by Nick Macfie
“Terry, can you tell me what you were doing dressed as a wino in Camden Town? Can you tell me why you threw stones at me?”
Terry downed his beer in one and cracked open another.
“What do you think I was doing? I was reviewing the situation. I was doing my groundwork. I wanted to know about Scout, her baby. And you.”
“Why me? Was it you in the back of that old BMW that stopped me in Tottenham Court Road? Two young punks got out?”
Terry shifted his position so he was sitting facing me. “I have arranged things, Hadley. It’s what I do. What matters now is why I am doing what I am going to do. Yes, that was me in the back of the car. With the two young detectives.”
“Why were you checking me out?”
“Because you were working in the casino, because you were living in Scout’s block of flats.”
“You knew that I was a journalist?”
“Oh for fuck’s sake. Of course I knew. An infantile journalist. Don’t take offence. Why did I throw the stones? Because you looked like a supercilious English prick. Good enough reason.”
“But what do you want from me?”
“You’ll find out when the time comes.”
“When the time comes?”
“It will be obvious. Even to you. I’ll make it nice and easy. It’s possible the decision will be taken out of your hands. I tend to make detailed plans and make them early. There is nothing, for instance, missing in my plans for a downhill runway. Or two.”
“So you do have a plan?”
“Of course I have a plan.”
“Will there be violence? Bloodshed?”
Terry put his beer down, leant back and put his hands behind his head.
“Violence isn’t the part of the plan which is occupying me right now.”
“That’s good to hear.”
“But violence has been part of my plans before. Many times.”
“That’s not so good.”
“I once buried a body on Lamma.”
“You don’t have to tell me these things.”
“Why not? You ain’t going to tell no one.”
“It’s not that so much as I might throw up.”
“No, I ought to tell you. Just to put you in the picture, like. So you know who you’re dealing with. I shot a man with a bow and arrow.”
“I see.”
“You see? Aren’t you going to ask me about it? ‘Why did you shoot a man with a bow and arrow, Terry?’ Something like that?”
“All right then, why did you do it?”
“Why did I do what?”
“You just said…”
“You mean why did I shoot the man? Or why did I shoot him with a bow and arrow?”
“Well, both. One question kind of leads directly to the next.”
“Bow and arrow because I could burn them both. No evidence, see. And I shot the man because he was pulling strokes in a little floating casino and upsetting the balance sheet. The flow of revenue.”
“Wow.”
“Yes. Wow.”
“He was a dealer?”
“You catch on fast. A dealer just like you, my friend.”
“He dealt roulette?”
“When he wasn’t pulling strokes.”
“Fuck.”
“Yes. Fuck. There’s a walk between the two sides of the island. I found a shaded area, away from all the fuckers on the beach, and I buried him there. It struck me, at the time, as a nice spot to have a picnic.”
“A picnic?”
“Yes. Scenic. We should do it some time.”
“Oh.”
“Oh?”
“Oh, I feel queasy.”
“Drink your beer.”
“But I must ask, Terry. This dealer you shot with a bow and arrow.”
“Yes?”
“Was he English?”
“Never mind about that. He was a thief.”
“And did he work on the ‘Xanadu’?”
“No. This was a while back. Another ship. Same outfit, though.”
“You mean…?”
“The same boss. The one who told me to do it.”
“And did this boss have short, cropped platinum hair?”
“No.”
“I see.”
“But he does now.”
“Ah.”
“So you’ve seen him obviously?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’ve seen the back of him anyway. Are you sure this dealer had to die?”
“As I said, allegiances you wouldn’t begin to understand. If I was asked to do it again now… maybe I’d question it.”
“Good.”
“But I would still do it.”
I couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed.
“You must not upset anyone on that boat, do you hear me?” he said.
“I hear you. He’s still killing people?”
“And tell Scout the same. Of course he’s still killing people. He’s a banker.”
“A banker?”
“Yes. Very well connected. But you won’t see him on no TV show or in no newspaper. He’s a slippery banking fucker.”
“You know him, personally?”
“Very well as it happens. He is very big in the Conservative Party. Hence the brainwashing gig you know about.”
“You know about that? How do they do that?”
“You hear all the hub-bub on the boat, the punters, the engine noises. Well, in the middle of all that are these taped messages like ‘join the fucking Conservative Party, why don’t you? You know you only care about yourself.’ That sort of thing. It’s all very sublime.”
“Subliminal.”
“Yes. Think of it as a kind of sponsorship. The Tory shits pay so much, the boat brainwashes a few geezers. It’s not just the Tories. There are party political broadcasts from the North Korean government, Chinese Communist Party, Eurovision Song Contest candidates, all sorts. The trick is not to send out mixed messages or people will get confused. I mean, you don’t want to turn up in North Korea and try to join the Conservative Party. People would just laugh. We even have tapes for Trappist monks, for heaven’s sake. You know about the Trappists? They don’t say a dicky-bird to anyone. Don’t know how they get things done. Anyway, they cancelled in the end because they were getting inquiries from all sorts of weirdos. ‘Oi, turn off the tap,’ they said.”
““I thought they didn’t speak.”
“They have a spokesman. He’s allowed to speak. Turn off the tap, he said. That’s Roman Catholics for you - fickle.”
“But how do the messages work?”
“It’s all very suggestive stuff. A flashing light here and there, a bit of smoke, the tapes. Hocus-pocus. Sometimes it’s a bit too strong and people are saying things they don’t know they’re saying days later. Like you, you prick.”
“What’s the room for on the lower deck?”
“In the messages, there are other hidden messages. Like ‘if you like this message, why not head down to wherever it is and see how wonderful the Conservatives are, or see that not all Catholics are playing around with little boys. That kind of thing.”
“It doesn’t sound very subtle.”
“Subtle is as subtle does. Genghis Khan gets his money. Everyone’s happy. Sometimes they use the girls to take the punters, the wavering ones, into the rooms. They sit there with their mouths open and get, how do I say, aroused at the same time. That works wonders.”
“The girls masturbate them while they’re looking at Margaret Thatcher?”
“They arouse them. Mao Zedong , Stalin. Each to his own. The world would be a much duller place…”
“…if people didn’t get jerked off in front of Margaret Thatcher. I’m not sure that’s true.”
“Anyway, Genghis Khan. He knows I’m kind of semi-retired, by the way. He doesn’t ask me on many jobs these days. Forget about him for now. Like I said, in my plan, the plan involving you, there is no violence. But there are other parts of the plan which rely on
people I know. You know what I mean? I can’t really account for their actions.”
“I have to say I am very confused right now.”
“There will be no bloodshed, Hadley.”
“That’s a relief.”
“No shedding of blood. There may be another liquid involved.”
BAXTER WAS ARGUING with a photographer when I arrived at the office, pointing out to sea, vaguely in the direction of the “Xanadu”. I had told him over the phone about Terry and the punter with the beautiful Chinese girl and the bouncers, but kept the bit about Zeb quiet.
“I told you what the story was about,” Baxter told the photographer. “It’s about pollution. I asked you to take pictures of the harbour. All you have to do is look out the window.”
“I’ll do it now. Sorry, boss. Hi, Hadley.”
The photographer, wearing huge shiny blue shoes like boiled sweets, skipped out, his tail between his legs.
“Can you believe it?” Baxter said to me. “I ask for a pollution picture and he gives a file photo of the Peak on a bright summer’s day with little white clouds puffing around. All he had to do was point his camera out the window!”
The buildings of Kowloon were barely visible across the harbour. The sky and the hills had merged into a monochrome fuzz and the chemical smell had seeped indoors. I could just make out an east-bound Star Ferry.
“Take a seat, Hadley. We have more important matters to discuss.”
“We do?”
“We do. Sit down and listen. A doctor’s coming here to talk to you.”
“A doctor?”
“Yes. It’s got something to do with Zeb. Have you upset him in any way?”
“Zeb? No.”
“Well he’s behaving very strangely. Very edgy. He’s used his connections… and he’s coming here with a hostile environment security consultant. He’s also a doctor, as it happens.”
“What kind of a doctor? I’ve had a bit of sniffle of late, it’s true, but I’ve found this herbal remedy…”
“Not that kind of a doctor, Hadley. A consultant, like I said.”
“You said a security consultant. Is he a shrink? He’s come to see me? What for?”
“I don’t think he’s a shrink. But he’s interested in security issues and social background and prisms of risk.”
“I don’t know what any of that means.”
“It’s about this old man and the girl who have followed you from England.”
“What about them? Wait, he thinks I’m delusional? I am not going to be interviewed by a shrink. The whole idea is outrageous. You haven’t told them about the subliminal stuff?”
“Of course not.”
“Because I’ve been doing a fantastic job on that. Harriet said so. You said so.”
“This has got nothing to do with that. This is from the board of directors,” Baxter said weakly. “It’s been taken out of my hands. He isn’t a shrink. He consults lots of people and brainstorms.”
“Don’t understand that, either. Rodney, I might as well tell you, I’ve found some stuff out about young Zeb…”
There was a knock on the glass door and Baxter jumped up to greet a tall, stooped Chinese man. Walking behind him was Zeb, looking shifty and menacing, an unlit cigarette in his mouth. What a nerve! What a bastard.
“Hadley, this is Dr Lim. He’s an expert on orientation issues.”
Oh, so now it was orientation issues. I rose at just the right time to close the door in Zeb’s face and shake hands with the doctor. Zeb stood back and Baxter nodded towards him as if to say this was none of his business.
“Orientation issues?” I asked the doctor. “You are in the Boy Scouts?”
“Dr Lim is a doctor, Hadley.”
“I’m a practising consultant,” Dr Lim said, taking the chair next to me. “Please don’t be alarmed.”
“Why should I be alarmed?” I wasn’t alarmed. I was fascinated. This was going to be fun. Maybe I would sit it out. After all, he was only practising. And then I would sue Zeb and the company for tons of money and live happily ever after on Lamma. I wouldn’t be practising it. I would just do it.
“Dr Lim is aware of your recent history, Hadley.”
“My recent history?”
“In terms of the great job you have been doing for us over the years. The whole shooting match. He just wants to ask you a few questions about the Chinese from London. To get a broader perspective. He is sworn to secrecy. Not to mention the Hippocratic Oath.”
“It’s easy stuff, really,” Dr Lim said. “I just want to know why you think you have been followed here, and why you think it matters. And if it matters for you, how it differs in mattering for Shrubs. Ideally this would be a learning curve for all of us in terms of growing the company brand.”
It was a shot in the dark, but I couldn’t help wondering it wasn’t too early for an eye-opener. Just something to smooth the edges. This man was speaking in tongues. I had a vision of an overflowing compost toilet, lined with fir cones, in my modest wood on Exmoor. I had a clear vision of where I could empty it.
“It’s easy stuff,” I said. I had no idea how to address all the fascinating ideas he had introduced in his little preamble. What a fucker. “I think Zeb may know a bit more about the guy with the spiky hair than me, but yes, I would like to know why they are all here.”
“Indeed,” Dr Lim said. “Tell me more about the couple in the casino. Did you ever speak to them? In London, I mean.”
“I spoke to the woman. She said he was on a run and that it was time to cash in.”
“On a run?”
“Yes. On a roll.”
“Are you sure she didn’t say she was ‘on the run’? Because that would be an issue of security, no?”
“No, doctor. These are my words. She said he was winning big and that it was time to go. I said something along the lines of you can stay as long as you like which made her laugh. The actual expression she used was that he ‘had the runs’.”
“He had diarrhoea?”
Oh boy. “She meant he was on a run. He was winning lots of money.”
“And now she’s here with him.”
“Yes.”
“Which is not so unusual, is it? A gambler travels overseas to gamble?”
“No. Nothing unusual. I don’t remember saying anything about it being unusual.”
“The girl. She likes you?”
“I have suspected as much. She’s a bit of a flirt.”
“And the man?”
“I don’t know the man. I know not the man. He never says a word. He treats the girl very politely. More paternal. Avuncular.”
“Avuncular.”
“Like an uncle.”
“I know what it means.” Dr Lim flicked through a green folder on his lap before resting his eyes on a page. “Just because I am a security consultant and a Chinese one at that, do not suppose I do not know the English language.” He pointed at something on the page and showed it to Baxter who smiled broadly. Totally professional man management. “Tell me, Hadley,” the doctor said. “Have you ever been abducted?”
“That was years ago. In the Philippines. Lasted less than a day. They sat around playing ‘Hotel California’ on acoustic guitars.”
“Is it true that you have a thing for Burt Bacharach?”
“Explain ‘a thing’, please.”
“Do you like his music?”
“Which period?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Burt Bacharach. Which period? I like Burt Bacharach. I like the Bee Gees. So what?”
This was corporate glass box madness at its shining, most unimaginative best. I had a vision of Dionne Warwick singing “Do You Know the Way to San Jose”, sitting on a high chair next to a piano played by Burt Bacharach, tapping the microphone with her fingers. The look on Burt’s face was… well, the look of love. I also had a vision of her singing the Bee Gees’ “Heart-breaker” and wondered what Burt thought about that song. Did he kick himself for not w
riting it? Did he ever kick Barry Gibb?
“Why do you mention the Bee Gees?” the doctor asked.
“I like the Bee Gees. I like David Bowie. Why do you mention Burt Bacharach?”
“Let’s move along. Have you ever been abused?”
“Sorry?”
I could think of nothing more poignant than Robin Gibb, not Barry, singing his mournful version of ‘Islands in the Stream’, with the slow, metronome beat. It would be pretty poignant if I could abuse Dr Lim with a metronome.
“Abused,” Dr Lim repeated. “Have you ever been abused? By your father, for instance?”
“That is ridiculous.”
“Did he ever call you by other names? Wendy? Or Penny perhaps?”
“I was enjoying this conversation up to now, but refuse to listen to such nonsense.”
“There is a trend here that I have never come across,” the doctor said. “The subject appears convinced that he is being followed by an old man. It’s all pretty yucky.”
“Yucky? Sorry, did you say you were a doctor?”
“I should explain, Hadley,” the doctor said, “that although, as you say, these things may have happened, it can take a trigger, an emotional fault line, to set things in motion.”
“My dad called me Wendy and that sets another man in another part of the world in motion decades later to sit at my roulette table with a complete babe on his arm?”
“So your father did call you Wendy?”
“Of course he didn’t. What on Earth are you talking about?”
“Calm down, Hadley,” Baxter said.
“You are talking total bollocks.”
Baxter put the palms of his hands up to call a halt. “What Dr Lim is trying to find out, Wendy - Hadley, sorry - what Dr Lim is trying to establish, Hadley, - correct me if I’m wrong, Doctor - is whether or not you are some sort of lush. A huge lush, in fact.”
They’re winding me up. For some reason they want me to make a scene. Why? So they can fire me? Why go to all the effort? Zeb was on to me, obviously. He knew that I knew. I turned in my seat and saw him walking outside with that fucking phone in his ear, no doubt on to the board of directors. He knew that I knew about his little ship-board romance. But why was Baxter playing the game? Why did he call me a lush?
“I am a huge lush,” I said, rising from my seat. “Congratulations on the diagnosis, doctor. And because I am a huge lush, I’m off down the pub.” I opened the door. “See if I can meet some normal people. I promise I’ll let you know if anyone calls me Wendy.”
