on the beat. Now knock it off and let the mighty Genie noggin’ get to work. I got a killer to catch.’

Gene carried his pint and smouldering fag over to corner table and ensconced himself.

Sam shook his head and turned to Nelson: ‘I’m sorry you have to hear talk like that.’

‘Oh, forget it, friend!’ Nelson beamed at him, his showy Jamaican accent vanishing and being replaced with the broad tones of Burnley. ‘Water off a duck’s back. Your boss, he don’t mean no harm. He’s just repeating what he’s learnt.’

‘It’s not right, the way he talks. Where I come from, Nelson, it’s all very different.’

‘Yup,’ said Nelson. ‘And where I come from too.’

CHAPTER TWO: STELLA’S GYM

‘Have you been drinking with the guv again?’ asked Annie, looking up at Sam from her desk at CID. ‘Sam, it’s barely lunchtime!’

‘I only had the one, to keep him company,’ said Sam. ‘Why, can you smell beer on me?’

‘That, and about a million fags.’

They glanced across at Gene who was back in his office, chewing on a biro while casting his eyes over the racing pages. He’d found no inspiration in the pub; perhaps he hoped he’d find it among the runners and riders.

‘You’re looking tired, Annie,’ said Sam, drawing up a chair beside her. ‘Is everything alright?’

‘Working here? It’s one big summer holiday.’ She smiled, but then her smile faltered. ‘Actually, I’ve been a bit down.’

‘Why? It wasn’t Ray again with that awful plastic thing?’

‘No, Sam, it wasn’t Ray and that awful plastic thing.’

‘I’ve warned him, Annie, I’ll have him disciplined if he keeps bringing that in.’

‘It’s nothing like that,’ said Annie. ‘It’s my own fault. I’ve been letting a case get to me, taking it personally.’

She opened a file on her desk and revealed a photograph of a slim, frail-looking girl staring blankly at the camera. Her eyes were almost completely closed by fat, shiny bruises; her top lip was swollen. Beneath this battered mask Annie had carefully written the victim’s name: Tracy Porter.

‘A&E called me in a couple of days ago to speak to her,’ Annie said. ‘Her boyfriend’s the one who did it – and it’s not the first time, neither – but she’s too frightened to go on record. I’ve been trying to persuade her, but she’s saying she walked into a door.’

Sam nodded. It was an old story. How many more beatings would young Tracy Porter endure before she ended up on the same mortuary slab as Denzil Obi? How many Denzils and Tracys would come and go through just this CID department alone – battered, bullied, and beyond help?

Sam closed the file. He had seen enough smashed and brutalised faces for one day.

‘I know it’s not easy, Annie, but you’ve got to keep a professional distance with stuff like this.’

‘Normally I do. I don’t know what it is about this girl that’s gotten to me. I think it’s the frustration, the way she’s protecting that bastard who did it to her. I can’t get through to her, Sam. Just name him, I say. I’ll help you – but you’ve got help me first. But it’s no good. Sometimes I want to shake her, it makes me so mad.’

‘Looks like she’s been shaken enough already,’ said Sam.

‘Exactly. So then I feel guilty that I want to get rough with her an’ all. She’s hardly the brightest star in the sky, but she still doesn’t deserve what she’s getting.’

‘It can sound heartless to say it, Annie, but once you’ve done all you can you really do have to walk away. That’s the job. You have your life, she has hers.’

‘If you can call what she’s got ‘a life’, trailing around with Terry Barnard’s fairground, living in a crappy caravan, getting smacked about by that thug of a boyfriend. She doesn’t know how to look after herself, or else she’s just given up. I had to literally twist her arm to make a check-up appointment with the hospital, just to make sure everything’s healing up okay. I think the only reason she agreed to go is because I promised to meet here there.’

‘You think she’ll show?’

Annie shrugged: ‘If she does, I’m going to have one last crack at getting her to give evidence.’

‘Don’t get your hopes up too high, Annie. We’re just coppers. We all get frustrated. I do. Chris does. Even Ray and Gene, they take it personally sometimes. But none of us can save the world. We can do our best, and we can do our job, but we can’t do the impossible.’

‘Speak for yourself,’ Ray Carling said, looming suddenly over them. ‘The impossible’s my forte. I can give you the number of a few birds who’ll testify to that.’

‘Ray, please, would you give us some space?’ said Sam, forcing himself to keep his cool.

‘Not until you’ve answered a question for me, Boss,’ Ray replied.

‘Okay. What’s your question?’

‘What do you say to a bird with two black eyes?’

Instantly, Annie stiffened and looked away. Sam wearily rubbed his forehead.

‘Ray, you have picked the single worst possible moment to start telling that joke. And besides, I’ve heard it. And it wasn’t funny the first time.’

‘Only trying to raise a smile,’ said Ray, stuffing a strip of Juicy Fruit into his mouth. ‘Perhaps I’ll bring that plastic thing back in again. That gets a few laffs.’

‘No you won’t bring that plastic thing back in again, Ray! I’ve bloody warned you!’

‘Suit yourself, you tight-arsed get,’ shrugged Ray. ‘We all need to get through as best we can. Go off our rockers, otherwise. At least Chrissy-wissy’s got a sense of humour round here. He likes that plastic thing.’

Chris’s head popped up from behind a mountain of paperwork weighed down with an overflowing ashtray.

‘I love that plastic thing!’ he said eagerly. ‘Have you brought it in again?!’

Ray sauntered over to him: ‘’Fraid not. Orders from the laffin’ gnome over there. But I got a question for you, Chris. What do you say to a bird with two black eyes?’

Ignoring him, Sam turned back to Annie.

‘Sorry about that,’ he said. ‘It’s just Ray being Ray.’

Annie smiled at him and said: ‘Thanks, Sam – you know – for not being like all the rest.’

Across the office, Ray reached the cruel punch line and Chris brayed with laughter.

Keeping his back to them both, Sam leant closer to Annie and dropped his voice: ‘Listen, maybe I can cheer you up by taking you out for dinner some time?’

‘You asking me out on a date, Boss?’

‘As your superior officer I suppose I could order you out on a date with me.’

‘How romantic. Where have you got in mind? The canteen downstairs?’

‘I think we can go a little more upmarket than that. You choose the restaurant. Anywhere you like, Annie. Don’t worry about the expense. Manchester is your oyster!’

Sam stopped suddenly. Oysters. They made him think of whelks. And whelks made him think of the fat-bellied coroner belching and grunting in the morgue.

‘Anywhere you like, Annie, but – please – not seafood.’

‘Why not?’

‘I’ve sort of … gone off it recently. Well? Am I tempting you?’

Annie swivelled playfully in her chair and said: ‘I don’t know. You’ve taken me by surprise, young man.’

‘Not the first time you’ve said that, I’ll bet.’

‘I’ll have a think about it and get back to you,’ she said, making a show of moving folders and files around on her desk. ‘I’m busy. But if you’re lucky I might be able to squeeze you in somewhere.’

‘And not the first time you’ve said that, I’ll bet.’

‘You are as bad as the rest of ‘em!’ Annie cried at him, blushing.

‘I’m the king of the bad ‘uns round here!’ Gene suddenly intoned from the doorway of his office. ‘Tyler! Stop fiddling with DI Bristols and start acting like a copper with a job to do. Raymondo! Christopher! I’m bored of reading the paper and I don’t feel like a taking a dump just yet; catch me a killer so I can play pat-a-cake with him in the interview room ‘til it’s home time.’

‘Got a possible start for you, Guv,’ said Ray, waving a piece of paper. ‘I’ve been digging up what I can about this half-darkie lad what got whacked.’

‘Mixed race,’ Sam corrected him, knowing nobody was interested. ‘It’s so simple: it’s mixed race.’

‘Looks like he was a local boy,’ Ray went on. ‘In and out of trouble as a kid, got himself nicked a couple of times – thieving, spot of aggro here and there, nothing serious. Worked around and about as a bouncer, did a spot of lugging down the warehouses. Then he started picking up a living as a bare-knuckle boxer at illegal fights.’

‘Is there a living in that?’ asked Sam.

‘If you know what you’re doing, Boss, aye, ‘course there is,’ said Ray. ‘There’s a lot of money slopping around in that game. But most of them lads are trying to go legit now – like Denzil Obi. It’s safer being a pro. Life in the boxing underworld can be pretty rough.’

‘Inside the ring and out of it,’ said Gene, nodding to himself. ‘So – our boy Denzil was looking to go straight, make an honest living at last. But somewhere along the way he’d piddled on somebody’s chips – and aforesaid somebody caught up with him, popped round his flat and aired his grievances. Come on, Ray, get me some names – who were Obi’s acquaintances? Did he have a trainer? Sparring partners? Boxing buddies?’

‘I don’t know about none of that – but this was found at his flat,’ said Ray, and he passed a laminated card to Gene.

Gene peered at it and read out loud: ‘Stella’s Gym. Denzil ‘The Black Widow’ Obi. Full membership.’

‘The Black Widow!’ grinned Chris. ‘That’s wicked, that!’

‘Stella’s Gym …’ Gene mused. ‘Don’t know it. Got an address for it, Raymond?’

‘It’s on the back of the card, Guv.’

‘Excellent. Ray, you stay here with ‘wicked’ Chris Skelton and carry on digging up everything you can about Obi. Go through the arrest files, see what dodgy underworld boxers we’ve got on the records. And find out who’s in town – boxers, brawlers, shady fight promoters, anyone Obi might have come into contact with. And as for you, Sugar Ray Tyler-’

‘Yes, Guv?’

‘Grab your shorts and skipping rope. We’re popping down the gym.’

‘Can this really be the right place?’ asked Sam as he and Gene clambered out of the Cortina and approached the entrance of a gloomy, filthy alleyway.

Gene sniffed the air with contempt: ‘Much like the aroma in your flat, Sammy. I can see why you try to cover it up with that druggy pong.’

‘They’re not drugs, they’re joss sticks,’ replied Sam. ‘How many times do I have to explain that, Guv?’

‘No amount of explaining’s going to make your gaff stink any less like a dope-smoking pansy-boy’s boudoir. Now then; lead on, Samuel, and boot any dog-eggs out the way. I don’t want to get my loafers soiled.’

‘Heaven forbid you should soil your loafers,’ said Sam, and gingerly he stepped into the alley, picking his way through the heaps of reeking garbage. ‘This place is worse than a pigsty! Doesn’t seem like a good location for a gym.’

‘Get over it,’ Gene growled as he loomed menacingly after Sam. ‘Real men ain’t frit by a spot of dirt.’

‘It seems they are if they’re wearing their best loafers, Guv.’

‘Second best, you prannet. First best’s for the ladies.’

They reached a set of filthy doors, above which hung the remains of a sign. The few letters still attached to it said: ST LLA’S YM

‘This must be it,’ said Sam.

He pushed open the doors and revealed a gloomy passageway beyond, with a set of stairs leading down into even deeper darkness. For a moment, a sharp, icy sensation passed through Sam’s blood. He sensed something – something he could not define. For a moment, he could not bring himself to descend that bleak staircase and enter the darkness at its foot.

But why? What am I afraid is down there?

But it wasn’t the descent into Stella’s Gym that froze his blood with fear. It was that deeper descent into the even greater darkness of the subconscious that terrified him. Because he had glimpsed into that pit of his own psyche before, not least when he had been pistol-whipped unconscious in the compound of the Red Hand Faction and found himself lost in a black, nightmarish void.

Something stared back at me from that void … something with inhuman eyes, an inhuman face … a devil … a devil in the dark! I saw it … and whatever it is, it saw me. It knows me. And it’s coming for me. Slowly, but surely, it’s coming for me … and then … and then …

But at that moment Gene shoved roughly past him and strode confidently into the murky hallway.

‘Keep up, Sam, we haven’t got all day.’

Forcing his nameless fears aside, Sam followed Gene down the steps and through another set of doors.

They found themselves at once in Stella’s Gym. It was a stark, windowless, concrete cavern lit by overhead strip lights. It felt more like an underground car park than a gymnasium. Between the hard concrete floor and the hard concrete ceiling stood rows of hard concrete columns plastered with photos of slab-faced boxers and naked women. Moving between the columns were an assortment of huge, sweating men pounding away at punch bags, heaving weights, dancing over skipping ropes. The air was thick with the mingled stench of body odour, embrocation and stale, wet towels.

One again, an overpowering sense of dread swept across Sam. His heart was pounding. He leant against a concrete pillar, afraid he might pass out, and in horror he saw amid the pinned-up photographs a face he knew at once; staring out at him was the Test Card Girl – a faded, dog-eared, black and white snapshot pinned up between pictures Henry Cooper and Raquel Welch.

‘Don’t you want to know the truth, Sam? Don’t you want to know what I know … about Annie?’

Sam’s head swam. He braced himself, forced himself not to faint. The girl’s mocking voice echoed through his mind, stirring up the terrible sickness that threatened to overwhelm him.

‘She has a past, Sam. Shall I tell you about it? Shall I? Shall I, Sam? Shall I?’

In sudden anger he snatched the photo of the Test Card Girl. But all at once he found himself holding nothing more than a tatty newspaper cutting of Joe Bugner poised for action.

To hell with your mind games, you little brat! You won’t get inside my head! You’re not real! You’re nothing!

Sam crumpled the photo into a ball and fell into step with Gene. Together they moved forward, making for a roped-off boxing ring where two men lunged and clashed under the under the noisy guidance of a short, pug-nosed Irishman.

‘Hey you!’ Gene barked.

The Irish trainer fell silent, turned, and looked Sam and Gene over. His flat, ugly face was not friendly, and neither was the atmosphere in the gym.

‘You addressing me?’ the trainer asked in his spiky Belfast accent.

‘I most certainly am, Paddy.’

‘The name’s Dermot.’

‘I don’t care what you call yourself, you gobby spud. Zip your trap and pay attention. And that goes for all of you!’

All the men had stopped working out and were staring at the unwelcome visitors, clocking at once that they had a couple of coppers amongst them – Sam’s leather jacket and Gene’s voluminous camel hair coat were as much giveaways in this place as bobby’s helmets and badges.

The atmosphere tightened. Sam set his face, determined not to show that he was intimidated. But Gene, who thrived on machismo like a rosebush thrives on quality shit, hooked his thumbs into his belt, thrust out his chest, and squinted slowly round at the men who surrounded them.

Please, guv – don’t antagonise them, Sam silently willed him. Keep it cool, keep it calm … no need to wind anyone up …

‘Right, you faggots,’ Gene declared. ‘Stop eyeing up each other’s arses and pay attention. I’ll keep it simple so as not to confuse you. My name’s Detective Chief Inspector Hunt, CID, A-Division – you know, the police. And this here’s my retard nephew tagging along on work experience.’

Sam kept his face fixed, maintaining what professional dignity he could.

Dermot, the pug-nosed trainer, leant casually on the ropes of the boxing ring and said: ‘And what can we be doin’ for you fellas, then? Lookin’ to put a spot of muscle on yourselves, are ya?’

Gene fixed him with a look and said; ‘Denzil Obi, the Mixed Race Widow.’

‘What about him?’ said Dermot. ‘Denzil’s not here.’

‘No,’ said Gene. ‘No, he’s not. He’s gone to that big, stinky gym in the sky.’

A ripple of tension ran through the men. Dermot straightened up, his face serious. ‘What you talkin’ about?’

‘Denzil Obi was found dead in his flat this morning,’ said Sam. ‘Beaten to a pulp.’

‘So it’s a not social call but a murder enquiry,’ Gene declared. ‘Any of you monkeys feel like having a chat? Eh? Anyone here know enough words to tell us anything?’

Silent faces stared back at them.

‘One at a time, lads, no need to rush,’ growled Gene.

Sam looked from one to the other, and it was then that he noticed a lean, wiry man – more sleek and well-toned than bulked-up and brawny – who was sporting a spider tattoo on the base of his neck, almost identical to Denzil’s. For a fleeting moment, Sam and the man with the tattoo made eye contact – and then the man looked nervously away.

At that moment, Gene spotted the man with the tattoo, and at once strode towards him.

‘Oi! What about you? Eh? Knew Denzil, did you? Eh? Speak up, lad! Or would you rather chat about this under the lights down at the cop shop?’

‘Hey, constable, you lay off Spider!’ Dermot protested.

‘I don’t like spiders – I squash ‘em,’ said Gene. ‘Or pull their legs off and flush ‘em down the plug hole. But only if they ignore me – you get my drift? Eh? Spider?’

Spider gave Gene a glowering look. He tightened his fists. Gene tightened his.

‘I said lay off ‘im!’ Dermot cried. He ducked under the rope and waddled aggressively towards Gene on his short, stocky legs.

‘Look, out, Sam,’ said Gene, looking down at Dermot. ‘Looks like I’ve upset the Lollypop Guild.’

Dermot planted himself protectively in front of Spider: ‘Let him be, constable. Him and Denzil were buddies – that ain’t no secret. Real close.’

‘Best friends?’ asked Sam.

‘Like brothers,’ said Dermot.

‘Faggots, were they? Nancy boys? Like to dip your wick in the ol’ chocolate pot, eh Spider?’

‘Officer, you’re out of line!’ the Irishmen cried. ‘You’re well out of line!’

‘What you gonna do about it?’ asked Gene, leaning down so that his face was level with Dermot’s. ‘You gonna get Sleepy and Bashful to give me a going over?’

‘Guv, please,’ said Sam quietly, trying to calm the situation. The atmosphere was tense beyond belief. The men in the gym seemed ready to rush them.

Maybe the machismo in the air’s gotten to him, San thought. Maybe he can’t help himself.

Spider stared furiously at Gene for a few moments, his eyes red and watery, and then he turned and stormed away.

‘Let the fella grieve in peace,’ Dermot said. ‘Spider’s a good lad. Like I told you – him and Denzil, they were like brothers the pair of ‘em. Think of his feelings. Let him shed a few tears. Then he’ll talk to you.’

‘He’ll talk to me now,’ growled Gene. ‘You might be the leprechaun’s bollocks in this shite-hole, Murphy, but when it comes to a murder enquiry you’re less to me than a puddle of pissed-out Guinness.’

‘I’m warnin’ you …’ muttered Dermot at the back of his throat.

‘Get back to Santa’s gotto, there’s rockin’ ‘orses need wrapping,’ said Gene, and he pushed past the little Irish men to go after Spider. But at once Dermot planted himself directly in Gene’s way, blocking him – and as he did, the other men in the room pushed forward to back him up. Sam braced himself. The anger in the room was like an electric charge. Hands were clenched. Muscles tensed. Eyes narrowed. The whole gym seemed to thrum and vibrate with a deep, pulsing, masculine energy, like the prelude to a storm or the first ominous rumblings of an earthquake. The thrill of imminent violence filled the room.

Sam froze.

Dermot prepared to throw a punch.

The boxers got ready to join him.

Gene puffed himself up.

It was then that they heard the gasp of a woman a few yards away to their right. It was an almost sexual sound. The lemony aroma of Charlie cut through the fug of sweaty men like the reek of powerful pheromones. Sam and Gene glanced across and saw bleached blonde hair, scarlet lipstick caked across wrinkled lips, a tight-fitting, zebra-patterned leather skirt, fishnet stockings encasing muscular legs, white stilettos. The balls-to-the-wall old bird who stared so frankly at the men in the gym raised her left hand to her painted mouth and teased a red lacquered nail between twin sets of nicotine-darkened teeth; as she did so, her right hand ran down her solidly curved body, from zebra-striped breasts to leather-clad crotch, in a single fluid movement of barely suppressed animal arousal.

‘Hands in your pockets, boys, your five-tissue fantasy’s arrived,’ Gene observed.

CHAPTER THREE: SLAPPER

‘I’m Stella, and this is my gym,’ said the woman in the zebra-striped top, lounging back in her chair and planting her stilettoed feet on her desk. ‘This place is mine. Mine. You come into Stella’s Gym with questions, I’m the one you speak to first. Got that?’

Sam didn’t know whether things would have kicked off had Stella not arrived the moment she did. But whatever the score, her sudden appearance had defused the situation. All eyes had turned to her as she stood there, running her hands over her own body and chewing her glistening bottom lip. Sam’s first thought was that she was somebody’s drunk and unpleasantly randy aunt, but whoever she was she radiated some sort of authority over the men in the gym. They respected her. Gene had sensed this too; instinctively, he’d turned his attention from the wretched Spider and the plucky Irishman defending him, and instead focused solely on this high-heeled, peroxided Amazon.

Beckoning Gene and Sam with a red-clawed finger, she had brought them through a door that led from the gymnasium area into her private office. It was lined with framed photographs of big men, boxers every one of them: some were groomed and suited; some sleek and oiled and posing in the gym; others sweating in the ring during a fight; not a few gushing blood and hardly able to see through swollen eyes – one or two lying sparko and splattered on the canvas, defeated and senseless.

‘Didn’t expect to find a bird running this gaff,’ said Gene, casting his glance around the office.

‘Thought the name might’ve given it away,’ Stella said, not looking up from filing her talons. ‘I was born into boxing. My dad, his dad, his dad before him. It’s in my blood. It’s my life.’

‘You should’ve been born a bloke,’ said Gene.

‘So should you, Detective Chief Inspector whatever you said your name was.’

‘The name’s Hunt. Gene Hunt.’

‘And I’m Detective Inspector Sam Ty-’

Gene silenced him with a curt wave of the hand, like Sam was cramping his style on a date. Which perhaps, in a way, he was. Gene’s eyes were fixed directly on Stella’s – and hers were now fixed on his. They were locked onto each other, oblivious to the rest of the world, like lovers. Sam fell silent and gave the two of them their space; it seemed wrong to intrude.

‘Denzil Obi’s got himself killed,’ Gene growled. ‘You know who I’m talking about.’

‘Of course I do. Denzil was one of my boys. I’m sorry to hear he’s come a cropper. Still, it happens.’

‘Does it?’

‘In this game, aye, it does. Boxing’s a tough world.’

‘What do you know about Denzil?’

‘This and that. Depends who’s asking.’

‘The Law, that’s who’s asking, now answer the bloody question.’

‘That’s no way to address a lady in her office.’

‘And that’s no way to treat a police officer on a murder enquiry,’ Gene said. ‘You’re starting to sound to me like somebody who knows more than they’re letting on.’

‘Little me?’ replied Stella, and she turned her attention back to filing her nails. ‘I don’t know nuthin’ … leastways, not about that sort of thing.’

‘Who killed Denzil Obi? Any ideas?’

‘None.’

‘Make a guess.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Pick a name out the bloody hat.’

‘Constable, I don’t know anything.’

‘Bollocks.’

‘Not a thing.’

‘Double bollocks.’

‘It’s not my job to nick villains, Mr DCI Gene Hunt. You’re the policemen.’

‘You better believe it. And as a policeman I can take you straight into custody and put the right royal squeeze on you, sugar. The right royal squeeze.’

Stella dropped the nail file onto the desk, moistened her red lips with her tongue, and looked up at Gene through her long fake lashes. ‘So. If I don’t cooperate, will you haul me down the station in handcuffs?’

‘Before you can say ‘post-menopausal slag’, you bet I will, toots.’

Stella took her feet down from the desk, stood up, and planted her hands on her leather-clad hips.

‘Right then,’ she said. ‘I’m not co-operating.’

‘Then I’ll have to start getting rough.’

‘Then get rough.’

Gene glowered at her: ‘I’m not bluffing.’

‘Neither am I,’ said Stella, her voice now a husky whisper. ‘Neither am I.’

Gene moved closer, his face hard, his eyes harder. Stella pointed her breasts at him and lifted her chin defiantly. Sam could hear them both breathing noisily.

And then, it all happened. Whether it was Gene who made the first move or of it was Stella, Sam didn’t see. All he knew was that there was a rapid flurry of movement, thrown fists, slaps, kicks, and a sudden torrent of things swept from the desk as Stella was thrown roughly over it and handcuffed.

‘Don’t just stand there gawping, Tyler!’ Gene barked as he held Stella down, pressing her with all his weight to subdue her struggling. ‘Help me getting this wildcat into the motor!’

‘We can’t take her out through the gym, Guv, not in cuffs! The boys out there will rip us to pieces!’

Gene thought about this, even as he renewed his grasp on his thrashing captive.

‘You got a point,’ he said, and hauled Stella upright, clamping one arm round her throat. ‘We’ll just have to move this mucky mare the way they do with pianos.’

‘Guv …?’

‘The window, Tyler. Get it open.’

Sam hesitated. Surely this wasn’t right? Was there no better way than this?

Gene suddenly roared: ‘Not next week, dopey nuts! Right now!’

And catching the excited gleam in Stella’s eyes, Sam realized that for all her thrashing and struggling, Stella herself would have no objections to such rough handling.

Don’t think about it, Sam. Just do it. Let’s just get this bloody thing over and done with!

By means that could only be described as undignified, they got Stella to the Cortina. Gene bunged her into the back seat like she was a sack of old taters. At once, she struggled to come back at him, teeth bared, eyes flashing fiercely. Having both her hands securely cuffed behind her back didn’t daunt her for one moment from taking them both on simultaneously.

‘Get in the back and sit on it!’ Gene ordered, shoving Sam onto her. ‘Keep it under control until we get to the station.’

Sam find himself sprawled across Stella, fighting blindly with her, trying to grab some part of her so he could hold her still.

‘Get this weedy boy off me!’ she cried, thrusting her knee into his stomach. ‘Get the guv’nor back here!’

‘The guv’nor is driving!’ growled Gene, planting himself behind the wheel and furiously revving the engine. He stamped on the gas and the Cortina lurched forward.

Sam grappled horribly with Stella as she hissed insults at him and demanded the personal attentions of the guv. But when she realised Gene was not going to relinquish his role and skipper of the Cortina, she fell into a sulk. It gave Sam precious time to get his breath back.

But the moment they reached the station, it all kicked off again. Gene wrenched on the handbrake like he meant to snap the handle and stormed round the back, grabbing Sam with both hands and hurling him out of the way. Sam fell against the hard pavement and saw Stella going crazy, aiming for Gene’s eyes with two-footed rabbit kicks from her stilettos. But Gene got hold of her waist, dragged her out, and flung him over his shoulder, marching off with her like a Viking bringing home a plundered wench.

They burst into the CID room, Gene red-faced and striding, Stella thrashing and screaming abuse, Sam panting and trying to keep up. Chris’s eyes bugged halfway out of his head at the sight; Ray’s mouth dropped open so that his chewing gum fell into his typewriter; Annie sprung up from her seat, looking confused, not sure if what she was witnessing was an actual arrest or some sort of blokey prank.

‘I got me some cheesecake,’ Gene declared to his team as he lumbered by, slapping Stella’s arse so powerfully that the sound of it echoed round the office like a gunshot.

‘Call that a slap?!’ Stella yelled at him as he carried her away down the corridor. ‘Harder! Harder, you fairy!’

Gene booted open the door of the Lost & Found Room and disappeared inside. Sam paused, exchanging silent looks with his open-mouthed colleagues.

‘It’s like a caveman’s wedding,’ he said. ‘Back to work, everyone. Me and the guv have got it all under control. Everything’s fine.’

Nobody believed that any more than Sam himself did. Nervously, he turned and followed Gene into the Lost & Found room.

Her hands cuffed behind her back, Stella sat, panting and sweating, on a wooden chair, surrounded by abandoned bicycles, unclaimed briefcases, and all the rest of Manchester’s unwanted bric-a-brac that had found its way here over the years. Sam tried to keep his attention away from the way Stella was sitting; like a low-rent, fag-stained Sharon Stone, she had her legs open just that bit too far. Her blonde hair had tumbled over one eye. Her breasts rose and fell heavily beneath the zebra-patterned fabric of her top; she was Moll Flanders meets Bet Lynch on a bad day.

Gene fished out a packet of Embassy No.6’s from his jacket pocket.

‘You crumpled my fags, you fruitcake,’ he accused her, carefully removing a wonky fag from the packet. ‘That, toots, is crossing the bloody line.’

He lit up and drew on the nicotine like it was the elixir of life itself.

‘Right,’ said Sam at last. ‘Let’s all calm down. I don’t think any of us have got the energy for any more messing about.’

‘Speak for yourself, young ‘un,’ said Stella, her eyes fixed on Gene. Her lipstick was smeared across one cheek, her Dusty Springfield mascara was all over her face, and yet, dishevelled as she was, there was still a fierce fire burning in her eyes and in her blood. ‘You brought me here to pump me with questions. Well then – get pumping.’

Sam sighed and said calmly: ‘Stella, there’s no need for all this. All we want from you is information about-’

‘Not you, girly-bollocks,’ Stella interrupted, still staring at Gene. ‘Him. The real man. The guv’nor.’

Gene lounged against the wall, the fag smouldering in his gob, and silently narrowed his eyes at her.

‘You want to pump me?’ Stella glared. ‘Then pump me. Like only you know how.’

For several highly charged seconds, Gene fixed her with his stare. The air was thick with the mingled aromas of Gene’s Brut and Stella’s Charlie. Once again, Sam felt he was intruding on a private moment between these two – a ghastly, stomach-churning private moment he would rather not witness. It was like being in a seedy backstreet club. It was worse than the coroner with the whelks.

Gene exhausted his cigarette and heeled it into the floor. Then, very much taking his time, he began to pace slowly up and down behind Stella’s back.

‘Denzil Obi,’ he said, his voice low, his manner controlled. ‘I’d appreciate it if you’d tell me what you know about him.’

‘He were a nice enough lad,’ said Stella. ‘In his way.’

‘Meaning?’

‘He didn’t have a good start in life. Had to make his way as best he could.’

‘Bit of a Jack-the-lad, was he?’

Stella shrugged. Gene paced.

‘He had ambitions to become a boxer,’ Gene said. ‘What can you tell me about that?’

‘He weren’t a bad welterweight. Nifty. Bit of a rough diamond, but with work he could have gone places.’

‘It’s not the places he could have gone that interest me but the places he came from. The Black Widow had a seedy past, didn’t he. Illegal fights. Bare-knuckle bouts. He must have rubbed shoulders with some right horrible bastards.’

‘Most like,’ said Stella.

‘And pissed a few of ‘em off in the process.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘Any ideas who?’

‘Nope.’

‘’Course you do.’

‘I’m legit, Mr DCI. I know nothing about the underworld.’

‘Pull the other one, luv, it lights up and plays Leo Sayer.’

‘I don’t associate with villains,’ protested Stella. ‘Not willingly, anyway. I’m straight.’

‘Straight? Straight?!’ Gene grasped her by the hair and twister he head round. ‘You’re as kinky as a bloody corkscrew, and in more ways than one. Names! I want bloody names! Denzil Obi got on the wrong side of someone – who was it? Give me a name!’

‘Make me.’

‘I said give me a name!

‘And I said make me!’

‘Give me a name! Give me a name!’ And now Gene began to punctuate his words with a series of slaps. ‘Give!’ – Slap! – ‘Me!’ – Slap! – ‘A’ – Slap! – ‘Blood!’ – Slap! – ‘Ee name!’ – Slap, slap!

Sam’s instinct was to intervene, but he restrained himself. Nobody would thank him for stepping in, least of all Stella. What was going on between these two was something too murky, too unsavoury for Sam to get involved with. He was better off out of it. He didn’t want to be soiled.

Gene yanked Stella’s face closer to his own and hissed into it: ‘Big fellas getting handy – that’s what gets your juices bubbling, isn’t it. That’s why you run that seedy gym. Watching blokes beating eight buckets of shite out of each other turns you right on, don’t it!’

‘Oh yes!’ The words came out of her as a gasp.

‘And getting on the receiving end of it tweaks your dial even more!’

‘Oh yes …!’

‘You dirty randy kinky scrubber,’ Gene snarled, and he hauled her up from the chair. One of her white stilettos went skittering across the floor. He gripped her by the shoulders and shook her; Stella’s head lolled about wildly, her hair falling all over her face, her manacled hands clenching and flexing behind her back.

‘You want the rough stuff? Eh?’ he barked.

‘As rough as you can make it, Guv’nor.’

‘Careful what you wish for … you might just get it.’

Stella was panting hard, pushing her heaving breasts into Gene’s barrel chest: ‘You’re … You’re …’

‘Speak up, petal!’

‘You’re getting close to making me … making me …’ She was breathing so hard she could barely get the words out. ‘… Making me talk.’

Gene span her round and yanked her arms up awkwardly behind her. She let out a cry – a cry of ecstatic pain.

‘Talk!’ Gene ordered. ‘Talk, you pervy slag. Or would you rather I turn you over to my colleague DI Tyler? He won’t treat you tough like this. Oh no. He’ll be soft and gentle. Very gentle.’

‘No!’ Stella cried.

‘He won’t lay so much as a finger on you. He’ll be patient, keeping his temper, treating you like a lady, with respect.’

‘No, please!’

‘Hour after hour of it! Cups of tea. Polite questioning. Playing it by the book. Never losing his rag – not once. Being nice!’

‘Please! Don’t leave me alone with him!’

‘You don’t want the Tyler treatment? Then get talking!’

‘Denzil and Spider!’ Stella panted, struggling to speak through the delicious pain. ‘They grew up together. Spider used to stick up for Denzil when the other kids picked on him and called him a coon and all that. They got them tattoos done together, to show they were like … you know, blood brothers. They didn’t have no family, not really – just each other.’

‘Very touching,’ said Gene. ‘But this a murder enquiry, not This Is Your Life. I want to know who’d have a grudge against Denzil!’

‘Denzil and Spider got into the word of illegal bare knuckle fights when they were still just kids,’ Stella went on. ‘It was all they could do to survive. Between them, they went up against some right hard bastards … big-money fighters, real legends …’

‘Names! Names!’

‘Too many to mention!’

‘Give me names!’

‘Lenny Gorman, Bartley Shaw, Patsy O’Riordan out of Kilburn. I could name a dozen others. Big men … real men … hard men …’ Her eyes glittered at the thought. ‘Any one of them could have had a grudge against Denzil.’

‘Why? Why would they have a grudge against Denzil?’

‘It’s what the underworld’s like,’ said Stella. ‘Fights that get fixed, fellas making off with winnings what aren’t theirs, blokes paid to bust other bloke’s hands. It’s the way it is. Betrayal and revenge. Denzil and Spider got involved in some pretty scummy business to earn themselves a crust. They were no different from anyone else in that world. Or in your world, Mr DCI Gene beautiful beautiful Hunt!’

‘Knock off the flattery and stick to the facts!’ snorted Gene, rewarding her compliment with a cuff round the ear that sent one of her dangly earrings flying off to join her missing stiletto.

‘They had a past, that’s no secret,’ Stella went on. ‘But they were good lads at heart. They were just trying to survive in a world that didn’t give a stuff about ‘em. And now boxing’s changing, offering a chance for boys like them to go legit, turn pro. They saw a chance to have a real life, a proper life, all above board and legal. That’s why they wound up at my gym. I got ‘em training under Dermot. He was Denzil and Spider’s mentor. I told ‘em, I said work hard, lads, do what Dermot tells you, and I’ll I see you meet all the right people, get real chances to make a go of it. But it looks like Denzil’s past caught up with him.’

‘And if someone’s settling an old score with Denzil, then odds on that they’ll want to settle it with Spider too.’

‘Most like,’ said Stella. ‘If I knew who it was, I’d tell you. I’d let you rough me up some more first, but I’d tell you.’

‘Aye, I think you would at that,’ said Gene, nodding to himself. ‘One more thing before we adjourn for scones and tea. We found a bullet in Denzil’s gob, unfired, shoved down after he died. What’s that all about?’

‘A sign,’ said Stella. ‘No, not a sign … more like a rebuke.’

‘A rebuke?’

‘Them boxers in the underworld – they’re bastards, but like all bastards they’ve got a code of honour. The only weapons they fight with are their fists. Anyone using guns or knives or baseball bats, they’re seen as … as disrespectful. Cowards. Not real men.’

‘So,’ mused Gene, his eyes narrowing. ‘At some point in his sordid past, Denzil Obi – and probably Spider along with him – got paid to give some bloke a straightener. And they used a weapon to do it, maybe a gun. And the bloke they walloped has either got a very aggrieved relative, or else he didn’t snuff it and is now feeling perky enough to go looking for revenge.’

‘And he carried out that revenge with his bare hands,’ put in Sam at last. ‘Denzil was punched to death. No weapon.’

‘Just a bullet down his wind pipe as if to say guns are for poofters,’ said Gene. ‘Very poetic.’

‘I’ve told you everything I know,’ said Stella. ‘You’ll have to speak to Spider if you want more – but I don’t think he’ll talk to you.’

‘No. He didn’t seem very chatty,’ said Gene. ‘Where can we find him when he’s not at the gym?’

‘You’ll be able to slap his home address out of me, I promise you.’

‘Appreciated,’ said Gene, releasing her from his powerful grip. ‘Well, Angela, you’ve been very helpful in our enquiries. Thank you for your time and cooperation. You can put your shoe and earring back on now. I’ll leave one of my colleagues, Detective Sergeant Carling, to get that address from you. He’s the chap with the moustache, you might have glimpsed him on the way in here. You’ll like him. He’s pretty handy.’

‘But not a patch on you, I bet,’ said Stella, looking languidly up at him.

‘Few men are, luv. Few men are.’

And Gene, who was indeed some kind of a gentleman, offered her a post-interview cigarette.

CHAPTER FOUR: GET HER TO THE GREEK

Night was settling over Manchester, and the boys from CID had repaired to the fag-stained snug of the Railway Arms. After his session with Stella in the Lost & Found Room, Gene had worked up a majestic thirst; Ray, too, had earned himself a drink, having been obliged to slap Spider’s address out of her; and even Chris needed a stiff one, his innocent young eyes still goggling at the sights he had witnessed. Given all the giving and receiving of pleasure through violence going on in CID today, Sam half expected to hear the strains of Blue Velvet playing on the pub stereo – but no, it was just Steely Dan singing Do It Again.

‘It’s dem tursty coppers again!’ grinned Nelson from behind the bar. He turned up his West Indian accent to 10 for their benefit. ‘Is it de beer or de music or mah bee-ootiful face dat keeps bringing you back in here?’

‘Beer, music, then face, Nelson, in that order,’ said Sam. ‘Don’t be offended.’

‘If you were four hot ladies sayin’ dat, den I’d be ahffended! What can I be gettin’ you boys?’

‘Four pints of best. God knows, we’ve earned them today.’

‘Makin’ dis city safer for de lahks of me – you surely have earned ‘em!’ Nelson beamed. He was really putting on his routine tonight. As he pulled the pints, he shot a glance at Gene: ‘Hey Mister DCI, you lookin’ lahk de cat what licked up aaall de cream!’

‘The guv’s in luv,’ smirked Ray. ‘He met the girl of his dreams today.’

‘There is a line, Raymond,’ intoned Gene. ‘I’d hate to see you cross it.’

‘She’s more your age than mine, Guv,’ Ray said, winking at Sam. ‘Hey Chris, if you don’t mind the guv’s leftovers maybe you’d like a go on her.’

‘Stella?! Give over, I’m no granny-sniffer!’ protested Chris.

‘She’d make a man of you.’

‘She’d make mincemeat of me!’ Chris cried. ‘I’m not into all that kinky stuff anyway.’

Ray sniggered. Gene looked sceptical. Chris got defensive.

‘I’m not!’ he insisted. ‘If you’re thinking of them magazines, I told you, I was looking after them for a mate. You’re the one who keeps bringing that plastic thing in, Ray!’

‘Oh please, not the plastic thing,’ groaned Sam, handing pints across. ‘I don’t want to think about the plastic thing.’

‘No plastic things, no kinky wrinklies, not here, not tonight,’ ordained Gene, and they all lifted their pint glasses. ‘Leave the filth of the world on the doorstep, lads. Let’s keep the Railway Arms hallowed ground.’

‘Amen to dat!’ put in Nelson.

Enveloped in the thick, cancerous atmosphere of the pub, Sam, Gene, Chris and Ray raised their rich, golden pints and drew deeply on them.

As Sam wiped away his froth moustache, Nelson leant close to him, dropped his exaggerated accent, and said in a low voice: ‘Only four of you this evening, Sam?’

‘I’m meeting Annie later, somewhere else,’ Sam whispered back.

‘Nelson’s little establishment not good enough for the likes of you two, eh?’

‘We’re having dinner together.’

‘You can get dinner here,’ Nelson grinned. ‘Two bowls of Smash and a selection of fish fingers.’ And turning on his accent again he added; ‘Birdseye’s finest! On de house! Wit mah compliments!’

Sam laughed and toasted him with his pint glass.

‘So,’ declared Gene, indicating to Nelson to get another round on the go, ‘pie and chips with DI Jugs more appealing than drinks with the boys is it, Samuel?’

‘It’s not the pie and chips he’s looking forward to,’ said Ray, and Chris sniggered like a schoolboy.

‘Actually, we’re going Greek, so it’s more likely to be calamari and stuffed vine leaves,’ said Sam with dignity, ‘if any of you lot know what they are.’

‘I know what stuffing vine leaves is all about,’ smirked Chris. ‘It was in them magazines I was looking after for me mate.’

‘Is that why the pages were stuck together?’ asked Ray.

‘I spilt me calamari,’ said Chris.

‘More than once,’ said Ray.

‘This is like having a drink with the fourth form,’ sighed Sam, and put down his pint glass. ‘I’d love to hang about and listen to this cracking banter all night, but the table’s booked and Annie will be waiting. So, gentlemen, if you will excuse me?’

Chris opened his mouth to say something daft, but Gene cut in gruffly: ‘No more hilarious gags from you, Christopher. I’m very fond of this shirt, I’d hate to ruin it by splitting my sides.’ And he glowered so menacingly that Chris hid behind his pint glass. Gene went on; ‘Before you leave us, Sam, I’ve got some shop talk for you – for all three of you. Whoever killed Denzil Obi is a dangerous man – an extremely dangerous man – and right now, while we’re stood here, he’s running around as loose as a whore’s drawers. It’s likely he’ll go after Spider whatever-his-name-is. It’s also likely Spider won’t want us around – he’ll be more interested in avenging his beloved blood brother. So – we’re going to keep an eye on Spider and see if the killer reveals himself by coming for him. But that doesn’t mean we can just sit about on our arses. I want to get to this murdering bastard before any more blood’s spilt on my manor, is that understood?’

Sam, Ray and Chris spoke as one: ‘Yes, Guv.’

‘The man we’re after is a boxer – a boxer with small hands,’ said Gene.

‘How small’s small, guv?’ asked Ray.

Gene grabbed Sam’s hand and forced his finger straight.

‘Our measuring stick,’ Gene said. ‘The width of the killer’s knuckles match the length of Sam Tyler’s pokey-finger.’

‘What bit of the boss can we use if we can’t get to his finger?’ asked Ray, grinning at Sam. ‘You see, my finger’s too big. Way too big.’

Chris tried his own finger against Sam’s and was delighted to find that they matched exactly – ‘Look at that! Peas in a pod!’ – but then Sam forced his hand free from Gene’s grasp.

‘This is my last word on the matter for tonight, gentlemen,’ said Gene. ‘Tomorrow, I want leads – I want information – I want the name of the killer and where we can find him and what he likes on his chips – everything. Understood?’

‘Yes, Guv.’

‘Very well. Sam, your dopey bit of crumpet’ll be gagging for her ouzo by now – bugger off and entertain her.’

‘Will do, Guv,’ said Sam. ‘I’ll see everyone first thing in the morning, then.’

And as he made for the door, he heard Gene drain his pint, slam his empty glass down, and say: ‘Right, let’s talk about birds and football and motors.’

Sam stepped out into the deep, dark Manchester night, pulling his jacket around him tighter to fend off the cold. Away in the distance, across a bleak expanse of open ground, he saw coloured lights whirling and flashing, heard a cacophony of screaming and amplified voices and raucous music. For a moment, he felt a sudden sting of fear, as if he had glimpsed the outskirts of Hell.

Don’t be such an idiot, Sam, he told himself at once. It’s just the fairground.

Tony Barnard’s Fair. He recalled standing high up on the rooftop of CID and seeing the planes trailing their banners across the sky. And then, in the next instant, he recalled her – the Test Card Girl – goading him, mocking him.

‘Don’t you want to know the truth, Sam? Don’t you want to know what I know … about Annie?’

Round and round she went, buzzing through the inside of his head like a trapped wasp, tormenting him with vague doubts and unnameable fears, poisoning his feelings for Annie.

Resolutely, he marched along the street, his back to the noise and colour of the fairground.

There is no dark secret about Annie. It’s all lies. It’s just some crap from deep in the subconscious rising to the surface. A waking nightmare. It’s nothing. It’s less than nothing.

Less than nothing. But could he be so sure? If the Test Card Girl was less than nothing, why did the mere sight of her freeze the blood in his veins? Why did he even now, just thinking of her, feel as if the shadow of death had fallen across him? Why, only moments before, had he glimpsed the far off lights of the fairground and thought – of all things – of hell?

He stopped. He listened. The city had fallen silent. Unnaturally silent. Nothing moved except for his heart, which he now found was pounding furiously.

And then, up ahead, he saw her – the Girl – bathed in the unearthly orange glow of a sodium streetlamp. She was standing motionless, watching him, dressed in her little black dress, her face pale, her eyes filled with the pretence of sadness. She hugged her bandaged doll, then, mockingly, slipped away into a dark alleyway.

Sam rushed after her, tore down the alley, and burst out into the street at the far end. The shops were shut up and dark. The street lights were all out. The whole street sat in an unnatural, smothering gloom.

And there, just visible as a pale shape in the darkness, was the Test Card Girl standing motionless, staring back at him.

‘Why are you doing this?!’ Sam bellowed at her. His muffled, echoless voice was swallowed by the filthy blackness. ‘What the hell are you trying to tell me?! Why don’t you just come straight out with it?!’

He began striding towards the Girl, his shoulders back, his jaw firmly set. Just as the darkness smothered his voice, so it seemed to cling to his body and limbs like treacle, slowing him, dragging him back, entombing him. He forced his way forward.

‘I know this isn’t real!’

He could barely move, so heavily did the cloying darkness weigh down on him.

‘No more mind games, you little brat! Spit it out. Get it off your chest. Then bugger off out of my head forever and leave me in peace!’

The Test Card Girl moved not a muscle. Her pale face glowed dimly.

‘My place is with Annie! And her place is with me! And when I chose to come back here, to this time, to 1973, I did the right thing! And there’s nothing you can do or say that’ll make me change my mind!’

He tried to reach her, but now he was being forced to his knees by the invisible pressure that bore down on him. He fought against it, but it was too great for him. It felt like he was being engulfed by a great avalanche of damp soil, crushing his body, filling his mouth, choking his lungs.

It’s like being buried alive …

And then, quite suddenly, everything changed. The waking nightmare vanished. The deserted high street was now bustling with people and traffic. He could see the lights of late-night newsagents and off-licenses, the illuminated windows of restaurants and chip shops, the brightly illuminated front of a cinema showing Jesus Christ Superstar. The Test Card Girl was nowhere to be seen. Manchester was just Manchester again. And there, standing outside Eleni’s Greek taverna, was Annie, stamping her feet to keep warm as she waited for him. In that moment, she seemed like an emblem for Life itself. Sam pushed from his mind the horrible memory of suffocation and death – he pulled his jacket straight and ran a hand through his hair – and then he strode forwards, resolute, uncowed, undefeated by the worst nightmares the Test Card Girl could throw at him.

Tonight isn’t for that little brat with the dolly in her arms. Tonight is for me … Me and Annie.

When Annie turned her head and caught sight of him, her sudden smile swept all horrors and fears before it, like a steel plough through snow.

Eleni’s Taverna was authentically Greek only in as much as it had moussaka on the menu and the theme from Zorba playing on an endless loop in the background. There were empty bottles of sangria hanging on the walls and a pair of castanets dangling from beneath a sombrero, all of which suggested a very confused concept of Greek life and culture. But for all that, the food was passable and the atmosphere was warm and Annie was happy and relaxed there, and that was all Sam cared about.

‘I don’t think our waiter’s really Greek,’ he confided, pouring Annie a refill of wine.

‘He sounds Greek,’ said Annie.

‘Sort of. In a strange way. But only with customers. I heard him in the kitchen shouting at the chef. He sounded like Bobby Charlton.’

‘They’ve got a model of some old buildings,’ said Annie, indicating some tourist tat sitting in an alcove.

‘Annie, it’s a model of the Colosseum,’ said Sam. And then he added: ‘You know, we should go and see it. Together.’

‘But we can see it right now, Sam, it’s just over there.’

‘No, no, I mean the real thing. In Rome.’

But she was smiling at him, teasing him.

‘I’ll take you to Rome,’ Sam declared. ‘How does that sound?’

‘It’s a long way, Sam. And expensive!’

Sam opened his mouth to say they could easily pop over for a weekend – and then reminded himself that here in 1973, flying visits to Rome were out of the league for humble DI’s like himself to afford.

‘I’ll get you there one day,’ Sam promised.

‘First Greece, then Italy,’ Annie said, raising her eyebrows. ‘You must have ants in your pants.’

‘I lead a jetset playboy lifestyle. Play your cards right and you could be part of it.’

‘A chance to live the dream, eh? How can I refuse?’

Live the dream. Is that all Sam was doing – living a dream, a fantasy? It was the thought that had been haunting him for so long, that none of this existed outside of his own head.

It exists, he told himself. It’s real. It’s more real than life in 2006, anyway. Stop thinking about all that. Don’t let the doubts gnaw away at you like this.

He was determined to rid his mind of all the poison planted there by the Test Card Girl. When he was with Annie, the world made more sense. It seemed right and natural to be sitting with her in a restaurant – even in this place – sharing a bottle of wine and just joking around. His place was with Annie. He knew that, deep inside, without reservation. And he was damned if he was going to let anyone or anything destroy that feeling. To hell with the Test Card Girl and her song-and-dance routines; they were nothing – wisps of smoke rising from his subconscious – bad dreams to be woken up from and forgotten.

And yet. And yet.

‘Tell me about your past, Annie,’ he said, topping up her wine glass.

‘My past?!’ exclaimed Annie. ‘Oh, it’s one big riot of glamorous people and exotic locations.’

‘I don’t know anything about your family, your parents …’

Annie rolled her eyes. ‘I haven’t come here to talk about all them!’

‘I’m interested. What are your mum and dad like? Have you got brothers or sisters?’

‘You’re starting to sound like an immigration officer.’

‘I just want to know,’ said Sam. ‘How were things at university when you did psychology? Did you have lots of friends? And lots of boyfriends? And what was it like when you started in the police, before I showed up?’

But Annie just smiled and waved all that away. Why? Why wouldn’t she engage with him about her past? Was she genuinely not interested? Was she hiding something? Or was there some other reason?

Suddenly, their waiter – who went by the name of Stavros – paused at their table.

‘Is-a every-a-thing-a all-a-right-a?’ he enquired.

‘Si, grazie mille,’ said Sam.

‘Ah, you-a speak-a da Greek-a!’ Stavros beamed.

‘I’m fluent,’ said Sam, fixing him with a look.

‘Ah! Good! Good!’ grinned Stavros, his face locking into a strange rictus. ‘Moltos bonnos, monsieuro. Avanti, avanti.’

And with that he vanished back into the kitchens, sharpish.

‘I take it all back,’ said Sam. ‘He’s 100% Greek. Absolutely.’

‘I haven’t been out like this for ages,’ said Annie. ‘I know it’s a silly place, but it’s doing me the world of good. Work’s been getting me down.’

‘Are you still trying to get that girl to speak to you?’

‘Tracy Porter? No. No, she’s refusing to name her boyfriend as the bloke who beat her up. She’s discharged herself from hospital and gone back to him. So that’s that. Case closed … until she turns up in A&E again, beaten to a pulp once more. And then I suppose we’ll go through the same song and dance all over again.’

‘Like I said before, you can only do what you can do. But Annie, I didn’t come here with you to talk about work. I wanted to talk about us.’

‘Of course, Sam. Sorry. My head’s been so full of that stuff.’

‘I know. No need to apologize.’ He smiled at her, and she smiled back. ‘Do you remember, Annie, a little while ago – I told you I had a strange feeling of needing to be somewhere important … but I didn’t know where or why. Do you remember that?’

‘I remember it,’ said Annie. ‘Of course I do. I told you then that I felt the same thing.’

‘And do you still have that feeling?’

‘Sometimes. And you?’

‘Often,’ said Sam. ‘Most days, in fact. It won’t go away.’

‘What does it mean, Sam? Are we going slowly bonkers together?’

‘I don’t think so. And if we are … well, I can’t think of anyone I’d rather end up sharing a padded cell with than you.’

‘How very romantic,’ said Annie.

‘I’m not sure that came out quite right. Anyway, it doesn’t matter, because I’m pretty sure we’re not going mad.’ He tried to push out of his mind memories of coming here to the restaurant – mad memories of the Test Card Girl and the hallucinatory worlds she kept dragging Sam into. ‘Do you believe in Fate, Annie?’

‘I don’t know. It’s not something I think about. Why? Do you think it’s Fate that’s making us feel the way we do?’

‘That’s how it feels.’ He looked for the right words and completely failed to find them. ‘Oh, I don’t know. I can’t express it.’

‘Can I tell you something, Sam?’ Annie asked, dropping her voice.

‘Something confidential?’

‘Yes. It’s about that girl who got beaten up – Tracy Porter – but it’s about me too.’

‘Go on.’

Annie thought for a moment, then said: ‘There was something about her that kept playing on my mind. I lost sleep over it. I thought it was just one of those things … you know, pressures of the job … but now I’m not so sure.’ She paused, looking for the words, then went on slowly: ‘I can’t express it any better than you can, Sam, but … it’s like … it’s like when I looked at Tracy, I felt I was somehow seeing myself … or … a version of myself. No, that’s not quite it. It’s … it’s like …’

‘It’s like you needed to save Tracy Porter in order to save yourself,’ said Sam.

‘Maybe. Something like that,’ said Annie, looking intently at him from across the table. ‘But … it doesn’t make any sense. Save myself from what?’

‘The million-dollar question. I feel the same. And I ask myself the same question, Annie: what is it that’s out there that I’m so afraid of?’

‘Because there is something out there … isn’t there, Sam.’

Sam nodded, and said: ‘God knows what, but yes, I think there is.’

Instinctively, they reached for each other across the table. Their fingers interlaced.

‘Whatever it is out there that’s so frightening,’ said Annie, ‘it’s not the likes of Patsy O’Riordan. It’s something … something very different.’

‘Patsy O’Riordan?’

‘That’s Tracy’s boyfriend,’ said Annie. ‘That’s the thug who works at Barnard’s Fairground. He’s the one who beats her up.’

‘Patsy O’Riordan …’ muttered Sam to himself. He knew that name. Dammit, he’d heard it somewhere before. But where? When?

‘I’m not frightened of men like Patsy,’ Annie went on. ‘They’re just cavemen. What’s really scary is something else, something I can’t put my finger on.’

‘Patsy O’Riordan … Patsy O’Riordan …’ Sam was whispering to himself.

‘Sam? Are you listening to me?’

The image of Stella in her stilettos and zebra-striped top, handcuffed in the Lost & Found room with Gene slapping her about appeared in Sam’s mind.

‘Denzil and Spider went up against some right hard bastards,’ Stella was saying.

‘Names! Names!’ Gene was insisting, smacking her head back and forth. ‘Give me names!’

‘Lenny Gorman, Bartley Shaw, Patsy O’Riordan out of Kilburn. Big men … real men … hard men …’

‘Patsy O’Riordan once fought Denzil Obi!’ Sam said, his mind working fast. ‘Patsy arrives in town with the fairground … and at the same time Denzil Obi winds up dead. That’s it! That’s our lead! That’s our first real lead!’

Instinctively, Sam let go of Annie’s hand and he began searching his pockets for his mobile. He would ring the guv’s office, leave a message on his machine for him to pick up first thing in the morning and …

But then he stopped searching for his mobile and recalled where he was. Some old habits died very hard.

‘Annie – you said you were meeting Tracy when she comes for her hospital appointment, right? Let me come too. Let me speak to her. Maybe she’ll speak to me, or at the very least start to trust me. I can use her to get closer to Patsy O’Riordan. What do you think, Annie? Do you think that would work?’

He looked across at Annie and saw at once that the intense mood between them had been broken. He had broken it. Not even the theme from Zorba being played for the millionth time could bring it back.

‘This job, eh, Sam?’ said Annie.

It was cold and very dark when they left the snug of the taverna. Sam offered to walk Annie home, but she said it was better to get a cab.

‘You’re not off with me are you?’ Sam asked. ‘When you mentioned the name Patsy O’Riordan a light came on in my head. I suddenly saw a connection.’ He shrugged. ‘You know how it was when you’re working on a case. Sometimes your brain just won’t switch off.’

‘I know what it’s like,’ Annie said. ‘And no, I’m not off with you. It was a lovely evening – almost like being in Greece for real.’

‘Um. Maybe.’

‘And I won’t be offended if you ask me out again sometime.’

‘Would you be offended if I did this?’

He leant forward and kissed her on the mouth.

‘Well?’ he asked. ‘Was that … offensive?’

‘Not sure,’ said Annie. ‘Try it again.’

He did.

‘Jury’s still out,’ said Annie. ‘One more. Just to make my mind up.’

‘If you absolutely insist.’

As they kissed for a third time, they were interrupted by howls and wolf-whistles from across the road. They looked round, half expecting to see Gene and Ray and Chris – but no, this time it was just a group of lads, tanked-up and overexcited, rolling back from the fairground.

‘We never seem to get a moment,’ said Sam.

‘Well, at least you can look forward to the red hot date I’ve invited you on.’ And when Sam looked at her blankly she pinched his cheek playfully and added: ‘Tomorrow. At the hozzie. Meeting with Tracy. Remember?’

He hooked his arm around Annie’s and walked her in the direction of a taxi rank. Away in the darkness, they saw the spinning lights of Terry Barnard’s Fairground. The screams and heavily amplified music rolled through the night and became a filthy mush of sound like something rumbling up out of a nightmare. Momentarily, Sam glimpsed a figure standing silhouetted by the coloured lights. Tall, straight-shouldered, motionless. Was he watching them?

Don’t get paranoid, Sam.

An array of red and blue light bulbs burst into life around the helter-skelter, illuminating the motionless figure’s neat, crisp suit. It was curiously old fashioned, even for 1973. The angular cut, without lapels or collar, recalled the sort of suit that was fashionable back in the sixties.

What did they call it? A ‘Nehru suit’, was it?

The coloured lights played across the man’s body, but strangely his head and face remained in shadow, featureless, anonymous, obscured.

A gang of excited kids raced past, and as they tore off, whooping and laughing, the figure was gone. That sudden absence was even more unsettling than the sight of the man himself. Protectively, Sam tugged Annie closer to him.

You have nothing to fear but fear itself, he told himself.

And for that moment at least, with Annie nestled against him, he believed it.

CHAPTER FIVE: TRACY

Side by side, Sam and Annie strode into the hospital foyer. The place was bustling. Nurses clipped by primly in their white pinafore dresses and boxy paper hats. Doctors in chalk-stripe suits and lab coats strode confidently along clutching bundles of X-rays. Porters wheeled huge beds in and out of the even huger lift doors, or pushed grim-faced patients this way and that in squeaking wheelchairs.

Annie glanced at her watch: ‘We’re early. Tracy’s follow-up appointment is at 10.45.’

‘You think she’ll show?’

Annie shrugged: ‘I got the feeling she was just starting to trust me, and that might be enough to motivate her to come. But who knows?’

‘Then I guess we just have to wait,’ said Sam.

‘No, not there,’ said Annie. ‘Too close to the doorway. She’ll be really jumpy, Sam. She won’t be able to deal with walking through that doorway and seeing two coppers at the same time, especially since she doesn’t know you. She’ll need space, and she’ll need to deal with everything very slowly, one step at a time.’

‘That,’ said Sam approvingly, ‘is called “intelligent policing”.’

‘It’s just common sense, you dope. There’s no need to try and flatter me at every turn, Sam, I’m not about to go off you.’

Sam laughed and, with exaggerated chivalry, indicated with a sweep of the arm for the lady to go first. Annie led the way along a short corridor which bustled with nurses and porters and hobbling patients. She stopped at a discreet bench tucked away beneath a notice informing of the dangers of whooping cough and a stop-smoking poster depicting a small girl being made to breathe in her father’s cigarette smoke. The legend IF YOU LOVE HER, DON’T KILL HER were emblazoned above the image.

‘This bench is so narrow we’re going to have to squash against each other,’ said Sam. ‘Up close.’

‘What a nightmare. We’ll just have to endure it.’

‘I suppose we will.’

They squeezed themselves, flank to flank, onto the bench. Sam felt Annie nestle tighter against him. He nestled back.

‘Do you think she’ll show up?’ Sam asked.

Annie shrugged. ‘Your guess is as good as mine.’

‘But what do your instincts tell you?’

‘They tell me …’ For a moment, she chewed her lip and thought. Then she looked at Sam intently, with a strange expression behind her eyes. ‘I don’t know what my instincts are telling me, Sam. I … feel something … something about Tracy, and this whole case, but …’ She searched in vain for the right words, but gave up. ‘Oh, I don’t know.’

‘Try and explain,’ Sam prompted her gently. He took her hand. ‘Try, Annie. I might understand more than you think.’

He felt her fingers close around his.

‘Well,’ she said, her voice very low, her manner hesitant. ‘You know how I said this case was getting me down? The thing is, I’ve been worrying about it all the time. I’ve even been dreaming about it.’

‘That’s one of the hazards of this job.’

‘Oh, I know that. But this is different.’ She broke off, lost in her own thoughts, and then, choosing her words carefully, she spoke with great deliberation. ‘I’ll tell you. These feelings I’ve been getting, Sam … these fears … I’ve been having them for a while, just sort of vaguely floating about in the back of my head. I sort of ignored them. But then it all changed when the nurses here called me in to see Tracy Porter. She was fresh in – she’d just been beaten up. I got here and I … I sensed it even before I walked into the room where she was lying.’

‘What, Annie? What did you sense?’

‘That something was wrong. I mean, really wrong. You know that feeling you get when the phone suddenly rings at like three in the morning? You know how your heart jumps into your mouth, coz you know, you just know, it’s going to be something awful? Well, what I got was a feeling just like that. Even before I reached the ward they’d put her in, my heart was going, Sam, it was really going, and my palms were all damp, and it was like I was bracing myself for … for jumping out of a plane, or something. And what for? I mean, what the hell for?’

She checked Sam’s expression to see if he was following what she was getting at. Sam said nothing, merely held eye contact and gave her hand an encouraging squeeze.

Annie took a breath, and carried on. ‘So, anyway. I tried to keep my mind on the job, and I walked in the room, and there was Tracy on the bed, her face swollen and her eyes half shut with the bruises. You remember the photo. Now the thing is, Sam, I’ve seen worse stuff than this before. Hundreds of times. So have you. We all have, it’s what coppers deal with every day. But it was really upsetting me – and I mean really upsetting me. I got frightened, like I was the next one line to get battered like that.’

‘You felt vulnerable?’ Sam asked.

‘Yes! Helpless. And really scared, like I wanted to look over my shoulder all the time. Why would I feel that way, Sam? Why would it affect me like that?’

Sam sighed and fidgeted awkwardly. What could he say? How could he tell her that somewhere out there, something was approaching through darkness – something evil, something inhuman – something that knew Annie’s name, just as it knew Sam’s, and that all its power and malice was bent towards them? How could he tell her that he had glimpsed this thing, this Devil in the Dark? How could he say that it was through him, through his subconscious, that it was reaching out to her?

‘You said you’ve been having dreams,’ he said. ‘Can you tell me about those?’

Annie laughed nervously: ‘Shouldn’t I be lying down on a couch for that, with you sitting next to me taking notes?’

Sam smiled: ‘I’m not a shrink, Annie, but I reckon I might understand what you’re saying better than anyone. Now – tell me – what have you been dreaming?’

‘It’s all confused, you know, the way dreams are. At first I did my best to forget them, because I’d wake up scared, like the way you did when you had nightmares as a kid. But then, when I kept having them, I tried to remember so I could understand. They’re always muddled, Sam – images all on top of each other, like trying to watch BBC1, BBC2 and ITV all at the same time.’

‘Just wait for cable …’ muttered Sam under his breath.

‘All I remember of them are single moments. An image. A sensation. I know enough psychology to know if there’s any meaning in a dream it’s hidden away in the details.’

‘And what details did you remember, Annie?’

Closing her eyes, recalling the ghastly images of her nightmares, Annie said softly: ‘Sometimes I dream of things rotting. There are maggots crawling about. And sometimes I dream of …’ Her eyebrows furrowed. ‘… Sometimes I dream of a man … A man in a suit … A Nehru suit, like they used to wear in the 60s …’

Sam almost jolted.

‘A Nehru suit?’ he whispered. ‘No collar, no lapels …’

‘That’s the one. In the dream, the man always wears a Nehru suit. Expensive, sharp … I can’t see his face, but I’m frightened of him because …’

Sam felt his mouth go dry. He swallowed hard and asked: ‘Why? Why are you frightened of him?’

‘I don’t know.’ She furrowed her brow. ‘It’s like … It’s like he’s … Sometimes I feel it’s like he’s my-’

Quite suddenly, Annie gave a little gasp and sat suddenly upright. Her hand went to her chest, as if she were feeling her own heartbeat.

‘She’s here,’ she whispered. ‘It’s that feeling like before …’

Sam glanced down the corridor at the hospital foyer and spotted a frail young woman, little more than a girl, moving uncertainly amid the to-ing and fro-ing of the medical staff and patients. She was wearing faded denims with a polka-dot patch unhandily stitched over one knee. Her thick-soled, high-heeled sandals made her totter slightly, as if she had not yet learnt to walk in them, and the shapeless, man-sized lumberjack shirt she had on somehow only emphasized her fragility by sitting so bulkily on her.

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