Categories > TV > Life On Mars > A Better Future
Business as usual turned out to be an incredible amount of shockingly routine cases, hardly worth the attention of an Inspector, but Sam put his back into it and worked through them. It was pretty much all he could do. It wasn't like his free time offered any interesting distractions. The friends he'd had before the accident had all moved on, the distance had grown to such an extent that they didn't really deserve the title 'friend' anymore. And his new colleagues offered little solace in that regard. He couldn't really find a way to connect to them. After duty they all went off on their own pursuits, leaving him to his own devices.
It was all quite different from what Sam had got used to. In 1973, the CID team had been close-knit, with a lot of the time not on duty spent with the same people in the pub, playing cards, watching the sport or just drinking. Going along with that had meant he integrated relatively quickly. No such thing happened now. Sam usually did go to the pub just to avoid sitting in his apartment alone, but that just meant that sat in the pub, alone. And not even drinking all that much, since he was still under doctor's orders to take it easy.
Those times really made him miss the good old days.
But there were also times when he didn't miss them, like he first time he managed to solve a case simply by doing an electronic record search that finished in half an hour. At that point he actually kissed the computer. Then he realised the whole room was watching and sniggering. For half a second Sam had wanted to sink into the floor in embarrassment, but then Gene in the back of his head started laughing too, and Sam had to either join in or snark at Gene. Since Gene wasn't actually in the room, that really left only one option. He laughed with them.
"PC Terminal saves the day."
Shut it.
Actions like that got him the reputation as the office eccentric, but that was nothing new. As long as they let him do his work and did as they were asked, it didn't matter. Well, to Gene it did, but Gene's immediate reaction to anything he didn't like was violence. That didn't work these days.
What did matter was that mild amusement wasn't the only reaction his antics triggered. He'd shocked some of the constables with his rough treatment of suspects during arrest, though it hadn't led to any reprimands yet. Sam really didn't think he was being that rough. Compared to the way Gene used to handle detainees, he was being downright gentle.
Not that he'd said that to the constables; that sort of remark was liable to transform his reputation from 'eccentric' into 'dinosaur'.
"You make that sound like a bad thing. Looks to me like you catch more villains than they do. Give 'em one in the face if they laugh about it."
It's not exactly accepted practice to rough up one's co-workers, Gene.
"Not accepted practice to sit around in a pub on your own either. Still seems to happen a lot lately."
Yeah. I'm sitting in a pub, talking to a manifestation of my subconscious. Why are people starting to think I'm crazy, I wonder?
"So why are you still talking to me then? Could've told me to shove off ages ago."
I did. Didn't work. Maybe I am crazy after all.
"Since when did missing a few marbles stop you?"
--
Back at work. Another day, another case and, thankfully, an arrest. It was a big case, too, finally. The arrest wasn't quite the big fish Sam had been hoping for, but a middleman could prove informative nonetheless. If that middleman were inclined to share that information, at least. This one wasn't.
He'd let Christine handle the first round of questions. She'd had the same by-the-book technique he used to employ himself: shock the suspect with the pictures and heaps of evidence against him in order to try and get him to co-operate and confess. No such luck. The suspect - a man caught dealing drugs - wasn't having any of it. He'd barely even shot a glance at the photographs of the victim of a particularly nasty overdose. His time and attention seemed completely occupied with complaining about his treatment.
"Miserable little shit. He'd never have got this far in one piece in my station."
No, but then you wouldn't be interested in finding out where he got his supplies, either.
Gene had a point, though. Patrick McKinnon was stalling, holding up the investigation for no good reason at all. The fun part was that he really wasn't that important a cog in the machine. The drugs he was selling were being supplied by someone else, and that someone else didn't seem to care much about the quality of their product. The analysts in the police laboratory had found multiple contaminants, all highly toxic, the majority of them most likely present before the drug was cut with whatever filler was cheapest. Already, there were three people in hospital and one person dead, and this idiot was stalling.
It was testing Sam's patience. He decided it was time to get directly involved in the interrogation. He'd try asking nicely, first. He held the drugs up to the suspect's nose. "Come on, Pat. We found these drugs on you." He dropped the packets of powder on the table. "That's plenty to get us a conviction, but you know what? I'd rather know where you got them."
"I'm not saying anything until I get my lawyer. And I want to file a complaint."
Sam grabbed one of the pictures and held it up. McKinnon looked away. "Take a good look at what those drugs you're selling are doing. D'you want to go down for that too?
McKinnon looked Sam in the eye, aggression clear on his face. "I've been knocked around, and insulted, and you got nothing. I want my solicitor."
"Just stop it, Pat, and tell us what we want to know," tried Sam. But McKinnon still wasn't having any of it.
"I'm the victim of police brutality!"
"He's what? Bloody hell, Sam, show him he's not even close, eh?
Gene's suggestion didn't sound all that unappealing to Sam. McKinnon's behaviour had already been stretching his patience to its limits. "You want brutality?" Sam tossed the photo on the table before stepping around it. He took McKinnon's right arm and twisted it behind his back, at the same time pushing his face close to the picture on the table. "Take a look at that! How's that for brutality?"
McKinnon was shrieking, but it was Christine's shocked exclamation of "Sir!" that made him realise he was too close to the line. He let McKinnon sit up straight again, then jerked him to his feet. He called the uniformed officers standing outside back in and pushed the man into their arms.
"Get him back to the cells." Then he walked out of the interrogation room ahead of the uniforms, temper unabated, with Christine close on his heels.
"What'd you do that for? You were just getting somewhere."
No, I bloody well wasn't, Gene. Any further than that and the git would have walked out of here and be suing for compensation on top of it.
He hadn't yet walked very far when he passed a group of officers amiably chatting. He caught a remark from one of them.
"Look at Jack Regan there, all upset."
That did it. He'd been ignoring the remarks and the occasional giggle behind his back for weeks now, and he really wasn't in the mood for taking any more. Sam rounded on the group and dragged the offending party out by his shirt, then slammed him hard against the wall.
"You have a problem, Peter? One you can tell me to my face?"
Before DI Peter Djawhuri could give any sort of reply, however, a third voice interrupted.
"Gentlemen."
DCI Jean Chase had stopped next to the two of them, and now stood, arms folded, waiting for the scuffle to break up. Sam let go of Djawhuri.
Their boss nodded. "I'm assuming there's some sort of justification. Sam?"
Although she had addressed Sam, it was DI Djawhuri who answered first. "I've no idea, ma'am. I was standing here talking, and then he just turns and starts throwing me around."
That remark made Sam's temper flare up again, but DCI Chase's interference had given him enough time to let it cool to a point where he could consider his actions. And he had been out of line, or at least at a point close enough to stepping over it as to make no difference. What was going on with him? He decided to show some contrition. "There was some provocation, but it wasn't in any proportion to the reaction." He extended his hand to Djawhuri, who didn't take it. "My apologies."
"Right." Chase turned to the group of officers watching. "Move along people, nothing to see here." Then she turned back to Sam and Peter. "Sam, my office, please. I'll be there as soon as I've delivered this." She waved a file folder in the air. "And you, Peter, keep the office humour to a minimum, yeah?"
Sam followed orders and found himself sitting alone in Chase's office, with once again nothing to do but think. On the one hand, there was the shame about losing his temper so royally not just in front of his colleagues and boss, but also personnel from other departments. But in another corner of his mind, it felt good. He was so tired of walking on eggshells, like he'd been doing ever since he got back onto the more major cases, that it was tremendously satisfying to just stomp on them for once.
He didn't used to be like this, he was sure. What had the time spent lying in a hospital bed, trapped in his own imagination, done to him? Besides land him with a mental companion who was fully deserving of the Jack Regan nickname, that was.
"Oi!"
Okay, at least you drove yourself.
"I'd probably have more to say about it if I actually knew what you were on about."
Everything felt wrong now. He didn't fit in, not with his former friends, not with his current colleagues, not even with his family, if he was completely honest. Lately his mother had also been getting on his nerves about something or other; he'd never stayed on the topic long enough to pin down what, exactly. It got too close to what had happened during his coma to be comfortable.
His eye caught the picture of his former Chief Superintendent and his wife, smiling at him. "Bet you didn't think I'd still be a DI at forty after getting there at thirty, did you, sir?"
Of course the photograph didn't reply, but there was something in it that made Sam get up and study it more closely. Then a name finally clicked, and Sam felt his heart speed up. DCS Chris Skelton. How could he have missed it all this time? Sam took the frame off the wall and held the picture at a different angle. If he squinted, with some good will he could recognise something of the young Detective Constable in the old man grinning at him.
"Chris made it all the way to DCS? I'm impressed. And he managed to hook up with Cartwright too. Well done to him."
Gene's comment momentarily confused Sam, but as he turned his attention to Mrs Skelton, the source of the comment was immediately obvious. Annie's smile hadn't changed in all those years. She looked good in the picture, older but also more confident. Lucky Chris, indeed.
"First woman to reach the rank of Detective Inspector here in C division." Sam started. He hadn't heard Chase come in. "Wasn't her husband your boss, before?"
"Or you his..."
Sam cleared his throat. "Yes." He sought for more to say. "A good man."
"Hmm." His current boss had taken her seat and was now pointing him to one of the other chairs. "What would he have thought of what happened back there, I wonder?"
Sam thought back to the Chris he knew best. Not much, as far as Sam was concerned, but somehow that didn't seem like the correct answer. Probably because that particular Chris was, in all likelihood, fictional.
His long silence provoked another question from Jean. "What did happen back there, Sam?"
"People've been joking about me behind my back. I lost my temper over it this time."
"Just like you lost your temper with Patrick McKinnon? That was very close, Sam." Her eyebrows dropped into a frown. "Are you sure you're okay? Because I read your file, and nothing in there makes me think that what just happened is normal."
"It's not. It won't happen again."
"I should hope not. But I don't recognise the man I have working for me from your file at all."
Sam had no reply to that. She was probably right, at that. He took a deep breath. What was happening to him? What had happened to him? People from his imagination were proving to be real, or real people had populated his imagination, and events that had influenced no-one but himself and even that only in the confines of his own head had left an indelible mark on reality. So what was and wasn't real?
"Ease up there, sunshine. You're making me dizzy."
"Look, Sam. You went through an incredibly traumatic experience. By all accounts, you were back on your feet and hard at work before most people would even be halfway through recovery. Don't you think you might have been overdoing it a little?"
"No, I don't. Doing nothing was terrible. I had to get something to keep me busy."
"And this was the only option?" She didn't sound like she believed him. "Why come back to a highly stressful job when you've got every excuse to take it nice and easy at home?"
Well, without a job he hadn't had a home, for one thing. His mother's worrying was driving him insane even from a distance, never mind when he was still living with her. That distance was necessary. Added to it was that, to Sam, the stress of sitting at home doing nothing had been far worse than the constant pressure of office gossip. He could ignore it, most of the time, as long as he was working. "I've always been a police officer. I've never wanted to be anything else."
His boss raised her eyebrows. "Now that, I recognise from your record." She looked at him intently. "Considering your medical history, I still think you need to take it easier." She typed something into her computer before turning back to him. "I'm putting you on administrative duties for the next couple of weeks. Then you won't have to stress about your cases so much. Get back home every night by six. And for today, just go home. Get an early night, catch up on some rest. Okay?"
"Do I have a choice?"
"No."
Well, that was that, then. As Sam got up to leave, DCI Chase shot him one more glance, accompanied by a glimmer of a smile. "Get well, Sam. I'd hate to lose a detective of your calibre to burnout."
--
It was all quite different from what Sam had got used to. In 1973, the CID team had been close-knit, with a lot of the time not on duty spent with the same people in the pub, playing cards, watching the sport or just drinking. Going along with that had meant he integrated relatively quickly. No such thing happened now. Sam usually did go to the pub just to avoid sitting in his apartment alone, but that just meant that sat in the pub, alone. And not even drinking all that much, since he was still under doctor's orders to take it easy.
Those times really made him miss the good old days.
But there were also times when he didn't miss them, like he first time he managed to solve a case simply by doing an electronic record search that finished in half an hour. At that point he actually kissed the computer. Then he realised the whole room was watching and sniggering. For half a second Sam had wanted to sink into the floor in embarrassment, but then Gene in the back of his head started laughing too, and Sam had to either join in or snark at Gene. Since Gene wasn't actually in the room, that really left only one option. He laughed with them.
"PC Terminal saves the day."
Shut it.
Actions like that got him the reputation as the office eccentric, but that was nothing new. As long as they let him do his work and did as they were asked, it didn't matter. Well, to Gene it did, but Gene's immediate reaction to anything he didn't like was violence. That didn't work these days.
What did matter was that mild amusement wasn't the only reaction his antics triggered. He'd shocked some of the constables with his rough treatment of suspects during arrest, though it hadn't led to any reprimands yet. Sam really didn't think he was being that rough. Compared to the way Gene used to handle detainees, he was being downright gentle.
Not that he'd said that to the constables; that sort of remark was liable to transform his reputation from 'eccentric' into 'dinosaur'.
"You make that sound like a bad thing. Looks to me like you catch more villains than they do. Give 'em one in the face if they laugh about it."
It's not exactly accepted practice to rough up one's co-workers, Gene.
"Not accepted practice to sit around in a pub on your own either. Still seems to happen a lot lately."
Yeah. I'm sitting in a pub, talking to a manifestation of my subconscious. Why are people starting to think I'm crazy, I wonder?
"So why are you still talking to me then? Could've told me to shove off ages ago."
I did. Didn't work. Maybe I am crazy after all.
"Since when did missing a few marbles stop you?"
--
Back at work. Another day, another case and, thankfully, an arrest. It was a big case, too, finally. The arrest wasn't quite the big fish Sam had been hoping for, but a middleman could prove informative nonetheless. If that middleman were inclined to share that information, at least. This one wasn't.
He'd let Christine handle the first round of questions. She'd had the same by-the-book technique he used to employ himself: shock the suspect with the pictures and heaps of evidence against him in order to try and get him to co-operate and confess. No such luck. The suspect - a man caught dealing drugs - wasn't having any of it. He'd barely even shot a glance at the photographs of the victim of a particularly nasty overdose. His time and attention seemed completely occupied with complaining about his treatment.
"Miserable little shit. He'd never have got this far in one piece in my station."
No, but then you wouldn't be interested in finding out where he got his supplies, either.
Gene had a point, though. Patrick McKinnon was stalling, holding up the investigation for no good reason at all. The fun part was that he really wasn't that important a cog in the machine. The drugs he was selling were being supplied by someone else, and that someone else didn't seem to care much about the quality of their product. The analysts in the police laboratory had found multiple contaminants, all highly toxic, the majority of them most likely present before the drug was cut with whatever filler was cheapest. Already, there were three people in hospital and one person dead, and this idiot was stalling.
It was testing Sam's patience. He decided it was time to get directly involved in the interrogation. He'd try asking nicely, first. He held the drugs up to the suspect's nose. "Come on, Pat. We found these drugs on you." He dropped the packets of powder on the table. "That's plenty to get us a conviction, but you know what? I'd rather know where you got them."
"I'm not saying anything until I get my lawyer. And I want to file a complaint."
Sam grabbed one of the pictures and held it up. McKinnon looked away. "Take a good look at what those drugs you're selling are doing. D'you want to go down for that too?
McKinnon looked Sam in the eye, aggression clear on his face. "I've been knocked around, and insulted, and you got nothing. I want my solicitor."
"Just stop it, Pat, and tell us what we want to know," tried Sam. But McKinnon still wasn't having any of it.
"I'm the victim of police brutality!"
"He's what? Bloody hell, Sam, show him he's not even close, eh?
Gene's suggestion didn't sound all that unappealing to Sam. McKinnon's behaviour had already been stretching his patience to its limits. "You want brutality?" Sam tossed the photo on the table before stepping around it. He took McKinnon's right arm and twisted it behind his back, at the same time pushing his face close to the picture on the table. "Take a look at that! How's that for brutality?"
McKinnon was shrieking, but it was Christine's shocked exclamation of "Sir!" that made him realise he was too close to the line. He let McKinnon sit up straight again, then jerked him to his feet. He called the uniformed officers standing outside back in and pushed the man into their arms.
"Get him back to the cells." Then he walked out of the interrogation room ahead of the uniforms, temper unabated, with Christine close on his heels.
"What'd you do that for? You were just getting somewhere."
No, I bloody well wasn't, Gene. Any further than that and the git would have walked out of here and be suing for compensation on top of it.
He hadn't yet walked very far when he passed a group of officers amiably chatting. He caught a remark from one of them.
"Look at Jack Regan there, all upset."
That did it. He'd been ignoring the remarks and the occasional giggle behind his back for weeks now, and he really wasn't in the mood for taking any more. Sam rounded on the group and dragged the offending party out by his shirt, then slammed him hard against the wall.
"You have a problem, Peter? One you can tell me to my face?"
Before DI Peter Djawhuri could give any sort of reply, however, a third voice interrupted.
"Gentlemen."
DCI Jean Chase had stopped next to the two of them, and now stood, arms folded, waiting for the scuffle to break up. Sam let go of Djawhuri.
Their boss nodded. "I'm assuming there's some sort of justification. Sam?"
Although she had addressed Sam, it was DI Djawhuri who answered first. "I've no idea, ma'am. I was standing here talking, and then he just turns and starts throwing me around."
That remark made Sam's temper flare up again, but DCI Chase's interference had given him enough time to let it cool to a point where he could consider his actions. And he had been out of line, or at least at a point close enough to stepping over it as to make no difference. What was going on with him? He decided to show some contrition. "There was some provocation, but it wasn't in any proportion to the reaction." He extended his hand to Djawhuri, who didn't take it. "My apologies."
"Right." Chase turned to the group of officers watching. "Move along people, nothing to see here." Then she turned back to Sam and Peter. "Sam, my office, please. I'll be there as soon as I've delivered this." She waved a file folder in the air. "And you, Peter, keep the office humour to a minimum, yeah?"
Sam followed orders and found himself sitting alone in Chase's office, with once again nothing to do but think. On the one hand, there was the shame about losing his temper so royally not just in front of his colleagues and boss, but also personnel from other departments. But in another corner of his mind, it felt good. He was so tired of walking on eggshells, like he'd been doing ever since he got back onto the more major cases, that it was tremendously satisfying to just stomp on them for once.
He didn't used to be like this, he was sure. What had the time spent lying in a hospital bed, trapped in his own imagination, done to him? Besides land him with a mental companion who was fully deserving of the Jack Regan nickname, that was.
"Oi!"
Okay, at least you drove yourself.
"I'd probably have more to say about it if I actually knew what you were on about."
Everything felt wrong now. He didn't fit in, not with his former friends, not with his current colleagues, not even with his family, if he was completely honest. Lately his mother had also been getting on his nerves about something or other; he'd never stayed on the topic long enough to pin down what, exactly. It got too close to what had happened during his coma to be comfortable.
His eye caught the picture of his former Chief Superintendent and his wife, smiling at him. "Bet you didn't think I'd still be a DI at forty after getting there at thirty, did you, sir?"
Of course the photograph didn't reply, but there was something in it that made Sam get up and study it more closely. Then a name finally clicked, and Sam felt his heart speed up. DCS Chris Skelton. How could he have missed it all this time? Sam took the frame off the wall and held the picture at a different angle. If he squinted, with some good will he could recognise something of the young Detective Constable in the old man grinning at him.
"Chris made it all the way to DCS? I'm impressed. And he managed to hook up with Cartwright too. Well done to him."
Gene's comment momentarily confused Sam, but as he turned his attention to Mrs Skelton, the source of the comment was immediately obvious. Annie's smile hadn't changed in all those years. She looked good in the picture, older but also more confident. Lucky Chris, indeed.
"First woman to reach the rank of Detective Inspector here in C division." Sam started. He hadn't heard Chase come in. "Wasn't her husband your boss, before?"
"Or you his..."
Sam cleared his throat. "Yes." He sought for more to say. "A good man."
"Hmm." His current boss had taken her seat and was now pointing him to one of the other chairs. "What would he have thought of what happened back there, I wonder?"
Sam thought back to the Chris he knew best. Not much, as far as Sam was concerned, but somehow that didn't seem like the correct answer. Probably because that particular Chris was, in all likelihood, fictional.
His long silence provoked another question from Jean. "What did happen back there, Sam?"
"People've been joking about me behind my back. I lost my temper over it this time."
"Just like you lost your temper with Patrick McKinnon? That was very close, Sam." Her eyebrows dropped into a frown. "Are you sure you're okay? Because I read your file, and nothing in there makes me think that what just happened is normal."
"It's not. It won't happen again."
"I should hope not. But I don't recognise the man I have working for me from your file at all."
Sam had no reply to that. She was probably right, at that. He took a deep breath. What was happening to him? What had happened to him? People from his imagination were proving to be real, or real people had populated his imagination, and events that had influenced no-one but himself and even that only in the confines of his own head had left an indelible mark on reality. So what was and wasn't real?
"Ease up there, sunshine. You're making me dizzy."
"Look, Sam. You went through an incredibly traumatic experience. By all accounts, you were back on your feet and hard at work before most people would even be halfway through recovery. Don't you think you might have been overdoing it a little?"
"No, I don't. Doing nothing was terrible. I had to get something to keep me busy."
"And this was the only option?" She didn't sound like she believed him. "Why come back to a highly stressful job when you've got every excuse to take it nice and easy at home?"
Well, without a job he hadn't had a home, for one thing. His mother's worrying was driving him insane even from a distance, never mind when he was still living with her. That distance was necessary. Added to it was that, to Sam, the stress of sitting at home doing nothing had been far worse than the constant pressure of office gossip. He could ignore it, most of the time, as long as he was working. "I've always been a police officer. I've never wanted to be anything else."
His boss raised her eyebrows. "Now that, I recognise from your record." She looked at him intently. "Considering your medical history, I still think you need to take it easier." She typed something into her computer before turning back to him. "I'm putting you on administrative duties for the next couple of weeks. Then you won't have to stress about your cases so much. Get back home every night by six. And for today, just go home. Get an early night, catch up on some rest. Okay?"
"Do I have a choice?"
"No."
Well, that was that, then. As Sam got up to leave, DCI Chase shot him one more glance, accompanied by a glimmer of a smile. "Get well, Sam. I'd hate to lose a detective of your calibre to burnout."
--
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