Filth (51 page)

Rhona!

Carole!

Stacey!

I take out her picture and stick it back on the sideboard. She used tae wear braces on her teeth, the wee yin. They really straightened them out. A good thing, though I was against it at first. She never wore anything on her leg though.

The kitchen is smelling bad. Something has died in here. I open the back door. It’s cold and I’m wearing only my boxer shorts and my dressing gown, which hangs open but it’s good to see the snow fall again. Like the Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye film
White Christmas
, where they open the patio doors of the General’s holiday inn in Vermont and the snow tumbles down and they burst into song and the closing credits come up. I sip on another purple tin as I watch the snow cascade down. I sing to myself: I’mmm steaming, it’s a shite Christmas . . .

There’s something on the ground, in the garden . . .

What is it? A sack of coal. A find.

I drag it into the cold, dark room. I slowly build up the fire and light it. It catches on quickly. I sit transfixed by the lapping flames which provide the only light in the room, except for a small, annoying flash on the sideboard next to me, which throws a dull, sick red tint over Stacey’s picture.

I switch on the answer machine to play back my messages:

– Bruce, Bunty. Please call me.

Beep
.

– Bruce, Bunty. I’m worried about you darling. They said you were sick. I called but you weren’t in. Call me.

Beep
.

– It’s Chrissie. Call me sometime sexy!

Beep
.

– Hello Bruce. It’s Gus here. Hope all is well and that you’ll soon be fighting fit again. Gie’s a wee tinkle!

Beep

– Mister Robertson, it’s Heather Sim here. Euan’s mum. It would be great if you could get tickets for Tynecastle for the Celtic match on the twenty-first. I don’t know if that’s convenient or not. If you could get back to me on six-one-two-seven-double-four three. Thanks again.

Beep
.

– Brucey baby, it’s Chrissie from-be Hynde here; the last of the great Pretenders! You haven’t been answering either your calls or your callers. I was round yesterday. I know you’re in. There are roadworks outside. Your gas needs turned off. What’s the matter big boy? Can’t you stand the heat? Call me if you just happen to rediscover your bollocks!

Beep
.

– Anybody home? Oh well . . .

Beep
.

– Bruce . . . please, please, please call me. It’s Bunty. Please Bruce.

Beep
.

– Bruce . . . it’s Shirley . . . Bruce . . . call me . . . call me!

Beep
.

– Bruce. Gus. Ah didnae git it Bruce. They didnae gie me it. Phone me Bruce, I want to take this up wi the Federation. Ye ken who they gave it tae!

Beep
.

– Hello . . .

Beep
.

Enough of it. I disconnect the phone. More television, that’s what I need.

More television.

No. The channels, the voices, always the fuckin voices . . .

Then a knock on my door. I can’t be bothered but the knock’s getting louder and louder and it’s just like whoever it is is going to kick the door in, polis-style. I’m opening up and he’s here, standing in front of me in the doorway, and I’m looking over his shoulder, watching Tom Stronach’s BMW pull out and head down the road. The winter sun glints in my eye. The snowstorm. It’s gone. It’s just away. Fuckin hell.

– I had to come Bruce, he says to us. – I was worried about you. You’ve been through the fucking mill. I had to come, he repeats.

We want to close the door, but it seems easier to let him in. We say nothing, but we go through to our kitchen and sit down. We look outside at our garden, a dead mess. It was once so lovely. Carole liked working in it, I never did. I appreciated her efforts though. Liked to sit out there with a can of lager. Simple pleasures. Stacey’s swing . . . got that a few summers ago now. How many?

Ray follows me in and sits down opposite us. A concerned visitor.

– Of course Bruce, ah dinnae need tae tell ye that while I was chuffed aboot the promotion, it’s been a bitter-sweet experience for me. If you hadnae had that . . . well, the problems you’ve been huvin . . . well, you’d’ve walked it mate. Hus tae be said.

– Aye Ray, that’s the way it goes, we nod. This is what it’s about. This is what Gus’s message was about.

Lennox’s face is set in an evaluating smile, tight round the mouth, eyes searching but strangely dead and mechanical, the polis way. – Ken what your problem is, he laughs coldly, – ye dinnae practise what ye preach.

We can say nothing.

Lennox is talking to us in the manner that pretends it’s all for our welfare, rather than his gloating benefit. – You telt me Bruce. Mind what you says: You need to suss out what the party line was and then spiel out the script.

– Aye, I mind, we tell him.

– You see though Bruce, you have tae learn a new script. It’s like all that equal opps bullshit: just spout that at the cunts and do it with conviction. It’s just another wee code you rely on. That’s why the likes of Gillman . . . he shakes his head in a condescending smile. He’s rehearsed this speech alright. – Your behaviour has to be non-racist and non-sexist. You ken the score; all this equal opps stuff started when mass unemployment took its toll. You couldn’t have upwardly mobile schemies taking jobs from the sons and daughters of the rich! So you bring in a handful of overprivileged coons as a Trojan horse sop to equal opps, while making sure you keep the good salaried jobs for the educated bourgeoisie. You start to introduce minimum qualifications, make a uni degree essential where it had never been needed in the past. That way you weed out people that cannae bullshit your script. Of course, fuck all changes. In London coons just get to be truncheoned by a member of their own race once in a blue moon. You know the score.

Lennox gives me an I’ve-got-it-sussed wink.

– Yeah. This is true Ray.

– I’m no saying you’re a dinosaur Bruce, but you’ve allowed these cunts to paint you that way. Keep the cards close to yir chest mate.

– Close to the chest Ray, like I always told you.

– That’s what you told me, he says cheerfully. He looks around the room and he can’t hide his distaste. He stands to his feet. Lennox the victor, Robertson the vanquished.

Who would have thought it. Lennox perhaps.

– Anyway, Bruce, got to nash. There is just one thing, and I suppose it’s something that everybody feels when they get a promotion, you know, how to relate to the old mates and all of that.

He looks closely at us to see as if we understand. We are looking at him blankly. We have nothing to say.

– I can say this because we’re both law enforcement professionals Bruce, but your methods and mines are very different. Now I ken that we’ve pulled some shit in the past, but that’s finito now, all the coke and that shit. He looks hard and searchingly at me with an authority he’s never shown before. The authority of the man who knows he has the state queueing up behind him, on his side. – Savvy?