Life on Mars: Get Cartwright. Tom Graham

But you and me, Mr Gould, we have business to finish.’ He raised his fists. They felt puny and weak, like the fists of a child. ‘So let’s get on with it.’

      Clive Gould, the Devil in the Dark, remained still and silent, an insubstantial shadow, a dark, hazy stain upon the air. But Sam could still recall the broad-nosed, snaggle-toothed face of Clive Gould from that awful night he had witnessed the murder of Annie’s father, PC Tony Cartwright. In dreams and waking visions, the Test Card Girl had shown him more of Gould’s cruelty, the sickening treatment Annie had suffered in life from this brute, the beatings, the assaults, the psychological torture. And although he had not seen it for himself (thank God), he knew that it was at Gould’s hands that Annie had died. She had died, just as Sam had died, and Gene Hunt and all the rest of them, and wound up here in this strange simulacrum of 1973 that lay somewhere between Life and the Life Beyond.

      And at some point Clive Gould died too, Sam thought. But unlike Annie, he shouldn’t have come here. His place was elsewhere. But that hasn’t stopped him. He’s forcing his way into 1973, strengthening his presence here, becoming more and more real. At first, he was a dream, a glimpse of something awful in the dark recesses of my mind. Then I saw him personified in the monstrous body tattoos of bare-knuckle boxer Patsy O’Riordan. Then, in Friar’s Brook borstal, I saw his face, and I saw how he murdered Annie’s father.

       And now – right now – I’m seeing him again. A shadow – a ghost.

      Sam frowned, tilted his head, thought to himself.

      ‘You’re not saying very much, Mr Gould. What’s the matter? Don’t you want to kill me here and now? Or is it … is it that you want to, but you’re not strong enough yet?’

      The shadow stirred at last. It seemed to push back its shoulders, as if about to attack. But Sam sensed it was all for show.

      ‘I’m right,’ said Sam, and he felt emboldened. ‘You’re not strong enough to beat me yet. You’re just trying to psych me out before the showdown. You sad, pathetic bully. Well … you might not be ready for this fight, but me …’

      Sam lunged forward, hurling a blow at Gould, putting all the weight of his body behind it. He lost his balance and staggered forward, righting himself at once and throwing up his left arm to deflect a counter-attack. But no attack came. The street outside the cinema was empty. Sam stared at Yul Brynner, and Yul Brynner stared back, but of Clive Gould there was no sign.

      ‘Run if you want to!’ Sam shouted into the empty street. ‘I’m not running anymore! I’m done with running. I’m coming for you, Gould! I’ll find you, and I’ll beat you, and I’ll send you back to the hell you came from!’

      His blood was up, he was ready for battle – but his enemy had quit the field. Sam brought his breathing under control and unclenched his fists. He wiped the sleeve of his leather jacket across his glistening forehead. His knees were shaking.

      Despite the fear that Gould’s ghost-like appearance had instilled him, Sam felt a strange surge of hope and defiance rising up from deep within him. Gould was getting stronger, but he still didn’t have what it took for the final duel. He would delay the final confrontation until he was more powerful – unless Sam could track him down before then and finish him once and for all.

       And I can do it! If I can draw him into a fight before he’s ready for it, if I can provoke him into attacking me too soon … I can do it! I can WIN!

      The sense that things were moving towards an endgame between these two implacable enemies renewed Sam’s energies, even revived his spirits. Victory – or at the very least, the possibility of victory – was at hand. The chance was coming for Sam to dispel Gould forever. He had no choice – he had to win this fight; the price of failure was too high. And when he at last defeated Gould, his and Annie’s future together would be wide open, like a shining plain beneath a golden sun, just as Nelson had shown him in the Railway Arms.

      ‘I’m not here to carry your burden for you,’ Nelson had told him. ‘That’s for you and you alone. Be strong! It’s the future that matters, Sam. Your future. Yours and Annie’s. Because you two have a future, if you can reach it. You can be happy together. It’s possible. It’s all very possible.’

      Possible – but not guaranteed.

      ‘“Possible” is the best odds I’m going to get,’ Sam told himself. ‘Perhaps I can improve those odds with a little help. But who can I turn to?’

      At that moment, he stopped, glancing across at a grimy, gone-to-seed, urban church, out of which slow, wheezing music could just be heard. The organist was limbering up before the service. It took a few moments for Sam to place the tune – he hunted through his memory like a man rifling through a cluttered attic – and then, quite suddenly, he found what he was after.

      ‘Rock Of Ages,’ he muttered to himself. And from somewhere at the back of his brain, words emerged to join with the tune:

       While I draw this fleeting breath,

       when mine eyes shall close in death,

       when I soar to worlds unknown …

      ‘Something something dum-dee-dum, rock of ages, cleft for me.’

      Like photographs in an album, old hymns had a potency that no amount of rationalism and scepticism could entirely stifle. Deep emotions were stirred – part nostalgia, partly unease, part regret, part hope. Sam thought of his life, and of his death – and of Clive Gould emerging from the darkness – and of Nelson, breaking cover to reveal that he was far more than just a grinning barman in a fag-stained pub – and he thought of Annie, whose memory, as always, stirred his heart and gave his strange, precarious existence all the focus and meaning he could ask for.

      Despite everything – the threats, the danger, the approaching horror of the Devil in the Dark – Sam felt happy. He knew it wouldn’t last, but as long as it did, he let the feeling warm him, like a man in the wilderness holding his palms over a campfire.

      Sam turned away from the church, strolled across an empty street devoid of traffic, and ducked into Joe’s Caff, a greasy spoon which served coffee like sump oil and bacon butties cooked in what seemed to be Brylcreem. There were red-and-white checkered plastic covers on all the tables, bottles of vinegar with hairs gummed to the tops, and ketchup served in squeezy plastic tomatoes. Joe himself was a miserable, bolshy bugger who covered his fat belly in a splattered apron and never cleaned his fingernails. He let ash from his roll-up fall into his cooking, and checked to see if food was ready by sticking his thumb into it.

      Sam loved the place.

      ‘Morning, Joe,’ he said as he strolled in, enjoying his brief inner-glow of happiness. ‘Any news on that Michelin star yet?’

      Joe grunted wordlessly back at him. He was shoving meaty objects about in a pan, presumably preparing them for human consumption. From the portable transistor radio balanced above the stove came the strange, melancholy strains of Elton John’s ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.’

      ‘I’ll have a skinny Fairtrade latte to drink in please,’ said Sam. ‘And a peach and blueberry muffin, and a bottle of still mineral water. Actually, come to think of it, I’ll go for the deep-fried heart attack and a cup of black stuff so gloopy I can stand the spoon up in it.’

      Joe looked at him like he’d spoken in Norwegian, so Sam clarified: ‘The full English and one of your unique coffees; quick as you like.’

      A jabbed finger and a grunt told Sam that he was to take a seat, so he settled himself facing the door, waiting for Annie and his breakfast, whichever arrived first. He had suggested meeting her here partly because his own place was such a tip that he was ashamed for her to see it, but mainly because Joe’s Caff was the sort of place that cheered you up. It was hard to stay too depressed when you were pumping ketchup out of a plastic tomato. And it was clear that Annie needed a little light in her