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intend to arrest everyone in Glasgow who doesn't own a car are unfounded?'
    ***
    H oldall sat at his desk, his head firmly buried in his hands. He still hadn't come to terms with what an idiot he'd been. Looked at his watch. Another forty minutes, and then he would have a meeting with the Chief Superintendent. He was going to have to explain himself. As always, he couldn't help thinking of the time he'd been dragged to the Headmaster's office when he was fourteen, after exploding a small bomb in the music teacher's sandwich box.
    And he hadn't had an explanation for that either.
Alas, Poor Nietzsche, I Knew Him, Bill
    ––––––––
    T he rain streamed against the windows. The old wooden frames rattled in the wind, the curtains blew in the chill draught which forced its way into the room. Ghosts and shadows. Outside, the night was cold and bleak and dark, to match Barney's mood as he sat at the dinner table. He pushed the food around his plate, every so often stabbing randomly at a pea or a piece of meat pie, imagining that it was Wullie or Chris. All the while Agnes looked over his shoulder at the television, engrossed in a particularly awful Australian soap, taped from earlier in the afternoon. The food grew cold on their plates, as Dr. Morrison told Nurse Bartlett that she would never be able to have children, as a result of the barbecue incident at Tom and Diane's engagement party, and Barney gave forth on what he intended to do to take his revenge upon his colleagues.
    'I'm going to get they bastards if it's the last thing I do. I mean it.'
    'Yes, dear.' Agnes's mind was on other things.
    'I mean, who the hell do they think they are, eh?' He stabbed a finger at her. 'I'll tell you. Nobody, that's who they are. They're nobody. And I'm bloody well going to get them.'
    'Yes, dear.'
    There was a mad glint in Barney's eye. The possibilities were endless, the bounds for doing evil and taking his revenge unfettered, limited only by his imagination; a very tight limit, as it happened. He had been thinking it over since the afternoon's humiliation, and the more he dwelt upon it, the more he liked the idea of murder.
    Murder! Why not? They deserved it. You should never humiliate your colleagues in front of the customers. Wasn't that one of the first things they taught you in Barber School? But these young ones today. They never even bothered with any sort of hairdressing education. Five years of high school learning sociology and taking drugs, and they thought they knew everything. They lifted a pair of scissors and started cutting hair as if they were preparing a bowl of breakfast cereal. It just wasn't that simple. It was a skill which needed to be nurtured and cultivated. Like brain surgery, or astrophysics.
    The trouble was that they were all bastards, every one of them. Not just Wullie and Chris, but every other cretin who'd ever lifted a pair of scissors in anger. But not for much longer. It was payback time.
    'What d'you think? Stabbing? Shooting? Poison even?'
    'Yes, dear,' she said, absent-mindedly nodding.
    He brightened up. Poison. Brilliant. Agnes was good for bouncing ideas off sometimes. 'Aye, you're right. Poison's the thing. I don't know anything about it, but I'm sure I can find out. I'm sure I can. What d'you think?'
    'Yes, dear.'
    'Aye, it shouldn't be too difficult.' Murderous plans raced through his mind, a manic smile slowly wandered across his lips. 'One of they slow acting ones, so I can stick it in their coffee during the day, and they won't die until much later.' He rubbed his hands together. 'Brilliant idea. Bloody brilliant.'
    There was some illuminated corner of his mind telling him that he wasn't being serious. Not murder. Surely not murder. But it was good to think about it for a while. Thinking about it wasn't the same as doing it.
    'Yes, dear,' said Agnes. Was Doreen really a lesbian or was she just pretending she loved Epiphany so she could get close to Dr. Morrison without Blaize