Goatie 34

I was the only prisoner to get out of the van when we reached the Police Station at Clydebank. A car blocked the entrance so the van couldn’t reverse to the back door inside the station. A guard handcuffed me and loped across the car park, bent forward and gasping for breath, with me in tow.

He rung the buzzer and it was a few minutes before anyone sprung the door and he could get me signed off. The Turnkey took me to the main desk. Some of the other cops poked their heads around the door to have a quick dekko.

Detective Inspector George, swivelled on a high chair, waiting to book me in. Watery pale eyes, he looked past retirement age. His dark tie was stained and his shirt none too clean. It hung loosely on thin, narrow shoulders. An extravagantly patterned Aran jumper was incongruous. A large mouth and a nose raised high in the air like a camel that gave his proclamations a nasal twang. ‘Crimes in prison,’ he snorted, ‘should have the decency to stay in prison. However, we’ve been asked to look at it…Take a look at you.’

He stared at me for a few moments and seemed to lose track of what he was saying. His large lips chewed over the possibilities. ‘Be assured there’ll be some kinda reason for it. Some kinda reason for marking you down as dangerous.’ He glared at me. ‘But you don’t look very dangerous. Like Hitler or Stalin or The Yorkshire Ripper or that fella that witters on about you.’

‘Who?’ I asked

‘Him that’s banging on about the Second Coming. Christ being the prophet and the prophecy. And you being his apostle.’

‘Who?’

‘That guy with the unpronounceable name.’ His mouth shaped to pronounce it, but he shook his head, and explained instead, ‘he’s American, one of they preachers. A lightening rod for all kinds of gross stupidity that makes even Boris Johnson sound reasonable’.

‘I don’t know who yer talkin about,’ I told him.

‘Nah,’ he said. ‘You do.’

To prove his point he pulled out his phone and tapped the screen. The booming voice had a Southern twang. He twisted his wrist, turned the screen towards me and the preacher was putting on the full show for an audience of whooping Christian fundamentalists. With enough Praise the Lording to raise the undead from their pews. The pious minister’s mimicry and white teeth a reminder of the bankability of Jesus to the Christian network, but he was a much younger looing fraud than the leader of the Moral Majority, Reverend Jerry Falwell.

‘Beliefs falter and values wain…Revelation 13:16-17 speaks of the beast.’ He paused to allow his audience to lean forward and dabbed sweat from his forehead with a white hanky. ‘Did the Indians believe the white man was coming?’ He was quick to answer. ‘No they did not…Drugs, crime and illiteracy all on the increase. It’s God trying to get our attention. Do we believe Jesus is coming?

He was answered with a roar of Jesus’ saints, men and women groaning and crying in their pews.

‘The Jews have returned to Israel as prophesized.’ He held up a ten-dollar bill and crumpled it and letting it fall at his feet. ‘Revelations speaks of beast’s mark…“to receive a mark on their right hand or in their foreheads, and that no man may buy or sell, save that he had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.”’

Holding out his arm and right empty hand, he asked his audience a question. ‘What do we see now, but youngsters with a phone in their hands. Always starting at the screen? They don’t even look up at you, or have any kind of decent conversation. Just grunts. In most European cities they no longer recognise the American dollar or take hard cash. You need to have the mark of the beast to buy a Coca Cola.’ He went up a notch. ‘You might call that progress. And it’s progress. Progress for Satan. You can only enter our great nation with the devil’s mark in your right hand or on your forehead. You can’t leave our country without bowing down to Satan. When you take the nine-digit zip code of our Post Office and add it to the nine-digit number issued by Government for Social Insecurity. That makes eighteen.’

He chuckled, let the microphone fall to his side and gave himself a breather. ‘I  wasn’t a great one for schooling, but I got it drilled into me. What’s six multiplied by three again?’ He cocked his hand over his ear waiting for the roar.

“666.”

‘That’s right,’ he said, beaming at his pupils in the front rows. ‘Satan is among us. And in a small Scottish town called Clydebank, saints are reborn and laying up souls for the final conflagration. They’re setting themselves on fire and proclaiming our belief.  “I believe in the final apocalypse”. For too long, we’ve been in outright denial. “The best lack all convictions, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” We see that every day. These saints, in far off, Bonnie Scotland, are laying down their lives. Deeds not words. We gotta be ready to help them. We gotta prepare. We need your prayers. We need your support. Jesus on His cross needs you.’

Detective George was watching my reactions. He shut the screen. ‘You don’t know who this guy is?’

‘Nah.’

‘You never heard of him?’

I shook my head.

He cajoled me. ‘He’s all over the internet. Despite his shite about money, he’s made millions and he’s coming here to spring you out of jail, or so he said.’

‘I’ve been locked up,’ I reminded him. ‘I never heard nothing. But he sounds like a complete fruitcake.’

‘He is.’ Detective George slipped his phone into his inside pocket. ‘But he’s got the backing of former President Trump. He’s a big cheese. And if that guy gets re-elected, he could make you President of Scotland tae. You could be the next Nicholas Sturgeon.’

I didn’t have time to think about it. ‘Is that good or bad?...An would I need tae wear a tartan skirt?’

‘Good for you,’ he said. ‘Bad for us, because it’s gonnae be endless fucking hassle.’