Chapter 0 #2
‘. . . unsustainable! One point two million immigrants in 2024 alone! That’s one immigrant for every man, woman, and child living in Aberdeen – Shire and City – Moray, Angus, Perth and Kinross, the Highlands, Orkney, Shetland, the Western Isles, and most of Clackmannanshire . . . combined!’
Tosser.
She flipped him the Vs – not that he was looking – and finished her text to Lund:
Have you lazy bumholes found ANYTHING yet?
SEND.
Still nothing back from Susan.
‘The sad truth is that we cannot afford to absorb these endless waves of people. We are a proud nation, and we’ve always shouldered our fair share, but there comes a time when we have to say, “enough is enough!”’
A muffled cheer from the crowd.
A big pantomime sigh from Roberta.
Where the hell was the wee loon?
Both hungry and bored, here.
She thumbed out a text to Logan, filling in a bit of time:
You’re a lazy sod, you know that don’t you?
Leaving me with all this work.
And all these idiots.
‘We can’t take any more immigrants!’ Anderson waited for the cheer to end. ‘How are we supposed to afford foreign aid when we can’t even pay our doctors and nurses properly?’
Speaking of idiots: the wee loon’s getting on my nipples!!!!
Good job I’m retiring.
Couldn’t cope with you useless poops for another 30 years!
SEND.
As that wafted off into the aether, Roberta glowered out at Graeme Tit-Face Anderson. Wonder if you could hate someone hard enough to make their head explode?
Worth a go.
She narrowed her eyes and gritted her teeth.
Die. Die. Die. Die.
‘We have to put Scotland first. Put Britain first. Put our hard-working families, struggling to get by, first!’
Maybe cranial detonation was a bit ambitious for a first go?
Poking two fingers against her temple she screwed her whole face up, sending out the mental rays:
Rectal prolapse. Rectal prolapse. Rectal prolapse.
Still nothing.
Starting to think this telekinesis thing was a load of old bollocks.
So she slumped in her seat again. Checked her phone again. Sighed again.
Still no reply from anyone.
Urgh . . .
‘We’ve got a cost-of-living crisis; a spiralling debt crisis; a GDP crisis; and a high-tax, low IQ, authoritarian government bleeding us dry!’
With the windows wound up, it was getting claggy in here. Cramped too. Muggy. Suffocating.
Not as bad as a wheelie bin, though.
Imagine being crammed into one of those: all your teeth battered out with a hammer, fingers hacked off with a knife, or an axe. Flesh melting away as the flies feasted . . .
Roberta’s shoulders dipped.
Only upside was the poor woman must’ve been long dead by the time she ended up in the bin, because there was no way anyone could do all that to a living human being, in a lay-by, on the side of the main road north to Inverness.
Talk about small mercies.
Just had to hope she hadn’t been alive for any of it, otherwise . . .
Yeah, that was a cheery thought.
Roberta’s head lolled back to stare at the ceiling.
Who the hell could do that to a pregnant woman?
With any luck, the bastard would resist arrest when they eventually caught him – at least long enough for her to get the boot in a few times. Turn his cock-and-balls into eunuch mince.
This probably wasn’t helping.
Of course, what she really should do is get back to Detective Superintendent Young. Tell him, politely, where to cram his request.
Could just kid-on she never got the text?
‘It’s not enough for political parties to just pretend they’re listening to the people. It’s time to roll up our sleeves and do something about it!’
Yeah, but then there would be repercussions and shouting and all that rubbish. And she’d have to act all chastened and humble and ‘Oh, I promise I’ll never do it again!’
When everyone knew she definitely would.
Pfff . . .
Better get it over with:
Unable to provide OSU support.
Working on a murder: pregnant woman in a bin.
You’ll need to find alternative dogs and thugs.
Sorry.
SEND.
Young couldn’t complain about that, surely. She hadn’t even told him to Foxtrot Oscar.
Bet he’d still whinge to Pine, though.
Oh, boo-hoo, naughty old Roberta won’t do what I tell her, she’s so mean to me!
As if she wasn’t up to her ears as it was.
Roberta tossed her phone onto the dashboard and reclined her seat a little further.
Anderson was still wanging on. And on. And on.
And where was that idiot with her cold drink? And her lunch. And her change, thieving scumbag.
Still, at least Wee Davey ‘Pain-In-The-Hoop’ McLeod was nowhere to be seen. But then Tufty’s driving was probably enough to put anyone off.
‘Our nation is crumbling all around us! Potholes, poverty, cost-of-living crisis. We’re the sixth biggest economy in the world, and we’ve got teachers using foodbanks! That. Is. A. Disgrace!’
Speaking of Davey: she wriggled a hand across the back seat, searching for that folder . . . Bingo.
Roberta opened it and pulled out the three PNC checks.
First up: a nearly new, red, Jaguar F-Pace – whatever the hell that was – belonging to a Rory Hatton, registered address, Tremuda Knap Steading, Stonehaven. One warning for drunk and disorderly; lots of parking tickets; and six months, suspended, for Class A possession.
Next: an eight-year-old, lime-green, Toyota Yaris, registered to one Charlotte MacNeal; 16 Creel Terrace, Cove Bay. No record.
And last: a brown Daihatsu Fourtrak that had been on the road since the first of January, 1997. Jeremy Yarrow; 8K Fairview Court, Danestone. Four months for soliciting under a Section Forty-Six, which meant Jeremy was selling sex, rather than buying it.
Hmmmm . . .
‘And now the government are talking about reopening the EU money-pit – handing billions of pounds and our hard-won sovereignty back to the unelected bureaucrats in Brussels – when our brave veterans are sleeping rough!’
Huge round of applause and cheering.
Not really any obvious connection between Hatton, Yarrow, and MacNeal. They didn’t live in the same area; didn’t share an offender profile; and going by the cars they drove, they came from very different income brackets.
So why was Davey so interested in them?
The idiots were still at it, cheering Anderson, clapping away and honking like seals.
But finally, some good news: here came Tufty, scampering back to the patrol car, carrying a clump of four cardboard containers and a couple of wax-paper cups.
About frunking time.
Roberta folded her trio of PNC printouts and stuck them in her pocket. Something to peruse later, when the wee squit wasn’t watching.
The wee squit opened the driver’s door and Anderson’s voice got a lot louder:
‘Well, I think it’s about time we took care of our own!’
And the crowd really went for it, waving their placards and yelling and jumping up and down. Like the pricks they were.
Tufty thumped into his seat, bringing with him the rich sticky scents of honey and five-spice and soy sauce and deep-fried loveliness. He handed her one of his boxes – a proper cardboard rectangle, slightly tapered towards the bottom, like they had on American TV shows. Hot in her hands.
‘Flipping heck!’ He took off his hat and popped it on the dashboard, next to hers. ‘It’s boiling in here!’
Then he placed the pair of smaller containers beside it, before digging into the armpit of his stabproof for two sets of cheapo bamboo chopsticks in crumpled paper wrappers.
Tossed one set to Roberta and ripped open the other with his teeth.
Whittling his chopsticks against each other, as if sharpening a carving knife. ‘Noodles, noodles, noodles, noodles.’
At long last the cheering died down.
‘It’s time we stood up and showed the Great British public what responsible government looks like!’
She whacked him with her chopsticks. ‘Close the bloody door! You’re letting all the fascism in.’
Ding-buzz.
Incoming message.
But whoever it was, they could wait. Especially if they were Detective Superintendent Young. No point spoiling lunch, after all.
And in the spirit of lunch: she grabbed Tufty’s box too. Because the wee snidge was bound to be hiding something.
‘Hoy!’
‘I paid for them, I get first choice. Door: close.’
‘All right, all right.’ Clunk. ‘If I knew you were going to be a complete frunt about it, I would’ve parked out on the street. In the shade.’ He let free a whingy groan. ‘Car’s like a microwave.’
It was his own fault for not ditching his stabproof in the back, like she had. Idiot.
With the door shut, Graeme Anderson wasn’t as loud, but sadly still audible. ‘No more money for foreign wars! No more money for foreign courts! No more money for foreign nationals who don’t respect our way of life! No more money for anything until we’ve taken care of our own!’
Tufty licked his greedy lips. ‘Speaking of being all sweaty . . . See when your sauna’s up and running, can me and Kate—’
‘No. I’m no’ having you besmirching my lovely new wooden-bench thing with your drippy wee bum.’
‘But I’d totally wear a towel!’
Christ, there was an image . . .
‘Doesn’t matter: your arse-sweat would seep into the grain – and no amount of Dettol is shifting that. Have to burn the whole place down.’ She opened one of the smaller, dashboard cartons. ‘Ooh, spring rolls.’ All golden and crispy.
‘We need to say, “No more” means, “no more”!’
The crowd joined in, chanting it out: ‘NO MORE! NO MORE! NO MORE!’
Roberta helped herself, crunching through the flaky carapace and into the savoury delight of Far-Eastern hotness – doing that monkey ook-ook-ook thing, breathing cool air over each scalding mouthful.
Then mumbling through the chewing. ‘Defective Superinfectant Young wants us to drop everything and go play dress-up for him.’ Crunch-crunch, ook-ook-ook, mouthfulmumble.
‘What’s “Operation Basilisk” when it’s at home? ’
‘And that’s why, today, I’m announcing the launch of a fresh political vision for Britain: the UK New Horizons party! And I’m running to represent the proud people of Gordon and Buchan in the upcoming by-election!’
Wild cheers.