My friend Brother Clifford Blades departs for the bosom of his spastic family in England while I give Hector a bell, to make sure that we’re still on for Monday morning. Then I check with Claire at the Fish Factory. It’s all systems go.

Just the thought of Monday’s frolics sets up the horn in me. I consider calling in at Bunty’s, seeing as she’s on her tod, but I decide to leave it till the morn, let Bladesey get further out of sight and mind first.

I just realise that he’s left the tapes he bought from the record store on the coffee table. I chuck them out with the rubbish, embarrassed at being party to something which gave that simpleton his petty pleasure, no matter how fleeting. I throw some McCain’s oven chips into the tray and heat up some beans, adding curry powder.

To my great elation, my friend Brother Blades realises that he’s left the tapes too. I thought that this would take a while to happen, but no, the stupid little twat is cutting his own throat for me. He phones up later that night and I don’t lift the receiver, letting him babble into the answer machine. Fate can be a cruel bastard, especially to the likes of Bladesey.

– Hello, is that Bruce Robertson. This is Frank ere. I should be sal looky, looky, looky, looky, I should be sal looky in loove . . . I’m on my way to my mam’s . . . but I left me bloody tapes. Look after em for me, will ya!

And he does it all in a beautiful, impeccable Frank Sidebottom voice. I rub my hands together and press the ‘Save’ button on the answerphone.

Gotcha!

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.