Life in 1986

Thirteen years.

Gene wasn't the sort of man to hold a grudge, so when he heard the mutterings about the office he didn't take much notice. It didn't matter what Cartwright said, he wasn't going to be bothered by what the latest bunch of poncy graduates, still wet around the ears from training, thought. He certainly wasn't going to put his team in danger, no matter what a bunch of stuck-up toss pot kids said about him being, what was it, 'Over the hill'? Something like that, anyway.

That was why he was here, out on the streets, giving them the benefit of his expertise. It had nothing to do with Ray's veiled comments about looming retirement, or the expression of concern on Chris' face when Gene took over the last interrogation. Alright, he may not have progressed from being a DCI, but that was because he was a street copper. Always had been, always will be. NO cushy desk-bound promotions for him, oh no. He was too good to lose.

And, of course, to be a street copper, you had to be a copper on the street. Which was why he was currently freezing his arse off outside the Hacienda on Whitworth Street. Of course, it could be worse. He could be inside. He blew a cloud of smoke into the dirty cold air, and waited. Some of the lads had gone inside, headed by Chris. And, soon enough, some of the lads would be coming out again with the finest haul of dealers that they'd nicked in quite a while. Easy and straightforward, just how he liked things.

Things, Gene mused, usually were straightforward. He'd admit, now, that occasionally there was smoke without fire, but seeing as how there wasn't anyone to admit it to now, there seemed little point. And anyway, things had been pretty simple lately. He suspected it was the quality of the recruits. Simple coppers saw simple crimes, and solved them. You needed a complicated mess of a copper to see complicated crimes, and half the time he'd be wrong anyway, and anyway, that wasn't important because the lads were coming out with some people. Most of them looked dodgy, some of them would be dealers and the few who possibly weren't could do with a kick up the arse to get them off the shit they'd been snorting, or injecting or whatever the hell it was that kids did with drugs these days.

It was, he reasoned, a good night's work.

O0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

The next morning started off with a cup of the brown sludge that DC Isherwood called 'tea', and it went downhill from there. Chris was having problems with the photocopier again, which meant that he was currently up to his eyeballs in tiny cogs, rollers, nozzles and a fine black sticky powder that made the copy room all but uninhabitable and covered the entire office with a thin layer of grubby fingerprints. DC Hartley had to be taken to hospital after he managed to prick himself on an unidentified object, probably a needle, from the evidence locker. And the now infamous DC Isherwood, after being rightfully bawled out for making the revolting tea and, as it turned out, breaking the aforementioned photocopier, was attempting to lose a suspect. Or at least, that was the only logical explanation for what the Guv caught him doing.

"Oi, Denise, what the bloody hell d'you think you're doin'?"

"Dennis. I was just taking him outside, Guv. 'E needed a bit of fresh air." The suspect, a lanky mousy-haired teen wearing stained clothes from the night before, was hanging limply from the wrist Dense was clutching. As he watched, the kid doubled over and retched unconvincingly.

"Does he, now."

"It's alright though, Guv, I've got 'im." Dennis held up the kid's wrist and Gene saw that the two were cuffed together. Feeling the need to explain under the influence of the Guv's angry glare, Dennis went on. "He's really not well, Guv."

Gene lit a cigarette and studied the youth for a moment. The kid didn't look up, just carried on with the act. If it was an act. IF it wasn't an act, and the kid was about to add to the current manky state of the office... It probably couldn't get any worse, but why chance it? He nodded.

"I'm coming with you. Could do with a bit of fresh air, myself."

Outside he was prepared to give the kid the benefit of the doubt, as the teen vomited miserably onto the concrete. He just wasn't prepared for his DC's special brand of resourceful idiocy. As the kid doubled over, he clutched his hands to his stomach. There was just enough time for Gene to wonder who'd taken the time to instruct Dennis in the proper handling and use of handcuffs, because it hadn't been him, then all hell broke loose. The kid yanked his hand out of the cuffs, causing DC Isherwood to wave his arms around like a girl before falling over. The Guv received a shoulder to the chest as the kid pushed past him and pegged it out onto the street.

Of course, Gene Hunt had never been one to refuse a challenge, especially one so downright insulting as this. He set off in pursuit, dodging the pre-noon traffic and chasing the kid down the backstreets and alleyways. The kid had a fair turn of speed but fortunately for the guv hadn't entirely been faking it. He followed a trail of – yes, that's vomit, not soup- down an alleyway that he knew came to a dead end, rounding a corner just in time to see the kid scramble up and grab the top of the crumbling brick wall at the other end. A painful burst of speed- he'd pay for it later, surely,- and he'd grabbed hold of a trainer that threatened to come off in his hand. The kid was flailing, not kicking, so he transferred his grip to the kids jeans and hung on. A bit of effort hauled his own feet up off the floor, he hung there for a minute as the kid grunted and swore, and then fourteen stone of Manchester's finest came crashing back to earth again, one sweaty hungover teen in tow.

Gene got up grumbling, and hauled the still-winded lad up by the scruff of his T-shirt.

"Technically, y'know, that counts as assault on a police officer." He growled at the kid, in between wheezes. "What the bloody hell're you playing at?" The kid just shook his head, gasping.

"Our mam." He managed eventually. "She's gonna go spare." Gene glared at the back of the kids head.

"Your mum? You ran away from custody and you're scared of what your mum's gonna do to you? Christ, lad." He began to walk, dragging the kid behind him. "You have no bloody idea the trouble you're in."

"M'gonna be sick again." Gene waited while the kid threw up whatever was left in his body – just bile, from the looks of things, and shook his head dissaprovingly.

"So." he said as he walked, pushing the kid in front of hi, "Why'd you decide to make a run for it?"

The kid hesitated. "Come on, lad, spit it out. Can't possibly make things worse, can it?" He should have known better.

"I, er, I'm going to uni year after next. They won't take me if I've got a criminal record."

"Bollocks, they won't. What course?"

"Criminology."

"You 'ave got to be bleedin' joking." he pulled the kid round to face him, and saw the embarrassment written all over his face. "Want to be a copper, do you? Can't say this is much of a start."

"No, sir." The kid looked down, scuffing the floor with the toe of his trainer like a naughty schoolboy. It struck Gene, suddenly, that if he was taller, a bit bulkier and a lot older, the kid would probably look a lot like-

"Guv! I'm so sorry Guv! I din't mean to let 'im go, I dunno 'ow 'e got loose Guv!" Oh great. Dennis was back, out of breath and stumbling but at least he had the foresight to bring the handcuffs with him. He hadn't thought to remove them from his wrist though.

"He got loose, DC Isherwood, because you didn't cuff him properly. Again." Dennis looked mutinous.

"I did, Guv! I done it just like DI Skelton shown me." Gene sighed.

"And yet I don't spend my time chasing down DI Skelton's escaping suspects, do I detective? I said, do I?"

"No Guv."

"Are you suggesting that this delinquent was able to escape from a locked pair of cuffs?"

"No Guv, but-"

"Oh, there's a but, is there? Well come on then, I'll believe it when I see it."

"Guv?"

Gene advanced on the nervous constable with a feral grin.

"I think it's time you learned how to fasten cuffs properly, DETECTIVE." With a warning "You, stay there." to the kid, he grabbed Dennis' cuffs and held the open link in front of his face.

"See this?"

"Yes Guv."

"It goes here." he pulled it round a lamppost and fastened it neatly over the DC's other wrist. "Got it?"

"Yes Guv, got it Guv. It won't happened again, Guv."

"Glad to hear it. Come on, you." He grabbed the kid's arm again. Behind him came the hesitant half-shout of a naïve DC realising that he's just been cuffed to a lamppost.

He dragged the now sulking teen back, hauling him upright when the kid stumbled over his own feet on the uneven pavement.

"So, mister I-want-to-be-a-copper-honest, what were you doing in that den of iniquity?"

"Dancin'." the teen looked up in sudden terror as Gene yanked him back by his t-shirt.

"You might be able to get away with that shit at 'ome, lad, but not wi' me." he held the lad out at arms length and pushed so that the kid sprawled back across the wall of the alley.

"I wasn't doin' anythin'!" the kid wailed, a whole decade suddenly fallen away. "I only had a bit of a smoke beforehand, me mate said it'd be okay!"

"Trust this 'mate', do you?" Gene grinned at the lad's panic.

"Er, er-"

"Alright, calm down." Gene let him rest for a minute, recognising the clammy nausea of a stinking hangover when he saw one.

"'m'okay." the kid muttered then, steadying himself on the wall. Looked to Gene as if he was trying to convince himself, and didn't he recognise that caught-in-doomed-headlights look?

"What's your name?" Gene managed, a tiny bit of uncertainty in the back of his mind, just a little bit that needed quashing right now. The lad looked up at him and he could see the kid's internal debate about giving his real identity to the police.

"Sam. Sam Tyler." the kid managed eventually, not understanding.

"So..." The syllable extended beyond reason while Gene tried to piece back together his suddenly scattered thoughts. D.I. Tyler had disappeared over a decade ago, now, without even a hint as to where he was going or why. Just left. Not even time to say goodbye, or finish that paperwork he was so fond of. It rankled, somehow, that he might have found time for something else before he went. "Your dad, he'd be..."

"Vic Tyler." the kid muttered, inspecting his shoes once more. "I dunno where he is."

"Never came back, then?" It wasn't really a question, but it raised some of it's own. Sam had only arrived in the area the day he'd strode into CID and demanded to know what they'd done with his office. And that same year, Vic Tyler's son had been four years old.

"No. He never did." Which made sense, all things considered, as the lad currently glaring at him nervously looked about seventeen.

"And you want to be a policeman." It didn't explain the mousey hair, that lankiness that would never really fill out.

"Yeah." Or the look, all sulky and defiant, that made him want to give the lad a thick ear.

"It's a bloody lot of hard work, I'll tell you that much. Not all fightin', drinkin' and arrestin' famous bank robbers."

The kid gave Gene a snotty look that made resisting the urge to belt him one suddenly really hard.

"I never thought it was."

"Let me tell you about policing, Tyler. Crime is like a bloody great onion. You peel back the layers and all that's left is a nasty lingering smell, and some poor sod crying. As a copper your job is to follow that smell back from the scene of the crime, up the ladder to the pot of gold at the end, and nick the bastard when he comes back for his loot." he stopped. "What?" The kid looked utterly bewildered.

"Isn't it a rainbow?" at the look on Gene's face he decided to elaborate "If there's a pot of gold? There should be a rainbow. Ladders are for promotions, aren't they?"

"Here I am trying to have a reasonable conversation, and you start blathering on about rainbows. Typical, bloody typical."

"It's not my fault you mixed your metaphors." Sam muttered petulantly. Gene gave him a thoughtful stare. NO doubt some vitally important part of his brain had shut down. Presumably one of the last bits to make sense, because he shrugged at the kid – at Sam, young Sam – and said "Never mind. I'm sure you'll make a good copper."

"What, really?"

"A total pain in the arse nit-picking bastard of a person, mind you. But a good copper."

"Oh." Sam looked puzzled. "Can I go?"

"What's that?" Gene stretched, trying to work some of the kinks out of his recently abused spine.

"I want to go home."

"Go on then, Sam. Make the most of it." He watched young Tyler leave, and reflected on how the world was a funny old place, really. In a sort of black-comedy surrealist way.