‘Oh for fuck’s sake! Oh Jesus Christ, that’s fucking sick.’
‘An I eard this from a bruvver who is definitely wot you’d call a usually reliable source, too, mate, an not given to tellin milky whites. He was taken along to see wot would happen to him if he ever crossed Mr Merrial. Actually I fink the bruvver must have tried on sumfink very slightly dodgy himself an Mr M wanted to give him a ever so mild warning. So he got to see. And hear.’
‘I feel ill.’
‘This bruvver’s a big fucker, too. An he can handle himself, but I swear when he was tellin me all this he fuckin went grey. Grey, Kennif.’
‘Green,’ I gulped. ‘Me; now.’
‘Yeah, well, I juss fot you ought to know, before you go gettin any more involved wif people like that.’
‘Ken?’ Jo yelled from below.
‘That’s my tea out, Ed. Though I do seem to have lost my appetite, for some reason. Anyway, thanks for the warning.’
‘No probs.’
‘I’ll see you.’
‘Yeah; you take care. Strenf, bruvver. Bye.’
I didn’t look properly at Mr Merrial’s card until the following morning, just before doing my under-vehicle bomb-check and heading for work. The Merrials lived in Ascot Square, Belgravia. I stopped at the side of the Landy and wondered about putting their home number into my phone, then decided I ought to. I placed it in Location 96, overwriting Celia’s mobile number. I never had got round to removing it – I still liked scrolling through to look at it sometimes – but entering her home phone there seemed fitting somehow.
I’d barely finished doing this when the phone buzzed in my hand; Phil, at the office. It was another dull December day and the rain had just started. I de-alarmed and unlocked the Landy and climbed in out of the rain as I said, ‘Yup?’
‘Breaking News.’
I put the keys in the ignition. ‘What about it?’
‘It’s starting on Jan fourteenth.’
‘What, next year? Kind of rushing things a bit, aren’t they?’
‘It’s a month away. But it’s definite, this time.’
‘Of course it is, Philip.’
‘No, it’s firmly scheduled. And you’re in it.’
‘Not the world’s most reassuring phraseology.’
‘They’ve started doing publicity and everything.’
‘Everything. Well.’
‘The PR people are mentioning your name. There’s a buzz.’
‘A sound so often associated with dead, decaying things, don’t you find?’
‘Will you stop being so sodding cynical?’
‘Probably shortly after I stop being so damn alive.’
‘I thought you’d want to know.’
‘You’re right. It was the uncertainty that was killing me.’
‘If all you can do is be sarcastic-’
‘Then it should be a good show today.’
I heard him laugh. I went to start the Landy, then sat back again and waved my hands even though Phil couldn’t see me. ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake,’ I said. ‘Why do TV people have to make such a big deal about everything? It’s one fucking item on a minority interest telly show, not an unknown play by Shakespeare written on the back of the missing bit from the “Unfinished Symphony”.’ I put my hand on the keys again.
Phil said, ‘You on your way in?’
‘Better than being on the way out.’
‘Save it for the show. Safe journey.’
‘It’s Chelsea to Soho, Phil, not the Paris-Dakar rally.’
‘So we’ll see you soon. Take care.’
‘Yeah, bye.’
I put the phone away. I looked at my hand, resting on the Landy’s keys, dangling from the ignition. People kept telling me to take care. I looked out across the Landy’s battered bonnet, still not twisting the key in the ignition. It was raining quite hard now. I sighed, then got out and did the checking-for-bombs-under-the-vehicle bit. Nothing there.
‘I’m all for globalism. I mean, if you’re talking about the sort of globalisation that says, Stuff whatever you people voted for, you’ll let us privatise your water and hike the prices five hundred per cent or else, then, no. Exclude me in. What I’m for is the globalism of the United Nations, imperfect though it may be, the globalism of arms treaties, the globalism of the Geneva Convention – possibly the next suspect piece of internationalism Dubya and his chums will want to withdraw from – the globalism of the International Court of Justice the US refuses to sign up for, the globalism of anti-pollution measures, and d’you know why, Phil? Because the winds know no boundaries. The globalism of the-’
‘The ground.’
‘What?’
‘The ground, and the sea, and space. Those are boundaries, for the wind.’
I hit the FX of a lonely desert wind blowing through a long-abandoned ghost town, tumbleweed rolling across the dust between the creaking wooden ruins.
‘What, like that?’ I said, glaring at him.
‘Possibly.’ He was grinning back at me over his Wall Street Journal.
‘I was, just possibly, on a roll there.’
‘I’ve interrupted your flow, haven’t I?’
‘You are a veritable stopcock, Philip.’
‘U-bend.’
‘Beg pardon?’
‘I thought I’d get that in before you did.’
‘You’re just a trust fund of straight lines this morning, aren’t you?’
‘It’s a living.’
‘Listen, Phil, if I may be allowed to put on my Serious Voice for a moment.’
‘Oh no, not another Charity Announcement.’
‘No. But, Philip, as you know, we don’t tend to do requests.’
Phil looked surprised. ‘Well, we can’t; most of those you receive are anatomically impossible anyway.’
‘I think you’ll find there’s a small private clinic in Tangier that would happily prove you wrong, for a price, Philsy-Willsy, but that’s as maybe.’
‘Keep going.’
‘Na, yesterday I bumped into somebody I met at a party once and I said I’d play a request for his wife.’
Phil blinked at me. I raised the dead air stopwatch threateningly. ‘Is that it?’ he said.
‘Sometimes, Phil, it’s just banality all the way down.’
‘Is this a new spot on the show? Guess The Relevance?’
‘Nope. So, for the lovely Celia Jane, here’s “Have a Nice Day”, from the Stereophonics.’
I hit Play and swept the faders.
Phil looked nonplussed. He looked at the faders and listened to the song play in his headphones. ‘You’re not even talking up to the vocals,’ he said, more to himself. He spread his arms. ‘What’s all this about?’
I eased my cans down round my neck to give my ears a rest. ‘What you hear is what you get,’ I told him. I nodded at the unit spinning the CD. ‘We were going to play it anyway. No extra paperwork involved.’
The skin around his eyes crinkled. ‘You trying to get into this woman’s knickers?’
‘Phil! I told you; she’s married.’
Phil laughed loudly. ‘Since when has that ever stopped you?’
‘You can be so cynical sometimes, Philip. You want to watch it; the wind’ll change and you’ll stay that way.’
‘It’s protective coloration around you, chum.’
‘What’s wrong with playing a request?’
‘We never do it.’
‘So it’s a change.’
‘There has to be an ulterior motive somewhere.’
‘Will you just leave it? There’s nothing going on.’
‘I know the way your mind works, Ken. There has to be. You’re more a creature of habit and ritual than you think you are.’
I shook my head. ‘Okay, I confess I was put in a slightly awkward situation by a… a friend of Sir Jamie’s,’ I said, glancing at the track’s run time on the play list and then at the studio clock.
‘Ah-hah!’