Life on Mars: Borstal Slags. Tom Graham

      CHAPTER ONE: ROLLIN’, ROLLIN’, ROLLIN’

      ‘Guv?’

      ‘What is it, Tyler?’

      ‘You’re going to kill us, Guv.’

      DCI Gene Hunt was driving as if the devil himself were after them. He floored the pedal, sending the Cortina shrieking through the Manchester evening like a rocket. DI Sam Tyler gripped the dashboard, as Hunt flung the car so recklessly round a bend that its offside wheels lifted off the tarmac. It dropped back heavily onto its suspension, the under-chassis scraping the road and sending out a sudden flare of sparks.

      ‘I might kill me motor’s springs, Sammy boy, but you and me is safe as houses,’ Gene growled. ‘It’s time you stopped worrying, Tyler, and learnt to trust the Gene Genie.’

      The Guv’nor jammed a fag into his gob, taking both hands off the wheel to light it up. He emitted a long, thick, stinking plume of smoke into Sam’s face.

      ‘Don’t you go worrying your pretty little head, Tyler, I’ll get us there in one piece.’

      ‘But you’re driving like a maniac, Guv. I don’t know what you’re rushing for.’

      ‘There’s nowt the matter with rushing. I like rushing. Now shut your cake-hole and look out the window like a good little soldier. Watch the world go by.’

      The world was indeed going by, and at a terrifying lick. Sam watched the shopfronts whipping past outside, the names rich with memories of his own childhood: Woolworth’s, Our Price records, Wavy Line. Bathed in the low, golden glow of the setting sun, the last of the evening’s shoppers headed up and down the high street. Sam glimpsed a young mother, no older than twenty, in a bright-red plastic raincoat pushing twins in a buggy. A stooped old woman waited patiently at a zebra crossing, her lined, toothless face peering out from beneath a fake fur hat that looked like a giant powder puff. Hurrying past her went a mustachioed man with collar-length hair and thick sideburns, his beige trousers hugging his crotch so tightly that nothing was left to the imagination.

      This is my world now, Sam thought to himself, watching a kid in a Donny Osmond T-shirt slurping on a rainbow-coloured lolly shaped like a rocket ship. This is my world, and these are my people – for better or for worse.

      These streets, these shoppers, even the orange glare of the setting sun, all seemed much realer to him than the world he had left behind. Two thousand and six was beginning to recede in his mind – or perhaps he was just less and less inclined to think about it. With effort, he could still recall his workstation at CID with its Posturepedic office chair, its PC terminal, its energy efficient desk lamp, its neatly coiled charging cables for his mobile and BlackBerry. But such memories seemed cold and dead to him. He felt no nostalgia for the world of touch screens and instant messaging – though maybe, from time to time, his thumbs hankered for the feel of a gaming console, his taste buds for the savour of sushi, his lungs for the comfort of a smoke-free pub.

      The Cortina roared ahead, its headlights blazing through the thickening gloom of evening. With a squeal of rubber, Gene narrowly avoided rear-ending a dawdling middle-aged woman in a VW. The Cortina mounted the pavement, ripped past the VW, and bounced recklessly back onto the road.

      ‘Dopey mare in a shitty Kraut shoe box!’ Hunt bellowed. ‘Why the hell do they let birds behind the wheel, Tyler? It ain’t natural. You might as well dish out licenses to chimpanzees.’

      Sam tried to keep his mind off of his guv’nor’s heart-stopping driving and turned inward instead. He thought back to how he had come to be in here in 1973 in the first place. His expulsion from 2006 had not been voluntary, nor had it been without pain. And it had all happened so fast! He could recall himself – twenty-first century DCI Tyler – pulling up by the side of the road as David Bowie played on the dashboard MP3. He could remember opening the car door and stepping out, in need of air and a moment to collect his thoughts. And