Mystery Road (2013)

 

In the All-Night Café: A Memoir of Belle and Sebastian's Formative Year by Stuart David (Chicago Review Press 2015)

 

At the end of the last day we had a play-through of everything in its finished state, and Stuart, Chris and 

Bel got up to dance behind the mixing desk during the playback of ‘I Could Be Dreaming’. They all had their own dancing styles. Chris was Northern-Soul-Boy, Bel School-Disco, with her pigtails and white knee socks. Stuart was somewhere between Punk and gym hall jogging.

It was joyful to watch, a shy celebration of what we’d achieved, but there was a bittersweet quality to it too – everyone knowing that our tenure at Cava was over. We’d packed our instruments away, all the microphones and patch leads had been dismantled and the live room had been tidied up and prepared for whoever was coming in next. All the mixes had been bounced down onto two-inch tape, and when the playback was over there was nothing much left to do except say our sad farewells to Gregor and Geoff and then go home.

Chris, Bel and me also had our respects to pay to the water-cooler at the bottom of the stairs, the symbol for us of everything that had been great about the week. Then, with that done, Chris said to me, ‘This has been the best week of my life. But I’m not sure if it’s just because I’ve had a shite life up till now or not.’

He disappeared up the stairs, while I went back along the corridor to pick up my bass, and before I got outside a rumour had begun to circulate that Chris was crying.

Riders of Justice (2020)

 

February's Son by Alan Parks (Canongate Books 2019)

 

10th February 1973

McCoy stopped for a minute, had to. He put his hands on his knees, bent over, tried to catch his breath. Could feel the sweat running down his back, shirt sticking to him under his jumper and coat. He looked up at the uniform. Another one of Murray’s rugby boys. Size of a house and no doubt thick as shit. Same as all the rest.

‘What floor is this now?’ he asked.

The big bastard wasn’t even breathing heavily, just standing there looking at him, raindrops shining on his woollen uniform.

‘Tenth, sir. Four more to go.’

‘Christ. You’re joking, aren’t you?  I’m half dead already.’

They were making their way up a temporary stairway. Just rope handrails strung between scaffolding poles, stairway itself a series of rough concrete slabs leading up and up to the top of the half-built office block.

‘Ready, sir?’

McCoy nodded reluctantly and they started off again. Maybe he’d be doing better if he hadn’t just finished two cans of Pale Ale and half a joint when the big bastard had come to get him. Him and Susan were laughing, dancing about like loonies, Rolling Stones on the radio, when the knock on the door came. Big shadow of the uniform behind the frosted glass. Panic stations. Susan trying to open the windows and fan the dope smell away with a dishtowel while he kept the uniform talking at the door for as long as he could. Just as well they’d decided against splitting the tab he’d found in his wallet.

Bloody January by Alan Parks (Canongate Books 2017)

 

1st January 1973

McCoy headed along the corridor towards the stairs, heels clicking on the metal walkway, breath clouding out in front of him. Never changed, Barlinnie. Freezing in the winter, boiling in the summer. The old Victorian building was on its last legs. Wasn’t built for the number of prisoners they had stuffed into it now. Three, sometimes four of them locked up in a cell made for two. No wonder the whole prison stank. The smell of overflowing slop buckets and stale sweat was so thick it caught in the back of your throat soon as the big doors opened; stuck to your clothes when you left.

He’d been coming up here since his first weeks on the beat. Only good thing about Barlinnie was that it saved you going anywhere else. The whole spectrum of Glasgow’s wrongdoers ended up in here. From rapists and murderers, nonces and kiddie fiddlers to bewildered old men caught coming out the Co-op with two tins of salmon stuffed up their jumpers and their wives not long in the ground. Barlinnie wasn’t fussy, it took them all in.

He leant over the balcony rail, peered through the netting and the fug of tobacco smoke at the rec hall below. Usual crowd milling about in their denims and white plimsolls. Couple of boys whose names he couldn’t remember playing ping-pong. Low-level troops from the gangs in the Milton gathered round the pool table, all long hair, moustaches and borstal tattoos. One of them pointed with his cue as Jack Thomson was wheeled in front of the TV, started sniggering. A year ago he would have been too scared to even look at someone like Thomson. Now the poor bastard had a dent in his head so deep it was visible from up here. That’s what happens when someone takes a sledgehammer to each knee and then gives you a few whacks on the head for luck. Can’t walk and your brain’s so scrambled you don’t even know where you are.

He buttoned up his trench coat, blew in his hands. Really was fucking freezing in here. A year ago he would have been too scared to even look at someone like Thomson. Now the poor bastard had a dent in his head so deep it was visible from up here. That’s what happens when someone takes a sledgehammer to each knee and then gives you a few whacks on the head for luck. Can’t walk and your brain’s so scrambled you don’t even know where you are.

The Accidental Footballer by Pat Nevin (Monoray 2021)

 

Another room was swiftly bypassed on the stairs with a flick of the wrist and a ‘You wouldn’t be interested in that one’ comment. Like hell I wouldn’t be interested, that was the one I wanted to see most, now that he had dismissed it with just a little too much disdain! I was already envisaging a picture of Dorian Gray, but with an ageing Morrissey in the frame. He changed his mind and then relented again after some gentle persuasion. He turned the key in the lock so sluggishly and opened the door to the room so slowly that it was even more obvious that he was embarrassed about its contents. I just wanted to push past him at this point, it was such a painstaking palaver.

The door finally opened to reveal the very last thing I expected to see: a fully kitted-out multigym with all the most modern equipment.

A Fatal Glass of Beer by Stuart M. Kaminsky (Mysterious Press 1997)

 

Pleasure to meet you,” Fields said.

“I’ll write to my husband and tell him I met you,” she said. “He thinks you’re funny.”

“Armstrong takes Beau Jack, ten bucks straight up,” I reminded her.

Violet nodded solemnly; Fields and I left.

“Note,” he said as we closed the door and stood on the railed landing of the sixth floor of the Faraday Building, “she said her husband likes me. It has been a source of irritation that women, as a gender, are not particularly responsive to my wit. They prefer a popinjay ballet dancer like Chaplin to honest misogyny.”

“Hard to understand,” I said, remembering that my former wife, Anne, had refused to see Fields movies with me, claiming that they made no sense, weren’t amusing, were nasty to women and small children. I had agreed with her, but I still thought he was funny.

Big Game (2014)

 

Face (1997)

 

An American Werewolf in London (1981)