Sentence The Thirtyseventh
Roxy and Jinty – as much for natural politesse as their own concepts of duty – waited until DS Brevity, their cousin Isa (his WPC), and the Forensics Team had secured the oubliette and it's connecting passages and the Medical Examiner had confirmed that the young man below was dead and authorised the Ambulance Crew to remove his body to the Mortuary; they then made their way to The Baillie Nicol Jarvie pub, one of the city's famous historical drinking places, this one named after a notorious figure – councillor and city officer by day, burglar and worse by night – there they were joined by Trixie, Leigh and Elvira and all four cousins, needing to catch up with each other's news but also not desiring to show the world that they were more deeply involved than merely casual bystanders who happen upon something which takes their attention from their responsibilities, adopted an air of masterful inactivity, abandoning their appointments and routine duties for the rest of the day, while seeming to disinterested drinkers that they were just a party of wee office lassies intent on deferring a return to their humdrum employment; still cowed by shock, Roxy and Jinty could not stop talking about what they had discovered, but, though they tried to keep their voices low and contained within the furthest booth from the door, they were not so much overheard as actively listened to by an unlikely couple of barflies: the man was in his late 50s, wearing the formal black jacket and waistcoat, pinstriped trousers, collar and cravat of an Advocate; the woman – well, little more than a slip of a girl – could have been his daughter as easily as a streetwalker, or so her dress
appeared to suggest – it was scanty in the extreme, but just (barely) within the relaxed dress-code of the establishment, which is to say it drew many glances, but in it's way, this merely served to make her invisible – for who would suspect that a girl of this cut was in fact a criminal mastermind, whose underworld network, with it's fingers in many corrupt pies, from drugs, to people-trafficking, luxury car boosting to order and the supply of expensive (and cultured) pearls at the very top of the sex trade as escorts to princes, politicians and oligarchs at the most exclusive Royal Mile hotels, all the way to corner dealers and hookers on the meanest streets, turning tricks in exchange for their next fix and with a working-life-expectancy reckoned in months, rather than years; she had specialists able to undertake anything a client required – you need a love or business rival disappeared, a million-pound burglary haul fenced, want telephone's tapped, or bribes offered to policemen, secrets bought from civil servants, celebrities' maids, or rent boys who possess the real names of their clients, filched from pockets or wallets during assignations in certain public toilets; if you've got dirty work needing done, the only question was 'how much can you pay?' and if the price was right, you had a deal with one of the many go-betweens representing the interests of Jeannie Deans – was that her real name, you ask – why bother, for she had another twenty in Scotland alone and both she and her affairs were like a series of Chinese Boxes: a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; many may guess at her identity, her appearance, her location or her presence, but none who speak of her know a thing and any of those who knew and spoke are already inside concrete bridges over the City Bypass, or have been fed to pig or fish farms the length of Scotland long since; 'tis said that the Scotia Triangle (with it's Southern base a line from Berwick to Stranraer and it's apex John-o'Groats) and in the Hebrides, Orkney and Shetland Isles many opportunities for providing quiet locations for arrivals and departures, for business opportunities, for money changing hands without any need to trouble the Revenue, are controlled by Jeannie Deans, and a safe haven exists for those who wish to fade from view for a time, or for ever – oh yes, rest assured that Jeannie deans held Scotland in the palm of the same small, soft, white hand, with scarlet pearlised nails, which presently held an e-cigarette close to her ear, quietly relaying to her – through the rousing beat of a callithumping ceilidh band (The Tattie-Howkers, no less) entertaining a wedding party in the upstairs room, eternized the name of Scott's original Jeannie Deans with rollicking choruses of The Heart of Midlothian Reel, much to the amusement of the other lady of that name in the bar below – the conversation her cigarette's directional microphone collected from the booth which enclosed and sheltered the five cousins, and all the while Jeannie Deans salso held an animated discussion with her advocate on the justice of a hefty fine and custodial sentence expected to be given to her next morning, for soliciting a press photographer outside the First Minister's official residence – a fictional offence, but one which kept a few nearby drinkers captivated by it's wealth of detail, which could (and no doubt will) appear in the next morning's red-tops, for several stringers were in the rapt audience – oh, Jeannie thought that it would be a hoot to see Ginger Goldfish's face in the morning, as she added more embellishments to her narrative, that had now reached the point at which, she said, the front door opened and a man she recognised from TV invited her in; and as she paused, for dramatic effect, registering with barely a flicker of her eyes that the attention of every man within fifteen feet of her was hanging on her words, through the glass of the street door, she saw a gaunt face appear, the eyes of Angus Og locked on hers and she knew that he was about to enter the bar, so gave just the briefest negative shake of her head and he was gone!
Roxy and Jinty – as much for natural politesse as their own concepts of duty – waited until DS Brevity, their cousin Isa (his WPC), and the Forensics Team had secured the oubliette and it's connecting passages and the Medical Examiner had confirmed that the young man below was dead and authorised the Ambulance Crew to remove his body to the Mortuary; they then made their way to The Baillie Nicol Jarvie pub, one of the city's famous historical drinking places, this one named after a notorious figure – councillor and city officer by day, burglar and worse by night – there they were joined by Trixie, Leigh and Elvira and all four cousins, needing to catch up with each other's news but also not desiring to show the world that they were more deeply involved than merely casual bystanders who happen upon something which takes their attention from their responsibilities, adopted an air of masterful inactivity, abandoning their appointments and routine duties for the rest of the day, while seeming to disinterested drinkers that they were just a party of wee office lassies intent on deferring a return to their humdrum employment; still cowed by shock, Roxy and Jinty could not stop talking about what they had discovered, but, though they tried to keep their voices low and contained within the furthest booth from the door, they were not so much overheard as actively listened to by an unlikely couple of barflies: the man was in his late 50s, wearing the formal black jacket and waistcoat, pinstriped trousers, collar and cravat of an Advocate; the woman – well, little more than a slip of a girl – could have been his daughter as easily as a streetwalker, or so her dress
appeared to suggest – it was scanty in the extreme, but just (barely) within the relaxed dress-code of the establishment, which is to say it drew many glances, but in it's way, this merely served to make her invisible – for who would suspect that a girl of this cut was in fact a criminal mastermind, whose underworld network, with it's fingers in many corrupt pies, from drugs, to people-trafficking, luxury car boosting to order and the supply of expensive (and cultured) pearls at the very top of the sex trade as escorts to princes, politicians and oligarchs at the most exclusive Royal Mile hotels, all the way to corner dealers and hookers on the meanest streets, turning tricks in exchange for their next fix and with a working-life-expectancy reckoned in months, rather than years; she had specialists able to undertake anything a client required – you need a love or business rival disappeared, a million-pound burglary haul fenced, want telephone's tapped, or bribes offered to policemen, secrets bought from civil servants, celebrities' maids, or rent boys who possess the real names of their clients, filched from pockets or wallets during assignations in certain public toilets; if you've got dirty work needing done, the only question was 'how much can you pay?' and if the price was right, you had a deal with one of the many go-betweens representing the interests of Jeannie Deans – was that her real name, you ask – why bother, for she had another twenty in Scotland alone and both she and her affairs were like a series of Chinese Boxes: a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; many may guess at her identity, her appearance, her location or her presence, but none who speak of her know a thing and any of those who knew and spoke are already inside concrete bridges over the City Bypass, or have been fed to pig or fish farms the length of Scotland long since; 'tis said that the Scotia Triangle (with it's Southern base a line from Berwick to Stranraer and it's apex John-o'Groats) and in the Hebrides, Orkney and Shetland Isles many opportunities for providing quiet locations for arrivals and departures, for business opportunities, for money changing hands without any need to trouble the Revenue, are controlled by Jeannie Deans, and a safe haven exists for those who wish to fade from view for a time, or for ever – oh yes, rest assured that Jeannie deans held Scotland in the palm of the same small, soft, white hand, with scarlet pearlised nails, which presently held an e-cigarette close to her ear, quietly relaying to her – through the rousing beat of a callithumping ceilidh band (The Tattie-Howkers, no less) entertaining a wedding party in the upstairs room, eternized the name of Scott's original Jeannie Deans with rollicking choruses of The Heart of Midlothian Reel, much to the amusement of the other lady of that name in the bar below – the conversation her cigarette's directional microphone collected from the booth which enclosed and sheltered the five cousins, and all the while Jeannie Deans salso held an animated discussion with her advocate on the justice of a hefty fine and custodial sentence expected to be given to her next morning, for soliciting a press photographer outside the First Minister's official residence – a fictional offence, but one which kept a few nearby drinkers captivated by it's wealth of detail, which could (and no doubt will) appear in the next morning's red-tops, for several stringers were in the rapt audience – oh, Jeannie thought that it would be a hoot to see Ginger Goldfish's face in the morning, as she added more embellishments to her narrative, that had now reached the point at which, she said, the front door opened and a man she recognised from TV invited her in; and as she paused, for dramatic effect, registering with barely a flicker of her eyes that the attention of every man within fifteen feet of her was hanging on her words, through the glass of the street door, she saw a gaunt face appear, the eyes of Angus Og locked on hers and she knew that he was about to enter the bar, so gave just the briefest negative shake of her head and he was gone!
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