Filth

Ladies Night

Sunday morning and I get the News Of The Screws and have a quick scan at the Saturday night telly I video’d, after I get the fire lit. At least I managed to keep the coal deliveries going. This is one thing I ken how tae dae in my hoose: tae make a real fire. Carole could never dae that, she always left it tae me. I’ve tried to handwash one pair of flannels in the sink using washing-up liquid and I’ve hanged them on a collapsible clothes-horse in front of the fire to dry.

The telly is fuckin pish as usual, but I’ve always preferred working at night. That dog’s on the box with three rides who need fucked. One of them bears such a strong resemblance to that wee Annalise bird I fucked at the lay-by before we went on holiday that I almost expect her to have a Scottish accent. Turns out she’s Lesley from London. The fuckin questions get on my tits. I know what I would use for the Blind Date questions: No. 1: If I were to ask you for a gam, would you gie it to me? No. 2: Do you take it up the arsehole? No. 3: Have you ever eaten the worm-ridden faeces of a non-uniformed police officer while he’s working you with a vibrator?

That’s the real questions the nation wants to fuckin well hear.

It’s so tedious that I take a look at Total’s script.

EXT. STREET. NEW YORK CITY. THURSDAY NIGHT, 3AM. A solitary man is nervously walking down a darkened, cold, deserted street. He gives the odd furtive glance backwards as if he is concerned that he is being followed. He heads down towards the waterfront with the lights of Brooklyn Bridge visible ahead of him. Someone shouts and he turns around. As this happens, we see, in slow-motion, a youth with a crowbar running towards the

Fuck off Total! What a load of shite! The cunt’s just ripping off whatever current bastard case we’re supposed to be solving and setting it in New York. That’s no fuckin screenwritin!

I rip off the title page and the first two and stick them in the fire I’ve built. The last copy of Toal’s masterwork and here it fuckin well goes! I decide to get down to some real writing and try the News Of The Screws crossword.

This crossword’s getting harder every fuckin day. The rings of Saturn . . . the rings of Uranus . . .

The ring of that fuckin phone.

And I left the machine off.

It’s always a mistake to answer the phone at hame. It’s a weakness, a polisman’s weakness: nosiness. I needed to find out who it is and it’s fuckin Toal. This means that I’ll have to watch what I put on the OTA 1–7. He’s giving us grief. He’s not impressed with two and a half pages of a progress report, I mean, how could a prodigious writer like Toal be? So he’s blabbering on about the topped coon, this Efan Wurie (he’s a Effen Worry tae me awright), how the Sambo-boy’s auld man’s sent a letter to the Home Secretary who’s nipped the Chief Constable’s heid who’s nipped Niddrie’s heid, who’s nipped Toal’s and now he’s nipping mine. This is why he’s taken Drummond off the case as lead officer: too many big guns firing off in all directions for a lightweight. I feel like asking him, But what about D.S. Amanda Drummond, what about her pivotal role in this investigation? Surely she proved a capable enough team leader for the Home Secretary to directly address such concerns to her? Ha!

But I can’t speak up. Toal. He’s giving me grief, but only because he has grief . . .

All I can think about is that boy’s skull, bashed in, the way his head was caved in and how it wasn’t like a heid at all, just like a broken silly puppet face, about how when you destroy something, when you brutalise it, it always looks warped and disfigured and slightly unreal and unhuman and that’s what makes it easier for you to go on brutalising it, go on fucking it and hurting it and mashing until you’ve destroyed it completely, proving that destruction is natural in the human spirit, that nature has devices to enable us to destroy, to make it easier for us; a way of making righteous people who want to act do things without the fear of consequence, a way of making us less than human, as we break the laws . . .

. . . but she was wrong. Wrong to do that; to try and prove something to me. Or try to get me to prove something to her about how I feel for her. I’ll never turn her in though. Never. But she was wrong, she shouldn’t have fuckin done it.

Toal’s stopped rabbiting. He’s looking for us to respond. We tell him what we have said in the report, that we have sent Dougie Gillman on liaison duty with the Forum on Community Relations and sweet darling Mandy Drummond has been given the task of overseeing the clerical procedures of tracing the hammer.

We, I, on the other hand, am engaged in active surveillance of the enemy. The ned enemy.

– Lean on these fuckers, these silly wee fascist cunts, Toal’s telling us. I wonder if he’s sussed out the missing manuscript yet. Poor Toalie boy.

Toal of course is the enemy. This is stark crystal clear. We were compelled to engage with this man, as outright opposition would have aroused his suspicion, but our strategy of quietly finding his weaknesses, then undermining him has paid dividends. We must continue to put our distaste for him to the side in order to keep achieving this.

We have been negligent in our duties. Other matters have dealt with too much of our time. Possession by hoors. Running after witches. Containment. Control. We have to break free. We

I go into Toal’s office and he’s looking destroyed. The thing is I can’t seem to derive any pleasure from it. Something is wrong. With me. I’m feeling out of sorts. I must cut back on the drink. It’s fuckin well killing me.

I’d been thinking that I’d perhaps be in a strong position to blackmail Toal into supporting my promotion application as I have the only copy of his draft screenplay, albeit minus the first few pages. After shop-talk on the fruitless Wurie case, he says, – It’s not been a good time for me Brother Robertson.

Does Toal suspect that I’ve half-inched his screenplay or is he just playing the craft card to cast the net? – How so Brother Toal? I ask haughtily.

– I’ve lost some files, he points at the machine on his desk.

– Computer files?

– Yes.

– I’m not a great fan of new technology. That’s computer files for ye. They’re a bit like brother freemasons in the craft: it doesn’t matter how full of shit they are, you have to remember to back them up.

Toal smiles painfully, then looks thoughtful for a bit. Then he says something which confuses but encourages me. – Often brothers are being supported in ways which they cannot imagine. Then he says, wearily, – If you hear anything Bruce, let me know. I’d appreciate it.

– You mean with files and things . . . I ask, playing the daft laddie to give myself a bit of space.

– Anything, he says sniffily.

The conversation with Toal has made me feel uneasy. What should have been a fucking triumph has a bitter and hollow aftertaste. I can’t think why. Anyway, the day seems to be drifting away from my control. I keep thinking about . . . stupid things.

Stacey. Christmas. Carole.

Fuck all that shite. She’s fuckin poisonous. A danger to herself and to other people. Well, I have news for her, and for Mister Toal, and for Mister Niddrie: you don’t fuck about with Bruce Robertson. Same rules apply. My methods are my methods are my methods.

You think the day cannae get any worse. Wrong! Things can always get worse, it seems as if they now can’t fucking improve. A social ratchet, that’s my life. What’s a ratchet? A wee bit bigger than a moose’s shit.

But it is getting worse Bruce, my sweet, sweet friend, because she’s here, waiting for us, here, outside the fucking station. – Bruce, she says, as we pretend not to see her and go to the car. That snakelike hiss of a voice. Broossssss . . .

Brooosssss

Let’s turn off the gassss Brooossss . . . no, that’s Chrisss-ie. Thisssss isss Shhhir-ley. Mind Ssstacey’s Jungle Book video. That sssnake that used tae sing, Trusssst in me . . . what wis that cunt’s name again? Sheer Khan? Naw, that wissss the fuckin tiger. That’s right, that’s right, that’s right, that’s right . . . Tiger Feet. Mud. Or Les Gray and Mud as they became.

– Hello Shirley. We cannot talk here. I shall see you in the pub on the corner in ten minutes.

– But Bruce . . . she says, her face twisting in that plea for clemency, but there can be no clemency, there is only the law which must be obeyed. The same goes for social laws, the ones we make in our daily interactions. She is trying to renegotiate the contract between us. The contract stipulates that there will be no fucking about with us in our private and personal life and this fuckin contract is being broken. No, no and no again!

Brooossss

– I repeat, we can-not talk here. Listen, because I’m not going to say this again, I kid you not. I’ll see you in the pub in ten minutes. My eyes glint in the sunlight which insipidly tries to negate the chill of a Scottish winter, blocking the hoor from my vision. I turn sharply away and out of the car park, stealing off down the road.

Ten minutes my arse, I can hear her following me, her creepy footsteps. I’m hoping nobody sees us. She doesn’t realise that she’s giving those cunts weapons to destroy me; cunts like Toal, Lennox, Gillman, Drummond and the like. Her presence in my company could, in the wrong hands, be a lethal weapon.

Tough Scottish cop Bruce Rabertson could hear the footsteps of the broad behind him as her heels clicked the tarmac. He thought of the legs attached to those heels and that Mecca they led to. No matter how many times he made that particular pilgrimage, Rabertson always reckoned that another visit was in order. He could hear her breathing heavily, her pursuit of him causing her heavy breasts to rise and fall, those warm and inviting mammaries that Rabertson knew so well . . . there ye go Toal, ya cunt that ye are! That’s fuckin screenwritin! Any cunt can fuckin well dae that shite!

That’s the right idea though that Toal’s got. Get as many voices in your head as you can and hide in the crowd. We’ve got loads of them. Probably as many as there are worms eating away inside us. There’s some billboards telling us to drink Tennents Lager: we can do that! None for the purple tin but: they know it’s not a recreational drug, any more than smack or crack is. There’s another one telling us to test drive a new Fiat Uno. We can do that; at the same time as the Tennents if ye want!

Ha!

Gotcha!

Wrong!

Come taste the bacon baby, come taste that muthafuckin bacon!

We go into the bar of the Rag Doll and get up some drinks. We are thinking that we should perhaps be more annoyed at this stupid cow than we actually are. Actually.

Actually!

Shirley is a funny bitch; fucking desperate for it. Everything’s fake about her, but with her skill at applying the make-up she can approximate how she used to look, or at any rate her make-up colludes with our hormones into making us believe she approximates it. After we’ve blown our muck, all we can see is her as a caricature of a former self.

Muthafuckin ho, that’s all she is. Dat ho is desprit to taste di bay-con.

This gets us thinking of all the times we’ve, I’ve fucked her over the years. Loads n loads n loads n loads n loads. – We should be able to do things for each other, we, I once told her. – The laddies are at school, so’s wee Stacey. You’re fed up, ah’m fed up. We should be able to have a wee bit of harmless fun. Only get one life, eh.

All those years of deceit. We turn round and see her. She reminds us more of Carole now that she’s getting older. She was always heavier built than Carole.

Come taste that bacon baby . . .

She opens her mouth and there is a noise in our head, and we, I, we see her mouth going oval-shaped and pleading and in our head we hear the message: Broooosssss

She’s getting it. They’re all fucking well getting it.

She is telling us something as we sit at the table in the pub. The bar is almost empty. The sun streams in across the lino. We see a report of a game on the back page of the Evening News. I wonder if Stronach was playing. We nod over to a uniformed spastic who comes in and says something to the publican. A uniformed spastic with a loose mouth in the canteen and the malevolent ears of the vicious gossiping faggot Inglis tuned in to every salacious tit-bit spewed from those embittered lips. Time to go.

– We can’t talk here, I say, and we call for a taxi. Thankfully it takes no time to arrive and we get in it with her. The engine and the heat and her perfume make my flannels start to rise and my mouth is on hers silencing that whingeing racket as I force my tongue as far into her gob as I can, poking it into every crevice. The taxi shudders to a halt and we are back at our place.

Gotcha!

I, we . . . I take her to our unmade and smelly bed, full of stale spunk and crumbs. I’m straight down on her cunt with my mouth, slurping, devouring. It tastes of strawberries. The soap. She’s loving it but will not take my stiff cock in her mouth, my scaly, flaking, stinking cock, and she’s pushing it away from her face and pulling at it and we are about to come so I pull away and go around and stick our cock up her, and she is disappointed as she doesn’t want the rancid prick that Rossie has been unable to cure inside her but she wants to come and we’re fucking hard and we come and she does too, and it’s the same rules.

The same rules. She’s lying chuffed and dreamy, she’s had her dose of cock. Her sister’s man. She’s fucking well won; she’s debased us again. We are empty.

Brooossss

We’re in bed, sitting up in bed, and I’m lighting a fag and saying: – Mind the first time ah rode you?

– That’s a horrible way of putting it! she pouts obstinately.

– What the fuck dae ye want us tae say? Remember the first time we made love darling? Ha ha ha. Eighty-five? Eighty-six? Over ten years ago now anyway. Carole . . . we were no long married. You were at ours and the pair of you were quite pished. Drove you hame. Mind that?

– I remember, her face twists in recall at this shared but unacknowledged history.

– Rode you in the back of the car. Portobello, we smile. – Mind what you said then? Naw? Never tell Carole. That was what you said. Ten years on and off and you’ve been getting rode by your sister’s man. Mind the time you came ower tae Australia? You n me n that Abo bird I used tae shag. Madeline. We had that threesome. She licked you oot. You couldnae wait for it. As soon as Carole’s back was turned. Mind?

– You can be so cruel, she’s shaking her head. – What do you get out of being like that? Eh?

– Just stating a fact. Ten years it’s been gaun oan. Kicked off again as soon as I got back fae Oz. Hudnae even unpacked the suitcase before ah wis pokin you, fir fuck sakes! That’s a cow in any book, I shake my head, watching her simmer in rage. – Once, even twice maybe, an indiscretion, but ten years? That spells cow. C. O. W. Cow. I tell her.

– Yeah? Well have you ever thought what that makes you son? She coughs out.

We, I, we, ignore her. – Mind when you got thegither wi Danny. The first time you brought us round tae yours was when he was on the rigs. Funny, mind a while back, ah brought Ray roond, you mind ay ma mate Ray? He was a D.C. at the time. D.S. now. The pair ay us rode ye. A right motley ménage à trois that yin. That’s you goat the set now, a threesome wi an extra bird and an extra guy.

– That was . . . we were all drunk . . . you . . .

– Perr Danny. Two weeks on, two weeks oaf. Know just how the cunt feels!

She looks at us, in a bitter, focused way. – I don’t know why I waste my fuckin time oan you! You’re not that fucking good, she sneers.

– There’s three reasons: one, Danny’s in the UAE, two, I have a cock and three, I am discreet, we smile at her.

– Nae wonder Carole’s away! She did right tae get shot ay you! She’s up, getting dressed in haste. There’s nothing that excites the morbid fascination more than watching an old boiler you’ve just fucked struggling into her clothes without dignity.

But we are injured by what she has said and want to shout, She’ll be back, but we say nothing on the subject. – Just go, I command.

– Don’t you fuckin well worry, she spits back, and departs.

After a while we, I, we find that we have become aroused again. We, I, we could have done with another go at it. Still, she’ll be back. Nothing surer than that. We put on our Frank Sidebottom Timperley EP. Then we, I, we put on a video in which this big blonde hoor takes on a couple of lumberjacks in an Alaskan forest. Now we are most definitely aroused and decide to call Bunty.

– Hello Boontay!

– Frank. If that’s your real name . . .

– Course it’s me real name! You don’t know what you’re talking about you fooking stupid big-titted whore.

There’s a bit of silence. No so sharp now Bunty. I have got this fuckin cow on the run. My breathing is getting out of control.

– How do you know what size my breasts are? She eventually says, tentatively.

She is now following the advice given to her by Detective Sergeant Brooossss Robertson. Detective Inspector Elect Brooosss Robertson. We find that our cock is really stiffening now and we are required to unbutton our trousers.

– I know everything. Now tell me your sexual fantasies Boontay.

– Shut up! You disgusting little creep! Leave me alone will you? She slams the phone down. This cunt’s riled.

We wind on the video to the place where a tired-looking, greasy continental stud is fucking a stretch-marked boiler up the arse. Worn goods, but some excellent close-up shots. The pole must be well-greased to get that kind of motion. We discharge over the axminster.

Later on we decide to telephone Bro. Clifford Blades.

He’s a bit upset. – Sorry Bruce, can’t make the club tonight. Actually, Bunty’s in a state. The pervert called again.

– Oh God, Bladesey. It never rains, eh. Look, you console her, and I’ll be right over.

– Thanks Bruce, I really appreciate it. She’s beside herself.

We go to the bog and give our arse, thighs and genitals a good clawing, then we cut up a line of coke. This is washed down with a Glenmorangie to get the taste of diseased druggy scum out of our tonsils.

Then we realise that our car has been left in the works car park, due to the self-centredness of the hoor Shirley. We get a taxi out to Corstorphine, the meter running to the price of a gam from a half-decent hoor, just to be with our friends Cliff and Bunty Blades.