Skagboys Read online

  They go to Alison’s flat in Pilrig. She looks terrible; minus her make-up and wearing a long blue dressing gown, her increasingly gaunt features heightened by her hair pinned tightly back, with dark circles under her eyes, Renton has to look twice to ascertain it’s actually her. She sniffles, unable to stop the thin trickle of snot running out of one nostril, and is compelled to wipe it on her sleeve. — Got a stinkin cauld, she protests, in response to their cynical, hungry scowls. They request that she call Spud at his mother’s, reasoning that neither of them would be a welcome voice should Colleen Murphy pick up. — Danny’s fell oot with her again, Alison tells them. — He stayed here on the couch the other night, now he’s at Ricky Monaghan’s.

  They call Ricky’s, and Spud picks up the phone. Before Sick Boy can ask, he blurts out, — Simon, any skag? Ah’m seek as a poisoned rat, catboy.

  — Nup, we’re aw in the same boat. Ye hear anything, make sure they ken we’re in the frame. Call ye later. He puts the phone down. During the conversation, his eyes have never left Alison. — Are you sure thaire’s nowt gaun aroond, he asks her, tones both pointed and pleading.

  — Nup. Nowt, she says with a final, vapid shrug.

  — Right … Sick Boy’s lip curls south, and he and Renton depart briskly. Alison’s glad to see them go, even Simon, as she’d come within an ace of disclosing her mother’s morphine stash. Fuck them all: you never know how long this drought would last for and she craves her dead mother’s silver needle, can envision one last drop of maternal blood lodged there sliding into her own hungry veins. Mum would want me to have it.

  Renton and Sick Boy find themselves once more on the well-worn path towards Tollcross. They head up the Walk and then the Bridges and across the Meadows without exchanging a single word and barely looking at each other. Their silence is a serious pact; they’re still at the stage where, with mental effort, they can try and negate the worst of their personal misery. They get to Swanney’s and it looks as lifeless as an empty film set. — What now? Sick Boy says.

  — We keep movin till we see something or think ay something, or we just lay doon and die like dugs.

  Walk on through the wind …

  Walk on through the rain …

  Billy and me were bored oan that drizzly early-morning walk, n cauld wi waiting oan wheezy auld Granda. It was farcical. He couldnae dae this any mair. Then, just beyond the tower, he suddenly stopped, standing rigid and sucking in a huge breath. It was as if he was trying to pull the shrapnel lodged inside him towards his core. A strange smile played on his lips, then it was obliterated by a spluttered cough as he keeled over, crumpling in a kind ay slow motion tae the tarmacked esplanade. — Stey here! Billy commanded. — Ah’ll get help! He ran off down the prom, talked tae two teenagers who looked aw awkward, then left them, bolting ower the road. He was only going tae the shops tae get somebody tae phone, but at the time I thought he’d just run away, leaving me tae deal wi the embarrassment.

  Though your dreams be tossed and blown …

  So I watched my grandfather die, sometimes glancing oot tae the sea, when the witnessing of that grotesque, bewildering event got too much. Because, as he struggled for air, his florid face burning, his rolling amphibious eyes being squeezed from his skull, I had the sense he’d come from the ocean, was caught ashore with the tide out. Ah wanted to tell them tae get him tae the water, even though it made no real sense. Ah felt the woman before ah saw her, ages with my mum, perhaps a bit younger, comforting me, her bosom muffling the sobs ah hudnae realised ah’d been making, as two men tried to help Granda. But he’d gone.

  Walk on …

  Billy ran back down the prom, glaring at me accusingly like he wanted to batter me, like ah’d failed tae keep Granda Renton alive till the ambulance came. Ah mind that woman wanted me tae go wi her, and ah kind ay wanted tae cause she was nice, but Billy gied her a black look n tugged oan ma hand. But when they took Granda away, he put his airm roond ma shoodir, and then bought us baith a cone, for that silent walk back tae the guest hoose. Ma and Dad and Grandma Renton had gone, but Auntie Alice was there and took care ay us.

  Oan the bus gaun back up, while Granny Renton sat in shock, my ma and dad kept lookin at me as ah pit my Shoot fitba stickers intae their album. Manchester City: Colin Bell, Francis Lee, Mike Summerbee, Phil Beal, Glyn Pardoe, Alan Oakes. Kilmarnock: Gerry Queen, John Gilmour, Eddie Morrison, Tommy McLean, Jim McSherry. — Why does he no say anything, Davie? ah mind ay Ma asking, gurgling doolally Wee Davie in her lap. My dad just sat in a trance, occasionally squeezing his mother’s hand. — Shock … he’ll be fine … he croaked out.

  Walk on …

  They walk for what seems like an age, shivering, dropping coins in phone boxes with spirits rising each time in anticipation, but the same grim message prevails: nothing doing, no room at the inn. Those tired, beaten voices on other end of the line: groaning as if in recognition that Death is already chalking their doors with crosses. Still they walk; walking for the sake of walking, unthinking blood and bone and breath, stripped of volition, walking themselves into inertia, a dullness of intellect, sensibility, hope and consciousness. All calculations purely biological.

  Glancing sideways at his reflection in the passing shop windows, Renton is reminded of an orang-utan; arms swinging pendulously like he’s wearing lead bracelets, greasy tufts of red hair spiking up through a nest of matted sweat and dirt.

  After a while, they realise they’re in Gorgie. This part of the city makes them feel like intruders. They seem to smell the Hibernian off you over here, Renton reflects; not just the gadges coming out the bookies and boozers, but the young mothers in trackies wheeling the pushchairs, and strangely, worst of all, the auld wifies with gobs like feline ringpieces, who glower witchlike as they shamble by, sick and paranoid.

  Who are these people, these aliens, that we move among in such sadness?

  Renton thinks their walking has been aimless, with no pattern. But fragments of information and supposition have been coalescing in his fevered brain, guiding his tired legs. Sick Boy senses it from him, following like a hungry dog in pursuit of a jakey master who still might be able to provide some sort of a meal. They steal down Wheatfield Road into a deathly stillness, which spells H-E-R-O-I-N to him, as Renton scents the same desolate skag reek of Albert Street. — What are we daein here?

  He strides on, Sick Boy still following in psycho-puppy mode, sinews bulging in his neck. The grass grows thick and coarse between the cobblestones on the street. Yet the Victorian tenements seem to escape any sun as they head past them, looking over at Tynecastle Stadium towards the back of the Wheatfield shed, recalling derby-day battles of old under its long roof, back in the pre-segregated times. The distillery stands at the bottom of the deathly quiet street, and there’s a narrow slip road to the left that snakes under the railway bridge, easily missable, he thinks, if you weren’t aware of its presence.

  — This is it, Renton says, — this is where they make it.

  They shuffle under it, and just a few yards ahead a second railway overpass towers above them. Sandwiched between the two bridges, on the right, a three-storey, Victorian building of red sandstone bears the sign: BLANDFIELD WORKS.

  This building is the first part of the pharmaceutical manufacturers, the offices where company sales reps are greeted and enquiries dealt with. The subsequent ones, past the next set of railway tracks, are less welcoming, surrounded by high perimeter fences and topped with razor wire. Renton immediately clocks the plethora of security spy cameras, pointing out at them into the street. He notes that Sick Boy is doing the same, his large protruding eyes, scanning and his fevered brain processing information. Employees mill around, coming and going to and from different shifts.

  As they walk, Renton gives voice to his thoughts. — This has tae be where the likes ay Seeker n Swanney got their original skag supply, that fabby white stuff. Seeker obviously put the bite on some poor cunt workin here.

  — Yes! It all has tae come fae
here, Sick Boy twitches. — Let’s phone him again!

  Renton disregards his prompt, his heated mind trying to piece things together. Seeker and Swanney would each have some poor sucker on the inside and they’d be getting the boys to take big risks by bringing the shit out. But no longer: their contacts are either in jail, have taken off, or worse. The company had cottoned on to the scam, and increased the security, making it impossible for employees to smuggle gear out of the complex. Now Swanney and Seeker are down the pecking order in a national pyramid that brings in the brown from Afghanistan and Pakistan, instead of being local top dogs selling pure product. Renton looks grimly through the fortified chain fence into the plant. — It’s aw in there. The best, purest shit we ever hud, or will ever get. Behind those gates, fences and waws.

  — So what do we dae? Ask the cunts in thaire tae sort us oot? Sick Boy scorns.

  Once again, Renton ignores him, continuing his brisk walk around the site, pressing Sick Boy to string along. The latter’s busy eyes follow his friend’s sight line, opening a window to the thoughts ticking over in his head.

  This cunt can’t be fucking serious …

  But Renton has never been more serious. The logical side of his brain has given way to the imperative of sickness. The strained muscles, the throbbing bones and the shredded nerves keep screaming: YES YES YES …

  The opium factory. Those railway lines seeming to define the place, one set dividing the plant from the distillery, the other bisecting it. They walk past the employee car park, looking over the big fence to the most startling building in a site made up of many disparate examples of industrial architecture: a large silver box with a multitude of gleaming pipes and tubes spilling out from one side, some of them rising skywards. — That looks like chemical processing taking place in there, Renton says. — That’s goat tae be where they make the fuckin skag!

  — Aye … but … we cannae fuckin brek in!

  The next thing that catches Renton’s eye is a loading bay, with large plastic box containers piled on top of each other. — Storage. Wonder what the fuck’s in they boaxes?

  They gape in awe at those receptacles, stacked up behind the barbed-wire fences and security cameras. Just the contents of one of them would last them for such a long, long time. — But ye cannae jist … Sick Boy begins in feeble protest.

  As they prowl past the adjacent wasteland, which a billboard informs them is designated for a new supermarket, they try to think things through. — Where they make it, n where they store it, Sick Boy ruminates, realising that he’s converted. They are sick and there’s simply no option.

  — First, there’s how to get in, Renton nods, — second, how tae get access tae the morphine.

  — This plant probably manufactures aw sorts ay pharmaceuticals, no just skag. It could be like looking for a fucking three-figure IQ in Tynecastle, Sick Boy spits. — If only we had inside info!

  — Well, we’re no gaun tae Swanney or Seeker tae get it, Renton says.

  — No way.

  Still slowly circumnavigating the edge of the plant, they move round to the busy, submerged Western Approach Road, watching the cars shoot into the city. It was once yet another old railway line, which led to the now defunct Caledonian Station at the West End of Princes Street. I’m a fucking trainspotter, Renton thinks, as he looks up and watches a goods train pass overhead. The two lines that go through the plant must be part of the old Edinburgh suburban system, now just used for freight rather than passengers. This part of the line, though, hadn’t been made into a public cycle path, nor did it house a new development of flats like most of the old Edinburgh rail network. And the embankments were fortified. Why did the circular south suburban line remain intact while the rest of the local Edinburgh urban railway had been ruthlessly ripped up under the infamous Beeching cuts of the sixties? It had to be the skag plant. They wanted people kept away from it.

  — That’s the way, Renton says, — we get in through the railway line.

  — Aye, it’s well barricaded roond here, but they cannae protect the whole fuckin line. We’ll find a way. Sick Boy’s chin juts out in defiance.

  But Sick Boy’s confidence instantly releases Renton’s inner doubts. — This is too much. We bottled it gaun through customs in Essex wi a couple ay poxy wee packets, now we’re gaunny brek intae a fortified plant?

  — Aye, we are. Sick Boy looks up into the clear blue sky, and back at the overhead railway lines. — Cause we have tae!

  They see no plant entrance or egress from the Western Approach Road, as the sun-glinted cars rush by. Crossing over towards Murrayfield Stadium, which stands imposingly opposite the manufacturing complex, they scramble up a pathway that curls up by the railway embankment. From this elevated vantage the dominant building in the plant is a red-bricked, corrugated-roofed Victorian structure which backs onto the road, with a huge barbed-wire fence on top of a stone perimeter wall; the railway line access is prohibited by a similar barrier. A group of tin-hatted railway workers, standing outside a Portakabin, regard them with suspicion. — Fuck this, we’d better nash, says Sick Boy.

  — Stay cool. Leave the talking tae me, Renton says as a man advances towards them.

  — What are you wantin?

  — Sorry, mate, is this private property?

  — Aye, it’s the railway’s property, the man explains.

  — Too bad, Renton says wistfully, looking over at the old part of the plant that backs onto the Western Approach Road. — I’m an artist. There’s some fascinating Victorian architecture there, great buildings.

  — Aye, the man concedes, seeming to warm to him.

  — Would’ve been great tae dae some sketches. Well, sorry to intrude.

  — Nae bother. If ye want tae apply tae the railway’s PR at Waverley Station, they’ll mibbe sort ye oot wi a pass.

  — Great! I’ll probably go and do just that. Thanks for your help.

  Sick Boy is feeling way too poorly to enjoy Renton’s performance. A groan rises from his crushed bowels, his deadened flesh crying for heroin, his brain swollen as he gets a whiff of a rank-rotten stench coming from his own body and clothes. He picks some dried, crusted slime from the corner of his eyes.

  He’s relieved beyond words when the small talk ends and they move back down the path, onto the road, crossing over to the wasteland, heading back round the perimeter of the plant. Renton stops again, just to look down at the railed space between the Victorian office buildings and the embankment and overhead bridge. That’s when he sees it; points it out to Sick Boy.

  It’s a mundane red-bricked outbuilding, topped with what looks to be a felt roof. It has a small rectangle of a door, painted green. It sits by the detritus of an older building, now a pile of algae, silt-and-weed-covered bricks and rotting boards. They stall to peer through the fence at it, then quickly move on as two suits emerge from the offices, heading to the car park over the road, lost in business-speak. But they know what they’re going to do. Getting back down to Gorgie Road, they walk into the city, stopping at Bauermeister’s on George IV Bridge to shoplift the Ordinance Survey map covering this segment of inner-city west Edinburgh that now obsesses them.

  When they get back to the flat in Montgomery Street, Hazel has gone. Renton says nothing. They’ve barely settled when there’s a timorous knock on the door. They open it to be confronted by Spud and Keezbo, a tearful Laurel and Hardy, ailing and shaky through lack of skag. In the front room, Renton and Sick Boy start to outline their proposition, when there’s another sudden, disquieting knock on the door. It’s Matty, looking completely destroyed. Renton notes that he hasn’t even bothered to try and disguise the receding bits at the side of his hairline by blowing the front central section into a bouffant spread. He smells like an exhumed corpse might, and one side of his face twitches in semi-permanent spasm. He looks sicker than any of them. They glance at each other and decide that they can’t leave him out. So Renton continues with the rundown.

  — It’s mental man, ne
ver work, we will dae big time, telling ye, and we will dae it big time. Tellin ye, no way, man, no way … Spud gasps.

  — Wey we see it, we’ve nae choice, Renton shrugs. — Ah’ve been oantae people in Glesgay, London and Manchester. The polis n customs made a lot ay big seizures lately and thaire’s jist nae fuckin broon. It’s a proper drought. So it’s either take a punt oan this pawkle or dae cauld turkey. It’s as simple as that.

  — I’ve been daein too much gear tae try that, Sick Boy shakes his head. Sweat seeps from his pores, his body revolting at the very notion. — It’ll kill us. And I don’t fucking well think that Amelia n Tom in St Monans are gaunny be too keen tae welcome us back intae rehab. And how long is it gaunny take till some cunt has the confidence tae bring another shipment in, or till the polis start puntin it back oot oantae the streets? Too long for me, that’s a fucking cert!

  — What dae youse think but, boys? Renton looks around the taut faces, into jittery eyes.

  — If it looks a sound plan, ah’m in, Matty says doubtfully.

  — Me n aw, Mr Mark, Mr Simon, Keezbo confirms.

  Everyone looks at Spud. — Awright, he says in a defeated, barely audible rasp.

  Renton shows them two diagrams, which he spreads out on the floor. One is the OS map, supplemented with his felt-tipped pen lines. The other is a drawing they can’t make head nor tail of. — Obviously, dinnae mention this tae any cunt, no even mates. He looks round them all. — Thank fuck Franco’s inside. He’d caw us aw the cunts under the sun then insist oan takin ower. N he’d tell us that we need tae kick the fuck oot ay the security guards instead ay avoidin thum!

  They all force a feeble chortle, except Matty, who Renton notes is already acting the cunt. His face is sour, and contemptuous sighs keep erupting from him. Nonetheless, Renton points to the rail lines on the map. — We get oantae the railway line at the old Gorgie Station, just off Gorgie Road. We park the motor and haul the planks up the embankment and walk wi them doon the line towards Murrayfield –