Shadows and Fog, Smoke and Mirrors

There are invariably problems in consorting with Victorian stereotypes and Dickensian caricatures, the main one is that you will often find yourself running, screaming from some awful scene, usually in the fog. The lesser known is that occasionally you will be laid low with some old and forgotten disease. And so it was that after I was spirited off the Edinburgh Express by agents of Donald Findlay, I was bed ridden for weeks with the ague or scrofula or something. Suffice to say, I lay soaking in bed, babbling and swatting imaginary mice from my sleeves while being waited upon by Findlay’s housekeeper, Mrs Hudson, lent to us by Findlay while he roomed with his brother at his club. Every now and then I’d peer out from behind the curtains of unconsciousness and hear about Peter Lawwell accusing Rangers of lying about a £9million transfer bid or the Scottish media stoking the flames of sectarianism with bare faced lies about a jury trial involving Neil Lennon but so ludicrous were these two claims that I simply put them down to my fevered imaginings.
‘No, it’s true,’ said Graeme Souness as he swung upside down from the ceiling. I had woken in the final stages of my condition the day before and witnessed Souness punching holes in the ceiling and then doing pull-ups from the exposed beam and wondered how he came to be here with me when I was sure I’d seen him dead on the train and now here he was stretching his legs in typical Sounessian style as I finally began my recovery.
‘It’s all true,’ he continued, swinging away. ‘Not one newspaper or television news outlet reported all of the facts on the Lennon case, instead all of them focussed on their own disingenuous outrage and gave an inordinate amount of space and time to your friend McBride to spout paranoid nonsense. I’m glad you’ve been out of it Spiers, else you might have been tempted to weigh in with your own tuppance worth.’
‘Didn’t the janitor at the Times manage to get anything out in my absence then?’ I asked but he shook his head. ‘I don’t read your paper. I’m surprised anyone still does so over-run is it with chattering west end middle-class socialists in thrall to Kearney’s department.’
‘And what about you, I thought you were dead after the BBC Scotland assassins jumped you from behind.’
‘It takes more than a satchel wearing, humous munching, coke snorting, Chip drinking, bigoted Celtic wimp to take out me, Spiers – you should know that by now. No, they caught me by surprise and I spent time recovering here with you while Donald cleared up the mess created by our little stooshy on the train. Did you see him then?’
‘See who?’ I asked with a start.
‘Spring Heeled Jack of course. Findlay reported that more crickets had been found on the body of the Pacific Quay CSC assassin you contrived to defeat while I wasn’t looking.’
‘While you were unconscious, seemingly dead,’ I corrected.
‘Not unconscious, just having a rest,’ he glared at me.
‘Well yes, I did see something or rather, two men with black eyes who followed me and were there when the blood started flowing but they didn’t participate and were gone by the time it was all finished. Had they something to do with Spring Heeled Jack?’
For all we know they were Spring Heeled Jack. He’s a mystery beyond even our organisations' ken. No one’s seen him and lived to tell the tale. We say ‘him’ when it could be more than one person such is his easy movement from dealing with a BBC editor in Govan to attacking a Sun journalist in Queen Street within minutes of each other. I’ll say one thing for him though, he has the Scottish media complex treading more carefully so although we can’t condone his actions, they are reaping dividends for us. But no, I don’t think your dead-eyed men were Jack or else you wouldn’t be here to tell the tale now, would you?’
I thought about this then when I couldn’t for the life of me work out what he meant and those troubling old thoughts that perhaps I’m not as clever as I like to think I am came creeping back, I put it from my mind and wondered aloud where we might be.
‘A safe house, top floor of a townhouse on Lady Stair’s Close. One of Findlay’s friends has given us lodgings here for our recovery. Well, I’m recovered, how about you, young shaver?’ And he swept himself off the beam and landed perfectly on the floor and waved thank you to an imaginary audience.
‘I feel quite normal. A bit smelly not having washed but…’
‘So nothing unusual then? Good, let’s be having you. You have somewhere important to be me old fellow me lad,’ and he winked at me and pulled me from my sick bed.
‘Where are we going then?’ I asked, changing from my corduroy nightshirt and into my corduroy jacket and matching slacks.
‘It’s the Justice Committee today Spiers, I hope you’re on top of your game because you’re sitting on it. We have a special friend waiting for you there, we think you’ll enjoy his company.’
‘It’s not Professor Steve Bruce is it?’ I asked, excited at meeting this elusive figure at last.
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Steve wouldn’t be allowed within a mile of anything to do with sectarianism in this country – he deals in facts, not shrill Celtic Minded scaremongering. No, your meeting with him is yet to come. Today you’ll be discussing the most pressing social matter in Scotland with another gentleman, a Dr. Stuart Waiton. You’ll like him, he thinks just like you and is on your side.’
And as we descended the narrow stairs and onto the High Street I’m sure I could hear Souness sniggering.