Tom Graham - Life on Mars - Borstal Slags

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.’

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?’