CHAPTER ONE

"Christ on a bike, it bleeding well stinks in here! Which dirty bastard's gone and walked dog shit in? Come on, who is it?" Lennie had never been one to beat around the bush. He glared belligerently about the office, as if he could shame the culprit into owning up by the sheer force of his disapproval alone. Slattery bent to examine the soles of his battered grey slip-ons. He surfaced, red-faced, and spread his hands in surrender.

"It's me. Sorry," he said, sheepishly. "I'll go and sort it out now."

"Yeah, you better had do. You're a bleeding health hazard. And don't go traipsing it all over the place, either." Lennie scowled at him.

"Alright, alright. Keep your bleeding hair on. Its not like I'm deliberately trying to rub your nose in it. Jesus!"

Awkwardly, Slattery began to hop towards the kitchen on his one clean shoe. Seconds later, he tripped over a wastepaper bin and slammed his thigh into the corner of Mo's desk. As he bounced about, howling in agony, he managed to distribute more of the shit over the carpet, raising a chorus of tuts and frowns from his colleagues. "Oh, sod the lot of you. It's not like this is the first time this has ever happened to anyone, is it? Do you think I went out of my way to stomp on the biggest, freshest turd I could find, just so as I could share the experience with you bloody shower?" Sighing, he crouched down, slipped the soiled shoe off, and carried it gingerly towards the kitchen.

"And don't even think about doing it in there!" Lennie bellowed after him. "Some of us have got to eat their dinners in that kitchen. We don't want to get contaminated by the likes of you."

"Just piss off, you miserable old get," Slattery muttered under his breath. Wasn't starting the day off with a shitty shoe bad enough, without frigging Lennie, who was supposed to be his mate, having a go at him in front of that bunch of bastards? He grabbed a fork off the draining board and headed for the toilets. Making sure he was alone, he slipped into one of the cubicles and quickly started scraping the shit off his shoe and onto a paper towel, screwing his nose up at the stink of it.

Funny old stuff, dog shit, he mused. When he was a little lad, his mum had always sternly warned him against playing with it. It'll make you go blind, she used to say. Or was that cat shit? He couldn't remember. Still, it was a bloody daft thing to tell a kid. Like he was really going to go out for an afternoon's entertainment arsing around with various denominations of animal shit. It was weird, though, how it always used to go white after it had been out in the sun for a few days. For years and years he had truly believed that white dog shit was actually poodle shit. That was what a bunch of older boys had told him. Even now, he was still half inclined to believe it. After all, you never saw it any more, and when was the last time anyone saw a poodle? Trotting along in the wake of their olds biddies, carefully barbered, dainty little things, looking faintly ridiculous as they minced down the street in their pointless tartan vests. No, it was all dobermen and pit bulls and the like round his way nowadays: the sort of evil looking hellhounds that would eat poodles for breakfast, and do it just for a laugh. Slattery couldn't say he was losing a great deal of sleep over it. They were horrible, yappy, piss poor excuses for proper dogs at the best of times, always puking their guts up over the chocolates and sweets that the biddies force-fed them.

Oddly enough though, Slattery had never noticed any white dog vomit. Maybe there was something in the poodles' stomach, some special chemical process that extracted the colour from the shit. He'd bet good money that they still had white dog shit in places like Southport and Lytham St Annes, places where pensioners flocked in their droves to clutter up the seafront in their declining years, and sensing safety in numbers, ruled the roost with a rod of iron, making sure that archaic customs, including compulsory poodle ownership, were preserved for posterity. And in any case, the other theory, the one about the sun-dried dog shit, didn't hold any water either. This bleeding place was never sunny for long enough to bake dog shit white.

Slattery like watching dogs taking a dump. He could always tell when it was about to happen. The dog would get a frantic and panicky look on its face as it raced around trying to find a suitable spot to shed its load, preferably something soft like a grass verge or a well-tended flowerbed. He had even once seen a dog neatly and precisely lay down its burden on a tiny thatch of greenery growing out of a pothole in the tarmac. Yes, dogs were very particular. If you studied the situation properly, though, you'd notice that they always looked as if they were trying to pretend that they weren't actually doing the deed, even as their hind legs shivered and their backs arched. They would glance round half defiantly, half nonchalantly, as if they were simply stopping to admire the view, and bollocks to you if you implied otherwise. In fact, they could seriously take the hump if they caught you staring at them, but if you were a bit circumspect, you would always catch them at it. There they were, with that comical doggy look on their faces, as if they were trying to whistle a tune, something light and melodic, a bit of Cliff Richard or Gene Pitney. Of course, dogs couldn't really whistle, or at least none of the ones Slattery had come across, but the concept had definite appeal. It could be a great act round the clubs: "Slattery and his Amazing Whistling Dog." He doubted any bugger would give it a chance, though. After all, who in their right mind would pay good money to watch a dog taking a dump as they supped their pints, no matter how many tunes it knew? And come to think of it, what sort of creeps got their rocks off watching dogs do their business, anyway? Slattery paused for a moment to consider where that left him. No, he reassured himself, he was different. There was nothing remotely prurient or kinky about it: it was simply a reflection of his healthy curiosity about whys and wherefores of the natural world.

Maybe the act could be made to work at some of the more arty places. That shower were up for anything, the dodgier the better. It wouldn't do, though. For a start off, he'd have to hang around all night with frigging students, and that would do his head right in. And anyway, there'd be too much messing around: he'd have to have his own portable clump of grass for the dog to shit on, a pooper-scooper and a decent supply of sturdy, resealable plastic bags. There was no way the club owners would want to involve themselves with the business end, so as to speak, of the situation. Slattery would just have to deal with the disposal arrangements himself. He could just picture it, driving round and round town in his beat up old Mazda, with a bag of freshly laid dog turd on the passenger seat, looking in vain for a suitable spot to heave it out of the window. Knowing his luck, the coppers would be bound to pull him over, and how would he explain that one away? "Don't worry officer. I'm a night club entertainer and this is just part of my act." Before he knew it, he'd be up before the beak on some sort of vice charge- he shuddered to imagine what- and his name would be all over the papers. His missus would blow a gasket, he'd have a fair amount of explaining to do at work and he'd never be able to show his face in his local again. And as if that wasn't bad enough, the problem still remained of how he would go about finding a dog that could whistle, let alone one blessed with a broad repertoire of easy listening classics. No, it wasn't worth the aggro. It might be another brilliant idea down the pan, but it was best to leave the entertainment business to the professionals.

"I assume we can expect you back in the office at some point?" Slattery started. He hadn't heard the assistant manager, Andy Grimes, sneaking up behind him. Grimey was a weasel of a man, not yet thirty but already ancient and ageless, with a permanently pinched look about him, frown lines creasing his papery, balding head. Peering round the cubicle door at Slattery, the pale eyes behind his horn rimmed specs signalled disappointment, as if he'd been half-hoping to catch Slattery in mid-wank. "Daydreaming again, were we?"

Slattery scowled. "I don't know who this 'we' is you keep banging on about. You must be getting yourself mixed up with someone people actually like. I'll be back through when I'm good and ready.  I've got to finish dealing with this." He waved the encrusted fork, at Grimey, who took an involuntary backwards step. "You don't need to hold my hand. Not unless you want to help me get the rest of this shit off my shoe."

"There's no need to take that tone. All I want is to see you sat at your desk and actually doing what you're paid for, for once in your life." Grimey tapped his watch. "Two minutes." Without a further word, he spun on his heel and marched out of the toilets. Slattery sighed. The poor bugger was completely deluded. He really thought that his pumped up strutting inspired respect, deference and maybe even a little spasm of fear in his staff. The only thing he inspired in Slattery was a tired contempt. Grimey registered so low on his radar that most of the time he couldn't even work up the enthusiasm to hate him properly.

He couldn't even get it right about the daydreaming. Slattery didn't daydream. He simply had a tendency to follow random trains of thought from station to station without any clear idea of the eventual destination, but with a sense of increasing anticipation that it might be somewhere he'd never been before, where he wouldn't mind having a good nose about. He'd always done it, ever since he was a kid. He'd dreamed up some of his best and some of his stupidest, most harebrained schemes during his mental wanderings, even if he did sometimes shudder at the places he ended up in, places full of the sort of nonsense that made him wonder whether the balance of his mind was more than a little off-kilter. But he had to keep going back: it was a way of getting through the day, an escape from a job he couldn't stand anymore; from the constant worry about where his money went and how he could get his hands on a bit more; from three kids whose demands increased his anxieties even as they turned into strangers he no longer understood, and from a wife, Christine, who seemed to view him as little more than an encumbrance, an irritant and a waste of human space. He sighed and gave his shoe one last sniff, deciding it would pass the test. He briefly ran the fork under the hot tap before slipping it into his shirt pocket. He glanced at the mirror, patted a few stray hairs back into place and headed back out to the office.

Slattery sat at his desk and scooped up the pile of messages that had been left for him. Not even pretending to give them even the most cursory of glances, he dumped them on top of the mountain of notes, letters and assorted debris gathering dust in what passed for his in-tray. He tried studiously to avoid catching Marge's eye, as she persistently waved her phone at him from the other end of the office, but finally had to admit defeat.

"What?" he demanded brusquely.

"Keep your hair on," she snapped back. "I've got Mr Alsop from 17 Rowan Drive on the phone. He's on about his drains again. He says this is the third time he's rung this week."

"And how does he expect me to do anything about it when I can't even sit down for two seconds without him pestering me? Tell him it's in the pipeline. No, tell him he's first on my drains list. In fact, tell him what you want. Christ, it's only ten past nine. It's too early to have punters mithering."

"Well, some of us actually come here to get some work done. Anyway, he's your tenant; tell him yourself. I'm not your flipping dogsbody." Marge's fleshy jowls quivered with indignation.

"Okay, okay. But he'll be on at me for hours once he gets his chops in. And I've still got my toast run to sort out. I'm late as it is, what with the dog shit." Slattery knew exactly what buttons to press. Marge was a big woman with a big appetite, and she was always first in line for toast. Of course, she could have heaved herself up from her desk, waddled over the road to the butty shop and sorted out her own breakfast. But that would have meant physical activity, something she sought to involve herself in as little as possible. She usually blamed her legs, which even on a good day, she would declare were playing her up something rotten. And if it wasn't her legs, it would be some other godforsaken part of her anatomy. Slattery secretly believed Marge's problem was that she was so large that she hadn't seen most of her body for donkeys' years. With that being the case, how could she possibly hope to keep tabs on what it was up to? For that matter, he wondered, how did she even manage to wipe her own arse? She only had short, pudgy arms, and he seriously doubted that she would be able to reach all the way round her enormous back to negotiate the delicate business of hefting one globulous buttock aside for a thorough scrub. But that was somewhere he definitely didn't want to go, particularly so early in the day, and he cursed his unruly mind for the unbidden image of Marge, straining to paper her crack, that was now popping into it. He realised she was speaking to him and flashed her what he hoped was a winning smile. "Sorry, what were you saying?"

"I said, alright. I'll deal with him just this once. But you'd better get those drains ordered as an emergency. I'm not covering up for you if he rings again."

"Ta, Marge. You're a love."

Slattery pulled a grubby Netto carrier bag from under his desk, reached in and extracted two loaves of sliced white. The toast run was his baby; a scheme he had dreamed up a few years ago and which he liked to believe had become a cherished institution. Every morning he would grill and butter the two loaves and sell them to his workmates for ten pence a round. Despite frequent grumbling about slipshod quality control, everyone went along with it: it was cheaper than the butty shop and you didn't have to go trudging out in the pouring rain. It wasn't exactly a major money spinner, but it did net him a nice little profit of around fifteen quid a week, which he didn't have to declare to Christine and which could make the difference between staying in with her and the kids or nipping off down the pub of a Friday night.

A couple of years back, flushed by success, he had tried to expand. He had visions of doing bacon, sausage and eggs, and even contracting out to cover the environmental health people upstairs and the social workers in the next building. No doubt the latter would have tried to complicate matters by demanding brown bread, rabbit food and other culinary monstrosities. First of all, though, he dipped his toes in the shallower waters of the catering world by adding toasted teacakes to the menu, which turned out to be a real hit. The only trouble was that people were so bloody unpredictable. One day there was run on teacakes; the next day everyone wanted toast. Before he knew it, he was having to buy nearly double the amount of food he needed, in order to cope with the whims and ever changing tastes of his workmates. Things got so bad that some weeks he barely broke even, and as he pointed out when he announced he was thinking of going back to the old system of toast, toast or toast, he wasn't doing this for the good of his health or to win any popularity contests. The decision was taken out of his hands, and the whole toast run nearly came to an untimely end, when one morning, Marge had waltzed into the kitchen just in time to see Slattery scraping the mould growth off the last of a bag of teacakes that had been hanging around for a few days too many. She had threatened to expose him to the whole office as a cheapskate, a crook and a walking health and safety disaster, who didn't give a monkey's if he poisoned every last one of them. He'd been left with no choice but to buy her off with free toast for a month on the promise that she'd keep her gob shut. He vowed from that day on to keep things simple.

Naturally, Grimey hated the toast run, and although it was already well established when he first arrived, he insisted on treating it as a personal affront to his authority. He had done everything in his power to get it closed down. Only the previous month, Slattery had caught him skulking around the office with a stopwatch in his hand. When he had asked him what the hell he was doing, Grimey had triumphantly disclosed that he had been timing the toast run for over a week, and could now inform Slattery that he spent an average of thirty four minutes a day preparing and distributing toast, which over the course of a whole year, amounted to more than 120 man hours down the drain. Not only that, but as far as he was concerned, Slattery was bringing the council into disrepute by his blatant and shameless profiteering at the expense of his colleagues. Slattery had sighed and rolled his eyes heavenward, as with a flourish of his fountain pen, Grimey had issued him with a written instruction to cease and desist from operating the toast run with immediate effect.

Slattery had promptly barged in to see Doug, the depressive and largely ineffectual office manager, slapping the note on his desk with a terse, "What are you going to do about this latest shit from that tosser?"

Doug, sighing heavily, had reluctantly torn himself away from his racing form, but had willingly vetoed Grimey's instruction. After all, he rather liked having his breakfast delivered to his desk every morning, deluding himself that it was some kind of management perk. Overruling Grimey's exhaustively evidenced protests and relying on an argument thoughtfully prepared for him by Slattery, who was gleefully eavesdropping from the other side of the door, Doug explained that many more hours would be lost if all and sundry went traipsing off willy-nilly to the butty shop every five minutes. Grimey had been furious, a fury that was only compounded when Slattery had rubbed his face in it, crowing, "You know what your problem is? You've not taken account of how I'm doing my bit to improve office efficiency. You should be giving me a bleeding medal, not wasting precious man hours trying to get me in the shit all the time."

Slattery grinned to himself as he buttered up the last slice, careful to use as little margarine as he could get away with, and scurried across the office to where the old bags huddled. He always got the bags out of the way first. This was partly a chivalrous gesture, but principally a reflection of a well founded sense of trepidation: as a bloc, the bags could be a formidable proposition, and had more than once threatened to withhold payment when their toast came to them soggy and cold. Slattery, in turn, had blustered and huffed and ratcheted up the indignation, even hinting he might have to serve them with an outright ban from the toast run. He knew he was on very shaky ground with this: on a bad day, they were just as likely to call his bluff as to back down. In the end he had concluded that getting them over and done with first was a solution that suited both parties, although he had drawn the line at letting them have want they really wanted, which was the opportunity to treat the toast like bric-a-brac at a jumble sale, foraging through the entire pile for the best slices.

He truly didn't understand the bags, with their hermetic world of constant dieting, Women's Weekly, knitting patterns and how they could come over all motherly one minute and stab him in the back, without even blinking, the next. He treated them with kid gloves, generally reserving his most vitriolic tongue-lashings for his male colleagues. The lot of them, with exception of Melanie, were well past their sell-by date, and Slattery wasn't sure if he approved of that in a woman. He was especially intrigued by their bathroom habits. Like clockwork, three times a day, Marge would sit up straight, peer over her tortoise-shell glasses and say, expectantly, "Mo? Muriel? Melanie? Is it that time yet?" They would all get up simultaneously, and clutching their handbags, troop off en masse to the ladies, from where occasional cooing and exclamations could be heard, until twenty minutes later, with identical expressions of grim satisfaction on their faces, they would file out and resume their duties. What was it all about? What did they get up to in there? Surely they couldn't be taking a dump three times a day, and if they were, how had they managed to synchronise their body clocks so completely? It was an absolute mystery to Slattery, who spent a great deal of time pondering it, but had yet to reach any satisfactory conclusions. He had discussed it with Lennie, who was inclined to be philosophical, shrugging and saying, "That's women for you, lad. They move in mysterious ways. It's not our place to question, merely to accept."

Slattery was not convinced by this answer, but short of asking the bags themselves, he had no way of verifying the situation. He had tried stationing himself near the door of the ladies, straining his ears to pick up any telltale clues that might slake his curiosity, but Lennie had bounded across the office, grabbed him roughly by the shoulder and steered him back to his desk, muttering angrily about not being prepared to sit back and watch his mates turn themselves into toilet sniffing perverts. And he could just imagine the response if he did try to broach the subject directly: "Cheeky bugger! Do you see us asking what you get up to in the little boy's room? It's none of your beeswax." Afterwards, they would doubtless spend the rest of the day shooting him outraged glares, shaking their heads and tutting audibly, before retiring with pursed lips and wounded dignity to the kitchen, where they would carry on a whispered conversation about the flaming cheek of that Slattery. No, some questions were best left unasked.

And what was this about all the bags having names that started with an M? It was yet another mystery. Naturally, there was the odd Joyce or Trish dotted around, but Slattery would wager good money, that if you carried out a department-wide survey, you would discover that the whole organisation was littered with them, an army of Maureens, Marys, Mandys, Muriels, Marjories and Margarets, all nipping off to the loo at ten thirty on the dot and simultaneously keeping Weightwatchers and the local cake shop in business. Poor Melanie, he mused. She didn't stand a chance. Only twenty-two years old and already saddled with the burden of bagdom. Her fate was sealed, and just because her parents were short sighted enough to give her a name starting with the letter M. It was a crying shame. She was a lovely looking lass, all pointy black boots and thick auburn hair, a proper rock chick in her studded leather bolero jacket. He couldn't help wondering whether things would have turned out differently for her if she had been born a Linda or just a plain Jane, but he'd never know. As it was, she seemed to revel in her junior league old bag status. Most of the other kids in the office were ex-students and he could tell she felt like a fish out of water around them, anxious to return to her own kind. All the fully fledged bags would reinforce this, clucking over her hair or her latest outfit and readily consoling her with hankies, cakes and cries of, "He's not worth it!" when she regaled them with the latest example of shocking behaviour from her arsehole boyfriend.

Finally shaking himself free of the bags, who had greatly amused themselves by delivering a series of scathing critiques of the inferior quality of today's offering, Slattery scuttled back and forth across the office delivering the toast and accepting tens, twenties and the odd fifty, till his pockets jangled with loose change. Over the years he had come to inhabit this strange, crablike mode of locomotion like a comfy pair of slip-ons. His walking style was a mongrel choreography of unlikely movements, a scurry, a skulk and a bustle, a bastard combination of the perennial skiver, the harried housewife and the professional pickpocket. He was a past master at covering immense distances in a remarkably short time, without actually appearing to have gone anywhere. As his workmates were fond of remarking, he had a tendency to pop up everywhere and miss nothing. Old bats ears, they would call him, blissfully unaware that his hearing had been irreparably damaged during his lengthy stint as a doorman-cum-glass collector at a local discotheque. "My legs are my ears," he was fond of saying, a gnomic utterance whose meaning escaped most listeners, but made absolute sense to Slattery.

Heaving a sigh of relief, Slattery eased himself into his seat, and tore into the last two slices of the toast with hungry enthusiasm. When he had finished, he wiped the crumbs and margarine smears off his lips and chin with the back of his hand, which he then licked a couple of times for good measure.

"What?" he asked defensively, looking up and noticing Lennie wincing at him fastidiously. "Something the matter?"

"What is it with you? You can't walk from your car to the office without treading in dog shit and you can't even eat a slice of toast without wearing half of it. You're completely disgusting, that's what you are."

"Well, if you weren't too tight to put your hand in your pocket once in a blue moon, you could have some toast of your own instead of having to eyeball me eating mine. You put me right off my stride, having to stare at your ugly mug every morning. What did you have for your breakfast, anyway? Lemons again? Or something more sour?"

Lennie looked smug. "Nope. Full English as usual. That's what comes of not having the wife go out to work. Not like these bloody career women here." He shot a disapproving glare at the bags. Slattery sighed. He could tell that Lennie was gagging to mount his favourite hobbyhorse. The man was immensely proud of the fact that his wife of thirty years had not done a day's paid work since they were married, and didn't mind who's ear got bent in the telling and retelling of the tale.

"There's plenty of blokes forced to sign on the dole, who'd be glad of a job in a place like this," he continued. "And what do we get? A gaggle of gossiping old women."

"God, Len, you're like a broken record." Slattery glanced stealthily at the bags, who were busily admiring Melanie's new Guns 'n' Roses t-shirt, and lowered his voice to a hoarse whisper. "For a start off, that lot aren't exactly climbing the greasy pole, are they? Not like some round here," he added, nodding towards Grimey's office. "They're just a bunch of clerks, always have been, always will be. That's not to say they aren't a pain in the arse, but let's face it, clerking is women's work anyway. I mean, would you do your own filing? Having said that,"- he paused for effect and pursed his lips- "That Muriel, now she a case. Her old feller's minted. That one's working for pin money and no mistaking."

Lennie nodded eagerly. Slattery reflected, not for the first time, how much he looked like a particularly pissed off bald eagle. He dismissed the thought, and went back to his dissection of Muriel. She would readily flaunt her wealth and superior social status, but was perfectly happy to play second fiddle to Marge in the coven. She was the more vindictive, however: the rottweiler Marge would unleash when some upstart needed putting in their place. She hadn't spoken to Lennie in three years, after he had called her an interfering old cow in an altercation over money owing to the tea fund, which Muriel guarded as jealously as Slattery guarded the toast run. She wore her hair in a column of tight curls rising magisterially from her haughty face, a style that Slattery disliked with an intensity bordering on obsession. Equally intense was his disapproval of her hair care regime, which he considered a slovenly abuse of otherwise perfectly acceptable plumage. Once a week, on a Thursday, she would knock off early, and despite the fact she was minted, she'd hurry down to the half-price afternoon at her local salon, where she would have the wash, rinse and set. The following day she would trumpet into work with a new shade of bronze, steel blue or one of a hundred variations on soft mauve. After a few days, the column would start to list slightly to one side, and would finally wilt woefully. Wild horses, however, could not drag her anywhere near shampoo or water between the weekly ministrations of her stylist. Despite the depth of Slattery's feelings, he erred on the side of caution: one look at the imperious set of her face and he knew that if he made even the most oblique reference, he'd never hear the last of it.

When Dippy Danny, the office hippy, bounded through the door, Slattery and Lennie had already covered Muriel's penchant for showy gold jewellery, her seemingly bottomless collection of brightly coloured acrylic cardigans, and were just getting started on her habit of jetting off twice a year on Mediterranean cruises and exotic foreign holidays.

"Did you see her after the last time?" Slattery was asking. "Her skin looked more leathery than her sodding handbag did. It was like she'd been rubbing it in gravy browning. Do you remember, she was shrieking and carrying on with herself, 'Are you jealous, girls?' and the rest of them were going at it like a pack of nodding dogs. Revolting, it was."

Danny loped over to his chair and threw himself down. "Hi guys," he beamed. "How's it hanging?" Both Slattery and Lennie winced involuntarily, but Danny, oblivious, carried on. "Anyway, who are you two gossiping about today? You're like a pair of old women."

"Watch your lip, son, and show a bit more respect to your elders and betters," Lennie growled. "Besides which, you'd better look out. Grimey's going to have your guts for garters if you keep on swanning in at this time, mark my words."

"Yeah. What's your excuse today, space boy?" Slattery chimed in.

"Oh, the band were playing a benefit at a squat café last night. There was a bit of a party afterwards. I didn't get in till four."

"Did you cop off?" Slattery asked, curious despite his official opposition to all that Danny stood for. There had to be some perks to being forced to work with hippies, and a taking prurient interest in what he hoped they got up to was one of them.

"Get your own sex life, you pervert," Danny shot back. "You know me. I wouldn't do the dirty on Rachel. Not that I didn't get the chance, of course," he added with a mischievous twinkle.

"Pull the other. Who'd be daft or blind enough to touch the likes of you with a barge pole? You look like Stig of the flaming Dump, and that's on your good days. And as for that hair…" Slattery gestured derisively at Danny's shaggy, grown-out bowl cut, which looked even more alarming than usual, curling out defiantly from under a too-small woolly Tibetan hat.

He grinned at Slattery and said tartly, "Pot, kettle, black. At least I've got a full head of hair. Not like some people round here who look like they've got a shredded wheat glued to their head. Anyway, is there any toast left?"

Lennie took a sharp intake of breath, shook his head, and murmured softly, "You're for it, lad. What have you done? You've just committed the cardinal sin. Have you not got an ounce of sense in that overeducated skull of yours?"

Meanwhile Slattery, bristling, his already ruddy cheeks blazing several shades deeper, the tip of his pug nose whitening with anger, reared up to his full five foot seven and glared menacingly at the hapless Danny.

"Some of us," he hissed, "have got a wife, three kids and twenty more years under their belt than you. Some of us have got bills and debts coming out of their ears and no rich Daddy to give them handouts when the going gets tough."

"I don't get handouts," protested Danny, weakly.

"No, of course you don't." Slattery paused. "Bollocks. Your type always do. You pretend you're just like the rest of us. But you're sponging off your folks till you get that cushy management job, then it's 'Bye-bye Slattery, bye-bye Lennie, have a nice life.' Oh, and another thing. Some of us don't come to work looking like something the cat's thrown up. Some of us take a bit of pride in our appearance."

"Oh, come on, man. You can't be serious. This is from the guy who single-handedly keeps the polyester industry in this country going. Look at your shirt. I get electric shocks just thinking about it. I'm surprised you've never spontaneously set yourself on fire."

"There's nothing wrong with my bleeding shirt. You know where you are with drip-dry. It saves a lot of messing about. At least you won't catch me in a pair of tie-dyed leggings. A grown man in leggings. It beggars belief. Anyway, that's not what's under discussion here. This is about your bleeding attitude to my hair."

"Look, I don't think I'm saying anything controversial. It's just that it's perfectly clear that when it comes to weaves, you make Arthur Scargill look like a rank amateur. Can't you see that's meant to be a compliment? As weaves go, yours is the dog's bollocks. At least most days no one can see your scalp shining through."

Slattery stared intensely at Danny, who stopped suddenly. "The more you talk, the more shit you're getting into," Slattery hissed.

"Look, I'm sorry, man," Danny back-pedalled. "I shouldn't have said anything. Let's forget it, eh?"

"That's easy for you to say. I can't forget it. I have to live with this hair every day. Do you know how long it takes me to get it right in the mornings? Forty-five frigging minutes. So listen, pal. You're not supposed to notice and you're not supposed to comment. Some things are sacred, and you're treading a very thin line. Alright?" Slattery gently patted the great gingery mane. How dare Danny take the piss? When he looked in the mirror, he saw a magnificent thatch, thick, wiry and swept into a neat fringe at mid brow. The problem was that the hairline started an inch or two above the nape of his neck, right between his ears. The whole edifice was lovingly recreated every morning with a painstaking combination of backcombing, teasing and the application of extra-hold lacquer. But beneath all the scaffolding, he was bald as a coot, the gravity-defying reverse pompadour covering up a vast tundra of barren ground. It was too late for him to contemplate shaving it all off- he had lived with his lie for too many years to join the out, proud and bald brigade. In his heart of hearts, he knew that everyone had rumbled his secret. He just didn't like having his face rubbed in it.

"Anyway, you nearly made me forget." Danny looked pleased with himself. "I bumped into Kev on the way in, off to the shop. And do you know what the first thing he said to me was? Not 'Hi, Danny, how're you doing, Danny.' Nothing like that. He reckons he finally got laid while he was on holiday."

Slattery and Lennie looked at each other and grinned. Now this was more like it.

CHAPTER TWO

Everything about Kev gave Slattery intense pleasure. He was earnest, gullible, daft as a brush and hopelessly obsessed with sex. No one made him do it, but Kev always wore a shirt and tie to work and was frequently caught absentmindedly picking his nose with the end of the tie. He insisted on sitting on an ancient ladder-backed chair, which he had rescued from a skip and dragged back to the office. Slattery chuckled to himself as he remembered the time Kev had been on the phone to a tenant, rocking back and forth on the chair and chewing his pen. He had swung back a fraction too far, upended himself, cracked the back of his head against a filing cabinet on the way down and somehow managed to swallow his pen top. As he lay spread-eagled on the carpet, gasping for air and clutching his throat, Slattery had the presence of mind to drag him to his feet and subject him to a rudimentary Heimlich manoeuvre, which had the desired effect of dislodging the pen top, along with half a cup of tea and a partially digested sausage and egg barm. Meanwhile a tinny voice still crackled from the receiver, "Eh, Mr Scott! Are you listening there or what?"

Any young woman who arrived at the office would be fair game for Kev's amorous advances, usually within hours of starting the job. Melanie had gone for a drink with him during her first week - out of politeness, she later insisted - and he had spent the entire evening boring her rigid with a lengthy monologue on his own skills and expertise in the field of estate management, before rounding the evening off with a casually placed, "Do you fancy a shag, then, or what?" Despite the answer being an unequivocal or-what, Kev spent the following morning swaggering about the office telling all and sundry what a great lay Melanie was. It never occurred to him that his boasts would get back to her, until she poked him in the chest and raged, "I wouldn't touch your scabby little prick with a bargepole, you shithead. And what's more," - she had turned to her gathering audience and shaken her head in disbelief - "Do you know what else he did? He turned up at my mam and dad's, and didn't even have the courtesy to ring the bell. Not him, he just sat in his car bibbing his horn. And when I came out, there he was, sat behind the wheel, eating cold baked beans out of the tin, with the juice all running down his chin. It was disgusting, it was."

Kev had tried desperately to squirm out of it, before eventually turning to Slattery in a desperate moment of weakness and morosely admitting he was still a virgin. A delighted Slattery had given him a few helpful pointers, which amounted to advising him to carry doing what he was already doing, as it would be a shame to change such a great technique. He sympathetically suggested that Kev's problem was simply that he hadn't met the right kind of girl yet and had he considered getting a blow-up doll? Kev had stormed off, his ears ringing with Slattery's derisive cackle. Naturally, Slattery had been compelled to start greeting him every morning with a cheery cry of, "Morning, Kev! Have you broken your duck yet?"

Before Kev could even get his coat off, Slattery was at his elbow.

"Morning, Kev," he beamed, hopping from foot to foot in anticipation. "Have you broken your duck yet? How was Ibiza? I hear you've got some news for us."

Kev feigned annoyance for a moment, but couldn't stop an expression of triumphant glee lighting up his face from his muffin chin to his startlingly low-slung hairline.

"What do you mean, like?" he asked Slattery coyly.

"Stop pissing about. You don't want us to have to resort to torture to get it out of you, do you?" Slattery was nearly beside himself with impatience.

"Alright then, if you're that bloody keen to know. It was the last night of the holiday. We were getting pissed up in this club and I met this really fit lass. She was well up for it. God, she was gorgeous. Tits out here and horny as hell. I'm telling you, we were at it all night long."

Slattery scoffed. "Oh aye. And the three bears. You can't pull the wool over my eyes. She was probably some old slapper from Stoke who was too pissed up to know what she was doing. I reckon your mates put her up to it. And I bet you shot your load before you could even get her knickers down," he goaded.

"No, she wasn't like that. She was really nice."

"So have you got any photos of her, then?"

"No," Kev said in a small voice.

"So how do we know you're not making it all up?"

"Well …" Kev hesitated. "The thing is, ever since we had it off, my knob's been dead, dead itchy and I think I might have caught a dose of something dodgy off her."

Slattery laughed uproariously. "Don't tell me. You finally get to find the girl of your dreams, you pop your cherry, and it turns out she's the village bike. And not only that, but you're the last one to get a ride. No wonder your old feller's a bit iffy if you've been stirring everyone else's porridge."

"Give us a sodding break. It was my first time, wasn't it? And you lot are the only ones who know that. All my mates think I've been at it for years."

"So how come they haven't cottoned on that you always piss off home on your own at the end of the night?"

"I tell them that a man of my experience can afford to be choosy."

Slattery hooted. "You seriously mean to tell me they fall for that? So how did you explain copping with the Stoke-on-Trent bike?"

"I'm telling you, she was alright. And anyway, it was dark in the club. Seriously, mate, I'm really worried. I think I'm going to have to go and see my doctor. It's a bit bloody embarrassing, though."

"Well, me and Lennie are men of the world. Do you want us to take a gander?"

"You can piss right off." Kev paused. "Actually, would you mind?"

"No trouble. Nip into the bogs and take your trousers down. I'll be through in a minute." As Kev hurried off, Slattery and Lennie, who had been following the entire exchange with an expression of growing disbelief on his face, exchanged glances, both struggling not to burst out laughing. When the toilet door had swung safely shut, Slattery winked at Lennie and said, "Go on. Get in there and have a look. And make sure you wind him up. Hang on..." He leant forward and whispered in Lennie's ear. Lennie nodded appreciatively.

A couple of minutes later, Lennie came out of the toilets, grinning. "I said to him it definitely looks like the clap. I left him dipping his little feller in a washbasin full of cold water. I've told him it'll help ease the itching. He's expecting a second opinion from you in the next few couple of minutes. I said it was best to wait till it was properly soaked."

Slattery laughed and headed into the toilets. Kev was still standing with his penis in the water, looking very uncomfortable.

"What the hell are you playing at, Kev?" asked Slattery, feigning astonishment.

"Lennie said this would help," Kev began doubtfully.

"The poor old sod's bloody lost it completely. How am I supposed to tell you what's going on when your knob's in that state? Look how shrivelled up it is. It's barely visible to the naked eye."

"That's down to Lennie, that is," Kev said defensively.

"True. That won't exactly help matters. But it must have been pretty underdeveloped to begin with. It's like a little pink walnut whip."

"It's not that small," Kev protested, but Slattery waved him away dismissively. "Never mind, it's not the size of the ship, it's the motion of the ocean," he quipped. "Or at least that's what the little people tell me. Now there's no way I can tell how bad things are with your knob in that state. You'll have to give it a few tugs to make it easier to examine. You'll need at least a semi."
"No sodding way!"

"Sorry, mate. There's no two ways about it."

"I'm not sure about this at all." Kev looked dubious.

"Look, Kev. Do you want to get this sorted out or not? Come on. Stop pissing around and give it a yank." Slattery allowed an edge of authority to enter his voice.

With a shrug of embarrassment, Kev began to tentatively stroke his penis, and after a moment or two, it started to swell.

"Now that's more like it," Slattery encouraged. "Let me see. Roll your foreskin back. Mmm. Yes. It definitely looks like the clap to me. Having said that, though, let me just fetch Lennie back. Tell you what- you keep tugging away so you don't lose that semi. If anything, you could do with a touch more volume, I reckon. Why don't you think about that lass from your holiday doing a slow strip for you? That should do the trick."

"Shit, mate. I feel like an utter twat here." Kev sighed. "Okay. But get a move on, will you. And make sure no one else comes in, alright?"

"Don't you worry. No one wants to see you embarrassed."

Slattery scuttled back into the office. It seemed that everyone had got wind of what was happening, and most of them were grinning up at him with a mixture of anticipation and malice. Slattery had a stroke of genius: ideas often came to him when he felt the weight of others' expectations on his shoulders. He bustled over to Grimey's office, rapped on the door and burst in.

"Here, I'm a bit worried about young Kev. Can you have a word with him? I don't think he's very well. He says its something he picked up on his holidays.  He's hiding himself away in the loo."

Grimey eyed him suspiciously. "Why do I get a feeling there's something fishy going on here? Since when have you started to take an interest in the welfare of those around you?"

Slattery shrugged. "Look, it's no skin off my nose one way or the other. No one's forcing you to do anything. Only with you being the boss and the first-aider, I just thought you'd want to know. I'll mind my own flaming business next time."

"Okay, okay." Grimey stood up and strode purposefully towards the toilets, apparently unaware that everyone else in the room was holding their breath. As the door to the gents swung shut behind him, two muffled yelps rang out, one of shock and one of horror.

"What in God's name do you think you're doing?" Grimey was shrill with outrage, his voice harshly audible in the office. "Openly masturbating in the works toilet. You are in deep trouble."

"But I was expecting Lennie!" Kev cried plaintively. "I've already had Slattery and he said it was Lennie's turn next."

The voices became quieter now, but it was clear that an urgent exchange was taking place. Moments later, Grimey crashed through the door, pointed a shaking finger at Slattery, and white with barely suppressed fury, snarled, "You. My office. Now." Slattery smirked at his colleagues and gave them a mocking bow to scattered applause. Hands in pockets, he sauntered along in Grimey's wake.

"Slattery, that was the last straw." Grimey was sitting behind his desk, trying to regain his composure. "You may think you're cock of the walk round here, but you've gone too far this time."

"I don't know what you mean, " Slattery purred, all innocence. "I was only trying to help."

"You call that help? Kevin tells me it was entirely your doing that he was standing stark bollock naked in the gents nursing an almighty erection."

"I wouldn't exactly call it almighty." Slattery couldn't help himself. "No, I think you've totally got the wrong end of the stick. So as to speak."

"I have, have I? Then pray enlighten me," Grimey retorted sarcastically.

"Well, like I said, Kev was feeling a bit dodgy after his holidays. I suppose I should have warned you it was the clap he was bothered about, not the squits or something, but you went haring off after him before I got a chance. I was going to get Len to take a look at first, but I figured as you're the office first-aider, you'd be best placed to sort him out."

"That still doesn't explain the erection." Grimey's took of his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose wearily. His resolve was starting to crumble.

"It beats me, too," Slattery said breezily. "But look, he's a young lad, he's just got his leg over for the first time, so he's bound to be a bit excitable in that department. We've all been there."

"We have?" Grimey was unconvinced, but the fire had gone out of him now. "Alright, that's enough. I still think you were up to your neck in all this, but in the absence of proof there's precious little I can do. But believe you me; I've marked your cards. I'll be watching you very closely from now on."

Business as usual then, thought Slattery, but he was wise enough to know when not to push it any further. "So can I go now?"

"Yes, yes. Get out of my sight." Grimey gazed at him dejectedly. His eyes suddenly hardened. "Just a minute. Where's your name badge?"

"I dunno. It's around somewhere."

"Yes, but where?"

"Um… in my pocket."

"Well put it on, then. How many times do I have to tell you that the customer care policy clearly states that name badges should be worn at all times?"

"Give us a break, will you? That bloody policy only came in five minutes ago. How am I supposed to remember?" Slattery reluctantly pulled the badge out of his pocket and pinned it to the polyester of his shirt.

"What in God's name have you done to it? It's a complete and utter mess."

Slattery glanced down at the badge and shrugged. He had used whitener to cover up his first name and gouged "Mr" across it with a biro. "I'm not having the tenants knowing my Christian name. For that matter, I'm not having this lot here knowing it, either." He gestured towards the main office. "Look. I've been 'Slattery' for the best part of thirty years, and as far as I'm concerned, that's the way it's staying. Just because this poxy piece of plastic is flavour of the month with the powers that be, it doesn't change a thing. And that's not up for negotiation." He shot a defiant glare at Grimey.

"But what you've done amounts to little more than vandalism of departmental property. The whole point of having your full name on the badge is to make the service more accessible to our customers. We're finally getting on board with the sort of innovative thinking the retail sector have been pioneering for years. Quite frankly, your truculent approach is undermining corporate strategy. You wouldn't get away with this attitude at Tesco."

"Yeah? Well, think of me as the resident corner shop. Anyway, I'm not going to do my job any better just because people know what my full name is. If anything it'll make matters worse. I'll tell you what: you get me a name badge with 'Mr Slattery' printed on it, and I'll leave the Tippex alone."

"You really are out of step with the times, aren't you Slattery? Or should I say, Beverley? Now get out of my sight and do something useful."

But Slattery was going nowhere. He was rooted to the spot, outrage, humiliation and something verging on the psychotic vying for control of his face. The corner of his mouth began to twitch convulsively. No one, absolutely no one, called him by his first name. Ever. His friends, his workmates, his family, the blokes at the pub, even Christine, always called him Slattery. It was an unwritten rule. Only his mother, God rest her, had been permitted to use his given name. After all, she was single-handedly responsible for the whole frigging mess. After she had given birth, in quick succession, to a Michael, a Bernadette and a Vincent, he had come along late and drawn a very short straw. He had once tried to get to the bottom of it, but had never got much further than an enigmatic reference to a nice young piano teacher from before the war, who had lovely soft hands and a winsome smile. At this point in the telling of the story, his mother's face had turned wistful, as she had drifted away to some place Slattery definitely didn't want to examine too closely.

When he was younger he had tried every trick in the book. He was Bev for a while, implying it was short for Bevan, but it hadn't taken long for people to find him out. Then he had tried to brazen it out with the "Boy Named Sue" approach, but had never had the imposing physical presence he would have needed to get away with it without some smart-arse turning it into a major issue. The young Slattery had been no Johnny Cash, no mysterious man in black, up from the badlands of Arkansas, boasting that he had shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die. He had tried to build himself up, the better to carry it off. He had saved up and sent off for a Johnny Weismuller Bullworker from the back of an old Batman comic, but had neither the interest nor the personal application to keep it up. It had been rubbish anyway, falling apart in a couple of weeks, after which it had been left to gather dust in the corner of the bedroom. So the problem - how to come of age in a tough part of town as a male Beverley - had remained unresolved.

In the end, the only workable solution had been to insist on his surname. Thirty years later he was still using more or less the same strategy. His driver's license presented him with a problem, of course, but no one ever got to see it, apart from the odd copper who pulled over his clapped out old Mazda. It always seemed to give them a good laugh, and Slattery would suffer the predictable jokes that were made at his expense in fuming silence, his ears burning and his face scarlet. Still, it had got him out of trouble more than once. If he remembered to bite his tongue and play along with the bastards, even muttering a joke or two of his own through gritted teeth, they would usually let him off with a warning to sort out the errant taillight, fix the dodgy brake or see to whatever other mechanical mystery ailed the Mazda. Sort it out sharpish and nothing more said. That was Slattery's kind of luck: small time, accidental, skating disaster by the skin of his teeth.

Anyway, these days it was all the rage to just have one name. Slattery could count himself as some sort of trendsetter. They were all at it: Prince Nazeem, the boxer; Emerson and a whole wagon load of South American footballers; pop stars like Tiffany, Madonna and Gabrielle. Admittedly, this last lot were all women, but the principle remained sound. In his day, of course, there had been Donovan, although he hadn't really cut the mustard as a single name role model, what with his mellow yellow and his red-is-the-colour-of-my-true-love's-hair. Donovan, it had to be said, was nearly as ridiculous a name as Beverley. He should have taken a leaf out of Slattery's book and used his surname as his stage name, not that Slattery's was a stage name, as such. But you couldn't really have had a pop singer called Leitch, could you? He could just imagine Tony Blackburn announcing, "This week's number one is "Hurdy Gurdy Man" by folk sensation, Leitch." It simply didn't have the right ring. Nowadays there was Puff Daddy, of course. He was one you wouldn't mess with. But if you were honest, you would have to admit that he had two names. "Puff Slattery" wasn't the answer: he would be facing the Beverley effect all over again. No, it was better to stick to plain old Slattery, or for the more formal situations, Mr Slattery. Come to think of it, he wouldn't have minded if it had said "Mister" on his birth certificate.

"Why are you staring into space like an idiot?"

Slattery blinked, shook his head and fixed Grimey with a blank and baleful stare.

"Daydreaming again?" Grimey nervously affected a jocular tone.

Slattery ignored him. "Don't you ever - and I mean ever - call me by that fucking name again. Do you understand me?"

"There's no need for that kind of language …"

"Fuck my language. What you just called me was bang out of order. You might think you're Mr Big Shot round here, but as far as I'm concerned, you're nothing but a pompous, jumped up little scrote. Always have been, always will be."

"Now you just hold on for one minute. You can't talk to me like that."

"Bollocks I can't. Tell you what, why don't you just stick to what you're paid for and leave the personal stuff out of it. No one here fucking likes you and if you keep pushing it, you're going to get a proper taste of what that feels like."

"Are you threatening me?"

"Take it how you want. Just don't call me" - Slattery's face screwed up with distaste, as he spat the word out - "Beverley."

"Right. Okay. If it's going to be like that, I will stick to what I'm paid to do, which is making sure you do what you're paid to do. Which both you and I know you don't do very often. And don't think I haven't noticed how you always conveniently contrive to be out of the office when I arrange your supervision. So I'm going to book you in for this afternoon, and we're going to take a long, hard look at your performance." Grimey gave Slattery a smug look, and flipped opened his oversized desk diary. "Let me see… Hold on. You're supposed to be on customer care awareness training today. Why aren't you at the Town Hall?"

"I didn't know anything about it. Anyway, it'll be a waste of bleeding time. The last lot I went on was a whole day of being told how the ins and outs of the dog's bollocks on the dress code." Slattery glanced down at his shirt and slacks. "As if I need lessons in what to wear."

Grimey raised an eyebrow. "I'm not going to even get started on that. Whatever your excuse is, this training is compulsory. You got a memo about it in your in-tray weeks ago. Here" - he thrust a piece of paper under Slattery's nose - " Basic telephone communication skills. You'd better get a move on. You're late. I'll ring training and let them know you're on your way." Slattery started to protest and Grimey held his hands up to silence him. "No, no. No arguments. Just go."