Tom Graham: Blood, Bullets and Blue Stratos

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

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

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

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

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 Chris hovered uncertainly nearby, still quiet and withdrawn after his morning of undignified trouserless adventures.

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

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

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

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

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

‘Then talk to me.’

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

‘I can’t talk here,’ he said.

‘Okay. We’ll talk later, at the pub.’

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

‘I see what you mean.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Why me, boss?’ Chris frowned.

‘Because you nearly died today.’

‘Don’t remind me!’

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

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