I’m going to explain everything to her, Sam thought, watching the door. It won’t be easy – for either of us – but it’s the right thing to do. And with Clive Gould breathing down our necks, she’s got no choice but to understand.
Through the open doorway, Sam could see the church across the road. The wheezing music had stopped, and a straggle of worshippers was now wandering in. Sam watched the desultory handful of OAPs as they headed through the graveyard and in through the church door. It was a typical Sunday-morning turn out. And yet, the sight of it tugged at Sam’s heart. He was hardly a religious man, but that plain, threadbare, C of E church with its leaky spire and unkempt graveyard and its smattering of a congregation spoke to him of Life and Death, of worlds beyond this one, of higher purposes and plans played out in mysterious ways. It reminded him that 1973, like Lieutenant Columbo, was only a shambling mess on the outside: behind the ruinous façade, wheels were turning, great forces were at work, high stakes were being placed.
‘Ee-yar,’ grunted Joe, and he slammed down a plate of runny eggs, fatty lumps of meat, and fried bread glistening with grease.
‘Is this my breakfast or something you just coughed up?’ Sam asked. And as Joe turned away he added: ‘Hey, before you disappear, tell me – do you know anything about old watches at all?’
‘Wrote the book on ’em,’ said Joe sourly, and he peered down at the gold-plated fob watch Sam had rested on the table. ‘Antique, is it?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘Take it down the market, see if someone stumps up a couple of bob.’
‘I’ve no intention of selling it,’ said Sam, closing his hand protectively around the watch. ‘I’m not parting with him, Joe. There’s something very special about it.’
‘You want to get the case replaced. Looks like somebody’s sat on it.’
‘Nobody sat on it,’ said Sam. He ran his finger over the dent that Donner had made with his kitchen knife when he’d lunged at Sam. It had saved his life once already. Maybe it'd do it again.
Utterly disinterested, Joe plodded back to his greasy pots and pans and joylessly started frying a few eggs.
Annie suddenly appeared in the open doorway, dressed in a wide-collared, canary-yellow shirt under a brown suede coat. She paused and looked in. Sam could tell at once something was wrong. Her face was pale, her eyes wide and anxious. When she sat down across from him, she said nothing, just folded her arms defensively.
‘Hi,’ smiled Sam. But Annie just frowned worriedly at him. ‘You’re very tense. Has something happened?’
Annie shrugged.
Thinking of the shadowy ghost that had confronted Sam outside the cinema, Sam asked anxiously: ‘Have you … seen something?’
‘I’m just not feeling right,’ she said.
‘Are you ill?’
‘I don’t know. I just know I’m not right.’
‘Let me order some revolting food for you,’ Sam suggested. He indicated the congealed filth on his plate. ‘You want to join me in a full English? It’ll take your mind off things. Not in good way, but it will take your mind off things. Go on, have a dip with one of my soldiers.’
But there was no response from Annie. She was not in a joking mood. Now that Sam looked at her more closely, she seemed shell-shocked.
‘Talk to me,’ he urged her gently.
‘I’ve been digging into the old police files from the sixties,’ said Annie.‘I needed some information, but the files were in a mess, so I started trying to sort ’em out, get ’em in order. God knows, nobody else in that place is going to do it.’
‘Well ain’t that the truth.’
‘So, I started going through it all. Everything was all filed badly and mucked about with. At first I just thought it was just the usual thing, people being careless, sticking reports in the wrong folders and not bothering to label things right. But then I noticed there were gaps, Sam – gaps like there were things missing on purpose.’
‘You’re saying those files have been tampered with?’
‘I’m sure of it, Sam. Somebody’s been covering things up.’
Sam nodded: ‘There were a lot of coppers on the payroll of villains back then, far worse than today.’
‘And I think I can name a few of them. There’s the same characters who keep cropping up, all of them in CID, all of them in relation to those gaps in the files or with reports that don’t quite make sense. I’ve got their names.’
She placed a sheet of paper on the table.
Sam read it out: ‘DCI Michael Carroll, DI Pat Walsh, DS Ken Darby. Any of them still serving in CID?’
‘No. They’re all retired now,’ Annie said.
‘The corrupt ones always retire. Mmm – these names don’t ring any bells for me.’
‘Nor for me, Sam. But I wonder if the Guv remembers them?’
It was possible. DCI Gene Hunt must have been working his way up through the ranks of CID at the same time as these men were around.
‘I wrote these names down so I wouldn’t forget,’ Annie went on. ‘But there’s one name I can hardly forget – the name of a uniformed copper working at the same time as these three.’
‘Let me guess,’ said Sam. ‘Cartwright. PC Anthony Cartwright.’
Annie looked at him with wide, confused eyes, and then dropped her gaze and nodded.
PC Cartwright. Annie’s father. Sam had seen him, met him, spoken to him – and then watched him die at the hands of Clive Gould, the villain who had all these coppers and detectives on his payroll. Sam had seen it all, though it had happened ten years ago. He had been there.
Choosing his words carefully, Sam asked: ‘What can you tell me about Anthony Cartwright?’
‘I looked him up,’ said Annie. ‘He was a uniformed officer, quite young. Something happened to him, and he died. I think there may have been some sort of a cover-up.’
‘But the name,
‘I … I don’t know what it means to me, Sam. When I saw it, I tried to think if I had any relatives with that name. Uncles, cousins. But … I couldn’t think of any, Sam. I mean, I couldn’t think of any,
‘Did memories start coming back?’
‘Not memories as such, just … impressions. Feelings. Echoes of things. God, I don’t know, I can’t explain it.’
The same thing will happen to me if I stay here long enough, thought Sam. This place – this 1973 us dead coppers find ourselves in – it takes us over eventually, erodes our memories of the life we used to lead, makes us forget everything except the here and now. But those memories of what we used to be are still in there somewhere – buried deep – waiting to be unearthed.
‘I’m really confused, Sam,’ Annie muttered.
‘Believe it or not, I completely understand you,’ Sam replied.
Annie