by Irvine Welsh
I storm out of the room, leaving them looking bemused. I’m charging up the stairs to Toal’s office and I’m in without knocking. – Gaffer, a wee word.
– Bruce, I’m a bit busy right now, Toal says, shuffling through some papers. He looks so fucking low.
– I want you to come and see something, some graffiti in the toilet.
– I don’t have time for . . .
– As Fed rep, I don’t have time to see brother officers being slandered by other members of the service!
– What’s this?
I explain the graffiti to Toal and he’s following me down to the bogs. The others have come along, their faces like the ghouls when that Colin Sim guy died. They are looking at Inglis for a reaction and he looks crestfallen. – It’s jist a load ay bloody nonsense, he’s saying over and over again, torn between trying to make light of it, and being genuinely staggered.
How did it make you feel?
I head back up the stairs with Toal, who beckons me into his office and closes the door. – Listen Robbo, he says, – Inglis isn’t, well, you know, is he?
– What? I ask. I’m starting to enjoy this.
– Like the graffiti says, Brother Robertson, Toal snaps.
Toal must be upset to resort to playing the craft card so nakedly. – Whether he is or isn’t is irrelevant surely, I say, planting the seed, – Peter’s sexuality is his business. He’s being harassed and we operate a non-discrimination policy on the grounds of sexual orientation.
– But he can’t be being sexually harassed if he’s not a . . . well, gay, I think the fashionable term is these days.
– Well, you can call it sexual harassment or just plain harassment Bob, but the way I see it, is that this is the unacceptable face of canteen culture . . .
– Whoa Bruce, whoa, I’m on your side . . . this has to be stamped out. It just came as a bit of shock to me . . . I mean, Peter’s a craft stalwart . . .
– Peter’s a lonely guy Bob. What he gets up to is his own business, and I don’t profess to know much about him, but I’m not having a brother officer harassed in this way.
– Exactly. I’ll make sure this is dealt with.
I walk out as high as a kite. The concepts ‘Inglis’ and ‘poofery’ are now indelibly associated. The concepts ‘Inglis’ and ‘promotion’ not so. Ah, the games, the games.
You should keep moving when you’re on a roll and I decide to call on Estelle at the flower shop. I’d like tae fuckin gie that wee shag one. She’s probably feart of Gorman and Setterington. What she needs is protection from those monsters. Someone she can trust in her life. An older, more mature man who can respond to her needs. If there are damsels in distress need saving, then I can think of no better knight in shining armour than Detective Inspector Elect Bruce Robertson.
That old familiar lump in the flannels starts rising as I think about Estelle and a combination of positions and girlie sex noises. A threesome with her and wee Claire, the hoor fae Maisie’s. Just what the doctor ordered. That’ll sort ma fuckin rash oot Rossi!
When I get to the shop, the only person there is the disapproving auld boot, who tells me that Estelle is off sick with the cold.
– A lot of it going about, I cheerfully say.
– Aye, sure, the auld cow mumbles. She doesnae like Estelle at all, that’s as sure as another trophyless season in Gorgie.
– Does she get many callers?
– Too bloody many, the wifie says, then crinkles her nose and commences hostilities, – What’s it tae you?
Looks like the auld cunt just woke up and smelt the bacon. The Scottish working class and respect for the polis go together like Mother Theresa and Playboy centrefolds.
I decide not to probe. – Just trying to make sure I’ve no rivals, I smile, heading for the exit.
– I never thought she wis that desperate, the cheeky old boot says.
I stop abruptly and look around at the stock and give some of the plants a sniff. – Bad time ay the year for flooirs, I say, then: – You got a staff toilet back there?
– Aye, she says. – Anything else?
– Not for now.
That cheeky auld boot is getting a visit from the environmental health; we’re fuckin sure the auld cunt is. Anyway, it seems a good idea to take the rest of the afternoon off and let the form OTA 1–7 take the strain. Call it stress management Mr Toal. Call it stress management Mr Niddrie. Bruce Robertson stress management.
I leave the Hunter’s Square bogs, then stop into the pie shop for a chilli pie. I almost got the bastard worms right out there. There can’t be much of them left. I get in the Volvo and head out to Colinton. The worms are on the run. The worm called Inglis is being flushed out the system; outed and routed, before further infestation can take hold.
At home I cut myself out a big, celebratory line of posh. I’m soon dying on a shag. The only person I can think of belling is Shirley. It’s either that or hooring and she’s cheaper.
Shirl girl.
I succumb to the force of libido and make the call, but as soon as she arrives I can see that I’ve made a mistake and that I’d have been better off with a wank. She’s like a block of ice; she’s staring at me, leaning back on the chair, smoking a fag, looking really nasty.
– I don’t know why I’m here, she says bitterly, and I’m about to retort along the lines of ‘because you’re a slag who wants fucked’ but I bite my tongue. – Carole phoned, she says suddenly in a gleeful inspiration, hoping to get to me. – She told me that she doesn’t want anything to do with you. If you try to see the bairn . . .
– Huh! What does she know? She knows nothing! That’s what she fuckin well kens. The sum total, I snap, feeling my anger rising. I try to control myself. – I mean, she’s deluding herself Shirley . . . it’s said. I’m more sad than angry about it. She’s unstable: I personally think that she’s had some sort of breakdown. I worry about her.
– She seems alright to me . . . Shirley says doubtfully, folding her arms, fixing her eyes on me. Her dark eyes. She’s a sexy cow from a certain angle.
– Believe you me Shirley, the game I’m in, you become something of an expert on human nature. She’s obviously had some kind of breakdown that’s gone undetected. She’s telling lies; lies to poison you against me.
– Poison me against you! Huh! You’ve been quite capable of that yourself, she scoffs, her face contorted in petulance, almost cracking that foundation mask which she wears to cover the acne scars she has. I like the way she does her eyes but, always have.
Time to move. I get ready to make my pitch. – Look . . . I know I’ve been cruel to you in the past. But you know why, surely to God you know why, I plead.
– I wish I did Bruce, I really wish I did, she says, shaking her head.
– Don’t wind me up Shirley, please, and don’t insult the both of us . . . I stand up and walk to the door. Surely the whore can’t be stupid enough to fall for it.
– I’m sorry Bruce, I don’t follow you . . . she says. Her pupils are widening. The fuckin spastic. I don’t believe it. She’s doubting herself. That’s step one: establish doubt. Step two: drive the bus right through her fucking doubt.
– Shirley, you surely to God know only full well that I’ve been trying to drive you away . . . cause I . . . fuck . . . I’m saying too much . . . I shake my heid.
– What! What are you saying?
– I tried to drive you away cause I couldn’t fuckin stand it!
– What! What couldn’t you stand?
– Danny! Carole! Him being with you! Me being with her! Making love to her and pretending it was you! Putting up with sneaky shags in backs of cars when I wanted to take you to my bed and hold you in my arms and make love to you all night and shout to the whole fuckin world: This is her! This is the lassie I love!
She holds my gaze and her eyes start to water and I think of all the injustices that have been perpetrated against me recently and I hope that I feel sorry enough for myself to make m
y eyes moisten as well and I hope that she mistakes this for some of my soul sliding into them and the spasticated cow does and I can’t hold this gaze for long without bursting out laughing so I pull her towards me in a tight embrace and listen to her sob, – Broossss Broooossss can we no work something out Brooosss, I love you . . . and I see my eyes in the mirror behind her, like the eyes on that Tory Party election poster about that Tony Blair spastic.
I fuck her, and I’m regretting it and regretting my stupid spiel even before I’ve blown my muck inside her. After I have to listen to her rabbiting on about her plans and ambitions for us. The sex with her is nothing like I imagine it to be prior to commencing it. I feel entrapped by my lust, but when I actually get round to doing it, it just seems so pointless and tedious. She’s jabbering away and I’m telling her about Inglis and his misfortunes.
– Bruce, she laughs, – why is it you have to savour everything bad that happens to others?
I think about this for a second or two. – It stems from a belief that there’s only a finite number of bad things that can happen in the world at any given time. So if they’re happening to someone else they ain’t happening to me. In a way, it’s a celebration of joie de vivre.
She wants to stay the night but I tell her I’m on backshift. She reluctantly leaves and I do some more lines before tanning a bottle of Grouse. This gives me the shits and I stagger through to the bogs.
Masonic Outings
It’s there! Waking up from a maddening half-pished sleep and seeing the fuckin thing! It’s slithering out of my arsehole, lying across my hips. I touched it. Its black eyes. Its hooked, sucker mouth. Like a stick of tagliatelle with a head. I went to grab it only for it to be sucked up my arsehole like you eat a piece of spaghetti . . .
. . . and we are awake. I am awake. On the couch. The video’s on: the ones that Hector The Farmer got for me. Vibrator Massacre: the dykes who do the young lassies in the woods.
I can’t fuckin well breathe . . . I’m falling apart at the fuckin seams . . . we’re falling apart . . .
These cunts are trying tae kill us with this OT cutback because they know we cannae kip during the fuckin night, never could. They know we need very little sleep and that all we do in darkness is think and think and think. In order to stop thinking we have to fuck and then you get the complications; financial in the case of hoors, social in the case of slags.
I’m sitting up and waiting, praying for the light. I get through by reading ‘Tam o’Shanter’. It’s an apt that I’ll be asked to toast the haggis at the Lodge Burns supper this year, especially after the mess auld Willie McPhee made of it the last time. I know he’s done it for over fifty years, and it’s the only thing he lives for, but it’s getting beyond a joke and it’s time the auld cunt left the crease and embarked on that long walk to tae the pavilion. Eventually the light comes and I sleep for a few hours.
Then I’m up and into work. It’s the Christmas Party the night. I take some more of Rossi’s laxatives. We’ll flush this fuckin thing right out of Bruce Robertson, every last trace, sure we fuckin well will. It’ll be an early start the day alright; I want the first bevvy sank before midday and nae fuckin nonsense aboot deid coons or any ay that shite.
At the station everyone’s in a party mood. Inglis has already had a few, probably been drinking alone in the sad way of the closet homosexual. That, an inspector? I don’t fuckin well think so. A bum inspector, maybe. He’s fuckin well gettin it, I kid you not. The graffiti was only a start. Soon everybody’s gaunny ken what kind of a nancy-boy’s been sharing their cutlery in the cannie.
Karen Fulton and Amanda Drummond are the only fanny around so the prospects aren’t looking good. That big hoor the Size Queen has apparently been transferred up to the South Side. Karen says something about Clell’s hip, and Lennox asks: – What albums does he have? What clubs does he go tae? It’s above every spastic’s heid though.
Drummond coldly says that Clelland has been taken into the Royal Edinburgh Hospital, the Arthur Dow clinic. Apparently he tried to top himself again, while in the hospital! Pills and voddy job!
This puts me in high spirits.
We leave the office and we go to the restaurant for the Christmas curry. – This is the only kind ay networkin wi the wog community that ah’m interested in! Gillman says, raising his pint of lager. Cheers!
– Merry Christmas everybody! I toast loudly, raising my glass and cutting off Drummond as she’s about to pull Dougie up about his comment.
After the meal, we head up the street on a pub crawl. A loud party of pricks in suits and similarly power-dressed fanny stagger out of a Cockburn Street pub, struggling to keep their footing on the slope and the ice. One fat-chopped wanker with an Arthur Scargill hairstyle throws up in the gutter, sending kidney beans everywhere. A horse-faced bird looks at us in embarrassment and another rotund figure chides the puker in a high, squeaky voice, – C’mon Hank! Too much Christmas spirit!
This is a right spastics’ convention. I thought that I was with a sad bunch, but there’s always somebody worse than you. I spot Drummond giving a disapproving Toalesque gesture and this immediately instils a surge of goodwill in me for those part-time seasonal drinkers whom I had instinctively hated. I pull some Kleenex out from my jacket pocket. I always keep them handy for wanking purposes as you never know when the tight-arsed cunts at HQ supplies will run short. I hand the boaking mess a couple. – There you go mate.
– Thanks, the squeakoid says on his behalf.
– Office do? I ask.
– Aye, Standard Life.
Ah, Standard Life. The citadel of spare fanny in Edinburgh. You dinnae qualify as a fully-fledged male native of that city unless you’ve fucked at least a couple of birds from Standard Life by the time you’ve hit your quarter century. Mind you, the fanny on display here looks far from impressive, probably senior minge. Forget the models-in-suits bullshit in they women’s magazines. Generally speaking, the further up an organisation’s hierarchy you go, the uglier the birds get. This isnae because tidy fanny have less brains than dogs, it’s just that tidy fanny wi real brains always take the short-cut by marrying wedge and getting sorted out with some plastic before heading off with a tidy settlement. I look around and decide that we must be near boardroom level here.
We head into the pub vacated by the Standard Life crew. I get them in, ordering myself a vodka and tonic water. I’ve got the horn set up and I fancy firing into somebody later on. Fulton’s the obvious candidate, but she’s taking things quite easy. No like last Christmas or Princess Diana’s funeral when I got her three sheets and rode her back at her flat in Newington.
– Not firing on all cylinders yet Karen? I ask, noting her nursing her drink.
– I’ve gone off the drink a bit, she says. Drummond looks approvingly.
– Mind after Princess Di’s funeral? We were three sheets then!
I couldn’t resist that one, and I drink in Fulton’s visible cringing.
– We ended up back at yours . . .
– Oh aye, Inglis laughs, – tell me more . . .
Fulton winces again, but Drummond interjects, – That was a very sad and emotional day.
– Aye, Gus says. – I watched that Mother Theresa’s funeral again the other night. Ah wis checking tae see what old tapes ah could record ower. Ah watched it aw the wey through again, but it wisnae as good as Princess Di’s.
– Papes though, what dae ye expect, Gillman says.
– Mind you, the papes usually ken how tae pit oan a good funeral, ah’ll say that for them, Gus comments.
– Calcutta but, fuckin wogs eh, Gillman rasps, – what dae ye expect. They cannae fuckin well run the country withoot us, ye dinnae expect them tae be able tae dae a funeral withoot fuckin things up.
– I don’t think . . . Drummond begins.
Gillman dismisses her with a contemptuous scowl. – Fifty fuckin years they’ve hud tae git it right. If they’d goat it right they widnae need any Mother Theresas cause
they widnae huv any slums and poverty in the first place.
– Well, Inglis says cheerily, – we’ve goat our ain parliament now. Lit’s hope we make a better job of it!
– That’ll be a load ay fuckin nonsense n aw, I snort. – Whose fuckin shout is it? If we cannae git organised tae get tae the bar wir no gaunny be able tae run oor ain affairs!
Inglis takes the hint and gets them in.
We lose the disapproving Drummond after a few drinks, but Fulton goes as well, which fucks up the prospects of a gang-bang later. Still, that’s force fanny: no worth the cock that’s pokin it. The crawl progresses down through town, to the St James Oyster Bar. I end up necking with some tart who’s groping my arse, and I only decide not to take her back for a shagging when Lennox points out to me that she’s a total fuckin hound. I sneak out the door and we head down the road.
Inglis makes some comment about dubious ladies, and I decide that that proof is too lippy and he’s fuckin well getting it. I arrange for us all to have a late night drink up at the casino, which I know is closed for refurbishment. It’s now freezing and we’re walking through driving snow.
– Shite, I moan, on seeing the boarded-up doors, – it’ll have tae be one ay they arse-bandit places, I tell them, pointing to the Top of the Walk.
– Ah’m no gaun thair, Inglis scoffs. – Doon tae Shrubhill tae the masonic . . .
– What have ye goat tae hide? Ray laughs. He’s taken his pint out with him and is drinking it.
Inglis looks at Lennox as if it’s him that’s the graffiti artist. – You sayin ah have got anything tae hide likes?
– Naw, Ray shrugs and takes a sip from his pint, – ah’m sayin nothing.
I smile at that.
– Look, c’moan, it’s jist for a fuckin drink, Dougie Gillman snaps.
Ray drains his pint and hurls his glass at a council gritting lorry. It smashes against its hull. – Spastics! he shouts.