Life on Mars: Borstal Slags

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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