by Irvine Welsh
Gus laughs and goes, – Right enough Bruce.
This cunt’ll never get a promotion. You have to spell things oot tae him. – Ah’m no saying that ah’d like tae shag Toal mind you, some price tae pey for a promo that, I grin, – but the principle’s the same. Fulton now though, just look at her: snooty fuckin cow, willnae mix it wi the likes ay us. Senior cock only. Thir wis a time when ye only hud tae paint three stripes oan yir willie and she wis desperate tae pack it between her thighs.
– Yir an awfay man Bruce, Gus coughs in laughter. A good old boy, even if a bit slow. I suddenly get an uneasy feeling. That was a mistake mentioning both Fulton and Toal to Gus. He’s probably seen the graffiti in the bogs as well. I’ll be fuckin prime suspect now. Luckily Gus’s mind isnae sharp enough, even in the narrow, proscribed, polis wey.
I’ll hand it tae that cunt Ghostie Gorman. The fuckin evil little albino twat has the good grace tae leave twenty minutes later, after we’ve had our scran, and without any flooirs. – Never reckoned that cunt tae be the romantic type, I smile at Gus.
– Bingo, Gus says softly, veteran polis instincts tuned tae alertness. Aye, the auld boy might be slow, but he can smell prey. You never lose that.
This is what makes the job worthwhile, the scent of spastic schemie blood, even better if it comes in the shape of quality fanny. It’s like two comes with one stroke.
I wait for Gorman to get out of sight and then I go in and have a look at the flowers, the prettiest one of all the one behind the counter. – Hello Estelle, I smile at her. There’s an auld wifie in the shop as well. She looks challengingly at Estelle who’s lost some of her hard cow composure, the juice draining from the hoor’s tank slightly. The auld wifie raises her eyebrows and goes into the backshop.
– How’s business?
– Sawright, she says, brushing her hair back in a nervous gesture.
– Funny, jist saw a guy come oot the shoap empty-handed. Did ye no huv nowt in his line?
– Nuht . . . she says doubtfully, avoiding my eyes and making out that she’s tidying up.
– Whae wis eh?
– Dinnae ken, eh wis jist eftir a bouquet . . . changed ehs mind bit . . .
At this point, right oan cue, the wifie comes out and says, – If you’re gaunny spend ay day talkin tae yir boyfriends, dae it ootside the shop n ah’ll take it oaf’yir pey!
Estelle gets a beamer at this one. – Listen, I think we should have a wee blether. Crawford’s? Either that or ah haul ye doon the station now. Whit’s it tae be?
– Awright, she says, coming out with me and making a big thing of shivering in her overalls.
We head for Crawford’s, and I wink at Gus who’s still in the car. We sit down with coffee. I have another vanilla slice. – Can I treat you to one of these? I ask.
– Nuht, she says dismissively.
She sits down and lights a fag. – I’ve done nowt wrong, she tells me.
Aye, right.
– Wasting police time, withholding information, possibly harbouring a suspect. You fuckin well listen, I point at her, – It’s tell aye what ye ken, or you’re gaunny be up in court. It’s up tae you. If ye dinnae want tae be making soft toys in Cornton Vale fir the next year ah’d find that tongue if ah wis you hen, and ah widnae be takin ma time aboot daein it.
She’s bending a bit here. I can tell. She lowers her heid.
– You gaunny co-operate?
– Look, ah ken that guy, fae the clubs n that. They call um Ghostie. Eh wis one ay the guys youse showed ays the photae ay that time. Eh jist comes in sometimes, tae talk aboot the clubs n music n that.
– Jist a wee two-person musical appreciation society. That’s nice.
She lifts her head up and focuses on me in a tough stare. – It’s no like that. Thir’s loads ay people ah ken and half-ken that come in tae blether aboot what they’ve been up tae, in the clubs n that.
– So how often does this boy come in and see ye?
– Maybe once a fortnight . . . depends.
She’s a fuckin hard nut awright. – And he was at Jammy Joe’s oan the night of Mr Wurie’s murder?
– Ah dinnae ken . . . look, ah’m oot nearly every night. Ah dinnae mind who’s oot everywhaire and who isnae.
– Busy social life. They must pey ye well in that flooir shoap.
– That’s ma business, she says. This cow has recovered her composure quickly. A real hard case, but what a fuckin little doll n aw. She’s looking at me intently. – Ah’m sure ah ken you fae somewhere . . . she says, almost accusingly.
– Ye soon will, ah’ll tell ye that for nothing. We’ll be watching you Estelle, you and your boyfriend.
– Ehs no ma boyfriend, she snaps.
– Hope no for your sake. Gaun, git back tae yir shop, ah nod to the door. She gets up and casts another glance at me before she leaves. This wide wee cow needs fuckin well sorted oot. Sorted oot good and proper. Nice erse on it, even through the overalls.
My genitals are hot and tingling, so I head to the café bog with my Sun and thrash off to Tara from Portsmouth, the image of Estelle’s receding arse complementing Tara’s smallish but solid tits. I spurt in double-quick time. I then give my sweaty hole a good rubbing with the bog paper and my arse a good clawing. I’m seeing Rossi in a bit, as no progress has been made with the fool’s creams.
I get back out and drop Gus off at the station. I drive out tae Rossi’s and I stick on a Michael Bolton compilation tape I made. ‘How Am I Supposed to Live Without You’ off of Soul Provider comes on, and I sing my heart out. Then Bolton’s version of ‘When A Man Loves A Woman’, which is ten times better than any nigger shite, comes blasting out and by the time I get to Rossi’s surgery and park the Volvo I’m in better spirits.
They think that they can drag Bruce Robertson down? All the schemies, coons and what have you? Get fuckin real you sad cunts!
– I’ve been applying that cream you gave me, Doctor Rossi, but it just makes me worse.
– Mmm, says Rossi, – If you just drop your trousers.
I comply, wondering whether this cunt’s an arse bandit. It seems that the bastard can never wait to get my fuckin keks off. Rossi, of course. Italian. Pape. These cunts are all shirt-lifters. That’s why the population of Ireland’s so fuckin low. Tattie famine my hole, it’s cause all these fenian cunts are erse-shag-gers. Same fuckin rules. Rossi, well, I ken it’s his job, but what a perfect cover for brown-bombers.
– Yes, yes, the infected area is more widespread. It’s now all over the thighs as well as the testicles. Yes. Are you avoiding foods with a high fat content?
– Aye . . . I tell him. The cunt expects me to fuckin starve.
– Well, I think we have to change creams, he says, writing out a new prescription. – I know it’s difficult, but try not to scratch the infected area. These look . . . well, they look like nail marks. I can’t stress enough the importance of washing and changing underwear on a regular basis. Cotton briefs preferably, or better still, boxer shorts for the circulation of air.
I need a fuckin washing done. That slag’s abandoned me; trying to fuckin well kill me! She kens I cannae work that fuckin machine. Huvnae hud a proper cooked meal in ages, a roast or something. When a man loves a woman right enough. I fuckin well followed her oot tae Australia. I fuckin well came back here for her. When a man loves a fuckin woman.
Trouble is, they dinnae love men!
– The thing is, ah’m eatin like a horse Doc, but I’m still losing weight . . . I’m worried I might have picked up something . . .
– You mean like an STD?
– Nah . . . well, aye . . .
– Have you been having different sexual relationships?
I smile at him. – You know how it is Doctor . . . normal heterosexual red-blooded male . . .
He looks at me strangely and I wonder if this cunt does know how it is.
– I want a urine sample, but . . . Rossi produces a plastic carton with a lid, – what I’d also like from y
ou is a stool sample.
This cunt must be a fuckin perve of the highest order. I’ll have to give Inglis his number. – What for? I ask coldly.
– Concerning the issue of your weight, I think you may have worms. Tapeworms.
– What does that involve?
– They are harmless parasites, but they can be hard to get rid of.
– I’ll go to the toilet now, I stand up.
– That won’t be necessary . . . he says, – in your own time . . .
– I can do it now, I tell him, exiting. I head to his bog and fill the container with sludgy lager and curry shite. The cunt wants shite, ah’ll fuckin well gie him shite!
I leave Rossi with my crap and pish and drive into town. Worms. It doesnae bear thinkin about. My thoughts are interrupted by a message from Ray, telling me that it’s going off down the flats. Colin Moss went up there carrying a holdall, so the D.S. boys’ve got the sniffer dugs down there and are raring to do Moss, Richards and Allan.
The roads are pretty bad and I’m shaking at the wheel, worried that I’m going to miss all the fuckin action. Fuck looking for somebody who topped a coon, this is real poliswork. I stick my light on the top of the car and hit the siren as I tear doon Leith Walk.
OUT MA FUCKIN WEY YA CUNTS!
By the time I get down to the flats, a huge crowed has gathered outside. Some jakeys from the lodging house sit huddled on to a bench, drinking strong largers and fortified wines and making insulting comments at two young uniformed spastics, one whose ears glow red with the cold and the humiliation. Some other polis are trying to cordon the area off and disperse the crowd. I see that something’s on the ground. As I get closer it looks like the remains of an animal but it has been ripped open and crushed beyond recognition, strewn all over the slushy pavement. I look towards the heavens suspecting our old friend gravity and the flats. This was probably last year’s model whose collar had grown a little tight and was jettisoned to make way for the incoming Christmas puppy dog.
Then I clock Ray, who looks a bit sheepish and tells me that the dug was one of ours, a sniffer in the advance party. I savour the prospect of an alliance with the RSPCA, destroying the peace-loving, caring credibility of these hippy, squatting cunts. They murdered that poor animal! Ha! Gotcha!
Ray nods towards George Mackie, the dug-handler, who’s sitting on the pavement being comforted by a poliswoman. I ken George from the craft. Lodge St John, Corstorphine.
– Bruce . . . he wheezes . . .– eh’s gone Bruce . . . Pedro’s away . . . ma Pedro . . . the best sniffer oan the force . . . eh’s gone . . .
– What happened George, I ask, bending over him.
– Eh found a sheet ay acid . . . but they’d hidden it in the kitchen . . . he slipped his leash . . . they hid the acid wi these dug biscuits . . . poor Pedro ate the lot, Mackie moaned, sounding himself like a dog in pain. – Perr Pedro . . . eh jist totally loast it . . . eh freaked and even turned on me! Me Bruce! I had him since he was a puppy . . . the runt ay the litter . . . I admit that I truncheoned him . . . it wis self-defence Bruce . . . eh just lept oot the windae . . . the best dug ah’ve ever hud . . . the best sniffer on the force . . . fourteen floors up, eh never stood a snowball’s chance in hell . . .
I move back over to Ray. – Where’s Moss? Ms Richards? Mr Allan?
Lennox points across to this trio of crusty bastards looking smug and getting into a BMW. The car’s being driven by Conrad Donaldson, Q.C.
– Nowt we can do Bruce, Ray says. – Listen Bruce, c’mere the now . . . Lennox furtively gestures over to a tenement stair door, far from the crowd. – I fucked up. I had the sheet ay acid to plant and I was about tae dae it when the fuckin dug ripped it out my hand . . . he showed me a toothmark on one of his fingers. – George was in the living room and it came intae the kitchen . . . he should have been with it at all times . . . he didnae follow procedure.
– What was in Moss’s holdall? Can we no do them for that?
– A fucking Christmas pudding. I didn’t even bother confiscating it to take it doon the lab for analysis. The smart cunt was straight on to Donaldson, who was here within ten minutes. They were laughing their fuckin heads off, Lennox smirks slightly, seeing the funny side. I don’t. I walk away in a raging fury and get back into the car.
That night I go out for a drink with Clell, who’s going on about his new job in traffic.
– It’s great tae be free fae Serious Crimes Bruce, he says, raising his glass. – It’s given me time tae think about what I want tae do with my life. That’s the problem wi Serious Crimes, you shut off too much. You just go through it . . . he makes his palms go parallel and forward like a train.
– Well, you’ll have plenty of time to think sitting with those vegetables in traffic, I tell him.
Clell looks closely at me. There’s a slight tick in his eye. It seems as if I’ve upset him.
– That’s just the way I want it, he bleats.
Cunt thinks that his worries are over and that he can rub our faces in it because he’s got a job as a vegetable. Wrong! We are not interested in the trivial concerns of one Mister Andrew Clelland.
I make my excuses after a bit and head hame.
The Lie Of The Land
Tom Stronach, or Tommy Stronach, as they first called him when he broke through from the Hearts youth set-up in 1984, is my friend of sorts by virtue of his being my next-door neighbour. Tom Stronach: two Scotland caps, the first in 1988 due to several call-offs, which resulted in the largely unheralded through-ball for Coisty or some other west-coast fucker to score the winner in a three-goal thriller in Belgrade, against a fancied Yugoslavian side; well, fancied to beat Scotland at any rate. Then a spell in the wilderness followed by a further cap against Northern Ireland during his swan-song season of 1990-91. That was his last chance to do something, with Everton and Sunderland reputedly making offers which were turned down by the ‘ambitious’ board who, like Tom, spent another few trophyless years in limbo. The spastics ought to have taken the cash: it was to be Stronach’s last season as even a minor force in the game.
Alimony cases and paternity suits have taken their toll on his greengages and Tom’s had to make the socially humiliating climbdown from Colinton Village with wife number three, to this pokey Gumley’s job. He’s a thick cunt whose only attributes is being able to kick a ball badly and he has the nerve to think that he’s slumming it, living next door to a law enforcement professional.
I’d taken the morning off to watch the female gymnastics on telly. There was some pubescent ex-commie Tony Hatch worth forty wanks. I couldn’t really get into it though; when I woke up I wanted to hear something by the Michael Schenker Group but I couldn’t decide between Assault Attack and Rock Will Never Die. After making myself a large fry-up and lighting the fire, I decide to take neither option and go for Built To Destroy. I do a bit of air-guitar work and make a mental list of the women I’d like to reduce to a state of slavery and bondage, Drummond coming in at num-bihr one. I check the post and there’s fuck all from Chelmsford. You’re keeping me waiting Tony. I don’t like waiting. Loneliness and melancholy settle in after this and the breathless strains of the stoat-the-baw gymnastics commentator irritates and I decide to seek company next door. The newspapers are still lying around from the weekend. I can see that face in the newspaper. I rip out the page and crumple it up before tossing it into the fire. I quickly re-read the Sunday Mail’s postscript of Saturday’s nil– three débâcle at Rugby Park.
A poor performance by the visitors and one which Tom Stronach, in particular, will want to forget. It was his loose pass-back which gifted Killie that decisive second goal, effectively ending the game as a contest.
I go next door and Tom’s in, still scanning the video action from the weekend’s matches. Not for nothing is he constantly referred to as ‘a keen student of the game’. Tabloidspeak for a lazy twat who sits on his arse watching fitba videos aw day.
Tom’s wearing his tracksuit. He looks worrie
d. He always does, when he doesn’t look stupid, that is. – Awright Bruce, he says. I breeze in, past the spastic.
– Not bad Tom, I say, scanning the house for knock-off. There’s some dodgy cunts on her side of the family. I’d ride it mind you, some dirty wee scanties oan the washing line last summer. That’s the mark of a real hoor, leaving them on the line like an invitation. Decent fanny use a tumble drier for that sort of thing. I clock a nice lamp, on the teak cabinets Tom had got built recently. Blue and white china porcelain. – Nice lamp.
– Aye . . . Julie bought it. John Lewis’s.
Mmm. Seems plausible enough. – What’s the game? I point to the screen. Philips’ newest model, four speaker quadrophonic sound, thirty-inch screen. Not bad. Checked it out in Tandy the other day. The one next to Crawford’s in the centre.
– Belgian League fitba on Eurosport. Taped it likes. Mechelen versus Molenbeck. The Mechelen boy scores a cracker. Watch this!
Tom rewinds the video and this Belgian spastic hits a screaming twenty-five yarder home. They might be boring cunts but they can play fitba.
– Could have done wi some ay that style doon in Ayrshire on Saturday, eh Tom, I gloat, trying, as his face contorts defensively, to force some concern and empathy into my voice, – What went wrong?
Tom shrugs, – Dinnae ask me Bruce, he mumbles, shaking his head.
I consider it prudent to change the subject. – All geared up for the Testimonial?
– Aye! Tom’s face lights up enthusiastically, – It’s difficult wi the festive period coming up, but the boys on the committee have done a cracking job and it looks like Kenny Dalglish is going to come up and play for at least part of the game.
– Sound, I say, – that should add a couple of thousand oantae the gate. I’m looking for any additions to the CD rack, and sure as fuck Stronach’s got the new Phil Collins. I pick it up. – What’s it like?
