Gene angrily floored the gas, sending the Cortina screaming through the streets. As he drove, he ordered Sam to put a call through to CID over the police radio.
‘Scramble the team. Get them to meet us at the church.’
‘Does that include Annie?’ Sam asked.
‘Unfortunately it does,’ Gene growled. ‘I want her where I can keep an eye on her, not sloping about on her own stirring up trouble. She’s done more than enough on her tod already.’
Sam reached for the dashboard radio, but hesitated.
‘Guv,’ he said, ‘I still don’t think it’s right to break the siege like this. Carroll said he’d start shooting hostages at the first sign of –’
Gene’s fist slammed into the side of Sam’s face like a steam-driven piston. Sam found himself slumped against the passenger door, his head spinning, his ears ringing.
With a face like a royally pissed off bulldog, Gene silently got on with his reckless driving. He didn’t say a word – but he didn’t need to. Sam understood what he was thinking perfectly. Narrowly avoiding being brained by a falling chimney had not put the guv in the best of tempers. Having his beloved camel hair coat smothered in filthy brick dust had wound him up even more. But worst of all, perhaps, was the betrayal he felt at Annie conducting private investigations behind his back, and Sam colluding with her. He saw Annie as having stirred up the mucky waters of CID, bringing to the surface old corruptions that were best left buried in the ooze. Gene had convinced himself that the department’s dirty washing would be hauled up in public for all to sneer at, and that the ensuing press attention would bear down on him even more crushingly than one of Fred Dibner’s toppling chimneys.
That punch to the face was his guv’nor’s way of saying that he had a lot on his plate at present and would appreciate it if Sam just shut his ruddy gob and did what the hell he was told.
Trying to ignore the throbbing pain pulsing through his jaw, Sam dutifully reached for the dashboard radio to put the call through to the team.
They reached the besieged church at the same time as Chris, Ray and Annie. A photo finish.
Gene slammed on the anchors, then threw open the door and swept out. As ever, Sam hurried on after him. They pushed their way through the assembled coppers cordoning off the street.
‘Christ, Guv, you’re covered in half of Blackpool beach,’ observed Ray as Gene came striding dustily towards him.
‘I’ve just had a close encounter with a great big watsit,’ Gene barked, ‘and I do not want to talk about it.’ He turned furiously towards Annie, fixing her with a killer stare. ‘As for you.’
‘Yes, Guv?’
‘You stand right where you are. And I mean right where you are. If I catch sight of your underdeveloped tits so much as pointing in the direction of that church I will have them and you arrested for –’ he looked for a suitable charge. ‘– for bloody everything. That clear, luv?’
‘Not really, Guv,’ said Annie, looking to Sam for help.
‘He means just stay put and he’ll talk to you later,’ Sam said quietly to her.
Gene turned his scowling face towards the church. ‘What’s happening in there?’
‘Same as before, Guv,’ said Chris. ‘Nobody’s come out, nobody’s gone in.’
‘Well that’s about to change,’ declared Gene, and he reached inside his filthy coat for his trusty Magnum.
‘Wait, Guv, please!’ Sam pleaded with him. ‘Think of the hostages.’
‘What hostages?!’ Gene scoffed. ‘It’s been two days, they’ve probably all died of starvation by now. Either that or they’ve suffocated on the pong of their own accumulated number twos. All them pensioners cooped up like that – God Almighty, I’ll bet it reeks in there worse than the geriatric ward down at central hospital.’
‘Do you really want to provoke Carroll into pulling the trigger?’ Sam insisted. He jabbed a thumb in the direction of a pack of reporters lurking about on the fringes of the siege. ‘Think what that lot will do to you if you kick off a massacre here today.’
Gene went to push past him, but Sam insisted.
‘Five minutes, Guv. Just give me five minutes.’
‘To do what, Tyler?’
‘To try some diplomacy.’
‘Diplomacy?! This is diplomacy!’ Gene barked, brandishing the Magnum. ‘Diplomacy goes bang. And Henry Kissinger said that! Or was it Charles Manson?’
‘I’ll go in there unarmed, Guv, I’ll speak to Carroll. He can’t have slept for two nights, he hasn’t eaten, he’s probably high as a kite by now, but I might just be able to make some sort of contact with him. Who knows, I might even be able to get close enough to get that gun out of his hand. But please, Guv, let me try before you go steaming in there. Just let me try!’
Gene stared stonily at the church for a moment, then shot a glance at the nearby reporters.
‘You know it makes sense, Guv,’ Sam prompted him.
At last, Gene let out a resigned sigh.
‘Five minutes,’ he growled.
‘Thanks, Gene. You’ve done the right thing.’
‘Five minutes, then the balloon goes up.’ Gene waved the Magnum at him. ‘This balloon. You reading me, Tyler?’
‘Loud and clear,’ said Sam, and without delay he threaded his way through the maze of parked police cars, making for the church. He caught a brief glimpse of Annie’s face – pale, concerned, preoccupied, confused – the face of somebody who fears they are losing their grip on reality.
I know just how she feels, Sam thought to himself, and then he focused his mind on the job at hand.
He passed through the gate that lead into the churchyard and made his way cautiously past the gravestones. Reaching the doors of the church, he hesitated. Sam batted dust from his jacket, creating billows in the air around him. He shook yet more dust from his hair, and knocked clouds of it out of his trousers. He was going to look like a tramp walking in there – but then again, Mickey Carroll wouldn’t notice anyway. The man was probably hallucinating by now, driven to the brink by fear and insomnia.
‘Yes, he’s frightened, Sam,’ said a soft, childish voice.
The Test Card Girl was sitting atop a stone cross in the graveyard, dangling her legs like she was on a swing. Her face was deathly pale, her cheeks rouged with two pink circles, her large eyes pretending at innocence.
She was surrounded by a bobbing sea of black helium balloons, hundreds of them. Every headstone on the church yard had its own balloon neatly attached to it by a length of string. It was like a sideshow in death’s own carnival.
Sam glanced back at assembled police officers and press surrounding the church – but they seemed completely oblivious to both the Test Card Girl and her morbid array of funereal balloons. He caught sight of Gene peering sceptically across at him, then turning to a uniformed copper and shouting something – but no sound came. A patrol car revved its engine and pulled away, but in complete silence. It all seemed to be happening in an alternative reality. The only sound to be heard was the Test Card Girl’s mocking voice, and the dry, rubber squeak as the black balloons nudged against each other in the breeze.
‘Mr Carroll is very, very frightened,’ she said. ‘And you know why, don’t you, Sam.’
‘Clive Gould came for him,’ said Sam, his own voice sounding shockingly loud in this unnatural silence. ‘Carroll escaped. But Walsh didn’t.’
‘That’s right. He didn’t escape. And what happened to him was all … very horrid.’
‘And what did happen? Why did Gould kill Walsh and mutilate his body like that? Why does he want to kill Carroll, and Ken Darby?’
‘It is rather puzzling, isn’t it,’ the Girl said, putting a finger to her cheek and rolling her eyes skyward as if looking for inspiration. ‘What could it all mean, I wonder?’
‘Gould wants Annie. He’s come here for Annie. Why does he give a damn about three retired coppers who used to be on his payroll?’
‘Umm.’ The Girl play-acted deep concentration.
‘Don’t mess me about, you little brat! You know!’
‘I do?’ She frowned, then pulled an expression of sudden enlightenment. ‘Now you come to mention it, Sam – I do!’
And with a barely perceptible motion of her hand, the balloon tethered to the cross she was sitting on suddenly came loose and went sailing sadly up into the grey, overcast sky.
‘Lost souls …’ she sighed, feigning sadness. ‘So many lost souls … Where do they all go?’
Sam felt a sudden wave of repulsion at the sight of those damned balloons. As if in a nightmare, he felt that at any moment they would transform into something else – dead faces, perhaps, or bloodshot, disembodied eyeballs staring out in silent agony and terror.
Appalled, furious, disgusted, Sam tuned away, refusing to be toyed with any longer. But without warning, he found the Test Card Girl suddenly standing directly in front of him, her blank face turned upwards towards him, her dark eyes glittering.
‘Mr Gould is coming here,’ she said softly.
Sam froze. Stiffly, he said: ‘For me?’
‘Not yet. That comes later. No – today, it’s Mr Carroll he’s coming for,’
‘Why?’ Sam’s voice had fallen to a tense whisper. ‘Why is he coming for Carroll?’
‘The same reason he came for Mr Walsh. The same reason he’ll come for Mr Darby. He needs them, Sam.’
‘… For what?’
The Girl’s mouth twisted into a tight smile: ‘To live.’
Sam wanted to back away from this grotesque mockery of a child, but his feet refused to move. The Girl seemed to understand his feelings at once.
‘You’re very frightened,’ she said, ‘just like Mr Carroll.’
‘I’m not frightened.’
‘Oh yes you are. I can hear your heart beating from here. Tell you what, Sam – why don’t I keep you company?’
She slipped her small, icy hand into Sam’s and closed her fingers gently around his.
‘We can go in together,’ she said. ‘That’ll be nice. Won’t it, Sam?’
Before he could answer, she reached out with her other hand and pushed the door of the church. It creaked open on its old hinges.
‘Come on then,’ the Girl said brightly. ‘Let’s see what’s going on in there, shall we?’
And still holding Sam’s hand, she led the way inside.