Irvine Welsh - Filth

– I see . . . I let the silence hang.

Eventually Toal says, – I don’t have time for this bullshit. I’ll see you in Jim Niddrie’s office at the appropriate time. Cancel everything else.

The line clicks dead. Now Toal’s hung up on me! Who the fuck does he think he is? Niddrie’s fuckin office-boy, that’s who. I shout into the mouthpiece, – I don’t have time for your fuckin bullshit Niddrie! We’ve got a fuckin murder case tae solve! I slam the phone down.

Gus Bain raises an eyebrow, – Whoa, Robbo, ye gied Niddrie it tight there, did ye no?

– The only way wi these cunts Gus, I said. That’s all they understand. I turn round and notice that Sonia, one of the civvy clerks, had come into the room. – Sorry aboot that Sonia hen, industrial language they call it.

– Sawright, she says. – It’s Hazel.

– Of course . . . of course . . . Hazel. Bet she takes it aw weys. Bit young for me but. Mind you, if they’re auld enough tae bleed . . .

– Ah’m sure Hazel’s heard worse, Gus gives that wheezing, creepy laugh of his, and she grins nervously.

– What ye could do for me Hazel, is to gie they people at the Forum a phone. I had a meeting with them tomorrow at two. Tell them I have to cancel out, but I’ll get back to them.

– Right. . . aw aye. . . there was a woman on the phone for you while you were out, she tells me.

– Whoah! Gus laughs, – Mister Popular.

Aye? Whae?

– She wouldnae leave a name or number. She sais you’d know who it was.

– Right . . .

That’s a bastard. Shit. Probably Carole crawling back. I’ll leave a message on the answer machine tonight.

Those cunts Toal and Niddrie have upset me big-time. Making me miss important fucking calls with their shite. I should have fuckin well stayed in Australia. Then where would the fuckers be now? If I hadn’t gone out there but stayed in London wi the Met, I’d’ve probably been Chief Constable in a fair-to-middling size force by now. I feel a bad itch in my arse. These boxer shorts ride up and brush against the scar tissue. My arse shouldn’t be fucking sweating as much. Stress, that’s what it is, as Rossi said, and it’s caused by these Personnel cunts who wouldnae ken what poliswork was if it was to suck their cocks or lick their fannies.

I decide to hit the canteen for lunch, well, pre-lunch, as it’s a bit early for dinner. Too late for a break and too early for lunch. Bruce Robertson time, I call this. Ina sorts me out with some bacon rolls and I hear smarmy voices behind me which belong to some cunts in suits and one of them is that lippy fucker Conrad Donaldson Q.C. who spends his time coining it in from the taxpayer by defending the kind of fucking scum that we risk our lives to try and put away: rapists, murderers, child molesters and what have you.

– Practising cannibalism Bruce? he nods at the plate and smiles.

I’m looking coolly at the cunt. I’d love to have him. Just him and me, just twenty minutes in an interview room the gether.

– Hello Conrad, I force a smile back.

I want to punch his face and deck him and them stomp that smirking posh face into the ground under the heel of my boot and keep doing it until his skull explodes over the lino, sending its fucked criminal-loving contents squidging across that tiled canteen floor. I’d eat my dinner after and keep it down as well, I kid you not. – Remember what I told you that PIG stood for? Pride, Integrity and Guts.

He smiles and turns to his pals. – Detective Sergeant Bruce Robertson. One of the force’s leading reactionaries. Comes from a mining family as well, I hear.

– You hear wrong, I say softly, looking him hard in the eye. – You must be getting me mixed up with someone else.

– Hmm, Donaldson mumbles, raising his eyebrows.

My knuckles are white on the tray as I depart. I hear Donaldson muttering a consensual goodbye, through a ringing in my ears. I feel sick and dizzy. I sit in a corner and devour the rolls, ripping and rending the stringy meat in my sharp teeth, wishing that it was Donaldson’s scrawny neck. New Labour rising star Conrad Donaldson.

By the time I get back upstairs I’ve composed myself, but whenever I think of Donaldson and his ilk, a savage rage crashes inside my chest. At one point it gets so bad that I’m shaking and my teeth are hammering again. I need a drink so I knock off early and hit the bar at the social club downstairs. Just feeling the thick carpet under my feet composes me. It makes a change from the other rooms in the building with their thin, harsh, cheap Berber flooring. The bar itself is a lot more basic than it used to be. When it opened it was full of good bric-à-brac, antique vases and the like, but these kept going missing so they changed to a more functional decor. A couple of baby polis are playing pool, but I see Bob Hurley at the bar. – I arrived just in time I see, I smile at him.

– Alright Robbo, he turns to the barman, – Another pint of lager Les, and you’d better set up a wee Grouse as well.

– Make that a large Grouse Les, seein as this English cunt’s on the bell. I wink at the barman. Hurley’s face briefly whitens a wee bit. The race card is just one of the cards in the pack and if you’re serious about this game you utilise that full pack as and when you need to. That wee aside is just to remind Hurley of his status as a barely tolerated guest, not just in this country, but in this life.

Hurley and I sit down in a corner and a few rounds later on we’re still there. Toal, of all people, has just come in, but I’m ignoring that arsehole. He sits in the next booth to us, reading the Evening News . Fuck him, the sad, nae mates cunt. Only tries to socialise with the boys when he wants something. It’s Hurley I’m more interested in.

He’s still melancholy about the split with his wife. – What fucked it up with me and Chrissie was her family. You know what it’s like being a polis, he sings in that Tony Newley voice that makes the word ‘polis’ sound so funny.

What’s he on about: ‘a’ polis? Daft cunt.

– You tell them all, her friends, family, the neighbours what you do for a living and you get treated like a leper. They sit in the house, her pals and their spouses and they say nothing, it’s like they’re in an interrogation room. The conversation’s full of awkward silences and they can’t wait to make their excuses and go. Then they always put off coming round again. You get treated fucking . . . he gasps, seemingly in pain, his breath catching, – like a fucking leper, he repeats, – . . . that’s what you feel like Bruce, a fucking leper.

– Yeah.

Hurley pulls a bit of wax from his ear and rubs it on the underside of the seat. – So I went through a phase of telling them that I was a plumber or that I sold insurance. Then they start telling you everything about themselves. It’s like, ‘I do this on the side’ or ‘I don’t put that through the books’. They’re all at it. Every one of them, he says, raising his voice in rage, – fucking Jackie Trent. The lot of them, they’re all fucking Jackie Trent.

I clock Toal getting up and leaving, the nosey, eavesdropping cunt.

– Exactly. And you are a law enforcement officer, I tell him.

– Right, and that’s what she can’t bleedin well understand. When you do what you have to do as a law enforcement officer, when you blow the whistle on these bastards, she turns round and says, ‘It’s my family. I’m leaving.’

– That’s women for you, I tell him, swigging back my whisky. If you drink whisky you’ll never get worms.

She isn’t much of a fuck that Chrissie. Quite into the video camera but went a bit funny on me when I brought out the vibrator. Had tae go aw lovey-dovey oan the daft cow to stop her becoming hysterical.