– Oh God, she tuts, rolling her eyes, – I’m not a lesbian Bruce, before you start with any more of your silly predictable responses. I have a boyfriend. He’s far better looking, more intelligent, sensitive, stronger and younger than you. In the sexual marketplace you’re not even Poundstretcher or Ali’s Cave to his Jenners. You’re a sad creature. I certainly don’t fancy Karen in any way shape or form, but I fancy you even less. You repulse me. Can I make it any plainer?
This isnae . . . this isnae . . .– Well why aw the fuckin concern for me . . . I hear myself bleat. This cow . . .– I’m not like that . . . I’m not like that ah’m no ah’m no ah’m no ah’m no . . .
– Because you’re my colleague and you’re a human being. You have to get yourself straightened out, and then you might just become the kind of person you imagine yourself to be, although God knows what that is.
What the fuck is this . . .
– I’m . . . I’m not so good at my job now . . . not so good . . . I’ve been in it too long . . . in Australia I was the best . . . my family don’t talk to me . . . cause of the strike . . . they’re a mining family . . . Newtongrange . . . Monktonhall . . . they don’t talk to me. They don’t let us in the house. My father. It was my brother. It was the coal, the dirt, the filth. The darkness. I hate it all. They won’t let us in the hoose. Our ain fuckin hoose. We tried. We really fuckin well tried . . . ah wis only daein ma fuckin job . . . polis eh. It was only the strike.
She turns to me, her teeth grinding together like she’s been up all night on the charlie as well . . .– Accept it. Deal with it, she snaps. – You have a wife, a daughter . . . don’t you?
– That’s all gone . . . I’m shaking my head, – she told lies . . . stupid lies . . .
– Who did?
– Both of them . . . stupid lies, we laugh, – It’s all gone wrong. Same rules apply. We used to be good at the auld policework. I’ll bet they told you that. Eh?
– Yeah, they told me, she says disinterestedly.
Well how would she know cause she’s never fuckin polis but if she could help us, if she could just try to understand like Carole used to . . . if we could explain . . .– There’s something wrong with us now. Something bad. Something . . . inside.
– Have you been to a doctor?
– He can’t do anything for us. Nothing. That’s it over, I tell her. Now I realise that I can’t talk to her. Her! Her of all people. I was weak, weak to start. – Same rules. Look, stop here. I’m getting out and I’m staking out Setterington and Gorman.
– Bruce, I don’t think you’re fit to work at the moment . . . she says.
I turn in the seat and look at her in a grim, tearing focus. That nosey cunt. Get a fuckin life of your own instead of nosing into other people’s. – I’m heading up this investigation Drummond! Don’t you ever forget that! GET ON WITH YOUR FUCKIN JOB AND STOP PLAYING THE AMATEUR PSYCHOLOGIST! I roar with violence and she cowers under the impact of my words and my hot slavering breath, stopping the car abruptly, her face crimson and her eyes watering. I jump out. She starts off at pace. Once she’s out of sight I get a taxi home and go to my bed where I see more demons forming in the swirling patterns of my artex ceiling.
The bed we used to share.
Time we acted.
It’s Hogmanay, and I’m going out tonight. Going out with Carole.
More Carole?
I’ve had a lot, in fact maybe too much, but it’s that time of year. It’s freezing and I’m glad I’ve put my big coat on. I’m carrying my nice new handbag, the one Bruce got me for last Christmas, well that should now be the Christmas before last, but I’ve not really used it yet. The Tron is sectioned off and the city is heaving. This used to be a traditional Scottish affair but now it’s just the Edinburgh Festival at New Year, another tourist thing. I’m sick of it. I head away from it all, down Leith Walk, passing crowds of jeering youths, couples and tourists who are all making their way up the town.
I turn off a sidestreet and see the glowing light of a bar. I’m heading towards it but I’m aware that there’s a car cruising alongside me, as if I was a hooker or something. One guy’s hanging out the window making signs. I ignore him. Then it stops a little bit in front of me and two young men get out. They approach me and one blocks my path. My grip tightens on my handbag.
– Happy New Year doll! he says.
– Ye comin fir a wee ride sweetheart? the other asks.
– No . . . I . . . I start, then stop. I don’t like talking. To strangers. Not when I’m out with
They start to laugh. I start to laugh. We start to laugh. Then one man gets out from the back of the car and pushes us into the back seat as another pair of hands grab hold of our wrists. We’re in the back seat of the car crushed between two men and the other two have got into the front and we’re speeding off. It’s strange, but we never thought of reacting: resisting or running off, although we had time to do both. This seems the right way.
– You’re a fuckin sick fairy. Ah’m gonny fuckin cripple you, one young man says, turning around in the front passenger seat. We know this albino-skinned boy to be Gorman. We know the record of this thug.
– Ye shag guys like that . . . darling? a guy next to us is laughing. He is big. His hands are like shovels. His head is as chunky as Darth Vader’s mask. This man we know to be Setterington.
They can’t talk to us like that. – Listen! we tell them, – Police! We’re working undercover!
They laugh. They just laugh at me. We pull off the wig we have been wearing. We still hold on to our handbag. Carole’s handbag. My present. Last Christmas I gave you my heart. The car seems to be moving so slowly, and there is a sickness in our stomach, a sickness which makes us feel as if we have eaten too much candyfloss at the fairground and gone on the waltzers. Stacey liked the waltzers. Us and her, her tucked in the middle. The nuclear family, spinning, twisting, disorientated, but still huddled together.
Still . . .
– Sexier oan but, eh, one guy’s laughing. He’s laughing at us. We do not recognise him.
Spinning, twisting out of control. The wig. It cost two hundred pounds from Turvey’s on the Glasgow Road. Made specially to look like Carole’s hair, long and black. I told the guy it was for my wife. Her hair fell out after chemotherapy. How terrible, he said. She smokes too many cigarettes, I told him.
– Any keks you wear may be taken doon and used in evidence, another one smiles; Liddell, this one is called.
– I’m Detec . . .
I’m
We’re a family . . . we knew a fam . . .
– Detective Se . . . we start to tell them, but Setterington has punched us hard on the nose with his anvil fist and the tears are filling our eyes and there is a sharp noise of pain spreading across our face and hitting the centre of our brain and an irregular pattern of breathing fits, a heaving in our chest, half a sob, half a puke. The only thing we can react to is the pain. We can see or feel nothing else.
How did it make you feel
We’re different to what they think
Where’s the fuckin back up team? We are fuckin polis! Police.
They put a plastic carrier bag over our head. We are now unable to see where we’re going. We’re remembering how this all started: that when Carole first left with the bairn we used to set the table for two and then we started wearing her clathes and it was like she was still with us but no really . . . Carole . . . Carole, why did you dae it, with that fuckin nigger, those whores they meant nothing tae me . . . you’re fuckin big-moothed hoor ay a sister . . . fanny like the fuckin Mersey tunnel . . . and the bairn . . . oh God . . . God . . . God . . . we want to live . . . all we’re asking for is some law and order . . . it’s the job . . .