by Graham, Tom
Whistles and intakes of breath from Chris and Ray.
Gene scowled through his haze of cigarette smoke. ‘Women’s libbers in today, I see.’
Annie got control of herself and said with measured calm, ‘I’m sorry I spoke like that, Boss. It’s just—’
‘It’s okay, Annie, I understand,’ said Sam, ignoring the kissy-kissy noises Ray was making. He turned to Gene. ‘Guv, Annie went through Donner’s psychiatric reports. She reckons he’s a psychopath. She reckons he’s the one killing inmates at Friar’s Brook.’
‘Motive?’ growled Gene.
‘No motive, Guv,’ said Annie. ‘He don’t need a motive. He does it because he can. It makes him feel good. Makes him feel big.’
‘But I don’t agree with that assessment,’ Sam countered. ‘Donner’s a badly disturbed kid, but so would any of us be growing up with the sort of life he’s had. And let’s not forget Barton, the lad who tipped us off about McClintock in the first place. He told me horror stories about what goes on in that place.’
‘Ex-cons always tell horror stories,’ suggested Ray.
‘Electrocutions!’ Sam exclaimed. ‘Water forced down boys’ throats! Some of them have drowned!’
‘And this toerag Barton is the one what told you all this?’ said Ray. ‘And you believed it?’
‘Barton accused McClintock of letting boys die in there and then covering it up,’ Sam insisted. ‘He named McClintock. He named him, Guv. We have to act on this information. It’s all stacking up – we got Donner, we got Barton—’
‘All we got are the tall stories of a couple of borstal slags, that’s what we’ve got,’ interjected Ray.
‘And who says they’re just stories, Ray?’ Sam asked.
‘Lags always lie. It’s a law of nature. And the biggest porkies they tell are about how badly they been treated. Every ex-con’s got more sob stories than Quentin Crisp’s had wangers up his flue.’
Chris winced. ‘Steady on, Ray, I’m still digesting me sausage and beans.’
‘I’m just saying, lads like Barton and Donner, you don’t want to listen to a word they say.’
‘It’s that attitude that lets bastards like McClintock get away with murder,’ Sam declared. ‘I’m not saying these boys are angels, but if they’re victims of human-rights abuses then we have a duty to take what they’re telling us very seriously.’
‘For the record, Guv, I think Donner’s the one we need to be focusing on,’ Annie chipped in. ‘I don’t think it’s McClintock at all.’
‘Choices, choices,’ mused Gene. He peered across at Chris. ‘What do you think, Chrissy-wissy?’
‘I think it’s disgusting, obviously,’ said Chris. ‘Wangers up the flue? I can’t see what it’s all about.’
Gene rolled his eyes. ‘Ray? Your instincts are to collar the uptight Jock, I take it, even if it’s just for the fun of it?’
Ray chewed his gum for a moment, then shrugged. ‘Why not haul him in and the criminal nipper?’
‘You mean question both McClintock and Donner?’
‘Why not, Guv? Give ’em both the squeeze, see what comes up. Heads you win, tails you win an’ all.’
Gene thought this through, then nodded.
‘Makes sense,’ he declared. ‘And, what’s more, it means that if McClintock does turn out to be in the clear, I’ll have had the pleasure of giving him a right goin’ over anyway.’
‘A case of ’avin’ your haggis and eating it,’ Ray suggested.
‘Exacta-flamin’-mundo!’ Gene declared, slapping his chest heartily with both hands. ‘Ray, Chris, Tyler – in the motor. Let’s get rolling over to Friar’s Brook.’
Sam saw Annie swallow hard, take a breath, and boldly say, ‘I think I should come too, Guv.’
Gene, Chris and Ray all turned slowly and looked at her.
‘I second that,’ said Sam, backing her up.
‘Sam sticks up for Bristols, what a surprise,’ growled Gene. ‘But the answer is no. A lock-up ain’t no place for a dopey bird. Too much of a liability.’
‘Seriously, Guv, I think I could be of real use to you,’ Annie insisted.
Sceptically, Gene looked her over.
‘Okay, Inspector Jugs, give me one good reason.’
‘My background in psychology, Guv. I think I’d be – I know I’d be – the right person to question Donner face to face. And, what’s more, I think he might speak more openly to a woman.’
‘Or he might just get a stiffy and become distracted,’ Gene intoned.
‘Which might be exactly the best way to forge a connection with him,’ Annie said. Gene thought about this, but before he could say anything Annie added, ‘Besides, Guv, you’re more interested in interrogating McClintock. You can have your fun with him while me and DI Tyler question the boy.’
Gene mused, nodded, shrugged. As he turned away, jangling his car keys, he said, ‘For the record, I don’t think it’s right, a bird coming into an all-boy borstal. But, if she really must, she’s your responsibility, Tyler. I’ll leave her for you to look after. Me – I’ve got a kilt-wearing, bagpipe-sucking, sporran-shagging, caber-tossing tosser to break into pieces. C’mon, lads, let’s take the high road.’
And with that he swept out, Chris and Ray striding along behind him.
Annie let out a shaky breath, then glanced at Sam. She was trying to suppress a grin. Sam patted her arm.
‘That was a bold move,’ he said. ‘Well done.’
She beamed a smile at him, and then frowned. ‘I’m sorry I went against you just now, Sam.’
‘Don’t apologize. You’re a police officer, it’s your duty to speak up.’
‘I’m really convinced it’s Donner we should be concentrating on. I don’t see why you’re so hung up on going after McClintock.’
Sam opened his mouth to tell her, but held back. How could he explain?
‘I’ve got my reasons,’ he said.
Annie looked at him for a moment, then said, ‘Well, then. Let’s get out to Friar’s Brook and find out once and for all what’s going on there.’
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: FEE FIE FO FUM
At the borstal gates, Gene thrust his ID badge into the face of the guard on duty.
‘Open flaming sesame!’
As the gates opened, the Cortina swept in. Just behind it, at the wheel of a midnight-blue Alfa Romeo with Annie beside him, Sam hit the gas to keep up. The cars drew up at the main block and everybody piled out. Gene led the way, marching forward resolutely, with Chris and Ray a step or two behind. Sam and Annie followed along, watching as the Guv swept his way past any warder who dared to challenge him.
In the corridor that led to Mr Fellowes’s office, they saw one of the boys mopping the floor, the brown patch of cloth – the ‘Stain’ – clearly visible on the breast of his denim dungarees. The boy glanced at them as they reached Mr Fellowes’s office door, observing them like a wary, watchful animal.
‘We’d better knock,’ said Gene, and flung the door open with a resounding crash.
Fellowes jumped up from behind his desk, spilling tea over the paperwork he was reading. Monteverdi played serenely from the radio.
‘Sweet Lord!’ Fellowes cried, putting a hand to his chest as if he could forcibly still his suddenly pounding heart. His eyes widened as he recognized Gene’s face. ‘You again!’
‘Me again! And this time I’ve brought the Party 7!’
Chris, Ray, Annie and Sam crowded in behind him.
Gene added, ‘Not exactly Pan’s People, I’ll grant you, but we all have to make do.’
Desperately mopping up tea from ruined papers, Fellowes blathered, ‘You’re perfectly at liberty to ring ahead and make a proper appointment to see me! You don’t have to keep barging in here like you’re raiding a gin joint!’
‘Well that’s where you’re wrong, porky,’ said Gene, swaggering arrogantly over to Fellowes’s desk. He was enjoying himself. ‘Because, if I was to let you know my moves before I made them, I’d lose
the element of surprise. And, in this game, the element of surprise is the maker and the breaker!’
‘Detective Chief Inspector, we’re all on the same side.’
‘Ah,’ said Gene, raising a wise finger. ‘That’s what we’re here to find out. Raymond!’
‘Yes, Guv.’
‘Watch him like a hawk. Don’t let him touch anything, move anything, do anything. He so much as sips that tea, cuff him! If there’s evidence in this room – reports, paperwork, spunky tissues hidden in the drawers – I don’t want him or no one else tampering with it. This place is on lock-down until I say otherwise. Christopher!’
‘Yes, Guv?’
‘Shut off that bleedin’ racket.’
‘Righto, Guv!’
Chris killed the radio. Monteverdi broke off in mid-cadence.
Fellowes stood behind his desk, staring aghast at the sudden invasion. He was speechless.
Sam decided to step in before things got out of hand.
‘Mr Fellowes, it’s really Mr McClintock my DCI needs to question,’ he said. ‘And, while he’s doing that, WDC Cartwright here and myself need to speak to Donner.’
‘You heard him,’ added Gene. ‘Make it ’appen.’
‘I most certainly will not!’ retorted Fellowes, his soft jowls wobbling in indignation.
‘Look out, lads, Mr Toad’s getting shirty,’ said Gene.
‘I am the governor of this facility and I will be treated with the due respect!’
‘And I’m King Kong and I’m ten feet long and I gotta big six-gun and everybody is scared!’ Gene snapped back. And, when Fellowes looked blankly at him, he clarified: ‘The Kinks, you opera-loving twat.’
‘It wasn’t opera, you oaf,’ Fellowes came back at him, his fat cheeks flushed. ‘It was a madrigal.’
Gene leant across the desk and glared into Fellowes’s eyeballs as if he were aggressively trying to hypnotize him. ‘Now listen up, butterball. I’m conducting a multiple-murder investigation, and it’s getting on for teatime and my tummy is a’rumblin’. I do not want to be standing here arguing the toss when I could be tucking into my Captain Birdseyes and I do not want some jumped-up headmaster who play-acts at being a proper prison guv’nor giving me backchat worse than some bird. Now, I know full well I’m making you anxious – I’ll bet right this minute you’re squirting your Y-fronts with a gallon of frit piddle – so let’s not pretend any more you’ve got the balls to stand up to me.’ Gene leant closer, his eyes flashing with a barely contained fire. ‘Start complying. Summon that jock house master or I’ll nick you for obstruction and bang you up with Big Bill Bum Bandit in Cell Number 2. You getting what I’m saying?’
Fellowes looked like a small, harmless animal driven into a corner.
Gene barked at him. ‘McClintock! Now!’
‘I-I’ll see if he’s in his office,’ he stammered, reaching shakily for the phone.
‘For he’s a jolly good Fellowes!’ beamed Gene, watching him nervously dial and wait for a reply.
Fellowes spoke into the phone. ‘Mr McClintock, would you be so kind as to come to my office straightaway? … CID is here again, and they want to speak to you … Well, I could ask them to come back tomorrow’ – he glanced over at Gene, who was slowly and with great deliberation shaking his head – ‘but on second thoughts, Mr McClintock, I think right now is the perfect time to clear up this matter … Thank you, Mr McClintock.’
He hung up and gave Gene a pathetic look that seemed to say, See? I did what you wanted. Now please don’t hurt me.
‘Right – we’ll wait,’ said Gene.
He thrust his hands into his pockets and began pacing innocently about. The clock on the wall ticked. The atmosphere became tight and awkward.
‘Guv?’ piped up Chris.
‘Yes, young Christopher?’
‘What’s a manderinal?’
‘Madrigal,’ sighed Fellowes.
‘It’s one of them porcelain troughs you piss in at the boozer,’ said Ray.
Fellowes looked at him like a man who has just seen his prize petunias trampled.
‘It’s a type of nancy-boy music,’ Gene explained. ‘It’s for ponces. Tyler’s probably got a soft spot for it. And, by a strange acoustical anomaly, it’s actually even more boring than it sounds.’
‘O tempora! O mores!’ muttered Fellowes, closing his eyes.
From outside came the sound of clipped, prim footsteps.
Gene’s ears pricked up. ‘Fee fie fo fum, I smell the blood of an uptight highland sausage-muncher who’s about to get his sporran squeezed.’
Mr McClintock appeared in the doorway, his uniform immaculate, his peaked cap tucked under his arm military-style. He paused, perusing the scene in Mr Fellowes’s office, turning his tight, narrow face from Sam to Annie, Annie to Chris, Chris to Ray, and from Ray at last to Gene Hunt himself.
‘I see,’ said McClintock coolly. ‘The impertinent detectives from CID have returned – and this time in force.’
Sam found his attention drawn to that gold watch chain glittering at McClintock’s waist. He felt an inexplicable urge to grab it, rip that fob watch from his pocket, and smash it on the floor. He also felt the urge to smash McClintock’s self-satisfied face.
House Master McClintock neatly settled his cap back onto his head, straightened it with his scarred hands, and stepped into the room. Gene at once squared up to him, but Sam decided to get in quick before the Guv’s mouth opened fire once again.
‘You’ve had your time, Mr McClintock,’ he said. ‘You’ve run this borstal your way long enough. But now it’s over. We’re here to break your precious System, Mr McClintock. And we’re here to break you.’
‘Are you indeed?’ said McClintock, primly arching an eyebrow. ‘Let me guess. You’re going to attempt to make the recent unfortunate deaths of inmates appear to be foul play, with me as the foul player, mmm?’
Sam nodded, slowly and deliberately. ‘And, what’s more, I received first-hand testimony of severe malpractice being carried on within these walls. Not just the beatings I’ve seen for myself, not just the totally unacceptable punishment block with its so-called “Black Hole”. I’m talking about torture, Mr McClintock. I’m talking about electrocutions.’
‘Electrocutions?’ repeated McClintock, incredulous. ‘And where, pray, did you garner your evidence, young Detective Inspector? Or may I be permitted to make a guess again? You’ve been speaking to the boys.’
‘I have,’ said Sam firmly. ‘Not the current inmates, of course, because under your regime they’re too scared.’
‘Ah,’ said McClintock, ‘then it’s not even fresh tittle-tattle you’ve been gathering but stale old nonsense from ex-cons. And what else did you hear, mmm? Have I been murdering the boys and cooking their flesh for my dinner? Do I drink their blood, and turn into a bat every full moon?’
‘A wolf,’ Chris corrected him severely. ‘It’s a wolf every full moon. Get your story straight, McClintock.’
‘Is that what you’re going to charge me with?’ McClintock asked. ‘Lycanthropy?’
Ray let out a breath, taken aback and somewhat angered by use of such a long and baffling word. He looked to Gene for support.
‘It’s all right, Ray,’ Gene comforted him. ‘He’s not messing with my head. Now listen up, McClintock. It’s nothing personal – well, actually, it is, but that’s just a happy coincidence. Point is, Jimmy, there’s a case building against you. The death of Craig Tulse, the death of Barry Tunning, the death of Thingy Coren.’
‘Andrew,’ Sam prompted him.
‘Andrew, aye,’ said Gene. ‘Three deaths. All on your watch, with your fingerprints all over ’em.’
‘Conjecture,’ declared McClintock.
‘That remains to be seen. And that’s why we’re here, me and my boys.’ He indicated Chris and Ray beside him. ‘We’re going to have serious words with you. We’re going to see what’s what and get to the bottom of all this. As for Bootsy and Snudge over there’ – he ja
bbed a thumb towards Sam and Annie – ‘-they’re off to play KerPlunk with that lad Donner and see what he’s got to say.’
‘I see,’ said McClintock. ‘You really are determined to build a case against me, aren’t you?’
‘You bet we are!’ Sam suddenly put in, stepping forward and confronting McClintock up close. ‘You’ve had the run of this place for too long. But that’s over now. The boys in this borstal might not be angels, but that doesn’t give you the right to treat them like scum. They’re human beings! Damn it, McClintock, they’re just kids! You have a duty of care to these boys!’
‘And I exercise that duty!’ McClintock snapped back. ‘I teach them right from wrong!’
‘You teach them nothing!’ Sam shouted back. ‘You reinforce the cycle of violence and revenge that these poor bastards have been born into! And when they won’t be battered and cowed into submission, when they stand up and refuse to be destroyed by your precious System, you’ll stop at nothing – nothing – to prove your so-called authority. Young men have died because of you! But not any more. We’re going to shine a bloody great spotlight on you and this place, McClintock. And we’re going to break your filthy, damned System into pieces!’
Was it House Master McClintock he was confronting, or was it Fate itself? In his mind, Sam was thinking as much about Annie, McClintock’s betrayal of her father and about the Devil in the Dark as he was about Coren and Tunning and the others. What he was pitting himself against was something far greater, and far more dangerous, than a corrupt and sadistic borstal House Master and his murderous regime.
‘You’re finished!’ Sam spat, jabbing his finger into McClintock’s chest. ‘You’re going down for what you’ve done here. Your System’s history and so are you.’ And then he whispered harshly, right into his face, ‘I know things about you. Your past. What you did.’
Furiously, Sam turned on his heels and marched towards the door.
‘Annie, let’s find Donner,’ he ordered, and Annie fell into step behind him. Over his shoulder, he declared, ‘Break him, Guv, if that’s what it takes. The bastard deserves it.’