TOM GRAHAM
Borstal Slags

Table of Contents

Title Page

Chapter One: Rollin’, Rollin’, Rollin’

Chapter Two: Sleeping Beauty

Chapter Three: Mrs Slocombe’s Pussy

Chapter Four: Annie Cartwright, Girl Detective

Chapter Five: Kiddies’ Porridge

Chapter Six: Crime and Punishment

Chapter Seven: Cooking with Gene Hunt

Chapter Eight: Through the Arched Window

Chapter Nine: House of Diamonds

Chapter Ten: A Simple Copper

Chapter Eleven: Pork Scratching

Chapter Twelve: Reading Between the Lines

Chapter Thirteen: Office Humour

Chapter Fourteen: Beauty Awakes

Chapter Fifteen: Decisions, Decisions

Chapter Sixteen: Fee Fie Fo Fum

Chapter Seventeen: Donner Speaks

Chapter Eighteen: It All Kicks Off

Chapter Nineteen: Punishment Block

Chapter Twenty: Like Camping but Worse

Chapter Twenty-One: Under Siege

Chapter Twenty-Two: Watch on a Chain

Chapter Twenty-Three: The Face of the Devil

Read on for an exclusive peek, available summer 2013

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

CHAPTER ONE: ROLLIN’, ROLLIN’, ROLLIN’

‘Guv?’

‘What is it, Tyler?’

‘You’re going to kill us, Guv.’

DCI Gene Hunt was driving as if the devil himself were after them. He floored the pedal, sending the Cortina shrieking through the Manchester evening like a rocket. DI Sam Tyler gripped the dashboard, as Hunt flung the car so recklessly round a bend that its offside wheels lifted off the tarmac. It dropped back heavily onto its suspension, the under-chassis scraping the road and sending out a sudden flare of sparks.

‘I might kill me motor’s springs, Sammy boy, but you and me is safe as houses,’ Gene growled. ‘It’s time you stopped worrying, Tyler, and learnt to trust the Gene Genie.’

The Guv’nor jammed a fag into his gob, taking both hands off the wheel to light it up. He emitted a long, thick, stinking plume of smoke into Sam’s face.

‘Don’t you go worrying your pretty little head, Tyler, I’ll get us there in one piece.’

‘But you’re driving like a maniac, Guv. I don’t know what you’re rushing for.’

‘There’s nowt the matter with rushing. I like rushing. Now shut your cake-hole and look out the window like a good little soldier. Watch the world go by.’

The world was indeed going by, and at a terrifying lick. Sam watched the shopfronts whipping past outside, the names rich with memories of his own childhood: Woolworth’s, Our Price records, Wavy Line. Bathed in the low, golden glow of the setting sun, the last of the evening’s shoppers headed up and down the high street. Sam glimpsed a young mother, no older than twenty, in a bright-red plastic raincoat pushing twins in a buggy. A stooped old woman waited patiently at a zebra crossing, her lined, toothless face peering out from beneath a fake fur hat that looked like a giant powder puff. Hurrying past her went a mustachioed man with collar-length hair and thick sideburns, his beige trousers hugging his crotch so tightly that nothing was left to the imagination.

This is my world now, Sam thought to himself, watching a kid in a Donny Osmond T-shirt slurping on a rainbow-coloured lolly shaped like a rocket ship. This is my world, and these are my people – for better or for worse.

These streets, these shoppers, even the orange glare of the setting sun, all seemed much realer to him than the world he had left behind. Two thousand and six was beginning to recede in his mind – or perhaps he was just less and less inclined to think about it. With effort, he could still recall his workstation at CID with its Posturepedic office chair, its PC terminal, its energy efficient desk lamp, its neatly coiled charging cables for his mobile and BlackBerry. But such memories seemed cold and dead to him. He felt no nostalgia for the world of touch screens and instant messaging – though maybe, from time to time, his thumbs hankered for the feel of a gaming console, his taste buds for the savour of sushi, his lungs for the comfort of a smoke-free pub.

The Cortina roared ahead, its headlights blazing through the thickening gloom of evening. With a squeal of rubber, Gene narrowly avoided rear-ending a dawdling middle-aged woman in a VW. The Cortina mounted the pavement, ripped past the VW, and bounced recklessly back onto the road.

‘Dopey mare in a shitty Kraut shoe box!’ Hunt bellowed. ‘Why the hell do they let birds behind the wheel, Tyler? It ain’t natural. You might as well dish out licenses to chimpanzees.’

Sam tried to keep his mind off of his guv’nor’s heart-stopping driving and turned inward instead. He thought back to how he had come to be in here in 1973 in the first place. His expulsion from 2006 had not been voluntary, nor had it been without pain. And it had all happened so fast! He could recall himself – twenty-first century DCI Tyler – pulling up by the side of the road as David Bowie played on the dashboard MP3. He could remember opening the car door and stepping out, in need of air and a moment to collect his thoughts. And then, out of the blue, came the sudden, agonizing impact of a vehicle slamming into him, the rush of air as he was hurled across the road, the bone-shattering crunch as his body smashed back down. Lying there, broken, his mind numb, he had lost all sense of space and time.

Gradually, thought had crept back into his scrambled mind. Sensation had returned to his fingers, his hand, his arm; breath returned to his lungs – and then, with a gasp, he had suddenly got to his feet and found that he was most definitely not in Kansas any more, but somewhere far, far away, well and truly over the rainbow. He was in a strange and alien world called 1973.

And, having worked so hard to escape from that world, Sam had discovered that in reality it was the one place he felt he most belonged. Unlike in 2006, here he felt alive.

But I’m not alive, he thought to himself. In 2006, I’m dead. I jumped from a roof. I died. Which makes me – what? A ghost? A lost soul? Is this heaven? Or hell? Or something in between? Or …?

He shook his head to clear it, refusing to submit to these overwhelming speculations. He wasn’t a philosopher: he was just a copper. He couldn’t answer these huge questions of ultimate reality; all he knew was that he was here, in 1973, and that it felt good. He had a job, a purpose – and he had Annie. WDC Annie Cartwright was the bright beacon at the heart of his world, the one thing more than any other that had drawn him back to this time when he’d had his chance to escape for ever. Being with her, he felt more alive than he had ever done – and that was good enough for Sam.

‘Here we are, Sammo. And you say I never take you anywhere classy.’

The Cortina was nosing its way through the front gates of Kersey’s Scrap Yard. On all sides stood mountains of mangled metal, cast in the raking, golden light of the sunset.

‘This place is an Aladdin’s cave!’ said Gene, glancing about at the heaps of wreckage. ‘Alfa Romeos. A couple of Audis stacked up over there. A tasty little Datsun just rustin’ away.’

‘Not just motors, Guv.’

Sam indicated at a mound of bulky washing machines piled carelessly amid the dead motors.

‘Who the hell chucks away deluxe twin-tubs?’ Gene tutted, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘They’ve got to be worth the best part of a hundred nicker apiece.’

Passing through this mountainous landscape of scrap, Sam spied a pair of mint-coloured Austin 1300s parked up ahead.

‘Patrol cars,’ he said. ‘Looks like uniform’s beaten us to it.’

Gene slewed the Cortina to a needlessly dramatic halt alongside the two Austins, showering them with dust. He flung open the door and strode manfully out, Sam following close behind. Together, they passed a parked lorry with a big open back for transporting junk. Lodged on the dashboard of the cab was a custom-made licence plate bearing the lorry’s name: Matilda.

Just across from the truck stood the crusher itself, a looming contraption of battered metal and massive pistons, standing still and silent with its half-digested load of ovens just visible, crunched within it. Several uniformed officers had climbed up and were trying to peer inside.

‘Don’t tamper with anything!’ Sam called to them, flourishing his ID. ‘If there really is a body inside that thing then this is a crime scene, gentlemen.’

‘Crime scene? It’s a ruddy mess, is what it is,’ one of the PCs called back, clambering down from the crusher. ‘You can see tufts of hair and what looks like a bit of a hand.’

‘Sounds like the missus,’ said Gene. He glanced across at a man in filthy overalls standing anxiously nearby. ‘Are you Kersey? DCI Hunt. Tell me what happened.’

‘Shook me right up,’ Kersey stammered. His hands were still shaking. ‘Never seen the like, not in nigh on twenty year.’

‘Take your time, Mr Kersey,’ said Sam.

Kersey took a breath. ‘We got all this junk delivered in. Old ovens from Friar’s Brook. They’re knocking down the kitchens and boiler rooms over there and shipping ’em to us as scrap. The lads had just finished unloading the ovens from Matilda, and I was starting to munch ’em up before Gertrude arrives with a stack of pipes and fridges—’

‘Gertrude’s the name of your other lorry, I take it?’ enquired Sam.

‘No, it’s his mother, she’s built like an ox,’ Gene put in, sourly. Then, to Kersey: ‘Keep talking. You were just starting to munch up the junk …’

‘I’d just started, when I see all this red stuff running out.’

Sam nodded thoughtfully: ‘So, Mr Kersey, you saw what you thought was blood coming out and you switched off the crusher straightaway?’

‘Course.’

‘Did you touch anything? Move anything? Poke around inside?’

‘Did I ’eck as like! I don’t wanna see what’s in there! I just shut her down and called the law, sharpish.’

‘Good man, you did the right thing. All of your co-workers are accounted for?’ Kersey nodded. ‘And you don’t have a pet dog or anything roaming about the place?’

‘There’s cats and foxes and God knows what all hanging about the yard, sure,’ Kersey said. ‘But I never had ’em go in the crusher before. They got more sense, specially them foxes. It’s a fella in there, you mark my words.’

‘And you have no idea who it might be?’

‘Nope. Or how he got in there. Or why.’

‘Right, then!’ Gene declared suddenly. ‘Let’s get that crusher opened up so we can have a look. You boys, stop monkeying about up there and get your arses off that thing.’ The constables began scrambling back down to the ground. ‘Kersey, throw the lever and open her up.’

‘I – I’m not sure I want to,’ stammered Kersey. His face was ashen.

‘It wasn’t a request, Kersey, it was a polite but firm instruction.’

Kersey froze. He’d seen more than enough blood for one day.

‘Think of it like opening a present on Christmas morning,’ said Gene, not very helpfully. ‘A great big lovely present full of mushed up body parts. That’s what I’m getting you, Tyler.’

Kersey looked to Sam for help.

‘Show me what to do,’ Sam told him. ‘You don’t have to watch.’

‘Turn it on with the key,’ Kersey said. ‘Then release that handle, slowly.’

Even as he spoke, Kersey was backing away, his face turning from white to green.

‘Everybody stand clear,’ Sam announced. ‘You all ready? On the count of three.’

‘It’s not Apollo 12, Tyler,’ grumbled Gene. ‘Just get on with it, you big fanny.’

Sam turned the starter key. The crusher’s mighty pistons rattled and roared into life. Black smoke belched from the motors. He glanced around, just to ensure no one was getting too close – and at that moment a sudden flash of reflected light caught his eye. Matilda’s sister truck was pulling up, just beyond the parked Cortina and the patrol cars; like its counterpart, it too had a custom-made licence plate propped up against the windscreen, which bore the name Gertrude.

But it wasn’t the sun reflecting on the lorry that caught Sam’s attention: it was the sudden flash of light on the crowbar wielded by a masked man who was rushing out from behind a heap of smashed cars. The man jumped onto the lorry’s running board, threw open the door and began battering at the driver inside the cab.

‘Guv!’ Sam shouted. His voice was drowned out by the bellowing of the crusher. ‘Guv! Look!’

But nobody could hear him.

Gertrude swerved left and right, then the driver’s door flew open and the driver himself tumbled out, battered and bleeding.

Leaving the crusher running, Sam bolted towards the hijacked lorry. Gene and the coppers gawped at him in incomprehension as he ran off.

‘Tyler – what the f—’

‘Felony in progress!’ Sam shouted as he ran. ‘Felony in bleedin’ progress!’

The lorry turned clumsily, crashing through a mountain of metal junk. This, at last, got everyone’s attention. The uniformed coppers stood and gawped. Gene reached instinctively under his coat for the Magnum.

Gertrude executed its blundering U-turn and went thundering out of the yard, smashing through a couple of parked cars in the street beyond before roaring recklessly away.

Sam reached the driver where he lay. He was splattered with blood, terrified and confused, but conscious enough to growl at Sam, ‘That bastard nicked Gerty!’

‘What the hell’s on your truck that’s so valuable?’

‘Old fridges! Just a load of old pipes and fridges! And for that he bashed my bonce and nicked my bloody Gerty!’

‘We’ll have him!’ Sam vowed. ‘We will have him!’ He turned to the uniformed officer. ‘Don’t just stand there, get after that truck! Get on your radios, organize a road block!’ As the coppers scrambled into their little Austins and set their lights flashing, Sam called to Gene, ‘I think we should stay here, Guv. We can monitor the pursuit over the radio, and make sure nobody tinkers with that crusher.’

‘“Monitor the pursuit”?’ sneered Gene, jangling his car keys as he strode swiftly towards the Cortina. ‘I am the pursuit, Tyler. I was born the bloody pursuit!’

He disappeared into the car and gunned the engine. Sam dived in beside him.

‘Guv, wait, I really think we should—’

But Gene wasn’t having any of it. They were off, rocketing past the marked patrol cars and ripping helter-skelter into the street. Sam flinched as the Cortina’s bonnet skimmed an oncoming car with barely an inch to spare.

‘Want to cast yet more aspersions on my driving, Tyler?’ Gene grunted at him.

‘I just want to get home alive, Guv.’

They were hurtling along, diesel smoke from Gertrude snorting into the air fifty yards ahead of them. Just behind the Cortina, the two patrol cars were rattling along, their lights flashing, burning out their feeble engines to keep up with the chase. The radio under the dashboard was alive with wild chatter as the word went round: truck on the rampage – heading for the heart of the city – block it, stop it, do what the hell you have to do but damn well get it off the road!

‘I’ll flamin’ get him off the road,’ Gene growled, the Magnum now in his hand, cocked and deadly.

‘Guv, for God’s sake, put that thing away!’

‘It’s my toy, and I wanna play with it!’

‘You can’t start blazing away in the streets, Gene!’ Sam bellowed at him. ‘You will kill people!’

‘Only bad ’uns.’

Gertrude was only a few yards ahead of them now, crashing madly forward in a black cloud like some sort of runaway demon.

‘It’s a sitting bleedin’ duck for a pot shot!’ Gene declared. ‘I can’t resist it, I’m having a crack.’

He leant out of the window, driving one-handed, and lined up the mighty barrel of the Magnum with Gertrude’s rear tyres – but before he could squeeze off a shot, the truck swung suddenly to the left, smashing through a pelican crossing and sending people running in all directions. Oncoming cars blared their horns and swerved madly out of the way.

‘He’s gonna splat more civvies than me!’ Gene spat. ‘Shoot him, Tyler!’

The Cortina’s engine howled as Gene floored the gas. Gertude roared right across in front of them. Gene flung the wheel as they mounted the pavement, missed a phone box by a gnat’s gonad, then roared back onto the road.

‘I said shoot him, Tyler!’

‘Shut it! I can’t hear the radio.’

‘This is no time for Diddy David Hamilton!’

‘The police radio, you cretin!’ Sam leant closer to the crackling speaker. ‘Sounds like somebody’s got a plan.’

‘Plan? What sort of plan?’

‘I’m trying to hear!’

Between Gene’s shouting and the screaming of tyres on tarmac, Sam could just make out one of the patrol cars announcing that it had cut down a back street to head off the truck. Sam glanced up and saw the little Austin pulling up bravely on the road ahead, blocking the way. The two coppers jumped out and indicated firmly for Gertrude to stop – stop – stop!

But Gertrude didn’t. The two coppers flung themselves clear as the thundering lorry ploughed straight into their titchy patrol car and just kept going. The Austin shattered, its body crumpling beneath the mighty truck. A single wheel rolled sadly away from the mangled remains, slowed, and fell over.

‘That was the plan?’ muttered Gene, stamping on the gas and swerving around the wreckage of the Austin. He powered the Cortina alongside the truck. ‘It’s time for a Genie plan.’

‘Not so close!’ Sam yelled. ‘He’ll veer across and roll right over us!’

‘Roll over the Cortina? He wouldn’t ruddy dare!’

‘Pull back, Gene!’

This time, Sam grabbed the wheel.

‘Off the motor!’ bellowed Gene, shoving him roughly away.

‘You’ve lost it, Gene!’ Sam shouted back. ‘You’re acting like a lunatic! People are going to get killed! We are going to get killed!’

‘Stop being such a pissy-pants.’

The Cortina drew right up to Gertrude, almost nudging her filthy rear bumper with its radiator grille.

‘You’re bleedin’ Tonto, Guv,’ Sam said, shaking his head. ‘You are medically a mentalist.’

‘Nah, I’ve just got balls.’

‘Look out!’

The monstrous truck cut directly in front of the Cortina, its brake lights blazing and its juddering exhaust pipe farting a great blast of filthy black fumes across the windscreen. Gene threw the wheel and the Cortina ducked away as Gertrude cut across a corner, burst through a line of parked cars and then flattened a street lamp.

‘He must really want them fridges,’ said Gene. ‘Keep your shell-likes stuck to them police reports, Tyler. I want to know exactly where that truck’s headed.’

Gene floored the pedal and jerked the wheel wildly to the left. The Cortina zoomed down one narrow street after another.

‘What are you going, Guv?’ asked Sam, bracing himself in his seat. ‘Overtaking it so you can face it head on? That’s insane! You saw what it did to that Austin!’

‘This ain’t a chuffin’ Austin, you tart. Now keep listening!’

Sam strained to hear the radio: ‘Lansdowne Road – Ellsmore Road – now he’s cutting across that bit of grass outside the Fox and Hounds – wrong way up Farley Street – Left into Rokeby Crescent …’

‘Has he reached the top of Keyes Street yet?’

‘Nearly.’

Without warning, Gene slammed on the brakes, throwing Sam hard against the dashboard.

‘You could’ve warned me you were gonna do that, Guv!’

‘Why didn’t you clunk-click like Jimmy tells you? Folks die.’

Gene threw open the door and swept out into the street. He strode, straight-backed and narrow-eyed, to the middle of the road, and there he made his stand, his off-white leather loafers planted squarely on the oil-stained tarmac. The smooth barrel of the Magnum glittered dully in the golden-red rays of the setting sun.

Sam stumbled from the car, watching Gene feed fresh rounds into the gun to make up a full barrel.

‘Guv? What are you doing?’

Gene gave the Magnum a flick of the wrist. Ka-chunk! The barrel snapped back into the housing, ready for action.

From the twilight shadows at the far end of the road there came a clamour and a roar, as if a rampaging, diesel-powered dragon were approaching.

Gene rested his finger on the trigger of the Magnum. He stilled his breath. He focused. He flexed and limbered his shooting arm; tilted his head; made the vertebrae in his neck go crack.

And then Gertrude appeared, rattling out of the shadows at speed, making straight down the road directly for Hunt. Its bank of headlights flared, turning Gene into a motionless silhouette.

‘Guv, that thing’s going to slam straight into you and just keep on rolling.’

‘It will not pass,’ Gene murmured, almost to himself.

‘It’s going to flatten you, Guv, and the Cortina!’

‘It – will – not – pass!’

Gene raised the Magnum.

The truck blasted its horn, sending a ragged spear of steam stabbing up into the darkening sky. Gene replied with the Magnum. Fire spat from the muzzle. Gertrude’s windscreen exploded. A second shot cracked the radiator grille and thudded into the engine block. A third, fourth, and then a fifth ripped one after the other through the front axle.

But it was the sixth that delivered the sucker punch. It smacked through the bonnet and struck something – something vulnerable, something vital – deep inside Gertrude’s rusty bodywork. The truck screamed like a transfixed vampire. The cabin lurched forward as the axle beneath it gave way and flew apart, busting the chassis and driving the front bumper into the tarmac like a plough. Sheer weight and momentum carried the broken-backed monster forward a dozen or more yards, gouging a furrow in the road and throwing up showers of stones and debris, until, with a shuddering crack, the truck jolted to a stop. The man in the mask came catapulting through the jagged remains of the windscreen and fetched up in a ruinous heap at Gene Hunt’s feet. The cargo of old fridges and metal piping crashed and smashed like a steel wave that broke over the cab and cascaded deafeningly all over the road. Gertrude’s mortally wounded engine spewed a noisy jet of steam and then died. The headlights went dark. The scattered metallic debris came to rest. A last shard of glass fell from the windscreen and tinkled onto the road. Silence settled over the twilit street.

Gene glanced about at his handiwork, nodded to himself, and blew the smoke from the muzzle of the Magnum. Another job well done.

‘You are mad,’ said Sam, shaking his head slowly as he looked from the gun to the shattered remains of the lorry, from the bloodstained man crumpled at the Guv’nor’s feet to the Guv’nor himself, standing there in his camel-hair coat and black-leather string-backs, wreathed in a slowly arcing aura of gun smoke. ‘This isn’t law enforcement – this is some sort of crazy macho playground you’re romping around in, you and your bloody Magnum. This isn’t what I signed up for. This isn’t the job I know. What the hell am I doing saddled with you, Gene?’

From the corner of his mouth, Gene replied, ‘Go on home to your kids, Herb.’ He leant over the groaning man sprawled at his feet, kicked away the now-dented licence plate bearing the name Gertrude, and said, ‘And as for you, sunshine, you’re nicked – what’s left of you.’

CHAPTER TWO: SLEEPING BEAUTY

The truck thief lay motionless in the intensive care ward, a cluster of clumsy plastic tubes tied with bandages to his nose and mouth. Beside him, a ramshackle tower of boxlike machines wheezed, chugged and beeped, keeping the lad in the bed on the very cusp of life. A nurse checked a paper read-out covered with wiggly lines, twiddled a fat dial or two, and fidgeted with the hem of the starched white sheets.

‘You’re not relatives,’ she said to the two men standing at the foot of the bed. ‘What are you? Police?’

‘DI Tyler,’ said Sam. ‘This is DCI Hunt. We’ve just, um, arrested this man.’

‘How? By dropping an anvil on him?’

‘He pranged his stolen motor,’ put in Gene. ‘I think he might have bumped his noodle.’

‘Sorry to have to bother you with this, Nurse,’ said Sam, ‘but does anyone here have a clue as to this young man’s identity?’

‘No.’

‘When he was undressed, was there no ID found on him? No wallet, nothing like that?’

‘His personal things are over there,’ said the nurse, indicating a small wooden locker. ‘But there’s nothing of interest, just shredded rags. We had to cut his clothes off when he came in here – what little clothing hadn’t been cut off him already.’

She stared fiercely at Gene.

‘He tripped on a kerb stone,’ said Gene, innocent as a cherub. ‘Anyway’s up, we need to have a chat with him.’

‘You’ll find that rather difficult, officer. He’s still unconscious.’

‘My uncle’s unwashed pantaloons he’s unconscious! He’s faking it. I can sense it. Sleeping Beauty here can hear every word we’re saying – can’t you, old son?’

‘He’s certainly not faking anything,’ said the nurse, aghast.

‘Is he not? Let’s put it to the test, why don’t we?’ He strode over to the bed, took hold of the truck thief’s ventilator tubes, and gave them a rattle. ‘Wakey, wakey, pretty baby, or I wrench these gizmos out your epiglottis and shove ’em right up your—’

‘For God’s sake!’ the nurse spat, shoving Hunt back. ‘You two are leaving right now. Right now! Or else I’m calling the police.’

‘Calling the police?’ said Gene, fishing out a packet of Embassy No. 6s. ‘There’s a flaw in your logic there. See if you can spot it.’

‘This boy is unconscious, and likely to remain so for some time – assuming he ever recovers at all,’ the nurse said fiercely.

‘I’ve been telling my DCI the same thing,’ said Sam, deeply uncomfortable to be associated with Gene when he was behaving like this. ‘Come on, Guv. This lad’s not going anywhere, we can always see him another time. They’ll let us know when he comes round.’

Truculently, Gene jabbed a cigarette between his lips. The nurse gave him a look: Don’t you dare …! Fixing her with a fierce look of his own, Gene raised his lighter, toyed at the flint with his thumb – then eased off.

‘Don’t take it personal, luv, I’ve had a day,’ he said. ‘Tyler – let’s roll.’

Sam apologized to the nurse for his DCI’s atrocious behaviour, and turned at once to go. He reached the plastic swing doors that led out of ICU into the busy corridor beyond, but found he was alone. Glancing back, he saw Gene rummaging through the small wooden cupboard which contained the tattered, blooded remains of the truck thief’s clothes. As the nurse furiously declared that she was going to get the porters to throw him out, Gene suddenly raised aloft a folded sheet of paper.

‘Nothing but rags?’ he said. ‘This could be vital.’ And to Sam: ‘See what happens if you take these medical birds too serious?’

He shoved the piece of paper into his pocket and – to Sam’s infinite relief – strode briskly through the swing doors and away along the corridor.

‘What a filthy, arrogant, reckless brute,’ the nurse said, shaking her head. ‘He should have been a consultant.’

They emerged into the cold night air outside the hospital. Ambulances clanged by. Gene sparked up his cigarette and drew deeply on the nicotine as if it were the very elixir of life.

‘You need to clean your act up, Hunt,’ Sam challenged him.

‘And you need to unclench those lily-white arse cheeks of yours, Tyler. We’re none of us in this job to make nurses happy – well, not like that, anyway.’

‘She’s got grounds to lodge a serious formal complaint against you. You assaulted a man on life support!’

‘I wobbled his pipes, that’s hardly an assault,’ Gene said dismissively. ‘And you’re forgetting – Uncle Genie had a ferret about and came up this.’

He held up the folded piece of paper. It was dotted with the truck thief’s blood.

‘It better be worth it,’ said Sam, watching Gene unfold it. ‘What is it? Looks like a letter.’

‘A spot of bedtime reading. Let’s see how it compares to Dick Francis, eh?’ Angling it towards the light coming from a sodium lamp, Gene perused it for a moment. ‘Nice handwriting. Very neat.’ And then he started to read it out. ‘“Dear Derek …” That our lad in there, you reckon? “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.” Gene shot Sam a serious look. ‘I hope he did tell her. I won’t have Auntie Rose worryin’.’

‘Get on with it, Guv.’

Gene peered closer at the letter, falling silent, his eyes narrowing, his expression darkening.

‘Guv?’ Sam asked.

‘My God, Tyler!’

‘Guv, what is it?’

Gene gave Sam an intense look. Gravely, he announced: ‘It’s Fluffy, Sam. She’s back on the tablets.’

Sam looked blankly at him. ‘What?’

Gene read out, “‘Don’t forget to give Fluffy her special tablets – take her to the vet in Lidden Street if she gets sick again.”’ Gene looked up sharply from the letter. ‘Sam, this stuff is dynamite.’ He balled the letter in his fist and bounced it off Sam’s chest. ‘Too exciting for me. I’ll never get to sleep after that.’

Sam retrieved the screwed-up letter, flattened it out, and glanced over the rest: ‘“… if she gets sick again. It’s very important I can trust you to look after her. See you again soon I hope. Love – Andy.” Andy,’ he said. ‘Derek and Andy.’

‘Those names don’t mean anything to me,’ said Gene.

‘Me neither. But look here – there’s a rubber stamp at the top of the letter approving it for posting. It says “HMP Friar’s Brook”.’

‘HMP!’ scoffed Gene. ‘It’s just a bloody borstal, Tyler. A kiddies’ lock-up for scallies whose balls ain’t dropped. That’s where his mate Andy is, is it? Doing a spot of bird in the nippers’ clinky? And what high-profile criminal caper did he mastermind, d’you think? Clocked some old granny for her pension book and Green Shields to pay for Fluffy’s suppositories? Or is he the Mr Big behind the Manchester used-fridge mafia?’

‘Something weird’s going on here,’ said Sam. ‘It’s not those fridges that lad was after, it was something else. But what? And is there a connection between him and the body in the crusher?’

Silently, Sam and Gene stood beneath the black, starless sky, waiting for inspiration to strike.

With an exaggerated sigh, Gene chucked away his dog end and declared, ‘I’ve ’ad enough of this bollocks. Hozzies give me the bleedin’ ’abdabs. I’m closing shop for the day. The Genie wants his beer. C’mon, Tyler, let’s leave chatterbox in there to suck on his pipes and dream of fridges, and get ourselves down the Arms for a few swifties.’

‘I think I’ll give it a miss this time,’ said Sam. ‘I’m going to swing by the station then head on home. I really do need some kip.’

‘DI Tyler needs kip more than beer,’ sighed Gene, rolling his eyes. ‘Kids today. Lightweights. A bunch of ruddy lightweights.’

When Sam got to the station, he found Annie Cartwright’s desk empty, and the sight of her chair and neatly piled paperwork made his heart ache for her.

Carefully, he sealed the letter from ‘Andy’ in an envelope and wrote on the front, ‘See what you make of this – are there any hidden clues???’ He left if tucked into Annie’s typewriter. It pleased him to have any opportunity to show that he took her seriously, that he valued her mind and police skills, that he saw her as an absolutely integral part of the team. Looking at the envelope left in the typewriter, it occurred to Sam that it was almost a love letter, from him to her.

It’s the first time I’ve left a bloodstained love letter! he thought.

A bloodstained love letter. All at once, the humour of the phrase curdled within him. He felt an icy coldness in the pit of his stomach, as if he was suddenly aware of being watched by malevolent eyes.

Sam glanced anxiously about, but the CID office was empty. And yet the fear remained. He knew that somewhere out there, hiding in the shadows but drawing steadily closer, was something evil. He had sensed it first as a vague apparition on the very margins of perception, and tried to dismiss it as a figment of his subconscious. But then, later, he had somehow recognized that same spectral presence reflected in the monstrous tattoos of bare-knuckle boxer Patsy O’Riordan. At the fairground, pursuing Patsy into the ghost train in an attempt to arrest him for murder, Sam had encountered an even stronger manifestation of that same horror – a rotting corpse, standing upright and seemingly alive, dressed in a sixties Nehru suit. The vision had vanished almost at once, but it had struck Sam with more immediacy and reality than just a trick of the mind. Whatever it was, it had been real – and it had been aware of both him and of Annie.

‘The Devil in the Dark …’ Sam murmured to himself. It was the name he had given this abominable thing. And briefly, after Patsy O’Riordan’s death, he had heard its voice, issuing momentarily from the mouth of a young scally Sam was passing in the street:

‘I’ll keep coming at you, you cheating bastard. I’ll keep coming at you until I’ve got my wife back – my wife – mine.’

‘You won’t mess with my mind,’ Sam said out loud, as if the Devil in the Dark could hear him. ‘I’m strong. Annie’s strong. And all your lies and mind games will get you nowhere. Our future is our own – and there’s nothing you can do.’

He found himself holding his breath, waiting for an answer. But there was nothing, just the sound the of the night cleaners starting up their hoovers in nearby offices.

Sam looked back down at the letter resting on the typewriter, silently wished the absent Annie a good night, and then headed out. He’d go home, alone, knock back a couple of bottles of brown ale and fall asleep. A dull, lonesome end to yet another chaotic day on the force with Gene Hunt.

In a corridor leading to the main doors, Sam came across Chris and Ray. They looked red-faced and out of breath. Ray was reviving himself by drawing heavily on a cigarette, wiping the sweat from his blonde moustache with a rough, fag-stained finger. Chris was finger-combing his hair and readjusting his knitted tank top, which had been pulled askew.

‘I hope you two haven’t been fighting,’ Sam said, striding towards them.

‘Not with each other, Boss, no,’ Chris said. There was a zip-up sports bag at his feet, which he picked up gingerly.

‘We just been banging up a poofter,’ announced Ray with contempt. ‘A right little pervert, Boss, delivering filth to some other pervert. We caught ’em at the handover. Show him the bag, Chris.’

Chris thrust the sports bag at Sam.

‘Take a gander inside that, Boss – if you dare,’ Chris said, backing up as if the bag might go off at any moment.

Sam looked into the bad and was confronted by a messy stash of photos. It was all boys together – in bed, in the shower, on a grubby sofa, on a bare floor – with masses of pallid, spotty male flesh on display. The harsh flash used to take the pictures did the models’ skin tone no favours at all.

‘It’s baffling!’ put in Chris. ‘Why would a fella want to look at other fellas’ meat-’n’-two? I mean – a bird wanting a look, yeah, I can get me head round it sort of – but a bloke?’

‘It’s a sickness, is what it is,’ opined Ray.

‘Oh, grow up,’ said Sam, zipping the bag shut. ‘It’s just a bit of gay porn – get over it. And from what I’ve seen, it’s not exactly top quality.’

‘I wouldn’t know,’ muttered Ray, uncomfortable with the whole situation.

‘Why’d you even bother nicking somebody for carrying this stuff?’ asked Sam. ‘It’s hardly the great train robbery.’

‘We saw this lad carrying that bag, Boss, acting shifty,’ Ray explained. ‘So we followed him to the park. It was obvious there was going to be a handover, so we waited to see who turned up. We concealed ourselves cunningly in a shrub. But then the lad sort of … spotted us.’

‘What do you mean, “sort of” spotted you?’

‘It weren’t me, Boss, it were ’im!’ Ray jabbed a thumb towards Chris.

‘I’ve got a problem that needs tablets!’ Chris protested. ‘I can’t help meself. The gas builds up and it hurts me tummy. I got no choice but to …’ He mimed a vile pumping action with his fist. ‘If I don’t let it out I could do meself an injury. Blokes die. It’s medical, Boss. I tried changing me diet, but it sent me the other way, all bunged up and solid, you know what I mean? Like trying to drop a lump of coal.’

‘I get the picture, Chris, thank you,’ said Sam.

‘I’m on charcoal tablets,’ Chris went on. ‘They turn your tongue black, but it’s a price worth paying.’

‘I said I get the picture, thank you. Okay, so Chris quite literally blew your cover and the suspect spotted you. What happened next? Run off, did he?’

‘Like a shot,’ said Ray. ‘I shouted at him to hold up but he kept legging it. So I brought him down with a rugby tackle and there was a bit of argy-bargy.’

‘And that set me off again,’ Chris grimaced. ‘Like flippin’ Hiroshima.’

‘We had to nick him, Boss, he was acting so suspicious,’ Ray went on. ‘And besides, we didn’t know what was in that bag. Could’ve been drugs. Could’ve been guns.’

‘Them photos could lead us to an international porn ring,’ said Chris, pointing at the bag. ‘This could be big, Boss!’

‘I doubt it,’ said Sam. ‘These pictures were probably snapped off locally. Look at them, they’ve been taken in somebody’s crappy little flat. It’s small beer. Amateur night. Let the lad go and get back to nicking real villains.’

‘He is a villain, boss!’ Chris insisted. ‘A jail bird. He’s done time before. He told us on the way in here. He did a stretch at Friar’s Brook and he begged us not to send him back there. Practically crying he was.’

‘Like a nancy,’ growled Ray.

Sam’s ears pricked up: ‘Friar’s Brook? He’s done time at Friar’s Brook borstal?’

‘That’s what he said, Boss.’

Friar’s Brook borstal was where the junk metal was being brought in from at Kersey’s yard, and it was also the source of the letter found on the lad who’d stolen the truck.

‘This young man you arrested, what’s his name?’ Sam asked.

‘Barton. We stuck him in Cell 2.’

‘Barton …’ Sam mused. Then he said, ‘You two knock off for the night. The Guv’s already down the boozer, he’ll be missing your company.’

‘You not coming, Boss?’ Ray asked.

‘No. I want to speak to this lad Barton. I’m interested in Friar’s Brook and he might have something useful to tell me about it.’

‘And what about – that?’ Chris indicated nervously at the sports bag full of shoddy gay porn.

‘I’ll hang onto it,’ said Sam flatly. ‘For my private use.’

Chris’s mouth fell open. Ray scowled, uncertain, disturbed.

‘What’s the matter, boys?’ Sam added camply, arching an eyebrow. ‘Afraid of your own feelings?’

‘You shouldn’t joke, Boss, not about stuff like that,’ said Ray darkly. ‘You’ll get yourself a reputation. C’mon, Chris, let’s get down the Railway Arms. The Guv hates to drink alone. And besides, his sense of humour’s more – more normal than some.’

As the two of them headed off together, Sam called out to them, ‘Oh – and Chris?’

‘Boss?’

‘Those charcoal tablets you’re taking. Don’t overdo ’em, they’re carcinogenic.’ And when Chris stared blankly at him, Sam added, ‘They give you cancer.’

‘Give over, Boss!’ scoffed Chris, waving him away. ‘They ain’t no worse for you than fags.’

Sam headed back down to the cells. He reached the heavy door of Cell 2 and opened up the spyhole. Inside he saw Barton pacing anxiously about, sweating and chewing his nails. He was older than Sam had imagined, with rough skin around his neck and face, and collar-length hair that was well overdue for a wash. If he’d been an inmate at Friar’s Brook borstal, it must have been some years ago.

‘Barton?’ Sam called through the spyhole. ‘My name’s DI Tyler. I want a word.’

Barton turned with a start and at once dashed over.

‘Officer!’ he cried. ‘Sir! You gotta get me out of here! Please! Please, sir! I’m begging you! I’m no nonce. I’m just the courier. It’s them what takes the pictures, sir, not me.’

‘I’m not really fussed about all that.’

‘They take ’em in one of the flats on the Hayfield estate. Dirty pictures, sir. I just deliver ’em. They pay me a couple of bob, I need the cash, but I don’t get involved or nuffing ’coz I’m not like that, honest I’m not, sir! Please, sir, please, you gotta let me out of here!’

‘Barton, take it easy. There’s nothing they can charge you with except some trumped-up nonsense about resisting arrest. And if you cooperate with me I can see that charge is completely dropped.’

‘Really? Really, sir?’ Barton pressed his face hard against the spyhole. ‘You’ll let me go? You mean it?’

‘Of course I mean it. But in return, I want to ask you a few questions.’

‘Oh thank you, thank you!’ grovelled Barton, thrusting his fingers through the spyhole and waggling them. ‘I knew you’d help me! I could see you were different, you’re not like the others. You’ve got kind eyes.’

‘I have?’ said Sam, suppressing a grin.

‘Yes, yes, sir, you have, very kind eyes! And a kind face, sir! A very, very kind face.’

Sam laughed.

‘I mean it!’ Barton cried. ‘I know, I know, you think I’m a nonce talking like that. They all thought I was nonce, back in Friar’s. That’s why I don’t ever want to go back there. They gave me a hard time. A hard time, sir!’

‘Friar’s Brook is what I wanted to ask you about. What’s it like?’

‘Terrible, sir! They nearly killed me! It was awful. They said I was a nancy, they said I’d got my dick out in the showers and tried to – they said I wanted to – that I … It weren’t true, I swear it, sir! I never did nothing! I’m no poofter I like big tits and that!’

‘When were you at Friar’s Brook?’ asked Sam.

‘Last year.’

‘Rubbish. It’s a borstal. You’re way too old.’

‘Too old? I’m seventeen.’

Sam was taken aback. The heavy features, the skin roughed by cold shaves and alcohol aftershave and a diet of instant mash and fish fingers – could that really be the face of a teenager?

No moisturizers for men in the seventies. No skincare regimes, no fruit juice, no five-a-day. It’s all harsh winds and fag smoke and chips cooked in dripping for lads like this.

‘I can’t never go back to Friar’s,’ Barton hissed. ‘It’s hell on earth.’

‘The other inmates pretty rough, are they?’

‘Not the inmates, sir.’

‘What, then?’

‘If I tell you what’s so terrible about that place, sir, will you promise to get me out of here?’ Barton pleaded.

‘Sure. I promise.’

‘Okay. Since you’re kind.’

‘I’m all ears,’ said Sam. ‘And kind eyes. Go ahead, tell me what’s so terrible about Friar’s Brook.’

Barton dropped his voice to a hoarse whisper. He pressed his mouth against the spyhole and breathed a single word, ‘McClintock.’

And with that, he fell silent.

Sam waited for something more, but he got nothing.

‘Is that it? “McClintock”?’

Barton nodded. He glanced about in terror, as if by uttering the name he was at risk of summoning the devil.

‘And who is this “McClintock”?’ asked Sam. ‘An inmate? One of the warders?’

‘Go and find out for yourself, sir,’ Barton whispered. ‘Then you’ll see. Then you’ll see.’

‘Barton, I promised to help you, and I will. But in return you promised to give me information.’

‘And that’s what I did, sir!’

‘A single name and some veiled hints isn’t much for me to go on.’

Barton crept forward again and peered out through the spyhole. ‘Just remember that name, sir. McClintock. Go to Friar’s Brook, sir. See what you will see.’

Sam shrugged. ‘Well, what can I say? Thanks for your cooperation. Now – you get yourself some rest. I’ll make sure you’re out of here as soon as I can.’

‘You mean that, sir? You won’t be sending me back there?’

‘We’ve got bigger fish to fry, Barton. Now go to sleep. And don’t have nightmares.’

Still anxious, but less so than before, Barton crept back to the mean little seat that ran along the cell’s back wall and settled himself on it. He folded his legs primly, and gave Sam a coquettish smile.

‘Thank you, sir,’ he said. ‘You’re different. I can see that.’ And, just as Sam closed up the spyhole once more, he caught Barton’s voice, ‘Be dreaming of you, PC Brown Eyes.’

CHAPTER THREE: MRS SLOCOMBE’S PUSSY

Alone in his flat, Sam dumped a set of dirty plates into the sink and left the washing-up for tomorrow. It would take half the night to get enough hot water to fill the basin, and he was in no mood to sit up, not after the day he’d had. All he wanted was beer and a doze in front of the telly.

He carried a bottle of brown ale over to the TV. The screen glowed. Cash registers clinked and clanged. A funky bass guitar started up. A woman’s voice intoned flatly:

Ground floor: perfumery,

Stationery and leather goods.

Wigs and haberdashery.

Kitchenware and food. Going up!

‘A bottle, a chair, and a few old gags about Mrs Slocombe’s pussy,’ Sam said to himself, cracking open the beer. ‘That’ll do me. That’ll do me just grand.’

He swilled back a warm mouthful of brown ale and let his mind drift. But at once he was disturbed by the memory of a voice – a man’s voice, very harsh and brutal, issuing incongruously from the mouth of an immature young scally.

‘I’ll keep coming at you, you cheating bastard. I’ll keep coming at you until I’ve got my wife back – my wife – mine.’

‘Just ignore it,’ he muttered to himself, trying hard to relax. ‘It’s just mind games. Annie’s never been married.’

Annie. Married.

The image floated into his mind of Annie dressed all in white, with a lace veil, appearing in the aisle of a crowded church. The organ struck up the Wedding March. Sam pictured himself, all togged up in his morning suit, getting to his feet and turning to watch her walk slowly towards him.

This beautiful fantasy made his heart turn over. But then, unexpectedly, his dream was invaded by interlopers. Horribly familiar faces appeared amid the assembled guests. First he caught sight of Chris Skelton, uncomfortable in his cheap suit, a wilting flower hanging limply from his button hole as he pulled a leering, Sid James-ish face at Annie: ooh ’eck, cop a load of that!

Beside him, with his collar un-ironed and fag burns on his shirt, stood Ray Carling. He nudged Chris with his elbow – when the boss gets tired of her, he can always chuck her over my way – and swigged flagrantly from a pewter hip flask.

Just across from them was Phyllis, all made up and kitted out in her finest glad rags, but looking as scowly faced and unimpressed as ever. She shot Sam a sour look that said a girl like that – settling for a no-good little ’Erbert like you.

‘Give me a break guys,’ Sam whispered to himself, emerging from his fantasy and taking another swig of beer. Then he settled back again, let sleep tug at his eyelids and the emanations from the TV wash over him like a lullaby.

INT: GRACE BROTHER’S DEPARTMENT STORE – DAY

With her bright orange hair and thick multi-coloured make-up, Mrs Slocombe folds her arms and looks disapproving.

MRS SLOCOMBE: That new girl who’s started – Miss Belfridge, she calls herself. Nothing but a floozy! She’s in line for a promotion already, and all because she wiggles her hips and flutters her eyelashes!

Captain Peacock looks at her across the top of his glasses.

CAPTAIN PEACOCK: Do you feel ready for a promotion, Mrs Slocombe?

MRS SLOCOMBE: I do! I’m totally up for it, Mr Peacock! If only someone would give me one!

CAPTAIN PEACOCK: If I had the power, Mrs Slocombe, I’d happily give you one right now.

Mrs Slocombe simpers and pats her orange hair.

Nearby, Mr Spooner and Mr Humphreys overhear their conversation.

MR SPOONER: Promotion? Personally, I’m not much interested in climbing the corporate ladder. What about you, Mr Humphreys? Would you rather be on top?

MR HUMPHREYS: Ooh, I’m quite happy near the bottom.

The TV burbled on.

Slipping back into his wedding fantasy, Sam tried to ignore the faces of his colleagues amid the pews. Damn it all, this was his dream! Those bastards had no right to gatecrash it!

He tried to fill his imagination with the image of Annie in her bridal gown. She looked – and how could she not? – wonderful. He allowed a pale aura of light to shimmer around her, a soft-focus haze that gave her an almost ethereal radiance. Subtly – perhaps a little tackily – he made her eyes glint alluringly beneath her veil as she turned to smile at him.

The priest stepped forward to read the wedding service. But Sam’s imagination decided on a cruel casting decision.

‘Oh no, not you!’

There was a panatela smouldering unashamedly in the priest’s gob. He tugged at his dog collar to loosen it, sniffed, glanced about, and reached under his cassock to flagrantly shepherd a wayward bollock.

‘Shall we crack on with and adjourn to the bar?’ grunted Father Hunt. ‘The padre is parched.’

‘You’re just bloody spoiling it, Guv. You’re always bloody spoiling it.’

INT: GRACE BROTHER’S DEPARTMENT STORE – EVENING

Later that evening, everyone’s working late.

Bald, jug-eared Mr Rumbold appears dressed in an overcoat and carrying an umbrella. With him is an extremely attractive young new employee, Miss Belfridge. Mr Rumbold is clearly excited by her company.

MR RUMBOLD: Since we’re finishing late tonight, I promised to accompany the lovely Miss Belfridge safely to her front door.

CAPTAIN PEACOCK: Isn’t that rather out of your way, Mr Rumbold? You don’t live anywhere near Miss Belfridge.

MR HUMPHREYS: I can give you a lift home, Miss Belfridge. I’ve got my mother’s motorbike and sidecar.

MISS BELFRIDGE: But Mr Humphreys, I thought you were completely the other way.

MR HUMPHREYS: (Purses his lips) That’s a wicked rumour.

Drifting on the outskirts of sleep, Sam tried to rearrange his fantasy. He blotted out Gene and Ray and the others and tried to replace them. But who with? He wanted to imagine Annie’s father proudly escorting his beautiful daughter up the aisle, but Sam had no image of the man.

I don’t really know anything about Annie’s father, he thought, sleepily sipping more beer, and sliding further into the warm bath of sleep. In fact, I don’t know much about her past life at all. Bits and pieces. She may have mentioned something about brothers. Are they in the Force too? Does she come from a police family? And what about her childhood, all those years before I met her?

He began to imagine old boyfriends she might have had over the years. There would have been no shortage of willing candidates. Spotty, callow-faced youths, trying to impress her at the disco, or deep-voice uniformed coppers with little intelligence and even less imagination, offering her a future of child-rearing and domestic servitude.

Sam felt waves of jealousy lap at the edge of his dozing mind. To think that he could so easily have missed his chance with Annie, that he might have lost her to some schoolyard boyfriend or dull-as-ditchwater lug in uniform. Just to imagine her with somebody else made his muscles tighten and his stomach clench.

But she’s not with somebody else – she’s with me. More or less. Pretty much. In a manner of speaking.

There was no husband, emerging from the shadows to reclaim his runaway bride. Whatever the Devil in the Dark may be, it was not Annie’s husband. It was impossible. It was unthinkable!

MR HUMPHREYS: Wait there, Miss Belfridge, while I get my motorcycle things. I stuck my helmet round the back.

CAPTAIN PEACOCK: Stuck it round the back, Mr Humphreys? I hope you haven’t put it anywhere that might cause a blockage.

MR HUMPHREYS: It’s only a small one, Captain Peacock. I could probably stick it anywhere and nobody would notice.

MRS SLOCOMBE: Well I hope you don’t try sticking it under my ladies’ counter, Mr Humphreys! I’d certainly notice! There’s no room down there to accommodate your helmet.

MR HUMPHREYS: Are you giving me backchat, you orange-haired bitch? Jesus Christ, you need to learn some bloody manners!

Since when did Quentin Tarantino start directing Are You Being Served?, Sam thought. He forced his eyes open and looked at the TV screen, and was disturbed to see Mr Humphreys stride furiously across to Mrs Slocombe’s counter and lay into her with both fists. As Mrs Slocombe went down, curling into a foetal position, Mr Humphreys slammed his foot into her, over and over again, aiming kicks at her back, her legs, her head.

MR HUMPHREYS: Still feel like showing me up in front of people, do you? I can’t hear you, you cheap little bitch! Do you still feel like showing me up! Answer me, you filthy whore!

I don’t remember this episode, Sam thought dopily. I must be dreaming. This can’t be real – this must all be some sort of—

‘No, Sam – it’s very real,’ said a horribly familiar voice. The Test Card Girl was standing right beside his chair, clutching her blank-eyed dolly. ‘Can’t you see who the lady is – the one lying on the ground, being hurt?’

His voice thick and slow with sleep, Sam muttered, ‘It’s Mrs Slocombe.’

‘Is it, Sam? Or is it really somebody else …?’

Forcing his eyelids apart, Sam peered at the screen. Mr Humphreys – not that it looked at all like Mr Humphreys any more – was still kicking the hell out of a woman on the ground. But, where there had been orange hair and a frilly blouse and frumpy shoes, there was a much younger woman, with dark hair and a paisley-pattern one-piece jumpsuit and platform boots.

‘I – can’t see her face …’ Sam slurred sleepily.

‘She keeps it covered when he beats her,’ the Test Card Girl said. ‘But you don’t need to see her face to know who she is. Come on, Sam – you’re asleep, but you’re still a policeman. Work it out. The answer’s obvious.’

Sam felt ice run through his veins. Sleep fell away. He sat bolt upright, fully awake, fully alert.

‘Make it stop,’ he ordered.

‘You can’t change the past, Sam,’ the Girl said.

On the screen, the appalling beating continued.

‘I said make it stop!’

The Test Card Girl gently touched Sam’s sleeve, as if to console him. ‘He’s a horrid man, isn’t he. She should never have married him.’

Sam leapt to his feet, crazily lunging at the TV set to save the girl on the floor. He’d grab that evil, bullying bastard – he’d grab him and give him a beating – the biggest damned beating of his life! He’d batter him to a pulp! He’d stamp him into the ground! He’d kill him! He would really kill him!

But all at once, Sam found himself standing alone, in silence. Wherever he was, it wasn’t his flat. He looked about him, saw drab, brown walls and a set of flimsy and quite obviously fake lift doors. To either side of him stood a couple of small shop counters with an array of suits and trousers behind one of them, a selection of ladies’ undergarments behind the other.

‘It’s Grace Brothers …’ Sam muttered in disbelief. ‘I’m actually in Grace Brothers.’

It was as rickety and unconvincing in reality as it looked on TV. A cheap set, pieced together and dressed courtesy of the BBC scenery department.

‘Just a set,’ Sam said to himself. ‘A set – with three walls …’

He turned slowly towards the non-existent fourth wall. What would he see? An array of huge old BBC cameras, and the seats for the studio audience behind them? Or would there actually be another wall there, enclosing him, sealing him in?

Sam turned – and gasped. There was no fourth wall, but neither were there cameras or an auditorium. Instead, there was the universe. Stars – billions of them – swirling slowly and breathtakingly around the luminous hub of the galaxy.

The Test Card Girl appeared beside him and took his hand. Her skin was warm. Surprisingly warm. Together, she and Sam looked out across the glittering cosmos.

‘Makes you feel very small, doesn’t it?’ the little girl said. ‘A single life can’t mater all that much, can it, Sam – not compared to all this?’

‘It matters,’ said Sam softly.

‘The woman you saw being beaten, Sam – you know who she is.’

‘Yes.’

‘And you love her.’

‘Yes.’

‘But she doesn’t matter, Sam. Look at all these stars. Too many to count. And what you can see is only a fraction of the whole. The woman you love is less than a grain of sand in the desert.’

‘She matters.’

‘But how?’

‘Because …’ Sam tried to think. He was just a copper, not a philosopher, not a poet. He was out of his depth. And the glittering panorama of stars and galaxies was making his head spin. ‘She matters because she matters.’

‘That’s no answer, Sam.’

Sam freed his hand from hers and looked about him. He turned from the vastness of the universe to the confines of a bawdy seventies sitcom, and then back again. He couldn’t help himself – he just had to laugh.

‘Okay,’ he said, forcing himself to get his head around things. ‘Grace Brothers on one side, Infinity on the other. Very good. Excellent. Well done. Now – please – what the hell are you trying to tell me with all this?’

He planted himself squarely in front of the Test Card Girl and fixed her with a mocking, confrontational look.

‘Spit it out. You’re my resident Sigmund Freud. Let’s have it. What the hell does all this represent?’

The Girl looked up at him, and her eyes went cold. She said flatly, ‘It represents the System.’

‘What system? The solar system?’

‘No, no. The System you’re trapped in.’

She used her dolly’s hand to indicate the TV set, with its fake walls and prop dressing.

‘It’s not real, Sam, but even so you still can’t escape it. These make-believe walls enclose you. They confine you – and they define you.’

‘I – don’t understand.’

‘You think you can escape the System, Sam, but you can’t. You can run around, kid yourself, score a few petty victories, tell yourself that you’ll win in the end – but it’s not so. Everything is fixed, set in place, unchangeable – like all those stars out there. You can more easily rearrange the universe, Sam, than alter the fate that awaits you – you and Annie.’

Sam took a step away from her and clenched his fists. ‘I’m not accepting that.’

‘There is a terrible power coming after Annie. It is linked to her, Sam. It is married to her.’

‘No.’

‘It was married to her in life and it’s still married to her now it’s dead.’

‘None of this is true.’

‘It’s coming for her, Sam, and it will find her, and it will drag her down to somewhere very, very unpleasant. And there’s nothing you can do to stop it. It’s the System, Sam. It’s all set. You can’t change it.’

‘You’re showing me dreams! It’s nothing! Pictures in my head! I know where I am. Right now, right now, I know exactly where I am! At home. Asleep. In a chair. With Are You Being Served? on the telly. Everything is normal! Whereas all this crap you’re showing me here’ – he angrily swept his hand to indicate the stars and the stage set about him – ‘all this bullshit, it’s just loony pictures you keep putting in my head!’

The Test Card Girl shook her head slowly, with mock sadness, and said, ‘I’ll tell you where you are, Sam – where you really are. You’re lying in a coffin, six feet down in a Manchester graveyard.’

‘That’s the future!’ Sam retorted. ‘That’s thirty years from now!’

‘You’re rotting, Sam. You glimpsed it yourself, remember? In the ghost train, in Terry Barnard’s fairground?’

Sam froze.

‘Tell me what you saw there, Sam.’

‘I saw …’ he said, and he found himself trying to swallow hard in a dry throat. ‘I saw something. I saw whatever it is that’s after us, that’s after Annie …’

‘Did you? Or did you just see yourself?’ the Test Card Girl asked. ‘You’re a mouldering corpse, Sam. The worms have got into you. They’re eating you from within. Your eyes are already gone. They’re just two holes now, filled with maggots.’

‘It wasn’t me I saw, it was that devil out there!’ Sam howled. ‘I am alive! The here and now is 1973, and in 1973 I am alive!’

‘No, Sam. You’re dead. You’re dead, and you’re lost – not in one place, not in another – somewhere in-between—’

‘I am alive!’

‘You’re fooling yourself, Sam.’

‘If I am, then I’m happy with that! I came back here by choice. I came back here because I want to be here. I came back here for colour, and feeling – and Annie. I came back here for life. I don’t understand what it all means, and I don’t want to understand. I just want to live my life.’

‘You have no life, Sam. And neither does your beloved Annie. Or that horrid man you work for, the one who smells of ciggies and is always shouting. Or any of you.’

‘Bullshit! They’re all alive! Of course they’re alive! And as for me, I’m more alive than I’ve ever been!’

‘If you’re all so alive, Sam, then what are you all doing here? This isn’t a place for the living, Sam.’

Sam wanted to yell at this little brat to keep her lies to herself, but deep down he knew that she wasn’t lying at all. Indeed, he had long since suspected what she was telling him, though he had fought against the knowledge, suppressed it, blotted it out with his police work, with his clashes with Gene, with his feelings for Annie, with that constant internal mantra that said, I’m just a copper, not a philosopher – I’m just a copper, not a philosopher – I’m just a copper, not a—

‘You don’t need to be a philosopher to work it out, Sam,’ the Test Card Girl said. ‘A simple copper is more than able to see what’s what.’

‘I’m alive,’ Sam declared.

‘No, you’re dead.’

‘I’m alive, and so is Annie.’

‘She’s dead too. So’s your horrid boss man. So are your friends in CID. All dead, Sam. You know that. You won’t accept it, but you know it. Think about it, Sam. You know you’re dead – you remember – you remember jumping from that roof and falling—’

Sam turned away, shaking his head, but the girl’s voice would not stop.

‘You remember, Sam. The others, they don’t remember. They’ve been here too long. They should have moved on by now. And if you stay long enough, Sam, you’ll start forgetting too. You’ll forget you had a life before this one. You’ll become like them. Lost, Sam. Lost.’

There were tears in Sam’s eyes now. He dashed them furiously away, but more came. He was thinking of Annie, of the life she’d had before this one. Had she, like Sam, come from the future? Or had she come from a life even further back than 1973? And how had that life ended? How had she died?

‘You know how she died, Sam. It was a horrible death.’

‘Stop it.’

‘Painful. Nasty.’

‘I said stop it!’

‘And it wasn’t quick, Sam.’

‘I don’t want to be in this damned dream any more, you filthy little bitch!’

‘Awake, asleep, whatever.’ The girl shrugged. ‘And calling me names won’t help you, Sam. Look at that vast universe out there. You can’t just wish it away. What will happen to you, Sam? Do you think you can carry on like this for ever, drifting in the gaps between this world and that one? You all have to move on one day. You, and your guv’nor, and your little friends in CID, and Annie too.’

‘I’m not going anywhere! I’m staying here, in nineteen-bloody-seventy-bloody-three with Annie! I am staying! We are staying!’

‘You think so? You think that you’ll keep hold of your darling Annie when that thing drags itself out of the darkness and comes for her? Will you go with her to the horrid place he’ll take her to? Could you even find that place? And, if you did, what then? Oh, Sam, it’s all so complicated. So complicated – and so hopeless! Better to give up on it all.’

Sam’s thoughts were crashing about inside his mind like waves tormented by a storm. Tears were flooding down his face now. He looked for answers, comebacks, words of defiance, but all he could find was a numb, silent horror deep within him. He knew the girl was telling him the truth. He knew that whatever it was that was prowling through the darkness towards his darling Annie was beyond his powers to defy. It would find her, it would drag her away – and there was nothing Sam could do to prevent it.

He felt small, cold fingers gently taking hold of his hand.

‘I can help you, Sam. I can make you fall asleep so that all this nastiness and confusion is forgotten. No pain, Sam, just rest. Hold onto my hand and I’ll lead to you to a place where you can go to sleep.’

‘I’m asleep already.’

‘Not deeply enough. Hold onto my hand.’

‘I’m not going anywhere. I’m staying here. I’m staying with my Annie.’

‘You know that’s hopeless, Sam. Hold onto my hand. I’ll take you away. And whatever happens to Annie – well, Sam, you’ll never know. It’ll be better that way. Better not to know, not never ever ever. Hold onto my hand, Sam. Hold onto my hand.’

But Sam had had enough. His mind was reeling from all this vertiginous metaphysics. He thrust the Test Card Girl’s hand away and shoved past her, blundering into Mrs Slocombe’s display of ladies’ apparel. Comically huge brassieres and girdles fell across him. He dashed them aside and raced for the doors at the back of the set. Slamming into them, he felt them sag under his weight. They were just painted plywood, braced at the back and fixed down with stage weights. Sam battered at the doors, but they would not open. They shook and lurched and groaned and shuddered, but still they stood firm.

Sam hammered at them with all his strength. He began shouting. He was still shouting when he found himself face down on the floor of his flat in a pool of spilt brown ale, the TV grandly playing the national anthem and primly reminding him to please turn off his set.

CHAPTER FOUR: ANNIE CARTWRIGHT, GIRL DETECTIVE

Monday morning. Sam arrived at the grey, slablike building that housed CID. Reaching the concrete steps that led up to it, he paused, taking in the pale sky, the first rays of the sun, the high-up scraps of ragged grey cloud.

A normal sky. A normal Manchester morning.

He breathed in the air.

Car fumes – the whiff of distant cigarette smoke – normal, all so normal …

He patted a concrete wall.

Normal.

He patted himself, felt his body solid and real beneath his leather jacket and slacks.

Normal. Everything’s normal. If this is death, then death is normal. It’s just normal.

And permanent? Would all this seeming normality last? And if so, for how long?

That’s a question nobody can answer. Not knowing why you’re here, and how long you’ve got – not knowing the answers to the big questions is well, it’s just normal.

‘Situation normal,’ he said to himself. ‘Everything might have changed for me but, in some ways, nothing’s changed at all.’

The mantra started up in his head once again: I’m not a philosopher, I’m just a copper. I’m not a philosopher, I’m just a copper.

It blotted out the crazy dreams of the night before. It smothered Sam’s suspicion that nothing about him was real, that it was all just illusion. It muffled the ice-cold terror within him that awful things were going to happen, that horror and pain were just over the horizon, that hell itself was drawing near.

I’m just a copper. I’m just a simple copper. I do my job and nick the bad guys and keep my head down because I’m just an oh-so-simple copper.

Up in A-Division, Sam found all the desks empty, all the phones unmanned. Everybody – Chris, Ray, a motley assortment of blokes from the department, and even Annie – was clustered together on one side of the room. What had attracted them was a huge white contraption, about which a rep in a pinstriped suit fussed and tinkered.

‘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.’

‘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.’

The gate officer glared at him from beneath his peaked cap. ‘Watch it, plod.’

‘DCI!’ retorted Gene, patting at imaginary pips on his arm as he swept by. Sam hurried after him. Behind them, the door clanged shut, with a power and finality that sent a cold shiver running along Sam’s spine. It was as if he himself were an inmate, arriving within the walls of this terrible place, doomed never to see the outside world again.

Get a grip, Tyler, for God’s sake, he told himself firmly, and followed the Guv’s lumbering hulk as it swaggered off ahead of him.

Sam and Gene were escorted by a warder along an interminable corridor. Far from reeking of filth and sweat, the air was thick with the pungent smell of detergent. Everything was scrubbed and polished, obsessively so.

Up ahead, they saw one of the inmates. He was a frail, spotty-faced boy, dressed in denim dungarees. He listlessly mopped the floor. But, the moment he eyed the guard approaching, he made a show of working hard.

How old is he? Sam thought. Fourteen? Fifteen? What sort of life’s brought him to this awful place? And what kind of future has he got in store?

As Sam approached, he noticed a ragged piece of brown cloth stitched unhandily to the front of the boy’s shirt. But, when Sam tried to get a closer look, the boy turned away, averting his eyes and keeping his face towards the wall.

‘This way, gentlemen,’ said the warder, and he indicated an oak-panelled door. The sign on it read: ‘J. W. FELLOWES, PRINCIPAL GOVERNOR’.

‘I suppose we’d better knock,’ said Gene, flinging the door open straightaway without warning.

Mr Fellowes, the borstal governor, sat behind his large desk. He looked up, startled. He was a balding man, rotund and soft-skinned, more at home with civil servants than hardened inmates.

‘Don’t wet ’em, it’s just us,’ said Gene, holding up his ID. He sniffed the air extravagantly. ‘At least your office don’t honk of Dettol.’

‘What’s going on here?’ stammered Fellowes. ‘Are you arresting me or something?’

‘I apologize for my superior officer, Mr Fellowes,’ Sam said, positioning himself in front of Gene to try to block him. ‘This is DCI Hunt. My name’s DI Tyler, Manchester CID, A-Division.’

From behind him came a tight, clipped, richly Scottish voice. ‘A dramatic entrance, gentlemen. Ill mannered, unprofessional – but dramatic, I’ll grant you.’

Sam and Gene turned to see a proud, stiff-backed warder standing in the open doorway. His black uniform was immaculate. At his waist hung two chains, a silver one bearing keys, and a gold one attached to a showy fob watch he kept tucked into his pocket. For some reason, that watch caught Sam’s attention. He felt a cold shudder run through his body.

Mr Fellowes cleared got to his feet and said, ‘This is our head warder, House Master McClintock.’

So this is McClintock, thought Sam. He’s not an inmate at all: he’s the head warder. Is this the man I need to be watching? Was Barton right to tell me to keep my eye on him?

McClintock stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. And, again, Sam found himself peering at the gold fob watch at his waist. What was its significance? Why did it demand his attention like this?

‘And to what do we owe the pleasure of your company, gentlemen?’ McClintock asked, eyeing them both suspiciously.

‘We’ve just been fishing one of your lads out of a crushing machine,’ announced Gene, eyeing McClintock right back. ‘Andy Coren. Handy Andy. Name ring a bell?’

Fellowes and McClintock shot a glance at each other.

‘It does indeed ring a bell,’ said Fellowes. ‘I regret to admit that we … slipped up recently and permitted Andrew Coren an opportunity to escape. We were rather hoping we’d pick him up again without too much of a fuss. He’s not violent, just slippery.’

‘We have an excellent record here for security,’ said McClintock in his clipped tones. ‘None of us wish to see it besmirched.’

Gene shrugged. ‘Your reputation might not be besmirched, Jimmy, but Andy Coren certainly is. Well and truly besmirched all over a load of old ovens in a great big crusher. Right old mess it was. Squashed, flattened, half his internal organs squirtin’ out his arse. I can go into more details if you like.’

Fellowes sat down slowly and laid his hands on his desk. ‘So. He got out inside one of the ovens. It’s as we thought.’

‘It won’t happen again,’ declared McClintock. ‘I have implemented tighter security.’

Fellowes looked up at Gene and Sam, said, ‘Thank you for coming out here to inform me of this tragedy – though I can’t see why it took two experienced officers to come here in person, when a phone call would have sufficed.’

‘We came here, Mr Fellowes, because of certain irregularities associated with Coren’s death,’ said Sam.

‘What sort of irregularities?’

Sam found himself glancing nervously at McClintock, although the House Master was motionless and silent, his blank face unreadable.

I don’t like that man. There’s something wrong about him.

‘Well, Detective Inspector? What sort of irregularities?’

‘Hard to say at present,’ said Sam, forcing his attention away from McClintock and back to Fellowes. ‘Ongoing intelligence. We’re in receipt of – scraps of information. We very much want to make sense of these scraps.’

Fellowes looked searchingly at McClintock, then shrugged.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘We’ll help you all we can – if we can.’

‘Your kitchen block and boiler house,’ said Sam. ‘They’re being demolished. Why is that?’

‘They were unsafe,’ said Fellowes. ‘The boilers were ancient and simply had to go. And the kitchen had been in a dire state for years. We’d struggled on with it, but then there was a terrible accident with one of the gas ovens. It went up like a bomb.’

‘A boy was killed, am I right?’ asked Sam.

‘I’m afraid you are. After that, the Home Office had no choice but to allocate us funds for a refit. Perhaps you’d like to see our brand-new kitchens?’

‘I’d love to see your new kitchens more than words can say,’ growled Gene. ‘But, before you thrill me and my colleague with that particular emotional roller coaster, I want to know more about this boy what got barbecued. What kind of lad was he?’

Fellowes fumbled for something to say, but it was McClintock who answered. ‘He was a young man by the name of Craig Tulse. Nasty little rogue he was. A lot of backchat. Insubordinate. A constant source of trouble to me and my warders.’

‘So – a relief to be rid of him?’ Gene said. His manner was confrontational.

McClintock gave him a very cold stare. ‘The boy died. Burned. Horribly.’

‘I’ll bet. And what about this other lad, the one who topped himself a couple of weeks back? What’s his name again, Tyler?’

‘Tunning, Guv.’

‘Aye, Tunning. What’s the story with him, eh?’

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