Born in a Burial Gown by Mike Craven Page A

inflated wages of the Sellafield nuclear site and those who didn’t. The main feature of the estate seemed to be barbed wire. The back of the pub, the roofs of shops, even some of the houses had it as protection. A broken ghetto, a bleak and miserable existence. The climate of fear was palpable.
    Despite this, some of the streets still thrived. Functioning and legally taxed cars were parked outside houses, and gardens were well kept. People got up in the morning and went to work. They raised their families. They bought their council houses. Parts of Pinegrove had genuine community spirit. Residents on the estate tried to lead their lives, if not within the letter of the law, then at least within its spirit.
    But there were a minority who had no interest in doing so.
    If negativity and resentment could generate electricity then the isolated streets they lived in would have made Sellafield redundant. Those were the streets where every other house had boarded-up windows. Cars rusted. Front lawns went untended. Rubbish was piled on the street, giving the impression parts of Pinegrove had been abandoned. Efforts by Copeland Borough Council to regenerate the area were only partially successful; there were some families who had no interest in the status quo changing. Antisocial behaviour was rife, casual violence the norm. Drugs were openly sold and consumed. Feral children roamed the streets with no adult supervision. The type of estate where some left their doors open while others bolted themselves in at night in terror. Disagreements were settled with baseball bats rather than solicitors. Everyone knew everyone and strangers weren’t tolerated. The worst thing you could be was a ‘grass’, even paedophiles were safer. Police callouts were constant. The chief had long ago directed that no police officer would patrol Pinegrove alone.
    ‘Welcome to Pinegrove, ladies and gentlemen. The ASBO capital of Cumbria,’ Towler said, as he turned into the estate. ‘Drugs, violence and underage sex. We have it all.’ He paused. ‘Now, where the fuck am I going?’
    Douglass didn’t know the estate, so Towler parked up beside an off-licence and got out. There were graffiti-covered steel shutters on the windows despite it being open. Fluke had seen less-fortified police stations in Northern Ireland. He’d never been in the shop before but knew that all the overpriced goods would be locked in cages, nothing being handed over until the owner had the cash in his till.
    In less than a minute, Towler was back with directions to Seaview Terrace, the last known address of McNab, and they quickly found it.
    The street was quiet. Everyone with a reason to get up had already done so. The rest were still in bed.
    ‘It’ll be one of these houses here, sir,’ Douglass said as they were near the middle of the wide road. ‘They take the numbers off the houses to make it difficult for us and bailiffs to find them. Even those with nothing to hide do it. They’d get called a grass if they didn’t.’
    It was obvious that Seaview Terrace was one of the poorer streets on the estate. About a third of the houses had windows that were boarded up and were obviously derelict. A third had windows without curtains; the remaining third had curtains that were twitching. Fluke knew their presence hadn’t gone unnoticed. A group of young children walked up and started looking over the car. Towler lowered his window, flashed his warrant card and said, ‘Fuck off.’ They backed away but didn’t disappear.
    ‘Right,’ Towler said getting out. ‘Let’s knock on a few doors, then.’
    ‘We’ll need uniform backup before we can do anything, Sergeant. I’ll call the station, get a van out,’ Douglass said.
    ‘Don’t worry, Douglass,’ said Fluke, smiling, as he followed Towler out of the car. ‘He’s his own backup.’
    For a minute, he thought she was going to stay in the car but eventually she joined them on the pavement, looking