by Graham, Tom
But Donner said nothing. Was he stonewalling? Or was he just playing his cards close, seeing what he could gain from this exchange?
Sam decided to try a different approach.
‘I was recently speaking to a lad who did time here. His name’s Barton.’
‘I remember Barton,’ said Donner.
‘He said he had a hard time here.’
‘Not from me.’
‘You were friends with him?’
‘Not like that. Not the way you mean.’
‘I didn’t mean anything, I just asked if you were friends.’
‘He looked up to me,’ said Donner. His voice was as flat and emotionless as ever.
‘What happened to him?’ Sam asked. ‘Was he getting it pretty rough?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who from? The other inmates?’
‘One or two of them, maybe.’
‘Barton’s real trouble, it wasn’t with the inmates, was it?’ Sam said.
‘Maybe not.’
‘Donner, you know something. Please tell me.’ Deciding to take the plunge, Sam came right out with it. ‘Coren’s death wasn’t an accident.’
‘And Tunning didn’t commit suicide,’ Donner added calmly.
He’s offering me titbits. He knows what’s going on here.
In a low voice, Sam asked, ‘And what about Tulse, the lad who died in the kitchens?’
‘I was there.’
‘You worked with him?’
‘On and off.’
‘And you were with him when he died?’
‘I was ten feet away. I saw everything.’
‘What happened? Was it a faulty oven that killed him?’
Donner looked slowly about the room, but remained silent.
Sam drew closer to the boy and dropped his voice to the merest hint of a whisper: ‘Somebody’s killing inmates. Aren’t they.’
Donner’s blank face was Sam’s only reply.
‘Tell me, Donner, where should we be looking? Amongst the inmates themselves? Or – or should we be looking at the System?’
‘It’s obvious,’ Donner breathed back.
Sam nodded to himself. His instincts were proven right. He’d known, right away, where the dark heart of Friar’s Brook really lay.
‘I didn’t say a word to you,’ Donner said quietly but firmly.
‘I understand.’
‘You’d better understand. You really had.’ The boy’s manner was almost threatening. ‘And now, tell me – before I lose my temper with you – what are you going to do about getting me transferred?’
CHAPTER EIGHT: THROUGH THE ARCHED WINDOW
‘I want to have a snoop about this place,’ said Sam. ‘I want to see what’s going on here.’
He and Gene were together in a corridor, a few yards away from McClintock, keeping their voices low.
‘Is there something going on, Sam?’ asked Gene.
Sam shot a glance at McClintock, and whispered, ‘I felt from the start this place was all wrong. And McClintock, he’s all wrong too. Coren’s death wasn’t an accident. Nor was Tulse’s. And Tunning didn’t kill himself. It’s a cover-up, I’m telling you, Gene. We need to start digging around here. We’ll find skeletons in the cupboards, believe me.’
‘What did that lad say to you in private?’
Sam’s glance kept going back to McClintock. ‘We can’t talk about it here, Guv. Just trust me – we need to investigate Friar’s Brook, and the people who run it.’
Gene chewed this over, nodded and said, ‘Fine. We’ll haul Jock McSporran down to the station, stick his caber in a vice, and get him singing “The Thistles of Old Loch Lomond”.’
‘No, Guv, that’s not what we’re going to do. What we’re going to do is behave like policemen.’
‘I thought that was acting like a policeman,’ said Gene, without irony.
Sam got closer and dropped his voice even lower. ‘I need to be free to have a nose around without McClintock looking over my shoulder. He’ll only let us see what he wants us to see. Keep him busy while I head off on my own.’
‘Keep him busy? How am I supposed to do that, engage him in a spot of Highland dancing?’
‘If that’s what it takes, Guv. For God’s sake, you’re a DCI, you’re supposed to be able to handle situations like this.’
‘And, being DCI, I’m also supposed to be the one who gives the orders, not takes ’em!’ Gene growled. ‘Why don’t you go compare bagpipes with Donald-where’s-ya-troosers while I have a snoop about?’
‘Because, Gene – and let’s be honest about it – you’ll blunder about, cause trouble, piss people off, and most likely get into some sort of fight. And that, Guv, would be unproductive.’
Gene gave him a sour look. ‘That’s a hurtful résumé of my capabilities, Tyler. I have my qualities.’
‘I know, Guv, you’re absolutely smashing with dogs. Now please, Guv, keep McClintock busy while I have a prowl around. It’ll be worth it. I’ll dig something up, I know it. And what’s more’ – now Sam’s voice was barely audible – ‘if McClintock’s as guilty as I’m guessing he is, you’ll have the pleasure of nicking him later on.’
Gene pulled a pinched, thoughtful expression, and then, without a word, he clapped his hand on Sam’s shoulder and strode manfully towards the House Master.
Sam headed in the other direction. Behind him, he heard McClintock’s voice raised in protest, ‘Now wait just one second. Where does that lad think he’s off to unsupervised?’
Gene thrust his ID badge into McClintock’s face. ‘Wherever the chuff he pleases, Jock. We’re CID.’
‘No, no, no, no, this is something I will not allow, officers running hither and thither as they please.’
‘Hard haggises, you can’t stop us. Oh, don’t pull that face, Jimmy, we’re all on the same side. Now – why don’t you and me go to your office and have a nice cosy chat about which one of the Bond lasses we’d most like to stick it to. Me, I’m up for that one on the double-decker who tells fortunes in Jamaica.’
Sam moved through a succession of whitewashed corridors, which all reeked of polish and bleach. Everywhere, he was confronted by those stark words stencilled in red: SILENCE – RESPECT – DUTY.
The atmosphere here, Sam thought, it’s stifling. I’ve seen the inside of enough prisons over the years – always rowdy, always full of backchat and course laughter and somebody singing away like a loon until a screw yells at him to shut up. But here – silence.
Silence, yes – but respect?
Gradually, Sam began to get a sense of the layout of the place. The inmates were confined within a network of buildings, all connected with corridors. There seemed to be, by and large, free access within this complex, allowing inmates and staff to move from one part of the borstal to another, but nobody could get out without unlocking the stout, bolted doors that led onto the various open-air exercise yards. Sam had to show his ID to a passing warder and get him to open up one of these doors so he could have a nose about outside. He found himself standing in an open space hemmed in by a huge, wire-topped wall. The slogan of the System glowered down oppressively from it in bright-red paint. Beneath the six-foot-high letters stood rows of inmates engaged in synchronized exercises. Every move was accompanied by a grunted word. They turned left – ‘Silence!’ – then right – ‘Respect’ – then touched their toes – ‘Duty!’
Every one of them wore a ragged patch of brown cloth.
The Stain, thought Sam, shaking his head in incredulity. He looked at the rows of young faces, all spots and puppy fat and beardless chins.
‘Silence!’ – turn – ‘Respect!’ – turn – ‘Duty!’ – bend.
Sam turned to the warder who had opened the door for him.
‘Where do the lads play footie round here?’ he asked. ‘This yard’s too small.’
‘They don’t play footie.’
‘Course they do! They’re lads!’
‘House Master’s rules – no football
, no games.’
‘No games? What about table tennis?’
‘Not even telly,’ said the warder. ‘Bending and stretching, that’s all the recreation they get. Rest of the time it’s chores or else they’re banged up in the their dorms.’
The boys turned left, turned right, bent over. ‘Silence! Respect! Duty!’
‘What’s McClintock doing to these kids’ heads …?’ murmured Sam. ‘No footie, no telly – little wonder this place feels like the calm before the storm.’
The warder opened another door for him, and Sam found himself back in the rabbit warren of bleached corridors and red, stencilled letters. He reached a hallway that was sealed off from the corridor by a barred gate and guarded by a fierce-looking screw in immaculate uniform. Clearly, this area was strictly off limits to the inmates.
‘What goes on here?’ Sam asked, showing his police ID.
‘Punishment block,’ said the warder. He indicated the heavy doors. ‘Isolation cells for lads who kick off.’
‘Let me see inside one.’
‘What for?’
Sam went to reply, then hesitated. What, indeed, was he hoping to find here? Clues that would incriminate McClintock for crimes against the inmates? The chances of that were a million to one. And yet something within him compelled him to explore, drawing him deeper and deeper into this wretched place for reasons not at all to do with police work and a criminal investigation. It was as if his own life, his own Fate, was bound up with this place and the labyrinth of rooms, corridors and cells within it.
‘Just unlock one of those doors for me,’ said Sam. ‘Let me see inside.’
The warder shrugged and rattled his keys. He opened the metal gate that sealed the punishment block off from the corridor, then opened one of the heavy cell doors and stood aside. Sam stepped through the open doorway. The cell within looked and smelt like a public toilet. The whitewashed walls were vilely stained. The single window was barred and gridded, the glass so caked in grime that it let in nothing but a sickly trickle of daylight. There was no bed, not even a cot or shelf, just the hard, filthy floor to lie on. The toilet was a stinking slop bucket sitting in the corner. It was all in sharp contrast to the bleach and carbolic soap elsewhere.
‘You lock kids in here?’ Sam asked.
‘Well we don’t use it for storing brooms,’ the warder replied. ‘It’s called the White Hole.’
‘It’s medieval. What do you think it does to some fifteen-year-old boy’s head to be banged up alone in a dungeon like this?’
The warder shrugged. ‘The White Hole’s better than the Black Hole.’
‘The Black Hole? You have a punishment cell here called the Black Hole?’
The warder showed him. Unlocking yet another huge, solid door, he revealed a windowless cell. Peering in, Sam could see nothing beyond the splash of light coming in through the open doorway. The air was fetid and stank like stagnant pond water.
‘For the real troublemakers,’ said the warder.
‘This is barbaric.’
‘It’s an education, that’s what it is. A lad with nous will realize pretty sharpish he don’t ever want to come back to a place like this in a hurry. He’ll change his ways.’
‘Change his ways, you reckon? Don’t you mean end up harder and more despairing than ever?’
‘It’s the punishment block. It’s for punishment. Don’t want to get punished? Then don’t go against the System. Simple.’ He handed Sam a cigarette lighter. ‘Have a look, if that’s what you want.’
Sam flicked the lighter and stepped inside. By the dancing orange glow of the flame he made out crude messages carved into the walls. The spelling was all over the place and half the letters back to front. There were names – ROZZA, BLINKY, JOEY, BAZ – all crisscrossed, written over each other, making a chaotic register of the lads who had paced and shivered in this abominable hellhole. Other, more hopeful names cropped up here and there – BOBBY CHARLTON, BARRY SHEENE. There were rows of upright incisions, marking the passing of days, and sticklike depictions of men dangling from the gallows.
‘The Black Hole …’ Sam muttered.
‘They smuggle lighters in, or matches,’ said the warder from the doorway. ‘Don’t know how but they do it. Then again, some of ’em just work blind, scratching away at the walls.’
‘These lads should be graffiti-ing their schoolbooks, not the inside of a solitary-confinement cell,’ Sam observed.
Some youthful budding Picasso, with more ambition than talent, had attempted to draw a full-length naked woman.
And there, beside those obscenely spread but anatomically confused legs, was – what? An egg-shaped oval with a round nose and blankly smiling face. What was it? Humpty-Dumpty?
‘Lost childhoods,’ Sam mused. ‘Kids behind bars.’
And what about these? Two teddy bears of differing sizes, side by side.
‘Big Ted and Little Ted.’
And then, with incredulity, he recognized yet more doll-like figures drawn on the wall. He knew them. He knew their faces. He knew their names.
‘Hamble, Jemima …’
To the warder outside in the corridor he called, ‘What the hell is this, a mural depicting the toys off Play School?’
‘A house, with a door,’ said the warder in a mild voice.
Sam glanced round. The warder had changed. In the doorway now stood a man in beige corduroys and a colourfully striped jumper. Sam knew him at once, knew him from his childhood, just as he had known those dolls and teddy bears. He knew that friendly face with its fair hair and twinkly eyes.
He gasped and straightened.
‘A house with a door,’ Brian Cant said again. ‘One, two, three, four. Ready to play. What’s the day?’
Automatically, like a man speaking in a dream, Sam muttered, ‘It’s Monday.’
‘Is it?’ Brian Cant asked. He was still smiling, but the twinkle had vanished from his eyes. ‘Is it?’
And, with that, he shut the door. At once, the cigarette lighter went out.
Total blackness smothered Sam like a physical entity. Panicking, he rushed at the door – only to find himself groping blindly in empty air.
Where the hell’s the door? Where the hell are the walls?
His hands clutched at cold emptiness all about him, searching in vain for the confines of the cell and finding instead only a void and intimations of infinity.
Shaking, panting hard, Sam fumbled with the lighter – and dropped the damned thing!
Shit! No! Please, no!
But it was gone. Vanished.
Sam braced himself. Reality had shifted and buckled and transformed about him so many times since he’d crash-landed into 1973 that he should, by rights, be thoroughly accustomed to it. But, of course, he wasn’t. Far from it. How could he? How could anyone?
Don’t get frit, Sam, told himself firmly. You’re an old lag at this. You’ve been through all this sort of crazy stuff before.
Reality rarely sat still for him any more. Time and again it warped and ran like wet paint caught in the rain, like a stray TV signal bleeding across another channel – and behind it all lay the inscrutable, insufferable, blankly smiling face of the Test Card Girl.
I won’t panic. I will keep my head.
But his heart was already hammering.
I’m just a copper. I’m just a simple copper. Sooner or later, I’m going to wake up from this.
To his relief, he made out a semicircle of a dim, orange light away to his left, like an arched window set amid infinite darkness. Warily, Sam tripped and stumbled his way towards it, groping ahead like a blind man, and as he drew closer he saw that it wasn’t a window, but the mouth of a tunnel.
He stepped through the arch and found himself in a dark street, a solid black night sky over his head, a few street lamps glowing dimly in the misty air. Glancing around, he saw that the tunnel he had just emerged from ran beneath a railway bridge.
I know this part of town, he thought to himself. I’
ve been through here before – this bridge, those houses, they’re familiar – and yet …
Something was different – something he could not quite define.
A large brick wall ran along the street to his left. It was covered in ripped and tattered posters. Sam drew closer, peering at the posters in the murky orange gloom of a fitful street lamp. He made out a black-and-white image of four men, dressed identically in pale-grey suits, clustered around a microphone stand, promoting their brand-new single.
The Four Seasons – ‘Walk Like a Man’.
What the hell year did that come out? It was old even in 1973. That poster must have been up there for years. It should have long since decayed or been buried beneath layer after layer of newer posters over the years. And yet there it was, a little dog-eared and rain-beaten but looking fairly fresh.
He moved to the next poster along. Another four men, also in suits – but this time sporting instantly recognisable mop-top haircuts. Four men who were yet to embrace hippy culture, yet to become experimental, yet to fall out and go their separate ways. Above the frieze of smiling faces, it said, ‘THE BEATLES – FROM ME TO YOU’.
Again, the poster looked brand-new.
Sam’s blood ran cold.
Oh my God – What the hell year is this …?
The next poster along depicted a very young, very quiffed Cliff Richards singing ‘Summer Holiday’. This blandly cheerful image of carefree youth struck Sam like the announcement of a death sentence. He felt the pit of his stomach lurch, as if he were in a suddenly descending lift. It was the same sickening feeling of vertigo, the same nightmare feeling of disorientation and homesickness, panic and loneliness that had flooded over him when he had first found himself lost and alone in 1973, like a long-distance space traveller abandoned on the alien surface of an unknown planet.
Please, please, I don’t want to go through that all again. I don’t want to fall through time yet again, please – please not again!
He stumbled against the wall, pressing his sweating, clammy forehead against the face of a slim and healthy Elvis Presley singing ‘Devil in Disguise’.
‘Feelin’ rum, sport?’
A young man had emerged from a curvy little Austin A30 parked beneath the flickering street light. The car was a relic from a time before 1973, as was the fashion the young man was dressed up in: black suit, waistcoat, Slim Jim tie and swept-back hair, slicked down and shiny. He might have been a stockbroker, or an undertaker’s assistant – and yet the orange glow of the sodium lamp revealed a youthful face, surely not much older than sixteen.
