PIG BLOOD BLUES
YOU COULD SMELL the kids before you could see them, their young sweat turned stale in corridors with barred windows, their bolted breath sour, their heads musty. Then their voices, subdued by the rules of confinement.
Don’t run. Don’t shout. Don’t whistle. Don’t fight.
They called it a Remand Centre for Adolescent Offenders, but it was near as damn it a prison. There were locks and keys and warders. The gestures of liberalism were few and far between and they didn’t disguise the truth too well; Tetherdowne was a prison by sweeter name, and the inmates knew it.
Not that Redman had any illusions about his pupils-to-be. They were hard, and they were locked away for a reason. Most of them would rob you blind as soon as look at you; cripple you if it suited them, no sweat. He had too many years in the force to believe the sociological lie. He knew the victims, and he knew the kids. They weren’t misunderstood morons, they were quick and sharp and amoral, like the razors they hid under their tongues. They
had no use for sentiment, they just wanted out.
‘Welcome to Tetherdowne.’
Was the woman’s name Leverton, or Leverfall, or —‘I’m Doctor Leverthal’
Leverthal. Yes. Hard-bitten bitch he’d met at —‘We met at the interview.’
‘Yes.’
‘We’re glad to see you, Mr Redman.’
‘Neil; please call me Neil.’
‘We try not to go on a first name basis in front of the boys, we find they think they’ve got a finger into your private life. So I’d prefer you to keep Christian names purely for off-duty hours.’
She didn’t offer hers. Probably something flinty.
Yvonne. Lydia. He’d invent something appropriate.
She looked fifty, and was probably ten years younger.
No make-up, hair tied back so severely he wondered her
eyes didn’t pop.
‘You’ll be beginning classes the day after tomorrow. The Governor asked me to welcome you to the Centre on his behalf, and apologise to you that he can’t be here himself. There are funding problems.’
‘Aren’t there always?’
‘Regrettably yes. I’m afraid we’re swimming against the tide here; the general mood of the country is very Law and Order orientated.’
What was that a nice way of saying? Beat the shit out of any kid caught so much as jay-walking? Yes, he’d been that way himself in his time, and it was a nasty little cul-de-sac, every bit as bad as being sentimental.
‘The fact is, we may lose Tetherdowne altogether,’ she said, ‘which would be a shame. I know it doesn’t look like much . . .‘
‘— but it’s home,’ he laughed. The joke fell among thieves. She didn’t even seem to hear it.
‘You,’ her tone hardened, ‘you have a solid (did she say sullied?) background in the Police Force. Our hope is that your appointment here will be welcomed by the funding authorities.’
So that was it. Token ex-policeman brought in to appease the powers that be, to show willing in the discipline department. They didn’t really want him here. They wanted some sociologist who’d write up reports on the effect of the class-system on brutality amongst teenagers. She was quietly telling him that he was the odd man out.
‘I told you why I left the force.’
‘You mentioned it. Invalided out.’
‘I wouldn’t take a desk job, it was as simple as that; and they wouldn’t let me do what I did best. Danger to myself according to some of them.’
She seemed a little embarrassed by his explanation. Her a psychologist too; she should have been devouring this stuff, it was his private hurt he was making public here. He was coming clean, for Christ’s sake.
‘So I was out on my backside, after twenty-four years.’ He hesitated, then said his piece. ‘I’m not a token policeman; I’m not any kind of policeman. The force and I parted company. Understand what I’m saying?’
‘Good, good.’ She didn’t understand a bloody word. He tried another approach.
‘I’d like to know what the boys have been told.’
‘Been told?’
‘About me.’
‘Well, something of your background.’
‘I see.’ They’d been warned. Here come the pigs.
‘It seemed important.’
He grunted.