Borstal Slags

by Graham, Tom

  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 frie
d 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.’

  ‘Powers, Sam? Do I look like Superman to you? Am I wearing my underpants on the outside, mmm?’ He shook his head. ‘I’m just Nelson the barman, the local colour, a bit of comic relief serving coppers in a pub.’

  ‘You’re more than that!’ Sam insisted. ‘I saw it for myself!’

  ‘Yes, you saw. And, yes, I am more than just a barman, Sam – I’m a great deal more – but like you I got a job to do and rules to play by and a very big boss, bigger even than your DCI, who I’ve got to keep happy. So in this place, and in this time, as far as you are concerned I’m just the all-singin’, all-dancin’, pint-pullin’ Jee-may-kahn.’

  ‘You broke cover to speak to me this evening.’

  ‘Broke cover?’ For a moment, Nelson turned the words over in his mind. Then a broad smile spread across his face. ‘“Broke cover”! Yes, that’s a good, policeman-ish phrase. I like that! I “broke cover”, and spoke to my friend Sam, revealing more than I’ve ever revealed before!’

  He laughed to himself, but Sam was deadly serious.

  ‘You broke cover once, Nelson, now break cover again. Use what power you have. Help me save Annie. Help me face what’s out there.’

  ‘I’m not here to carry your burden for you,’ said Nelson gently. ‘That’s for you and you alone. It’s the rules, Sam, and I’ll say no more about it. Just make sure you don’t get yourself killed out there.’

  ‘Then I can – I can die here?’

  ‘Well of course, Sam! Just the same way you could in your old life. You’re as much flesh and blood as you ever were. Cut yourself – you’ll bleed. So will everyone else round here.’

  ‘And what would happen if I – if I died here? What would happen, Nelson? Where would I go?’

  ‘Don’t think about that.’

  ‘But – but I have to know what—’

  ‘Be strong! It’s the future that matters, Sam. Your future. Yours and Annie’s. Because you two have a future, if you can reach it. You can be happy together. It’s possible. It’s all very possible.’

  ‘But not guaranteed.’

  Nelson looked at him wordlessly for a moment, and then, very subtly, shook his head, just once.

  ‘But if I can stop this Gould …’ Sam went on, gripping the edge of the bar. ‘If I can stop him and get rid of him, then there really is a life for me and Annie? We can be together? Where will we go – to that place you just showed me? That place full of light?’

  ‘Oh, that!’ laughed Nelson. ‘Sam, that’s just the porch. It’s much nicer once you get through the front door. Man, you should see the living room with the minibar!’ His eyes sparkled for a moment, then his face became grave. ‘But you’ve got a lot to do before all that, Sam. And I can’t say if you’ll manage it or not. There’s everything to play for. Nothing’s guaranteed. But if you and Annie make it through intact – if you defeat what’s out there, and survive that confrontation – well then …’ He edged the solitary pork scratching along the bar until it nestled against the bottle of Johnnie Walker. ‘Don’t forget this, Sam. Don’t forget the whisky.’

  ‘And is it worth it?’ Sam asked. ‘Is it worth all this effort, all this pain?’

  ‘Is it worth it, Sam?’

  Nelson smiled – a huge, broad, genuine smile – and set two small glasses on the bar, side by side.

  ‘Let’s see for ourselves, eh?’ he winked, and twisted the cap off the whisky bottle.

  CHAPTER TWELVE: READING BETWEEN THE LINES

  Nelson sent Sam on his way, out into the night, pleasantly pissed and more at ease with himself and the universe than he had been in a long, long time. The turmoil of his mind was gone. All those unanswerable questions about reality and unreality, life and death, had receded.

  I am flesh and blood – I am here in this city – I have a job to do, and I have a future with Annie. That’s enough.

  As he wended his way through the damp, dark streets, heading for home, Sam imagined that he could still feel the comforting glow of the Railway Arms about him, the reassuring presenc
e of Nelson warming him like a camp fire. Patiently, knowingly, Nelson had listened to his clumsy attempts to explain the extraordinary events of that day, the sudden and horrifying lurch back through time that had occurred to him while he was inspecting the punishment block at Friar’s Brook. Anyone else would have made Sam feel like a babbling lunatic – but Nelson merely nodded sagely.

  ‘What did it all mean, Nelson? Why did it happen?’

  ‘Let me ask you a question,’ Nelson had said. ‘Did you see something today – an object, perhaps just a very small one – that attracted your attention, made you feel … odd in some way?’

  ‘Yes. A watch. A gold-plated fob watch with a chain. It was in House Master McClintock’s jacket pocket.’

  ‘A watch,’ Nelson mused thoughtfully. ‘Mmm. And when you saw it, how did it make you feel?’

  ‘Sick.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Disturbed. Uncomfortable. I hated it the moment I clapped eyes on it. And I mean really hated it, Nelson. What does it mean?’

  For a moment, Nelson’s face was drawn and serious, his thoughts turned inward. And then he suddenly became aware of Sam again, grinned, and refilled both their drinks.

  ‘We’ll talk about it another time,’ he said, raising his glass in a toast. ‘There’s only so much you can be expected to deal with it in one day, Sam!’

  ‘That watch – was it connected to what happened to me? Was it the reason I started seeing things in the past, things though McClintock’s eyes?’

  ‘Yes, it was the reason for it.’

  ‘Why? What does it mean?’

  ‘Drink up, Sam, and clear your mind of troubles.’

  But Sam had become insistent: ‘It’s because of that watch that I saw into the past, isn’t it? I’m right, aren’t I?’