Ficathon: Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear by fawsley, blue Cortina w/Gene, t'Missus, Sam
Title: Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear
Author: fawsley
Pairings: Gene/The Missus (don't worry, not for long), Gene/Sam
Rating: blue Cortina
Word count: 3930
Disclaimer: All the property of the BBC and Kudos
Summary: Written for the 2009 Ficathon exchange for nepthys_uk, whose prompt was 'Sam and Gene, forced to share a hotel room, first time'. Her wish is my command.
Notes: I was absolutely thrilled to bits to write for nepthys, my evil partner in Bankside pink fizz quaffing and *not* flinging our knickers at Mr Simm when he's on stage.
The POV is partly an homage to nepthys' own wonderful Still Waters (undoubtedly my favourite Mars series of the year and not just because she's a good mate but because it's brilliant - do go read it if you haven't already) but also partly the fault of Robert Louis Stevenson, because I re-read Kidnapped and Treasure Island back-to-back in the couple of days before I started writing, so the format was very much in my head at the time.
Massive thanks and a lifetime's supply of pink wafers to the delightful and talented norfolkdumpling for concrit and confidence-boosting, and even more so for her fabby fiddling with the boys, evidence of which awaits within....
(image created by norfolkdumpling)
The irony of it was that it’d been on the very same spot that I’d popped the question all those years ago.
We’d come for the weekend on a summer coach trip. Very proper it was in those days - separate B&Bs, never mind separate bedrooms. I’d taken her dancing at the Tower Ballroom, all gold trim and painted ceilings, plush red velvet and sparkling chandeliers. Like a palace of dreams. Never seen anything like it.
She wore a cornflower-blue frock with God knows how many starched petticoats underneath, and when she twirled I could see her stocking-tops and suspenders and a fleeting glimpse of snow-white lace-edged knickers.
By the time they played the National Anthem I knew I was in love.
It was June and mild of an evening but she was shivering in her thin cardie as we walked out to the end of the North Pier, tide smashing against the iron supports far below the worn boards beneath our feet. I put my arm around her and pulled her close, told her I’d always keep her safe and warm. She giggled and snuggled up to me and I thought I was the luckiest bloke in the whole wide world.
When I finally came out and said it she answered before I’d finished stumbling over my words. Should’ve been a bit suspicious then, but I was bowled over and blinded and when we got home it was all sorted out and done and dusted before I knew what was happening.
Even when the tragedy struck us I didn’t see the truth of what was right before my eyes.
Years later, it was that drunken slapper bitch of her sister who finally gave the game away. Laughed in my face and said I was a fine sort of detective if I didn’t know the ride me and my paypacket’d been taken for. And there I was all that time believing it’d been the grief and the loss and the sorrow that’d turned my sweet dancing girl into an icy block of heartless stone.
I felt anger and hatred and violence as I’d never done before when I learned those snow-white knickers had been a lie.
But I know I would have loved that child as if it’d been my own.
And here I was again, back at the end of the same pier with the waves crashing around me. But now it was late November rather than June, a bitter wind off the grey Irish Sea tearing at my flapping coat and defeating any attempt to light up, all detritus of past holidays and happiness long since washed away.
Behind me the town lay in the grubby semi-darkness that falls upon all seaside resorts out of season, only an occasional fizzing neon sign proudly declaring Closed. That’s the trouble with Britain. Come the evening everything shuts down - shops, pubs, restaurants, even petrol stations - nowhere to get food, fags, or fuel, which makes a cold winter’s night in Blackpool one of the most dismal and depressing places to be.
I was frozen to the marrow but wasn’t going to move just yet. Sometimes a fierce salt spray upon your face is exactly what you need, lets you convince yourself that seawater is all it is.
Back on the same spot, knowing that once again I’d managed to fall for the wrong person. And this time so totally wrong it'd needed a lot of bad whisky to try to drown the truth.
It never occurred to me that Tyler might actually be worried about where on earth I’d disappeared off to.
When I finally slunk back into our hotel room he fairly bounced off his single bed and at me, but I sidestepped his flight path and deposited myself on the squashy squeaking double I’d staked my claim to on arrival the night before.
I still hadn’t forgiven Tyler for the mix-up with the booking, though he swore blind he’d asked for separate rooms and I knew really that he was telling the truth, but I wasn’t going to let him off lightly when there was nothing else available. I’d pushed my lime green valanced monstrosity to the far side of the room and threatened him with the third degree, issuing every dire warning in The Book of Gene Hunt as to what'd happen if he dared cross the demarcation line I’d laid down between the two bedside tables.
At the time I almost believed I meant every word of it.
He’d crumpled his smart jacket and tie by now, had ruffled his hair into spikes and was sporting a five o’clock shadow.
I tried not to look.
‘Where the hell do you think you’ve been? It’s way past midnight - I was getting bloody worried about you!’
It was like the missus all over again. Except that she was always more concerned about how I might've been frittering away the housekeeping than my own bodily welfare.
I rolled over to contemplate the nauseating mauve flock wallpaper and growled something about combing the town but not being able to get a drink after hours for love nor money, though I knew he’d never fall for that one.
‘What the hell is it with you, Guv? I still haven’t worked out why you came along in the first place, but seeing as you did you might've had the good grace to have actually stuck around for me.’
Rather too much of our train journey had been taken up wrangling over the rights and wrongs of my accompanying Tyler to his moment of glory.
Q: If I trusted him enough to give the presentation on behalf of 'A' Division then why did I have to go too?
A: To sort out the mess when he bollocksed it up.
Q: Which just went to show that I didn’t trust him at all, so why was it him doing the business and not me?
A: Because I know when to play to my team’s strengths and public speaking is Tyler’s forte, not mine.
Not that I actually said that last bit of course. I made up something off the cuff about enjoying seeing him make a twonk of himself before I got royally pissed at the bar that always so conveniently opens as the final presentation closes.
I’d had to physically drag him back into the carriage at Preston when he’d thrown up his hands, claimed to have had more than enough of me, and insisted that he wanted to go home.
It’d been a bloody good speech as I’d known it would be. Watching him up there at the podium, seeing his confidence, his depth of knowledge, his ability to take the audience with him down the path his words were spinning out before them, hearing his passion and conviction, I knew him for what he was: the best damned copper I’d ever had the privilege of working with.
There was something else as well, something more than pride in a colleague, more than admiration for a job well done. Something that made it a bad idea to go over and congratulate Tyler until I’d got a few barbed comments tipped and my arm primed for an appropriately sharp Gene-genial slap. Something that I'd damped down with another healthy dose of single malt from the bar and refused to let cross my own personal mental demarcation line.
Tyler had gone hobnobbing after his time in the spotlight - networking, he calls it - and seemed to be making a thoroughly good job of it, so I’d availed myself of a large cigar and sought out a comfortable corner behind a parlour palm that had designs upon becoming a one-tree rain forest, where I could smoke and drink in splendid isolation whilst keeping an eye on Tyler winning hearts and minds with his smart suit and smart talk.
‘Where the hell did you go, Guv? And why? Even if you thought every word I said was a load of cobblers you could at least have bought me a drink. You obviously managed to pour enough down your own throat.’
He had a point. And I would’ve done, would've bought him a whole damned crate of the best whisky behind the bar because not a word of it had been cobblers and I was so bloody proud of him I was set to burst. I’d wanted to hug that daft nancy poofter DI of mine so hard I'd had to hide behind a tree. He’d’ve got his drink right enough when he’d finished with the socialising and I’d got a grip on myself rather than on him if it hadn’t’ve been for that pair of bastard Scousers.
Superintendents McDermott and Johnson from Liverpool and Bootle, large as life and twice as ugly. They’d managed to plant themselves on the other side of the parlour palm jungle, completely blocking my sightline on Tyler. I was going to get up and move to a better position, but when they started talking I had no choice but to stay where I was.
‘So that’s the famous Sam Tyler?’
‘The one and only. Comes with a formidable reputation. Proper little terrier he is. Never gives up, never gives in. Exactly what we need on the team. Believe me, he’s the man for us.’
‘Wasted where he is. No prospects at all.’
‘Absolutely none. But there’ll be a place for him with us soon enough, as well you know.’
‘Better snap him up before anyone else gets their paws on him.’
‘New blood, new ways of thinking. I’ll go buy him a drink and have a quiet word about where his future direction lies…’
I’ve no memory of where I lifted the bottle of cat’s piss Scotch from or of getting from the Winter Gardens out along the pier. Christ alone knows where I'd been in the meantime, but that was where I washed up some hours later. The one thing that'd never crossed my stupid mind was that I might lose Tyler, however badly I behaved. And when it seemed that I would, it not only broke down all my drunken defences but also whatever passed as the miserable excuse for a heart I’d convinced myself I no longer possessed.
Liverpool and Bootle would be a DCI down when Kirkbride retired next year and it looked like a pair of Cuban heels would be following in his footsteps before Spring was out. I knew I could’ve treated Tyler better, that I’d given him little reason to stay once he got a better offer, and this was an offer no right-minded DI with a bastard bully of a DCI for a Guv would think twice about. A bastard bully of a DCI who was only now managing to wring a confession out of himself as to quite why he was so much of a bastard bully.
I told myself my head was throbbing because of the bad booze and half managed to blame the gnawing hollow emptiness in my belly on not having eaten for some hours.
Bloody fool.
I’d forgotten that the hardest case fesses up to the Gene Genie in the end, even when the hardest case is himself.
A couple of idiots with sou’westers and fishing rods emerged out of the darkness, nodding a gruff greeting my way before casting their lines over the end of the pier railings and settling down for a night of sodden frustration.
I knew the feeling.
Strange how in the end we all become what we most despise. Except that, truth be told, I’d given up on the despising some considerable time ago, surrendering to the lethal combination of a fine mind, gobby mouth, and nice tight arse.
None of this was anything Tyler needed to know.
‘If you refuse to tell me what you’ve been up to then I’ll just have to bore you with what’s happened to me.’
Proper little terrier, Tyler is.
‘I’ve got some news. Just you wait until you hear this. I’ve been made an offer.’
Never gives up, never gives in.
I could hear the rising excitement in his voice. I rolled over onto my back and glared at the yellowed, flaking ceiling.
‘Don’t waste your breath. I already know.’
Splash! went my cold water all over his grand announcement.
‘Was sat right behind Superintendents Tweedledum and Tweedledee all the time they were up to their plotting. Knew it was happening long before you did. Old news.’
Didn’t mean to sneak a peek at Tyler’s reaction but somehow I managed it anyway. I’d wanted to hurt him but he looked more puzzled than anything else, carding a hand through his hair like he always does when he’s tired.
‘Thought you’d be pleased for me…’
‘Absolutely bloody delighted for the pair of us.’
Odd how twisting the knife seemed to hurt me more than it did Tyler.
My victim sat upright and stopped fidgeting for a moment.
‘Have you got some sort of problem with this, Guv?’
‘Nope.’
‘Do you want me to turn it down?’
‘Never said that.’
‘Not in so many words.’
‘Never said nothing. Now shut up and let me get some kip.’
We fell into an uncomfortable silence where more was said by its being unspoken than spoken and every terse word of it was a stab.
Eventually Tyler stood up, untucked and began to unbutton his shirt.
‘Okay. Have it your way. I can’t work with you if you’re going to be like this over it all the time. I’ll speak to Johnson tomorrow and make up some absurd excuse. Won’t tell him that my oh-so mature and fair-minded DCI won’t let me. Christ Guv, I really don’t understand you sometimes.’
That brought my train of thought up short. Never dreamed anything I said or did would ever make him actually change his mind, let alone roll over as easily as he’d just done. God only knows I didn’t want him to go, but who the hell was I to hold him back and ruin his career for him? He meant too much to me for that. All the fight went out of me and it was a bloody relief when it did. I heaved myself up to sit on the edge of the bed.
‘No, Sam.’
He turned around, half undressed, and I had to look.
‘Don’t be daft. Course you’ve got to accept it. Should know better than to listen to me when I’m pissed.’
He stopped what he was doing, thankfully, and sat himself down on the narrow single to face me.
‘You’re bloody well going to accept, Tyler, and that’s an end to it. Offers like this don’t come knocking on your door every day of the week and you’d be an idiot to refuse it. The Gene Genie says you’re going so you’re going. You’re a bloody good DI for all that you’re a loose cannon, and you’ll make a good DCI…’
Tyler opened his mouth to say something but I waved him down and kept on going. If I stopped now I wasn’t going to start again with the niceties. His modesty would have to wait until later for its stroking.
‘…a good DCI. Kirkbride made his mark at Liverpool and you’ll have a lot to do to follow up on that, but no doubt you can do it even if you do make an idiot of yourself at first. I’m not as daft as you think I am, I know you’re all bottled up and ready to blow. Time to go and annoy someone else for a change, give me a rest. Just hope the Tweedle brothers know what they’re letting themselves in for. Bitten off more than they can chew, if you ask me.’
I ground to a halt, regretting everything I had and hadn’t said. I needed a fag but the packet I retrieved from my inner pocket was sodden. Tried to lob it into the wastepaper basket but failed miserably.
Tyler said nothing, just sat there looking stunned. I wished to God he wouldn’t stare at me like that. Finally he bowed his head, rubbed his face in his hands, and came up laughing.
‘You think they’re fast-tracking me into Kirkbride’s job, don’t you? Bloody hell! That’s classic!’
‘No good denying it. I know what I heard.’
‘Yeah, and it sounds like you ran it through the patent Gene Hunt meaning-mangler and came up with your own personal Chinese whisper!’
I growled, as much at the queasy sensation that had seized my guts as at Mr Know-it-all Sam Tyler. That grin of his certainly didn’t help settle the spin-cycle my innards were on.
Suddenly he was back in terrier mode, leaping up and grabbing the crumpled fag packet which he then subjected to as fine a display of footie control skills as you could ever expect from a runt of a United fan deprived of the use of a ball. Which of course is what should happen to United themselves and will do if I ever have anything to do with the matter. It was pretty impressive though, I’ll give him that, until the fag packet ended up lost down the back of the wardrobe.
‘Idiot!’ Tyler grinned at me and flopped back onto his bed, not a gasp out of breath or a bead of sweat broken.
‘It’s not about a job, it’s about football! They want me in the north-west area police squad. Superintendent Johnson saw me play in that five-aside tournament in Leeds back in the summer.’
I felt like I’d just won the pools. Wasn’t letting on though. I swallowed hard before responding, had a bit of a frog in my throat from the lack of fags.
‘We lost every match. Badly. It was a total embarrassment.’
‘Should never have put Chris in goal. He’s still paying up each month for a new net. But obviously Johnson liked what he saw of my form and now they need a new right wing cos of somebody transferring up to Scotland and he remembered me and so, well, that’s what it’s all about.’
Lucky that I’m possessed of such impassive features. The great tidal wave of relief never showed.
‘You thought it was Kirkbride’s job and you didn’t want to lose me! That’s why you disappeared off and got yourself rat-arsed, isn’t it?’
I was going to say something deservedly sarcastic.
‘Wouldn’t be the same without you.’
Bloody hell. I wasn’t even pissed any more.
‘Best partner I’ve ever had.’
If I didn’t shut up soon I’d really land myself in it.
‘God, I’d miss you Sam.’
Bugger.
I heard Tyler’s deep breath. Wasn’t looking, but I heard it.
‘I’m not going anywhere so you can stop worrying.’
Who said I was worried?
‘If I ever get to be DCI again…’ - did I mention that amongst his other qualities Tyler is a delusional nutcase? - ‘…it’ll be when Rathbone retires and you’re made Super and we both shuffle a step up the ladder. I’m not in a hurry. Not any more.’
‘Thought now Hyde didn’t want you back you’d grab the first chance you got to be rid of us.’
‘Nah. Once upon a time, maybe. Not any more. I’ve found where I want to be.’
‘Oh. Thought you were all frustrated and desperate.’
He smiled one of his trademark odd little smiles and stared down at his half of our delightful matching turquoise bedside rugs. No doubt thinking how well they clashed with the lurid pink carpet.
‘Reckon I wind you up as much as you do me. Par for the course in this job when we’re always working so closely together.’
Scuffing the rug back into place where it’d suffered from his earlier athletic antics he looked up and at me, straight in the eye.
‘I can cope with it. I know you don’t like or understand half my ideas and I can hardly blame you. Christ knows how they’d take to me anywhere else. No better than with you and probably a whole lot worse. I’m staying put, staying to finish the job I’ve started, working to make a difference from the inside out, however long it takes. So I’m sorry Guv, but you’re stuck with me.’
Never thought I’d be glad to hear those words but I was. Last thing I needed was Carling getting ideas of promotion into his bonce again.
‘And I’d miss you too, you know.’
He almost said something more, but didn’t. Instead he stood up and walked over to where I sat, pulled me to my feet and peeled me out of my coat.
‘Look like a drowned rat, you do, and smell like a wet sheep into the bargain. Should've taken this off when you came in. Now you’re totally soaked through.’
He moved away to hang the coat on the back of the door. I should have moved away too, but I didn’t.
It was the cold I was shivering from. That’s why it got worse when he began to unbutton my shirt for me.
‘If I left, who’d look after you, eh?’
‘The Gene Genie looks after himself,’ I managed to growl through gritted teeth.
If he tried unbuttoning anything else he was going to get a big surprise.
‘No he doesn’t. And you don’t let anyone else get near enough to do it for you.’
Tyler was far too near in my book.
‘You need to cut out the pride, accept it when someone else genuinely cares about you.’
All buttons conquered, he dropped his hands to his sides and looked up at me.
‘And I do care, Gene. A lot.’
‘Bloody nancy poofter gay boy.’
Tyler can do this killer of a little shrug.
Still don’t know which of us was more shocked when I lurched forward and kissed him. Possibly Tyler. After all, it was him who pushed me off.
‘Shit! Okay, okay… I didn’t mean… Okay, you’re still drunk, it’s just the booze, you’re not thinking straight…’
‘Not drunk. Not the booze. Not straight.’
This time I grabbed him hard to make my point.
Tyler’s known me long enough to realise that he doesn’t stand a chance against the fine physical specimen that is the Gene Genie. Wasn’t long before he had one hand snaking around my waist and another on the back of my neck. Neither of us was particularly steady on our pins, staggering and weaving around the room as we grappled with each other, all hands and mouths and total lack of co-ordination, so it was more by luck than judgement that I finally had Tyler backed against my lovely big double bed with his smart suit trousers scrunched up around his ankles.
For a moment he broke away and looked around then back at me.
‘Erm, sorry Guv. I’m afraid I appear to have overstepped the demarcation line…’
Cheeky little bugger.
Talented one, too, as I was about to discover.
Later on, afterwards, once I’d regained some sort of grip on the here and now, the pair of us all warm and snuggled up together, I began planning the liberation of a bottle of bubbly from the hotel bar.
Pansy sort of drink, but something Tyler would appreciate.
I knew I was the luckiest bloke in the whole wide world, and a return trip to make the end of the pier our own was due before we headed back to civilisation in the morning.
It’d be horizontal folk dancing only for Sam and me from now on.
(line 145 of Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis inscribed above the proscenium arch of the Tower Ballroom, Blackpool)
Author: fawsley
Pairings: Gene/The Missus (don't worry, not for long), Gene/Sam
Rating: blue Cortina
Word count: 3930
Disclaimer: All the property of the BBC and Kudos
Summary: Written for the 2009 Ficathon exchange for nepthys_uk, whose prompt was 'Sam and Gene, forced to share a hotel room, first time'. Her wish is my command.
Notes: I was absolutely thrilled to bits to write for nepthys, my evil partner in Bankside pink fizz quaffing and *not* flinging our knickers at Mr Simm when he's on stage.
The POV is partly an homage to nepthys' own wonderful Still Waters (undoubtedly my favourite Mars series of the year and not just because she's a good mate but because it's brilliant - do go read it if you haven't already) but also partly the fault of Robert Louis Stevenson, because I re-read Kidnapped and Treasure Island back-to-back in the couple of days before I started writing, so the format was very much in my head at the time.
Massive thanks and a lifetime's supply of pink wafers to the delightful and talented norfolkdumpling for concrit and confidence-boosting, and even more so for her fabby fiddling with the boys, evidence of which awaits within....
(image created by norfolkdumpling)
The irony of it was that it’d been on the very same spot that I’d popped the question all those years ago.
We’d come for the weekend on a summer coach trip. Very proper it was in those days - separate B&Bs, never mind separate bedrooms. I’d taken her dancing at the Tower Ballroom, all gold trim and painted ceilings, plush red velvet and sparkling chandeliers. Like a palace of dreams. Never seen anything like it.
She wore a cornflower-blue frock with God knows how many starched petticoats underneath, and when she twirled I could see her stocking-tops and suspenders and a fleeting glimpse of snow-white lace-edged knickers.
By the time they played the National Anthem I knew I was in love.
It was June and mild of an evening but she was shivering in her thin cardie as we walked out to the end of the North Pier, tide smashing against the iron supports far below the worn boards beneath our feet. I put my arm around her and pulled her close, told her I’d always keep her safe and warm. She giggled and snuggled up to me and I thought I was the luckiest bloke in the whole wide world.
When I finally came out and said it she answered before I’d finished stumbling over my words. Should’ve been a bit suspicious then, but I was bowled over and blinded and when we got home it was all sorted out and done and dusted before I knew what was happening.
Even when the tragedy struck us I didn’t see the truth of what was right before my eyes.
Years later, it was that drunken slapper bitch of her sister who finally gave the game away. Laughed in my face and said I was a fine sort of detective if I didn’t know the ride me and my paypacket’d been taken for. And there I was all that time believing it’d been the grief and the loss and the sorrow that’d turned my sweet dancing girl into an icy block of heartless stone.
I felt anger and hatred and violence as I’d never done before when I learned those snow-white knickers had been a lie.
But I know I would have loved that child as if it’d been my own.
And here I was again, back at the end of the same pier with the waves crashing around me. But now it was late November rather than June, a bitter wind off the grey Irish Sea tearing at my flapping coat and defeating any attempt to light up, all detritus of past holidays and happiness long since washed away.
Behind me the town lay in the grubby semi-darkness that falls upon all seaside resorts out of season, only an occasional fizzing neon sign proudly declaring Closed. That’s the trouble with Britain. Come the evening everything shuts down - shops, pubs, restaurants, even petrol stations - nowhere to get food, fags, or fuel, which makes a cold winter’s night in Blackpool one of the most dismal and depressing places to be.
I was frozen to the marrow but wasn’t going to move just yet. Sometimes a fierce salt spray upon your face is exactly what you need, lets you convince yourself that seawater is all it is.
Back on the same spot, knowing that once again I’d managed to fall for the wrong person. And this time so totally wrong it'd needed a lot of bad whisky to try to drown the truth.
It never occurred to me that Tyler might actually be worried about where on earth I’d disappeared off to.
When I finally slunk back into our hotel room he fairly bounced off his single bed and at me, but I sidestepped his flight path and deposited myself on the squashy squeaking double I’d staked my claim to on arrival the night before.
I still hadn’t forgiven Tyler for the mix-up with the booking, though he swore blind he’d asked for separate rooms and I knew really that he was telling the truth, but I wasn’t going to let him off lightly when there was nothing else available. I’d pushed my lime green valanced monstrosity to the far side of the room and threatened him with the third degree, issuing every dire warning in The Book of Gene Hunt as to what'd happen if he dared cross the demarcation line I’d laid down between the two bedside tables.
At the time I almost believed I meant every word of it.
He’d crumpled his smart jacket and tie by now, had ruffled his hair into spikes and was sporting a five o’clock shadow.
I tried not to look.
‘Where the hell do you think you’ve been? It’s way past midnight - I was getting bloody worried about you!’
It was like the missus all over again. Except that she was always more concerned about how I might've been frittering away the housekeeping than my own bodily welfare.
I rolled over to contemplate the nauseating mauve flock wallpaper and growled something about combing the town but not being able to get a drink after hours for love nor money, though I knew he’d never fall for that one.
‘What the hell is it with you, Guv? I still haven’t worked out why you came along in the first place, but seeing as you did you might've had the good grace to have actually stuck around for me.’
Rather too much of our train journey had been taken up wrangling over the rights and wrongs of my accompanying Tyler to his moment of glory.
Q: If I trusted him enough to give the presentation on behalf of 'A' Division then why did I have to go too?
A: To sort out the mess when he bollocksed it up.
Q: Which just went to show that I didn’t trust him at all, so why was it him doing the business and not me?
A: Because I know when to play to my team’s strengths and public speaking is Tyler’s forte, not mine.
Not that I actually said that last bit of course. I made up something off the cuff about enjoying seeing him make a twonk of himself before I got royally pissed at the bar that always so conveniently opens as the final presentation closes.
I’d had to physically drag him back into the carriage at Preston when he’d thrown up his hands, claimed to have had more than enough of me, and insisted that he wanted to go home.
It’d been a bloody good speech as I’d known it would be. Watching him up there at the podium, seeing his confidence, his depth of knowledge, his ability to take the audience with him down the path his words were spinning out before them, hearing his passion and conviction, I knew him for what he was: the best damned copper I’d ever had the privilege of working with.
There was something else as well, something more than pride in a colleague, more than admiration for a job well done. Something that made it a bad idea to go over and congratulate Tyler until I’d got a few barbed comments tipped and my arm primed for an appropriately sharp Gene-genial slap. Something that I'd damped down with another healthy dose of single malt from the bar and refused to let cross my own personal mental demarcation line.
Tyler had gone hobnobbing after his time in the spotlight - networking, he calls it - and seemed to be making a thoroughly good job of it, so I’d availed myself of a large cigar and sought out a comfortable corner behind a parlour palm that had designs upon becoming a one-tree rain forest, where I could smoke and drink in splendid isolation whilst keeping an eye on Tyler winning hearts and minds with his smart suit and smart talk.
‘Where the hell did you go, Guv? And why? Even if you thought every word I said was a load of cobblers you could at least have bought me a drink. You obviously managed to pour enough down your own throat.’
He had a point. And I would’ve done, would've bought him a whole damned crate of the best whisky behind the bar because not a word of it had been cobblers and I was so bloody proud of him I was set to burst. I’d wanted to hug that daft nancy poofter DI of mine so hard I'd had to hide behind a tree. He’d’ve got his drink right enough when he’d finished with the socialising and I’d got a grip on myself rather than on him if it hadn’t’ve been for that pair of bastard Scousers.
Superintendents McDermott and Johnson from Liverpool and Bootle, large as life and twice as ugly. They’d managed to plant themselves on the other side of the parlour palm jungle, completely blocking my sightline on Tyler. I was going to get up and move to a better position, but when they started talking I had no choice but to stay where I was.
‘So that’s the famous Sam Tyler?’
‘The one and only. Comes with a formidable reputation. Proper little terrier he is. Never gives up, never gives in. Exactly what we need on the team. Believe me, he’s the man for us.’
‘Wasted where he is. No prospects at all.’
‘Absolutely none. But there’ll be a place for him with us soon enough, as well you know.’
‘Better snap him up before anyone else gets their paws on him.’
‘New blood, new ways of thinking. I’ll go buy him a drink and have a quiet word about where his future direction lies…’
I’ve no memory of where I lifted the bottle of cat’s piss Scotch from or of getting from the Winter Gardens out along the pier. Christ alone knows where I'd been in the meantime, but that was where I washed up some hours later. The one thing that'd never crossed my stupid mind was that I might lose Tyler, however badly I behaved. And when it seemed that I would, it not only broke down all my drunken defences but also whatever passed as the miserable excuse for a heart I’d convinced myself I no longer possessed.
Liverpool and Bootle would be a DCI down when Kirkbride retired next year and it looked like a pair of Cuban heels would be following in his footsteps before Spring was out. I knew I could’ve treated Tyler better, that I’d given him little reason to stay once he got a better offer, and this was an offer no right-minded DI with a bastard bully of a DCI for a Guv would think twice about. A bastard bully of a DCI who was only now managing to wring a confession out of himself as to quite why he was so much of a bastard bully.
I told myself my head was throbbing because of the bad booze and half managed to blame the gnawing hollow emptiness in my belly on not having eaten for some hours.
Bloody fool.
I’d forgotten that the hardest case fesses up to the Gene Genie in the end, even when the hardest case is himself.
A couple of idiots with sou’westers and fishing rods emerged out of the darkness, nodding a gruff greeting my way before casting their lines over the end of the pier railings and settling down for a night of sodden frustration.
I knew the feeling.
Strange how in the end we all become what we most despise. Except that, truth be told, I’d given up on the despising some considerable time ago, surrendering to the lethal combination of a fine mind, gobby mouth, and nice tight arse.
None of this was anything Tyler needed to know.
‘If you refuse to tell me what you’ve been up to then I’ll just have to bore you with what’s happened to me.’
Proper little terrier, Tyler is.
‘I’ve got some news. Just you wait until you hear this. I’ve been made an offer.’
Never gives up, never gives in.
I could hear the rising excitement in his voice. I rolled over onto my back and glared at the yellowed, flaking ceiling.
‘Don’t waste your breath. I already know.’
Splash! went my cold water all over his grand announcement.
‘Was sat right behind Superintendents Tweedledum and Tweedledee all the time they were up to their plotting. Knew it was happening long before you did. Old news.’
Didn’t mean to sneak a peek at Tyler’s reaction but somehow I managed it anyway. I’d wanted to hurt him but he looked more puzzled than anything else, carding a hand through his hair like he always does when he’s tired.
‘Thought you’d be pleased for me…’
‘Absolutely bloody delighted for the pair of us.’
Odd how twisting the knife seemed to hurt me more than it did Tyler.
My victim sat upright and stopped fidgeting for a moment.
‘Have you got some sort of problem with this, Guv?’
‘Nope.’
‘Do you want me to turn it down?’
‘Never said that.’
‘Not in so many words.’
‘Never said nothing. Now shut up and let me get some kip.’
We fell into an uncomfortable silence where more was said by its being unspoken than spoken and every terse word of it was a stab.
Eventually Tyler stood up, untucked and began to unbutton his shirt.
‘Okay. Have it your way. I can’t work with you if you’re going to be like this over it all the time. I’ll speak to Johnson tomorrow and make up some absurd excuse. Won’t tell him that my oh-so mature and fair-minded DCI won’t let me. Christ Guv, I really don’t understand you sometimes.’
That brought my train of thought up short. Never dreamed anything I said or did would ever make him actually change his mind, let alone roll over as easily as he’d just done. God only knows I didn’t want him to go, but who the hell was I to hold him back and ruin his career for him? He meant too much to me for that. All the fight went out of me and it was a bloody relief when it did. I heaved myself up to sit on the edge of the bed.
‘No, Sam.’
He turned around, half undressed, and I had to look.
‘Don’t be daft. Course you’ve got to accept it. Should know better than to listen to me when I’m pissed.’
He stopped what he was doing, thankfully, and sat himself down on the narrow single to face me.
‘You’re bloody well going to accept, Tyler, and that’s an end to it. Offers like this don’t come knocking on your door every day of the week and you’d be an idiot to refuse it. The Gene Genie says you’re going so you’re going. You’re a bloody good DI for all that you’re a loose cannon, and you’ll make a good DCI…’
Tyler opened his mouth to say something but I waved him down and kept on going. If I stopped now I wasn’t going to start again with the niceties. His modesty would have to wait until later for its stroking.
‘…a good DCI. Kirkbride made his mark at Liverpool and you’ll have a lot to do to follow up on that, but no doubt you can do it even if you do make an idiot of yourself at first. I’m not as daft as you think I am, I know you’re all bottled up and ready to blow. Time to go and annoy someone else for a change, give me a rest. Just hope the Tweedle brothers know what they’re letting themselves in for. Bitten off more than they can chew, if you ask me.’
I ground to a halt, regretting everything I had and hadn’t said. I needed a fag but the packet I retrieved from my inner pocket was sodden. Tried to lob it into the wastepaper basket but failed miserably.
Tyler said nothing, just sat there looking stunned. I wished to God he wouldn’t stare at me like that. Finally he bowed his head, rubbed his face in his hands, and came up laughing.
‘You think they’re fast-tracking me into Kirkbride’s job, don’t you? Bloody hell! That’s classic!’
‘No good denying it. I know what I heard.’
‘Yeah, and it sounds like you ran it through the patent Gene Hunt meaning-mangler and came up with your own personal Chinese whisper!’
I growled, as much at the queasy sensation that had seized my guts as at Mr Know-it-all Sam Tyler. That grin of his certainly didn’t help settle the spin-cycle my innards were on.
Suddenly he was back in terrier mode, leaping up and grabbing the crumpled fag packet which he then subjected to as fine a display of footie control skills as you could ever expect from a runt of a United fan deprived of the use of a ball. Which of course is what should happen to United themselves and will do if I ever have anything to do with the matter. It was pretty impressive though, I’ll give him that, until the fag packet ended up lost down the back of the wardrobe.
‘Idiot!’ Tyler grinned at me and flopped back onto his bed, not a gasp out of breath or a bead of sweat broken.
‘It’s not about a job, it’s about football! They want me in the north-west area police squad. Superintendent Johnson saw me play in that five-aside tournament in Leeds back in the summer.’
I felt like I’d just won the pools. Wasn’t letting on though. I swallowed hard before responding, had a bit of a frog in my throat from the lack of fags.
‘We lost every match. Badly. It was a total embarrassment.’
‘Should never have put Chris in goal. He’s still paying up each month for a new net. But obviously Johnson liked what he saw of my form and now they need a new right wing cos of somebody transferring up to Scotland and he remembered me and so, well, that’s what it’s all about.’
Lucky that I’m possessed of such impassive features. The great tidal wave of relief never showed.
‘You thought it was Kirkbride’s job and you didn’t want to lose me! That’s why you disappeared off and got yourself rat-arsed, isn’t it?’
I was going to say something deservedly sarcastic.
‘Wouldn’t be the same without you.’
Bloody hell. I wasn’t even pissed any more.
‘Best partner I’ve ever had.’
If I didn’t shut up soon I’d really land myself in it.
‘God, I’d miss you Sam.’
Bugger.
I heard Tyler’s deep breath. Wasn’t looking, but I heard it.
‘I’m not going anywhere so you can stop worrying.’
Who said I was worried?
‘If I ever get to be DCI again…’ - did I mention that amongst his other qualities Tyler is a delusional nutcase? - ‘…it’ll be when Rathbone retires and you’re made Super and we both shuffle a step up the ladder. I’m not in a hurry. Not any more.’
‘Thought now Hyde didn’t want you back you’d grab the first chance you got to be rid of us.’
‘Nah. Once upon a time, maybe. Not any more. I’ve found where I want to be.’
‘Oh. Thought you were all frustrated and desperate.’
He smiled one of his trademark odd little smiles and stared down at his half of our delightful matching turquoise bedside rugs. No doubt thinking how well they clashed with the lurid pink carpet.
‘Reckon I wind you up as much as you do me. Par for the course in this job when we’re always working so closely together.’
Scuffing the rug back into place where it’d suffered from his earlier athletic antics he looked up and at me, straight in the eye.
‘I can cope with it. I know you don’t like or understand half my ideas and I can hardly blame you. Christ knows how they’d take to me anywhere else. No better than with you and probably a whole lot worse. I’m staying put, staying to finish the job I’ve started, working to make a difference from the inside out, however long it takes. So I’m sorry Guv, but you’re stuck with me.’
Never thought I’d be glad to hear those words but I was. Last thing I needed was Carling getting ideas of promotion into his bonce again.
‘And I’d miss you too, you know.’
He almost said something more, but didn’t. Instead he stood up and walked over to where I sat, pulled me to my feet and peeled me out of my coat.
‘Look like a drowned rat, you do, and smell like a wet sheep into the bargain. Should've taken this off when you came in. Now you’re totally soaked through.’
He moved away to hang the coat on the back of the door. I should have moved away too, but I didn’t.
It was the cold I was shivering from. That’s why it got worse when he began to unbutton my shirt for me.
‘If I left, who’d look after you, eh?’
‘The Gene Genie looks after himself,’ I managed to growl through gritted teeth.
If he tried unbuttoning anything else he was going to get a big surprise.
‘No he doesn’t. And you don’t let anyone else get near enough to do it for you.’
Tyler was far too near in my book.
‘You need to cut out the pride, accept it when someone else genuinely cares about you.’
All buttons conquered, he dropped his hands to his sides and looked up at me.
‘And I do care, Gene. A lot.’
‘Bloody nancy poofter gay boy.’
Tyler can do this killer of a little shrug.
Still don’t know which of us was more shocked when I lurched forward and kissed him. Possibly Tyler. After all, it was him who pushed me off.
‘Shit! Okay, okay… I didn’t mean… Okay, you’re still drunk, it’s just the booze, you’re not thinking straight…’
‘Not drunk. Not the booze. Not straight.’
This time I grabbed him hard to make my point.
Tyler’s known me long enough to realise that he doesn’t stand a chance against the fine physical specimen that is the Gene Genie. Wasn’t long before he had one hand snaking around my waist and another on the back of my neck. Neither of us was particularly steady on our pins, staggering and weaving around the room as we grappled with each other, all hands and mouths and total lack of co-ordination, so it was more by luck than judgement that I finally had Tyler backed against my lovely big double bed with his smart suit trousers scrunched up around his ankles.
For a moment he broke away and looked around then back at me.
‘Erm, sorry Guv. I’m afraid I appear to have overstepped the demarcation line…’
Cheeky little bugger.
Talented one, too, as I was about to discover.
Later on, afterwards, once I’d regained some sort of grip on the here and now, the pair of us all warm and snuggled up together, I began planning the liberation of a bottle of bubbly from the hotel bar.
Pansy sort of drink, but something Tyler would appreciate.
I knew I was the luckiest bloke in the whole wide world, and a return trip to make the end of the pier our own was due before we headed back to civilisation in the morning.
It’d be horizontal folk dancing only for Sam and me from now on.
(line 145 of Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis inscribed above the proscenium arch of the Tower Ballroom, Blackpool)