by Irvine Welsh
– I did not realise … I had no idea …
– No, Sir, you did not, so bewitched by a spell of evil were you, so torn by heartbreak that the devil got into you while your defences were devastated by the loss of your darling wife. But that sheep is no replacement … only a woman can love a man, Sir, this I contend.
Denby let a smile play across his lips as he studied this enchanting young creature fondly. – And what, my little darling, would you know of love?
– Alas, Sir, I too harbour my passions, passions which burn all the more sorely for being so guarded …
– A pretty, innocent young thing like you? Denby said. Yet so devious, he thought.
– Even in a world so warped by the madness of men as our own, my good Lord, I cannot bring myself to regard trickery, subterfuge, manipulation and seduction as the legitimate behaviour of a young woman, let alone one preparing to take up her place in society, but these concerns of morality are always tempered by passions … grand passions which justify anything!
– You’ve fallen for Marcus Cox! Lorraine, I will have you know that the dashing blood commands my utmost respect as a soldier and a friend and, moreover, in his vagabond ways I see echoes of a younger self. This is why I could never consent to such a liaison with a ward of mine. Cox is a wild stallion whose entire raison d’être is to win the hearts, and thus the virtue, of innocent maidens, then discard them ruthlessly in pursuit of the next prey!
– No, Sir, you may rest assured on the matter of Marcus Cox. Charming and dashing though he may be, Marcus is not the one who has captured my heart … you are, my Lord. There. I have said it.
Denby looked at Lorraine. He was then aware of the presence of someone else in the room. He turned, anticipating Marcus Cox. However, it was a female figure. He gazed at his departed wife’s great friend, the match-maker Miss May. – Miss May. You have, I take it, played a part in these proceedings?
– Not as much as I generally do, for affairs of the heart can only be resolved by the parties concerned. It is for you to now make that resolution, my Lord. What do you say?
Lord Denby looked into the dark pools that were the eyes of the fair Lorraine. – I say … he staggered forward and held her in his arms, – … I love you … my darling … my sweet, sweet darling Lorraine! He kissed the beautiful young woman and he was aware of cheers in the room as Harcourt and Cox had gathered round. Nonetheless, the Lord held his lips on the lovely lady’s.
– Now, Cox commented loudly to Harcourt, – we shall surely get a day out with those blasted hounds!
23 Perk’s End
He was on his third bottle of red wine in the Kensington bar, but two inches past the bottleneck he could drink no more and he decided that he was as drunk as could be without passing out. He wearily raised his hand to the barman and staggered out into the street.
It was still light but Perky Navarro was too dazed with drink to react to the oncoming car. He felt nothing until it hit him and he went over its bonnet, realised nothing at all until he briefly came to in the hospital.
Through his heavy, stunned state Perky could see the assorted strange faces around his bed, the faces of the medical team. One face was familiar, though, one leering face which twisted grotesquely into focus from behind the bland expressions of concerned detachment from the medical people.
Perks could feel himself slipping away, but he could see that face getting closer to him and the last words Perky Navarro heard were: – You’re in good haaaands ere, Perky, moi ol zun. We’ll take praber gare of thee …
Unfortunately, Perky Navarro passed away. That evening, Yvonne Croft was on her break so she went down to the path lab to see Glen. She heard noises coming from the behind a door in the lab. – Who’s in there? she asked Glen.
– It’s just Freddy, Glen smiled, – he’s an old friend of the deceased. He’s a bit emotional; he’s just paying his last respects in his own way.
– Oh, said Yvonne, – that’s nice.
– Yeah, said Glen. – Fancy a coffee?
She smiled and he ushered her out, along to the canteen.
24 Pathologically Yours
There were two men who played a particularly prominent role in the St Hubbin’s Hospital Trust. It was profitable to them both in different ways. Both men had known that they were not going to give up what they had, what they valued.
Alan Sweet, who was one of these men, had requested the clear-the-air meeting with the increasingly truculent pathologist Geoffrey Clements, to discuss his continuing allegations of malpractice in the department.
The pathologist had just started to speak when he felt the chloroform gag over his mouth. He struggled, but Freddy Royle, the second of the men most concerned about the ramifications of the pathologist’s findings, came from good farming stock, and he had an exceptionally tight grip.
Alan Sweet was soon over by his side, helping to restrain the pathologist until he fell into unconsciousness.
When Geoffrey Clements was able to gain partial consciousness, he could only strain fitfully against his bonds. Even though a girl with bleached-blonde hair called Candy was riding him, and the huge dildo strapped to her stomach was well into his anus, and in spite of the other girl, Jade, rubbing her crotch into his bearded face, Clements felt blissfully relaxed.
– Ooh ar, looks like a good un! Freddy Royle shouted as the camera in Perky’s old apartment started recording the scene. – Them muzzel-relaxint drugs look loike the bizzniz, don’t they, Geoffrey, me old sport?
All Clements could do was moan quietly into Jade’s bush in his blissed-out state.
– A lot of people could see this video, Geoffrey. Of course, you and I know that isn’t going to happen, Sweet smiled.
– In fact, oi think that itz bizzniz as usual, Freddy laughed, – Ooh aar, looks like a good un!
25 Lorraine Goes To Livingston
Rebecca was having the time of her life at The Forum. The drug was taking her to new heights with the music. She took it easy, sitting in the chill-out room, enjoying the waves of MDMA and sound inside her. She looked at Lorraine, dancing away to the crazy apocalyptic sounds of the car horns and sirens blaring, crazy urban nightmare FX over a seductive, irresistible break-beat. Rebecca had accompanied Lorraine home to Livingston for a break. Lorraine was dancing with a group of men and women she knew. It was the first ever jungle night at The Forum, with a couple of top London jocks up doing the business. Lorraine looked happy. Rebecca thought of the title for her book: Lorraine Goes To Livingston. It would probably never be published. It didn’t matter.
And in the midst of the Livingston jungle, something happened to Lorraine. She found herself necking with somebody, snogging the lips on a face that had been close to hers all night. It felt good. It felt right. She was glad she had come back up to Livingston. Come home.
Fortune’s Always Hiding
A Corporate Drug Romance
For Kenny Macmillan
Prologue
Stoldorf was a very beautiful village, picture-postcard Bavarian. It was located some eighty miles north-east of the city of Munich, nestling on the edge of the Bayrischer Wald, the lush Bavarian forest. The present village was actually the second Stoldorf; the medieval ruins of the first lay just over a mile down the road, where, long ago, the swelling Danube had burst its banks and swept part of the original settlement away. To avoid the risk of future flooding the village had been moved back from the great river, up onto the base of the slopes of the mountainous forest which rose in towering layers to the Czech border.
Gunther Emmerich, who had family connections in the area, had chosen to make this idyllic and unspoiled hamlet his home. The local pharmacy had become available, and six years ago Emmerich had decided to take it over, giving up corporate life and its attendant stresses.
It had been a good move. Gunther Emmerich was a contented man who felt that he had everything. Additionally, there was the wry satisfaction of knowing that this was how he was perceived by others: an
old man with a young wife, a beautiful baby, health and wealth. As the local pharmacist in Stoldorf, Emmerich also had a status, and his family connections enabled him to be assimilated into the village community more easily than someone without the advantage of such a background. Emmerich was far too self-effacing by nature to be smug about his lot and therefore tended not to incite jealousy. This had been a flaw in his corporate life; lesser talents had obtained greater career advancement purely on their ability to beat their own drums. Here in Stoldorf, however, this liability was a decided asset. The locals respected this quiet, courteous and diligent man, admired his pretty young wife and their baby. So while Gunther Emmerich had reason to be contented, there was always a vaguely fatalistic unease about him; it was as if he knew that what he had could, and perhaps would, be someday taken from him. What Gunther Emmerich understood was the fragility of life.
Brigitte Emmerich was, if anything, even more at one with the world than her husband. From an adolescence littered with drug and personality problems, she considered that the best move she had ever made had been to marry the old pharmacist. She would think of her days in Munich’s Neuperlach District, consuming and dealing amphetamines. The irony that she had married a pharmacist! It was not, she knew, a relationship based on love, but there was a strong affection which had grown over the four years they had been together and this had cemented further with the birth of their son.
This postcard appearance of the village of Stoldorf, though entirely persuasive, was inherently superficial; like most places it had more than one facet. Stoldorf was located in a region which had, until recently, been one of the most inaccessible in Europe, tucked alongside the old east-west divide of the Iron Curtain. In the darkness of the night, the forest which loomed over the village gave off an aura of foreboding which lent substance to the age-old myths of the Superbeasts lurking in its recesses. Gunther Emmerich was a religious man, but also a man of science. He didn’t believe that a Superbeast stalked through the forest, observing the villagers just out of the line of their vision – though sometimes he felt as if he was being watched, spied on, singled out. Gunther knew far more about the evil that people, rather than monsters, were capable of. Bavaria had been the key region in the development and rise of Nazism. Many older people in Stoldorf had their secrets, and they never asked too many questions about the past. That local characteristic appealed to Gunther Emmerich. He knew all about secrets.
One cold, late December morning, Brigitte had taken their young child, Dieter, into Munich to do some Christmas shopping. As a Christian, Gunther Emmerich was opposed to the commercialisation of Christmas, but enjoyed the occasion and the exchange of gifts. As the child had been born just before last Christmas, this would be their first real family Christmas together. There had been problems last year. Following the birth of the baby, Brigitte had become depressed. Gunther was supportive, and urged prayer. This was a bulwark in their lives: they had met at a Christian mission in Munich, where they had both worked as volunteers. Brigitte had subsequently made a full recovery and was relishing this festive period.
A few minutes changed everything.
She left the child outside a gift shop in Munich’s crowded Fussgängerzone for just a few minutes, to nip inside and get Gunther a tie-pin that had taken her fancy. When she emerged, the child and his buggy were gone: in their place just a sickening vacuum. A jagged, frozen sensation exploded in the base of her spine and travelled up each vertebra, disintegrating them one by one. Shaking off fear’s paralysis, she looked around frantically – nothing, just throngs of Christmas shoppers. Buggies there were, but not her buggy, not her baby. As if the corrosive trail of fear had eaten through the very structure that held her upright, all Brigitte Emmerich could do was let out a loud moan as she buckled and collapsed against the window of the shop.
– Was ist los? Bist du krank? An elderly woman asked her.
Brigitte just kept screaming, all the faces of the shoppers turning towards her.
The police had little to go on. A young couple had been seen pushing a child in a buggy away from the shop around the time Brigitte’s child had vanished. Nobody really remembered what they looked like. Nobody took any notice: another young couple with a baby. Yet there was an impression from the witnesses that there was something about that young couple. Something that was difficult to be specific about. Something perhaps in the way that they moved.
Eight days later the distraught Emmerichs received an anonymous package from Berlin. It contained, wrapped in polythene, two small blue, puffy, chubby arms. Both knew straight away what it was and what it meant: only Gunther knew why.
The police doctors said that there was no way the child could have survived such an amputation, performed with a crude implement, like a saw. There were marks above the elbow joints to show that the arms had been secured in a vice. If the shock hadn’t killed Dieter Emmerich, the child would have bled to death in minutes.
Gunther Emmerich knew that his own past had caught up with him with a vengeance. He went into his garage and blew his face off with a shotgun his wife didn’t even know he kept. Brigitte Emmerich was found by neighbours drugged and in a pool of blood where she had slashed her wrists. She was taken to a mental hospital on the outskirts of Munich where she has spent the last six years catatonic.
Aggravation
If the truth be known I can fucking well do without this bleedin aggravation, on account of the little job we got planned for tonight. Well, that was the way it panned out. You don’t come down here mob-handed like that. Not on our fucking manor, you bleedin well don’t.
– Came down here to clear the air, didn’t we, this cocky Ilford cunt says.
I turned to Bal, then back to this mouthy Ilford slag, – Yeah, well let’s fucking well clear it then. Outside.
Now I could tell that that took the wind out of the cunt’s sails because the geezer with the mouth and his mate that was all fucking sly, well they were looking a bit fucking sad at that point, I should fucking well say.
Les from the Ilford, he ain’t so bad, he was saying, – Look lads, we don’t need all this aggravation. Come on, Dave, he says to me.
But nah, they don’t come down here mouthing. That ain’t on. I ignore the cunt; I nod to Bal and we make for the door.
– You, Bal points to this Hypo geezer and his mate, the cunt with the mouth, – out you fucking well come, you cunts!
They follow us, but I don’t reckon that their bottle’s up to it. A few Ilford slags make to go out behind them but Riggsie says, – Sit fucking down and drink your fucking beer. They’ll sort it all out.
So me n Bal are right over to the two Ilford ponces and there ain’t nowhere for them cunts to go, they are like lambs to the bleedin slaughter. But then I see that one cunt’s tooled; he pulls a blade, and him and Bal are having this stand-off. This peps up the other geezer cause I thought that he was just gonna stand there and take a slapping, but he’s steaming in, the cunt. He gets in a couple quite tasty style n all but what he don’t realise is that I’m a heavyweight and he’s a lightweight so I don’t mind taking a few to get in close – which I do – then it’s over in no time. I hit him in the jaw and boot him a couple of times and he goes down onto the tarmac of the pub car-park. – It’s the fucking Rembrandt Kid we got here! Always on the fucking canvas! I shout at the slag who’s all cowed on the deck, not so fucking cocky now. My brogue goes down hard on his throat and he makes a shrieking, choking noise. I kick him a couple of times. Very disappointing this is n all; ain’t no fight left in this cunt so I steam over and give Bal a hand.
Thing is, at first Bal ain’t nowhere to be seen, then he comes back, eyes all fucking glazed, hand dripping with blood. It looks quite bad. The cunt’s cut him and run, the fucking conniving little toe-rag.
– Slag fucking got my hand! Tooled the cunt was! A fucking toe-to-toe we was on! That slag’s fucking history! Fucking history! Bal screams, then a light comes into his eye when he sees the geezer that I’ve
given the slapping to, just lying there, groaning on the fucking deck. – CAHHNNTS! FUCKING ILFORD CAHHNTS! He starts booting fuck out off this Ilford slag who’s gone into a ball to try to protect his fucking face. – Hold on, Bal, I’ll open this cunt up for you, I says, and starts booting at the base of the cunt’s spine and that makes him buckle, giving Bal cleaner shots at the fucker’s nut. – I’LL TEACH YOU CAHHNTS TO PULL A FUCKING BLADE IN A TOE-TO-TOE YOU CAHHNNTS!
We left the Ilford wanker lying there. He’d have got worse if he hadn’t been one of our geezers, I mean not Mile End, but like Firm. Well, they call themselves Firm but they ain’t the real Firm. We proved that fucking point. Foot-soldiers, them cunts. Ideas above their fucking station.
Anyway, we leaves the cunt in the car-park and goes into the Grapes to finish our drinks. Bal took off his T-shirt and wrapped his hand in it. Standing there like fucking Tarzan, he was. It was bad n all, the hand like, needed stitching pretty sharpish at the A&E at the London Hospital down the road. It would have to wait though; this was about show, about flash.
Cause it felt great walking into that bar: grinning like a pair of bleeding Cheshire Cats we was. Our boys cheered when we got in; some Ilford cunts skulked out the fucking door there and then. Les from their mob came over.
– Well, you got the result, fair and square, lads, he said. Not a bad geezer, Les: decent sort of bloke if you know what I mean.
Bal ain’t a happy man though. No wonder with his bleedin mit cut up. – Weren’t fair n square at all, you cunt. Some slag slipped that Hypo geezer a tool!
Les just shrugs like he dunno nothing about it. Maybe he don’t. Not a bad geezer, Les. – Dunno nothing about that Bal. Where are they, Greenie and Hypo?
– The mouthy slag, Greenie, is it? Last seen in small fucking pieces outside in the car-park. That Hypo cunt, he was heading for the fucking Tube. Probably caught the East London line across the fucking river. He’ll be running with the fucking Millwall next season!