A Snowball in Hell

by Christopher Brookmyre

‘Yeah, she did,’ Charlotte confirms. ‘Bit spooky, but that just underlines the point, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Exactly.’ And people said she wasn’t the quickest.

  I make her do a couple of takes on the walk-up shot so that I look professional and nobody gets suspicious. She insists on a third, making out she’s not happy about her own ‘performance’, but more accurately not happy about the gust of wind that blew a strand of her hair into the corner of her mouth just before she climbed into the back seat.

  ‘You happy with that one, Charlotte?’ Fizzy asks, conveying to me that while I might be directing this, I should be aware that her boss is the one calling the shots.

  Charlotte insists on a make-up retouch and some work on her hair before we do the interiors. I have to stop myself looking at my watch.

  I wait until this bit of running maintenance is done and climb into the driver’s seat, where I adjust the second camera mounted on the dashboard and pointing into the back. Meanwhile, Charlotte composes herself, and I really mean that her expression and posture are a work of studied composition. If she had any idea what verisimilitude meant, she’d still be saying bollocks to it: her job is to look good, whatever the circumstances. This piece of self-sculpture complete, I resist the temptation to ruin it by suggesting she be wearing a seatbelt in the shot (a better example to the kids than the late People’s Princess and all that), and cue her for a dry run at her line.

  I make a show of adjusting the camera again, shaking my head and tutting.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘Need to get your entourage out of the picture. Won’t be a sec.’

  I climb out of the car and explain to the hangers-on that I need them to move around to the side of the house. They comply obediently, the make-up girl considerately gathering her bags from the top of the steps to remove them from view. I usher the trio around the building, out of sight of the limo, slipping my silenced Glock from inside my jacket and concealing it behind my back.

  ‘Won’t be long,’ I assure them. ‘Just three shots.’

  Holstering my gun again, I return to the car and this time start the engine, which causes Charlotte to furrow her brow. This is as much surprise or curiosity as she will allow to register on her face for fear of undoing the above-mentioned composition.

  ‘I reckon it will be more poignant if the car is moving – you know, that moment of pulling away towards unknown destiny.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. Got you. Absolutely.’

  I lean across the passenger side and make a final adjustment to the camera. ‘Your cue is when we pass that tree, so we can just make out that you’re being taken away from the security of your own home.’

  ‘Got you.’

  I set the camera recording then put the car into gear.

  ‘Okay, turning,’ I tell her.

  I drive slowly and smoothly away from the front of the house, Charlotte staring out of the side window with an infinitesimally disquieted expression that I assume is supposed to convey grace under pressure. As we approach her mark, she turns to face the camera and gives the subtlest shake of her head, briefly closing her eyes as she does so. It’s supposed to express the depths of her pain at merely contemplating Anika’s abduction, though would function just as appropriately in refusing a sprinkle of parmesan in an Italian bistro.

  Then, as we pass the appointed tree, with her house shrinking behind her in the rear windscreen, she delivers her line.

  ‘It could have been any of us, Anika. So we’re not just thinking of you, we’re with you. We’re part of this. And we’ll do anything it takes to get you back alive.’

  I trigger the gas release in the rear and accelerate for the open gate.

  ‘That’s a wrap.’

  It really turns into an exciting day for me, getting to meet so many famous faces. A lot of folk do get thrown a celebrity bone when they’re circling the cancer drain, though, don’t they? A wee bedside hospice visit or a photo-op for the local paper, but you’re talking about a local celeb too, usually: someone ten years binned from Coronation Street, who’s angling to publicise the panto they’re co-starring in at the Fudbury Town Hall. Doesn’t hurt the image either: you always look comparatively youthful, glamorous and coiffured next to some emaciated fucker on chemo. But most of all, it’s a chance to give something back.

  Lucky old tumour-ridden me, though, three in one day, and we’re talking strictly household names here: nobody in immediate danger of having to say yes if the Call My Bluff booker happens to ring. There was Charlotte, first thing, of course, and next, just before lunch, there is Danny Jackson, stand-up comic and stalwart of ‘light entertainment’ in a career spanning four decades.

  Yes, he’s quite the survivor, our DJ. First graced the screens back in the Seventies among the pantheon of old-school (ie mother-in-law jokes and casual racism) comics rapid-firing feedline/punchline gags on ITV’s legendary The Comedians. Legendary in as much as the myth of it has grown as the mists of time have clouded its memory: in reality it was a largely unregarded half-hour schedule-filler, slotted haphazardly in the early part of midweek evenings before the big shows that people really wanted to see. That said, it was the only such showcase for stand-up comics, and its regulars were therefore in their time the biggest stars in that particular firmament: Stan ‘The Geeermans’ Boardman, Frank ‘That’s a cracker’ Carson, Jim ‘Nick-nick’ Davidson, Bernard ‘Cholesterol? Never heard of it’ Manning, and, of course, Danny ‘I’m all right’ Jackson. He was slightly younger than his peers, more photogenic and a great deal more image-conscious; this last an indicator that he was sharper than them, too, in ways they weren’t even aware it was worth being sharp about.

  While they were still doing the working-men’s club circuit for their bread-and-butter, hawking the same act as they did on The Comedians plus swearing and jokes about periods, DJ was refining his cheerful Cockney cheeky-chappy front in order to transcend being a mere comic and become that most viable crossbreed strain: a personality. It was this evolution that kept him fronting game shows while his erstwhile peers became the entertainment world’s living fossils, embittered relics of a bygone age.

  When that revolting polyester suit full of sweaty corpulence Manning belatedly got the final hook in 2007, it was moaned that he and his ilk had been victims of political correctness, and that this nanny-state prudishness had stifled the careers of these talented entertainers. Danny Jackson was conspicuously absent from the tributes, because he knew he was living proof that this explanation was utter bollocks. Manning and co weren’t victims of political correctness: they were victims of the same thing as had given them national fame in the first place: television. They were jobbing comics with a limited repertoire, which was fine when you were playing a different club every night and the audience was too pissed to remember you telling all the same jokes when you last visited eighteen months back. But television delivered your gags straight to a national audience, among whom it would be repeated and retold, in the workplace, in the pub and in the playground. Thus TV producers weren’t refusing to book dinosaurs like Manning because their material was now considered offensive; they were refusing to book them because their material was known verbatim and they proved incapable of coming up with anything new.

  Danny Jackson saw it coming, and not only pitched himself as a bubbly and loveable scamp just right to inject zany enthusiasm into otherwise predictable family formats, but boosted his stand-up career into the top rank by the cute tactic of keeping it very distinct from his TV self. It was a cleverly worked symbiosis, a masterclass in the art of having one’s cake and eating it. Being a household name, on TV every Saturday teatime, meant it was never hard to shift tickets – or videos and later DVDs – for his live tours, but he never performed any of his stand-up material on TV. Well, he couldn’t could he? It was saucy stuff, ‘strictly adults only’, as it said on the posters, perhaps because nobody in the audience would want their kids to see them laughing away at jokes about niggers, pakis, four-by-twos, jam-rags an
d shirt-lifters.

  The symbiosis enshrined our nation’s self-deluding hypocrisy. DJ’s enduring success as a TV host was partly down to his popularity with white van man and his missus for his standup reputation and the values it pandered to. They identified with him because they ‘could tell he knew where they were coming from’, and it gave an edge to his appearances that there was this latent side of him that the viewer knew was being kept in check. The same nation that so hysterically and ostentatiously condemned football pundits and reality-show contestants for unguardedly letting slip isolated racial or other proscribed epithets, was nonetheless happy to have its Saturday-night family entertainment presented by a man who cheerfully indulged every kind of bigotry – just as long as he kept it off the box.

  He was way too smart to ever break that particular fourth wall, and very careful to protect the gossamer-thin defence that his live material was merely a stage persona rather than his own opinions. Gossamer-thin because, as he once put it: ‘It’s like a condom. The thinner it is and the more real it feels, the bigger the thrill.’

  Thus he was acutely conscious of the damage should he ever be caught riding bareback, as it were, which was why he once knocked back Celebrity Big Brother, and also why he said yes to my own request.

  Clearly it wasn’t the only reason he knocked back Celebrity Big Brother; there was no danger of the Call My Bluff booker even giving DJ’s agent a bell, far less him having to say yes. Unlike the rest of the CBB contestants, he didn’t need the money and he didn’t need the exposure; but more than that, he couldn’t afford the exposure. Though he wouldn’t have known who else was going to be in the house, he knew how the producers worked. It was a certainty there would be housemates from the ethnic and sexual minorities, and he knew he couldn’t be guarded and circumspect twenty-four/seven; nor could he rely on sympathetic editing to erase any little indiscretions, those being what the producers were principally interested in.

  When the tightrope he walked was the width of that gossamer membrane, not only could he ill afford such risks, but he had to regularly assuage suspicion and innuendo through displays of public mateyness with a select few tame black and homosexual celebs. An upscale version of the ‘some of my best friends’ defence. That was why I knew he’d be more than happy to contribute a solidarity message for little Asian Anika. How could he say no? It reflected his A-list status that he was among the first to be asked, it showed he cared and was prepared to give up his time for a good cause, it demonstrated a deeper, less frivolous side to his personality, and it proved he had nothing against the coons.

  But I said three household names, didn’t I? And I saved the biggest name until last; or at least our respective schedules dictated it that way: AMTV having her on-air, today as all days, until just before my meeting with the charming Mr Jackson.

  I’m new to this whole TV business, but I like to think of myself as a fast learner, and I know that for a project such as this, the chemistry is crucial. I need balance, I need light to contrast shade, yin to counter yang. So as well as a spoilt narcissistic fucktard and an insufferably smarmy bigot, both of whom many people in my prospective audience would secretly enjoy seeing tortured and degraded, I need someone of whom nobody has a bad word to say, and to whom nobody could wish any torment; someone genuinely loved and admired throughout the country: punters, pundits and industry alike. And that’s why, today, I get to meet the warm, the genuine, the lovely, the wonderful Katie Lorimer.

  I know. Touch me.

  The Katie Lorimer. A woman so infallibly adorable that if there was to be a Britain’s Nicest Person title, all it would take was a single nomination for her and everyone else would voluntarily withdraw, rather than be so mean or arrogant as to even contest it. Everybody, everybody loves Katie.

  It’s perhaps because she seems so natural in front of the camera, so down-to-earth, like she just stepped through the screen from an ordinary living room and into the AMTV studio, the perfect everywoman, or everyhousewife at least. Which isn’t to say she’s anything less than professional, but that she doesn’t seem yet another polished example of some metropolitan TV-presenter production line. She hasn’t sprung fully formed from the loins of Zeus, or even sprung secretly from the loins of Hughie Green.

  This is why she and AMTV are made for each other; it’s hard to imagine the show being so popular without her, just as it’s hard to imagine Katie’s style on any other show. She’s perfect for AMTV’s magazine format; not just because she talks to the guests like they dropped into her living room for morning coffee, but because her target audience find it reassuring that she discusses the day’s news stories in a manner that gives the impression she doesn’t understand them either.

  All of which is to say nothing of her physical charms, crucial to extending her popularity across the sexes. She is no dolled-up glamourpuss, but for all that, has an approachability that crucially makes the ordinary bloke think he might be in with a chance. She’s maturely mumsy without coming across as an imminently menopausal frump; which is not to say that she’s plain, either. She’s not overtly or provocatively sexy, but there’s something of the stocking-top flashed beneath the housecoat about her. In short, she’s the closest thing the UK has to a mother of the nation, but a mother the male viewer could plausibly imagine in a basque and sussies, taking it doggy-style with breathless alacrity once the nation has been safely tucked up in bed after a goodnight story.

  I get to meet her on Ravenheath Moor, about ten miles from the village where she lives with the hubby and three kids. I sold her publicist the location on the concept of being driven off from somewhere mysterious, with sheer convenience helping seal the deal. And I’m happy to report that unless she is the ultimate pro and a flawless actress, then yes, she is everything people say, and that what you see truly is what you get.

  She delivers the line as I pull away into open moorland, emerging from the copse of trees where her publicist, Elisha, and her driver, Tony, lie dead inside a black Audi A8.

  ‘It could have been any of us, Anika. So we’re not just thinking of you, we’re with you. We’re part of this. And we’ll do anything it takes to get you back alive.’

  Of the three I’ve filmed, she’s the only one I would swear truly means it.

  As I say, an exciting day all round, and an equally productive day’s work, but not everything is in place for my farewell extravaganza quite yet. There’s a slot open for one last star, and I’ll be filling it very soon. Admittedly, this one is not a house-hold name (though I’m about to change that), but it is a face that’s been gracing all our TV screens recently, another admirable individual to balance that crucial chemistry I was talking about. Not a celebrity, but someone who’s nonetheless been playing a public part in these shenanigans: my noble adversary from the long arm of the law.

  This will be arguably my most valuable acquisition, as it will ensure that the cops think very carefully about all their options before attempting anything rash. Nothing concentrates their minds and stays their more gung-ho instincts quite like having a genuine stake in the game.

  Prey

  Darcourt is commencing his endgame, of that Angelique has little doubt. The haematologist she showed the file to confirmed as much. Lymphoma, leaving him functional but imminently doomed; just not imminently enough. If the bastard had just assumed the lump on his neck was a big plook, the late onset of other symptoms might have ensured he was too sick to engage in this valedictory undertaking. Nonetheless, his time is running out. The haematologist said, going by the dates on the file, he should be hitting the debilitating phase in a matter of weeks, if it hasn’t begun already. That, in fact, might be what has heralded the commencement of what she is sure will be his final play, and though she yet has no idea what form it will take, she knows for certain that it signals her parents’ time is fast running out.

  The thought of them is like a low hum in her head, ever constant even if she can relegate it to the background some of the time. It is a unique
aspect of this torture that she has to keep tuning them out: that the only way she can maintain the composure required to have any chance of helping them is by banishing them from her mind, or at least drowning her thoughts of them in a deluge of more immediate concerns.

  Her most immediate concern right now, as she sits on the Piccadilly Line, is an unsettling, goosebump-pricking suspicion that she is being followed. It’s not some indefinable sixth-sense nonsense, but a combination of trusted instinct and experience. She hasn’t specifically seen anything to set off her sensors; rather, it is like a belated, subconscious awareness that something in the background may have been more significant than it registered at the time. Something glimpsed back on the platform at Holborn, perhaps, a furtive look or movement that some corner of her mind took note of while the larger part of it was busy contemplating the latest celebrity abductions.

  However, she also knows that it could instead simply be down to the paranoia attending the purpose of her journey: her first clandestine meeting with Zal back on British soil, to ponder how best they might obstruct or at least illegally divert the course of justice.

  As she rides the up escalator, she hears the chime announcing a text message, a sound that has come to elicit a Pavlovian quickening of her pulse and gut-churning, dry-throated dread. The woman in front of her dips into a handbag and produces a mobile, same model as Angelique’s, same default alert. Angelique sighs quietly, her breath lost in the roaring of a train as it thunders away from one of the platforms below. That text wasn’t for her, but there will be another winging her way soon enough, her puppetmasters continuing to remind her that they have seen the same straws in the wind, or at least the same news reports and images on the internet. The latest photo of her parents showed them holding a printout of Darcourt’s homepage, just to underline the point. They looked ill. She tries not to stare at these attachments, these little digital cluster-bombs, wishes she could force herself not to view them at all, but the desperate thirst for news, for information, always overrides this. Each new shot shows them more anguished, more gaunt, more tired, thinner, and so much older.