“Or you can just go for the straight-up, in-yourface way of doing things. None of this ‘I need some money to get into a shelter’ or ‘Please help me get a hot meal’ or shit like that. You just look someone in the eye and ask them for a bit of change because the truth is that you’re fucking gagging for a can of Special Brew. Some people prefer that…”
Thorne thought about it and decided that, as the person being asked to hand over the cash, it was definitely his favorite approach. Like most people, though, his normal reaction, however he was being asked for money, was to look away and mutter nonsense, or pretend that he hadn’t heard. He’d certainly ignored his fair share of beggars in the tube.
“Right, thanks,” Thorne said. “I’ll bear all that in mind.”
They were sitting against the wall just inside the entrance to Tottenham Court Road tube station. The sign scrawled on a strip of cardboard in front of them said please help and the small plastic bowl in front of that contained a handful of coins. One-, two- and five-pence pieces.
“Tell me about some of these other ways,” Thorne said. “Loads of ways to get cash, you said…”
Spike leaned his head back. A poster for a new Brad Pitt movie was backlit behind him. “Yeah, well, there’s a few. Busking, Big Issue, whatever…”
Busking was out of the question, but Thorne had wondered about selling the Big Issue. He wasn’t sure how many of those who made money selling the magazine slept rough.
“Don’t you have to register or something to do that? Get a badge?”
Spike shook his head and leaned forward. He straightened the cardboard sign that was already sodden around the edges. It was chucking it down outside and the floor around them was becoming increasingly wet as rush-hour travelers brought the rain in on their way down from the street to the ticket hall.
“Look, there’s selling the Big Issue and selling the Big Issue, like. Some people just get hold of one copy and sell it over and over again. You tell people it’s your last one and most punters won’t have the heart to take it. It’s a good scam.”
“I might give that a go.” Thorne looked up at a young black woman coming down the steps toward them. She looked quickly away and stayed close to the far wall as she moved past them and on down the next set of stairs.
“Or there’s poncing used travel cards and selling them on. I used to do a fair bit of that. That’s a good one an’ all, but they’re starting to clamp down a bit.”
“Right…”
“Oh, shit.”
Thorne followed Spike’s gaze and watched a dumpy, dark-haired man walking down the steps in their direction. He was dressed in a gray hooded top and black combats, but it was the way he wore the clothes more than anything that identified him as a copper quicker than any warrant card could have done.
“All right, Spike?” the man asked.
“I was.”
“Be fair.” The police officer held out his hands. “There’s two of you, so you’re actually causing an obstruction. Someone could get hurt.”
“Whatever,” Spike said.
“Where’s your girlfriend today?”
Spike ignored the question. He pointed down the corridor toward the platforms, from where the lessthan- melodic sound of voice and guitar had been echoing for the previous hour or more. “Why don’t you do something useful and go hassle the arsehole who’s murdering Wonderwall at the bottom of the escalators?”
“I’ll see what I can do.” He turned, looked down, squatted on his haunches next to Thorne. “I’m Sergeant Dan Britton from the Homeless Unit at Charing Cross. You’re new, yeah?”
There was no sign of any ID being produced. Maybe this was one of those coppers who didn’t think that everyone merited an official introduction. This and the counselor-meets-children’s-TV-presenter voice were not facets of a winning personality, but it didn’t really matter. In that utterly irrational yet completely straightforward way that Thorne had-that he was convinced most people had if they were honest-he’d marked Britton down as a tosser before he’d so much as opened his mouth.
“New-ish,” Thorne said.
“Well, if you have any problems, just come down to the station and ask for someone from the Homeless Unit.”
Thorne remembered what Lawrence Healey had said to him. There seemed to be no shortage of people offering their help.
“Can you do anything about the price of heroin?” Spike said. “It’s fucking extortionate…”
Britton ignored him, carried on talking to Thorne. “Any problems, yeah?”
“Right,” Thorne said.
Staring at the floor in front of him, Spike raised a hand, slowly, like a sullen schoolboy with a question. “Actually, there is something that’s a bit of a bloody nuisance…”
Thorne could hear the mischief in Spike’s drawl, but Britton took the bait.
“What?”
“It’s this bloke. He appears to be going round killing people like me, and I was wondering, you know, if you might be able to help with that. Sorry to be a bother, like…”
Britton made a poor job of hiding what, to Thorne, looked a lot like embarrassment. He stood up and gave Spike’s outstretched leg a nudge with his scuffed training shoe. “Come on then, off you go. It’s getting busy down here and people’ll be tripping over you.”
Spike climbed slowly to his feet and Thorne did the same.
“Don’t worry,” Thorne said. “For some reason, people are careful to keep as far away from us as they can.”
They’d taken half an hour or so, wandering slowly along a darkening Oxford Street, saying very little. They’d seen a couple of familiar faces, waved at Radio Bob talking animatedly to himself outside a sandwich bar. They were loitering just inside the entrance to Borders when Spike suddenly began talking as if the earlier conversation had never ended. As if no time had passed at all.
“Begging’s getting bloody tricky now…”
Thorne had seen the same thing with his father when the Alzheimer’s had begun to take hold. He knew that naturally occurring chemicals could be every bit as potent as the ones that people stole, and killed, and sold themselves for.
“Is it?”
“If you just sit there with your hand out, you get moved on, and if you’re too pushy, you run the risk of getting an ASBO, like.”
Thorne knew what Spike was talking about. The Anti-Social Behaviour Act, launched in a blaze of Blairite glory, was supposed to curb the activities of nuisance neighbors, of tearaway teenagers, and of others who blighted the lives of the majority living in the inner cities. Overly aggressive begging certainly came within the remit of the legislation, but it had become clear pretty quickly that certain councils were using their own interpretation of aggressive in an effort to eradicate beggars of any description. Westminster Council, in particular, was chucking Anti-Social Behaviour Orders around like they were parking tickets-making a sustained effort to criminalize begging, the consumption of alcohol on the street, and any other activity liable to offend. God forbid they should upset those honest, upright citizens who might be confronted by such indecent behavior on their way home to beat their children and drink themselves into a stupor indoors…
“Plus, there’s the asylum seekers,” Spike said. “A lot of them use their kids, or borrow other people’s, and if punters are going to give their change to beggars, like as not they’ll give it to them. So, you know, you need a bit of extra dosh, you have to be clever. You have to get a bit naughty now and again.”
“Naughty?”
“Yeah, naughty. Now, I mean, there’s degrees of naughtiness, like
…”
Thorne nodded. He’d seen just about every sort.
“Some of the ones with a real bad habit can get a bit desperate, you know? There was this one bloke used to put on a crash helmet and run into the chemist’s with a claw hammer. I seen him one time running out carrying
