Borstal Slags (9 page)

‘Silence, respect, duty,’ McClintock said, almost to himself. ‘The three graces.’

And, with that, he continued along the corridor, Sam and Gene striding along in his wake.

‘You put a lot of faith in your System here, Mr McClintock,’ Sam said as they walked.

‘Of course. The System is what holds this place together. It’s what stands between order and chaos.’

Gene nodded. Despite his instinctive loathing of all things tartan, there was a lot of common ground between him and McClintock.

‘It’s all a bit draconian, isn’t it?’ Sam suggested.

Gene threw his head back in exasperation. ‘Oh, knock it off with the bloody
Doctor Who
language, Tyler, will you
please?
’

‘Running this place with a rule of iron,’ Sam went on, ‘slapping huge slogans on the walls. Doesn’t it jack up the pressure round here? I’d say if you weren’t careful, Mr McClintock, you’re going to turn this place into a powder keg, ready to explode.’

McClintock snorted contemptuously. ‘It’s the System that keeps this institution firmly under control, young man. There’ll be no disturbances here, no riots, not on
my
watch.’

‘I’ll tell you something, Mr McClintock. This place reeks of tension. I sensed it the moment we got here.’

‘It’s a prison, Detective Inspector, with a prison atmosphere like any other. That’s all you sensed.’

‘I think you’re wrong.’

McClintock halted at a heavy door and waited for a warder to unlock it. He took the opportunity to turn to Sam and say, ‘I don’t care for your manner, Detective Inspector.’

‘And I don’t care for yours, Mr House Master.’

‘Settle it with a fight,’ suggested Gene.

McClintock’s gaze locked onto Sam, and Sam refused to be cowed by it. He stared right back, willing himself not to blink.

‘What’s on your mind, mmm?’ McClintock asked in a low, threatening voice. ‘Out with it.’

What
is
on my mind? Why does this man set my teeth on edge so badly?

McClintock stared at Sam.

Sam stared at McClintock.

Gene sniggered.

And then, the moment was broken by the clanging of the door as the warder opened it.

‘I think we three should meet up socially,’ Gene suddenly declared, rubbing his hands together excitedly at the prospect. ‘Have a few drinks together, maybe go on a lads’ night out. There’s a real chemistry between us.’

Slowly, and in his own time, McClintock turned away from Sam and stepped neatly through the open door. Sam found he had been holding his breath.

Gene winked at him. ‘Nice one, Sammy. Lovely to see you winding up the Jocks. Didn’t think that was your bag.’

‘I don’t like that man,’ whispered Sam.

‘Well, no, he’s Scottish.’

‘No, I don’t mean I don’t like him the way
you
don’t like him, Guv, I mean … I mean I don’t like him because … because he’s …’

He tried to explain, but he couldn’t, not even to himself. It wasn’t possible to put such deep, instinctive emotions into words.

Gene gave him a blokey nudge.

‘You think too much, Sam. You don’t have to analyse
everything
. And you know what? It’s okay to hate the Scots. It’s fine. It’s natural. It’s not like it’s racist or nuthin’. Patriotic duty, ain’t it?’

He pushed Sam ahead of him through the doorway after McClintock. They found themselves outside, in an enclosed yard beneath a sullen, rain-filled sky. On one wall, in huge letters, was the word SILENCE, on another RESPECT, and on the third DUTY. Hemmed in by these huge commands stood a metal frame, with a crossbar about seven feet from the ground. Two inmates in regulation dungarees were lifting themselves up and down, up and down, like lads working out at the gym. Their faces were screwed up in pain and shiny with sweat. They were clearly at the very end of their endurance, but still they hauled themselves up and down, forced on by the barking and bellowing of the uniformed warder who oversaw them.

‘Exercises?’ asked Gene.

‘Punishment,’ replied McClintock. ‘These two young scallywags are being taught that fighting will not be tolerated, not by me, not by the System.’

The warder overseeing the boys barked at them like a drill sergeant: ‘Say it! Say the System! Say the System you ’orrible little shits!’

And in unison, as they dragged themselves up, the boys struggled to say, ‘Silence.’

They hauled themselves up a second time: ‘Respect.’

And then a third. Their faces were so screwed up with agonized effort that they could do no more than grunt.

‘Say the bloody System!’ the warder shrieked, his voice breaking. He clashed at the metal frame with his baton. ‘Say it!’

‘Duty,’ the boys managed.

‘Right! Again! From the beginning! Silence, respect, duty, let’s have it all over again! Up, up! Lift your ’orrible lazy arses
up
!’

‘What are those bits of brown cloth on their uniforms?’ Sam asked. ‘The boy mopping the floor back there in the corridor had one on too.’

McClintock nodded. ‘All the boys here wear them. I insist on it. I call it the “Stain”. I have them stitch those tokens on themselves the day they arrive here.’

‘The “Stain”?’ said Sam, incredulous. ‘You mean, you make them boys wear a badge to mark them out as – what? Corrupted? Contaminated?’

McClintock nodded.

Sam’s jaw dropped. ‘Mr McClintock, this is a borstal, not Buchenwald.’

Gene rolled his eyes, lost once again by Sam’s vocabulary.

Sam opened his mouth to speak again, but he was interrupted by a cry. One of the boys – a wiry lad with narrow, squint eyes – lost his grip and fell exhausted to the ground.

At once, the warder exploded, ‘Capps! Get your lazy arse off the ground! Up! Up! Get your filthy self
up
!’

The other lad – a tall, red-haired boy with powerful shoulders – still managing to hang from the bar, glanced down.

‘Don’t you look at him, Priest!’ the warder screamed, and he jabbed at Priest’s ribs with his truncheon. ‘Get yourself going up and down! Say the System!
Say it! Bloody well say it!
’

Priest screwed up his eyes again and tried painfully to lift his chin above the crossbar. His face was scarlet. The warder clashed his baton against the metal frame, making it ring.

‘You can’t treat these boys like this!’ Sam announced.

‘It’s no worse than how they treat each other,’ McClintock retorted.

‘That’s why you and your warders are here, to set an example. How many of these lads have male role models to look up to, eh?’

‘My warders are here to punish and reform, not to play surrogate father to a shower of young villains.’

‘And that’s your “System”, is it? Drill them with slogans, mark them out as corrupted, scream at them all day, punish them?’

‘Aye, young Detective Inspector, that’s about it,’ said McClintock, and he looked down his nose at Sam. ‘Clearly you’re one of these new breed of do-gooders. Holiday camps and hand-outs of sweeties, is that your prescription?’

‘Showing a bit of respect, giving these lads a good example to follow,
that’s
all I’m saying,’ Sam replied. ‘Your precious System does nothing, Mr McClintock, except trap these kids in a cycle of beatings and hatred.’

‘If these hooligans are trapped in such a cycle, they have only themselves to blame,’ said McClintock. Primly, he pointed. ‘That lad there, hanging from the crossbeam. Priest, his name is, though you’ll not find a less priestly boy within these walls. He tried to blind another boy using an improvised weapon. A screwdriver, to be exact, pilfered from the woodwork shop.’

‘The little tyke,’ interjected Gene.

‘And that other lad,’ McClintock went on. ‘Capps – beat another boy so badly his jaw was dislocated. Such brutes need to be made very aware of the seriousness of their actions.’

Gene nodded. ‘I hate to side with a Jock, Tyler, but wee Jimmy’s right on that one.’

Sam shook his head. ‘Decency. Understanding. A little human compassion, for God’s sake.
There’s
the three graces you should be teaching them!’

Beneath the shadow of the punishment frame, Capps was trying to get to his feet, but his strength was exhausted. The warder overseeing the punishment lashed out at him, cracking the truncheon across the lad’s elbow.

‘I’ll break your bloody arm, you lazy shite! Now get yourself dangling from that bloody crossbeam!’

‘If we can instil in these villains fear of the law, then we’ve perhaps made the outside world a safer place,’ said McClintock.

‘Can’t argue with that,’ muttered Gene. He exchanged a look with McClintock. Despite their deep and mutual antipathy, they clearly stood shoulder to shoulder on one thing at the very least.

‘Indeed – one
cannot
argue with that,’ McClintock said. ‘One cannot argue with the System.’

McClintock picked up his already brisk pace. A warder unlocked a doorway and McClintock trotted through it. Gene loped in after him, but Sam hesitated, glancing back at Capps and Priest in the yard. In agony, they slowly dragged their chins above the high crossbar, their shirts darkening with sweat.

In agony,
he thought.
Just as that little brat in my dreams said Annie is doomed to agony – that it’s her fate, and she can’t escape it – that she can’t escape the filthy, stinking System.

He gritted his teeth.

You’re wrong, McClintock. You
can
argue with the System. And you can break it. You
can
damn well break it!

‘This is disgusting,’ Sam snapped, fronting McClintock face to face. ‘Have you tried actually
talking
to these lads, Mr McClintock? I mean really actually
talking
?’

‘Have
you
, Detective Inspector?’ McClintock came back at him, cold and self-assured. ‘If you had, you’d know what you can expect from them.’

‘Backchat and bollocks,’ suggested Gene.

McClintock nodded tightly. ‘Aye. I’d nae have phrased it that way myself, but that’s precisely what you’d get from them.’

‘Then you ignore all that and get to the real lad behind it,’ said Sam. ‘They don’t know any better. You need patience if you want to turn these kids around. Your warders should act as role models, not torturers.’

‘It’s hardly torture, young Detective Inspector. It’s the System.’

Suddenly, in a youthful, high-pitched voice, Priest cried out, ‘It
is
torture! He’s a torturing, murdering bastard, he is!’

At once, the screw lashed out at him with his baton. Priest took the blow right across the ribs, and down he went, falling from the crossbar and hitting the ground hard. The warder struck the boy again and yet again, bellowing obscenities at him. The sight of it brought back to Sam his terrible dream from just a few days before, when he had watched Annie being beaten and kicked on his TV screen. He thought of the Test Card Girl telling him calmly, ‘There is a terrible power coming after Annie, Sam – and it
will
find her, and it
will
drag her with it down to somewhere very, very unpleasant. And there’s nothing you can do to stop it. It’s the System, Sam.’

‘Leave him!’ Sam yelled at the warder as he strode suddenly back into the yard. ‘I said leave him!’

The warder, baton raised for another strike, paused, unsure if Sam had the authority to issue orders.

Priest was lying in a ball, his knees drawn up, arms cradling his head. Sam positioned himself between the boy and the warder.

‘This stops!’ he declared. ‘Right now!’

‘For Christ’s sake, Tyler, don’t make a tit of yourself,’ growled Gene.

‘Back me up, Guv!’ Sam barked back at him. ‘Just for bloody once, back me up!’

Gene loomed over him. ‘You’re shrieking like a nancy-boy, Tyler, and I do
not
like it! You can wear your pants over your trousers all you like, Sam, but that still don’t make you bloody Superman! You can’t save the world! Even if you
could
, why would you waste your efforts on a bunch of worthless shites like the lads in this place, eh? And I’m not just referring to the warders.’

‘I’m not letting this continue!’ Sam declared. ‘This boy will
not
be beaten!’

Gene suddenly grabbed Sam by the lapels. ‘Don’t you show me up in here, Tyler, not in front of all these people!’

‘I’m not your bloody missus, Gene! Now get your hands
off me
!’

But Gene tightened his grip, hauled Sam off his feet and shoved him against a wall, right under the huge painted word: RESPECT.

‘I mean it!’ he hissed in to Sam’s face. And then, over his shoulder, ‘Sorry you all have to witness this. My colleague gets like this sometimes, starts thinking he’s Joan of Arc or summat, comes over all high-minded and preachy. Dead embarrassing. If I hadn’t chucked the receipt I’d have taken him back to the shop long ago.’

Sam fought free of Gene’s grasp and pushed him away. He stood for a moment, glaring at Gene’s face, McClintock’s face, the slow, stupid face of the warder with the baton, the wide-eyed face of Capps, and the flushed, blooded face of Priest as he peered out from behind the cover of his arms at this strange man who had, quite suddenly and out of the blue, stuck up for him.

I’m on my own here,
Sam thought.
Gene won’t back me up. And the warders’ll close ranks. I’m on my own, doing this the wrong way, letting my emotions get the better of me.

He looked at McClintock, who stared back at him from beneath the razor-sharp peak of his black cap.

That man’s corrupt. I know it. I sense it. I can smell it. There’s things going on here – worse than what we’ve seen so far. Crimes – torture, even deaths – and that cold-eyed bastard’s behind, covering it up, keeping it all contained and suppressed by his precious System. I know it. I know it!

McClintock’s fingers momentarily skimmed the length of gold chain that glinted at his waist. The shiny case of the pocket watch was just visible poking above the line of his pocket, glinting dully.

‘Enough of this,’ McClintock suddenly announced. He indicated with a curt gesture towards the two inmates. ‘Officer, return these boys to the dorm.’