Irvine Welsh - Filth

the fucking head of those things and I can’t get the bastard out.

I decide that there’s going to be no work done today, so I fill out an OTA 1–7 for the overtime, and sit back watching videos until I drowse. When I wake up, I note that it’s the evening. This is when I come to life. That was a great kip. It’s got me going.

I’ve snorted my last half G and I’m on the mooch for mair posh. I call cold round at Ray Lennox’s gaff. Always the best way tae call anyone. The polis way. One heavy-knuckled rap on the door and I hear that characteristic sound of the occupants scuttling like disturbed rats, their pathetic lives swamped in criminality. Lennox is daein something eh shouldnae be. Then the door opens. He has a bird round, she’s just on her way out.

– Eh, Bruce, Lennox says, – this is Trudi.

– Pleased to meet you my darling, I lift her hand to my mouth and kiss it, an extravagant gesture. Worth forty wanks as well. Mmm hmm. – Pleased to meet you Trudi. Ray’s not mentioned you to me. That’s remiss of him, I smile. I turn to Lennox, who now looks a bit off-white, – I can see why you’d like to keep a treasure like her well away from an old prospector like Bruce Robertson!

She smiles and departs, Ray instantly recovering his cool.

– Tidy piece Mister Lennox, I say approvingly.

– A lovely girl, Lennox replies in fake pomposity. He’s already gone to his stash and started cutting oot the lines. I’ll say one thing for Ray Lennox, he doesnae let the grass grow under his feet as far as the posh goes. Fuck work today, even the backshift.

I snort back one of the lines, – I believe in law and I believe in order. This is a treat, a perk for enforcing . . . Jesus fuck . . . good shit . . . where was I, aye, a perk for enforcing law and order. I mean, we know that there are shite laws, so there’s no point in obeying them ourselves, even if it’s our job to enforce them for others. The problem is, most people are weak, so if you don’t have laws, even shite ones, then you certainly don’t have any order matey. Same rules.

– Agreed, Ray points at me, then bends down to the mirror to fill his hooter full of gear, – Phoah . . . Aye, sometimes I think that the best solution to the whole fuckin mess would be if we could just go around and shoot any cunt we felt like at any time. Most of the time, simply through experience and professionalism, you’d get it right. Then wide bastards wouldnae go around with such an attitude. Imagine, all the fuckin scumbags with big, apologetic stares on their faces . . .

– Niggers doon in London and Abos over in Sydney aw smiling and going ‘Yez baz’ like they did in the fuckin fields . . .

– . . . Birds comin up n giein ye a blow-job in the street for the privilege ay no gittin thir fuckin heids blown oaf . . .

– . . . but maist of all, just fucking well shooting spastics stone dead, I smile, forming a gun out of my hand, putting it to my head and making a loud exploding noise as I violently jerk the hand and head away from each other.

– Good coke, eh Bruce?

– Too good for spastics Ray. Too good for spastics. I kid you not, my sweet, sweet friend.

Ray Lennox. A sound guy and a fuckin good polisman. I don’t care what anybody says.

After another blitz on the posh we hit a few bars, then it’s back to his with a cairry-oot and mair posh. The cunt makes me listen to his shite records aw night. Starts trying tae tell me that The Verve or whatever they’re called are better than U2 and Simply Red! Get a life Lennox! It gets too much and I leave and head downtown. Fucked if I’m paying for a taxi. I think I might have missed the last corpie bus. It’ll have to be a night bus. It’s fucking freezing out there. I head into St Andrew’s Square station to see if there’s a bus for any of the outlying scum towns that can drop me off in Colinton.

My luck might be in as there’s still one or two people hanging around. I see a jakey out of the corner of my eye. He scrapes along the wall, coming to rest against a bus shelter. The jakey seems to have a kind of fear in his eyes, as if it’s just dawned on him that whatever he’s drank it’s just not been quite enough to blank out the hideous reality of his miserable life.

And I know him.

Alan. Alan Loughton. Used to be a member of the strike committee, back in the day. How’s it goin A1 buddy? How’s it going now that the pits been shut down for over ten years? How is it going now that you’re no longer seen as a socialist hero back in the village, but as a boring auld pissheid and

– Awright! Alan isn’t it! What’s this? I nod at his gold tin of Carlsberg Special. – Nae old purple tin? Going bourgeois on us? Cleaning up our act are we?

He’s looking at me now, trying to get me into focus.

– Bruce! Bruce Robertson, I tell him. – Mind ay me? I joined the polis just before the strike! If you cannae beat them, join them, I always did say. What aboot yourself? What are you up to these days? Politics no doubt. Always did have a way with public speaking!

Loughton groans an incomprehensible recognition.

– Seem tae have lost it but mate, eh? That silver-tongued oratory. Anyway, I must fly, see you, I turn and stroll across the concourse. Behind me I can hear a pained growl of sheer anguish.

There’s two words though, that I, we, I, we can make out.

Filth.

The other one is bea

No fuckin way a jakey, a purple-tinned cunt is fucking with my head. It’s me, Bruce. There are no others. I’m not the one he’s on about. Loughton. A nothing. A nobody. A set of fucking dormant social problems waiting to be cleaned up. That’s the real filth, that’s the real garbage.

At the other end of the bus park, two uniformed spastics are talking to an Eastern Scottish Transport inspector. I approach them.

– Alright officers, I flash my ID.

– Aye, one says nervously.

– How auld’s yir granny? I ask.

– Three hundred and sixty-two, he replies.

– Good lodge. Dougie Millar still grand-master?

– Aye . . .

– Well, officer . . .?

– Cameron sir.

– Well P.C. Cameron, I suggest you and your colleague here get your fingers out of your arseholes. Are you aware of the policy of zero tolerance of crimes and misdemeanours in public areas?

– Yes . . . we . . . he stutters. A fledgling spazwit.

– I’m assuming that you are beat officers here?

– Yes sir.

– Glad to hear it. There’s a fuckin jakey over the concourse, I point in Loughton’s direction. – He’s been abusing passengers, including me. You get that cunt or you’re getting it baith weys, through the service and through the craft. Savvy?

– Right, one says nervously, turning to the other one, – Let’s go.

The two uniformed spastics race across the tarmac and grab a hold of the bemused Loughton.

I always liked Loughton but it seems to me that he’s been going nowhere since his salad days of the miners’ strike. The best I could do is to help the cunt relive old memories and it was almost like auld times watching the poor fucker get huckled away into the back of a police vehicle by the boys in blue.

Come In Charlie

The new area office in the South Side looks tatty already: those sticky-fingerprinted glass doors and that fag-burned public desk with the badly printed and faded posters on the noticeboard above it. There’s a smell of disinfectant, that strong institutional kind that looks like it’s been put down to conceal the smell of pish, even when it husnae. An old cow is giving the desk sergeant a hard time. It’s Sammy Bryce though, and Sammy’s too professional to let her faze him. – . . . I understand that, he’s saying, – but if it doesn’t have a crime number then there’s nothing we can do.