Fic: Jabberwocky, Part 16/?
When Gene thundered back into CID, thoughts of Hyde trying to stonewall them, as well as fear that Barrie really could be their killer, still somersaulting through his mind, he found Ray and Chris directing an obviously newly arrived Glen Fletcher through a box that had been sloppily labeled, ‘1967’ in black marker. Fletcher stood up straight, far straighter than he had when they’d first met, an obvious air of pride in his stance now, and offered his hand to Gene. Gene shook it, and Fletcher nodded at him, “DCI Hunt. Pleasure to be back, Sir, although I do wish it were under better circumstances.”
“Don’t we all, DC Fletcher. And I want you in my office, now,” Gene said, and then stormed towards the cracked glass of the door. Glen followed him, a surprised look on his face, and then the two of them entered the office. As Gene stood at the door, he noticed Ray getting up and grabbing his coat, and shouted out towards Chris and Ray, “Ray, Doctor Denslow’s on board with us, he’s going through all of the old charts on Sam, just to make sure nothing’s amiss. I want a full report on everything he says when he gets back to you on it, and if there’s even a hint that any damned thing’s off in the soddin’ slightest, I want you to get back to me on it, straight-bloody away. Chris, you and Cartwright drop the case files for a bit, get on every ruddy detail of the damned case, take one of them over-field things on it, second she gets her pretty little arse through the door, understood?”
“Got it, Gov,” Ray said as he headed for the door.
“Wilco, Gov,” Chris said, and started to sort through the enormous pile of papers on his desk, letting a few fall to the floor. Gene gritted his teeth at this, and then pulled the door shut, ripping off his coat and hanging it on the coat rack, and then heading for his chair, pulling two glasses and a half empty bottle of scotch from one of his filing cabinets in the process. He poured a liberal amount into the glasses, and then motioned for Fletcher to sit down. Fletcher took the seat across the desk, and raised his eyebrows at the proffered drink.
“What, never been offered a whiskey by a superior before, Fletcher?” Gene said, downing his own drink in a large gulp and then pouring himself another.
“Not as such, no, Sir. Thank you,” Glen said, and then took a small drink from the glass, a slightly pleased look on his features. Gene figured that he’d still been taking ten types of shit from his other superiors.
“Shame. Couple shades of muddy aren’t keeping you from being one of the best in the area, ‘s what I’ve been hearing of late,” Gene said. Glen’s face fell slightly, but he accepted the compliment for what it was, not wanting to put up any sort of argument with the first DCI to ever specifically request his presence on a case.
“I read about DI Tyler in the papers; he all right, then?” Glen asked, and Gene leaned back in his chair, knowing that Sam had made a bit of a bond with Glen, although over what, he wasn’t sure.
“He’s still in hospital, but he’ll be out soon enough,” Gene said, and Glen nodded at him, noticing the hard set of Gene’s face and not willing to ask for any more information until it was offered. Gene nodded at his silence, and then asked, “So, Carling and Skelton told you why we’re going through all of the case files from Hyde, then?”
Glen nodded, “Reckon it’s a bit of a vendetta against DI Tyler, and that it has something to do with his old cases, they said. Every one of the victims so far’s fit a rough description of Tyler, and the general idea is that the killer was looking for him as well as doing in the others.”
Gene nodded, “Only there’s a bit more to it than that, so far as Hyde’s concerned. DCI Morgan, from Hyde, he’s been down here to check in on Sam, and he and his DI, Scarborough, and both of those tossers have been giving us a bit of the run around so far as the bleedin’ case files are concerned,” Gene began, and then looked up to see a confused look on Glen’s face. “What? Am I not speaking soddin’ English?”
“DCI Morgan and DI Scarborough?” Glen asked, and Gene nodded, then leaned forward heavily in his chair, waiting for Glen to finish. “They weren’t in Hyde CID when I was there,” Glen said, and Gene felt his eyes go round and his blood begin to boil. If they weren’t the DCI and DI for CID in Hyde, then who were they, and why was Hyde transferring him to them every time that he called? “I remember the names, though - there was a bit of bother at Hyde, and they were in the process of promoting a new DCI - a DCI Williams, but I never met the man. Nor Morgan nor Scarborough - they were in…” Glen leaned back and stared at the ceiling, a chagrined frown on his face.
“Only, at the time, I was tryin’ more to keep meself to meself, you know, try and keep a low profile, on account of me bein’ colored and all, so I never really got to know many people, especially not at the top, like… Mostly it was just transferring from station to station, working on filing, from the time I made DC to the time I met DI Tyler. He were really the one that got me really started in on the job, the way that he believed in me - real inspiring, isn’t he?” Gene grunted an affirmative at this, and Glen continued, “But DCI Morgan and DI Scarborough, they weren’t in CID, they were… They were in Discipline and Complaints! Some new division of it, as I reckon - I can’t recall the name - I think maybe it were ‘Mars’.”
“Mars?” Gene wasn’t sure how to take this news - if Morgan was in Discipline and Complaints, why was he the one that Hyde kept transferring him to, and what the hell did Fletcher mean, ‘Mars?’ It made no sense at all…
“I’m sure of it, they were in some new branch of Discipline and Complaints; if it weren’t Mars, it were something like that. And the old DCI, a DCI Jack Haley, he were caught up in some bother about taking backhanders, and were actually sent down. Involvement in an actual murder case, a lot like,” Glen paused and fixed a nervous stare on Gene, “A lot like what happened with Superintendant Woolf. DCI Haley was the one that I’d been reporting to the first time that I were at Hyde, a few weeks in ’71, and then I heard about them going down just before I came back up for another bit at Hyde, him and a DS Ebsen, they’d been mixed up in some bad business, but it was never explained to me exactly what it was. So then I came up again in ’72, and there was a new DCI, Williams, but I never met him - they said he was actually lending a hand to Discipline and Complaints, but that it were all hush hush, no news to be had on it. That’s where I remember seeing Tyler’s name!” Gene polished off his second glass of Scotch and leaned in further, his elbows in the middle of his desk.
“I was handling a box full of papers that were supposed to be confidential; I had orders not to read them and all, and I was supposed to deliver them to DCI Williams’ office. I was coming out of the collator’s den, and tripped, and a bunch of the files spilled out. I tried not to look at them, I mean, I didn’t want to get involved, but the one on top was a personnel report, and there were a picture with it - it was DI Tyler, I’m sure of it. That’s why I remembered him when I was up here in June.” Glen looked across at Gene, hoping that at least part of his story would make sense to the other man, and Gene stared back at him, a cryptic look on his face.
“So you’re telling me that you never actually met Sam when he was at Hyde? And the fellas that they’ve been shunting us to, all this time, are in Discipline and Complaints? And they had files on Sam at the time?” Gene’s mind had stopped doing somersaults and had started in on a full-blown, Olympics-caliber gymnastics routine. His stomach was joining in on it, flipping around inside of him, twisting amid a bed of confusion, anger, and fear. He looked up and saw Glen giving him a confused look, and then bent his head down again before looking back at Glen.
“So Sam was never at Hyde when you were there?” Gene asked, and Glen nodded in response.
“They said that DCI Williams and their DI - Tyler, I’m guessing, but I never got a name, or if I did, I don’t remember - they said that they were working with Discipline and Complaints on the whole mess, and that they didn’t have any specific information. I worked mostly with a DS Lahr: he was even worse than I was about keeping heads down and not asking any questions. No one wanted to get involved in anything that had happened, especially not related to Haley and Ebsen. Right big man, DS Lahr, but always scared, it seemed. Been a DS for decades, never stirred about anything, ‘less he was told to. Mostly it was just catch and carry,” Glen said, and then, with a slightly disgusted look, “you know, the spade work.” He shook his head, “Never met DCI Williams, or DI Tyler, or DCI Morgan, or DI Scarborough; just know about all that bother that went down over there. They tried to keep it under wraps, too; never saw nought about it in any of the papers at all.”
Gene put his head in his hands as Glen finished, and then exhaled slowly as he leaned back in his chair. “But both of the times that you were at Hyde, you never worked at all with Sam?”
Glen shook his head, “No, Sir, not once. Never saw him, just that file, and I didn’t get too good of a look at that. I think… I’m really not sure on this, but I think it might’ve been transfer orders.”
Gene felt his eyes go wide again, “Transfer orders? You mean the orders for Sam to come down here? And this was when?”
Glen sipped at his Scotch and leaned back, “This were in May of ’71, and then when I came back, it were in September of ’72.” Gene leaned forward and racked his brain, and then jumped up out of his chair, earning a surprised look from Glen.
“Sir?” Glen asked, but Gene didn’t respond. Instead, he moved for the door, storming quickly out of his office and across the floor, until he reached one of the filing cabinets at the far end of the CID room, a tall cabinet labeled, ‘Staff Forms.’ He yanked open the middle drawer of the cabinet so hard that the entire thing shook and rattled where it stood, and then started to frantically leaf through the folders inside, drawing stares from all of the officers in the room. Glen had stood when Gene had, and was just exiting the office and staring at Gene as he continued to rip through the files, eventually yanking out a folder labeled, ‘Tyler’ and then moving towards the nearest desk, where he slammed it down and started to flip through the pages at a rapid, manic pace.
“Gov? What’s happening?” Chris asked, starting to make his way over to the desk where Gene stood, bent low over the folder and still tearing through it at a mad pace. Eventually Gene stopped, and then bent low, staring at one of the sheets inside of the folder. Sam’s original transfer authorization, from February of 1973, authorized and signed by DCI Frank Morgan. Gene leaned back slightly, his hands still grasping the edge of the desk, and then he picked up the folder and kicked his foot into the bottom of the cabinet, the force causing the middle drawer to slide back into place with a loud and rapid crash.
Gene started to move quickly back to his office, shouting over his shoulder, “Skelton, get together everything we have on the current case and meet me in my office, you too, Fletcher! And Turner!” He turned to face one of the other detectives, who was pouring over an old Hyde file with an exasperated look on his face, “The second that Cartwright turns up, you send her in, too!”
Chris scrambled back to his desk and started collecting papers and folders, and Gene retreated back to his office, the folder clenched so tightly in his hand that it was bending and creasing under his grip. Glen followed Gene back in, and then stood against the far wall, near the door, watching as Gene paced the length of his office several times, occasionally looking down at the folder in his hand and flipping back to Sam’s transfer order.
“So you’re sure, you absolutely bloody sure that Morgan wasn’t Sam’s DCI?” Gene turned to Glen as he said it, advancing on him slightly. Glen stood his ground admirably as Gene moved to tower over him, and nodded, a resolute look upon his face as he tried not to let his eyes stray too much to the folder in Gene’s hand.
“Absolutely sure. Morgan and Scarborough, they’re with Discipline and Complaints. I could call down to Hyde, see if I can’t get in touch with Lahr; I could make it sound like a bit of a social call, you know, try and keep them from suspecting,” Glen said, hoping that Gene would shed some light onto the reason that he was so upset over the contents of the folder.
Gene took a step back and looked up and down Glen, and Glen got the feeling that he was being sized up by a very large, and very hungry, predator. Eventually Gene moved back around to the other side of his desk and sat in the chair, motioning towards the phone. “Go on, then. See if you can’t ask about Sam’s past with Hyde, but make damned soddin’ sure you’re discreet about it.”
Glen nodded, and then moved towards the phone, picking it up and requesting that the operator patch him through to Hyde. Chris came in then, the papers and folders a jumble in his hands, pushing the door open awkwardly with his backside as he moved into the room, juggling all of the files together in a haphazard mess. “Gov,” he began, but Gene quieted him.
“Shut up, you ruddy tart!” Gene shouted, and Chris stared at Glen as he sat, waiting for the connection to be made on the phone.
“Hello, DS Lahr? Glen Fletcher, long time no see! No, no, not work related, just thought I’d give you a shout. Well, see, it’s me birthday, two weeks from now, and I was thinking about having some of the old mates from all the stations I’ve been at come down to Salford for drinks, have a little do, see. Oh, we’ve a great boozer there, best whiskey there is. Right. No, really, Bert, I thought it’d be a good way to get to know everybody more an’ all… Yeah, yeah… Exactly. Well, it’s two weeks from Saturday, pub called the Hedley Arms, in Salford… Yeah, yeah, exactly. Listen, I was wondering if you could invite a few of the other fellas, too, all the ones that I worked with. Well, I know I worked closely with you, and DC Bunting, and then DI Tyler, do you think he’d come down? Tyler, you know, bit barmy, but bleedin’ good DI, did his whole career up there, you know, all the way from,” Glen looked up with a panicked look in his eyes and Gene mouthed the year to him, “1960, when he first made DC. You sure? Really? Must be thinking of another station, then. Yeah, yeah, that’s us. No mate, no bananas. Sure. Right. Okay, thanks,” Glen said, and then put down the phone, a decidedly confused look on his face.
Gene leaned in, looking intently at Glen, who was leaning back in his chair, still looking confused, and slightly afraid. “Well?” Gene asked. “Bloody well spit it out, then!”
Glen looked up at Gene, then glanced at Chris, and then looked back at Gene, “He said they’ve never had a DI Tyler in Hyde. Never.” Gene stared at Glen for a moment, and then back at the phone, and then he dove under his desk, pulling up the large box labeled, ‘1972-73’ in black marker. He started to rip out a few files, and then to look through them. A look of intense anger colored his features as he stared, and then he motioned for Chris to come over to him.
“Skelton, arse over here. Look at this,” Gene said, opening up one of the old Hyde case files and showing it to Chris. The carbons of the actual case files seemed fairly new, but they’d all assumed that it was because Hyde had made new copies to send up to them. There was, however, one other glaring detail about all of the Hyde files: some of the pages, especially the ones that listed which officers had been involved in the cases, taken statements, etc, all had slightly smeared ink. “Was the ink smeared like this on all of the case files that we received from Hyde?” Gene was staring at Chris with a look that suggested he might jump up and plaster him against the wall any second, and Chris felt some of the papers fall out of his arms and to the floor as he swallowed, hard, while looking back at Gene and then down at the papers.
“Some of it, yeah. Like it’d just been typed out, right before the carbon were laid on it,” Chris said, and then he let his gaze shift back and forth between both Gene and Glen, a lump steadily rising in his throat. He swallowed against it again, and then moved to sit down on the couch, piling his files down next to him and stooping to pick up the fallen papers as he did so, adding them to the top of the pile. He looked back up at Gene after a moment of sorting through the papers. “Like they were just typed out, before the carbon was laid…”
Gene slammed his fist down on his desk, “Bastards! Damned bastards!” He screamed it so loudly that he knew it must be echoing outside of CID, and he saw a figure jump outside of the glass of the door. Annie slowly pushed it open, a confused look on her face.
“Sir?” Annie asked as she walked in, and stood next to Glen, offering him a tiny smile as a welcome.
Gene looked up and fixed her with a quick stare, and then his eyes narrowed slightly. “Cartwright, did Tyler ever tell you that he wasn’t from Hyde?” Gene asked, and Annie took on a frightened look. Her thoughts immediately spun back to all of the crazed conversations that she’d had with Sam, to his maniacal insistence that he was from the future, and she moved to sit down next to Chris, trying to think of something to say that wouldn’t result in Sam being signed into a psychiatric ward for the rest of his life.
“Well? Speak up, Fussy-britches!” Gene shouted, and Annie locked her eyes on him, still unsure of what to say.
“He, he did mention that he thought he wasn’t from Hyde, Sir, on a few occasions,” Annie said, and Gene slammed his fist down onto the desk again. He turned and looked at Chris, who seemed to shrink back slightly at the fiery look in Gene’s eyes.
“Skelton, did he ever say anything to you?” Gene asked, his voice gone eerily soft and still hard as iron.
“He, well, he’s always been a bit loose upstairs, you know, always going on and on about this way and that way and things, and you know how he was when he first came in, saying ‘what year is it,’ and all to you. But he never really mentioned where he was from, except, you know, saying ‘where I come from,’ and if you’d say ‘Hyde’ first, then he’d agree with you.” Chris racked his brain for any mention that Sam might’ve made of his previous department, and drew a blank.
Gene stood at his desk for a moment, still fuming, the gymnastics act in his brain and stomach giving way to a full blown three-ring circus, complete with elephants and tight-wire walkers. He looked from Glen to Annie to Chris, and then back down at the box of files from Hyde. He seemed to calm down a bit, straightening up to his full height, and then took a deep breath, and promptly swept the box off of his desk with a full blow to the side of it, splitting the cardboard up the side and letting the entire thing land with a thud on the floor. He slammed his fist back down on the desk again, watching as Chris and Annie jumped slightly in response. Glen was still staring at him, shaking his head slightly.
“He were a bit off his nut when I met him, too, Sir, but still a damned good copper,” Glen put in, and Gene ran his hands through his hair, then moved to pour himself an entire glassful of Scotch. He took a moment to down nearly a third of it, and then looked over at Annie.
“Just to fill you in, Hot-pants, we’ve got a bit of a problem with Hyde. It seems that the DCI and DI that I’ve been on the horn to aren’t from Sam’s old department, and, in fact, a DS at Hyde can’t recall there ever being a DI Tyler anywhere at Hyde. But the DCI that I have been speaking to, who is, accordingly to DC Fletcher’s memory, which I trust a damn lot more than I trust any of those lying bastard wankers at Hyde, well, he’s a member of Discipline and Complaints. Apparently, the DCI at Hyde is called Williams, and we haven’t heard a thing from him. But Williams, didn’t sign the transfer authorization for Sam to come down here, Morgan did! And all of the case files that we have from Hyde, if you look closely, are not only recent copies, parts of them are recently typed!” Gene slammed his hands down on the desk again, wishing that there were someone readily available to hit. He looked up hopefully for a moment, wondering how any of the three officers before him would react to him punching them in the gut, just to blow off steam, and realized that none of them would work. Fletcher would likely hit him back and then declare him further off of his nut than Tyler, Skelton would just cower and take it, and Cartwright, well, as much as she was a good detective, he didn’t think he could ever openly punch a woman. At least not one that he liked. If Sam were here, he reasoned, he’d say something just to wind Gene up, they’d both get a few good shots in, and then it’d be back to business. But Sam wasn’t there, and Gene felt his absence more acutely than ever.
“But Gov, the wording on all of the first hand reports in the files is exactly the same,” Annie stated, trying to fit together everything that she’d just heard. “And it is very thorough, very by the book, very like Sam. Except…” Annie stopped and thought for a moment, shaking her head as she did so. “It was a lot like Sam, but it wasn’t quite him, the way that everything was written. All of the statements that are marked down as being from him, they’re all written differently from the other reports in the files, all written in the same manner, and while it’s a lot like Sam…”
Gene looked over at Annie, “It isn’t Sam. That’s what Hyde’s done. They’ve just changed the files around a bit, and they’ve sent us someone else’s soddin’ career up in all of those boxes! Days, bloody days, how many man hours have I put on those bleedin’ files, and they’re all from another officer! Some other poncy Hyde git, they’ve just changed the name to Sam’s!”
Glen looked over at Gene sharply, an idea forming in his mind, “And if Tyler had been a hushpuppy, but then requested a transfer to a normal division…” Gene’s mind snapped up this idea and felt it clink into place in his gut.
“If Sam was a bleedin’ hushpuppy, then they couldn’t release what he’d worked on before sending it over. So they just slapped his name on some other bugger’s files, and then sent them up. I ought to send over to Discipline and Complaints myself, get those damned nancies banged up for wasting police time!” Gene slammed his fist down on the desk again, and then looked back up at the other three. “Except that Sam knows more than his way around a crime scene, he’s Mister-Bleedin-Crime-Scene-Holly-Go-Lightly-Investigation, he has to have a lot of background in CID… But your DS, this Lahr, he didn’t have any soddin’ recollection at all of Sam.” Gene’s mind paused in the middle of the third ring’s act as the circus started to quiet down, and he let his gaze wander back over to Annie and Chris.
“So Sam was in CID somewhere else, and then in Discipline and Complaints for a time, and then he transferred back to CID, only CID here, and not… Not wherever he came from,” Annie stated, and Gene nodded at her.
“And if this DCI Morgan and Sam himself are or were Discipline and Complaints, it’s going to take channel after channel of swimming through the red tape and filling out forms to get information on any cases that Sam dealt with while he was there; D&C falls under the damned Police Authority, not under the Constabulary, not that the two don’t work together whenever doing so presents them with the greatest opportunity for driving bloody thorns into my soddin’ side,” Gene leaned back heavily in his chair and gave a very dissatisfied grunt, then leaned forward and looked up at Annie and Chris again. “Right. You two, get Fletcher all the way up to speed on the case. I want him briefed in full on everything, and I want him to tell you everything that he just told me. Everyone on the same damned page.”
Gene looked them over once again, and then barked a quick, “Move!” at them, and all three filed out of his office. He stared at the glass of Scotch and then moved to down more of it, staring into the glass as the door to his office swung fully shut. “Where the hell are you from, then, Sammy boy?” Gene asked, swirling the amber liquid around in the glass, and then drinking another third of it back. An odd, tingling sensation started to worm its way into Gene’s guts at that moment, and he stood then, pulling the phone over to himself. When the operator answered, he requested to be transferred to the hospital, but not to the ICU, or to any of the staff that were involved in Sam’s case. He needed different information…
Comments are highly encouraged and greatly appreciated! Feel free to mutate the bunny, too!
“Don’t we all, DC Fletcher. And I want you in my office, now,” Gene said, and then stormed towards the cracked glass of the door. Glen followed him, a surprised look on his face, and then the two of them entered the office. As Gene stood at the door, he noticed Ray getting up and grabbing his coat, and shouted out towards Chris and Ray, “Ray, Doctor Denslow’s on board with us, he’s going through all of the old charts on Sam, just to make sure nothing’s amiss. I want a full report on everything he says when he gets back to you on it, and if there’s even a hint that any damned thing’s off in the soddin’ slightest, I want you to get back to me on it, straight-bloody away. Chris, you and Cartwright drop the case files for a bit, get on every ruddy detail of the damned case, take one of them over-field things on it, second she gets her pretty little arse through the door, understood?”
“Got it, Gov,” Ray said as he headed for the door.
“Wilco, Gov,” Chris said, and started to sort through the enormous pile of papers on his desk, letting a few fall to the floor. Gene gritted his teeth at this, and then pulled the door shut, ripping off his coat and hanging it on the coat rack, and then heading for his chair, pulling two glasses and a half empty bottle of scotch from one of his filing cabinets in the process. He poured a liberal amount into the glasses, and then motioned for Fletcher to sit down. Fletcher took the seat across the desk, and raised his eyebrows at the proffered drink.
“What, never been offered a whiskey by a superior before, Fletcher?” Gene said, downing his own drink in a large gulp and then pouring himself another.
“Not as such, no, Sir. Thank you,” Glen said, and then took a small drink from the glass, a slightly pleased look on his features. Gene figured that he’d still been taking ten types of shit from his other superiors.
“Shame. Couple shades of muddy aren’t keeping you from being one of the best in the area, ‘s what I’ve been hearing of late,” Gene said. Glen’s face fell slightly, but he accepted the compliment for what it was, not wanting to put up any sort of argument with the first DCI to ever specifically request his presence on a case.
“I read about DI Tyler in the papers; he all right, then?” Glen asked, and Gene leaned back in his chair, knowing that Sam had made a bit of a bond with Glen, although over what, he wasn’t sure.
“He’s still in hospital, but he’ll be out soon enough,” Gene said, and Glen nodded at him, noticing the hard set of Gene’s face and not willing to ask for any more information until it was offered. Gene nodded at his silence, and then asked, “So, Carling and Skelton told you why we’re going through all of the case files from Hyde, then?”
Glen nodded, “Reckon it’s a bit of a vendetta against DI Tyler, and that it has something to do with his old cases, they said. Every one of the victims so far’s fit a rough description of Tyler, and the general idea is that the killer was looking for him as well as doing in the others.”
Gene nodded, “Only there’s a bit more to it than that, so far as Hyde’s concerned. DCI Morgan, from Hyde, he’s been down here to check in on Sam, and he and his DI, Scarborough, and both of those tossers have been giving us a bit of the run around so far as the bleedin’ case files are concerned,” Gene began, and then looked up to see a confused look on Glen’s face. “What? Am I not speaking soddin’ English?”
“DCI Morgan and DI Scarborough?” Glen asked, and Gene nodded, then leaned forward heavily in his chair, waiting for Glen to finish. “They weren’t in Hyde CID when I was there,” Glen said, and Gene felt his eyes go round and his blood begin to boil. If they weren’t the DCI and DI for CID in Hyde, then who were they, and why was Hyde transferring him to them every time that he called? “I remember the names, though - there was a bit of bother at Hyde, and they were in the process of promoting a new DCI - a DCI Williams, but I never met the man. Nor Morgan nor Scarborough - they were in…” Glen leaned back and stared at the ceiling, a chagrined frown on his face.
“Only, at the time, I was tryin’ more to keep meself to meself, you know, try and keep a low profile, on account of me bein’ colored and all, so I never really got to know many people, especially not at the top, like… Mostly it was just transferring from station to station, working on filing, from the time I made DC to the time I met DI Tyler. He were really the one that got me really started in on the job, the way that he believed in me - real inspiring, isn’t he?” Gene grunted an affirmative at this, and Glen continued, “But DCI Morgan and DI Scarborough, they weren’t in CID, they were… They were in Discipline and Complaints! Some new division of it, as I reckon - I can’t recall the name - I think maybe it were ‘Mars’.”
“Mars?” Gene wasn’t sure how to take this news - if Morgan was in Discipline and Complaints, why was he the one that Hyde kept transferring him to, and what the hell did Fletcher mean, ‘Mars?’ It made no sense at all…
“I’m sure of it, they were in some new branch of Discipline and Complaints; if it weren’t Mars, it were something like that. And the old DCI, a DCI Jack Haley, he were caught up in some bother about taking backhanders, and were actually sent down. Involvement in an actual murder case, a lot like,” Glen paused and fixed a nervous stare on Gene, “A lot like what happened with Superintendant Woolf. DCI Haley was the one that I’d been reporting to the first time that I were at Hyde, a few weeks in ’71, and then I heard about them going down just before I came back up for another bit at Hyde, him and a DS Ebsen, they’d been mixed up in some bad business, but it was never explained to me exactly what it was. So then I came up again in ’72, and there was a new DCI, Williams, but I never met him - they said he was actually lending a hand to Discipline and Complaints, but that it were all hush hush, no news to be had on it. That’s where I remember seeing Tyler’s name!” Gene polished off his second glass of Scotch and leaned in further, his elbows in the middle of his desk.
“I was handling a box full of papers that were supposed to be confidential; I had orders not to read them and all, and I was supposed to deliver them to DCI Williams’ office. I was coming out of the collator’s den, and tripped, and a bunch of the files spilled out. I tried not to look at them, I mean, I didn’t want to get involved, but the one on top was a personnel report, and there were a picture with it - it was DI Tyler, I’m sure of it. That’s why I remembered him when I was up here in June.” Glen looked across at Gene, hoping that at least part of his story would make sense to the other man, and Gene stared back at him, a cryptic look on his face.
“So you’re telling me that you never actually met Sam when he was at Hyde? And the fellas that they’ve been shunting us to, all this time, are in Discipline and Complaints? And they had files on Sam at the time?” Gene’s mind had stopped doing somersaults and had started in on a full-blown, Olympics-caliber gymnastics routine. His stomach was joining in on it, flipping around inside of him, twisting amid a bed of confusion, anger, and fear. He looked up and saw Glen giving him a confused look, and then bent his head down again before looking back at Glen.
“So Sam was never at Hyde when you were there?” Gene asked, and Glen nodded in response.
“They said that DCI Williams and their DI - Tyler, I’m guessing, but I never got a name, or if I did, I don’t remember - they said that they were working with Discipline and Complaints on the whole mess, and that they didn’t have any specific information. I worked mostly with a DS Lahr: he was even worse than I was about keeping heads down and not asking any questions. No one wanted to get involved in anything that had happened, especially not related to Haley and Ebsen. Right big man, DS Lahr, but always scared, it seemed. Been a DS for decades, never stirred about anything, ‘less he was told to. Mostly it was just catch and carry,” Glen said, and then, with a slightly disgusted look, “you know, the spade work.” He shook his head, “Never met DCI Williams, or DI Tyler, or DCI Morgan, or DI Scarborough; just know about all that bother that went down over there. They tried to keep it under wraps, too; never saw nought about it in any of the papers at all.”
Gene put his head in his hands as Glen finished, and then exhaled slowly as he leaned back in his chair. “But both of the times that you were at Hyde, you never worked at all with Sam?”
Glen shook his head, “No, Sir, not once. Never saw him, just that file, and I didn’t get too good of a look at that. I think… I’m really not sure on this, but I think it might’ve been transfer orders.”
Gene felt his eyes go wide again, “Transfer orders? You mean the orders for Sam to come down here? And this was when?”
Glen sipped at his Scotch and leaned back, “This were in May of ’71, and then when I came back, it were in September of ’72.” Gene leaned forward and racked his brain, and then jumped up out of his chair, earning a surprised look from Glen.
“Sir?” Glen asked, but Gene didn’t respond. Instead, he moved for the door, storming quickly out of his office and across the floor, until he reached one of the filing cabinets at the far end of the CID room, a tall cabinet labeled, ‘Staff Forms.’ He yanked open the middle drawer of the cabinet so hard that the entire thing shook and rattled where it stood, and then started to frantically leaf through the folders inside, drawing stares from all of the officers in the room. Glen had stood when Gene had, and was just exiting the office and staring at Gene as he continued to rip through the files, eventually yanking out a folder labeled, ‘Tyler’ and then moving towards the nearest desk, where he slammed it down and started to flip through the pages at a rapid, manic pace.
“Gov? What’s happening?” Chris asked, starting to make his way over to the desk where Gene stood, bent low over the folder and still tearing through it at a mad pace. Eventually Gene stopped, and then bent low, staring at one of the sheets inside of the folder. Sam’s original transfer authorization, from February of 1973, authorized and signed by DCI Frank Morgan. Gene leaned back slightly, his hands still grasping the edge of the desk, and then he picked up the folder and kicked his foot into the bottom of the cabinet, the force causing the middle drawer to slide back into place with a loud and rapid crash.
Gene started to move quickly back to his office, shouting over his shoulder, “Skelton, get together everything we have on the current case and meet me in my office, you too, Fletcher! And Turner!” He turned to face one of the other detectives, who was pouring over an old Hyde file with an exasperated look on his face, “The second that Cartwright turns up, you send her in, too!”
Chris scrambled back to his desk and started collecting papers and folders, and Gene retreated back to his office, the folder clenched so tightly in his hand that it was bending and creasing under his grip. Glen followed Gene back in, and then stood against the far wall, near the door, watching as Gene paced the length of his office several times, occasionally looking down at the folder in his hand and flipping back to Sam’s transfer order.
“So you’re sure, you absolutely bloody sure that Morgan wasn’t Sam’s DCI?” Gene turned to Glen as he said it, advancing on him slightly. Glen stood his ground admirably as Gene moved to tower over him, and nodded, a resolute look upon his face as he tried not to let his eyes stray too much to the folder in Gene’s hand.
“Absolutely sure. Morgan and Scarborough, they’re with Discipline and Complaints. I could call down to Hyde, see if I can’t get in touch with Lahr; I could make it sound like a bit of a social call, you know, try and keep them from suspecting,” Glen said, hoping that Gene would shed some light onto the reason that he was so upset over the contents of the folder.
Gene took a step back and looked up and down Glen, and Glen got the feeling that he was being sized up by a very large, and very hungry, predator. Eventually Gene moved back around to the other side of his desk and sat in the chair, motioning towards the phone. “Go on, then. See if you can’t ask about Sam’s past with Hyde, but make damned soddin’ sure you’re discreet about it.”
Glen nodded, and then moved towards the phone, picking it up and requesting that the operator patch him through to Hyde. Chris came in then, the papers and folders a jumble in his hands, pushing the door open awkwardly with his backside as he moved into the room, juggling all of the files together in a haphazard mess. “Gov,” he began, but Gene quieted him.
“Shut up, you ruddy tart!” Gene shouted, and Chris stared at Glen as he sat, waiting for the connection to be made on the phone.
“Hello, DS Lahr? Glen Fletcher, long time no see! No, no, not work related, just thought I’d give you a shout. Well, see, it’s me birthday, two weeks from now, and I was thinking about having some of the old mates from all the stations I’ve been at come down to Salford for drinks, have a little do, see. Oh, we’ve a great boozer there, best whiskey there is. Right. No, really, Bert, I thought it’d be a good way to get to know everybody more an’ all… Yeah, yeah… Exactly. Well, it’s two weeks from Saturday, pub called the Hedley Arms, in Salford… Yeah, yeah, exactly. Listen, I was wondering if you could invite a few of the other fellas, too, all the ones that I worked with. Well, I know I worked closely with you, and DC Bunting, and then DI Tyler, do you think he’d come down? Tyler, you know, bit barmy, but bleedin’ good DI, did his whole career up there, you know, all the way from,” Glen looked up with a panicked look in his eyes and Gene mouthed the year to him, “1960, when he first made DC. You sure? Really? Must be thinking of another station, then. Yeah, yeah, that’s us. No mate, no bananas. Sure. Right. Okay, thanks,” Glen said, and then put down the phone, a decidedly confused look on his face.
Gene leaned in, looking intently at Glen, who was leaning back in his chair, still looking confused, and slightly afraid. “Well?” Gene asked. “Bloody well spit it out, then!”
Glen looked up at Gene, then glanced at Chris, and then looked back at Gene, “He said they’ve never had a DI Tyler in Hyde. Never.” Gene stared at Glen for a moment, and then back at the phone, and then he dove under his desk, pulling up the large box labeled, ‘1972-73’ in black marker. He started to rip out a few files, and then to look through them. A look of intense anger colored his features as he stared, and then he motioned for Chris to come over to him.
“Skelton, arse over here. Look at this,” Gene said, opening up one of the old Hyde case files and showing it to Chris. The carbons of the actual case files seemed fairly new, but they’d all assumed that it was because Hyde had made new copies to send up to them. There was, however, one other glaring detail about all of the Hyde files: some of the pages, especially the ones that listed which officers had been involved in the cases, taken statements, etc, all had slightly smeared ink. “Was the ink smeared like this on all of the case files that we received from Hyde?” Gene was staring at Chris with a look that suggested he might jump up and plaster him against the wall any second, and Chris felt some of the papers fall out of his arms and to the floor as he swallowed, hard, while looking back at Gene and then down at the papers.
“Some of it, yeah. Like it’d just been typed out, right before the carbon were laid on it,” Chris said, and then he let his gaze shift back and forth between both Gene and Glen, a lump steadily rising in his throat. He swallowed against it again, and then moved to sit down on the couch, piling his files down next to him and stooping to pick up the fallen papers as he did so, adding them to the top of the pile. He looked back up at Gene after a moment of sorting through the papers. “Like they were just typed out, before the carbon was laid…”
Gene slammed his fist down on his desk, “Bastards! Damned bastards!” He screamed it so loudly that he knew it must be echoing outside of CID, and he saw a figure jump outside of the glass of the door. Annie slowly pushed it open, a confused look on her face.
“Sir?” Annie asked as she walked in, and stood next to Glen, offering him a tiny smile as a welcome.
Gene looked up and fixed her with a quick stare, and then his eyes narrowed slightly. “Cartwright, did Tyler ever tell you that he wasn’t from Hyde?” Gene asked, and Annie took on a frightened look. Her thoughts immediately spun back to all of the crazed conversations that she’d had with Sam, to his maniacal insistence that he was from the future, and she moved to sit down next to Chris, trying to think of something to say that wouldn’t result in Sam being signed into a psychiatric ward for the rest of his life.
“Well? Speak up, Fussy-britches!” Gene shouted, and Annie locked her eyes on him, still unsure of what to say.
“He, he did mention that he thought he wasn’t from Hyde, Sir, on a few occasions,” Annie said, and Gene slammed his fist down onto the desk again. He turned and looked at Chris, who seemed to shrink back slightly at the fiery look in Gene’s eyes.
“Skelton, did he ever say anything to you?” Gene asked, his voice gone eerily soft and still hard as iron.
“He, well, he’s always been a bit loose upstairs, you know, always going on and on about this way and that way and things, and you know how he was when he first came in, saying ‘what year is it,’ and all to you. But he never really mentioned where he was from, except, you know, saying ‘where I come from,’ and if you’d say ‘Hyde’ first, then he’d agree with you.” Chris racked his brain for any mention that Sam might’ve made of his previous department, and drew a blank.
Gene stood at his desk for a moment, still fuming, the gymnastics act in his brain and stomach giving way to a full blown three-ring circus, complete with elephants and tight-wire walkers. He looked from Glen to Annie to Chris, and then back down at the box of files from Hyde. He seemed to calm down a bit, straightening up to his full height, and then took a deep breath, and promptly swept the box off of his desk with a full blow to the side of it, splitting the cardboard up the side and letting the entire thing land with a thud on the floor. He slammed his fist back down on the desk again, watching as Chris and Annie jumped slightly in response. Glen was still staring at him, shaking his head slightly.
“He were a bit off his nut when I met him, too, Sir, but still a damned good copper,” Glen put in, and Gene ran his hands through his hair, then moved to pour himself an entire glassful of Scotch. He took a moment to down nearly a third of it, and then looked over at Annie.
“Just to fill you in, Hot-pants, we’ve got a bit of a problem with Hyde. It seems that the DCI and DI that I’ve been on the horn to aren’t from Sam’s old department, and, in fact, a DS at Hyde can’t recall there ever being a DI Tyler anywhere at Hyde. But the DCI that I have been speaking to, who is, accordingly to DC Fletcher’s memory, which I trust a damn lot more than I trust any of those lying bastard wankers at Hyde, well, he’s a member of Discipline and Complaints. Apparently, the DCI at Hyde is called Williams, and we haven’t heard a thing from him. But Williams, didn’t sign the transfer authorization for Sam to come down here, Morgan did! And all of the case files that we have from Hyde, if you look closely, are not only recent copies, parts of them are recently typed!” Gene slammed his hands down on the desk again, wishing that there were someone readily available to hit. He looked up hopefully for a moment, wondering how any of the three officers before him would react to him punching them in the gut, just to blow off steam, and realized that none of them would work. Fletcher would likely hit him back and then declare him further off of his nut than Tyler, Skelton would just cower and take it, and Cartwright, well, as much as she was a good detective, he didn’t think he could ever openly punch a woman. At least not one that he liked. If Sam were here, he reasoned, he’d say something just to wind Gene up, they’d both get a few good shots in, and then it’d be back to business. But Sam wasn’t there, and Gene felt his absence more acutely than ever.
“But Gov, the wording on all of the first hand reports in the files is exactly the same,” Annie stated, trying to fit together everything that she’d just heard. “And it is very thorough, very by the book, very like Sam. Except…” Annie stopped and thought for a moment, shaking her head as she did so. “It was a lot like Sam, but it wasn’t quite him, the way that everything was written. All of the statements that are marked down as being from him, they’re all written differently from the other reports in the files, all written in the same manner, and while it’s a lot like Sam…”
Gene looked over at Annie, “It isn’t Sam. That’s what Hyde’s done. They’ve just changed the files around a bit, and they’ve sent us someone else’s soddin’ career up in all of those boxes! Days, bloody days, how many man hours have I put on those bleedin’ files, and they’re all from another officer! Some other poncy Hyde git, they’ve just changed the name to Sam’s!”
Glen looked over at Gene sharply, an idea forming in his mind, “And if Tyler had been a hushpuppy, but then requested a transfer to a normal division…” Gene’s mind snapped up this idea and felt it clink into place in his gut.
“If Sam was a bleedin’ hushpuppy, then they couldn’t release what he’d worked on before sending it over. So they just slapped his name on some other bugger’s files, and then sent them up. I ought to send over to Discipline and Complaints myself, get those damned nancies banged up for wasting police time!” Gene slammed his fist down on the desk again, and then looked back up at the other three. “Except that Sam knows more than his way around a crime scene, he’s Mister-Bleedin-Crime-Scene-Holly-Go-Lightly-Investigation, he has to have a lot of background in CID… But your DS, this Lahr, he didn’t have any soddin’ recollection at all of Sam.” Gene’s mind paused in the middle of the third ring’s act as the circus started to quiet down, and he let his gaze wander back over to Annie and Chris.
“So Sam was in CID somewhere else, and then in Discipline and Complaints for a time, and then he transferred back to CID, only CID here, and not… Not wherever he came from,” Annie stated, and Gene nodded at her.
“And if this DCI Morgan and Sam himself are or were Discipline and Complaints, it’s going to take channel after channel of swimming through the red tape and filling out forms to get information on any cases that Sam dealt with while he was there; D&C falls under the damned Police Authority, not under the Constabulary, not that the two don’t work together whenever doing so presents them with the greatest opportunity for driving bloody thorns into my soddin’ side,” Gene leaned back heavily in his chair and gave a very dissatisfied grunt, then leaned forward and looked up at Annie and Chris again. “Right. You two, get Fletcher all the way up to speed on the case. I want him briefed in full on everything, and I want him to tell you everything that he just told me. Everyone on the same damned page.”
Gene looked them over once again, and then barked a quick, “Move!” at them, and all three filed out of his office. He stared at the glass of Scotch and then moved to down more of it, staring into the glass as the door to his office swung fully shut. “Where the hell are you from, then, Sammy boy?” Gene asked, swirling the amber liquid around in the glass, and then drinking another third of it back. An odd, tingling sensation started to worm its way into Gene’s guts at that moment, and he stood then, pulling the phone over to himself. When the operator answered, he requested to be transferred to the hospital, but not to the ICU, or to any of the staff that were involved in Sam’s case. He needed different information…
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