Life on Mars: Blood, Bullets and Blue Stratos

by Graham, Tom

  I’ve been shot, through the spine … That’s it, I’m finished, it’s over.

  He rolled groggily onto his side and looked down at himself. Lit up brightly by the search beams, he could see his crumpled body sprawled on the ground, but there were no traces of blood on him. If it had been a bullet that had torn into him, half his spine should be hanging out.

  It was then that he saw the pair of army boots – rather small and expensive-looking army boots – planted beside him. He looked up, and saw the girl with the blonde plaits standing over him, the semi-automatic in her hand, ready to club him again with the butt of the hand-grip the moment he tried to move.

  Pistol-whipped, Sam thought. So that was it. Good God, it hurts even more than I’d imagined.

  The claw hammer must have gone flying from his hand when he was struck, but Sam became aware that he still had the broad-bladed chisel in his jacket pocket. He grasped it, thrust upwards wildly, and at once felt a boot slamming into his wrist, kicking the chisel out of his hand. The next thing he knew, the blonde girl was leaning close to him, her plaits brushing his face. She seemed almost about to kiss him. Sam tried to grab her throat, but the girl stopped him by ramming the cold metal of the semi-automatic’s muzzle roughly between his teeth and against the roof of his mouth.

  ‘You’ve had your warning,’ the girl said in clipped, convent-school tones. ‘Try anything funny, and this time I’ll blow your brains out.’

  Sam lay there, staring upward at his sweet-faced assailant. He heard Mary cry out momentarily, and then fall silent at the command of a male voice. Armed men were rushing about in the overlit courtyard. One of them was roughly shoving Mary back through the window and replacing the metal grille; others were hurrying about the compound, hunting for more intruders.

  That’s it, thought Sam. I blew it. It’s over.

  ‘Who are you? Who else is with you?’ asked the girl with plaits. She removed the gun from his mouth just enough to let him speak. ‘Come on, speak up. Or would you like me to smash your teeth with this?’

  ‘I’m alone.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘You won’t find anyone else. It’s just me. I’m unarmed. I only came here for the girl.’

  ‘I still don’t believe you.’

  ‘Believe what you want. It’s the truth.’

  The girl pressed the pistol hard against Sam’s nose.

  ‘Don’t be clever with me or I’ll be forced to kill you.’

  ‘I’m not being clever,’ Sam said calmly. ‘I’m just being straight with you.’

  ‘Straight!’ the girl laughed. ‘And what does that mean, coming from a fascist?’

  ‘What makes you think I’m fascist?’

  ‘Who else would feel threatened by us enough to break in here and snoop about? But enough of all this chitchat. I want you to stay perfectly still and silent until ordered, otherwise you’ll regret it.’

  She got to her feet, keeping the gun pointed right at him, as a man strolled casually up to join her. He was dressed in combat fatigues, with an IRA ‘Widowmaker’ slung over his shoulder. But what stood out most was the suave – almost too suave – moustache; Sam would have called it a ‘Hulk Hogan’, but back here in the seventies it would perhaps be better understood as a ‘Jason King’ – showy, self-conscious, the ’tash for a playboy.

  ‘Made a catch, Carol?’ the man with the moustache asked breezily, and Sam recognized his voice at once. It was the same man he and Gene had overheard talking to Michael and Cait. His tone was the same here – educated, middle-class, superior, and very English.

  ‘He says he’s alone,’ said Carol.

  ‘Does he, indeed?’

  ‘And he’s English. I don’t think he’s IRA, Captain.’

  ‘English, eh?’ mused the Captain, and he unslung the ArmaLite and aimed it at Sam’s stomach. ‘So what’s the story, hmm? MI5’s finest, are we?’

  ‘CID,’ said Sam, struggling to raise his still-spinning head from the ground. ‘Kill me, and you’ll never see the light of day again.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not one for the sunshine anyway,’ said the Captain. He pulled back the firing bolt on the rifle. ‘Get up.’ Sam began to get to his feet, but the Captain suddenly yelled at him, ‘Slowly, slowly, for God’s sake! You’re making me jumpy, Mr CID.’

  As Sam very slowly straightened, he could see that the Captain was smiling, enjoying himself. Carol kept glancing across at him, admiringly, all the while keeping her semi-automatic trained on Sam.

  An armed man ran up and said, ‘No sign of anyone else, Captain. The compound’s secure.’

  ‘Any vehicles lurking outside?’

  ‘No, Captain.’

  No vehicles? thought Sam. Not even the Cortina? Has Gene gone already? What’s he most likely to do? Get clear, call for backup, and wait for it to arrive. But how long will it take for help to get here?

  He looked at the rifle and the semi-automatic, both pointed straight at him.

  How long have I got?

  The Captain muttered something to the other man, who nodded and hurried off. Then he turned his attention back to Sam.

  ‘Well, Carol,’ he said. ‘It looks like we’ve got ourselves a prisoner. We’ve already got a hostage, but a prisoner’s even better. Hostages need to be kept more or less in one piece, but we can have fun with a prisoner. Shall we do that, Carol? Shall we have fun with our prisoner?’

  ‘When I’m reported missing,’ said Sam, ‘they’ll storm this place. Special Branch. Armed Response Units. SAS. The works. It’s not in your interests to let anything happen to me, or the girl.’

  ‘That’s the sort of thing I’d say,’ put in Carol, ‘if I was in his predicament.’

  ‘Which thankfully you’re not,’ said the Captain. He raised the rifle to his shoulder, military fashion, as if about to fire.

  Sam forced himself not flinch, not to run, not to cry out. Keeping control of his voice he said, through gritted teeth, ‘Think about it. Killing me is only going to make things worse for you all.’

  The Captain motioned briskly with the barrel of the rifle – a gesture that said, Get moving, that way. With his hands above his head, Sam obeyed. Slowly, he turned in the direction the Captain indicated. Ahead of him, he saw the workshop, a menacing array of sharp-edged tools still visible in the broken window.

  ‘We’ll be more comfortable in there, Mr CID.’ The man smiled, squinting at Sam through the rifle gun sight. ‘Then we can talk at leisure. With no need to rush. Taking our time.’

  ‘If anything happens to me, you do realize that—’

  But he had already said too much. Carol brought the butt of her semi-automatic crashing down once again, this time on the base of Sam’s skull. He was unconscious before he even hit the ground.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  GIRL WITH A GUN

  Am I still unconscious?

  Blackness. That’s all there was.

  Am I still alive?

  Still just blackness.

  Tentatively, he raised a hand to the back of his head. Where Carol had brought the butt of her pistol down on him he felt nothing – no blood, no swelling, not even a dull ache. He flexed his shoulders, and they too felt fine, despite the frightful blow to the spine that had sent him sprawling only moments before.

  ‘Something’s wrong,’ he said out loud. ‘To feel this right, something must be wrong.’

  He peered into the darkness, unsure if the vague hints of colour and form were just his eyes playing tricks on him.

  With infinite care, he shuffled blindly forward, feeling the way ahead of him with his foot, wary of obstacles or sudden, cavernous drops. Where the hell was he? Had the R-H-F locked him in a lightless cellar? Had they buried him alive somewhere? Would they be back for him, or was this it? Was he abandoned? Was he doomed to die here, alone in the dark, screaming for a help that would never come, starving, dehydrating, slowly rotting away?

  ‘Hello? Anybody there?’

  The more he
squinted, the surer he was that the murky smudge he perceived ahead of him was real, not imagined. It seemed to move independently of him, edging away from him as he drew closer, almost circling him, like a wary opponent in a boxing ring.

  ‘Hey! Who’s there? Who are you?’

  Sam reached out, groping in the darkness. The figure in the gloom stood still and let him inch his way towards it. But as Sam got closer, he began to doubt what he was seeing. Out of what he had taken to be the torso of the figure there glared two wide, narrow, animal eyes. A gaping, snaggle-toothed set of fangs were bared right across where the belly should be. Whatever it was that glared at him silently from the darkness, it wasn’t human.

  Instinctively, Sam drew back. But this time the thing in the shadows lumbered forward after him, closing the distance.

  ‘Stay back! Stay away from me!’

  Sam tripped over himself, fell, landed heavily and scrambled backwards on his heels and elbows. The devil bore down on him, its eyes still fixed and unblinking, the mouth unmoving. He felt large, powerful hands clamp around his neck, and then he was clawing at muscular forearms, prising desperately at the implacable fingers that were choking his windpipe and sending the blood ringing through his ears.

  Even in his panic, the ringing of his blood recalled to Sam the high-pitched dead tone of the Test Card Girl.

  Is that what this is? Another of her bloody nightmares? But this one feels different … It feels worse!

  His lungs were bursting. His tongue became fat and bloated with trapped blood. His vision filled up with sickly green light as his brain became starved of oxygen. The strength began to ebb from his clawing hands. And still his ears sang and sang with that interminable whistling tone.

  ‘This is how I finished her,’ came a deep, male voice, just audible through the suffocating chaos in Sam’s mind.

  Who? Finished who?

  ‘Slowly … I did it slowly …’

  With the dregs of his strength, Sam tugged at the iron fingers around his throat, then felt his arms flop limply at his sides.

  ‘And then …’ The voice went on, ‘when she passed out … I let her go.’

  The fingers relaxed, and Sam fell against the hard floor. On the verge of death he gasped and groaned for air, gulping down oxygen into his agonized lungs, feeling it bring the strength back to his numbed and trembling limbs. He choked and spluttered, tried to struggle onto his feet, but suddenly felt those ogre’s hands slipping round his neck once again.

  ‘And then, when she’d recovered … I’d start all over again.’

  The hands tightened. Sam’s windpipe was squeezed shut. Again, he began to claw at the hands around his throat, as hopelessly as before.

  ‘Over and over … Again and again … For hours … Until her heart gave out.’

  Sam’s own heart was pounding crazily within him.

  ‘So now you know how it ended for her,’ the monster breathed in his ear in its low, guttural voice. ‘Now you know.’

  On the threshold of death, Sam was released once more. He fell limply to the floor, choking, gagging, greedily sucking in great lungfuls of air.

  ‘Don’t forget this, Tyler,’ the disembodied voice whispered, very close to Sam’s ear. ‘I want you to remember it when next we meet – what I did to her, and what I’ll do again, when I come back for what’s mine.’

  Sam struggled to speak: ‘Who … What are you … What’s the …’

  ‘For what’s mine, Tyler.’

  The leering devil face filled his vision. Was it a huge mask? Was it painted? It wasn’t real. Surely it wasn’t real!

  ‘Until the next time.’

  The monstrous hands that had been choking him now landed heavily on Sam’s shoulders; with a single, powerful push, they shoved Sam backwards – but instead of hitting the floor, he found himself tumbling through darkness, down, down, and still further down, into a pitch black void. Some deep and animal part of him sensed the hard, unyielding ground rushing up to meet him.

  I’ll break my back when I hit … Or my rib cage will be shattered … Or my skull …

  There was a rush of air, a terrible split second of certainty – this is it, this is it! – and then, with a sudden and shocking impact, he was smashing head first into a hard floor. The power of the concussion seemed to numb him, depriving him of any sense of his body or physical being.

  Am I still unconscious?

  Blackness. That’s all there was.

  Am I still alive?

  Blackness – and then pain, tingling first at the base of his skull, then growing, spreading, until it was washing through him in steady, sickening waves. It was pain like he’d never known before.

  I’m alive – and conscious. With pain like that, I’m most definitely alive and conscious …

  If the devil in the dark had been some terrible fantasy of the mind, what he was experiencing now was all too real. His skull felt as if it had been shattered. Every nerve ending was screaming. With effort, and still unable to see, he tried to make sense of where he was and what shape he was in. Through the nausea of his pain he became aware that he was sitting upright in a hard chair, his hands behind him. When he tried to raise his arms, he felt the hard bite of handcuffs at each wrist, holding him firm. Feebly, he tested their strength.

  ‘They’re secure,’ said a feminine voice.

  Sam tried to speak, but his tongue felt thick and heavy. His lips were gummed together with dry blood.

  I’m conscious, I’m alive … But where the hell am I?

  With effort, he created a mental picture of his situation. He was manacled to a chair, probably in one of the little sheds or workshops dotted about the compound. He was blindfolded, very tightly. Carol, the girl with the gun and innocently plaited hair, was standing somewhere close by, her semi-automatic either aimed at his head or sitting snug and ready in the holster at her waist. Was she alone, or was that man still with her – the one with the Jason King moustache, the one they called Captain?

  ‘Mnnnmn … Nanmnmnnm …’ said Sam. His fat, dry tongue moved sluggishly in his mouth. The effort of speaking increased the pain, intensified the nausea.

  ‘Don’t make a noise,’ ordered Carol. ‘I’m authorized to keep you under control by any means necessary.’

  ‘Water …’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I need water …’

  ‘Do you want me to hit you again?’

  Sam let his head loll on his chest. His dry mouth tasted vilely of beef extract. How much time had passed since his capture? Most likely it was just a few minutes, but how could he really be sure? He might have been stuck in this chair for hours – perhaps even days. And if so, where the hell was Gene? Was he still lurking about outside the perimeter fence? Or had he come climbing into the compound after Sam? And if he had, what had become of him? Was he too sitting in a shed somewhere, cuffed to a chair, blindfolded and under armed guard? Were they working him over before starting on Sam? Or had things turned out very differently for the guv? Was his bullet-filled body packed into the boot of a car somewhere? Were the R-H-F driving him down to the nearest canal, his bloodstained camel hair coat weighted down with rocks?

  ‘Mary …’ Sam muttered.

  ‘Are you praying?’

  ‘Mary … The little girl …’

  ‘She’s secure, back where we want her,’ said Carol. ‘You wasted your time breaking in here. What did you think you could accomplish all on your own, you idiot?’

  All on my own!

  Sam felt a glimmer of hope. Wherever Gene was, he wasn’t in the clutches of the R-H-F. Not yet, at any rate.

  He’ll have seen the lights come on in the compound, heard the shouting, and figured I’ve been taken captive. He’s a half-psychotic, alcoholic bastard with the sensibilities of an overgrown adolescent, but he’s not stupid. For once in his life he’ll have no choice but to follow procedure; he’ll call for back-up, get an armed response team deployed on the site, and ensure the safe release of his fellow
officer. He’s probably already radioed through for support and is sitting tight just outside the compound waiting for them to roll up.

  Just hang on in there, Sam. Put your faith in Gene Hunt.

  That last thought sent a tremor of doubt through him.

  You’ve got no choice. You’ve got to trust that Gene will do the right thing, that he’ll get you out of here. Have faith. Just keep buying yourself time and have faith.

  Sam worked his mouth to get some feeling back into. He felt the flakes of dry blood on his lips crack and break.

  ‘Carol,’ he said. ‘It is Carol, isn’t it?’

  ‘I said be quiet.’

  ‘What time is it? How long have I been here? Carol, you can’t blame me for trying to get my bearings.’ His voice was broken and rasping. He sounded like a man who’d just crawled out of the desert. ‘If you won’t let me have water, Carol, what about taking this blindfold off?’

  ‘Don’t be stupid.’

  ‘Please, Carol, what’s the point in doing this to me?’ No answer. ‘Carol. Please speak to me, Carol.’

  ‘Stop using my name like that,’ she said. ‘I know what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to establish a rapport. You think it’ll make you safer. You think it will make you seem more human to me.’

  ‘I’m a policeman, Carol. I’ve had training. Anyway, you’d do the same in my position.’

  ‘Actually, I wouldn’t,’ Carol said, her young voice sounding chipper and perky, as if she were discussing her favourite pony. ‘I’d keep my mouth shut, except to spit at the fascist policemen who were torturing me.’

  ‘I told you before, I’m not a fascist,’ said Sam. ‘I wonder if you even know the meaning of the word.’ Keep her talking. Build a bridge between the two of you, however slight. Just keep her talking! ‘What is it that’s made you so anti the police? Did you get busted for smoking dope at uni? Is your dad chief constable or something?’