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There’s fuck all gets past that cunt.

It was a guy I’d talked a lot of shite with in the past. Like we were gaunnae be something different. Like he wisnae a skagheid fae the Fort who’d dropped oot ay the uni and I wisnae a snidey cunt spraffing away intae the heid of any poor wee bitch who’d had a bad childhood and who was daft enough to swallow both a sorry tale and a sweaty cock.

It wis ma old mate Mark.

It wis Rents.

It was the cunt who’d ripped me off, the cunt who
owed me
.

And I can’t, no, won’t, take my eyes off him. Sitting here in the shadows, in a little alcove with my party, Catherine, Terry and what’s the other lassie called? whatever, I’m just watching him on the dance floor. After a while, I notice that he’s preparing to go with some people. And I’m out after him, tugging on Catherine’s hand and she’s going on about her mate and I silence her with a kiss, looking over at Renton’s back receding, turning to tip Terry a libidinous nod, his carnal smile making me feel sorry for the girl he’s with and her ring-piece. As we go out to pick up the coats, I snog with Catherine for a bit and realise that, although young, and with a pretty face, she’s a fucking hefty piece. The black clothes should have been a giveaway, but those oil-drum thighs . . .

Not to worry.

We’re outside and I can see Rents is further down the street, he and a skinny short-haired blonde bird with another couple. Boy-girl, boy-girl, as Danny Kaye says in
White Christmas
. How cosy. How civilised, as the Islington middle classes mindlessly parrot. You give the cunts a glass of wine and switch the fire on, and they say: ‘This is civilised.’ They cut some fuckin pieces of ciabatta with a knife, and they go: ‘Isn’t this civilised?’

And you want to go: no, you daft cunt, no it’s fuckin well not, because civilisation extends beyond pouring wine and cutting bread and what you’re
really
talking about is simply leisure and relaxation.

Now Catherine’s at it, as we’re following Renton’s posse over the cobblestoned canal roads. She’s telling me it’s so ci-vi-lah-sed over here, and she’s curling into my side. Civilise ays, bambino, civilise this wild Caledonian-Italiano laddie from Leith. Catherine’s eyes may be on the sodium street lamps reflecting off the wet stones and the still canal waters, but mine are on the thief, just the thief and if I had a third eye in the centre of my head, it too would be on the thief.

I can almost hear him, and I wonder what he’s saying. Over here the Rent Boy is free to indulge all his pretensions, without any Begbie figure coming up and saying: ‘Aye, a fuckin junky fae the Fort.’ Cutting him down to size: to small, small pieces. Yes, I can almost empathise with the thief, see the need he had to do this, to avoid swimming in that pool of negative energy until your arms ache and you just go down like the rest of the sad fuckers. But to do it to me, to
me
, and to sort out that useless loser Murphy, well, it destroys any fucking argument.

Catherine’s babblings become a strange soundtrack to my thoughts, which are growing darker by the minute. It’s as if somebody had put the score from
The Sound of Music
on top of a print of
Taxi Driver
.

They cross this narrow bridge down a canal street and head down the road, it’s called the Brouwersgracht, and they get in the stair at 178. The lights go on in the second-floor flat and I steer Catherine over the bridge to get a perspective from the other side of the canal. She’s still going on about ‘li-bi-ril-ah-zay-shin’, and ‘ow it breeds a different attitude’. My eyes are on them, I see them dancing in the window, in the warm, and here’s me outside, in the biting cold air, and I think, why don’t I just go up and ring the bell and freak the cunt out? But no, because I’m savouring this stalking now, that’s why. That feeling of power that I know where he is, but he doesn’t have a clue about me. Never act in haste, act in thought and deliberation. And, most importantly, when I come face to face with that cunt I won’t be on good Es, I’ll be on industrial-strength cocaine.

He needs sorting out; that’ll happen. I know where the thief lives: 178 Brouwersgracht. But Catherine needs the SDW experience first.

— You look so beautiful, Catherine, I tell her, suddenly, straight out of nowhere, interrupting her thoughts.

She’s taken aback by this. — Don’t . . . she says shyly.

— I want to make love to you, I tell her, warmly, but with what I think is deep profundity.

Catherine’s eyes have become black, shimmering pools of beautiful love that you want, crave, so desperately, to drown in. — You’re so sweet, Simon, she laughs. — You know, I thought for a moment that you was bored with me, it were like you weren’t listening to me.

— No, it was the pill, the way you look . . . it just made me feel . . . you know . . . like I was sort of trancing out a bit. But all the time I heard your voice, felt your warmth in my side and my heart was fluttering like it was a butterfly in a breeze of warm, fresh, spring air . . . it sounds pretentious, I know . . .

— No, no, it sounds lovely . . .

— . . . I just wanted to hold on to the moment, because it was so perfect, but then I thought, no, that’s so greedy, Simon. Share it. Share it with the girl who made it happen . . .

— You’re so lovely . . .

I squeeze her hand and lead her back to her hotel, first checking out that it was a more expensive one than mine.

In the morning, my first thoughts are of extrication. As one gets older it becomes almost as important an art form as seduction itself. Gone are the bitter, tense days of pulling on your clothes and wanting to, or actually, physically running away. Catherine’s by my side, sleeping like an elephant that’s been brought down by a Safari dart gun. She’s a crasher. It’s good to have a lassie who sleeps soundly. Frees up so many extra hours in the day for you to be you. I pen a note.

I head back to the hotel. There’s no sign of Terry, but Rab Birrell’s up with a few of his mates. I sort of like this Birrell guy. He’s too cool to ask where I’ve been. When you’ve been surrounded by snickering morons half your life you grow to appreciate the quality of quiet discretion in a man.

I get some rolls and cheese and ham and coffee from the breakfast buffet and join them. — And how are the chaps? Good and well?

— Aye, Rab says, as does his big mate Lexo Setterington. I have to watch what I say around that cunt as he’s a mate of Begbie’s. A bit more upstairs than that fucking lunatic though. Knows the score, the way things are going. A Thai café, in fucking Leith!

It’s good to know, though, that there’s no love lost between those so-called bosom buddies. — Left me in the lurch wi bills to pay and assets ay a few hundred quid’s worth ay auld junk n mawkit furniture. Ah should fuckin kill the arrogant cunt . . . he laughs.

I keep my own counsel here, responding with a non-committed, — Mmm . . . because this cunt is as bad in his own way as Begbie.

— Thing aboot Franco, eh never forgets, Lexo says. — Go against the cunt n ye huv tae huv um put tae sleep for good. Or else eh’d just keep on coming back. Things is, the radge’ll get his anyway, if ye just leave him tae his ain devices long enough. Somebody’ll get fed up wi um and do Begbie for fuck all, savin some cunt a traceable couple ay grand, he grins. I realise that Lexo’s been out all night and is still pretty drunk, because he grabs my shoulder heavily and whispers, alcohol-breathed into my ear: — Naw. Ye need tae be ruthless enough no tae indulge your ain taste for violence just for the sake ay it. Leave that tae losers like Begbie. He lets go of me, smiling, still staring carefully into my eyes. Once again, I try to make the right noises in reply, to which he responds by saying: — Of course, ye kin huv the odd wee tickle now n then . . .

With that, the conversation drifts off along the predictably depressing lines of the relative merits of the Feyenoord and Utrecht mobs. Billy Birrell, Rab’s boxing brother and N-Sign Ewart have apparently bagged off and are not up for the thug excursion. Sensible. I can’t stay here listening to bams on cocaine ranting about who they’re going to kill; I can get that back in Leith any time. I throw back the coffee and head out into the street.

Eventually, I find a bike shop and hire a black boneshaker and pedal past the thief’s flat. There’s a café with huge windows opposite his pad on the other side of the canal, which I noticed last night. I chain up the bike and sit in the window of this large, airy bar with brown floorboards and yellow walls, sipping coffee
verkerd
. The trees block the view of his window, but I can see the front-stair door, and I can watch all his comings and goings.

I’ve stolen, robbed, choried everything that isn’t tied down, and so have most of my mates here and in London. That doesn’t make us thieves in my book. A thief is someone who steals from his or her own. I wouldnae do that, Terry wouldnae. Even fucking scruffy Murphy wouldnae . . . well . . . that’s not quite true. There’s Coventry City to consider. But the point is that Renton is getting paid back with interest.

24

Whores of Amsterdam Pt 4

T
here’s me come out the shower and I’m standing there watching Katrin watching the world. She’s got the huge glass doors which dominate our front room wide open and she’s leaning on the railing looking out across the canal. I can see where her line ay vision’s going, following that narrow street opposite us which runs right down, cutting across several other Jordaan canals. I’m moving up quietly behind her, not wanting to disturb her, almost mesmerised by her stillness. Over her shoulder I see a lone cyclist receding doon the road, his figure bobbing as he bounces ower a speed bump. There’s something familiar about him, maybe he passes this way a lot. I see the top beams of the buildings, the ones they leave sticking out for the purpose of swinging furniture into the narrow dwellings; they jut out at each other like two lines of rifle-packing armies in a stand-off.

That chilled air must be cooling her bare legs. What does she want? Whatever it is, it can’t go on like this. I feel the sun’s rays in my face, on our faces, and I think that maybe this is how it should be.

We try to talk, but finding the words is like digging for water in a desert. To casually get back to humanity after dragging our relationship along the path of death takes longer and longer every time. Now our only communion are the rows we have about nothing. I kiss the back of her thin neck, in hurtful guilt and compassion, in a tender rage. There’s no reaction. I move away and go into the bedroom to get dressed.

When I come back she’s in exactly the same spot. I tell her I’m going out for a bit and meet the same silence. I head down the street to the Herengracht, following it to the Leidseplein and stroll through the Vondelpark, nerves jangling for some reason, although I’ve not had any drugs. Nonetheless, I feel quite para. Martin always says the logic in doing drugs is that if you’re totally straight, some weeks you’re still gaunnae feel fucked up and paranoid; at least if you do drink and drugs you have a reason to feel that way, rather than just sitting around convincing yourself that you might be mentally ill. The paranoia is nothing like as heavy in chilled Amsterdam as it is in Edinburgh, but I still feel like every fucker’s watching me, like I’m being stalked by some mad cunt.

After a bit I head up to the club, opening the office. Checking e-mails on a Sunday, because you can’t bear to sit in the same room as your girlfriend: life surely doesnae get much sadder than that. I’m as well being in London.

I start doing some other things; dealing with paperwork, bills, correspondence, making phone calls and all that shite. Then I get a shock, a big, big fucking shock. I’m just sitting there, looking at the cashbook, through some bank statements from the ABN-AMRO. I still have trouble with Dutch on the page. No matter how good your verbal gets, the visual recognition in print can floor you. To ken, to know. Dutch-Jock. Just say loch.

Reckoning.

There’s a tap on the door and I anxiously check to make sure that Martin’s not left any wraps of coke out, lying under the stacks of paper, but no, they’ll all be in the safe that sits behind me. I get up and open the door, thinking that it’s probably Nils or Martin, when this cunt pushes me inside. The thought hits me in a second, tensing up my body: I’M BEING FUCKIN WELL ROBBED HERE . . . before it evaporates and I see a figure standing in front of me, familiar and alien all at the same time.

It takes a second for the realisation to entirely strike home. It’s like my brain can’t quite process the sense data my eyes are sending it.

Cause standing right in front of me is Sick Boy. Simon David Williamson.

Sick Boy.

— Rents, he says in cold accusation.

— Si . . . Simon . . . what the fuck . . . I don’t bel . . .

— Renton. We’ve business. I want my money, he barks, his eyes bulging like a Jack Russell terrier’s baws when it sees a bitch on heat, scanning the office. — Where’s my fuckin money?

I just stand there looking at him, zombiefied, not quite knowing what the fuck to say. All I can think is that he’s gained weight but it strangely looks okay on him.

— My fuckin money, Renton, he steps towards me and snarls in ma face, and I can feel the heat and slaver from him.

— Sick . . . eh, Simon, ah’ll . . . I’ll gie ye it, I tell him. It seems to be all I can say.

— Five fuckin grand, Renton, he says, and he grabs a hold of my T-shirt at the chest.

— Eh? I ask, a bit scoobied, looking down at his hand on my chest like it’s dug shite.