Free What Dies Inside by James Craig Page A

don’t know they’re born, the little buggers. When I was a kid, if we got a weekend in bloody Southend we were lucky. Nowadays . . .’
    Moving tentatively down the corridor, Carlyle cut him off. ‘I need to get going, Sarge. Get ready for my shift.’
    ‘Yes, you do.’ Donaldson looked him up and down. ‘You’ve got twenty minutes, then assemble in the canteen. We’ve got a job to do.’
    Jesus Christ! If my father could see me now . . .
Arms folded, Rose Murray stood with her bum resting against the sink, a John Player Special dangling from her lower lip and the unmistakeable scent of Sentry floral disinfectant in her nostrils. From the bar next door, the sound of Prince’s ‘Let’s Go Crazy’, a current juke box favourite, began pounding through the walls. Not for the first time, Rose wondered about whether to go and see Prince’s new movie,
Purple Rain
. Once she’d finished here, she could catch a showing at the Marble Arch Odeon. On the one hand, everything about Prince was fey, pretentious and hopelessly bourgeois. On the other hand, the guy was clearly a total genius. And shouldn’t even the most ardent revolutionary have some free time?
    Making a firm date with Prince, she turned her attention back to the slightly less than edifying scene in front of her. Sitting on the toilet seat in the nearest of two large cubicles, Gerry Durkan, jeans around his ankles, took a swig from a can of Carling Black label and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Placing the can on the cistern behind him, he then stuck a hand down the front of his grubby green Y-fronts and began vigorously scratching his balls. Lifting his gaze towards Murray, she could see that his eyes were glassy and unfocused.
    ‘Gerry,’ she sighed, ‘how much have you had to drink?’
    ‘Gerry,’ parroted a second, slurred, voice, ‘are we doing this, or what?’
    ‘Jesus!’ Pushing his underpants towards his knees, Durkan slid off the toilet. ‘You’re gonna put me off here, the both of ya. One thing at a time.’ He tried to grin at Murray but only managed to burp. ‘Gimme a minute and I’ll be right with you.’
    A minute? That should be about the long and short of it.
Sticking a look of bored amusement on her face, Rose watched Durkan clawing at the backside of the woman crouching in front of him in the cubicle. The woman, a member of the London Spartacist League whose name Rose couldn’t quite recall, obligingly unzipped her jeans and began pushing them down. She was one of the McDermott Arm’s groupies, a brainless star-fucker in a place where the ‘stars’ either spouted dialectical materialism or threatened your kneecaps, or both. Kneeling on a thick pile of unsold copies of the
Workers Hammer
magazine, her eyes lowered to the floor, she studiously ignored Murray’s presence. Even from several feet away, Rose could smell the alcohol fumes coming from the woman’s mouth. Pressing herself more firmly against the basin, Rose wondered if the woman was going to throw up. The last thing she needed was to get covered in proletarian puke.
    Still pulling at the woman’s clothes, Durkan looked up at her. ‘Enjoying the view?’
    Saying nothing, Rose took a long drag on her cigarette.
    ‘You can join in if you want,’ he said, more in hope than expectation. ‘I’m up for a threesome.’
    You and every bloke on the entire sodding planet.
‘Thanks – but no thanks.’
    ‘Oh, sorry,’ Durkan whined. ‘I forgot you don’t do doggie-style.’
    Taking the cigarette between her fingers, she jabbed an angry hand towards him. ‘For fuck’s sake, Gerry, it’s not like we haven’t got things to do here.’
    ‘But I’m in the mood. It’s not going to take long.’
    I bet it’s not.
‘You’re supposed to be hiding.’
    ‘I
am
hiding,’ Durkan chuckled. ‘Hiding in plain sight.’
    ‘Hiding in plain sight and off your fucking face,’ she scolded, realising that she was sounding like his mum and hating herself for it,