by Irvine Welsh
More than tiresome, it was dangerous. Despite their assurances to the contrary, it would be impossible, he decided, for this bunch of wasted Jocks to ever be discreet. It was more than possible that the D.S. had stuck a tail on them. For that reason, he has two experienced punters outside in the car with their eyes peeled. Despite his reservations, he cultivated his new business associates. Anyone desperate enough to punt them this gear once, could be daft enough to do it again.
The deal concluded, Spud and Second Prize hit Soho to celebrate. They are typical new boys in town, attracted to that famous square mile like kids to a toy shop. Sick Boy and Begbie go to shoot what proves to be a competitive game of pool in the Sir George Robey with two Irish guys they team up with. London old stagers, they are contemptous of their friends’ fascination for Soho.
— Aw thill git thair is plastic polisman’s hats, union jacks, Carnaby Street signs and overpriced pints ay pish, Sick Boy scoffed.
— They’d git a cheaper fuckin ride back it yir mate’s hotel, what the fuck d’ye call um, the Greek cunt?
— Andreas. But that’s the last thing these cunts want, says Sick Boy, racking up the balls, — and that fucker Rents. That’s the umpteenth time he’s tried tae kick. Doss cunt chucked in a good joab n barry flat doon here n aw. Ah think me n him’ll go oor separate weys eftir this.
— It’s a good joab he’s fuckin back thair though. Some cunt’s goat tae watch the fuckin loot. Ah widnae trust Second Prize or Spud tae look eftir it.
— Aye, Sick Boy says, wondering how he can ditch Begbie and get off in search of women’s company. He wonders who he will call up, or whether he’ll check out the backpacker. Whatever he decided, he’d move soon.
Back at Andreas’s place, Renton is sick, but not quite as sick as he’d led them to believe. He looks out onto the back garden and sees Andreas cavorting with Sarah, his girlfriend.
He looks back at the Adidas bag, stuffed full of cash, the first time Begbie has let it out of his sight. He turfs its contents out onto the bed. Renton has never seen so much money. Almost without thinking, he empties the contents of Begbie’s Head bag; putting them into the empty Adidas bag. Then stuffs the cash into the Head bag, and puts his own clothes in, on top of the money.
Briefly, he glimpses out of the window. Andreas has his hand inside Sarah’s purple bikini pants and she is laughing and shrieking: — Dahnt Endreas . . . dahnt . . . Gripping the Head bag firmly, Renton turns and stealthily scuttles out of the room, down-the stairs and along the hallway. He looks back briefly before striding out the door. If he bumped into Begbie now, he was finished. As soon as he lets that thought form consciously in his head, he almost collapses with fear. There is nobody in the street, however. He crosses the road.
He hears chanting noises and freezes. A group of young guys in Celtic football tops, obviously down for the Pogues gig in the afternoon, are staggering towards him, out of their heads on alcohol. He walks tensely past them, although they ignore him; and to his relief, he sees a 253 bus coming. He jumps on, and away from Finsbury Park.
Renton is on automatic pilot as he alights in Hackney to get a bus to Liverpool Street. Nonetheless, he feels paranoid and self-conscious with the bag full of money. Every person looks like a potential mugger or bag-snatcher to him. Whenever he sees a black leather jacket similar to Begbie’s, his blood turns to ice. He even considers going back when he is on the bus to Liverpool Street, but he sticks his hand in the bag and feels the bundles of notes. At his destination, he walks into an Abbey National branch and adds £9,000 in cash to the £27.32 already in his account. The cashier does not even blink. This is the City, after all.
Feeling better with only £7,000 on him, Renton goes down to Liverpool Street station and buys a return ticket to Amsterdam, only intending to go one way. He watches the county of Essex transmute from concrete and brick into lush green as they rumble out towards Harwich. He has an hour’s wait at Parkston Quay, before the boat sails to the Hook of Holland. This is no problem. Junkies are good at waiting. A few years back, he worked on this ferry, as a steward. He hopes that nobody recognises him from those days.
Renton’s paranoia subsides on the boat, but it is replaced by his first real feelings of guilt. He thinks about Sick Boy, and all the things they went through together. They had shared some good times, some awful times, but they had shared them. Sick Boy would recoup the cash; he was a born exploiter. It was the betrayal. He could see Sick Boy’s more-hurt-than-angry expression already. However, they had been drifting apart for years now. Their mutual antagonism, once a joke, a performance for the benefit of others, had slowly become, through being ritualised in that way, a mundane reality. It was better this way, Renton thought. In a way, Sick Boy would understand, even have a grudging admiration for his actions. His main anger would be directed at himself for not having had the bottle to do it first.
It didn’t take much effort to rationalise that he had done Second Prize a favour. He felt pity when he thought of Second Prize using his criminal injuries compensation board cash to front his stake. However, Second Prize was so busy destroying himself, he’d scarcely notice anyone giving him a hand. You would be as well giving him a bottle of paraquat to drink, as three grand to spend. It would be a quicker and ultimately more painless way of killing him. Some, he considered, would argue that it was Second Prize’s choice, but did not the nature of his disease destroy his capacity to make a meaningful choice? He smirks at the irony of him, a junky who has just ripped off his best mates, pontificating in such a manner. But was he a junky? True, he had just used again, but the gaps between his using were growing. However, he couldn’t really answer this question now. Only time could do that.
Renton’s real guilt was centred around Spud. He loved Spud. Spud had never hurt anybody, with the exception perhaps of a bit of mental distress caused by his tendency to liberate the contents of people’s pockets, purses and homes. People got too het up about things though. They invested too much emotion in objects. Spud could not be held responsible for society’s materialism and commodity fetishism. Nothing had gone right for Spud. The world had shat on him, and now his mate had joined it. If there was one person whom Renton would try to compensate, it was Spud.
That left Begbie. He could find no sympathy for that fucker. A psycho who used sharpened knitting needles when he went to sort some poor cunt out. Less chance of hitting the rib cage than with a knife, he’d boast. Renton recalled the time when Begbie had glassed Roy Sneddon, in The Vine, for fuck all. Nothing other than the guy had an irritating voice and Begbie was hungover. It was ugly, sickening and pointless. Even uglier than the act itself, was the way that they all, including Renton, had colluded with it, even to the extent of creating fictitious scenarios to justify it. It was just another way of building Begbie’s status as somebody not to mess with, and their own indirectly, through their association with him. He saw it for the extreme moral cowardice it was. Alongside this, his crime in ripping off Begbie was almost virtuous.
Ironically, it was Begbie who was the key. Ripping off your mates was the highest offence in his book, and he would demand the severest penalty. Renton had used Begbie, used him to burn his boats completely and utterly. It was Begbie who ensured he could never retum. He had done what he wanted to do. He could now never go back to Leith, to Edinburgh, even to Scotland, ever again. There, he could not be anything other than he was. Now, free from them all, for good, he could be what he wanted to be. He’d stand or fall alone. This thought both terrified and excited him as he contemplated life in Amsterdam.
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