by Graham, Tom
‘Burned!’ put in Sam. ‘A boy called Tulse died like that. McClintock’s report said that a faulty gas cooker exploded in his face. Is that the boy you’re referring to?’
‘What’s his name again?’
‘Tulse. Craig Tulse.’
‘Craig Tulse, yeah, that’s him! That’s the one! It was McClintock, but he covered it up, sir, he covered it up and he lied! He’s a psycho, sir. He’s a killer. You need to do him, sir, you need to throw the book at him, ’coz he’s the one should be banged up, sir, not lads like me, but him!’
Gales of cruel, childish laugher suddenly flooded into the flat. Sam spun round and saw the open doorway crowded with young faces – gap-toothed, narrow-eyed, jug-eared. It seemed that every scallywag on the estate was crammed into that doorway.
‘That’s the bloke! He was bumming that other one! Pervy! Pervy!’
‘I’ve warned you lot!’ Sam bellowed, and he strode towards them. ‘Clear off!’
‘Oooh! “Clear off!” Get her!’
‘I mean it! I’m a police officer pursuing an important case.’
‘You’re a prat!’
‘I won’t tell you kids again. I have the authority to charge you all with obstructing an officer in the line of—’
Sam found himself mobbed, jeered, pelted with gobbets of saliva and pink balls of gum.
‘I am a police officer! Doesn’t that mean anything to you?’
Sam tried to push the kids away, shouting at them, but they crowded him, treating it all like a game.
‘I said bugger off the lot of you! I bloody mean it!’
Sam lunged at the kids, and off they ran, shrieking and hollering and hurling terrible insults over their shoulders as they went. The last kid to go was the obligatory fat boy, who cumbersomely picked up his bike, heaved his meaty arse onto the saddle, and shot Sam a venomous look.
‘You’re a bloody great buggering black bloody bastard, you are,’ the kid spat at him. ‘I’ll get my dad round here and he’ll kick your arse back to bloody wog-land, you paddy Jew-boy poof.’
And off he pedalled, slowly and unsteadily, away along the balcony after his mates, his head full of all the confused crap the adults in his life had filled it with.
When Sam returned to the filthy little flat that doubled as a porn studio, he found it empty.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: BEAUTY AWAKES
On his way back to CID, Sam found himself – almost without realising it – taking a detour via the Railway Arms. The place now glowed in his mind as a refuge, a sanctuary, a place of promise and of hope. It was here, after all, that he could speak plainly and on the level with the one person in this world who would actually understand, who could show him glimpses of ‘behind the scenes’, of the secret reality behind the daily façade of 1973.
Walking into the Arms, Sam was confronted by a sorry array of lunchtime drinkers, unwashed, dishevelled men with nothing better to do than install themselves at the bar and avoid either work or the wife for as long as possible. Cigarettes burned silently between yellow-stained fingers. Bloodshot eyes scanned the racing pages of crumpled newspapers. And there, at the helm as ever, was Nelson, topping up the float in the till with change he emptied out of cloth bags. He glanced over his shoulder at Sam and acknowledged him with a grin.
‘Ah, mah ol’ pal Sam!’ His Jamaican accent was back with a vengeance. ‘Feelin’ better today, are we?’
‘Feeling better, Nelson,’ Sam replied. ‘Thanks to you.’
‘Oh no, Sam – I tink it’s dis you should be tankin’!’ And he thrust a freshly poured pint of Courage Pride across the bar to him.
‘It’s a bit early – but what the hell! Cheers, Nelson.’
Sam sipped, wiped away a froth moustache and glanced about. The other men along the bar seemed lost in their papers or lost in their alcoholic haze, but still he resented their presence. He wanted to speak to Nelson in private, just as he had the other night. In fact, he found that he was jealous of anyone but himself taking up Nelson’s time and attention.
‘Can we talk?’ he asked.
‘No law against it – less you know udda’wize, Mr Copper.’
‘What I mean is, can we talk in private?’
‘I gotta pub to run, Sam, wit’ fellas drinkin’ in it. You wanna talk, we gotta do it here.’
‘It’s important, Nelson.’
‘So’s keeping me regulars happy! If I let dere glasses dry out dey kick up a stink fit to bust, Sam!’
‘Nelson, please. I’ve got a million questions. I need to know more about …’ He dropped his voice and leant across the bar. ‘More about what we were talking about before. That fob watch I was telling you about – what’s the deal with it? And what’s the story behind McClintock? I’m right to go gunning for him, yes?’
‘Hey, bro, I just pull de pints round here.’
‘There’s a connection, isn’t there? The fob watch, McClintock, Clive Gould? There’s a chain that runs right through them, yes?’
‘You been on de sauce before walkin’ in my pub, Sam? You sure sound like it.’
‘That watch, it’s got something to do with my flashback to McClintock’s past, hasn’t it? Why? What’s so important about it?’
But Nelson just looked blankly at him. His manner was completely different from how it had been last time. There was no knowing light in his eyes, no sense of ‘breaking cover’ and revealing hidden truths. Before, when Sam had stumbled in here on the verge of some sort of nervous breakdown, Nelson had been an administering angel. Today, he was just Nelson, the bloke with the phoney West Indian accent who ran the local boozer, with nothing more to offer him than a pint of Courage.
But, then again, it should have come as no surprise.
‘I’m not here to carry your burden for you,’ Nelson had advised him. ‘That’s for you and you alone. It’s the rules, Sam.’
Perhaps he had already bent those rules to reveal to Sam as much he had. What Sam had learnt from him that night – about where he was, where he was going, about the meaning of his existence in this strange place – would simply have to be enough.
‘Okay,’ said Sam quietly. ‘I understand.’
‘Oh, you do? Well, that’s good, Sam. That’s real good.’ And then, as Sam turned to go, Nelson called after him: ‘Surely you ain’t slopin’ off widout finishin’ ya pint?’
‘I need to keep a clear head, Nelson,’ Sam replied.
‘So you is sober, mmm?’
‘Very sober, Nelson. More sober than I’ve ever been.’
Just for a moment, there was a look in Nelson’s eye, a fleeting hint that he was about to say something, something important, something revealing. But then the moment passed.
‘Stay sober, Sam – but not for ever, not if you don’t wanna see your ol’ china out beggin’ in da streets!’
And with that, Nelson’s attention left Sam and focused on the demands of the other drinkers. He watched as Nelson presented a hunched man in a trilby with a vodka and tonic. The man dropped coins into Nelson’s palm. The simple, ordinary transaction – the buying of a drink in a squalid, gone-to-seed boozer – seemed in that moment to be as solemn and as charged as a holy sacrament.
It means something, Sam thought. Like everything else round here.
Back at CID, Sam found Annie still at her desk, dealing with an even greater mountain of paperwork than before.
‘Sam, I think you ought to have a look at this,’ she said, presenting him with a sheaf of official documents. ‘I’ve been looking into the background of this lad Donner. He’s got quite a history, Sam, and it don’t look good.’
‘What do you mean it doesn’t look good?’
She held up a file of papers: ‘These are his psychiatric reports. He’s been assessed five times by psychiatrists – three times by referral and twice through the police when he’s been arrested.’
‘What’s wrong with him?’
‘According to these reports, just about everything.’ She opened th
e file and skimmed through it, reading out salient points. ‘By the age of six, he’s discovered the joys of torturing animals. By the age of nine, he’s figured out that you can blind cats with bleach, and a year later he brings a bottle of Domestos into school with him to see if it works on kids.’
‘That’s the behaviour of a disturbed little boy,’ said Sam. ‘Did he receive the appropriate psychiatric care?’
‘He get expelled and moved to another school,’ said Annie. ‘He’s there for a year, and seems to be doing well. Works hard, starts getting good marks – and then out of the blue he assaults a female teacher. This time, he gets put into care, and it’s the same pattern: he keeps his head down for a bit, applies himself to his school work, and then, wallop, he goes off the deep end.’
‘What did he do next?’
‘Aged thirteen, he tries to burn down one of his foster homes in the middle of the night – but not until he’d locked his foster family inside. He’s threatened with youth custody, but his psychiatrist gets him off the hook. His mother takes him back, and he seems to have gone quiet again until he was sixteen.’
‘What did he do at sixteen?’
‘Broke into an eighty-five-year-old lady’s house, threatened her with a carving knife, and attempted to rape her.’
‘Attempted? What stopped him?’
‘The old lady’s son turned up, let himself in with his key. This time, Donner gets sent down. And so there he is, in Friar’s Brook, banged up for sexual assault of a half-blind housebound pensioner. Sam, I can see him causing us a lot of problems if we rely too heavily on him as a key witness.’
‘We don’t have much choice,’ said Sam. ‘He’s the only boy in that borstal willing to testify. We need him.’
‘Then we need to tread very carefully,’ said Annie. ‘All these psychiatric reports talk about the same pattern of behaviour: he’s quiet, he’s intelligent, he’s keen to help people out – and then, without warning.’ She snapped her fingers. ‘More than one of these reports describes him as a “Jekyll and Hyde” character.’
‘What kind of home life did he have before going into care?’ Sam asked.
‘Not good. There’s a whole list of run-ins his mother had with the police. I think she may have worked as a prostitute. She was certainly a chronic alcoholic.’
‘What about his father? Was he on the scene?’
‘Not much, certainly not after Donner got to school age. There were no brothers or sister, neither. Just Donner and his mum, cooped in a council flat surrounded by bottles and the occasional client.’
‘And yet the lad’s got a first-rate brain,’ said Sam, shaking his head. ‘It’s a tragedy. All he had to do was get himself born in a different flat on that estate and he’d be all set for university right now. And instead he’s banged up in borstal, and clearly disturbed.’
‘I think he’s more than disturbed,’ Annie suggested. ‘I think he’s got a real problem, Sam. A real problem.’
‘Who can blame him? And, whatever’s going on in his head, Friar’s Brook isn’t the place to sort it out. If we can get him out of there, get him transferred somewhere secure but decent, perhaps we can salvage him. He wants to cooperate with us, Annie. He wants to do the right thing.’
‘Sam, I’m not sure I agree with you. I studied psychology, remember, I’ve read papers like these psych reports before. Donner’s pattern of behaviour, it’s not a one-off.’
‘What are you implying? That he’s some sort of psychopath?’
‘The telltale signs are there,’ said Annie. ‘It’s almost textbook. And at least two of the psychiatrists who’ve assessed him have openly said so.’
‘But not all of them have said so.’
‘No. But I’m inclined to agree with those who have.’
‘I don’t know much about psych-evaluation, Annie, but I know enough to say that you can’t diagnose somebody from a distance. You’ve never met Donner, you’ve never spoken to him; all you know is what’s in those reports. How reliable are these shrinks who’ve seen him? Are they biased? Have they been brought in by prosecuting counsel to show Donner in a bad light?’
Annie sighed. ‘I don’t know, Sam. All I know is what’s written here. And, if even half of it’s true, there’s more than enough grounds to at least suspect Donner of having psychopathic tendencies. Hurting animals as a kid, then graduating on to hurting people. The emotional coldness, the lack of remorse, the inability to make friends or connect with people. The high intelligence – a lot of psychopaths are very, very smart, Sam.’
‘And a lot of kids who’ve had a crap start in life are smart, too,’ Sam argued. ‘And you know what happens to them? They get written off. By everyone: school, social services, the police, the prison system.’
‘Donner’s not gone out of his way to make himself liked,’ said Annie, glancing at the police record.
‘Oh, come on, Annie, you’re smarter than that!’ Sam retorted. ‘Think it through. The lad’s never been shown a scrap of love or affection – not from his mum, his dad, not from anyone. A lonely little kid with no friends. He’s grown up watching his mother out of her head on booze and turning tricks with clients. And he’s cursed with enough natural intelligence to pay close attention to what’s going on in front of him, to think about it, analyse it. What the hell does that do to a lonely five-year-old kid, Annie?’
‘I appreciate what you’re saying, Sam. And I’m not trying to evaluate Donner at second hand. But his behavioural traits, they’re classic symptoms of psychopathy.’
‘And they’re the classic symptoms of an emotionally disturbed child crying out to be loved! Yes, it comes out in violence and cruelty, but you know as well as I do, Annie, that there’s a lot of youngsters out there whose criminal behaviour is a great big cry for help.’
‘You don’t want to let the Guv hear you talking like that,’ Annie whispered.
‘Balls to the Guv!’ Sam snapped. ‘You think I’m being soft on crime? I’m being humane. It takes more strength to understand than to condemn, and you know that.’
‘You’ve been pretty quick off the blocks to start condemning McClintock. In fact, you’ve been hell-bent on nailing him right from the start. It’s like you’re blinkered to any other possibility.’
Blinkered? Yes. But with good reason. Sam knew what sort of a man McClintock truly was, that behind that clipped accent and obsession with rules he was a coward and a Judas. And, what was more, only Sam understood the importance of bringing down the System he represented. He could not be distracted from his purpose by suggestions of Donner’s guilt. Donner was a red herring; everything hinged around McClintock and his System.
But how was he going to convince Annie of that? She was quite right to see Donner as a key suspect. Under other circumstances, Sam would have too. But this case was different. Sam knew things. He had seen things. Nailing McClintock meant more than just convicting a killer – it meant saving Annie from an unimaginable horror that was bearing down on her and drawing closer every day.
I have to win her over, get her onside with me. I have to convince her that Donner is nothing but a distraction, that it’s McClintock we’re after.
‘If I’m coming across as blinkered, Annie, then it’s with good reason,’ Sam said. ‘Don’t forget, I’ve talked to both McClintock and Donner face to face. McClintock’s a bully and coward. But Donner – I tell you, Annie, he’s smart, he’s cool, but he’s frightened. Terrified. The real boy is hiding behind that cold exterior. He’s damaged. He’s screwed up. And what’s going on in Friar’s Brook is only going to screw him up even worse. And that’s not just true for Donner, but for all them other boys in there who’ve never had a shot at a decent life. It’s a vicious cycle. It’s a system, and all it does is trap them lads in endless crime and punishment. And I tell you here and now: it’s going to stop.’
‘Sam, I really think that—’
‘It’s going to stop, Annie. You and me, we’re going to stop it. We’re going to show t
rust to these lads, perhaps for the first time in their lives. We’re going to treat them with respect. We’re going to play fair by them. It’ll be the nearest thing to love half of them will have ever experienced. And in return, they’re going to help us nail House Master McClintock for God knows how many deaths and how much abuse that’s gone on behind those walls. We’re going to break that System, Annie. We’re going to break it, and we’re going to do some good.’
He knew that he was raising his voice, that he was in danger of grandstanding, but he couldn’t help himself. Seeing Annie there, looking so serious and so beautiful, with her bobbed hair and clear, blue eyes, Sam’s heart ached to think of anything hurting her. He could sense, deep within himself, some echo of her past – a lingering residue of the beatings, the violence, the intimidation, the abuse that she herself could not now recall but that Sam had glimpsed. A shadow seemed to fall across Annie’s face as he looked at her – the shadow of the Devil in the Dark, looming up just outside of the window or on the other side of the door, close now, very close, and drawing closer still with every tick of the clock.
Sam glanced across at Chris, who was gawping at him. Ray was smirking, chewing his gum.
‘Yes,’ said Sam, confrontationally. ‘You’re right, boys. I spoke like a man instead of like a little boy. So that gives you all carte blanche to rip the piss out of me. Go right ahead.’
There was a tense pause of a few seconds. And then Chris said, with a frown, ‘“Carte blanche”?’
‘It’s a kind of runny cheese,’ Ray clarified for him. ‘I’ve had it. It’s a bit Frenchie but it ain’t bad on a Jacob’s.’
‘Like Brigitte Bardot.’
‘Yeah, Chris. Summat like that.’
Sam threw up his hands. How could these idiots understand what was at stake here? How could their silly, infantile minds grasp that this wasn’t just about the case, or Sam’s career, or showing off to impress Annie? It wasn’t even about life and death. It was more important than any of that!
