When he reached Spike and Caroline, Thorne sat down. He pointed back over his shoulder toward the man who, he guessed, was still staring at him. “Neighborhood watch?”
“Ollie’s a cool bloke,” Spike said. “He keeps an eye out, you know?”
Caroline moistened a Rizla and completed a skinny roll-up. “He’s also got the only two-story bedroom down here. It’s like one of those hamster houses.”
Thorne looked at the two huge cardboard boxes end to end against the wall next to them. “Where do you get these things?”
“Round the back of Dixon’s,” Spike said. “They’re for fridge freezers, you know? Those big, fuck-off American ones, right, Caz?”
“We fold ’em up, stash ’em during the day, and then put ’em back together last thing.”
“It’s flat pack, like.” Spike had taken the tobacco and papers, was busily rolling a fag of his own. “Same as you get from IKEA, only cheaper …”
Caroline lit her cigarette, inhaled deeply, then pointed to the smaller of the two boxes, letting the smoke go as she spoke. “That one’s yours …”
Thorne looked, and realized that Spike and Caroline would be sharing the bigger box. That they’d made the other one up for him.
“We got you some scoff an’ all,” Spike said. “We’ve already had ours … sorry.” He produced a brown KFC bag and handed it to Thorne.
Thorne felt oddly touched. As he reached across for the bag he was thinking that, in relative terms, there weren’t many people he could think of who’d have done as much for him. There were plenty, with far more to their names than these two, who’d have balked at equivalent acts of generosity.
“Be stone cold by now, like,” Spike said.
Thorne opened the beer he’d brought with him. While he tucked hungrily into the food, the three of them talked. And they laughed a lot. Spike was a natural storyteller and Caroline was the perfect foil; she happily fed him cues and helped him recount tales of life on the street, some of them horrific, despite the humor that Spike was able to wring from their telling. It was no different, Thorne thought, from a copper’s war stories; from the gags that flew thick and fast across a room where the walls were smeared with blood and in which one occupant would fail to laugh only because they were dead.
There hadn’t been a single night since Thorne had come onto the street when he hadn’t sat or lain, desperate for sleep to take away the ache of cold or hunger, and thought that he would give nearly anything for the comfort of his own bed. That he’d have plumbed the depths of depravity for a curry from the Bengal Lancer and a Cash album on the stereo. But, sitting in a stinking subway with two junkies, watching water run down the wall behind them, and with cold KFC settling heavy in his gut, Thorne felt as good as he had in a long while.
“I want to get the stuff for our flat from IKEA,” Caroline said suddenly. “And I want a big American fridge.”
Such was the nature of their conversation: tangential; fragmented; comments that referred to conversations long since dead-ended …
“Got to get the flat first, like,” Spike said. He pushed his legs out straight, then raised his knees, then repeated the action. “Yeah? See what I’m saying? Got to get the fucking flat.”
“It’ll happen,” Thorne said.
Caroline sniffed once, twice, and let her head drop back. She banged it against the wall, over and over again, though never quite hard enough to hurt. She spoke like a child, desperate to cling onto a fantasy; to be convinced that it isn’t really the lie she knows it to be. “When … when … when … ?”
“I’m not a fortune-teller,” Spike said.
“Tell me.”
“When we get enough money. You’ll have to start nicking stuff from a better class of shop …”
“I know how to get the money.”
“Fuck that!” Spike was clenching and unclenching his fists; quickly, like he was shaking away a cramp; like he was warming up for something. “Fuck that!”
Thorne could see that, all in a rush, things were starting to unravel. Their words were not overtly aggressive, but an agitation, an impatience, a pain, was coloring everything they said.
“You talked once about just needing a bit of luck,” Thorne said. “Remember? You never know when that’s going to happen.”
“Right, he’s right,” Spike said.
Caroline snapped her head up and stared at Thorne. “I know it’s going to happen, because it always happens, and it’s always bad.”
Spike shook his head, kept on shaking it. “No … no way, no way …”
“I don’t know anyone who has the good sort,” she said. “We only have the shit kind. We get luck that’s fatal …”
They were starting to talk over each other. “When it comes, we’ll have enough money to get everything we want. Everything.” Spike was grinning from ear to ear, jabbering, high and fast. “We’ll get a place with room for loads of fucking fridges and the best sound system and all great stuff in the kitchen and whatever …”
“You’re dreaming …”
“We can have massive parties, and when we feel like it we can check into one of them posh places in the country and get straight, and then when we’re well and truly sorted we can get Robbie back …”
Caroline flinched and dragged her eyelids down. When she opened them again, though she made no sound, her eyes were wide behind a film of tears. She cast them down to the floor, her fingers spinning the thin leather bracelets around her wrist.
“He’s here,” Spike said suddenly.
As fast as Thorne could turn to see the man walking toward them down the tunnel, Caroline was on her feet and on her way to meet him. It didn’t take very long. There were not much more than half a dozen grunted words of exchange before the more important commodities were handed over.
Thorne looked back to see Spike unrolling a bar towel on the floor, revealing three or four thin syringes, a plastic craft knife, and a black-bottomed spoon with a bent handle. He then produced a small bottle of Evian from behind one of the boxes, looked across at Caroline, who was on her way back. Thorne could see the goose pimples clearly, the sheen that he’d thought was grease from the fried chicken.
“Get a move on, Caz, I’m sick …”
Caroline sat back down and passed over a matchbook-size wrap of folded white paper.
Spike snatched up the cigarette lighter, talking ten to the dozen as he opened the wrap, smoothed it out on the floor. “Great to see Terry again, though, yeah? Told you he was a good bloke, like. He’ll be fucking bladdered by now, off his fucking head somewhere with a few of Radio Bob’s old cronies. Bunch of nutters, most of ’em, but Terry’s not proud who he drinks with, like …”
Using a supermarket reward card, Spike flattened out the heroin, shaped it carefully until he was satisfied. He thrust the card at Caroline. “You cut, I’ll choose.”
Caroline moved away from the wall, shuffled toward Spike, and toward the heroin. Now Thorne could see that she was every bit as strung out as Spike was. Her tongue came out to take the sweat from around her lips. The translucent covers on the subway lights cast an odd glow across everything, but it wasn’t this that gave her skin the color of the old newspapers that blew down the tunnels. “Don’t fuck about,” she said. “Cook it all …”
Spike funneled the wrap and carefully poured every grain of brown powder onto the spoon. “You do me first, yeah?”
“Piss off. I’ll do myself, then I’ll do you.”
“No way. You won’t be in any fit state to do fuckall then.”
“Just get a move on, tosser …”
Spike drew water up into the syringe, then let some out until he had just the right amount. He leaned down, concentrating hard as he released the water into the bowl of the spoon, then used the end of the syringe to mix the heroin into it.
And Thorne watched …
He wasn’t shocked, but he’d never worked on a drugs unit; he’d never been this close to it before. He sat and stared, g
ripped by the process. Fascinated by the ritual of it all.
“You got vinegar?”
Caroline reached into her pocket, pulled out tissues, a plastic Jif lemon, the pile of sachets she’d grabbed earlier in the café. She handed a sachet to Spike. He bit off the end, squeezed some vinegar into the mixture, and continued to stir.
“What’s that for?” Thorne asked.
“This lot was only twenty quid,” Caroline said. “It’s not pure, so it don’t mix very easy. The vinegar helps it dissolve a bit better …”
Thorne reached across for the plastic lemon on the floor. “Making pancakes later?”
Spike put down the syringe and picked up the lighter. “Taste well strange if we did, mate.” He held the flame beneath the spoon, nodded toward the lemon in Thorne’s hand. “It’s not fucking lemon juice in there.”
“Anyone tries it on, they get a face full,” Caroline said.
Thorne took the cap off, sniffed, then drew his face sharply away from the pungent kick of the ammonia.
Spike laughed. “I’ve got my weapon, she’s got her’s, like …”
Then Thorne became aware of another smell: the syrupy kick of the heroin as it began to bubble on the spoon; the vinegar slight, but noticeably sharp, beneath. He realized that this was the smell he’d noticed earlier. He held his breath …
Caroline reached over for the needle. She tore it from the plastic sleeve, and after pulling off the orange cap, she attached it to the syringe.
“Come on, we’re there,” Spike said.
There were a number of cigarette butts, of varying sizes, scattered across the bar towel. Caroline took one from the bobbly, maroon material and used the knife to cut a thin slice from the filter, then dropped it into the liquid. Thorne thought it looked like those inedible slivers of something or other you got in spicy Thai soup …
While Spike held the spoon steady, Caroline placed the tip of the needle flat against the section of filter and drew the liquid through it, up into the syringe. Again, she expunged some of it back into the spoon to be sure she had exactly half.
“For fuck’s sake, Caz, get a shift on …”
“This is for your benefit, mate, to make sure you get your share.” She lifted the spoon and placed it on the floor, out of harm’s way. The handle had been bent in such a way that the bowl rested flat on the concrete.
Spike had already rolled up the sleeve of his faded, red hoody. As Caroline put the needle to his skin he twisted the material that was gathered above his elbow and made a fist.
Caroline grunted as she dug around for a vein …
Spike moaned as she found one; as she drew blood back into the syringe; as the red billowed into the brown, like wax in a Lava lamp; as she pushed the plunger.
“Flush it … flush the fucker …”
Twice, three times, she drew the blood back into the syringe and pressed it back into the vein. By the third time, Spike was nodding; each bounce of his head taking it lower. He raised it slowly, one last time to smile at Thorne, to beam like a baby at Caroline. “ ‘Time for bed,’ said Zebedee …”
Caroline had already begun to clean out the syringe, drawing water in from the bottle and squirting it away onto the floor. She leaned across to kiss Spike, then gave him a push. “Into your box, you silly bastard …”
Spike half fell, half crawled into the cardboard box, until all Thorne could see were the soles of his trainers. After only a few seconds, they stopped moving. Then Thorne watched as Caroline flushed the syringe again. She cursed, announced that the thing was “juddery,” and rooted among her collection of sachets for a pat of butter to smear around the plunger. Her movements were practiced and precise, and she bit off the ends of her words as she talked, like they were bitter on her lips.
“Aren’t you worried about sharing needles?” Thorne asked.
She shrugged. “It’s only him and me …”
“But they’re easy enough to get.” He pointed at the bar towel. “You’ve got new ones.”
“Everyone thinks we’ve got AIDS anyway, don’t they?”
Thorne stretched out his legs and opened his mouth, but before he could speak she was shouting at him to be careful, and moving quickly to avert any risk of the spoon being knocked over; of losing the precious liquid pooled in its bowl.
“Who’s Robbie?” Thorne asked.
She dipped the syringe back into the spoon, put the needle to the filter, and drew up the remainder of the heroin. “My kid. From before I met Spike. He’ll be ten now.” She held the syringe up to the light. “I lost him.”
Thorne watched as she pushed down a sock and flexed her foot. “I’m sorry …”
She looked up briefly from what she was doing. “See what I mean about luck, though?” A smile that seemed to hurt appeared for just a moment. “Mind you, my luck might have been shit, but at least Robbie’s hasn’t been too bad. It was his good luck to get taken away from me, right?”
Thorne couldn’t think of anything to say. He could only imagine how badly she needed what the needle she was holding could give her.
For another few seconds she tried to get the needle into the right position, but it was tricky. She was right-handed and the vein she was after was above her left ankle. She looked up at Thorne, sweat falling off her. “Could you give me a hand with this?”
“I’m a bit shit with needles …”
“Please … ?”
Thorne had known there might be such moments; he hadn’t signed on to go undercover thinking it would be easy. That he would never need to make tough choices. It took him only a second or two to realize that, as choices went, this was actually one of the easier ones.
It was the least he could do …
He could feel something shift—in himself as well as in Caroline—as he pushed the drug into her. He swung round when it was finished, so that he was sitting next to her against the wall. He let her head fall onto him as she began to nod. “I was thinking about this money thing,” he said. “I know Spike doesn’t like to ask, but couldn’t his sister help? Just to get you two started, maybe?”
“Sister …”
“I know he’s funny about it, but it sounds like she wants to help him.”
Now the words dribbled from her, falling in thick, sloppy threads without emphasis or cadence. “His sister’s dead; died fucking ages ago. Years. When he was still at home …”
“Caroline … ?”
It was maybe half a minute before she continued. “When he was still at home, his dad used to mess with ’em, you know? With both of ’em. Used to hurt him and his sister and he couldn’t stand it, so he got out.
“Got the fuck out …
“He was older than she was, you see? A couple of years. Older. So he left her there, and then a bit later on … six months or something, you’d have to ask him, was when she took a load of pills. Chucked ’em down like Smarties …
“Spike was … you know? He was very fucked up. There was a nasty scene when they buried her … That was the last time he saw anyone in the family. That was it for good then.”
“He knows it wasn’t his fault, doesn’t he?” Thorne asked.
“Like Smarties …”
Thorne could hear someone singing in one of the adjoining subways. He was stroking Caroline’s hair. “I don’t think it’s hurting anyone that Spike pretends …”
Caroline groaned.
“Everybody does it to some extent or other,” Thorne said. “When they lose someone. People bang on and on about letting go, like it’s the healthy thing to do, like we don’t all need a bit of fucking comfort. We all keep our loved ones alive somewhere …”
But she couldn’t hear him anymore.
At some point during the night, Thorne was woken by something. He reached out to touch the cardboard on every side of him. He was hot and stinking inside his sleeping bag.
From a few feet away, he could hear Spike and Caroline making love. The noises they made, their cries, and the movement of thei
r bodies inside the box seemed urgent and desperate. His hand moved to his groin, but did not stay there for very long. He was touched rather than excited by what he could hear: there was a reassurance in their passion, in the simple desire of each to please the other.
Thorne eventually drifted back to sleep, soothed by the rhythm of it and comforted by the affirmation of need. By an honest moment of human contact; by an act of love that had more meaning on cardboard than it might have had on silk.
The next time Thorne woke, he knew the cause straightaway; he could feel the mobile phone vibrating in his coat pocket. He groped for it, getting hold of the thing just as the shaking stopped. The glow from the illuminated screen lit up lines of grime on the heel of his hand; it was 6:18 a.m. and it had been Holland calling …
It rang again almost immediately.
Thorne pushed his way out of the box and took a few steps away from where Spike and Caroline were still sleeping. He squatted down, answered the phone with a whisper.
“Dave?”
“Thank fuck for that …”
During the short pause that followed, Thorne stood and waited for his head to clear a little. A plastic bag flapped along the tunnel and he shuddered as the draft whipped into him; icy against clammy skin.
“I just wanted to make sure you were alive,” Holland said.
“That’s thoughtful, but it’s a bit bloody early—”
“They’ve found another body. We haven’t got anyone down there as yet.”
Thorne could smell piss and sugar, vinegar and grease. He glanced up and down the corridor, checking that there was no movement from any of the boxes. He wondered if the body might be that of Ryan Eales; if the killer had finally completed the set.
“Sir … ?”
“I’m listening,” Thorne whispered.
“A rough sleeper, looks like the usual method, in the doorway of a theater behind Piccadilly Circus. D’you see what I’m getting at?”
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