What Lies Beneath

So here was the situation: in a meeting of the press at Peter Lawwell's office I'd been too busy fretting about the Traynor to hear my special instructions and now everyone was after me for not carrying out my part of some master plan of Lawwells. The Traynor was still after me - always after me, Darrell King was now after me for booting him down a flight of stairs, some mysterious tramp had warned me not to go near Ashton Lane and now Darryl Broadfoot had told me that Lawwell was out to get me for letting him down. Worried, I headed for home but when I got there I found all my windows smashed and a crowd of police and press photographers gathered around some writing on the pavement. It was a warning from Lawwell, this had his modus operandi written all over it. I pulled up the collar of my corduroy jacket and shuffled casually to the back of the crowd to read the spray painted letters outside my red stone flat; it said, 'the juwes are the men who will not be blamed for nothing'. Oh god, it was definitely Lawwell, only he would have his agents smash my windows and then write graffiti on a pavement implicating the Masons. I had to get out of here but where? Then a ragamuffin paper boy came up to me and whispered, 'Seek Devine inspiration.' I looked down at him, 'What? What did you just say?' but he walked away shouting, 'Times, Evening Times!' This was odd but it was obvious what he meant, this was one of Tom Devine's Sauchiehall Street Irregulars - and so must the tramp have been - and they were keeping me safe and telling me to go to Tom Devine.

It didn't take long to sneak through the west end to Devine's mansion in Jordanhill, I pulled the bell and was shown into his home by a butler dressed in a white apron and black stockings. Professor Tom Devine stood in the hall holding a pint of red wine in one hand and a bucket of slops in the other. 'Ah Spiers, I was expecting you but you're early, I'm just about to feed Elaine C Smith.'
'Elaine C Smith?' I stammered.
'Yes. I keep her in a cage in the basement. Frightful creature but I wheel her out occasionally when I need to get one of our more blunt messages out to the readers of the Sunday Mail.' He handed the bucket to the butler and told him to take it from there and then he led me through to a huge dining hall where another of his strumpets was sitting drunk at the end of a long teak table, her petticoats pulled up to show her grubby white stocking tops. 'This is Joan McAlpine, award winning columnist for the Sunday Times' said Devine and sat down, wincing as McAlpine leaned over and grabbed his arse. Before I knew what I was doing I was letting it all spill out, I told him everything that had happened to me that day, finally admitting to not even knowing what my part in the mission was supposed be. He coughed up some wine, letting it spill onto his shirt. 'Listen young pup, you have a lot to learn about this game. Look at me tonight, featured on the BBC discussing the Glasgow North East by-election. Glasgow North East for heaven's sake, it's an infernal Irish theme park at times, bog trotters running around all over the place, greatest concentration of our people Scotland has ever seen and they're scared. They're scared of the influx of darkies sent their way by their own kind at GCC for a few shillings and a seat at Parkhead. So these scared people have turned to the BNP, I can see that - I'm not blind - but how to relinquish our own people of responsibility, eh? Did you not see my masterstroke? I blamed the rise of the BNP on their activities at football grounds, especially one - and my implication was clear here - Rangers. Genius, dear boy, don't ye think?'
I stared at him, appalled, 'Bog trotters? Darkies?' He pushed Joan McAlpine's hand away from his crotch and took another gulp of wine, tore the flesh from a chicken leg with his yellow teeth and wiped his mouth on the corner of his sleeve. 'Aye, you heard me. We're allowed to have private opinions of our own, Spiers. We're just not supposed to air them in public and we can think what we like as long as we always lay the blame for society's ills at the door of the Protestants, ye hear?'
I couldn't believe what I was hearing, I thought this man was morally beyond reproach and here he was using the most foul slurs for which I berate Rangers fans on a daily basis. Could it be possible that I've been blind all these years? That I've been led a merry dance by the forces of evil who used me for the machinations of their own vile schemes? No, it wasn't possible yet I had to leave here at once - I couldn't take advice from such a monster. Devine looked at me and seemed to have read my thoughts and started to laugh, a hideous, grasping laugh; then his trollop joined in, bearing her black teeth at me and waggling her poonts in Devine's face which made him laugh even more. And then the door behind me opened and there stood Peter Lawwell.