Blood, Bullets and Blue Stratos

CHAPTER FOUR

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.

‘As you know,’ he intoned, ‘the gunman we so valiantly risked our arses trying to apprehend yesterday managed to elude us. Not only that, he also managed to elude the Keystone Kops outside and their impenetrable “ring of steel”, all of which means I’ve been getting it in the neck from Special Branch for not leaving the operation to them. They’re saying — and I quote — that we made a “right pigging balls-up”. Black mark for A-Division. Black mark for me. And me not well pleased, children, me not well pleased at all.’

He stopped pacing and glowered intensely at Sam for a moment, daring him to come out with an ‘I told you so, Guv’. But Sam knew when to keep it buttoned.

After a few moments, Gene resumed pacing and said, ‘On the plus side, however, our keen cub reporter Annie Cartwright has supplied us with a useful lead. Go on, luv, tell us what you got.’

On cue, Annie produced some typewritten pages and read from them: ‘Michael and Cait Deery. Husband and wife. Irish nationals residing somewhere in Manchester. There’s been a Home Office file on them for months now. It seems pretty certain they’re acting as couriers between Ireland and the mainland, shipping in firearms, ammunition and plastic explosives to supply IRA cells.’

‘If the Home Office know about them, why haven’t they been arrested?’ asked Sam.

‘Because they’re more valuable left alone to do their thing,’ said Gene. ‘The contacts they meet, the people they deal with. It might all just reveal the whole chain, connecting bomb factories in Dublin to attacks being planned on the mainland.’

‘How sure are we that they were anything to do with what happened at the council records office?’

‘For want of anything better to go on I’m working on the assumption that the Deerys are involved,’ said Gene. ‘If there’s an IRA unit at work on our patch, we’ll find it through them. And bagging an IRA unit might just make up for yesterday’s fiasco. Um, excuse me, DI Tyler, but did somebody drop the marmalade in your pants this morning? What’s that gormless face for?’

‘You’re working on the assumption that what happened yesterday was the work of the IRA,’ said Sam.

Gene sighed. ‘Oh, God, Sam, not this Old Mother ’Ubbard again!’

‘I know you’re resistant to my line of reasoning …’

‘To put it poncily.’

‘But I’m telling you, Guv, we’re going to find out sooner or later that what kicked off yesterday had precious little to do with the IRA.’

‘A bomb, a bloke in a balaclava and a certain negativity expressed towards the British constabulary — now, I’m the first to admit I’m not Sherlock bloody Holmes, but-’

‘I’ve already told you, Guv, I’m not convinced,’ said Sam. ‘That bomb in the toilet — it was a message of some kind. It meant something. It was more symbolic than a genuine threat.’

‘Unlike this,’ snapped Gene, raising a balled fist in front of Sam’s face.

Sam ignored him and carried on: ‘And what about the red hand painted on the wall, and the letters RHF?’

‘And what about the report I found on my desk this morning from Bomb Disposal?’ countered Gene. ‘They’ve examined the explosives from the khazi and confirmed it’s a classic bit of IRA kit.’

‘Maybe it is,’ said Sam, shrugging. ‘But I’m still sceptical.’

‘I don’t care what you are,’ barked Gene. ‘I’m still head honcho round here and until you convince me otherwise I’m going to pursue this investigation on the not unreasonable assumption that it’s the Paddies we’re after and not the bloody RHF. What is the bloody RHF anyway, for God’s sake? Royal Horticultural Faggots?’

‘Red Hand something?’ suggested Annie, suddenly. ‘Just a guess. What do you reckon?’

‘Red Hand something — of course!’ cried Sam. ‘Of course!’

‘Red Hand something?’ said Gene, looking unimpressed. ‘So what’s the F stand for?’

‘I know what F stands for,’ put in Ray suddenly, sticking his head round the door and winking at Annie. He flapped a sheet of paper onto Gene’s desk. ‘Here you go, Guv. The Deerys’ address. Dowell Road on the other side of town.’

‘Nice work, Raymondo,’ said Gene. ‘Right, playmates, let’s start proving to Special Branch that we know how to behave like proper grown-up coppers. Annie, see if you can find out what the letter F stands for. It sounds like a task of about your level. Use Chris’s wooden bricks with the letters on ’em if it helps. Sam, you’re coming with me. We’re going to pop round the Deerys’ place and see if anything’s cooking.’

‘Want me to drive, Guv?’ Sam asked.

Gene looked blankly at him and said, ‘And why the hell would I want you to drive?’

‘Well, you know, seeing as you’ve … You’ve had a couple of, um …’

Sam was going to say something about the Scotch glass on Gene’s desk, then reminded himself that nobody gave a toss about that sort of thing, not here. There was some part of him, some corner of his brain, that would always be 2006, no matter how long he lived in 1973.

‘Sorry, Guv. Forget I said anything.’

‘I always do,’ said Gene, jangling his car keys and grabbing his coat.

They sat in the Cortina at the end of Dowell Road. Number 14, the home of Michael and Cait Deery, was a just another unremarkable semidetached among many, with a trim little garden and a Vauxhall Cresta parked in the driveway.

‘Are we going in?’ asked Sam.

Gene flexed his hand on the wheel, making the leather of his driving glove creak ominously.

‘Nope, we’re staying put,’ he said. ‘If the Deerys are middlemen in the IRA chain, let’s sit back and observe, just like the Home Office recommended. Sooner or later they’ll lead us to the terrorist cell they’re supplying.’

‘Guv, I know you’re not interested in this, but I don’t think what happened yesterday-’

‘-was the work of the IRA. I know, Sam. You think it was part of the Pinky Palm Brigade’s campaign against khazis. Maybe it was. Fact remains, our boys across the water have pissed rather too heavily in the hornets’ nest and stirred up trouble. If we can blag an IRA unit by trailing the Deerys, that scores me and my department a handful of much-needed Brownie points.’

‘Um, Guv, I didn’t quite follow all that. What did you mean about “pissing in the hornets’ nest”?’

Gene turned his head and stared at him, and then said, as if speaking to a deaf idiot, ‘Bloody. Sunday. You. Dozy. Pillock.’

Bloody Sunday. Of course. For Sam, Bloody Sunday was something very much from the past, like the Apollo moon landing or Blue Peter in black and white. But here, in the world of Gene Hunt, it was fresh news, a raw and open wound. In 1972 — only last year — the British Paras opened fire on a civil-rights march in … Belfast, was it? Or Ulster? Or Derry? Damn it, he couldn’t remember. Wherever it had taken place, it had left a dozen or more dead and brought the IRA right out on the offensive. The repercussions of ‘pissing in the hornets’ nest’ would still be reverberating in the far future — even in 2006, when a young detective from CID, recently recovered from a life-threatening accident that had left him in a coma, would inexplicably jump from a rooftop to his death.

Sam shook these thoughts from his head. He was here now — in 1973 — with a job to do, a duty to fulfil, a life to lead. The future was history. All that mattered was the here and now.

‘You know, Sam,’ said Gene, ‘now we’ve got a cosy moment together, just the two of us, I’d like to have a little chat with you about summat.’

‘Yes, Guv?’

‘I was thinking about what you said the other day in the pub, about the way I handle cases. You said I was irresponsible. You said I treated the job like a game.’

‘What I said, Guv … What I meant was that I was brought up with a very different approach to policing than you. I was taught — and I’ve always believed — that the rules of conduct and behaviour laid down for us aren’t there to make our job difficult or give villains the opportunity to get off the hook. Those rules are there because they’re right, and they’re fair, and they stop people getting killed.’

‘Go on, Tyler, I’m listening.’

‘I know it sounds poncy to you, Guv, but if the police don’t play by the rules what’s the point? We might as well bring back lynch mobs and string fellas up in the street just because they come across as wrong ’uns.’

‘And you wouldn’t go for that, then?’

‘Would you?’

Gene thought for a moment, then said, ‘Depends on whose feet end up dangling. I can think of some right naughty boys I wouldn’t shed no tears over.’

‘You’re just saying that, Guv. You don’t really believe it. Look, the point I was making is that I don’t want to end up dead, any more than you do, or Chris or Ray or any of us. And, as much as it offends your freewheeling sensibilities, Gene, I think that sticking to the rules — at least, to the spirit of the rules — is the best way of keeping us alive. We’re not here to take undue risks, we’re not here to dish out justice from the end of a gun, and we’re certainly not here to make ourselves feel more like real men.’

‘That’s what you think I’m about, is it?’ Gene asked, without sarcasm. He seemed to genuinely want to know. ‘You think I’m trying to prove something?’

‘Sometimes, Guv, yes.’

Gene thought about this, nodded to himself, and said, ‘I was right about you Tyler. You do talk and think a right load of shite.’

Sam sat back in his seat. He’d tried. He really had.

‘Right, boyo, let’s get our minds back on the job,’ said Gene. ‘Keep your eyes fixed on the Deerys’ gaff. Let me know the moment you see anything.’

‘Why? Where are you going?’

‘Nowhere,’ said Gene, fishing out a folded copy of the Mirror and flicking it open. ‘I want to catch up on me paperwork.’

He disappeared into the sports pages. Sam shook his head — then his eye was caught by the front page of Gene’s paper.

TUC CALLS FOR MASS STRIKE ACTION IN PROTEST AGAINST PRICE RISES AND PAY RESTRAINTS — OVER 1.5 MILLION WORKERS CALLED OUT

MASSIVE DISRUPTION TO RAIL SERVICES DUE TO INDUSTRIAL ACTION — ASLEF CALLS FOR DRIVERS AND STATION STAFF NOT TO CROSS PICKET LINES

Protests, mass unrests, trains up the spout. Some things don’t ever change, thought Sam. He continued to skim-read:

CAR PLANTS, COAL MINES, AND SHIPPING YARDS BROUGHT TO A HALT

FIRE BRIGADE UNIONS THREATEN MASS INDUSTRIAL ACTION

ARMY ON STANDBY TO MAN FIRE STATIONS

COUNTRY ON THE BRINK OF CHAOS

I vaguely remember all this, he thought: the strikes, the power cuts. I was only four years old — it all seemed like a world away from me back then. I never realized just how bad things got.

HEATH ADMINISTRATION IN CRISIS TALKS WITH UNIONS

JACK JONES, LEADER OF THE TRANSPORT AND GENERAL WORKERS’ UNION, WARNS THAT GOVERNMENT WOULD BE ‘FOOLISH TO IGNORE NOT ONLY THOSE PROTESTING TODAY BUT THOSE MILLIONS WHO ARE FED UP WITH THE CONTINUING PRICE RISES’

‘Stop reading my bloody paper,’ Gene growled from behind his Mirror.

Sam obediently fixed his attention on the Deerys’ house. Moments later, he saw the front door open.

‘Eh up, Guv, we’ve got movement.’

A young couple were emerging from the door of Number 14. Michael Deery was a nondescript-looking man — dark-haired, clean-shaven, dressed in a checked, wing-collared shirt and corduroys; his wife Cait had hair like a young Cher — very dark and straight — and wore a beige corduroy pinafore dress that made Sam think of Play School presenters.

‘They look so ordinary,’ said Sam. ‘Hard to believe they’re gunrunners for the IRA.’

‘What were you expecting? T-shirts with “Bugger the British” printed across ’em?’

Together, the Deerys hauled a heavily taped-up package from the house and stowed it in the boot of the Cresta.

‘What do you reckon that is, Guv?’

‘It’s not meals on wheels, Sammy-boy, I’ll put money on that,’ muttered Gene.

The Deerys glanced about, got into their car, and reversed out into the road. Gene chucked his paper into the back seat and started the Cortina.

‘Don’t make it obvious we’re tailing them,’ said Sam. ‘Keep it low-key.’

‘Is that the way it’s done, is it? Oh, thank you for informing me, Samuel, I was just about to put the blue light on and start beeping me horn.’

‘I just meant-’

‘I know what you meant, Doxon of Dick Green. Now zip your cakehole and let me drive.’

They followed the Deerys out of Dowell Road and soon found themselves heading west. Gene trailed them from a distance, at times allowing cars to get between the Cresta and the Cortina, but he never lost sight of them. Once, he jumped a red light to ensure that he didn’t lag behind, and, when a man in a sporty MG blared his horn and yelled at him to watch where he was bloody going, Gene replied with a one-handed gesture.

‘We’re heading out of town,’ said Sam.

‘Open country — moorland — somewhere deserted away from prying eyes,’ growled Gene. ‘It’s a handover, Sammy, you mark my words.’

‘But not necessarily a handover with the IRA.’

‘You just won’t drop it, will you, Tyler?’

‘As a police officer, I’m obliged to inform my superior officer of my feelings about a given case,’ said Sam.

Gene shot him a sideways glance. ‘You can’t half be an uptight little twonk, Samuel.’

They were leaving the grey suburbs of the city and approaching a desolate, flat landscape of drab grass and wind-flattened trees.

‘There are fewer cars on the road,’ warned Sam. ‘If we’re going to be spotted it’ll be out here. Ease off, Gene.’

‘And risk losing them? No way.’

‘We’ll lose them anyway if they realize we’re following them.’

‘Tyler, I would appreciate it if you stopped addressing me like I was new to policing. I have done this sort of thing before, you know.’

‘Guv, if you’re right and they’ve got explosives in that car, they’ll be on red alert for a police tail. Just ease off, that’s all I’m saying.’

Gene grudgingly pulled over. They watched the Deerys’ car moving away along the road — and then, quite suddenly, after a hundred yards or so, it turned and vanished behind a scrappy knot of trees and did not reappear.

‘That’s it,’ breathed Gene. ‘That’s the rendezvous.’

‘There’s a white van coming up behind us,’ said Sam.

Gene sat bolt upright in his seat, his senses tingling, nerve endings crackling.

‘That’s the contact,’ he muttered as the van drew closer. ‘I can feel it. I can smell it.’

And Sam knew, in the marrow of his bones, that Gene was right. The guv was on form. The booze had not dulled him, nor had the sixty Rothmans a day diminished him. He was a racist, sexist, borderline-alcoholic Neanderthal who flagrantly disregarded protocol and basic human rights — but, whatever Gene Hunt was made of, it was the right stuff for a good copper.

The white van rattled past the parked Cortina. They caught a fleeting glimpse of the driver as he went by.

‘See that, Sam? See what he was wearing?’

‘I saw, Guv. Little round glasses. Just like the gunman yesterday.’

As they watched, the white van turned off the road and disappeared into the same copse of trees as the Deerys.

‘Still convinced there’s no connection between yesterday’s little shindig and the IRA, Sam?’ Gene asked, firing the ignition and creeping the Cortina stealthily forward.

‘To be honest, Guv, no, I’m still not convinced.’

‘You should be. We know the Deerys are couriers for the IRA. They don’t ship in guns and bombs just to hand ’em out like Smarties.’

‘Still doesn’t explain the red hand on the wall,’ said Sam.

‘Bollocks to the red hand on the wall. I want that John-Lennon-faced bastard, Tyler — I want him. He ain’t giving us the slip again, not today he ain’t. I’m gonna have him and his cargo of whiz-bangs safe and sound in my lockup by teatime, ’coz that’s what real coppers do, Sammy-boy, they nick villains — and you can use a red-painted finger to shove the meaning of the mystery F up your word-puzzling, crossword-solving arse, Tyler. Am I communicating my sentiments with sufficient clarity, mm?’

‘Sometimes, Guv,’ said Sam, ‘you’re on the cusp of being some sort of poet.’

‘Only a poet of justice, Sammy-boy,’ Gene intoned as he edged the Cortina forward. ‘Now, stop talking like a ponce and let’s nick ourselves a murdering IRA scumbag.’