Borstal Slags (26 page)

Is this it? Is this how McClintock got those burns?

But it was Sam, looking out through McClintock’s eyes, who suddenly thought,
Oh, my God, it’s
me
who’s going to feel this! It’s
me
who’s going to endure that pain!

Sam was McClintock, and McClintock was Sam. The agony inflicted on one would be felt by the other.

He looked from the hissing blue flame of the approaching blowtorch up to Tony Cartwright’s terrified face. At that moment, Gould reached out and threw a lever. Noisily, a gear whirred up in the rafters, and Tony descended head first into the oil. Sam caught one last glimpse of his face, bright-red, wide-eyed, utterly despairing, before it slipped beneath the thick, black ooze.

McClintock rushed forward. But at once he felt his legs being brutally kicked out from under him. Down he went down, hitting the floor hard. Charlie grabbed him, hauled him upright, and smashed him square in the face with a fist the size of a mallet. It was McClintock’s body that took the force of that blow, but Sam sure as hell felt it, too. The impact went through him like an explosion. As his head shot back, he felt blood splatter over his face and pour down his chin. Another blow powered into his stomach, and, through the haze of his spinning, reeling brain, he was dimly aware of blood and vomit splattering over his shoes.

He heard Gould say, very calmly, ‘Shove that torch in his face, Lewis.’

Dredging up a wild and desperate strength from somewhere, McClintock kicked out with both feet simultaneously. Sam felt McClintock’s boots strike Lewis, good and hard, right in the crotch, and then he felt himself and Charlie tumbling chaotically to the floor.

There was a sudden whoosh of noise and a blaze of light. Lewis was tumbling heavily into the barrel of oil in which Tony had been submerged, but now the barrel was blazing furiously, ignited by the blowtorch. It was burning, and so was Tony.

McClintock went crazy, lashing out wildly, driving blows into Charlie’s face and windpipe, and then he found himself back on his feet, grabbing a crowbar and glaring about. He saw Perry, standing there in the light of the exploding oil barrel, staring in mixed horror and fascination at Tony Cartwright’s burning body. The boy seemed oblivious to everything except that spectacle of horror. Sam lunged at him and brought the crowbar down on the back of his skull. Perry pitched head first against the blazing barrel, overturning it. A torrent of flaming oil swept across the garage floor.

McClintock grabbed one of the chains suspended from the ceiling and hung on, lifting his feet clear of the inferno beneath him. He saw the rolling wave of fire engulf Charlie, who rose up from amid the flames and ran, screaming and flailing. Lewis, also ablaze, came floundering towards him. They collided. The two bouncers rebounded off each other and fell back, consumed by fire.

The chain McClintock was hanging from was red hot now. Sam could feel the skin of his hands burning. But still he hung on, keeping himself clear of the lake of fire beneath him. Agonized, he turned his head and saw Tony Cartwright hanging as a piece of charred meat suspended amid blackened chains. Perhaps, for him, the fire had been a mercy. Perhaps he had died far more quickly then he would have done in the filthy black ooze.

Where was Perry? Presumably he was already dead, lying face down in the burning oil, his skull cracked like an eggshell.

Gould!
he thought, gritting his teeth against the searing pain in his hands.
Where’s Gould? Please let me see him burning – please let me see him dead. Please!

Through the fire, he caught sight of Clive Gould, standing in the open doorway of the garage, very much alive. His face was lit manically by the leaping flames, his eyes glaring, his teeth bared. Did he see McClintock clinging like a monkey from his chain? Or did he see only Tony Cartwright, who had escaped the worst of the punishment owed to him? Did he see only the burning bodies of his minders? Did he see only the loss of Perry, his youthful driver and runaround, who’d need to be replaced? Or was it just the loss of his garage that this cold, evil bastard mourned?

Whatever ran through his subhuman, reptilian mind, Sam could not read it. Billows of black smoke blinded him for a moment, and in the next instant, he looked and saw that Clive Gould was gone.

I still have the evidence. That fob watch – it’s in my pocket.

And then he corrected himself:
It’s in
McClintock’s
pocket – right now, as McClintock dies – and it will still be in his pocket years from now, in the life after this one.

There was a riddle here, a riddle Sam felt on the brink of solving, but he was unable to think any further. More smoke swept across him, engulfing him, choking him, smothering him in total blackness.

The black smoke blinded him. It filled his lungs. He gasped and spluttered for breath – and then found himself being hauled and heaved about.

My God! One of those damned bouncers is still alive!

Feebly, utterly disoriented, he tried to fight back.

What if it’s Gould? What if he’s that damned Devil in the Dark?

‘I’ll kill you!’ Sam choked, thrashing blindly. ‘I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you!’

‘Only through the boredom of your company, Tyler,’ a familiar gruff voice growled back. ‘Even so, I’m moderately glad to see you ain’t quite snuffed it yet.’

Sam looked about him – and saw nothing. Blackness. Void.

‘Gene?’

‘Who else, dum-dum?’

‘I’m blind!’

‘No you’re not, you twonk. We’re in the punishment cell that ain’t got no windows. I got us both in here and slammed the door. It was either that or a lynching.’

‘The Black Hole? We’re locked inside the Black Hole?’

Sam felt about in the darkness. His fingers brushed against the Guv’s face.

‘
Naff off!
’

He ran his hands over himself. He felt his shirt, his jacket, the familiar contours of his face.

‘I’m me,’ he breathed.

‘Oh, God, he’s gone Tonto again,’ Gene muttered.

Sam groped about and found a wall. He could feel the rough texture of the carvings and graffiti.

‘Annie!’ he cried. ‘Annie, can you hear me!’

‘Knock it off, Tyler!’

Sam’s head was spinning with the terrible things he had witnessed: Tony’s death, the fire, McClintock’s agonizing demise in the flames. But, more than that, his mind was branded with the ugly, hard face of Clive Gould, the man who would take Annie as his own, brutalize her, murder her.

He felt an overwhelming need to find Annie, to put his arms around her, protect her from the terrible things of this world. But she was alone, somewhere out there in the murderous madhouse that was Friar’s Brook in meltdown, while Sam was trapped in the dark.

‘We got to get out of here, right now! Right
now
, Guv!’

‘Well
I
ain’t stopping you.’

‘For God’s sake, Gene, they could be raping her, they could be killing her, they could be—’

‘I said it weren’t no place for a dopey bird!’ Gene barked from out of the darkness. ‘I didn’t want her along.
You
wanted her along.’

‘She’s one of the team, she’s one of us!’

‘She’ll
never
be one of us, Tyler, ’coz she don’t drink pints and she don’t stand up when she takes a wazz.’

‘What the hell’s that got to do with anything?’

‘In this game, Tyler, it’s got
everything
to do with
everything
! And before you say “no, it ain’t”, tell me why you’re more worried about drippy-knickers right now rather than our boys? You know as well as I do, Tyler, that this were a job for
blokes
. Bringing a bird in here, it was asking for trouble!’

‘This isn’t the time for this argument, Guv!’

‘I’d say it was the
perfect
time. There’s stuff all else to do!’

‘Annie is out there, Guv. God knows what’s happening to her. We need to get that door open and find her.’

‘She’s probably with Chris and Ray. I reckon Raymondo managed to get his hands on the Magnum. He’s smart like that. He’ll have held off them scallywags long enough to get him and Chris and Bristols to a place of safety. They’re all holed up somewhere, like us.’

‘But we don’t
know
that!’

‘No, we don’t. And for the time being we ain’t gonna find out one way or the other. So until we get out of here, we have to
trust
them Tyler. You know? They’re all serving officers, even that soppy tart Annie. They know how to look after ’emselves, they know how to handle trouble. So – have a bit of faith, Sam.’

Hopelessly, Sam battered at the solid door, dragging his fingers down it the way countless terrified inmates must have done over the years.

‘Stop making a tit of yourself,’ Gene barked from the darkness. ‘Just ’coz I can’t see you don’t mean you don’t look like a right prat clawin’ at that door. Pack it in, park your arse somewhere and pull yourself together.’

Sam threw a last, furious punch at the door, and then slumped down, his back against the hard surface. He had no choice but to trust in Annie, that somehow she had got herself to safety, that she could indeed take care of herself.

Sam gently placed his palms together. The skin was neither hot nor blistered.

Perhaps I had no chance to change the past. Perhaps all I witnessed was a replay of what happened, a glimpse of how Tony Cartwright died, and how Clive Gould got his hands on Annie. And, of all people, it was McClintock who tried to stop him!

He could hardly believe it. And yet, it made a curious sense. McClintock was uptight, a disciplinarian, a by-the-book sort of man. Ten years ago, as a serving police officer, before he switched and joined the prison service, he’d be just the sort who’d stand out from the others, refuse to take bribes, refuse to be corrupted.

Like me,
Sam thought.
Maybe we’re more alike than I could ever have imagined.

McClintock stood up, he defied Clive Gould, he tried to save Tony Cartwright – but he failed, and in the process he was burned.

He died in that fire – and he ended up here, in 1973, just like me. But, unlike me, he brought something with him – something solid, an object from Life. He brought that watch. It’s not just evidence to link Gould to murder – it’s a direct link to Life itself!

He had sensed it, right from the start, at the very moment he clapped eyes on that fob watch nestling in McClintock’s uniform pocket. He had sensed there was something about it, something vital – and yet also something repellent.

But of course. It’s not just a physical link to Life – it’s a physical link to Clive Gould. Gould handled that watch – it was in his possession during those final moments before Tony Cartwright died. That watch is graced by its connection to Life, just as it is contaminated by its contact with the Devil in the Dark.

Sam shook his head to clear it. This was no time for sitting about, fathoming out riddles in the dark. They had to get out of this damned punishment cell – right now!

‘Get your cigarette lighter out, Guv,’ Sam said. ‘Let’s at least have a look around, see if there’s any way we can get out of here.’

‘Bad news, Samuel,’ Gene intoned sadly. ‘I lost me lighter in the crush outside.
And
me packet of Players. It’s a tragedy I don’t deserve. I’m fagless, Tyler. Fagless in the dark. Now
that
is what I call punishment.’

‘We could be stuck in here for days, Guv. Just you, and me, and the darkness.’

‘And no snout.’

There was a pause, and then Gene said, ‘Shit, let’s get that bloody door open.’

They moved about clumsily in the darkness, running their hands over the door in search of the mechanism.

‘How good are you with locks, Tyler?’

‘So-so. But this one’s going to be a real pig.’

‘I think you’re right. Let’s force it.’

‘Force it? Gene, this door is solid iron.’

‘So am I.’

‘It’s built to withstand a bloody tank rolling into it!’

‘So am I.’

‘It’s donkey’s years old and covered in shit and graffiti.’

‘Tough luck, Sammy boy, I ain’t walking into
that
one!’ He sighed and shuffled away from the door. ‘There’s nowt for it. We’re not getting out, not for the foreseeable. It’s just you, me, and the slow passing of time. Think of it like a camping holiday, Tyler, only worse.’

They settled down again in the pitch blackness.

‘Remember what you said to me first time we came to this borstal, Tyler?’ Gene said.

‘I’m not in the mood to chat, Guv.’

‘No, it weren’t that. It were that these lads, locked up here, they could’ve been prime minister given half a chance. Summat like that. You remember?’

Sam sighed. ‘Yes, I remember.’

‘And what do you reckon now, mmm? Still a bunch of future Winston Churchills, are they? I mean, now you’ve seen what a scummy, nasty, shitty, treacherous shower of shite they really are?’

‘I’d say, Guv, that given your description of them they’ve got the perfect character reference to go into politics.’

‘Oh very good, Tyler. Right off the flamin’
Frost Report
, you are.
God
, I wish I had me fags!’ There was a pause while Gene hunted through his pockets, just in case, then admitted defeat. ‘I only mention that stuff, Tyler, ’coz I think you’re wrong.’

‘You
always
think I’m wrong, Guv.’

‘That’s because I’ve been around and I’ve seen what’s what and I’m not afraid to call a spade a spade. And, no, I didn’t mean that racialistically.’

‘I’m sure you didn’t, Guv.’

‘The thing is, Tyler, there’s a reason lads end up in places like this. It’s not about hard luck. It’s about
choice
.’

‘Spoken like a true Tory,’ said Sam.

‘But I’m right. You choose which way to go. You see different roads, and you decide which one to follow. Some blokes choose crime. Some blokes choose the path of least resistance. Me, I chose the path of the angels.’

‘
The path of the angels?’