Her relief at seeing Maurie was tangible, and her emotion welled up to moisten those big brown eyes, so that they soaked up and reflected almost every ounce of light in this whole dismal place.
We all stood back a little, feeling like intruders, embarrassed and unwilling witnesses to a very personal moment. She hardly noticed us.
Then she glanced nervously along the corridor before ushering us inside. ‘Come in. Quick. You don’t want to be seen out here.’
We shuffled into the flat after Rachel and Maurie like sheep, and she closed the door carefully behind us. Through an open door on the left I saw an unmade bed, street light from the window falling across a tangle of sweat-stained sheets. From the hall she led us into the living room, where glass doors opened on to a cluttered balcony that looked out into the very heart of the Quarry Hill development. It seemed that half the flat had spilled out on to the balcony, bags of rubbish, broken bits of furniture, the detritus of a life in disarray, all piled up like debris washed ashore after a storm. The balcony itself gave on to a joyless view of other apartments, lights burning in countless windows, other people’s lives spooling out behind glass like so many private movies. Short ones, long ones, sad ones, happy ones.
But there was nothing happy about this apartment. It was a car crash of a place. We had to wade through an accumulation of old clothes, the flotsam and jetsam of lives in chaos, just to get out of the hall. There was a foul smell in the flat, and rising above it the unpleasant odour of paraffin. I saw an old paraffin heater sitting in the corner of the room, and thought that probably explained the tracks of black condensation that stained the walls and windows.
The mouldy remains of half-eaten meals littered a Formica-topped table.
‘Jesus!’ Maurie voiced all of our thoughts in a single oath. ‘How can you live like this, Raitch?’
I saw tears well up in her eyes again.
‘It’s not my choice, Mo. It really isn’t. It’s not my home, it’s Andy’s. And whichever of his friends decide they’re going to crash for the night. There can be eight or ten people sleeping over, some nights. You have to step over bodies just to get to the loo.’
Maurie shook his head in confusion. ‘So why do you stay?’
‘Like I said, I don’t have a choice. If I tried to get away Andy would come after me. I’m not his girlfriend, I’m his property. And where would I go? What would I do? I don’t have any money.’
Jeff said, ‘You told Maurie you could get your hands on some cash, Raitch.’
She glanced at Jeff, and I could tell immediately that she didn’t like him. One look was all it took to convey a whole history that the rest of us knew nothing about.
‘I know where it is. I just can’t get at it.’
‘What do you mean?’ Maurie said.
Without a word she led us back out through the hall and into the bedroom I had glimpsed on the way in. The smell in here was sour. Body odour and feet. On a bedside table there was a candle and, laid out on a dirty handkerchief, a syringe, a small round metal container, a strip of stained blue rubber about fifteen inches long and other, unidentifiable bits and pieces. Although I had never witnessed anything like them, I knew instinctively these were the accoutrements of the heroin addict. It was startling to see them laid out like that, as if they were everyday things in everyday use. And in truth, they probably were. But I was distracted by Rachel dropping to her knees at the side of the bed and reaching under it to slide out a small trunk secured by a large padlock.
‘This is where he keeps his stuff. And his cash.’
‘His stuff?’ I said.
And she looked at me, I think, for the very first time. There was a moment, I am sure of it, that mirrored for Rachel the moment when I first set eyes on her. I can still see and feel it clearly in my mind, although I wonder now if it wasn’t exaggerated in my imagination, and imbued in later years with the memory that I have of it today.
‘The stuff he sells,’ she said.
‘Drugs?’ Maurie seemed shocked.
She nodded. ‘H.’
‘He’s a dealer?’
‘And user.’ Her brave face crumpled just a little before she caught herself. ‘He’s started making me take it, too.’
She pulled up her sleeve to reveal the bruises and scabbing around the injection sites in the crook of her arm. The stunned silence in the room seemed to affect her more than anything else. As if serving, somehow, to bring home to her just how far she had fallen. We were her peers. Middle-class kids from a south-side Glasgow suburb, staring at her with the same horror she would have felt herself in other circumstances.
Silent tears brimmed on her lower lids, before spilling over to run down her cheeks. ‘Please, Mo. Get me out of here.’ Though for some reason, it was me she looked at.
But it was Jeff who took the initiative. Not the brightest, but always practical. ‘Are there any tools in the flat?’
She wiped her cheeks dry with her palms as she stood up. ‘Andy keeps stuff in a box under the sink.’
We followed her through to the kitchen.
In the cardboard box there was a stout screwdriver, a set of spanners wrapped in cloth, a claw hammer, a rusted file with a pointed end, a bicycle pump and some corroded tins of chrome cleaner. Jeff grabbed the box and carried it back through to the bedroom.
Maurie turned to Rachel. ‘Get packed, Raitch. Minimum that you need. You got a bag?’
She nodded. ‘Andy’s got an old sports bag in the back room.’
‘Then pack now.’
The imperative in Maurie’s voice infused us all with a sense of urgency. None of us wanted to be here when Andy got back. I hurried through to help Jeff try to break open the trunk.
‘We’ll never bust this padlock,’ he said. ‘Best we can hope for is to break the clasp.’
His instrument of choice was the file. It was about twelve inches long and solid iron. He insinuated it between the clasp and the body of the trunk and braced his legs against the trunk itself to try to lever it free. The side of the trunk buckled with the force of it, but the clasp remained firmly attached.
I sat on the trunk and added my heel and the strength of one leg, to try to gain more leverage. The scream of metal under stress filled the room, and there was some movement of the rivets that attached the clasp to the trunk. Enough for me to be able to force the head of the screwdriver between the two and hammer it down. The panel welded to the clasp buckled, and with two of us now exerting leverage at different points, the whole thing bent outwards, protesting all the time, until finally it gave. Jeff fell backwards and the padlock dropped to the floor.
I threw back the lid of the trunk. Me and Jeff, and Dave and Luke, all crowded round to look inside. If we had expected it to be crammed full of heroin we were disappointed. It was almost empty, except for a single, clear plastic bag sealed with sticky tape and filled with a white powdered substance. It was about the size of a two-pound bag of sugar. The bottom of the trunk was littered with small resealable plastic sachets, all empty. There was a small set of scales, a spectacles case that opened to reveal several unused syringes, and a black cloth bag with a string threaded through the open end of it, gathered and tied in a bow. I untied it and pulled the bag open to lift out two wads of banknotes. Fives, tens and twenties.
‘Jees!’ Dave’s voice came in a breath that seemed to fill the room. ‘Must be a couple of hundred quid in there if there’s a penny.’