We stop off at a store and to his delight I buy him some decent trainers. — The cover story for your mamma, when she asks you where we were. And also a reward for being a top shagger. I give him a playful nudge.
— Thanks, Uncle Simon, squeaks the dazed Colinton gigolo.
When we return to the ranch, Carlotta is up and we tell her about the trainer shopping. But she’s still going on about Euan, lost in her own despair. This problem will hopefully be sorted out soon. I check my phone. Sure enough, there’s an email from Syme with an e-ticket in the attachment for myself and Euan. Economy class. I get onto the airline and upgrade mine to business, using the Colleagues account. Of course Carlotta is clucking, hovering over me, trying to see what I’m doing. — I have a lead, which I’m following up first thing tomorrow morning, I tell her.
— What kind ay a lead?
— Just some people I’ve been talking to. I don’t want to get your hopes up, Carra, but I’m giving this everything I’ve got.
— You cannae keep me in the dark like this!
I pat her softly on the cheek. — As I say, something or nothing, and I head up the stairs, opting to retire early.
After a decent kip, I rise the next brisk morning, and taxi to the airport. Yes, I’m meeting Euan, among others, to make the direct flight to Berlin. I text Renton:
When did you say you were going to Berlin?
An almost instant reply:
Here now. Big gig at Tempelhofer Feld tonight.
Life’s ironies: when I was hunting for Renton, I couldn’t find the bastard anywhere. Now our stars are so aligned that I can’t get rid of the cunt.
Espied timeously in the departure area: Mikey Forrester, clad in semi-decent Hugo Boss brown corduroy jacket, carrying an Apple Mac in a leather shoulder bag. He’s with Spud, who looks like he’s been rejected as an extra from The Walking Dead for being too decrepit. Murphy sports a crappy old green dress jacket and a Ramones Leave Home T-shirt, through which seeps a stain of blood and something else, even though he’s well bandaged. Then I catch Euan, the obtuse cunt, standing apart from us, looking anxiously at his watch. As we clear security, Mikey picks up his cue and moans something about time.
— Relax, boys, I tell them, even though I’m anything but, in fact absolutely shiteing it about what we’re about to try and pull off. Fear, though, is an emotion best not expressed. Once acknowledged, it spreads like a virus. It’s ruined our politics: the controllers have been dripping it into us for decades, making us compliant, turning us against each other, while they rape the world. You let em in, you let em win. I cast an eye over at my motley cohorts. — Looks like the gang’s all here!
Mikey drops his passport and I pick it up. As I hand it to him I see his full name: Michael Jacob Forrester. — Michael Jakey Forrester! You kept that quiet!
— It’s Jacob, he protests belligerently.
— Whatever you say, I grin, throwing my bag on the belt and heading through security.
19
RENTON – DECKED
Never work wi a Jambo cunt fae the west side ay Edinburgh. Being steeped in a broth of Gumley mediocrity, schemes too drab tae be offensive, snobby-but-shite bungalows and that dark tumour on the city that is Gorgie-Dalry tenementland, serves to leave an indelible stain of moral weakness. Carl vanished after his birthday bash and finding him was a nightmare. I eventually tracked him down at the BMC club yesterday, where he helpfully introduced me as a ‘Hibs cunt, but awright’ tae the ching-snorting, crap-beer-guzzling occupants ay this seedy blood-relative-battering shithole. It gets even worse as I have Conrad and Emily ootside in the limo on Gorgie Road. When I manage tae get Carl, who apart from his two fucking heavy record flight cases has nothing but the clathes on his back and whae smells like a cross between a blocked lavy and the local brewery, intae the vehicle, the Dutch maestro roars, — You smell bad! I must sit up front!
So fat boy moves up beside the driver, leaving me sitting bitch between minging Ewart and Emily, who keeps groping my thigh. Carl can smell nothing outside the rancid chemicals clogging his ravaged nostrils and sinuses, but he witnesses her actions through a drunken, sleepy haze and gies ays a creepy, licentious smirk. Then he bursts intae ‘Happy Birthday to Me’ which segues intae ‘Hearts, Hearts, Glorious Hearts’, before he passes out.
— Fuckin B-side cunt, I laugh. The limo driver is Hibs and gets the joke.
When we arrive in Berlin, Carl, comatose on the flight, is suddenly animated again. I pick him out a couple ay T-shirts fae the Hugo Boss shop at the airport. — Cool, he sais aboot one, and, — My ma wouldnae dress me in that shite, Renton, regarding the other. He cheers up when we meet Klaus, the promoter, at the hotel bar. A dance-music veteran, he makes a big fuss ay Carl, immediately sorting us both out with ching. — N-Sign is back! I was at that party outside Munich, many years ago. The crazy one. Your friend… he climbed onto the roof!
— Aye, says Carl.
— How is that guy?
— Deid. He jumped off a bridge back in Edinburgh, shortly after that.
— Oh… I am sorry to hear this… Was it the drugs?
— Everything is the drugs, mate, Carl says, signalling for another lager. The first never touched the sides, and you can see it flooding back into the toxic reservoir inside him, recharging it. This could be a shit gig.
Conrad starts moaning about his room being too small. The cunt is acting out because my old homie is getting the star treatment from Klaus. Then Emily’s all nippy, because my little boys’ club is sooo much more important than her. I’m fucking exhausted and we’ve only just got here. This will be a shit gig.
The Tempelhofer Feld is on the site of the old Berlin Flughafen, which shut down several years back. They plan to make it into a refugee camp. Now the youthful, colourful ravers are cultural émigrés from the old, clapped-out, straight society of capitalism that can’t pay them a living wage and exists solely to suck the wealth of their parents into its coffers through debt.
The Nazi-era terminal, said to be the biggest listed building in the world, is stark, imposing, gloomy and beautiful. Its giant hangars curve out implausibly under a column-free cantilevered roof. In its flightless era it’s mostly leased out, and one of the biggest tenants are the Polizei. Two cops with machine guns look stonily at us as we head into the building, our pockets stuffed with wraps of cocaine. We find the offices, in a glass-fronted control centre overlooking the big arena and its stages. Besides the cops, Berlin’s traffic-control authority and the central lost-property office are based here. There’s also a kindergarten, a dancing school and one of the city’s oldest revue theatres. We watch the out-of-town ravers, milling about, gaping in awe at this strange utopia the locals casually accept. — This is some gaff, I concede to Klaus, who practically ignores me. Now that the festival is under way, he seems tae have ditched sociable and turned intae a narky fascist cunt, snapping orders at stressed underlings. I go off to check things out as the arena fills up, shimmying through the revellers. A skinny young guy I’ve never heard ay plays an interesting set. I’m getting into it. I head for the DJ box, wondering if I can get a word when he’s done, when I see that there are no decks there. Ewart. The place does not have record decks. Fuck. I realise that I forgot to arrange for turntables to be there.
I hurry back to the control centre, flustered. I’ve stated repeatedly tae Carl that he needs to move with the fucking times. All I get in response is a shrug and him muttering about how ‘we’ll sort something out’, usually as he chops oot another line ay coke. Emily and Conrad probably wouldnae remember their SD cards and headphones if I wisnae constantly chasing them up, but they are of a different era. The culpabilty is mine, though: I ought to have mentioned this on the rider.