Life on Mars: Get Cartwright. Tom Graham

F. Enderby,’ Sam read out. ‘That name’s important?’

      ‘Only because there is no Dr F. Enderby who ever worked as a police coroner or anything else – not here, not in the Midlands, not in London, nowhere! If there was, then he’s done a brilliant job of removing every trace of his existence from the CID files. His name isn’t mentioned anywhere else, not once. Not once, Sam. When I get the chance I’m going to go down the county coroner’s office and see if there’s any mention of him there, but I’m not betting on it. Two weeks to get a diver in, by which time the body’s in too bad a state to be seen by anyone but this non-existent coroner. That ain’t right, Sam. And look at this. It’s a file of bank statements for Cartwright’s current account and building society account at the time of his death.’

      Annie thrust the file into Sam’s hands. He opened it.

      ‘It’s empty,’ he said.

      ‘The statements are marked as “mislaid”,’ said Annie. ‘No proof that he was ever in debt. And the last person registered as taking this file out of the records office –’

      ‘– was DCI Carroll,’ Sam finished her sentence for her.

      ‘And here’s a statement from a man called Terrence Fitch, arrested less than a week after Cartwright’s body was recovered. He was a money lender, a loan shark. In this statement he admits to lending seven hundred pounds to Cartwright at some ridiculous rate of interest, and then threatening to kill him and his family when the repayments stopped.’

      ‘In fairness, doesn’t that corroborate the official story?’ said Sam.

      ‘Fitch was arrested by Walsh and Darby, and interviewed by Carroll. His statement was put into the Cartwright file, and after that Fitch disappeared from the records. Completely. No word of him.’

      ‘Are you saying he didn’t exist?’

      ‘If he did, he had the same talent for vanishing as the mysterious Dr F. Enderby. Look at all this stuff, Sam – it stinks of a cover-up. Files going missing. A dodgy coroner’s report. A miraculously convenient suspect interview that just happens to confirm the official story. And those same three names cropping up time and again: Carroll, Walsh, Darby.’

      ‘It certainly feels all wrong, Annie. But …’ He hesitated, fearing that the ears of Ray and Chris were flapping in their direction. Lowering his voice to a murmur, he said: ‘Why is it so important to you to find out what happened to PC Cartwright? Do you feel … close to him in some way?’

      Annie paused, chewed her lip, and said: ‘I think so. I’m confused. Why does all this stuff feel so personal?’

      ‘Has the name McClintock turned up in those files?’ Sam asked. Here in this otherworldly 1973, McClintock was House Master of Friar’s Brook borstal. But, in life, he had not only been a serving police officer at the same time as Tony Cartwright, but he had died right alongside him on that awful night when Gould’s garage went up in flames.

      ‘Mr McClintock?’ Annie asked. ‘The House Master from Friar’s Brook borstal? I’d remember if I’d seen his name anywhere.’

      ‘No mention at all? That’s strange. Or maybe it’s not strange at all, given the way names come and go so freely in those files.’

      ‘This much I know, Sam – PC Cartwright died and his death was covered up,’ Annie said, her voice tight and constrained. ‘And the main culprit for that cover-up was DCI Michael Carroll.’

      ‘Well, at least we know exactly where he is and what he’s up to right now,’ said Sam. ‘Unlike your other suspect, DI Pat Walsh.’

      ‘And then there’s DS Ken Darby. We need to track them all down, Sam. We need to know exactly what happened, how they were involved, and why they covered it up.’

      ‘You need to know,’ Sam gently corrected her.

      And now Annie looked up at him, her face drawn and pale, her eyes slightly bloodshot as if she had been crying.

      ‘Yes!’ she hissed at him. ‘I need to know. I need to know who I am and why all this is so damned important to me and what the hell’s going on!’

      ‘Shhh!’ Sam glanced over his shoulder at Chris and Ray, both of whom were pretending to do paperwork whilst in fact they were flagrantly ear-wigging. Drawing closer to Annie, Sam said in a low voice: ‘We need to talk.’

      ‘Well I don’t want to talk!’ Annie suddenly snapped at him. ‘I want to find out what’s going on and I want to do it my way!’

      ‘I did it myyyyy waaaaaaaayyyy!’ Chris suddenly bawled out.

      Sam hurled a stapler at him. Chris shot him a threatening, dead-eyed, Yul Brynner look, and seemed ready to challenge him to ‘draw’ once again. Ignoring him, Sam turned back to Annie and urged her to keep it down.

      Annie glared at him and said in a low voice: ‘I want to do it my way because I don’t like your way!’

      ‘What are you talking about?’

      In the background, Chris was putting the hurled stapler back together again whilst burbling under his breath: ‘Regrets … I’ve had a few … like that curry after the film. Stone me, I’m regretting that!’

      ‘Your way, Sam, is all about keeping things from me, and not telling me what you know,’ Annie hissed. ‘You’ve known things … about me, about … about everything! But you haven’t said.’

      ‘Annie, keep it down, this isn’t the time or the place.’

      ‘How can I trust what you say, Sam? You’ve kept secrets from me! You knew things – important things – but you didn’t tell me!’

      There was a deep, chesty rumble, and the sound of congealed phlegm being grunted out. Gene Hunt strode into CID, a fag smouldering in his gob.

      ‘Morning, my lovelies,’ he intoned.

      ‘Draw!’ Chris challenged him, squaring up for a gun fight. ‘I said, Guv.’

      Gene stopped dead in his tracks, looked Chris over like he was made of freshly dropped shit, and then said in low and menacing voice: ‘If that’s Brynner from that bloody kiddies’ flick you’re doing, Skelton, then I’m giving you precisely one second to pack it in.’

      Chris responded by drawing his imaginary revolver and pow-pow-powing the Guv with it.

      Gene turned down the sides of his mouth in a fish-faced grimace of utter disgust and declared: ‘Brynner ain’t no cowboy! He talks like bloody Brezhnev and looks like a squeezed dick with a Chinky’s face painted on the bell.’

      Looking suddenly deflated, Chris said meekly: ‘I … I thought you liked Westerns, Guv.’

      ‘Westerns, Chris! Westerns! That abortion showing in the flea pits out there ain’t fit to wipe the arse of a decent Western! You think John Ford would crank out some shite about wind-up toys getting porked by stockbrokers in a theme park?’

      Ray’s ears pricked up at that: ‘Oh aye? I didn’t know there was porking in it. Do you get to see much?’

      ‘You see a bit,’ Chris said, turning to Ray. ‘There’s this bird, right, and she’s a robot-like but you wouldn’t know it, it’s not like her tits are made out of foil or nuthin’, but her eyes do go a bit silver at one point. Anyway, this scrawny fella with a ’tache is getting the right horn with her, so he …’

      ‘I’ll have no more talk about Westworld in my department!’ Gene bellowed. ‘Yul Brynner ain’t no cowboy – end of. John Wayne! Randolph Scott! Saint Gary of Cooper! Them’s cowboys, Christopher, them’s bloody cowboys, not that slappy-skulled Ruskie mincing about with two Evereadies up his arse and a scrote-sack full of