Blood, Bullets and Blue Stratos

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

‘You’ll survive,’ said the prim, narrow-eyed doctor who was examining Sam’s head wound. ‘No fractures, just surface tissue damage. Minor blood loss. You were lucky.’

Sam was sitting up on a hospital trolley, sealed off from the rest of the ward by green plastic curtains drawn on all sides. The doctor aggressively peeled off his latex gloves and dropped them into a pedal bin.

‘You just need a couple of stitches,’ he said. ‘I’ll send for Dr Thanatos.’

He looked Sam over coldly, as if he were some sort of vile specimen the doctor was forced to deal with, and then he batted his way through the plastic curtains and vanished.

Sam sat on the trolley, looking down at his hands. They were still covered in dried blood. Nobody had bothered to wash him. He would have to find a basin and clean himself up, and if this Dr Thanatos didn’t show up straightaway he’d look for a phone, call Annie, tell her he was okay.

He climbed stiffly down off the trolley and searched for a gap in the curtains. But there was none. He smacked and pawed and tugged at the plastic sheets draped all about him, but they seemed to be continuous, unbroken, impenetrable. There was no way through. Panic started to rise in his chest.

‘What’s going on here?’ he cried out. ‘Hey! Doctor! Somebody!’

Something moved above him. He looked up, and saw a black balloon bobbing gently above the curtain rail. Through the plastic sheeting, the silhouette of a child was visible, moving steadily closer, whispering to him.

‘Stitches, stitches, I’ve come to give you stitches.’

Sam stumbled back and fell heavily against the trolley.

‘A stitch in time saves nine times nine …’

A dark shape became visible, looming on the far side of the curtain. It pressed itself against the translucent plastic, revealing wide, glassy eyes and a monstrous, snaggle-toothed mouth.

Sam screamed, sat up sharply, and found himself on a hospital bed, surrounded by green plastic curtains, a prim, narrow-eyed doctor examining his head wound.

‘You’ll survive,’ the doctor said. ‘No fractures, just surface tissue damage. Minor blood loss. You were lucky.’

The doctor aggressively peeled off his latex gloves and dropped them into a pedal bin.

‘You just need a couple of stitches,’ he said. ‘I’ll send for Nurse Ambrose.’

Sam glanced about anxiously, his heart pounding, waiting for something to happen.

The doctor paused before heading through the curtains.

‘Is there a problem, Mr Tyler?’

‘You said I was lucky,’ said Sam. ‘A couple of stitches, nothing worse. No — no brain damage, then?’

‘Brain damage? No, Mr Tyler, I can assure you there’s nothing like that.’

‘Concussion?’

Humouring him, the doctor held up three fingers, said, ‘How many fingers?’

‘Nine,’ said Sam.

The doctor held up one finger.

‘Now how many?’

‘Nine times nine.’

The doctor offered a tight smile and said, ‘Sit tight, Mr Tyler. Nurse Ambrose will be along to give you a couple of stitches, and then you can be discharged.’

And, with that, he disappeared through the curtains.

Sam looked down at his hands, saw that they must have been washed by a nurse.

‘No blood …’ he said, and held up his palms. ‘All clean …’

But Sam couldn’t relax. He slid down off the trolley, crossed warily to the curtains, reached out and pulled them aside — revealing a bustling accident-and-emergency ward. No little girls, no black balloons, no monstrous devil faces with strangling hands — just a ruddy-cheeked woman in a white coat striding briskly towards him, carrying a needle and surgical sutures.

‘Something the matter, Mr Tyler?’ Nurse Ambrose beamed at him.

‘Nothing,’ Sam smiled back. ‘Absolutely nothing at all.’

Stitched up, repaired, and ready for duty, Sam strode out of the A amp;E doors into the grey light of a Manchester morning. A boxy, primitive-looking ambulance hurried by, blue light flashing feebly, and as it passed it revealed Annie standing ten yards away, waiting anxiously for him.

‘You promised you’d look after yourself,’ she said coldly.

‘I’m fine, Annie.’

‘Only just. I heard what might have happened to you.’

‘But it didn’t happen. My guardian angel stepped in, just in the nick of time.’

He moved forward to kiss her, but she stepped back. Sam frowned, and Annie made a head movement towards the battered Cortina parked across from the hospital, Gene Hunt leaning against the bullet-riddled wheel arch, puffing on a cheroot.

‘Not in front of your guardian angel,’ Annie said, unsmiling, and together they headed over to Gene.

‘Managed to stick all the necessary bits back together, did they?’ Gene intoned as Sam approached him. ‘The Cortina has more need of urgent medical attention than that oversized bollock you use as a head, Tyler. Them bastards nearly killed my motor. And nobody kills my motor.’

The three of them got into what was left of the Cortina, and Gene hit the gas, narrowly avoiding an old lady with swollen legs being helped to walk by a young nurse. The car rattled and shuddered as it reached the main road — a valiant veteran, battle-scarred but struggling on.

‘While you’ve been enjoying bed baths and carbolic washes, Samuel, the rest of the department has been getting on with some police work,’ said Gene. ‘We called in the goon squad and raided that compound. Properly raided it, with an armed response team and blokes in riot gear — not some go-it-alone twonk in a poofy leather jacket leaping in there like John Wayne.’

‘I didn’t leap, I fell, Guv,’ said Sam. ‘It was you who wanted me to climb the fence in the first place.’

Gene ignored him. ‘Our boys stormed the place but found chuff all. The RHF had cleared out — packed up their guns and ammo and their hostage onto those trucks in the yard and buggered off out of it.’

‘Any idea where?’

‘Nope. The place had been well and truly cleared out before we stormed it. They had plenty of warning we were onto them — thanks to you, Sam — so they didn’t hang about. We could have had ’em, Tyler. If you hadn’t ballsed up the operation, we could have had ’em.’

‘Guv, I don’t know how many more times I have to say it — it was an accident,’ Sam protested. ‘Do you really think I’d have jumped in there on purpose?’

‘What do you think, Bristols?’ asked Gene over his shoulder. ‘Would your fella play the hero to save a poor little girlie from the bad guys?’

‘He might,’ said Annie from the back seat, her voice cold. ‘And he’s not my fella, Guv.’

Sam turned round to look at her, but she turned her face away and gazed out the window.

‘So, the RHF know we’re onto them and they’re playing hard to get,’ Gene continued. ‘At least we got something out of last night — names. Peter Verden and Carol Waye. Annie, I want you to get stuck into the files, see if you can dig up anything about those two. Sam, if you can put your Lone Ranger mask back in your dressing-up box for ten minutes, perhaps you would be so good as to assist me in locating the Red Hand Faction and stopping them before they blow up anything else. Everybody happy with that?’

‘Yes, Guv,’ muttered Sam, settling back in his seat, his back to Annie.

‘Yes, Guv,’ muttered Annie from the back, still looking out the window.

‘Right, then,’ said Gene, and he flung the wheel, stamped on the gas and carried both Sam and Annie with him on his hurtling drive north.

They arrived at the compound on the outskirts of town and found it cordoned off with great fluttering steams of blue police tape. Patrol cars blocked the entrance to the industrial estate. Gene held up his badge and was ushered through. The place was bustling with activity — uniformed coppers, plainclothes police, firearms officers, forensic photographers, explosives experts.

Gene drove up to the smashed door of the compound, wrecked after his explosive forced entry the night before.

‘You know what them gates did to the front of my motor?’ he chided Sam.

‘It couldn’t have been half as bad as what Peter Verden was about to do to me,’ Sam replied.

But Gene just scowled at him. ‘If that’s an attempt to elicit sympathy, Tyler …’

‘I nearly had my face drilled off — why should I be fishing for sympathy?’ said Sam, throwing up his hands in despair. ‘I’ll just sit here and let everyone hate me, how’s that?’

‘Sounds good to me,’ muttered Gene. ‘Sound good to you, Bristols?’

Annie said nothing. But even with her face turned away from Sam, she gave off enough negative vibes to make her feelings more than clear. Sam was desperate to take her to one side, to convince her that he hadn’t been playing the hero last night, that he hadn’t put himself recklessly in danger for the sake of some sort of masculine one-upmanship over Gene. But a quiet word in private was even less possible here, trapped inside Gene’s bullet-riddled Cortina, than back at the station or in the reeking fug of the Railway Arms. Sam sighed, and tried to put his feelings to one side.

They passed through the smashed doors of the compound and drove into the courtyard. All the RHF trucks were gone, replaced by an assortment of police vehicles. Sam peered through the Cortina’s chipped windscreen and made out the wrecked remains of the workshop where he had been held. The sight of the place made his blood run cold.

Gene stopped the car and wrenched up the handbrake.

‘That’s the shed the girl was being held in,’ Sam said, pointing. CID and MI5 officers were going in and out of what had once been Mary Deery’s prison. ‘And that cabin over there was the operations room.’

‘What did you see in there?’ asked Gene. ‘Anything useful?’

‘A map, up on the wall,’ said Sam. ‘A map of the north-west coast.’

‘Any markings on it? Pins stuck in it?’

‘There were markings, Guv, but I couldn’t read them. I assumed they were planning areas they wanted to attack.’

‘Or picking a site for a new HQ,’ said Gene. ‘Either way, it doesn’t really narrow things down for us. We already know they’re somewhere in the north-west. Can’t you be more specific about what you saw, Sam? Cast your mind back.’

‘I’m sorry, Guv. I only had a glimpse. There were people around, I was trying not to be seen.’

Gene peered at him darkly, flung open the car door and prowled away.

Sam turned to Annie, said, ‘What’s up with you? Why are you off with me?’

‘Do they make you feel more like a real man?’

‘Do what make me feel more like a real man?’

‘Those stitches.’

‘Oh, Annie, please.’

‘What did you think you were doing, playing Clint Eastwood and running around here all on your own?’

‘You’ve been listening to Gene too much.’

‘They could have killed you. Worse than killed you. I thought you had more sense than that. You know as well as I do what happens to coppers who think they’re indestructible.’

‘Annie, you’re being unfair.’

‘I’m being unfair? Didn’t you spare a single thought for me when you broke in here last night and started acting all macho?’

‘I didn’t mean to break in here. It was an accident.’

‘You broke in by accident? I’ve nicked teenagers who give excuses like that.’

Sam rolled his eyes, exasperated. But Annie misread his frustration for arrogance.

‘Oh, the bird’s giving you some grief, is she?’ she said, her voice as hard as her expression. ‘And you say I’ve been listening to Gene too much.’

‘Annie, I-’

‘Excuse me, boss, I’ve got to go.’

‘Annie, please, can’t you just-’

But she had already thrown open the passenger door and clambered out.

‘Annie, as your superior officer I order you to stay right here and-’

Slam!

Sam sat alone in the Cortina.

‘There’s some people would give me a medal for what I did last night,’ he told the dashboard. But the dashboard didn’t give a damn, any more than anyone else round here.

Suddenly, he spotted a uniformed officer hurrying over to speaking to Gene. The officer pointed, and Gene went striding purposefully away. Sam climbed out of the car and hurried after him.

‘Guv? What is it?’

Gene was heading for the entrance to the industrial estate. As they approached the police blockade, Sam heard screaming — a woman’s voice, shrieking hysterically. It was Cait Deery, scarlet-faced, struggling to break the grip of the two officers restraining her.

‘You stupid murdering English bastards! You’ve killed her! You’ve killed her!’

Gene cruised towards her, his face set, his shoulders back. Cait saw him and sensed at once that he was somebody she could focus her hatred on. Her eyes blazed — but Gene’s blazed right back at her. Cait opened her mouth, drew breath to scream — but Gene cut right across her.

‘You!’ he commanded. ‘Woman! Shut it!’

Cait spat in Gene’s face.

Gene spat in hers and said, ‘Your go again.’

‘My daughter was in there!’ Cait screeched at him.

‘We know,’ Gene intoned back.

‘She’s twelve years old and you raided the place anyway.’

‘Try shutting your trap and listening, you bog-brained Murphy. I will not get into a shouting match with you.’

‘I want my daughter,’ Cait howled. ‘You don’t care about her, You stinking child killers!’

‘That’s great, that is, coming from an IRA bitch like you,’ Gene snapped back.

‘What have you done with her body, you devils?’

‘Your daughter was long gone by the time we arrived.’

‘She was in there and you went in anyway, guns blazing, just like you English always do.’

‘And you keep on screaming like a bloody loon and not listening to word anyone’s saying just like you Irish always do!’ Gene bellowed back. ‘Now shut it!’

‘I want my daughter’s body.’

‘Shut! It!’

‘I want my daughter’s body.’

Cait struggled furiously to attack him, then spat again. This time Gene wiped the saliva from his face with a gloved hand, and used that same hand to smack Cait Deery hard across the face. She took the blow like a man.

‘A pansy English slap!’ she hissed.

‘Oh aye? Room for some more?’

‘You’ll be getting more than that from us.’

‘Take note of that, lads,’ said Gene to the coppers who were restraining her. ‘That’s the way these lousy savages think. Blow up your kids and weep for their own.’

Sam raced over. The situation was getting out of control.

‘Mrs Deery, I saw your daughter last night,’ he said.

Cait turned the full blazing power of her wrath onto Sam, stopping him dead in his tracks.

‘Murderer!’

‘She’s alive and well,’ Sam said. ‘I spoke to her, Mrs Deery. Listen to me! I tried to get her out of that place. I nearly managed it, but I was caught.’

Cait thrashed like a wild cat, insane with grief and rage. Sam tried to grab her clawing hands and get through to her.

‘Mrs Deery, listen to me! They took your daughter away from here before our boys moved in. They’ve still got her, do you understand? And they’ll keep her — alive — for as long as they can use her to blackmail you and your husband. Mary’s alive, Mrs Deery, they haven’t touched her. We’re going to find her, and we’re going to bring her back to you.’

For a few moments, Cait’s eyes burned into him. Sam thought she would break free from the restraining officers and hurl herself at him, ripping him to pieces with her bare hands. But all at once she covered her face with her hands and howled, the fight in her giving way to anguish, and she slumped to the ground.

Gene looked coldly at her as she wept, then turned to one of the uniformed officers and said, ‘Stick her in a wagon and take her back to CID. I want to continue this little chinwag in private.’