“Round the back of Dixon’s,” Spike said. “They’re for fridge freezers, you know? Those big, fuck-off American ones, right, Caz?”
“We fold ’em up, stash ’em during the day, and then put ’em back together last thing.”
“It’s flat pack, like.” Spike had taken the tobacco and papers, was busily rolling a fag of his own. “Same as you get from IKEA, only cheaper…”
Caroline lit her cigarette, inhaled deeply, then pointed to the smaller of the two boxes, letting the smoke go as she spoke. “That one’s yours…”
Thorne looked, and realized that Spike and Caroline would be sharing the bigger box. That they’d made the other one up for him.
“We got you some scoff an’ all,” Spike said. “We’ve already had ours… sorry.” He produced a brown KFC bag and handed it to Thorne.
Thorne felt oddly touched. As he reached across for the bag he was thinking that, in relative terms, there weren’t many people he could think of who’d have done as much for him. There were plenty, with far more to their names than these two, who’d have balked at equivalent acts of generosity.
“Be stone cold by now, like,” Spike said.
Thorne opened the beer he’d brought with him. While he tucked hungrily into the food, the three of them talked. And they laughed a lot. Spike was a natural storyteller and Caroline was the perfect foil; she happily fed him cues and helped him recount tales of life on the street, some of them horrific, despite the humor that Spike was able to wring from their telling. It was no different, Thorne thought, from a copper’s war stories; from the gags that flew thick and fast across a room where the walls were smeared with blood and in which one occupant would fail to laugh only because they were dead.
There hadn’t been a single night since Thorne had come onto the street when he hadn’t sat or lain, desperate for sleep to take away the ache of cold or hunger, and thought that he would give nearly anything for the comfort of his own bed. That he’d have plumbed the depths of depravity for a curry from the Bengal Lancer and a Cash album on the stereo. But, sitting in a stinking subway with two junkies, watching water run down the wall behind them, and with cold KFC settling heavy in his gut, Thorne felt as good as he had in a long while.
“I want to get the stuff for our flat from IKEA,” Caroline said suddenly. “And I want a big American fridge.”
Such was the nature of their conversation: tangential; fragmented; comments that referred to conversations long since dead-ended…
“Got to get the flat first, like,” Spike said. He pushed his legs out straight, then raised his knees, then repeated the action. “Yeah? See what I’m saying? Got to get the fucking flat.”
“It’ll happen,” Thorne said.
Caroline sniffed once, twice, and let her head drop back. She banged it against the wall, over and over again, though never quite hard enough to hurt. She spoke like a child, desperate to cling onto a fantasy; to be convinced that it isn’t really the lie she knows it to be. “When… when… when…?”
“I’m not a fortune-teller,” Spike said.
“Tell me.”
“When we get enough money. You’ll have to start nicking stuff from a better class of shop…”
“I know how to get the money.”
“Fuck that!” Spike was clenching and unclenching his fists; quickly, like he was shaking away a cramp; like he was warming up for something. “ Fuck that!”
Thorne could see that, all in a rush, things were starting to unravel. Their words were not overtly aggressive, but an agitation, an impatience, a pain, was coloring everything they said.
“You talked once about just needing a bit of luck,” Thorne said. “Remember? You never know when that’s going to happen.”
“Right, he’s right,” Spike said.
Caroline snapped her head up and stared at Thorne. “I know it’s going to happen, because it always happens, and it’s always bad.”
Spike shook his head, kept on shaking it. “No… no way, no way
…”
“I don’t know anyone who has the good sort,” she said. “We only have the shit kind. We get luck that’s fatal…”
They were starting to talk over each other. “When it comes, we’ll have enough money to get everything we want. Everything.” Spike was grinning from ear to ear, jabbering, high and fast. “We’ll get a place with room for loads of fucking fridges and the best sound system and all great stuff in the kitchen and whatever…”
“You’re dreaming…”
“We can have massive parties, and when we feel like it we can check into one of them posh places in the country and get straight, and then when we’re well and truly sorted we can get Robbie back.. .”
Caroline flinched and dragged her eyelids down. When she opened them again, though she made no sound, her eyes were wide behind a film of tears. She cast them down to the floor, her fingers spinning the thin leather bracelets around her wrist.
“He’s here,” Spike said suddenly.
As fast as Thorne could turn to see the man walking toward them down the tunnel, Caroline was on her feet and on her way to meet him. It didn’t take very long. There were not much more than half a dozen grunted words of exchange before the more important commodities were handed over.
Thorne looked back to see Spike unrolling a bar towel on the floor, revealing three or four thin syringes, a plastic craft knife, and a black-bottomed spoon with a bent handle. He then produced a small bottle of Evian from behind one of the boxes, looked across at Caroline, who was on her way back. Thorne could see the goose pimples clearly, the sheen that he’d thought was grease from the fried chicken.
“Get a move on, Caz, I’m sick…”
Caroline sat back down and passed over a matchbook-size wrap of folded white paper.
Spike snatched up the cigarette lighter, talking ten to the dozen as he opened the wrap, smoothed it out on the floor. “Great to see Terry again, though, yeah? Told you he was a good bloke, like. He’ll be fucking bladdered by now, off his fucking head somewhere with a few of Radio Bob’s old cronies. Bunch of nutters, most of ’em, but Terry’s not proud who he drinks with, like…”
Using a supermarket reward card, Spike flattened out the heroin, shaped it carefully until he was satisfied. He thrust the card at Caroline. “You cut, I’ll choose.”
Caroline moved away from the wall, shuffled toward Spike, and toward the heroin. Now Thorne could see that she was every bit as strung out as Spike was. Her tongue came out to take the sweat from around her lips. The translucent covers on the subway lights cast an odd glow across everything, but it wasn’t this that gave her skin the color of the old newspapers that blew down the tunnels. “Don’t fuck about,” she said. “Cook it all…”
Spike funneled the wrap and carefully poured every grain of brown powder onto the spoon. “You do me first, yeah?”
“Piss off. I’ll do myself, then I’ll do you.”
“No way. You won’t be in any fit state to do fuckall then.”
“Just get a move on, tosser…”
Spike drew water up into the syringe, then let some out until he had just the right amount. He leaned down, concentrating hard as he released the water into the bowl of the spoon, then used the end of the syringe to mix the heroin into it.
And Thorne watched…
He wasn’t shocked, but he’d never worked on a drugs unit; he’d never been this close to it before. He sat and stared, gripped by the process. Fascinated by the ritual of it all.
“You got vinegar?”
Caroline reached into her pocket, pulled out tissues, a plastic Jif lemon, the pile of sachets she’d grabbed earlier in the cafe. She handed a sachet to Spike. He bit off the end, squeezed some vinegar into the mixture, and continued to stir.
“What’s that for?” Thorne asked.
“This lot was only twenty quid,” Caroline said. “It’s not pure, so it don’t mix very easy. The vinegar helps it
