could resist it. Crawling over to where the man lay, she unstrapped his leather belt and wrapped it round her own arm. She spat in his face – her one, pointless act of rebellion.
The inside of her arm was bruised, the veins collapsed – it took a minute or two for her to coax a bulge out of them. But as soon as she did, she slid the needle into her flesh and squeezed the syringe.
Within seconds, she felt all her anxieties melt away, like snow in the sunshine. A smile spread across her face as she too lay back on the floor.
It was only in a tiny corner of her mind that she realised something was different. That there was a sensation she neither recognised nor wanted. A nausea that seemed to paralyse her limbs and numb her brain.
And even through the calming effect of the opiate she knew that something was very, very wrong just before she passed out.
They lay on the floor. To look at them, you’d think they were dead. Maybe they were. Certainly they didn’t hear the television that still chattered in the corner of the room and filled it with its glow now that the light outside was failing.
Politicians were arguing on the screen, their suits smartly pressed and their faces fat and ruddy. ‘Men are dying,’ one of them announced. ‘They’re not just statistics. They are people’s sons, husbands and brothers. The terrorism threat level in the UK remains critical. Our streets are being flooded with heroin that comes directly from Helmand Province. And yet the government refuses to acknowledge that its strategy in Afghanistan is failing miserably . . .’
The junkies lay there, perfectly still.
A knock on the door.
Another knock. And then a crash. The door burst inwards as a hydraulic battering ram whacked against it. Police entered, carefully at first. Gingerly. But when they saw the two figures lying motionless on the floor, they moved with a new urgency.
One of the officers knelt down by the man and pressed his fingers to the junkie’s neck.
‘No pulse,’ he said, his voice terse, just as one of his colleagues checked the pulse of the girl.
‘Nothing,’ the second police officer said.
The others lowered their heads slightly.
‘Wait. I’ve got something.’ A faint pulse. ‘ Get an ambulance here, now! ’
The police officer moved the debris of the drug binge away from the girl’s body, then stuck two fingers down her throat to check for obstructions. Nothing. ‘She needs CPR!’ he shouted. ‘Help me!’
A third officer bent down, held the girl’s nose and performed two rescue breaths in quick succession. His colleague put his hands, one on top of the other, on her ribcage and pushed down thirty times.
‘Go again,’ he said, and the two of them carried out the CPR routine another time.
It didn’t really look like it was doing much good. The girl’s face remained deathly white; she didn’t regain consciousness; she didn’t move. When the paramedics arrived, they covered her face with an oxygen mask, transferred her to a stretcher and carefully manoeuvred her back down the seventeen flights of stairs and into the back of a waiting ambulance. Her face looked even more deathlike bathed in the glow of the flashing blue lights, as a small crowd looked on in the rain.
Back up in the flat, a forensics officer took photographs and made notes. ‘What a shithole,’ he observed to no one in particular.
‘Yeah,’ one of the cops replied. ‘They didn’t spend their spare cash in Ikea, to be sure.’
When the forensics officer gave the word, the dead junkie was zipped up into a body bag and taken away to be opened up and examined by the coroner. But with a crack pipe and a hypodermic syringe by his corpse, no one doubted for a minute what cause of death the coroner would record.
Back to back. A lethal cocktail, if you fuck it up. And as drug fuck-ups go, this was sterling silver. The girl was lucky to be alive, the cops said as they left the scene.
None of them really thought she’d
The inside of her arm was bruised, the veins collapsed – it took a minute or two for her to coax a bulge out of them. But as soon as she did, she slid the needle into her flesh and squeezed the syringe.
Within seconds, she felt all her anxieties melt away, like snow in the sunshine. A smile spread across her face as she too lay back on the floor.
It was only in a tiny corner of her mind that she realised something was different. That there was a sensation she neither recognised nor wanted. A nausea that seemed to paralyse her limbs and numb her brain.
And even through the calming effect of the opiate she knew that something was very, very wrong just before she passed out.
They lay on the floor. To look at them, you’d think they were dead. Maybe they were. Certainly they didn’t hear the television that still chattered in the corner of the room and filled it with its glow now that the light outside was failing.
Politicians were arguing on the screen, their suits smartly pressed and their faces fat and ruddy. ‘Men are dying,’ one of them announced. ‘They’re not just statistics. They are people’s sons, husbands and brothers. The terrorism threat level in the UK remains critical. Our streets are being flooded with heroin that comes directly from Helmand Province. And yet the government refuses to acknowledge that its strategy in Afghanistan is failing miserably . . .’
The junkies lay there, perfectly still.
A knock on the door.
Another knock. And then a crash. The door burst inwards as a hydraulic battering ram whacked against it. Police entered, carefully at first. Gingerly. But when they saw the two figures lying motionless on the floor, they moved with a new urgency.
One of the officers knelt down by the man and pressed his fingers to the junkie’s neck.
‘No pulse,’ he said, his voice terse, just as one of his colleagues checked the pulse of the girl.
‘Nothing,’ the second police officer said.
The others lowered their heads slightly.
‘Wait. I’ve got something.’ A faint pulse. ‘ Get an ambulance here, now! ’
The police officer moved the debris of the drug binge away from the girl’s body, then stuck two fingers down her throat to check for obstructions. Nothing. ‘She needs CPR!’ he shouted. ‘Help me!’
A third officer bent down, held the girl’s nose and performed two rescue breaths in quick succession. His colleague put his hands, one on top of the other, on her ribcage and pushed down thirty times.
‘Go again,’ he said, and the two of them carried out the CPR routine another time.
It didn’t really look like it was doing much good. The girl’s face remained deathly white; she didn’t regain consciousness; she didn’t move. When the paramedics arrived, they covered her face with an oxygen mask, transferred her to a stretcher and carefully manoeuvred her back down the seventeen flights of stairs and into the back of a waiting ambulance. Her face looked even more deathlike bathed in the glow of the flashing blue lights, as a small crowd looked on in the rain.
Back up in the flat, a forensics officer took photographs and made notes. ‘What a shithole,’ he observed to no one in particular.
‘Yeah,’ one of the cops replied. ‘They didn’t spend their spare cash in Ikea, to be sure.’
When the forensics officer gave the word, the dead junkie was zipped up into a body bag and taken away to be opened up and examined by the coroner. But with a crack pipe and a hypodermic syringe by his corpse, no one doubted for a minute what cause of death the coroner would record.
Back to back. A lethal cocktail, if you fuck it up. And as drug fuck-ups go, this was sterling silver. The girl was lucky to be alive, the cops said as they left the scene.
None of them really thought she’d
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