The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs (6 page)

Kay nodded warily. — It’s horrible when friends fall out over money.

Traynor winked at Kay, slapped Skinner on the back. — Love and money are the only things worth fawin oot ower, eh, chaps? He laughed loudly.

Two men who were with a young boy who was wearing a green Carlsberg football strip sat at the next table and looked over at them. The men were drinking shorts and pints and the kid was drinking Coca-Cola. Skinner gave them a long, cold once-over and they averted their gaze.

The sugar turns to alcohol.

Kay caught the ugliness in his leer, saw the signs. That guy at the bar had soured his mood. She whispered sexily into his ear, — Let’s go back and lie in the bath together.

— Whae the fuck dae ye think ah am? Ah only
drink
like a fish! Lie in the bath the gither, she says! Skinner had retorted loudly, drawing in the company, but instead of coming out witty, jokey and flirty as he’d intended, through the mask of alcohol it was distorted into a gruff reprimand, which Kay took as him showing off to his pals that
he
was the boy. Humiliation twisted like a knife in her chest and she stood up. — Danny . . . she said in one last plea.

Skinner, semi-jolted through his heavy-boned pish-head apathy was moved to add in placatory tones, — You go, ah’ll be doon eftir this. He shook his half-full glass of lager.

Kay turned on her heels, left the bar and stole down Leith Walk. She was wasting her time. She could have gone to the studio, worked on the barre, got her mind and body right for the audition.

— Birds, Skinner said to his friends. A couple of them nodded knowingly. Most just pulled thin smiles. They were largely from the local younger team who had taken an interest in the fashionable upsurge in football violence. Most were impressed by Skinner and Big Rab McKenzie’s recent tales of hanging out with some of the old school CCS boys. They were as anxious to hear the story of their West Lothian day out with terrace institutions Dempsey and Gareth as Skinner was to tell the tale away from Kay’s ears. He was also keen to get the porn film Traynor had got for him,
The Second Coming of Christ,
and secrete it from her view.

He had intended to head home after that pint, but Rab McKenzie came through the door and more tales were told and more drinks flowed. No, drink never questioned.

Until the next morning.

The next morning when there was no Kay.

Skinner rose slowly, showered and dressed. Ironically, he was
a tidy, fastidious man who spent hours compulsively cleaning his flat and himself, only to almost completely destroy both with a regularity that to many was simply unfathomable. He surveyed the mess of his flat and cursed in sick self-loathing at the cigarette burn visible on his couch. He’d have to turn the cushion over, but no, there was a worse one on the other side, where somebody had let a kernel of dope burn through.

A fucking cigarette burn on your couch! A good enough reason to stop smoking for ever. A good enough reason to ban any weak, minging chavy cunt whae even smelt ay fags fae coming anywhere near yir fuckin hoose!

The handset was covered in sticky beer stains. It was gummed up and it took some time and effort to press and wiggle it into action. The television presenter came up on the screen, fronting the morning show. Glancing at his alarm clock again, Skinner struggled to get into his clothes and into the day. As he knotted his blue tie and gazed at his appearance in the mirror, his confidence to face the week ahead slowly grew.

I look like a fucking pantomime villain. If I grew a moustache I’d be Dick Dastardly.

Danny Skinner knew that although he was relatively young in his department, his sharp tongue was respected and feared, even by some of his elders and superiors, who had seen it mercilessly deployed on several occasions. More than that, he was good at his job: popular, bright and well liked. And yet he was starting to sense a growing disapproval from some senior colleagues regarding his drinking and his often cavalier, irreverent attitude.

But so many of them are corrupt bastards, like Foy.

He jumped on a 16 bus and got off at the east end of town. In Cockburn Street he met his favourite colleague, Shannon McDowall, coming into the Chambers from the back entrance and they took the lift to the fifth floor. In the workplace she was the one person Skinner really talked to, beyond superficialities,
and they often enjoyed a casual flirtatiousness with each other. He couldn’t believe how prim Shannon looked in her long brown skirt, yellow blouse and light brown cardigan. Her hair was pinned up. All that hinted at the vivacious, clubby, girl-about-town of the weekends was the shit-eating grin she wore. — Awright, Dan? Good weekend?

— Must have been, Shan, must have been, I remember nothing about it, Skinner said. — Yourself?

— Yeah, me and Kevin were at Joy. It was a brilliant night, Shannon leered.

— Good for you. Any naughtiness?

Shannon’s voice dropped to a whisper and she looked around, pulling a loose strand of hair back from across her face. — Just one pill, but I was up all night.

Fuck just one pill, Skinner thought, and then with a sideways glance considered, fuck Shannon as well. But he’d never cheat on Kay, and anyway, Shannon had that boyfriend, Kevin, the up-himself-cunt with the weird hair. No, he’d never deceive Kay, but it would be great to screw Shannon’s brains out, just to piss that Kevin cunt off, Skinner thought, then felt a rush of shame.

Shannon’s okay, a mate. You cannae think about friends in that way. It’s the alcohol: it leaves a taint of sleaze, of dirt in your mind. Mix it with cocaine and in large quantities and over long periods of time and you’re probably heading for the beast’s register. I’ve got tae fuckin well
–

He remembered the time that he and Kay were at a club in the West End, and they met Shannon and Kevin. It ought to have been a cosy foursome, but he and Kevin never hit it off for some reason, neither, he could tell, did Shannon and Kay. It wasn’t so pronounced as to be an instant dislike on either side, as things were superficially friendly enough, but the mutual antipathy was apparent.

Different lassies, Skinner thought. Kay was the youngest in her family with two much older brothers, the spoiled little
Princess. When Shannon was a teenager and still at school, her mother had died unexpectedly, her father subsequently going to pieces. This meant that she’d effectively had to bring up her younger brother and sister. Skinner looked at her rounded face in profile, saw that focus and strength in her eyes. She caught him admiring her and shot him a disarming smile, like a sun coming out from behind a cloud.

On the first floor a skinny guy in a blue C&A suit shuffled nervously into the lift. Something about the boy’s awkwardness made Skinner feel sorry for him and he smiled at the guy before noting that Shannon did too.

Skinner’s guts were in turmoil from the beer and curry at the weekend and a viscous, silent eye-stinging killer of a fart slipped out off him, as poignantly weeping as a lover’s last farewell, just as the lift stopped at the next floor to let in two men wearing overalls. Everybody suffered in silence. As the workmen got off at the following level, Skinner seized the opportunity, announcing, — That is minging, looking towards the departing workies. He knew that when it came to farting everybody turned into Old Etonian High Court judges. Men would always be suspected before women and men in working clothes would always be blamed before men in suits. Those were the rules.

Danny Skinner and Shannon McDowall were making their way to the office, when the thin guy in the suit stopped them and asked for directions. He really was an emaciated youth, Skinner thought: all skin and bone. From the front he looked as though he’d been run over by a steamroller, while at the side elevation he displayed a matchstick-thin body with a slightly oversized head. But he was open-faced enough, with freckled skin and fairish brown hair.

— Follow us, Skinner smiled again, making the introductions.

They took the new lad, Brian Kibby his name was, into the open-plan office. Foy was late, so they made him a coffee and introduced him to everyone. — We won’t take you round
till Bob comes, Brian, Shannon explained, because he’ll have his own induction programme planned. So, how was your weekend?

Brian Kibby started to enthusiastically recount his weekend. After a bit Skinner felt himself switching off, as the hangover kicked in. He noted the copy of
Game Informer
the new guy had taken from his bag, and picked it up. He wasn’t a big video-game player, but his friend Gary Traynor had loads, and often press-ganged him into playing. He saw a review of one that Traynor had mentioned,
Midnight Club 3: Dub Edition
.— Ever played this one? he asked Kibby.

— It’s brilliant! Kibby said, his voice going high. — I don’t think I’ve ever played a game where you got as much a sense of speed as this one. And it’s not just racing; so much of the emphasis is on customising your wheels so you spend a lot of the time in the garage pimping rides.

— Phoar, Skinner exclaimed, — that sounds right up my street, pimping rides!

Kibby blushed red. — It’s no . . . it isnae . . .

Shannon cut in: — Danny was only joking, Brian. He’s the office comedian, she smiled.

Brian Kibby got back in his flow about the game. Skinner’s growing lack of interest turned into mild contempt when Kibby embarrassingly had to open his box containing a model train, after being pressed by Shannon to explain its contents. He also had, in his bag, McGhee had noticed, a Manchester United hat. — So you’re a Man U fan, Brian? he’d asked Kibby.

— No, I dinnae like football, but I like Manchester United because they’re the biggest team in the world, so you’ve got to follow them, Kibby squeaked eagerly, remembering a family holiday in Skegness, where he and his father had watched the 1999 European Cup Final in the hotel. It was there that he’d bought the hat, which, since Keith’s illness, had taken on a sentimental attachment.

Oh my God, Skinner thought, Shannon will talk to him. He
excused himself and slumped into the chair of his desk by the window.

This place is full of annoying, straight pricks who just dae your fuckin heid in with their home, garden and golf bullshit. That churchy old cunt Aitken’ll be in soon . . .

. . . and now the new boy, he’s as straight as fuck n aw . . .

Skinner acknowledged his disappointment, realising that he’d secretly wanted another drinking partner-in-crime. He glanced across at Kibby.

Fucking incorruptibly straight. The whiny fucking voice . . .

Those big, camel eyes radiated enthusiasm, but Skinner also thought he could witness, on fleeting occasion, a sneaky calculation in them, which maybe afforded a clue to a less wholesome side of this Kibby guy’s nature.

As Aitken, then Des Moir, a perpetually cheerful middle-aged guy, trooped in wet and damp and made their coffees and shook hands with Kibby, it seemed to Skinner that only he could see this dupli-citous streak in the new boy.

I’ll fucking well keep an eye on that cunt.

A volley of hailstones urgently rattled the large windows, which, despite their size, only at certain times of the day seemed to let in enough light. This was due to the proximity of taller buildings on the other side of the Royal Mile, that narrow thoroughfare which ran from Castle to Palace, a place where sovereign powers once sat, but now essentially just a large open-plan museum.

Skinner stood up to look out at the pedestrians below running for cover. A soaked man, his grey suit made black across the back and shoulders, face red with bombardment from hailstones, scurried into an arched close, peering out with impotent belligerence in the face of the weather’s assault. It was only when he plucked up the nerve to make the dash across the forecourt and his face came into sharper focus that Skinner recognised him as Bob Foy.

Delighted at his boss’s discomfort, Skinner sank into his chair.
As befitting his status, it had no armrests. There was a leather-wrapped football tankard on his desk, with a black-and-white Notts County FC crest, in which he kept pens and pencils. As the strip lighting above bounced off the paper on his desk and into his head, how he wished that it was full of refreshing lager.

Just one fucking pint tae get me going. That’s all I ask.

He thought about toughing it out till lunchtime, when perhaps Dougie Winchester upstairs might have similar needs. Winchester, stuck up in his garret, a small office-cum-broom-cupboard at the top of an old staircase, the struggling council piss artist that the non-job had been found for.

Dead wood, just waiting tae be chopped oot by some cunt ruthless enough to wield the axe. And he’ll be along soon, no doubt about that, chavy.

In his mind’s eye he could see Winchester’s ashen face, now almost neckless, and the dead, sunken eyes with the thinning hair swept across the balding pate, a display of vanity so ludicrous that it could only be contemplated by a clinically depressed old fucker. Skinner recalled a particularly dismal conversation he’d had in the pub with him, one Friday after work. — Of course, as ye git aulder, sex becomes less important, Winchester had contended. Skinner looked at him in his shiny suit, reckoning that he was stating the obvious. — Och aye, ye still like the
idea
ay sex, but it becomes too much faffin aboot. Too uncomfortable and sweaty, Danny son. A nice wank, or a blow job fae a tasty wee hoor, och aye, that’s bliss. But see aw this tryin tae satisfy a woman; too much ay a burden, too uncomfortable. Ma second wife couldnae get enough. Aw they friction burns on the welt, scrotum and inside ay the thighs. Nae use. Nae use at aw.

In his hard office chair, Danny Skinner squirmed, chilling as he tried to think of how many times he and Kay had made love last weekend. Only once, a violently sweaty hangover-cure fuck on Saturday morning, devoid of any sensuality. No, there was also a drunken one on Saturday night he could scarcely recall.

She should be having sex with an athlete, not a fucking jakey . . .