Tom Graham - Life on Mars - Get Cartwright

‘No, no, I remember you on the telly.’

‘I nowt been on’t telly, lad, not wit’ face like mine!’

‘No. No, of course not. I meant that … you should be on the telly.’

‘As what? One o’ Pan’s People on’t Top o’ t’ Pops? Give over! I’d look like right tit, prancin’ wit’ ’em lasses.’

‘Well, if one day somebody comes knocking from the BBC … just have a think about it,’ suggested Sam, and then he followed Gene over towards the chimney.

‘You think that bloody thing’s really gonna stay up while we have a snoop?’ asked Gene, sizing up the chimney. Close up like this, it looked huge. Huge, and precarious. The bricks at its base had been mostly hacked out and replaced with stout wooden props, then heaped with kindling; a fire, once ignited, would burn through the props and bring the chimney crashing down upon itself.

‘It’ll be okay, Guv. The steeplejack said it would be okay.’

‘Mmm. I ain’t so sure that pot-bellied inbred knows what the chuff he’s doing. Smacks of a ’erbert, to me.’

‘Fred Dibner? Gene, I assure you – he is the man .’

Gene shrugged: ‘Well then – since you got such faith in ’im ...’

He indicated that Sam was to lead on.

With dignity, Sam pulled his jacket straight and ran a hand nonchalantly through his hair: ‘Certainly, Guv – seeing as you’re chicken.’

Sam strode up to the base of the chimney and peered in between the wooden props. Inside, half obscured with rubble and brick dust, was a mangled corpse. Its skin had been so shredded that its face was an anonymous red mask. It was impossible to tell what was ripped flesh and what was torn clothing, the two had become so matted.

‘My God …’ Sam muttered.

‘What is it, Tyler? A stiff?’

‘What’s left of one.’

Sam crawled gingerly through the gap and stood upright. Glancing up, he saw the chimney rising up above him, the grey sky forming a bright circle a hundred feet up.

All at once, the severe, looming perspectives seemed to overwhelm him. He felt trapped, like a man stranded at the bottom of a deep well. For a moment, Sam experienced a giddy sense of vertigo, as if the chimney were swaying. Shutting his eyes tight, he took a slow, deep breath.

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

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

‘Is that the same as Bombay bum?’

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

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

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

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

‘What you got, Tyler?’

‘A wallet, Guv.’

‘Anything in it?’

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

‘Name on the licence?’

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

‘Well, Tyler? Who is it?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Have a stab.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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