Borstal Slags (12 page)

‘The
Black
Hole? You have a punishment cell here called the
Black
Hole?’

The warder showed him. Unlocking yet another huge, solid door, he revealed a windowless cell. Peering in, Sam could see nothing beyond the splash of light coming in through the open doorway. The air was fetid and stank like stagnant pond water.

‘For the
real
troublemakers,’ said the warder.

‘This is barbaric.’

‘It’s an education, that’s what it is. A lad with nous will realize pretty sharpish he don’t ever want to come back to a place like this in a hurry. He’ll change his ways.’

‘Change his ways, you reckon? Don’t you mean end up harder and more despairing than ever?’

‘It’s the
punishment
block. It’s for
punishment
. Don’t want to get punished? Then don’t go against the System. Simple.’ He handed Sam a cigarette lighter. ‘Have a look, if that’s what you want.’

Sam flicked the lighter and stepped inside. By the dancing orange glow of the flame he made out crude messages carved into the walls. The spelling was all over the place and half the letters back to front. There were names – ROZZA, BLINKY, JOEY, BAZ – all crisscrossed, written over each other, making a chaotic register of the lads who had paced and shivered in this abominable hellhole. Other, more hopeful names cropped up here and there – BOBBY CHARLTON, BARRY SHEENE. There were rows of upright incisions, marking the passing of days, and sticklike depictions of men dangling from the gallows.

‘The Black Hole …’ Sam muttered.

‘They smuggle lighters in, or matches,’ said the warder from the doorway. ‘Don’t know how but they do it. Then again, some of ’em just work blind, scratching away at the walls.’

‘These lads should be graffiti-ing their schoolbooks, not the inside of a solitary-confinement cell,’ Sam observed.

Some youthful budding Picasso, with more ambition than talent, had attempted to draw a full-length naked woman.

And there, beside those obscenely spread but anatomically confused legs, was – what? An egg-shaped oval with a round nose and blankly smiling face. What was it? Humpty-Dumpty?

‘Lost childhoods,’ Sam mused. ‘Kids behind bars.’

And what about these? Two teddy bears of differing sizes, side by side.

‘Big Ted and Little Ted.’

And then, with incredulity, he recognized yet more doll-like figures drawn on the wall. He knew them. He knew their faces. He knew their names.

‘Hamble, Jemima …’

To the warder outside in the corridor he called, ‘What the hell is this, a mural depicting the toys off
Play School
?’

‘A house, with a door,’ said the warder in a mild voice.

Sam glanced round. The warder had changed. In the doorway now stood a man in beige corduroys and a colourfully striped jumper. Sam knew him at once, knew him from his childhood, just as he had known those dolls and teddy bears. He knew that friendly face with its fair hair and twinkly eyes.

He gasped and straightened.

‘A house with a door,’ Brian Cant said again. ‘One, two, three, four. Ready to play. What’s the day?’

Automatically, like a man speaking in a dream, Sam muttered, ‘It’s Monday.’

‘Is it?’ Brian Cant asked. He was still smiling, but the twinkle had vanished from his eyes. ‘
Is
it?’

And, with that, he shut the door. At once, the cigarette lighter went out.

Total blackness smothered Sam like a physical entity. Panicking, he rushed at the door – only to find himself groping blindly in empty air.

Where the hell’s the door? Where the hell are the walls?

His hands clutched at cold emptiness all about him, searching in vain for the confines of the cell and finding instead only a void and intimations of infinity.

Shaking, panting hard, Sam fumbled with the lighter – and dropped the damned thing!

Shit! No! Please, no!

But it was gone. Vanished.

Sam braced himself. Reality had shifted and buckled and transformed about him so many times since he’d crash-landed into 1973 that he should, by rights, be thoroughly accustomed to it. But, of course, he wasn’t. Far from it. How could he? How could
anyone
?

Don’t get frit
, Sam, told himself firmly.
You’re an old lag at this. You’ve been through all this sort of crazy stuff before
.

Reality rarely sat still for him any more. Time and again it warped and ran like wet paint caught in the rain, like a stray TV signal bleeding across another channel – and behind it all lay the inscrutable, insufferable, blankly smiling face of the Test Card Girl.

I won’t panic. I will keep my head.

But his heart was already hammering.

I’m just a copper. I’m just a simple copper. Sooner or later, I’m going to wake up from this.

To his relief, he made out a semicircle of a dim, orange light away to his left, like an arched window set amid infinite darkness. Warily, Sam tripped and stumbled his way towards it, groping ahead like a blind man, and as he drew closer he saw that it wasn’t a window, but the mouth of a tunnel.

He stepped through the arch and found himself in a dark street, a solid black night sky over his head, a few street lamps glowing dimly in the misty air. Glancing around, he saw that the tunnel he had just emerged from ran beneath a railway bridge.

I know this part of town,
he thought to himself.
I’ve been through here before – this bridge, those houses, they’re familiar – and yet …

Something was different – something he could not quite define.

A large brick wall ran along the street to his left. It was covered in ripped and tattered posters. Sam drew closer, peering at the posters in the murky orange gloom of a fitful street lamp. He made out a black-and-white image of four men, dressed identically in pale-grey suits, clustered around a microphone stand, promoting their brand-new single.

The Four Seasons – ‘Walk Like a Man’.

What the hell year did
that
come out? It was old even in 1973. That poster must have been up there for years. It should have long since decayed or been buried beneath layer after layer of newer posters over the years. And yet there it was, a little dog-eared and rain-beaten but looking fairly fresh.

He moved to the next poster along. Another four men, also in suits – but this time sporting instantly recognisable mop-top haircuts. Four men who were yet to embrace hippy culture, yet to become experimental, yet to fall out and go their separate ways. Above the frieze of smiling faces, it said, ‘T
HE
B
EATLES
– F
ROM
M
E
T
O
Y
OU
’
.

Again, the poster looked brand-new.

Sam’s blood ran cold.

Oh my God – What the hell year is this …?

The next poster along depicted a very young, very quiffed Cliff Richards singing ‘Summer Holiday’. This blandly cheerful image of carefree youth struck Sam like the announcement of a death sentence. He felt the pit of his stomach lurch, as if he were in a suddenly descending lift. It was the same sickening feeling of vertigo, the same nightmare feeling of disorientation and homesickness, panic and loneliness that had flooded over him when he had first found himself lost and alone in 1973, like a long-distance space traveller abandoned on the alien surface of an unknown planet.

Please, please, I don’t want to go through that all again. I don’t want to fall through time yet again, please –
please
not again!

He stumbled against the wall, pressing his sweating, clammy forehead against the face of a slim and healthy Elvis Presley singing ‘Devil in Disguise’.

‘Feelin’ rum, sport?’

A young man had emerged from a curvy little Austin A30 parked beneath the flickering street light. The car was a relic from a time before 1973, as was the fashion the young man was dressed up in: black suit, waistcoat, Slim Jim tie and swept-back hair, slicked down and shiny. He might have been a stockbroker, or an undertaker’s assistant – and yet the orange glow of the sodium lamp revealed a youthful face, surely not much older than sixteen.

‘Pissed, are we?’ the lad said, winking but not smiling. ‘You should’ve waited till we got to the club. I’m sure Mr Gould would happily give you a free drink or two.’

Sam stood dumb and motionless, not knowing what the hell to do or say.

The boy tapped his wristwatch impatiently. ‘Time’s getting on. Don’t want to keep Mr Gould waiting. We’d best go knock.’

He headed towards one of the terraced houses, but then stopped, glancing back over his shoulder and flashing Sam a cocky, lopsided grin.

‘You ever seen her?’ he asked.

Sam looked at him blankly.

‘His daughter,’ the boy said. ‘She’s up there now. That’s her light on.’ He pointed towards an upstairs window, glowing dimly. ‘She’s tasty. Let’s cop a look, yeah?’

Scooping up a palmful of grit from the road, the young man threw it at the first-floor window. After a few seconds, he threw some more.

A shadow appeared on the inside of the window. The curtains moved. A hint of a figure appeared – but at once, the front door of the house flew open and a man strode furiously into the street.

‘You pack that in, Perry!’

The man marched straight for Perry, who ducked away, grinning.

‘Keep your hair on, Mr Cartwright!’ he laughed. ‘Just wanted to wish her goodnight!’

‘And the rest!’ Cartwright snapped back. ‘I know what you’re after, you greasy little ferret.’

‘I ain’t after nothing,’ grinned Perry. ‘Just being civil.’

Cartwright turned and called up at the window, ‘Back to bed! Right now! And turn that light out!’

The shadowy figure in the window disappeared at once back behind the curtains. Moments later, the window went dark.

When Cartwright turned back, he noticed Sam and acknowledged him with a curt nod of the head.

‘So,’ he said, flatly. ‘You’ve shown up. Good. Very good.’

Sam stood dumbly, not knowing what to say, or where he was, or what the hell was going on. Even the name Cartwright hadn’t quite impinged on his reeling brain as fully as it might.

Perry made a show of straightening his suit and checking his hair, then said, ‘Shall we be on our way, then?’

He graciously indicated the little Austin. Cartwright strode towards it – and Sam, without any conscious decision to do so, strode after him, his legs moving under their own volition, as if somebody were operating his body by remote control.

This isn’t my body,
Sam thought, fresh waves of panic washing over him.
I’m looking out through somebody else’s eyes. I’m a passenger inside somebody else’s mind.

And then, in horror, he corrected himself:
No, not a passenger. A prisoner!

Where this stranger’s body went, Sam was powerless to control it. He was witnessing events from the past, from somewhere back in the 1960s, through the eyes of a stranger. He was a voyeur, forced to witness and experience whatever this alien host body witnessed and experienced. But whose body was it?
Who the hell was he?

Without warning, Perry suddenly called up to the dark, first-floor window, ‘Sweet dreams, Annie!’

Cartwright took a furious swipe at him, but Perry ducked away.

‘You want to watch it, Mr Cartwright,’ he said, producing car keys from his jacket pocket. ‘Mr Gould thinks very highly of me. I’m an appreciating asset in his organization – hear what I’m saying?’

‘Just get behind that wheel and drive,’ Cartwright growled. ‘And keep your mind on the road, not on my daughter.’

And, with that, he disappeared into the Austin, and Sam – or whoever’s eyes Sam was seeing through – clambered in after him.

As he sat in the back of the speeding car, the street lamps flashing by, Sam’s thoughts turned over and over on the silhouette he had glimpsed in the upstairs window.

Could that really have been her? Could that really have been Annie? And what year must this be? Nineteen sixty-three, or thereabouts? Then how old would she have been? Fifteen? Sixteen? And this man sitting beside me – is that really her father? And who am I? Who’s life am I being made to witness?

Sam could not process what was happening to him. He was moving through this sunken dream like a sleepwalker, like man under the control of a hypnotist.

In front of him, he could see the back of Perry’s head, held upright as he drove. From time to time Perry’s eyes flashed in the rear-view mirror as he glanced at Sam and Tony in the back seat. He whisked them through the dark and almost deserted streets until suddenly he flung the wheel and bounced them recklessly down a tight alleyway. He hit the brakes, and the car came to a stop.

‘We’re here, gentlemen!’

The three men clambered out. They were in a mean, badly lit passage tucked in between large brick buildings that might have been factories or workshops. An illuminated sign read ‘H
OUSE OF
D
IAMONDS
’. Beneath it stood an open doorway, very narrow and uninviting, and beyond this doorway ran a flight of steps, descending steeply into darkness.

Perry straightened his jacket, his tie, and then his hair. He rolled his shoulders and adjusted the gold chain of his fob watch. When he was sure he was immaculate, he clapped his hands together and rubbed them eagerly.

‘Righty-righty, then! I’ll run on ahead and let Mr Gould know you’re here.’

With a cocky wink at Sam, the lad bounded down the stairs and vanished into the smoky gloom.

Sam supposed he was to go down that gloomy staircase too, but Tony hesitated. He caught hold of Sam’s arm and looked very intently into his face.

‘When you go in there, say as little as possible. Gould doesn’t like blabbermouths. The less you say, the more he’ll trust you. Understand?’

Sam tried speak, to get some sort of word back to Tony – even if that word was only a single, pathetic ‘Help!’ But his mouth was not his own, and it stayed firmly shut. Instead, he nodded – or rather, Sam felt himself nod – and said not a word.