Tom Graham: Life on Mars: Blood, Bullets and Blue Stratos

Sam played agitatedly with his pint glass. ‘It’s crazy, isn’t it? I’ve been going on and on about us two finding the time to sit and talk – and now we’re here, I don’t know how to say what’s on my mind.’

‘The job getting you down?’

‘It’s not the job, Annie. It’s … It’s like … Ach, I don’t know how to put this without sounding like an idiot.’

‘Well, say it anyway. You can’t sound more like an idiot than some people I can think of.’

‘I’ve been dreaming,’ said Sam at last.

‘Oh, aye?’

‘No, not like that. Stupid dreams. I’m always alone. I’m always lost, stuck somewhere I shouldn’t be, unable to get home. Everything’s broken … Like the world’s come to an end and I’m lost, and …’ He shrugged and threw up his hands. ‘I told you I’d make myself sound like an idiot.’

‘These dreams you keep having,’ said Annie, ‘the way they make you feel. Does that feeling stay with you, even when you wake up?’

‘Yes. Yes, it does.’

‘Is it the feeling that you ought to be somewhere else? Somewhere really important?’

‘Yes.’

‘But you don’t know where it is, or why you need to be there. And that feeling doesn’t go away, even when you ignore it and tell yourself it’s just the job or you’re having an off day. It keeps coming back, creeping up on you, all the time.’

Sam leant forward, looking intently into her face. ‘Annie, it’s like you’re reading my mind.’

‘It’s like you’re reading mine , Sam. I know the feeling you’re talking about. I have it too.’

‘You do? Annie, you never said.’

‘Yes I did. Just now.’

‘But … Why didn’t you tell me this before?’

‘Why didn’t you tell me ?’

Sam squeezed her hand, and she squeezed back. He could feel the warmth of her skin, catch the hint of her Yardley perfume, see the light reflecting from her eyes as she looked intently at him. It was a quietly intense moment – a real moment, more real by far than anything he could recall from his old life amid the laptops and iPods, satellite channels and Bluetooths.

‘What does it mean, Annie? Why do we feel like this?’

He could feel it right now, and he supposed that Annie could, too. A restlessness. A deep feeling of a job to do, a train to catch, an appointment to be met, important business to be concluded. Holding Annie’s hand, he looked back across the pub towards the bar. There was Ray, grinning and joking, the empty glasses piling up in front of him; and there was Chris, looking youthful and uncertain as he squirmed from the good-humoured bullying. And, looming over them, there stood Gene – solid, rocklike, wreathed in blue fag smoke that caught the light and glowed all about him like an aura.

But now Sam become acutely aware of Nelson standing just beyond them, pumping bitter into a pint glass and grinning at some inane comment from his CID regulars. Without changing his expression, Nelson glanced slowly up at Sam and Annie; knowingly, he tipped them both a wink.

For a brief moment, Sam felt the sudden conviction that everything here in this crappy, filthy pub was alive with meaning – the bar, the ashtrays, the rings of sticky beer on the tables, and, even more so, the people: Chris and Ray and Gene. Annie too, and Sam himself. And Nelson most of all.

We’re all here for a reason, Sam thought. There’s a plan at work here – and we are all part of it.

And in the next heartbeat, everything faded back into drab normality, the sense of imminent revelation gone. Gene, Ray and Chris were just three mouthy coppers sharing a drink. Nelson was just Nelson. The pub was just yet another reeking Manchester boozer.

‘What’s going on in that noggin of yours, mm?’ Annie asked, leaning closer to him.

‘I was thinking,’ Sam breathed softly. ‘I was thinking that I thought I was here to stay. This place. This life. I thought it was home. But now I’m starting to suspect home’s somewhere else.’

‘Me too,’ murmured Annie.

‘I can’t explain it better than that.’

‘Me neither.’

‘But I do know one thing,’ said Sam, and he looked into Annie’s eyes. ‘Wherever I go, I won’t be able to call it home without y—’

But, before he could say anything more, Ray’s boozy voice cut across them, ‘Look out, lads, it’s Brief En- bloody- counter over there.’

Chris placed a limp hand to his heart, fluttered his eyelids, and gave his best Celia Johnson impression. ‘Oh, dahling, I do so frightfully love you and all that. Merry meh – at once. Oh, do say you’ll merry meh.’

Gene shut him up with a clout to the back of the head, like a headmaster cuffing an unruly schoolboy. For a moment, he seemed unsure why he’d done it – then he turned his back on Sam and Annie and complained to Nelson that he wasn’t drunk enough. Not half drunk enough!

‘Is this a conversation for another day?’ Annie asked, very quietly.

Sam sighed and nodded. The moment was broken. He would have to wait for another.

More fag smoke, more unshaven coppers, more testosterone hanging in the air like the scent of musk – but it wasn’t the Railway Arms this time, it was A-Division at Greater Manchester CID. Harsh strip lights burned in the ceiling, casting their unblinking glare over the criminal mugshots and Page 3 pinups Sellotaped over the drab grey walls. Telephones chimed, typewriters clacked, mountainous heaps of paperwork leaned perilously from trays.

Hung over and bleary-eyed, Chris propped himself up at his desk, not even pretending to be fit for work. Across from him, Ray chewed gum and lounged about.

‘Feeling a bit ropy this morning, Chrissie-boy?’

‘I can handle it,’ murmured Chris.

‘Had half a sherbet too many, eh?’

‘I just copped a dirty glass, that’s all.’

Ray grinned and stretched in his chair, flexing his arms and pushing out his chest. ‘Me – I’m laffin’. Fit as a flea. And I matched you drink for drink last night, Chris, which only goes to show …’

‘Lay off, will ya,’ Chris muttered.

‘You gotta learn to manage your drinking,’ Ray went on. ‘You can’t call yourself a bloke, not a real bloke, until you can confidently down it, absorb it, and piss it up a wall like a pro. You think Richard Harris poofs it up like you after a couple of swift ones?’

‘He might do if had my metabolism,’ muttered Chris. ‘Anyway, he’s Irish. I don’t want no mention of anything Irish.’

‘Take my advice, young ’un – stay well within your limits, and leave the heavy stuff to us grown-ups.’

‘I’ll admit it, I might have had one or two more than was good for me,’ said Chris. ‘But I’m a man in trauma. I can’t get that image out of my head – the khazi of doom, all set to blow half a ton of Semtex up me Rotherhithe. It’s haunting me, Ray. Just imagine if that lot had gone off.’

‘You’d’ve ended up feeling no worse than you do right now,’ suggested Ray.

‘God, ain’t that the truth?’ Chris groaned, and slowly sank forward until his ashen forehead rested against his desk.

Without warning, the door to Gene Hunt’s office slammed open, and the guv himself appeared, glaring and brooding like a grizzly bear with a right monk on.

‘DI Tyler, Brenda Bristols, the pleasure of your company, if you please.’

Exchanging looks, Sam and Annie stepped into Gene’s office and shut the door behind them. Gene prowled about behind his desk, not even bothering to conceal the glass of Scotch amid the paperwork. Hair of the dog. His morning pick-me-up. It may be wrecking his liver, but it didn’t seem to be impairing his police work.