Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch [120]
‘Used to be a fucking paradise,’ shouted the ranting drunk. He couldn’t be talking about Camden Town which, despite the markets, had never really aspired to much more than shabby respectability.
Camden tube station is where the Northern Line splits into the Edgware and High Barnet branches, and here loads of people got off and even more people got on. We all crushed up a bit more and I found myself staring at the top of the woman in the halter top’s head – she had blonde roots and dandruff. The man in the blue blazer got shoved in from the right, and between them they had me boxed against the door. We all shuffled about trying to keep our armpits out of each other’s faces – just because it’s uncomfortable, there’s really no excuse for not maintaining standards or making eye contact.
The ranting drunk welcomed everyone aboard. ‘The more the merrier,’ he said. ‘Let’s have the whole fucking world in here – why not?’
The smell of the white boy with dreads intensified, adding urine and excrement – I wondered when he’d last changed his fake combat trousers.
Less than a minute out of Camden Town, the train lurched to a stop. An almost subliminal groan rose from the passengers, especially when the lights dimmed as well. I heard someone chuckling at the other end of the carriage.
There had to be something else behind Henry Pyke, I thought, something much worse than a bitter failed actor.
‘Of course there is,’ shouted the ranting drunk. ‘That would be me.’
I craned my neck to spot the drunk, but my view was blocked by the white boy with dreads whose face now had an expression of dumb satisfaction. The smell of shit got worse, and I realised the boy had just relieved himself in his pants. He caught my eye and gave me a big smile of contentment.
‘Who are you?’ I shouted. I tried to get out of my corner but the woman in the halter top thrust herself backwards and pinned me to the wall. The lights dimmed further, and this time the groan from the passengers was anything but subliminal.
‘I’m the demon drink,’ shouted the ranting drunk. ‘I’m gin lane and your local crack house. I’m a follower of Captain Swing, Watt Tyler and Oswald Mosley. I’m the grinning face in the window of the hansom cab; I made Dickens long for the countryside and I’m what your Masters are afraid of.’
I pushed at the woman in the halter top but my arms felt heavy, useless as if in a nightmare. She started to rub herself against me. The carriage was getting hotter and I began to sweat. A hand suddenly grabbed hold of my backside and squeezed tight – it was the man in the blue blazer. I was so shocked that I froze up. I looked at his face but he was staring straight forward with the typically bored, abstracted expression of a seasoned traveller. The bleed from his iPod was louder and more irritating than it had been.
I gagged on the smell of shit and shoved the woman in the halter top enough to get a view down the carriage. I saw my ranting drunk – he had the face of Mr Punch.
The man in the blazer let go of my arse and tried to stick his hand down the back of my jeans. The woman in the halter top ground her hips into my crotch.
‘Is this,’ shouted Mr Punch, ‘any way for a young man to live?’
The white boy with dreads leaned towards me and with great deliberation poked me in the face with his index finger. ‘Poke,’ he said, and giggled. Then he did it again.
There’s a point where a human being will lose it, just lash out at everything around them. Some people spend their lives on the edge of that – most of them end up doing time in prison. Some, a lot of them women, get ground down to that point over years, until one day it’s hello, burning bed and a legal defence of extreme provocation.
I was at that point, and I