by Graham, Tom
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.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: DECISIONS, DECISIONS
‘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.’
They drove in silence for a few moments. And then, quite suddenly, Gene grinned. ‘That fat one with the ’tache, I thought he were gonna have a flamin’ coronary!’
Arriving back in CID, Sam and Gene were confronted by a mountain of photocopy paper.
‘Bobby Moore on a bike, what’s all that?’ Gene demanded.
‘Home Office reports,’ said Annie, popping up from behind it. ‘Copies of everything that exists on file about the lads in that borstal.’
‘You’ve been industrious!’ said Sam.
‘Well, I somehow managed to persuade the boys to help me, Boss,’ she replied. She indicated Chris and Ray, who were at the Xerox machine, churning out copies from the original HO files.
‘It’s grand this!’ Chris beamed. ‘Just stick your thingy on the glass, close the lid, press the button, and fire photon torpedoes!’
He obligingly pressed the button and made laser-beam noises as the copier swept its light back and forth.
‘I got to admit, Guv,’ added Ray, ‘it’s sort of therapeutic.’
‘“Therapeutic”?’ sneered Gene, appalled. ‘I’ve just been single-handedly intimidating three grown men plus a gobby nurse, and I come back here and find you’re doing bird work! You’re meant to be blokes, not secretaries! Now get your arses away from that ruddy robot.’
Looking chastised, Chris and Ray carried over their copies and threw them on the pile.
‘Donner was working in the kitchens with a lad called Tulse,’ said Sam. ‘Tulse got burned. What does the official report say?’
‘Ah, I know where that one is,’ piped up Chris, rummaging. ‘Here we go! Craig Tulse. Coroner’s report. Blah, blah, blah, load of old crap in Latin or summat – here it is. Cause of death: gas explosion from a faulty stove resulting in severe burns to the face, neck and chest.’
‘A faulty gas stove,’ said Sam. ‘Faulty on purpose, I reckon. If those ovens hadn’t been shipped out and conveniently destroyed, we’d be able to check them for ourselves. We’d find signs of tampering. McClintock’s tampering.’
‘Conjecture, boss,’ said Annie. ‘And, even if there was sabotage, who’s to say it was McClintock?’
‘He was a bit of one, this Tulse,’ said Ray, glancing through the report. ‘Insubordinate. Answering back. Continually being reprimanded. A right gobshite, by the looks of it.’
‘And he paid the price,’ said Sam. ‘Just like Tunning. What does it say about him?’
Ray dug through the paperwork for a moment, then read out, ‘Barry Michael Tunning. Hard man. In for GBH. Whole list of disciplinaries while at Friar’s Brook. Assaulting a warder, assaulting another warder, threatening the house master—’
‘How did he die?’ asked Gene.
Ray flipped some pages: ‘Um, committed suicide in his cell during the night. He were found by the screws next morning, hanging from the end of his bunk bed.’
‘Not much of a drop,’ said Annie.
‘Don’t need no drop,’ explained Ray, ‘not if you’re serious about topping yourself. Just get something round your neck, tie it off, and let your body weight do the rest. Slow, bloody painful, but it works.’
‘How come you know so much about hangin’ yourself?’ asked Chris.
Ray shrugged.
‘It happens in prisons all over,’ said Gene. ‘It’s the way it’s done. Horrible, but lethally effective. Like cider, or Ex-Lax.’
‘The boys in Friar’s Brook share cells,’ said Sam. ‘Who was Tunning sharing with the night he died?’
Ray thumbed through a copy of the relevant Home Office report. ‘Um, a lad called … Donner.’
Sam and Annie exchanged looks. Gene drew thoughtfully on his cigarette.
‘The way I see it, there’s three things might have happened,’ said Annie. ‘Number one: it’s like it says in the report. Tunning hanged himself, and for whatever reason Donner didn’t say anything until the cell was unlocked in the morning. Maybe he was asleep. Whatever. Possibility number two: Tunning didn’t kill himself. The warders did. They either came into the cell and hanged him, or else Tunning died some other way – maybe undergoing one of McClintock’s punishment sessions – and it was made to look like suicide to cover it up.’
‘And number three?’ growled Gene.
‘Possibility number three is that it was one of the inmates who killed Tunning,’ said Annie. ‘Which in turn would point the finger at his cellmate that night – Donner.’
Sam shook his head. ‘I’m not buying that. My gut instinct says it was a McClintock cover-up.’
‘And my gut instinct says it’s time to drop a ton and half down the khazi while reading the paper, but that don’t make my arse a copper,’ opined Gene. ‘Give me something better than a rumble in your belly, Tyler.’
‘McClintock runs that place with a fist of iron,’ said Sam. ‘You’ve seen that for
yourself, Guv. He’s obsessed with discipline, order, his precious “System”. He’s a control freak. And it’s not just the inmates he likes to control, it’s everything – you, me, us, the law. He thinks he can punish inmates until they die, then cover it up and just keep on going.’
‘Facts, Tyler!’ Gene boomed at him. ‘No more flowery speeches. Facts!’
‘Every boy who died in that borstal was at odds with McClintock. Tulse was a born rebel. Tunning was a thug who refused to be beaten. Coren was the cheeky little Houdini determined to slip away. All three threatened to make McClintock look weak – and all three died.’
‘All three were also connected directly to Donner,’ Annie said. ‘Tulse worked with him in the kitchen. Tunning shared a cell with him. Coren came to him to write that letter to his brother Derek.’ She glanced at Sam and said, ‘I’m sorry, Boss, I’ve got to say it. I don’t think it’s McClintock we should be after.’
‘Donner’s not a big lad,’ Sam said. ‘Tunning was a bloody gorilla, in for GBH. Are you saying, Annie, that Donner somehow overpowered him at night after lock-up, and forcibly hanged him? Do you really believe he’s physically capable of doing that?’
‘If he attacked Tunning while he was asleep, then yes, Boss, I do,’ Annie replied. ‘Tunning would be half strangled by the time he woke up and realized what was happening – if he ever got a chance to wake up.’
‘And what about Coren’s work detail being changed at the last minute? How could Donner arrange that?’
‘He couldn’t,’ said Annie.
‘Well then!’
‘But what if the work detail wasn’t changed, boss?’
Sam gave her a look. ‘We know it was changed. McClintock changed it.’
‘And how do we know that? From McClintock himself? From one of the other warders? From the prison governor?’
Sam sighed. ‘No. From Donner.’
‘No, Boss, it weren’t even from him!’ Annie exclaimed. ‘You’re just assuming that! What if Donner wrote that letter for Coren, but deliberately put the wrong information in it? He’s smart enough, he had the opportunity. It’s perfectly possible. You got to think more clearly, Sam!’ And then, after a heavily charged pause, she added, ‘I mean Boss.’