Souness: Revenge of the Ranger Part Five

Peter Lawwell’s Celtic is a wounded beast, limping through the undergrowth trying in vain to hide the painful and open wounds inflicted by the UEFA fine and unprecedented media attention on its fans’ sectarian singing. I’m Souness and I saw those open wounds and decided what they needed was a dose of vinegar.

My first thought was to arm up and take the Mini Cooper through the front doors but a phone call from Jorg Albertz warned me that there was an easier way.
‘How did you know what I was planning?’ I asked.
‘Because I know what you’re thinking.’ He replied.
‘How do you know what I’m thinking?’ I asked.
‘Because I’m Jorg Albertz Demon Hunter,’ he replied.
Satisfied, I met him at George Square and wore the cheap suit and emerald green tie he’d requested. When Albertz turned up he was wearing the same. The disguises got us into the City Chambers without anyone batting an eye and there he showed me the tunnel that led from the headquarters of Glasgow City Council to Celtic Park.

A half hour yomp later and we came out inside Parkhead from a broom cupboard. The first thing that happened was that we met a Celtic security guard. I was reaching for my Walther but Albertz held up a pack of cigarettes and said to the man, ‘This is an ID card. It says I’m an employee and so is this man. You’re going to let us go on our way.’
It worked and the man left us be.
‘Oh, and you’re going to leave here and go take a shit in Alan Thompson’s office,’ he shouted after him. I’d seen this before, auto-suggestion, hypnosis, call it what you like. Albertz calls it magic, I call it dealing with morons.

We made our way to Lawwell’s dungeons, Albertz remembering the four digit code to get into the subterranean base: 1967. They hadn’t changed it since he was last here with Richard Gough. They never change it. So caught up are they in their own self-mythologising, they make it easy for us to access every code they have. We crept past the torture pits, past the skin flats and the inquisition chamber until we got to the operating room. This was where I intended to plant the first high explosive, not to bring down Parkhead – no, that wasn’t my plan at all. The football club was safe with me, my intention was to strike at the bristling underbelly of the institution and where better to start than Lawwell’s underground empire?

I was reaching into my bag of tricks when Albertz nudged me and motioned for me to follow him into the operating room. It was empty save for one table in the centre. Barely lit, the only illumination came from this table where a body lay covered in a single sheet. It was a woman, we could tell from the protruding breasts. Intrigued as to what Lawwell was doing with a woman inside his dungeon retreat we walked cautiously towards the table and Albertz leaned over and pulled back the sheet. What fresh madness was this? It was Spiers!