by Irvine Welsh
– Yes . . . Jackie Trent, I hear the words reverberate in my head and parrot mindlessly out from between my lips.
– Anyway, I’m sick of it all. Funny Bruce, I misjudged you. You see, somebody half-inched a private document of mine. From my office. The bastard stole the hard copy, erased the file and the back-up disk. I had my suspicions, he looks at me and shrugs.
We know that our face is too blank to register anything.
– I got a bit paranoid for a while. I was testing out everyone, trying to find cracks. I mean, all that stuff I was giving you about poor Inglis, as if I care who he shags. You were good though Bruce, I’ll give you that. Anyway, I was daft to have this stuff at the work. I was doing some private stuff, during breaks you know, maybe when I had a spare minute. Sometimes I’d stay late and work on it, it’s quieter at the office than at home. I thought that perhaps you knew, well . . . what we knew. You see Bruce, I was writing a screenplay based on the case of a racist murder. I based it loosely on the Wurie murder, with my own fictive embellishments of course. In my screenplay, the murder is being covered up by a racist cop who has a motive . . . not to solve the crime.
– How does it end . . . I ask too quickly.
– Oh, we fit up some thugs. A happy-ever-after story.
I nod. The sort of ending people like.
– Yes, I got a fright when the document was stolen and the files erased. At first I suspected . . . certain parties. But I knew that the person would have had to have read it, and I would have been able to tell. Of course, I had another copy on the hard disk at home, so it wasn’t too much of an inconvenience. You can’t be too careful, eh! I still might finish it and send it off to a production company. A pipe dream, but nothing ventured, eh?
– Aye . . . that’s good . . . that you’ve done it . . . I mean that you have an interest . . .
– Aye. I’m fed up on the force. Had it up to here, a leather glove salutes his forehead. – Clell’s right. The law spends too much time demonising ordinary people who’re just trying to get on with their lives. Society’s changed and the law hasn’t kept pace; so it’s us, the mugs, who have to enforce them, who get it all in the neck. I’m sick of it. There’s enough genuine bad guys to lock up without sending some daft kids on a H.M.P. University of Crime course for smoking weed or selling pills. You can’t criminalise people for a consumer preference. Might as well jail them for preferring Cornflakes tae All Bran. A load of fuckin nonsense, he shakes his head. – Anyway, I have to go.
I feel an anxiety rising in my chest. I want him to stay. No. I want him to tell me something. I have to ask.
– Boss, one thing. What happens to the guy in your script . . . the, eh racist cop?
– Not got to that bit yet Bruce. Maybe you could help me! he smiles. – Anyway, the welfare will be round soon. As I said, try to hang on in there.
Toal departs.
A good man.
We are alone. We switch on the television. There is nothing on.
No. We love only ouerselves.
No. This is not us. We are thinking of somebody else.
Rhona.
We have to think of Rhona. The mob of hate reminded me, always the mob of hate. There were the pit villagers and then Gorman and Setterington’s thugs. In between them, another mob. Who?
No, it does us no good to think of that.
because it’s done and it’s in the fuckin past
I can’t even eat a thing
– Come if you want, I’m telling her on the phone, – just come if you want.
I put the receiver down on the cradle and I realise that I don’t even know who I was talking to. It was a her though. But I don’t know who it was. Bunty? Chrissie? Shirley? The polis welfare woman? Carole?
Naw, it wisnae Carole.
I’m sitting here inspecting the rash on my thighs. I’ve taken a felt-tipped pen and drawn the border around the extremity of the infected skin. This way I’ll be able to calculate the rate at which the infection spreads. If I could calculate my entire skin surface, I could work out how long it would take for me to be completely covered in the rash.
I’ll fuckin well tell Rossi. I’ll have the information before that useless quack can get it. In three years, four months, twelve days and six and a half hours from now, your patient, Detective Sergeant, no, not now Detective Inspector, Detective Sergeant Bruce Robertson will be just one, big festering scab.
Is that news?
You question my method of calculation? My methods are my methods are my methods. I do not give an Aylesbury Duck.
I rise and go to the window. Those are snow storm clouds gathering.
Rhona!
Carole!
Stacey!
I take out her picture and stick it back on the sideboard. She used tae wear braces on her teeth, the wee yin. They really straightened them out. A good thing, though I was against it at first. She never wore anything on her leg though.
The kitchen is smelling bad. Something has died in here. I open the back door. It’s cold and I’m wearing only my boxer shorts and my dressing gown, which hangs open but it’s good to see the snow fall again. Like the Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye film White Christmas, where they open the patio doors of the General’s holiday inn in Vermont and the snow tumbles down and they burst into song and the closing credits come up. I sip on another purple tin as I watch the snow cascade down. I sing to myself: I’mmm steaming, it’s a shite Christmas . . .
There’s something on the ground, in the garden . . .
What is it? A sack of coal. A find.
I drag it into the cold, dark room. I slowly build up the fire and light it. It catches on quickly. I sit transfixed by the lapping flames which provide the only light in the room, except for a small, annoying flash on the sideboard next to me, which throws a dull, sick red tint over Stacey’s picture.
I switch on the answer machine to play back my messages:
– Bruce, Bunty. Please call me.
Beep.
– Bruce, Bunty. I’m worried about you darling. They said you were sick. I called but you weren’t in. Call me.
Beep.
– It’s Chrissie. Call me sometime sexy!
Beep.
– Hello Bruce. It’s Gus here. Hope all is well and that you’ll soon be fighting fit again. Gie’s a wee tinkle!
Beep
– Mister Robertson, it’s Heather Sim here. Euan’s mum. It would be great if you could get tickets for Tynecastle for the Celtic match on the twenty-first. I don’t know if that’s convenient or not. If you could get back to me on six-one-two-seven-double-four three. Thanks again.
Beep.
– Brucey baby, it’s Chrissie from-be Hynde here; the last of the great Pretenders! You haven’t been answering either your calls or your callers. I was round yesterday. I know you’re in. There are roadworks outside. Your gas needs turned off. What’s the matter big boy? Can’t you stand the heat? Call me if you just happen to rediscover your bollocks!
Beep.
– Anybody home? Oh well . . .
Beep.
– Bruce . . . please, please, please call me. It’s Bunty. Please Bruce.
Beep.
– Bruce . . . it’s Shirley . . . Bruce . . . call me . . . call me!
Beep.
– Bruce. Gus. Ah didnae git it Bruce. They didnae gie me it. Phone me Bruce, I want to take this up wi the Federation. Ye ken who they gave it tae!
Beep.
– Hello . . .
Beep.
Enough of it. I disconnect the phone. More television, that’s what I need.
More television.
No. The channels, the voices, always the fuckin voices . . .
Then a knock on my door. I can’t be bothered but the knock’s getting louder and louder and it’s just like whoever it is is going to kick the door in, polis-style. I’m opening up and he’s here, standing in front of me in the doorway, and I’m looking over his shoulder, watching Tom Stronach’s BMW
pull out and head down the road. The winter sun glints in my eye. The snowstorm. It’s gone. It’s just away. Fuckin hell.
– I had to come Bruce, he says to us. – I was worried about you. You’ve been through the fucking mill. I had to come, he repeats.
We want to close the door, but it seems easier to let him in. We say nothing, but we go through to our kitchen and sit down. We look outside at our garden, a dead mess. It was once so lovely. Carole liked working in it, I never did. I appreciated her efforts though. Liked to sit out there with a can of lager. Simple pleasures. Stacey’s swing . . . got that a few summers ago now. How many?
Ray follows me in and sits down opposite us. A concerned visitor.
– Of course Bruce, ah dinnae need tae tell ye that while I was chuffed aboot the promotion, it’s been a bitter-sweet experience for me. If you hadnae had that . . . well, the problems you’ve been huvin . . . well, you’d’ve walked it mate. Hus tae be said.
– Aye Ray, that’s the way it goes, we nod. This is what it’s about. This is what Gus’s message was about.
Lennox’s face is set in an evaluating smile, tight round the mouth, eyes searching but strangely dead and mechanical, the polis way. – Ken what your problem is, he laughs coldly, – ye dinnae practise what ye preach.
We can say nothing.
Lennox is talking to us in the manner that pretends it’s all for our welfare, rather than his gloating benefit. – You telt me Bruce. Mind what you says: You need to suss out what the party line was and then spiel out the script.
– Aye, I mind, we tell him.
– You see though Bruce, you have tae learn a new script. It’s like all that equal opps bullshit: just spout that at the cunts and do it with conviction. It’s just another wee code you rely on. That’s why the likes of Gillman . . . he shakes his head in a condescending smile. He’s rehearsed this speech alright. – Your behaviour has to be non-racist and non-sexist. You ken the score; all this equal opps stuff started when mass unemployment took its toll. You couldn’t have upwardly mobile schemies taking jobs from the sons and daughters of the rich! So you bring in a handful of overprivileged coons as a Trojan horse sop to equal opps, while making sure you keep the good salaried jobs for the educated bourgeoisie. You start to introduce minimum qualifications, make a uni degree essential where it had never been needed in the past. That way you weed out people that cannae bullshit your script. Of course, fuck all changes. In London coons just get to be truncheoned by a member of their own race once in a blue moon. You know the score.
Lennox gives me an I’ve-got-it-sussed wink.
– Yeah. This is true Ray.
– I’m no saying you’re a dinosaur Bruce, but you’ve allowed these cunts to paint you that way. Keep the cards close to yir chest mate.
– Close to the chest Ray, like I always told you.
– That’s what you told me, he says cheerfully. He looks around the room and he can’t hide his distaste. He stands to his feet. Lennox the victor, Robertson the vanquished.
Who would have thought it. Lennox perhaps.
– Anyway, Bruce, got to nash. There is just one thing, and I suppose it’s something that everybody feels when they get a promotion, you know, how to relate to the old mates and all of that.
He looks closely at us to see as if we understand. We are looking at him blankly. We have nothing to say.
– I can say this because we’re both law enforcement professionals Bruce, but your methods and mines are very different. Now I ken that we’ve pulled some shit in the past, but that’s finito now, all the coke and that shit. He looks hard and searchingly at me with an authority he’s never shown before. The authority of the man who knows he has the state queueing up behind him, on his side. – Savvy?
– Sure Ray, we say.
– Just as long as you realise how the old song goes: ‘These days are gone now, and in the past they must remain’, okay?
– Okay . . .
– And Bruce, nae hard feelings, eh mate?
– Naw Ray, you know me, I’m not one for living in the past. I’m sure you’ll do a great job as inspector.
Ray grips our shoulder harshly. – Thanks mate. Right, I’d better nash. See ye. Things to dae, people tae see.
– Aye. Cheerio Ray.
– Cheery bye bye Bruce . . . oh . . . Bruce, I saw that Bladesey the other day, doon the club at Shrubhill. We all gave him the cold-shoulder treatment. He looked a bit sheepish. Then Gillman went up and put him in the picture, in Dougie’s own inimitable style. So I doubt whether our Mister Blades will be showing his face in the craft again. Cheers then, Ray winks, making a clicking noise from the side of his mouth as he departs.
Click click click
Channel hopping.
I’m hearing the voices and I’m pressing the buttons on the handset to change the channels but it’s the voice in my head. That same, insistent soft voice, eating me up from the inside . . .
. . . I change channels . . .
. . . I change channels . . . a Bond film. This time it’s Roger Moore . . .
I change channels . . . cartoons . . . Walt Disney. Beauty and the Beast . . .
I change channels . . . adverts . . . real Scots read the Record . . .
I change channels: repeats of Please, Sir.
The telly goes off.
I don’t know whether it’s day or night. Some empty purple tins lie in front of me. The fire still flickers. A welfare woman called at some point. I can’t remember what she said. I need to do something.
I pull on some clothes and go outside, making my way towards Colinton Village. The only person I can think of visiting is my physician, Dr Rossi.
The waiting room is full of smelly old cunts, but I’ve got the upper hand on them now. I’m minging in this old coat! Take some of that ya snobby auld cunts. I produce a purple tin from my coat pocket.
– You can’t drink in here, the receptionist tells me. I flash my ID at her. – Police, I tell her. – Working undercover, I explain to the old wifies. One makes a twisted girn with those old, dried-out lips. I want to grab a syringe and fill it up with the contents of the old purple tin and shoot it right into those old lips, rehydrating them instantly! – Plastic surgery, I tell her, – modern techniques. Everybody can afford it, I raise my can to toast technology.
The receptionist calls me and I go in and see Rossi. His jaw drops as I enter, and if I gave a Luke and Matt Goss, I’d say his lack of bedside manner is unprofessional.
He’s the McDonald’s of medicine, and it takes him a shorter time to come to a diagnosis than it does for them to serve up a Big Mac.
– You’re depressed Mr Robertson. I don’t do this lightly, but I’m going to prescribe Prozac.
– Fine, we tell this physician.
Rossi though: something is different about him. It’s as if it’s just dawned on him that he’s approaching middle age and he’s never going to reach surgical greatness. This, prescribing pills to sad old cunts and being a glorified clerk, like polis, teachers, social workers all are nowadays, this is as good as it gets. Our normally buoyant physician is giving off the defeated, depressive stink of a man whose own limitations have caught up with him. It’s a smell we’ve grown accustomed to lately. It oozes from every sick pore in my own body, as surely as the stale whisky sweat which accompanies it.
When we, I, we are leaving his surgery and walking through the village we screw the prescription into a ball and sling it in the Water of Leith at Colinton Dell. Then we go to the Royal Scot for a pint. This is the only fuckin drug we need: peeve. It was that fuckin coke that fucked us up, that cunt Lennox. Brought us down to his level then nipped in and stole the job that was ours. We should have picked that up, should have seen the signs. But we were weak.
We must now be strong.
Sleep fails to take us during the night. Thoughts are flying through our head like an endless merry-go-round. We can see the merry-go-round, our wife and child waving to us from the stupid horses a
s we sit and drink our tea in the Piazza of Princes Street Gardens, always distracted, lost in our own thoughts, our dreams of revenge against those who transgress the laws of the state.
We cannot break the cycle by having a fuckin wank cause every time we conjure up a picture of a woman we see the yobs’ faces or those of Lennox or Toal, and arousal, to our relief, is impossible under those circumstances.
Terror’s grip on us seems physical; sometimes it slackens but it never lets go.
We are walking again, through the Dell, through the long passage, which is like an old railway tunnel. There is one point in this tunnel, the point we have now reached, where it bends and you cannot see the light ahead, nor can you see it if you look back. A couple of steps forward and the light shines, a couple of steps backward and a glance over your shoulder and it’s the same story. But here, just at this point: this is limbo. There is the sense that if you stay at this point for too long, stop at this point of oblivion for a certain amount of time, you will just cease to exist.
And we cannot move.
The tunnel swirls around us, the stone configuration visible, starting to spin through the filthy, bruised darkness. We hear voices, but we are not tense.
Then we are sadly not in oblivion. We have no sensation of leaving the tunnel or the wooded glen, but know that we have somehow gone back up on to the main road through the noise of the occasional car and its lights.
Then, the Napier University and the rise of twilight and the chirping of birds up towards the gardens at Gilmore Place and then we are at the King’s Theatre.
Stacey and Carole and Stacey’s wee pal Celeste with us at the pantomine, to see Mother Goose featuring Stanley Baxter and Angus Lennie out of Crossroads.
We saw it.
