Borstal Slags (15 page)

‘I hope that ain’t the prelude to a snog, Tyler, I’m not that sort of boy. Now get in that pub and get bladdered. I’d join for a swift one but frankly I’ve seen enough of your face for one day, Sammy boy. Talk to Nelson. It’s his job to listen to self-pitying twats like you mooing on about themselves over a pint glass.’

Feeling a sudden warmth for Gene, which was very rare indeed, Sam clambered out of the car. The Cortina’s engine roared, the tyres screamed, and the motor shot away into the night.

Sam stood in the dark street, looking up at the blank sky. He was grateful he could see no stars. Stars would have sent his head reeling and spinning again.

He patted his chest. It felt real and solid. He looked at the drizzle falling against the orange glow of the sodium street lamp, felt it tingle coldly against his hands and face. He watched a cat slink across the road, its emerald eyes glinting bright green as it shot him a glance. He watched a car pass, swishing through water pooled over a blocked drain.

Details. Endless details. And all of them perfect.

At the far end of the street, he glimpsed a small figure – a girl, standing half in and half out of the glow from a street lamp. She was motionless, staring through the night at Sam, unblinking. He had seen that stare all too many times already.

She’s never going to leave me alone. She’s going to hound me for ever with her threats and her insinuations. Why? Why, for God’s sake?

The windows of the Railway Arms glowed in the night, warmer and more inviting than they had ever seemed before. Repelled by the cold stare of the Test Card Girl, and unable to face going back to his cold, lonely flat, Sam pushed his way into the pub, like a moth drawn irresistibly towards the light.

Sam was at once cocooned by the warmth and friendly fag-smoke reek of the Railway Arms. His heart was still heavy and his mind was still reeling, but he at least felt safe here. Perhaps it was the familiarity, or the smell in the air, or the promise of booze. Or perhaps it had something to do with Nelson, the Arms’ indefatigable landlord, who was stationed – as ever – behind the bar in readiness. Tonight, he was all togged up in his fineries: he had donned an extravagant shirt that depicted a rich Caribbean sunset (or was it a sunrise?) complete with sea, beach and wilting palm trees.

As Sam entered, Nelson looked up from behind the bar, where he was tucking into a bag of pork scratchings. He grinned massively, revealing chunks of pig fat between his white teeth and, turning his Jamaican accent up to eleven, declared, ‘A customer at laahst! Yo savin’ mah life, bro! I was tinkin’ I was gonna be spendin’ da whole naht alone wit’ nuttin’ but me scratchin’s for company!’

Sam wandered uncertainly into the empty pub feeling lost and shell-shocked. He couldn’t clear his brain of the turmoil of thoughts and fears that seethed there.

The guv was right to drop me off here. I need a drink – more than I’ve ever needed a drink!

Nelson leant over the bar and scrutinized him. ‘What dat all over your face, Sam? You blackin’ up to join de Minstrels?’

‘It’s mud,’ Sam said.

‘Is that so?’

Nelson passed him a tea towel used for drying glasses and watched Sam thoughtfully as he scrubbed his face.

‘You wanna freshen up in de gents’?’ Nelson asked. ‘I tink at least
one
o’ de taps in dere is workin’. But you might have to give de looking glass a wipe to see yo be-ootiful face starin’ back atcha!’

‘The looking glass,’ Sam muttered. ‘We’re all through the looking glass …’

Through the looking glass. Wonderland. When he was a little boy, his dad would read him favourite passages from the Alice stories before lights out. ‘The Owl and Pussy Cat’. ‘The Red Queen’. ‘The Jabberwocky’.

My dad. Vic. Vic Tyler.

A complex rush of emotions and memories came tumbling through his mind. He recalled his father’s lean, boyish face, his impish smile, the rasp of his unshaven chin against Sam’s cheek that always made him giggle and squirm, the sight of his jacket hanging on the banister, his silhouette in the bedroom doorway as he looked in to say good night, the signed Bobby Charlton cigarette card that his dad had presented to him one day and which had meant then – and still meant now – more to Sam than all the treasure in the world.

But there was more to Vic Tyler than this. There was the dark side that little four-year-old Sam had never seen or even suspected, but which the adult Sam had come face to face with here in 1973. There was Vic Tyler the crook, the liar, the pornographer, the ruthless killer. There was Vic Tyler the man who walked out on his wife and son without a word, never to return, because he knew CID was closing in on him. There was Vic Tyler who had tried to beat Annie to death just to evade arrest. There was Vic Tyler who had turned a gun on Sam, aiming the barrel straight between his eyes and pulling the trigger without a moment’s hesitation, unaware that the gun was unloaded, that Sam himself had removed the bullets.

Sam screwed up his face and pressed his fists against his eyes, trying to block out the horror of the memory, the loneliness that had flooded over him as a child when he learnt that his father had walked out on him and his mum, all those years of daring to believe that in the next moment there would be a knock at the door and his dad would be there, out of the blue, come to kiss his wife and gather up his son in his arms.

Death. Loss. Blighted childhood. And that nameless, faceless threat emerging from the deep darkness to drag Annie away from him for ever.

‘I can’t cope with all this!’ Sam growled through gritted teeth, driving his knuckles into his face as if he could crush the pain and confusion and fear he was experiencing. ‘My dad tried to kill Annie, but I saved her! I thought it was enough! Damn it all, I thought it was enough!’

He felt that terrible panic rising in him again, that sense the world about him and the sky over his head was pressing in on him, crushing him, trapping, confining him. Unlike his father, he had nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide.

‘I can’t deal with this. I’m a copper!
I’m only a bloody copper!
’

‘
Only
a copper?’ said Nelson. ‘Dere ain’t no “only” about being a copper, Sam. It’s a high callin’.’

‘I’m going mad, Nelson.’

‘Not you, bro. You ain’t goin’ mad.’

Sam dug his fingers into his face: ‘I – I … Ach, you don’t understand, Nelson. How could you? How could anyone? Oh, God, I’m losing it, I’m losing it, I’m losing it big time!’

‘Open your eyes, bro.’

‘Nelson, I – I don’t feel I can.’

‘Open your eyes and look. That’s all you gotta do.’

Sam dropped his hands from his face and saw Nelson opening the door behind the bar that led into the back room. But through the doorway, instead of the usual glimpse of piled-up boxes of crisps, discarded delivery invoices, old packing crates, and assorted heaps of junk, Sam saw a wide-open space, a vast shining plane beneath a glittering sky, all blazing with a cool, clear light.

In the next heartbeat, Nelson pulled the door shut and cut off the view. For a moment, pure white light blazed through the gap between the jambs and the lintel – and then, all at once, it faded out. Nelson stood with his back to the door, grinning his huge toothy, Cheshire Cat grin at Sam.

‘
That
shut you up,’ he smiled.

‘What – what did I just see?’ Sam asked quietly.

Nelson crunched on a pork scratching and flashed his eyebrows knowingly.

In little more than a whisper, Sam asked, ‘Who are you, Nelson?’

‘Me? Oh, I’m different from all you guys.
Very
different. I’m sort of like …’ He thought for a moment, looking for the right expression. ‘I’m sort of like passport control. Or maybe a bouncer at a club. Or something like that.’

‘Are you … an angel?’

‘Do angels eat pork scratchings?’

‘It looks to me like they do.’

Nelson smiled. ‘Angels, devils … What’s in a name? To you, I’m Nelson, the fella who pulls the pints and listens to your woes after you’ve had a hard day chasing bad guys. But maybe now you see what I was telling you: I
do
understand how you’re feeling, Sam. Better than anyone.’

‘Where am I?’ Sam asked.

‘Where’d you think? Your local boozer!’

‘But the Railway Arms isn’t really a pub, is it?’ said Sam. ‘And 1973 isn’t really 1973 – I mean, not really.’

‘It is and it isn’t.’

‘That’s not very helpful, Nelson.’

‘Well, it’s not an easy question to answer.’

‘I need to know where I am!’

‘Then I’ll show you.’ Nelson placed an empty pint glass on the bar and pointed at it. ‘This, Sam, is your Life. Your old life, the one you left behind. It’s where you came from. And this’ – about a foot from the pint glass he set down a virgin bottle of Johnnie Walker Red Label – ‘this beautiful bottle of liquid gold is where you’re heading to. It’s your destination, all being well. But it’s still far off. Right now, Sam, you’re about here …’ He took a pork scratching from the packet and placed it carefully on the bar. ‘That’s you. Between the empty pint glass and the unopened whisky. That’s where you are, Sam. In transit. On your way – to this.’

Nelson grinned and tapped the Johnnie Walker bottle.

Slowly, Sam said, ‘So – I’m a pork scratching making my way to a bottle of Scotch.’

‘Just a metaphor, Sam!’ Nelson laughed. And, smiling, he cast his gaze about the pub. ‘It’s
all
a metaphor! This pub, those streets out there, all them villains you go chasing after.’

‘It all feels – very real to me.’

‘And so it should! It
is
real, Sam. It’s as real as the life you left behind. The people here are real; your job is real; all the danger and the pain, the hopes and the fears – it’s all as real as ever. But
here
, Sam, here between the pint glass and the whisky – reality has a twist. An extra dimension. Something more.’

‘It has meaning,’ said Sam. ‘That’s what you’re telling me. Everything here has meaning.’

‘Oh, yes.’

Sam picked up the pork scratching between his forefinger and his thumb, examining it like forensic evidence. It was a lumpy, burnt, misshapen sliver of fried pig fat, as attractive and appetizing as a bogey. And yet it meant something. It had significance. And so did everything else in 1973. The stink and the squalor of this time and place – the fag ash and the filth. All the people – the Guv and Ray and Chris, and Phyllis and Annie, and McClintock and Fellowes and Donner. And Friar’s Brook and even the Cortina. It all had significance. It was here for a reason, just as Sam was, just as the Railway Arms was, just as this little pork scratching was.

‘I’m a copper,’ Sam said softly. ‘I solve crimes. That’s what I do. But here those crimes mean something more. Don’t they?’

‘Very much more, Sam.’

‘What do they mean, Nelson? Why am I here? What have I got to do?’

‘Big questions!’ laughed Nelson. ‘
Big
questions! Just keep doing your job, Sam. Keep nicking them bad guys.’ And now his smile faded, and he fixed Sam with his eyes and said very seriously, ‘Just do your best, Sam. It’s important.’

‘Help me,’ said Sam.

‘That’s what I’m doing right now.’

‘No, I mean
help
me. There’s something out there, something in the dark. It’s getting closer all the time. It wants Annie. It wants to … to hurt her.’

Nelson nodded, his face very serious. ‘Yes, Sam. It wants to hurt her.’

‘What is it?’

‘A man from Annie’s past,’ Nelson said simply. ‘They were together in Life. He killed her. And later he himself died. He died, Sam, but he still won’t let her go.’

‘It’s Gould, isn’t it? It’s that bastard Clive Gould.’

‘He’s reaching out for her, trying to take her back. He doesn’t belong here – his rightful place is far away – but he never played by the rules in Life and he has no intention of starting now. It’s taking all his strength to manifest himself here. Bit by bit he’s piecing himself together here. You’ll have glimpsed him first in dreams.’

Sam nodded. He was recalling when he had fallen into the fortified compound of the Red Hand Faction. Carol Waye, the public-school-educated revolutionary with the plaits like Heidi, had knocked him out with a blow from the butt of her handgun – and as he plunged into unconsciousness, he had seen a terrible, inhuman face leering out at him from the darkness. He had dismissed it later as a phantom of his reeling brain – but deep within himself Sam knew that what he has seen had been real. It had been all too horribly real.

‘And then,’ Nelson was saying, ‘after the dreams, you’ll have seen him in some other form. A picture in a book, maybe. A painting on a wall.’

‘A tattoo,’ said Sam. He was thinking of Patsy O’Riordan, the huge, bullet-headed, bare-knuckle boxer from Terry Bernard’s fairground. ‘A monstrous tattoo, like the face of a devil.’

Nelson nodded. ‘He doesn’t have the strength to come waltzing into your world and drag Annie away with him – at least, not yet. He has to take it in stages. Step by step, he becomes more real, Sam. And who knows what guise he’ll take next? It might be something subtler, something more abstract. Whatever form he takes, Sam, it will always appear to you in the form of a crime, a case for you and your department.’

‘The System,’ said Sam, nodding to himself. ‘McClintock’s System at Friar’s Brook. I knew it! I knew that I had to break that System! If I break that System, Nelson, then I break the other System too, the one that little bitch from the test card was talking about. She said Fate was a system that couldn’t be broken, and that Annie’s Fate was for that damned Devil in the Dark to get its hands on her! But I can change that! I can change it all and save her! That’s right, isn’t it, Nelson? That’s what I’ve got to do?’

‘Maybe it is – maybe it’s not.
You’re
the policeman, DI Tyler, not me.’

‘Help me, Nelson. Help me do this job.’

‘I can’t do that, Sam.’

‘Yes you can! You know the game round here, better than any of us. You understand what it’s all about. You’ve got – you’ve got powers.’