Gross Domestic Product.

Chapter one.

“Check it oot,” Brian said enthusiastically, nodding in the direction of the grey pebble-dashed, semi-detached house that lay beyond the cemetery wall. They’d cut into the place so Brian could do a piss but now an opportunity had arisen. Brian was excited.

Daft Pete sighed and looked up from the joint he was trying to make. He wasn’t happy. The council had cut the grass in the graveyard that morning and it was playing havoc with his hay fever. The city was in the midst of being tarted up for The City of Culture celebrations. Pete thought that was like putting make-up on a diseased pig. They’d barely bothered touching the graveyard since he was a kid but now they got a whiff that tourists might want to visit Glasgow, suddenly were trying to disguise that the town was and always had been, a fucking midden. Mind you, he thought, tourists were always good for mugging. Perhaps all the pretentious bollocks would have a benefit to his own economic status after all. That didn’t stop his eyes from stinging nor his throat burning. As such, he was in no mood for Brian’s bullshit. “Whit noo?” he whined.

“Up ther', top fler,” Brian said, a hint of annoyance in his voice, clearly he thought Pete wasn't taking this seriously.

He wasn't. Pete was more interested in getting the joint finished, the afterglow of the heroin was wearing off and already reality was tingling at his nerve-endings. “Whit aboot it?” He asked rolling the papers together.

“Fuck sake, you blun'? Look,” Brian insisted. He was getting a bit antsy too. They both needed some skag but before that they needed some cash.

Daft Pete looked up at the building. He scanned the top floor, two windows, both bedrooms by the look of the pastel coloured curtains. One of the windows had a net curtain floating around in and out of the frame in the breeze. Pete thought it looked creepy and a bit sad like a forlorn ghost. “Whit um ah meant tae be lookin' it?”

“The windae on the left, check it, it's open. Jist a bit, but it's open,” Brian said excitedly. He was practically salivating at the prospect of getting in there and seeing what he could pinch.

“Aye, and?” Pete said before licking the glue edge of the papers.

“Fuck sake, you need tae lay aff the weed mate, it's turnin' yer brain tae mush. Ah could get up there, get in, grab some stuff and get oot, pronto. If you jist keep the edgy,” Brian explained.

Daft Pete thought it over and after a few moments of vague rumination said “Hauf.”

“Hauf whit?” Brian answered, baffled by the statement.

“Ah want hauf of whit ye get.” Pete insisted as he rolled up the half inch of card to stick in the bottom of the joint.

“Aye man, of course. Ah'm no' some rip aff merchant. Partners, right?” Brian said, pretending to be offended.

Pete, junkie that he was, wasn't dumb enough to trust other junkies, he'd been digging in long enough to learn that valuable fact that over the years. He popped the roach in the end of the joint. “Ah mean it Bri, you better no fuck me 'oor.”

“Fuckin' hell. I said, didn't ah?” Brian protested.

Daft Pete shrugged. “Aye, awright, jist move.”

That was enough for Brian. He bolted from the bushes, over the small stone wall and across the garden, like some kind of emaciated gazelle in oversized denims. Pete lit the joint and watched amusedly. He hadn’t known Brian that long, had discovered him flat-out and on the nod in the squat that he and Buckley had claimed. Brian had begun hanging around with them but shortly after that Buckley got clean and then got three years in prison for battering his dad with a hammer. From the tales Buckley had told Pete about his dad, it should have been that filthy old sod in prison.

Brian started up the drainpipe. The owners had covered it in some kind of sticky greasy deterrent, but this was not the first time Brian had confronted such useless measures. He shinned to the top in seconds, stretched over and slid open the window further. Stretching over to the sill with his right foot, he found some purchase on the window ledge and with a feat of gymnastic skill managed to shift his balance, swing over to the window and force all four limbs against the outside edge. Finding some balance, he managed to grab the frame and tumbled in, acrobatically.

The room smelled foul, it was almost enough to make him feel sick, but just for a moment. His attention was diverted from that rotten meat smell. The room wasn't lit but nor was it dark. Daylight shone through the windows and the thin wafting curtains illuminating the three bodies in there, two on the couch, one half-smeared against the opposite wall. Brian made sure he definitely didn't notice them, definitely didn't see those emaciated, haunted faces with their horrid twisted frozen screams. It was only the expensive looking thing that caught his attention. That was it, no corpses, just the thing like a small upside-down chandelier. He stared at its intricate design, lots of little interlocking crystals in circle patterns emitting a weird, cold, white glow, which pulsed and throbbed. The thing seemed to be set in gold, which to Brian meant only one thing. “Knocked.”

Careful not to acknowledge the rotting stiffs, he lifted the object, looked at it closely for a moment or two and deemed it better than he could have hoped for given the circumstance. He couldn't find the switch to turn the light off, but he knew he'd best get out of that room quickly and so headed back to the window. He popped his head out and looked for Pete, gasping for air at the same time. The stink inside was revolting.

Pete was still behind the back garden wall in the graveyard but was staring out at the street, bobbing back and forth and puffing on his joint. Brian knew it would be a disaster to try and get his attention, so he withdrew back into the room to see if he could find a container, a bag, something to hold the treasure he was about to purloin.

Flies crawled across a dead, wide-opened eye. He didn't see it, definitely didn't see that. Behind the sofa, nothing, some suspicious puddled stains on the cream carpet, but nothing of use. He'd have to just risk grabbing one of the cushions from the sofa, which was tricky considering that he was not prepared to look at what lay upon it. He felt ice-water run down his back as he stretched his arm out, hoped to God that whatever he'd clamped onto wasn't going to squelch or creak or topple or snap or worse, grab him. He was relieved when his hands revealed a cushion, cream coloured except for the oily brown, damp patches.

There was a noise from below him. A thud, a sound like a muffled scream, a groan which seemed to be one of pleasure. Was there someone else in the house? His heart thudded in his chest. Given the state of the room he had no desire to investigate further, he had to get out of that place, tout suite. He had a job to do, best it were done quickly. Keeping his attention focussed on the lamp the best he could, he picked it up. The light it emitted changed colour slightly, a soft amber burned inside its gems. Curious.

He thought better about kneeling down to wrap the lamp up. The carpet was sticky, and upon closer inspection, very much inhabited by all manner of maggots, mites and insects. Instead, Brian took a deep breath placed his jacket on the window frame, tucked the cushion inside of it, stuffed the lamp on the cushion and then folded the cushion and the jacket over it, before using the two arms to tie the whole thing together.

It would be fine. He wasn’t going to freak out or boke. He took one loop of his bundle, slid it over his shoulder and made sure he definitely he did not take one last look at the mottled, rotting cadavers still in stained white shirts and moldy suits. He did not think how long they had been there, didn't think about that at all. Just made his way down the drainpipe with treasure in hand. He sped across the back lawn and was back over the wall in seconds. He was hardly even trembling when he plucked the joint from Pete and took a victorious draw. “Wait tae you feast your eyes oan whit I fun' up ther'”

“Wis it a telly?” Pete guessed.

“Naw mate, this wis worth much mer than a telly.” Brian answered, unaware of how true this was. He unraveled the package. The lamp’s colour had returned to the cold white light.

“Whit the fuck is that?” Pete asked.

“Dunno, man, but look at the base, that’s pure gold. I’m thinkin’ this thing is an antique. Pretty heavy fur the size of it.” Brian answered, already, the memory of the stinking corpse-strewn room was fading from his mind, as he tried to calculate just how much the thing was worth. “I’m reckonin’ we could get a pretty penny for this.”

“Aye?” Pete asked, hopefully.

“Nae bother. I mean check oot aw that gold, that’s got tae be worth a couple of grand at least.” Brian said, equally as hopeful.

“Cool.” Pete nodded. “Let's go sell it 'en, an’ remember, hauffers.”

“Fuck sake man, I awready said. You need tae start bein’ a bit mer trustin’” Brian answered.

Pete looked at him in disbelief. “Trustin’? You battered a wean fae the local school last week fur his lunch money.”

“Ah didnae batter him. I just threatened him wae a blade, I’m no a monster. Anyway, the wee cunt wis a fat shite, could have done wae missin’ a meal or two.” Brian replied.

“Ah, that makes it awright then?” Pete protested.

Brian gave him a look of disgust. “You wantin’ hauf o’ the money fur this, or are ye joinin’ the fuckin’ priesthood?”

“Aye, right. Fuck the tims.” Pete said, without thinking. It was a Pavlovian response, common for many like him, he barely knew what it meant or why, it had just been drummed into him from the word go. “Gies that joint back.”

Brian sucked on it hard and then handed it back. “I think I know who’ll buy this.” he croaked, trying to hold the smoke in. “Giddy Allerdyce.”

“Aye, good shout that.” Pete said. Giddy was a fence and was known to buy almost anything as long as he could sell it on quickly. No questions asked. Which was probably for the best given the majority of his clients. Pete inhaled the last of the joint and threw the remains back over the wall. “Let’s bolt.” he said.