shoulders through the crowd and everyone breaks into a circle, leaving Barton and Noble in the centre, the Christian and the Lion.
Noble is holding a white plastic cup, the kind you get from the coffee machine upstairs.
He looks into it, looks at Barton, then tosses it on to the floor in front of him and says, ‘Come into that.’
Barton looks up, eyes all wide red streaks.
‘You heard,’ says Chief Superintendent Peter Noble. ‘Put your fucking jungle juice in that.’
Barton is here and there, searching the room for a friendly face, some kind of help, and for a brief second his eyes light on mine but finding nothing there they keep on going till they end up back on the white plastic cup in the centre of the room.
‘Fuck,’ he whispers, the fucked-up horror of his situation sinking into them dense black bones.
‘Get it hard,’ hisses Noble.
And then the slow handclap starts up and I’m right there, beating out the rhythm, banging out the time, as Barton slithers around in the smallest circle his body’ll let him, this way and that, twisting and turning, this way and that, no escape at all, that way or this, no escape.
Noble nods and the claps stop.
He bends down and cups Barton’s head in his hand:
‘Let me help you out, boy. Let’s imagine that dead woman of yours isn’t dead any more and it was all just some ugly dream. Yeah? Let’s get her all naked and hot, get her wet, yeah. Bet you could make her wet Steve, yeah? Bet you can get a right big cock on you when you want, can’t you Steve? Go on, show us what a big black cock you got. Show us how big you got it for Marie. Come on boy, don’t be shy. Among friends here, all lads together. Don’t want to have to put you in with some big fat babber-stabber from Armley, now do we? No need for that. Let’s just picture dear old Marie, hot and naked and waiting for that big old cock o’yours, stroking that big old bush of hers, getting it all big and pink and hanging out like a little fat juicy cherry, just waiting for you. Ooh. Ooh. What’s that? A drop of the good stuff slipping out, sneaking off. Come on Steve, she’s not dead, you didn’t kill her, she’s here and she’s hot and she’s waiting for you to stick that big old cock of yours inside and give her a good seeing to, a right good time. Come on, get it hard. Come on, she’s all wet and waiting, begging for it, flipping on to her belly, her fat little fingers right up her juicy chute, wondering where the fuck you are when she needs you. Where’s Stevie, she’s thinking, and then the door opens and in comes a big black dick, but it isn’t you is it Stevie? It isn’t your big black dick, is it? Well, well, if it isn’t your old mucker Kenny D and he’s looking at her all wet and naked and lying there with her fingers up her cos you’re nowhere to be seen and so he whips it out and puts it in and out, in and out, in and out, till she’s got it running down her legs and then here you come and you clock him and her, your woman and your mate making the old beast with two backs and you’re pissed off aren’t you Steve? Pissed off and who wouldn’t be? Him with his big black cock up your white woman, your white woman who should be out earning your cash not fucking around with your mate giving it away for nowt. Makes you sick, just fucking sick eh? Your mate and your woman. Hard to take, eh? That’s what happened, isn’t it Steve? And you had to get her back, pay her back big time didn’t you Stevie, didn’t you?’
‘No, no, no,’ he’s whimpering.
Noble stands up, Barton sobbing between his legs.
‘So you come, then you go.’
Steve Barton reaches for the cup and puts it over his shrivelled dick.
Fifteen white faces stare at the black man on the floor before us, a white plastic cup on his dick, his other hand shaking it, stopping it shrinking anymore.
There’s a shove in my back and there’s Oldman.
He looks at the scene before him, at the black man on the floor before him, a white plastic cup on his dick, his other hand shaking it.
Oldman looks at Noble.
Noble raises his eyes.
Oldman looks pissed off.
‘Get the black cunt some porn and get his fucking spunk down the lab,’ he says.
‘You heard him,’ shouts Noble at the man nearest the door, me.
Craven makes a move, but Noble points at me.
I’m down the corridor, up three flights of stairs and into Vice, Craven’s lair.
Dead, half of them back down in the Belly.
I pull open a cabinet: envelopes.
Next drawer the same.
And the next.
Thinking, this is fucking Vice, there ought to be some.
And then it hits me and I look back at the door, the thought right in front of me: JANICE.
Back into the cabinets, eyes every second second at the door, ears bleeding for the slightest footfall.
Ryan, Ryan, Ryan…
Nothing.
Nowt.
Nil.
I’m almost out the door before I remember the fucking porn.
I reach across the desks and pull open a drawer: two magazines, cheap and nasty, a fat blonde woman with a sun visor and her cunt wide open.
I grab them and go.
Back down into the Belly, the crowd parting, Barton still lying on the floor in a ball, still fucking crying, a blanket beside him.
I chuck the magazines down on the ground next to him.
He turns his head and pulls the grey blanket slowly across the concrete towards him.
‘Had an Aunty Margaret,’ Rudkin is saying. ‘Went by the name Mags. We all called her Nuddy for short.’
Titters and giggles.
‘Should get one of the women to do it for him,’ says someone else.
‘Do rest of us while she were down here.’
‘Long as she does me before Sambo.’
Noble kicks the magazine closer. ‘Get on with it.’
Barton lies on his side beneath the blanket, the magazine before him.
Ellis bends down and opens it.
Everyone laughs.
‘Go on, Mike,’ shouts Rudkin. ‘Give him a hand.’
Belly laughs in the Belly.
Barton’s started moving beneath the blanket.
More laughter.
‘Here, don’t forget the fucking cup,’ says Oldman. ‘Don’t want it all over the blanket.’
Steve Barton keeps moving, eyes closed, tears open, teeth clenched, the curses burning into his brain.
The clapping starts and I’m right there again but I’m thinking about Bobby and how Steve Barton must have been someone’s little boy not so long ago, with his trains and his cars and his hopes and his dreams and the food he liked and the food he didn’t but here he is now, a bouncer, a pimp, and a drug user, wanking into a white plastic cup from a coffee machine in front of fifteen white coppers.
And then, just as he picks up speed, Rudkin reaches down and pulls away the blanket, just as Barton’s dick spits up its come, just as Craven snaps a Polaroid and the claps break into a round of applause.
‘Detective Constable Ellis,’ says Oldman. ‘Take Mr Barton’s semen up to Professor Farley’
Everyone’s laughing.
‘And don’t be having a fucking sip,’ I add, everyone clapping, Ellis giving me his best hard-as-nails fuck-you- later face.
And Barton, Barton’s still in a ball, shaking and shaking, dry heaving big gulping sobs, the party over.
