They are on the outbuilding, a humdrum red-brick structure about fifteen-foot high and twenty-foot square. From this vantage point they look around for security. Nothing. All the cameras point away from them. They look at each other in a kind of childlike wonderment. They are five junkies from Leith, locked inside a compound with the biggest amount of pure morphine on these islands.
Renton scrambles down the drainpipe of the building. It’s plastic, not metal, as he’d imagined. He worries about Keezbo’s weight on it but says nothing. Matty is down behind him, followed by Spud, then Sick Boy. They again look in horror at Keezbo, then across to the main buildings of the plant, sensing that the pipe will come crashing down, trapping them all inside, helplessly sick in this Venus flytrap, for the morning shift to come and raise the alarm. However, Keezbo shimmies halfway down it, jumping the rest of the distance, landing on his feet with a big grin. — We’re in, Mr Mark, Danny, Simon, Matthew.
Renton limits his celebration to a solitary fist beat on his chest. Sick Boy’s eyes look as if they are about to pop from his head, and he briefly crouches down against the outbuilding for a second as if in great pain, then springs back to his feet. They go towards the floodlight pylons, making for the loading bay at the side of the processing plant where the plastic boxes are piled up on wooden pallets. — It’ll no be skag in thaime, Matty says, — it’ll aw be pharmaceuticals. The morphine’s gaunny be locked up, he moans.
Acknowledging the logic in what he says, Renton insists, — They’re sealed up though, and takes the iron bar from his Sealink bag. — We should make sure before we start brekin intae they labs n warehooses …
Keezbo and Spud are holding each other’s wrists and jumping around in a circle together, lost in a rabid, strung-out dance. — Here we go, here we go, here we go … they gasp in elation, before being silenced with prejudice, as a shrill, severing, turbo-powered alarm shrieks into the night. It seems to erupt from under the ground, vibrating up through their rubber soles, freezing them in the most paralysing shock they’ve ever experienced. It splits their eardrums, rendering them almost senseless. They can barely hear the shouts of men and barks of dogs above it as fear propels them to bolt through the disabling cacophony, across the concourse towards the outbuilding.
They don’t look back, not one of them; Renton gets there first but cups his hands, giving Sick Boy, then Spud, a grateful boost up the drainpipe. By the time he scuttles up onto the roof himself, he can see the moonlit skeleton he assumes is Daniel Murphy, vanishing into heaven, which means that Sick Boy has already crossed over to the embankment.
Renton now allows himself a backward glance. There seem too many pursuers to be feasible, swarming across the shadowy courtyard: dogs and men, barking psychotic encouragement and instruction at each other. Disregarding the shouts and snarls behind him, he launches himself up the plank. At the top, he looks back over his shoulder, shouting for Matty and Keezbo to get onto the roof. Then a flashlight blinds his eyes and he staggers down the board, expecting to fall into the void on the safe side of the barrier, but he makes it all the way to the sloping bank, feeling Spud grab his arm and guide him up to the tracks. Falling recumbent, they watch Sick Boy’s ivory silhouette stealing away down the south suburban railway line.
Renton and Spud see Matty coming onto the roof, torches from security guards picking him out. Keezbo is last up the pipe, the guards almost on him, an Alsatian leaping at his foot and missing by an inch. As Matty zooms up the plank towards the fence, Renton and Spud see Keezbo miraculously haul his large frame onto the outbuilding’s roof, the dogs snarling at him. It seems that there are around eight men and four dogs, yelping at each other, their handlers screaming into walkie-talkies over the alarm, which squawks like a monster mechanical bird whose eggs are under threat. Keezbo is on the roof. But as Matty hits the top of the fence to begin his descent, a twist of his heel sends the first plank sliding away and crashing down into the black space between the outbuilding and fence. Keezbo is stranded.
As the dogs bark, circling the building, they see Keezbo look first grievously, then sadly up at them from the other side of the fence. His features have contorted in an expression of deep pain and betrayal. Then they suddenly fade into a broken resignation, as he sits down on the roof, like a beaten junky Buddha, surrounded by the shouting men and snarling dogs beneath him.
— Fuck sake … Keezbo … Spud wheezes as Matty joins them on the track.
Renton suddenly springs to his feet, bellowing into the compound, — LEAVE UM ALAINE, YA FUCKIN FASCIST CUNTS! IT’S OOR FUCKIN GEAR! WE FUCKIN WELL NEED IT! WE’VE GOAT A FUCKIN RIGHT! He picks up stones from the embankment, hurling them over the fence at the guards and dogs. One strikes a dog in the side eliciting a high yelp. — C’MON THEN, YA FUCKIN SCABBY CUNTS!
Matty pulls him back. — C’mon! Cunt, we goat tae fuckin split, and they see Spud running down the tracks and follow him. Renton looks back a couple of times, then picks up speed to catch up with the others.
— Fat cunt … better no … grass us up, Matty rasps, as they run breathlessly to the abandoned wreckage of Gorgie Station, where they stop to recover. Sick Boy is waiting in the shadows. Renton feels his head spinning with the decimating effort of the flight as he struggles to get the air into his lungs.
— Nae gadge’s gaunny grass any cat up, Spud whines at Matty, taking deep breaths, as Sick Boy’s gaze whips from one to the other. — Keezbo’s sound.
— What happened tae the fuckin plank? Renton wheezes. — How could he no get up?
— It just fell back in, wi us climbin up it, Matty protests. He sees a judging aspect to Renton’s gaze. — It wis an accident! Cunt, what are ye tryin tae say?
Renton turns away, maintaining a pointed silence, but Sick Boy swiftly cuts in. — Tell ye what ah’m tryin tae say. A common snowdropper’s no in a position tae call any other cunt a grass.
— What? Matty turns to him.
— That sky-blue Fair Isle jumper ah hud. He points at Matty, his mouth buckled tight in accusation. — You ken, the one ye fuckin snowdropped fae the dryin green at the Bannanay flats that time.
— Ah fuckin never stole yir fuckin jumper! Matty turns to Spud in appeal. — Cunt, that was yonks ago, we were just wee laddies, every cunt snowdropped back then!
— Aye, but they didnae wear what they fuckin snowdropped! They flogged it, n bought new clathes. Only a fuckin tramp wears what they snowdrop, Sick Boy declares, lighting a cigarette, taking a drag. — Ah mind when ah sais tae my ma: ‘Matty Connell’s nicked that jumper you bought me, he wis wearin it at school,’ he smiles thinly. — Ken what she said? She goes: ‘Let him keep it, son. The Connells are a poor family, that boy needs it mair than you.’ That was what my ma said. My mother was prepared tae pit clathes oan the back ay a tramp, oan a lice-infested scruff, he nods gently as he mouths each word, — just cause she felt sorry for him.
— So that’s what ye think ay us, then? Eh? That’s what you’ve thought ay me aw they fuckin years?!
— That’s right, Sick Boy shrugs, — so go and get aw emotional, as per usual. Poor wee Matty. Poor fuckin sk-ruff!
Matty looks plaintively at Spud and Renton in appeal.
— Ye ken what ma take oan this is, Matty, Renton is bent over with his hands on his knees, but is looking sharply up at him, — this fuckin obsession yuv goat wi daein Keezbo doon? It’s aboot him being wi Shirley. They wir jist bairns whin they went oot thegither, for fuck sakes! She’s wi you now! Git the fuck ower it!