Irvine Welsh - Filth

– What does that involve?

– They are harmless parasites, but they can be hard to get rid of.

– I’ll go to the toilet now, I stand up.

– That won’t be necessary . . . he says, – in your own time . . .

– I can do it now, I tell him, exiting. I head to his bog and fill the container with sludgy lager and curry shite. The cunt wants shite, ah’ll fuckin well gie him shite!

I leave Rossi with my crap and pish and drive into town. Worms. It doesnae bear thinkin about. My thoughts are interrupted by a message from Ray, telling me that it’s going off down the flats. Colin Moss went up there carrying a holdall, so the D.S. boys’ve got the sniffer dugs down there and are raring to do Moss, Richards and Allan.

The roads are pretty bad and I’m shaking at the wheel, worried that I’m going to miss all the fuckin action. Fuck looking for somebody who topped a coon, this is real poliswork. I stick my light on the top of the car and hit the siren as I tear doon Leith Walk.

OUT MA FUCKIN WEY YA CUNTS!

By the time I get down to the flats, a huge crowed has gathered outside. Some jakeys from the lodging house sit huddled on to a bench, drinking strong largers and fortified wines and making insulting comments at two young uniformed spastics, one whose ears glow red with the cold and the humiliation. Some other polis are trying to cordon the area off and disperse the crowd. I see that something’s on the ground. As I get closer it looks like the remains of an animal but it has been ripped open and crushed beyond recognition, strewn all over the slushy pavement. I look towards the heavens suspecting our old friend gravity and the flats. This was probably last year’s model whose collar had grown a little tight and was jettisoned to make way for the incoming Christmas puppy dog.

Then I clock Ray, who looks a bit sheepish and tells me that the dug was one of ours, a sniffer in the advance party. I savour the prospect of an alliance with the RSPCA, destroying the peace-loving, caring credibility of these hippy, squatting cunts. They murdered that poor animal! Ha! Gotcha!

Ray nods towards George Mackie, the dug-handler, who’s sitting on the pavement being comforted by a poliswoman. I ken George from the craft. Lodge St John, Corstorphine.

– Bruce . . . he wheezes . . .– eh’s gone Bruce . . . Pedro’s away . . . ma Pedro . . . the best sniffer oan the force . . . eh’s gone . . .

– What happened George, I ask, bending over him.

– Eh found a sheet ay acid . . . but they’d hidden it in the kitchen . . . he slipped his leash . . . they hid the acid wi these dug biscuits . . . poor Pedro ate the lot, Mackie moaned, sounding himself like a dog in pain. – Perr Pedro . . . eh jist totally loast it . . . eh freaked and even turned on me! Me Bruce! I had him since he was a puppy . . . the runt ay the litter . . . I admit that I truncheoned him . . . it wis self-defence Bruce . . . eh just lept oot the windae . . . the best dug ah’ve ever hud . . . the best sniffer on the force . . . fourteen floors up, eh never stood a snowball’s chance in hell . . .

I move back over to Ray. – Where’s Moss? Ms Richards? Mr Allan?

Lennox points across to this trio of crusty bastards looking smug and getting into a BMW. The car’s being driven by Conrad Donaldson, Q.C.

– Nowt we can do Bruce, Ray says. – Listen Bruce, c’mere the now . . . Lennox furtively gestures over to a tenement stair door, far from the crowd. – I fucked up. I had the sheet ay acid to plant and I was about tae dae it when the fuckin dug ripped it out my hand . . . he showed me a toothmark on one of his fingers. – George was in the living room and it came intae the kitchen . . . he should have been with it at all times . . . he didnae follow procedure.

– What was in Moss’s holdall? Can we no do them for that?

– A fucking Christmas pudding. I didn’t even bother confiscating it to take it doon the lab for analysis. The smart cunt was straight on to Donaldson, who was here within ten minutes. They were laughing their fuckin heads off, Lennox smirks slightly, seeing the funny side. I don’t. I walk away in a raging fury and get back into the car.

That night I go out for a drink with Clell, who’s going on about his new job in traffic.

– It’s great tae be free fae Serious Crimes Bruce, he says, raising his glass. – It’s given me time tae think about what I want tae do with my life. That’s the problem wi Serious Crimes, you shut off too much. You just go through it . . . he makes his palms go parallel and forward like a train.

– Well, you’ll have plenty of time to think sitting with those vegetables in traffic, I tell him.

Clell looks closely at me. There’s a slight tick in his eye. It seems as if I’ve upset him.

– That’s just the way I want it, he bleats.

Cunt thinks that his worries are over and that he can rub our faces in it because he’s got a job as a vegetable. Wrong! We are not interested in the trivial concerns of one Mister Andrew Clelland.

I make my excuses after a bit and head hame.

The Lie Of The Land

Tom Stronach, or Tommy Stronach, as they first called him when he broke through from the Hearts youth set-up in 1984, is my friend of sorts by virtue of his being my next-door neighbour. Tom Stronach: two Scotland caps, the first in 1988 due to several call-offs, which resulted in the largely unheralded through-ball for Coisty or some other west-coast fucker to score the winner in a three-goal thriller in Belgrade, against a fancied Yugoslavian side; well, fancied to beat Scotland at any rate. Then a spell in the wilderness followed by a further cap against Northern Ireland during his swan-song season of 1990-91. That was his last chance to do something, with Everton and Sunderland reputedly making offers which were turned down by the ‘ambitious’ board who, like Tom, spent another few trophyless years in limbo. The spastics ought to have taken the cash: it was to be Stronach’s last season as even a minor force in the game.

Alimony cases and paternity suits have taken their toll on his greengages and Tom’s had to make the socially humiliating climbdown from Colinton Village with wife number three, to this pokey Gumley’s job. He’s a thick cunt whose only attributes is being able to kick a ball badly and he has the nerve to think that he’s slumming it, living next door to a law enforcement professional.

I’d taken the morning off to watch the female gymnastics on telly. There was some pubescent ex-commie Tony Hatch worth forty wanks. I couldn’t really get into it though; when I woke up I wanted to hear something by the Michael Schenker Group but I couldn’t decide between Assault Attack and Rock Will Never Die . After making myself a large fry-up and lighting the fire, I decide to take neither option and go for Built To Destroy . I do a bit of air-guitar work and make a mental list of the women I’d like to reduce to a state of slavery and bondage, Drummond coming in at num-bihr one. I check the post and there’s fuck all from Chelmsford. You’re keeping me waiting Tony. I don’t like waiting. Loneliness and melancholy settle in after this and the breathless strains of the stoat-the-baw gymnastics commentator irritates and I decide to seek company next door. The newspapers are still lying around from the weekend. I can see that face in the newspaper. I rip out the page and crumple it up before tossing it into the fire. I quickly re-read the Sunday Mail ’s postscript of Saturday’s nil– three débâcle at Rugby Park. A poor performance by the visitors and one which Tom Stronach, in particular, will want to forget. It was his loose pass-back which gifted Killie that decisive second goal, effectively ending the game as a contest.