Irvine Welsh - Skagboys

Maria’s crying softly into the pillow, and Sick Boy’s on her, hammer in his hand, smothering her like a blanket, as if she were on fire, and holding her as she’s bucking and twisting under his grip, all snotters, tears, screams and deep, deep burns. — YOU LET HIM RAPE US … FUCK OFF … KEEP AWAY FAE ME … AH WANT MUH MA … AH WANT MUH DA-HAH-HAD …

— AH HUD THE HAMMER! AH WIS GAUNNY DAE HIM! BUT NO HERE, AH MADE A MISTAKE!

— YE LET HIM RAPE ME –

— SOAS WE COULD GIT HIM! THEN AH REALISED THAT WE CANNAE DAE HIM HERE! WE’D GO DOON!

— AH WANT MY MA … HUH-HA … Maria convulses, and Sick Boy knows he just has to hold her till her rage is spent and sickness creeps into her junk-deprived cells and they scream for another shot.

And he does. The banshee howls fade into the background as his mind wanders off to scams and schemes and Maria feels warm and soft again, like somebody else is making the noise.

Then she sleeps. It’s only when the phone goes off that Sick Boy feels moved to leave her. It won’t stop.

He picks it up, and it’s Uncle Murray, from a motorway Little Chef. He’s spoken to Janey and he’s on his way to get Maria, and Sick Boy had better fucking well be gone by the time he gets there. Despite repeating to the increasingly irate uncle ‘You’ve got the wrong end of the stick here, Murray’ and ‘That’s not my style, Murray’ and ‘We all need to sit down and talk this through, Murray’, when the phone is slammed down Sick Boy suddenly thinks it may not be such a bad idea to vacate the premises. He leaves the dozy girl and heads out and up to Junction Street, then onto the Walk. He thinks he’ll go straight up the thoroughfare to Montgomery Street, where Spud and Renton will be waiting, or even press on to the Hoochie Coochie Club at Tollcross, where there will be girls who are much less high-maintenance.

THE NEEDLE EXCHANGE in Bread Street, Tollcross, was shut down in the early 1980s by the police, after increasing concern about this facility had been mooted in the local press.

It meant that members of Edinburgh’s growing intravenous drug-using community no longer had easy recourse to clean injecting equipment. Consequently, people started to share syringes and needles, unaware of the threat of HIV transmission (then publicised almost exclusively as a gay man’s disease) from direct blood-to-blood contact.

Users began to get sick in hitherto unheard-of numbers, and soon some sections of the media were describing Edinburgh as ‘the Aids capital of Europe’.

STEPPING INTO THE dusky room, his hand had instinctively reached for the light switch, before abruptly stopping. Tracing the hulking silhouette of his former brother-in-law and business associate sat in the chair, he remembered that the light hurt his eyes.

Following his exit interview at personnel, where they’d alternately humiliated and terrorised him, Russell Birch had spent most of the afternoon trying to get drunk. He’d hopped around several west Edinburgh bars, slowly fuelling his rage against the man who’d brought this nightmare down on him, who was silently ensconced in the wicker-basket chair, so still his bulk produced not even the faintest creak. Russell thought he’d been successful in his mission, but suddenly felt way too sober.

The awareness that he now faced a different ignominy, even starker and less compromising than this morning’s ordeal in that shabby office, gripped Russell and he found himself internally cursing his stupid fucking slut of a sister who had actually married this animal, in that tawdry biker ceremony in Perthshire. He burned at the memory of that wedding, with its procession of muscled-and-tattooed leather-clad freaks. But Kristen wasn’t that stupid, she soon extricated herself from the relationship. Russell hadn’t been able to do the same.

He’d come to accuse, but now recognised the inherent lunacy in such a course of action. His lot was to explain. And that was what he was trying to do, in a thin, whining reed of a voice that even offended his own ears. — They pulled me into the office, they’d caught me on these new cameras they’ve installed everywhere. Told me tae clear my desk, Russell shuddered, thinking briefly of the glacial expression on Marjory Crooks, the personnel manager. He knew the woman, they’d been colleagues . Eight years of service down the drain, and for nothing, save a couple of grand in a bank account.

Yet he found himself parroting Ms Crooks, almost verbatim, to the shadowy hulk in the chair. — They said the only reason they’d decided against criminal prosecution was due to my outstanding previous service and the adverse publicity the company would receive.

Po-faced security guards (he knew those men!) had been waiting to escort Russell on the short walk from office to street. As they prepared to embark on this humiliating hike, one of the directors had asked him, — Is there anybody else involved?

— Michael Taylor, he’d immediately said, anxious to cooperate, to try and ingratiate himself. That was his weakness; too hungry to be accepted.

— He’s a driver-stroke-storeman. Crooks had turned to the director, who had nodded twice, once in slow understanding, the second time to the sanction the security guards to continue ushering Russell Birch outside, onto the cold street.

He’d given them something, given them Michael, and received nothing in return. And now Michael would want some payback. He recalled the time his now former associate had threatened him. Russell had remained cool, countering by stating that he could easily have this conversation with his brother-in-law. Michael had gone silent, keen to keep it between them. That had been the time his tree-shagging yuppie brother had walked into Dickens in Dalry Road, of all places, with that young shag he’d then brought to their mother’s birthday party. Alexander had made a fool of himself that evening, but he’d gone home with that drunk, slutty, youthful piece of minge. But then Alexander always seemed to land on his feet. The injustice of it all torched Russell inside out.

And now he had this brooding force sitting opposite him. To think he’d got involved as a personal favour, to help him out. He was in pain, he’d said, since the crash; Russell had to help him. Then, as soon as he did, the former brother-in-law was putting the squeeze on him for more. He cut him in, of course, but Russell had been the one taking all the risks. Bags of it, stuffed inside his underpants, him waddling duck-like to the toilets like he’d had a non-industrial accident.

Now it had all come home to roost, as his mother was fond of saying. Now he was unemployed, and unlikely to get references for any job in this specialist field. The four-year BSc (Hons) in Industrial Chemistry at Strathclyde University was now a worthless piece of paper in a frame.

And as he told his former brother-in-law the story, restating the dangers of the security review he’d previously warned him about, with the new monitoring systems, a disembodied voice ripped out of the darkness, silencing him: — So what you’re saying is that yuv fucked things up, fucked things right up fir every cunt.

— But ah lost my job trying tae help you!

More silence. Russell could make out the man in the chair now. He was wearing sunglasses. His pain must be bad today; the weather had gotten colder. — You know what ye dae now?

— What?

— Ye shut the fuck up.

— But I tried tae help you … he pleaded. — Craig … The dark shape rose from the chair. He’d forgotten the gargantuan mass of his former brother-in-law. About six five, as if hewn from marble. He recalled a film he’d recently seen, featuring a bodybuilder turned actor; it was like the Terminator coming out of the mist. — I don’t think you get it. He shook his head at Russell, like a disappointed parent.