Extract from Chapter 2: My Name Is Karen Clamp

Second extract from my forthcoming novel, The Wrong Box, available in Kindle and paperback editions from Amazon or, if you prefer a ‘proper’ bookshop, Waterstone’s. In this extract from Chapter 2, Karen Clamp introduces herself, and hears something interesting not entirely by accident.

I must finish up and get the bairn in from the green. I have to
get some of this down though. There’s somethin really, really
no right about those lassies down the stairs from me.

My name, for the record, is Karen Clamp. Age: 40. Dress size:
20. Means of support: zero. I live in a third floor maisonette in
Ivanhoe Court, on the Auchendrossan Estate. No exactly your
Edinburgh tourist destination, by the way. Unless you’re a fan
of Trainspottin.

Oh aye. I read that filth. Makes us all out to be druggies and
scumbags. Full of swear words. I heard that that Irvine Welsh
used to work down the housin department in Leith, and blagged
all their best stories. Don’t see him down there much now though.
Well that’s no me. Don’t drink, don’t take drugs, don’t swear.
You can ask anyone that kens me about that, even the people in
the Cooncil. ‘In many ways, Ms Clamp, you’re the perfect
example of community empowerment,’ one of them says to me
recently. In many ways. Sarky cow.

Anyway, that’s another story. Those two lassies down the stairs
from me are involved in somethin and they’re in it up to their
filthy wee necks. I heard them talkin this mornin on the baby
monitor.

Aye, that’s right. The baby monitor. I ken how that sounds,
but hear me out. I have my reasons, believe you me.

The folk the Cooncil have had in that flat below me over the
last few years would make Trainspottin look like A Room With A
View. Convicted paedophile, at one point, before the locals
nearly lynched the guy. Then a couple of chancers who ran it as
a party flat. Raves every other night. Then, of course, a cannabis
farm. That was actually ok, because they were keepin a low
profile until they’d got the crop fully grown. The worst thing
about it was the police raid, burstin our door down by mistake.

When the Cooncil gutted the flat downstairs, after they finally
threw out the last set of druggies, I took the chance to nip down
when the Cooncil workies were away havin their two hour lunch
break, and install some handy wee devices. Never too early to
ken what the neighbours are up to. Never too early to ken what
the Cooncil are up to either, for that matter. I may be the size of
a number eight to Muirhouse, but I’m no stupid.

See, I kent the lassies had been out on the randan on Friday
night and came in late. Woke me up as usual with all the doors
bangin and that. Luckily, the bairn would sleep through a
thermonuclear strike on her toy cupboard.

Then, this mornin, just when I’m on my second coffee of the
day, I hear them through the baby monitor talkin to each other,
almost whisperin like, except the East European lassie can’t keep
her voice down ever and that other one, wee Debi Murray, it’s
never long before she starts pumpin up the volume too.

‘So, what happen to him?’ The East European one, Elena I
think her name is, says.

‘Never you mind, hen,’ says Debi. ‘The less we ken about what
went on after we left that flat, the better.’

By now, I’m mildly interested, although I’m still thinkin it’s
some kind of low level drug deal. I’ve got bigger fish to fry than
that, especially all that corruption that’s goin on in the Cooncil
that I’m just one step away from blowin the lid on. Then the
other one says somethin that makes me sit up and pay attention.
‘But it’s on the radio, Debi,’ she says. ‘Top businessman found
dead in Stockbridge lawyer’s flat.’

That nearly sends me scamperin for the laptop, to check the
news websites, but I’m no wantin to miss any of this. I’m wishin
now I’d put in recordin devices that are compatible with
Windows. That way I could be recordin all this. Course they
didn’t have them when I needed them. They’re releasin bits of
technology one bit at a time, just to make us buy more. Plain as
anythin.

‘It isn’t our problem, Elena,’ says Debi. ‘We did what we were
told to do. We weren’t to ken he would react that way.’
Just then, the ice-cream van starts up below the deck access
again. If I could get down the stairs fast enough, and if it weren’t
for my confidence issues, I’d stick that guy’s head down his
freezer with the Vanilla Flake. Either he’s got one of these ham
radios, or it’s signals given off by his chimes, but whatever it is,
it throws the baby monitor out of whack every time he comes
round here with them on. Ice-cream van, eh? What a joke. Fags’ll
be the least of what he’s sellin to the kids.

I take the chance to check on Candice again. She’s eight, now,
so you can’t keep them wrapped up in cotton wool forever. She’s
a good wee lassie though, always plays down on the common
bit drying green where I can see her. She gives me a wee wave
and I wave back. It’s the McLatchie lassie with her, from the
looks of it. Low risk.

Anyway, by the time heid-the-baw in the van has gone off
again, the lassies have been out to him for fags and come back
to a different part of the flat where I can’t pick up what they’re
sayin. It’s only in the livin room, you see, that the listenin device
still works. One out of three isn’t a very good success rate but,
given I ordered it off the internet and it’s installed semi-legally
in the flat downstairs, I don’t suppose I can do much about the
guarantee. Probably the batteries come to think of it.

So I go onto the internet and, sure enough, down a wee bit
from the top stories, a wee piece sayin:

BUSINESSMAN FOUND DEAD
IN CITY SOLICITOR’S FLAT.
A prominent Liverpool businessman has
been found dead in a flat in the city in
unusual circumstances. The flat’s tenant, a
solicitor with prominent city firm Benzini,
Lambe and Lockhart, is said to be helping
police with their enquiries. No charges
have been brought and police investigations continue.

It is understood, however,
that the body was found naked in the bath.

They couldn’t resist that last bit, could they, eh? All sex, sex,
sex. It gets my mind racin though, for a different reason. How
do those lassies ken about it? Solicitors and businessmen –
sounds like it might be the Freemasonic thing again, although it
could be somethin to do with the Cooncil and their Black Ops
Division. I just can’t tell at this stage. No enough to go on…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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