Ugly Puggly 96

There was a glow from the kitchen. Molly had left the lights on. She was sitting with her back to me at the table playing Candy Crush. I wondered if she’d been to bed. ‘Lazy Bones,’ she muttered, her eyes flickering and following on-screen colours.

‘Aye,’ I admitted stretching and yawning. ‘I’d the best sleep, ever.’

‘Yer lucky.’ She swivelled on the chair. Her face was blotchy, the colour of peeling distemper and she looked knackered. ‘The police phoned. They want yeh tae go up tae the station.’

‘Well, they can whistle. I’m no goin.’ I scratched my bollocks while glancing out the window to check if it was still raining. ‘The playboy no up?’

‘Nah, but he’s young.’

‘Well, why don’t you stick on the washin machine or go and hoover under his bed? The way you used tae when the kids were wee?’

Grasping the horizontal bar of the chair, she eased herself into a standing position. ‘Chance would be a fine thing. I used to keep this place spotless.’ She made a face. ‘My knees.’

‘Och, yer fine.’ I gave her a quick cuddle before she went into the kitchen. ‘But I’ll need tae get sorted before wee Jim turns up. He’ll probably huv phoned me about 1000 times already. The police have probably turned my phone aff and buried it in lead. Hopefully, they’ll arrest him for being a nuisance caller.’

She hauled the frying pan from the cabinet under the sink. ‘That wouldnae stop im.’

‘But it might slow im doon.’

‘Yeh dae need tae go up and see them.’

‘Aye,’ I admitted. ‘Let go and let god. I’ll take wee Jim up wae us. That wae they’ll dare no keep me long. Cause they’d need tae keep him tae.’

A packet of six eggs sat unopened on the work surface. She opened and banged shut cupboard doors and drawers. ‘My spatula,’ she told me, even though I hadn’t asked what she was searching for. ‘Hink I’ve got dementia.’

‘You and me, both.’  

When I went to pick wee Jim up in the Bongo, he told me was he’d phoned me and made it sound like an accusation. He must have thought I was daft, the way I stood laughing at him. He reluctantly agreed to come up to the police station with me, before we went to a meeting in Partick. But I had to blackmail him, saying I wouldn’t go to his meeting, unless he came to mine.

A police wagon was parked near the entrance.  But it left a single lane for us to take the Bongo around the side and back of the station. I pointed at the sign, which read, FREE PUBLIC PARKING.

‘Lotta shite,’ wee Jim huffed. ‘They want yeh tae pay tae get arrested noo?’

‘Cheers mate.’ I turned the engine off and the harmony on the radio died mid-note.

‘No, I don’t mean you,’ he tried to reassure me, which made me feel more apprehensive.

Neither of us wanted to go in. ‘I wonder whit they mean by private parking? Maybe yev got tae bring yer own bit of pavement and tarmac on the back of a lorry, with yer own traffic light and cones, tae piss drivers aff.’

‘I’m auld enough to member when you could park anywhere, as long as yeh hud a car and it wisnae underwater.’

We watched a police car turning sharply from Montrose Street into the car park, but it went the other way, probably where there was private parking.

I put my hand on the handle of the door and sighed. ‘I member when you could park yer car on a set of bricks. And jist leave it—forever—and whoever thought of parking fines must have been a genius, cause it was like chargin yeh tae breath fresh air.’

Wee Jim wheezed as he got out of the passenger side and slammed the door behind him. He trailed beside me as we made our way to the entrance. He muttered, ‘Aye, yed need tae be daft in the right way tae hink about hings like that.’

He hung back when I went to the front desk. It was a young girl, I don’t know if she was a rookie cop doing work experience, but she seemed too nice to be in the police force. I gave her my details. She asked me to wait.

Wee Jim sat huddled into his coat, his foot tapping. He wanted to be away as quickly as me. I sat beside him. Across from us on an L-shaped plastic bench designed for discomfort, a young guy with a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes tapped into his phone. He kept raising his head and looking at the door. I realised it was a young girl from strands of blonde hair rather than a boy.

‘No be long,’ I whispered out of the side of my mouth to wee Jim.

‘Hope no,’ he sniffed. ‘Wouldnae want tae miss a meetin.’

‘Yeh been waitin long?’ I asked the young girl in a cheery voice.

She looked at the door, then the desk and back at me, while she decided what the answer would be. ‘No really.’

I nudged wee Jim.

‘Whit?’

‘We’ll no be long.’ But he wasn’t placated.

A door opened and the detective in the black tie came out. He still carried a smile from his conversation with the young, pretty cop on the front desk. When he saw us, he frowned and shouted my name as if calling me to stand to attention. Waving the papers in his hands to come and follow him into the interview rooms in the back.

I stood and nudged wee Jim with my foot. ‘You comin?’

‘Nah,’ he replied. ‘I’ll stay here.’

I didn’t have time to argue with him. I trotted behind the detective’s wide shoulders as he locked the door and followed him down the corridor. His partner was already sitting in the interview room, playing with a plastic cup. He straightened up as we came in. My phone was sitting on the table.  

I sat across from him and picked up my phone. Pushed the button and the screen lit up my chin. ‘Well, did yeh find im?’

‘Sure you don’t want your fancy-dan lawyer?’ replied the cop with the dark brown suit.

I’d played this game before. ‘Only if yer plannin tae beat me up, again. Ur yeh?’

His jerked forward, and he motioned as if he was going to hit me. Instinctively, I fell back into the backrest of the chair, almost knocking it over. My arm and hands up to block him. My legs were shaking when I stood up. But I kept my voice steady. ‘Well, thanks for the entertainment.’

‘Sit down,’ his partner scratched and picked plaque from his front teeth with his fingernail. He pointed to the seat.

I eased myself back into the seat.

He looked for somewhere to wipe the gunk on his nail and wiped it under the desk. ‘Interesting, according to our records, the missing person phoned you from the same location that you already were. Clydebank Crematorium. Can you explain that?’

I thought about it and couldn’t work it out. ‘Nah,’ I admitted. ‘So was he up there?’

They exchanged a glance and shook their heads as the same time. He sniffed the tip of his finger. ‘You know more than you’re letting on.’

‘I’m actually also handsomer than I look. And yev obviously done a crime-fighting- correspondence course sponsored by Scooby Doo.’

‘What were you doing up the Crematorium that time of night, anyway?’ his partner asked in a gruff voice.

I shrugged. ‘Visitin my mum, I miss er. Always brings a tear tae my eye.’ I pushed back the chair and got up to leave, but when I pulled at the door, it bounced off my face.