by Tom Graham
‘Yes, we’re the fuzz,’ announced Gene, striding up to the steeplejack and waving his ID about. ‘Okay, so what did you find?’
‘A dead fella, all mushed-up like, at base o't'chimney,’ the steeplejack explained, pushing back his cloth cap to scratch his brow with a permanently oil-stained hand. His voice, with its rich, warm Lancashire accent, was even more familiar to Sam than his appearance. ‘Nigh on ’ad ’eart attack when I copped sight o’ that!’
‘Base of the chimney, you say. If we have a poke around, is that thing going to come down on our bonces?’
‘Nay, lad, it’ll stand there till doomsday if I don’t light kindlin’,’ the steeplejack assured him. ‘’Ave no fear, you poke an’ prod to your ’eart’s content. Just don’t ask me to clap eyes on that poor fella a second time!’
‘Leave it to us, we’re used to it,’ said Gene, jutting out his jaw in a manly, unshockable way. He wrapped his camel hair coat about him and marched towards the chimney.
But Sam hesitated before following him. He looked sideways at the steeplejack, frowned, squinted.
The man grinned at him. ‘You all right, lad?’
‘Excuse me, but … is your name Fred Dibner?’
‘Aye, tha’s right. We met, a’ we?’
‘No, no, I remember you on the telly.’
‘I nowt been on’t telly, lad, not wit’ face like mine!’
‘No. No, of course not. I meant that … you should be on the telly.’
‘As what? One o’ Pan’s People on’t Top o’ t’ Pops? Give over! I’d look like right tit, prancin’ wit’ ’em lasses.’
‘Well, if one day somebody comes knocking from the BBC … just have a think about it,’ suggested Sam, and then he followed Gene over towards the chimney.
‘You think that bloody thing’s really gonna stay up while we have a snoop?’ asked Gene, sizing up the chimney. Close up like this, it looked huge. Huge, and precarious. The bricks at its base had been mostly hacked out and replaced with stout wooden props, then heaped with kindling; a fire, once ignited, would burn through the props and bring the chimney crashing down upon itself.
‘It’ll be okay, Guv. The steeplejack said it would be okay.’
‘Mmm. I ain’t so sure that pot-bellied inbred knows what the chuff he’s doing. Smacks of a ’erbert, to me.’
‘Fred Dibner? Gene, I assure you – he is the man.’
Gene shrugged: ‘Well then – since you got such faith in ’im ...’
He indicated that Sam was to lead on.
With dignity, Sam pulled his jacket straight and ran a hand nonchalantly through his hair: ‘Certainly, Guv – seeing as you’re chicken.’
Sam strode up to the base of the chimney and peered in between the wooden props. Inside, half obscured with rubble and brick dust, was a mangled corpse. Its skin had been so shredded that its face was an anonymous red mask. It was impossible to tell what was ripped flesh and what was torn clothing, the two had become so matted.
‘My God …’ Sam muttered.
‘What is it, Tyler? A stiff?’
‘What’s left of one.’
Sam crawled gingerly through the gap and stood upright. Glancing up, he saw the chimney rising up above him, the grey sky forming a bright circle a hundred feet up.
All at once, the severe, looming perspectives seemed to overwhelm him. He felt trapped, like a man stranded at the bottom of a deep well. For a moment, Sam experienced a giddy sense of vertigo, as if the chimney were swaying. Shutting his eyes tight, he took a slow, deep breath.
‘What you doin’ in there, Tyler?’ Gene barked through the gap in the bricks.
‘Just having a moment of metaphysical angst, Guv,’ Sam replied, placing a hand on his chest and willing his heart to slow down.
‘Is that the same as Bombay bum?’
‘The symptoms are curiously similar, Guv … It’s okay, I’m fine now.’
Pulling himself together, Sam approached the corpse. Its red, fleshless face stared back at him with empty eye sockets, grinning a ghastly, deathly grin.
‘Frisk him, Tyler, he won’t mind,’ Gene urged him.
Wincing, Sam reached his hand towards the body. He touched the chest – it was cold and damp and encrusted with brick dust. Lifting a soggy mass which might have been the remains of a jacket, or might have been shredded human tissue, he saw a square object nestling against the corpse’s ribs. Using his fingertips, Sam removed it.
‘What you got, Tyler?’
‘A wallet, Guv.’
‘Anything in it?’
‘A fiver,’ said Sam. ‘And a driving licence.’
‘Name on the licence?’
Sam had to clear away a revolting dollop of red goo to read it – and then, when he saw the name, he felt his stomach muscles tighten.
‘Well, Tyler? Who is it?’
‘Walsh,’ said Sam, looking now at the terrible, mutilated remains of the man’s face.
Without warning, a sense of panic and claustrophobia welled up inside him. He turned and scrambled frantically back through the narrow opening.
‘It’s him, it’s DI Pat Walsh,’ he panted, throwing the wallet to Gene.
‘Well, well, well,’ mused Gene. ‘Carroll kills Walsh, dumps the body here, then holes up in a church – is that the story?’
Sam couldn’t speak. His mind was reeling, recalling Mickey Carroll’s high, desperate voice howling at him: ‘I’m not going to end up like Pat! I’m not going to end up that way! No, no, no, no ...!’
‘What you reckon, Tyler – nervous breakdown? Carroll goes daffy and whacks his old DI – not that there’s anything too daffy about wanting to do that – then trots off to the God squad like loonies always do. Adds up for me, Sammy boy.’
‘It’s not what happened …’ Sam muttered, almost to himself. And then, louder, he added: ‘For one thing, if Carroll did dump Walsh’s body here, how did he get it inside the chimney? That hole in the base was cut afterwards by the steeplejack. You’re not going to tell me Carroll climbed to the top and dropped Walsh down the hole?’
As he spoke, Sam recalled the awful shadow that had confronted him outside the Roxy cinema. He imagined it loping through this blighted wasteland of rubble and shattered masonry, hauling Walsh’s flayed corpse behind it. In his mind’s eye, he saw it passing freely through the brickwork at the base of the chimney, as freely as it had passed through the solid façade of the cinema, and he pictured Walsh’s body sharing for a moment in that shadowy incorporeality as it too passed through the solid chimney wall and vanished inside.
This twisting and morphing of reality made Sam’s head swim. He forced himself to keep a clear brain; to stay focused, not to let such bizarre unreality undermine him.
‘Somebody brought Walsh here, Guv,’ he said with conviction, ‘but it wasn’t Carroll.’
‘No?’ said Gene, peering at him. ‘You sound very certain.’
‘I am. Because Carroll didn’t kill Walsh.’
Gene took a step closer, narrowed his sharp eyes and said: ‘If you know something I don’t …’
‘I know a lot of things you don’t, Guv. Things that would rock your world.’
There was a sudden fall of bricks from the chimney, landing noisily just a few feet from where Sam and Gene were standing.
But Gene ignored it. He loomed over Sam: ‘You say Carroll didn’t kill Walsh? What makes you think that?’
‘It’s not an … an easy thing to explain.’
‘Have a stab.’
Sam sighed and threw up his hands. But Gene drew closer still, keeping his beady eyes fixed on him.’
‘It’s them old police files, isn’t it,’ the Guv’nor said in a low voice. ‘Them ones your tart keeps going through. I’m serious, Tyler, if you and her have got information from them pertaining to this case …’
Sam turned away, trying to think, trying to piece together what was happening here.
It’s Gould did this. He killed Pat Walsh and dumped the r
emains here – and he’d have done the same to Mickey Carroll, except that Carroll got away. But why? Why would he kill these men – and why would he mutilate the bodies?
‘Don’t you ignore me, Tyler!’ Gene was growling at him.
Carroll saw what happened – or at least, he saw Gould arrive and attack Walsh. What guise did Gould take? Did he appear to them like the Devil in the Dark? No wonder Gould’s holed up in a church – he must feel he’s got the Prince of Darkness coming after him!
‘Tyler! You bloody well turn round and answer me!’
‘Carroll, Walsh, Darby,’ Sam said, suddenly facing Gene. ‘Three bent coppers, Guv. Three members of CID back in the sixties, all of them corrupt. Walsh is now dead, and Carroll only narrowly avoided the same fate. The third of them – Darby – he’s in line for the same treatment too, you mark my words. They’re all connected, Guv! Each one of them’s connected to –’
He broke off. He’d already said too much.
‘Connected to what, Tyler?’
‘To a … a murder, back in the sixties.’
‘Whose murder? What’s the matter, Sam, why are you being so chary about this?’
Sam sighed: ‘There was a man. PC Cartwright. No relation to Annie.’ He swallowed down that lie, and completely glossed over the death of James McClintock at the same time, and kept talking. ‘Cartwright was murdered in the early sixties. His death was covered up by DCI Carroll, DI Walsh, and a man called DS Ken Darby. They falsified reports, brushed the whole thing under the carpet, because they were paid to do it. There was a villain, he had half of CID in his pocket – including Carroll, Walsh and Darby. That’s what Annie’s unearthing in those old files.’
Gene’s face was very pinched and serious. Slowly, he said: ‘Do you remember our little chat in my office? The one about letting sleeping dogs lie?’
‘I do, Guv. But the dog isn’t sleeping, is it. It’s up and about and running round town biting ex-coppers.’
‘And your soppy tart with the files, she’s the one what woke it up. Just like I said.’
‘Annie’s not responsible, she’s just uncovering the back-story.’
‘Oh aye? And she just happened to uncover that back-story about a bunch of ex-coppers right before somebody pops up and starts knocking ’em off? Or are you going to tell me it’s just a coincidence?’
Sam looked for an answer, but couldn’t find one. He knew that Gould was drawing closer and ever closer to Annie, and that Annie – with all her researches and her slowly recovering memories – was drawing steadily towards him. Gene was right; it was no coincidence. But it was too complicated and too cosmic and too damned surreal for Sam to have a hope of explaining to him.
Trying to sound like he meant it, Sam said: ‘It’s a coincidence, Guv.’
‘And the fact that this copper whose death got covered up was called PC Cartwright, that’s just a coincidence an’all, is it?’
Feebly, Sam nodded.
‘Then why, Tyler, did she say this private investigation of hers was – and I quote – personal?’
Gene was edging towards violence. His rough, unshaven cheeks were flushed red, and his eyes were glittering dangerously.
‘Why didn’t you step in, Sam? Why didn’t you stop her before she sparked this whole thing off? Thinking with your dick, that’s what you’ve been doing!’
‘It’s more complicated than that.’
‘So you keep telling me!’
‘Guv, I … I don’t think right here, at the bottom of a bloody great chimney that’s about to come down, with a flayed corpse grinning at us, is the time and the place to have this conversation.’
‘Oh, I don’t know, I’ve been to wedding receptions that were worse.’
‘Guv, there’s flamin’ Fred Dibner over there waiting to bring this lot down! This is just not the time for it! Listen, it really is complicated – and I don’t know how much of it you’d understand or how … how you’d react if you did.’
‘So you thought it best to carry on behind my back, is that it?’
‘Guv, you make it sound like I was having an affair.’
‘What you did’s worse than an affair!’ Gene barked at him, ignoring another fall of bricks close by. ‘A DCI and his DI are closer than a bloke and his ball ’n’ chain, closer than brothers, closer than a muvva an’ her brat!’
‘Stop being melodramatic.’
‘Shut it!’ Gene ordered him. ‘I’m the guv’nor round here and I’ll decided what’s what. Right, Tyler, I’ve let you muck me about long enough. I’m taking action. Here and now.’
‘What do you mean, "taking action"?’
‘You and me are going straight back to that ruddy church.’
‘The church? You mean the one Mickey Carroll’s holed-up in?’
‘No, I mean Westminster bloody Abbey so I can frenchy the Queen Mum. Of course I mean the one with Carroll in it, you dopey dipstick! That siege has gone on long enough. We’re not fannying about no more. We’re going to go in there, nick Carroll, and we’re going to contain this story, Tyler – we are going to contain it! Kill it! Bury it!’
‘Guv, no, please,’ Sam pleaded, rushing after him. ‘You try and storm that place, you’ll have a massacre on your hands.’
‘I do not want a scandal coming out, not on my watch!’ Gene hissed furiously. ‘If half of what you’ve been telling me is right, do you have any idea what the press would make of it? Eh? It don’t matter it was ten years ago, it’ll be yours truly what cops it. DCI Hunt, do you really expect us to believe you knew nothing about this affair? Were you part of the conspiracy? What trust can the public have in a police force that colludes with villains to cover up the murder of a PC? They’ll crucify me, Tyler! It’s happened before. That dodgy hack who’s always half-cut, Saucy Jack Sargood who writes for the whatever-it-is, he’s tucked me up like a kipper a dozen times in his filthy little rag, writing all sorts of stuff about me being a bully and a thug and mistreating darkies an’ that. Total bollocks, but people believe it. Just think what a field day he’d have if a real scandal came out. He’d make mincemeat of me. And all because your drippy bird stirred up old troubles. Damn it, Tyler!’
Without warning, Gene span round and grabbed Sam by the throat. He thrust his face against Sam’s and glared right into his eyes.
‘You went behind my back!’ he hissed. ‘You and that bird of yours, you deliberately failed to keep me informed! You froze me out! You kept me in the cold! You bloody well –’
More bricks fell, and this time there came a strange honking sound from behind them, like the frantic calling of a chronically overweight goose.
‘What the hell’s them giant farts?’ Gene frowned, tilting his head to listen.
Two hundred yards away, Fred Dibner was madly honking the old car horn he used as a warning klaxon. Frantically, he waved his arms and pointed, and then honked again.
Sam suddenly understood. So did Gene. In unison, they glanced up at the chimney as it began to tilt towards them.
‘Stand there till doomsday, he said …’ muttered Gene.
‘I think doomsday’s arrived early …’ Sam grunted back, prying the Guv’s fingers from around his windpipe.
In the next moment, they ran.
There was a deafening roar and a violent cascade of masonry. The sky went dark as great billows of brick dust erupted all round them. Sam had time to glimpse Gene being swallowed whole by the avalanche of dust before he himself was blinded by the deluge.
And then, a heartbeat later, came the terrible weight of the falling chimney crashing down at their heels, slamming into the earth with the force of a meteorite. The ground heaved and jolted beneath Sam’s feet, but he somehow maintained his balance and kept on running. He felt his back and legs peppered with flying pellets of brickwork. Spinning chunks of debris whistled past his ears and shattered on the ground all about him like hand grenades.
Choking and spluttering, Sam blundered blindly ahead, aware now that the sun was just
visible as a sickly yellow glow. The dust clouds were settling. The air was clearing. Sam slowed to a walk, and found that he was stumbling through a ruinous terrain of heaped bricks and pulverised stone. The chimney had twisted as it fell, hurling itself to destruction off to their left, missing them by a matter of yards. As Sam spluttered and looked about, he saw movement – a shadowy, faceless figure emerging threateningly from the dust. But this time, unlike the encounter outside the Roxy, there was no aura of horror about this ghostly apparition. There was violence, yes, and anger, and a certain brutishness – but more powerfully than that was a sense of moral purpose, a feeling that, for all its faults and failings, this figure emerging from the debris represented sanctuary.
Caked in dust, like two gingerbread men freshly rolled in flour, Sam and Gene stood looking at each other.
Fred Dibner came panting up to them, the concern on his face giving way to relief when he saw they were both alive and in one piece. Then he cast his eyes over the ruined chimney, and a huge grin spread across his face.
In his broad Lancashire accent, he said: ‘Y’like tha’?’
Gene glared at him: ‘Not one bit, you oily-dicked bowl of bollocks.’
And with that, he stormed off towards the Cortina, trailing dust in his wake.
CHAPTER SEVEN: THIS IS DIPLOMACY
Gene angrily floored the gas, sending the Cortina screaming through the streets. As he drove, he ordered Sam to put a call through to CID over the police radio.
‘Scramble the team. Get them to meet us at the church.’
‘Does that include Annie?’ Sam asked.
‘Unfortunately it does,’ Gene growled. ‘I want her where I can keep an eye on her, not sloping about on her own stirring up trouble. She’s done more than enough on her tod already.’
Sam reached for the dashboard radio, but hesitated.
‘Guv,’ he said, ‘I still don’t think it’s right to break the siege like this. Carroll said he’d start shooting hostages at the first sign of –’
Gene’s fist slammed into the side of Sam’s face like a steam-driven piston. Sam found himself slumped against the passenger door, his head spinning, his ears ringing.
