“Is it?”
“If you just sit there with your hand out, you get moved on, and if you’re too pushy, you run the risk of getting an ASBO, like.”
Thorne knew what Spike was talking about. The Anti-Social Behaviour Act, launched in a blaze of Blairite glory, was supposed to curb the activities of nuisance neighbors, of tearaway teenagers, and of others who blighted the lives of the majority living in the inner cities. Overly aggressive begging certainly came within the remit of the legislation, but it had become clear pretty quickly that certain councils were using their own interpretation of aggressive in an effort to eradicate beggars of any description. Westminster Council, in particular, was chucking Anti-Social Behaviour Orders around like they were parking tickets-making a sustained effort to criminalize begging, the consumption of alcohol on the street, and any other activity liable to offend. God forbid they should upset those honest, upright citizens who might be confronted by such indecent behavior on their way home to beat their children and drink themselves into a stupor indoors…
“Plus, there’s the asylum seekers,” Spike said. “A lot of them use their kids, or borrow other people’s, and if punters are going to give their change to beggars, like as not they’ll give it to them. So, you know, you need a bit of extra dosh, you have to be clever. You have to get a bit naughty now and again.”
“Naughty?”
“Yeah, naughty. Now, I mean, there’s degrees of naughtiness, like
…”
Thorne nodded. He’d seen just about every sort.
“Some of the ones with a real bad habit can get a bit desperate, you know? There was this one bloke used to put on a crash helmet and run into the chemist’s with a claw hammer. I seen him one time running out carrying the dangerous-drugs cabinet on his back. Lugging this dirty great metal box up the fucking street. Another mate of mine used to go into shops just before they closed and hide, like. Then, after they shut up, he’d rob the place, then break out.”
“Breaking and exiting…”
Spike cackled, enjoying Thorne’s joke, repeating it a couple of times. “I’m just talking about a bit of nicking, yeah? A spot of light shoplifting. Marks amp; Spencer’s is the best. You used to be able to nick stuff, take it back, and they’d give you the money for it. These days they just give you vouchers, but you can sell them easily enough. Say you sell twenty quid’s worth of vouchers to some punter for fifteen? You’re sorted, and they get an extra fiver’s worth of pants and socks, right? Caz is ace at all that stuff…”
Thorne was fairly sure he’d need to supplement his forty-six pounds a week somehow, but wasn’t convinced that shoplifting was the best way to do it. It wasn’t any sort of ethical problem: minor offenses would be countenanced as part of his undercover role. It was more about avoiding the hassle of getting caught. He hadn’t nicked anything since he was thirteen or fourteen, and that had been a short-lived shoplifting career. He could still remember the look on his old man’s face after he’d been marched back from the local branch of W. H. Smith by a beat bobby.
“You all right?” Spike asked.
“I’m fine.”
He could still remember the look…
“I got done for nicking an Elton John album from Smith’s when I was a kid.” Thorne hadn’t intended to say anything at all, but once it had started coming out of his mouth, he felt good sharing the memory. “They didn’t actually prosecute me in the end, but it put the shits up me, I can tell you. My dad went fucking mental.”
“Did he belt you?”
“No, my mum did.” Thorne remembered his mum’s largely unsuccessful efforts to instill a bit of discipline. She’d used her hand on the back of his leg, or sometimes a spiky blue hairbrush, but her heart had never really been in it. “The look on my dad’s face was far worse, though.”
“Were you scared of him?”
Thorne was about to make some crack about his father being afraid of him, but stopped himself. He thought about how, toward the end, his father had spent most of his time afraid. Thorne hated the idea that this might be the way he remembered him.
“Fucking hell,” Spike said. “Elton John?”
Thorne stared blankly back at the security guard who was eyeing them from a corner. “He was better then…”
They stepped back out on to the street and stood for a minute, unsure exactly what to do next. Suddenly Spike raised his arm and pointed back in the direction they’d come. “My sister works there.” He flapped his hand toward Tottenham Court Road and beyond. “In the City. Working with stocks and bonds or something. She’s got a posh flat in Docklands.”
Thorne was surprised, more at what Spike had said than the fact that he was following Thorne’s lead, and talking about his family. Thorne had clearly been wrong in assuming that people who lived like Spike couldn’t possibly have any close relatives nearby.
“Do you see her?”
“I’ve seen her a couple of times since I started living on the street. Both times she got a bit upset.” He began to step from foot to foot, rocking, as Thorne had seen him do on the night he’d first met him. “I’ve not seen her for a while, like.”
Thorne wanted to know more, but before he could say anything, Spike began moving away quickly. “Let’s have something to eat…”
Thorne hadn’t eaten for eight hours. He hurried to catch up.
Spike pointed ahead again. “There’s a McDonald’s back up here on the right. Shall we go mad?”
“I knew there was more to this place than just somewhere to have a shit.” Thorne shoved the last of the cheeseburger into his mouth and chewed enthusiastically. The food tasted fantastic.
Spike was on his third Crunchie McFlurry. Chocolate and ice cream. Standard smackhead fare.
“The H-Plan diet,” Spike said, grinning. The ice cream coated his teeth, making them far whiter than they were normally.
“What about that copper Britton, then?” Thorne asked. “What’s he like?”
“He’s all right.”
“All right?”
“Yeah, well, he’s about the same as the rest of ’em, isn’t he? None of that lot down Charing Cross can make their minds up what bloody side they’re on, like.” Spike was talking faster, running one word into the next. His face was suddenly gray and Thorne could see the goose pimples standing out across the backs of his hands. “Can’t decide if they’re there to help us or sweep us off the street.”
“Where is Caroline, anyway?” Thorne asked.
Spike grunted. What?
“That copper was asking, wasn’t he? I haven’t seen her all day. You two fallen out?”
“She had to go and meet her caseworker. He keeps trying to encourage her to get a hostel place, but she’s even less keen on ’em than I am.”
“She’s ‘chaotic,’ too, right?”
“Not really. She’s just got a problem with institutions. Spent a lot of time in care when she was a kid and stuff. In homes. It was things that happened to her in institutions that put her on the street in the first place, d’you know what I mean?”
Thorne thought that he probably did.
There were few women visible among the community of rough sleepers. So far, Thorne had seen no more than a handful. He’d asked Brendan Maxwell about it, who had explained how a great number of women ended up among the vast population of the city’s “hidden” homeless.
Spike used language that was a little more basic.
“See, a lot of girls can get a bed for the night, but they have to share it with some fat, sweaty cunt whose wife doesn’t understand him. Selling their arses, them and a few young boys, right? That’s what these caseworkers are worried about. Don’t have to worry about Caroline, though. She’d rather starve.”
“It’s not food that’s the problem, though, is it?” Thorne said.
Spike took another mouthful of ice cream, and was off on another tangent. He and Thorne began to speculate on just how shitty you’d have to look to be refused entry to various London restaurants. Dressed as they were now, Spike decided that there’d be little or no problem in any KFC or Pizza Hut. Thorne thought they’d have no chance whatsoever of making it past the doormen at the Ivy or Quaglino’s, but still had a fair way to go yet before they were considered too shitty to be allowed into a Garfunkel’s.