Tom Graham - Life on Mars - A Fistful of Knuckles

‘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.

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.