James Craig: The Enemy Within

Well spotted, Carlyle thought glumly. Sitting in the back, next to Dom, he tried to ignore the rumbling of his stomach. Closing his eyes, he tried to imagine he was back home in Fulham. It didn’t work, not even for a second.

‘Don’t worry about that,’ Ross said firmly, ‘just let us out here.’

‘Okay.’ The driver brought the vehicle to a gentle halt. ‘There you go.’

The rubble-strewn waste ground was about the size of a dozen football pitches. It was an area that the three policemen had come to know well over the last few days. They stood there for hour after hour, as part of the thin blue line tasked with keeping the flying pickets at bay and ensuring that the hulking colliery about 400 yards from the main road remained open and operational. So far, the police had been successful. Coal was still being dug from the ground by those miners who were refusing to strike, albeit at a fraction of the usual rate.

Less than four hours ago, maybe four hundred men had been milling about here, waiting for a fight that, this time, never materialized. Now, however, the last shift of the day had hurried home and the day’s protests had ended. The mine glowered in the twilight, its machinery silent, shut down for the night.

Charlie Ross pushed open the passenger door. ‘Let’s go,’ he barked over his shoulder. ‘Out you get.’ Sliding out of his seat, he slammed the door and began walking away from the vehicle at a brisk pace.

With the greatest reluctance, constables Silver and Carlyle pushed out of their seats after him. Barely had they closed the doors than the driver had conducted a brisk three-point turn and set off, heading for the safety of the RAF base. Watching the Triumph’s red tail lights disappearing into the distance, Carlyle looked around warily.

‘Bandit country,’ Dom sniffed.

‘Yeah,’ Carlyle nodded, ‘no sense in hanging about.’ Both of them knew well enough that any straggling officers caught by a band of roving strikers could expect, at the very least, a good kicking. In the last week alone, three officers had suffered minor assaults and one had been hospitalized with a broken leg.

‘Let’s go, then,’ said Dom, gesturing towards the shrinking figure of Charlie Ross. Already the sergeant was more than fifty yards ahead of them. Moving forward at a brisk pace, he was showing no signs of slowing down.

‘Where’s he going?’ Carlyle asked.

‘No idea.’

Next to the colliery was a small housing estate and beyond that, a wood. The light seemed to be fading with every passing second. The Dead Kennedys’ ‘Holiday in Cambodia’ started playing in his head and Carlyle giggled nervously.

‘Huh?’ Dom gave him a puzzled look.

‘Nothing.’ Carlyle lifted the knapsack that he’d managed to fill with a few provisions and hoisted it over his shoulder. ‘Okay,’ he said wearily, as he started after the yomping sergeant, ‘off we jolly well go.’

After several minutes’ walking, the distance between the two of them and Ross only seemed to be growing.

‘Fit old sod, isn’t he?’ said Dom, wiping the sweat from his brow.

Grunting, Carlyle tried to up his pace, cursing as he stumbled on the rough terrain, which was strewn with rubbish, bricks and pieces of rubble.

‘Fucking hell, Charlie, slow down.’

‘He’ll probably live ’til he’s a hundred.’

‘I wish he’d have a fucking stroke,’ Carlyle grumbled. ‘Then we could stop all this crap.’

‘Could be worse,’ Dom grinned.

Don’t give me your ‘mustn’t grumble’ shit, now, Carlyle thought angrily. His sugar levels were plummeting and he could feel himself getting increasingly annoyed. Slipping the bag from his shoulder, he reached inside and fumbled around until he pulled out an apple. He offered it to Dom, who shook his head.

‘Imagine this is the Falklands and we’re being shot at by a bunch of Argies.’

‘It’s not.’ Carlyle took a bite of his apple and chewed vigorously. ‘And, anyway, the locals round here are far more dangerous than a bunch of scared kids conscripted into some tin-pot army.’

‘At least they don’t have guns.’

‘Let’s hope not. Anyway, they don’t need fucking guns, do they?’

‘I know but. .’ Looking up, Dom watched as the sergeant began veering off to their left. He pointed towards the increasingly indistinct figure in the gloaming. ‘Where’s he going now?’

‘Good bloody question.’ Taking a series of rapid bites from his apple, Carlyle tossed the core and adjusted his direction to follow the sergeant. Rather than heading towards the mine, as they had expected, Ross seemed to be aiming for the small housing estate next door. Despite the hour, many of the homes were shrouded in darkness. Others showed only a weak, flickering light. Candles. Carlyle knew that many strikers’ families could no longer afford their utility bills and had seen their power cut off.

‘What’s he up to?’ Dom repeated.

‘I suppose we’ll find out soon enough,’ Carlyle grunted as he danced round a pothole, ‘assuming that we can ever catch the old bastard.’

After another ten minutes of stumbling around in the gloom, they reached the far side of the waste ground.

‘Nice to see you, boys,’ Charlie Ross growled as they approached. ‘I was wondering if you’d gone home.’

If only, Carlyle thought.

Hands on hips, Ross stood by the side of a narrow path. Unpaved, it looked like the kind of bridleway used by walkers. Shaking his head, he looked the two of them up and down. ‘My, my,’ he cackled gleefully, ‘you boys aren’t very fit, are you?’

‘It’s been a long day, sergeant,’ Dom replied evenly.

‘And these soldiers are marching on an empty stomach,’ Carlyle added indignantly.

‘My God, laddie. You’re always thinking about your food, aren’t you?’ The sergeant pointed down the track, towards the woods. ‘We’re just going down there. Not far now.’

Under the canopy of leaves, the night fully enveloped them. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, Carlyle had to watch even more carefully where he was putting his feet as they followed the sergeant down a narrow, mucky path between the trees. At least the sergeant had slowed his pace to a more manageable level; presumably he had no desire to end up on his arse in the mud.

A few minutes later, Ross brought them out into a clearing of sorts, a small patch of scrub littered with empty beer cans, food wrappers and other rubbish. In the middle were scattered the remains of a long-extinguished fire. A couple of yards beyond that came the wheezing rumble of a diesel-powered generator. A small spotlight had been hung from the lower branches of one of the trees, illuminating the fluttering police tape that had been strung between two trunks situated fifteen feet apart. Behind the tape was a low mound covered by grey plastic sheeting which had been weighed down at each corner with some rocks.

Standing by the generator was a glum-looking police officer. He nodded at Charlie Ross and the sergeant nodded back. Without saying a word, the uniform turned round and began jogging away in the opposite direction from which his three colleagues had arrived.

‘This is it. Make yourselves at home.’ Ross gave his two young constables a moment to survey their billet.

Stepping up to the tape, Carlyle pointed at the sheeting. ‘What’s that?’

‘Her name’s Beatrice Slater,’ Ross explained, adopting the standard monotone delivery coppers of all ages liked to use when imparting life and death news. ‘Seventy-eight years old. Battered around the head and sexually assaulted, not necessarily in that order.’

Carlyle made a face. He had a grandma of his own, about the same age as the woman under the sheet. Squeamish at the best of times, he didn’t need to know the details.