Made sound financial sense, when you thought about it.
She let go of her boobs and gave the train a wave, throwing in a jiggle for good measure. ‘FIRST TASTE’S FREE!’ Smile, pout, pose. Lowering her voice, even though there’s no wayanyone would’ve heard over the huge diesel engines. ‘The rest you have topayfor.’
Kyle made a revoltinghl-urking noise. ‘Think I’m gonna hurl...’
‘It’s calledadvertising, Kyle. Jesus you’re such a...’
Wait a minute – what he’d been pointing at: it was a man.
Carol covered her breasts again, sharpish. Taking a slippery step backwards, her heel catching between two stones and sending her crashing down on her backside in the river. Sending up an explosion of spray that glittered and sparkled in the sun.
Sitting there, holding her boobs, staring at the man.
But he wasn’t staring back, because he was facedown in the water. His legs were stranded on the bank, but his top half floated – left arm stretched out towards the sea, right folded under his face. Dressed all in black, like a ninja or something.
The back of his head was one bigrawwound, hair sticky with dark-crimson blood around the edges of a great big dip. About the size of a soup bowl. With flashes of pink and grey poking through the soggy mess.
Probably startled by the splash, one of the seagulls got its courage back, swooping down to land on the body’s back, right between the shoulder blades. Cocking its head as it eyed up the chunks of gore.
Then that big yellow beak stabbed forward and helped itself to a tasty, glistening treat.
At which point Kyle was loudly and prodigiously sick.
‘Oh, well that’s justgreat.’ Carol glowered at the seagull as it went in for another beakful. ‘Knew we should’ve gone down the bloody beach.’
19
In Dante’sDivine Comedy, there are nine circles of Hell.
The first is Limbo: home to people who aren’t Christians, so they can’t get into Heaven, but weren’t dicks when they were alive so can’t be punished in Hell. Level Two is for the lustful. Three is stuffed full of gluttons. Four is where the avaricious are held to account. Five is all the angry sods. Six: heretics. Seven seethes with violent bastards – though Dante is a bit of a wanker when it comes to defining what ‘violence’ actually means. Eight is slick with fraudsters. And the ninth circle is a frozen lake, where traitors spend eternity with only their heads poking out of the ice...
But what Dantedidn’tknow was that if you took a dirty big drill, and bored your way through the ice, down, down, down a thousand feet or more, you would eventually come to a small stuffy cavern, where lies the tenth andfinalcircle of Hell. Also known as the MAPPA meeting on this Saturday’s upcoming protest march.
Oh, it might’ve looked a lot like the room where Logan and Pine and Rutherford and Sweeny had grimaced their way through a post-press-conference debrief, but it was full of demons, all hell-bent on making Logan’s afterlife a sodding misery.
One of them was on his feet now – a baldy prick in black-rimmed glasses, with ‘KEITHLONGFELLOW~ABERDEENCITYCOUNCILLIAISONMANAGEMENTSERVICES’ on his name badge – wanging on about key performance indicators and stakeholder engagement.
Every seat in the place was packed with some other poor sod, in their shirtsleeves and lanyards, listening to Keith drone on.
Like Jessica, from the Road Department – frizzy-haired with a splodge of ketchup on her top – who kept trying to say something, but Keith was in full monologue-mode with no intention of ceding the floor to anyone.
So they all sat there, wilting in the stale meeting-room air, with their mugs of nasty coffee and plates of disappointing biscuits.
To start with, Logan had taken down everyone’s names and which department they represented: Fire, Ambulance, Public Transport, Traffic Wardens, Licensed Premises, Waste & Recycling, the business community, etc. etc. etc...Full of good intentions – planning to make detailed notes on their various flipchart and PowerPoint presentations.
But it’d been nearly an hour and a half now and he’d already started doodling skulls and kittens on his conference notepad, as Keith tried to break the World Record for Most Boring Arsehole In The World.
There weren’t even any biscuits left.
No decent ones, anyway.
Chocolate bourbons.
Which looked more like dog biscuits than people ones. Ironic, given that chocolate was poisonous to dogs and—
Logan’s phoneding-buzzed, skittering slightly on the tabletop as the caller ID flashed up: ‘IT’STUFTYTIME!’
It wasn’t enough to distract Keith, though. ‘...and we have tomaintainthat draw factor long after all these protestors have gone away. We should be embracing this as anopportunitytoshowcase Aberdeen as a destination not just for protest, but forfine dining, andculture, andrecreational activities...’