London Calling - James Craig [16]
What he wanted was some shade, but there was none to be found. He was in a regular terraced street of straightforward two-up, two-down red-brick houses, each with a cobbled yard at the back and a small garden at the front. It was a typical Northern working-class neighbourhood, the kind of road where trees were in short supply.
In the end, he settled for the shade provided by an overgrown hedge, about five feet tall and seven feet wide, bordering a garden maybe eight doors along from the ambulance. He slipped through the open gate and slumped down on the threadbare grass, before crawling under the bush in search of a little respite from the relentless sun and the blinding light.
Carlyle was woken by a man’s scream, followed by the sounds of a struggle nearby.
‘Get off me you, bastard …’
‘Bite me, would you?’ the male voice growled.
‘Stop it.’
‘C’mon …’
‘Fuck … right … OFF!’
‘Bitch!’
He slowly realised that they were somewhere behind him, in another garden, three doors further along. Getting to his feet, he squinted through the intervening hedge. Unable to see anything, he stepped back into the street and moved towards the arguing voices.
He saw the woman first. She was wearing worn blue jeans and a grubby white V-neck T-shirt. Behind her stood a policeman, sweating profusely in the same protective gear as Carlyle. His helmet had been knocked to the ground, and he had one arm wrapped around her neck. His other hand was firmly clamped on her left breast, which he was pawing slowly in a clockwise direction.
As he stepped closer, Carlyle could see that the woman was not wearing a bra. Her nipples were erect, clearly visible through her T-shirt. He had not had sex – of any description – for more than a fortnight, and now felt a sharp twinge in his groin. The stirring of it brought him a welcome distraction from the headache, but he was embarrassed all the same and felt his cheeks flush.
Looking up, both of them eyed Carlyle warily.
She was about 5’4”, with short blond hair. This was clearly one of the enemy within, one of the women that supported the strikers on the picket line; probably someone’s wife or girlfriend. Her grey eyes were hard and blazed with hatred. Aged anything from twenty-five to fifty-plus, she looked pinched, tired and thin, with the same washed-out, grubby, bleached complexion they all had.
The absence of any badge numbers didn’t stop Carlyle from recognising Trevor Miller. They had come up from London together at the beginning of the tour and, although the two of them didn’t always end up working on the same picket line, Carlyle had noticed him on each of the last three days. Maybe five years older than Carlyle, Miller was far too full of himself, a mouthy so-and-so only too eager to hold forth on what he was going to do to these ‘stupid Northern wankers’. Carlyle had last seen him earlier the same day, chasing some bloke over a patch of waste ground in the no man’s land intervening between the police and the pickets. The striker had been wearing a toy police hat covered in union stickers, as he flipped Miller the finger and headed off like a scalded cat. Trevor, truncheon at the ready, struggled to catch up with him through a barrage of catcalls and the occasional missile hurled by other strikers.
That had been several hours ago. So what was Miller doing here, now?
Recognising Carlyle, he sized up the situation for a second or two, preparing an explanation. ‘It’s OK,’ he said, his expression blank, ‘I’ve got this sorted.’ He glanced down at his hand, which remained clamped on the woman’s breast, rising and falling with her breathing.
‘What’s going on, Trevor?’
The woman belatedly piped up: ‘He’s touching me up, the dirty bastard.’
Carlyle took a step closer. Miller automatically took a step back, half dragging the woman with him. ‘Just fuck off out of it, Carlyle,’ he snarled. He was six foot plus, which Carlyle knew gave him