Free Get Cartwright by Tom Graham Page B

radio.
    ‘Scramble the team. Get them to meet us at the church.’
    ‘Does that include Annie?’ Sam asked.
    ‘Unfortunately it does,’ Gene growled. ‘I want her where I can keep an eye on her, not sloping about on her own stirring up trouble. She’s done more than enough on her tod already.’
    Sam reached for the dashboard radio, but hesitated.
    ‘Guv,’ he said, ‘I still don’t think it’s right to break the siege like this. Carroll said he’d start shooting hostages at the first sign of –’
    Gene’s fist slammed into the side of Sam’s face like a steam-driven piston. Sam found himself slumped against the passenger door, his head spinning, his ears ringing.
    With a face like a royally pissed off bulldog, Gene silently got on with his reckless driving. He didn’t say a word – but he didn’t need to. Sam understood what he was thinking perfectly. Narrowly avoiding being brained by a falling chimney had not put the guv in the best of tempers. Having his beloved camel hair coat smothered in filthy brick dust had wound him up even more. But worst of all, perhaps, was the betrayal he felt at Annie conducting private investigations behind his back, and Sam colluding with her. He saw Annie as having stirred up the mucky waters of CID, bringing to the surface old corruptions that were best left buried in the ooze. Gene had convinced himself that the department’s dirty washing would be hauled up in public for all to sneer at, and that the ensuing press attention would bear down on him even more crushingly than one of Fred Dibner’s toppling chimneys.
    That punch to the face was his guv’nor’s way of saying that he had a lot on his plate at present and would appreciate it if Sam just shut his ruddy gob and did what the hell he was told.
    Trying to ignore the throbbing pain pulsing through his jaw, Sam dutifully reached for the dashboard radio to put the call through to the team.
    They reached the besieged church at the same time as Chris, Ray and Annie. A photo finish.
    Gene slammed on the anchors, then threw open the door and swept out. As ever, Sam hurried on after him. They pushed their way through the assembled coppers cordoning off the street.
    ‘Christ, Guv, you’re covered in half of Blackpool beach,’ observed Ray as Gene came striding dustily towards him.
    ‘I’ve just had a close encounter with a great big watsit,’ Gene barked, ‘and I do
not
want to talk about it.’ He turned furiously towards Annie, fixing her with a killer stare. ‘As for you.’
    ‘Yes, Guv?’
    ‘You stand right where you are. And I mean
right
where you are. If I catch sight of your underdeveloped tits so much as
pointing
in the direction of that church I will have them and you arrested for –’ he looked for a suitable charge. ‘– for bloody
everything.
That clear, luv?’
    ‘Not really, Guv,’ said Annie, looking to Sam for help.
    ‘He means just stay put and he’ll talk to you later,’ Sam said quietly to her.
    Gene turned his scowling face towards the church. ‘What’s happening in there?’
    ‘Same as before, Guv,’ said Chris. ‘Nobody’s come out, nobody’s gone in.’
    ‘Well
that’s
about to change,’ declared Gene, and he reached inside his filthy coat for his trusty Magnum.
    ‘Wait, Guv,
please
!’
Sam pleaded with him. ‘Think of the hostages.’
    ‘What hostages?!’ Gene scoffed. ‘It’s been two days, they’ve probably all died of starvation by now. Either that or they’ve suffocated on the pong of their own accumulated number twos. All them pensioners cooped up like that – God Almighty, I’ll bet it reeks in there worse than the geriatric ward down at central hospital.’
    ‘Do you
really
want to provoke Carroll into pulling the trigger?’ Sam insisted. He jabbed a thumb in the direction of a pack of reporters lurking about on the fringes of the siege. ‘Think what
that
lot
will do to you if you kick off a massacre here today.’
    Gene went to push past him, but