Green - part iv

I turned up unannounced at Natasha’s place in a bit of a state. She was at the least nonplussed by this. She had people round partying, I knew some of them, but I wasn’t really fit for socializing, so we had gone into her room. I was telling her that I’d been chucked out of Optimo. Not a biggy, got pinched taking a pill. Had a wrap of ten confiscated, but they didn’t call in the wagon or know about the other fifty or so that I had secured on my person for cash sales.

Still, I was pissed off about it, as that was my plan for the night and for my spending money for the week, so I was storming about the streets all sour-faced when I must have got into some aggro, details of which I don’t recall. I think I kicked a wing-mirror off a car, or smashed a window or something, and then just stormed off in a wobbly rage over the bridge, into the south-side. I should have just went home obviously, and I was crying for some reason, and I was paranoid the police were going to come and pinch me and then on top of whatever else, breach of the peace or whatever, it would be a supply of class A drugs charge based on the heat in my shoe, and this was stressing me out as well.

The walk from town to Pollokshields was stressful experience at the best of times. Beyond the river the city stopped abruptly, replaced by dilapidated tenements and wide open spaces. Places where things could be built, but no builder could be found. The main road runs parallel to the train track that enters Central Station. On the other side, brown boxy warehouses with rusting roofs. There were scant places that humans might want to be on foot. A tiny cafe aimed squarely at the bus driver market, at the lithest of long stretches. This was a world for cars. Police cars.

Things didn’t especially improve on arriving at Natasha’s. Basically, I’d forgotten that she had dumped me a week or so before. She was giving me a ticking off about something, ‘responsibilities’, that sort of pish. I was much too wasted for this. When I started speaking I was forgetting what I was saying from one clause to the next. She had a ridiculous advantage on account of being totally sober, although she was pretending she was drinking to keep up appearances.

‘They all said I shouldn’t let you in,’ she was saying. ‘I thought you had come to apologize, but look at you…’ etcetera. We were both crying, feeling frustrated, scared; all for totally different reasons (my brain wasn’t allowing me to contemplate the matters that most haunted hers.) She went into the ensuite at some point to throw up, or maybe just to get away from the grinding, inconclusive row we were having. I took a moment to clear my own head, and decided I best just bail from the mess I was in. I starting preparing to leave, then minded the pills in my shoe. Without thinking twice about it, I stashed them in a half-full medicine bottle I found sitting on her dresser, and called a taxi home.

*

The next few days are pretty blurry, but I’ll do my best. I remember being in my flat, and a party was either happening or was dying down. I can’t remember who was there; probably nobody I knew well, or maybe even at all, as nobody was really talking to me out of my regular friends, with shit as it was with Josh and Natasha. So who knows where these people came from, or even (I suppose it’s possible) if there were any people there. Seems likely though. That flat seemed to attract people; it was imbued with pishhead magnetism. And I had a habit of inviting people up who I met on the bus.

The place was a riot. The smashed television was still there, facing into the corner in the living room, and there were menchies all over the walls. Names I knew, like Josh, like Natasha. Like Ben Allan. All sorts of other shit. Someone had spray-painted a hammer and sickle on the window, probably me. Below it was a picture of a goat that had been cut out of a magazine and sellotaped to the wall. By it was the immortal legend: “GOAT” in black permanent marker.

I think I must have just been coming round. I have an image of waking up, surrounded by newspapers, all open at the article about Tom Monaghan’s court case. He pled not guilty to fraud. The jury convicted him on a vote of eight to seven. I actually felt sorry for him, and partially responsible. There really is no justice more shite that Scots justice. Still, I reckoned: don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.

I pulled myself up and checked my reflection. Yellow eyes, and a little bit green. There was explosive tinnitus in my head. I sucked in some air, and ducked out to the street to the Key Store, where I realized that I had no money. I didn’t have the willpower for two trips, so I shoplifted some orange juice. I just grabbed it and bolted; there was no point trying to be discreet when I was looking as jakey as I was. Unfortunately the analgesics were behind the counter, so I had to just endure a headache in my hovel without a TV or books or, by afternoon, electricity or gas.

I sat in the dark for a while, trying to work up the inspiration to go and top up the meter. I figured I couldn’t go to the Key Store to do it, so I’d have to walk all the way to Partick. This, I decided, was so much effort that I may as well get the bus to town and go to the cinema. I met a few friends at the UGC, no idea what we went to see, but I was drinking Buckfast. At some point I nipped into the disabled loo for a smoke. I mind getting a bit dizzy and sitting down on the toilet.

I could hear loud music playing and didn’t understand where I was; I slowly realized I had fallen asleep in the toilet. Sheepishly, I snuck out into the foyer to find that the cinema was closed. I shuttled out down the escalator, meticulously failing to meet the eyes of any of the staff at work clearing up the excess popcorn, then I pushed a bar and set off the fire alarm exiting into the street. I made a call, then took a bus to a squat in Govanhill where I rejoined my friends from the cinema. There was a drug shortage and I hadn’t thought to take anything. The toilet was full of excrement and there was no running water. Somehow I ended up spending two or three days in this flat.

I was feart to leave. My phone rang every few hours, during the day time. Voicemails were accumulating. ‘Hello, Mr Allan,’ a sombre voice said, ‘this is Strathclyde Police. Can you please call the…’

So I stayed until they tricked me into leaving. They sent me to the off licence and I couldn’t find my way back. Fair enough, I reckoned.

Eventually Josh called. Natasha had overdosed. She was dead; suicide. Did I know she was pregnant?

*

I called the police back a couple of days later. They wanted to come round for a chat, but I wasn’t falling for that. I stashed the drugs at Josh’s, and went to the station. Just for a wee chat. Not under caution or anything. Fucking scum.

Two fat fucking fuckers, fat necks like fucking lifebelts. They were doing the nice guys act; all that, ‘sorry for your loss,’ stuff, all that, ‘so you’d recently broken up,’ sort of stuff. ‘Who left who,’ and that.

‘I don’t really see the relevance of this,’ I told them.

‘What drugs did Natasha take?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘That seems unlikely.’

‘May be so, but it’s true.’

‘Did you know she was pregnant?’

‘Yeah, she said.’

‘She was having an abortion.’

‘Okay.’

‘It was the mixture of drugs that killed her.’

‘Okay.’

‘An abortion is a chemical procedure at that stage, you know. It’s a powerful drug. Causes a sort of intense period. The foetus is washed out with the lining of the womb. It causes cramps, stomach pain. Severe discomfort. Why would Natasha, after taking this drug, get home and take a cocktail of anxiety pills, painkillers and ecstasy?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘It’s the ecstasy that doesn’t make sense, isn’t it Mr Allan.’

‘Okay.’

‘Bleeding, cramping… party time?’

I didn’t care about what they were saying. I just nodded. They always lie, the filth. I was minded of, what, it would have been two and a bit years prior. When they took me to Govan station. They were all, ‘of course, you have the right to request a lawyer, but it’ll just slow things down. You’d end up being here for hours.’ I was just turned 18, hungover, scared. I trusted them for some reason. They never read me my rights, nothing like that. No ‘right to remain silent.’ They turned the tape off half-way through the interview. ‘Look Benny; the idea is you just tell us what you’ve done, then we’ll let you go. It’s fine. We don’t want to be here any more than you.’

I did this. They did: ‘Ben Allan, you are under arrest…’, and they put me in the cells, and they left me there all night, and most of the next day. And even then it wasn’t alright. It was court, and lawyers, and Paisley, and years, it felt like forever, of uncertainty. All for a stupid little thing like that.

As I said, they are fucking scum, the lot of them.

‘If that’s it I’d like to go home and grieve in peace.’

They didn’t arrest me. Didn’t read my rights.

*

The procurator fiscal eventually decided that it was death by misadventure, but it was clear at the cremation that the family blamed me, which I found to be quite unreasonable, but if it helped them in their time of grief then fair enough. My friends erred entirely on the side of consolement; many tearful hugs were shared. Lisa squeezed her tits in tight against me and sobbed on my shoulder, which was a highlight. The hall at Linn Crematorium was packed; it seemed like half of the punters from Optimo were there, along with most of her high school peers. Fact is, they’d need to have cremated her three times for everyone to be able to watch the grim process in comfort.

After the pseudo-secular ritual, the various subsets of mourners went their separate ways. Our group walked to Castlemilk, which at that time was not somewhere I’d spent any amount of time. It was and probably is a depressing, menacing scheme, but it is notable for being set on a hill and offering excellent views over the head of Glasgow to the Campsies in the north west. Years later, I saw the Fairport Convention play at the local community centre, which is strictly irrelevant to this story, but recountable on account of it being by far the oddest concert I’ve ever attended. The booze was being sold near to cost. Would definitely do again.

From Castlemilk we took the bus to the city centre and went to Mono and get wired into many jars of lager. We were all in ill-fitting funereal dress: cheap black suits and skinny black ties; shiny black dresses more suitable for waiting on tables. Chat was initially sombre and vacuous; pointless aphorisms and little memories of Natasha. ‘I loved her,’ I said, to many. As the alcohol began to show, the patter changed. ‘Have another drink,’ then, vaguely remembering, ‘it’s what Natasha would have wanted.’

Soon it was just any other night, and we were all pished, walking through town to a nightclub. I was very wobbly and managed to drift off in the wrong direction with Josh, and I saw someone I thought I vaguely knew. Maybe an Ibrox connect, one of Jie Pee’s mates? I didn’t have a name. ‘You got any gear?’ I asked him.

Eventually we agreed a price of £50 for a gram of cocaine, and we walked to the cash machine together. Josh wasn’t liking the situation and had wandered up the road ahead of us. I put my card in the machine, stuck in my PIN, and pressed the button for £100. I was standing there, doing a drum roll with my fingers, when the bam panelled me in the back of the head. I got back up to see him running off with the cash and my card.

‘Josh!’

He had already seen and was running back. We started chasing the guy up Glassford Street, but it was futile. We were not fit. Neither of us had ran more than 50 metres since high school.

‘Fuck it. I’m going to the police station.’

‘Fuck that, Ben. That’s just stupid.’

‘He’s no getting away with all my fucking money. I want that coke.’

‘There isn’t a station anywhere near here anyway.’

I dialled 999.

‘Fuck this, you’re on your own,’ Josh said, and fucked off.

‘What is your emergency?’

I’m not sure quite how it happened, but with great alacrity I found myself at the police station at Cowcaddens explaining why I had £940 in cash on my person, and, that being the case, why I was attempting to withdraw further readies from the cash machine. ‘I told you,’ I was saying, ‘I’d forgotten I had it.’

‘And what line of work are you in, Mr Allan?’

‘Unemployed.’

‘So how did you come to have £940 in cash?’

‘I won it on a scratchcard.’

‘Surely you’d remember that?’

‘It was ages ago. I hadn’t worn that jacket since it happened.’

Fortunately, they grew exasperated with me and turfed me out. I asked for a crime reference number for the robbery.

‘Okay, Mr Allan. Shall I just take a note here saying: “The victim approached a stranger on the street seeking to acquire an amount of cocaine. The stranger stole his money and bank card. The victim can not identify the culprit, but describes him as “a basic ned”.” What do you think? Shall I put that in writing?’

In a moment of clarity, I declined to pursue the matter. They held onto my money. Robbed twice in a night. Three times if you count the coke I didn’t get. They are fucking scum.