Authors: Tom Graham
Yes,
thought Sam.
That’s how it will appear here. That’s how it will seem to the CID of 1973.
‘If Tyler’s right,’ Gene growled, ‘then there’s more to it that just that. Annie Cartwright, our dopey girl detective, is the one who’s been digging up all this old stuff in the files. She’s been digging and she’s been
talking
– to Carroll, to Walsh, to them ex-coppers who were on the take. And word’s evidently gotten back to Clive Gould that his past is not as dead and buried as he thought it was.’
‘So it’s bloody Cartwright who’s stirred all this up?’ said Ray, and he shot an angry look at Sam. ‘Why don’t you keep her on a tighter leash, Boss?’
Sam squared up to him: ‘She’s a copper and she’s acting like one.’
‘She’s acting like a kid!’ Ray came back at him. ‘The past is the past, you leave it where it is, you don’t go back to it when there’s no need.’
‘Sometimes there
is
a need to go back to the past,’ Sam said. ‘Sometimes, there’s
every
need to go back.’
‘Oh, yeah, right Boss, and two blokes winding up dead is a price worth paying, is it?’ Ray turned back to Gene. ‘That Cartwright, Guv, she’s a liability. This is big league stuff; she had no right to be going behind all our backs.’
Gene nodded, but Sam put his foot down: ‘This department was riddled with corruption back then. It was like a cancer. Guv, you should be the first one to applaud one of your officers rooting out what’s rotten.’
‘Sleeping dogs,’ Gene said dourly.
‘Time to wake ’em up, then!’ Sam said angrily. ‘Annie had the balls to do that. Can the same be said for any of you lot?’
Ray rolled his eyes, unimpressed. Chris was still queasy with visions of the man with the six inch nail run through his bollocks.
After a long pause, Gene said: ‘Well. It seems to me we ain’t got no choice in this. Cartwright’s popped the cork on something, and that’s that, there’s no going back. What we got to do is play this right. If Tyler’s on the nose about this, if Gould’s back in town and blagging old coppers, then nailing him would be a big gold star for this department and an even bigger gold star for
me.
And boy, do I ever need a gold star.’
‘What’s the plan then, Guv?’ Ray asked.
‘First up, let’s make sure we’re pointing our guns in the right direction,’ said Gene. ‘Chris, if you’re going to puke up, bugger off and do it in the bogs.’
‘I’m steady, Guv …’
‘I don’t want you chucking your porridge in my waste bin.’
‘I’m … controlling it, Guv.’
‘Good. Keep controlling it and do something useful at the same time. Dig up what you can about Clive Gould’s death. I want everything – coroner’s report, death certificate, what suit he had on when they stuck him in the casket. If there’s discrepancies in there, if there’s anything to suggest that Gould ain’t as dead as he’s supposed to be, I want them found, you hearing me, Chris?’
Still looking on the verge of spewing, Chris gingerly made his way out.
‘Raymond,’ Gene went on, ‘it looks like the police files are full of more bullshit and bollocks than Tyler’s LP collection, so let’s leave ’em be. Instead, see what you can dig up about old acquaintances and employees of Gould, fellas who worked for him, heavies, croupiers, mechanics, dollybirds if you can find ’em. Let’s get a list of contacts on the roll so we’re not fannying about in the dark. I want to start speaking to people who might know what’s going on.’
‘Wilco, Guv,’ said Ray and turned to go. But then he paused and fixed Sam with a look, and said, ‘You know she don’t belong, Boss.’
Sam looked straight back at him and said: ‘You’ve got your orders, DS Carling.’
‘Don’t think with your dick, Boss, not in this job.’
There was a tense, silent moment, and then Ray pushed his way past Sam and headed off.
‘He’s right, Tyler,’ Gene said.
‘Annie Cartwright, the department scapegoat,’ said Sam bitterly. ‘Where the hell’s the
esprit de corps
round here?’
‘The what? Hang on a sec, Samuel, while I look that phrase up in my
Beginner’s Guide to Talking Utter Cock
.’ He scowled across at Sam. ‘Cartwright’s been a dollop. And deep down you know it. Going behind my back, going behind
everyone’s
back, that’s not how it’s done, Tyler.’
But Sam had heard Annie run down and abused more than enough for one day. He turned his back on Gene, threw open the door, and walked out without a word.
He found a cup of cold tea which she hadn’t so much as sipped. Sam came over and sat beside her. She didn’t look up.
‘I’m proud of you,’ he said.
‘Don’t patronize me, Sam.’
‘I understand how you’re feeling. Confused, frightened … God, I’ve had my share of that.’
‘Nothing makes any sense anymore,’ she said, almost inaudibly. ‘Nothing feels real. Or it feels
too
real. Or …’
She looked for the right words, failed to find them, and threw up her hands in despair.
‘I hate seeing you this miserable,’ Sam said. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘I’m not expecting you to do anything,’ Annie said.
‘No, but I’m still offering. Let me take you out somewhere tonight.’
‘I dunno, Sam.’
‘A meal. Somewhere quiet. With candles.’
Annie shook her head.
‘Well, there’s always the stock car rally,’ Sam teased her. ‘I’ve seen the posters. Lots of noisy bumping – just your scene, yeah?’
She didn’t react. But Sam kept pushing for a smile, however fleeting.
‘Not tempted?
Really?
You surprise me. Okay then …. what about the pictures? Come on – two hours of escapism. Leave the world and all its worries behind for a bit. Lose yourself.’
‘Lose myself …’ she muttered.
‘In a
good
way,’ Sam added.
Annie shrugged.
‘I’ll get you a lolly,’ Sam said, and then leaning closer, he added enticingly: ‘A
red
one. Mmm? Ah, I’m getting through to you now, yes, I can see it in your eyes.’
The hint of a smile appeared on Annie face. It warmed Sam’s heart to see it.
‘You’re resistance is crumbling …’
‘Okay, Romeo,’ Annie said, giving in to him with a sigh. ‘What’s showing?’
‘The Guv’s bête-noir,’ grinned Sam.
‘Never heard of it. Who’s in it?’
‘No, that’s not the name of the film, what I meant was … Don’t matter.
Westworld,
that’s what’s showing. The one with Yul Brynner.’
‘Who else?’
‘Don’t know. Some blokes.’
Annie thought it over, looked Sam in the eye, tilted her head to one side and said: ‘I’ll pass on the lolly. But I quite like Yul Brynner.’
The moment they arrived at the Roxy, Sam regretted it. It was here, outside the cinema, that the shadowy form of Clive Gould had stepped out suddenly and confronted him. He looked at the poster on display – Yul Brynner in full cowboy costume, looming up, gun in hand, his face falling away to reveal circuits and wires beneath. He thought how Gould’s transparent apparition had stood directly in front of it. The memory disgusted him. Why the hell had he come back to this place that had such horrible associations? And why had he brought Annie?
But Annie herself was oblivious. She hung tightly to Sam’s arm, reassured by his presence, desperate for some scrap of normality in a life that was becoming increasingly undermined.
Normality,
Sam thought as the queue began working its way into the cinema foyer.
I think we could both do with a great big helping of dull, boring, workaday normality.
Two for the stalls set Sam back a grand total of ninety pence. Together, they made their way into the auditorium and settled into the faded red plush of their seats. The place filled up – Brynner was a big draw – and, as the lights went down, Sam found Annie’s hand and gently squeezed it. Her fingers tightened around his, hard.
The curtains pulled back, and up on the screen, trippy geometric shapes came hurtling out of a hazy void, accompanied by jaunty, jazzy music. It was time for Pearl & Dean.
Pa-pah, pa-pah, pa-pah, pa-pah, pa-pa-pah!
Pa-pah, pa-pah, pa-pah, pa-paaaAAAH – PAH!
There was a bad splice and a crunch of crackle. Then wobbly, catlike music howled shakily from the speakers, and a man’s voice intoned over a sequence of shoddy Polaroids:
‘For the real taste of Old Peking, why not visit the Golden Gong. Enter a world of luxury and wonder, relax in one of our hygienic, wipe-clean dining booths, sample Macclesfield’s finest oriental cuisine, choose between authentic wooden chopsticks or a proper knife and fork, and let the magic of the Far East transport you on an unforgettably culinary adventure. The Golden Gong Chinese restaurant – only five minutes from this cinema.’
‘Five minutes by jet pack!’ Sam whispered. ‘It’s miles away, right over by –’
But he was drowned out by the next advert. The screen was filled with square-jawed men who seemed to have walked straight out of a mail-order catalogue. They laughed and joshed to a funky soundtrack, attracting the attentions of women who all looked like Agnetha from Abba. In the pub, in the park, in the night club, these guys had it made – it was all friends and fun and quality birds for them. Their secret? They rolled their fags with Rizla. Sam duly took note.
A jump-cut to crudely animated peanuts hopping about as excited voices sang:
Hey! Crusader! Have you any nuts?
It got the same filthy laugh from the audience that Sam remembered from his childhood.
Normality,
San thought again, and he found that he was relaxing. He hoped Annie was too. They deserved it, just one evening away from cosmic stress and trauma.
A girl with an illuminated tray of Lyons ice cream appeared under the screen, while from the speakers came a solemn male voice that sounded like a prime minister announcing to the country that war had been declared: ‘
Kia-Ora fruit drink may be purchased in the foyer of this theatre now. Available in orange and lemon flavours.’
Before they could get anywhere near
Westworld,
there was an absolutely mind-numbing B-feature to endure. It was something about a fisherman with a beard like Captain Birdseye who lived alone in a cabin by an American lake and was trying to catch a trout who had eluded him all his life.
‘The Guv won’t be pleased we’ve come here,’ Sam said as the abysmal short film came to its tedious conclusion. ‘He has major issues with
Westworld.’
‘That’s not the only thing he has issues with,’ Annie said. ‘But let’s not think about him, not tonight. Let’s not think about anything. Just the film.’
‘Just the film,’ Sam nodded, and again he squeezed her hand.
There was a pause while people rushed off to the toilet or grabbed last minute provisions from the kiosk in the foyer, and then, after what felt like fifteen hours,
Westworld
commenced.
Sam knew the story, having seen the film as a teenager late at night on TV. In the near future, wealthy American thrill-seekers visit an elaborate theme park where they can live out their fantasies. In Medievalworld, they play at being knights and ladies; in Romanworld, it’s one big debauch with grapes and togas; and in Westworld, they don Stetsons and chaps and pretend to be cowboys in a frontier town. Nothing is off limits, and everything is guilt free – sex, violence, murder – because the whole park is populated by lifelike robots. The movie’s heroes, enjoying themselves in Westworld, can roll about with robot whores and blaze away at robot gunslingers to their hearts’ content. Nobody gets hurt. It’s all just fantasy.
And then a computer virus ravages the theme park’s control systems. The robots turn nasty and start killing the guests. And the film’s protagonist finds himself remorselessly pursued by Yul Brynner, the blank-eyed android gunslinger whose faulty computer brain has fixated utterly on tracking down and shooting this poor, helpless man.
Sitting in the dark, Sam let his thoughts wander. As the terrified hero of
Westworld
fled across a bleak desert landscape, the robot Yul Brynner manically on his trail, Sam began to sense a connection between the cinematic events and his own existence. The ‘Westworld’ of the film was a façade, as unreal and phony as the Manchester of 1973 that Sam found himself in. And the man fleeing out across the desert, dressed up as a cowboy but really a city boy to the core, was as every bit out of his own time and place as Sam was.
And then there was Brynner, the killing machine that could not be stopped, marching on and on in pursuit of its victim, deaf to reason, oblivious to mercy, focussed utterly on its single, lethal purpose. The parallels between him and Gould were obvious, and all the more chilling for being so. His own horrible, desperate situation was being enacted up there on the screen. Sam found himself regretting yet again his suggestion to bring Annie here.
As Sam’s mind drifted, half in and half out of the film, he became dimly aware that the image on the cinema screen seemed to have subtly shifted. What had changed? Why did he suddenly feel so unsettled?
In the movie, the hero – a weedy, gawky guy with a horrible moustache, who was still dressed up in his cowboy costume – was running for his life across an arid expanse of desert, the black-hatted gunslinger marching after him. But why had the man’s costume changed? The hat and cowboy clothes had been replaced by a long, dark grey overcoat worn over a sombre suit and tightly-knotted tie. And now that Sam looked, he saw that the man’s moustache had disappeared, and his features had changed completely.
‘McClintock!’ Sam hissed, his voice drowned out by a sudden blast of gunfire from Yul Brynner.
There was blood on McClintock’s face as he ran. The showy waistcoat and shirt were ripped and stained with red. As he staggered and stumbled down a rocky incline, McClintock lurched to a stop and raised up his right hand. Something glinted gold. It was the fob watch that had accompanied him on his transition from fiery death in Gould’s burning garage to a new life in 1973.
Yul Brynner appeared at the head of the incline, silhouetted against the dazzling desert sky. But he, too, had changed. He was shorter, and dressed not in black but in a snappy, grey Nehru suit. His face was obscured by the dazzle of the scorching sun, but Sam knew Clive Gould’s broad, ugly face, his narrow eyes, his thick lips and the jumble of huge, misshapen teeth behind them.