Dead Air Page 14

  ‘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 luvver
ly 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 do
wn-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.’