Borstal Slags (20 page)

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
trust
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!

It was then that he noticed Gene lurking in the doorway of his office, scowling. A cigarette was burning in his gob, wreathing him in a cloud of smoke, out of which his intense eyes glared.

‘Here, Guv,’ said Ray with a grin. ‘You hear the way Tyler’s been carrying on? Sounds like he’s been promoted. He ain’t a DI any more: he’s an avenging bloody angel!’

Gene glowered across at Ray, narrowed his eyes, and with the fag still wedged in his gob he growled, ‘We’re
all
avenging angels, you dopey bloody dumpty. Ain’t you figured that, yet?’

He meant it. The room fell silent. For a moment, Gene looked out imperiously from his blue-white cloud – an unreadable, implacable face haloed with mist – before removing the cigarette from between his lips, hawking up a mouthful of phlegm, and swallowing it.

‘Tyler!’ Gene declared. ‘I’ve just been on to the hozzie. Sleeping Beauty’s alarm clock has gone off and she is most definitely awake at last!’

Sam frowned. ‘Guv?’

Leaning forward, as if impatiently addressing a deaf simpleton, Gene boomed, ‘Derek Coren has woken up. So what say you and me take him some tea and toast, eh, Tyler?’

‘You again!’

As Sam and Gene strode alone the corridor towards Derek Coren’s room, they were confronted by the same nurse as last time. She clocked Gene at once – and he clocked her. The two of them squared up.

‘We’ve got some grapes for Dingley Del,’ grunted Gene. ‘Well, I say
got
some grapes, what I mean is we
would
have some if we could’ve been arsed. But it’s the thought what counts, eh? He’s through there, is he?’

‘Yes, but he’s in no state to see you,’ the nurse said, folding her arms.

‘But we came all the way special.’

‘Then you can go all the way back again, because I remember only too well how you behaved last time.’

‘I’ve learnt the error of my ways since then.’ Gene winked. ‘I’ve turned over a new leaf. Ain’t I, Tyler?’

Embarrassed, Sam rolled his eyes and willed the Guv to stop behaving like this.

‘Five minutes, luv,’ Gene said. ‘I’ll be good as gold.’

‘No,’ said the nurse.

‘Five minutes, and then we’ll be on our way.’

‘I said no.’

‘It’s a murder enquiry, luv. It’s a bit more important than turning down the sheets and slopping out the crap pans, you get what I’m saying?’

‘My patient is also important.’

‘Are you being obstructive?’ Gene asked, lowering his voice.

‘Are
you
being threatening?’ the nurse asked back.

There was a moment of tense, silent atmospherics between them. Sam decided to intervene.

‘Guv, lay off. I’m sorry about this, Sister. It’s completely uncalled-for behaviour from my DCI. But please,
please
can you let us speak to Derek Coren, just for a few moments?’

The nurse thought about it, and then gave her definitive answer: ‘No.’

‘Much obliged,’ boomed Gene, and swept past her, shoving her aside like a battleship ramming a yacht. He went barging into Coren’s room.

Sam made to help her, but the nurse shoved him away.

‘That’s it!’ she snapped. ‘I’m going to get the porters together and have the pair of you chucked out!’

‘I’m genuinely sorry about what’s just happened, Sister, I really am, I—’

‘Oh shut up you little creep!’ she spat, and away she went, striding off in search of reinforcements.

Sam sighed, rubbed his forehead wearily, then followed after Gene.

He found the Guv looming over the bed in which a very pale, very fragile-looking Derek Coren was lying propped up against a mountain of crisp, white pillows. Various tubes were attached to his arm, being fed from drip bags suspended about his bed. A mountain of crude-looking machines beeped and blinked, monitoring him.

‘I’ve just been renewing our acquaintance,’ said Gene over his shoulder as Sam entered. ‘Last time me and Derek met, it was all a bit rushed.’

‘It’s going to be rushed again, Guv. That nurse is getting the porters together to have us chucked out.’

‘Oh my God, that frightens me so much I’ve just done a bit of poop in my drawers,’ said Gene, casually lighting up a fag and dropping the spent match onto Derek’s starched hospital bed sheets. ‘I’ll keep this succinct, then, Derek. Your brother Andy’s brown bread, old son. Squashed. Flattened. You got the wrong lorry. He were on the one that rolled in half an hour previous. Bet you’re gutted. Andy certainly was.’

Derek looked up at Gene with a hard, pinched expression. There were no tears.

‘I’m sorry about what happened to your brother,’ Sam put in. ‘He died, Derek. He didn’t make it out of the crusher.’

‘What an obituary!’ piped up Gene. ‘Imagine knowing
that’s
what they’d say about you after you snuffed it: “He didn’t make it out the crusher.” Personally, I’m hoping for something more like, “Gene Hunt passed away, aged 103, humping two birds at the same time while a third one was getting her breath back.”’

Derek sat against his pillows, clenching his jaw, staring daggers at Gene. But still there were no tears.

Expecting the door to fly open at any moment and a horde of furious porters to come barging in, fists flying, Sam tried to get what information he could out of Derek as quickly as possible. It went against the grain to operate like this –
Hi Derek, glad you’re out of the coma, your brother’s dead, now answer our questions –
but he had no option. Gene, as ever, had pointlessly raised the emotional temperature with his oafish behaviour. If Derek had anything important to tell them, Sam had to get it out of him right
now
.

‘We know about the code you used,’ said Sam. ‘Pinpricks on individual letters, spelling out a secret message. Very clever. Whose idea was it?’

Derek looked sullenly at him for a few moments, then seemed to slump. What was the point in holding out? His brother was dead, there was nothing left to lose.

‘It was my idea,’ he said at last. ‘It’s how we managed to work out ways of getting Andy out of bird. We could talk to each other, right under the screws’ noses, and nobody ever spotted it.’

‘Until now,’ said Sam.

Without enthusiasm, Derek fixed him with a look and said, ‘Well done, copper.’

‘I wasn’t referring to me. Somebody else spotted it. They knew Andy was planning to escape, and how. So they changed the work detail. They ensured that if Andy
did
get out of Friar’s Brook, it would be on the back of the wrong lorry.’

Derek’s expression changed. He raised his head, looked very intently at Sam, and said, ‘McClintock …!’

Yes!
thought Sam.
It’s falling into place! I’m right about McClintock – and I’m going to get the evidence together to bury him for ever!

‘What makes you think it was House Master McClintock?’ Sam asked, controlling his voice to keep it impassive. ‘Why not one of the other warders? Did Andy mention McClintock to you specifically?’

‘It was McClintock,’ muttered Derek, almost to himself. He was starting to breathe hard through his nose, like a bull preparing to charge. ‘That bastard McClintock, he was making Andy’s life hell in there. He wanted to wear him down, break him, just because Andy wouldn’t be intimidated by that piece of shit.’

‘Piece of
kilt-wearing, haggis-scoffing
shit,’ Gene corrected him.

At last, tears began to well in Derek’s eyes. He gritted his teeth, threw back his starched sheets and attempted to clamber out of the bed.

‘I’ll get that bastard!’

Sam grabbed the boy’s shoulders and forced him back against the pillows. ‘Derek! No! You’re staying put, and there’s nothing you could do anyway!’

‘I’ll get that bastard! I’ll get that murdering bastard!’

Still grappling with him, Sam spoke very clearly and forcibly into Derek’s face. ‘No you won’t! But
we
will! Now get back in that bed and—’

But Derek’s grief and rage had overwhelmed him. He fought against Sam, struggling to get free and get out of the bed, heedless of the drips in his arms and the machines he was rigged up to.

‘Derek, for God’s sake!’ Sam implored him. ‘Stay in the bed! You’re going to pull your drips out!’

‘I’ll get that murdering bastard! I’ll get him!’

‘Derek! Stay still!’

‘I’ll
get
that
murdering
ba—’

Gene’s fist flashed in like a thunderbolt. It struck Derek between the eyes. Derek fell back against the pillows, silent and motionless, his jaw hanging open, his tongue drooping out.

‘He appears to have nodded off again,’ opined Gene.

Sam piled Derek’s limbs back into the bed and covered them with the sheets. Then he turned and glowered at Gene. ‘Guv, just think what you have done.’

‘I administered a sedative.’ Gene shrugged.

‘You have assaulted a grieving man who has just emerged from a coma!’

‘He was going daft and noisy!’ Gene protested. ‘Didn’t want him upsetting the other malingerers round here. Don’t get your knickers in a twist, Sammy boy, he’s snug as a bug now.’

The door flew open. Two middle-aged, potbellied men and a gangly adolescent in specs, all dressed in porters’ uniforms, bundled messily into the room.

‘That’s them!’ cried the nurse from behind them. ‘Now – chuck ’em out!’

Gene exhaled a plume of smoke, fixed the porters with a look, and said, ‘Your move, lads. In your own time.’

There was a significant pause.

‘Porters? I shit ’em!’

Gene gunned the engine of the Cortina as he powered it through the grey streets of Manchester.

‘You behaved disgracefully back there, Guv,’ sulked Sam. ‘Sometimes, I’m genuinely ashamed to be seen in public with you.’

‘Yeah, yeah. But that lanky one with the specs! I thought he were about to literally shit ’imself!’

‘Those porters showed themselves to be real men, Gene, not like you!’

‘
Real
men? Two roly-polies and a four-eyed beanpole?’

‘Yes, Guv. Because they stood up to you and did the right thing. They were scared, but that didn’t stop ’em. They proved themselves, Guv, while all you do was act like a bully.’

‘Oh put a sock in it, Deidre, you’re making my lug’oles ache.’ Gene flung the wheel and stamped on the gas.

‘Still, it weren’t a
completely
wasted trip,’ said Sam. ‘Derek Coren was pretty convinced that McClintock orchestrated his brother’s death on purpose.’

‘Mmm. But that don’t count as evidence. It’s conjecture.’

‘Yes, but it does confirm what we already suspect.’

‘What
you
suspect!’ Gene corrected him. ‘The Gene jury is still well and truly out on this one. I mean, I’m not the sort of a fella to balk at nicking a jock, but then again it goes against the grain to take the word of a bunch of pint-sized louts and lags. It’s a difficult one, Tyler. I’ve got to weigh up my next move very carefully.’