A Snowball in Hell

by Christopher Brookmyre

  ‘Given the capacity for grudges and vindictiveness you just alluded to, it might be flattering yourself to think you’re a priority. Maybe he’s got a long roster to get through, and you’ll have to wait your turn.’

  ‘Oh, you’re full of all the cheery thoughts of the day, Angelique. But here’s my question, even allowing for what you just said: if he survived Dubh Ardrain, and somehow got away, maybe with another new identity, why would he break cover now, after all these years? And what’s he been up to in the meantime?’

  ‘I’ve asked myself the same thing. The scary answer is “planning”.’

  They reach the Charing Cross Road and turn right, crossing away from Burleigh Mansions where one Thomas Stearns Eliot used to keep a crash pad. ‘Humankind cannot bear too much reality,’ he once wrote. Unfortunately, its tolerance for reality TV is proving less fragile. As they pass Borders bookstore, Angelique observes that there’s no place in the window for the one-time local boy: the inset bay is taken up with a display promoting Darren McDade’s book, Who’s the Daddy? He got paid a shudderingly huge advance for his cobbled-together compendium of populist rantings, only for the very public that was believed (at least by one literary editor, after a catastrophically good lunch) to be hanging on his every word, to widely baulk at the prospect of paying to read the same columns they had already coughed up for when they bought their papers. Perhaps this was a measure of his success in dissuading them from the tree-hugging practices of recycling, global warming being a muesli-eaters’ myth, apparently. Now, however, he was finally earning those imprudently generous royalties.

  A few yards further on, the music section has all three Four Play albums (debut, flop follow-up, greatest hits) prominently stacked close to the doors, and one of their tracks playing on the in-store stereo. Needless to say, it isn’t ‘You’re Dynamite’. It’s going to be a bugger of a long time before a radio station, a shop or any publicly accountable organisation ever plays that again. The bookies have stopped taking bets on their ‘new’ single going straight to number one on next week’s chart. The song is called ‘Gone But Not Forgotten’. It’s a previously uncelebrated number from the less successful second album, a cue to hit the skip button on most fans’ CD players, now elevated immeasurably by the sheer marketing potential of its unintentionally poignant title.

  ‘I don’t know, Angelique. I’m aware I’m trying to talk myself out of worrying, but the other thing that doesn’t quite fit for me is the targets. He was a mercenary – he killed for cash and, let’s not forget, because he liked it – but he didn’t choose the targets. This psycho we’re dealing with now strikes me as being about something very, very heartfelt and personal.’

  ‘There’s some classified stuff I can’t divulge, Ray, but believe me, Simon killed people for his own heartfelt, personal reasons as well as for professional ones. How do you think he started? He didn’t wake up one morning and decide to try his hand at being a hitman.’

  ‘Okay, granted, but allowing for that, what do the targets say about the perpetrator? Because I don’t think they say “Simon”. I mean, Nick Foster? Crappy teeny-pop bands? It’s a bit of a comedown from taking out power stations, cruise liners and military bases, is it not?’

  ‘You told me yourself how ridiculously serious Simon was about music, as well as how angry about the world not quite falling at the feet of his own talents. Don’t you have any recollections of him ranting about the Nick Fosters and Four Plays of the time?’

  ‘It was the Eighties, and the Nick Foster of the time was Nick Foster. But no, not really. The kind of music Foster churned out was literally beneath contempt. Saying you hated manufactured bands was like saying you hated wasps. Us music-obsessives had our prejudices and irrational dislikes, but it took ‘serious’ music to pique serious hatreds. Simon really, really fucking hated The Smiths. If it was Morrissey strapped to that giant amp, you’d have a positive ID on Simon right there. Or maybe the guys from Chambers of Torment, because they truly represent the boat he missed. Back when I knew Simon, Nick Foster wouldn’t even have registered on his radar.’

  ‘Foster’s been a lot harder to miss in recent years,’ Angelique reminds him. She doesn’t want Ray getting entrenched too deeply in his understandable attempts to convince himself that Darcourt has not returned, as she needs his mind to be open when he gets to the post-production house. She’s got a more compelling argument in her armoury, but she’s saving it for the right moment.

  ‘Not so hard to miss if you don’t live in the UK,’ Ray counters.

  ‘Don’t be so sure, Raymond. Christ, I’ve been living in Paris for five years: it doesn’t guarantee you an escape from hearing about Big Brother and Bedroom bloody Popstars. If anything, being somewhere else makes you even more resentful that it’s still able to find you. Can’t you see someone as deranged as Simon deciding this was one way of stopping the rot?’

  ‘I can’t see Simon tuning in via satellite from some mainland European bolthole just so he can stoke up his rage. And that’s one of many reasons why McDade doesn’t add up either. Can you picture him getting the Sun or the Daily Mail delivered to his underground lair or wherever he’d have been hiding? Plus, look what was done to the guy – that was a lefty-liberal revenge fantasy come true. Revenge fantasy might be Simon’s style, but the lefty-liberal part...’

  ‘Sure,’ Angelique agrees. ‘I appreciate that if you wanted to plot the human spectrum of social conscience, you’d stick Mahatma Gandhi at one end and Simon Darcourt at the other, with maybe the distance between him and Donald Rumsfeld being how you calibrate the scale, but—’

  ‘No,’ Ray interrupts. ‘What you don’t appreciate is that Simon wouldn’t be on the scale, because the scale would be irrelevant to Simon. The only political leader you could identify him with would maybe be Margaret Thatcher, simply because she said there was no such thing as society. That’s pretty close to Simon’s perspective, though it would be more accurate to describe the way he sees it as there’s one person who matters and six billion supporting players of varying levels of minor relevance. Simon only reacted to issues when they directly affected him, and even then he never saw it as politics, but as a personal affront. He wouldn’t give a fuck what Darren McDade said about penal codes or asylum seekers, so he wouldn’t be concerned with driving home any points about either of those issues.’

  ‘Granted, but I think you could be missing the point he was driving home. It wasn’t about penal codes or asylum seekers, it was about humiliation, and this “lefty-liberal fantasy” as you put it was the means by which he felt McDade would be most humiliated.’

  They take a left and they’re on Wardour Street. The postproduction facility is in sight, only three pubs and four porn stores away. Time for the money shot.

  ‘The lefty-liberal part was incidental,’ she continues. ‘But the revenge part was genuine. McDade wrote some strong stuff about Darcourt.’

  ‘So did every columnist in the country.’

  ‘True, but only one wrote about Darcourt’s father.’

  Ray turns his head sharply and slows his stride. Impact confirmed. Angelique follows up the blow.

  ‘I had someone search through all of McDade’s rantings post Dubh Ardrain, and as well as the standard outrage, he uses it as an angle to vent one of his many personal prejudices. “Simon Darcourt was born in Scotland,”’ she quotes. ‘“But the Jocks don’t need to apologise for him. His father was French and a failure, though the latter part goes without saying once you’ve established the first . . .” Then blah blah, planting trees on the boulevards to let the Germans march in the shade, surrender monkeys, etcetera, etcetera.’

  Ray says nothing for a few moments. They stop outside the audio house.

  ‘Are the targets saying “Simon” now?’ Angelique asks.

  ‘Let’s find out.’

  Angelique’s mobile vibrates and she glances at the LCD before excusing herself, leaving the suite to take the call while the sound engineer prepares an
other sample for Ray. She was planning to bail once Ray was ensconced, having been warned that the process could take a while. She just had to deliver him and explain what was required; he wouldn’t need a babysitter the whole time. Nonetheless, she had sat there and observed for the best part of an hour, turning down the exit opportunities afforded by two previous calls. However, as both of these had been from her mum, she couldn’t say whether she had stayed put out of curiosity or convenience.

  Two of the three voicemails left while her phone was off during the press conference had been from her mum too. The first had been an excited call to say she had just seen her on Sky News, the words ‘live press conference’ failing to register any implications for Angelique’s availability to take any calls at that particular moment. The second, left less than ten minutes after the first, was more familiarly accusatory and unsubtly guilt-laying, starting off by asking why she hadn’t phoned back regarding the first message, then moving on to slating Angelique’s failure to inform her she was back in the UK, before inevitably demanding to know when she’d be up to Glasgow for a visit.

  What a great idea, mum. A trip to Glasgow: that would help fill in some of the countless hours she had spare and didn’t know what to do with. And what a morale-booster it would be too. She and her parents could gather round the dinner table and have a special celebration to mark the five-thousandth time of her mum sympathetically – ie not remotely optimistically – asking her whether there was ‘someone special on the horizon’. Then they could all drink to commiserate with Angelique upon the ongoing loneliness and futility of her life without companionship or the even distant prospect of ever hearing the patter of tiny feet. Angelique had tried just as many times to explain how her job hadn’t made it very easy to meet prospective partners, nor was it the most stable base for young family life.

  ‘There will always be crooks, there will always be police and there will always be jobs, Angelique,’ her mum would respond. ‘But some things won’t wait forever.’

  As if she needed any more pressure in her life, she had been getting her own biological countdown thrust in her face like it was the old Irn Bru clock above Central Station.

  It used to piss her off because she thought her mum didn’t appreciate what she was involved in and didn’t understand what she wanted from life. Now it pissed her off because she realised her mum had always known better than she the precise value of what she was involved in compared to what she really needed from life.

  She hadn’t told her parents she was coming over to London on this attachment, far less that she was planning to quit the force. Angelique still felt equipped to handle Simon Darcourt one more time, but having to hear her mum say ‘I told you so’ was a prospect she was nowhere near strong enough for.

  The call is from Dale. She’s about to tell him it’s early days on the voice-work with Ray Ash, but he doesn’t even ask.

  ‘Get to a computer,’ he says. ‘Our boy’s back online.’

  ‘Just gimme a minute,’ she tells him. ‘I’m down in the basement. I need to get upstairs to the main office. More videos?’

  ‘Oh, we’re going way upscale now. It’s a fucking multi-media extravaganza, and speaking of media we’d better brace ourselves for a force-ten shitstorm. He’s unleashed a multi-headed hydra on us.’

  ‘Less girly squealing, more details, please,’ she says, walking into the office. ‘Sir,’ she belatedly adds. She glances at one of the engineers and gesticulates towards a free monitor by way of asking permission. He gives her a nod and she hits the on button. A fan starts to whir and the hard drive lets out a fart as the system boots. Sounds like an old man waking up in the morning.

  ‘He has indirectly made the Black Spirit claim public,’ Dale continues, ‘while simultaneously setting his cap – or should that be black cowboy hat – at a place on next week’s hit parade.’

  She thinks of her words to Ray earlier, reminding him how angry Simon had been about the world not quite falling at the feet of his own talents.

  ‘He’s released that track, hasn’t he?’ she says. ‘His version of “Hurts So Good”.’ Low-quality rips of the song lifted from the videos and from recordings of PV1’s party coverage were already in circulation on the net. Its sick-joke value, combined with a sense of the forbidden, gave it an iconoclastic kudos that had guaranteed its proliferation. Those properties would be multiplied tenfold in an ‘official’ cut, released by the artist himself.

  ‘He’s called it “Hurts Like Dynamite”, and it’s credited to “The Black Spirit versus Nick Foster and Four Play”. It’s a polished-up version of the combination of the two songs that formed the soundtrack to the Nick Foster and Four Play murders. Their vocals are still on there, as are Foster’s digitally manipulated, in-key cries of pain, though he’s faded down the Four’s descent into hysterical screaming and replaced the explosions with cymbal crashes.’

  ‘Going all soft on us?’ she says bitterly.

  ‘No. You ask me, he’s done it so that it’s more listenable. He doesn’t just want a few sickos checking it out for thrills – he wants people playing it on their iPods, dancing to it in the fucking clubs. He’s simultaneously released it on to several mainstream download services.’

  ‘How can he do that? He doesn’t have a record company or a music publisher.’

  ‘You don’t need one to license your track for download; not a legitimate one anyway. Just the online semblance of a company and an account for your share of the take to be deposited. Our people have been all over it since the track appeared. The company is a phantom, but the account is the real kicker: the bastard’s set it up so that every penny goes to a bona fide youth music charity.’

  ‘Does he think that will stop us pulling the plug on the downloads?’

  ‘No, he’s covered that part elsewhere. I think this is about him ramming the point home. There’s a warped self-righteousness running through everything he’s doing. Naturally, the charity will be mortified, but they won’t be able to refuse the money as it’s going straight into their bank. They can take it out again, of course, but they can’t exactly give it back to him, so Christ knows what will happen there, other than a lot of public debate, discussion, publicity; in short, everything this headcase wants.’

  ‘So how has he covered the issue of us—’

  ‘You got web access yet?’

  ‘Just about. Haven’t seen anything start so slowly since Rangers sold Mikhailichenko.’

  ‘Okay, launch the browser and key in the following.’

  Dale dictates a numerical address. Angelique keys it in and is routed to a black web page displaying the Rank Bajin image at the top above an embedded video window, which immediately begins to buffer its content. Beneath this are three thumbnail images, identified with underlined hyperlink text as Anika, Sally and Wilson. There is also a button marked ‘Forum’. She clicks on each image in turn, launching new embedded video tabs, all of which also begin buffering.

  ‘I’m not seeing anything yet,’ she says.

  ‘Which should tell you how many people are already drawing on the same bandwidth. Give it a moment.’

  Angelique clicks through the tabs, and after a few seconds they begin to successfully stream silent video. She sees the three members of Vogue 2.2: each looking tired, scared, tear-streaked and sweatily dishevelled, each isolated in a small, identical cell, fully in shot. Apart from the human occupants, each cell contains only three items: a thin, pale grey mattress in one corner of the floor, a bucket, placed as far from the mattress as space allows, and, mounted high on one wall out of reach, a tubular canister.

  ‘Are these live streams?’

  ‘Far as we can tell. All except the main page, which is a recording – more overdubbed vocals from our host.’

  ‘It still hasn’t loaded.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s drawing the most traffic – everyone goes there first before selecting any of the streams.’

  ‘Oh, here it comes.’

  The video
window displays a short montage of Vogue 2.2: miming onstage as a trio, ‘performing’ individually on Bedroom Popstars and glimpsed in a fast-edit moving scrapbook of their countless tabloid and magazine clippings. Then the killer’s now-familiar altered voice comes through the speakers.

  ‘Welcome, all you insatiable, amoral, vicarious thrill-seeking voyeurs. You’ve come to the right place. Though, can I just offer a big apology to all of you out there who don’t fit that description, and who have only logged on out of genuine concern for the plight of my three contestants. You’re not voyeurs, or amoral vicarious thrill-seekers. I acknowledge that. You’re hypocritical lying cunts. Accept what you are or log the fuck off, right now.’

  ‘Christ, how long does this keech go on for?’ Angelique asks Dale. ‘Can’t you just talk me through it, bring me up to speed with a non-self-satisfied gloating prick version?’

  ‘Might as well hear it from the horse’s arse, Angelique.’

  She sighs, keeps watching the screen. The view cuts between the three cells, showing earlier footage of Anika, Sally and Wilson.

  ‘. . . very special guests, all of whom have proven themselves real champions on another televised popularity contest, so who better to take part in my new, higher-stakes reality game show? A big welcome to Wilson, Anika and Sally, who are, as of now, the first contestants on Dying to be Famous!’

  ‘Oh no,’ Angelique breathes.

  ‘The rules are simple. Each contestant is locked in an airtight cell with, as you can see, a tank on the wall. In the tank is their air supply – let’s call it the Oxygen of Publicity. To keep getting oxygen, they need to get publicity, which should of course be a piece of piss for these three, especially under such terribly moving circumstances. But here’s the catch: the one who gets the fewest mentions on TV, who clocks up the fewest column inches dedicated to him or herself over each twenty-four hour period, gets the least oxygen. There’ll be enough so that they can each recover from a bad day and maybe rally the next, but three, maybe even two days at the bottom of the vacuous-gossip chart, and it’s off to the big talent show in the sky. But don’t worry, it won’t all be in the arbitrary hands of those self-important wankers in the media: this is a British popularity show, after all, so you can get involved too. Go to the forum below, and give us your opinion on who should die first. But remember to give a reason, otherwise your vote won’t count. Any reason you like – don’t worry if it’s just blind and irrational prejudice – that’s good enough!’