James Craig: What Dies Inside

‘Maybe he’s an associate of Durkan,’ Wickes mused.

Associate. Vardy hated it when Wickes used language he’d picked up from American cop shows. They were British, for God’s sake. And this certainly wasn’t Starsky amp; Hutch , even if he did detect a bit of a passing resemblance to David Soul when he looked in the rear-view mirror. ‘Nah,’ he said. ‘Why would he spend so much time inside if he was looking for Durkan? He must know the old woman — family, most likely.’

‘He’s sticking something in his pocket.’

‘Mm.’ Vardy was more interested in where he was going to relieve himself. The two policemen watched the man stop at the front gate, before turning right and walking down the road, away from the Cortina.

‘We’d better go and tell Cahill,’ said Wickes, taking a few last shots of the man’s back, before tossing the camera on the back seat.

‘OK.’ Slamming the door closed, Vardy turned the key in the ignition and the Cortina’s engine roared into life. Pulling away from the kerb, he stomped on the accelerator. ‘Let’s get going before I bloody piss myself.’

Trying desperately to keep his gaze on Saturday Superstore, Carlyle used his peripheral vision to track Samantha Hudson as she walked languidly through the living room. Watching the voluptuous young woman pad across the carpet wearing nothing but a black bra and a pair of lacy white briefs, he reflected, not for the first time, on just how unfair life could be. Reaching the bedroom, Sam placed her hand on the doorframe and leaned forward, giving Carlyle an excellent view of her perfectly symmetrical backside as she stuck her head round the open door.

‘Dom,’ she trilled, sounding every inch the pampered Sloane refugee that she was, ‘fancy a coffee?’ From the bedroom came an indecipherable grunt. Turning, the girl retraced her steps towards the kitchen, giving Carlyle a cheeky smile as she sashayed past in slow motion. ‘He’ll be out in a minute. . probably.’

Feeling himself blush violently, Carlyle raised his gaze as far as her navel. ‘OK.’ With great force of will, he gritted his teeth and returned his attention to the TV. Somehow, though, even the ever-perky Sarah Greene didn’t seem so alluring on this particular morning.

After listening to Sam banging around in the kitchen for a few minutes, Carlyle was wondering if he should leave. He didn’t like playing gooseberry at the best of times, and this brutal demonstration of the difference between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’ was causing him an almost physical pain. He was just about to get up from the cream sofa when Dom, wearing not a stitch of clothing, finally wandered into the living room, scratching his head and yawning widely. ‘Late night?’ Carlyle asked, his voice dripping with jealousy.

‘Not particularly,’ grinned Dom, as he looked towards the kitchen. ‘It’s more to do with the company I keep.’ Stepping over to the armchair in the corner, he picked up a pair of jeans and a grubby looking green and white Frank Zappa T-shirt. ‘Where are my trainers?’ he asked, pulling on the jeans. Carlyle pointed to the pair of blue Adidas Originals peeking out from under the chair.

‘Ta.’

‘No problem.’ Carlyle felt like crying.

‘C’mon,’ Dom grunted, pulling the T-shirt over his head and slipping on the shoes, ‘let’s go out and get some breakfast.’

Carlyle took a bite of his egg roll and washed it down with a mouthful of lukewarm Nescafe. The Roadrunner cafe on Goldhawk Road had long been a favourite haunt; the food was crappy and the service appalling, but it was cheap and had a seedy, down at heel air that appealed to him. At this time on a Saturday morning, it was almost full, so they had to share a table with a couple of young women busy fortifying themselves for an assault on the department stores of the West End.

‘So,’ Carlyle said, wiping ketchup from his chin with a napkin, ‘you and Sam, is it serious?’

‘Serious?’ Dom pulled a packet of Embassy Regal from his pocket and stuck one in his mouth.

‘Well, you know, you’ve been going out together for, what, almost six months now?’

‘“Going out”?’ Ignoring the disapproving glance of one of the women at a nearby table, a pretty blonde wearing a denim jacket over a cheesecloth blouse, Dom laughed as he lit up his smoke. After taking a long drag, he turned away from the table and exhaled. ‘Listen to you,’ he continued, lowering his voice. ‘We don’t “go out”, we get high and we fuck.’

No need to be so bloody smug about it, Carlyle thought sourly.

‘Sam’s a nice girl,’ Dom explained, waving his cigarette airily over the table. ‘We hook up now and again, have a bit of fun, but that’s it.’

A bit of fun? Carlyle felt his head spin with frustration as he watched the smoke from Dom’s cigarette rise lazily towards the ceiling. In his extremely limited experience, relationships with women were impossibly complex. It annoyed him intensely that Dom could make it seem so simple. Then again, it was like that with most things — Carlyle seeing complexity everywhere, while his mate just ploughed on regardless.

‘Anyway,’ Dom asked, ‘what about you? How’s the love-life?’ Sitting back in his chair, he winked at the blonde, who smiled despite herself.

‘What love-life?’ Carlyle replied, with rather too much feeling.

Taking another drag on his cig, Dom gave him a consoling pat on the arm. ‘Come on, Johnny boy, you’ve got to get out there.’ He gestured towards the passing traffic. ‘There’s a big, bad world out there, just waiting for you to jump into it.’

‘Mm.’ Carlyle slurped the last of his coffee. Deep down he knew that he simply wasn’t the kind of bloke who jumped into things — big, bad, or otherwise — much as he might want to.

‘If it’s just a question of getting your rocks off,’ Dom said, stubbing out the remains of his cigarette in a tin ashtray, ‘I know a couple of girls. .’ He shot the blonde a frankly lecherous look that sent her scuttling from the table, with her mate in tow. ‘More than a couple, in fact.’

‘No, no,’ Carlyle said hastily as he watched the girls pay their bill at the counter and disappear through the door without so much as a backward glance. The last thing he wanted was for Dom to line him up with a hooker. Apart from anything else, he couldn’t afford one.

‘Whatever takes your fancy.’

‘No,’ Carlyle repeated.

‘Up to you,’ Dom shrugged.

‘Anyway, there’s a woman at the station. .’ Desperate not to seem like a total loser, Carlyle gave Dom a quick bit of background on Sandra Wollard, omitting to mention the kids, the divorces and the fact she was well on the way to forty.

Dom listened patiently. ‘Ah well, good luck with that,’ he said when Carlyle had finished. ‘I’m not sure I would get involved with another copper, but that’s up to you. How is work at the moment, anyway?’

‘Nothing particularly exciting.’

‘That’s exactly why I left,’ Dom said, tapping the cigarette packet with his index finger. ‘Who would have thought the whole thing was just so totally fucking boring?’

Carlyle grinned. ‘I thought you left because they were gonna kick you out.’

‘Hardly.’

‘How many coppers tried to shop you over Syerston in the end?’ A few months earlier, in the summer, the pair of them had been billeted in an RAF base in Nottinghamshire while on picket-line duty during the mineworkers’ strike. For Constable Dominic Silver, presented with a captive market, it had been an opportunity to develop his growing side-line — selling drugs. There had been plenty of brother officers happy to partake of his wares. A fair few, however, had not been prepared to turn a blind eye to what was going on. Barely two months after returning to London, Dom had left the force.