Life on Mars: Blood, Bullets and Blue Stratos. Tom Graham

more, Ray’s boozy voice cut across them, ‘Look out, lads, it’s Brief En-bloody-counter over there.’

      Chris placed a limp hand to his heart, fluttered his eyelids, and gave his best Celia Johnson impression. ‘Oh, dahling, I do so frightfully love you and all that. Merry meh – at once. Oh, do say you’ll merry meh.’

      Gene shut him up with a clout to the back of the head, like a headmaster cuffing an unruly schoolboy. For a moment, he seemed unsure why he’d done it – then he turned his back on Sam and Annie and complained to Nelson that he wasn’t drunk enough. Not half drunk enough!

      ‘Is this a conversation for another day?’ Annie asked, very quietly.

      Sam sighed and nodded. The moment was broken. He would have to wait for another.

      CHAPTER FOUR

      THE PADDY CHAIN

      More fag smoke, more unshaven coppers, more testosterone hanging in the air like the scent of musk – but it wasn’t the Railway Arms this time, it was A-Division at Greater Manchester CID. Harsh strip lights burned in the ceiling, casting their unblinking glare over the criminal mugshots and Page 3 pinups Sellotaped over the drab grey walls. Telephones chimed, typewriters clacked, mountainous heaps of paperwork leaned perilously from trays.

      Hung over and bleary-eyed, Chris propped himself up at his desk, not even pretending to be fit for work. Across from him, Ray chewed gum and lounged about.

      ‘Feeling a bit ropy this morning, Chrissie-boy?’

      ‘I can handle it,’ murmured Chris.

      ‘Had half a sherbet too many, eh?’

      ‘I just copped a dirty glass, that’s all.’

      Ray grinned and stretched in his chair, flexing his arms and pushing out his chest. ‘Me – I’m laffin’. Fit as a flea. And I matched you drink for drink last night, Chris, which only goes to show …’

      ‘Lay off, will ya,’ Chris muttered.

      ‘You gotta learn to manage your drinking,’ Ray went on. ‘You can’t call yourself a bloke, not a real bloke, until you can confidently down it, absorb it, and piss it up a wall like a pro. You think Richard Harris poofs it up like you after a couple of swift ones?’

      ‘He might do if had my metabolism,’ muttered Chris. ‘Anyway, he’s Irish. I don’t want no mention of anything Irish.’

      ‘Take my advice, young ’un – stay well within your limits, and leave the heavy stuff to us grown-ups.’

      ‘I’ll admit it, I might have had one or two more than was good for me,’ said Chris. ‘But I’m a man in trauma. I can’t get that image out of my head – the khazi of doom, all set to blow half a ton of Semtex up me Rotherhithe. It’s haunting me, Ray. Just imagine if that lot had gone off.’

      ‘You’d’ve ended up feeling no worse than you do right now,’ suggested Ray.

      ‘God, ain’t that the truth?’ Chris groaned, and slowly sank forward until his ashen forehead rested against his desk.

      Without warning, the door to Gene Hunt’s office slammed open, and the guv himself appeared, glaring and brooding like a grizzly bear with a right monk on.

      ‘DI Tyler, Brenda Bristols, the pleasure of your company, if you please.’

      Exchanging looks, Sam and Annie stepped into Gene’s office and shut the door behind them. Gene prowled about behind his desk, not even bothering to conceal the glass of Scotch amid the paperwork. Hair of the dog. His morning pick-me-up. It may be wrecking his liver, but it didn’t seem to be impairing his police work.

      ‘As you know,’ he intoned, ‘the gunman we so valiantly risked our arses trying to apprehend yesterday managed to elude us. Not only that, he also managed to elude the Keystone Kops outside and their impenetrable “ring of steel”, all of which means I’ve been getting it in the neck from Special Branch for not leaving the operation to them. They’re saying – and I quote – that we made a “right pigging balls-up”. Black mark for A-Division. Black mark for me. And me not well pleased, children, me not well pleased at all.’

      He stopped pacing and glowered intensely at Sam for a moment, daring him to come out with an ‘I told you so, Guv’. But Sam knew when to keep it buttoned.

      After a few moments, Gene resumed pacing and said, ‘On the plus side, however, our keen cub reporter Annie Cartwright has supplied us with a useful lead. Go on, luv, tell us what you got.’

      On cue, Annie produced some typewritten pages and read from them: ‘Michael and Cait Deery. Husband and wife. Irish nationals residing somewhere in Manchester. There’s been a Home Office file on them for months now. It seems pretty certain they’re acting as couriers between Ireland and the mainland, shipping in firearms, ammunition and plastic explosives to supply IRA cells.’

      ‘If the Home Office know about them, why haven’t they been arrested?’ asked Sam.

      ‘Because they’re more valuable left alone to do their thing,’ said Gene. ‘The contacts they meet, the people they deal with. It might all just reveal the whole chain, connecting bomb factories in Dublin to attacks being planned on the mainland.’

      ‘How sure are we that they were anything to do with what happened at the council records office?’

      ‘For want of anything better to go on I’m working on the assumption that the Deerys are involved,’ said Gene. ‘If there’s an IRA unit at work on our patch, we’ll find it through them. And bagging an IRA unit might just make up for yesterday’s fiasco. Um, excuse me, DI Tyler, but did somebody drop the marmalade in your pants this morning? What’s that gormless face for?’

      ‘You’re working on the assumption that what happened yesterday was the work of the IRA,’ said Sam.

      Gene sighed. ‘Oh, God, Sam, not this Old Mother ’Ubbard again!’

      ‘I know you’re resistant to my line of reasoning …’

      ‘To put it poncily.’

      ‘But I’m telling you, Guv, we’re going to find out sooner or later that what kicked off yesterday had precious little to do with the IRA.’

      ‘A bomb, a bloke in a balaclava and a certain negativity expressed towards the British constabulary – now, I’m the first to admit I’m not Sherlock bloody Holmes, but—’

      ‘I’ve already told you, Guv, I’m not convinced,’ said Sam. ‘That bomb in the toilet – it was a message of some kind. It meant something. It was more symbolic than a genuine threat.’

      ‘Unlike this,’ snapped Gene, raising a balled fist in front of Sam’s face.

      Sam ignored him and carried on: ‘And what about the red hand painted on the wall, and the letters RHF?’

      ‘And what about the report I found on my desk this morning from Bomb Disposal?’ countered Gene. ‘They’ve examined the explosives from the khazi and confirmed it’s a classic bit of IRA kit.’

      ‘Maybe it is,’ said Sam, shrugging. ‘But I’m still sceptical.’

      ‘I don’t care what you are,’ barked Gene. ‘I’m still head honcho round here and until you convince me otherwise I’m going to pursue this investigation on the not unreasonable assumption that it’s the Paddies we’re after and not the bloody RHF. What is the bloody RHF anyway, for God’s sake? Royal Horticultural Faggots?’

      ‘Red Hand something?’ suggested Annie, suddenly. ‘Just a guess. What do you reckon?’

      ‘Red Hand something – of course!’ cried Sam. ‘Of course!’

      ‘Red