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

you go, Guv. The Deerys’ address. Dowell Road on the other side of town.’

      ‘Nice work, Raymondo,’ said Gene. ‘Right, playmates, let’s start proving to Special Branch that we know how to behave like proper grown-up coppers. Annie, see if you can find out what the letter F stands for. It sounds like a task of about your level. Use Chris’s wooden bricks with the letters on ’em if it helps. Sam, you’re coming with me. We’re going to pop round the Deerys’ place and see if anything’s cooking.’

      ‘Want me to drive, Guv?’ Sam asked.

      Gene looked blankly at him and said, ‘And why the hell would I want you to drive?’

      ‘Well, you know, seeing as you’ve … You’ve had a couple of, um …’

      Sam was going to say something about the Scotch glass on Gene’s desk, then reminded himself that nobody gave a toss about that sort of thing, not here. There was some part of him, some corner of his brain, that would always be 2006, no matter how long he lived in 1973.

      ‘Sorry, Guv. Forget I said anything.’

      ‘I always do,’ said Gene, jangling his car keys and grabbing his coat.

      They sat in the Cortina at the end of Dowell Road. Number 14, the home of Michael and Cait Deery, was a just another unremarkable semidetached among many, with a trim little garden and a Vauxhall Cresta parked in the driveway.

      ‘Are we going in?’ asked Sam.

      Gene flexed his hand on the wheel, making the leather of his driving glove creak ominously.

      ‘Nope, we’re staying put,’ he said. ‘If the Deerys are middlemen in the IRA chain, let’s sit back and observe, just like the Home Office recommended. Sooner or later they’ll lead us to the terrorist cell they’re supplying.’

      ‘Guv, I know you’re not interested in this, but I don’t think what happened yesterday—’

      ‘—was the work of the IRA. I know, Sam. You think it was part of the Pinky Palm Brigade’s campaign against khazis. Maybe it was. Fact remains, our boys across the water have pissed rather too heavily in the hornets’ nest and stirred up trouble. If we can blag an IRA unit by trailing the Deerys, that scores me and my department a handful of much-needed Brownie points.’

      ‘Um, Guv, I didn’t quite follow all that. What did you mean about “pissing in the hornets’ nest”?’

      Gene turned his head and stared at him, and then said, as if speaking to a deaf idiot, ‘Bloody. Sunday. You. Dozy. Pillock.’

      Bloody Sunday. Of course. For Sam, Bloody Sunday was something very much from the past, like the Apollo moon landing or Blue Peter in black and white. But here, in the world of Gene Hunt, it was fresh news, a raw and open wound. In 1972 – only last year – the British Paras opened fire on a civil-rights march in … Belfast, was it? Or Ulster? Or Derry? Damn it, he couldn’t remember. Wherever it had taken place, it had left a dozen or more dead and brought the IRA right out on the offensive. The repercussions of ‘pissing in the hornets’ nest’ would still be reverberating in the far future – even in 2006, when a young detective from CID, recently recovered from a life-threatening accident that had left him in a coma, would inexplicably jump from a rooftop to his death.

      Sam shook these thoughts from his head. He was here now – in 1973 – with a job to do, a duty to fulfil, a life to lead. The future was history. All that mattered was the here and now.

      ‘You know, Sam,’ said Gene, ‘now we’ve got a cosy moment together, just the two of us, I’d like to have a little chat with you about summat.’

      ‘Yes, Guv?’

      ‘I was thinking about what you said the other day in the pub, about the way I handle cases. You said I was irresponsible. You said I treated the job like a game.’

      ‘What I said, Guv … What I meant was that I was brought up with a very different approach to policing than you. I was taught – and I’ve always believed – that the rules of conduct and behaviour laid down for us aren’t there to make our job difficult or give villains the opportunity to get off the hook. Those rules are there because they’re right, and they’re fair, and they stop people getting killed.’

      ‘Go on, Tyler, I’m listening.’

      ‘I know it sounds poncy to you, Guv, but if the police don’t play by the rules what’s the point? We might as well bring back lynch mobs and string fellas up in the street just because they come across as wrong ’uns.’

      ‘And you wouldn’t go for that, then?’

      ‘Would you?’

      Gene thought for a moment, then said, ‘Depends on whose feet end up dangling. I can think of some right naughty boys I wouldn’t shed no tears over.’

      ‘You’re just saying that, Guv. You don’t really believe it. Look, the point I was making is that I don’t want to end up dead, any more than you do, or Chris or Ray or any of us. And, as much as it offends your freewheeling sensibilities, Gene, I think that sticking to the rules – at least, to the spirit of the rules – is the best way of keeping us alive. We’re not here to take undue risks, we’re not here to dish out justice from the end of a gun, and we’re certainly not here to make ourselves feel more like real men.’

      ‘That’s what you think I’m about, is it?’ Gene asked, without sarcasm. He seemed to genuinely want to know. ‘You think I’m trying to prove something?’

      ‘Sometimes, Guv, yes.’

      Gene thought about this, nodded to himself, and said, ‘I was right about you Tyler. You do talk and think a right load of shite.’

      Sam sat back in his seat. He’d tried. He really had.

      ‘Right, boyo, let’s get our minds back on the job,’ said Gene. ‘Keep your eyes fixed on the Deerys’ gaff. Let me know the moment you see anything.’

      ‘Why? Where are you going?’

      ‘Nowhere,’ said Gene, fishing out a folded copy of the Mirror and flicking it open. ‘I want to catch up on me paperwork.’

      He disappeared into the sports pages. Sam shook his head – then his eye was caught by the front page of Gene’s paper.

      TUC CALLS FOR MASS STRIKE ACTION IN PROTEST AGAINST PRICE RISES AND PAY RESTRAINTS – OVER 1.5 MILLION WORKERS CALLED OUT

      MASSIVE DISRUPTION TO RAIL SERVICES DUE TO INDUSTRIAL ACTION – ASLEF CALLS FOR DRIVERS AND STATION STAFF NOT TO CROSS PICKET LINES

      Protests, mass unrests, trains up the spout. Some things don’t ever change, thought Sam. He continued to skim-read:

      CAR PLANTS, COAL MINES, AND SHIPPING YARDS BROUGHT TO A HALT

      FIRE BRIGADE UNIONS THREATEN MASS INDUSTRIAL ACTION

      ARMY ON STANDBY TO MAN FIRE STATIONS

      COUNTRY ON THE BRINK OF CHAOS

      I vaguely remember all this, he thought: the strikes, the power cuts. I was only four years old – it all seemed like a world away from me back then. I never realized just how bad things got.

      HEATH ADMINISTRATION IN CRISIS TALKS WITH UNIONS

      JACK JONES, LEADER OF THE TRANSPORT AND GENERAL WORKERS’ UNION, WARNS THAT GOVERNMENT WOULD BE ‘FOOLISH TO IGNORE NOT ONLY THOSE PROTESTING TODAY BUT THOSE MILLIONS WHO ARE FED UP WITH THE CONTINUING PRICE RISES’

      ‘Stop reading my bloody paper,’ Gene growled from behind his Mirror.

      Sam obediently fixed his attention on the Deerys’ house. Moments later, he saw the front door open.

      ‘Eh up, Guv, we’ve got movement.’

      A young couple were emerging from the door of Number 14. Michael Deery