Tom Graham - Life on Mars - A Fistful of Knuckles

Dickie stood up from behind his desk, and as he did his moustache vanished, his body shrank, his suit became a black dress, and his face morphed in the small, round, pale face of a twelve year old girl, with a big teardrop painted on each cheek.

‘Awful things are going to happen,’ the Test Card Girl said sadly. ‘You should never have come back here.’

The TV sports’ studio melted away. There was just Sam and the Test Card Girl, high up atop CID, the city of Manchester spread out all about them and the grey sky reeling over their heads.

Sam clenched his fists and said: ‘You don’t scare me anymore. I know what you are. I know what you’re playing at.’

‘I’m just telling you the truth, Sam …’

‘Oh no you’re not. You’re trying to mess with my head. But you’re nothing ! You’re not even real!’

‘But I’m very real, Sam. And so is the horrible fate that’s in store for you and Annie.’

‘I’m done listening to you. You’re just a bad dream. Go back to where you came from.’

The Test Card Girl listened mournfully, shaking her head with infinite sadness. She hugged her little teddy bear doll, rocking it – and then, quite suddenly, she hurled it over the edge of the roof.

‘And there it goes,’ she said. ‘Better off out of it. Better off dead than facing what you and Annie have to face …’

‘You’re wasting your time,’ Sam said. ‘You won’t make me give up. You won’t make me despair.’

‘It’s not looking good, Sam. It’s all going to end in tears. Your tears. For ever. And ever. And ever. ’

‘I’m not listening.’

‘Shall I tell you what’s going to happen?’

‘Get out of my head!’

‘Don’t you want to know the truth, Sam? Don’t you want to know what I know … about Annie?’

‘I said get out !’

‘She has a past, Sam. Like you have a past. But it’s a very different sort of story from yours, Sam. Shall I tell you about it? Shall I? Shall I, Sam? Shall I?’

‘Damn you, get out of my head!’ Sam bellowed, and at that moment the air was ripped apart by a deafening roar. Dark shadows swept across him; glancing up, he saw the trio of planes shriek overhead, recklessly low, their banners streaming behind them – but now the lettering had changed. It read: Terry Barnard’s Fairground.

When he looked back down, the rooftop was empty. He was alone again. The planes dragged their advertisement for the fairground away across the rooftops of Manchester. The wind cut through him like a knife. Looking down, he saw that his hands were shaking.

‘Don’t let her get to you,’ he gently told himself. ‘The little bitch isn’t real. She’s just messing with your mind.’

Suddenly, the door to the roof flew open and an overexcited Chris Skelton burst out.

‘You see that, Boss!’ he cried, pointing at the planes as they veered away. ‘Pretty nifty, eh? You reckon we could get one of them for CID? Eyes in the sky! Do they come with guns on? Now that’s the future of policing, Boss. You think they’d train me up?’

He grinned at Sam, the huge, round-ended collars of his blue nylon shirt flapping and fretting like cherub wings in the harsh Manchester wind. But as he read Sam’s expression, his grin faltered.

‘Hey, boss, you all right?’

‘I’m fine,’ said Sam, sticking his hands in his pockets and clenching them into fists to stop them shaking. ‘I just … needed a few minutes alone to think about stuff.’

‘No time for thinking, Boss. The guv’s yelling for you. We got a shout.’

From far below, the Cortina’s horn brayed angrily for Sam to move his arse – pronto . The Guv was impatient. There was a big, bad city out there that needed its sheriff.

‘Dead body in a bedsit in Greeton Street,’ Chris said. ‘A big bloke, beaten to a pulp, ‘pparently. Very nasty. Sounds like a good ‘un.’

The Cortina honked again, more threateningly. Only Gene Hunt could be so expressive with a car horn. This time, Sam obeyed his guv’s summons; he moved his arse – pronto.

The big bloke in the bedsit in Greeton Street had indeed been beaten to a pulp. And just as Chris had predicted, it was very nasty. DCI Gene Hunt stepped into the room carefully, so as not to get congealing blood on his off-white leather loafers. He moved about the room in his camel hair coat, his tie knotted loosely beneath the raw, aftershave-inflamed turkey flesh of his throat. Sam followed him. The bedsit’s fat, string-vested landlord watched from the open doorway.

‘What’s his name again?’ Gene asked, looking down at the dead man.

The landlord said: ‘Denzil Obi. A darkie name. He were one of them half-castes. You know, half-coloured, half-normal. Mongrel type.’

‘Mixed race,’ Sam corrected him. ‘Please – it’s not “half-caste”, it’s not “mongrel” – it’s mixed race.’

‘Don’t make no difference now,’ observed the landlord. ‘Can you take him with you, lads? I want to let the room as soon as possible, like.’

‘Meat wagon’s on the way,’ said Gene.

‘Do you boys clean up too? I mean, look at them carpets.’

‘I’ll Brasso your flamin’ knick-knacks on me way out an’ all. What state was the front door in when you found him? Had it been forced?’

‘No. I had to use my key. I came up because Denzil was behind on the rent, which weren’t like him. He were regular, you know. A good lad, for a coon.’

‘Please!’ Sam insisted irritably, speaking over his shoulder as he looked around the flat. ‘Can we knock it off with the BNP language.’

Gene shot a glance at the landlord: ‘No, I don’t know what the flamin’ chuff he’s on about either.’

The landlord scratched at the hairy dome of his stomach through the holes in his string vest. ‘I was just sayin’ that Denzil were okay, that’s all. He didn’t deserve this.’

Sam looked at the front door; it was fitted with three sturdy bolts and a spyhole for seeing who was on the other side of it.

‘Security conscious,’ said Sam.

He stepped carefully across the blood-splattered floor and examined the window.

‘No sign of this being forced either, Guv. Looks like Denzil opened the door and let his killer walk right in.’

What little furniture was in the room lay overturned. Clothes and possessions were strewn about the floor. There were bloodstains on the bed and up the walls. There were even splatters of red across the ceiling.

‘He didn’t go quietly,’ said Sam. ‘Must have been a hell of a fight.’

‘And this lad looks like he could handle himself,’ said Gene, indicating Obi’s muscular arms and torso. ‘Body builder, was he?’

‘Boxer,’ said the landlord.

‘Who beats a boxer to death?’ asked Sam, shaking his head.

‘Another boxer?’ shrugged the landlord.

‘Or a whole gang of ‘em,’ put in Gene.

Sam looked about the room: ‘Not much room in here for a lynch mob, guv. Barely enough room for the body.’

‘You saying this place is small ?’ piped up the landlord, looking defensive. ‘It’s cosy. People like it.’

‘Any of your other cosy tenants hear anything?’ asked Gene. ‘This whole building must have been shaking like a fun house at the fair when this boy got walloped.’

‘No other tenants, not here. Downstairs is empty.’

‘What about the flat above this one?’

‘Just a couple of layabouts up there, but they’ve buggered off to India or something. Students.’

‘Pity,’ said Gene, flexing his hands and making his leather driving gloves creak. ‘I’m in the mood for questioning students.’