Scudbook

‘Of course it’s fucking fixed. How else do you think bookies make money?’ Mhairi said to the seething punter in front of her.

‘Och fuck off ya daft wee cow,’ the old guy said to her, crumpling his betting slip into a wee ball and flinging at her. The hot favourite in the 3:30 at Kempton had come dead last despite being tipped to win by many of the self-proclaimed tipsters who frequented the bookies.

‘This guy giving you grief, hen?’ The branch manager, Andrea, asked Mhairi. A formidable woman, was Andrea. Feared by the punters due to her no-nonsense approach to dealing with them when they gave her staff any bit of cheek.

‘Naw, naw. Am just leaving,’ said the old guy. He left along with his two cronies who had been emptying their pockets into the roulette machine after Andrea eyeballed them as well. Andrea and Mhairi were now the only people in the bookies.

‘Right Mhairi, hen, I need to ask you something,’ said Andrea, ‘it’s about that magazine that’s appeared in the staff room.”

‘Wit magazine?’ said Mhairi.

‘The wan on the staff room table,’ Andrea looked around and lowered her voice, ‘the dirty wan.’

The magazine had appeared seemingly overnight. Andrea was sure it hadn’t been there when she closed up the night before and yet, that morning, there it was it all its glory. Naked men and women cavorted on the front of it. Their faces contorted into bizarre, wide-eyed expressions. Their hands gripped an assortment of phallic objects. The sheer obscenity of the magazine was heightened by the fact it was placed casually next to Malcolm’s copy of ‘Angler’s Weekly’.

Of course Mhairi had seen it. It was the first thing she’d seen when she walked into the staff room before she started her shift. Naturally she’d taken a picture of the lewd magazine and shared it on twitter. Can’t believe the creeps I work with, she’d written as the caption. Her fellow part-time colleague, Shaun, commented, along with several laughing face emojis, Nae danger. I start at 5, make sure it’s still there when I get in, I want a swatch. Bet it’s Malcolm’s hahahah.

‘I’m asking everybody, is it yours?’ Andrea asked Mhairi.

‘Course it’s no! You think I’m gonnae be sitting on my tea break reading a porno?’ Mhairi said.

‘Och a knew it widnae have been you, hen,’ Andrea said, ‘am just making sure. If nobody admits it’s theirs, I’ll need to get the area manager involved. It’s bloody disgusting. A cannae have people bringing that kind of . . . vulgarity into ma shop.’

When Shaun arrived later to start his shift, the magazine was still on the staff room table. Nobody had touched it for fear it may well have been ‘contaminated,’ as Mhairi had put it. Shaun had no such hesitation however. He picked it up and laughed as he flicked through the glossy pages.

‘Fuckin hell, man,’ he said, ‘this is some proper hardcore shit.’ Shaun’s smile evaporated as he got near the middle.

Staring back at him was his own face.

There he was, smiling seductively, standing against a backdrop of football fixtures. Naked from the waist up. A small blue bookie pen tucked behind his ear.

Open-mouthed he turned the page. He was now unbuckling his belt as he leaned back against the Deal or No Deal machine. Shaun’s hands were shaking so much he dropped the magazine. It landed facedown with a soft slapping noise. Mhairi watched the colour drain from Shaun’s face.

‘It’s no that bad, surely?’ she said, ‘bet you’ve seen a lot worse.’

‘There’s p-p-pictures of me in there,’ Shaun stuttered.

Mhairi picked up the magazine. She thought it looked a bit thicker than it was a few hours ago.

‘No fuckin way. I need to see these,’ she said. Mhairi erupted with laughter as she opened the magazine to find Shaun, spread across the centre pages, lying naked on the floor with only a handful of betting slips protecting his modesty.

Shaun couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He had no recollection of the pictures of him being taken and no idea how they could have ended up in a porn magazine.

‘Please don’t tell anybody, Mhairi. I don’t know how they’ve done this. It must be photoshop or something, I don’t know,’ he said. Mhairi turned the page to see Shaun shoving a fistful of bookie pens up his arse.

‘Hmmm they look quite real to me,’ Mhairi said, exploding with laughter again as she saw Shaun’s rectum. ‘I won’t tell anybody, obviously, but you’re telling me these pictures have just appeared magically in this magazine?’

‘Fuck knows how this has happened but I want rid of it. Imagine if ma pals seen this. Imagine if my da seen it!’ Shaun was shaking now. His face had turned from chalk-white to a strange grey colour. He was freaking out big time.

‘Right, calm doon,’ said Mhairi. ‘We’ll bin it then I’ll tell Andrea I’ve flung it out cause it was giving me the boak. Nobody will ever know.’

‘Bin it?’ said Shaun, ‘I want the whole fucking hing shredded and set it on fire and then I want the fucking shredder burned’.

Mhairi had a quick flick through the rest of the magazine. She thought she’d caught a glimpse of her distinctive blunt fringe and panicked. She went to look for any pictures of herself but decided not to. After Shaun ripped out the pages featuring him (all fourteen of them) and stuffed them into his pockets, the two of them went out the back of the shop. They took the two small metal bins from the staff room. They placed the pictures of Shaun in one and the rest of the magazine in the other. Shaun started a fire in each of the bins. His mysterious homoerotic photoshoot was gone forever.

Or so he thought.

The next morning the magazine was back, completely intact, on the table in the staff room.

Andrea asked Malcolm about the magazine as the two of them opened up the shop that morning.

‘Surely a don’t look like the kinda guy that reads porn mags, do a?’ asked Malcolm, standing there in his stain-covered jacket and milk bottle specs. Andrea looked him up and down.

’Em . . . no, course not, Malcolm. It’s just that it must belong to someone who works here and I’ve already asked Mhairi and Shaun said it’s not his either. . .’ said Andrea. Silence filled the void between them. Malcolm felt hurt by the accusation that he was the owner of the filth in question. He picked up the magazine.

‘I can assure ye, Andrea, that this isnae mine,’ Malcolm said, picking up and flinging the magazine towards the bin. It missed and landed on the floor, flopping open to the middle pages.

The two of them stared in horror at the sheer amount of pasty white Malcolm flesh that was now on show before them. He lay on his stomach on the navy blue carpet of the shop floor, wearing only his threadbare Gola boxers. He was looking back over his shoulder at the camera seductively as he filled in a football coupon. The glossiness of the magazine somehow accentuating his peely-walliness. There was a column of text next to the picture of Malcolm. It was an interview.

Malcolm scrambled over and picked the magazine up. He was shaking. Andrea was speechless.

‘How?’ was the only word Malcolm could force his mouth to make. Malcolm read the introduction of his interview:

Malcolm Dempsey, everyone’s favourite bookie, on life, love and being a virgin in his forties. ‘Am just savin masel for the right wummin; Am no ready to take a gamble oan love just yet…’

Andrea snatched the magazine out of Malcolm’s trembling, sweaty hands. She licked her index finger and turned the pages. She was mortified for Malcolm. He tried to grab the magazine back off her but she deftly moved aside and kept it out of his reach.

‘Please, Andrea. Don’t tell anybody. For the love of God don’t show anybody,’ he said.

‘I think this clears up who the magazine belongs to, eh Malcolm?’ Andrea said.

‘Look, I don’t know where that hing came fae or how it’s got pictures ae me in it.’

‘I’ll make you a deal. I won’t tell anyone about your wee photoshoot in here,’ Andrea waved the magazine about in front of Malcolm’s face, ‘or your . . . secret, and in return you can do me a couple of wee favours. Cannae say fairer than that, can we?’

Later that day, when Shaun arrived for his evening shift, Malcolm was scurrying around after Andrea. Making her tea, going to the shop for her and even doing some of her paperwork for her. Shaun watched with confusion as Malcolm catered to Andrea’s every whim. Malcolm was a proud man who wouldn’t lower himself to being a skivvy for someone, he had confided to Shaun, he detested.

‘Mate,’ Shaun said to Malcolm, pulling him aside as Andrea went to the toilet, ‘wits happening here?’

Malcolm let out a deep sigh.

‘If I tell ye, ye cannae tell anybody,’ said Malcom.

Shaun had an inkling about what Malcolm was about to say.

‘Mind that magazine?’ Malcolm said.

‘Was there pictures of you in it?’ said Shaun

‘How dae you know? Did she show you them?’ Malcolm nodded towards the toilet where Andrea was.

‘Naw,’ Shaun lowered his voice, ‘there was pictures of me in it as well. But me and Mhairi set it oan fire, how can it be back?’

‘Fuck knows, but Andrea’s keeping it so we better get it aff her then, eh?

Andrea had taken to keeping the magazine in the safe where only she had access to it. She hadn’t flicked through it in a while. She had no desire to see erotic pictures of any of her colleagues — especially Malcom. She would just keep using it to manipulate him until she grew bored, she decided. And she was already getting bored. There was only so many cups of Malcolm’s pathetic milky tea that she could drink.

A few weeks after the magazine had first appeared in the staff room, Andrea was sitting in the office herself one Wednesday night while Malcolm and Shaun served the steady flow of Champions League night punters. The two men had decided to wait until the right moment to steal the magazine so Malcolm could try and destroy it. Shaun said he wouldn’t be handling the magazine under any circumstances for fear that more pictures of him would appear in it. Andrea was fiddling with her set of keys, trying to attach the new shutter key, when Shaun shouted on her to come out and deal with an irate customer. She slammed the keys down on the desk and marched through to face the guy. As she explained to the raging punter that own goals didn’t count in first goal scorer bets, Malcolm took his chance and slipped through to the back office. He unlocked the safe, took out the magazine, locked the safe, placed the keys back silently on the desk and then stuffed the magazine into his rucksack in the staff room.

Andrea was too flustered from dealing with angry customers to notice the magazine was missing from the safe as she sorted out the cashing up that night. Malcolm got it home and sat in his bedroom leafing through it. The pictures of him were still there. He inspected the images with the magnifying glass he used for fixing his model trains. They didn’t look photoshopped or computer generated or anything. The pictures were definitely of him, he could tell by the big hairy mole on his arse. After quickly flicking through all the pictures of himself, he came across pictures of Andrea. She was dressed as a dominatrix and the pictures showed her whipping Malcolm as he crawled on all fours like a big sweaty dog. Malcolm giggled at the absurdity of the situation he found himself in. Here he was, in possession of a magazine filled with countless explicit images of him and his boss, pictures he was sure he would have remembered posing for, but didn’t. He came to the conclusion the magazine was part of some elaborate wind-up. On the very last page of the magazine was a full-page advertisement which, he thought, seemed to confirm his suspicions. It said:

Did you find this magazine in your home or place of work?

No idea how it got there?

Even more surprised by the fact there is pictures of you and your colleagues, friends, family etc. in it?

Call Frank on 07728326665

Malcolm took a picture of the magazine using his phone and sent it to Shaun. Well fucking phone the cunt then, was Shaun’s reply. Malcolm phoned the number from the advert. A robotic female voice greeted him after three rings.

‘Hello. You have reached Frank. If you have found a pornographic magazine in your home or place of work, please press one.’

Malcolm pulled the phone away from his ear and pressed one.

‘Thank you. If you would like to make a complaint about the magazine, please press one.’

Malcolm once again pulled the phone away from his ear but then decided he would wait to hear the other choices.

‘If you would like to order an extra copy of the magazine, please press two. If you would like to speak directly with Frank, please hang up immediately.’

‘Wit?’ Malcolm said out loud to no one in particular. He listened for further options. The tinny voice on the other end of the phone said nothing. Malcolm hit the END CALL button. As soon as he did this there was three quick knocks on his front door. ‘Surely no,’ he said out loud again. He went downstairs to answer it. He looked through the spy-hole. There stood a man who looked like the only name he could possibly have was Frank. He was the very embodiment of the name Frank; Short, sweaty and smoking a cigar. Malcolm opened the door. Frank looked him up and down and removed the cigar from his mouth, blowing smoke into Malcolm’s face.

‘S’appenin my man? Am Frank,’ he said as he breezed past Malcolm and sauntered through into the living room. Malcolm was stunned. He immediately phoned Shaun.

‘Mate the guy Frank from the advert has just turned up at my hoose,’ Malcolm whispered down the line, ‘get here pronto.’

‘Fuck fuck fuck. Right I’ll see if Mhari’ll give me a lift over. I’ll no be long,’ said Shaun.

‘Fucking hurry up, the cunt looks mental,’ Malcolm said, hanging up on Shaun.

Malcolm told Frank his two colleagues would be joining them. Frank said this was not a problem. Not a single word was exchanged while they waited on Shaun and Mhairi. Malcolm stared at Frank as he puffed on his cigar. The smoke hung low in the room. Malcolm admired Frank’s Adidas Samba trainers, he decided he would buy himself a pair after this carry on was over and done with. Frank reached into the pocket of his stonewash denim jacket and produced a comb which he dragged through his long greasy hair. He slicked his hair back and it contoured perfectly to the shape of his skull.

As Frank tucked the comb back in his pocket, Malcolm’s phone buzzed. Outside mate, the text from Shaun read.

‘Why not just chap the fucking door?’ Malcolm muttered under his breath. He opened the door and ushered Mhairi and Shaun into the living room to see Frank. Mhairi, Shaun and Malcolm stood in awkward silence. Frank looked them all up and down then gestured at Shaun with his cigar.

‘That’s some fuckin haircut, pal,’ Frank said. ‘Who done that? The cooncil?’

Shaun gingerly rubbed the back of his head. He always got the back and sides of his hair shaved in with a number zero and he was leaving the top to grow long. He was used to older guys in the bookies and down the pub giving him grief about his hair but this time the insult felt particularly cutting given that it came from the greaseball in the corner.

‘Am Frank, by the way. Yeez gonnae sit doon or wit?’ said Frank. The three of them sat opposite Frank on Malcolm’s flowery couch. Frank leaned forward in the armchair he was sitting in. ‘Right, am assuming yeez are having a bit a bother wi a porn magazine?’

Mhairi, Shaun and Malcolm nodded in unison.

‘Photies ae yersels appearing in it?’

They nodded once again.

‘Yeez want rid ae it?’

Another synchronized nod.

‘Fur fuck sake cin yeez no talk?’ Frank laughed.

‘We’re just a bit creeped oot to be honest,’ said Mhairi. ‘Like, it just turned up in the staff room wan morning.’

‘Understandable,’ Frank nodded. ‘It can be a bit troubling, a know that. A don’t like this line a work, but am here tae help. . As soon as ye touch the magazine, pictures ae ye will pop up in it. These magazines have got a habit a turning up in work-places where there’s a lack ae excitement or maybe where there’s a boss who’s being a bit ae a dick. Sometimes they just appear in hooses tae gie folk a wee scare. A mind wan appeared in this lesbian couple’s flat wi pictures ae wan ae them having a bit a . . . ye know. . . fun wi the other burd’s brother and they ended up having a barney cos ae it. Next hing ye know am at the door having to calm them doon and sort it oot.

‘Anyway, it’s easy enough to get rid ae these scudbooks,’ Frank nodded at Malcolm. ‘Take it you’ve got it here? Go and get it fur me please my man.’

Malcolm went up to his bedroom to fetch the magazine. Shaun and Mhairi sat staring at Frank as he slicked his hair back again. He put the comb, thick with matter which they assumed was hair gel, back into his pocket. Frank took a quick puff of his cigar and blew smoke rings which dissipated as they reached Mhairi and Shaun.

‘There ye go,’ Malcolm said, handing the magazine to Frank and sitting back down.

‘Right,’ said Frank getting to his feet, ‘first of all, have you tried burning the magazine?’

‘Aye,’ Shaun answered, ‘me and her set it on fire but it turned up back in the staff room the next day.’

Frank let out a soft chuckle.

‘I thought you would’ve been the wan,’ Frank said, ‘fair play, pal.’

‘Wit d’ye mean? Am heavy confused, man,’ said Shaun.

‘It’s just that to get rid of the magazine by burning it, the person setting it on fire has tae be a virgin,’ Frank laughed again, ‘ah was sure you would’ve been wi that haircut, haha!’

‘Fuck,’ Malcolm said. Frank looked at Malcolm and gave him a wink.

‘It’s you then?’ Frank opened the magazine to the page with Malcolm’s interview and held it up for everyone to see. ‘Aw aye, there he is! The virgin bookie! That’s a belter!’

Malcolm’s face turned beetroot red.

‘Ye don’t have to say anything, big chap. Here, just take this an dae the deed,’ Frank said, handing Malcolm his still-lit cigar.

Mhairi and Shaun watched as Malcolm touched the cigar to the corner of the magazine. The three of them turned away as it went up in a bright blue light. There was a loud bang and then . . . nothing. The magazine was gone, the cigar was gone — and so was Frank.

‘That was fucking metal,’ Shaun exclaimed, looking around the room for Frank.

‘You awrite?’ Mhairi said, rubbing Malcolm’s back.

‘Aye, hen, aye. Am fine. Look am gonnae get to my bed,’ Malcolm said.

‘Listen, we’re no gonnae tell anybody, Malcolm,’ Mhairi reassured him, ‘are we, Shaun?’

‘Naw, don’t be daft. Am no telling anycunt aboot anything that’s happened the night. Am sure ah must be tripping. Where did that cunt go?’ Shaun said.

‘I don’t know and I don’t really care either. I’ll see yeez in work the morra,’ said Malcolm

Malcolm showed his colleagues out to the front door without saying a word.

He went back through to the living room to turn off the lights. He felt totally drained after the evening’s events. Something on the table caught his eye. Lying there was a business card. He picked it up. It simply read: Frank.