‘Yeah, well, but maybe somebody’s got one out on you.’
‘That’s why I thought a means to defend myself-’
‘Look, either they’re so crap you won’t need a gun to get one over on them – like you already ave – or they’re so good avin a Glock down the back of your 501s ain’t gonna make a blind bit a difference. You ever see Leon?’
I looked at him. ‘You know, I think you were right earlier; we should just admire the view.’
I didn’t want to leave London. I liked it here. Part of it was pride; not wanting to run. Part of it was fatalism; depending who might or might not be after me, maybe they could get me anywhere, so I was better off where I had the most friends (even if the bastards wouldn’t provide sanctuary or the means to defend myself). Part of it was I had a living to make and a job to do, which I happened to enjoy.
I bought a big, long Mag-Lite torch, a six-cell job even longer than the ones I’d seen security people carrying. A good, strong beam, but – at half a metre long – an even better club. It fitted neatly into the angle between the headboard of the bed and the mattress and sometimes if I woke up during the night, especially if Jo was away, I’d reach out and feel its smooth, massy, diamond-cut coldness, and be reassured, and fall asleep again.
One thing I hadn’t told Ed was that Capital Live! and Mouth Corp were in on it now. Phil had insisted, and when I checked with Paul, my agent, he’d confirmed that there was a clause in my contract that meant I had to report any material threat to my life, my well-being or my potential ability to fulfil my contract to present the show. I should have felt outraged but actually I felt relieved.
Sir Jamie himself had phoned me from LA, assuring me that I’d be looked after. Mouth Corp’s Head of Security, a grizzled, tough-looking ex-SAS geezer called Mick Beezley, had the alarm system on the Temple Belle replaced, a new CCTV monitor added on the quayside linked to Mouth Corp’s own 24/7 Security Monitoring Centre, and an X-ray machine installed in the post room (we were, these days, already looking out for anthrax). A satellite tracking system was added to the Land Rover, also feeding in to the Monitoring Centre. Something called a Category Four Thatcham alarm system apparently made the Landy virtually impossible to interfere with or nick except by stealth helicopter. I didn’t dare point out that adding all this electronic wizardry to something that was basically diesel, clockwork and string had probably increased its value – and presumably therefore its attraction to those of a thieving disposition – by about two thousand per cent.
I was told I could even have a bodyguard for times when I felt I might be especially vulnerable, though from past experience I suspected I was most vulnerable when I was being led by the dick by some flirtatious floozy and didn’t want anybody else around in the first place (with the possible exception of her twin sister).
I said I’d think about the bodyguard idea.
‘This is from the boss,’ Mick Beezley growled, handing me a chunky box. ‘The boss’ was how he referred to Sir Jamie.
It was a watch. A very chunky watch with dials within dials and a rotating bezel with lots of marks and notches and tiny figures on it for working out when you might dream of making your last payment on it and it finally becoming yours and a variety of buttons and knobs including one very big one that looked like you could attach Big Ben to it and have a fair stab at winding the bastard. It looked like the sort of watch small boys used to think looked really cool (not nowadays; now they covet the sort of smooth, highly post-modern Spoon I was wearing). The thing looked like it was probably waterproof to the bottom of the Marianas Trench, but it also looked like the sort of watch there would be no point waterproofing because it was so fucking heavy it would drag you straight to the bottom the instant you dived into the briny. I stared at it, then at the piece of simply elegant sculpture on my wrist and then at the scarcely-less-chunky-than-the-watch features of Mick Beezley. ‘What is this?’ I asked him. ‘Fucking James Bond?’
‘That is a Breitling Explorer, that is,’ Beezley rumbled. ‘Instructions included, but basically if you pull this big button here, hard, a wire comes out and a signal goes out to a satellite. Only for use in genuine emergencies, otherwise you’re left with a watch with a big long wire sticking out of it and no way of getting it back in again, and a very expensive repair bill. After a real emergency they repair it for free.’
‘Does it work indoors?’
‘Not so well.’
‘Right. How much does it cost?’
‘Three and a half grand. So don’t lose it.’
‘Bloody hell.’
‘And it’s not James Bond; you’ve been able to buy these over the counter for years.’
I studied it. ‘I’ve obviously been shopping in the wrong jewellers.’ I lifted it up. It wasn’t as heavy as I’d anticipated, but it was heavy enough. ‘Jesus. It does tell the time, too, I take it.’
Beezley looked at me. I looked at him. After a bit I scratched my head and said, ‘Do they teach you that look in the SAS?’
‘Okay, we’re back to that phone/vibrator thing. For those of you new to the show, this is our long-running project to get somebody to build a mobile phone of the correct dimensions and degree of, ah, proofness to be used, by ladies, as… an intimate comfort device – I think that was the euphemism we settled on, wasn’t it, Phil?’
‘I recall so,’ Phil agreed from the other side of the desk.
‘So we’re trying to get somebody to make it. Come on; there must be some enterprising manufacturer out there. They can make the damn things waterproof these days; what’s the problem? Not new technology. Okay, so there might have to be a thin sort of aerial thingy hanging down… again…’
‘There’s a precedent,’ Phil supplied.
‘It has to be safe, it has to be shaped, it has to be comfortable and it has to work. Phone sex will take on a new meaning. When a woman says, Call me, you’ll know she really means it, even though you also know you’ll probably never get an answer.’
‘Till home them cows does come.’
‘Thank you, Phil.’ I paused. ‘Phil; you’re looking smug. I realise you labour under the pathetic delusion that you deserve to look like that all the time because you’re just so intrinsically fabulous, but why do you look so particularly smug right at this point in time?’
‘That was a song lyric.’
‘What? “Till home them cows does come”?’
‘Yes.’
‘Fascinating.’
‘Joni Mitchell,’ he said quietly, smiling. ‘Or was it Melanie Safka?’ Then he frowned.
I couldn’t help it; I burst out laughing. ‘You don’t say? Again, not precisely on the button in terms of our target audience, Philip.’
‘Permit a middle-aged man his little foibles.’
‘Right. Foible away. Anyway. Come on,’ I said. ‘We’re talking to one of the most vibrant cities in the world out there.’ (Phil guffawed.) ‘It can’t be beyond the wit of human kind to invent a phone it’d be an utter pleasure for a woman to use.’
‘And men,’ Phil chipped in. I raised my eyebrows at him. ‘Some men,’ he said, shrugging. ‘Just a thought.’
‘Well, we do know you are of that persuasion yourself, Phil, but-’
‘Well,’ Phil said, taking off his glasses and starting to clean them with his hanky, ‘being gay doesn’t automatically mean you feel a desire, you might even say a burning desire, to put electronic vibratey type things anywhere near your sit-upon area.’
‘Give the words “ring tone” a new resonance though, wouldn’t it?’ I said, laughing despite myself.
Phil grinned. ‘Anyway…’ he said lazily. ‘Maybe this isn’t really perfect morning-show material.’
I glanced at the call-monitoring screen. ‘Phil, from the screen here I can see there are literally integers of people ringing in to disagree with you.’