Borstal Slags (13 page)

‘That’s the spirit,’ Tony said in a hushed voice. ‘Speak when you’re spoken to, and tell Gould what he wants to hear. Once he’s accepted you, we’ll get the hell out of there as soon as we can.’

Tony pulled Sam nearer to him, close enough for Sam to smell the nervous sweat of his armpits.

‘Gould will be suspicious. He’ll send somebody to keep an eye on you. They’ll sit you at one of the gaming tables, give you drinks, encourage you to enjoy yourself. Play along. I’ll be in the office with Gould, explaining that I need you in on our arrangement. Once he’s happy with that, he’ll send for you. Sweet Jesus, I’m sweating cobs!’

Tony fumbled a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his glistening brow.

‘It was never supposed to bloody come to this! A few extra on the side to make ends meet, that’s all it was. But those bastards, they suck you in. I should have seen it coming – I should have smelt it, right from the start, what Gould wanted in the long run. I just didn’t realize it’d be
me
who’d be the one tangled up in it! There’s others on the pay roll working for Gould, it ain’t just me. There’s lads creaming it in! Uniformed coppers, boys from Special Branch, boys from CID – right across the board. All sorts. But the bugger goes and singles
me
out, wants
me
to get him off the hook for that whole bloody messy business of his!’

With shaking hands, Tony scrubbed at his face with the handkerchief then shoved it back into his trouser pocket. He took a deep breath, held it, let it out slowly.

‘Right, then. Let’s go.’

Tony indicated that Sam was to go first. Sam felt himself turn, head through the doorway, and plod down the staircase into the murky gloom. The reek of cigars filled his nostrils. He stepped into a shifting, suffocating darkness, felt a curtain made of dangling beads brush against him and pushed his way through it.

Figures moved through a smoky, dim light. Decorated lamps glowed. Light sparkled from the effervescence of champagne glasses. Cards were dealt and dice thrown across green baize. A roulette wheel spun, and a steel ball shot across it. Gambling chips clacked.

‘Gould’s office is back there,’ whispered Tony. He indicated past the gamers, the girls, and the croupiers towards a set of wooden doors set deep in shadow, outside of which were stationed two sharply dressed, bald-headed bouncers. ‘We’ll wait here until he sends for me. God, I need a drink!’

He grabbed two glasses of champagne and downed them both, one after the other.

Then they saw Perry appear out of the wooden doors of Mr Gould’s office and come threading his way between the gaming tables towards them.

‘Mr Cartwright, Mr Gould will see you now.’

Tony hesitated, and looked around for another glass of champagne.

‘
Now
, Mr Cartwright,’ Perry insisted.

Without a word, Tony headed towards the wooden doors. The heavies opened them for him, and he vanished inside.

Perry thrust a block of gambling chips into Sam’s hands. All by themselves, Sam’s hands accepted them. He could feel the weight of them, feel the smooth plastic surface of each chip, and yet he knew it was the hands of a stranger who held them.

‘Compliments of Mr Gould,’ he said. ‘You’re to enjoy yourself this evening.’

Through shifting bands of thick tobacco smoke, the wooden doors to Mr Gould’s private office were just visible. They reeked of menace, like the doors to some terrible underworld of lost souls and perpetual torment.

Violence
, Sam thought.
Violence and cruelty. Pain and betrayal. It stinks of death here! My God, this is an awful place.

Sam suddenly realized his hands were trying to thrust the gambling chips back to Perry.

‘A refusal often offends,’ said Perry, smiling, refusing to accept them. But Sam wouldn’t take them. Perry’s smile didn’t falter for a moment. ‘Let’s get something straight. This is the House of Diamonds. You’re a guest of Mr Gould. You understand what that means? And, while you’re a guest, you’re to have a nice time, right? You’re to have a very nice time.’

Politely but firmly, Perry was manoeuvring Sam towards the bar. They sat together on narrow stools, side by side.

‘On the house.’ He winked, sliding a cocktail glass into Sam’s hands. ‘You can have a good life if you do the right things. Mr Gould looks after his own. He’s looking after
me
. I’m on the up here. You are, too – leastways, now you’re on the team. You’re one of us. One of the gang.’

He clinked his own glass against Sam’s and sipped his cocktail, smacking his lips. He looked intensely into Sam’s face for a moment, leant closer, and spoke in a low voice.

‘Mr Gould’s got plans, you know. Not just for me and you. For
her
. Cartwright’s daughter. Know what I mean?’

He nudged Sam with his elbow.

‘It’s going to be hard for her at first, of course,’ he went on, whispering. ‘You know – tears and all that. But he’ll look after her.’ He grinned and winked at Sam. ‘And, with her daddy out of the way, there’ll be a vacancy. You want to get in there. Annie’s a chip off the old block, you know what I’m saying? Her mother’s still a looker. A
real
looker. And, besides, she’s more your age than mine.’

Sam’s thoughts reeled. Was he reading Perry’s meaning right? He felt himself turn away, shift position in his seat, and as he did he caught sight of himself for the first time in the mirrored tiles on the wall behind the bar. What he saw made his blood freeze in his veins.

The face looking back at him was familiar, but it was not his own. A young man with cropped, reddish hair and a trim moustache was staring out at him. It was House Master McClintock’s face, but ten years younger, and dressed not in the black uniform of a borstal warder but in a sharp suit with a narrow tie.

My God, this is McClintock’s past I’m seeing. This is McClintock’s life I’m witnessing!

He saw one of his – or rather, McClintock’s – hands reach out and pick up the cocktail glass. The hand, Sam now realized, was unscarred. Whatever injury had so disfigured him still lay ahead, in McClintock’s future.

‘You seem very tense Mr McClintock,’ Perry said. ‘I don’t think this casino is your sort of place, is it. It
is
a bit smoky in here. Tell you what’ – he knocked back his drink and got to his feet – ‘let’s chat outside.’

As Perry got to his feet, Sam waited for McClintock to follow him, but instead he stayed put. Perry looked at him with a strange expression for a moment, then laughed.

‘
You
got nothing to worry about, old sport! It’s Cartwright who’s up shit creek – as well you know! C’mon, let’s get some air.’

Slowly, McClintock rose and followed Perry across the casino and back up the steep flight of stairs. Together, they stepped into the narrow alleyway, where Perry’s car was still parked. Perry lounged against his motor and fished out a packet of cigarettes. McClintock refused the offer of one with a shake of his head, so Perry lit up alone, making a show of it, acting like the big man.

‘Don’t feel guilty, Mr McClintock,’ he said, breathing out smoke. ‘Cartwright brought it on himself, you must understand that. All Mr Gould needed was a little bit of messy business tidied up. That’s all. But PC Cartwright went and let his conscience get the better of him. He tried to – oh what’s the expression? He tried to “wear the white hat” – that’s it. But white hats have gone out of fashion, don’t you think? I mean, we wouldn’t catch
you
in a ruddy great white hat now, would we?’

And with that, he produced a huge wad of bank notes from under his jacket and held them out to Sam.

‘Take it,’ Perry said. ‘Mr Gould insists. Go on, stick in your pocket. And please don’t say “thirty pieces of silver”.’

McClintock betrayed Tony Cartwright
, Sam thought, his brain working frantically to make sense of what he was hearing.
McClintock was on the force alongside Annie’s father, and he sold him out to the gangster who runs this casino.

And then, very suddenly, and with the utmost clarity, Sam thought,
Tony Cartwright’s about to die. Annie’s father is about to die. And it was McClintock who betrayed him.

It didn’t matter how he had come to be here, in this decade and in this place and in this unfamiliar body, seeing events from ten years before through eyes that were not his own. All that mattered was that he seize the initiative. If Annie’s father was about to be murdered by this gangster, Clive Gould, Sam could stop it. He could save him. He could change history.

That’s why I’m here. I’ve been brought here to rewrite the past. God knows how, God knows why, but that’s why I’m here! But how the hell can I make this damned body do anything – it’s not mine to control!

He screamed silently at the body he was trapped in,
Move! Move, damn it! There’s no point me being here if I can’t change things!

But still he just stood there.

Up the steps, looming out of the darkness, came the two bouncers who had been guarding the entrance to Gould’s office. They planted themselves menacingly on either side of McClintock, like prison warders with an inmate.

Perry acknowledged them politely: ‘Charlie. Lewis. Good evening to you both.’

The bouncers said nothing. They stood with faces like bulldogs, implacable and humourless. One of them nodded, almost imperceptibly, at Perry. It was a signal.

‘Very well,’ said Perry, and patted McClintock’s arm. ‘Mr Gould is ready to receive us. Follow me, if you’d be so kind.’

McClintock hesitated. The bouncers drew closer, nudged him to walk forward, but still he did not move.

‘Don’t be concerned, Mr McClintock,’ Perry urged him. From the tone of his voice it was clear that he was enjoying himself, savouring the opportunity to show what he could do, how he could deal with tricky business matters, how he could give orders and take control. Mr Gould would hear of it. Mr Gould would promote him. ‘You’ve done the right thing. Everything runs smooth if everyone behaves. Cartwright was rocking the boat. He was dangerous. But not any more.’ Perry looked deep into Sam’s eyes. ‘You haven’t betrayed a fellow copper – you’ve proved your loyalty to Mr Gould. And you’ve saved yourself from ending up like Cartwright. You’d be sharing the same sticky end as him if you hadn’t played along like a good boy.’

A coward!
Sam thought furiously.
McClintock’s nothing but a stinking coward, selling out his colleague to save his own skin!

McClintock began walking, obediently following Perry down the dark alley, the bouncers plodding along behind.

Sam struggled to somehow take control of McClintock’s body, to override him, to force him to act like a copper and get back down those stairs and get his partner out of trouble. He tried to pour energy into McClintock’s body, into his limbs, to wrest control of them, to clad himself in McClintock’s body as if it were suit of armour. The effort of it was all consuming. Sam’s vision blurred and darkened. He felt a sudden pain, like a migraine, and sense of nausea, and then he seemed to be falling backwards into an inky blackness that enveloped him utterly. He struck something hard that was a wall or a floor, he could not tell which, and found himself stumbling about, confused, his hands pressing against hard surfaces, something heavy and metallic clanging nearby, a sudden light falling across him and then a man’s voice.

‘What? Did you say something, eh?’

The warder was standing in the open doorway of the punishment cell, looking at him. Sam was standing flat against one of the graffiti-covered walls, so close that his nose was pressing against the filthy, black surface.

‘I’m back,’ he breathed, panting.

‘You’re
weird
,’ corrected the warder.

Sam found himself stumbling back through the bleached corridors of Friar’s Brook like a man in a daze. He felt adrift, dislocated, mentally jetlagged. The instability of Time – the suddenness with which he could slip from 2006 back to 1973, and then from 1973 to some point in the early 1960s – appalled him. He was like a man who had just survived an earthquake, shocked that the terra firma beneath his feet that he had taken for granted all his life was far from firma after all.

He leant against a wall, pausing beneath a huge painted slogan that demanded from him SILENCE – DUTY – RESPECT in big, red letters.

‘Coward,’ he muttered. He felt a red-hot anger rising within him. ‘Pathetic, stinking coward.’

He could see it all clearly now. Clive Gould had been the big villain back in the sixties, with money enough to buy off the police. Tony Cartwright had fallen in with all that corruption and bribery, but only out of fear. He knew the consequences of trying to be the one good man in a rotten town. But his conscience had got the better of him, and he’d made his stand, looking to incriminate Gould and have him convicted. But he couldn’t do it alone, he needed an accomplice – and that accomplice was McClintock, who back then must have been a regular copper just like Cartwright himself.

He trusted McClintock. He trusted him with his life. But he picked the wrong man to rely on. McClintock didn’t have the nerve to go against Gould. He feared the consequences if they failed to nail him. And so he sold out his own colleague to save his skin.

That treachery was what Sam had sensed the moment he arrived here at Friar’s Brook. Even before he passed the front gate, his heart had told him that something foul and corrupted resided within these walls. And then, at first sight of McClintock, he had felt an immediate sense of loathing, of repulsion. Instinctively, he had known that McClintock was rotten to the core.

He betrayed Tony Cartwright, sending him to his death at the hands of Clive Gould. Annie was left fatherless …

Perry had made it clear that, with Tony out of the way, Gould had his sights on Annie herself. Once he had washed her father’s blood from them, he would get his hands on Annie for his personal pleasure.

Sam felt cold waves of sickness wash over him.

Annie was so young, just a child – she was just a child …