Borstal Slags (7 page)

‘Good for you, lass,’ said Gene, examining the crust he’d just plucked.

‘Look at the handwriting, Guv,’ Annie insisted, holding out the crumpled sheet of paper. Silently, Sam willed her to stand her ground, make her point, break through Gene’s macho carapace and make herself heard. ‘Look how all the letters are nicely spaced out, dead neat. Andy Coren’s barely literate, guv, he’s never in school, he’s always out thieving or getting himself nicked. You think he writes like this? And look how strangely worded it all is.’

There was a flicker of interest in Gene’s face which he tried to disguise.

Sam took the letter from Annie’s hand and studied it with renewed interest.

Dear Derek,

So brilliant you could make time for a visit. Really good to get time with you again. Tell Auntie Rose not to fret so much. Don’t forget to give Fluffy her special tablets – take her to the vet in Lidden Street if she gets sick again. It’s very very important I can trust you to look after her. See you again soon I hope.

Love, Andy

‘It’s very stiff and formal,’ he said. ‘No spelling mistakes. Commas and full stops in the right places.’

‘Exactly,’ said Annie. ‘I don’t see Andy Coren being up to writing this.’

‘Maybe he dictated it,’ said Gene. ‘Maybe he got some other inmate to write it down for him. It’s what cons often do.’

‘And how many cons use these turns of phrase, Guv?’ Annie said. ‘“Tell Auntie Rose not to fret so much” – “Take Fluffy to the vet in Lidden Street if she gets sick again” – Guv, I just don’t hear the voice of a borstal boy in these words.’

‘Oh? And what
do
you hear?’

‘A message, Guv. Not a message about Auntie Rose and Fluffy’s tablets – a
hidden
message, one
behind
the words. Besides, there ain’t no vet in Lidden Street. I checked.’

Gene gave her a long, level look, and then said, very slowly, ‘Think carefully what you’re saying, Cartwright. You’re getting very,
very
close to saying you suspect this letter’s written in secret code.’

‘And why not, Guv?’ Annie said, throwing caution to the wind.

‘Why not? Because you ain’t Nancy flamin’ Drew, sweetheart! Secret bloody codes, my arse! This is
real life
!’

‘This letter was rubber-stamped,’ Annie kept on. ‘Before it could be posted it was vetted by somebody at the borstal, somebody in authority. It had to be officially approved before it was sent. Now, if Andy wanted to get some message to his brother in this letter, and he didn’t want the borstal authorities to see it, then he’d need to find a way of hiding that message behind something that looks totally innocent.’

‘Codswallop!’ barked Gene. ‘You been reading too much Famous Five.’

‘And what’s more, one of the lads in that borstal hanged himself, Guv, just two weeks ago. And a month before that, a lad got his face burnt off.’ Annie’s voice was starting to become shrill. ‘A death, a suicide, a dodgy letter, a body in the junkyard, the violent theft of a lorry that don’t make no sense, and all of ’em connected to Friar’s Brook.
Think
about it, Guv. It’s not right! Can’t you see? There’s something
not right
!’

Her frustration had got the better of her, and she all at once realized it. Annie clamped her mouth shut and lowered her eyes, waiting patiently for her guv’nor’s rebuke.

But Gene seemed calm. He wasn’t about to be riled up by some bird. He smiled to himself, smoothed down his tie, and said, ‘You know what I really miss right now?’

‘No, Guv,’ said Sam ‘What do y—’

‘Not you, Granny Clanger.
Her
.’

With a sigh, Annie said flatly, ‘What do you really miss right now, Guv?’

‘The whistlin’ of a kettle,’ said Gene.

Annie’s shoulder slumped. With a muttered ‘Yes, Guv, right away, Guv,’ she turned and headed off.

‘Not that we’ll have time to drink it,’ Gene said, getting to his feet and reaching for his jacket.

‘Why not? Where are we going, Guv?’

‘Where’d you think? Borstal.’

‘Borstal? You mean Friar’s Brook?’

‘No, I mean one of the six dozen other borstals in the neighbourhood. Of
course
I mean Friar’s bloody Brook, you spanner.’

‘But I thought as far as you were concerned this case was closed and done with.’

Gene shook his head. ‘Not quite. There’s something iffy about this business of the boy in the crusher, something that needs resolving. That letter Andy sent to Derek, then Derek nicking that truck, and now some mention of suicide, and some lag’s face going up like Guy Fawkes. It ain’t quite right, Sam. It ain’t quite right.’

‘Wait a minute, Guv,’ said Sam, indignantly. ‘This is what Annie was saying just now and you pissed all over it.’

‘It’s them sensitive toes of mine,’ said Gene. ‘Sometimes the only way to stop ’em hurting is to at the very least
pretend
that’s it me what runs this place, not you and twinkle-tits out there. I’m not about to let
her
start thinking she’s leading this investigation. Slippery slope, Tyler, letting birds think they’re in charge. Where would all it end? You want to wake up one morning and find you got some bint
in charge
?’ He bounced his car keys off his forearm and deftly caught them. ‘Well come on, then, Sammy boy, don’t hang about. Let’s go and play with a borstal full of naughty boys.’

The borstal was situated well out of town, somewhere on the rugged moors north of Heponstall. Gene floored the pedal of the Cortina and took him and Sam hurtling through the outskirts of Manchester, through Rochdale and Littleborough, beyond the far side of Todmorden, until concrete began to give way to wide stretches of open country, and the buildings thinned out until there was nothing but isolated stone farmhouses beneath an oppressive, sullen grey sky.

Gene powered the car off of the main road, hurtling recklessly along smaller and yet smaller byways until at last they were bounding along what was little more than a dirt track that meandered across the landscape. Sam glimpsed forlorn trees forming tragic shapes against the clouds. He saw broken walls and derelict barns and here and there the rusting, overgrown hulks of long-abandoned pieces of farming equipment. In the far distance, a grey curtain of rain swept slowly across the horizon.

When at last they saw it, Friar’s Brook borstal appeared as an assortment of squat, unfriendly buildings heavily fenced off from the surrounding countryside. The barred gate across the track and the barbed wire spiralling along the top of it made Sam think of concentration camps.

‘It’s so bleak,’ he said. ‘It’s like something out of
Schindler’s List
.’

‘Schindler’s list of what? Holiday camps to avoid?
I’ve
stayed in worse places.’

‘All seems a bit tough, though, don’t you think? I mean, for kids.’

‘What’s the matter with you, Tyler? You gone soft? It’s a lock-up, it’s
supposed
to be tough.’

‘Half them lads in there, I bet they’ve never known anything in their lives but “tough”.’

‘Life ain’t no picnic, not for any of us.’

‘I bet they’ve never known what it feels like to be safe and warm and looked after,’ Sam mused, peering through the high fence at the barred windows and heavily bolted doorways. ‘What chance do they have? Parents who don’t care, violence at home, violence at school, no job prospects, no education, no role models.’

‘Well
I
did all right,’ put in Gene, defensively.

‘I wasn’t referring to you, Guv.’

‘And knock it off about “no education”. I’m a walking encyclopedia, Tyler, you’d be surprised. Go on, ask me how to spell
silhouette
.’

But Sam’s mind was still on that collection of low, mean-looking buildings and the unseen inmates entombed within. ‘Just think of all the wasted talent, wasted intelligence just rotting away inside that place. There’s boys in there could have been surgeons, or architects, or airline pilots, if only they’d been born a few miles across town where kids have a chance. Artists, writers – a future prime minister, who knows?’

‘Future prime minister? From round here? There’ll be a bird in Number 10 before there’s a Northerner,’ Gene growled.

‘Maybe there
will
be a bird. And one who
is
a northerner. There’s a thought for you, Guv.’

Gene snorted contemptuously and shook his head. ‘I know what’s going on in that grubby little brain of yours, Tyler. The only northern bird you want to see on top is your bit of prospective crumpet.’

‘I take it that offensive epithet refers to our colleague WDC Cartwright? Guv, why can’t you and the other boys in the department just get used to the fact that people sometimes have what the grown-ups call
relationships
?’

‘Just keep your mind on the job we’ve come here to do,’ Gene barked. ‘If we find a hint that Andy Coren’s death
wasn’t
an accident, and that he ended up in that crusher for any other reason than him and his brother being a couple of useless dopey donuts, then Annie’s put us on the right track. She’ll have earned her brownie points for the day. That should loosen her knickers, Sam – get you one step closer to the ol’ pinball machine.’

‘Jesus, Guv, the way your mind works.’

‘Ain’t no different from yours, Tyler, except
I’ve
got what it takes to make DCI.’

‘So have I!’

‘When you’re old and grey, most like. But until then, Tyler, you’re just my little trained monkey. Now, then – best behaviour. We’ve arrived.’

Gene brought the Cortina to the front gates and sounded the horn. They waited.

‘It’s like a picking up a date,’ he observed.

‘If
that’s
our date, Guv, you’re welcome to him,’ said Sam, as a gate officer appeared, dressed in black warder’s uniform with a fierce peaked cap. The man’s face was hard and angular, with a flat, broken nose and small, unfriendly eyes.

Police IDs were flashed, and the gates were unlocked. As the Cortina nosed through, Gene stuck his head out of the window.

‘What’s going on there?’ he asked, indicating a set of roofless, broken buildings at the east wing. ‘V-2 come down on you, did it?’

‘Demolition,’ said the gate officer in a surly voice. ‘Pulling down the old kitchens and boiler house.’

‘That’s where the junk was coming from that ended up in Kersey’s Yard,’ said Sam. ‘Andy Coren’s escape plan wasn’t bad, Guv. He saw a chance and he took it.’

‘And then buggered it up,’ Gene growled. ‘Unless somebody else made sure it was buggered up for him.’

Gene parked the car outside the reception area and clambered out. Sam followed him. Beneath a weather-beaten sign that said ‘HMP F
RIAR’S
B
ROOK
’ stood a heavy door, which the gate officer now began to noisily unlock with yet another key on his chain.

I don’t want to go inside there
, Sam thought suddenly. He felt icy panic, as if something terrible awaited him within those drab, grey walls.

‘What’s up with you, Tyler?’

‘Nothing, Guv.’

‘Got the fidgets? You should’ve gone before we set off.’

‘I said it’s nothing, Guv.’

‘If you’re going to get spooked by a spot of kiddies’ porridge, Tyler, you should never have come along. I’d be better off with Ray.’

‘Guv, just leave it.’

The gate officer rattled his keys and the heavy door clanged open, revealing a hallway with a tiled floor and whitewashed walls. It reminded Sam of a public toilet.

‘Get yourself ready, Tyler,’ Gene boomed, slapping his palms together and rubbing them briskly. ‘If you think the outside of this place is grim, wait until you breathe the air in them cells.
Parfoom de Borstal
. The heady aroma of BO, spunk and bunged-up khazies. And that’s just the staff who work here.’

The gate officer glared at him from beneath his peaked cap. ‘Watch it, plod.’

‘DCI!’ retorted Gene, patting at imaginary pips on his arm as he swept by. Sam hurried after him. Behind them, the door clanged shut, with a power and finality that sent a cold shiver running along Sam’s spine. It was as if he himself were an inmate, arriving within the walls of this terrible place, doomed never to see the outside world again.

Get a grip, Tyler, for God’s sake
, he told himself firmly, and followed the Guv’s lumbering hulk as it swaggered off ahead of him.

Sam and Gene were escorted by a warder along an interminable corridor. Far from reeking of filth and sweat, the air was thick with the pungent smell of detergent. Everything was scrubbed and polished, obsessively so.

Up ahead, they saw one of the inmates. He was a frail, spotty-faced boy, dressed in denim dungarees. He listlessly mopped the floor. But, the moment he eyed the guard approaching, he made a show of working hard.

How old is he?
Sam thought.
Fourteen? Fifteen? What sort of life’s brought him to this awful place? And what kind of future has he got in store?

As Sam approached, he noticed a ragged piece of brown cloth stitched unhandily to the front of the boy’s shirt. But, when Sam tried to get a closer look, the boy turned away, averting his eyes and keeping his face towards the wall.

‘This way, gentlemen,’ said the warder, and he indicated an oak-panelled door. The sign on it read: ‘J. W. F
ELLOWES
, P
RINCIPAL
G
OVERNOR
’.

‘I suppose we’d better knock,’ said Gene, flinging the door open straightaway without warning.

Mr Fellowes, the borstal governor, sat behind his large desk. He looked up, startled. He was a balding man, rotund and soft-skinned, more at home with civil servants than hardened inmates.

‘Don’t wet ’em, it’s just us,’ said Gene, holding up his ID. He sniffed the air extravagantly. ‘At least your office don’t honk of Dettol.’

‘What’s going on here?’ stammered Fellowes. ‘Are you arresting me or something?’

‘I apologize for my superior officer, Mr Fellowes,’ Sam said, positioning himself in front of Gene to try to block him. ‘This is DCI Hunt. My name’s DI Tyler, Manchester CID, A-Division.’