The kid’s pained face tells me it’s closer to the latter.
— No, buddy, you need the confidence that experience gives you: social as well as sexual. That’s what Prof Unc Si from Shaggers University offers. Now think it through. And tell your mother fuck all. This is a bros’ thing. Promise?
— Right… Thanks, Uncle Simon, he squeaks in gratitude, bumping my proffered fist.
Just then, Ben appears at his shoulder, looking a little smug, but still shooting us a what-the-fuck stare.
— Benito the bandito! I’m trying to talk your piccolo cugino, Pitch and Toss here, and I place an arm around the shoodirs of the spotty boy, — into joining us at the ER hozzy.
— The ER hozzy… Ben says in his lazy, posh, suburban Home Counties accent… My God, he’s one of them. My son is one of them. — Is that something to do with Uncle Euan?
— No! ER as in Easter Road, hozzy as in hospitality. For the match of the season against the mighty Raith Rovers!
— Yeah, cool, Ben says, massively underwhelmed, but coming to some animation on noting that I’m attired in a coat and scarf. — Where are you going?
— A wee message for your auntie.
— Are you going to find Dad? Ross bleats. — I want tae come!
— Not possible, pal of mine, I contend as I hear thumping steps down the stairs.
— Ross! Carlotta barks from the doorway. — You’ll stay here with your cousin!
Ross has that what-the-fuck-have-I-done-wrong expression of hangdog bemusement.
I tip him a wee wink, which seems to console him a little. This is as opportune a time as any to make good my escape. Enough of all the family shite! This festive blight on the calendar is a headfuck, and thank Christ (literally) that it’s only once a year.
So I head out on my dispiriting search. The frosty bite of winter tingles my face, as the street lamps blink into an insipid glow. The daylight hours here are so fleeting it’s almost more of an insult inserting such meagre, murky grey slithers of shit into the total darkness. Funny, but in my younger days, I always wanted out of this city. London offered a bigger canvas. Now, unaccountably, I feel a perverse loyalty towards it. I even contemplate taking a stroll down Leith Walk, but that would only serve to invite crushing despondency. The one thing worse than hearing the words: SICK BOY YA CUNT, WHAIRE HUV YOU BEEN HIDIN YIRSEL? – delivered at maximum volume across a filthy pub – would be not hearing them at all. I set course away from town, towards the Royal Infirmary, Euan’s place of work. When I get to the reception desk, they phone personnel in response to my enquiry, before informing me, — Dr McCorkindale is on leave until the 6th of January.
So I get the bus back into town. It’s fuckin nippy alright; my coupon is stinging with the cold air and my lips are cracking over. I head into a Boots tae buy some lip balm and condoms.
As he’s not a lost waif, there’s no sense in trawling the bus or train stations, so I opt to hang around the hotel lobbies. At least they’re warm. Euan has dosh but is too much of a penny-pinching Calvinist wanker to splash out on the Balmoral or the Caledonian. It will be a functional, clean budget chain, so I hit a few and loiter; they’re full of sales and marketing cumsplats, but no sightings of disgraced Colinton podiatrists.
Applying the same logic, I doubt Euan would have gone to a high-class escort agency. I’m betting he’s been slumming it in the saunas, loving the thrill of the transaction, and part of him excited at the potential humiliation of being rumbled by a work colleague. Yes, I reckon he subconsciously craves all this drama. I hit a couple of the Mary Tyler Moore hooses, one at the top end of Leith and the other in the New Town, showing the Christmas photo I took of Euan on my phone, without exciting any signs of recognition.
I find those tacky premises and their grubby clientele dispiriting. This place in the East New Town is like a shabby government office of the eighties. With its bland reception area, you feel as if you are here to get your passport stamped rather than your pipes cleaned. I head outside, about to call it a day and return empty-handed to face Carlotta’s wrath, when I hear somebody emerging behind me. Then a voice urges, — Hi, mate, hud on a minute.
I turn to face what can only be described as a total fuckin radge. His eyes, slitty but burning with a focused intent, announce him as big trouble. He wears an expensive-looking suit, but it somehow seems scabby on him, as if it’s gotten damp from him actually wearing it in a sauna. I know who he is; he’s the psycho cunt that runs some of these establishments, and whom Terry once did some work for. This isn’t good. When a stranger refers to you as ‘mate’ in that tone of voice, it never is.
— You’ve been gaun roond the saunas, asking about a boy?
— Aye. I take the initiative and show him the picture on my phone.
— Well, if you’re playing detective and no going tae the bizzies, it cannae be kosher, this bastard says. God forged this cunt’s pus when He was sat constipated on the toilet seat and thinking of the word ‘snide’. Not the Creator’s best work, it must be said.
— The boy’s a bit ay a sex case, I explain. — His missus is ma sister, and she caught him playing away fae hame. Chucked him oot. Now she wants him back. I thought he might have been hooring, is all.
All the time this cunt’s slanty, malicious, sweetie-wife eyes are going from the screen to my coupon. Then he suddenly says, — Ah ken you! Sick Boy, they called ye!
They presumably being his fellow retarded idiots, ones also created from the grunting congress of mongol siblings. — Ha… no heard that one for a while.
— Ayyye… you punt aboot doon in London now. Wi Leo, and the Greek cunt, what’s-his-name…
My heart skips a wee beat. This product of retard kinshafting has a long reach, and with fellow insect-brained fuckers not programmed to compromise their mechanical goals. If he’s mobbed up with them, there is no hiding place and it means I’m duty-bound to assist. — Andreas… Yes, Leo, great lads. But that’s all in the past. These days I run a respectable dating agency. We have an application –
— You’re a Leith boy, he accuses, — used tae run wi Franco Begbie.
— Aye, I concede. I hate the way these cretins use the term ‘run’, their pathetic gangster pish vexes me, and I can’t believe I’m hearing Begbie’s name now; that violent psychopathic cunt who conned his way out of jail on some bullshit art ticket. This nightmare grows bleaker by the second. It’s dark and cold and I’m hung-over and I crave that couch. Even Carlotta’s verbal assault and iciness must beat being in the uncomfortable proximity ay this fucker. Now the wind is whipping freezing fucking rain into my face.
— Well, ah dinnae care who you are, ye dinnae come intae ma premises and poke yir neb in. Got that?
— Well, I wisnae really. As I explained, I was looking for my brother-in-law. He’s a surgeon and he –
The next thing I know is the wind is battered oot ay ays by a jackknifing blow tae ma guts… I can barely breathe, as I reach out and grab the railing. There are people walking by in the rain, some at a bus stop, others smoking outside a pub. Not one of the cunts has even noticed this prick’s assault on me!
I look up at his pitiless eyes. — Ah’ll take that phone, he gestures tae the mobby in my hand.
— Ma phone… what the fuck…?