I decide to hit the canteen for lunch, well, pre-lunch, as it’s a bit early for dinner. Too late for a break and too early for lunch. Bruce Robertson time, I call this. Ina sorts me out with some bacon rolls and I hear smarmy voices behind me which belong to some cunts in suits and one of them is that lippy fucker Conrad Donaldson Q.C. who spends his time coining it in from the taxpayer by defending the kind of fucking scum that we risk our lives to try and put away: rapists, murderers, child molesters and what have you.
– Practising cannibalism Bruce? he nods at the plate and smiles.
I’m looking coolly at the cunt. I’d love to have him. Just him and me, just twenty minutes in an interview room the gether.
– Hello Conrad, I force a smile back.
I want to punch his face and deck him and them stomp that smirking posh face into the ground under the heel of my boot and keep doing it until his skull explodes over the lino, sending its fucked criminal-loving contents squidging across that tiled canteen floor. I’d eat my dinner after and keep it down as well, I kid you not. – Remember what I told you that PIG stood for? Pride, Integrity and Guts.
He smiles and turns to his pals. – Detective Sergeant Bruce Robertson. One of the force’s leading reactionaries. Comes from a mining family as well, I hear.
– You hear wrong, I say softly, looking him hard in the eye. – You must be getting me mixed up with someone else.
– Hmm, Donaldson mumbles, raising his eyebrows.
My knuckles are white on the tray as I depart. I hear Donaldson muttering a consensual goodbye, through a ringing in my ears. I feel sick and dizzy. I sit in a corner and devour the rolls, ripping and rending the stringy meat in my sharp teeth, wishing that it was Donaldson’s scrawny neck. New Labour rising star Conrad Donaldson.
By the time I get back upstairs I’ve composed myself, but whenever I think of Donaldson and his ilk, a savage rage crashes inside my chest. At one point it gets so bad that I’m shaking and my teeth are hammering again. I need a drink so I knock off early and hit the bar at the social club downstairs. Just feeling the thick carpet under my feet composes me. It makes a change from the other rooms in the building with their thin, harsh, cheap Berber flooring. The bar itself is a lot more basic than it used to be. When it opened it was full of good bric-à-brac, antique vases and the like, but these kept going missing so they changed to a more functional decor. A couple of baby polis are playing pool, but I see Bob Hurley at the bar. – I arrived just in time I see, I smile at him.
– Alright Robbo, he turns to the barman, – Another pint of lager Les, and you’d better set up a wee Grouse as well.
– Make that a large Grouse Les, seein as this English cunt’s on the bell. I wink at the barman. Hurley’s face briefly whitens a wee bit. The race card is just one of the cards in the pack and if you’re serious about this game you utilise that full pack as and when you need to. That wee aside is just to remind Hurley of his status as a barely tolerated guest, not just in this country, but in this life.
Hurley and I sit down in a corner and a few rounds later on we’re still there. Toal, of all people, has just come in, but I’m ignoring that arsehole. He sits in the next booth to us, reading the Evening News. Fuck him, the sad, nae mates cunt. Only tries to socialise with the boys when he wants something. It’s Hurley I’m more interested in.
He’s still melancholy about the split with his wife. – What fucked it up with me and Chrissie was her family. You know what it’s like being a polis, he sings in that Tony Newley voice that makes the word ‘polis’ sound so funny.
What’s he on about: ‘a’ polis? Daft cunt.
– You tell them all, her friends, family, the neighbours what you do for a living and you get treated like a leper. They sit in the house, her pals and their spouses and they say nothing, it’s like they’re in an interrogation room. The conversation’s full of awkward silences and they can’t wait to make their excuses and go. Then they always put off coming round again. You get treated fucking . . . he gasps, seemingly in pain, his breath catching, – like a fucking leper, he repeats, – . . . that’s what you feel like Bruce, a fucking leper.
– Yeah.
Hurley pulls a bit of wax from his ear and rubs it on the underside of the seat. – So I went through a phase of telling them that I was a plumber or that I sold insurance. Then they start telling you everything about themselves. It’s like, ‘I do this on the side’ or ‘I don’t put that through the books’. They’re all at it. Every one of them, he says, raising his voice in rage, – fucking Jackie Trent. The lot of them, they’re all fucking Jackie Trent.
I clock Toal getting up and leaving, the nosey, eavesdropping cunt.
– Exactly. And you are a law enforcement officer, I tell him.
– Right, and that’s what she can’t bleedin well understand. When you do what you have to do as a law enforcement officer, when you blow the whistle on these bastards, she turns round and says, ‘It’s my family. I’m leaving.’
– That’s women for you, I tell him, swigging back my whisky. If you drink whisky you’ll never get worms.
She isn’t much of a fuck that Chrissie. Quite into the video camera but went a bit funny on me when I brought out the vibrator. Had tae go aw lovey-dovey oan the daft cow to stop her becoming hysterical.
– I just find it hard to switch off sometimes. The thing about being a polis is that you get used to seeing things in a certain way: looking for things that are going wrong. It’s the way you are; how some people behave, it makes you so suspicious. I just can’t stop running routine checks on them. That’s what wound her up, the questions I would ask her family. I didn’t even realise that I was probing. I couldn’t switch out of role. You can’t be any other way Robbo, that’s what you do.
– Take it or leave it, eh mate, I smile. I’ll be taking your missus again, that’s for sure you stupid cunt.
– Aye, he says, Tony Newley style, – so she left it. It’s over. For good this time.
– Force marriage though pal. May the force be with you, cause sure as fuck the fanny willnae stick aroond.
– You’re lucky though Robbo, he says, almost accusingly.
– Aw aye, me and Carole. Well, she’s a wee bit special. No doubt about that. Steak on the menu tonight!
– She can cook as well! Hurley says, – Is there no end to this woman’s talents?
The fuckin lecherous cunt’s wantin me tae tell him aboot Carole and I’s sex life. Nae wonder his wife’s gittin fucked by everybody in sight. Aw mooth n nae troosers that prick. – It’s a question of values, I say, draining the whisky glass.
Gus Bain comes in and we have a scoop. I’m trying tae watch myself but Gus likes a good jag when he’s clocked off. Hurley fucks off back to his miserable life. Hurley isn’t liked much on the force. I don’t know why; there’s just something about the cunt that makes you fuckin detest him and savour everything bad that happens to him, of which there is lots, I kid you not. You learn to sniff out a loser in this game. The worst kind of losers are the ones who think that they are winners and have to be reminded of the facts. Like a certain young gentleman by the name of Raymond Lennox, for instance.
– Young Ray Lennox didnae have much tae say for himself oan the course, I tell Gus.
– Aye, still waters, Gus smiles with a bit of affection.
– Listen Gus, I say, dropping my voice, – dinnae take this the wrong way, but watch what ye say in front ay Ray. I’m no saying nowt against the guy. In fact I lap him up. But watch what ye say aroond him.
– What dae ye mean Robbo? Gus looks alarmed.
– What I mean is that he’s typical ay they young cunts. He’d drop ye in it in a minute if it suited him. Ye ken the wey it is Gus, five minutes oan the force and they want tae be the Chief Fuckin Constable. Thinks eh kens it aw. The thing is, they young cunts are totally ruthless and they certainly arenae above a bit ay backstabbin and character assassination tae git oan.