I shrugged, stuffed the wrapping paper into the bin and headed for the car park and the car Capital Live! had sent for me. The Landy was still in the garage; it had been fitted with its two new tyres – three, in fact, as the spare on the back door had been stabbed as well – but they hadn’t replaced its headlights yet.
My phone went as soon as I turned it on, walking up the pontoon towards the car park.
‘Debbie; you’re up and running very early. How are you?’
‘Come straight to my office when you get in, all right?’
I took a couple of steps. ‘I’m fine too, Debs. Thanks for asking.’
‘Just be there, okay?’
‘Ah, okay,’ I said. Oh-oh, I thought. ‘Why? What’s happening? ’
‘See you soon.’ She hung up.
The Motorola vibrated again as I got to the Lexus waiting at the kerb. A Lexus; it had been a Mondeo yesterday. Good job something was looking up. I waved to the driver, who was reading the Telegraph. ‘Nott?’ I asked, unfolding the buzzing phone as he folded the paper. I thought it was best to ask; I’d once jumped into another houseboat dweller’s limo waiting to take them to Heathrow. ‘For Capital Live!’
‘That’s me, boss,’ the driver said.
I got in, belted up and into the phone said, ‘Yes, Phil?’
‘The papers have got it.’
‘What?’ I asked as the car pulled smoothly away.
‘Lawson Brierley’s Institute for Fascist Studies, or whatever it’s called, released a press statement this morning. Basically saying they can see what you’re trying to do here, but… blah blah blah… the full majesty of English law, and common Anglo-Saxon justice, must take precedence over arrogant and theatrical pseudo-intellectual cosmopolitan political machinations. ’
‘You’re not paraphrasing there, I hope.’
‘No. We’ve just had the Mail on the phone. Followed by the Sun, followed by the Standard and then ITN, the Eye and the Guardian. I’m expecting to collect the rest of the set before the hour is out. Why is your land-line down?’
‘I pulled it out last night; some fucker rang about one in the morning and kept ringing but not leaving a message on the machine, plus their identity was withheld, so I got annoyed and wheeched it.’
‘Probably a journo favoured by Mr Brierley getting wind of it early. You weren’t door-stepped this morning, were you?’
‘No.’
‘You were lucky. You in the car?’
‘Yup.’
‘Well, if you want to avoid questions at this end, have the driver take you down into the car park here and take the lift, okay?’
‘Yeah. Shit. Okay,’ I sighed. ‘Oh, fuck, here we go…’
‘Courage, mon brave.’
‘Yeah. Right.’
‘See you soon.’
‘Yeah, in Debbie’s office.’
‘Damn, she’s heard, has she?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘That’ll be who’s jamming my internal line here. Better talk to you when you get here; meet you down in the car park?’
‘See you there.’ I put the phone away.
The driver looked at me in the mirror, but didn’t say anything.
I sat and watched the traffic go past. Shit. What if they were going to fire me? I’d taken heart, bizarrely, from the profoundly noxious Nina’s remarks about publicity. I’d thought that no matter how messy everything got with the assault in the studio, at least it would be great publicity for me and the show and the station and that because of that everybody would be happy. Good grief, had I actually been insufficiently cynical? Maybe Amy was right. Maybe I was naïve. I thought back to the night in Soho during the summer with Ed and Craig, and me not dipping far enough down into the cess of human motivation with my imagination, being so innocent as to think that the worst reaction towards somebody who was helpless and vulnerable was indifference, not something worse.
How personally and professionally embarrassing.
I got lost in the traffic for a while, submerged in memories. A dispatch rider swept past on his panniered Bandit. Oh well, I thought, if I did get fired and I couldn’t get in anywhere else, I could always get a job being a bike courier again. Or maybe Ed would take me seriously if I said I finally really really wanted to be a proper club-type DJ. Fuck, yeah; the money was good, and just because I’d been dismissive about it in the past and gone along for the fun, drugs and women didn’t mean I couldn’t try to make a go of it as a career now. Boy George could do it; why couldn’t I?
We were drawing to a stop in the Mall, pulling in to the side near the ICA.
‘What’s the problem?’ I asked.
The driver glanced in the mirror, pressed the hazard warning lights, killed the engine and turned round, handing the keys to me. I looked at them lying in my hand, wondering what the hell was going on. ‘I’d like a word, Mr Nott,’ he said (this was itself enough to have me tense up and check that the door-lock buttons were in the unlocked position), ‘but I don’t want to alarm you.’ He nodded at the keys in my hand. ‘That’s why I’ve given you them. If you want to get out, you can.’
He was about fifty; a balding, slightly overweight guy with the sort of large-framed glasses last fashionable in the early nineties and a pinched, concerned-looking face; sad-looking eyes. Otherwise fairly nondescript. His accent sounded vaguely Midlands, like a Brummie born and raised who’d lived in London most of his life. He was neatly dressed in a light-grey suit that only now was starting to look a little too well cut to be that of your standard limo driver.
‘Uh-huh?’ I said. ‘I’ll just test the door, right?’
‘Be my guest.’
The door opened easily enough and the sound of traffic and the chatter of a passing gaggle of Japanese tourists entered the cabin. I closed it again. ‘I’ll just keep my phone open here, too,’ I said warily. The driver nodded.
He offered his hand. ‘Chris. Chris Glatz.’ We shook hands.
‘So what’s going on, Chris?’ I asked him.
‘Like I say, Mr Nott, I’d like a word.’
‘About what?’
‘A matter that has, umm, fallen to me to try to resolve.’
I screwed up my eyes. ‘I’m kind of looking for specifics, here.’
He looked around. On the broad pavement under trees in front of the colonnaded white splendour of the ICA, a couple of cops were walking slowly along, eyeing us. ‘Here isn’t perfect, frankly,’ he said apologetically. ‘You suggest somewhere.’
I looked at my watch. An hour and ten before the last possible time I could get to the studio for the start of the show. ‘Tell you what,’ I said. ‘I’ll drive.’
If he’d taken too long, or said no, I’d have walked, but he just looked a little surprised, nodded and opened his door. I made sure the two cops got a really good look at us, waving at them and saying, ‘Morning, officers!’ They nodded, professionally.
I rang the office en route but the lines were busy. Instead I left a message with Debbie’s secretary to say I’d be late.
I parked the Lexus behind the Imperial War Museum. We got some coffees from a mobile stall and walked round to the front, under the barrels of two colossal Naval guns. Mr Glatz pulled some gloves from his coat pocket and put them on. The air had an easterly tang to it and the clouds were grey as the paint on the giant artillery pieces above us.
‘Nice car,’ I said. ‘Yours?’
‘Yes, it is. Thanks.’
‘Should have known I wouldn’t rate a Lexus from the radio station.’