Gregson wants to be a tree when he dies.
He knows of some organization that will plant a tree into your ashes or something, and he plans to live on for eternity as a majestic oak in some park somewhere. Lestrade immediately resolves to outlive Gregson so that he can go and take a piss on him once he's a tree.
"It's kind of beautiful." says Bradstreet, when Greg brings it up over coffee. It's lunch, and they're sitting on opposite sides of Lestrade's desk with the sunlight coming in through the big window. The radio is turned down, but not off, and it's playing some new top 100 billboard hit that Lestrade doesn't know. He'd like to say he'd never heard it before in his life, except that would be a lie: he remembers the chorus from when he was driving to work two days ago. The song had been playing all the way along Victoria Street and Broadway and he had had a headache and had been thinking about that case with the identical twins and the cat. "You don't really die, that way." continues Bradstreet, "You're reborn. A tombstone, that's death, but a tree.. that's life."
"Except you're dead." says Lestrade. "The tree's alive, but you aren't."
Thomas takes a really long sip of his coffee. "See, this is why I love talking to you, Greg." he says. "Right little ray of sunshine, you are."
Greg is going to be cremated when he dies, because a tombstone is too depressing. He doesn't want to be a name and a heap of dirt, and have people come and put flowers on the dirt and maybe even stand there on top of him being all upset about things. He'll just be burned up and put in a jar, and that will be the end of that. He tells Bradstreet this. The top 100 billboard hit stops playing on the radio and another one takes it's place.
"Me too." says Thomas. "Cremation. Cheaper and easier."
"Who's going to want me, though?" asks Greg. "When I'm dead. No one's going to want to keep my ashes."
"Sherlock will keep them"
"He'll do some experiment with me."
"I will, then." says Thomas. "I'll put you on my mantlepiece."
Lestrade imagines his ashes being on Bradstreet's mantlepiece, in one of those decorated jars, next to the school photos of Thomas' kids and the pipe that his grandfather used to smoke before he died. He imagines people walking past him every day, eating and laughing and watching telly in the same room where he was dead in a jar. He imagines people coming over to visit and not even knowing his ashes were there. They'd just think he was a nice vase or something. Bradstreet's family would have to pick the jar up to dust the mantle and then have to put him back when they were through dusting, along with the pipe and the photographs and the rest of the rubbish that Bradstreet keeps on his mantlepiece. He decides he's not too keen on that idea."Just put my ashes in the bin." he says. "Or down the loo or something."
"I wouldn't put you down the loo. You're my friend."
"It wouldn't be me, though." argues Greg. Bradstreet takes another sip of his coffee. "I'd be dead. It would just be ashes. Not me. You wouldn't be putting me down anything. Just what was left of me after I burned up."
Thomas just looks at him for a long time. Then he takes a sip from his coffee again. "You know, what they ought to do," he says thoughtfully, "is find a way to make you into vinyl when you die. A record. Instead of a tree, you could be music. I'd like that."
Greg finds that plan incredibly flawed. It takes him forty minutes to find the right song to hoover to on weekends. It took him a year and a half to choose a wedding song, and he still lies up nights second-guessing his choice. He has no idea how he's supposed to decide what song he wants to be for all eternity. It's impossible. He wouldn't even know where to start.
"What record would you be?" Greg asks, curious. You can probably tell a lot about a man by the way they would answer that question. He could probably tell a lot about himself if he knew the real answer. He wishes he did. His coffee has gone mostly cold, but he drinks some anyways, to give Thomas time to think. Thomas thinks for a grand total of about forty seconds. "Strawberry Fields Forever." he says. "Penny Lane on the B side."
Greg hadn't known he'd been expecting that answer until Bradstreet said it. He'd expected it though. He feels that the song had been chosen partly because of the inclusion of the word 'forever' in the title. Bradstreet loves the concept of forever. Greg hates it. When he was a kid he used to lie in his bed and try and imagine forever, something that went on and on and on and on and on and never stopped, not even then, not ever, just kept going and going and didn't stop and was still going and it always scared him more than any ghost story or horror film ever had. Even Jaws. Sharks are quantifiable, shark attacks begin and end, just like songs do, but forever doesn't begin or end or anything, it just is, and is forever. Greg thinks that's terrifying.
"What do you think?" asks Thomas.
"I think you ought to listen to Strawberry Fields Forever while you're still alive, instead" says Greg.
"That's rather deep." says Thomas, impressed. "I'll take that advice."
Greg hadn't been trying to be deep. Thomas gets up from the opposite side of the desk and brushes the crumbs off his trousers. "I'd best be getting back to work." he says, crushing the styrofoam cup that he'd been drinking out of in his hand. Greg nods, and hands Thomas his own styrofoam cup so that the other DI can put it in the bin for him, and knows that he's never going to listen to Strawberry Fields Forever again the same way because it's always going to be the song on the A side of the record that Thomas Bradstreet would want to be made into when he died. "Just promise you won't be a tree." says Greg.
Bradstreet laughs. He doesn't promise, though. Greg imagines a park with Bradstreet and Gregson standing side by side as trees. All the kids in the park will run past playing football, and not even knowing that the trees used to be two of his colleagues and that one of them wanted to be made into a vinyl record of Strawberry Fields Forever with Penny Lane on the B side. He hates that. He hates all of it. Greg doesn't want to be a tree when he dies. Greg doesn't want to be anything when he dies.
Human by The Killers is on the radio on the way home. Greg remembers lying on the couch crying to that song after his wife left him. His Ipod was on shuffle in it's docking station and he'd taken a whole pack of beer into the living room and gotten insanely pissed and then he'd laid down on the couch and cried a whole lot. That song came on just as he started really crying and he'd just lay there with his face buried in the arm of the couch sobbing and sobbing until he couldn't breathe and the volume was up at maximum so that Brandon Flowers was screaming at him about being human or dancer and he'd just cried. He remembers how all the beer bottles had been stacked up on the floor like a fence and he was choking a lot and he kept thinking he was going to drown in his own tears and that he wouldn't really mind if he did. And all through that, the song was on maximum volume, just blasting through the room, and he started feeling like there was nothing in the world left but that song and it was just everywhere and he was drowning in it, and in that moment it was the most insanely profound and moving and important song in all of the world. And then just like that the song ended and Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd came on shuffle. The title of that song could have been relevant to his current situation except that he doesn't remember wishing his ex wife was there at all, only wishing that he was dead.
He remembers this as he's driving home from work, remembers crying on his couch to The Killers and then wishing he was dead. The problem with music is that you don't ever forget stuff like crying on your couch to The Killers and then wishing you were dead, and then whenever you hear Human all you can think about is that night you were crying on your couch with all the beer bottles stacked up like a fence. It's the same reason he can't listen to Layla anymore, and the same reason that now he's going to have trouble with Strawberry Fields Forever too. He wishes he had the sense not to listen to music when bad things were happening. Because it just spoils the music. It really does.
He doesn't turn off Human though, for the same reason he knows he'll always have to listen to music when bad things are happening. Because music that makes you feel bad is better than none at all. He turns the radio up really loud and thinks about dying, and The Killers, and Gregson and his stupid trees, and all of a sudden he starts getting the same feeling he had had that night after his wife left him: like the answer to everything is in the song, so he starts listening hard and trying to figure out if he's a human or a dancer but just as he thinks he might be getting somewhere the song ends. He's waiting for the next song to be Wish You Were Here, but it's not. It's not even a song, just a radio commercial.
The next day he decides to conduct an experiment to see if he's actually mad, or if this kind of thing is normal.
"How often do you think about dying?" he asks Thomas. The other DI shrugs. "Quite often, I suppose. I'm a cop, I have to."
That makes Greg feel better a bit. He's a cop. He has to.