"Do you remember that time whenever you were first made Sarge, Geordie
" he said, "and all the guys in the canteen painted those little Hitler moustaches on themselves
"
George smiled at the memory.
"Sure, mate. I remember." It had been - what - three, four years ago? Yet, it seemed like only yesterday. For George, it might as well have been yesterday that he got the stripes and the much welcomed pay rise to go with it. He still felt he was learning the ropes, still felt he was fresh to the job. Of course, the irony now was that the stripes on his arm meant nothing. The last person to place any value on those three white lines was lying beside him, hanging precariously between life and
George reached out, as Norman suddenly bent double on the bed, laughing giving way to coughing. Speckles of blood were scattered across the nearby cardboard boxes, like Ragu sauce. George wiped his lips, gently, with a wet baby wipe. The older cop settled back, again, blowing out some air.
"Fuck me," he said, suddenly serious.
His breathing remained heavy and deep. Each cough was almost tangible, as if you could catch it in your hand, like clay. He was drawing close to the end, to the Great Whatever that lay beyond life, and beyond the shadow of life that the virus offered. But Big Norman was laughing, when he could. He wanted to enjoy every last moment of life. He wanted to suck in every last breath that was due to him, fuelling a few more moments, a few more seconds. And it was breaking George's heart to watch him struggle like that.
"And that other time, when we were sent out to that old bloke's house," he said, cracking his tired skin to smile again. "You remember, don't you? The one who had been dead for about four weeks before the neighbours caught a whiff of him
" Norman coughed again, his eyes strained and face full of pain as he bent over. Sweat broke across his forehead, like raindrops on a leaf. George sat down on the cold, concrete floor by his side, reaching forward with a fresh wet wipe, this time to cool his partner's forehead down. "And he was just lying there, wasn't he mate?" Norman continued. "He was just lying there, pants around his ankles
with a clothes peg on his cock."
George allowed himself a chuckle at that one. He remembered the old man well. He'd lived on his own for years. No family, very few friends. His flat had been an absolute fucking mess, suggesting the four-quid-an- hour home help hadn't been putting much backbone into her work. He recalled asking the guys in the morgue why the old boy had the clothes peg like that. They'd thought it was to stop his urine leaking. Seemed the old boy was fighting incontinence, as well as the cancer. In the end, though, it was a heart attack that took him. George remembered Norman shaking his head at that one. Then laughing.
"The things you see in this job. Eh, Norman?"
"You said it, mate
" Norman coughed again, harder this time. "You said it." He turned to look at George, suddenly serious for a moment. He reached out his hand, George grabbing it and holding it tight. It was cold as ice, and clammy. The flu was rinsing every bit of heat and moisture from his body. "We had some good times, mate
" he said. "I'll be honest, though
I thought you were a prick when I first met you. All rule books and regulations. You loved them, mate! You weren't an old- style, get-stuck-in RUC man, like me
"
"Well, I learned the hard way, Norm
"
"You did, mate. But you always kept your cool, though. You never lost it, like me
not until -"
"Don't, Norman. Don't go there
"
"I have to, mate. We haven't talked about it
and -" He coughed harder, this time, and more sharply. It was as if he were puking up knives. As if his tubes and airways were made of barbed wire, now, stabbing him with every breath he took. "And, I think we need to
" he continued in a low, crackling voice.
His face was paling fast. Like there was a hole at the bottom of his feet, all the colour draining out and down some invisible drain. Norman wiped his mouth, a slither of bloody bile spreading across his arm like a dead snail. He looked at it, disgusted by himself. George reached forward with a towel to quickly clean him.
He thought back to that fateful day, the day of the quarantine. George had tried to blot it out, shake it from his memory the way dogs shook water from their hair. But it wasn't so easy. There was too much dampening his conscience. And that little girl's ghost wouldn't let it lie. The scene in the old woman's flat. He could almost smell its mustiness in the air, now. Her husband, lying dead on the couch only minutes before, getting up and walking. The crowds banging against the door. The old man walking towards Norman. The old woman hanging off his arm, screaming. The crowds breaking the door down, coming at him. The gun, raised again in his hands
"They were coming to us for help, weren't they, mate? Running away from something else. From those fucking -" He began coughing again, having excited himself. He fought for breath, grabbing his chest as if expecting it not to work. "We fucked up," he said, a primal keen escaping his throat. "We really fucked up
They weren't coming
at
us. They were coming for us!"
George stood up, turning away from the candid words of his fading friend. He recalled that night like it was yesterday. Or an hour ago. Or two minutes ago. Or right now. The crowds closing in on them. A much healthier Norman swinging his baton without discrimination. He never had been a man to take any shit, George thought.
Then he thought of himself. Standing there, hands clammy. Visor damp with the quickening of his breath. And that woman. The one who'd been shouting at him, the one with the phone. He remembered her judging him, shaking her head. He remembered wanting to give her something to
really
judge. He'd fired at her with anger. He remembered that, too. It was the first time he'd fired a gun with real anger in his heart. He also remembered enjoying it. And not just the act of petty vengeance; he remembered enjoying the aesthetics, too. The shot piercing her neck, tearing through her skin like a knife through bread. How she fell into the crowd, gripping her torn, useless throat, eyes gaping from under her hair like tiny, bright bulbs.
And then they had been upon him, grabbing him, begging him. He was surrounded, people flooding into the room and gathering behind him like a big brother in a schoolyard fight. They wanted him to protect them, guard them, help them. They wanted him to
police
them.
George turned to this friend. He watched Norman pull a small clear plastic bag from his breast pocket. It was full of white dust.
Norman smiled, guiltily.
"Picked it off that wee -" he paused to cough more dagger-sharp phlegm up, "scrotum back at the house
" George had seen Norman take similar bags from people before. He would have pinned them up against the wall, taken the dope from them, then beat blue hell out of them. George had usually turned his head, wandering down a nearby alleyway, at that point. Norman would return as if nothing had happened, sliding into their patrol car and muttering something about grabbing a McDonalds or coffee. It was just one of those things.
"What?" Norman said, spluttering slightly, then wiping his mouth with a shaking hand. "Are you going to judge me even now?"
George had never said anything to Norman about the drugs, but the older cop would have known rightly what his younger colleague thought of it all. It was a damnable offence for a police officer to be involved with illegal drugs. George knew he should have disciplined Norman in the appropriate manner. But, in reality, he had always felt intimidated by Norman. Especially in the early days. It was Norman's age and length of service. His experience. The fact that the big man had survived the very worst years of policing in Northern Ireland. His cynicism about the way things were done now, compared to the way things were done then. He made George feel inferior, even as his superior. He never felt able to question Norman, chastise him, discipline him. Of course, Norman gave something in return for George's silence, his submissive respect. The older cop's loyalty was second to none. He would back George up to a fault. Anyone in the force talking shit behind the young Sergeant's back was in danger of a bloody nose, courtesy of the big man. For George, much of the success he enjoyed (endured?) was due to having Norman watch his back. It was a quiet trade-off between the two men, an unwritten rule. Never questioned nor even verbalised.
Until now.
"I never judged you, Norman," said George. "But I was disappointed in you." There. It had been said. And George almost felt weak for waiting until now. He wondered to himself what exactly was the point in saying something like that to a dying man. A weak man, wrapped in his own piss and puke and sweat like some kind of drunk on the street. He knew he wouldn't have said that to a healthy Norman, to a Norman who was strong enough to stand on his feet and look him in the eye. So, what would it achieve to say it now?
But Norman seemed not to care about those kinds of details. Norman had other things on his mind, other, more important things which needed to be said, needed to be addressed.
"Look at me, George
" he said, his voice growing weaker, his breathing ebbing closer to his chest.
George turned and looked at his partner of five years. He was fading fast. As far from the man he'd first laid eyes upon as heaven was to hell. The formidable man. The intimidating man. None of those things could be said about Norman now, lying on his makeshift bed, crudely wrapped in his stained sleeping bag. The white dust was lying open in front of him, its pure, bleached colour mirroring the pallor of his face.
"You got to go back to that flat
finish business with that little girl. I can't rest until I know she isn't walking around like one of those dead fuckers
"
"Norman, it's too -"
"You got to promise me, George!" he begged, tears glistening in his big, heavy eyes.
George had never seen Norman cry before today, never known he
could
cry.
"Okay," George promised. "I'll do it."
Norman nodded, seeming able to relax more, now that he'd said his piece and got George's word. He seemed to be ushering in death's final embrace, opening the doors of life to allow the Great Leveller a private audience. He reached down to the white dust sitting in the clear plastic bag on his lap. His mouth was hanging open, thick, viscous blood building at the corners of his lips like red jelly. He dipped his fingers in the white dust, messily, like a kid caught in a pie shop. He looked feral. Desperate. In pain. George had seen this before in a dying man. A recklessness. An acute awareness of himself. A final splash of indulgence, just for the hell of it.
He sucked the dust up one nostril like a drowning man fighting for breath. And then, at the end of his arduous fight for pleasure, his hand shook briefly, before falling to his side. His head rolled over one shoulder, eyes still wide and hungry. George wondered if he'd even felt the last hit.
Quietly, George moved over to his friend's bedside. He took the white powder from his hands, using another wet wipe to remove the excess from his nose and mouth. He wiped the sleeping bag where more of the powder had stained like talc. He wiped his collar, his shirt. He wiped his badge. He crumpled the small bag and wipe together and shoved them into another plastic bag, throwing it in the corner as if to discard later.
Then he sat, down on the concrete floor again and ran a hand through Norman's hair. It was matted and sweaty, like pond reeds.
"I'm so sorry, mate
" he said, simply."I'm so very sorry."
McFall lifted the dried up teabag they had used and reused as if it were a dead mouse, dropping it into his teacup and standing back as if it might explode. He poured the last of the water into the cup, heated using the camping cooker. Finally, he added two spoonfuls of sugar.
"Where's mine?" Lark asked him.
McFall looked defensive.
"It's the last of the water," he said. "You were meant to bring more back, but you didn't."
"Oh, so it's my fault we've fuck all here, is it?" scowled the tattooed man. "Even though I went OUT THERE," he continued, raising his voice for dramatic effect, "twice, no less, while you sat here on your lazy, fat arse -"
"I've been cleaning up!" McFall countered. "It's not like I've been doing nothing! And, anyway, it's not like I've never done a supply run in all the time we've -"
"ONCE!" Lark shouted over him. "One single run! And all you brought back was a fucking girl! Who may have been infected!"
"Like you're complaining, mate!" McFall laughed.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Lark asked, a baffled look drawing across his face.
"Come on!" McFall said, still sniggering. "I've seen the way you look at her!"
"Fuck off!" Lark said, looking uncomfortable. He grabbed a magazine, flicking through it suddenly. Feigning interest in some article on golf. McFall really wouldn't have pitched him as a golf lover, though. He sat down with his tea, continuing to laugh at his friend's expense, especially when he noticed Lark's face growing red.
"Look, we're all going to have to leave here tomorrow morning," Lark said, clearly in an attempt to change the subject. "How will you feel about that? Going out there, again, eh?"
"No problem," McFall said, as if the thought didn't bother him. "It's not like I can't go out; it's just I haven't had the opportunity."
"Bollocks!" Lark laughed. "You're a chicken shit! It fucking terrifies you, the thought of going out!"
"No it doesn't!" McFall stressed. "I just don't see the point when -"
"When someone else is stupid enough to go out there for you?" Lark interrupted.
McFall seemed stumped by that one, unable to come up with a retort.
"See?" Lark said, leaning back, all proud of himself. "You're chicken shit."
McFall went to say something, but he was interrupted. He reached for his balaclava-clad face. His head leaned forward, as if within a spasm, as if he had lost control for a second. And then he heard himself sneeze, the blast leaving his mouth and staining the woollen gauze of the balaclava.