Crime by Irvine Welsh Read Free Book Online

retards
. Clocking the bitter desperation in her eyes, he sees how he’s now a challenge and he
will
get aroused and come. To force him to take part in the circus and become as desperate and degraded by it as her – it’s the one way for this crackhead stripper to keep face. He understands this as he’s participated in versions of it so many times back home in Edinburgh on police stag nights. He discerns the uptightness on the men’s faces. Knows he’s implicating them all by not playing the game, by being better than them, and humiliating this woman by rejecting the only thing she has to sell, her sexuality, or this cartoon version of it. It was less a self-esteem issue than a professional pride one; this was what she did for a living.
    But he can’t do anything other than win this terrible stand-off.
    Eventually she gives up and her face contorts as she whispers, — Faggot, spitefully in his ear, then twists with a gleeful smile to rub up against the next sweaty crotch. The men in the bar cheer as one in palpable relief.
    He sits beside Ginger, whose head throbs psychedelic purple from an overhead light. His old friend looks at him, first in hostility then in greasy admiration. — Fuck sakes, Lennox, that dance cost me twenty bucks and ye didnae even blaw yir muck! That Trudi lassie, she’s fair got you sorted oot, eh! The beast has been tamed!
    Lennox bristles at the use of Ginger’s terminology. — Sorry to waste the dosh. Then he thinks: let him believe what he wants. But now his own mental river is diverting again, away from the stripper, Trudi and Ginger. The drink that had distanced the crime now bubbles it up in his head, like percolating coffee.
    Britney Hamil. Now the beast
had
been tamed. How will Mr Confectioner be serving his sentence? What would he be doing right now? Isolated from all the other prisoners for his own safety – even the other nonces – would his arrogance have evaporated? Lennox suddenly needs to know.
    — Do you ever think aboot these cunts we bang up in Serious Crimes? he asks Ginger. — How they can live with what they’ve done?
    — They live with what they’ve done cause they’re scum. They couldnae care less. Fuck them, let them rot, his reddening face snarls, as he signals to a waitress for more beer.
    It seems to Lennox that this reprimand is as much directed at him as any criminals Ginger can recall. They have another drink, but he senses that things have soured a little.
    When Ginger does speak it’s to call a halt to proceedings. — Better no have any more, I’m way over the limit as it is, he gasps. A girl showily licks the fingers that she had previously used to breach herself as she swivels on the catwalk stage in front of him. — Let’s head back over my side and dump the motor, he says, looking at the girl and raising his glass in appreciation, — after this wee cutey-pie has done her thing, but. Christ, Ray, if I was twenty years younger …
    — You’d still be auld enough tae be her faither.
    — Cheeky cunt.
    Ginger’s driving is better with a drink in him; he takes greater care and actually watches the road, as they get down on to the beach area neighbourhood. It looks run-down in the murky twilight. It seems that many local businesses have gone bust or are hanging on by the skin of their teeth. On the block behind the Holiday Inn, drunk, young vacationers and the transient workers and beach bums who survive on their patronage and carelessness, inhabit the bars and cheap eateries. And all around are old people, solitary and depressed. Lennox comments on this as he and Ginger go into an open patio bar, well removed in its grime and sleaze from the sterile glitz of the Miami Beach establishments.
    — A lot of poor bastards have retired down here with a partner, who’s since kicked the bucket, and now they cannae afford to move elsewhere. I know tons of codgers in that situation. Ginger swirls back a mouthful of beer and signals for some shots of