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‘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.’
‘Good for you, lass,’ said Gene, examining the crust he’d just plucked.
‘Look at the handwriting, Guv,’ Annie insisted, holding out the crumpled sheet of paper. Silently, Sam willed her to stand her ground, make her point, break through Gene’s macho carapace and make herself heard. ‘Look how all the letters are nicely spaced out, dead neat. Andy Coren’s barely literate, guv, he’s never in school, he’s always out thieving or getting himself nicked. You think he writes like this? And look how strangely worded it all is.’
There was a flicker of interest in Gene’s face which he tried to disguise.
Sam took the letter from Annie’s hand and studied it with renewed interest.
Dear Derek,
So brilliant you could make time for a visit. Really good to get time with you again. Tell Auntie Rose not to fret so much. Don’t forget to give Fluffy her special tablets – take her to the vet in Lidden Street if she gets sick again. It’s very very important I can trust you to look after her. See you again soon I hope.
Love, Andy
‘It’s very stiff and formal,’ he said. ‘No spelling mistakes. Commas and full stops in the right places.’
‘Exactly,’ said Annie. ‘I don’t see Andy Coren being up to writing this.’
‘Maybe he dictated it,’ said Gene. ‘Maybe he got some other inmate to write it down for him. It’s what cons often do.’
‘And how many cons use these turns of phrase, Guv?’ Annie said. ‘“Tell Auntie Rose not to fret so much” – “Take Fluffy to the vet in Lidden Street if she gets sick again” – Guv, I just don’t hear the voice of a borstal boy in these words.’
‘Oh? And what do you hear?’
‘A message, Guv. Not a message about Auntie Rose and Fluffy’s tablets – a hidden message, one behind the words. Besides, there ain’t no vet in Lidden Street. I checked.’
Gene gave her a long, level look, and then said, very slowly, ‘Think carefully what you’re saying, Cartwright. You’re getting very, very close to saying you suspect this letter’s written in secret code.’
‘And why not, Guv?’ Annie said, throwing caution to the wind.
‘Why not? Because you ain’t Nancy flamin’ Drew, sweetheart! Secret bloody codes, my arse! This is real life!’
‘This letter was rubber-stamped,’ Annie kept on. ‘Before it could be posted it was vetted by somebody at the borstal, somebody in authority. It had to be officially approved before it was sent. Now, if Andy wanted to get some message to his brother in this letter, and he didn’t want the borstal authorities to see it, then he’d need to find a way of hiding that message behind something that looks totally innocent.’
‘Codswallop!’ barked Gene. ‘You been reading too much Famous Five.’
‘And what’s more, one of the lads in that borstal hanged himself, Guv, just two weeks ago. And a month before that, a lad got his face burnt off.’ Annie’s voice was starting to become shrill. ‘A death, a suicide, a dodgy letter, a body in the junkyard, the violent theft of a lorry that don’t make no sense, and all of ’em connected to Friar’s Brook. Think about it, Guv. It’s not right! Can’t you see? There’s something not right!’
Her frustration had got the better of her, and she all at once realized it. Annie clamped her mouth shut and lowered her eyes, waiting patiently for her guv’nor’s rebuke.
But Gene seemed calm. He wasn’t about to be riled up by some bird. He smiled to himself, smoothed down his tie, and said, ‘You know what I really miss right now?’
‘No, Guv,’ said Sam ‘What do y—’
‘Not you, Granny Clanger. Her.’
With a sigh, Annie said flatly, ‘What do you really miss right now, Guv?’
‘The whistlin’ of a kettle,’ said Gene.
Annie’s shoulder slumped. With a muttered ‘Yes, Guv, right away, Guv,’ she turned and headed off.
‘Not that we’ll have time to drink it,’ Gene said, getting to his feet and reaching for his jacket.
‘Why not? Where are we going, Guv?’
‘Where’d you think? Borstal.’
‘Borstal? You mean Friar’s Brook?’
‘No, I mean one of the six dozen other borstals in the neighbourhood. Of course I mean Friar’s bloody Brook, you spanner.’
‘But I thought as far as you were concerned this case was closed and done with.’
Gene shook his head. ‘Not quite. There’s something iffy about this business of the boy in the crusher, something that needs resolving. That letter Andy sent to Derek, then Derek nicking that truck, and now some mention of suicide, and some lag’s face going up like Guy Fawkes. It ain’t quite right, Sam. It ain’t quite right.’
‘Wait a minute, Guv,’ said Sam, indignantly. ‘This is what Annie was saying just now and you pissed all over it.’
‘It’s them sensitive toes of mine,’ said Gene. ‘Sometimes the only way to stop ’em hurting is to at the very least pretend that’s it me what runs this place, not you and twinkle-tits out there. I’m not about to let her start thinking she’s leading this investigation. Slippery slope, Tyler, letting birds think they’re in charge. Where would all it end? You want to wake up one morning and find you got some bint in charge?’ He bounced his car keys off his forearm and deftly caught them. ‘Well come on, then, Sammy boy, don’t hang about. Let’s go and play with a borstal full of naughty boys.’
CHAPTER FIVE: KIDDIES’ PORRIDGE
The borstal was situated well out of town, somewhere on the rugged moors north of Heponstall. Gene floored the pedal of the Cortina and took him and Sam hurtling through the outskirts of Manchester, through Rochdale and Littleborough, beyond the far side of Todmorden, until concrete began to give way to wide stretches of open country, and the buildings thinned out until there was nothing but isolated stone farmhouses beneath an oppressive, sullen grey sky.
Gene powered the car off of the main road, hurtling recklessly along smaller and yet smaller byways until at last they were bounding along what was little more than a dirt track that meandered across the landscape. Sam glimpsed forlorn trees forming tragic shapes against the clouds. He saw broken walls and derelict barns and here and there the rusting, overgrown hulks of long-abandoned pieces of farming equipment. In the far distance, a grey curtain of rain swept slowly across the horizon.
When at last they saw it, Friar’s Brook borstal appeared as an assortment of squat, unfriendly buildings heavily fenced off from the surrounding countryside. The barred gate across the track and the barbed wire spiralling along the top of it made Sam think of concentration camps.
‘It’s so bleak,’ he said. ‘It’s like something out of Schindler’s List.’
‘Schindler’s list of what? Holiday camps to avoid? I’ve stayed in worse places.’
‘All seems a bit tough, though, don’t you think? I mean, for kids.’
‘What’s the matter with you, Tyler? You gone soft? It’s a lock-up, it’s supposed to be tough.’
‘Half them lads in there, I bet they’ve never known anything in their lives but “tough”.’
‘Life ain’t no picnic, not for any of us.’
‘I bet they’ve never known what it feels like to be safe and warm and looked after,’ Sam mused, peering through the high fence at the barred windows and heavily bolted doorways. ‘What chance do they have? Parents who don’t care, violence at home, violence at school, no job prospects, no education, no role models.’
‘Well I did all right,’ put in Gene, defensively.
‘I wasn’t referring to you, Guv.’
‘And knock it off about “no education”. I’m a walking encyclopedia, Tyler, you’d be surprised. Go on, ask me how to spell silhouette.’
But Sam’s mind was still on that collection of low, mean-looking buildings and the unseen inmates entombed within. ‘Just think of all the wasted talent, wasted intelligence just rotting away inside that place. There’s boys in there could have been surgeons, or architects, or airline pilots, if only they’d been born a few miles across town where kids have a chance. Artists, writers – a future prime minister, who knows?’
‘Future prime minister? From round here? There’ll be a bird in Number 10 before there’s a Northerner,’ Gene growled.
‘Maybe there will be a bird. And one who is a northerner. There’s a thought for you, Guv.’
Gene snorted contemptuously and shook his head. ‘I know what’s going on in that grubby little brain of yours, Tyler. The only northern bird you want to see on top is your bit of prospective crumpet.’
‘I take it that offensive epithet refers to our colleague WDC Cartwright? Guv, why can’t you and the other boys in the department just get used to the fact that people sometimes have what the grown-ups call relationships?’
‘Just keep your mind on the job we’ve come here to do,’ Gene barked. ‘If we find a hint that Andy Coren’s death wasn’t an accident, and that he ended up in that crusher for any other reason than him and his brother being a couple of useless dopey donuts, then Annie’s put us on the right track. She’ll have earned her brownie points for the day. That should loosen her knickers, Sam – get you one step closer to the ol’ pinball machine.’
‘Jesus, Guv, the way your mind works.’
‘Ain’t no different from yours, Tyler, except I’ve got what it takes to make DCI.’
‘So have I!’
‘When you’re old and grey, most like. But until then, Tyler, you’re just my little trained monkey. Now, then – best behaviour. We’ve arrived.’
Gene brought the Cortina to the front gates and sounded the horn. They waited.
‘It’s like a picking up a date,’ he observed.
‘If that’s our date, Guv, you’re welcome to him,’ said Sam, as a gate officer appeared, dressed in black warder’s uniform with a fierce peaked cap. The man’s face was hard and angular, with a flat, broken nose and small, unfriendly eyes.
Police IDs were flashed, and the gates were unlocked. As the Cortina nosed through, Gene stuck his head out of the window.
‘What’s going on there?’ he asked, indicating a set of roofless, broken buildings at the east wing. ‘V-2 come down on you, did it?’
‘Demolition,’ said the gate officer in a surly voice. ‘Pulling down the old kitchens and boiler house.’
‘That’s where the junk was coming from that ended up in Kersey’s Yard,’ said Sam. ‘Andy Coren’s escape plan wasn’t bad, Guv. He saw a chance and he took it.’
‘And then buggered it up,’ Gene growled. ‘Unless somebody else made sure it was buggered up for him.’
Gene parked the car outside the reception area and clambered out. Sam followed him. Beneath a weather-beaten sign that said ‘HMP FRIAR’S BROOK’ stood a heavy door, which the gate officer now began to noisily unlock with yet another key on his chain.
I don’t want to go inside there, Sam thought suddenly. He felt icy panic, as if something terrible awaited him within those drab, grey walls.
‘What’s up with you, Tyler?’
‘Nothing, Guv.’
‘Got the fidgets? You should’ve gone before we set off.’
‘I said it’s nothing, Guv.’
‘If you’re going to get spooked by a spot of kiddies’ porridge, Tyler, you should never have come along. I’d be better off with Ray.’
‘Guv, just leave it.’
The gate officer rattled his keys and the heavy door clanged open, revealing a hallway with a tiled floor and whitewashed walls. It reminded Sam of a public toilet.
‘Get yourself ready, Tyler,’ Gene boomed, slapping his palms together and rubbing them briskly. ‘If you think the outside of this place is grim, wait until you breathe the air in them cells. Parfoom de Borstal. The heady aroma of BO, spunk and bunged-up khazies. And that’s just the staff who work here.’