And I know him.
Alan. Alan Loughton. Used to be a member of the strike committee, back in the day. How’s it goin A1 buddy? How’s it going now that the pits been shut down for over ten years? How is it going now that you’re no longer seen as a socialist hero back in the village, but as a boring auld pissheid and
– Awright! Alan isn’t it! What’s this? I nod at his gold tin of Carlsberg Special. – Nae old purple tin? Going bourgeois on us? Cleaning up our act are we?
He’s looking at me now, trying to get me into focus.
– Bruce! Bruce Robertson, I tell him. – Mind ay me? I joined the polis just before the strike! If you cannae beat them, join them, I always did say. What aboot yourself? What are you up to these days? Politics no doubt. Always did have a way with public speaking!
Loughton groans an incomprehensible recognition.
– Seem tae have lost it but mate, eh? That silver-tongued oratory. Anyway, I must fly, see you, I turn and stroll across the concourse. Behind me I can hear a pained growl of sheer anguish.
There’s two words though, that I, we, I, we can make out.
Filth.
The other one is bea
No fuckin way a jakey, a purple-tinned cunt is fucking with my head. It’s me, Bruce. There are no others. I’m not the one he’s on about. Loughton. A nothing. A nobody. A set of fucking dormant social problems waiting to be cleaned up. That’s the real filth, that’s the real garbage.
At the other end of the bus park, two uniformed spastics are talking to an Eastern Scottish Transport inspector. I approach them.
– Alright officers, I flash my ID.
– Aye, one says nervously.
– How auld’s yir granny? I ask.
– Three hundred and sixty-two, he replies.
– Good lodge. Dougie Millar still grand-master?
– Aye . . .
– Well, officer . . .?
– Cameron sir.
– Well P.C. Cameron, I suggest you and your colleague here get your fingers out of your arseholes. Are you aware of the policy of zero tolerance of crimes and misdemeanours in public areas?
– Yes . . . we . . . he stutters. A fledgling spazwit.
– I’m assuming that you are beat officers here?
– Yes sir.
– Glad to hear it. There’s a fuckin jakey over the concourse, I point in Loughton’s direction. – He’s been abusing passengers, including me. You get that cunt or you’re getting it baith weys, through the service and through the craft. Savvy?
– Right, one says nervously, turning to the other one, – Let’s go.
The two uniformed spastics race across the tarmac and grab a hold of the bemused Loughton.
I always liked Loughton but it seems to me that he’s been going nowhere since his salad days of the miners’ strike. The best I could do is to help the cunt relive old memories and it was almost like auld times watching the poor fucker get huckled away into the back of a police vehicle by the boys in blue.
Come In Charlie
The new area office in the South Side looks tatty already: those sticky-fingerprinted glass doors and that fag-burned public desk with the badly printed and faded posters on the noticeboard above it. There’s a smell of disinfectant, that strong institutional kind that looks like it’s been put down to conceal the smell of pish, even when it husnae. An old cow is giving the desk sergeant a hard time. It’s Sammy Bryce though, and Sammy’s too professional to let her faze him. – . . . I understand that, he’s saying, – but if it doesn’t have a crime number then there’s nothing we can do.
– How dae ah get a crime number? she asks.
– You have to report to the nearest local station to where the offence took place.
– But they said any police office . . . she’s almost in tears with frustration.
– Any police office if you have a crime number.
I wink at Sammy, not a bad guy for a uniformed spastic, and then I head upstairs to meet Davie McLaughlin.
D.S. McLaughlin from the South Side is heading up the investigation of Bladesey, who has returned from the bosom of his spastic family in Newmarket to find himself minus a wife and in our custody helping us with our enquiries. McLaughlin is a good choice on this one: a dirty carrot-topped bastard with a filthy fuckin pape name, not in the craft, an odious piece of racial vomit. It’s quite fortuitous as it’s an excuse for not pulling strings for Brother Blades. The pervert Brother Blades.
– So you know Cliff and Bunty Blades well? he asks.
Of course, we find it distasteful talking to a freckle-faced left-footer, but it’s serving our purposes. I slip on my concerned face. – Aye Davie, we’re friends of the both of them. I’ve kent Bladesey, eh Cliff Blades, for a couple of years, but I’ve only got to know Bunty recently. She was going through a pretty hard time with this sicko hassling her, so Bladesey wanted me to come around and give them a bit of support.
– Did you ever get the idea that he was the one making all those calls?
I give a slow, deliberate swallow. – Davie, I’ve been polis longer than I care to remember, and I’ve investigated loads of cases like this. At the time, I have to admit it, it was the last fucking thing on my mind, I shake my head. – Now I can see that this was how he was getting his kicks, enjoying the element of risk. He was wanking all over me! I smash my fist on to the table.
– Don’t give yourself a hard time mate, honestly, says the concerned Romanist. Seems not a bad guy, for a pape. – We all have to switch off and have our own lives. Sometimes we get blind spots about people.
– But I feel like a fuckin monkey Davie . . .
– Bruce, ye cannae go around in your private life thinking that every single pal you’ve got can or cannae be Jackie Trent in some way or another. If the truth be told, when we walk out that door, we all put the job on hold to an extent.
Maybe you do, but you’re a pape. As your family are probably all criminals, you have tae pit the job oan hold.
– I want to see him . . .
– I don’t think that’s a good idea Bruce . . ., the bead-twirler tells me.
– Just give me two minutes with him, I won’t fucking touch him, I swear.
– Okay, he says, raising those ginger brows. McLaughlin may be a Romanistic, anti-abortionist cunt, but he’s polis through and through.
I head down to the detention room where Bladesey is being held. A uniformed spastic stands over him, but departs as I come in.
Bladesey says nothing, but his eyes are burning and eager. He’s pleased to see me.This pathetic little bastard’s genuinely pleased to see me!
He really thinks that I’d be friends with a sad pervert. Best put him right. – You fuckin little cunt! I snap. – Fuckin piss-taking little fart . . . you fuckin strung me along from the start! All that fuckin shit about Frank Sidebottom! You were wanking off in my face ya fuckin cunt!
Bladesey’s now a picture of wretchedness. – No . . . he protests. He looks so bad, that it’s hard for me to keep looking at his eyes. I turn away briefly, but then the need for sport takes over, as it always does, and I glare at him.
– Bruce, you have to believe me, it wasn’t me!
– Don’t make me fuckin punch your heid doon through your fuckin shoodirs – right oot yir fuckin erse ya wee cunt! I move towards him, and he cowers away. I stop and turn, then do a full circle back towards him. I think of all the injustices I’ve suffered, more injustices than that wee cunt could ever know. Spreading my palms I plead, – Why mate? Why the fuck did you do this Cliff? Why did you Drag me intae it? I thought we were mates!
– I didn’t, I didn’t, we are! Bladesey begs, and then breaks down. – I digh-hi-dent . . . I digh-hi-dent . . . he chokes, biting into the sleeve of that checked jacket to stifle his sobs.