by Tom Graham
‘Gould!’ a voice bellowed, cutting through the sound of rushing water. Sam knew the voice at once – and his heart leapt at the sound ‘Don’t you move, you vertical pile of suited shite! You are royally nicked, my lovely!’
There was a blur of beige camel hair and flash of white loafer, cutting through the overpowering gloom of hellish green, followed by a deafening shotgun blast and a blaze of light. A ragged hole exploded in the ceiling, brining down a cascade of melting ice and shattered plaster onto of the roulette tables.
Gould, with Annie still hooked on his arm, turned, saw who had just come bursting into his casino, and snarled.
Standing ankle-deep in running water, being drenched by the thawing ice, stood Gene Hunt, a sawn-off double-barrel shotgun in his hands.
‘That was a warning shot,’ he declared, and lowered the gun so it aimed straight at Gould’s face. ‘Next one’s the doozy.’
Gene stood fierce and resolute – and he did not stand alone. To his left stood Ray, very much alive and unbloodied, no gaping bullet hole in his chest, but standing there in his corduroy jacket and slack tie, chewing gum whilst smoking a roll-up. And to Gene’s right stood Chris, resplendent in a knitted, diamond pattern tank-top over a lemon yellow fly-wing collared shirt. Like the Guv, they both held shotguns too. Carroll, Walsh and Darby had evidently been despatched and disarmed. All barrels were aimed straight at Gould.
Standing together like that, there was an aura about them, like the rays of the sun, cutting through the icy cold and dispelling it, thawing the deep frost and bringing life to what was once dead. There was a chemistry that kicked in, an alchemical power that could only be realised by them coming together as a unit.
Sam felt heat and life surging through him. Sopping wet, he got to his feet.
‘It was you, Guv!’ he gasped, almost hysterical with relief. ‘You and Chris and Ray! It was you I saw on the road back there, following me! Wasn’t it!’
‘Well it weren’t Ken Dodd and the Diddymen,’ Gene growled back, not taking his eyes off Gould. ‘Nice bit of team work, Gould, don’t you think? Enough to warm this gaff up, anyway. Old Brenda Bristols was the bait, and Dopey-Bollocks Tyler here was the homing beacon leading me and the lads right to the heart of the action. So – Bristols, Bollocks, you’ve both played your part; a Crackerjack pencil and pen will be yours. Now get yourself clear from the zone of conflict, it’s time for Uncle Genie and his lads to dance the hot-shoe rhumba ...!’
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ said Sam, strength flowing back into his limbs. He strode over, slopping his way through the water, and took his place beside Gene. ‘Game’s over, Gould. The boys are back in town.’
‘And girl,’ Annie added, and out of nowhere she landed a blow across Gould’s throat that sent him falling hard against a poker table. Chips clattered across the baize and fell into the water sluicing about on the floor. ‘I take it I’m back on the team, Guv?’
‘Course you are, now get clear you, gobby tart!’ Gene bellowed, and at once Annie threw herself to the side.
Shotguns roared. The slugs smashed into Gould’s body, jerking him up off the table and flinging him hard against his office door.
‘Again!’ Gene bellowed, and at once there was a second volley, him and Chris and Ray all firing in perfect unison.
Blood splashed across the door. Gould span round, tottered drunkenly, and then went down onto the flooded floor. He lay motionless, face down, tendrils of red drifting from his body and spreading into the water.
‘Suck on that, you Brylcreemed twat!’ Ray spat.
‘Yeah!’ put in Chris, twin plumes of smoke rising lazily from the barrels of his shotgun. ‘And the next shot goes …’ he thought about it ‘… right up your bum-hole.’
‘Spoken like gentlemen,’ opined Gene, turning to his boys and acknowledging them. ‘You’ve paid attention to your Westerns. And just look what you’ve learnt.’ Then he shot a stern look over at Annie, ‘You all in one piece, Bristols?’
‘I’m all in one piece, Guv.’
‘Glad to hear it. You’re a soppy, stroppy, dopey mare with a voice like Woody Woodpecker – but somehow or other, you fit in the team. From time to time. More or less.’
‘I do my best, Guv,’ Annie said. ‘I do my best.’
Gene glanced from Annie to Sam, cleared his throat noisily, and said: ‘Well get on with it, you two, start snogging, it’s what we’re all waiting for. And Chris, keeps your hands out your pockets.’
But Sam found that all he could do was stand and stare at Annie. She was drenched from the deluge of melting ice, her hair in disarray, her clothes clinging to her body, her eyes bloodshot, her bruised throat livid – and he thought that he had never loved her quite so much as at this moment.
Annie stared back. She seemed to be thinking much the same thing about him.
They moved towards each other, slowly, like a pair of shell-shocked survivors of a shipwreck. But quite suddenly, Sam turned from Annie and slopped through the flood towards Gould.
‘I want to make sure he’s dead,’ he said. ‘Really dead.’
‘Cover him,’ Gene ordered, and at once Chris and Ray cocked their shotguns and braced themselves, ready to open fire.
Sam looked down at the body in the blood-stained Nehru suit. It lay motionless, leaking red, its face in the water. Sam nudged it with the toe of his boot. No reaction. It was nothing more than a piece of expensively dressed, and very dead, meat.
‘That’s all it took,’ he said under his breath, addressing the corpse. ‘A few bullets. And a few good men.’
He laughed, and was about to add, ‘And one good woman, of course,’ when suddenly there was a confusion of noise and movement. Water sprouted wildly upwards as if from a geyser, sending bloodied foam exploding across the ceiling. Sam was thrown back, crashing against the door to Gould’s office; the wood, weakened already by shotgun blasts, gave way, and Sam smashed through it, tumbling into the office beyond.
But it wasn’t an office. It was an abyss. It was the Abyss. Where the floor should be was a vertiginous, plunging, sickly green pit, out of which flowed a devastating blast of icy, fetid air, thick with the stench of disease and putrefaction, and with that blast came a deafening bellow, like a thousand fog horns mingled with the screams of a thousand blood-crazed coyotes.
Sam screwed his eyes tight, clamping his mouth shut so as not to breath in the fetid reek that rolled over him.
The rush of air coming out of the pit suddenly ceased, and there was a moment – not more than a second or do – when everything became still and silent.
And then, the hellish air was drawing back into the Abyss, dragging with it debris and water from the casino. Sam felt it pulling him, too, hauling him with an irresistible force. He clawed wildly at the broken remains of the door, grabbing hold of shattered wood and hanging on so tightly he felt that his fingers would burst. And yet still it seemed that his body was being drawn down into that yawning expanse beneath him, down, down into that ice-cold cavern that plunged away into unimaginable depths.
Through the broken doorway, he could see flashes of light as Gene, Chris and Ray blazed away with their shotguns, blasting at a shadowy figure that burst up out of the water. Even as they fired, they struggled back towards the exit, fighting the powerful rush of air. Sam glimpsed Annie just behind Gene, hanging on to him tightly, like she was enduring a hurricane. And Sam knew come what may, even in that moment of confusion and terror on the brink of the Abyss, that Gene would never let Annie go.
The shotguns roared, and like a black cloud tortured by crosswinds, the shapeless form that was Clive Gould whipped and writhed. It fought against the air being sucked down into the pit, and used what strength it had to resist the relentless pull. It came screaming towards Sam and struck him like an arctic gale, knocking the wind out of his lungs. Sam felt Gould’s shadowy form all over him, clutching at him, slithering icily around his throat, hooking onto him and trying to drag him down with it into that bot
tomless chasm.
Sam tried to cry out, but his lungs felt as if they had collapsed and turned to ice.
I’m slipping … I can’t hold on … Gould’s going to take me down with him!
Annie appeared suddenly in the wrecked doorway, reaching out to him, grasping him by the wrists. She pulled with all her strength – but Sam felt himself sliding down, felt Gould’s icy claws digging into him and dragging him away.
Annie fought to pull him back. She threw her head back and screamed, putting every ounce of strength she had into the effort, and for what seemed like a thousand years Sam was poised agonizingly between worlds, Life pulling him one way, Hell dragging him the other.
Green light blazed from deep within the abyss, and Gould seemed to be wrenched forcibly into it, no longer able to resist its pull on him. His shadowy soul let out a sound like gas bursting from a split pipe, and down he went, tumbling away. Sam found himself at once being pulled in through the broken door by Annie – but instead of being hauled back into the flooded casino, he was being pulled across muddy grass. He choked and heaved, fighting for air, filling lungs that were no longer frozen but instead were full of ashes and reeking, poisonous fumes. Through streaming eyes, Sam glimpsed fire and billowing smoke and the moon gazing down uncaringly from the night sky.
He was outside, on damp grass under the stars, being pulled away from the blazing remains of Trencher’s Farm by Annie.
Wracked with coughing, Sam doubled up. Annie flung her arms around him. Painfully, Sam hugged her back. At last, they had their embrace.
They looked at each other, speaking not with their mouths but with their eyes.
It was Sam who descended to using mere words first.
‘The others …’ he said.
‘I don’t know,’ she said shakily. ‘You were the only one I saw in there. By the time I got you out, the place was … it was completely …’
They both looked across at the inferno that used to be Trencher’s Farm.
‘Oh God, Sam.’
‘There’s hope!’ Sam said, still fighting for breath. ‘We saw them. All three of them. They were there, they were with us?’
‘I don’t understand you, Sam.’
‘Just now, in the casino! Annie, we were a team! We won!’
Annie put her arms around him and squeezed. ‘You’ve had a nasty dose of fumes in there, Sam. But I think you’ll be okay.’
Sam struggled free from her embrace. ‘No, no, you’re the one whose brain’s gone to pot if you don’t remember! Annie, you were there! We all were! We were a team!’
‘We’re going to go now and try and get help,’ Annie said, speaking to him very slowly and deliberately.. ‘We’re going to take Clive’s car, okay? I think Clive’s dead. I think everyone’s dead, but we've still got to get help. Look – the engine’s still running in the Sceptre, the keys must still be in the –’
‘I’m not going anywhere!’ Sam barked. ‘You go. You go, and you get what help you can.’
‘I’m not leaving you Sam, you’re halfway delirious!’
Sam forced himself to speak slowly and calmly. ‘I’m not delirious. I’m fine. I’m telling you, Annie, that you must get help. You must go, right now, and get help.’
His look told her he was totally sane, and that there was no time to argue. Annie nodded grimly. She quickly kissed Sam on the mouth, then raced off past the flames, ducking round the ruined Avenger in the drive and leapt into Clive Gould’s Humber Sceptre. The engine roared, the car reversed wildly up the track, and then hared off along the road, making for the faraway lights of the town.
Sam limped heavily towards the collapsed remains of Trencher’s Farm. Flames were still leaping, and great bursts of sparks momentarily erupted from the thickly billowing smoke. Peering in through a gaping hole that had once been a window, Sam saw a figure lying face down, covered in fire. It was Chris. He was part buried by burning debris. The staircase and most of the upstairs landing had given way and come crashing down on him. Slumped next to him, and blackened almost beyond recognition, was Ray. He had been flung down when the staircase collapsed, but Sam knew in his heart he had already been dead when he dragged him out of the upstairs bedroom.
As he watched, the flames roared across the two bodies, consuming them hungrily. Thick smoke drew across them, like the final curtain, obscuring them from sight.
‘Guv?’ Sam called out, limping round the outside of the farm. ‘Guv, are you there?’
It was conceivable that Gene had made it out. He had been in the front living room, armed with an axe, when the fire took hold. He might well have smashed his way through what was left of the windows and jumped clear.
And if he did, what then? Did Gould’s lackeys shoot him down? Is he dead, like the others?
‘Gene! Gene, answer me! Where are you?!’
He’s dead. Surely he must be dead. That’s how managed to turn up in the casino along with Chris and Ray. They all died together – they carried out their final duty as police officers by saving Annie – and now they have moved on. They’ve moved on to …
To where? Oblivion? Had they each been handed their own black helium balloon and directed towards the all-consuming darkness?
‘No …’ Sam muttered, shaking his head. ‘No, it’s not possible. We’re CID. We’re A-Division. It can’t end like this …’
Sam had worked his way right around the back of the farmhouse and was approaching the front of it again when he saw Gene’s camel hair lying bunched on the grass, smouldering and ruined. It was only when it moved that Sam realised the Guv was still inside it.
‘Gene! Gene, oh thank God!’ He rushed forward. ‘Thank God, Gene, I thought you were …’
Sam glimpsed the side of Gene's face, the skin charred and peeling and running with blood.
‘Guv ...?’
All at once, Sam felt useless, afraid and utterly alone. He didn't know what to do. He looked around as if he might suddenly spot a first-aid kit sitting handily nearby, but all he saw was the ruin of Trencher’s Farm. It looked almost like a ruined chapel, with a broken chancel and cross consumed with flames. Above it, the stars glittered coldly, and the moon was full.
Sam knelt down beside the Guv, reached out to touch him, then hesitated. If he started manhandling him, all he would do is make Gene’s appalling injuries even worse. Gene’s face was unrecognizable. Most of his hair had been burned away, leaving his exposed scalp red and blistered.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ Sam said in a flat, stupid voice. His mind was a blank. He was in shock. ‘Burns. I … I never know what to do with burns.’
‘Put butter on ’em …’ croaked Gene.
‘Yes, that’s what my mother always told me,’ said Sam. Insanely, he patted his pockets as if he might just come across a handy pack of Stork SB. In the next moment, he dropped his hands to his sides and stared straight ahead. ‘I can’t think, Guv. I don’t know what I’m doing. I … I don’t know what to …’
‘Business as usual then …’ Gene coughed feebly. Smoke came out of his mouth. Painfully, he muttered, ‘That watch … The one you showed me …’
Sam pulled the fob watch from his pocket.
‘Chuck it,’ Gene struggled to say. He swallowed hard and painfully. ‘Chuck it, Tyler.’
‘I can’t do that, Guv. You don’t understand.’
‘Oh, I do, Tyler. I do.’
Did he? Perhaps he did. Sam recalled how the Guv had reacted when they were hiding out together in the ruined mill. The watch had affected him, stirred dormant memories within him. Maybe his past had started to come back to him. Maybe he was fully aware of the confrontation Sam had just had with Gould on the very edge of the abyss. Maybe Gene Hunt knew. Maybe he knew everything.
‘Chuck it,’ he breathed again.
Sam got up and headed back to the farmhouse. Feeling an overwhelming sense of misery, he held the watch up before him. It was meaningless.
In a sudden moment of despair, Sam hurled the watc
h. It sailed through the night air, its chain streaming out behind it like the glittering tail of a comet. It struck a blackened wall of Trencher’s Farm, bounced off at an angle, and fell amid the flames. As it did, another upstairs room gave way, and a mass of blazing timbers crashed down on the little fob watch.
Slowly, Sam returned to where Gene lay.
‘It’s gone,’ he said. ‘Chucked.’
‘Tyler …’
‘Yes, Guv?’
‘Just tell me one thing.’
‘Yes, Guv.’
‘Am I bad?’
‘Bad, Guv? No. No, no, no, you’re one of the good ones, Guv. You’re one of the best. You’re the best bloody DCI I’ve ever had, better than I was …’
‘No, you prat,’ Gene croaked. ‘What I’m askin’ is – am I bad?’
Sam looked down at him, and the burnt and bloodied remains of Gene’s body, and found he had to blink away tears to see.
‘Not so bad, Guv,’ he said, struggling to speak. ‘Nothing you won’t get over. Not so bad at all.’
‘Lying git, I’m bollocksed and you know it.’ The Guv’s voice was dry as ashes. His eyes were closed; perhaps there was nothing beneath those burned and peeling lids but empty, ruined sockets. ‘Game’s up for me, Tyler. Final whistle on extra time.’
Gene pawed feebly at the breast of his coat.
‘What is it, Guv? What do you need?’
Sam groped in his inside pocket and pulled out Gene’s charred ID badge. Gene pushed it away. Sam tried again, and this time his fingers closed around the hard, smooth surface of the guv’s hip flask. The metal was hot.
‘Here, Guv – let me.’
He unscrewed the cap and placed the flask against Gene’s blackened lips. But for the first time in Gene Hunt’s life, he could not take his drink. His face screwed up in agony as the Scotch burned his blistered lips and tongue.
‘It’s going to be okay, help’s coming,’ Sam said. His words were wretched, empty, pathetic, and he knew they sounded like that to Gene too. But still he had to say them. He looked up at the night sky, and said, ‘Annie’s gone for help. She took Gould’s car. She’ll be back in no time, and she’ll bring doctors and ambulances and … and it’s going to be okay. You’re going be back at your desk before you know it. You’re going to be back on the front line, where you belong. Manchester needs you. We all need you. I need you.’
