Life on Mars: A Fistful of Knuckles

CHAPTER TWO: STELLA’S GYM

‘Have you been drinking with the guv again?’ asked Annie, looking up at Sam from her desk at CID. ‘Sam, it’s barely lunchtime!’

‘I only had the one, to keep him company,’ said Sam. ‘Why, can you smell beer on me?’

‘That, and about a million fags.’

They glanced across at Gene who was back in his office, chewing on a biro while casting his eyes over the racing pages. He’d found no inspiration in the pub; perhaps he hoped he’d find it among the runners and riders.

‘You’re looking tired, Annie,’ said Sam, drawing up a chair beside her. ‘Is everything alright?’

‘Working here? It’s one big summer holiday.’ She smiled, but then her smile faltered. ‘Actually, I’ve been a bit down.’

‘Why? It wasn’t Ray again with that awful plastic thing?’

‘No, Sam, it wasn’t Ray and that awful plastic thing.’

‘I’ve warned him, Annie, I’ll have him disciplined if he keeps bringing that in.’

‘It’s nothing like that,’ said Annie. ‘It’s my own fault. I’ve been letting a case get to me, taking it personally.’

She opened a file on her desk and revealed a photograph of a slim, frail-looking girl staring blankly at the camera. Her eyes were almost completely closed by fat, shiny bruises; her top lip was swollen. Beneath this battered mask Annie had carefully written the victim’s name: Tracy Porter.

‘A&E called me in a couple of days ago to speak to her,’ Annie said. ‘Her boyfriend’s the one who did it – and it’s not the first time, neither – but she’s too frightened to go on record. I’ve been trying to persuade her, but she’s saying she walked into a door.’

Sam nodded. It was an old story. How many more beatings would young Tracy Porter endure before she ended up on the same mortuary slab as Denzil Obi? How many Denzils and Tracys would come and go through just this CID department alone – battered, bullied, and beyond help?

Sam closed the file. He had seen enough smashed and brutalised faces for one day.

‘I know it’s not easy, Annie, but you’ve got to keep a professional distance with stuff like this.’

‘Normally I do. I don’t know what it is about this girl that’s gotten to me. I think it’s the frustration, the way she’s protecting that bastard who did it to her. I can’t get through to her, Sam. Just name him, I say. I’ll help you – but you’ve got help me first. But it’s no good. Sometimes I want to shake her, it makes me so mad.’

‘Looks like she’s been shaken enough already,’ said Sam.

‘Exactly. So then I feel guilty that I want to get rough with her an’ all. She’s hardly the brightest star in the sky, but she still doesn’t deserve what she’s getting.’

‘It can sound heartless to say it, Annie, but once you’ve done all you can you really do have to walk away. That’s the job. You have your life, she has hers.’

‘If you can call what she’s got ‘a life’, trailing around with Terry Barnard’s fairground, living in a crappy caravan, getting smacked about by that thug of a boyfriend. She doesn’t know how to look after herself, or else she’s just given up. I had to literally twist her arm to make a check-up appointment with the hospital, just to make sure everything’s healing up okay. I think the only reason she agreed to go is because I promised to meet here there.’

‘You think she’ll show?’

Annie shrugged: ‘If she does, I’m going to have one last crack at getting her to give evidence.’

‘Don’t get your hopes up too high, Annie. We’re just coppers. We all get frustrated. I do. Chris does. Even Ray and Gene, they take it personally sometimes. But none of us can save the world. We can do our best, and we can do our job, but we can’t do the impossible.’

‘Speak for yourself,’ Ray Carling said, looming suddenly over them. ‘The impossible’s my forte. I can give you the number of a few birds who’ll testify to that.’

‘Ray, please, would you give us some space?’ said Sam, forcing himself to keep his cool.

‘Not until you’ve answered a question for me, Boss,’ Ray replied.

‘Okay. What’s your question?’

‘What do you say to a bird with two black eyes?’

Instantly, Annie stiffened and looked away. Sam wearily rubbed his forehead.

‘Ray, you have picked the single worst possible moment to start telling that joke. And besides, I’ve heard it. And it wasn’t funny the first time.’

‘Only trying to raise a smile,’ said Ray, stuffing a strip of Juicy Fruit into his mouth. ‘Perhaps I’ll bring that plastic thing back in again. That gets a few laffs.’

‘No you won’t bring that plastic thing back in again, Ray! I’ve bloody warned you!’

‘Suit yourself, you tight-arsed get,’ shrugged Ray. ‘We all need to get through as best we can. Go off our rockers, otherwise. At least Chrissy-wissy’s got a sense of humour round here. He likes that plastic thing.’

Chris’s head popped up from behind a mountain of paperwork weighed down with an overflowing ashtray.

‘I love that plastic thing!’ he said eagerly. ‘Have you brought it in again?!’

Ray sauntered over to him: ‘’Fraid not. Orders from the laffin’ gnome over there. But I got a question for you, Chris. What do you say to a bird with two black eyes?’

Ignoring him, Sam turned back to Annie.

‘Sorry about that,’ he said. ‘It’s just Ray being Ray.’

Annie smiled at him and said: ‘Thanks, Sam – you know – for not being like all the rest.’

Across the office, Ray reached the cruel punch line and Chris brayed with laughter.

Keeping his back to them both, Sam leant closer to Annie and dropped his voice: ‘Listen, maybe I can cheer you up by taking you out for dinner some time?’

‘You asking me out on a date, Boss?’

‘As your superior officer I suppose I could order you out on a date with me.’

‘How romantic. Where have you got in mind? The canteen downstairs?’

‘I think we can go a little more upmarket than that. You choose the restaurant. Anywhere you like, Annie. Don’t worry about the expense. Manchester is your oyster!’

Sam stopped suddenly. Oysters. They made him think of whelks. And whelks made him think of the fat-bellied coroner belching and grunting in the morgue.

‘Anywhere you like, Annie, but – please – not seafood.’

‘Why not?’

‘I’ve sort of … gone off it recently. Well? Am I tempting you?’

Annie swivelled playfully in her chair and said: ‘I don’t know. You’ve taken me by surprise, young man.’

‘Not the first time you’ve said that, I’ll bet.’

‘I’ll have a think about it and get back to you,’ she said, making a show of moving folders and files around on her desk. ‘I’m busy. But if you’re lucky I might be able to squeeze you in somewhere.’

‘And not the first time you’ve said that, I’ll bet.’

‘You are as bad as the rest of ‘em!’ Annie cried at him, blushing.

‘I’m the king of the bad ‘uns round here!’ Gene suddenly intoned from the doorway of his office. ‘Tyler! Stop fiddling with DI Bristols and start acting like a copper with a job to do. Raymondo! Christopher! I’m bored of reading the paper and I don’t feel like a taking a dump just yet; catch me a killer so I can play pat-a-cake with him in the interview room ‘til it’s home time.’

‘Got a possible start for you, Guv,’ said Ray, waving a piece of paper. ‘I’ve been digging up what I can about this half-darkie lad what got whacked.’

‘Mixed race,’ Sam corrected him, knowing nobody was interested. ‘It’s so simple: it’s mixed race.’

‘Looks like he was a local boy,’ Ray went on. ‘In and out of trouble as a kid, got himself nicked a couple of times – thieving, spot of aggro here and there, nothing serious. Worked around and about as a bouncer, did a spot of lugging down the warehouses. Then he started picking up a living as a bare-knuckle boxer at illegal fights.’

‘Is there a living in that?’ asked Sam.

‘If you know what you’re doing, Boss, aye, ‘course there is,’ said Ray. ‘There’s a lot of money slopping around in that game. But most of them lads are trying to go legit now – like Denzil Obi. It’s safer being a pro. Life in the boxing underworld can be pretty rough.’

‘Inside the ring and out of it,’ said Gene, nodding to himself. ‘So – our boy Denzil was looking to go straight, make an honest living at last. But somewhere along the way he’d piddled on somebody’s chips – and aforesaid somebody caught up with him, popped round his flat and aired his grievances. Come on, Ray, get me some names – who were Obi’s acquaintances? Did he have a trainer? Sparring partners? Boxing buddies?’

‘I don’t know about none of that – but this was found at his flat,’ said Ray, and he passed a laminated card to Gene.

Gene peered at it and read out loud: ‘Stella’s Gym. Denzil ‘The Black Widow’ Obi. Full membership.’

‘The Black Widow!’ grinned Chris. ‘That’s wicked, that!’

‘Stella’s Gym …’ Gene mused. ‘Don’t know it. Got an address for it, Raymond?’

‘It’s on the back of the card, Guv.’

‘Excellent. Ray, you stay here with ‘wicked’ Chris Skelton and carry on digging up everything you can about Obi. Go through the arrest files, see what dodgy underworld boxers we’ve got on the records. And find out who’s in town – boxers, brawlers, shady fight promoters, anyone Obi might have come into contact with. And as for you, Sugar Ray Tyler-’

‘Yes, Guv?’

‘Grab your shorts and skipping rope. We’re popping down the gym.’

‘Can this really be the right place?’ asked Sam as he and Gene clambered out of the Cortina and approached the entrance of a gloomy, filthy alleyway.

Gene sniffed the air with contempt: ‘Much like the aroma in your flat, Sammy. I can see why you try to cover it up with that druggy pong.’

‘They’re not drugs, they’re joss sticks,’ replied Sam. ‘How many times do I have to explain that, Guv?’

‘No amount of explaining’s going to make your gaff stink any less like a dope-smoking pansy-boy’s boudoir. Now then; lead on, Samuel, and boot any dog-eggs out the way. I don’t want to get my loafers soiled.’

‘Heaven forbid you should soil your loafers,’ said Sam, and gingerly he stepped into the alley, picking his way through the heaps of reeking garbage. ‘This place is worse than a pigsty! Doesn’t seem like a good location for a gym.’

‘Get over it,’ Gene growled as he loomed menacingly after Sam. ‘Real men ain’t frit by a spot of dirt.’

‘It seems they are if they’re wearing their best loafers, Guv.’

‘Second best, you prannet. First best’s for the ladies.’

They reached a set of filthy doors, above which hung the remains of a sign. The few letters still attached to it said: ST LLA’S YM

‘This must be it,’ said Sam.

He pushed open the doors and revealed a gloomy passageway beyond, with a set of stairs leading down into even deeper darkness. For a moment, a sharp, icy sensation passed through Sam’s blood. He sensed something – something he could not define. For a moment, he could not bring himself to descend that bleak staircase and enter the darkness at its foot.

But why? What am I afraid is down there?

But it wasn’t the descent into Stella’s Gym that froze his blood with fear. It was that deeper descent into the even greater darkness of the subconscious that terrified him. Because he had glimpsed into that pit of his own psyche before, not least when he had been pistol-whipped unconscious in the compound of the Red Hand Faction and found himself lost in a black, nightmarish void.

Something stared back at me from that void … something with inhuman eyes, an inhuman face … a devil … a devil in the dark! I saw it … and whatever it is, it saw me. It knows me. And it’s coming for me. Slowly, but surely, it’s coming for me … and then … and then …

But at that moment Gene shoved roughly past him and strode confidently into the murky hallway.

‘Keep up, Sam, we haven’t got all day.’

Forcing his nameless fears aside, Sam followed Gene down the steps and through another set of doors.

They found themselves at once in Stella’s Gym. It was a stark, windowless, concrete cavern lit by overhead strip lights. It felt more like an underground car park than a gymnasium. Between the hard concrete floor and the hard concrete ceiling stood rows of hard concrete columns plastered with photos of slab-faced boxers and naked women. Moving between the columns were an assortment of huge, sweating men pounding away at punch bags, heaving weights, dancing over skipping ropes. The air was thick with the mingled stench of body odour, embrocation and stale, wet towels.

One again, an overpowering sense of dread swept across Sam. His heart was pounding. He leant against a concrete pillar, afraid he might pass out, and in horror he saw amid the pinned-up photographs a face he knew at once; staring out at him was the Test Card Girl – a faded, dog-eared, black and white snapshot pinned up between pictures Henry Cooper and Raquel Welch.

‘Don’t you want to know the truth, Sam? Don’t you want to know what I know … about Annie?’

Sam’s head swam. He braced himself, forced himself not to faint. The girl’s mocking voice echoed through his mind, stirring up the terrible sickness that threatened to overwhelm him.

‘She has a past, Sam. Shall I tell you about it? Shall I? Shall I, Sam? Shall I?’

In sudden anger he snatched the photo of the Test Card Girl. But all at once he found himself holding nothing more than a tatty newspaper cutting of Joe Bugner poised for action.

To hell with your mind games, you little brat! You won’t get inside my head! You’re not real! You’re nothing!

Sam crumpled the photo into a ball and fell into step with Gene. Together they moved forward, making for a roped-off boxing ring where two men lunged and clashed under the under the noisy guidance of a short, pug-nosed Irishman.

‘Hey you!’ Gene barked.

The Irish trainer fell silent, turned, and looked Sam and Gene over. His flat, ugly face was not friendly, and neither was the atmosphere in the gym.

‘You addressing me?’ the trainer asked in his spiky Belfast accent.

‘I most certainly am, Paddy.’

‘The name’s Dermot.’

‘I don’t care what you call yourself, you gobby spud. Zip your trap and pay attention. And that goes for all of you!’

All the men had stopped working out and were staring at the unwelcome visitors, clocking at once that they had a couple of coppers amongst them – Sam’s leather jacket and Gene’s voluminous camel hair coat were as much giveaways in this place as bobby’s helmets and badges.

The atmosphere tightened. Sam set his face, determined not to show that he was intimidated. But Gene, who thrived on machismo like a rosebush thrives on quality shit, hooked his thumbs into his belt, thrust out his chest, and squinted slowly round at the men who surrounded them.

Please, guv – don’t antagonise them, Sam silently willed him. Keep it cool, keep it calm … no need to wind anyone up …

‘Right, you faggots,’ Gene declared. ‘Stop eyeing up each other’s arses and pay attention. I’ll keep it simple so as not to confuse you. My name’s Detective Chief Inspector Hunt, CID, A-Division – you know, the police. And this here’s my retard nephew tagging along on work experience.’

Sam kept his face fixed, maintaining what professional dignity he could.

Dermot, the pug-nosed trainer, leant casually on the ropes of the boxing ring and said: ‘And what can we be doin’ for you fellas, then? Lookin’ to put a spot of muscle on yourselves, are ya?’

Gene fixed him with a look and said; ‘Denzil Obi, the Mixed Race Widow.’

‘What about him?’ said Dermot. ‘Denzil’s not here.’

‘No,’ said Gene. ‘No, he’s not. He’s gone to that big, stinky gym in the sky.’

A ripple of tension ran through the men. Dermot straightened up, his face serious. ‘What you talkin’ about?’

‘Denzil Obi was found dead in his flat this morning,’ said Sam. ‘Beaten to a pulp.’

‘So it’s a not social call but a murder enquiry,’ Gene declared. ‘Any of you monkeys feel like having a chat? Eh? Anyone here know enough words to tell us anything?’

Silent faces stared back at them.

‘One at a time, lads, no need to rush,’ growled Gene.

Sam looked from one to the other, and it was then that he noticed a lean, wiry man – more sleek and well-toned than bulked-up and brawny – who was sporting a spider tattoo on the base of his neck, almost identical to Denzil’s. For a fleeting moment, Sam and the man with the tattoo made eye contact – and then the man looked nervously away.

At that moment, Gene spotted the man with the tattoo, and at once strode towards him.

‘Oi! What about you? Eh? Knew Denzil, did you? Eh? Speak up, lad! Or would you rather chat about this under the lights down at the cop shop?’

‘Hey, constable, you lay off Spider!’ Dermot protested.

‘I don’t like spiders – I squash ‘em,’ said Gene. ‘Or pull their legs off and flush ‘em down the plug hole. But only if they ignore me – you get my drift? Eh? Spider?’

Spider gave Gene a glowering look. He tightened his fists. Gene tightened his.

‘I said lay off ‘im!’ Dermot cried. He ducked under the rope and waddled aggressively towards Gene on his short, stocky legs.

‘Look, out, Sam,’ said Gene, looking down at Dermot. ‘Looks like I’ve upset the Lollypop Guild.’

Dermot planted himself protectively in front of Spider: ‘Let him be, constable. Him and Denzil were buddies – that ain’t no secret. Real close.’

‘Best friends?’ asked Sam.

‘Like brothers,’ said Dermot.

‘Faggots, were they? Nancy boys? Like to dip your wick in the ol’ chocolate pot, eh Spider?’

‘Officer, you’re out of line!’ the Irishmen cried. ‘You’re well out of line!’

‘What you gonna do about it?’ asked Gene, leaning down so that his face was level with Dermot’s. ‘You gonna get Sleepy and Bashful to give me a going over?’

‘Guv, please,’ said Sam quietly, trying to calm the situation. The atmosphere was tense beyond belief. The men in the gym seemed ready to rush them.

Maybe the machismo in the air’s gotten to him, San thought. Maybe he can’t help himself.

Spider stared furiously at Gene for a few moments, his eyes red and watery, and then he turned and stormed away.

‘Let the fella grieve in peace,’ Dermot said. ‘Spider’s a good lad. Like I told you – him and Denzil, they were like brothers the pair of ‘em. Think of his feelings. Let him shed a few tears. Then he’ll talk to you.’

‘He’ll talk to me now,’ growled Gene. ‘You might be the leprechaun’s bollocks in this shite-hole, Murphy, but when it comes to a murder enquiry you’re less to me than a puddle of pissed-out Guinness.’

‘I’m warnin’ you …’ muttered Dermot at the back of his throat.

‘Get back to Santa’s gotto, there’s rockin’ ‘orses need wrapping,’ said Gene, and he pushed past the little Irish men to go after Spider. But at once Dermot planted himself directly in Gene’s way, blocking him – and as he did, the other men in the room pushed forward to back him up. Sam braced himself. The anger in the room was like an electric charge. Hands were clenched. Muscles tensed. Eyes narrowed. The whole gym seemed to thrum and vibrate with a deep, pulsing, masculine energy, like the prelude to a storm or the first ominous rumblings of an earthquake. The thrill of imminent violence filled the room.

Sam froze.

Dermot prepared to throw a punch.

The boxers got ready to join him.

Gene puffed himself up.

It was then that they heard the gasp of a woman a few yards away to their right. It was an almost sexual sound. The lemony aroma of Charlie cut through the fug of sweaty men like the reek of powerful pheromones. Sam and Gene glanced across and saw bleached blonde hair, scarlet lipstick caked across wrinkled lips, a tight-fitting, zebra-patterned leather skirt, fishnet stockings encasing muscular legs, white stilettos. The balls-to-the-wall old bird who stared so frankly at the men in the gym raised her left hand to her painted mouth and teased a red lacquered nail between twin sets of nicotine-darkened teeth; as she did so, her right hand ran down her solidly curved body, from zebra-striped breasts to leather-clad crotch, in a single fluid movement of barely suppressed animal arousal.

‘Hands in your pockets, boys, your five-tissue fantasy’s arrived,’ Gene observed.

CHAPTER THREE: SLAPPER

‘I’m Stella, and this is my gym,’ said the woman in the zebra-striped top, lounging back in her chair and planting her stilettoed feet on her desk. ‘This place is mine. Mine. You come into Stella’s Gym with questions, I’m the one you speak to first. Got that?’

Sam didn’t know whether things would have kicked off had Stella not arrived the moment she did. But whatever the score, her sudden appearance had defused the situation. All eyes had turned to her as she stood there, running her hands over her own body and chewing her glistening bottom lip. Sam’s first thought was that she was somebody’s drunk and unpleasantly randy aunt, but whoever she was she radiated some sort of authority over the men in the gym. They respected her. Gene had sensed this too; instinctively, he’d turned his attention from the wretched Spider and the plucky Irishman defending him, and instead focused solely on this high-heeled, peroxided Amazon.