James Craig - What Dies Inside

A shit-eating grin spread across Durkan’s face. ‘That just makes it all the more exciting.’ Spitting twice into his palm, he slipped his hand between his comrade’s buttocks and began moving it slowly up and down. ‘Doesn’t it, Becky?’

Drool trickling down her chin, the girl let out a confused laugh.

That was it, Rebecca Andrews. Another trust-fund revolutionary — not, it had to be said, unlike Murray herself. Rose quickly shook that description from her head in favour of another: Trotskyist slag . She took another drag on her cigarette. ‘Never mind you, how much has she had to drink?’ she asked.

‘No idea,’ Durkan shrugged.

‘Fuck off,’ Andrews grumbled. ‘Can’t you see we’re busy here? Why don’t you piss off and go and blow one of your WSL pals.’

Intense irritation swept through Rose. ‘I left the Workers Socialist League months ago,’ she said sharply.

Andrews’s eyes narrowed as she looked up from the floor. ‘Well, why don’t you go and suck off that Special Branch bastard of yours, bitch?’

Fuck. She looked at Durkan. If anything, he seemed to be aroused by the exchange.

‘She can’t do that,’ he laughed. ‘I shot the fucker.’

‘Ha!’ Andrews cackled. ‘Good for you, Gerry. Good for you.’ She eyed Rose malevolently. ‘Looks like you’ll have to find some other copper to blow, won’t you, you fucking tart?’

‘Piss off.’ Rose sent a half-hearted kick in the direction of Andrews’s head, without coming close to making contact.

‘Ladies, ladies!’ Durkan protested. ‘Calm down.’ He looked up at Rose more in hope than expectation. ‘Sure you don’t want to play?’

Half-turning, Murray dropped the butt of her cigarette into the sink behind her. ‘Fuck off, you wanker.’

‘Suit yourself.’

‘Just imagine that I’m not here.’

‘But I like it when you watch.’ Durkan caught her eye as he resumed massaging himself and Rose quickly looked away. Your gun might have been bigger than Cahill’s, she thought ruefully, but your dick certainly isn’t.

Durkan’s tongue flopped from his mouth as he finally mounted the comrade and began thrusting vigorously. The woman let out a gasp as her head banged against the side of the cubicle.

Men, Rose thought sourly. At the bottom of it all, they are all just the same pigs.

‘Urgh!’ Durkan grunted as he entered the home straight. Gritting her teeth, the Luxemburgist slapper held on to the sides of the cubicle for dear life.

That’s the thing about Trotskyists, Rose decided. They’ve got plenty of experience at taking it up the arse. The Stranglers’ ‘No More Heroes’ started playing in her head and she giggled at the thought of burying an ice-pick in Becky Andrews’s head.

A few moments later, the door swung open and another woman appeared. Dressed in torn jeans and a Sex Pistols T-shirt, with too much make-up on her face and too much peroxide in her hair, she looked like a refugee from the Kings Road, circa 1977. With a half-empty pint of lager in her hand, the new arrival paused to take in the impressive tableau in front of her. Rose waved her angrily away. ‘Fuck off!’

‘But I need a piss,’ the woman protested, her flat Manchester accent sounding out of place in this fine Kilburn establishment. ‘I’m burstin’.’

‘Fuck off and use the gents,’ Rose growled, pushing herself off the basin and giving the door a good hard kick.

‘Ow!’ the woman complained, before finally retreating down the hallway, just as Durkan let out a cry more of relief than of ecstasy.

‘At last,’ Rose mumbled. ‘Mission accomplished.’

Pulling up his keks, Durkan gave Rose a cheeky smile. ‘Any chance of a smoke?’

‘Jesus.’ Rose pulled the packet of John Player Specials from her parka and threw it at his head.

‘Ta.’ Catching the packet just in front of his nose, he pulled out a cigarette and stuck it between his lips. He offered one to Andrews, who had struggled to her feet and was buttoning her jeans. Shaking her head, she bent down again to retrieve her newspapers. Durkan turned his attention back to Murray and pointed at the end of his fag. ‘Got a light?’

‘But of course,’ said Rose snarkily, handing him her Colibri side-roll lighter.

Durkan lit up and inhaled deeply. ‘Aaah!’

‘Want to buy a copy of Workers Hammer ?’

‘What?’ Murray did a double-take as Becky Andrews offered her a copy of one of the tatty-looking papers she had just been kneeling on. On its front page, splashed across the grinning face of Cliff Harris, one of the leading lights of the Trotskyist movement, were Durkan’s discarded juices. Above Cliff’s abused visage, a series of straplines promised articles inside on the degenerated workers’ state, the French Turn and the ‘inevitable’ collapse of the Thatcher regime.

‘It’s only 15p.’ Andrews looked at her hopefully. ‘I’ve got to sell my quota.’

‘Oh, for Christ sake!’ reaching into her pocket, Murray scraped together a handful of coins and thrust them at the hapless Spartacist. Ignoring the proffered copy of the newspaper, she glanced over at Durkan, who was still enjoying his post-coital cigarette. ‘C’mon Gerry, you’ve had your fun. Now let’s go and get a bloody drink.’

Sitting in the back of a Mercedes police van, in a side street a block from the McDermott Arms, Carlyle flicked through a copy of the previous day’s Evening Standard . The leader of the Greater London Council, Ken Livingstone, was promising to set up a ‘shadow’ council after Margaret Thatcher made good on her promise to abolish the GLC on the grounds that it was a nest of left-wing vipers. Dropping the paper onto the floor, the inspector kicked it under his seat and yawned. He had been stuck here with a dozen or so colleagues drawn from various police stations around the capital for more than an hour, and the atmosphere in the back of the vehicle was hot and humid.

Gazing out of the back window, the constable counted three other vans full of officers lined up by the far kerb. Everyone knew that they were TSG. The Territorial Support Group were the heavy mob, specialising in ‘public order containment’, otherwise known as riot control. The word among the officers was that they were here to raid a pub. Must be some bloody pub, Carlyle thought glumly. He wasn’t in the mood for a ruck but if the TSG were in attendance, trouble was most definitely on the cards.

At the rear of the furthest van, he could see the officer in charge of the operation, a Commander from Victoria known to those who had worked with him simply as ‘that cunt Craven’. The Commander was in animated conversation with a man in civilian dress. Carlyle squinted. At this distance, he couldn’t be 100 per cent sure, but the civilian looked familiar. Leaning back against the side of the van, he closed his eyes and tried to remember where he’d seen him before. On the other side of the van, someone farted loudly. There was laughter, followed by howls of complaint as a complex array of noxious odours filled the confined space.

‘Jesus,’ someone groaned in a broad Yorkshire accent, ‘I’m not sticking in here.’ The back door was pushed open and half a dozen giggling officers spilled out onto the road. Opening his eyes, Carlyle followed them outside. Keeping to the back of the group, he took a couple of deep breaths of fresh air and returned his attention to the conversation that was still taking place further down the street. Commander Craven looked distinctly unhappy as the civilian jabbed an angry finger towards his chest. They were clearly arguing about something. The civilian seemed to be laying down the law. Having said his piece, he turned away from Craven and began walking down the street.