Chapter Text
The main thing about dying isn't the fear or the pain (though God knows I was in agony). And it isn't the noise (although there were sirens and shouting and a pounding which I had a sneaking suspicion was inside my own head). It isn't even your life flashing in front of your eyes (frankly, I hadn't enjoyed it that much the first time round so I didn't fancy an action replay).
No.
No, the main thing I felt, as I lay there in a warm, fast-spreading pool of my own blood, was damned annoyed.
***
12 days earlier
If I'd known the trouble Sam Tyler would bring in his wake, I never would have got out of bed that Tuesday morning.
It was one of those mornings when you wished you could stay asleep. When your body felt like you'd gone ten rounds with John Conteh the night before, and everything was louder and brighter than it had any need to be.
Unfortunately, most of my mornings started this way.
"Guv? Come on, it's after nine."
Annie's voice, soft and gentle. I heard her sigh.
"Look, you can pretend you're still asleep if you want to, but you're not fooling anyone."
I cracked open an eye. "How about if I start snoring?"
Annie placed a steaming mug on my bedside table and stepped back, folding her arms. "You've got a client waiting downstairs."
"I know; I heard them knocking on the door."
Sitting up, I fumbled at the table, pushing aside an empty scotch bottle and ignoring the mug in favour of a packet of fags. I shook one out, lit it and inhaled gratefully, ignoring Annie's look of disapproval.
"He's been waiting nearly half an hour."
"Serves him right for turning up at the crack of dawn." I squinted up at Annie. "What's he look like?"
"Like he can pay," she snapped back. "Look, I may just be the skivvy who answers your phone and makes your tea but I'm also your bookkeeper and I'm telling you that you need this job. So get out of bed and get to it!"
She looked at me, and despite her best efforts to look fierce I could tell by the way she was biting her lip that she thought she might have overstepped the mark this time. And she had, but she was also right, and I knew it.
I exhaled, coils of smoke hanging in the still air between us. "Tell him I'll be down in a few minutes."
***
The Private Investigation business isn't for just anyone. It takes hard work, dogged persistence, and a certain amount of what my mam would have called gumption. All of which I've got in spades, what with being an ex-copper. It also requires quick wits and an instinctive nose for trouble.
Which probably explains the ex- part of the ex-copper label.
I splashed some water over my face and ran my fingers through my hair. The face looking back at me in the mirror twisted into a sneer so I looked elsewhere while I finished in the bathroom.
The tea Annie had left me was hot and sweet - no alcohol in it (that would have been too much to ask for), but plenty of sugar, bless her. Yesterday's clothes lay draped across a chair and I gave them a quick sniff: they would do, apart from the shirt which had some unexplained bloodstains on it. Chucking it into a corner, I picked another one off the floor. It passed muster, so I pulled it on. Dressed and ready to face the world, I headed out of my flat and downstairs to the office.
At the bottom of the stairs there's the front door to the street, which was standing open as it usually is in office hours, and the door which leads to the outer office. The bell above the door rang as I pushed it open and went in, seeing Annie behind her desk and a youngish man sitting in one of the visitors' chairs. He stood up as I entered and held out his hand.
I looked at it suspiciously. Clean, short nails, no calluses. And just the hint of a tremor. I nodded towards the inner office.
"You'd better come in, then."
He lowered his hand and gave a wordless nod, then followed me through the door to my office.
Annie came in and fussed about with tea and coffee. She must have felt sorry for him - I'd seen the empty cup sitting next to him in the waiting room, so he'd had one already. Oh, and a plate of Garibaldis. Yep, she definitely liked this one.
The distraction gave me a chance to give him the once over, realising as I did so that the cheeky bugger was doing the same to me.
A bit shorter than me with a slim build, dark hair cut strangely short, battered black leather jacket and no tie with his patterned shirt, close-fitting flares leading down to brown boots with Cuban heels. All of it casually fashionable, yet incongruously clean and neat. And finished off with brown eyes with the sort of look in them that women fall for every time.
I cleared my throat. "So, Mr…?"
"Tyler. Sam Tyler."
His voice was low, and the accent seemed local but it was soft, muted.
"And you saw the sign over the door so you know I'm Gene Hunt. What can I do for you on this bright and sunny morning?"
"You can help me find out who I am."
I blinked at him. "That shouldn't be too hard seeing as how you've just told me. You're Sam Tyler."
His expression twisted into a grimace and he looked away. "That's what it says on my driving licence," he said in a low voice. He took a deep breath.
"A month ago I was found unconscious, apparently having been knocked over by a car--"
I could hear the faint rattle of his cup against its saucer.
"--and although I'm now fine physically, I've lost my memory."
He put the cup and saucer down on the desk and looked up at me, his expression haunted.
"Please, Mr. Hunt. I need to know who I am."
***
I've done my fair share of missing person investigations, both on the force and off, but I've never had to look for someone who had lost himself.
Mr. Tyler told me everything he knew, which didn't take very long. After three weeks in hospital – just bruises and sprains, but the doctors were worried about his head – they eventually discharged him, saying his memory might return in time.
And so it might, but there were no signs of it so far.
Fortunately for him, he'd had his driving licence on him, along with a bit of loose change and a front door key, so he knew his own address. It was a nondescript flat in a nondescript street, and he was turning the key in the lock as he spoke.
"…the police never found the driver of the car, and they said that no-one of my name had been reported missing, so there was nothing more they could do."
He pushed the door open and motioned for me to enter. "Then DI Carling suggested I should come to see you."
I gave a nod and stepped past him into the front room of his flat.
Tidy. Spartan, even. A low pile of books on the shelves, a TV in the corner, and a small sofa angled towards it. Tyler was right by my shoulder, looking around as if he was seeing it all for the first time.
"It's rented. Apparently I moved in about three months ago. Paid a deposit and a month's rent in advance." He gave a frustrated huff, running a hand through his hair. "But I don't recognise anything. None of it."
He followed me as I went over to peer at the books. They were all from the library, all medical texts about head injuries and memory loss. I looked over at him and for a moment he looked back, desperate and hopeful and pained all at the same time. Then he gave a shrug and glanced away.
Stepping away from him, I headed towards the inner doors. One led into a small but spotlessly clean bathroom, and another into an equally small and clean kitchen. I made a bit of a show of looking in the cupboards. Not that I expected to find anything out of the ordinary, but I poked about the fridge and glanced in the oven, anyway. I keep a gun in mine but that's fairly unusual, not to mention illegal. (The gun, that is. Last time I checked there weren't any laws about what you can and can't keep in an oven.)
Moving on into the bedroom I had to remind myself that he was a paying client and so I couldn't just turf all the stuff out of his drawers and cupboards, which was a shame as I don't get to do that much these days. Not that there was much to turf, just a few changes of underwear, some shirts and a couple of pairs of trousers hanging neatly in the wardrobe. I went through all the pockets, but came up empty.
"I've already done that, you know."
Tyler had followed me in and was sitting on the bed watching me.
"Checked behind pictures, under the mattress…" he gave a dry, humourless chuckle, "…even looked for anything sewn into the lining of my clothes."
I nodded but continued to search anyway. He was paying me, after all, so it was best to make a show of being thorough.
"This was all I found."
I froze, then turned to look at him. Why is it punters always leave the important things till last?
He had a few items spread out on the bed:
A grimy hanky.
A matchbook.
An odd small key.
A small thin black notebook with worn edges.
A large wad of banknotes, high denomination.
I pressed my lips together, mentally calculating.
His mouth twisted in a humourless smile. "So you see, I may not know who I am, but I know I can pay you."
***
I sat on his sofa, turning the bundle of money over in my hands.
"There must be a few hundred here."
"Twelve thousand, four hundred and sixty, actually." Tyler's voice came from the kitchen. "I found it in a plastic bag in the toilet cistern."
I raised an eyebrow: he'd been more thorough than me.
The notebook had just a few blank pages in it; the rest had been torn out. I put it to one side and picked up the matchbook. It bore the name of a club which looked vaguely familiar so I was certain it was local, although not one of the more popular ones. I put it down as Tyler handed me a steaming mug of coffee.
"And you don't remember anything else?"
He shook his head.
"Nothing. So I've spent the last week hanging around here reading, hoping that someone will knock on the door or I'll get something in the post that will tell me who I am."
Tyler sat down next to me with a sigh, and we drank in silence. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, his forearms suggesting a lean, sinewy strength.
I eyed the stash of banknotes. "What about work? I mean, that money came from somewhere."
A worried frown creased his forehead. "I've no idea. But I've been thinking that if I just moved here recently, I might not have got around to opening up a bank account, and I suppose the cistern is a good a place as any to hide it. And no-one has called round to ask why I'm not at work, so maybe I haven't got a job yet."
I nodded slowly. "Maybe." I could hear the note of hope in his voice and I didn't have the heart to drown it out completely, but he and I both knew he was clutching at straws. You don't hide that amount of loot in your loo just because you haven't had the chance to pop to the bank. I sighed, knowing I was going to hate myself.
"Look, are you really sure you want to get to the bottom of this?"
Tyler seemed to freeze in place beside me. He had the money to pay me and God knows I needed it, but I took a deep breath and ploughed on regardless.
"As things stand, you've got a clean slate. No-one is looking for you and you've got a nice tidy sum to set yourself up somewhere, no questions asked. Have you thought that you might be better off not knowing?"
Tyler looked up at me and I hated myself even more. His eyes reflected worry and doubt, but his voice when he spoke was rock-solid.
"I want to know the truth."
***
The truth, as someone once said, is rarely what it's cracked up to be. But Tyler was paying for my time, so after arranging to meet him the following day I left him at his flat and headed back to the office where I gave Ray Carling a call.
Ray had been my DI up until my sudden and involuntary departure from the force just over three years ago. The corruption charges had eventually been dropped, but not in time to save my job or my pension, or my picture from being front-page news thanks to Jackie bloody Queen. Disgrace had followed, with divorce hot on its heels.
A lot of my old friends and comrades had been unable to look me in the eye afterwards but Ray had stayed in touch. I don't know whether Ray really thought I was innocent, or just that I had been unlucky to be the one to get caught. It didn't really matter either way. Ray was a good man, and a good mate, and I trusted him.
Well, as much as I trust anyone.
We arranged to meet later that night in the One Bell, and I went back to work, spending the rest of the day dropping off some surveillance photos I'd taken and deciding how to tell old man Palmer exactly how his son was spending his inheritance.
It was the tail end of the day, phone calls made and papers filed, and Annie offered to pop round the corner to Noreen's café and pick up an egg buttie for me before she went home. I agreed, partly because I was a bit peckish but mostly because I knew it would keep Annie happy (God knows why she worries about me not eating properly – it's not like I'm going to fade away from starvation anytime soon).
I fished a fresh bottle of scotch out of my desk drawer and took a healthy swig: no harm in warming up before heading to the pub. I slouched down in my chair and propped my feet up on my desk.
Sometimes I hate this job. Especially the surveillance work. Long periods of boredom punctuated with bursts of activity. It's not the spying itself that's the problem – it's all a bit girly, but there's nothing wrong with having a healthy sense of curiosity. And sometimes you get to tackle something a bit more challenging; something requiring thought and cunning, something you can really sink your teeth into.
No, I hate what you find out about people; hate having to dash clients' hopes, seeing the anger and pain in their eyes when I have to confirm their worst suspicions.
Or take someone like Tyler. He was obviously smart - a bit odd, perhaps, but seemed basically decent – who knows what I might uncover about him to shatter his illusions.
But it's a living, and let's face it, what the hell else would I do?
***
When I heard the bell above the front door ring I assumed it must be Annie returning, so when I glanced up I wasn't expecting to find myself looking down the business end of a double-barrelled shotgun.
The bloke behind it was familiar enough – I'd watched his ugly mug for many a long hour behind a telephoto lens - but this was the first time I'd seen him up close and personal, and it wasn't much of a view.
"Mr. Luckhurst." I said calmly. "What brings you in here?"
"You bloody bastard!" He stepped further into my office and I could see he was white-lipped and almost shaking with rage, the tremor of his body visible beneath the tailored cut of his expensive suit.
I tried to maintain eye contact as I slowly lowered my feet, keeping my hands flat on my desk so as not to alarm him. In the movies the good guys always have a gun to hand – either in a nearby drawer or taped under the desktop or something – but I didn't think he'd obligingly hang around while I nipped upstairs and rummaged around in my oven. Lucky I had my natural charm to fall back on.
"You seem a bit upset," I pointed out, probably unnecessarily.
"Damn right I'm upset!" He bellowed, the spittle flying from his lips and spotting his expensive silk tie.
"Why don't you tell me what all this-"
"Shut up and get on your feet!" He gestured with the gun and I risked a glance at his trigger-finger to assess the chances of him shooting me accidentally – quite high, I reckoned.
"Okay, okay." I got to my feet slowly, hands raised. This wasn't good. This sort of thing was the drawback of working without a partner – no back-up. And although I know we all have to meet our Maker one day, I wasn't in a hurry for it to be today. Besides, I didn't want Annie's last sight of me to be a gory mess redecorating the walls of my office.
Luckhurst had his back to the door and was motioning me to step around the desk in front of him.
"Get round here and prepare to die like a man, you bloody swine!"
I complied as slowly as I could, my mind racing. Presumably he'd waited until Annie left before barging in, thinking that she'd gone for the evening. A quick glance at the wall clock told me Annie would be back any second – well, unless she'd got stuck in conversation with Noreen or someone else she knew, in which case she might be ages - but I shoved that thought away. All I had to do was keep him talking.
"But – surely you're not going to kill me without telling me why?" I asked, in a reasonable tone.
"You know very well why, you filthy immoral scum!"
That was a bit rich, seeing as I'd caught him on camera cheating on his wife with no less than three different women, at least two of whom had been young enough to be his daughter.
"Just doing what I'm paid for. You're the one who had the affair in the first place – can't blame your wife." I tried to sound vaguely regretful about it all, but quite frankly the slimy bastard deserved whatever his wife dished out to him.
"Oh, so that makes it fine for you to sleep with her, then, does it?" His voice was lower but his hand seemed to be shaking more, which wasn't a good development.
"Ah. Well, I can explain that…"
And that was the moment that the bell sounded Annie's return.
Luckhurst's head whipped round, his body turning slightly, and the barrels of the gun twitched to one side with his movement. I'd been ready for it and I dived for him, grabbing the gun with both hands and twisting it viciously from his grip before he could react. I brought the stock up to meet his jaw with a satisfying crack – not enough to break it, but enough to send him reeling to the floor at Annie's feet. Her hand flew up to her mouth in shock and she stepped smartly to one side to avoid Luckhurst as he rolled around moaning.
"Firstly," I said, breaking open the breech and dropping out the two cartridges, "I haven't shagged your bloody wife." Not that she hadn't offered, but her type is always bad news. I stashed the cartridges in my pocket and snapped the breech shut as Luckhurst staggered to his feet, cradling his jaw in his hands. "And second, if you're so worried about morals then stop shagging other birds and take up letter-writing to Mary bleedin' Whitehouse instead!"
I took a couple of menacing steps towards him and he backed away, Annie shifting aside to let him reverse out of the door.
"And finally – I could go to the coppers about this but I'm not going to because if I ever, ever see hide or hair of you again, I'll have much more fun ramming this up your jacksie and letting you have both barrels!"
As I brandished the gun Luckhurst turned tail and fled, still clutching his jaw, the bell ringing merrily as the door swung shut behind him. Annie was staring at me, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, sandwich bag lying dropped and forgotten on the floor.
I sniffed, putting the gun down on my desk and straightening my tie. "D'you know, I think we'll close early today."
***
Ray was already there when I got to the One Bell, sitting in an alcove near the back. We meet up for drinks every week or so, but always somewhere that isn't a regular coppers' boozer as it might not be healthy for Ray's career for him to be seen too frequently with me.
Pints in hand, I slid into the seat next to him. It's always easy, this friendship. Even at the worst of it I could trust Ray not to blather on or ask a load of questions I didn't want to answer. He was always happy with a chat about the footie, and that's how I liked it. So we started on that, and it was a couple of pints later before I got round to asking him about my Mysterious Missing Memory Man.
"Yeah. It's a bit of an odd case, that one." Ray wiped the beer froth off his moustache before continuing. "He was found unconscious on a bit of waste ground right next to the canal towpath. Bloke out walking his dog early morning found him, and Tyler's bloody lucky he did: the doctor reckoned he'd been there at least a couple of hours and that head injury could have been right dangerous if they hadn't got him to hospital. And it were the hospital that called us because of his injuries – they thought he'd been in an accident."
"What about witnesses?"
"None. We only know he was hit by a car because of what the doctor reckoned about all his injuries, and when I went down and had a look at the road next to where he was found there were tyre tracks that swerved off the road and back on again."
I frowned. "Thought you said it was an accident?"
Ray shrugged. "It could have been. Drunk driver, maybe, that time of night."
I nodded, thinking it through.
"He got thrown quite a distance." Ray added, reaching for his pint. "Any further and the poor bugger would have ended up drowning in the canal."
For a split second I could see him: body water-logged, blue-tinged lips and dulled brown eyes, then I shook myself. Seen a lot of bodies in my days as a copper, that's all.
"So why'd you send him to me?"
Ray gave a wry smile. "Felt sorry for him. There was nothing else we could do, and the doctors seemed to be stumped about his memory loss. Thought maybe you could help him, what with you being a big fan of lost causes." He shot me a lopsided grin and I gave a snort.
"D'you know if he can pay the bill?"
Ray frowned in concern. "No, but I thought that's one of the first things you would check."
I just nodded and took a swig from my pint. So Tyler hadn't told the police everything. Well, if I'd just found twelve-and-a-half thousand quid hidden in my lav I don't suppose I'd have told them, either.
"Oh, there's one other thing: he's not a known criminal."
I raised an eyebrow. "Well that's reassuring."
"See, it's just that there was something weird about him when he came to the station. I can't quite put my finger on it, but he seemed to know the drill, and there were a couple of things he said, or maybe it was the way he said them…anyway, I had his name checked in our files but he came up clean."
So the name came up clean. Didn't mean the man using it was.
***
We whiled away the evening until time was called, and as we left the pub I beckoned Ray over to the Cortina and opened the boot. He let out a low whistle as I handed him the shotgun, wrapped in an old copy of the Manchester Evening News.
"I dread to ask."
"I'm just being a good citizen and handing it in to the police."
"Anything I need to be worried about?"
I shook my head. "I took it off a posh twat by the name of Luckhurst – more money than brains and a bit put out by the fact his missus doesn't like him porking younger birds."
Ray snorted. "All right. I'll turn it in and keep your name out of it." He cast me a half-chiding, half-envious look. "You want to watch it. One of these days your taste for a bit of skirt is going to get you into trouble you won't be able to walk away from."
I gave him a leer and a wink as I got into the Cortina. Ray glanced around then hustled over to his own car and stashed the gun inside before sliding behind the wheel. With a wave of thanks in his direction, I drove off into the night.
***