Life on Mars: Borstal Slags

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?’