Playing With Fire

The thing about creaking floorboards is that they always sound much louder to the one making them creak than the one in the next room who's not supposed to hear them. John Reid and Peter Lawwell were in the dining room of Reid's country mansion discussing Aiden McGeady's departure. It was easy for me to overhear as I sneaked past the door with Jorg Albertz who had brought me here to investigate the evisceration of the most recent Keevins (for that was who was found under the Jamaica Street bridge) and the disappearance of Chick Young and Hugh MacDonald when they got too close to Alan Dick's silence over the Celtic fans' sectarian chanting at Inverness on Saturday.

'The fucking little prick,' growled Lawwell. 'Thought he was better than the club that made him, well I showed him - let's see how he likes Siberian winters on the Russian Front.'
'Keep an eye on the fans though please Peter,' said Reid, 'you know how much they love him, not for his playing skills of course but because he's a bitter little scrote who, like them, claims to be Irish even although the closest he's been to Ireland is a day trip to Girvan beach with his mammy last weekend. No, we must be careful as I've said in the past, we don't want a return to car park protests - we need to keep the car park clear for secret meetings, remember?'
'Don't worry about the fans, I've already thrown them a bone in the shape of a couple of exclusives to the Record and the Herald where they'll state that McGeady left Scotland because of the bigotry and the nightclub beatings. No one needs to know that the beatings were all by his own fans when they approached him to shake his hand only to find he was a despicable little scumbag who had no time for them. And the bigotry? Well, we'll lay the blame for that at the feet of Rangers fans as usual even although it was every fan of every other club in Scotland who hated him for turning his back on the Scottish national team. The Record and the Herald will lap it up, you know how they love to hate Rangers.'
It was at this point that the floorboard beneath my corduroy deck shoes creaked and I froze, not wanting to move my foot off the offending board lest it creak again but Jorg Albertz reached back and put a reassuring hand on my shoulder and motioned for me to continue. I stepped off and the floorboard gave a slight sigh and we continued on up the wooden stairs while Reid and Lawwell continued their palaver unaware that they had company.

Albertz led me to a huge room at the back of the mansion and we entered and closed the door. The room was dark, illuminated only by the lights from the garden outside, the leaves from the branches of trees swaying in the wind by the windows throwing eerie shadows across the room which was empty except for one large Indian rug spread across the wooden floor. Albertz put a finger up to his lips to keep me silent and motioned for me to shine my torch to the floor and as I did he bent down and rolled back the rug to reveal a strange pattern painted onto the floorboards.
'A magic circle,' whispered Albertz, more to himself than to me.
'What's a magic circle?' I asked, puzzled.
'Demonology,' he whispered, this time to me. 'It can protect you from evil or it can be used for evil. I suspect the latter in this case. I've long suspected Celtic had been playing with fire when I heard rumours of two priests newly joined with Lawwell for the new season to ensure Neil Lennon got off to a successful start. These priests, recommended by Mario Conti no less, are called Father Wormwood and Father Screwtape. Wormwood and Screwtape are two second level inquisition demons and I've met them before but never on the physical plane and yet here they are now, almost certainly holding Chick Young and Hugh MacDonald and responsible for the cruel murder of Hugh Keevins.'
'Oh I wouldn't worry about Hugh Keevins if I were you, he gets murdered usually every week, Lawwell will soon find another,' I chipped in, a little too loudly only to be met with a steely glare from Albertz.
'Less of your prattling, Spiers,' he hissed at me but it was too late, my voice had carried and we could hear Reid and Lawwell downstairs wondering what the noise was.
'Shit, what are we going to do?' I panicked, 'Reid will have his guards on us in seconds!'
'You can run if you like, Spiers, I'm going to take my time and leave by the front door,' said Albertz, calm as you like.
'But how will you get away by doing that?' I almost screamed at him.
'By making myself invisible to them of course.'
And at that, I realised I was dealing with yet another maniac and decided to leg it. I opened the window and as I was about to launch myself onto one of the trees outside, I turned and saw Reid's guards run into the room, straight past Albertz as if he wasn't there and run directly at me. I jumped and crashed through the branches, missing nothing on the way down before landing in a heap on the ground. I was up in a twinkling though and absolutely sprinting across the lawns before Reid could release the hounds. Now in the old days I used to be able to call on Graeme Souness and the Rangers 80s Squad Commandos to get me out of a pickle like this but they'd disowned me at the end of last season. Even Donald Findlay who was also my occasional saviour had taken up bee keeping in exile recently so I knew I was on my own. In the distance behind me I could hear barking and see torches scanning the grounds and still in front of me there was no sign of a fence over which I could scramble to safety. I was beginning to sob like a woman now, fearing that this time it was all over and cursing Jorg Albertz, Demon Hunter for getting me involved in this when suddenly in front of me there appeared a cloud of dense black smoke, rising from the grass and forming into some hideous, malignant shape, hissing and filling me with a dread I hadn't felt since I'd accidentally walked into the Glaswegian Bar on match day. I stopped, paralysed with fear and just as the cloud took the form of a cloaked figure with burning red eyes, I felt two strong hands grab me under the arms and suddenly I was airborne. I was lifted up, higher and higher, through the clouds, and across the countryside before being deposited on my backside in some bushes just outside Larkhall. I just had time to spot the mask across the eyes and the square and compass on the chest of my rescuer before he soared off again into the sky and disappeared, leaving me wondering how on earth I was going to get back to the west end from here.