Tom Graham - Life on Mars - Get Cartwright

‘I did it myyyyy waaaaaaaayyyy !’ Chris suddenly bawled out.

Sam hurled a stapler at him. Chris shot him a threatening, dead-eyed, Yul Brynner look, and seemed ready to challenge him to ‘draw’ once again. Ignoring him, Sam turned back to Annie and urged her to keep it down.

Annie glared at him and said in a low voice: ‘I want to do it my way because I don’t like your way!’

‘What are you talking about?’

In the background, Chris was putting the hurled stapler back together again whilst burbling under his breath: ‘ Regrets … I’ve had a few … like that curry after the film. Stone me, I’m regretting that !’

‘ Your way, Sam, is all about keeping things from me, and not telling me what you know,’ Annie hissed. ‘You’ve known things … about me, about … about everything ! But you haven’t said.’

‘Annie, keep it down, this isn’t the time or the place.’

‘How can I trust what you say, Sam? You’ve kept secrets from me! You knew things – important things – but you didn’t tell me!’

There was a deep, chesty rumble, and the sound of congealed phlegm being grunted out. Gene Hunt strode into CID, a fag smouldering in his gob.

‘Morning, my lovelies,’ he intoned.

‘Draw!’ Chris challenged him, squaring up for a gun fight. ‘I said, Guv.’

Gene stopped dead in his tracks, looked Chris over like he was made of freshly dropped shit, and then said in low and menacing voice: ‘If that’s Brynner from that bloody kiddies’ flick you’re doing, Skelton, then I’m giving you precisely one second to pack it in.’

Chris responded by drawing his imaginary revolver and pow-pow-powing the Guv with it.

Gene turned down the sides of his mouth in a fish-faced grimace of utter disgust and declared: ‘ Brynner ain’t no cowboy! He talks like bloody Brezhnev and looks like a squeezed dick with a Chinky’s face painted on the bell.’

Looking suddenly deflated, Chris said meekly: ‘I … I thought you liked Westerns, Guv.’

‘Westerns, Chris! Westerns ! That abortion showing in the flea pits out there ain’t fit to wipe the arse of a decent Western! You think John Ford would crank out some shite about wind-up toys getting porked by stockbrokers in a theme park?’

Ray’s ears pricked up at that: ‘Oh aye? I didn’t know there was porking in it. Do you get to see much?’

‘You see a bit ,’ Chris said, turning to Ray. ‘There’s this bird, right, and she’s a robot-like but you wouldn’t know it, it’s not like her tits are made out of foil or nuthin’, but her eyes do go a bit silver at one point. Anyway, this scrawny fella with a ’tache is getting the right horn with her, so he …’

‘I’ll have no more talk about Westworld in my department!’ Gene bellowed. ‘Yul Brynner ain’t no cowboy – end of. John Wayne! Randolph Scott! Saint Gary of Cooper! Them’s cowboys, Christopher, them’s bloody cowboys, not that slappy-skulled Ruskie mincing about with two Evereadies up his arse and a scrote-sack full of fuses! Robots?! In Stetsons? I’ve shit ’em! ’

He stomped furiously to his office, flung open the door, and disappeared inside. A moment later, his voice roared out: ‘Tyler! Cartwright! You are summoned!’

Without a glance at Sam, Annie got to her feet and strode briskly towards the Guv’s office. Sam sighed and followed her.

They found Gene prowling about, agitated and enraged.

‘Bloody robots …’ he growled. ‘ Bald bloody robots, with slitty eyes. Oh, how our days have darkened, Tyler, how they have darkened !’

Gene glanced round at Sam and Annie, swallowed down his indignation at the state of seventies cinema, and plonked himself heavily into his chair. He planted his feet up onto his desk.

‘Right, enough of that, I’ve got a city to police,’ he said, appraising them both critically. ‘I take it, Cartwright, that in relation to your behaviour the other day DI Tyler has dished out a suitable bollocking – or whatever the female equivalent is … a “fannying”, if that’s a word. Well? Has he?’

‘Yes, Guv,’ Annie muttered.

‘And have the pertinent lessons been absorbed?’

‘Yes, Guv.’

‘You could at least pretend to sound like you give a toss, Cartwright.’

‘Yes, Guv.’

‘Okay then. I’ll say no more about it. But what I do want to discuss is what you’re up to.’

‘Guv?’ Sam and Annie asked in unison.

‘WPC Knicker-Elastic has been conducting some sort of private investigation,’ Gene clarified. ‘I want to know what it’s about, and I want to know right now.’ He waited for an answer, and when he got none he raised an eyebrow and said: ‘Well?’

‘It’s not easy to explain,’ Sam suggested.

‘Then let dopey-tits have a go.’ Gene narrowed his eyes and stared at Annie. ‘Come on, ducks, I’m a busy man. What are you up to with all them old police files?’

‘It’s … personal, Guv,’ said Annie.

‘Oh, cobblers it is!’ Gene suddenly barked at her, sweeping his feet from the desk and looming up out of his chair. ‘What’s “personal” in this place? We’re coppers, you drippy mare! All of us – even you! So start behaving like one!’

‘Oh aye?’ Annie shot back at him. ‘By banging on about some stupid cowboy film?’

‘ Yul Brynner ain’t no cowboy ! ’ Gene bellowed. ‘And don’t try and change the subject. What’s in them files, eh? What are you after? And what about these ex-coppers on that list of yours? Have you been knocking on their doors asking for a chat?’

To Sam’s utter amazement, Annie simply turned on her heel, strode out, and slammed Gene’s officer door behind her.

For a few heartbeats, Gene watched the empty space where Annie had been standing, then he turned the full force of his gaze into Sam. Silently, he waited for an explanation.

‘She’s upset, Guv,’ Sam said.

‘So am I. Bloody robots!’ And then, looking intently at Sam, he added: ‘What’s going on with her, eh? Why’s she got the hump like this?’

Sam ran a hand through his hair. Damn it, this was a tight corner. How the hell could he explain?

Gene sank slowly into his chair, placed his hands carefully upon his desk, and drummed his fingers. Without warning, he suddenly stopped. Whatever thought process had been going through his head was evidently completed. The Gene Hunt mind had cogitated – and now it was made up.

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

‘Take her off your hands?’

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

‘Guv? What are you saying?’

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

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

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

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

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