Complicity

CHAPTER 2 — CHILL FILTER

I'm very tempted to call in at the paper and pick up a copy fresh off the presses, which will be rumbling away now, shaking the whole building. The smell of ink and the greasy feel of the print always powerfully reinforce the news-fix buzz, plus I'd like to check my Vanguard story to see what violence the sub-editors have succeeded in inflicting on it; but as I drive down Nicolson Street suddenly the idea of subs cutting a story about a sub seems wildly amusing and I find myself giggling uncontrollably, making me sniff and sneeze and bringing tears to my eyes. I decide that I'm too wasted to be able to put on a sober face for the print-room boys, so I head home instead.

I get back to Cheyne Street about one o'clock and have the usual enforced tour of Stockbridge By Night looking for a parking place before finding one only a minute from the flat. I'm tired but not sleepy so I have a nightcap spliff and a two-fingers of Tesco's single malt. During the next couple of hours I listen to the radio and watch all-night TV out of the corner of my eye and tinker with the whisky story on the PC and then deliberately do not play Despot because I know I'd only go and get involved and be up until dawn and sleep all day and not be up in time for tomorrow's job (I have an appointment with a distillery manager at noon), so instead I go back to Xerium and play that; recreational play in other words, not serious stuff; a game to wind down to, not get wound up by.

Xerium is an old favourite, almost like a pal, and even though there are still a few bits of it I haven't cracked I've never looked for hints or cheats in the magazines because I want to get there myself (which isn't like me) and anyway it's fun just flying around and adding to the map you gradually build up of the island continent the game's set on.

Finally I crash the good ship Speculator trying — as usual — to find a probably non-existent route between the peaks of the Mountains of Zound. I swear I've tried every gap in those damn hills — hell, I've even tried flying straight through the mountains, thinking one of them is supposed to be a hologram or something — but I crash every time; there just doesn't seem to be any way of getting through or of gaining enough height to fly over the damn things. There is supposed to be a way into the rectangular territory the mountains enclose somehow, but I'm fucked if I can work out what it is, not tonight, anyway.

I pass on another attempt and load the slower of my two Asteroids programs and obliterate a few zillion rocks in glorious wire-frame monochrome until my fingers ache and my eyes are smarting again and it's time for some decaff and bed.

I get up bright and fresh and — after a good five-minute cough and a shower — the only wake-me-up I have is some freshly ground Arabica. I munch some muesli and suck on a quartered orange while I look through the whisky story, which is due in today so this is really my final chance to work on it apart from any last-minute thoughts after seeing the distillery at lunch-time. I sneak a look at my current status in Despot, too, but resist firing the program up. I stare accusingly at the Tosh's NiCads, which I forgot to charge up last night, then transfer the tinkered-with whisky article to disk and search out some clean clothes from the pile on one side of the bed where I dumped them after last week's laundry run. Leaving the clothes on the bed can sometimes make you think there's somebody in there with you when there isn't, which can be comforting but is distinctly sad; you haven't had a fuck for well over a week, this pile of clean clothes on the duvet is telling me. Still, I'm seeing Y in a couple of days so even if nothing else turns up there's always that to look forward to.

There's some mail: junk and bills, mostly. Ignore for now.

Take the bleeper, mobile, Tosh, NiCads and slot-in radio down to the 205; the car has not been broken into or scratched (helps not to wash the Pug). Set the NiCads charging from the cigarette lighter. Take off into a cool blue-whiter; sunshine and clouds. Stop along the road for papers; scan headlines, make sure that no late-breaking story displaced the Vanguard piece and that it's intact (ninety-five per cent — a satisfyingly high score), check out Doonesbury in the Grauniad, then away.

Over the road-bridge and fast through Fife; once up to cruising speed — needle in that 85-to-90 region the jam-sandwich boys ignore unless they're particularly bored or in a really bad mood — steer with knees while rolling spliff, feeling good in a childish way and laughing at myself and thinking, Don't try doing this at home, kids. Leave number aside to smoke later; turn left at Perth.

The drive to the distillery takes me along part of the route to Strathspeld. I haven't been to see the Goulds for so long and I half wish I'd started out earlier so I could drop in, but I know it isn't really them I want to see, it's the place: Strathspeld itself, our long-lost paradise with all the aching, poison-sweet memories it holds. Though of course maybe it's Andy I really remember and miss; maybe I just want to see my old soul-mate, my surrogate brother, my other me; maybe I'd go straight there if he was at home, but he isn't, he's way far north and being reclusive and I must visit him too, someday.

I pass through Gilmerton, a wee village just outside Crieff, where I'd turn off for Strathspeld if I was heading that way. Used to be there was a collection of three identical little blue Fiat 126s sitting facing the road here outside one of the houses; they were there for years and years and I always meant to stop off here and find the owner and ask him, Why have you had these three little blue Fiat 126s sitting outside your house for the last decade? because I wanted to know and besides it might have made a decent story and over the years there must have been millions of people who've passed this way and wondered the same thing, but I never did get around to it; always in a hurry, rushing past, anxious to get to the tainted paradise that Strathspeld's always been to me… Anyway, the three little blue Fiat 126s disappeared recently so there's no point. Guy seems to be collecting transit vans these days. I felt hurt, almost grieved when I first saw that house without the three little cars outside; it was like a death in the family, like some distant but friendly uncle had copped it.

I play some old stuff from Uncle Warren for the same nostalgic reasons I came this way.

Deep in the glens at Lix Toll there's another automotive roadside attraction standing outside the garage there; a bright yellow Land Rover about ten foot tall facing the road, not on wheels but on four black triangular tracks like the bastard cross of a Landy and a Caterpillar earth-mover. Been there a few years now. Leave it another few and I might go in and ask them, Why have you —?

Sweep past, in a hurry.

The distillery is just outside Dorluinan, hidden in the trees off the Oban road, across the rail line and up a narrow lane through the forest. The manager is a Mr Baine; I go to his office and we do the usual distillery tour, through the damp, half-enticing smells and the kiln heat and past the gleaming stills, past the gushing glass cupboard of the spirit safe until we end up in the chill darkness of one of the warehouses, standing looking out over rows of broad-backed barrels, gloomily lit from above few small, grimy armoured skylights. The roof is low, supported by thick, gnarled wooden struts resting on widely spaced iron columns. The floor is compacted earth, hard as concrete after a centuries of use.

Mr Baine looks worried when I tell him about the article. He's a bulky, droopy-faced highlander in a dark suit with a Technicolor tie that makes me glad I'm facing him here in the soft darkness of the warehouse, not outside in the sunlight.

"Well, basically just the facts," I'm saying, grinning at Mr Baine. "That back in the "twenties the Yanks objected to their whisky and brandy going cloudy when they added ice to it, so they told the distillers to fix what they regarded as a problem. The French, being the French, told them what to do with their ice cubes, while the Scots, being British, said, Certainly, here's what we'll do…"

Mr Baine's wounded-spaniel looks take on an extra tier of unhappiness as I tell him all this. I know I shouldn't have taken that micro-lick of powder while we were going through earlier, but I couldn't resist it; there was an irresistibly appealing getting-away-with-it promissory glee about sticking my finger in my mouth, then my pocket, then my mouth again and as Mr Baine talked and I looked interested while my tongue went numb and the chemical taste thickened in my throat and this firingly, chargingly addictive illegal drug did its business while we walked round this perfectly legal, government-financing drug facto

So I'm gibbering but it's good.

"But, Mr Colley —»

"So the distillers brought in chill-filtering, lowering the the temperature of the whisky until the oils that cause the cloudiness come out of solution and then straining the stuff through asbestos to remove the oil; only that removes a lot of the taste as well — which you can't put back — and the colour, which you can put back, using caramel. Isn't that right?"

Mr Baine has a hangdog look. "Ah, well, broadly," he says, clearing his throat and looking out over the ordered sea of barrel-backs disappearing into the gloom. "But, ah, is this going to be, um, a what-do-you-call-it? An expose, Mr Colley? I thought you just wanted —?"

"You thought I just wanted to do yet another article on what a grand, beautiful country we live in and how lucky we are to produce this world-renowned, dollar-earning drink and isn't it life-enhancing used in moderation and just generally great?"

"Well, well… it's up to you what you write, Mr Colley," Mr Baine says (I have raised a smile). "But, ah, I feel you might be misleading people by emphasising things like, well the asbestos, for example; people might think there's asbestos in the product."

I look at Mr Baine. Product? Did I hear him say product?

"But I'm not going to be suggesting that at all, Mr Baine; this will be a straight, factual article."

"Aye, aye, but facts can be misleading out of context."

"Uh-huh."

"You see, I'm not sure about the tone —»

"But, Mr Baine, I thought you were in sympathy with the tone of this article. That's why I'm here today; I was told you're thinking about producing a "real whisky", with no chill-filtering and no colouring; a premium brand, using the cloudiness and the oils that are left in as a selling point, basing the ads on it, even —»

"Well," Mr Baine says, looking uncomfortable, "the marketing people are still looking into that —»

"Mr Baine, come on, we both know the demand's there; the SMWS does a roaring trade, Caddenhead's shop in the Royal Mile —»

"Well, it's not that simple," Mr Baine says, looking even more uncomfortable now. "Look, Mr Colley, can we talk, you know, without you reporting it?"

"You want to talk off the record?"

"Aye; off the record."

"All right." I nod. Mr Baine clasps his hands under his suit-clad belly and nods in a serious manner. "Look, ah, Cameron," he says, dropping his voice, "I'll be honest with you: we have thought about test-marketing this premium brand you're talking about, and using the lack of chill-filtering as a Unique Selling Point, but… You see, Cameron, we couldn't survive on that alone, even if it did work, not for the foreseeable future at any rate; we've got other considerations to take into account. We'll probably always have to sell the vast majority of our product for blending; that's our business, that's our livelihood, and as such we rely on the goodwill of the firms we sell to; firms much, much larger than we are."

"You're saying you've been told not to rock the boat."

"No no no." Mr Baine looks distressed at being imperfectly understood. "But you have to realise that a great deal of the success of whisky has to do with its mystique, the… the image the customer has of it as a unique, high-value product. It's almost mythical, Cameron; it's the uisgebeatha, the water of life, as they say… It's a very strong image, and a very important one for the Scottish export drive and national economy. If we — as, frankly, a very junior player in all this — do anything that conflicts with that image —»

"Such as putting the idea into the public's head that all the other whiskies they can buy are chill-filtered and/or caramel-coloured —»

"Well, yes —»

"— then you'll rock the boat," I say. "So you've been told to shelve the new premium brand or forget about ever selling whisky for blending again, and so going out of business."

"No no no," Mr Baine says again, but as we stand there in the chilly gloom of the spirit-fragrant warehouse, surrounded by enough maturing hootch to float a Trident submarine, I can see that the real answer even off the record is yes yes yes, and I'm thinking, Yay! A conspiracy; a cover-up, arm-twisting, blackmail, corporate pressure on the little guy; this could be an even better story!

You enter through the back door using a crowbar; the door and the lock are both heavy, but the frame has rotted beneath its layers of paint over the years. As soon as you're in you take the Elvis Presley mask from your day-pack and slip it on, then pull the surgeon's gloves from your pocket and snap those on too. The house feels warm from the afternoon; it faces south and has an uninterrupted view out over the links of the golf course towards the estuary, so it catches a lot of sun.

You don't think there's anybody in yet but you aren't sure; there wasn't time to watch the place all day. It feels and somehow sounds empty. You slip from room to room, feeling sweaty beneath the slick latex of the mask. The late evening sun has turned the faint, high clouds over the sea pink and the light falls into every room, filling them with rose and shadows.

The stairs and a lot of the floorboards creak. The rooms look clean but the furniture is old-fashioned and mismatched; cast-off. You satisfy yourself there's nobody in, ending up in the main bedroom of the house.

You're not very happy with the bed; it's a divan. You inspect it, in that reddening gloaming, then heave the mattress off, leaving it propped against the wall. Still no good. You go through to the other front bedroom, which also looks out over the course and the sea; the room smells unlived-in, even slightly damp. This bed is better; this one has an iron frame. You pull the bedding off and start to tear the sheets into strips.

You look out of the window as you do this, watching a couple of military jets over the sea in the distance. To the right, beyond the railway line, you can see the curve of beach leading out to the wooded point, and catch a glimpse of the lighthouse there, rising above the trees.

Then you see Mrs Jamieson coming though the gate from the road and up the garden path and you duck down, walking quickly to the door and the top landing. You listen to the front door opening.

Mrs Jamieson comes in and goes through to the kitchen. You remember the creaking stairs. You hesitate for a second, then walk normally to the stairs and go down them with a fairly quick, heavy tread, whistling. The steps creak.

"Murray?" Mrs Jamieson's voice calls from the kitchen. "Murray, I didn't see the car —»

You reach the foot of the stairs. Mrs Jamieson's white-haired head appears beyond the banister rails to your right, her face turning to you.

You swing round, seeing her start to react, mouth dropping. You already know what you're going to do, how you're going to play this, so you punch her, knocking her down. She collapses to the floor, making little flustered, bird-like noises. You hope you didn't hit her too hard. You haul her up and keep your hand over her mouth as you drag her upstairs.

You pin her on the divan base and stuff a handkerchief in her mouth using the handle of the Stanley knife, then pull a pair of her tights over her head, tie them round her neck and mouth and put her inside the old, heavy wardrobe in the main bedroom, pulling out the few clothes hanging there and handcuffing her to the rail. She whimpers and cries but the gag muffles everything. You pull the tights she's wearing down and tie her ankles together above her sensible brown brogues, then you close the wardrobe doors.

You sit on the divan base, pull off the mask and sit there, breathing hard and sweating. You cool off, then put the mask back on and open the door again. Mrs Jamieson stands, trembling, her eyes through the dark grey mesh of the tights looking bright and wide. You shut the door, then close the curtains in that bedroom and the one with the iron-frame bed.

Her husband arrives half an hour later, parking the car in the drive. He comes in by the front door and you're waiting behind the kitchen door as he walks through; you make a noise, he turns and you punch him, sending him clattering back against the kitchen cabinet, producing an avalanche of willow-pattern plates. He tries to get up so you hit him again. He's very old and you're quite surprised it takes two punches to lay him out, though he's still a decent weight.

You stuff a pair of his wife's panties in his mouth and do the same trick with the tights, over the head and tied round the neck, then drag him upstairs to the second bedroom. You can smell he's been drinking recently; G & Ts, probably. Some cigarette-smoke smell, too. You're sweating again by the time you get him onto the bed with the iron frame.

You tie him to the bed, face down. He's starting to come round. When he's secured, you take out the Stanley knife. He was carrying a light windcheater which you left in the kitchen and he's wearing a blue Pringle sweater with a knickerbockered golfer depicted on the front, a Marks & Spencer's check shirt and a light string vest. You cut his clothes off, flinging them into one corner. His fawn slacks scatter golf tees when you throw them aside; his socks are bright red, his Y-fronts white. His golf shoes are brown and white, heavily spiked and with elaborate tongues and tasselled laces.

You take off your day-pack. You get the pillows from the main bedroom and stuff them and those from this bed under the old man's torso, raising his body from the bed. He's making spluttering, shouting noises now and moving weakly. You use a couple of rolled-up blankets to bring his rump up further, then go back to the day-pack and sort out the things you'll need. He struggles, as though wrestling with a pinned, invisible opponent. He's making a noise like he's choking but you don't do anything yet. You take the top off the cream.

There's a spitting, hacking noise and he must get at least some of the gag out of his mouth because he splutters, "Stop this! Stop this, I say!" Not the gruff, home-counties voice you recall from the television; more high-pitched and strained, but that's hardly surprising in the circumstances. He sounds less frightened than you expected, though.

"Look," he says, in something more like his normal voice; deep and no-nonsense. "I don't know what you want, but just take it and get out; there's no need for this; no need at all." You squirt some of the cream onto the vibrator.

"I think you're making a mistake," he says, trying to twist his head round to see you. "Seriously. We don't live here; this is a holiday home. It's rented; there's nothing of value here at all." He struggles some more. You kneel on the bed behind him, inside the inverted V of his scrawny, varicosed legs. There are broken veins on his back and upper arms. His shanks look grey and withered; his buttocks are very pale, almost yellowish, and the skin on his thighs, below the level shorts would come to, has a grainy, mottled appearance; his balls hang like old fruit, surrounded by wiry grey hair.

His cock looks slightly engorged. That's interesting.

He feels you get up onto the bed and shouts, "Look! I don't think you know what you're doing. This is aggravated burglary, young man; you — ah!"

You've put the cream-smeared tip of the vibrator against his anus, grey-pink and pursed between his spread buttocks. The cream must feel cold. "What?" he shouts, voice muffled by the gag. "Stop! What d'you think you're doing?"

You start to work the creamy plastic dildo into him, twisting it from side to side and watching the skin round his anus stretch and whiten as the ivory-coloured plastic slides in; a thin collar of white cream builds up there.

"Ah! Ah! Stop! All right! I know what you're doing! I know what this is about! All right! So you know who I am; but this is no way to — ah! Ah! Stop! Stop! All right! You've made your point! Those women — look, all right, I may have said things I regretted later, but you weren't there! You didn't hear all the evidence! I did! You didn't hear the men who were accused! You couldn't form an opinion of their character! The same with the women! Ah! Ah! Ah! Stop! Please; you're hurting! You're hurting!"

You have the vibrator about a third of the way in, not quite up to its maximum girth. You press harder, pleased at how much grip the surgeon's gloves give you but half-wishing you could say something though you know you can't, which is a pity.

"Ah! Ah! Jesus Christ, for God's sake, man, are you trying to kill me? Look, I have money; I can — ah! Ah, you filthy bastard — " He moans and farts at the same time. You have to turn your head away from the smell, but you push the vibrator in further. You can hear seagulls crying outside, beyond the closed curtains.

"Stop, just stop this!" he shouts. "This isn't justice! You don't know all the facts about those cases! Some of them were dressed like whores, dammit! They'd let any man have them; they were no better than whores! Ah! Fuck, fuck, you filthy blackguard bastard! You filthy, fucking queer bastard! Ah!"

He pulls and bucks, rattling the bed and pulling the knotted sheet-strips tighter. "You bastard!" he splutters. "You'll pay for this! You won't get away with this! They'll catch you; they'll catch you and I'll make damn, fucking sure they give you a lesson in the cells you'll never forget! D'you hear me? Do you?"

You leave the vibrator in there and switch it on. He heaves and pulls again but it doesn't do any good. "Oh, for God's sake, man," he moans, "I'm seventy-six; what sort of monster are you?" He starts sobbing. "And my wife," he says, coughing. "What have you done with my wife?

You get off the bed and take out the little wooden box from the zipped pocket of your shell-suit, carefully slide the lid off and tease apart the nest of toilet tissue inside. The wad of tissue holds a tiny vial of blood and a needle; it's a dirty disposable syringe needle, a little thing barely a centimetre long with a cone of ribbed orange plastic at the end that would fit onto the body of the syringe.

You listen to him as he curses you and threatens you, and you are still unsure. You couldn't decide when you were planning this whether to infect him with HIV-positive blood or not; you couldn't make up your mind whether he really deserved it, and so you've left it until now to make your decision.

Sweat runs into your eyes as you stand there.

"D'you get a thrill from this, do you? Is that it?" He spits. "Closet queer, are you?" He coughs, then twists his head, trying to look back at you. "Are you still there, are you? What are you doing now? Having a wank, eh? Are you?"

You smile behind the mask and fold the toilet tissue back over the vial and the needle, leaving them in the box. You slide the lid shut again and put it back in your jacket pocket. You take a couple of steps back towards the door, where he can see you.

"You filthy bastard!" he spits. "You filthy, fucking bastard! I served the best I could for thirty years! You've no right to do this! This doesn't prove anything, d'you understand? It doesn't prove anything! I'd do it all just the same if I had my time again! All of it! I wouldn't change one sentence, you fucking little cunt!"

You rather admire the old fellow's attitude. You slip through to the other room to make sure his wife is all right. She's still trembling. You leave her hanging there in the mothball-scented darkness of the old wardrobe. You go downstairs, pack the Elvis mask back into the day-pack with the rest of the stuff and leave by the back door you arrived through.

It's still light and the evening is only just starting to turn chilly as you walk down the back path beneath a deep blue sky ridged with high, dark clouds. A cool wind comes in off the sea and you pull your jacket collar tight.

Your hands still smell of rubber, from the gloves.

I turn in the whisky story, with a teaser paragraph at the end promising further revelations concerning arm-twisting moves being made by the big corporate booze-barons to silence the brave little whisky wizards. Meanwhile I try to work out what's going on in the long-running mole story; the Ares story (Ares the god of massacre, according to the mythology dictionary in the paper's library). I throw «Jemmel» at the databases but they draw a blank. Even Profile throws up its silicon hands in defeat.

"Cameron! It's yourself!" Frank informs me, indubitably. "So you thought you'd put in an appearance; well, well. Hey; guess what the spell-check thinks Colonsay should be?"

"No idea, Frank."

""Colonic"!"

"Hilarious."

"And Carnoustie?"

"Hmm?"

""Carousing"!" He laughs. ""Carousing"!"

"Even funnier."

"By the way, Eddie wants to see you."

"Oh."

Eddie the Ed is a wee, wizened sandy-haired man of fifty-five or so who wears half-moon glasses on his pointy nose and always looks like he's just briefly tasted something extremely sour but is finding it actually quite amusing because he knows you're about to taste it too, soon, and for longer. Technically Eddie is only acting editor while our real Great Helmsman, Sir Andrew, is away for an indefinite period recovering from a heart attack (presumably brought on by that common editorial affliction of having too much heart).

Our resident cynic in the sports section pointed out that Sir Andrew's heart attack occurred only a short decent interval after the murder of Sir Toby Bissett back in August, and hazarded that it was a kind of pre-emptive strike to take him off the target list of what a few editors at the time half-suspected was some editor-offing loony whose next target was them personally. Well, blame a host of guilty consciences, and the confusion caused when the IRA apparently claimed responsibility for Tobe's murder, and then retracted it. No other editors were spiked (though at least that showed our assassin had a sense of humour), and anyway Eddie seems not to worry about such threats to his temporarily elevated position.

The editor's office of the Caledonian probably has one of the best views in all newspaperdom, looking out over Princes Street Gardens to the New Town, the river Forth and the fields and hills of Fife beyond, with a side-window view of the castle's best profile thrown in, just in case the occupant ever gets bored with the frontal aspect.

I have kind of a bad association with this room after an unsuccessful foreign trip last year which resulted in a visit here to see Sir Andrew. I left with my ears singed; if displaying editorial outrage was an Olympic sport, Sir Andrew would undoubtedly be on the British team and saddled with the crushing burden of being a Medal Hope. I'd have resigned there and then except I got the impression that was just what he wanted me to do.

"Cameron, come in, sit down," Eddie says. Sir Andrew is into furniture politics; Eddie is sitting on — no; housed within — a throne of a chair, all black carved wood and buttoned red leather and looking like it's supported more than one royal rear. I'm perched on the class equivalent of an honest artisan, one fabric-covered step up from stackable plastic prole. Eddie did have the decency to look uncomfortable in this piece of power-seating when he first took over the job last month, but I get the impression he's grown to like it.

Eddie leafs through a print-out on his desk. The desk isn't quite as impressive as the chair — only single-bed size rather than the king-size I suspect Sir Andrew and maybe Eddie would prefer — but it still looks fairly impressive. There's a terminal on its surface but Eddie only uses that to spy on people, watching the system as we type notes, input a story, fax outside or e-mail insults to each other.

Eddie sits back in his chair, taking off the half-moon glasses and tapping them against the knuckles of one hand. "I'm not sure about this whisky story, Cameron," he says in the perpetually pained tones of Kelvinside/Morningside Refined.

"Oh? What's wrong with it?"

"The tone, Cameron, the tone," Eddie says, frowning. "It's a tad too combative, you know what I mean? Too critical."

"Well, I'm just sticking to —»

"Aye, the facts," Eddie says, smiling tolerantly and sharing what he thinks is a private joke. "Including the fact that you obviously don't like some of the larger distilling concerns, by the sound of it." He slips his glasses back on and peers at the print-out.

"Well, I wouldn't say that's how it comes across," I say, hating myself for feeling defensive. "You're bringing the fact that you know me to this, Eddie. I don't think somebody coming cold to —»

"I mean," Eddie says, slicing through my waffle like a steak knife, "all this about the Distillers Company and the Guinness take-over. Is that strictly necessary? It's old news, Cameron."

"But it's still relevant," I insist. "It's in there to show the way big business works; they'll promise anything to get what they want and then renege on it without a second thought. They're professional liars; it's only the bottom line that matters, only the shareholders" profits; nothing else. Not tradition or the life of communities or the people who've worked all their lives in —»

Eddie sits back, laughing. "There you go," he says. "You're writing an article about whisky —»

"The adulteration of whisky."

"— and you've got stuff in here basically saying what a lying wee shite Ernest Saunders is."

"Lying big shite; he's —»

"Cameron!" Eddie says, annoyed, taking off the half-moons again and tapping the print-out with them. "The point is that even if this wasn't very possibly libellous —»

"But nobody recovers from senile dementia!"

"It doesn't matter, Cameron! It has no place in an article about whisky."

"… adulteration," I add, sullenly.

"There you go again!" Eddie says, standing and heading to the middle of the three big windows behind him. He half-sits on the window-ledge, hands on the wood. "My God, laddie, you're a terrible one for getting bees in your bonnet, so you are."

God, I hate it when Eddie calls me "laddie'.

"Are you going to print it or not?" I ask him.

"Certainly not, as it stands. This is supposed to grace the front of the Saturday supplement, Cameron; it's for hungover people in their dressing-gowns to scatter their croissant crumbs across; the way it reads at the moment you'd be lucky to get it into the back of Private Eye."

I glare.

"Cameron, Cameron," Eddie says, looking pained at my expression and rubbing his chin with one hand. He looks tired. "You're a good journalist; you write well, you meet deadlines and I know you've had offers to go down south with an even wider brief and extra money, and both Andrew and I give you more leeway than some people here think you deserve. But if you ask to do a Saturday special on whisky we do rather expect it to have something to do with the cratur itself, rather than read like a manifesto for Class War. It's as bad as that television piece you did last year." (At least he hasn't mentioned the results of my little foreign trip.) He leans over and peers at the print-out. "I mean, look at this: forcing Ernest Saunders to drink so much whisky his brain deteriorates to the "bovinely spongy state he claimed it was in at the end of the Guinness trial"; that's —»

"It was a joke!" I protest.

"It reads like incitement! What are you trying to —?"

"You'd let Muriel Gray away with it."

"Not the way you've put it, I wouldn't."

"Well, get it legalled, then; the lawyers —»

"I'm not going to get it legalled, Cameron, because I'm not going to run it." Eddie shakes his head. "Cameron," he sighs, quitting the window to resume his throne again, "you simply have to cultivate a sense of proportion."

"What happens now?" I say, ignoring this and nodding at the print-out.

Eddie sighs. "Rewrite, Cameron. Try to dilute the vitriol instead of harping on about this asbestos filtering."

I sit and stare at the print-out. "This means we'll lose the slot, doesn't it?"

"Yes," Eddie says. "I'm moving the National Trust series forward a week. The whisky piece will just have to wait."

I purse my lips, then shrug. "Okay, give me till — " I look at my watch "- six. I can have it redone by then if I work right through. We can still make the —»

"No, Cameron," Eddie says exasperatedly. "I don't want a quick rehash with a few of the expletives deleted; I want you to rethink the whole thing. Approach it from a different angle. I mean, get your criticism on the moral corrosion of late capitalism in implicitly if you must, but make it implicit; keep it subtle. I know you… we both know you can do it, and that you're more effective when you're wielding the stiletto rather than the chainsaw. Take advantage of that, for goodness" sake."

I'm not mollified but I make a half-smile and give a grudgingly confirmatory grunt.

"Agreed?" Eddie asks.

"Okay," I say, nodding. "Agreed."

"Good," Eddie says, sitting back. "Anyway. How's everything else going? Liked that piece on the submarine, incidentally; nicely balanced; just hovering on the brink of editorialising, but never quite going over. Good stuff, good stuff… By the by, I hear rumours you might have something interesting coming up involving a government mole, that true?"

I fix Eddie with my best steely look. It seems to bounce off. "What's Frank been saying?" I ask.

"I didn't say I heard it through Frank," Eddie says, looking all innocent and open. Too innocent and open. "A few people have mentioned you seem to have something on the go, something you're not telling anybody about. I'm not prying; I don't want to know anything about it yet. I just wondered if these rumours are true."

"Well, they are," I say, hating having to admit it.

"I — " Eddie begins, then his phone rings. He looks annoyed as he answers it.

"Morag, I thought — " he says, then his expression changes to one of sour resignation. "Yes, all right. Just a second."

He presses the mute button and looks apologetically at me. "Cameron, sorry; this bloody Fettesgate thing. High-altitude leaning going on. Got to field all this stuff. Nice talking to you. See you later."

I leave the office feeling like I've just been to see the headmaster. Retreat to toilets for nose-to-nose with Auntie Crystal. Thank fuck for drugs.

Andy and Clare and I walked through the Strathspeld estate, from the house across the lawn and the terrace and through the shrub garden and the forest, down into the glen and out again, up to the wooded hill beyond and the densely overgrown dip where the old air-shaft chimney was.

The chimney was one of two on the hill; the old railway line ran directly underneath. The line had been closed for thirty years and the tunnel entrances had been first boarded up and then filled in with rubble. The viaduct over the Speld a half-mile away had been demolished, so that only the piers were still visible in the rushing waters. The tracks themselves had been torn up, leaving a long, flat-floored canyon curving under the trees of the estate.

The two air-shaft chimneys — squat dark cylinders of undressed stone a couple of metres across and a little over half that high, each capped with an iron grating — had vented the steam and smoke from the trains in the tunnel. You could climb up onto them and sit on the rusting iron grid — afraid it would give way but afraid to admit you were afraid — and look down into that utter blackness, and sometimes catch the cold, dead scent of the abandoned tunnel, rising up around you like some remorseless chilly breath. From there, too, you could let stones fall into the darkness, to land with a distant, hardly heard thud on the floor of the tunnel thirty or forty metres below. Once Andy and I had come here with old newspapers and a box of matches and dropped the lit, twisted papers into the hole and watched them slowly fall flaming, spiralling silently downwards into the blackness until they hit the tunnel floor.

Andy was eleven, Clare ten, and I was nine. We were there for a ceremony. Andy was slightly plump at the time, Clare agreeably normal. I was — everybody agreed — wiry, but I'd probably fill out, like my dad had.

"Blimey!" Clare said. "Dark in here, isn't it?"

It was dark. In high summer the outrageously tangled bushes around the chimney grew fast and green and blocking, starving the hollow of light. We'd had to fight our way in here to the little oasis of calm clarity around the forgotten chimney itself. Now that we were here, in its little green cave, the light seemed dim and clotted.

Clare shivered and clung to Andy, face puckering in pretended terror. "Argh, help!"

Andy grinned, putting an arm round her. "Never fear, sis."

"Do the dreadful deed!" she cried, making a face at me.

"You first," Andy said, handing the packet to me.

I took the box, extracted a cigarette from it and put it in my mouth. Andy fumbled with the match, lit it, then quickly put it to the cigarette. I sucked hard, eyes narrowed.

I inhaled a smell of sulphur, coughed immediately, turned appropriately green and nearly threw up.

Andy and his sister laughed themselves hoarse while I kept on coughing.

They each tried smoking, too, and pronounced it utterly foul, quite disgusting, what did people see in it? Adults were mad.

Andy said, But it looked good; had we ever seen Casablanca with Humphrey Bogart? There was a film. And who could imagine Rick without a cigarette in his hand if not hanging from his mouth? (Clare and I could, as we mugged to each other. Hell, I'd seen that film a couple of Christmases ago, hadn't I? It was a Marx Brothers movie and there was nobody called Humphrey Bogart in it I could remember.)

We tried another cigarette, and by then I'd — maybe instinctively — sussed how to handle it.

I was getting a hit from the stuff! I really toked on that second fag. Andy and Clare just sipped at it, took it into their mouths but not their lungs, not their beings, didn't accept it into their own personal ecospheres; just giggled childishly, peripheral.

Not me. I sucked that smoke in and made it part of me, joined mystically with the universe right at that point, said Yes to drugs forever just by the unique hit I got from that one packet of fags Andy liberated from his dad. It was a revelation, an epiphany; a sudden realisation that it was possible for matter — something there in front of you, in your hand, in your lungs, in your pocket — to take your brain apart and reassemble it in ways you hadn't thought of previously.

This was better than religion, or this was what people always meant by religion! The whole point was that this worked! People said Believe In God or Be Good or Do Well At School or Buy This or Vote For Me or whatever, but nothing actually worked the way substances worked, nothing fucking well delivered like they did. They were truth. Everything else was falsehood.

I became a semi-junkie that day, that afternoon, that hour, that second-fag-length moment. In that first virginal rush of toxins to the brain I believe I started to become my later self; I finally had my internal eyes opened to my true being. Truth and revelation. What is actually going on? What is literally the case? What really works?

There you are, the Journo Catechism, the truth-teller's tale, written in any damn scrip or script you care to choose to denominate, elect to go for or designate. WHAT FUCKING WORKS?

I rest my case.

We threw the burned-out fag-butts down the chimney into the darkness without further ceremony. We walked back towards the house and while Andy was ahead of us he suddenly announced a race, so we yelled, protesting, and darted off after him over the last hundred metres, sprinting across the lawn and the gravel to the porch.

Breathless in the main hall, all pronounced the experiment at the old chimney a failure… but in my heart I knew different.