Dead Air

Five. MISSION STATEMENT

“Yeah, I’d just like to say that don’t you think these Eurosceptic people should be called Europhobes, yeah?’

Phil and I rolled our eyes. I leaned right up to the microphone. This has the pretty universally automatic effect of making people lower their voices, and I was no exception. It should sound like I was talking personally just to the caller. ‘Actually, Steve, we went through all this two years ago, on the evening show, and, if you recall, we did a sort of rolling Greatest Hits of the Evening Show for the first week of the daytime slot when that very point came up, oh, a few times. Kind of guessing here you’re new to the programme, Steve.’

‘Oh. Sorry. Yeah.’ Steve seized up, audibly. ‘It’s great,’ he managed. ‘Keep it up.’

‘Practically my personal motto, Steve,’ I said with a smile, sitting back again. ‘Thanks for calling.’ I clicked on to the next caller, which the screen said was a Mr Willis, from Barnet. Subject: Eurp & poound (Kayla may have put the ass in assistant, but her typing owed more to the carpet-bombing approach than any concept of precision targeting).

Mr Willis. Not a first name. That told you something immediately, without even saying Hello to the guy.

‘Mr Willis,’ I said crisply. ‘Mr Nott. Your point, sir.’

‘Yes, I just wondered why an apparently intelligent fellow like yourself was in such a hurry to get rid of the pound and throw in our lot with a currency that’s dropped so much value since it was launched.’

‘I’m not in a hurry, Mr Willis. Like most people in Britain I think it’s going to happen sooner or later, so it becomes a question of which is best, when is best, but I don’t claim to know. My point is that it’s all about economics and politics, and it shouldn’t be about sentiment, because the pound sterling is just money, like any currency. If the Germans can give up the Deutschmark, we can surely stop using bits of paper with the monarch’s head on them.’

‘But, Mr Nott, why should we? A lot of us happen to think the pound is important. We love the pound.’

‘Look, Mr Willis, you lost the pound… whatever it was, thirty years ago. I can just about remember this; the pound – the real pound – had two hundred and forty pennies; a third of a pound was six and eightpence-’

‘Yes, but-’

‘-there were thrupenny bits, sixpences, shillings, florins, half-crowns, half-pennies, ten-bob notes, and-’

‘I know-’

‘-if you were being fancy, guineas. That all went in the sixties and that was the end of the pound. What you’ve got now is a British dollar, basically, so why all the belly-aching about it?’

‘It’s not belly-aching to wish to preserve a vital part of our proud British culture. I am a member of an organisation-’

I looked at Phil on the other side of the desk and spread my hands. He did the throat-cutting thing. I nodded. ‘Mr Willis,’ I said, fading his voice down, ‘here’s a handy hint; attack the Euro via the interest rate. A single interest rate barely makes sense throughout the UK, let alone all twenty-five members of an expanded EU, unless you want – in fact to impose – absurd levels of worker mobility or a vastly increased centralised regional compensation fund.’

‘Look, we didn’t fight and win the Second World War-’

‘It’s been interesting talking to you, Mr Willis. Goodbye.’ I looked at Phil as I cut Mr Willis off. ‘We getting crossed lines with the Daily Mail letters page or something?’

‘I think it’s encouraging that we have a spread of listeners of various ages, views and ethnic and cultural backgrounds, Ken,’ Phil said, leaning towards his mike.

‘Phil Ashby, listeners. Voice of Reason. Singing in harmony from the hymnal of Corporate Mission Statements.’

‘That’ll be me, then. Hi,’ Phil said, right up to the mike. ‘Who’s our next caller?’

‘It’s another Steve, from Streatham.’ According to the screen he wanted to talk about Scotz & & Erop & U.

‘Streatham Steve, hello.’

‘Awright, Ken? Ma man!’ a deep voice shouted. I looked at Phil and crossed my eyes.

‘Steve, you’re doing some violence to the mike on that mobile. I’m sure if you return it promptly to its owner they may not press charges.’

‘Wot? Agh, ha-ha-ha! Na, mate, it’s mine.’

‘Well, bully for you. And the exact flavour of your beef would be what?’

‘Wot?’

‘What is it you want to say, Steve?’

‘Yeah, I don’t want to be a European!’

‘You don’t? Right. Which continent should we tow the British Isles to lie off then?’

‘Na, you know what I mean.’

‘Indeed I do. Well, so vote against it whenever you have the chance.’

‘Yeah, but it’s still gonna happen, innit?’

‘Fraid so. It’s called democracy.’ I hit the FX for Hollow Laughter.

‘Yeah, but the fing is, I blame you Scots, don’t I?’

‘Ah-hah,’ I said. ‘Any particular reason, Steve, or is this just some generalised anti-Caledonian prejudice?’

‘Yeah, the government’s all Scotch, innit? The Labour Party. They’re all Jocks, aren’t they?’

‘Very high proportion of the top jobs, yes, Steve. The Dear Leader himself, our prudent Chancellor is a Scot-’

‘Worse, he’s a Fifer,’ Phil cut in.

‘Na, Phil, sorry,’ I said.

‘What?’ Phil asked.

‘Yeah,’ Steve said, ‘That’s what-’

‘Hold on, Steve, pal,’ I said. ‘Come back to you in two seconds, but I just need to straighten something out with Producer Phil. Okay?’

‘Ah,’ Steve said. ‘Yeah…’

‘What?’ Phil repeated innocently, blinking behind his glasses.

‘Sorry, Phil, pal,’ I said. ‘But you can’t do that.’

‘Can’t do what?’

‘Bring up divisions or petty squabbles between different bits of Scotland. Our internal prejudices and micro-management bigotries are our own affair. We’re allowed to indulge in that but you’re not. It’s like black people can call each other nigger but us white folks can’t. And rightly so, I might add.’

Phil nodded. ‘Things don’t mean what the sayer says, they mean what the listener hears.’

I hit the FX key for a quiet, minute-long sample of the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’, and over it said, voice raised, ‘Still our most elegant formulation of what really would be one of our mission statements if we didn’t spit on such foul aberrations from a great height and grind the ordure-jammed cleats of our Jockboots into their snivelling faces.’

‘Along with,’ Phil said, ‘If you don’t give people justice, they’ll take revenge.’

‘And, Never underestimate the greed of the rich.’

‘Not forgetting, Ditto the ability of people to take exactly the wrong lesson from a disaster.’

‘NMD? Come on down!’ I was laughing again. ‘Or our emission statement: I’m coming! I’m coming!’

‘Or the posh version: I’m arriving! I’m arriving!’

‘Indeed.’ I un-clicked the sample.

‘But anyway,’ Phil said, still grinning.

‘But anyway indeed, Philip.’

‘What it boils down to is,’ he said slowly, ‘that I can’t say the things about the Scots that you say all the time.’

‘Of course not! You’re English. A few of us clever Jocks still blame you for the whole Glasgow-Edinburgh antipathy thing. The good citizens of each very-much-equally-worthy conurbation just loved each other to bits until you guys came along. And frankly the utterly preposterous idea that if we hadn’t had the English to unite us in hate we’d still be a bunch of bare-arsed hill tribes marrying our sisters and murdering each other in caves holds no water with us whatsoever, no sirree. We reckon you were just dividing and conquering. So, like I say, just don’t start, okay?’

‘It’s a good job you’ve got us to blame,’ Phil said.

‘It most certainly is,’ I agreed emphatically. ‘Just don’t for a nanosecond expect the least scintilla of gratitude.’

‘As if,’ Phil said, smiling. ‘As apparently the young folk say, these days.’

‘Yeah, you’ll prise that copy of Clueless out of the video one day, Phil.’ Phil laughed silently and I went back to Steve. ‘Steve. Yeah. All these Scots in Westminster? Hear what you’re saying, but don’t forget: if you think the Scots are crap, and they’re the ones who’ve clawed their way to the top of this particular greasy pole, what does that say about the English politicians?’

‘I fink it’s a conspiracy, mate.’

‘Brilliant! Phil; a conspiracy form.’ I picked the paper copy of the running order from the desk in front of me and rustled it near the mike. ‘Thank you. Steve? Ready; shoot.’

‘Cos, like, you want to get us into Europe, don’t you?’

‘We do?’ I smiled widely at Phil. ‘Yeah! We do! You’re right. Steve, I think you’re on to something here. Possibly a rehab programme. But listen, this makes sense. It’s a Scottish conspiracy to get revenge for three hundred years of oppression, which we secretly feel we never did resist strongly enough.’

‘I fink it’s cos you’re jealous.’

‘Of course we are. Our invasions of you lot never worked. Same with yours of us, though obviously our impression is very much that you were always much better at killing lots of us than we were at killing lots of you. Then you guys realised where our weak spot is and just bought us. That was smart. Except we’ve never forgiven you for being cleverer than us; we’re supposed to be the canny ones in this relationship.’

‘Yeah, cos you lot do want to be in Europe, dontcha?’

‘Naturally. Scots’ll make great Europeans. When we hear the English say, We don’t want to be ruled from a distant capital where they speak differently from us and impose an alien currency on us, we think: hold on, we’ve had that for three centuries. We’ve been there, we’ve had the conditioning, we’ve done the apprenticeship. London, Brussels, what’s to choose? Better to be wee and ignored in a potential superpower than wee and ignored in a post-imperial backwater where the only things that arrive on time are the corporate bonuses.’

‘Yeah, well,’ Steve said.

‘Excellent work there, Steve. Fine contribution. Breaks my heart we don’t pay anything.’

‘Sawright.’

‘Of course this does mean, though, Steve, that having started to uncover the conspiracy, the people who really run the country are now going to be after you. Basically you’re on the run from here on in, chum. Sorry. And I’d get moving now, frankly, because these people don’t hang around. They’ve been known to collar somebody while they’re still making the phone call that alerted what little remains of our so-called free society to the threat in the first place. I’m not kidding, mate, while they’re still-’ I’d clicked Steve’s line off. ‘Steve? Hello? Steve? Steve? Steve! Are you… Dear God, Phil,’ I said in hushed, strangled tones. ‘They’ve got the poor beggar. My God they’re fast.’

‘That was quick,’ Phil agreed.

‘He’s probably already trussed into a head-to-toe strait-kilt and being bundled into an unmarked Irn Bru van even as we speak.’

‘Ayee,’ Phil said, in what was already recognisable as his incurably atrocious Scots accent. ‘He’ll be languishing in a pibrock on the Isle of Ocktermuckty before the day is oot, Ken.’

‘Och, Phil,’ I sighed happily, ‘when you speak, it’s like being home again.’

‘Shplendid. Sho, who’sh our nexsht caller?’

‘Well, we’re obviously shunted onto a deeply Scottish vibe here, Phil, as that spookily accurate Sean Pertwee impression of yours so powerfully testifies. Let’s have…’ I scanned the call-monitoring screen, paging down to where the new calls were still appearing. ‘Ah; Angus. Now there’s a fine choochter name.’ I clicked on his line. ‘Angus. Are you Scottish? Say yes.’

‘Aye, man, ah am. Hullo. How’re ye doin?’

‘Fine and dandy. Yourself?’

‘Magic, aye.’

‘And what have you and your magic eye been looking at, then?’

‘Aye, ah was jus listenin to what yur man there was saying about us an the English, an ah jus thought he wiz talkin a lod a shite.’

Beep. ‘Shite’ was a beepable word; Phil did the business this time, though we all had a button. Beepable words were: cunt, fuck (and variations thereof), shit (and variations thereof), shite (but not crap), bastard (but not, apparently, the Scotified versions I kept getting away with), prick (in context) and cock (in context). We could do this because the show went out with a three-second delay. This meant that, in theory, Phil could beep me if I said anything slanderous or likely to bring Capital Live! into disrepute, or court. Ha, ha.

‘So cogently put, Angus,’ I said.

‘Aw, sorry, man.’

I looked across the desk. ‘Beep count today, Phil?’

‘That’s the first.’

‘Thought it was. Seventy minutes in. Dear me. Standards are slipping. So, Angus, is that all you want to say? We do allegedly have a national reputation for cogent intellectual discourse we ought to be maintaining here, Angy, and frankly you’re not coming up to the mark. Or pound, or groat.’

‘Na, but it’s just, if the English don’t want to be part of Europe, fine. But why should we have to no be a part of it too, like? Let them go their own way. We’ll go ours. We don’t need them. Man, they’re just an embarrassment sometimes.’

This made me laugh. Phil took umbrage. ‘From the nation that gave us the Krankies?’ he said, voice rising indignantly. ‘And the deep-fried Mars bar? We embarrass you?’

I was still laughing. ‘Yeah, well, Angus,’ I said. ‘I know what you’re saying, but then we’ve always wanted it both ways, haven’t we? Us Scots, I mean. When the Empire was still commonly held something to be proud of we were like, Aye, an dinny forget who really built it fur ye; we wur yer best sodjers an engineers an aw sorts, and we built yer ships fur ye too, an mined the coal tae make them go. Aye, when ye were takin civilisation tae the fuzzy-wuzzies it might a been the Inglish general an is foppish chums on their horses on the ridge sayin charge an tally-ho chaps, but it wiz the bams wi the kilts an the bagpipes that stormed in tae dae the real bayonet work. Oh, an did we mention we inventit the steam engine an the telly?

‘Right? But then, like, soon as imperialism became a dirty word we were giving it, Aye, solidarity there, black brother; ken exactly whit ye’ve went through by the way; those Inglish bastirts invaded our country before anybody else’s, so they did; under the imperialist yoke fur three hunner years, us. Totally exploited. Stole that steam engine an the telly frae us, too, by the way.’

Angus’s mobile feed had crackled, broken up and gone back to the dial tone about halfway through this.

Phil said, ‘Angus has left the airwaves.’

‘Indeed he has,’ I said, glancing at the studio clock and using my pencil to cross off another segment on the running order. ‘Well, that’s the end of the Looney Tunes section of the show, where all you brave, brave people ring up to be insulted by a professional. We’ve got some vitally important information about stuff you didn’t know you wanted coming up right here, and then, after that, talking about insults, it’ll be Shaggy. Take it away, Shaggy. Take it very, very, far, away…’

‘What on earth are you doing?’

‘I’ve changed me mind. I want a gin and juice.’

‘So you’re phoning Craig to change your order.’

‘Yep.’

‘He’s about eight fucking metres away,’ I protested, pointing into the bar. ‘I can see his slap-headed cranium.’ We were sitting on some aluminium chairs on the pavement outside a bar on Frith Street. This was back in August, I think. It was a Saturday evening, one of those warm summer nights in Soho when the whole place feels like it’s inside, like it’s a vast, warren-like room, when the people throng the streets between the low-rise buildings and turn it all into a single space, and the cars, edging slowly, slowly up the narrow streets, often slower than the people walking, seem to bloom to the same size they look in a showroom; big, ungainly things, all that hot, fast metal trapped by the press of soft, summer-stripped bodies. Music came whumping out of the bar’s open doors and windows, seeped from a club down some steps across the road, and pulsed from the vehicles crawling their way up the street, sounding dull if the windows were closed and sharp if the windows were open. I smelled cigars, blow, exhaust, perfume, curry, kebabs, beer, sweat and tar. Plus, every now and again, there came the faint, almost subliminal smell of drains, of sewage, like something decaying and noxious seeping up from underneath.

Ed twisted briefly in his seat, glancing back towards the crowded, noisy bar, where Craig had, it seemed, finally got to the counter. ‘Yeah, maybe he is,’ he said, thumbing the phone. ‘But you try gettin froo to im or attractin is attention.’

It occurred to me that Ed had a point. It also occurred to me that a well-aimed ice cube might do the trick, but I looked at my bottle of Budvar and Ed’s bottle of Beck’s, and thought, No. Even with a reliable ice cube supply (which we didn’t have), and my fabulous lobbing abilities (which it was highly unlikely had been in any way compromised by the three or four hours of drinking accomplished until this point), such behaviour could, just conceivably, result in a miss, a misunderstanding and a fracas. Even a mêlée.

‘Ullo, Craig? Yeah. Hee hee hee. Best way, mate. Na, a gin and juice. You know; wif orange. Yeah, cheers, mate.’

‘Make it a double!’ I yelled at the phone. Some passing people looked at me.

‘Yeah, that was im,’ Ed said into the mobile. ‘See you.’

‘You’re so decadent,’ I told him.

‘I’m so pissed off.’

‘Don’t take it personally.’

Ed should not have been here. He’d been just about to start a gig in Luton when it had been cancelled due to a series of bomb alerts. With nothing to do, he’d joined Craig and me on our Night Out. This was supposed to end up with Craig and I going clubbing but somehow we’d kind of side-tracked ourselves down a Serious Drinking route. Loved-up dancing on the prowl for luvverly laydeez was now almost certainly out of the question. Of course we might convince ourselves otherwise in the interim, but in that case the night would almost certainly end in abject humiliation.

‘Why would somebody bomb a club, anyway?’ I asked Ed. ‘Or threaten to.’

‘Turf war, mate. Settin these fings up, doin the security, providin the pills; lot a dosh involved.’ Ed finished his Beck’s. ‘Course it usually all runs nice an smoov cos that’s in everybody’s inarest so that the money keeps comin slidin froo, but every now an again there’ll be some sort a disagreement where neevir side’ll back down an some cunt feels the need to make a point. This evenin patently being one of them.’ He nodded at me. ‘Sorta fing that Merrial guy might be involved in.’

‘Really?’

‘Possibly.’ Ed shrugged. ‘I don’t know an I don’t want to neevir. Just a bastard when these geezers can’t get their fuckin acts togevver. Leaves a onist jobbin DJ out of pocket, dunnit?’

‘Wait here; I’ll organise a whip-round.’

‘Fack orfft.’

I have no idea where this happened.

‘Ere.’

‘What?’

‘D’you unnerstand everyfin your mate’s sayin?’

‘What? Craig?’

‘Yeah, oo else, ya nutter.’

‘Course I do.’

‘Bit of a accent though, asn’t he? Dontya fink?’

‘What the hell are you talking about?’

‘I mean, I can just about cope wif your Highlan brogue, but I almost need a interpreter wif im.’

‘Are you trying to be funny?’

‘Na, I’m serious, mate. Hee hee hee.’

‘You’re talking nonsense. Craig hasn’t got a Scottish accent any more. Well, virtually none; he goes back to Glasgow and they think he’s a Londoner.’

‘Na, but really.’

‘And what the hell’s this about my accent too, ya bastard?’

‘What? D’you really fink you speak BBC English or somefing, do you?’

‘Better than that!’ I roared. I think people looked round again. ‘I don’t have an accent!’

‘Ha! You got an accent, man! I’m telling you!’

‘Naw ah dinny!’ I said. I meant it to be ironic.

‘Hee hee hee. All right, then; what nationality am I?’

‘You’re British.’

Ed rolled his eyes. ‘All right, which bit of Britain?’

‘Brixton.’

‘You is just being deliberately obtuse here, man.’

‘All right! You’re English!’

‘See? I’m not; I’m Inglish.’

‘“Inglish”? What d’you mean “Inglish”? There’s a fucking “E” at the start there!’

‘Yeah, but it’s pronounced “Inglish”, innit?’

‘I beg to differ.’

‘Say “film”.’

‘Fim.’

‘Na! Come on; say it like you always say it.’

‘That is how I always say it.’

‘Fuck off! You say “fillum”! You always do.’

‘I do not. Film. There.’

‘See?’

‘See what?’

‘You said “fillum”!’

‘I did not!’

‘Yes you did. Here’s your mate; let’s see how he pronounces it. Ere, Craig, mate; say “film”.’

Craig sat down, put the drinks on the table and, smirking, said, ‘Movie.’

Oh how we laughed.

‘Na, it’s just, like, realising there’s the powerful and the powerless, the strong and the weak, the rich and the poor, the winners and the losers, and which lot do you identify with? If it’s with the winners, then you’re basically saying, Right, fuck the poor or the dispossessed or the oppressed or the whatever; I’m just out for me; I want to be one of them winners and I don’t care who I hurt or what I do getting there and staying there. If you identify with the losers-’

‘You’re a loser,’ Ed said.

‘No, no; no, you’re not.’

‘Anyway, you got money.’

‘I’m not saying having money at all is immoral. Though I’m not so sure about having shares…’

‘Lissen to you, man! Wot’s wrong wif havin shares?’

‘The legal precedence you’re automatically accorded over workers and consumers, that’s what,’ I said. At this point, even I was aware I was sounding a bit pompous.

‘Yeah, right. I bet you got shares anyway, man, wevvir you know it or not.’

‘No I don’t!’ I protested.

‘No?’ Ed said. ‘You got a pension?’

‘No!’ I exclaimed triumphantly.

Ed looked amazed. ‘Wot? No pension plan?’

‘Nope. Opted out of the company’s and never opted into another.’

‘You’re mad.’

‘I’m not! I’m principled, you bastard.’

‘Self-righteousness is easily worth a few percentage points to a man like Ken,’ Craig told Ed. At the time, I thought in support.

‘Still fink you’ve got shares somewhere. Where do you keep your dosh, then?’

‘Building society. Nationwide; the last big mutual. All my money goes to provide loans to people buying houses, not into the rest of the capital market and certainly not into lining the pockets of fucking fat cat directors.’

‘Yeah,’ Ed snorted. ‘An wot you gettin? Four per cent?’

‘A clear conscience,’ I said. Oops; skirting the perimeter of the pomposity precipice again. ‘Anyway, my point is that you can still have ambition and want to do well and want your friends and family to do well, but you’re keeping your, keeping your… what am I trying to say here, Craig?’

‘You’re tryin to say “I am drunk.”’ Ed laughed. ‘Loud and clear.’

‘I think,’ Craig said, ‘you’re trying to explain what determines whether you’re right- or left-wing. Or liberal or not. Something like that.’ He waved one long arm. ‘I don’t know.’

Craig sat looking gangly and overhanging his seat, limbs on a very low state of readiness, light reflecting from his shaven head. We had moved on to the Soho House after the bar had shut. There might have been somewhere in between (see above). Whatever; we had all been very sorry to leave the bar because all these stunningly beautiful women had kept walking by us, going up and down the pavement and the street, and we’d all observed that they’d got more and more beautiful as the evening had gone on, remarkably.

Anyway, now we were here in the House and it was crowded and hot and when I thought about it I couldn’t remember what floor we were on or which room we were in or where the loo would be from here. At least we’d got a table somehow, but sitting down in the midst of all these standing bodies meant you were situated kind of low to spot any natural landmarks and so get the old bearings. I had no idea how we’d got onto this stuff about belief but if I’d stopped to think about it, it would probably have been me who’d brought the subject up.

‘Something like that,’ I said, feeling I was agreeing with an important point, though not quite able to recall exactly what it might be. ‘It’s a fucking mission statement, man. One that actually has some point. It’s about where your sympathies lie; with yourself or with your fellow man. Women. Human beings. This is what it’s all about; this.’

‘What?’

‘This, what I’m going to explain, right here, right now.’

‘Well?’

‘Go on then.’

‘It’s about, do you see somebody having a really tough time of things and think, Tough shit, loser? Or do you see somebody having a really tough time and think, Hmm, too bad, or, Oh, that’s a shame, or, Oh, poor person, I wonder how I can help? That’s the choice. Choices. Choice. It’s all about how nasty or nice you are.’

‘Wow, you really must be nice,’ Craig said. ‘You missed out the one that’s worse than, Tough shit, loser.’

‘I did? There is one?’

‘Yes; it’s, Hmm, how can I exploit this already down-and-out and therefore usefully vulnerable person for my own ends?’

‘Fuck,’ I breathed, abashed by my own lack of sufficient cynicism. ‘So I did.’ I shook my head. ‘God, there are some real bastards around.’

‘Never more than ten feet from a rat,’ Ed said. He raised his eyebrows. ‘Specially round ere.’

‘Ten feet?’ I said. ‘I thought it was ten metres.’

‘Twenty feet,’ Craig offered, possibly as a compromise.

‘Wotever.’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Soho. I suppose there just might be the odd tad of exploitation going on here.’

Ed made a show of spluttering into his drink. ‘Fuckin Exploitation City here, mate.’

‘The girls are all slaves,’ Craig said, nodding wisely.

‘Who? What girls?’

‘The prossies,’ Craig said.

‘The girls wif their cards in the phone boxes,’ Ed said.

‘Oh. Yeah. Of course.’

‘Yeah, you try findin a ho wot can speak English round ere.’

‘Right,’ I said. ‘Yeah; they’re all from Eastern Europe or somewhere now, aren’t they?’

‘Slaves,’ Craig repeated. ‘Take their passports, tell them they’ve got to work off some ludicrous amount of debt. The girls think once they’ve done that they can start earning some for themselves and sending money back home but of course they never do.’ He nodded. ‘Read about it. Observer, I think.’

‘And the police are out, I suppose,’ I said, ‘because then they’ll just get deported, or slung into a detention centre or something.’

‘Not to mention what’ll appen to their family back ome.’ Ed clicked his fingers. ‘Nuvvir fing your Mr Merrial’s involved in, come to fink of it. Im an is Albanian chums.’

‘Who?’ Craig said, looking mystified.

I had a sudden fit of hull-breach-category paranoia, and waved one hand with what I hoped looked like airily casual dismissiveness.

‘Woops!’ Ed said, catching the glass before it fell all the way to the floor. ‘Nuffing in it anyway.’

‘Sorry, sorry,’ I said. ‘Um, ah, yeah; too complicated,’ I told the still mystified-looking Craig. I turned to Ed.

‘Ed,’ I said. ‘What do you believe in?’

‘I believe it’s time for anuvver drink, mate.’

‘I wasn’t. I didn’t. I didn’t say half the things I was supposed to have said.’

‘Ya. So, like, what did you say?’

‘Three things. Two of them simple, unarguable road safety points. One: estimable and thoroughly civilised city though it is, it was something close to criminal neglect on the part of the Parisian authorities that a piece of road like that had massive, square concrete pillars unprotected by crash barriers. It couldn’t have been much more intrinsically dangerous if they’d attached giant iron spikes angled to face into the traffic stream. Two: this is supposed to be a mature, responsible adult, mother of two, beloved by millions, so she might have done the first thing that any rational human being does when they get into a car, especially one that might be going to travel quickly and even if you haven’t guessed the driver is quietly pissed, and put on a fucking seat belt. Three, and this is the one that really caused the trouble: my conscience was clear. But a lot of the people who turned up to watch the procession and throw flowers onto the hearse, if they blamed the photographers chasing the Merc on their motorbikes – which a lot of people did – then they were hypocrites, because by their own logic they’d helped kill her.’

‘Ya. Right. Ya. How?’

‘Because why were the snappers bothering to stay up late outside a flash Parisian hotel in the first place? Because the photographs they might get could be worth something. Why might the photographs be worth something? Because the papers would pay good money for them. Why would the papers pay good money for them? Because those photos sold newspapers and magazines.

‘My point was that if any of the people that blamed the photographers – a profession I have no great love for, believe me – ever bought newspapers that regularly featured the royals in general and Princess Di in particular, and especially if they had ever changed from whichever newspaper they usually bought, or bought an extra one, because it contained or might contain a photograph of Diana, then they should blame themselves for her death, too, because their interest, their worship, their need for celebrity gossip, their money, had put those snappers at the door of the Ritz that night and set them off on the chase that ended with a black Merc totalled round an underground chunk of reinforced concrete and three people dead.

‘Me, I’m a republican; nothing-’

‘What, like the IRA? Right.’

‘No, not the fucking IRA. I mean I’m a republican rather than a monarchist. Nothing against her madge or the rest personally… well, anyway… but as an institution I want the monarchy dumped. I wouldn’t buy a piece of shit like the Sun or the Mail or the Express in the first place, but even if for some bizarre reason I’d ever been tempted, I’d have been less, not more likely to do so if there had been a photo of Princess Di on the cover. So I hadn’t helped kill her. My question to whoever might have been listening was, How about you?’

‘Right, I see.’

‘Right. Do you?’

‘So they sacked you. Bummer.’

I shrugged. ‘The papers got a little upset. Personally I think the Express and the Mail just didn’t like being called tabloids.’

‘But you found something else, right, ya?’

‘Oh, ya.’

‘Oh, you’re making fun of me. You’re terrible.’

‘Am I?’

‘Yes, I’m a big fan. You shouldn’t insult me. I thought I was doing quite well.’

‘What? You thought you were doing quite well?’

‘Amn’t I?’

I looked her down and up. ‘You’re funny.’

‘You think?’

‘Definitely. Another drink?’

‘Okay. No; you sit. I’ll get them. You haven’t let me buy anything yet. Please.’

‘If you insist, Raine.’

‘I do. Same again?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Don’t go away,’ Raine said, touching me on the arm again. She’d done this a lot over the last hour or so. I liked it.

‘Oh, okay then,’ I said.

Raine slid out from behind our table and insinuated her lithe, size six body into the crowd, towards the bar. Phil leaned over. ‘I think you’re in there, mate.’

‘Yeah, I think I might be, too,’ I agreed. ‘Who’d a thunk it?’ Shit, I was a bit drunk. I’d actually knocked back that last whisky. Mistake. I turned to Phil. ‘Can I have some of your water?’

‘Yep. There you go.’

I drank from his bottle of Evian.

We were in Clout on Shaftesbury Avenue, a big, coolly swish, third-generation pleasure complex designed for the discerning older clubber who might equally favour Home or be found in FOBAR (Fucking Old Beyond All Recognition, age-profile successor to FUBAR: Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition).

Phil and I were sitting in a booth in the Retox Bar, on Level Tepid. If you listened carefully you could just make out the thud-thud-thud from the main dance area on the floor above. From downstairs, where the main chill spaces were and quiet, relaxing sounds were the ambient noisescape, there was what sounded like silence. Well, maybe just the occasional quiet pop of yet another fried brain cell departing this world.

Above, you could hardly hear the person next to you if you hollered in their ear. Below, it felt wrong to do much more than whisper. Here, music played but normal conversation was perfectly possible. I must be getting old, because I preferred it here. Fucking right I did! Here was where you obviously got to meet pieces of class ass like Raine! Fucking yee-ha!

Calm down, calm down, I told myself. I tried breathing deeply. ‘I’ve been on a real fucking roll recently,’ I told Phil, shaking my head. Jo, Ceel – ah, Ceel, who was really in another category altogether, who was a whole world in herself, but who I saw so horribly seldom -… I’d lost track. Start again: Jo, Ceel… that Argentinian girl in Brighton, one or two others, Tanya – well, not Tanya, who’d baled out on me – but I still reckoned I was green-light with Amy if I wanted to take things further down that next-on-personal-playlist route, and… and now this Raine girl. A total fucking stunner with a Sloane accent and she seemed to be after my body! I loved London. I loved even the modest morsel of fame that I had. ‘I have, haven’t I?’

‘Yeah,’ Phil said, nodding wisely. ‘Don’t know what they see in you, myself.’

‘Me either,’ I agreed. I drank some more water and studied the floor at my feet. The floor of the Retox was some blond Scandinavian-looking wood. Pouring a whisky away straight onto it might cause unseemly dribbling, splashing noises, like you’d pissed yourself or something. Ah-hah; Phil had put his jacket down on the floor when Raine had slipped in beside us. Perfect. I hooked his jacket closer underneath me with one foot while he wasn’t looking.

‘Here you go,’ Raine said, setting my whisky down in front of me. It was a double. ‘Here; I got you some more water, ah, Paul.’

‘Phil,’ said Phil.

‘Ya. Sorry. Phil.’ Raine smiled at me and raised her glass; it looked like a G &T. I raised mine. ‘Down the hatch,’ Raine said, and drank deep. I put my glass to my lips and made a big show of drinking, but didn’t, keeping my lips tightly closed. I sniffed it, instead. I was getting paranoid about this, thinking that Raine was watching me drink. I made my Adam’s apple bob, like I was swallowing. I put the glass down on the table, keeping it covered by my fingers so the level wasn’t obvious.

‘Nice. Bit peaty. Is it an Islay?’

‘Ah, ya,’ Raine said. ‘Ya, that’s right.’ She wore tight leather pants, a couple of layers of pink and white chiffon blouse, and shades with a faint yellow-tint that made her look a bit like Anastacia. Mid-twenties, like her waist. Awfully good cheek-bones and a jaw line like David Coulthard’s, except smoother, obviously. Her nipples were kind of obvious through the chiffon – was it fashionable again? Looked good on her, anyway – and something about her bare shoulders reminded me of Ceel. Raine’s hair was blond and thick and she kept flicking it back off her face.

‘So, Raine,’ Phil said. ‘Ever sky-dived in La Mancha?’ He grinned inanely at her, then at me. I got the impression he was at least as drunk as me. We’d started mob-handed in the pub, gone on to the Groucho, then the Soho House, and ended up here, losing co-workers en route to pathetic excuses like food, prior engagements, life-partners, children; that sort of thing. I had the vague impression we’d had a good talk about the show during some part of this and come up with some new ideas and stuff for me to rant about, but I couldn’t recall any of the details at all. Luckily Phil usually did, and he normally took notes in tiny writing in the Useful Diary he always carried with him.

It was a Friday, so we didn’t have a show tomorrow; we were allowed to go out to play, dammit. Jo was absent for the weekend, with the Addicta boys in Stockholm and Helsinki. Also, it had been three weeks since I’d seen Celia and I’d been hoping there would be a couriered package for me immediately after the show and an Anonymous call on my mobile; in fact I’d spent the show, the day since I woke up, even the week, if I was being honest, looking forward to signing my name on a dispatch rider’s acknowledgment form; received in good condition, sign here, print here, insert time here… But there had been nothing, just an empty feeling.

I’d decided it was time for a jolly good drink.

‘Sorry?’ the girl said.

Phil waved a hand woozily. ‘Nothing. Ignore me.’

‘Ya.’ Raine looked rather meanly at my producer, I thought. Bit cheeky, I thought. This man was one of my best friends and a very fine producer, too. Who did she think she was, looking at him with a just-fuck-off expression? How dare she? This man deserved respect, for Christ’s sake. While she was distracted, I took the opportunity to pour about half my whisky over Phil’s jacket, then brought the whisky glass up and did the pretend drinking thing again, just as Raine switched her attention back to me, and a smile reappeared on her face. She clinked glasses once more. I thought I could smell the whisky fumes evaporating from the dark surface of Phil’s old but still serviceably stylish Paul Smith. I swirled my whisky round in the glass. Raine was watching.

‘You trying to get me drunk?’ I asked her in a sort of kooky, role-reversal kinda stylee.

She lowered her eyelids a little and slid up to me on the seat until I could feel the warmth of her through my shirt. ‘I’m trying to get you to come home with me,’ she murmured.

‘Ha!’ I laughed. I slapped my thigh. ‘You shall go to the ball, Cinders!’

Phil was snorting with laughter on the other side of me. Raine gave him a dirty look. I took her chin in my hand and brought her mouth towards mine, but she put her hand on my forearm and gently pushed my hand down. ‘Finish your drink and let’s go, okay?’

I’d already disposed of most of the rest of the whisky and could happily have slugged the rest because it wasn’t enough to make any real difference, but by now it had become something between a game and a point of honour to dispose of the whole lot without a drop passing my lips, so I looked over Raine’s shiningly blond head and said, ‘Okay… Shit, is that Madders and Guy Ritchie?’

She looked. I dumped the last of the whisky onto Phil’s jacket and stood up, lowering the whisky glass from my mouth as Raine turned back again. ‘Guess not,’ I said. I felt fine, I thought. The prospect of sex with somebody new, especially somebody new who looked as good as Raine, was a profoundly sobering influence all by itself. Still, I felt myself sway as we edged out of the booth.

‘Phil, got to go.’

‘Fine. Have fun,’ he said.

‘That’s the intention. You take care.’

‘And you precautions.’ He sniggered.

‘See you Monday.’

‘I just have to visit the loo,’ Raine said as we crossed through the crowds.

‘I’ll see you at the cloakroom.’

I spent a couple of minutes nattering to the cloakroom girl on the ground floor. Unlike Phil I usually checked my jacket in, but then I didn’t use mine as a wearable handbag.

‘Ready?’ Raine asked, passing her receipt to the girl.

‘Very,’ I said.

Raine let me help her on with her coat. It was an Afghan, which I interpreted as a retro-fashion-driven coincidence rather than some subtle geopolitical statement. She turned and looked me in the eye, gaze switching from one pupil to the other. It felt good, very sexy, to be inspected so closely. She hadn’t tipped the cloakroom girl but I didn’t care. I kind of fell against her and she let me kiss her, though not deeply. She pushed me away and glanced at the girl. ‘Come on,’ she said.

It was raining as we left. I nodded at the bouncers, who smiled and nodded back. I was moderately certain I knew their names, but I wasn’t absolutely sure, and getting bouncers’ names wrong was a lot worse than not calling them anything. I stared at the rain and the traffic sizzling up and down the Avenue, lights bright in the drop-jewelled darkness. ‘It’s rain, Raine,’ I said.

‘Right, ya,’ she said, gazing down the street. Yes, Kenneth, I thought to myself, like she’ll never have heard that one in her life before.

‘Friday night in the rain,’ I said authoritatively. ‘Our best chance is a taxi dropping somebody off. I’ll bravely volunteer to make a dash for one if it pulls up.’

‘Right.’

‘Or I could just phone a mini-cab,’ I said, taking my mobile out after a struggle with the little holster at my hip. ‘I’ll tell them there’s an even more exorbitant tip in it than usual.’ I squinted down at the little Motorola as I flipped it open. ‘Just don’t say anything about curry,’ I muttered, closing one eye to see the display properly.

Raine looked round. She put her hand over mine, over the phone. ‘No, it’s all right. Here’s a taxi now.’

A black cab had just pulled up at the kerb. ‘Glory be,’ I said, putting the mobile away again. ‘Na, its light’s off…’

But Raine was already pulling me across the pavement towards the cab. ‘Ya, I flagged it.’

‘Fine work, Raine,’ I said, grabbing for the door handle and missing. She opened the door but I insisted on holding it open for her. I then hit my head getting in. ‘Ouch.’

‘You all right?’

‘Fine.’ I started searching for my seat belt. ‘This is a really good omen, you know, Raine,’ I told her, raising my backside off the seat to grab at the belt.

‘Ya, it is, isn’t it.’

‘Getting a taxi that quickly on a rainy Friday?’ I said. ‘You’re a miracle worker. Or, as a combination, we’re just blessed.’

‘Right, ya.’

The cab pulled out into the traffic, heading north-east. I finally got my seat belt on. Raine hadn’t bothered with hers. I started lecturing her on the extreme inadvisability of this, given what had happened to Princess Di, but she just looked at me strangely and I realised that as well as preventing you from being flung forward, limbs flailing, in a bad crash, seat belts also stopped you from snogging. They made you Safe In Taxis. I was appalled with myself. I was sure I’d known this before but I seemed to have forgotten.

‘You’re right,’ I said, though she hadn’t said anything. I undid my belt. ‘Solidarity, sister.’ I slid along the seat towards her. I caught the driver glancing up at us in his mirror. Raine let me slip my arms round her, pressed up against the seat corner. I covered her mouth with mine. She opened up a little more this time. I fumbled to get my hands inside the Afghan coat.

‘Maybe you should put your seat belts on, eh?’ the driver said. It was an oldish cab so he had to talk through the gap in the perspex screen between us, rather than use the intercom set-up the more modern cabs have.

Raine pushed me away. ‘Ya, I suppose we should, ya,’ she said, with what I took to be obvious reluctance.

‘Ha. See?’ I said, wagging a finger at her. I felt for my belt again. She watched me, then put hers on.

‘Here,’ she said, helping me with one end.

‘Thanks.’ I sat back, closing my eyes.

‘Have a snooze, why not?’ Raine said.

I opened my eyes, looked at her. ‘I’m not tired,’ I told her. ‘Is it far?’

‘Ya, fair bit to go yet.’ She glanced at the driver, then leaned over to me and said quietly, ‘Get some rest. You’re going to need it.’ She gave me one of those heavy-lidded looks again and stroked my hand in a manner I decided was distinctly carnal.

I grinned in what I hoped was not too lecherous a fashion and sat back, closing my eyes. ‘If I start snoring, I’m only pretending in a sorta post-modern ironic way, okay?’

‘Ya, right, sure.’

The taxi drove on, grumbling and clattering through the late-night traffic. It sounded a lot like my old Landy. Very relaxing. The rain swishing beneath the tyres and against the wheel wells sounded calming and soothing. It was quite warm here in the back. It made me think of darkened hotel suites. I took a deep breath and let it out. A little while to rest the eyes. Why not? A snooze would do no harm. On the other hand, I didn’t really want to drop off and start snoring or drooling or looking gross, so maybe it wasn’t such a great idea.

Some time passed. A male voice said quietly, ‘Is that him gone?’

‘Yeah, I think so,’ said Raine. At least I thought it was her. Her voice sounded different. ‘We nearly there yet then?’

‘Nuvver five minutes.’

That was weird, I thought, behind my closed eyes, with my chin somewhere near my chest. Had I dropped off? Just a little. But why was Raine asking the driver if they were nearly there yet? Didn’t she know the way home? Maybe she’d just moved in.

But what did the driver mean when he asked her, Is that him gone?

‘Just check he’s out, will ya, doll?’

Check he’s out? What the fuck was that about? I felt a hand stroke mine, then pinch the skin. I didn’t react. ‘Ken? Ken?’ Raine said, quite loud. I stayed just as I was. My heart had started to speed up. Then she said, ‘Yeah, he’s gone.’

‘Roight.’

What was going on here? What the fuck was going on? Where were we going, anyway? Had she given the driver an address as we got in? I’d kind of assumed she’d told him her home address while I was getting in and smacking my head off the top of the door frame, but had there been time? Wouldn’t I have heard something? I couldn’t remember. Shit, I was drunk; of course I wasn’t going to remember stuff like that. But then the taxi had appeared really fortuitously, too. Just rolled up, in the damp midst of a wet Friday some time between theatre and bar chucking out time. On Shaftesbury Avenue. Just appeared, its yellow For Hire light already off, if my hazy memory served me right, ready and waiting at the kerb, just like that. And it had seemed as if she’d been looking for it. But then she would have been; looking for a taxi, any taxi. But then we came back to this Check he’s out/Yeah, he’s gone shit. What the fuck was all that about? He’d expected me to be out, to be gone, to be unconscious…

Sweet Jesus H. Christ; the whisky. There had been something in the whisky. What was that date-rape drug? I couldn’t remember. But something like that. The drink she’d insisted she’d get, then watched me drink, or thought that was what she was watching while I suppressed a giggle and played my silly game and anointed Phil’s jacket with the stuff instead, distracting her, making my Adam’s apple go up and down, smacking my lips and doing everything but wipe my mouth on my sleeve; look, I’m drinking it! See? It’s gone! She’d put something in it. She must have. What was that date-rape stuff? Euthymol? No, that was a toothpaste, wasn’t it? A fucking Micky fucking Finn in this fucking day and fucking age and I’d fucking fallen for it! Or would have, if I hadn’t been determined to salvage some dregs of sobriety from my drunken stupor for the purposes of, hopefully, fucking.

Oh shit.

I’d sniffed it. The whisky with the date-rape drug or whatever it was; I’d breathed it in. How powerful was that stuff? Some must have stuck to my lips when I pretended to drink it. Was I falling into a drugged sleep now? No. No definitely not me, no-how, no-way. Very awake and horribly, edgily, tensely sober with my heart hammering so hard I’m astonished that Raine, if that’s really her name, can’t hear it, that she can’t see my entire body shaking with each thudding, crashing, flailing tremor of it.

‘You aw-wight?’ the driver asks. For one idiotic moment I think he’s talking to me, and for a totally deranged micro-moment I’m actually about to answer him.

Then the girl says, ‘Yeah,’ quite casually, as though she’s bored.

I open one eye very slightly, the left one, away from her. Where are we? I have a vague feeling we’re somewhere in the East End but I don’t know. My head is down and I can’t see much without raising it. How long did the driver say? Five minutes? Yes, it was five minutes. But how long ago was that? One minute ago? Two? Four?

I can see the little red tell-tale light on the door at my side, near the handle. Of course; cab doors lock while the vehicle is in motion. Safety device, allegedly. Stop you doing a runner, more like. Doesn’t matter. I can’t just make a break for it when we slow down. Have to wait for a complete stop. Shit. We slow down here, and I start to get sweaty palms, thinking about grabbing the door handle and sprinting off… but then we speed up again.

I use the acceleration as a plausible excuse to let my head fall back, my neck over the back of the seat now and my view through my half-closed eye a bit better. I sense Raine looking at me. I start snoring. Through the trembling blur of eyelashes, I can see a lightly trafficked road and low-rise buildings. I must really have dropped off. We’re well away from the West End here. We take a left into a darker, quieter road. What look like low warehouses and light industrial units line the road. I see plentiful graffiti and billboards with old, torn, rain-sodden posters flapping in the cold wind. We go under a bridge, engine echoing off the rivet-studded undersides of massive black girders.

‘Nearly there,’ the driver says.

‘Mm-hmm,’ says Raine.

We slow. There’s a brighter, noisier road ahead. And traffic lights.

‘Just over these lights.’

Turning amber.

‘Right.’

Thank fuck.

‘Yeah, I fink that’s Danny there I can see.’

Turning red.

‘Uh-huh.’

Oh yes. Oh yes, just stop right here on the far side of the busy traffic from wherever it is we’re going, from whoever the fuck Danny is.

The cab stops, engine idling noisily. The little red light by the door handle should click and go off now. Now. There’s a click. I wait for the little red light to go off. It doesn’t.

Something in my bowels makes a terrible trembling course through me, squeezing cold sweat from every pore. The driver; taxi drivers can override the door-locks’ stationary off-switch, keeping it on. He’s locked us in.

I’m fucked. These people can do whatever they want to me. I may be about to die. The lights are still red but the traffic crossing our path has just stopped. The driver is reaching for the gear stick.

I sit up suddenly. Raine looks at me and her mouth starts to open as her eyes finish widening. I click my seat belt unlocked and swing my right leg as hard as I can at the window to my left. It shatters first time. It feels like my leg does too, but the window’s gone in an almighty bang, falling spraying to the street outside and the rubber-matted floor of the cab in a thousand square-edged little jewels glinting sodium in the street-light.

The driver’s shocked face turns towards me. Raine grabs my arm and I do something I’ve never done before, ever; I hit a woman. Punch her square in the nose and send her head whacking back against the door window on her side.

Then I’m out of the smashed window on my side so fucking fast John Woo would be proud of me, turning on my back, hands to the top of the frame and levering myself out with just some kicking, flailing footwork to spoil the balletic beauty of it.

I land with a wind-expelling whumpf on the road, just as the taxi jerks forward and then screeches to a stop again, nose dipping. I’m rolling on the broken glass and bouncing to my feet, starting to run. There’s shouting behind me and a door slamming. More shouting from further away. These both male. Female screaming now. The road ahead is broad and almost deserted. Some parked cars, one or two Transits and Lutons. I angle for the pavement, to put some of the parked stuff between me and them. More shouting and screaming.

The wind roars in my ears as I run. Engine noise back there now. I’m near the end of the street. The engine behind me whines, caught in the low gear of reverse, then the engine seems to cut out, there’s a squeal of tyres, a moment of silence, and the engine screams. Handbrake turn.

I run out onto the street ahead at right-angles and pelt across a sudden burst of traffic, horns blaring right and left as I leap a traffic island in one stride and spot a chip shop with a queue of people outside, a hundred metres away. I make the pavement, just dodging a Royal Mail van, which skids to a stop so close I have my arm stuck out and the grille nudges the flesh of my palm. I run for the chip shop queue, dodging between a few slowly walking people like gates on a downhill slalom course. The Royal Mail van races past to my left, the driver leaning out of the window, shouting that I’m a fucking wanker and backing this up with a gesture. There are two cars at the kerb just beyond the queue at the chip shop. I splash through a puddle. The rain is off, I notice. The cars beyond the chip shop are parked outside a little lit doorway and window with a cheap-looking sign above, glaring yellow-white above the pitted brickwork and spelling out the two most beautiful words in the most beautiful language in the universe: Mini-Cabs.

I slow and look back just as I get to the queue but there’s no taxi anywhere to be seen, and nobody running. I straighten my jacket, run fingers through my hair and by the time I get to the first cab in the rank, nodding first to the guy in the doorway and then at the car, I’m actually whistling.

‘Well, do you ever look at the number of a cab when you get into one?’

‘Na,’ Craig admitted. ‘Who does?’

‘Phil, probably,’ I said. I’d called him on his mobile and home number but only got answer machines.

‘I still think,’ Craig said, ‘you should have gone to the police.’

‘Christ, man, I just wanted to get away.’

‘Yeah, but.’

‘Yeah but what? It was half eleven on a Friday night. The cops are going to be busy enough with fights and brawls and the usual weekend nonsense. And what exactly would I be ringing up to report, anyway? I think I was being kidnapped, I think somebody tried to spike my drink, but if you want any proof you’ll have to get another guy’s jacket and test it for the drug, if it’s still detectable. I think some violence was planned for me but I don’t know. I’m fairly sure I was chased but that’s not even illegal. Fucking hell, the only definitely criminal things that actually happened were the things I did; I smashed a cab window and I punched a woman in the face. I fucking hit a woman, man! Jesus Christ, that was something I had hoped to get through my whole life without doing, like breaking a major bone or changing a nappy.’ I sucked very hard on the J. I’d wanted a brandy or something but Craig had reckoned what I needed was a nice, mellow smoke.

My very first thought, once I’d got into the cab and told the guy to head for Basildon (this had to be east of wherever we were, so it meant we didn’t need to chuck a U-ey and go past the end of the road I’d been chased down), was to call Amy. She lived in Greenwich, which was feasibly in the area, and turning to her – and up on her doorstep – in an hour of need, on the run from heavies, might be just the sort of romantic ice-breaker required to shift our relationship onto whatever next phase might be on the cards (the last time I’d seen her had been on 11 September, when we’d all sat together in Kulwinder and Faye’s loft, watching the unbelievable unfold, until she’d been called away by her boss).

Then I thought of Celia. Christ; Merrial. Maybe he was behind whatever had almost happened back there.

I don’t know who I’d imagined might want to have me kidnapped and whisked off to the East End for… whatever, but of course Celia’s husband had to be a prime suspect. Why the hell hadn’t that been the first thing I’d thought of? Could this be anything to do with Celia and me? Had we been discovered? We thought we’d been so careful, but who really knew?

Oh shit. Should I use the mobile number she didn’t know I had, try to warn her?

But if it wasn’t anything to do with her, with us, and she discovered I’d taken her number without asking, without telling her…

Yeah, but if all this was about us then it was entirely possible a phone call could save her life.

‘I’m Ken, by the way,’ I said to the guy driving the mini-cab. He was a strapping white lad with a shock of red-dyed hair. I’d sat beside him rather than in the back. We shook hands.

‘Dive.’

‘Dave, I’ve a bit of a funny request.’

‘Yeah? Wossat?’

‘Can I use your mobile? I’ve got one of my own but I need to use a different one. Please? Add a fiver to the fare. It’s important. ’

‘Here you go.’

‘You are a saint, sir.’ I pulled out my own mobile, cursored through to Ceel’s entered but never used number, and clicked it into Dave’s Sony.

‘The mobile phone you are calling is switched off…’

Another couple of tries got the same response. No voice mail or message service available. ‘Thanks,’ I said to Dave the driver, handing him back his phone. ‘Never got through.’ I hesitated. ‘Listen, Dave; what I said about a fiver? Call it a tenner, but in the unlikely event a woman… anybody ever phones about a call made, like, now, just say you dialled the same wrong number or something.’

‘“You never saw me, I wasn’t here,”’ the lad quoted, grinning. ‘Used to work in a boozer, mate; lying to people on the phone looking for somebody they fink’s there is like second nature.’

‘Yeah, well, cheers,’ I said. I tried Amy next, on my own phone, but her mobile was switched to message and the land-line to her place in Greenwich was on answer, with a long beep-time of stacked messages before the tone. I sighed and rang Craig. He was in, sitting watching TV, about to go to bed.

‘Okay, Dave,’ I said. ‘Change of destination…’

I tried Celia’s mobile again from a phone box near Craig’s place in Highgate. Still nothing.

‘You should still go to the cops,’ Craig said again, looking down at the big old Geographia London Street Plan he’d spread on the kitchen table, to see if we could work out where it had all happened. Idiotically, I hadn’t thought to get the number or the name of the mini-cab company. The first thing I remembered from the drive was seeing a sign for Stratford station, off to our left as we’d headed in the general direction of Essex. ‘Report what happened,’ Craig insisted. ‘Because of what might happen.’

‘Because of what might happen?’ I echoed.

‘Supposing something else does, and it has to be something the cops get involved in; if what happened tonight comes out they’re going to want to know why you didn’t mention anything about it. You’ve got to report it, man. The cops might be able to find out if an old taxi gets its left window repaired over the next couple of days.’

‘I doubt that a kidnap that never really happened will be far up their list of priorities just now, plus I have said one or two unflattering things about the boys in blue, over the years,’ I observed. Dryly, I hoped. I was still shaking, and my leg hurt where I’d kicked the window out; I was going to have a splendid bruise in a day or two. There were various other mysterious aches, pains, grazes and likely bruises I couldn’t recall picking up in all the excitement, plus my hands and fingers were a little cut where I’d grabbed the window. Craig had handed me a bottle of TCP and some kitchen towel and told me to get on with it.

‘I know,’ he said. ‘But you still have to report it.’

‘What exactly is this stuff that might happen? What were you thinking of?’

‘I don’t know.’ Craig stretched his lanky frame back in the kitchen chair and put his hands behind his head. ‘You don’t have any idea who these people were?’

‘They were both white, south-east England, maybe London. There was somebody I didn’t see called Danny. The place I was being taken to was in the East End and the driver seemed to know the area. I’d guess he’s a proper taxi driver, done the Knowledge. It was…’ I gestured at the map in front of us. ‘There, somewhere.’

‘Suspects? Motives?’ Craig asked, grinning.

‘Stop enjoying this, you bastard.’

‘No, I’m being serious. Can you think of any suspects and what their motives might be?’

‘Oh, Jesus, do you want them alphabetically or in order of appearance? The world is basically composed of people who want me dead, and my close friends.’

‘I’m not sure those are mutually exclusive categories.’

‘Fuck off.’

‘That’s a tad paranoid, even for you.’

‘Craig, I’ve lost count of the death threats I’ve had over the years. We have to report each one to the local nick. They have a photocopied report form with my details already filled in. The people who open my mail get danger money. I’m not joking.’

‘You told me it was dirty money.’

‘Okay, it’s mostly shit, not bombs, but still. The point is lots of people have claimed to want me dead, and that’s just the ones who feel a burning desire to tell me. This could be fundamentalists of any persuasion, a corporate hit-job-’

Craig sniggered. ‘Oh, come on.’

‘Excuse me? I have affected the share price of large corporations. That’s a capital offence.’

‘Yeah, ha ha. Colour me chortle. But no, you haven’t. Not alone,’ Craig said. ‘You’re not an investigative reporter or anything, Ken. You’re a commentator. You comment on what others have dug up. If you didn’t, somebody else would, people who do dig stuff up. Private Eye, Mark Thomas… I don’t know; Rory Bremner, I mean… Shit, people have been trying to close down the Eye for decades. If Maxwell couldn’t and Jimmy Goldsmith couldn’t… I mean, why would anyone bother trying to kill you?’

‘Did any of that make sense even to you?’ I asked him.

‘I’m tired,’ Craig flapped one hand. ‘Mr Penfold and I have been in deep discussion most of the evening.’

‘Have you heard some of the things I’ve said about people? About fundamentalists in par-fucking-ticular?’

‘Fundamentalists don’t listen to your show.’

‘Khomeini didn’t read The Satanic Verses. So fucking what?’

‘Well, they don’t sound like fundamentalists, do they? White, man and woman, somebody called Danny.’

‘That I’ll give you.’ I put the dead joint into the ashtray. ‘They don’t sound like fundamentalist Muslims, anyway. Could be fundamentalist Christians; Aryan Nation militia types or something. They can’t all be wanking over pictures of Ayn Rand and polishing their Desert Eagles in South Dakota.’ My hand was still shaking. ‘Man, I really need a drink.’

‘I’ve got a box of red. Banrock okay?’

‘If it’s red and it has lots of alcohol in it, that’s all that matters.’

Craig rose. ‘Sounds like your blood, pal.’

‘You ruddy sod. My jacket stank of whisky.’

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t see it lying there,’ I lied. ‘D’you still have it? I mean, you haven’t washed it or anything, have you?’

‘Exhibit A is in a bin-bag in my kitchen,’ Phil said. He paused. He shook his head. ‘I still can’t believe you punched a woman.’

‘For the last time! I didn’t have a fucking choice!’

‘Well,’ Craig said. ‘As long as you didn’t enjoy it.’

‘About as much as I’m enjoying this,’ I muttered.

Phil had picked Craig and me up on Saturday morning and taken us to the Temple Belle. I’d been worried what I might find there; I’d wanted reinforcements. Phil and Craig knew each other so well they frequently had great sport with my insecurities, telling me they were actually better friends with each other than they were with me. This time they didn’t do that but they ganged up and made me swear that if they helped me here, I’d report what had happened to the police on the Monday morning.

The houseboat was fine. Nothing had been disturbed, no horses’ heads in the bed, nothing. There was a tool box in the cupboard under the stairs; I’d rummaged around in it until I found a hammer, which I suggested we took with us in case we were attacked, but the guys just stood there and shook their heads in unison, like they’d been rehearsing. I put the hammer back.

We went for a pint and a light lunch, then set off for the East End in search of the site of the previous evening’s fun.

I found the place eventually. Haggersley Street, off Bow Road, which was where the chip shop and the cab firm were. It all looked very different in the fresh, pale light of an October afternoon. Just past the rail bridge, by the traffic lights, there was still window glass on the road. I took a handful.

We mooched warily around the cul-de-sac on the far side of the lights, where Haggersley Street ended in a dead end off Devons Road.

‘I think your birds have flown, chum,’ Phil said, kicking at an old lager can. ‘If they were ever here.’

‘Yeah, thanks, Phil; cheers,’ I said. Phil was, compared to Craig, rather more sceptical about my account of what had happened the night before. Probably because he had seen how drunk I was. And maybe because of the jacket.

We were in a place of old, crooked kerb stones, peeling tarmac laid over ancient cobbles, windscreen glass that crunched under foot like gravel, burnt-out and abandoned cars with rusted panels and sagging plastic trim, and – framing it all on three sides – tilted lengths of desultorily graffitied corrugated iron topped by rusting angle iron strung with thin strands of barbed wire, jagged strands of sharp, spaced knots decorated by the greyed-out tatters of ruined black bin-liners, fluttering in a damp wind like the prayer flags of a half-hearted monochrome hell.

Some of the corrugated iron sections were crude gates, all strung with ancient padlocks and grimy chains.

I took a stirrup-step up – Craig made me take my shoe off, which would have made running away interesting – and looked over the corrugated iron walls. Concrete aprons in front of abandoned-looking light industrial units. Freight containers. Sheds. Puddles. Piles of wooden pallets. Waste ground. Weeds. More puddles. There was nobody about; not even any guard dogs came bounding out to greet me. The rain was coming on again.

‘I hate this place utterly,’ said Phil.

‘Seen enough?’ Craig asked me.

‘I can feel my life-force draining out through my soles,’ Phil muttered.

‘Nobody wears grey socks any more, Ken.’

‘Yeah, you’re right,’ I said, tutting and detaching one sleeve from a snag in the barbed wire. ‘Let us to fuck get.’

‘That’s you off the German beer until your grammar gets back to normal, pal.’

I tried calling Ceel at least twice a day from a variety of phone boxes throughout central London.

I now knew her number by heart.

She never answered.

Instead, on the Thursday, just after I’d finished my show, a package arrived, by courier. The package was slim and light, like Celia herself, but I didn’t dare hope. I signed for it, opened it, and there, glory be, was a key card.

My mobile rang. Something inside me melted and went south for the winter.

From the mobile’s tiny speaker, Ceel’s voice said, ‘One Aldwych. Dome suite.’

‘Are you-?’ I started to ask, but the line had clicked off. I let my head drop.

My phone burred again.

‘What?’ Ceel said.

‘Are you okay?’ I asked, almost choking.

‘Yes,’ she said, sounding puzzled. ‘Of course.’

I smiled into the middle distance. ‘I’ll see you soon.’

I couldn’t fuck. I just wanted to cuddle. Fully clothed. Ceel seemed more confused than annoyed, but also more confused than sympathetic.

‘No, I didn’t get the taxi’s number,’ I said. ‘Who ever does?’

‘I do.’

‘Oh yeah? What was the number of the last taxi you-?’

‘Four four one seven.’

‘Oh, Ceel, you’re kidding.’

‘No. I used always to leave gloves, scarves, bags, umbrellas and so on in taxis. Strangely, it was always easier to remember the taxi’s number than to-’

‘All right, all right,’ I breathed.

‘Kenneth, don’t you want to take your clothes off?’

‘Aah…’

‘Or mine?’

‘Well, ah…’

‘I think we need drugs,’ Ceel said decisively. ‘Luckily I have contacts.’

She was right.

‘Do you know what John does when he is not with me, or away on one of his trips overseas?’

‘No.’

‘Do you want to know?’

‘Not particularly.’

‘He goes caving.’

‘He does what?’

‘He goes caving. He spelunks. He descends into caverns under the ground. Mostly in England and Wales, but also abroad.’

‘That,’ I breathed, ‘is so not a gangster thing to do.’

We were lying on a giant circular table in one of the rooms in the Dome suite. The Dome itself, in fact, at the very top of the whole hotel. We had made it comfortable with sheets and pillows from the bedroom, two rooms away through the sitting area. The Dome room had numerous small, high windows that looked straight down Waterloo Bridge, part-way up the Aldwych and down most of Drury Lane. If we’d stood up we’d also have had a view to part of the Strand. There were twelve severe, formal-looking seats spaced round the giant table. Even all the soft accoutrements hadn’t made the solid surface all that comfortable. The bed would have been more forgiving, but this was how, and where, Ceel had wanted it.

‘Mobile phones do not work in caves,’ she said after a long time.

I thought. I thought twice, in fact. ‘Don’t suppose he goes scuba-diving, too, does he?’

‘Yes.’

I thought some more. ‘Why would he need that excuse?’

‘I don’t know. That is why I think perhaps it is not an excuse.’

There was silence for a while. Ceel cuddled up to me. She hadn’t quite managed to get the suite up to what she considered to be full operating temperature yet, so perhaps she was cold. I lay there, perspiring gently, and thought about what Craig had said, about love.

Some time passed, then she murmured into my shoulder, ‘You have my mobile number, don’t you?’

I closed my eyes. Holding her had never felt more precious. ‘Yes,’ I admitted.

She said nothing for a while, but I felt her give what might have been a small nod. ‘You have been careful,’ she said. ‘I appreciate that. I understand now why you were concerned. I’m touched. But please; be even more careful. You have the number committed to memory?’

‘I know it by heart.’

‘Remove it from your phone.’

‘All right.’

‘Thank you.’

‘This girl. Was she very beautiful?’

‘Very attractive, in a sort of obvious, blond way.’

Ceel was silent for a while. Then she said, ‘I feel jealous. I know I should not, but I do.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Me too.’

‘Well, I feel jealous of your husband.’

‘And yet there are times you and I meet up when the last person to make love to me was you.’

I thought. ‘I don’t know what’s the more pathetic,’ I said quietly. ‘The fact that that does actually make me feel a little better, or the fact that we are clutching at this straw in the first place. It’s not just about sex, Ceel. I mean that I’m jealous he gets to be with you more than I do, that you two can have something like a normal life together.’

‘It is not very normal. He is away so much.’

‘No, but you can walk across a street together, holding hands.’

Another pause. ‘He never holds my hand.’

‘You’re admitting you assaulted this woman, Mr McNutt?’

‘It was self-defence, but yes.’

‘I see.’

‘Oh, shit,’ I breathed.

There was no comeback. Nobody was going to press charges, after all, and, of course, as I’d expected, the cops did nothing. At least nothing they ever told me about. They couldn’t even test Phil’s jacket for traces of rohypnol; a visiting friend had assumed the jacket in the bag was to be taken to a dry cleaners, and done just that.

Never mind. I’d fulfilled my part of the bargain and reported the incident to the police like a good little citizen.

‘Well, maybe, like, we should leak it to the press. Yuh?’

The speaker was Nina Boysert, Mouth Corp Group PR chief and Special Adviser to Sir Jamie, whatever the fuck that was supposed to mean. She didn’t say ‘Ya’, like Raine – sorry, ‘Raine’; hers was more of a ‘Yuh’.

Meant the same thing.

We all looked at her. This was her office, an even more spacious one than Station Manager Debbie’s. Not high up, but wide and deep and airy and with a pleasant view over Soho Square. Also present were Debbie, Phil and the Group’s chief in-house legal mind, Guy Boulen.

‘Ah, the police did say not to,’ Boulen pointed out. We’d covered this point about a minute ago. Boulen was an oddly rugged man to be a lawyer; about my age, tall and fit-looking and with a face that appeared wind-burnt. Strapping, would be the word; looked like he belonged halfway up a fell in the rain and cloud, manfully scrutinising a compass and leading a bunch of deprived kids on a character-building hike. Softly spoken, though; Home Counties accent.

‘Yuh, but, like, they’ve got their job to do and we’ve got ours, right? We have to think what’s best for the Group.’ Nina was business-suit posh; long, not inelegant face, perfect teeth and silky skin; black hair, bobbed. Deep voice. She’d been head-hunted for the Mouth Corp from an internationally renowned management consultancy firm. Still under thirty.

‘May I call you Nina?’ I asked her with a smile.

‘Ah, yuh. Yuh, sure.’

‘Ms Boysert,’ I said, not smiling. ‘My life might be in danger. I’m not entirely sure from what you’ve been saying whether you’ve fully grasped that fact. I’m asking for help from my professional colleagues, and from the firm that employs me. Now-’

It was the ‘Now’ that did it. Phil jumped in after that.

Of course what I’d wanted to say was, Listen, bitch, fuck the Group, fuck the shareholders and fuck Sir Jamie, too; I was the one being bundled off into the depths of the East End in the middle of the night to have fuck knows what done to me, let’s focus on what’s best for me… but I’d reined myself in and come out with a little speech that I thought was far more polite, even with the sarky and probably unnecessary bit at the start about not using the woman’s first name.

‘I think Phil’s right,’ Boulen said, to whatever Phil had said (I’d kind of missed it, still glaring at Ms Corporate Good). ‘This is a legal matter and we have to take our lead from the police.’

‘Yuh, but I’m thinking, like, what about the publicity? I mean, this would be quite big news, yuh? I’m seeing the front page of the Standard; Top DJ’s Death Threat Hell. And a photograph, of course. Something like that, yuh? I mean, that’s big. We can’t ignore that; you almost can’t buy that.’

There was an awkward silence.

I said, ‘Are you for fucking real?’

‘Look, Ken!’ Phil said quickly, rising and clapping me on the shoulder. ‘You’ve had a tough couple of days; you don’t really need to be here. I can look after things. Why don’t I meet you in the Bough, half an hour, say? Yeah?’ He waggled his eyebrows at me. Guy Boulen was nodding fractionally, his expression somewhere between a grin and a grimace. Debbie was looking at the floor.

‘What a splendid idea.’ I got up, looked round them. ‘Excuse me.’

As I got to the door I heard a deep female voice say, ‘Was it something one of us said, yuh?’

‘Well done,’ Phil said, clinking glasses in the Groucho that evening. We were in the wee nook with the blue plaque, up in the snooker level. ‘You told the police what happened and, to my utter astonishment, you didn’t tell Nina Boysert exactly what you think of her. Proud of you.’

‘Thank you so fucking much. Do I get a badge or something? ’

‘I’m having a special commemorative medal struck tomorrow. ’

‘Did she shut the fuck up about leaking the story eventually or did you just throw her out the fucking window?’

‘That would be Option A there.’ Phil nodded. ‘Though it did take Boulen and I threatening to resign if she insisted on going ahead. I did also somewhat talk up your acquaintanceship with Sir Jamie; she might have got the impression that if anything happened you didn’t like, you’d take it up with the Dear Owner the next time you’re playing polo together.’

I shook my head, drank. ‘I bet she leaks it anyway.’

‘I don’t know.’ Phil thought. ‘Wouldn’t like to hazard a guess. But I wouldn’t be at all surprised. I’ve never met anybody who thought quite so much like a spreadsheet.’

‘Well, never mind. Fuck it. Fuck her.’

‘Hmm. Well, after you.’

‘Hey, look, Phil, can I stay at your place tonight?’

‘Jo’s away again, is she?’

‘Yeah. I hate sleeping alone on the boat.’

‘Well, no, you can’t. Sorry.’

‘Oh, come on.’

‘No.’

‘I’m vulnerable! Don’t abandon me!’

‘Stay with Craig.’

‘He’s got Nikki staying for the weekend.’

‘So?’

‘They don’t want me there.’

‘So get a hotel.’

‘I don’t want me there. I…’

‘What?’

‘Nothing. Let me stay at yours, Phil. Come on. Please.’

‘No. You’re probably safe now; they know you’ll be wary.’

‘I’m trying to be fucking wary! That’s why I’m asking you to let me stay with you.’

‘No.’

‘Please.’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘I have a friend staying.’

‘What, the compulsively tidy jacket-cleaner?’

‘What about Ed?’

‘He’s away.’

‘Oh. Forgot to tell you; those Winsome people rang again, just before we left.’

‘The Breaking News company?’

‘Yes. The thing with this Holocaust denial bloke is back on. Second or third week in December, though that’s still tentative. ’

‘Tentative. Really. Right. But don’t go changing the subject. Come on; let me stay over. You’ll never know I’m there.’

‘No. Stay in a hotel, or go back to the boat.’

‘Look, man, I’m fucking frightened, don’t you understand?’

‘You have to face it sometime.’

‘I don’t want to fucking face it! I want to fucking live!’

‘Even so.’

‘I’m thinking about asking Ed to get me a gun.’

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake.’