Ashes to Ashes fic: Neutral Men, part 4
Spoilers for finale :)
Part 4: The Devil Wears Your Patience
I: God and Mammon
No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.
Matthew vi, v. 24
Jim was smoking. His grandfather hadn’t approved of it, his few steady romantic partners hadn’t approved of it, and his doctor certainly hadn’t approved of it, but the beautiful thing was that here, in the eighties, nobody gave a damn. He could smoke as much as he liked. When he’d emerged from Daniel Connor’s bathroom, cleansed of canal water and dressed in Connor’s clothes, his immediate action had been to light up a cigarette.
“Isn’t that bad for your health?” Connor had asked.
“Trust me,” Jim had said, offering him one, “don’t worry about it.”
He had not missed the light in Connor’s eyes. The poor sod thought that Jim was his saviour, that he was going home if only he could figure all this out once and for all. But then, they all thought that, didn’t they? The trouble was, Jim reflected as he sat on the edge of his desk, blowing out a thick, satisfying cloud of smoke, that people didn’t really believe they could die. They spent their lives afraid of death as though it were a horror film on the television, something which upset them when they came into contact with it, but which invariably sank onto the back burners of their consciousness when that contact was over. Something fictional. Other people died - people on the news, which was still the telly and therefore Not. Quite. Real. TV cowboys and Indians, cops and robbers, all dying oh so heroically in pools of tomato ketchup. When somebody close to you died, for a moment that self-protective illusion was breached, and you truly touched the abyss - but only for a moment, not long enough for the living human mind to truly comprehend.
Daniel Connor was still alive, dripping his brains out of his ears on a hospital ward somewhere. Thing was - poor Daniel! - he had nothing to go back to. Whatever was left of his brain was here, in the lovely cheesy eighties. All that remained in his hospital bed in 2010 was a drooling husk. Nobody in their right mind would want to go back to that, but Daniel didn’t know. Poor things, they never knew; they couldn’t accept it. Jim thought about Alex Drake, sighed, and lit up another smoke.
If people didn’t really believe in death, what happened when they died? The first thing was always a rejection of it, no matter how clued-in you were. And Jim had been very clued-in. He had known immediately - almost immediately. No deals for a promised homecoming. He’d had nothing to go back to, either, and he’d known that, right from the word go. Nothing can come of nothing, and nothing was exactly what he had left himself with.
He remembered icy water all around him, first insidious, creeping, then surging in when he’d finally been desperate enough to open his mouth to take a breath. The dirty, cold, polluted water of the dirty, cold, polluted north. Jim hated the north almost as much as he hated water; hated it passionately. He never wanted to go there again. Their water had been inside him, though, tainting and polluting him. He was beginning to think he would never get it out; these days, when displeasing Nick meant that Jim’s illusion of continued life had begun to break down, he was even bleeding the stuff.
Taking another deep drag on his smoke, he reflected on Daniel Connor’s remark when he had slumped on the sofa in Connor’s sitting room, accepting a cup of hot sweet tea and trying not to think about the last time he’d been inside this flat. “Did he know?” Connor had asked....
“Did who know what?” Jim wasn’t in the mood for small talk - he could still taste the canal water in his throat - but he tried. It was his nature to try, his job. When he’d looked at himself in the bathroom mirror, wearing Connor’s too-short trousers and a sweater which left his wrists bare (risky, that; should he avoid letting Connor see his ‘broken’ watch?) he’d been reminded of a schoolboy wearing last term’s outgrown uniform. Fine; try it that way. He’d washed his hair, removing the controlling gel, letting it hang over his forehead. The floppy fringe took years off him, he thought, making his eyes big and puppylike as he took off his glasses and put them in his pocket. That haplessness, enhanced with a bashful smile, had worked wonders on the last lot, especially Alex, Shaz and sometimes - funnily enough - Ray. He doubted it would work on Connor, but he would give it a go. He didn’t feel up to a lot else, frankly.
“Hunt,” Connor was saying impatiently. “Did he know you have a phobia about water?”
Jim was silent for a moment, sipping his tea. “I doubt it,” he said. “I don’t go around handing that man my Achilles’ heels.”
Connor looked amused. “How many have you got?”
Just the one, really, Jim thought. But he didn’t say anything.
“Can I ask you something?” Connor’s face was carefully set to neutral, but Jim could see the burning need - greed? - behind his eyes. Seeing into people’s souls was not a gift Jim relished any more. The corruption was interesting, if inevitable; all those dirty little thoughts eroding what was left of the good, like water over rocks. There were other things, though. Things he’d come to realise he didn’t actually want to know. Nick’s gifts, he had discovered, invariably had a downside. Often enough, they were all downside.
“Of course, Daniel,” he said now, with a friendly nod. “You can ask me anything you like. Can’t promise to answer, though.”
Connor was still smiling fixedly. It was getting a bit - weird. “Who are you?” he said. “Really?”
Oh dear. It had taken Alex longer to ask that question; perhaps Jim was losing his mojo. Screw it, he didn’t care any more. He couldn’t answer, however. Not properly, not completely. Besides, he had the strange and uncomfortable feeling that Daniel already knew - suspected, at least - and that he would do anything at all to find out the truth. Jim wondered if he’d end up strapped to a bed and injected with sodium pentothal, like in the spy films.
He laughed the question off. “What is this? Are we dating? You want to know the ‘real me’? I'm a fan of Elvis Costello, if that helps.”
Connor’s smile widened slightly. “I already know the real you, Jim.”
“Do you?”
“Oh yes, I do. I saw your picture in the paper.”
“Really?”
“I wasn’t certain at first, but seeing you like this, I’m absolutely sure. Surprising how glasses and a different hairstyle can change the way somebody looks, isn’t it?”
Jim sipped his tea noncommittally.
“What it is you think you see?”
The reply was calm, friendly, almost. “I see someone who is going to make a really big mistake, about -” he made a show of looking at his watch, “twenty-two years from now.”
Play it steady, play it safe. “Yeah? That's a very long-term prediction. I don't suppose you know who's going to win the 12.15 at Chepstow?” he chuckled.
“How did you get here, Jim? Do you remember?”
“You drove me here. I got a soaking, Daniel, not a bang on the head. What’s all this about? Are you feeling all right? You seem a bit - confused. I think you’ve got me mistaken for somebody else.”
Nick had to have known that Connor would recognise him. Was this a test, or a set-up?
“Not here, in this flat. How did you get here, to this world?”
Jim thought his own expression of amused disbelief was pretty realistic. “Um, well, you see, Daniel, when a man and a woman love each other very much, they get certain urges…” he tailed off, laughing awkwardly, aware it was the sort of sarcastic crack Gene Hunt himself might have made.
Connor’s smile had long since left his eyes. “You and Hunt,” he said. “And Callaghan, too - I don’t know how he fits in yet. But you and Hunt are the key to this. Am I supposed to choose a side?” He leaned closer, his pale eyes fixing on Jim’s dark ones. “Tell me what to do, and I’ll do it. I have to go home, Jim. I can’t stay here. I don’t belong here. I’m not like the others - I won’t learn to fit in, learn to love this place. I’m different, and you know I am. I know what this is - I just don’t how it works yet. Help me, and I’ll help you.”
“Help me to what?” Jim pretended nonchalance, swigging down the rest of his tea.
“To finish Gene Hunt,” Connor replied.
xxx
A few years ago - before the memory of ice-water filling his lungs had blasted away all his other dreams - Jim had experienced a strange and mystifying nightmare. He had been standing in a church, and he had known (in his dream) that he was dead. The church was very beautiful. It had reminded him of the one his grandmother had taken him to as a child - tall stained glass windows, filtering the light of day in beautiful, colourful patterns, reflecting on his innocent young face as he knelt before the altar. The carvings had fascinated him - especially the pulpit, with its depiction of a magnificent eagle. He wondered if the priest, standing there so grave and serious, had ever imagined that he was flying up to heaven on the eagle’s back.
The world had soured when Grandma had died, but Jim remembered the church all his life, and a few months before his thirtieth birthday he had dreamed of it. He was alone in the church at night time; the images in the stained glass windows seemed almost to be alive, watching him with anxious eyes. Did they want him to succeed, or fail? He knew - in the way we always seem to know the truth, in our dreams - that this was a test.
“Show me, then,” he’d said into the silence, and a chill wind seemed to blow through him. When it had passed, he looked around again and found that the layout of the church had changed. He was standing in the aisle, at the very centre of the cruciform, and at each end of the transept - to his left and right - stood an unfamiliar door.
First, he turned to his left. The door there was made of ancient, decaying wood. As he moved closer he could see the rusty bolts, the marks of woodworm; the thing was hanging off its hinges, and through the cracks he could see flames. An unearthly shriek echoed from whatever lay beyond that rotting, burning door and he stumbled away, horrified, returning to the centre of the church.
Hastily, he turned right. The door there was beautiful: it gleamed as though made from pure gold. As he crept towards it he could hear singing, pure soprano voices. His heart soared with them, and he knew that this was the right choice, the only choice. Grasping the shining handle, he turned it and walked through…
...and fell straight into Hell.
Then he had woken up, shaking and sweating.
The dream plagued him for three nights. The second time, he turned again towards the golden door, seduced by the heavenly voices, and again found fire and brimstone on the other side. On the third night he was ready, and turned without hesitation to the rotting wooden door on his left. The handle was hot; it blistered the palm of his hand as he touched it, but he persevered, knowing at last that he had chosen correctly. The door opened…
What was inside the dream-door, Jim was never to know; his flatmate arrived noisily home and startled him into frustrated wakefulness. A few months later, however, when two good people died because of Jim Keats and his really big mistake, he knew he would have the opportunity to find out for real what lay behind those tantalising doors.
Now all he had to do was choose.
Xxxx
II: Iron Sharpeth Iron
There’s nothing that cleanses your soul like getting the hell kicked out of you.
Woody Hayes
Lost as he was in thoughts of the past - or was it the future? - Jim was startled by the knock on his office door. Not Gene; he never bothered with the standard social niceties. Not Carter; it was too authoritative. Connor?
Nick.
“Good morning, Jim. I hear you've had a bit of a mishap, my boy.”
All fatherly concern and warm smiles. Jim tried hard not to respond to it.
“I had a small accident, yes.”
“An accident? It's my understanding that DCI Hunt pushed you into Regent's Canal.” Nick closed the office door behind him and paced the tiny room, picking up items from Jim's desk and examining them - pencils, notebooks, an empty cup.
Jim remained silent, smoking. After a moment he offered a cigarette to Nick, who shook his head with a small smile. “I must take care of my health. I've had a touch of bronchitis, you know.”
“Good thing your department is nice and warm, then.”
Nick chuckled appreciatively. “Quite. I'm glad to see that your experience this morning hasn't damaged your sense of humour, such as it is. Still - it was cruel of him, wasn't it? To take advantage of your deepest fear like that. Can you really trust a man like that, Jim?”
Yes indeed. What kind of man would make somebody relive their worst memory over and over and over again? Jim released a last, long plume of smoke and calmly put out the still-glowing tip of the cigarette - on his own palm.
“You've been talking to DI Connor, Nick.”
“He seemed concerned about your welfare. He's a promising young man, that one. I take it you have your eye on him, eh?”
“I'm doing my best.”
“Then you'll be happy to share your report with me.”
“As yet, sir, I don't have much to say.”
Nick tutted. “Not good enough, my boy.”
“I've only just got here.”
“You were quicker off the mark with Alex Drake.”
Jim did best to ignore the needling. “This situation is not the same. It's Hunt we're after, isn't it? Connor would be a bonus. The bigger the tree, the stronger and thicker the roots. It's going to take a long time to dig Hunt out. But I'll get there - believe me. I've got a big spade,” he added, flippantly. Perhaps Gene was rubbing off on him.
Nick was shaking his head sadly. “I wish I had perfect faith in you, Jim, but I worry about you, I really do. I'm not sure you're really the man for this job. I think Hunt might be getting to you. Corrupting you.”
“No.”
“No?” Nick took a cigarette from the pack on the desk, placed the filter end gently in Jim's mouth, and lit the other. Jim inhaled automatically, the smoke burning the chill out of his lungs. “Then prove it. Give me something. Anything. I hesitate to phrase it as 'demonstrating your loyalty' - that's such a cliché, don't you think? Let's just say that I would appreciate a little token to show that you appreciate everything I've tried to do for you.”
Their eyes locked as the silence following this perverse statement deepened. This time, Jim almost jumped out of his skin when somebody tapped on the door.
“What?” he snapped, eyes never leaving Nick's calmly smiling face.
Arnie Carter's smile, by contrast, was both nervous and apologetic. “The Guv wants to see you, sir. The Boss is there too.”
“They'll have a job fitting in here,” Nick quipped jovially, glancing around Jim's tiny office. “Let's take the mountain to Mohammed, shall we?”
Carter's hesitancy was explained in an instant by the atmosphere in CID. It resembled the sudden, dusty stillness of a saloon at High Noon, when the sheriff strides in to confront the local cattle-rustlers. Gene's officers weren't exactly hiding under their desks, but they were alert, expectant, and trying to pretend they weren't watching.
Right on cue, Gene opened his office door. He was holding a manilla folder in one hand.
“Looking for this?” he barked.
Jim glanced behind him; who was Gene talking to?
“You snivelling, sneaky, treacherous little scumbag.” Question answered. The manilla folder was under Jim's nose now, being waved menacingly in his face. “If you don't want people to read the lying shite you're writing about them, Jimbo, don't leave your paperwork about where any bugger can pick it up!”
Gene threw the folder on the floor. Papers spilled out. Jim stared at it, then at Gene, whose eyes fractionally narrowed, his head tilting marginally forward, nodding towards the file.
Jim bent down slowly and picked it up, stuffing the pages back inside. “Don't know what you're talking about, Gene,” he said, honestly.
Two people were watching the altercation with particular interest. Nick Callaghan hadn't taken his eyes off the folder since Gene started waving it around. Daniel Connor, standing in the doorway to Gene's office, was switching his attention rapidly between Jim and Hunt, like a spectator at Wimbledon.
“I knew it,” Gene went on, savagely. “I give you one bloody chance to act like a decent human being, and you go grassing me up over some pointless procedural bollocks. Begging your pardon, sir,” he added roughly, to Nick, who smiled and said,
“I'm sure DI Keats is only doing his job, Gene.”
“Does his job involve skulking about trying to get me the sack?” Gene grabbed Jim by the lapel of his coat and dragged him so close that their noses touched. Jim could feel spittle hitting his face as Gene launched into another tirade. “I thought we had an understanding, you lousy, treacherous, ungrateful, United-supporting...”
Jim was not in the mood to be handled - nor to be accused of supporting a northern football team. “Get off me! I'm warning you, Hunt...”
“You're warning me?! Who the bloody hell do you think you're talking to, Inspector?”
“Now, now, Gene...” murmured Nick Callaghan.
For answer, Gene drew back a meaty fist and punched Jim in the stomach. Hard. Jim doubled up, startled by the force of the blow.
“Really, Gene, I must insist!” Nick placed a soothing hand on Gene's chest as Jim slumped to the floor, gasping. “I can't allow you to treat my officers like this. Go into your office, have a drink and calm down. I doubt that DI Keats will want to make a formal complaint?”
Jim, fed up with the pair of them, ignored that remark. Nick patted him on the shoulder, then left without bothering to help him up.
“What are you lot looking at?” Gene barked at his officers. “Show's over. Get back to work. You - Peroxide Hedgehog!” He pointed at spiky-haired Carter. “Where's that crime scene report?” And turning to stare down at Jim, ”see, Jimbo - I do know how to read. You should've realised that before you left your girly folders around.” He stomped off to his office, turning back to say, “well? Do you not want a drink?”
Jim looked at Connor, hovering by his own desk now. He climbed slowly to his feet, waving off the belated assistance of DC Carter.
“My office,” he told Gene.
Gene shrugged. “Fine. I'll bring a picnic.” He collected his bottle of Scotch and a glass, and followed Jim amiably enough as his team returned slowly to their work. DI Connor, however, never took his eyes off the pair of them as Jim held the door open politely - some might have interpreted it as 'threateningly' - for his superior.
In his office, Jim checked for lurking Assistant Commissioners before turning on Gene. “I'm not your public punchbag, Hunt!”
“If you hadn't noticed, Jimbo, I saved your warty backside in there. Old Nicky Callaghan won't suspect you of letting the side down any more, will he?”
“You only knew what to do because I warned you he was onto us,” Jim sulked. “But how did you know when to set it up?”
“Connor told me Callaghan was here with the intention of ripping you a new, even wider bumhole. Maybe he's not a completely useless bastard, after all.”
Connor. What was he playing at?
“All right,” Jim conceded, “you did it for my benefit. How magnanimous. But did you have to enjoy it? There was no need to hit me as hard as you did. You undermined my authority over the other officers.”
“Oh dear. I'm so very sorry. I didn't realise your guts and your authority were made of glass, you whiny streak of piss.”
“Blimey, could you be any more childish? Just leave me alone. I've had enough of being shoved around today.”
“Be sure to write and tell your mum on me.”
That was it. Abandoning all attempts at self-control, Jim aimed a wild punch at Hunt's face. It connected awkwardly and not very powerfully - there wasn't room to swing a cat in Jim's office, let along a fist.
Gene was unimpressed. He grabbed Jim's arm and twisted, holding it behind his back as he shoved Jim face-downward onto his own desk. Jim could feel his glasses cutting into his cheek as his face was mashed mercilessly against the cheap, splintered wood. He struggled, kicking out, but he was tired and Hunt was strong and clearly well-practised at this, holding him firmly.
“Why did you bother?” Gene asked, sounding almost friendly. Or perhaps that was a misconception due to oxygen deprivation setting in - with his free hand Gene had taken hold of Jim's tie and was pulling on it like a puppy with a tug-toy, cheerfully throttling his victim.
“..off me...” Jim managed, “...fat bastard.”
“Don't be rude to the bloke who's got your head in a noose, Jimbo.”
“...'ck off...” Jim croaked.
“Say I've won.”
“Ghwa...?!”
“Say, 'you've won, Gene, because you're the better man.'”
He loosened his hold slightly. Jim gasped for air, shook his head.
“Say it,” Gene cajoled. He planted a knee in the small of Jim's back and jerked him backwards, causing considerable pain.
“You won!” Jim snarled furiously, eyes watering.
“'Because you're the better man.'”
His vision beginning to grey out, Jim said it.
The tie had been loosened, but Gene's knee remained in his back, Jim's arm still twisted up behind him, his face still pressed into the desk. His teeth were cutting into his lower lip.
“Now,” went on Gene, pleasantly, “say, 'I'm a pencil-pushing four-eyes who gets erotically aroused by filofaxes, and I've never satisfied a woman.'”
Fully oxygenated once more, Jim had recovered his self-respect. “I'm not saying that, you mad git!”
“Say it,” Gene insisted, manipulating Jim's body with the skill of a very violent chiropractor. The pain was blinding; after a few moments Jim ground out, “I'm a...a pencil-pushing four-eyes who...”
“'gets erotically aroused by filofaxes...'” Gene encouraged, like a parent prompting their toddler at the school play.
His performance apparently satisfactory, Gene finally let Jim up.
“Well, that concludes our bit of business, I think, DI Keats. Here's your consolation prize.” He poured a measure of whisky into one of the cylindrical compartments of Jim's red plastic desk-tidy, nodded briskly, and left. Jim, growling to himself, removed his newly Scotch-flavoured pencils and poured the whisky into a cup before drinking it off. There was a smarting sensation as the liquid ran over his injured lip. Frowning, Jim touched his fingers wonderingly to the cut - which was rapidly welling up with rich, red blood.
Xxx
On to Part V: Sowing the Wind
Part 4: The Devil Wears Your Patience
I: God and Mammon
No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.
Matthew vi, v. 24
Jim was smoking. His grandfather hadn’t approved of it, his few steady romantic partners hadn’t approved of it, and his doctor certainly hadn’t approved of it, but the beautiful thing was that here, in the eighties, nobody gave a damn. He could smoke as much as he liked. When he’d emerged from Daniel Connor’s bathroom, cleansed of canal water and dressed in Connor’s clothes, his immediate action had been to light up a cigarette.
“Isn’t that bad for your health?” Connor had asked.
“Trust me,” Jim had said, offering him one, “don’t worry about it.”
He had not missed the light in Connor’s eyes. The poor sod thought that Jim was his saviour, that he was going home if only he could figure all this out once and for all. But then, they all thought that, didn’t they? The trouble was, Jim reflected as he sat on the edge of his desk, blowing out a thick, satisfying cloud of smoke, that people didn’t really believe they could die. They spent their lives afraid of death as though it were a horror film on the television, something which upset them when they came into contact with it, but which invariably sank onto the back burners of their consciousness when that contact was over. Something fictional. Other people died - people on the news, which was still the telly and therefore Not. Quite. Real. TV cowboys and Indians, cops and robbers, all dying oh so heroically in pools of tomato ketchup. When somebody close to you died, for a moment that self-protective illusion was breached, and you truly touched the abyss - but only for a moment, not long enough for the living human mind to truly comprehend.
Daniel Connor was still alive, dripping his brains out of his ears on a hospital ward somewhere. Thing was - poor Daniel! - he had nothing to go back to. Whatever was left of his brain was here, in the lovely cheesy eighties. All that remained in his hospital bed in 2010 was a drooling husk. Nobody in their right mind would want to go back to that, but Daniel didn’t know. Poor things, they never knew; they couldn’t accept it. Jim thought about Alex Drake, sighed, and lit up another smoke.
If people didn’t really believe in death, what happened when they died? The first thing was always a rejection of it, no matter how clued-in you were. And Jim had been very clued-in. He had known immediately - almost immediately. No deals for a promised homecoming. He’d had nothing to go back to, either, and he’d known that, right from the word go. Nothing can come of nothing, and nothing was exactly what he had left himself with.
He remembered icy water all around him, first insidious, creeping, then surging in when he’d finally been desperate enough to open his mouth to take a breath. The dirty, cold, polluted water of the dirty, cold, polluted north. Jim hated the north almost as much as he hated water; hated it passionately. He never wanted to go there again. Their water had been inside him, though, tainting and polluting him. He was beginning to think he would never get it out; these days, when displeasing Nick meant that Jim’s illusion of continued life had begun to break down, he was even bleeding the stuff.
Taking another deep drag on his smoke, he reflected on Daniel Connor’s remark when he had slumped on the sofa in Connor’s sitting room, accepting a cup of hot sweet tea and trying not to think about the last time he’d been inside this flat. “Did he know?” Connor had asked....
“Did who know what?” Jim wasn’t in the mood for small talk - he could still taste the canal water in his throat - but he tried. It was his nature to try, his job. When he’d looked at himself in the bathroom mirror, wearing Connor’s too-short trousers and a sweater which left his wrists bare (risky, that; should he avoid letting Connor see his ‘broken’ watch?) he’d been reminded of a schoolboy wearing last term’s outgrown uniform. Fine; try it that way. He’d washed his hair, removing the controlling gel, letting it hang over his forehead. The floppy fringe took years off him, he thought, making his eyes big and puppylike as he took off his glasses and put them in his pocket. That haplessness, enhanced with a bashful smile, had worked wonders on the last lot, especially Alex, Shaz and sometimes - funnily enough - Ray. He doubted it would work on Connor, but he would give it a go. He didn’t feel up to a lot else, frankly.
“Hunt,” Connor was saying impatiently. “Did he know you have a phobia about water?”
Jim was silent for a moment, sipping his tea. “I doubt it,” he said. “I don’t go around handing that man my Achilles’ heels.”
Connor looked amused. “How many have you got?”
Just the one, really, Jim thought. But he didn’t say anything.
“Can I ask you something?” Connor’s face was carefully set to neutral, but Jim could see the burning need - greed? - behind his eyes. Seeing into people’s souls was not a gift Jim relished any more. The corruption was interesting, if inevitable; all those dirty little thoughts eroding what was left of the good, like water over rocks. There were other things, though. Things he’d come to realise he didn’t actually want to know. Nick’s gifts, he had discovered, invariably had a downside. Often enough, they were all downside.
“Of course, Daniel,” he said now, with a friendly nod. “You can ask me anything you like. Can’t promise to answer, though.”
Connor was still smiling fixedly. It was getting a bit - weird. “Who are you?” he said. “Really?”
Oh dear. It had taken Alex longer to ask that question; perhaps Jim was losing his mojo. Screw it, he didn’t care any more. He couldn’t answer, however. Not properly, not completely. Besides, he had the strange and uncomfortable feeling that Daniel already knew - suspected, at least - and that he would do anything at all to find out the truth. Jim wondered if he’d end up strapped to a bed and injected with sodium pentothal, like in the spy films.
He laughed the question off. “What is this? Are we dating? You want to know the ‘real me’? I'm a fan of Elvis Costello, if that helps.”
Connor’s smile widened slightly. “I already know the real you, Jim.”
“Do you?”
“Oh yes, I do. I saw your picture in the paper.”
“Really?”
“I wasn’t certain at first, but seeing you like this, I’m absolutely sure. Surprising how glasses and a different hairstyle can change the way somebody looks, isn’t it?”
Jim sipped his tea noncommittally.
“What it is you think you see?”
The reply was calm, friendly, almost. “I see someone who is going to make a really big mistake, about -” he made a show of looking at his watch, “twenty-two years from now.”
Play it steady, play it safe. “Yeah? That's a very long-term prediction. I don't suppose you know who's going to win the 12.15 at Chepstow?” he chuckled.
“How did you get here, Jim? Do you remember?”
“You drove me here. I got a soaking, Daniel, not a bang on the head. What’s all this about? Are you feeling all right? You seem a bit - confused. I think you’ve got me mistaken for somebody else.”
Nick had to have known that Connor would recognise him. Was this a test, or a set-up?
“Not here, in this flat. How did you get here, to this world?”
Jim thought his own expression of amused disbelief was pretty realistic. “Um, well, you see, Daniel, when a man and a woman love each other very much, they get certain urges…” he tailed off, laughing awkwardly, aware it was the sort of sarcastic crack Gene Hunt himself might have made.
Connor’s smile had long since left his eyes. “You and Hunt,” he said. “And Callaghan, too - I don’t know how he fits in yet. But you and Hunt are the key to this. Am I supposed to choose a side?” He leaned closer, his pale eyes fixing on Jim’s dark ones. “Tell me what to do, and I’ll do it. I have to go home, Jim. I can’t stay here. I don’t belong here. I’m not like the others - I won’t learn to fit in, learn to love this place. I’m different, and you know I am. I know what this is - I just don’t how it works yet. Help me, and I’ll help you.”
“Help me to what?” Jim pretended nonchalance, swigging down the rest of his tea.
“To finish Gene Hunt,” Connor replied.
xxx
A few years ago - before the memory of ice-water filling his lungs had blasted away all his other dreams - Jim had experienced a strange and mystifying nightmare. He had been standing in a church, and he had known (in his dream) that he was dead. The church was very beautiful. It had reminded him of the one his grandmother had taken him to as a child - tall stained glass windows, filtering the light of day in beautiful, colourful patterns, reflecting on his innocent young face as he knelt before the altar. The carvings had fascinated him - especially the pulpit, with its depiction of a magnificent eagle. He wondered if the priest, standing there so grave and serious, had ever imagined that he was flying up to heaven on the eagle’s back.
The world had soured when Grandma had died, but Jim remembered the church all his life, and a few months before his thirtieth birthday he had dreamed of it. He was alone in the church at night time; the images in the stained glass windows seemed almost to be alive, watching him with anxious eyes. Did they want him to succeed, or fail? He knew - in the way we always seem to know the truth, in our dreams - that this was a test.
“Show me, then,” he’d said into the silence, and a chill wind seemed to blow through him. When it had passed, he looked around again and found that the layout of the church had changed. He was standing in the aisle, at the very centre of the cruciform, and at each end of the transept - to his left and right - stood an unfamiliar door.
First, he turned to his left. The door there was made of ancient, decaying wood. As he moved closer he could see the rusty bolts, the marks of woodworm; the thing was hanging off its hinges, and through the cracks he could see flames. An unearthly shriek echoed from whatever lay beyond that rotting, burning door and he stumbled away, horrified, returning to the centre of the church.
Hastily, he turned right. The door there was beautiful: it gleamed as though made from pure gold. As he crept towards it he could hear singing, pure soprano voices. His heart soared with them, and he knew that this was the right choice, the only choice. Grasping the shining handle, he turned it and walked through…
...and fell straight into Hell.
Then he had woken up, shaking and sweating.
The dream plagued him for three nights. The second time, he turned again towards the golden door, seduced by the heavenly voices, and again found fire and brimstone on the other side. On the third night he was ready, and turned without hesitation to the rotting wooden door on his left. The handle was hot; it blistered the palm of his hand as he touched it, but he persevered, knowing at last that he had chosen correctly. The door opened…
What was inside the dream-door, Jim was never to know; his flatmate arrived noisily home and startled him into frustrated wakefulness. A few months later, however, when two good people died because of Jim Keats and his really big mistake, he knew he would have the opportunity to find out for real what lay behind those tantalising doors.
Now all he had to do was choose.
Xxxx
II: Iron Sharpeth Iron
There’s nothing that cleanses your soul like getting the hell kicked out of you.
Woody Hayes
Lost as he was in thoughts of the past - or was it the future? - Jim was startled by the knock on his office door. Not Gene; he never bothered with the standard social niceties. Not Carter; it was too authoritative. Connor?
Nick.
“Good morning, Jim. I hear you've had a bit of a mishap, my boy.”
All fatherly concern and warm smiles. Jim tried hard not to respond to it.
“I had a small accident, yes.”
“An accident? It's my understanding that DCI Hunt pushed you into Regent's Canal.” Nick closed the office door behind him and paced the tiny room, picking up items from Jim's desk and examining them - pencils, notebooks, an empty cup.
Jim remained silent, smoking. After a moment he offered a cigarette to Nick, who shook his head with a small smile. “I must take care of my health. I've had a touch of bronchitis, you know.”
“Good thing your department is nice and warm, then.”
Nick chuckled appreciatively. “Quite. I'm glad to see that your experience this morning hasn't damaged your sense of humour, such as it is. Still - it was cruel of him, wasn't it? To take advantage of your deepest fear like that. Can you really trust a man like that, Jim?”
Yes indeed. What kind of man would make somebody relive their worst memory over and over and over again? Jim released a last, long plume of smoke and calmly put out the still-glowing tip of the cigarette - on his own palm.
“You've been talking to DI Connor, Nick.”
“He seemed concerned about your welfare. He's a promising young man, that one. I take it you have your eye on him, eh?”
“I'm doing my best.”
“Then you'll be happy to share your report with me.”
“As yet, sir, I don't have much to say.”
Nick tutted. “Not good enough, my boy.”
“I've only just got here.”
“You were quicker off the mark with Alex Drake.”
Jim did best to ignore the needling. “This situation is not the same. It's Hunt we're after, isn't it? Connor would be a bonus. The bigger the tree, the stronger and thicker the roots. It's going to take a long time to dig Hunt out. But I'll get there - believe me. I've got a big spade,” he added, flippantly. Perhaps Gene was rubbing off on him.
Nick was shaking his head sadly. “I wish I had perfect faith in you, Jim, but I worry about you, I really do. I'm not sure you're really the man for this job. I think Hunt might be getting to you. Corrupting you.”
“No.”
“No?” Nick took a cigarette from the pack on the desk, placed the filter end gently in Jim's mouth, and lit the other. Jim inhaled automatically, the smoke burning the chill out of his lungs. “Then prove it. Give me something. Anything. I hesitate to phrase it as 'demonstrating your loyalty' - that's such a cliché, don't you think? Let's just say that I would appreciate a little token to show that you appreciate everything I've tried to do for you.”
Their eyes locked as the silence following this perverse statement deepened. This time, Jim almost jumped out of his skin when somebody tapped on the door.
“What?” he snapped, eyes never leaving Nick's calmly smiling face.
Arnie Carter's smile, by contrast, was both nervous and apologetic. “The Guv wants to see you, sir. The Boss is there too.”
“They'll have a job fitting in here,” Nick quipped jovially, glancing around Jim's tiny office. “Let's take the mountain to Mohammed, shall we?”
Carter's hesitancy was explained in an instant by the atmosphere in CID. It resembled the sudden, dusty stillness of a saloon at High Noon, when the sheriff strides in to confront the local cattle-rustlers. Gene's officers weren't exactly hiding under their desks, but they were alert, expectant, and trying to pretend they weren't watching.
Right on cue, Gene opened his office door. He was holding a manilla folder in one hand.
“Looking for this?” he barked.
Jim glanced behind him; who was Gene talking to?
“You snivelling, sneaky, treacherous little scumbag.” Question answered. The manilla folder was under Jim's nose now, being waved menacingly in his face. “If you don't want people to read the lying shite you're writing about them, Jimbo, don't leave your paperwork about where any bugger can pick it up!”
Gene threw the folder on the floor. Papers spilled out. Jim stared at it, then at Gene, whose eyes fractionally narrowed, his head tilting marginally forward, nodding towards the file.
Jim bent down slowly and picked it up, stuffing the pages back inside. “Don't know what you're talking about, Gene,” he said, honestly.
Two people were watching the altercation with particular interest. Nick Callaghan hadn't taken his eyes off the folder since Gene started waving it around. Daniel Connor, standing in the doorway to Gene's office, was switching his attention rapidly between Jim and Hunt, like a spectator at Wimbledon.
“I knew it,” Gene went on, savagely. “I give you one bloody chance to act like a decent human being, and you go grassing me up over some pointless procedural bollocks. Begging your pardon, sir,” he added roughly, to Nick, who smiled and said,
“I'm sure DI Keats is only doing his job, Gene.”
“Does his job involve skulking about trying to get me the sack?” Gene grabbed Jim by the lapel of his coat and dragged him so close that their noses touched. Jim could feel spittle hitting his face as Gene launched into another tirade. “I thought we had an understanding, you lousy, treacherous, ungrateful, United-supporting...”
Jim was not in the mood to be handled - nor to be accused of supporting a northern football team. “Get off me! I'm warning you, Hunt...”
“You're warning me?! Who the bloody hell do you think you're talking to, Inspector?”
“Now, now, Gene...” murmured Nick Callaghan.
For answer, Gene drew back a meaty fist and punched Jim in the stomach. Hard. Jim doubled up, startled by the force of the blow.
“Really, Gene, I must insist!” Nick placed a soothing hand on Gene's chest as Jim slumped to the floor, gasping. “I can't allow you to treat my officers like this. Go into your office, have a drink and calm down. I doubt that DI Keats will want to make a formal complaint?”
Jim, fed up with the pair of them, ignored that remark. Nick patted him on the shoulder, then left without bothering to help him up.
“What are you lot looking at?” Gene barked at his officers. “Show's over. Get back to work. You - Peroxide Hedgehog!” He pointed at spiky-haired Carter. “Where's that crime scene report?” And turning to stare down at Jim, ”see, Jimbo - I do know how to read. You should've realised that before you left your girly folders around.” He stomped off to his office, turning back to say, “well? Do you not want a drink?”
Jim looked at Connor, hovering by his own desk now. He climbed slowly to his feet, waving off the belated assistance of DC Carter.
“My office,” he told Gene.
Gene shrugged. “Fine. I'll bring a picnic.” He collected his bottle of Scotch and a glass, and followed Jim amiably enough as his team returned slowly to their work. DI Connor, however, never took his eyes off the pair of them as Jim held the door open politely - some might have interpreted it as 'threateningly' - for his superior.
In his office, Jim checked for lurking Assistant Commissioners before turning on Gene. “I'm not your public punchbag, Hunt!”
“If you hadn't noticed, Jimbo, I saved your warty backside in there. Old Nicky Callaghan won't suspect you of letting the side down any more, will he?”
“You only knew what to do because I warned you he was onto us,” Jim sulked. “But how did you know when to set it up?”
“Connor told me Callaghan was here with the intention of ripping you a new, even wider bumhole. Maybe he's not a completely useless bastard, after all.”
Connor. What was he playing at?
“All right,” Jim conceded, “you did it for my benefit. How magnanimous. But did you have to enjoy it? There was no need to hit me as hard as you did. You undermined my authority over the other officers.”
“Oh dear. I'm so very sorry. I didn't realise your guts and your authority were made of glass, you whiny streak of piss.”
“Blimey, could you be any more childish? Just leave me alone. I've had enough of being shoved around today.”
“Be sure to write and tell your mum on me.”
That was it. Abandoning all attempts at self-control, Jim aimed a wild punch at Hunt's face. It connected awkwardly and not very powerfully - there wasn't room to swing a cat in Jim's office, let along a fist.
Gene was unimpressed. He grabbed Jim's arm and twisted, holding it behind his back as he shoved Jim face-downward onto his own desk. Jim could feel his glasses cutting into his cheek as his face was mashed mercilessly against the cheap, splintered wood. He struggled, kicking out, but he was tired and Hunt was strong and clearly well-practised at this, holding him firmly.
“Why did you bother?” Gene asked, sounding almost friendly. Or perhaps that was a misconception due to oxygen deprivation setting in - with his free hand Gene had taken hold of Jim's tie and was pulling on it like a puppy with a tug-toy, cheerfully throttling his victim.
“..off me...” Jim managed, “...fat bastard.”
“Don't be rude to the bloke who's got your head in a noose, Jimbo.”
“...'ck off...” Jim croaked.
“Say I've won.”
“Ghwa...?!”
“Say, 'you've won, Gene, because you're the better man.'”
He loosened his hold slightly. Jim gasped for air, shook his head.
“Say it,” Gene cajoled. He planted a knee in the small of Jim's back and jerked him backwards, causing considerable pain.
“You won!” Jim snarled furiously, eyes watering.
“'Because you're the better man.'”
His vision beginning to grey out, Jim said it.
The tie had been loosened, but Gene's knee remained in his back, Jim's arm still twisted up behind him, his face still pressed into the desk. His teeth were cutting into his lower lip.
“Now,” went on Gene, pleasantly, “say, 'I'm a pencil-pushing four-eyes who gets erotically aroused by filofaxes, and I've never satisfied a woman.'”
Fully oxygenated once more, Jim had recovered his self-respect. “I'm not saying that, you mad git!”
“Say it,” Gene insisted, manipulating Jim's body with the skill of a very violent chiropractor. The pain was blinding; after a few moments Jim ground out, “I'm a...a pencil-pushing four-eyes who...”
“'gets erotically aroused by filofaxes...'” Gene encouraged, like a parent prompting their toddler at the school play.
His performance apparently satisfactory, Gene finally let Jim up.
“Well, that concludes our bit of business, I think, DI Keats. Here's your consolation prize.” He poured a measure of whisky into one of the cylindrical compartments of Jim's red plastic desk-tidy, nodded briskly, and left. Jim, growling to himself, removed his newly Scotch-flavoured pencils and poured the whisky into a cup before drinking it off. There was a smarting sensation as the liquid ran over his injured lip. Frowning, Jim touched his fingers wonderingly to the cut - which was rapidly welling up with rich, red blood.
Xxx
On to Part V: Sowing the Wind