Life on Mars: Get Cartwright. Tom Graham

at him for a moment, then slowly sank down into his chair. The tension in the room eased – but only slightly.

      ‘Make sure you do take care of everything, Tyler,’ he said. And with that, he dismissed his DI with an imperious wave of the hand. He had things to get on with. The racing pages didn’t read themselves.

       CHAPTER FIVE: GARY COOPER

      Long after the sun had gone down, and a cold night had settled over the city, Sam found himself drawn back to the church where Michael Carroll was still holed up with his hostages. The police laying siege to the place were bored, sitting in their patrol cars or pacing around, smoking. The lights inside the church were on, visible in the coloured glass of the stained windows, but apart from that there was no hint of life.

      Sam flashed his CID badge and strode past the coppers, stopping at the edge of the churchyard. He felt a powerful compulsion to go up to the door, go inside, and confront Michael Carroll, and not just in order to break the siege. Sam wanted to know what Carroll had seen, what form Clive Gould had taken when he turned up, and what – if anything – Gould had said. His own future, and Annie’s too, were bound up with the events going on inside that church, with the mysterious fate of Pat Walsh, and the horrors that Michael Carroll had witnessed at first hand. Sam had to speak to him.

      It was taking one hell of a risk to walk up to that door. Carroll had been half out of his mind when he’d first gone bursting in there – what state would he be in now? Would he be delirious from lack of sleep? Paranoid? Psychotic? At the first sight of Sam, would he start opening fire on the hostages like he’d threatened?

       I’m risking a blood bath if I go in there … and yet, I can’t stay away. I need to speak to him.

      Sam hesitated, nerving himself to move forward – and then heard a noise from behind him. The uniformed coppers were challenging a man who had drawn too close, telling him to move back behind the police cordon.

      Glancing round, Sam recognised him at once.

      ‘It’s all right, I know that man,’ Sam announced, striding over to him. ‘And I believe he knows me.’

      McClintock did not look at all surprised to see him. The House Master was dressed very soberly, in a dark coat worn over a dark suit, with a dark tie knotted tightly at its crisp white collar. And yet, in a way that Sam could not explain, McClintock just didn’t look right. He looked somehow depleted in civvies, like a demobbed officer. He was a man born to wear a uniform.

      The two men – Sam and McClintock – stood looking at each other for a moment.

      ‘I know an absolutely revolting café just across the way,’ Sam said. ‘Would you care for a coffee?’

      McClintock nodded slowly: ‘Aye, Detective Inspector Tyler, I would. And a wee chat too, if you could spare the time.’

      They sat together in Joe’s Caff, Joe himself still frying eggs despite the late hour. The man seemed never to sleep.

      Sam sipped a strong, bitter coffee. McClintock looked at the tepid brew in front of him, but never touched it. Up close, Sam could see just how severely starched his white shirt was. He wore his tie very tight, like a noose, and his collar was held in place with immaculate silver collar studs.

      For some moments, neither of them spoke – until McClintock leant forward and said in a low voice:

      ‘I don’t know what brought me to that church. Something compelled me. And then, when I saw you, Detective Inspector, I felt not the slightest surprise.’

      ‘You can call me Sam.’

      ‘I’d rather not. I’ve never been comfortable with first names. It’s either what attracted me to a life in uniform, or else a symptom of too many years in that world.’

      ‘Very well, then, Mr McClintock,’ said Sam. There was something strangely endearing about this man’s need for formality. Perhaps it was the glimpse of vulnerability that it betrayed, the hint of the nervous little boy hiding in the heart of the man. ‘Our paths crossing here tonight – it’s no coincidence, is it.’

      ‘It’s no coincidence. Something drew us together before, in Friar’s Brook, and it has done so again this evening. I think we both understand each other.’

      Sam hesitated, then said with care: ‘Understand each other how?’

      ‘This place we’ve found ourselves in,’ McClintock said, ‘it only appears to be 1973. But it isn’t. Not really. Is it.’

      ‘No. It’s not really 1973. It’s somewhere between Life and Death.’

      ‘Yes,’ McClintock nodded slowly. ‘A strange place. Betwixt two worlds. We’re nae the living nor the dead.’

      Sam nodded, and said quietly: ‘It’s such a relief to speak to somebody who actually realises that.’

      ‘Yes. A relief for me too. It is a … burden to know such things. It is a source of great loneliness.’

      ‘When I first met you, in Mr Fellowes’s office in Friar’s Brook borstal – did you know then?’

      McClintock shook his head: ‘No. Not then. I had forgotten I had a life before this one. But it all started coming back to me a little later.’

      ‘But why, Mr McClintock? Nobody else here remembers. Just me … and now you. Why?’

      McClintock stared thoughtfully into his wretched coffee for a few moments before replying. When he spoke, it was with slow, measured words.

      ‘For a time, when first I arrived here, I could recall my past with clarity, just as you can, Detective Inspector. I remembered the fire that consumed me, I remembered the pain. Like you, I knew that I was dead – or leastways, I was something very much like being dead. But again, like you, though I had lost my old life I had at least gained a new job. I was no longer DS McClintock of Manchester CID, but House Master McClintock of Friar’s Brook borstal. A new post for a new existence.’

      ‘And what happened?’ Sam asked. ‘You could remember your past life at first ... but then?’

      ‘The memories started to fade. No, that doesn’t quite describe it. It was more like … I felt less and less inclined to think of the past, what I had once been. When I did think back, it was only in vague terms. And over time, the inclination grew less and the vagueness grew greater until at last … well, until it was as if the past had ceased to exist. I thought no more about it than one thinks of the moment of one’s birth; we were most certainly there, but we recall nothing, not even a gap in our memory. It’s as if it never happened.’

      Sam thought of Annie, how she had first reacted when he had once pressed on her past, her family, her parents. It was just as McClintock had described – the total lack of inclination for her to recall her early life, the vagueness of her recollections, the inability to connect with her own memory.

      ‘Our paths have crossed, Detective Inspector Tyler – and I do not believe for one moment it’s by mere chance,’ McClintock went on. ‘There may be other reasons for your appearance in this so-called 1973, but I believe that one of them was to act as an alarm clock – for me. You woke me up, Detective Inspector Tyler. You saved me from that slow sink into forgetfulness.’

      ‘How? How did I do that?’

      ‘It was during that awful siege, when Donner was holding us hostage,’ said McClintock. ‘When I was sitting there, with that knife halfway down my throat, waiting to die, I’ll not pretend to you that I wasn’t terrified. I was certain Donner would kill me, and I was just as certain that it would not be a quick death or a painless one. My mind was spinning, and maybe that was what made me start to remember. Who knows? All I can say is that as I heard you talking about that fob watch, and about the