The Curious Case of Nil By Mouth Part 4

Everyone in the Nil by Mouth office stood or sat frozen to the spot as Donald Findlay and his confederate, Watson, prowled the room, Watson holding up his service revolver to encourage everyone to keep still. All that could be heard was the sobbing from the girl in the cage and a faint, tinny, fiddly dee music coming from the collected ipods of everyone in the room.

Findlay grabbed at some paper off one desk and held it up. 'Look! Look at what they have here Spiers, here's your unbiased government funded anti-sectarian organisation at work!' he shouted and I took the paper he offered me. It was the minutes of a meeting recently held in this very office and detailed in the present section was a who's who of Labour MPs, MSPs and councillors, various Seans, Declans and Anthonys all working for Nil by Mouth and there at the top of the column, Peter Lawwell. I shivered. I was hoping to avoid Lawwell for a while and this didn't bode well. I looked down the page and the items covered were there in black and white: payment to various households for use of their names in creating false stories about sectarian victimhood; recommendation of several books by sympathetic writers to the RC cause to be used on the school curriculums in non-denominational schools; further advancement of denominational schools by MPs to spread the illusion that denominational schools outperform non-denom schools; Lisbon Lions tour of Scottish denominational schools; Lisbon Lions tour of non-denominational schools (just to rub it in and to dare them to object); and so it went on, a shameful list representing a one sided agenda against non-RCs in Scotland.

Watson kept his gun trained on the room while Donald Findlay filled a bag with as many documents as he could and we backed out of the room as the girl in the cage screamed for us not to leave her. Once out of the door we ran down the stairs and out onto Queen Street, sprinting across the road towards the black car which awaited us on the other side. Suddenly Findlay bumped into a figure which hadn't seen us coming in the fog and they both clattered down onto the road. Findlay looked at the man he was sprawled beside and let loose an oath. 'Drury! Paul Drury! You swine, what're you doing here?'
Drury's ugly, fat face flushed and he scrabbled to pick up his mobile phone and dictaphone, 'You're too late Findlay, I've just dropped off the pics and story from Seville - I was undercover you see and now the News of the World have everything they need to lead with another anti-Rangers story on the front page!'
Findlay raged, 'I hope you're pulling my leg Drury otherwise I'll pull yours and it'll be the worse for you.'
'Do what you will Findlay,' Drury sneered. 'It's over, you might have Spiers puffing you up tomorrow but this'll knock the stuffing out of you.'
Watson tried to intervene, 'Quick Findlay, we must move...' and as he said it, the Celtic shirt militia poured out of the Nil by Mouth doorway.
'There's nothing else for it,' sighed Findlay and reached into his coat and pulled out a vial of bubbling orange liquid.
'No, Findlay!' shouted Watson.
'Relax Watson, old fellow, it's only a seven percent solution,' and he gulped down the liquid and looked up, his face trembling. In an instant he'd grown to a man five times his size and let out a roar that could be heard from the Clyde. 'Kissed by an Angel, eh Drury? Only a team like yours could laud a man just because his dead wife had a name like Bernadette, eh? And only you could cash in with a book on it. Cynical bastards. Well you're about to be kissed by an angel yourself, you third rate scribbler,' growled the Findlay-like monster who'd taken his place as he picked up Drury by the leg and threw him at the advancing Nil by Mouth militia. Drury's body knocked them over while his leg stayed, bloody, in Findlay's care which he then used to bludgeon the militia as they lay on the ground screaming for mercy. I looked away and as I did, I was bundled into the black car by Watson and we drove off.
'What about Findlay?' I asked.
'Don't worry about him,' said Watson. 'He always finds his way home. Across the rooftops normally. We'll meet him at his house at 221b.'
I sat back in the car and watched the blur of street lights pass as we drove through the fog.