Donner was at his usual place, in the kitchens peeling spuds. He looked up at Sam without surprise or interest, his face as bland and unreadable as before. He seemed barely even to register Annie at all.
‘We need to speak to you,’ said Sam.
Donner meekly set down his peeling knife, wiped his hands on a dishcloth, and let them lead him down one of the bleached and polished corridors.
‘You can speak in there,’ said the warder, opening a door onto a small room containing nothing but rows of folded-up plastic chairs.
‘Thank you,’ said Sam curtly. ‘Now leave us.’ And, when the warder hesitated, Sam added severely, ‘I said leave us. This is a CID matter.’
Unsettled, sensing that something was up, the warder headed back to the kitchens. Donner watched this whole exchange with unblinking eyes, taking it all in, but revealing nothing in his expression.
‘Here,’ said Sam, unfolding a chair for Donner. ‘It’s all right, it’s not a trap.’
Everybody sat down – Sam and Annie on one side, Donner on the other. The lad gazed blankly at them with pale eyes.
Sam said, ‘I want to start by saying that if you cooperate with us, Donner, I guarantee I will do everything in my power to get you transferred to an open borstal far from here. Is that a deal?’
‘Have you arrested Mr McClintock?’ Donner suddenly asked.
Sam had to admit that he was impressed. The boy had read the situation perfectly. The sudden arrival of CID, Sam’s curt dismissal of the warder, the urgent need to interview Donner formally – he had at once fitted the pieces together and seen what was happening.
‘We’ve arrested him.’ Sam nodded. ‘Near as damn it.’
‘Then you haven’t arrested him,’ Donner corrected him.
‘He’s being interviewed by other officers at this very moment. With your testimony, we can formally charge him.’
‘And then you’ll have me transferred to an open borstal?’
‘Yes,’ said Sam emphatically. ‘I promise you that. Will you cooperate?’
Donner thought about it, and then said at last, ‘Yes, I’ll cooperate.’
‘You trust me?’
‘I trust you.’
‘And you trust my colleague here, WDC Cartwright?’
Donner looked over at Annie as if he had only just noticed her existence. After a moment, he nodded. Yes, he trusted her.
Excellent, Sam thought. We’ve got the boy on side. I knew he’d respond to fair treatment.
‘Then we can do business together,’ he said. ‘Let’s talk. And remember, I want nothing but the truth.’
‘Of course.’
‘Craig Tulse, the boy who was burned in the kitchen?’
‘It was Mr McClintock who killed him,’ said Donner simply.
‘Go on,’ prompted Sam.
‘Tulse was always goading him, answering back, trying to make a fool of him. One morning in the kitchens Mr McClintock just snapped. He grabbed Tulse and shoved his face towards one of the gas rings. Maybe he didn’t mean to go as far as he did, but …’
Donner shrugged.
‘You saw this happen?’ asked Sam.
‘Of course I did. How else would I have known about it?’
‘You might have heard that story as a rumour,’ Annie suggested.
‘I don’t listen to rumours.’
‘Okay,’ Annie said, ‘then you might be lying.’
‘Like I said, I’m telling you the truth.’ Donner’s voice was flat, almost uninterested. ‘I was in the kitchens. I saw Mr McClintock kill Tulse, and then I helped him cover it up.’
‘You?’ asked Sam. ‘Why?’
‘Because I was the only witness. I was in danger. So I told Mr McClintock what I’d seen – that it was a faulty gas stove, that it had blown up in Tulse’s face. What else could I say? That cover story saved my life. And Mr McClintock used it to gain more funds to rebuild the kitchens, claiming they were dangerous – so it all paid off for him in the end.’
Sam glanced at Annie, saw from her expression that she was far from convinced. But he decided to plough on anyway.
‘And what about Tunning?’ he asked. ‘The official report said he hanged himself in his cell.’
‘He didn’t hang himself,’ Donner said, without a flicker of emotion. ‘Mr McClintock turned up in the middle of the night with a few other warders. They held him down while Mr McClintock strangled him, then hung up the body to make it look like suicide.’
‘And once again you just happened to be there and witness it all?’ Annie asked.
‘Of course I happened to be there. I was sharing a cell with Tunning when it happened.’
‘But I thought you boys slept in dorms,’ Annie went on. ‘I saw one myself. There were a dozen beds in there.’
‘Special privileges,’ Donner replied. ‘Two to a cell for good behaviour. Better than the dorms.’
‘But Tunning was a troublemaker,’ Annie said. ‘Why would he be rewarded with a double cell?’
‘McClintock wanted to punish him, good and proper. But he didn’t want a dozen witnesses. So he moved him in with me, so it’d be private. And he knew from what happened with Tulse that I’d keep my mouth shut.’
Annie shook her head. ‘This all sounds very far-fetched.’
‘You asked for the truth,’ said Donner.
‘But that’s not what we’re getting, is it?’
Fearful that Annie’s attitude would alienate Donner and make him clam up, Sam interjected, ‘We’re not here to judge you, Donner. We just want to hear what you have to say. Okay – you’re telling us that Mr McClintock was directly responsible for the deaths of Tulse and Tunning. What about Andrew Coren – what can you tell us about him?’
‘He tried to escape,’ said Donner. ‘Not that it was his idea. It was mine.’
‘Yours?’ Annie frowned.
Donner slowly turned his head to look at her. ‘Of course. Who else in here would have thought of it?’
Sam tried to shush Annie, but she ignored him.
‘You came up with the idea of getting smuggled out on the back of one of those junk lorries?’ she went on. ‘Why didn’t you make use of that plan yourself?’
‘How could I? I work in the kitchens. I’m rostered to work in the kitchens. It was Coren and them others who were on labour duty, not me.’
‘Labour duty,’ said Sam. ‘You mean clearing out the old fridges and ovens?’
‘Of course that’s what I mean,’ said Donner. ‘I could see them breaking up all that stuff and loading it onto the lorries, and I realized at once that if you could get inside one of those old fridges you could get yourself carried out of this place right under the screws’ noses. You’d be well away before anyone knew you were missing.’
‘Would you?’ asked Annie, sceptically. ‘What about roll call? Surely they take a name check at the end of the shift to make sure everyone’s accounted for?’
Donner’s mouth pulled into a tight smile, just for a moment. ‘I thought of that. It’s simple. You just get somebody to answer “sir” for you when the screw calls your name out.’
‘We sometimes pulled the same trick at school with the morning register,’ said Sam.
‘Then you see it’s possible,’ said Donner.
‘Oh, grow up,’ Annie cut in. ‘There’s a world of difference between a borstal and a comprehensive.’
‘Not the one I went to,’ muttered Sam under his breath.
Annie ignored him. ‘Somebody saying “Here, sir” on behalf of somebody else? I don’t see the warders here falling for a cheap, Bash Street Kids trick like that, Donner.’
‘Do you not?’
‘No. No, I don’t.’
‘That just shows what you know, then, doesn’t it?’ And with that Donner sat back and stared ahead, thinking his own thoughts.
‘I think what Donner means to say, Annie, is that the warders did fall for it,’ said Sam. ‘If they hadn’t, Coren wouldn’t have made it as far as Kersey’s Yard, and we wouldn’t be sitting here now.’
‘Aye,’ said Donner. ‘He gets it.’
A telling remark. I think he’s starting to warm to me. Is that what Annie’s doing – playing bad cop to my good cop? Maybe she’s right to be hard on him after all. Perhaps I should play along.
‘So,’ he said, leaning towards Donner with an expression of openness and honesty. ‘You figured out your escape plan, but you couldn’t make use of it yourself.’
‘I would have to have got myself transferred from the kitchens to the labour detail,’ the boy said. ‘And to do that I would have had to have applied to Mr McClintock. He’d have wanted to know why. He’d have been suspicious.’
‘Because of what you know about him, the things you’ve seen him do?’
Donner tilted his head and looked slyly at Sam. ‘And because he knows I’m not like the others. I’m smart. I play chess.’
‘Play chess? On your own?’ asked Annie, raising an eyebrow.
Donner paused for a moment, then said mildly, ‘I cut out chess problems from magazines.’
‘Which magazines?’
‘Any magazines.’
‘Such as? Name one.’ And Annie fixed him with a look. She waited.
Donner turned to Sam. ‘Is she always like this?’
‘She’s a police officer,’ Sam shrugged.
‘Isn’t she just?’
‘I think we’re getting sidetracked,’ Sam said. He was concerned that Annie was overdoing it. If Donner clammed up or got stroppy and retracted his statement, they were stuffed. ‘You worked out an escape plan, but you couldn’t make use of it yourself. But why did you give that plan to Coren and not one of the other boys?’
‘Coren was perfectly suited to make the attempt,’ Donner said flatly. It was almost as though he were speaking lines committed to memory. ‘He had the right mentality to escape – he’d escaped from borstals before. He was small enough to fit inside one of those fridges. And he had a brother on the outside who could meet him at the other end. You see, I figured that you’d need help getting out of the fridge at the other end. It might be stuck under a load of heavy junk, or chained up, or you might get grabbed by the workers in the scrapyard when they saw you suddenly appear.’
‘You’ve really thought this through,’ said Sam.
‘Of course I have.’
‘I’m impressed.’
Donner looked flatly at him, a curious expression that Sam was not sure he could read, and then, without warning, he said to Annie, ‘The British Chess Magazine if I can get it. The Guardian – that prints chess problems. And, if a screw brings it in, The Times, but that’s rare.’ And after a pause he added, ‘Or I recall them from memory. I have a good memory for chess problems. And other things.’
He’s showing off, thought Sam. He’s preening himself. Maybe he’s even flirting. Either way, it’s all to the good. He’s talking. Let’s keep him at it.
Sam went to ask another question, but Donner began speaking, unprompted.
‘I saw the opportunity to escape in one of the old fridges. I worked out how to get marked down as present on the roll call. I foresaw the need to be met by a trusted contact on the outside – the real problem, as I saw it, was making the necessary arrangements with that contact. I needed a way to get messages to them in secret, without the screws being aware. So I worked out a code.’
Sam frowned. Derek Coren, lying in his hospital bed, had told them how he and his brother had been using that code for years, that they had worked it out between themselves.
‘You worked out that code?’ Sam asked. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course I’m sure, you idiot,’ Donner said, his voice flat. ‘Who else round here could work out a code like that?’
‘But – Derek Coren told us that he was the one who created that code.’
‘Oh, well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?’ Donner said dismissively. ‘You asked for the truth, and that’s what I’m giving you. It’s his word against mine.’
Annie leant forward, looking at Donner intensely.
‘Let’s assume you are telling the truth,’ she said. ‘Let’s assume for now that you did work out that pinprick code. It took me a long time to crack that code, Donner, and then it was as much through sheer luck as anything else. How would Derek Coren have known how to read the hidden message?’
‘I told him how to do it,’ Donner answered simply.
‘How?’
‘When he was here on a visit to see his brother. I whispered to him, “Hold any letters you receive up to the light.”’
‘And then you worked a letter that was supposedly from Andy, encoded it with information about the escape, and even got it personally approved by Mr McClintock.’ Annie shook her head. ‘And you did all that for Andy Coren out of the goodness of your heart?’
‘I hate to see a good idea go to waste.’
‘But it did go to waste!’ Annie countered. ‘Because the escape failed. Andy Coren died.’
‘Mr McClintock must have spotted the code,’ Donner said. ‘He must have done, because at the last minute he changed Coren’s work roster, he moved him from loading up old fridges to dealing with the ovens. But Coren took a gamble and made an escape attempt anyway. His brother on the outside was looking for the wrong lorry, and the wrong consignment of scrap – and that’s why Andy ended up in the crusher.’
‘And do you feel guilty about that?’ Annie asked.
‘Why should I feel guilty?’
‘It was your plan.’
Donner shrugged, thought for a moment, then said flatly, ‘It was Mr McClintock who killed him, not me.’
Annie turned to Sam and asked for a word in private. Together, they stepped outside. As Sam shut the door behind him, he saw Donner sitting quietly in his chair, unmoving, hands folded in his lap, looking up at the ceiling as if patiently waiting for something to appear there.
‘He’s lying,’ Annie whispered. ‘Everything he’s telling us in there, it’s lies.’
‘I can’t accept that,’ said Sam. ‘Maybe he’s stretching the truth a little, here and there.’
‘Stretching the truth? Sam, it’s all fairy stories what he’s spouting!’
‘He’s just swinging the lead. God knows, he’s a bright enough lad. This is probably the most intellectual stimulation he’s had in months.’
Annie shook her head. ‘It’s not about swinging the lead, Sam. Can’t you see what he’s like? “I figured out a plan, I worked out how to do it, I can play chess problems from my head, it’s all me, me, me, the screws know I’m the smartest one in this place.” That lad’s ego is practically bursting out of him.’
‘So?’
‘I kept pricking that ego of his,’ Annie said, leaning close, her voice low. ‘I was goading him. He’d barely respond. A flicker, nothing more. And then he’d come back with an answer, minutes later. Like when I pushed him about which magazines he got his chess problems from. He carried on talking, but he was working out an answer in the back of his mind – and he wouldn’t have rested until he’d given me that answer, Sam. He just had to put me in my place, no matter how long it took him. He’s cold, Sam. He’s ice cold. He’s like a machine. Yes, he’s smart, and, yes, I’ve no doubt he’s a wizard at chess problems – but I also see a cold, razor-sharp mind with three dead bodies associated with it. I was right about him, Sam. The boy’s a psychopath.’
‘I’m not buying that, Annie. It’s McClintock, he’s the psychopath.’
‘Proof, Sam!’
‘Barton’s testimony,’ Sam replied. ‘The things he told me about – the torture, the electrocutions—’
‘Oh, he was just telling you what you wanted to hear!’ said Annie, waving her hand to dismiss the whole matter. ‘He was terrified of going back. And he knew you were a soft touch if he made himself appear vulnerable enough.’
‘The System is rotten, Annie. McClintock’s System stinks!’
‘Of course it does, Sam, anyone can see that. But it’s not Nazi Germany. McClintock’s not killing anyone. He is.’ She pointed back at the door, beyond which sat Donner.
‘And what if he corroborates what Barton told me?’ Sam asked.
‘He’s bound to, Sam! And I’ll tell you what else he’ll do – he’ll go further. It won’t just be electrocutions or whatever, it’ll be bloody firing squads and branding with hot irons and a ruddy great medieval rack down in the dungeons, and there in the middle of it all, using his Godlike intelligence to win over McClintock and control him, will be our wonder boy, Donner. Go back in there and speak to him, see if I’m not right. And what’s more, Sam, he’s seeing a soft touch in you. He knows you’re playing along, lapping it all up. He’s controlling you.’
‘Nobody’s controlling me!’
‘Oh yes they are. That boy in there, he’s stringing you along. Have you seen any evidence of these so-called torture chambers, eh?’
‘I’ve seen the punishment block. A solitary-confinement cell, Annie, all blacked out, pitch dark.’
‘That’s cruel, but it’s not what Barton was telling you. It’s not boys being plugged into the national grid, is it. Think about it, Sam.’
Sam shook his head. ‘It’s McClintock and his System that’s behind these deaths. I – I have my reasons to be sure about that.’
‘And why won’t you tell me what those reasons are?’
‘And why won’t you just trust me on this, Annie?’
Annie threw up her hands. ‘Sam, you’re not making sense! Evidence, proof – you know better than anyone that’s what we need, not just some hunch!’
‘It’s not a hunch,’ Sam insisted. ‘We need to nail McClintock.’
‘Oh, Sam, forget McClintock, can’t you? McClintock’s just a uniform and a set of rules. That boy Donner, on the other hand, he’s dangerous.’
‘Rubbish!’
‘I don’t think it is rubbish.’
‘Donner’s a victim, not a suspect. Oh, for God’s sake Annie, if only you knew!’
Sam turned away from her. When Annie touched his arm he brushed her off.
‘Think clearly, Sam,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why you’re so hung up on nailing McClintock for all this.’
‘Because he’s guilty!’ Sam hissed back. ‘Him and his System! They both need breaking!’
‘Maybe they do need breaking, Sam, but that’s not why we’re here!’
‘That’s exactly why we’re here!’ Sam cried.
Annie stared at him, frowning.
‘Tell me,’ she said softly, but without warmth. ‘Tell me what game you’re playing here, Sam. It’s like the other night at your flat, when you started talking daft and telling made-up stories about my dad. There’s something going on inside you, and I want to know what it is.’
Sam ran his hands over his face. How the hell could he explain everything to her? How could he tell her the danger she was in? How could he make her understand that everything he was doing he was for her and her alone?
‘Sam? What’s the matter with you? Why can’t you see Donner for what he is?’
Because Donner was irrelevant! It was McClintock he needed to destroy! It was McClintock and his System that needed to be broken, and, in breaking them, a blow would be struck against the Devil in the Dark that was drawing closer all the time. Perhaps it would be the fatal blow, the one that would break the stranglehold of Fate and release Annie from the terrible destiny that awaited her. That lad Donner was nothing. Nothing. But McClintock – he was everything.
And what if I’m wrong? What if Annie’s right? Have I misunderstood everything? Damn it, damn it, it’s all too much for me!
Sam dug his fingers into his scalp, as if he could gouge out the confusion and turmoil in his brain. In his mind’s eye, he saw that gold-plated fob watch nestling in McClintock’s pocket, its slender chain forming a link through space and time to Perry – and then from Perry to Annie, connecting them all one to the other, yoking them altogether in some terrible web of Fate that defied even death and the grave to ensnare them.
I’m just a copper, for God’s sake – I shouldn’t have to be dealing with this – I’m just a simple bloody copper.
‘I’m feeling very confused,’ Sam muttered, his back to Annie.
‘You should have stayed off sick like the Guv said.’
‘I’m not sick. I’ve just … seen too much. I’m … confused, and it’s all so … big.’
‘Sam, I don’t understand what you mean?’
‘I—’ He swallowed, and turned to face her. ‘I’m here to save you. If I can. It’s more important than you can imagine. Somehow – and I just know this, Annie – it’s McClintock. He’s the one, he’s the one who—’
‘Forget McClintock!’ Annie yelled at him, her patience suddenly snapping. ‘It’s Donner! We need to nick Donner!’
And at that moment, they both realized that Donner was standing in the open doorway, staring at them. There was a still moment of silence. Donner tilted his head, almost imperceptibly, then said quietly, ‘Time for the endgame.’
And, with that, he hurled himself at them.