Whit a fukn rush that wis, Davie… whit a fukn rush. Ah could dae anither yin! Ey says that like eys just had a fukn Chinkie or sumthin, no robbed a fukn bookie’s. Eys totally fukn serious nawtae. Scanning aboot, taking a sketch oot the windae fir another fukn Scotbet.
Are you aff yer fukn scone? Ah says.
Naw… naw… serious, man. Oan a fukn roll so am are.
Ah take a deck at the cunt and eys fukn roarin oot the windae and screamin and gaun half fukn caked oot his nut, and ahm thinkin, whit the fuk is this cunt oan? Man needs eys fukn heid seein tae… Ma maw said the likes.
There’s wan there, there’s wan there, Davie. The cunt’s clocked anither Scotbet – fukn rarin tae go nawtae.
C’moan, Davie… pull ower, we’ll dae anither wan.
He hauns me the bag wi the poppy… There’s aboot twenty grannies in there, ahm thinkin. Ah could fuk aff and get maself set up wi that, oot ma maw’s hair fir guid. That’s whit she needs, some peace and fukn quiet… no all this shite wi me jist oot the jail and under her feet and Uncle fukn Barry aff eys Harry Hills.
C’moan, Davie… c’moan, Davie…
The cunt’s up fir it. Fukn surein ey is. Fukn een sittin oan fukn stalks so they are… eys goat this big red fukn set ay cheeks oan him nawtae. Looks like that fukn Hell Boy cunt. Radge is just as fukn daft likesay. Ah canne dey it but, eys femly and ye look efter yer femly don’t ye? Ey is femly, kindae… ah ken eys no ma faither and ah ken eys no even ma fukn proper uncle n’all that, really… but femly’s femly.
Awright, Barry… get yerself oot the motor.
The cunt stomps oot, eys like a fukn dug wi two dicks, fukn rarin tae go so ey is… pure shoutin at me fir the shooter. Fukn shooter some cunt fae Burdiehoose goat plugged wi, mind ey disnae ken that. So ahm oot the 4x4 and ahm telling him tae cool the fukn beans right doon. Eys gonae gie himsel a hert attack if ey disnae keep the heid.
Aye, aye… gis the fukn gun, Davie, ey gauns.
So ahm passing the gun ower and eys getting the Pretty fukn Pollys oot again and telling me tae keep shoatie like the last time. Aye, aye, ahm gaun, and ahm thinking this cunt’s away wi the fukn dizzy dippits. Needs proper fukn medical attention n’all that. Shouldnae be aff they Harry fukn Hills likes ah say. And ahm femly, well, likes as close as much, and ah need tae dae the right thing by the cunt. But mair so, ma maw. Ah need tae gie ma maw a breck here.
There ye go, Barry… here’s the shooter, mate. Now, mind… keep the heid, eh? ah goes.
Eys oaf like a fukn rat up a drainpipe, disnae even look at eys. Just grabs the shooter and eys aff. Ah gie him tae the end ay the pavement thit eys taking like a fukn whippet, time tae get ootside the Scotbet, before ah tip the bullets ah took oot the shooter. Ah mean, cannae hey some cunt being shot if things gaun erse ower tit. Ah could’ve been a right cunt and left them in the fukn gun, ah mean, ah could, but ah didnae, cos ahm the kind ay cunt looks oot fir folk… looks oot fir eys femly n’all that, eh?
Best move all round, Davie, ah says tae masel. Best move, aye, aye…
Ah pulls open the phone box door in a oner. Goat the handle thing in ma haun as Barry steps intae Scotbet.
Eh, polis, please… I want tae report a robbery in progress.
WILKOLAK by Nina Allan
KIP KNEW THE man was the monster as soon as he saw him. He was coming out of the convenience store attached to the garage at the bottom end of Lee High Road, his shopping in an old Tesco bag. Kip uncapped the Nikon and took his picture; the click of the shutter release sounded loud to him, even above the noise of the passing traffic. Kip lowered the camera, suddenly afraid the man might turn and see him, but that didn’t happen. Instead, the man crossed the garage forecourt, ignoring the cars parked at the pumps and heading off up the road in the direction of Lewisham. He was of medium height, but skinny, with gangling limbs and a jutting Adam’s apple, and reminded Kip of Tom Courtenay in The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. He wore tatty old Levis, and an army surplus jacket that was too big for him around the shoulders. He seemed lost in thought, cocooned in it, shut off from his surroundings, from Kip, from everything.
Kip raised the Nikon again and took half a dozen more shots in quick succession. Later, at home in his room, he downloaded the images to his hard drive, storing them in a file he tagged as monster. A fortnight ago an eight-year-old girl from Marischal Road had gone missing on her way home from school. The girl’s name was Rebecca Riding. Her body was discovered a week later in a disused mobile home on the Isle of Sheppey. She had been raped and then suffocated. The police issued a photo fit of a man they wanted to question, a man with thinning hair and a scrawny build, and teachery little wire-framed glasses. The police said he was probably in his early forties, and living in the Lewisham area. Kip thought the man in the photo fit looked like a school nerd gone bad. He also looked exactly like the bloke he had seen coming out of the garage on Lee High Road. Kip remembered the man’s walk, slightly knock-kneed, the Tesco bag bumping against his thigh as he moved along.
The tabloids had already dubbed him the Manor Park Monster.
Kip selected one of the photos and printed it out, the best one, showing the man’s face in profile like the double agent in a spy movie. It was the kind of photo you could imagine flashing up on the TV news, or on the front page of the next day’s papers. Rebecca Riding had been all over the news, always the same photo, a blonde kid with a demon smile and one of her top front teeth missing. Rebecca Riding had gone missing just before the start of the holidays and at school her name quickly became that summer’s catchphrase: What do you get if you cross Rebecca Riding with a rubber glove? What did Rebecca Riding’s dad say when the cops asked him why his trousers were at the cleaner’s? The jokes were disgusting but you couldn’t help laughing at them. One dork had laughed so hard Kip thought he was going to piss himself. Kip didn’t want to think about the murder. It was the photograph of the murderer that interested him, some loser with a plastic carrier bag crossing the street. The image might seem ordinary but Kip knew it wasn’t, that the very act of framing the man in his viewfinder and then choosing to release the shutter made the picture significant. The main point of a photograph was to invite you to look, to concentrate on the world around you a little harder. The photographer recreated the world in the way he saw it, and in this, Kip supposed, he was the master of his universe. A guy who worked for the Star and who had once come to the school to give a talk on photojournalism said that all photographers were grubby-handed alchemists, pier-end magicians – words that stuck in Kip’s mind like splinters of glass. Now that he had the photograph in front of him Kip found he didn’t really care whether the man was the monster or not. The point seemed to be that he could be. He could just as easily be a hero. If you mounted a photo on a nice ground and gave it an interesting title then anybody could be anything.
He shut down his computer and went downstairs. The television was on in the back room, his mother slumped at the end of the sofa watching The Weakest Link. She was folding and unfolding a tea towel, one of the souvenirs she had brought back from their holiday in Tenby three years before. It had the Welsh dragon on it, in red.
“Your father won’t be home for supper,” she said. “He has work to finish.”
“OK,” Kip said. He sat down beside her, his eyes on the screen, careful not to look at her directly. This was a game they played together all the time now. She would tell him his father was working late at the site, and he would pretend to believe her and not care less. He would ignore the bunched, grasping look of her hands, her puffy eyes, and concentrate on Anne Robinson torturing a bank clerk from Cleethorpes over the identity of the currency of Argentina.