It was Boxing Day, which meant Edinburgh stayed in its pyjamas—except for Billy McNab's alarm, which shrieked in his broken bedsit like a kettle being murdered. He silenced it with the heel of his hand and lay there a moment, smoking ceiling cracks with his glare.
"Ah, shite. Here we go again."
He rolled out of bed in his black boxers, the room sighing around him: single-pane window furred with cold, radiators that only believed in heat as a theory, a carpet the colour of boiled tea. Forty-three, hair gone AWOL on top, he had three proven talents: smoking a cigarette and drinking a beer at the same time, winning pub fights he didn't start, and playing the tank in Dungeons & Dragons because, according to his party, he had "main character rage."
To get his blood moving he did his morning ritual: one quick punch through the flimsy glass pane in the bedroom door. The crack spidered, shed a polite tinkle, and the cold rushed in. He sucked the sting from his knuckles and felt better. Cheaper than therapy.
Teeth. Pit. Shave where it mattered. He scrubbed at himself with a towel that used to be white and pulled on the uniform of defeated men: shirt gone shiny at the elbows, threadbare tie that had seen too many funerals, overcoat that smelled faintly of old smoke and wet wool. The ink on his shoulder itched the way bad decisions do in winter. The swastika had seemed like a statement when he was a younger idiot in a bomber jacket—now it was just a locked door. No army. No police. No "beat 'em legally" career path. Just a clip-on badge and the privilege of telling pensioners where the queue starts.
He slammed his bedsit door, thundered down the staircase that always smelled of damp toast, and stepped into the grey. Edinburgh offered him her best Boxing Day sunlight: the kind that looked like it had given up halfway across the sky. A woman in a sensible coat walked a dog that lifted its leg on the corner of his building.
"Filthy hag," he growled, because manners were for other people today.
He crossed the road without looking, daring the cars to solve his boredom. Horns answered; no one hit him. Typical. Even fate couldn't be arsed. In St Andrew Square he passed a man sleeping under a thin donation of cardboard, a sign propped on his chest. NEED HELP. So did everyone. Billy spat beside—not on—the man. He wasn't a monster; he was just tired of the audition.
He pictured the life he wanted—a truncheon, a warrant card, the right to rearrange society one jaw at a time—and then, as usual, pictured the meeting where some HR vulture had clocked the tattoo and stamped NO across his file. That one choice had closed every door but one. The one he held open for other people.
The black railings of the Royal Bank of Scotland came up like a cage that had learned to stand. He stopped across from the brass and the marble and thought, as he always thought, Look at all that money pretending it belongs to itself. He got five quid an hour to guard a dragon's hoard he wasn't allowed to see, let alone touch. You were supposed to be grateful. He was not gifted in gratitude.
That, he reminded himself, was why he'd said yes to the Highland Liberation Army—such as it was. A name, a pub, a handful of angry hobbyists with dice and opinions. But their leader, Douglas Alastair Horn—Braveheart, if you were in the mood for theatre—had promised more. During their last D&D night Braveheart had tapped the table with a knuckle and said, We'll hit the bank. We'll make it honest. Billy had been ready to be the inside man. A real part to play. Two weeks now and no word. Braveheart vanished back into whatever hole produced prophets with leather jackets and hunger for banners.
Billy lit a cigarette on the steps and watched his smoke lose an argument with the wind. Inside the glass he could see his future as a faint reflection: bald, square, unkillable out of spite. If the army had taken him, he could have killed legally. If the police had taken him, he could have kept order with a baton and a smile. Instead, he held the door so rich people's coins didn't catch a cold. A nation of cowards, he thought, and somehow he paid the price.
He took a last drag and muttered to himself, "Best part of the job, this bit right here."
Then he heard it — the click of the big brass lock turning behind the doors. He cursed under his breath and flicked the butt into the gutter, stamping it flat.
"Oh, shite—already?"
The doors swung open, and out came Guthrie, the head of security, in his blue overcoat and army posture, looking like a man born to scowl at clipboards.
"McNab!" Guthrie barked. "I can see you skulking from the bloody window. Shift starts at eight, not when you finish your fag."
"Aye, aye, I know," Billy said, hands up, guilty but unbothered. "Just havin' one before the grand performance."
"Christ's sake, you smell like a pub carpet," Guthrie said, jingling the key ring. "You could've come through the back like normal people."
"Yeah, was gonna," Billy muttered. "Figured I'd take the scenic route, get a lungful of freedom before I chain myself to the door again."
Guthrie wasn't laughing. He reached the gates, slid the key home, and swung them open with the ceremonial groan of metal and history. Billy trudged through, muttering thanks like a man entering church under protest. Guthrie locked the gates behind him — click, clank, authority sealed. Together they crossed the neat strip of lawn to the wide stone steps.
"Try not to set the place on fire this time," Guthrie said. "And for God's sake, wash your hands before you touch the logbook."
"Yessir," Billy said, tone halfway between salute and sneer.
Inside, the banking hall yawned up into pale silence. Fluorescents flickered, and the air smelled of polish and cold brass. The counters were shuttered; the marble floor gleamed like a frozen pond.
Billy followed Guthrie through the echo until they reached the locker corridor, where Guthrie handed him a small red-tag keyring.
"Locker, staff corridor, side stair. That's it. Vault's off limits—again."
Billy pocketed it. "Aye. Not like there's anything down there worth guarding, eh?"
Guthrie ignored him and disappeared toward the cameras.
Billy went through the motions:
Locker open. Shirt changed. Clip-on tie snapped in place. Badge pinned straight enough. Navy blazer, black trousers, shiny cap. He stared in the mirror at a man who looked like he was auditioning for a low-budget funeral. The swastika on his shoulder itched under the fabric like a secret cough.
By the time he shuffled back to the main hall, the day's skeleton crew were trickling in through the back: Agnes from the vaults with her crossword, Mags Leitch the assistant manager in her good coat, young Derrick Singh still rubbing the sleep from his face, and two cleaners hauling a trolley that smelled of bleach and despair.
Billy stood by the side door and played doorman:
"Morning."
"Morning."
"Morning."
Each one got a different flavour — sarcasm, boredom, or pity — depending on how fancy their shoes were.
Derrick tried to hand him a cup of tea. "Here, Mr McNab. Thought you'd want one."
Billy took it, sniffed. "You used water or petrol for this?"
"Just water."
"Ah. Explains the taste."
Once everyone was inside and the noise of opening lockers, kettles and typewriters began echoing faintly through the halls, Billy finally had the front to himself. The marble felt too clean, too cold, too smug.
"Right," he said to no one. "Time for the grand patrol."
Patrol, for Billy, meant walking six steps to the front doors and lighting another smoke. He leaned against the glass, cap low, one eye on the street.
Outside, Boxing Day 1989 dragged its hungover feet. A bus wheezed past, three passengers inside looking like leftovers. Across the square, a kid in a neon jacket tried a skateboard, his dad standing nearby with a camcorder the size of a toaster. A woman in a fur hat shouted into a phone box, her breath fogging the glass. The newsagent was only half open, as if courage had to thaw in stages.
Billy took a slow drag and exhaled toward the street. The smoke ghosted up, pale against the cold.
He muttered, "Five quid an hour to stand here like a window ornament. Could've been army, could've been police, but naw—couldn't let ol' Billy have a uniform that matters."
He watched his reflection in the glass — bald head, uniform cap, tired eyes. The smoke drifted around his face like a ghost that wouldn't leave.
"Fuck," he said softly. "I hate my life."
Then he smiled, small and crooked. "Still beats unemployment."
He flicked the ash, adjusted his cap, and stared at the street again, guarding nothing, waiting for nothing, perfectly qualified for it.
But unknown to Billy, twenty yards away on a alley named Multrees Walk, near the bus station and empty at this hour, a white van eased into an alley and stopped. Inside, the nine crusaders — led by Sir Eòghan — checked straps, pouches and the bite of their rifles. Braveheart, hooded, sat in the driver's seat and looked back at them with a face gone earnest and fierce.
"Remember, brothers and sisters," he said, voice raw with religious fever, "praise the little lord that he has delivered us to this place and time in history so that we can go and slaughter the heretics and the unclean in his holy name! We do the Emperor's work, brothers and sisters! Even now I'm sure he watches us and by the manner of our deaths will we be judged, so let us be washed into his holy embrace by the blood of the enemy that taints this land! Now follow me and let us rob a bank, Deus vult!"
At the words the men made the sign of the cross and answered, "Deus vult!"
Braveheart threw the van door open. A hood shadowed most of his face as he climbed out and moved to the rear, fingers working the latch. One by one the nine slipped down from the van into the street — helmets glinting, tabards hanging over modern plate, the soft clink of metal on mail. They listened with the blunt attention of men unused to new words: the modern English came to them like a strange bell. Their own speech, older and rougher, still held the cadence of another century; they had not been in this world long enough to make its sounds their own. This would be their first true walk through it.