Craig Robertson - Random

‘Aw, c’mon missus. Nae need for that.’

‘Don’t missus me, ya wee arsehole. Any ay your shite and ah’ll shout ma man doon here to sort you oot.’

It wouldn’t need her man to come down and sort him out. In a square go, my money was on Maw. Straight knockout in the first round, no problem.

The drunk was drunk enough not to have worked that out though.

‘For fuck’s sake. Get him doon here then,’ he came back. ‘Ah’ll tell him how sorry ah ah’m for him, being married tae you and that.’

Mrs Broon breathed in an indignant harrumph and I was sure she was just about to deck him when the number 40 swung round the corner and pulled up in front of us.

The drunk threw her a lopsided smile and stood aside, letting her on first with an exaggerated bow and a low sweep of his arm.

She stormed past without looking at him and took up residence halfway up the bus, her handbag pulled tight to her formidable bosom.

The drunk pulled himself into the first empty seat and let his head smack off the window as it lurched off, feeling no pain.

I sat four rows behind Mrs Broon and had a quiet look around. There were maybe twenty people on board the 40. Glasgow in miniature that bus. All human life was there. White and Asian. Young and old. Shoppers and office workers. Crooks and cops. Prods, Papes, Poles and Pakis. Enough racist opportunity for everyone.

Wee boys in bad suits heading for call centres. Neds in tracksuits heading for street corners. Guys heading for the bookies and the offie.

A couple of kids were pushing and shoving at each other. The first one slapping the second round the head, the second calling him a fud and the pair of them giggling. The wee bastards should have been at school.

A mother with two kids and two big bags of shopping. The five of them squeezed into two seats, her on the outside and them and the messages trapped between her and the window. Weans wriggling like eels, shopping bags bouncing. Trapped but trying to escape.

Another mother. This one no more than mid-twenties and with three kids. Every person on that bus soon knew their names. Chloe. Chantelle. Candice. Chantelle in particular was a real charmer, swinging on the post at the front of the bus, drawing daggers from the driver and shouts from her mother.

Fuck. This was getting harder. So much harder. Had been from the moment that Wallace Ogilvie died.

There was a hard case in a torn leather jacket. His face torn too, an old knife wound scarring him from ear to lip. He was staring at the back page of the Daily Record and shaking his head. The front page had the latest on The Cutter but all he was interested in was who Celtic were supposed to be signing.

Two rows behind him was a junkie, no more than seventeen and off her face. Her scrawny arms tugging at her hair, head twitching. She was bouncing in her seat, bouncing more than the two kids. Energy was bursting out of her. Life leaking out. She must have been good-looking once.

Two guys in white overalls, painters maybe. One of them sleeping on the other’s shoulder. His mate looking out the window at every bit of passing skirt. Knocking on the glass at a couple of them. Winking. Waving with the free arm, the one that wasn’t squashed in by his pal.

Glasgow in miniature. Didn’t look much like a city living in fear, a city living in the shadow of The Cutter. Though it should have done. This bus more than anywhere else. I had already decided it would be the first person who got off at the Viking on Maryhill Road. No particular reason.

The mother had already got off two stops earlier, pulled and pushed down the stairs off the bus by the weans and the shopping. I was glad to see them go. The kids who were plugging the school were still on but I was sure they were headed all the way into the town. Hoped they were. Had to be.

Approaching the Viking. Any time now. I could feel the tension in me. Could feel my heart rate pick up. Any one of them. Anyone.

The hard case in the leather jacket moved in his seat and my eyes turned to him. He’d do. But he was just turning the inside sports pages, settling himself again. Wasn’t him.

One of the two boys stood up and my heart dropped a foot. My breathing stopped. He skelped his pal on the back of the head, got his own back and sat down. Wasn’t him.

My breathing had just started again when a woman brushed past me. She was getting off at the next stop. All I could see was her back. She was as wide as she was tall, just squeezing between the seats. Short and round, thick legs perched on sensible black shoes. A dark raincoat and a scarf. All topped off with a bowl of reddish hair.

She was getting off at the next stop. She was the one.

The woman stood at the front waiting for the bus to come to a halt and copped some chat from the drunk that had already chanced his luck with Maw Broon. I couldn’t hear what he said or what she replied but there was no doubt who had won. The roly-poly snapped something at him and he turned to the window, wrapping his arms round his ears and his head in exaggerated protection. Just wasn’t his day. Slayed by two of Glasgow’s finest within twenty minutes.

I waited until the bus had stopped before getting up from my seat and making for the exit. By that time a couple of people were trying to get on and I earned a bit of a glare from the driver. It was worth it though, the roly-poly was off and waddling down the street without ever catching sight of me.

As soon as she got off the bus, she’d reached into her handbag and took something out. Whatever it was, she moved it from hand to hand and then seemed to put it back in the bag. She went just a few yards then repeated the exercise.

Maybe ten yards further, just as she’d passed the Viking itself and crossed the road, she was back into the bag again. She took out whatever it was and this time huddled over it for a few moments before walking on. She’d lit a cigarette.

I was still on the other side of the road, watching her turn right and head back in the direction we’d come. Watched her charge purposefully ahead, fat but fast, rolling like a battlecruiser in stormy seas.

Then suddenly she took a sharp pavement left and turned into the Tesco on Maryhill Road. I followed, grabbing a basket for cover. Cameras saw me enter the store but it wouldn’t matter. I was one among hundreds. Hundreds today and thousands this week.

I walked up and down the aisles but couldn’t see her anywhere. Fruit and veg, toiletries, dog food, tinned foods, all the way to the butchers and bakers without sight of the roly-poly. I started to walk quicker, doubling back, scanning the heads of all the shoppers.

Nothing.

Fully five minutes, up and down, back and forth, getting desperate, had to find her. Surely she couldn’t have gone in and out so quickly. Had to still be there. Panicking a bit.

Then I saw her. Not in any of the aisles but sitting behind a till. Ten items or less. The roly-poly had been on her way to work at Tesco.

I picked up enough things to make it look like I had actually been shopping then joined a queue already three deep at her till. There were shorter queues but not so many that it would have looked odd that I chose this one. Just like a once a month shopper who didn’t know any better. Women were probably shaking their heads at me and smiling patronizingly.

She looked up and saw me standing there, another impediment to an easy day. She exhaled noisily and shook her head at my stupidity. Keep shaking it, I thought. She was maybe fifty-five although I had the feeling she wasn’t as old as she looked. She’d made herself old. She’d smoked her face old and scrunched it up into a meaner, harsher version than her God had intended. If she looked fifty-five then she was forty-five tops. Her podgy face was framed by that bowl of red hair and set off by a pair of practical specs and a permanent scowl.