Douglas Lindsay
The unburied dead
1
They all say it around here. Why did we join? Why do we put up with this shit? Why do I bother coming to work? Sometimes I like to stand on my desk and shout will you all just shut the fuck up, you entitled, whining bunch of wankers? This is just how it is, so get the fuck on with it…
Yeah, all right, I don't. I don't do that. It's not like our lot are that different from everyone else in the country. People complain, because that's what people do.
This lot, they joined for all sorts of reasons. The need for power. The need to do good on your own terms. The desire to be above the law, so you can manipulate it, or break it. Legal thuggery. I joined in '96. I'd been back from Bosnia for over a year. Still drifting, still suffering. Didn't drink too much, didn't do drugs. I did women. Lots of women. Mostly they seemed quite happy about it, until I buggered off, or they found out what number they'd been that week.
Yeah, I know, it just sounds like some kind of sexually-frustrated male fantasy, but it wasn't a carefree erotic expedition through the fertile female jungles of Glasgow; I was fucked up and taking out my PTSD on any woman I could get hold of. How could they know that when I was fucking them, I was seeing bodies dumped in the stinking heat of a Balkan summer? Really, it's not a great image. How could they know that when they screamed I was hearing wives scream for their tortured husbands?
I never seemed to grasp that sex wasn't helping.
Finally I got someone pregnant or, at least, someone finally told me I'd got her pregnant. This coincided with the arrival in the public consciousness of Detective Sergeant Jonah Bloonsbury.
Jean Fryar left school at the first opportunity. No 'O' levels, no common sense. Started working in a newsagents up the old Edinburgh Road. I used to go in there sometimes on a Saturday for my twenty Marlboro. I had a detached look that the women liked. Never looked interested. Never looked like I wanted them.
Works every time, although probably only because I wasn't trying to get it to work.
Don't even remember whether the first time was at her place or mine. There was something about her, although it was probably just that when she sucked me off it was so fucking good that I almost managed to get the images out of my head.
One night or other the condom got left in my pocket, along with my brain. I'd been doing a reasonable job up until then.
Naturally I'd moved on by the time she called me up saying she was pregnant. She seemed to believe that I might be interested, and because I wasn't doing anything else at the time, I said I'd marry her.
Didn't take long for her to start badgering me about getting a job. I think what she actually wanted was for me to go abroad again. She envisaged me sending my pay cheque home from a distant, war-torn land. She was keen on Chechnya. If things had worked out well for her, I would have been killed and she'd have received compensation from someone.
However, a story started appearing in the newspapers at the time. A young sergeant in Glasgow called Jonah Bloonsbury cracked a murder inquiry which had defeated the most senior detectives in the city. The guy was nine years older than me and he had his fifteen minutes. Front page news, detective of the month. He'd acted alone on a hunch all the others had ignored and had nabbed his man after a long chase on foot over open moorland up beyond East Kilbride. Reading between the lines, it was apparent that in the end he had taken the guy down and kicked all kinds of fuck out of him before the bloke had been taken into custody.
I could do that, I thought. I could kick the fuck out of people. And the police would give me shift work, and I wouldn't have to spend too much time at home.
We got married on a staggeringly warm summer's day in 1996, then three weeks later Jean had a miscarriage. So the child was gone and, messed up and insensitive beyond reason, I immediately contemplated losing the wife as well. I didn't do it straight away, but that was the beginning of the end.
The police no longer seemed necessary, but I was there, and right enough, it kept me out of the house for long periods. I didn't have to put up with her drinking, and she just didn't have to put up with me.
By the time I'd finished my first year, I had met Peggy and was seeing her behind Jean's back, and by the time I finally met Jonah Bloonsbury, Peggy and I had been married for eight years and the marriage had long since drifted into disinterest. By then Bloonsbury was a drunken detective chief inspector, living on past glories and suffering the same sort of marriage as the rest of us.
That first murder case wasn't his only big success. There were several others, though none so high profile. But somewhere along the way the pressure became too much for him, and he drowned in alcohol. Very last century. I don't know when he hit the downward spiral, but by the time Bloonsbury reached fifty he was wasted, viewing everyone with suspicion through the dregs of a bottle of cheap blended malt.
There was one last crowning glory over a year ago, plucked from nowhere, to temporarily save his wretched career and wasted reputation, but since then his life has been nothing but a fast drop to the bottom of the ocean. And now he's just a guy, drifting through his fifties; overweight, ruddy-faced, bleary-eyed. A waste of a good man, but there are many more where he came from.
So it could be said I joined up for two illusions — a child that never came, and the disingenuous festering bullshit that is the career of Jonah Bloonsbury — but in reality I joined because I felt like my brain had been taken out and refitted the wrong way round.
I bumped into Jean Fryar again a few months ago. She slapped me across the face, we went for a drink, compared divorces and children — three and two for me, two and four for her — and nearly ended up in bed. I like to think we both thought better of it in the end, but really the decision was all hers. And that's all there is to say about Jean Fryar.
The story of Jonah Bloonsbury limps on however, while the rest of us watch it pass by — mourners at a wake — as he reaches for one last success; or perhaps merely hangs on, hoping to receive a full pension, with as much dignity as a man with a bottle of whisky attached to his face can do.
Meanwhile my brain turns slowly, occasionally almost clicking back into position, but never quite making it.
2
Wild flowers? Is it wild flowers? Smells like wild flowers, but how can something actually smell of wild flowers? There are hundreds of wild flowers. They must all smell different. All the wild flowers together?
His mind churns.
Wild flowers. Wild flowers. I don't know any stinking, fucking wild flowers. Wild flowers. Wild flowers. The words tumble through his brain. His head twitches, a sudden snap, eyes closed for a second, and it's gone. Now all he can smell is the rotten cabbage of the underground tunnels. Rotten cabbage, sewage, decay. They should bottle those.
He glances over his shoulder at the woman three seats behind. Dark brown hair. Almost black. Shoulder length. She's not looking at him. It must be her; there's no one else in the carriage that would wear that kind of scent.
The train rumbles to a halt, emerging from the tunnels into the drizzle and cold dark night of Dalmarnock station.
He doesn't turn all the way round, but looks at the woman's reflection, catching her eye in the window. A fleeting glimpse then she looks away. He smiles at her too late, but can feel her shudder.
He looks along the length of the carriage. Two old women, grumbling, voices too loud; a man asleep, face
