One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night by Christopher Brookmyre Page B

violence kept up its reliable back‐
beat, but the omnipresent fear of an occasional doing was sweeties compared to the lingering agony of fancying everything before your eyes and being too ugly, awkward, shy, spotty, uncool and thoroughly terrified to do anything about it. Ms PC in the audience would have had nothing to fear from the young Matthew’s anguished and fevered libido. The greatest fantasists are often the greatest realists, and at that stage even a kiss was strainmg the plausible limits of his aspirations.
    He used to be such a sweet thing …
    Matt slowly circumnavigated the place: walkways, doorways, playgrounds, grass bankings, kitchen bins, railings, stairs, windows. The initial standard impression of everything being smaller than he remembered wore off as each square foot yielded up a long‐
stored recollection. To anyone else the walls might look like plain brickwork, but in Matt’s eyes they were lined with brass plaques:
    On this spot, during some miserable, drookit lunchbreak in Autumn 1981, Paul Duff stuck the heid on Ally McQuade, having demanded satisfaction over a matter of honour (slagging his Clark’s Commandoes once too often).
    Davie Murdoch battered Danny Greig on this banking, Spring 1980.
    Local legend recording that in this passageway, on the night of the 1982 Christmas disco, Maggie Currer did famously allow Barry Cassidy to get three fingers up her, giving rise to a tediously oft‐
repeated gag about Kit‐
Kats.
    Davie Murdoch burst Jai Lynch’s nose in this doorway, Winter 1981.
    Eddie Milton knocked himself unconscious against this pillar playing tig, Winter 1979, he remaining officially still ‘het’ to this day.
    Davie Murdoch leathered Jai Lynch’s big brother Mick beside this fence, Winter 1981.
    Ally McQuade spewed his ring next to this drainpipe after pochling a suspect scone from the Home Economics department, Spring 1980.
    Davie Murdoch leathered Mick Lynch’s two mates, also beside this fence, same day as above, Winter 1981.
    Davie Murdoch smacked Tommy Milligan’s face against this kitchen bin, Autumn 1980.
    Davie Murdoch punched Allan Crossland down these stairs, Spring 1982.
    Davie Murdoch burst Mathew Black’s nose and mouth against this banister, Winter 1981.
    And so on. Until:
    Davie Murdoch threw Deek Patterson out of this second‐
floor window, for resons never disclosed by either party.
    That one would have a more specific date, ingrained as it was on everyone’s memories: Saturday, March 24 th , 1984. It was the last day Davie Murdoch set foot inside St Michael’s, and the last day Deek Patterson set foot at all without someone else’s assistance, confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life.
    Davie Murdoch. Or Davie Fuckin’ Murdoch, as it probably read on the bastard’s birth certificate. Sociopath, psychopath, whatever you like. Matt had always preferred bampot. Not
a
bampot but
the
bampot; the absolute quintessence of bampottery. The more technical diagnostic terms had always seemed too sophisticated for describing a creature who was, uncomplicatedly, a violence‐
dispenser: an inexhaustible fount of rage, like some abominable force of nature striking out arbitrarily and impersonally at anything in its path. There was no cause and effect with Davie, no way of predicting what would set him off; and consequently no course of action guaranteed to keep you safe. As far as appeasement went, from Matt’s memory, copious bleeding usually did the trick.
    The familiar comedian’s story, ‘I was a little guy at school so I developed the ability to make the bigger guys laugh as a form of self‐
defence’, didn’t really apply either, not in a part of the world where the phrase ‘You ’hink you’re a smart cunt, daen’t ye?’ carried such portent. When Matt had his exterior respiratory outlets rearranged through their rapid application to a sturdy length of aluminium, it was because he had raised his own profile sufficiently to be singled out