Fic: Steady As She Goes (85/86), brown cortina, dakfinv
Title: Steady As She Goes (85/86)
Author: dak
Word Count: 2697 this part; [144,804 overall]
Summary for Whole: After an accidental shooting at the station, Gene struggles to keep his team from tearing themselves apart while his and Sam's friendship is pushed to the limits.
Summary this Part: Sam visits Mrs. Hunt
Rating: Brown Cortina
Warnings: angst, swearing, violence, violent imagery, minor drug use, mild sexual situations, self-harm for whole
Spoilers: none here; see each chapter for specific spoiler warnings
Pairing: mild Sam/Annie, Sam/Maya, Gene/missus
Disclaimer: Belongs to BBC/Kudos
A/N: Here it is, the penultimate chapter. Yes. I'm completely, 100% certain that there is only one more chapter after this one. Which I'll hopefully finish tomorrow after I get off work at 5. Please enjoy!
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13 Part 14 Part 15 Part 16 Part 17 Part 18 Part 19 Part 20 Part 21 Part 22 Part 23 Part 24 Part 25 Part 26 Part 27 Part 28 Part 29 Part 30 Part 31 Part 32 Part 33 Part 34 Part 35 Part 36 Part 37 Part 38 Part 39 Part 40 Part 41 Part 42 Part 43 Part 44 Part 45 Part 46 Part 47 Part 48 Part 49 Part 50 Part 51 Part 52 Part 53 Part 54 Part 55 Part 56 Part 57 Part 58 Part 59 Part 60 Part 61 Part 62 Part 63 Part 64 Part 65 Part 66 Part 67 Part 68 Part 69 Part 70 Part 71 Part 72 Part 73 Part 74 Part 75 Part 76 Part 77 Part 78 Part 79 Part 80 Part 81 Part 82 Part 83 Part 84 Part 85 Part 86
Everyone thought the grief counseling was working. “Tyler seems more focused,” they would say or “I think he actually smiled today.” Superintendent Grant was happy. Maya was happy. His mum was happy. Sam was just confused.
None of them knew he hadn’t been to the meetings in over a month. Like kids fed up with school, Sam and Gladys would show up at St. Christopher’s as everyone expected them to, then ditch the church and sneak off to a pub or chip shop for greasy food and more constructive conversation than the counselor could provide for them.
The week after their first meeting, Sam had convinced himself it wasn’t possible. It was all a coincidence. As his mind slowly and logically ticked through the possibilities, he had convinced himself that Gene Hunt had possibly existed. He must have read some of the man’s old case files. It was an easy name to remember. It must have stuck in his head. That was all.
When the next Wednesday finally rolled around, Sam arrived at the church early and spotted her struggling to hold an umbrella and light a fag at the same time. Being the gentleman he was, Sam jobbed over and held her brolly while she cursed at the lack of legal smoking areas nowadays. Sam offered to buy her a curry and Gladys had shrugged and said why not. She never liked eating alone. Sam’s stomach cramped a little.
He wanted to know everything about her, to disprove his theory of course, because it simply wasn’t possible. Not in the slightest. That’s why theories were tested after all, to be proved wrong.
At their third dinner, fried scampi and chicken kiev at the local Sam never dared enter before, he decided maybe it didn’t matter if it had been real or not. Maybe it didn’t matter if this Gladys Hunt was the daughter of his DCI Hunt. His Gene hadn’t had any kids, after all. Maybe he and this woman, maybe they had each lost something, someone, similar. Someone no one else had and talking just with each other, to the only person who could even begin to understand,maybe that was all either of them needed. Maybe the truth didn’t really matter.
Sam discovered that night her Gene had died the same exact day he had woken up. It didn’t matter. It was only a coincidence but Sam had cried that night, somehow feeling guilty for the death of this man that he hadn’t known. Not really.
Food tasted a little better. His flat seemed a little more like home. His mum was worrying less. He even cracked a joke at the station, an action which subsequently sent CID into temporary shock. He still wasn’t their DCI yet, he had another two months until his review. He was getting nervous. It made him happy that he felt nervous.
Sam had convinced himself the truth didn’t matter. After their fifth dinner, an unadventurous trip to McDonald’s for a shared craving of Terry’s Chocolate Orange McFlurries, Gladys mentioned her birthday was 1 January 1974. She told him her dad had been pissed at the pub with his mates when the hospital had called. She had been one month premature and until she was finally sent home her father had been “continuously shitting bricks” as his DI had repeatedly told her when she was younger.
Sam hadn’t known Gene in 1974. He hadn’t made it that far. He asked the DI”s name. She mocked him for being a curious bastard then told him it was Ray Carling. A good bloke now retired and living in Brighton with his second wife and a couple of Beagles. Sam had started choking on a bit of chocolate and Gladys had been forced to perform the Heimlich maneuver to the amusement of the other patrons and the curious manager.
As she walked him back to his flat, they passed a rusted heap of a Cortina and she had sighed nostalgically and said her dad had one just like it when she was little. Sam proceeded to walk into a lamp post. After she helped him off the pavement and into his flat, fixing him a bag of ice for the bump on his forehead, Sam said he’d like to meet her mother and asked if he could come round for Sunday dinner.
Gladys had smirked and said they hadn’t even kissed yet and usually it was the host who invited the guests not the other way around, but being the genial soul she was, and seeing as he’d nearly died twice in her company that evening, she would allow it if he permitted her to smoke in his flat before she headed off.
So it was a week later that Sam Tyler found himself standing on the pavement in his best suit and tie, holding a bouquet of flowers and a bottle of wine, staring at the same door he’d seen so many times in 1973. There really had to be a sensible explanation for all of this, he decided as he walked up the steps and knocked on the door,
It was opened seconds later by a pleasant looking elderly woman, aged by time but who still had auburn streaks in her graying hair and sparkling green eyes. She stared at Sam quizzically a few seconds before speaking.
“I think I know you. Do I know you?”
Sam didn’t know how to answer and stood there gaping.
“Mum? Is that Sam?” A frantic Gladys appeared behind her mother’s shoulders, food clearly splattered on her clothes and in her hair. “Hi! Are you early or am I running late? Shit. Doesn’t matter. Come in.” She guided her mother away from the door frame so Sam could enter, then ushered her into the kitchen. “Watch the stove, ‘kay Mum? I’ll be right back.” She made sure her mother was safely away before turning her attention back to Sam. “Hi,” she heaved a sigh of relief and picked a bit of chicken off her sleeve.
“Hi,” he smiled back. “Will she be alright? The stove...”
“Oh it’s not even on,” she explained as she led Sam into the sitting room. “I just told her that to keep her busy while we have a quickie on the couch.”
“What?”
“You are really bad at picking up on jokes, aren’t you? Oh, I’ll take those.” She grabbed the flowers and wine from Sam’s hands.
“This is a lovely house,” Sam told her, already digging for information, despite the fact he promised himself earlier that he wouldn’t.
“Thanks. It’s actually the house we lived in before we moved to Surrey. When Dad decided to move back with Mum he wanted something that’d be familiar to her.”
“It’s amazing it was for sale.”
“It wasn’t,” Gladys smiled proudly. “Daddy sort of...convinced the owners to move. He could be very persuasive like that.”
“Yeah,” Sam smiled to himself. “I know. People like that. I know people like that,” he corrected himself.
“Right. So, I’m going to go do something with these so I don’t look like a walking advertisement for Marks and Spencer, then I’ll be right back.”
In her absence. Sam walked around the room observing everything. He vaguely remembered sitting on that side of the room when Gene had brought him home from hospital, still knocked out on Valium. He had a hazy recollection of sitting on the other side when Dr. Merrick had come round to assess his mental status. If any of that even happened because there was no way it could have been real.
Sam looked up at the mantel. There in the center was a framed picture of a man holding a baby, his wife on one side, the whole family standing in front of a Bronze Cortina. Sam took the picture in his hands. The woman was Margaret, the one who had helped him off the floor the night he fell asleep at the bottom of the stairs. The woman he thought, in a fit of paranoia, had been trying to poison him.
The man was Gene Hunt. He was smiling in the photograph, something Sam considered highly unusual, but it was Gene Hunt. His Gene Hunt. His alcoholic, over-the-hill, nicotine stained Neanderthal with an unhealthy obsession with male bonding. Sam felt very nauseous.
“That’s Dad,” Gladys said over his shoulder.
“Sorry,” Sam quickly set it back on the mantel.
“ ‘S alright,” she smiled. “I talk about him enough, least now you know what he looks like.”
“Gene, could you give me hand?”
Both Sam and Gladys turned to see Mrs. Hunt standing in the doorway anxiously awaiting assistance.
“She means you,” Gladys clarified. “Ever since Daddy...she calls every man Gene. Go on,” Gladys nudged him forward. “She won’t bite. Probably just wants you to fold the laundry or something.”
“You sure?”
“Haven’t even finished dinner yet. Go on. I’m sure you two crazies will have loads of fun,” she winked. “Her name’s Margaret, by the way.”
Sam smiled nervously and walked towards the old woman. “What can I help you with, Margaret?”
“This way,” she smiled and motioned for him to follow. Sam soon found himself headed to the cellar, the one room in the Hunt home he’d never seen before. “It’s down here,” Margaret confirmed for herself as they descended the stairs. “Now, I know there was a light here somewhere. Where...ah.” She pulled a cord and the dark room lit up. It was neatly organized, everything properly labeled and stacked. Sam knew this was more likely the work of Gladys and Margaret than Gene.
“I think it’s over here,” she said, going towards the darkest corner.
“Do you need me to carry something up for you, Mrs. Hunt?”
“Ah!” She exclaimed, ignoring Sam’s question. “I knew it was here!” She pulled a dusty box forward then turned and waggled her finger at Sam. “I know you’re not my Gene. I only said that so she wouldn’t follow.” Mrs. Hunt smiled sneakily and pointed upstairs. “You’re much too skinny. Much too skinny. But...” she waddled closer, joints stiff with arthritis and examined Sam in the dim light. She raised a hand and kindly stroked Sam’s cheek. “Yes. There you are. We always wondered what happened to you,” she sighed sadly, then lowered her hand to Sam’s own and guided him to the box.
As he got closer he realized it was marked in a sloppy scrawl different from all the others. It stated simply “ST” in a handwriting that was immediately recognizable to Sam. His heart began to beat faster as Margaret bent down and opened the cardboard lid.
“You,” she accused, “were supposed to go to Shenley Hospital.”
Sam wanted to move closer but his feet were suddenly glued to the floor.
“But you,” she said forcefully, “never got there.” The box opened, Margaret rose and turned back to Sam. “My Genie watched you loaded into the ambulance and then waited for them to call. Say you got there. They didn’t. He drove down there himself but you weren’t there. You weren’t at St. Mary’s. You weren’t anywhere.” Her voice became sad and wistful. “Genie got very drunk and said you never did what you were supposed to. Then we had sex.”
Her bluntness shook Sam from his reverie. “Sorry?”
“And I got pregnant. And we had Gladys. And Gene was happy again.” Her voice became nostalgic again and Sam saw her eyes staring off, returning to a world no one else could see. Now he knew what he had looked like half the time in 1973. “She’s a good girl, our Gladys. Definitely her father’s child. Gave her everything she wanted but she still turned out alright. I wonder if she’ll visit today.” Suddenly, she seemed to snap out of it and smacked Sam on the arm. “You caused my Gene a lot of trouble, disappearing like that DI Tyler. But he never forgot you. You know how many times he drove down there looking for you? When they asked him to transfer, I know he really only did it cos he thought he might find you. Why those other boys went with ‘im, too. Yes. Caused him a lot of trouble...”
She started for the stairs then stopped and turned. “Now. That box’s yours and it’s cluttering up my cellar so it would be lovely of you to take it with you.”
Sam watched in disbelief as she hoisted her way up the stairs and out the door. The woman was ill, he told himself as he knelt down in front of the box. She couldn’t remember things properly. She was confused. Sam blindly reached into the box and his hand hit leather.
Body shaking, he pulled out a worn black leather jacket with a tiny tear at the back of the collar. Sam choked out a tiny laugh before the tears started to blur his vision. He wiped them away and held the jacket out before him, suddenly unable to control the flood of emotions coursing through his body. He laid it on the ground, running his hands over the seams and fabric, and felt a bulge in the inside pocket. Hardly able to control his trembling hand, he pulled out a black, leather rectangle. Flipping it open and lifting the flap, Sam discovered he was laughing and crying at the same time.
This is to certify that Sam Tyler has achieved the rank of Detective Inspector...
He set the badge on top of the jacket and tore through the rest of the box. It contained a few things he’d left in his flat, a book on procedure given to the Guv as a joke, the inside labeled with his own scrawl. “Sorry Guv. No pictures.” A few hideous seventies shirts followed and at the very bottom - a file. A faded, tattered file labeled “Tyler, Sam” with the date of his kidnapping.
He dropped everything else in his hands and picked it out of the box. Holding his breath, he opened the cover and came face to face with photos he’d seen thirty-three years prior. The bruises, the breaks, the blood, it was all there, but this time they made Sam laugh. They made him happy. His face was soaked in tears by the time he reached the picture of his face. His face, with the broken nose and purple bruises.
It was real.
It had all been real. All those horrible, awful things had happened to him. He had really been a selfish, miserable twat who hurt all those around him.
That meant all the good things had happened, too. Catching people like Kim Trent and Stephen Warren. Teaching Chris about modern policing. Nights at the pub, playing darts, getting into punch-ups.
Changing Gene. Getting him to give up backhanders and listen to new ideas. Gene changing him. Reteaching him how to follow his instincts, trust his gut, work with a team.
He had been there. He had made a difference. It had all mattered.
Sam left all his belongings in the cellar, raced up the stairs, and into the kitchen.
“Oh, good Sam. Dinner’s almost--”
Gladys Hunt’s sentence was cut off as Sam spun her away from the oven and into his arms, hands placed on each side of her face as he held her and kissed her with more feeling than he had ever experienced before.
A sensation that was only matched by the slap he received a few seconds later.
“You bloody nonce! What the hell was that for? Why is your face all wet?” She stared at her wet palm, more than slightly confused.
“I believe it’s called a kiss,” Sam grinned like a goofy teen.
“In front of my mother?” Gladys argued.
“I don’t mind,” Mrs. Hunt smiled, pretending not to notice. “Though Gene might....” She added softly.
Gladys grabbed Sam roughly by the arm and dragged him into the hall before grabbing him by his lapels and heaving him against a wall. “You’re bloody bonkers, Detective Chief Inspector Tyler, and you really need to learn to ask first.”
“I never do what I’m supposed to,” he whispered back and kissed her again.
________
Part 86
Author: dak
Word Count: 2697 this part; [144,804 overall]
Summary for Whole: After an accidental shooting at the station, Gene struggles to keep his team from tearing themselves apart while his and Sam's friendship is pushed to the limits.
Summary this Part: Sam visits Mrs. Hunt
Rating: Brown Cortina
Warnings: angst, swearing, violence, violent imagery, minor drug use, mild sexual situations, self-harm for whole
Spoilers: none here; see each chapter for specific spoiler warnings
Pairing: mild Sam/Annie, Sam/Maya, Gene/missus
Disclaimer: Belongs to BBC/Kudos
A/N: Here it is, the penultimate chapter. Yes. I'm completely, 100% certain that there is only one more chapter after this one. Which I'll hopefully finish tomorrow after I get off work at 5. Please enjoy!
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13 Part 14 Part 15 Part 16 Part 17 Part 18 Part 19 Part 20 Part 21 Part 22 Part 23 Part 24 Part 25 Part 26 Part 27 Part 28 Part 29 Part 30 Part 31 Part 32 Part 33 Part 34 Part 35 Part 36 Part 37 Part 38 Part 39 Part 40 Part 41 Part 42 Part 43 Part 44 Part 45 Part 46 Part 47 Part 48 Part 49 Part 50 Part 51 Part 52 Part 53 Part 54 Part 55 Part 56 Part 57 Part 58 Part 59 Part 60 Part 61 Part 62 Part 63 Part 64 Part 65 Part 66 Part 67 Part 68 Part 69 Part 70 Part 71 Part 72 Part 73 Part 74 Part 75 Part 76 Part 77 Part 78 Part 79 Part 80 Part 81 Part 82 Part 83 Part 84 Part 85 Part 86
Everyone thought the grief counseling was working. “Tyler seems more focused,” they would say or “I think he actually smiled today.” Superintendent Grant was happy. Maya was happy. His mum was happy. Sam was just confused.
None of them knew he hadn’t been to the meetings in over a month. Like kids fed up with school, Sam and Gladys would show up at St. Christopher’s as everyone expected them to, then ditch the church and sneak off to a pub or chip shop for greasy food and more constructive conversation than the counselor could provide for them.
The week after their first meeting, Sam had convinced himself it wasn’t possible. It was all a coincidence. As his mind slowly and logically ticked through the possibilities, he had convinced himself that Gene Hunt had possibly existed. He must have read some of the man’s old case files. It was an easy name to remember. It must have stuck in his head. That was all.
When the next Wednesday finally rolled around, Sam arrived at the church early and spotted her struggling to hold an umbrella and light a fag at the same time. Being the gentleman he was, Sam jobbed over and held her brolly while she cursed at the lack of legal smoking areas nowadays. Sam offered to buy her a curry and Gladys had shrugged and said why not. She never liked eating alone. Sam’s stomach cramped a little.
He wanted to know everything about her, to disprove his theory of course, because it simply wasn’t possible. Not in the slightest. That’s why theories were tested after all, to be proved wrong.
At their third dinner, fried scampi and chicken kiev at the local Sam never dared enter before, he decided maybe it didn’t matter if it had been real or not. Maybe it didn’t matter if this Gladys Hunt was the daughter of his DCI Hunt. His Gene hadn’t had any kids, after all. Maybe he and this woman, maybe they had each lost something, someone, similar. Someone no one else had and talking just with each other, to the only person who could even begin to understand,maybe that was all either of them needed. Maybe the truth didn’t really matter.
Sam discovered that night her Gene had died the same exact day he had woken up. It didn’t matter. It was only a coincidence but Sam had cried that night, somehow feeling guilty for the death of this man that he hadn’t known. Not really.
Food tasted a little better. His flat seemed a little more like home. His mum was worrying less. He even cracked a joke at the station, an action which subsequently sent CID into temporary shock. He still wasn’t their DCI yet, he had another two months until his review. He was getting nervous. It made him happy that he felt nervous.
Sam had convinced himself the truth didn’t matter. After their fifth dinner, an unadventurous trip to McDonald’s for a shared craving of Terry’s Chocolate Orange McFlurries, Gladys mentioned her birthday was 1 January 1974. She told him her dad had been pissed at the pub with his mates when the hospital had called. She had been one month premature and until she was finally sent home her father had been “continuously shitting bricks” as his DI had repeatedly told her when she was younger.
Sam hadn’t known Gene in 1974. He hadn’t made it that far. He asked the DI”s name. She mocked him for being a curious bastard then told him it was Ray Carling. A good bloke now retired and living in Brighton with his second wife and a couple of Beagles. Sam had started choking on a bit of chocolate and Gladys had been forced to perform the Heimlich maneuver to the amusement of the other patrons and the curious manager.
As she walked him back to his flat, they passed a rusted heap of a Cortina and she had sighed nostalgically and said her dad had one just like it when she was little. Sam proceeded to walk into a lamp post. After she helped him off the pavement and into his flat, fixing him a bag of ice for the bump on his forehead, Sam said he’d like to meet her mother and asked if he could come round for Sunday dinner.
Gladys had smirked and said they hadn’t even kissed yet and usually it was the host who invited the guests not the other way around, but being the genial soul she was, and seeing as he’d nearly died twice in her company that evening, she would allow it if he permitted her to smoke in his flat before she headed off.
So it was a week later that Sam Tyler found himself standing on the pavement in his best suit and tie, holding a bouquet of flowers and a bottle of wine, staring at the same door he’d seen so many times in 1973. There really had to be a sensible explanation for all of this, he decided as he walked up the steps and knocked on the door,
It was opened seconds later by a pleasant looking elderly woman, aged by time but who still had auburn streaks in her graying hair and sparkling green eyes. She stared at Sam quizzically a few seconds before speaking.
“I think I know you. Do I know you?”
Sam didn’t know how to answer and stood there gaping.
“Mum? Is that Sam?” A frantic Gladys appeared behind her mother’s shoulders, food clearly splattered on her clothes and in her hair. “Hi! Are you early or am I running late? Shit. Doesn’t matter. Come in.” She guided her mother away from the door frame so Sam could enter, then ushered her into the kitchen. “Watch the stove, ‘kay Mum? I’ll be right back.” She made sure her mother was safely away before turning her attention back to Sam. “Hi,” she heaved a sigh of relief and picked a bit of chicken off her sleeve.
“Hi,” he smiled back. “Will she be alright? The stove...”
“Oh it’s not even on,” she explained as she led Sam into the sitting room. “I just told her that to keep her busy while we have a quickie on the couch.”
“What?”
“You are really bad at picking up on jokes, aren’t you? Oh, I’ll take those.” She grabbed the flowers and wine from Sam’s hands.
“This is a lovely house,” Sam told her, already digging for information, despite the fact he promised himself earlier that he wouldn’t.
“Thanks. It’s actually the house we lived in before we moved to Surrey. When Dad decided to move back with Mum he wanted something that’d be familiar to her.”
“It’s amazing it was for sale.”
“It wasn’t,” Gladys smiled proudly. “Daddy sort of...convinced the owners to move. He could be very persuasive like that.”
“Yeah,” Sam smiled to himself. “I know. People like that. I know people like that,” he corrected himself.
“Right. So, I’m going to go do something with these so I don’t look like a walking advertisement for Marks and Spencer, then I’ll be right back.”
In her absence. Sam walked around the room observing everything. He vaguely remembered sitting on that side of the room when Gene had brought him home from hospital, still knocked out on Valium. He had a hazy recollection of sitting on the other side when Dr. Merrick had come round to assess his mental status. If any of that even happened because there was no way it could have been real.
Sam looked up at the mantel. There in the center was a framed picture of a man holding a baby, his wife on one side, the whole family standing in front of a Bronze Cortina. Sam took the picture in his hands. The woman was Margaret, the one who had helped him off the floor the night he fell asleep at the bottom of the stairs. The woman he thought, in a fit of paranoia, had been trying to poison him.
The man was Gene Hunt. He was smiling in the photograph, something Sam considered highly unusual, but it was Gene Hunt. His Gene Hunt. His alcoholic, over-the-hill, nicotine stained Neanderthal with an unhealthy obsession with male bonding. Sam felt very nauseous.
“That’s Dad,” Gladys said over his shoulder.
“Sorry,” Sam quickly set it back on the mantel.
“ ‘S alright,” she smiled. “I talk about him enough, least now you know what he looks like.”
“Gene, could you give me hand?”
Both Sam and Gladys turned to see Mrs. Hunt standing in the doorway anxiously awaiting assistance.
“She means you,” Gladys clarified. “Ever since Daddy...she calls every man Gene. Go on,” Gladys nudged him forward. “She won’t bite. Probably just wants you to fold the laundry or something.”
“You sure?”
“Haven’t even finished dinner yet. Go on. I’m sure you two crazies will have loads of fun,” she winked. “Her name’s Margaret, by the way.”
Sam smiled nervously and walked towards the old woman. “What can I help you with, Margaret?”
“This way,” she smiled and motioned for him to follow. Sam soon found himself headed to the cellar, the one room in the Hunt home he’d never seen before. “It’s down here,” Margaret confirmed for herself as they descended the stairs. “Now, I know there was a light here somewhere. Where...ah.” She pulled a cord and the dark room lit up. It was neatly organized, everything properly labeled and stacked. Sam knew this was more likely the work of Gladys and Margaret than Gene.
“I think it’s over here,” she said, going towards the darkest corner.
“Do you need me to carry something up for you, Mrs. Hunt?”
“Ah!” She exclaimed, ignoring Sam’s question. “I knew it was here!” She pulled a dusty box forward then turned and waggled her finger at Sam. “I know you’re not my Gene. I only said that so she wouldn’t follow.” Mrs. Hunt smiled sneakily and pointed upstairs. “You’re much too skinny. Much too skinny. But...” she waddled closer, joints stiff with arthritis and examined Sam in the dim light. She raised a hand and kindly stroked Sam’s cheek. “Yes. There you are. We always wondered what happened to you,” she sighed sadly, then lowered her hand to Sam’s own and guided him to the box.
As he got closer he realized it was marked in a sloppy scrawl different from all the others. It stated simply “ST” in a handwriting that was immediately recognizable to Sam. His heart began to beat faster as Margaret bent down and opened the cardboard lid.
“You,” she accused, “were supposed to go to Shenley Hospital.”
Sam wanted to move closer but his feet were suddenly glued to the floor.
“But you,” she said forcefully, “never got there.” The box opened, Margaret rose and turned back to Sam. “My Genie watched you loaded into the ambulance and then waited for them to call. Say you got there. They didn’t. He drove down there himself but you weren’t there. You weren’t at St. Mary’s. You weren’t anywhere.” Her voice became sad and wistful. “Genie got very drunk and said you never did what you were supposed to. Then we had sex.”
Her bluntness shook Sam from his reverie. “Sorry?”
“And I got pregnant. And we had Gladys. And Gene was happy again.” Her voice became nostalgic again and Sam saw her eyes staring off, returning to a world no one else could see. Now he knew what he had looked like half the time in 1973. “She’s a good girl, our Gladys. Definitely her father’s child. Gave her everything she wanted but she still turned out alright. I wonder if she’ll visit today.” Suddenly, she seemed to snap out of it and smacked Sam on the arm. “You caused my Gene a lot of trouble, disappearing like that DI Tyler. But he never forgot you. You know how many times he drove down there looking for you? When they asked him to transfer, I know he really only did it cos he thought he might find you. Why those other boys went with ‘im, too. Yes. Caused him a lot of trouble...”
She started for the stairs then stopped and turned. “Now. That box’s yours and it’s cluttering up my cellar so it would be lovely of you to take it with you.”
Sam watched in disbelief as she hoisted her way up the stairs and out the door. The woman was ill, he told himself as he knelt down in front of the box. She couldn’t remember things properly. She was confused. Sam blindly reached into the box and his hand hit leather.
Body shaking, he pulled out a worn black leather jacket with a tiny tear at the back of the collar. Sam choked out a tiny laugh before the tears started to blur his vision. He wiped them away and held the jacket out before him, suddenly unable to control the flood of emotions coursing through his body. He laid it on the ground, running his hands over the seams and fabric, and felt a bulge in the inside pocket. Hardly able to control his trembling hand, he pulled out a black, leather rectangle. Flipping it open and lifting the flap, Sam discovered he was laughing and crying at the same time.
This is to certify that Sam Tyler has achieved the rank of Detective Inspector...
He set the badge on top of the jacket and tore through the rest of the box. It contained a few things he’d left in his flat, a book on procedure given to the Guv as a joke, the inside labeled with his own scrawl. “Sorry Guv. No pictures.” A few hideous seventies shirts followed and at the very bottom - a file. A faded, tattered file labeled “Tyler, Sam” with the date of his kidnapping.
He dropped everything else in his hands and picked it out of the box. Holding his breath, he opened the cover and came face to face with photos he’d seen thirty-three years prior. The bruises, the breaks, the blood, it was all there, but this time they made Sam laugh. They made him happy. His face was soaked in tears by the time he reached the picture of his face. His face, with the broken nose and purple bruises.
It was real.
It had all been real. All those horrible, awful things had happened to him. He had really been a selfish, miserable twat who hurt all those around him.
That meant all the good things had happened, too. Catching people like Kim Trent and Stephen Warren. Teaching Chris about modern policing. Nights at the pub, playing darts, getting into punch-ups.
Changing Gene. Getting him to give up backhanders and listen to new ideas. Gene changing him. Reteaching him how to follow his instincts, trust his gut, work with a team.
He had been there. He had made a difference. It had all mattered.
Sam left all his belongings in the cellar, raced up the stairs, and into the kitchen.
“Oh, good Sam. Dinner’s almost--”
Gladys Hunt’s sentence was cut off as Sam spun her away from the oven and into his arms, hands placed on each side of her face as he held her and kissed her with more feeling than he had ever experienced before.
A sensation that was only matched by the slap he received a few seconds later.
“You bloody nonce! What the hell was that for? Why is your face all wet?” She stared at her wet palm, more than slightly confused.
“I believe it’s called a kiss,” Sam grinned like a goofy teen.
“In front of my mother?” Gladys argued.
“I don’t mind,” Mrs. Hunt smiled, pretending not to notice. “Though Gene might....” She added softly.
Gladys grabbed Sam roughly by the arm and dragged him into the hall before grabbing him by his lapels and heaving him against a wall. “You’re bloody bonkers, Detective Chief Inspector Tyler, and you really need to learn to ask first.”
“I never do what I’m supposed to,” he whispered back and kissed her again.
________
Part 86