Life on Mars: A Fistful of Knuckles. Tom Graham

him, Annie, I’ll have him disciplined if he keeps bringing that in.’

      ‘It’s nothing like that,’ said Annie. ‘It’s my own fault. I’ve been letting a case get to me, taking it personally.’

      She opened a file on her desk and revealed a photograph of a slim, frail-looking girl staring blankly at the camera. Her eyes were almost completely closed by fat, shiny bruises; her top lip was swollen. Beneath this battered mask Annie had carefully written the victim’s name: Tracy Porter.

      ‘A&E called me in a couple of days ago to speak to her,’ Annie said. ‘Her boyfriend’s the one who did it – and it’s not the first time, neither – but she’s too frightened to go on record. I’ve been trying to persuade her, but she’s saying she walked into a door.’

      Sam nodded. It was an old story. How many more beatings would young Tracy Porter endure before she ended up on the same mortuary slab as Denzil Obi? How many Denzils and Tracys would come and go through just this CID department alone – battered, bullied, and beyond help?

      Sam closed the file. He had seen enough smashed and brutalised faces for one day.

      ‘I know it’s not easy, Annie, but you’ve got to keep a professional distance with stuff like this.’

      ‘Normally I do. I don’t know what it is about this girl that’s gotten to me. I think it’s the frustration, the way she’s protecting that bastard who did it to her. I can’t get through to her, Sam. Just name him, I say. I’ll help you – but you’ve got help me first. But it’s no good. Sometimes I want to shake her, it makes me so mad.’

      ‘Looks like she’s been shaken enough already,’ said Sam.

      ‘Exactly. So then I feel guilty that I want to get rough with her an’ all. She’s hardly the brightest star in the sky, but she still doesn’t deserve what she’s getting.’

      ‘It can sound heartless to say it, Annie, but once you’ve done all you can you really do have to walk away. That’s the job. You have your life, she has hers.’

      ‘If you can call what she’s got ‘a life’, trailing around with Terry Barnard’s fairground, living in a crappy caravan, getting smacked about by that thug of a boyfriend. She doesn’t know how to look after herself, or else she’s just given up. I had to literally twist her arm to make a check-up appointment with the hospital, just to make sure everything’s healing up okay. I think the only reason she agreed to go is because I promised to meet here there.’

      ‘You think she’ll show?’

      Annie shrugged: ‘If she does, I’m going to have one last crack at getting her to give evidence.’

      ‘Don’t get your hopes up too high, Annie. We’re just coppers. We all get frustrated. I do. Chris does. Even Ray and Gene, they take it personally sometimes. But none of us can save the world. We can do our best, and we can do our job, but we can’t do the impossible.’

      ‘Speak for yourself,’ Ray Carling said, looming suddenly over them. ‘The impossible’s my forte. I can give you the number of a few birds who’ll testify to that.’

      ‘Ray, please, would you give us some space?’ said Sam, forcing himself to keep his cool.

      ‘Not until you’ve answered a question for me, Boss,’ Ray replied.

      ‘Okay. What’s your question?’

      ‘What do you say to a bird with two black eyes?’

      Instantly, Annie stiffened and looked away. Sam wearily rubbed his forehead.

      ‘Ray, you have picked the single worst possible moment to start telling that joke. And besides, I’ve heard it. And it wasn’t funny the first time.’

      ‘Only trying to raise a smile,’ said Ray, stuffing a strip of Juicy Fruit into his mouth. ‘Perhaps I’ll bring that plastic thing back in again. That gets a few laffs.’

      ‘No you won’t bring that plastic thing back in again, Ray! I’ve bloody warned you!’

      ‘Suit yourself, you tight-arsed get,’ shrugged Ray. ‘We all need to get through as best we can. Go off our rockers, otherwise. At least Chrissy-wissy’s got a sense of humour round here. He likes that plastic thing.’

      Chris’s head popped up from behind a mountain of paperwork weighed down with an overflowing ashtray.

      ‘I love that plastic thing!’ he said eagerly. ‘Have you brought it in again?!’

      Ray sauntered over to him: ‘’Fraid not. Orders from the laffin’ gnome over there. But I got a question for you, Chris. What do you say to a bird with two black eyes?’

      Ignoring him, Sam turned back to Annie.

      ‘Sorry about that,’ he said. ‘It’s just Ray being Ray.’

      Annie smiled at him and said: ‘Thanks, Sam – you know – for not being like all the rest.’

      Across the office, Ray reached the cruel punch line and Chris brayed with laughter.

      Keeping his back to them both, Sam leant closer to Annie and dropped his voice: ‘Listen, maybe I can cheer you up by taking you out for dinner some time?’

      ‘You asking me out on a date, Boss?’

      ‘As your superior officer I suppose I could order you out on a date with me.’

      ‘How romantic. Where have you got in mind? The canteen downstairs?’

      ‘I think we can go a little more upmarket than that. You choose the restaurant. Anywhere you like, Annie. Don’t worry about the expense. Manchester is your oyster!’

      Sam stopped suddenly. Oysters. They made him think of whelks. And whelks made him think of the fat-bellied coroner belching and grunting in the morgue.

      ‘Anywhere you like, Annie, but – please – not seafood.’

      ‘Why not?’

      ‘I’ve sort of … gone off it recently. Well? Am I tempting you?’

      Annie swivelled playfully in her chair and said: ‘I don’t know. You’ve taken me by surprise, young man.’

      ‘Not the first time you’ve said that, I’ll bet.’

      ‘I’ll have a think about it and get back to you,’ she said, making a show of moving folders and files around on her desk. ‘I’m busy. But if you’re lucky I might be able to squeeze you in somewhere.’

      ‘And not the first time you’ve said that, I’ll bet.’

      ‘You are as bad as the rest of ‘em!’ Annie cried at him, blushing.

      ‘I’m the king of the bad ‘uns round here!’ Gene suddenly intoned from the doorway of his office. ‘Tyler! Stop fiddling with DI Bristols and start acting like a copper with a job to do. Raymondo! Christopher! I’m bored of reading the paper and I don’t feel like a taking a dump just yet; catch me a killer so I can play pat-a-cake with him in the interview room ‘til it’s home time.’

      ‘Got a possible start for you, Guv,’ said Ray, waving a piece of paper. ‘I’ve been digging up what I can about this half-darkie lad what got whacked.’

      ‘Mixed race,’ Sam corrected him, knowing nobody was interested. ‘It’s so simple: it’s mixed race.’

      ‘Looks like he was a local boy,’ Ray went on. ‘In and out of trouble as a kid, got himself nicked a couple of times – thieving, spot of aggro here and there, nothing serious. Worked around and about as a bouncer, did a spot of lugging down the warehouses. Then he started picking up a living as a bare-knuckle boxer at illegal fights.’

      ‘Is there a living in that?’