Chapter Four
Gene Hunt had a brother called Stuart, who - one summer in 1975 when he was thirteen and Gene was ten - rescued a young bird which had fallen into their back yard from a very ill-advised nest on a telephone pole.
It wasn't dead, but wouldn't fly, only hop around the shoebox they put it in. They were encouraged when it drank water from an eggcup and stabbed at the woodlice Gene retrieved from cracks in the yard wall, going back and back for more even though it was getting darker and they wanted to be in bed before their Dad got home.
In the morning, running down the stairs in his socks, Gene found the cat in the kitchen leaning over the box, licking its lips. At the table, smoking a fag and still in a boozy cocoon of happiness, their father had been sitting, watching and laughing.
"And... I don't even know why I'm telling you all this," Gene says, stopping the story, trying to shake the feeling of pressure in his chest. Yesterday was another long, intense day at the files and records, trying to chase back the Cavalier through low-rent personal sales ads in the local paper and he finished too late to reach the hospital. Today it's Saturday again and although he has every intention of carrying on working, no one expects him at the station.
He's sitting by Tyler's bed, and he can't remember exactly what he began trying to explain that ended up bringing out all that crap.
"I mean, you know, the old man's brother could be a bit loose with his fists when he'd had a pint or two. By the time I was thirteen in '78, me and Stu stuck together, we could take him."
Tyler's very still today, eyes not even moving, and Gene has to concentrate to see the reassuring sign of his chest rising and falling.
Tyler is by some definition alive, no doubt about it, breathing on his own, but there can't be any way he can hear anything, not that deep under – he doesn't respond to voice, to touch, even when the nurses shake him and shine a light in his eyes as they do every four hours on what they tell Gene are necessary neuro observations.
Telling Sam Tyler is like telling the void – nothing will come back from it.
As always, when he thinks about Stuart, something turns over and hurts deep inside Gene's chest. He'd never told Rachel about Stuart, there'd never been what felt like the right time, he'd never really thought she'd want to know, and he'd never been able to stand the thought of questions.
But Tyler is a million miles away inside his own head, might as well be on another planet, and simply bringing the words out into nothingness likes this feels like bringing the acid out of his chest.
Gene sighs.
"The thing about Stuart was," he says slowly, twisting and untwisting his fingers as he speaks, "that he got into drugs. And I didn't notice until it was too late."
Outside the hospital, spring is moving forwards in a wave of green and fecund proliferation, and of course the sun is fucking shining brighter than it was last week, but although the fact has no meaning it remains the truth, and Gene winds down his car window, enjoying the heat and the scent of cut grass.
Although it's probably in truth not much healthier than the takeaways, Gene feels almost a glow of pride as he buys a selection of ready meals at the garage to stack in his freezer. He stands for a while, contemplating the anaemic collection of flowers in black plastic buckets, before telling himself he's an idiot and grabbing Auto Trader on the way to the till. At the counter there are sweets and cigarettes and painkillers – impulse buys and he takes one packet of each.
While he's been out, Rachel has phoned and left a message about car tax. Gene deletes it and sticks some cold pizza slices in the microwave, sitting on the sofa while he's waiting, pen poised over his notebook.
He probably ought to buy another computer, but he thinks better this way, ink in hand, this is how it used to be back when he was still fresh and bright and invincible.
He's always felt too much, far too much – moments like this, the melancholy sinks into him with a burn that's almost pleasant. Alcohol deadened those feelings more than replaced them, stopped him caring too much about anything, maybe prevented him – he sees it now – ever really feeling enough about some things he should have valued.
What happened with Tyler has largely spooked him out of his usual evening drinks, and has given him something else to do instead. And although he's told Tyler so much today, although he's never been more aware of how far he's fallen down the shitty hill of life's disappointments, now he feels alive, he's aware that he feels - for the first time in a decade – real.
Colin Raims.
Lauren Chester. Tina Mitchell.
Each name a life, but here in front of Gene they're reduced to incident numbers and index keys on triplicate evidence forms, linked only by paper clips.
Like the charts at the end of Tyler's bed on the Neurosurgical Ward, the run of numbers, the wiggling line of temperature and pulse that describe day after day of a human existence, evidence without meaning, information without the ability to inform. That life of Tyler's that Gene Hunt barely knows and yet maybe saved, just after almost definitely, almost nearly ending it.
Sam Tyler is the link, whoever Sam Tyler really is. Sam Tyler connects the dots. Sam Tyler makes the reason clear, or could; Sam Tyler makes it all make sense.
"I'm not who you think I am, and I don't think you're who you think you are either."
That was what Tyler had told him, that day on Tactical Driving, during the period when they were still talking rather than snarling, his eyes quick and his tongue sharp, more alive than you could reckon.
Gene wants to finish that conversation, because the more he reads this man's working out, the more he sees of the man's mind, the more fascinating it becomes.
"Oi! What's all this then?! I didn't ask for a roommate! You remember what happened to my last one, don't ya?" a elderly male voice grumbled from behind the curtain partitioning the sterile white hospital room.
"Now, Chief Inspector Mr. Hunt, that's just a retired police officer ranting away." Nurse Halloway soothed. "We think he might be in a coma; he's only going to be here a short time while we're waiting for the CAT scan machine to be free. He was just brought in; he's definitely unconscious but we're not sure why." Nurse Halloway chose to inform, in the interests of professionalism.
"Does it seem like an accident or a crime, love?" DS Gene Hunt asked before he could stop himself. Raising her eyebrows at his sudden investigation, Nurse Halloway decided to answer honestly. "I'm not sure. There's an investigation going on where you work, but we're pretty sure some sort of vehicle hit him as he was standing outside his own car."
"Was there anything suspicious found in his car? Any questionable substances?" Mr. Hunt squinted as he tried to view his colleague lain in the hospital bed, ensuring that the retired police officer in the next room partitioned by only a set of curtains didn't eavesdrop on their conversation.
"Nothing seemed suspicious at the time. There was an iPod still playing when our paramedics got there, a discarded water bottle, and a book with a few dog-eared pages tossed in the backseat." Nurse Halloway said to the police officer with 23 years of experience.
Gene scrawled her statement into his black notebook to be written out into a Microsoft Word document later. Minding that Kramer had been old, unfit and no match for Collin Raimes; the once misunderstood little boy whom looked up to the schizophrenic turned serial killer.
The main Stopford House station is filled with computers, video, DVD recorders and air conditioning, the smell of warmed paper coming from the printers with fresh colour ink.
