Borstal Slags (6 page)

‘What’s all this?’ Sam asked.

‘A new gadget, ordered in on trial,’ said Annie. And then, looking intently at him, she frowned and added, ‘You all right, Sam?’

‘Bad night’s sleep, that’s all,’ he smiled. Her eyes were bright and clear, her skin was gently flushed around the cheeks, her hair was glossy. Not bad, he thought. Not bad at all, seeing as she’s supposed to be dead.

I’m just a copper. I don’t understand these things. Annie’s alive. We’re
all
alive. That’ll do for me – and to hell with the crazy bloody nightmares!

‘They want to start sticking these new machines in the offices all over, Boss,’ put in Ray, speaking without taking the fag from his gob. ‘Not that the Guv’s too keen on it.’

He nodded towards Gene’s office, where the man himself was visible as a brooding, lurking shape behind frosted glass.

‘I’m sure your guv’nor will change his tune when he sees what this little beauty can do,’ said the rep. With a knowing smile, he pressed a button and the cumbersome device clanked and juddered, emitting a sudden sweep of light.

‘Look out Boss, the bloody Martians have landed!’ grinned Chris, turning to Sam.

‘Not Martians, sir,’ grinned the rep proudly. ‘
The future
.’

‘The future’s not always such a great place to be,’ put in Sam.

The rep turned that oily smile towards him: ‘Ahh – there speaks a man who’s stuck in the past. But let me see if I can bring you up to date, sir. Look.’

The machine slowly disgorged a sheet of paper that reeked of chemicals. The rep swept up the sheet and flourished it proudly.

‘See for yourselves, gentlemen, madam. Look at the quality of that reproduction. Pristine. Beautiful. Reliable. No more mucking about with messy old carbon paper or wasting time typing up duplicates. The Xerox 914 is the automated office secretary you’ve always dreamt of!’

‘She’s not the stuff of
my
dreams,’ sniggered Chris. ‘Secretaries are supposed to have – well, you know – a right ol’ set o’ melons.’

‘In the ideal world, Chris, yes,’ said Ray, and he smirked across at Annie. ‘But we don’t live in an ideal world. Do we, luv.’

‘Not so long as it’s got dopes like you in it,’ Annie glowered back. Ignoring sniggers and jeers from the boys she added, ‘And I’m nobody’s flamin’ secretary.’

‘
This
office secretary doesn’t need lunch breaks,’ the rep went on. ‘Or holidays. And she won’t go and get married, leaving you all in the lurch.’ He pressed the button again. The Xerox noisily and laboriously delivered another copy. ‘It’s a lovely model this, the 914 – but who knows, if you get on with it well enough then you might like to think about upgrading to one of our cutting-edge machines that actually makes copies
in colour
.’

‘Colour?’ exclaimed Chris. ‘No way, give over!’

The rep nodded proudly. ‘Full-colour copying at the touch of a button, right here in your office.’

Chris whistled through his teeth, genuinely impressed: ‘It’s Buck Rogers, ain’t it.’

Mutely, the staff of CID stood watching the copies emerging one by one from the Xerox machine. They seemed almost hypnotized. Ray puffed smoke. Chris audibly chewed on his bubble gum.

‘This ain’t a church, it ain’t a library, and it ain’t a bloody undertaker’s!’ Gene’s voice boomed out from the doorway of his office. Everybody jumped. ‘It’s too quiet in here! I want noise! I want activity! I want typewriters clacking and phones going ding-a-ling! Move it, move it! Mush, mush, you dogs!’

The gaggle of gawpers broke up at once as people bustled back to their desks. Gene gave the Xerox machine and its unctuous rep a sour look, muttered something about not wanting Robbie the Bloody Robot in
his
department, and vanished back into his office, slamming the door behind him.

All thoughts of the vastness of the cosmos, and the terrible truths of ultimate reality, were pushed from Sam’s mind. Mercifully.

‘You got a moment, Boss?’ Annie called to Sam.

‘For you, as many moments as you like.’

Ray made smoochy kiss-kiss noises, but Sam ignored him.

‘What is it, Annie?’

‘I’ve been having a look at that letter you left for me, the one found on that lad who nicked the lorry,’ said Annie, laying out a mass of paperwork on her desk. ‘It was addressed to “Derek”, signed “Andy”, and sent from Friar’s Brook borstal – we know because it’s been stamped at the top, presumably to show it’s been read by a member of staff and officially sanctioned. So I checked the Home Office files.’ She plucked a sheet of paper from the array. ‘Now – turns out there’s a lad serving time at Friar’s Brook borstal by the name of Andrew Coren. He’s been in trouble on and off since he was a nipper – him and his brother Derek.’

‘Andy and Derek,’ mused Sam, nodding. ‘Well spotted. Okay, so that would explain the names in the letter. What’s Andy Coren in for?’

‘Breaking and entering, handling stolen goods,’ said Annie. ‘Not for the first time, neither. And, what’s more, seems like he’s a bit of a slippery fish. He’s twice escaped from open borstal, so they stuck him in Friar’s Brook. Tighter security, apparently.’

‘A name was mentioned to me last Friday. There’s a young lad in the cells called Barton. He’s done time in Friar’s Brook. He’s absolutely terrified we’re going to send him back there. He gave me the name McClintock. Did you come across that name at all?’

‘Don’t think so,’ said Annie, leafing through the names of inmates she’d compiled. ‘No McClintock amongst this lot. Do you think it’s important?’

‘I have no idea. Maybe this lad McClintock’s been released – maybe he doesn’t even exist.’ He waved that line of enquiry away. ‘Let’s not get sidetracked by red herrings. Let’s stick to what we know. Andy Coren’s banged up in Friar’s Brook. He sends a perfectly innocent letter to his brother Derek, and Derek violently steals a truck loaded with old fridges, making off with it like it’s gold bullion. At the same time, we’ve got an unidentified white male fished out of the crushing machine at the same junkyard where Derek stole the lorry.’ He sighed. ‘Bits and pieces. And they
seem
somehow connected – but I can’t see a pattern.’

‘Neither can I,’ said Annie. ‘And I don’t know if I’m complicating things by mentioning this, Sam, but there was a suicide recently at Friar’s Brook. One of the inmates, a lad called Tunning. He hanged himself.’

‘When was this?’

‘Two weeks ago. I came across it looking for Andy Coren. And a month before that there was a lad died in the kitchens. Some sort of faulty cooker went off on his face.’

Sam looked at the arrays of papers on Annie’s desk and sighed: ‘If we’re not careful here, Annie, we could get seriously bogged down in
data
. And
data
isn’t the same thing as
information
.’

‘That’s true, but we can’t afford to ignore details. If there
is
something weird going on here, and it’s being concealed, then it might only be those seemingly unrelated details that’ll reveal it to us.’

‘Can I leave this with you, Annie? This needs some careful thinking about. It’s all too Sherlock Holmes for the likes of
some
round here.’

He glanced over at Chris and Ray, who were discussing whether Xerox machines gave off radiation, and if they did was it enough to shrivel your nadgers?

‘I’ll call Friar’s Brook and see if I can dig up anything new,’ said Annie. And then, glancing over Sam’s shoulder, she added, ‘I think the Guv’d like a word with you.’

Sam turned and saw Gene’s face scowling at him from his office.

Obediently, Sam went to him, choking on the thick smoke from half a dozen early-morning fags that filled the office.

‘What’s the matter, Tyler?’ growled Gene. ‘The air in here not to your liking?’

‘It’s fine, Guv,’ spluttered Sam, waving his hand in front of his face. ‘I love the smell of cheap tobacco in the morning.’

‘Me too,’ said Gene without irony, drawing heavily on a No. 6. ‘But what I do
not
like is minions and skivvies carrying on behind my back.’

‘Guv?’

‘You’ve been talking to that nonce Barton. He’s downstairs in the cells hollering that you promised to let him walk.’

Sam shrugged. ‘There’s no point holding him. He’s just a kid.’

‘He’s an important link in a chain, Tyler.’

‘A chain leading where?’

‘To a den of pornographers,’ said Gene dramatically, snorting smoke from his nostrils. ‘
Pansy
pornographers. You should see the pictures, Tyler. Lads in their Y-fronts with their bacon butties flappin’ about fit to bust. It’s bloody diabolical.’

‘I
have
seen the pictures,’ said Sam, dismissively. ‘They’re nothing. Small potatoes.’

‘You reckon? Some of them boys had Hamptons like a Frenchie’s loaf.’

‘What I meant, Guv, was that Barton selling on mucky photos is hardly worth our while worrying about. He’s done time already, and he didn’t have an easy ride of it inside. He’s absolutely terrified of going back.’

‘My heart bleeds,’ intoned Gene. He sparked up a fresh smoke, contemplated it for a moment, and then said, ‘Okay. I’ll let Barton go. We need the space down there in the cooler. But the point remains, Tyler, that you’ve been going behind my back. It’s not for you to decide who gets to walk out of them cells.’

‘That’s what bothering you, isn’t it, Guv?’ said Sam. ‘You don’t give a stuff about “the pornographer’s den”. All that’s bothering you is that you feel I’ve trodden on your toes.’

‘Yes, I do. And, if there’s one thing I have, it’s sensitive toes.’

‘Well, it might soothe your bruised tootsies to know that Annie’s doing some nifty detective work out there. Looks like she’s identified our lorry thief. Derek Coren. His brother Andy’s doing time in Friar’s Brook right now.’

Gene shrugged. ‘That doesn’t get us any nearer to identifying the bloke in the crusher.’

There was a demure knock at the office door and Annie appeared.

‘Sorry to disturb you, Guv,’ she said, ‘but I’ve just picked up some information. Andy Coren was reported missing from Friar’s Brook last Friday. He escaped.’

‘Friday. The same day the body was found in the crusher,’ added Sam.

‘And the same day Derek made off with them fridges,’ mused Gene. He was furrowing his brows, like a dog picking up the scent. ‘All three incidents, all on the same day.’

‘Those lorries at Kersey’s Yard,’ Sam said. ‘
Gertrude
and
Matilda
. They were both bringing in junk from Friar’s Brook.’

‘There’s major renovations going on there,’ Annie explained. ‘They’re pulling down the old kitchens and boiler house.’

‘And ten-to-one says they’re using the inmates to help load up the lorries with junk,’ said Gene. ‘What you reckon, Sammy boy? Did our lad Andy Coren stow himself away on the back of one of ’em?’

‘Kersey said it was a stack of old ovens he was munching up in that machine,’ said Sam. ‘It’s perfectly feasible Andy Coren could have climbed into one when it was loaded up at Friar’s Brook, and been carried out inside it.’

‘Maybe easier to climb
into
one of them ovens than climb
out
again,’ said Gene. ‘Handy Andy’s not quite the Houdini he thinks he is. He might have got himself out of Friar’s Brook but he sure as shitty knickers didn’t make it out of that crusher.’

‘What if that was Derek’s job?’ suggested Annie. ‘What if Derek turned up to get his brother out of the oven, but somehow got it all wrong?’

Sam nodded, seeing a pattern emerge. ‘There were two lorries coming to the yard –
Gertrude
and Matilda. Andy was aboard Matilda – but Derek thought he was on
Gertrude
. That’s why he made off with it like that – he thought he was rescuing his brother!’

‘But instead all he got was a ton of old fridges,’ growled Gene. ‘Still, I know which is more use to society.’

‘Guv, a young man has died,’ Sam reproached him.

But Gene shrugged. ‘What’s the world lost? A thieving little tit. What you want me to do, drop big fat tears on my tie?’

‘Perhaps you should for once, Guv, yes, instead of dollops of ketchup. Whatever Andy Coren did, he didn’t deserve to die like that. He was just a kid.’

‘A
flid
, more like,’ Gene cut across him. ‘And his brother Derek’s an even bigger spastic than Andy. What a bloody pair. Not exactly
The Great Escape
, was it? Well, whatever. Case closed. There’s nothing here for us.’

‘You think so, Guv?’

‘Of course. It’s a ballsed-up escape attempt. Dopey Derek got the wrong lorry, and brain-of-the-week Andy Coren got put on the world’s fastest diet. What you want me to do, nick the crusher and charge it with grievous? Leave it to plod, let them sort it out.’

Sam shrugged. In one thing at least Gene was right: it looked very much like nothing more than a bungled escape attempt. If so, their job here was done. But when he glanced at Annie he could see at once that she wanted to speak.

‘Annie?’ he said. ‘Is there something you’d like to add?’

Annie looked from Gene to Sam to Gene again.

‘Well …’ she said.

‘Well what, luv?’ barked Gene. ‘If you’ve got an opinion that you think’s superior to mine then I’d love to hear it. It’s Monday morning, I need a laff.’

‘Well, if you really want my opinion, Guv,’ said Annie, ‘I reckon there’s more to this than just Derek accidentally getting the wrong lorry.’

‘Conspiracy, not cock-up, is that what you reckon?’ asked Sam.

Annie shrugged, then nodded.

‘And what do you base this supposition on?’ said Gene, giving her a sour look. ‘A hunch?’

‘Something like that, Guv.’

‘Hunches are for
real
coppers, luv, not for jumped-up secretaries. What you got ain’t a hunch – it’s called time o’ the month.’

‘For Christ’s sake, Guv, that is bang out of order!’ snapped Sam.

‘Keep your hair on, Marjorie,’ Gene said, examining his tie to see if it really
did
have ketchup on it. ‘Sometimes, Tyler, I think you’re like a bird an’ all.’

‘It’s that letter, Guv, the one from Andy Coren to his brother,’ Annie went on, keeping her cool. ‘It’s not normal. There’s something about it.’ Gene wasn’t looking at her. He was picking at crusty bits of food stuck to his tie. She carried on regardless. ‘You asked my opinion, Guv, and I’ve given it to you. There’s something suspicious about that letter and I’m going to do my best to find out what it is.’