The wee guy forces another smile.

– Hiya, I smile back. I look at his Hearts tracksuit. The new one. A Christmas present. I point at the crest. – So you’re a jambo eh? Did you go yesterday?

– Naw . . . he says sadly.

– Colin used to . . . his mother begins.

– Who’s your favourite player? I ask, expecting a Neil McCann or a Colin Cameron.

– Tom Stronach, I suppose, he says, then smiles doubtfully, – but he’s no as good as he used to be.

– My next-door neighbour! I’ll have to get Tom to sort us out with some special tickets for Tynecastle. Would you like that?

– Aye, that would be barry.

– Speak properly Euan, his mother says. She looks at me. – You’re really kind, but I couldn’t let you . . .

– It’s no problem. Honestly.

We exchange addresses and phone numbers.

– That’s a really kind man. Mister Robertson. A good man, I, we, hear her tell the kid as they depart.

Our hands are almost cut in two by the handles on the plastic bags, but we are unaware of this until we reach home.

Who are we?

Who are we?

How did we feel?

We put the hands under the warm tap to help our circulation, but the water is boiling from the electric immersion. We flinch with the scalding pain and shed tears at the iniquity of the situation: that transgressors are living better lives than we are currently able to. More festive television, and a load of fuckin

So we watch television. At some point Toal comes tae the hoose. My first foot. At least he comes here, rather than compelling us go in there. That evil, evil place. Some of them would have, Niddrie would have. We have been officially on the sick, our neck in a surgical support collar.

– It might no really seem appropriate Bruce, but Happy New Year.

– Happy New Year Bob, I hear a voice coming from my stiff, cold, numb lips.

Toal explains to us that we are now suspended following an inquiry of the internal variety, the type of all our inquiries.

– Don’t worry, we’ll do what we can, he tells us, looking around our hoose. He’s not taken his expensive-looking camel coat or his leather gloves off. He looks like a football manager. Like the guy who manages Wimbledon, him that played for Spurs. Steaming breath comes from his mouth. A few feet away in our fireplace lie the ashes of his manuscript.

We cannot nod while we are wearing our support collar. – Appreciate it, we say meekly.

Toal is trying to be firm and compassionate at the same time. He must make us aware of the gravity of the situation, but also offer hope that things will improve. We cannot even feel sorry for ourselves any more. This is a bad sign. We think.

– Listen Bruce, we’ve obviously had to withdraw your application . . . for the promotion. Now is not the right time for you to meet with the promotion board. You see that, don’t you?

We understand what Toal is saying. We cannot be bothered responding. They’ve now taken the job we coveted, the one which was ours by right, but the sense of loss that we feel is strangely negligible.

Toal’s looking around the house with distaste. It’s a mess: aluminium takeaway cartons, chip-shop wrappers, beer cans (purple? aye, it’s found us at last!), plates with rotting scraps of food on them, even a pile of dried sick in one corner. – Listen Bruce, Toal’s face pinches as he allows his nostrils to acknowledge the stench we have long been oblivious to, – you can’t live like this. Is there nobody we can get in touch with, to make sure you’re being looked after?

– No . . .

BUNTY

SHIRLEY

CHRISSIE

CAROLE

Carole. The only one who could give us anything. The rest would just take. We have nothing to give them. But Carole will never return.

– You sure?

– I’ll sort it out boss, we tell Toal. His face looks sourly down at us. – Honest, I try to force a smile.

– I want you to Bruce. The police welfare people will be round to see you soon. They’ll be able to offer professional help. I know things seem pretty bleak at the moment, but you’re not the first officer on the job who’s lost it and you won’t be the last. Busby’s had his problems. Then there was Clell. He seems on the mend now. Bruce . . .

Toal looks a bit sheepish. He’s rubbing his gloved hands together.

– Aye?

– You’ve got friends you know, he says softly. Then he smiles slightly. – We’re no as daft as you think. Your wife. We know she was having an affair with a black guy. It’s no a big city Bruce, and it’s a very white one. Things like that get noticed, no matter how discreet the parties are. But, as I said, you’ve got friends. We look after our own.

His words hit me in a slow, stupefying flood. I feel like a test-crash dummy on low impact. I’m trying to work out what he means. – You mean you knew . . . all the time . . . you . . .

– Don’t say anything Bruce, Toal says sternly, – Don’t say a word to me.

He turns and pulls the net curtains and looks out the window. Then he faces me, keen-eyed: – Sometimes things are best left the way they are. There’s reputations, morale and careers at stake. In some ways, aye, it’s penny wise and pound foolish. We’re a bit short-termist in our thinking. But then again, we’re burdened wi this wee problem of three score and ten. Needs must, he grins.

Same rules apply. I try to smile but I feel my face frozen, as if all the muscles and nerves in it have been severed.

– You know, all this stuff about a mystery woman? I wasted a lot of time on her, he laughs and shakes his head looking at me, slightly embarrassed. – I overheard Bob Hurley saying to you in the bar one time: They’re all fucking Jackie Trent. You know, I thought that this Jackie Trent girl was involved and was having it off with most of the guys on the investigation in order to get them to cover things up. I spent ages looking for a Jackie Trent to run checks on. Then I realised it was all just some canteen in-joke, a bit of silly rhyming slang.

– Yes . . . Jackie Trent, I hear the words reverberate in my head and parrot mindlessly out from between my lips.

– Anyway, I’m sick of it all. Funny Bruce, I misjudged you. You see, somebody half-inched a private document of mine. From my office. The bastard stole the hard copy, erased the file and the back-up disk. I had my suspicions, he looks at me and shrugs.

We know that our face is too blank to register anything.

– I got a bit paranoid for a while. I was testing out everyone, trying to find cracks. I mean, all that stuff I was giving you about poor Inglis, as if I care who he shags. You were good though Bruce, I’ll give you that. Anyway, I was daft to have this stuff at the work. I was doing some private stuff, during breaks you know, maybe when I had a spare minute. Sometimes I’d stay late and work on it, it’s quieter at the office than at home. I thought that perhaps you knew, well . . . what we knew. You see Bruce, I was writing a screenplay based on the case of a racist murder. I based it loosely on the Wurie murder, with my own fictive embellishments of course. In my screenplay, the murder is being covered up by a racist cop who has a motive . . . not to solve the crime.

– How does it end . . . I ask too quickly.

– Oh, we fit up some thugs. A happy-ever-after story.

I nod. The sort of ending people like.

– Yes, I got a fright when the document was stolen and the files erased. At first I suspected . . . certain parties. But I knew that the person would have had to have read it, and I would have been able to tell. Of course, I had another copy on the hard disk at home, so it wasn’t too much of an inconvenience. You can’t be too careful, eh! I still might finish it and send it off to a production company. A pipe dream, but nothing ventured, eh?