Borstal Slags

by Graham, Tom

  ‘Not so close!’ Sam yelled. ‘He’ll veer across and roll right over us!’

  ‘Roll over the Cortina? He wouldn’t ruddy dare!’

  ‘Pull back, Gene!’

  This time, Sam grabbed the wheel.

  ‘Off the motor!’ bellowed Gene, shoving him roughly away.

  ‘You’ve lost it, Gene!’ Sam shouted back. ‘You’re acting like a lunatic! People are going to get killed! We are going to get killed!’

  ‘Stop being such a pissy-pants.’

  The Cortina drew right up to Gertrude, almost nudging her filthy rear bumper with its radiator grille.

  ‘You’re bleedin’ Tonto, Guv,’ Sam said, shaking his head. ‘You are medically a mentalist.’

  ‘Nah, I’ve just got balls.’

  ‘Look out!’

  The monstrous truck cut directly in front of the Cortina, its brake lights blazing and its juddering exhaust pipe farting a great blast of filthy black fumes across the windscreen. Gene threw the wheel and the Cortina ducked away as Gertrude cut across a corner, burst through a line of parked cars and then flattened a street lamp.

  ‘He must really want them fridges,’ said Gene. ‘Keep your shell-likes stuck to them police reports, Tyler. I want to know exactly where that truck’s headed.’

  Gene floored the pedal and jerked the wheel wildly to the left. The Cortina zoomed down one narrow street after another.

  ‘What are you going, Guv?’ asked Sam, bracing himself in his seat. ‘Overtaking it so you can face it head on? That’s insane! You saw what it did to that Austin!’

  ‘This ain’t a chuffin’ Austin, you tart. Now keep listening!’

  Sam strained to hear the radio: ‘Lansdowne Road – Ellsmore Road – now he’s cutting across that bit of grass outside the Fox and Hounds – wrong way up Farley Street – Left into Rokeby Crescent …’

  ‘Has he reached the top of Keyes Street yet?’

  ‘Nearly.’

  Without warning, Gene slammed on the brakes, throwing Sam hard against the dashboard.

  ‘You could’ve warned me you were gonna do that, Guv!’

  ‘Why didn’t you clunk-click like Jimmy tells you? Folks die.’

  Gene threw open the door and swept out into the street. He strode, straight-backed and narrow-eyed, to the middle of the road, and there he made his stand, his off-white leather loafers planted squarely on the oil-stained tarmac. The smooth barrel of the Magnum glittered dully in the golden-red rays of the setting sun.

  Sam stumbled from the car, watching Gene feed fresh rounds into the gun to make up a full barrel.

  ‘Guv? What are you doing?’

  Gene gave the Magnum a flick of the wrist. Ka-chunk! The barrel snapped back into the housing, ready for action.

  From the twilight shadows at the far end of the road there came a clamour and a roar, as if a rampaging, diesel-powered dragon were approaching.

  Gene rested his finger on the trigger of the Magnum. He stilled his breath. He focused. He flexed and limbered his shooting arm; tilted his head; made the vertebrae in his neck go crack.

  And then Gertrude appeared, rattling out of the shadows at speed, making straight down the road directly for Hunt. Its bank of headlights flared, turning Gene into a motionless silhouette.

  ‘Guv, that thing’s going to slam straight into you and just keep on rolling.’

  ‘It will not pass,’ Gene murmured, almost to himself.

  ‘It’s going to flatten you, Guv, and the Cortina!’

  ‘It – will – not – pass!’

  Gene raised the Magnum.

  The truck blasted its horn, sending a ragged spear of steam stabbing up into the darkening sky. Gene replied with the Magnum. Fire spat from the muzzle. Gertrude’s windscreen exploded. A second shot cracked the radiator grille and thudded into the engine block. A third, fourth, and then a fifth ripped one after the other through the front axle.

  But it was the sixth that delivered the sucker punch. It smacked through the bonnet and struck something – something vulnerable, something vital – deep inside Gertrude’s rusty bodywork. The truck screamed like a transfixed vampire. The cabin lurched forward as the axle beneath it gave way and flew apart, busting the chassis and driving the front bumper into the tarmac like a plough. Sheer weight and momentum carried the broken-backed monster forward a dozen or more yards, gouging a furrow in the road and throwing up showers of stones and debris, until, with a shuddering crack, the truck jolted to a stop. The man in the mask came catapulting through the jagged remains of the windscreen and fetched up in a ruinous heap at Gene Hunt’s feet. The cargo of old fridges and metal piping crashed and smashed like a steel wave that broke over the cab and cascaded deafeningly all over the road. Gertrude’s mortally wounded engine spewed a noisy jet of steam and then died. The headlights went dark. The scattered metallic debris came to rest. A last shard of glass fell from the windscreen and tinkled onto the road. Silence settled over the twilit street.

  Gene glanced about at his handiwork, nodded to himself, and blew the smoke from the muzzle of the Magnum. Another job well done.

  ‘You are mad,’ said Sam, shaking his head slowly as he looked from the gun to the shattered remains of the lorry, from the bloodstained man crumpled at the Guv’nor’s feet to the Guv’nor himself, standing there in his camel-hair coat and black-leather string-backs, wreathed in a slowly arcing aura of gun smoke. ‘This isn’t law enforcement – this is some sort of crazy macho playground you’re romping around in, you and your bloody Magnum. This isn’t what I signed up for. This isn’t the job I know. What the hell am I doing saddled with you, Gene?’

  From the corner of his mouth, Gene replied, ‘Go on home to your kids, Herb.’ He leant over the groaning man sprawled at his feet, kicked away the now-dented licence plate bearing the name Gertrude, and said, ‘And as for you, sunshine, you’re nicked – what’s left of you.’

  CHAPTER TWO: SLEEPING BEAUTY

  The truck thief lay motionless in the intensive care ward, a cluster of clumsy plastic tubes tied with bandages to his nose and mouth. Beside him, a ramshackle tower of boxlike machines wheezed, chugged and beeped, keeping the lad in the bed on the very cusp of life. A nurse checked a paper read-out covered with wiggly lines, twiddled a fat dial or two, and fidgeted with the hem of the starched white sheets.

  ‘You’re not relatives,’ she said to the two men standing at the foot of the bed. ‘What are you? Police?’

  ‘DI Tyler,’ said Sam. ‘This is DCI Hunt. We’ve just, um, arrested this man.’

  ‘How? By dropping an anvil on him?’

  ‘He pranged his stolen motor,’ put in Gene. ‘I think he might have bumped his noodle.’

  ‘Sorry to have to bother you with this, Nurse,’ said Sam, ‘but does anyone here have a clue as to this young man’s identity?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘When he was undressed, was there no ID found on him? No wallet, nothing like that?’

  ‘His personal things are over there,’ said the nurse, indicating a small wooden locker. ‘But there’s nothing of interest, just shredded rags. We had to cut his clothes off when he came in here – what little clothing hadn’t been cut off him already.’

  She stared fiercely at Gene.

  ‘He tripped on a kerb stone,’ said Gene, innocent as a cherub. ‘Anyway’s up, we need to have a chat with him.’

  ‘You’ll find that rather difficult, officer. He’s still unconscious.’

  ‘My uncle’s unwashed pantaloons he’s unconscious! He’s faking it. I can sense it. Sleeping Beauty here can hear every word we’re saying – can’t you, old son?’

  ‘He’s certainly not faking anything,’ said the nurse, aghast.

  ‘Is he not? Let’s put it to the test, why don’t we?’ He strode over to the bed, took hold of the truck thief’s ventilator tubes, and gave them a rattle. ‘Wakey, wakey, pretty baby, or I wrench these gizmos out your epiglottis and shove ’em right up your—’

  ‘For God’s s
ake!’ the nurse spat, shoving Hunt back. ‘You two are leaving right now. Right now! Or else I’m calling the police.’

  ‘Calling the police?’ said Gene, fishing out a packet of Embassy No. 6s. ‘There’s a flaw in your logic there. See if you can spot it.’

  ‘This boy is unconscious, and likely to remain so for some time – assuming he ever recovers at all,’ the nurse said fiercely.

  ‘I’ve been telling my DCI the same thing,’ said Sam, deeply uncomfortable to be associated with Gene when he was behaving like this. ‘Come on, Guv. This lad’s not going anywhere, we can always see him another time. They’ll let us know when he comes round.’

  Truculently, Gene jabbed a cigarette between his lips. The nurse gave him a look: Don’t you dare …! Fixing her with a fierce look of his own, Gene raised his lighter, toyed at the flint with his thumb – then eased off.

  ‘Don’t take it personal, luv, I’ve had a day,’ he said. ‘Tyler – let’s roll.’

  Sam apologized to the nurse for his DCI’s atrocious behaviour, and turned at once to go. He reached the plastic swing doors that led out of ICU into the busy corridor beyond, but found he was alone. Glancing back, he saw Gene rummaging through the small wooden cupboard which contained the tattered, blooded remains of the truck thief’s clothes. As the nurse furiously declared that she was going to get the porters to throw him out, Gene suddenly raised aloft a folded sheet of paper.

  ‘Nothing but rags?’ he said. ‘This could be vital.’ And to Sam: ‘See what happens if you take these medical birds too serious?’

  He shoved the piece of paper into his pocket and – to Sam’s infinite relief – strode briskly through the swing doors and away along the corridor.

  ‘What a filthy, arrogant, reckless brute,’ the nurse said, shaking her head. ‘He should have been a consultant.’

  They emerged into the cold night air outside the hospital. Ambulances clanged by. Gene sparked up his cigarette and drew deeply on the nicotine as if it were the very elixir of life.

  ‘You need to clean your act up, Hunt,’ Sam challenged him.

  ‘And you need to unclench those lily-white arse cheeks of yours, Tyler. We’re none of us in this job to make nurses happy – well, not like that, anyway.’

  ‘She’s got grounds to lodge a serious formal complaint against you. You assaulted a man on life support!’

  ‘I wobbled his pipes, that’s hardly an assault,’ Gene said dismissively. ‘And you’re forgetting – Uncle Genie had a ferret about and came up this.’

  He held up the folded piece of paper. It was dotted with the truck thief’s blood.

  ‘It better be worth it,’ said Sam, watching Gene unfold it. ‘What is it? Looks like a letter.’

  ‘A spot of bedtime reading. Let’s see how it compares to Dick Francis, eh?’ Angling it towards the light coming from a sodium lamp, Gene perused it for a moment. ‘Nice handwriting. Very neat.’ And then he started to read it out. ‘“Dear Derek …” That our lad in there, you reckon? “Dear Derek, so brilliant you could make time for a visit. Really good to get time with you again. Tell Auntie Rose not to fret so much.” Gene shot Sam a serious look. ‘I hope he did tell her. I won’t have Auntie Rose worryin’.’

  ‘Get on with it, Guv.’

  Gene peered closer at the letter, falling silent, his eyes narrowing, his expression darkening.

  ‘Guv?’ Sam asked.

  ‘My God, Tyler!’

  ‘Guv, what is it?’

  Gene gave Sam an intense look. Gravely, he announced: ‘It’s Fluffy, Sam. She’s back on the tablets.’

  Sam looked blankly at him. ‘What?’

  Gene read out, “‘Don’t forget to give Fluffy her special tablets – take her to the vet in Lidden Street if she gets sick again.”’ Gene looked up sharply from the letter. ‘Sam, this stuff is dynamite.’ He balled the letter in his fist and bounced it off Sam’s chest. ‘Too exciting for me. I’ll never get to sleep after that.’

  Sam retrieved the screwed-up letter, flattened it out, and glanced over the rest: ‘“… if she gets sick again. It’s very important I can trust you to look after her. See you again soon I hope. Love – Andy.” Andy,’ he said. ‘Derek and Andy.’

  ‘Those names don’t mean anything to me,’ said Gene.

  ‘Me neither. But look here – there’s a rubber stamp at the top of the letter approving it for posting. It says “HMP Friar’s Brook”.’

  ‘HMP!’ scoffed Gene. ‘It’s just a bloody borstal, Tyler. A kiddies’ lock-up for scallies whose balls ain’t dropped. That’s where his mate Andy is, is it? Doing a spot of bird in the nippers’ clinky? And what high-profile criminal caper did he mastermind, d’you think? Clocked some old granny for her pension book and Green Shields to pay for Fluffy’s suppositories? Or is he the Mr Big behind the Manchester used-fridge mafia?’

  ‘Something weird’s going on here,’ said Sam. ‘It’s not those fridges that lad was after, it was something else. But what? And is there a connection between him and the body in the crusher?’

  Silently, Sam and Gene stood beneath the black, starless sky, waiting for inspiration to strike.

  With an exaggerated sigh, Gene chucked away his dog end and declared, ‘I’ve ’ad enough of this bollocks. Hozzies give me the bleedin’ ’abdabs. I’m closing shop for the day. The Genie wants his beer. C’mon, Tyler, let’s leave chatterbox in there to suck on his pipes and dream of fridges, and get ourselves down the Arms for a few swifties.’

  ‘I think I’ll give it a miss this time,’ said Sam. ‘I’m going to swing by the station then head on home. I really do need some kip.’

  ‘DI Tyler needs kip more than beer,’ sighed Gene, rolling his eyes. ‘Kids today. Lightweights. A bunch of ruddy lightweights.’

  When Sam got to the station, he found Annie Cartwright’s desk empty, and the sight of her chair and neatly piled paperwork made his heart ache for her.

  Carefully, he sealed the letter from ‘Andy’ in an envelope and wrote on the front, ‘See what you make of this – are there any hidden clues???’ He left if tucked into Annie’s typewriter. It pleased him to have any opportunity to show that he took her seriously, that he valued her mind and police skills, that he saw her as an absolutely integral part of the team. Looking at the envelope left in the typewriter, it occurred to Sam that it was almost a love letter, from him to her.

  It’s the first time I’ve left a bloodstained love letter! he thought.

  A bloodstained love letter. All at once, the humour of the phrase curdled within him. He felt an icy coldness in the pit of his stomach, as if he was suddenly aware of being watched by malevolent eyes.

  Sam glanced anxiously about, but the CID office was empty. And yet the fear remained. He knew that somewhere out there, hiding in the shadows but drawing steadily closer, was something evil. He had sensed it first as a vague apparition on the very margins of perception, and tried to dismiss it as a figment of his subconscious. But then, later, he had somehow recognized that same spectral presence reflected in the monstrous tattoos of bare-knuckle boxer Patsy O’Riordan. At the fairground, pursuing Patsy into the ghost train in an attempt to arrest him for murder, Sam had encountered an even stronger manifestation of that same horror – a rotting corpse, standing upright and seemingly alive, dressed in a sixties Nehru suit. The vision had vanished almost at once, but it had struck Sam with more immediacy and reality than just a trick of the mind. Whatever it was, it had been real – and it had been aware of both him and of Annie.

  ‘The Devil in the Dark …’ Sam murmured to himself. It was the name he had given this abominable thing. And briefly, after Patsy O’Riordan’s death, he had heard its voice, issuing momentarily from the mouth of a young scally Sam was passing in the street:

  ‘I’ll keep coming at you, you cheating bastard. I’ll keep coming at you until I’ve got my wife back – my wife – mine.’

  ‘You won’t mess with my mind,’ Sam said out loud, as if the Devil in the Dark could hear
him. ‘I’m strong. Annie’s strong. And all your lies and mind games will get you nowhere. Our future is our own – and there’s nothing you can do.’

  He found himself holding his breath, waiting for an answer. But there was nothing, just the sound the of the night cleaners starting up their hoovers in nearby offices.

  Sam looked back down at the letter resting on the typewriter, silently wished the absent Annie a good night, and then headed out. He’d go home, alone, knock back a couple of bottles of brown ale and fall asleep. A dull, lonesome end to yet another chaotic day on the force with Gene Hunt.

  In a corridor leading to the main doors, Sam came across Chris and Ray. They looked red-faced and out of breath. Ray was reviving himself by drawing heavily on a cigarette, wiping the sweat from his blonde moustache with a rough, fag-stained finger. Chris was finger-combing his hair and readjusting his knitted tank top, which had been pulled askew.

  ‘I hope you two haven’t been fighting,’ Sam said, striding towards them.

  ‘Not with each other, Boss, no,’ Chris said. There was a zip-up sports bag at his feet, which he picked up gingerly.

  ‘We just been banging up a poofter,’ announced Ray with contempt. ‘A right little pervert, Boss, delivering filth to some other pervert. We caught ’em at the handover. Show him the bag, Chris.’

  Chris thrust the sports bag at Sam.

  ‘Take a gander inside that, Boss – if you dare,’ Chris said, backing up as if the bag might go off at any moment.

  Sam looked into the bad and was confronted by a messy stash of photos. It was all boys together – in bed, in the shower, on a grubby sofa, on a bare floor – with masses of pallid, spotty male flesh on display. The harsh flash used to take the pictures did the models’ skin tone no favours at all.

  ‘It’s baffling!’ put in Chris. ‘Why would a fella want to look at other fellas’ meat-’n’-two? I mean – a bird wanting a look, yeah, I can get me head round it sort of – but a bloke?’