How the Dead Live (Factory 3) by Derek Raymond Read Free Book Online Page A

said.
    ‘I might just have to shut your yap for you after all,’ said the driver.
    ‘I’m busy,’ I said. I was examining their kit. It looked all right, spanking new to me, though they had taken a long time getting itout of their car and I hadn’t seen it come out of its box. Anyway, I didn’t care much – there was no chance of my being over the top with a fast-food inside me and only one pint of beer, and that hours before. When I had finished they took it away and conferred by their headlights. Then the driver came back to me and said: ‘It’s just as we thought, you’re right over the top, yes.’ And his mate added: ‘Oh yes, yes. Way over.’
    ‘I didn’t expect anything else,’ I said, ‘not parked next to you two, but can I just look at that gear I blew into?’
    ‘No you may not,’ they said together, ‘as this is now, or could be, evidence in a matter that may lead to your prosecution on a charge of being drunk in charge of a motor vehicle.’ The driver added: ‘So now let’s all go inside, shall we?’
    ‘It certainly does look inviting,’ I said, ‘yet another police station.’
    ‘Oh so you know about them, do you?’ said the driver. ‘I thought you might have.’
    ‘You could say that,’ I said. ‘Yes, you definitely could.’
    ‘That’s it, he’s got form,’ said the other copper, ‘you can almost get to smell it, can’t you? I’ll bet you it’s a yard long; we’ve got a right runner here, Ben.’
    We went through the doors and crossed to the desk sergeant, a hatless middle-aged man with a rash in his hair. ‘Well?’ he said, ‘what’s this, then?’
    ‘Drink and drive,’ said the copper called Ben, ‘way over the top, bang to rights.’
    ‘How I do love a country Londoner,’ I said.
‘Bang to rights!’ I
mimicked. ‘1950s slang, I lap it up.’
    ‘And cheeky with it,’ said the same copper, reddening. The desk sergeant looked up at me and said: ‘You’d better realize, laddie, you’re doing yourself no good with that kind of talk.’
    ‘What you’d better realize,’ I said in a leaden voice, ‘is that I’ve got an actual name, and I strongly recommend you to use it. It’s neither sonny, laddie, darling nor dear, what do you take me for? A sheepdog starring in an old B-movie?’
    ‘All right, all right,’ said the sergeant warily. He pulled his pad of charge sheets towards him. ‘Since it seems you’ve got a name let’s have it, if you’re sober enough to give it.’
    So I gave it to him.
    ‘Address?’
    I told him Earlsfield.
    ‘Place of work?’
    ‘Poland Street.’
    ‘Poland Street?’ he said, creasing his eyes up. ‘What number in Poland Street?’
    I told him the number.
    ‘That somehow rings a bell,’ he said.
    ‘It ought to.’
    ‘Oh well, never mind,’ he said. He yawned. ‘Any profession?’
    ‘You bet,’ I said. I dropped my warrant card on his desk. ‘You can see what profession.’
    An extremely long silence followed. To end it I said to the sergeant: ‘Your apprentices here have really got their goolies tangled up in the high wire this time, eh, Sarge?’
    ‘Why the fuck didn’t you tell us?’ yelled the driver.
    ‘Because I’m in the business of extracting information,’ I said, ‘not volunteering it.’
    ‘Let’s all keep calm, shall we?’ said the desk sergeant.
    ‘You can screw the calm,’ I said. ‘I may well bring a charge against these officers, in that they knowingly made and preferred against me and conspired to ma ke a false drink-and-drive charge against me.’ I said to them: ‘Now bring me that kit I blew into, and double.’
    ‘You’ve got to realize,’ said the desk sergeant, ‘these are my men.’
    ‘I realize that all right,’ I said, ‘and I don’t give a fuck about it, so you’d better put your weight behind me, otherwise it’ll be your head on a plate too, and new jobs aren’t so easy for old men to find in these hard times.’
    ‘All right,’ said the desk sergeant.