London Calling - James Craig [13]
‘No,’ Carlyle nodded. Round here, the police weren’t exactly popular.
‘You wouldn’t want another crack on the head,’ the medic added.
‘No.’
‘And you wouldn’t want to get yourself lynched.’
‘No.’
The gargoyle pulled an unfiltered cigarette out of his packet of Capstan. Carlyle smiled as he recognised the sailor logo. Capstan Full Strength (For men who feel strongly about cigarette taste!) had been his grandfather’s chosen brand. Ever since Carlyle could remember, his granddad’s fingers had been stained yellow from the nicotine and his cardigan pocket marked with cigarette burns. He’d always have a cigarette in one hand, often with a glass of Johnnie Walker Red Label in the other. Carlyle was no expert, but reckoned that the cigs and the booze didn’t do much for the old fella’s health. He had died two years previously, having barely made sixty but looking as if he was twenty years older.
Lighting up, the gargoyle ran a hand over his shaven head to wipe away a sheen of sweat that reappeared almost immediately. After a deep drag, he took the cigarette from his mouth, lent over and coughed up a large lump of brown phlegm which he deposited into the gutter, before plonking himself down on the back step of the ambulance. In the front cab, a radio chattered away, but he paid it no heed.
Along the road Carlyle counted another three ambulances where various policemen and strikers – coal miners who had been engaged in an increasingly messy and bitter industrial dispute for several months now – were being attended to for their minor injuries. One of the policemen was busy arguing with a photographer who had just taken his picture. Rather than wait to get thumped or, worse still, have his camera smashed into the tarmac, the snapper turned on his heels and marched off as quickly as he could manage, without quite breaking into a trot. The copper obviously thought about going after him before deciding that it just wasn’t worth the effort.
Further in the background, the hum of the afternoon’s struggle continued: five thousand police versus five thousand strikers. The scuffles that had been raging all across a worthless couple of acres of scrubland – outside the coking plant in an exhausted village called Orgreave, about five miles south of Sheffield, in the self-proclaimed Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire – showed no sign of abating.
Smoke rose lazily into the sky from a car that had been cremated, by accident or design, on the edge of the skirmishes. The gargoyle took a final monster drag on his cigarette and tossed it next to a discarded yellow Coal Not Dole sticker lying on the pavement. Stubbing it out with the toe of his liver-coloured Doc Martens boot, he wandered into a front garden a couple of doors down, to take a piss behind a bush.
Carlyle looked around, wondering what to do next. This wasn’t what he had signed up for. Pouring most of the last of the water from the bottle over his head, he promised himself that, once this nonsense was finally all over, he would scuttle back to London and bloody well stay there.
Constable John Carlyle’s badge number was V253. Like all of the police officers, however, today he was not wearing any number. The normal identification worn on their shoulder straps had been taken off before the start of the day’s proceedings, to help avoid any trouble involving legal action and civil-liberties claims later. This divestment had become part of the daily pre-ruck ritual on the coach, as the officers were delivered to whichever picket line they were policing that morning.
‘Right, lads,’ barked their Scottish sergeant, Charlie Ross, ‘numbers off. Stick ’em in your pockets. We are not going to have any problems today.’
‘No, Sergeant.’
‘Rest assured, gentlemen, that no one will be pissing all over your fine work accomplished here at a later date.’ A general murmur of agreement rose from the seats closest to him. ‘And, remember, what happens on the