The Art Guy (18+) COMPLETE, FREE to READ

Not Knowing How Glasgow Works

Glasgow, July 1993

The noise hadn't sounded alarming at first. Just the common or garden sounds you heard when your mind stirred to consciousness the morning after the night before. Cars in the street, the odd bark or miaow, feet thundering up and down stairs in a close and the awareness of life going about its daily business around you.

But suddenly, the footsteps sounded very close by. Almost as if they were in the–

"Rise and shine, Sleeping Beauty—oh, ah might have known. He's a fuckin' wee poofter."

There were three of them, and all of them similar looking which contrarily made them more and not less scary looking. The rise and shine man was the shortest, a buzz-cut, heavy-framed bloke with a prominent nose and carrying a baseball bat. Numbers two and three sported the same buzz cut, one with greying temples, the other a red-head, and they all wore bomber jackets and dark jeans. They made the perfect unholy triptych.

When they'd come into the room, Kippy had sat up immediately. Jordan's flat was one of the new builds in the East End, an attempt by house-builders and the council to persuade the young and beautiful that they really did want to live in a place that had long held a reputation for poverty and crime. It was modern, properly insulated, its corners fitted so beautifully there were no gaps for the dust to gather, and at the same time, tiny.

The three men at the bottom of the bed filled the room to capacity. Kippy, struggling with the last vestiges of too much vodka and beer, had clasped the duvet to him—a gesture he doubted would endear him to his new companions. Jordan had stumbled into consciousness a minute or so after Kippy. He sat up in the same way, duvet clasped to the chest and wearing the same look of pure terror.

Short man slapped the baseball bat in his hands, whacking it off his palms in a gesture that held no ambiguity.

"Ah'm Jerry Gibson. Nice tae meet you, ladies. My friends," he turned his head to the right and left, "Jimmy and Ronan are goin' tae explore your flat while you and me have a wee chat."

Jimmy whipped the duvet off the bed as he left the room, dumping it just outside the door. They could hear the sounds of two men taking a flat apart and not bothering to be delicate about it. Kippy thanked the stars he'd pulled on his boxers before going to sleep last night. It had been an instinctive thing, that not wanting to sleep naked. Jordan hadn't done the same. Jerry Gibson looked at his crotch pointedly and thumped the baseball bat once more. He sat down at the end of the bed and smiled at them both.

"Son, you obviously dinnae know how Glasgow works," he grinned at Jordan. Kippy felt a momentary surge of relief that Jerry had managed to identify Jordan, and then loathed himself for it. The relief and the loathing then seemed to battle themselves out.

"We dinnae like strangers who come in and think they can take over, like?"

"Look what ah've got, guv!" Ronan, a malicious grin plastered to his face, returned to the room. He held out plastic bags of white powder in both hands. Kippy felt his insides turn themselves over. If only he hadn't–

Jerry leant forward, exaggeratedly. He plucked the bags up, opened them, licked a finger and inserted it delicately into the first bag, held it to his nose and snorted it.

"Och! Ronan, that's good shit."

Jimmy had returned, also bearing gifts. More plastic bags. The three had reassembled themselves, the unholy triptych, at the bottom of the bed. Jerry gestured behind him, and Ronan lifted a rucksack and put the plastic bags in it.

"We'll consider this compensation for loss of earnings, aye?" Jerry said. "Ah mean, feel free to report it as theft to the polis, but you're no' gonnae get very far."