Magwitch

Peter Lawwell stalked the corridors of the SFA as if daring anyone to ask him what he was doing there. Behind him lay the horse-whipped bodies of those who had.
‘Where the fuck is Regan?’ he demanded, knocking over busts and throwing pictures from walls.
'All I ask is that teams of tree wrestling farmhands know their place but no, he couldn’t even guarantee me that’ and he booted open a door and glared into the empty office. He turned and saw me trying to hide behind a fire extinguisher.
‘Spiers!’ he roared and my arse dissolved as I realised I’d wandered in here on the wrong night. I should have known better than to be out in the open after Rangers had gone top of the league courtesy of a Celtic home defeat. I was just lucky he wasn’t carrying any heavy armaments.
Minutes later he’d located Regan and had both of us tied to a Hampden goalpost and was thrashing us with a corner flag in such a blind rage I’d never seen before even in this lazy eyed psycho. As the darkness and welcome unconsciousness approached, reality began to merge with dreams and I was cast back to my childhood and a mist shrouded graveyard.

Even as a young lad I found it thrilling to lurk in dark places at night where I might meet handsome strangers for a fumble but a lonely island cemetery amidst the sea hugged marshes was never as busy as Kelvin Way on a Thursday night. So it was with a start that I was taken unawares by a hulking great brute who leaped on me from behind a gravestone. He wrapped a chain around my neck and demanded that I bring him cake which if you think about it isn’t that far off what Stephen Purcell used to ask of me in those halcyon days before his downfall. Later that night I spirited a fairy cake from the family home and took it to this frightening yet vulnerable stranger who gobbled it down with nary a thank you and then felt my arse and as I squeaked he sent me off to bring him back a file for his chains. As I struggled through the marshes again that night I could hear the sound of cannon from the prison ship off shore indicating an escape – could this be my charming rough trade skulking amongst the stones? I didn’t have to wait long for an answer as the Redcoats were ahead of me and had captured him and my longed for night of passion dissipated in front of my youthful eyes.
‘I’ll never forget what you did for me boy’ whispered Magnus Linklater out of earshot of his captors as he was led away and he never did.

I came to on the centre spot and Lawwell was gone, Stewart Regan standing above me. He was naked, bloody and weeping.
‘What have I done, Spiers’ he cried? ‘What have I let into the SFA?’
‘Don’t make me laugh, Regan’ I sneered. ‘You’ve always known what he’s like.’
‘No. No, I thought I knew. I envy you, Spiers. I really do. You were lucky enough to pass out and not hear his new plans for this season. I wish to God I’d never heard’ and he broke down sobbing, gathering up the Hampden turf and rubbing it into his eyes. St. Johnstone have a lot to answer for I thought and wondered how I was going to get back to the west end from here.