Borstal Slags (22 page)

Chris, Ray, Annie and Sam crowded in behind him.

Gene added, ‘Not exactly Pan’s People, I’ll grant you, but we all have to make do.’

Desperately mopping up tea from ruined papers, Fellowes blathered, ‘You’re perfectly at liberty to ring ahead and make a proper appointment to see me! You don’t have to keep barging in here like you’re raiding a gin joint!’

‘Well that’s where you’re wrong, porky,’ said Gene, swaggering arrogantly over to Fellowes’s desk. He was enjoying himself. ‘Because, if I was to let you know my moves before I made them, I’d lose the element of surprise. And, in this game, the element of surprise is the maker and the breaker!’

‘Detective Chief Inspector, we’re all on the same side.’

‘Ah,’ said Gene, raising a wise finger. ‘That’s what we’re here to find out. Raymond!’

‘Yes, Guv.’

‘Watch him like a hawk. Don’t let him touch anything, move anything,
do
anything. He so much as sips that tea, cuff him! If there’s evidence in this room – reports, paperwork, spunky tissues hidden in the drawers – I don’t want him or no one else tampering with it. This place is on lock-down until I say otherwise. Christopher!’

‘Yes, Guv?’

‘Shut off that bleedin’ racket.’

‘Righto, Guv!’

Chris killed the radio. Monteverdi broke off in mid-cadence.

Fellowes stood behind his desk, staring aghast at the sudden invasion. He was speechless.

Sam decided to step in before things got out of hand.

‘Mr Fellowes, it’s really Mr McClintock my DCI needs to question,’ he said. ‘And, while he’s doing that, WDC Cartwright here and myself need to speak to Donner.’

‘You heard him,’ added Gene. ‘Make it ’appen.’

‘I most certainly will
not
!’ retorted Fellowes, his soft jowls wobbling in indignation.

‘Look out, lads, Mr Toad’s getting shirty,’ said Gene.

‘I am the governor of this facility and I will be treated with the due respect!’

‘And I’m King Kong and I’m ten feet long and I gotta big six-gun and everybody is scared!’ Gene snapped back. And, when Fellowes looked blankly at him, he clarified: ‘The Kinks, you opera-loving twat.’

‘It wasn’t opera, you oaf,’ Fellowes came back at him, his fat cheeks flushed. ‘It was a madrigal.’

Gene leant across the desk and glared into Fellowes’s eyeballs as if he were aggressively trying to hypnotize him. ‘Now listen up, butterball. I’m conducting a multiple-murder investigation, and it’s getting on for teatime and my tummy is a’rumblin’. I do
not
want to be standing here arguing the toss when I could be tucking into my Captain Birdseyes and I do
not
want some jumped-up headmaster who play-acts at being a proper prison guv’nor giving me backchat worse than some bird. Now, I know full well I’m making you anxious – I’ll bet right this minute you’re squirting your Y-fronts with a gallon of frit piddle – so let’s not pretend any more you’ve got the balls to stand up to me.’ Gene leant closer, his eyes flashing with a barely contained fire. ‘Start complying. Summon that jock house master or I’ll nick you for obstruction and bang you up with Big Bill Bum Bandit in Cell Number 2. You getting what I’m saying?’

Fellowes looked like a small, harmless animal driven into a corner.

Gene barked at him. ‘McClintock! Now!’

‘I-I’ll see if he’s in his office,’ he stammered, reaching shakily for the phone.

‘For he’s a jolly good Fellowes!’ beamed Gene, watching him nervously dial and wait for a reply.

Fellowes spoke into the phone. ‘Mr McClintock, would you be so kind as to come to my office straightaway? … CID is here again, and they want to speak to you … Well, I
could
ask them to come back tomorrow’ – he glanced over at Gene, who was slowly and with great deliberation shaking his head – ‘but on second thoughts, Mr McClintock, I think right now is the perfect time to clear up this matter … Thank you, Mr McClintock.’

He hung up and gave Gene a pathetic look that seemed to say,
See? I did what you wanted. Now please don’t hurt me.

‘Right – we’ll wait,’ said Gene.

He thrust his hands into his pockets and began pacing innocently about. The clock on the wall ticked. The atmosphere became tight and awkward.

‘Guv?’ piped up Chris.

‘Yes, young Christopher?’

‘What’s a manderinal?’

‘Madrigal,’ sighed Fellowes.

‘It’s one of them porcelain troughs you piss in at the boozer,’ said Ray.

Fellowes looked at him like a man who has just seen his prize petunias trampled.

‘It’s a type of nancy-boy music,’ Gene explained. ‘It’s for ponces. Tyler’s probably got a soft spot for it. And, by a strange acoustical anomaly, it’s actually even more boring than it sounds.’

‘
O tempora! O mores!
’ muttered Fellowes, closing his eyes.

From outside came the sound of clipped, prim footsteps.

Gene’s ears pricked up. ‘Fee fie fo fum, I smell the blood of an uptight highland sausage-muncher who’s about to get his sporran squeezed.’

Mr McClintock appeared in the doorway, his uniform immaculate, his peaked cap tucked under his arm military-style. He paused, perusing the scene in Mr Fellowes’s office, turning his tight, narrow face from Sam to Annie, Annie to Chris, Chris to Ray, and from Ray at last to Gene Hunt himself.

‘I see,’ said McClintock coolly. ‘The impertinent detectives from CID have returned – and this time in force.’

Sam found his attention drawn to that gold watch chain glittering at McClintock’s waist. He felt an inexplicable urge to grab it, rip that fob watch from his pocket, and smash it on the floor. He also felt the urge to smash McClintock’s self-satisfied face.

House Master McClintock neatly settled his cap back onto his head, straightened it with his scarred hands, and stepped into the room. Gene at once squared up to him, but Sam decided to get in quick before the Guv’s mouth opened fire once again.

‘You’ve had your time, Mr McClintock,’ he said. ‘You’ve run this borstal your way long enough. But now it’s over. We’re here to break your precious System, Mr McClintock. And we’re here to break
you
.’

‘Are you indeed?’ said McClintock, primly arching an eyebrow. ‘Let me guess. You’re going to attempt to make the recent unfortunate deaths of inmates appear to be foul play, with
me
as the foul player, mmm?’

Sam nodded, slowly and deliberately. ‘And, what’s more, I received first-hand testimony of severe malpractice being carried on within these walls. Not just the beatings I’ve seen for myself, not just the totally unacceptable punishment block with its so-called “Black Hole”. I’m talking about
torture
, Mr McClintock. I’m talking about electrocutions.’

‘Electrocutions?’ repeated McClintock, incredulous. ‘And
where
, pray, did you garner your evidence, young Detective Inspector? Or may I be permitted to make a guess again? You’ve been speaking to the boys.’

‘I have,’ said Sam firmly. ‘Not the current inmates, of course, because under your regime they’re too scared.’

‘Ah,’ said McClintock, ‘then it’s not even
fresh
tittle-tattle you’ve been gathering but stale old nonsense from ex-cons. And what else did you hear, mmm? Have I been murdering the boys and cooking their flesh for my dinner? Do I drink their blood, and turn into a bat every full moon?’

‘A wolf,’ Chris corrected him severely. ‘It’s a
wolf
every full moon. Get your story straight, McClintock.’

‘Is that what you’re going to charge me with?’ McClintock asked. ‘Lycanthropy?’

Ray let out a breath, taken aback and somewhat angered by use of such a long and baffling word. He looked to Gene for support.

‘It’s all right, Ray,’ Gene comforted him. ‘He’s not messing with
my
head. Now listen up, McClintock. It’s nothing personal – well, actually, it is, but that’s just a happy coincidence. Point is, Jimmy, there’s a case building against you. The death of Craig Tulse, the death of Barry Tunning, the death of Thingy Coren.’

‘Andrew,’ Sam prompted him.

‘Andrew, aye,’ said Gene. ‘Three deaths. All on
your
watch, with
your
fingerprints all over ’em.’

‘Conjecture,’ declared McClintock.

‘That remains to be seen. And that’s why we’re here, me and my boys.’ He indicated Chris and Ray beside him. ‘We’re going to have serious words with you. We’re going to see what’s what and get to the bottom of all this. As for Bootsy and Snudge over there’ – he jabbed a thumb towards Sam and Annie – ‘-they’re off to play KerPlunk with that lad Donner and see what
he’s
got to say.’

‘I see,’ said McClintock. ‘You really are determined to build a case against me, aren’t you?’

‘You bet we are!’ Sam suddenly put in, stepping forward and confronting McClintock up close. ‘You’ve had the run of this place for too long. But that’s over now. The boys in this borstal might not be angels, but that doesn’t give you the right to treat them like scum. They’re human beings! Damn it, McClintock, they’re just kids! You have a duty of care to these boys!’

‘And I exercise that duty!’ McClintock snapped back. ‘I teach them right from wrong!’

‘You teach them nothing!’ Sam shouted back. ‘You reinforce the cycle of violence and revenge that these poor bastards have been born into! And when they won’t be battered and cowed into submission, when they stand up and refuse to be destroyed by your precious System, you’ll stop at nothing –
nothing
– to prove your so-called authority. Young men have died because of you! But not any more. We’re going to shine a bloody great spotlight on you and this place, McClintock. And we’re going to break your filthy, damned System into pieces!’

Was it House Master McClintock he was confronting, or was it Fate itself? In his mind, Sam was thinking as much about Annie, McClintock’s betrayal of her father and about the Devil in the Dark as he was about Coren and Tunning and the others. What he was pitting himself against was something far greater, and far more dangerous, than a corrupt and sadistic borstal House Master and his murderous regime.

‘You’re finished!’ Sam spat, jabbing his finger into McClintock’s chest. ‘You’re going down for what you’ve done here. Your System’s history and so are you.’ And then he whispered harshly, right into his face, ‘I know things about you. Your past.
What you did
.’

Furiously, Sam turned on his heels and marched towards the door.

‘Annie, let’s find Donner,’ he ordered, and Annie fell into step behind him. Over his shoulder, he declared, ‘Break him, Guv, if that’s what it takes. The bastard deserves it.’

He strode out into the corridor, and at once walked straight into the boy with the mop. The boy stumbled back from where he’d been eavesdropping, stepping into his bucket and toppling it. Water gushed all over the floor, and the boy splashed through it as he fled, chucking aside his mop and belting away along the corridor.

Sam marched resolutely ahead, Annie hurrying along after him.

‘Sam, calm down, keep a clear head.’

‘My head’s perfectly clear, Annie. Never been clearer.’

‘You’re sounding like the Guv! Get a grip of yourself.’

‘That boy there!’ Sam declared, pointing at the lad running away and disappearing round a corner. ‘You see what he had on his uniform? A brown patch of cloth. A “Stain” to mark him out as corrupted, as less than human. McClintock’s orders. It’s like bloody Auschwitz in this place! But not any more. Not any more!’

‘Sam!’ Annie reached out and caught his arm, stopping him. ‘Just stop and think. Don’t go swaggering about like the Guv. That’s not the way and you know it. You’re
Sam –
so act like Sam.’

He looked at her, at her serious, round face, her searching eyes, her brown, bobbed hair that danced lightly above her shoulders as she walked. He wanted to shield her from everything, from every dark and malignant thing out there that would do her harm. He wanted to sacrifice himself, if that’s what it took, so that the terrible Fate decreed for her was averted and her future became her own once more.

Break the System
, he thought.
Break the System, break Fate, and break that damned Devil in the Dark. I can do it. I
know
I can do it.

Behind her, stepping out of Mr Fellowes’s office doorway, appeared the Test Card Girl, clutching her bandaged dolly and fixing Sam with a look of infinite sadness, infinite despair.

I
have
to do it!
he told himself.
I don’t have a choice. The stakes are too high. They’re way too high.

‘Come on,’ he said, taking Annie’s hand and marching with her along the corridor. ‘Let’s find Donner and get this case wrapped up.’

When he glanced back, the Test Card Girl was gone.

‘Where do you think he’ll be?’ asked Annie as she strode with Sam down the long, bleach-stinking corridors.

‘There can’t be too many places,’ said Sam. ‘Donner tends to work in the kitchens. But I think there are dormitories just along here somewhere. We could try there first.’

As they reached one of the dorms, a boy in dungarees rushed out, glanced at them, and then raced off again.

‘That was the lad who was mopping the floor,’ Annie whispered. ‘You think he’s spreading the word about what he’s overheard?’

‘I bet the rumour mill’s in full swing.’ Sam nodded. ‘That could work to our advantage. If the boys know McClintock’s under arrest, they might be more willing to cooperate.’

Together, they approached the dorm. It was a bleak room of whitewashed brick, lined with neat, grey beds. A dozen or so boys, all dressed in regulation prison overalls and bearing their brown ‘Stain’, were whispering intensely among themselves, but at once fell silent. They turned and stared silently, but not at Sam. All eyes were on Annie. The atmosphere became charged with a menacing sexual tension.

Sam held up his ID badge. ‘My name’s DI Tyler. Don’t worry, lads, we’re on your side, believe it or not.’ He was answered with a tense silence. ‘We’re looking for Donner. Anyone know where he is?’

Looking around, Sam spotted a tall, red-haired boy with powerful shoulders amongst the other lads. His face was familiar. It took a moment, but then the memory came back to him: when he and Gene had first come to Friar’s Brook, this lad had been one of those they’d seen being punished out in the yard.