Filth

To Lodge A Complaint

Sunday. For some a depressing day, for me the happiest day of the week: it means big-time OT. I can’t find my slippers. I go through to the front room and my heart skips a beat. Her picture’s gone from the sideboard. Of course. The top drawer.

I open the top drawer and put it back.

It was Christmas and I never got her anything.

That was

I look at the picture for a while then push it back into the drawer and slam it shut. That poor wee lassie, what a fuckin legacy. I’m better away from her. I’m better away from them all. It’s a dormant virus and it’s becoming more manifest.

But it was Christmas and I never got her anything.

It was cause of Carole that I . . . she usually gets her . . . she would have, surely, she would have bought her something from the both of us.

Surely.

Maybe though, that’s the way her mind’s working: trying to turn us, me against the bairn. She’s living in a fool’s paradise. Same rules. I do not give a Matt and Luke Goss about her. Not an Aylesbury Duck.

I pull on my stinky old clothes and defrost the Volvo. Getting the motor charged up and storming round the city bypass to Meat Loaf’s Bat Out Of Hell album restores some cheer. Jim Steinman, probably the greatest rock composer of all time. That cunt is operatic.

When I get to HQ, I find that most of the crew are in; they’ve had their fill of that Christmas shite. For all the bullshit talk of the family, close friends and the festivities, I’ve always found that most people can’t wait to call a halt to all that garbage and get back to the two-slice. I find that polis can’t function for very long in the company of non-polis.

– Who’s in the Screws the day? I ask Peter Inglis who’s got his paper open.

– Nikki from Somerset. Good tits like. Fill paps. Dirty cow’s been tweaking her nipples fir the photae. Like fighter pilot’s thumbs, he says in the fake-coarse way of the closet homosexual in desperate fear of being outed. Mister Inglis has recently dropped his application for the promotion. On the advice of a certain Mr Toal, no doubt. He holds the page up for my inspection. Thinks that keeping a low profile and talking dirty aboot birds will set up a smoke-screen. Such an obvious attempt to be one of the boys just grates and only serves to isolate him further.

– A pump and a piece thon, I nod appprovingly.

You fool nobody, Mr Inglis.

I open my file wallet and pull out my own Screws for closer study. No bad, worth forty wanks later on. I’m as itchy as fuck in the genital region. I go downstairs to the bog and wipe the sweat from my arse-crack. Then I line my buttocks and thighs with toilet paper, putting my y’s over them. That should absorb the moisture generated. I put the flannels I washed back on, and catch a whiff of detergent from them. They seem discoloured as well.

business remains as unsolved as ever. Yes, there are clues, but it’s working out what they mean . . .

ACROSS DOWN 1Urban dweller (8) 1Outer garment (7) 5Stinging insect (4) 2Narrow part (5) 8Gave money (4) 3Pondered (5) 9Joined using a hot iron (8) 4African river (4) 10External (7) 6Fruit (7) 12Bumptious (5) 7Short form of Patrick (5) 13Holy place (6) 11Eyot (5) 15Hand gun (6) 12Dry, brittle (5) 17Trainee (5) 14Wine or cake (7) 18Pain-killer (7) 16Archer’s weapon (7) 22Friendly (8) 17Category (5) 23Dingy (4) 19Water vapour (5) 24Lodge (4) 20Scarcer (5) 25After today! (8) 21Aid in crime (4)

– Gus, I shot, – Urban dweller, eight letters . . . N dinnae say citizen cause that’s only seven.

– Aw . . . that’s what ah would have said. Citizen. Here, what did you get for that nine across?

– Soldered. Join using a hot iron, I tell him. There’s a fuckin good one here for ye. Twelve across. Bumptious. TOAL! Pity it’s five letters but.

Gus’s laugh ricochets around the open-plan like a workie’s drill in a built-up area.

I turn to the football pages. BOXING DAY DISASTER is the headline. an anonymous, lacklustre performance by Tom Stronach, normally so full of endeavour in the visitors’ engine room, led to his substitution in the second half.

Dougie Gillman looks over my shoulder. I shake the paper at him. – Did ye go Dougie?

– A bloody nightmare. That Stronach, he’s a fuckin imposter, Gillman scoffs.

– Ah ken why he was so crap yesterday, I tell him knowingly, – the cunt was up till the wee small hours on Christmas Day, off his fuckin tits . . . no just on bevvy either by the look ay things.

– Aye, thir aw it that fuckin cocaine . . . they fitba players, Gillman shakes his heid.

– Thing is, thir short-changin the fans Dougie. We pey they cunts’ wages.

Gillman nods in bitter agreement as Lennox comes in. He has a copy of the Screws as well. He sees Gus at the crossword. – Seven doon, he says, – Short for Patrick. That’s easy: Dirty fuckin thick fenian terrorist bog-wog cunt.

Lennox is now sporting a huge, Zapata-style moustache: it seems to grow along with his charlie intake. I keep thinking that I can see bits of coke stuck in it.

– No bad Ray, mair than five letters in that though, eh, I smile.

What made Ray Lennox want to be all palsy-walsy and one-of-the-boys all of a sudden?

– What about twenty-four across: ‘Lodge?’ Gus asks with an edge in his voice, turning away from Lennox.

– File, Ray says.

– Eh? Gus snaps challengingly.

– Tae file a complaint. Tae lodge a complaint, says Lennox, all superior-like. – I’ll bet the first thing you thought of was masonic or orange! he laughs.

– And ah bet it was the last bloody thing you thought of! Gus almost takes his heid off.

– Eh? Ray asks, bemused, almost rocking back on his heels.

I’m shaking with laughter behind my paper. Growl! Growl! Go for him old boy, go on and teach that smart young pup a thing or two! Go on old boy! You can dae it! Ruff ruff!

– Dinnae think yir behaviour’s no gaun noticed in the craft, son, Gus says, pointing the finger.

– What ye on aboot Gus? Lennox turns to me and then Peter, – What is this? We don’t respond, so he looks back at Gus.

– Jist what ah said. No wise, son, Gus hisses, tapping his muppet heid, – no wise at aw. Then he turns away and leaves. Inglis follows him like he was his boyfriend. Yes, buftie boys are the biggest size queens.

– What the fuck was that about? Ray asks.

– Listen Ray, it’s what I’ve been telling ye aboot, I whisper confidentially as I see Gillman going into the photocopying room. – The young stag syndrome.

Ray looks flushed. – He doesnae ken anything aboot the charlie, does he? he whispers eagerly.

– I doubt it, I smile.

I’m looking at my stars while, yes, I can almost hear it, the slow delicious sound of that wanker, Ray Lennox, stewing in his own fucking juices. My sign is Taurus, the bull. Fuckin appropriate cause that’s all I get aroond here, usually from that sad spastic Toal. Nope. Wrong! He is not a sad spastic, he ain’t that fuckin interesting! TAURUS (April 21 – May 21): The combined influence of Mars and Pluto, two rather volatile planets, together with your ruler Venus, indicates a time of smouldering passion. But seriously, don’t get too carried away as it could all end in tears. As for someone who is coming on strong today, you need to question their motives.

The News of The Screws disgusts me after a while. It’s all shagging, drugs and crime triangles featuring fat schemies. I’ll have to get back to buying the Mail On Sunday. I used to get it for the politics, but I packed it in after Princess Diana’s funeral. Every person that was interviewed outside the Palace all seemed to be sad, nae-mates spastics, sort of Bladesey types. Then I read that the majority of people who attended were Mail readers. That terrified me into dropping the paper.

I decide to go and see Bunty. – Ray, I’m going walkabout. If that docile mutation Toal is looking for me, tell him that I’m away to the Forum.

– Will do Bruce. When will you be back?

– A couple of hours or so. How, ye wantin ays tae bring back something fae Crawford’s?

– Aye . . . I suppose a Cornish pasty wi chips, Ray says hesitantly, as if he is thinking of something more tasty.

Peter comes back in. – Peter? Scran?

It’ll be sun-dried tomatays, olives and feta cheese fir that big nancy-boy.

– You gaun past Brattisani’s?

– Could do.

– White puddin supper then, he says. Probably sees the white puddin as a guy’s cock. Ah’ll fuckin well bet ye the cunt wants one awright!

– Well, if you’re gaun by Brattisani’s, ah’ll take a fish supper,