by James Craig
Constable John Carlyle’s badge number was V253. Like all of the police officers, however, today he was not wearing any number. The normal identification worn on their shoulder straps had been taken off before the start of the day’s proceedings, to help avoid any trouble involving legal action and civil-liberties claims later. This divestment had become part of the daily pre-ruck ritual on the coach, as the officers were delivered to whichever picket line they were policing that morning.
‘Right, lads,’ barked their Scottish sergeant, Charlie Ross, ‘numbers off. Stick ’em in your pockets. We are not going to have any problems today.’
‘No, Sergeant.’
‘Rest assured, gentlemen, that no one will be pissing all over your fine work accomplished here at a later date.’ A general murmur of agreement rose from the seats closest to him. ‘And, remember, what happens on the picket line, stays on the picket line. We watch each other’s backs.’
‘Yes, Sergeant,’ came back the weary reply.
The smell on board was foul. The air was thick with stale sweat, body odour and nervous excitement. Carlyle stared out of the window and tried to breathe through his mouth. Sitting next to him was Dominic Silver, another recent recruit from Hendon. Dom was a genuine, one hundred per cent cockney, an east London lad, complete with regulation cheery-chappy grin plastered across his face. He was considered a ‘mate’, the kind of bloke who you should never confuse with a friend. Still, under the circumstances, Carlyle was more than happy to have someone he knew on the bus with him that morning.
Dom rocked back and forth, playing an imaginary set of drums on the back of the seat in front of him. He was speeding his tits off, but so was Carlyle. Dom knew where to get his hands on the best amphetamine sulphate, and half a teaspoon in a mug of black coffee set the day up nicely. Tired and wired was a million times better than just tired.
Dom broke off from his drum solo, nudged Carlyle in the ribs and stuck his hand up. ‘Sergeant?’ he gestured, like a hyper five year old. ‘Sergeant?’
Carlyle rolled his eyes to the heavens, knowing what was coming.
‘Yes, son?’ Charlie Ross grinned, enjoying such banter. In his fifties, he was at least twenty-five years older than anyone else on the bus. Carlyle couldn’t decide whether that made him super-hard or merely super-sad. On the brink of retirement, Charlie was small and gaunt, with sunken cheeks and a biker moustache straight out of Village People. When he rolled up his sleeves, you could see a Japanese dragon tattoo on his right forearm. There was an evil twinkle in his eye at all times, except when the booze took hold and he was about to keel over.
Despite the crushing schedule, all of this rushing around Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire had given Charlie a new lease of life. He looked twenty years younger than he had done when Carlyle had first seen him three months earlier, outside Cortonwood colliery, just down the road from where they were today, frogmarching a striker towards a Black Maria.
Dom put his question slowly and thoughtfully: ‘Didn’t I read in the paper that the new Home Secretary has promised that all transgressions on the picket line, committed by either side, will be dealt with properly, without fear or favour?’
The sarky little bugger had been reading the Daily Telegraph again. Not for the first time, Carlyle wondered why Dom hadn’t gone for some career that would have been better suited to his restless spirit and sharp brain. Surely, it would have been easy for him to get into the City and make shitloads of money as some kind of trader. He was just too sharp to be a plod.
Laughter trickled round the bus. The small minority aware that the relatively exotic Leon Brittan had become Home Secretary only a week before did not have much time for his views on their current battle. A CV that included Haberdashers’ Aske’s Boys’ School, Trinity College Cambridge, President of the Cambridge Union Society and a career as a lawyer certainly did not impress these young police officers. They knew that such a background didn’t give him the right to pass comment on those obliged to do the dirty work.
Charlie stuck his thumbs into the breast pockets of his tunic and thrust out his chest. ‘Well’ – he had been given his cue and was preparing for the big build-up – ‘I can tell you this…’ he then glanced up and down the bus to make sure his audience was paying attention, ‘… there are three things in life that are of absolutely no use to man or beast…’
Carlyle grinned. He had heard it all before, several times, but he knew that Charlie’s monologue would still make him laugh.
Charlie ploughed on: ‘These are the Pope’s testicles…’ pause, smiles all round, ‘tits on a man…’ another pause to acknowledge the cheers, ‘and…’ extra pause, ‘a politician’s promise.’ A fierce round of applause ran through the bus, accompanied by cheers, whistles and truncheons being beaten against windows. Charlie made a small bow and, having milked it enough, let the smile fall from his lips. He began prowling the aisle, eyeing up his charges, looking for any signs of doubt or apprehension. ‘These fuckers aren’t going to give us any trouble today. Am I right?’
Nervous laughter filled the coach. A couple of cheery voices responded to Charlie’s rallying cry: ‘Yes, Sergeant!’
‘So don’t be shy.’ Ross chuckled as he watched a group of mounted police gathering fifty yards down the road. ‘Show ’em who’s boss.’
A few more joined in this time: ‘Yes, Sergeant!’
‘Don’t be a bunch of fucking poofs. Show those fucking communists who’s fucking boss.’
‘YES, SERGEANT!’
As the din died down, a voice came from the back of the bus: ‘Where are we, Sergeant?’
Charlie Ross gazed dreamily out of the window. ‘Dunno, son. Some DNS or other.’
‘DNS?’ someone asked.
‘Dirty Northern Shithole.’
More laughter.
Another voice piped up: ‘And what are we doing here, Sergeant?’
‘Precisely?’ asked another.
‘Exactly?’ Carlyle laughed.
‘Specifically?’ queried another wag.
‘What is this?’ Charlie snarled in mock fury, though loving every minute of it. ‘Twenty fucking questions?’ He smacked his truncheon against the side of a nearby seat and fixed his stare on one of the questioners. ‘We are here, lads, as you very well know, to maintain law and fucking order; to allow the ordinary working man do his job without interference; to protect the innocent; and,’ he paused again, to unveil his final and most winning smile of the morning, ‘most importantly of all, to break some fucking heads.’
Carlyle’s headache was getting worse. He swallowed another aspirin and pocketed the foil wrapper. Sitting motionless on the wall, he shut his eyes in an attempt to try to keep out the light, which seemed to be bouncing off every available surface in order to assault his brain with the maximum violence possible. He took a couple of slow, deep breaths. Finally, his heart slowed to a more recognisable beat. Now he could at least count the various different components of his all-round discomfort. Under the uniform, his T-shirt had melted into his chest. Sweat trickled down his spine and between the cheeks of his bum. Right on cue, his piles started playing up and he felt as if he had a knife stuck up his arse. He could feel his stomach churning and felt a chill wrap itself around his shoulders. Being so dehydrated, at least Carlyle didn’t also have to worry about needing a piss. With all the gear on, it would have taken him the best part of an hour to expose his dick.
Somewhere along the road, he could hear the hooves of a pair of police horses clattering over tarmac. Beyond them, a roar went up on the field of combat, as one side charged the other. Carlyle closed his eyes tighter and refocused on his breathing.
After a few minutes, he tried to stand and felt his legs buckle. His mouth was still dry and sticky and his stomach heaved. He leant over the nearest wall and vomited into the garden. That brought some temporary relief, and he tried to puke again but nothing more would come out. Carlyle pushed his fingers down his throat. No joy. Spent, he just sat there, fee
ling useless.
After a few moments, the dizziness eased. Sticking another couple of aspirin in his mouth, he took a final swig of water and swallowed quickly. Standing up, he began moving slowly up the street, away from the din of conflict. A police Alsatian had become separated from his handler, and was casually walking along the road too, heading away from all the noise and confusion. Like Carlyle, the dog looked as if he’d had more than enough for the day.
Carlyle kept his eyes on the ground, quickly jumping backwards as a piece of brick exploded near his feet.
‘Fuck off, pig!’
Carlyle looked up. Almost twenty feet away, he saw a kid of maybe ten or eleven flipping him the finger. Laughing at the disorientated policeman, the kid turned on his heels and started sprinting off down the road. Almost immediately, he tripped over his feet and crashed on to the tarmac, skidding along the street in a ball of blood, snot and tears. Serves the little shit right, Carlyle thought. Resisting the temptation to go over and give him a kick, he kept on walking.
What he wanted was some shade, but there was none to be found. He was in a regular terraced street of straightforward two-up, two-down red-brick houses, each with a cobbled yard at the back and a small garden at the front. It was a typical Northern working-class neighbourhood, the kind of road where trees were in short supply.
In the end, he settled for the shade provided by an overgrown hedge, about five feet tall and seven feet wide, bordering a garden maybe eight doors along from the ambulance. He slipped through the open gate and slumped down on the threadbare grass, before crawling under the bush in search of a little respite from the relentless sun and the blinding light.
Carlyle was woken by a man’s scream, followed by the sounds of a struggle nearby.
‘Get off me you, bastard…’
‘Bite me, would you?’ the male voice growled.
‘Stop it.’
‘C’mon…’
‘Fuck… right… OFF!’
‘Bitch!’
He slowly realised that they were somewhere behind him, in another garden, three doors further along. Getting to his feet, he squinted through the intervening hedge. Unable to see anything, he stepped back into the street and moved towards the arguing voices.
He saw the woman first. She was wearing worn blue jeans and a grubby white V-neck T-shirt. Behind her stood a policeman, sweating profusely in the same protective gear as Carlyle. His helmet had been knocked to the ground, and he had one arm wrapped around her neck. His other hand was firmly clamped on her left breast, which he was pawing slowly in a clockwise direction.
As he stepped closer, Carlyle could see that the woman was not wearing a bra. Her nipples were erect, clearly visible through her T-shirt. He had not had sex – of any description – for more than a fortnight, and now felt a sharp twinge in his groin. The stirring of it brought him a welcome distraction from the headache, but he was embarrassed all the same and felt his cheeks flush.
Looking up, both of them eyed Carlyle warily.
She was about 5’4”, with short blond hair. This was clearly one of the enemy within, one of the women that supported the strikers on the picket line; probably someone’s wife or girlfriend. Her grey eyes were hard and blazed with hatred. Aged anything from twenty-five to fifty-plus, she looked pinched, tired and thin, with the same washed-out, grubby, bleached complexion they all had.
The absence of any badge numbers didn’t stop Carlyle from recognising Trevor Miller. They had come up from London together at the beginning of the tour and, although the two of them didn’t always end up working on the same picket line, Carlyle had noticed him on each of the last three days. Maybe five years older than Carlyle, Miller was far too full of himself, a mouthy so-and-so only too eager to hold forth on what he was going to do to these ‘stupid Northern wankers’. Carlyle had last seen him earlier the same day, chasing some bloke over a patch of waste ground in the no man’s land intervening between the police and the pickets. The striker had been wearing a toy police hat covered in union stickers, as he flipped Miller the finger and headed off like a scalded cat. Trevor, truncheon at the ready, struggled to catch up with him through a barrage of catcalls and the occasional missile hurled by other strikers.
That had been several hours ago. So what was Miller doing here, now?
Recognising Carlyle, he sized up the situation for a second or two, preparing an explanation. ‘It’s OK,’ he said, his expression blank, ‘I’ve got this sorted.’ He glanced down at his hand, which remained clamped on the woman’s breast, rising and falling with her breathing.
‘What’s going on, Trevor?’
The woman belatedly piped up: ‘He’s touching me up, the dirty bastard.’
Carlyle took a step closer. Miller automatically took a step back, half dragging the woman with him. ‘Just fuck off out of it, Carlyle,’ he snarled. He was six foot plus, which Carlyle knew gave him about four inches in height and probably about forty pounds in weight. Miller could beat him to a pulp with one hand tied behind his back, but Carlyle knew that he was all front. He could face him down.
The woman started squirming again. ‘Get him off me!’
Carlyle stepped through the gate and into the garden. ‘What did she do?’
‘She assaulted me.’
‘Fuck off,’ the woman spat in fury. ‘You assaulted me, put me in a headlock, grabbed my tits and started squeezing them. Fucking pervert.’
Unbelievably, Trevor started grinning.
‘Trevor,’ Carlyle sighed, ‘she’s half your size.’
‘So?’ He seemed genuinely surprised by the idea that there might be a problem with what he was doing.
‘So,’ Carlyle shouted, ‘the only way she could have assaulted you is with a loaded AK47. Let her fucking go!’
Miller looked at him blankly, a bead of sweat hanging from the tip of his nose.
‘Now!’
Stepping sideways, Miller tramped some flower or other into the dirt. Maybe it was even a weed. Staring off into the middle distance, he gave Carlyle’s request several seconds’ thought. ‘Mind your own business, you wanker,’ was his considered reply.
It was time for a change of tack. Carlyle spread his arms wide and adopted what he hoped was his most philosophical tone: ‘Mate, think about it. You don’t want a complaint. It could seriously hurt your career.’
Trevor grunted. ‘I’m making an arrest.’
‘This is the kind of thing that could cost you your job.’ Carlyle was about five feet away from them now, edging closer.
‘I’ve done nothing wrong here, Carlyle.’ Trevor looked and sounded like a little boy. A monster of a little boy.
‘Let her go… c’mon we have to get back.’
‘No!’ Trevor shook his head.
Carlyle took another step towards him, trying not to stare at the woman’s nipples which seemed to be getting even bigger. Maybe I’m becoming delusional, he thought. ‘You have to.’
At last, Trevor recognised that Carlyle wasn’t going to just walk away. Finally, he let go of the woman’s breast and loosened the neck hold slightly. The woman immediately sank her teeth into his arm and bit him as hard as she could.
‘Fuck!’ Trevor grunted.
With all the gear he was wearing, Carlyle doubted if she even broke the skin, but Miller instinctively recoiled and pushed her away. The woman took this as her cue to make a dash for freedom. She bolted past Carlyle, a bottle-blonde blur that was out of the garden and down the road before he could react. Showing a nice turn of speed, and, Carlyle noticed, a very shapely arse, she was round a corner and out of sight in a matter of seconds.
Trevor struggled with his options as he tried to decide whether or not to give chase. In the end, the final decision was no decision. He shrugged, and the spell was broken.
Carlyle stood there, wondering what to do next. His headache was returning with a vengeance, and he needed again to find some shade.
Eventually, Trevor picked up his helmet and slowly
trudged out of the garden. ‘You stupid bastard,’ he hissed, pushing past Carlyle. ‘You stupid bloody bastard, next time try to remember which fucking side you’re on.’
SIX
Not wishing to dwell on his rampant stupidity any longer than was absolutely necessary, Inspector Carlyle headed back in the direction he’d come from only ten minutes earlier. The fact that it was such a short walk did nothing to improve his mood. Grinding his teeth in frustration, he lengthened his stride and tried not to think about the bed he could already be lying in. There was no one about to catch a middle-aged policeman talking to himself like a demented dosser, and so he took the opportunity to curse himself loudly. Tonight wasn’t the first time this year that he’d arrived outside his flat, stuck his hand in his jacket pocket and realised that he had left his house keys at the station and, therefore, couldn’t get in. There was no way he would dare wake his wife at this time of night, so he turned round and headed back to Charing Cross Police Station.
Keeping up a brisk pace, Carlyle cut across the north side of Covent Garden piazza, whose cobbles felt hard and unyielding under the soles of his shoes. This was his home territory, just three blocks north of the biologically dead waters of the River Thames at Waterloo Bridge.
Carlyle passed an imposing mansion standing at number 43 King Street, in the north-west corner of the piazza, which was now home to a flagship shoe store. Back in the nineteenth century it has been one of London’s first boxing venues. Then, as now, the prizefight game was so bent that many of the bouts descended into farce. One of the most famous King Street matches ended in chaos after both fighters took a dive even before a single punch had been thrown. Not surprisingly, the disgruntled punters sought to take out their frustrations on the two boxers, one of whom found the presence of mind to feign blindness in order to escape a beating from the mob. Legend had it that this ‘blind’ boxer was declared the winner, and awarded the purse as well.
Glancing up at a poster advertising a new computer game, Carlyle stumbled on a loose cobblestone. He steadied himself in front of the life-size image of a cartoon commando letting fly with a machine-gun in each hand. The game’s strapline promised ‘a new kind of war’. That’s just what the world needs, Carlyle thought sourly, as he resumed walking. Almost immediately, he was passing in front of St Paul’s Church. Known as the actor’s church, it was currently flanked on one side by an Oakley sunglasses store, and on the other by a Nat West bank. Inigo Jones, the architect, would doubtless be proud, Carlyle thought, to see his celebrated creation now keeping such august company. God would probably be quite chuffed, too.
