A Snowball in Hell

by Christopher Brookmyre

  The countdown reaches zero at noon.

  I divert the video to all the feeds, so that it’s the only show in town. It being a pre-edited package, the broadcasters won’t stream any of it without seeing all the content, after which it’s going to be a tough call for organisations supposedly remitted to carry the news. Everybody is going to see it anyway, one way or another, and their nanny-state fixations with protecting their audience from offensive material are about to become moot to an extent they could not possibly imagine.

  It starts with music, a drum beat fading up into my Nick Foster tribute mix: ‘Hurts Like Dynamite’, playing over a montage of images from the media coverage of Four Play and Vogue 2.2’s abductions and subsequent retirements from the music business. This gives way to the SHE’S ALIVE! headlines that clamoured around Sally Smith’s safe return, before Sally herself provides the segue to the ongoing plight of Anika with a recent TV message from her hospital bed, while ‘Gone But Not Forgotten’ fades up to replace ‘Hurts Like Dynamite’ on the soundtrack.

  ‘You hang in, I know you’re strong.’

  I use this as the overture to a cloying compilation of headlines and TV clips about what a wonderful and special person Anika is, a recurring phrase punctuating the sequence with a growing frequency until it reaches a fast-edit crescendo: face after face, voice after voice saying the same thing: ‘We’d do anything to get her back.’

  The music stops and the image dissolves to show Anika chained to the bed, weeping. This fades to black for a beat, then fades up to footage of Dale at a press conference, stating solemnly: ‘I will not rest, I will be doing everything in my power to ensure her safe return.’

  Fade to black again, for a poignantly longer beat, then cue a slightly extended edit of my star-studded montage from the back of the limo.

  ‘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.’

  ‘Anything it takes.’

  ‘Anything it takes.’

  ‘Anything it takes.’

  ‘Everything in my power.’

  Now, here’s the part where the folks watching at home get to see something that the contestants don’t. In the common room, the video ends there. For everybody else, there’s an uptempo bass-drum beat, playing over constantly changing shots of all four faces – publicity stills, press photos and image captures from their respective feeds – one in each corner of the screen, with Anika’s image fixed in the centre. The drumbeat is supplemented by guitars and vocals, my own remixed version of an old Echo and the Bunnymen number: ‘Rescue’. There’s umpteen songs I could have used with the appropriate word in the title, but I always hated those cunts and I know that its association with this is going to taint the track forever. No nostalgia-bandwagon greatest-hits release for you, McCulloch.

  ‘Coming soon,’ my own voice announces; no need for digital manipulation at this late stage of the game. ‘From all responsible broadcasters... It’s Celebrity Rescue! The show where four special people get the chance to prove they’re as good as their word, and you get to see just how far they’re prepared to go in order to save the nation’s latest paragon: the lovely, the talented, the saintly, and the ever so vulnerable... Anika!

  ‘It’s the show where you get to find out just what “anything” really means, and you don’t need to worry about the action getting too hot for TV, because they’ll be playing this game too, as will the police, the government, you at home; hell, we’ll all be playing Celebrity Rescue, and here’s why. Let me explain the rules.

  ‘Every day, for four days, I’ll be setting our rescue team a task, and if they complete them all, Anika will be set free, alive and unharmed. As will, in fact, all surviving celebrities, which if everybody behaves themselves, should mean three out of our four contestants. Why only three? Well, we’ll come to that, and I promise, you’re gonna love it! You’re gonna love the whole line-up, because this is what you’ve really been wanting to see while you sat through those endless hours of brain-melting tedium on every other reality show!’

  Three of the images fade out on screen, leaving only two flattering shots of Charlotte Westwood and Katie Lorimer.

  ‘Task one will see these two sensuous beauties engaged in the hottest two-girl action ever seen on British television, and I don’t mean the Wimbledon ladies’ singles here. We’re talking scissor sisters, we’re talking oral, we’re talking strap-ons and double-ended jumbo vibrators, ladies and gentlemen.

  ‘But we’re not going to let the girls have all the fun,’ I add, as the pictures of Charlotte and Katie are replaced by images of Dale and DJ.

  ‘With task two, we’ll discover whether Danny “I’m all right” Jackson still sees the funny side of all those jokes about gay piano players pushing in their stools. That’s right: it’s celebrity buggery! With Detective Dale giving the naughty comedian a stiff lesson from his truncheon! But if DJ’s feeling sore about being on the receiving end and not even getting the courtesy of a reacharound, then he’ll be able to take it up with Detective Dale in a real celebrity deathmatch.

  ‘That’s right: task three will see our two male contestants armed with machetes in order to engage in a genuine fight to the death. Or you could call it a fight for life, because if either of them refuses to kill the other, then I’ll be killing them both. But it would be no fun if that was the only incentive, which is why the winner gets the special prize of fucking both Charlotte and Katie – and we are talking ass-to-mouth here – in task four, our super celebrity threesome finale!’

  The video now cuts to a montage of the contestants together in the common room, demonstrating the multiplicity of angles and close-ups I will have at my fingertips.

  ‘And don’t worry if you don’t have access to the internet, because every evening, I will be supplying a one-hour highlights programme which will be broadcast on the BBC, ITV and Sky networks – after the watershed, of course, because Black Spirit Productions are a family-friendly company. If any of the networks fails to broadcast the highlights programme each night, unedited, then one of the contestants will die. And as with the massively popular Dying to be Famous, a similar penalty will be incurred by any attempted meddling from those nasty spoilsports in the police. If everybody plays by the rules, we’re all going to have a lot of fun, and together, everybody is going to play their part in rescuing Anika.’

  ‘And they say there’s nothing good on the telly these days,’ growls Shaw, breaking the dread-struck silence that has enveloped the Operations Centre. His words precede the inevitable cacophony of telephones, though Angelique can’t see the point in anyone answering them. The purpose of any conversation is an exchange of information, and she doesn’t believe two parties informing one another that ‘No, we don’t know squat either’ really qualifies.

  Shaw seems of similar mind, telling several receiver-gripping applicants to fuck off, or at least to convey to whoever is calling that he is presently indisposed.

  ‘This part is like the electromagnetic pulse following a nuclear blast,’ he says to Angelique. ‘An overwhelming wave of energy serving no purpose but to bollocks up your communications network at the time you most need it clear.’ He turns, waves an arm in a wide arc to get everyone’s attention, then addresses the room.

  ‘Our phones are for incoming information only at this time,’ he announces. ‘We’re not answering anybody else’s questions, just pursuing queries of our own.’

  The phone next to Angelique rings at this insensitive moment, and she answers it principally with the intention of silencing the tone and quickly getting rid of the caller. However, it’s Lee Hardacre from Met Traffic, getting back to her. The officers despatched to Dale’s flat took a statement from a witness who heard a noise in the common stair and had a look out at the street to see whoever was exiting. He said he saw a man dressed in black trousers and a black hooded top loading a long canvas bag into a dark-coloured van; l
ooked like one of those holdalls for taking skis or golf clubs on holiday. He only saw the man from the rear and, predictably, he couldn’t be sure about the exact colour of the van, the sodium streetlights washing all dark shades to black. What he could say for certain, however, was that it was two-fifteen, because he had glanced at his bedside clock as he returned to bed. That had given them a time-frame to analyse, and Angelique had relayed the details to Hardacre.

  ‘We’ve clocked your van on two cameras in Crouch Hill,’ he reports. ‘Both sightings within a minute of each other, travelling west from DS Dale’s address. It’s a Ford Escort van, late-Nineties model, probably dark blue—’

  ‘And you’ve checked all the cameras for any other possibles?’ she interrupts. ‘I’m not trying to tell you how to do your—’

  ‘I understand,’ he interrupts back. ‘But believe me, this is the van.’ There is something weary, almost apologetic about his tone, which Angelique doesn’t find encouraging. ‘The second shot was good enough to get a reg. I fed it through the system. DVLA records showed the plate decommissioned, but previously registered to a certain Mrs Mary Whitehouse.’

  ‘Christ,’ she mutters. ‘That’s Darcourt all right. I don’t know where he gets this shit, but he’s previously used fake plates belonging to Princess Di and Fred West.’

  ‘He’s a riot, isn’t he?’

  ‘So how long before the system picks up what other cameras the van has appeared on?’

  ‘That’s just it. The results are all in. The van shows up on these two cameras then disappears. Which means either he’s running this whole show from a location in Crouch End, or he switched vehicles.’

  ‘Admittedly my London socio-geography is a bit rudimentary, but I can’t see Crouch End as a viable spot for smuggling drugged celebrities in and out of a building unnoticed.’

  ‘He’d need some budget for the square footage too. We’re working on the switch theory. Problem is, there’s no way of knowing when he started moving again, so the cameras are essentially useless.’

  ‘What about the ditched van?’

  ‘Got officers on the ground searching the area right now. I’ll call you as soon as we find anything.’

  While she was on the phone, Shaw has taken a call also, and looks less than pleased about it. Angelique deduces that it can only be from one person.

  ‘Keen,’ he confirms with a grumble. ‘He’s had the fuckin’ home secretary on the line, asking the usual stupid questions politicians ask at this point. “Why don’t you try such-and-such?” It never occurring to them that either we have tried it and it didnae help, or that there’s a bloody good reason why not. In this case, it was why can’t we trace the source. A sore point with the commander, I gather.’

  Angelique recalls his face-off with Dale, Keen eventually backing down against his own instincts.

  Meilis has latterly become sceptical about whether Darcourt truly has the capability to detect attempted traces, and is increasingly of the opinion that the bastard actually had no prior warning before the police walked into his decoy honey-trap. However, he has continued to emphasise that the GOG technology meant that further honey-traps were the only thing they were likely to detect, and nobody was going to call that bluff twice.

  ‘I take it Keen explained to the home sec that the reason we aren’t tracing the signal is called Wilson Gartside.’

  ‘No, he explained that the reason is called Sally Smith.’

  Angelique nods to convey her understanding. Keen gave in to Dale on the grounds that Darcourt was going to kill all his hostages anyway.

  ‘It wasn’t the one he murdered that really fucked us,’ continues Shaw. ‘It was the one he let go. He played by his own rules, so we have to play by them too. Basic stick-up scenario: just do as he says and he won’t kill anybody.’

  ‘It’s what he’ll have them doing to each other that’s gonna make it kind of hard to just stand back and watch.’

  ‘Aye. Though not everybody will be so squeamish. The home sec will be speaking to the networks very soon, and there will be a lot of hand-wringing, heavy hearts and talk about having no choice if lives are at risk, but secretly the bastards will be thinking it’s Christmas. And I mean Christmas as in the 1976 Morecambe & Wise Christmas Special: an all-time-high ratings bonanza.’

  ‘Can’t argue with you on that. The Great British Public will be vocal in their disgust, but they’ll tune in in their millions. It’ll overtake The Teletubbies as the programme everybody sees but nobody admits to watching. God knows what the networks would be prepared to pay – in the public interest, of course – if Darcourt was auctioning exclusive rights rather than doling it out to all of them for free.’

  ‘That’s what I don’t get, though,’ Shaw adds, his voice dropping like it’s a private thought expressed aloud. ‘What is Darcourt’s back-end on this? I mean, after everything else he’s done, is his dying wish merely to put celebrity porn and gladiatorial snuff movies on the goggle box? Is it some kind of fucked-up moral revenge on the country that didn’t understand him? What?’

  ‘I know what you mean, sir. Appalling as it is, I must admit, it strikes me as insufficiently apocalyptic for it to be Darcourt’s swan song.’ She daren’t mention it, but it’s Zal’s words that are resounding in her head once again, as she asks herself what they might not see coming while Darcourt’s got them focused on this.

  ‘And why didn’t he announce when it was starting?’ Shaw asks. ‘He just said “Coming soon”. He’s got everybody where he wants them: what’s he waiting for?’

  The unlikely figure of Julian Meilis heralds the answer.

  ‘Sir,’ he says, standing up and removing his headset, itself a harbinger of great moment as Angelique can’t remember ever seeing him sans; the thing is like a Borg implant. ‘You have to take this call.’

  ‘Who is it? Keen again?’

  ‘No sir. It’s him.’

  With a gesture, Shaw silences the whole room. ‘Darcourt? On the phone? Are you sure it’s him?’

  ‘It’s not a phone call, sir. It’s a P2P VoIP using AES encryption, routed directly to this desktop. Darcourt is the only person outside this room who knows the IP.’

  Shaw stares bemusedly at Meilis, then turns to Angelique as if looking for some kind of explanation as to who this guy is and why he’s babbling in another language.

  ‘Julian,’ she snaps. ‘English.’

  ‘It’s a computer-to-computer call, sir, and he’s one of the very few people who would know which number to dial.’

  ‘Can we get a trace on it?’ Shaw asks.

  ‘Not a chance. That’s why he’s using it.’

  ‘Can you record it?’

  ‘Already there, sir.’

  ‘Good. And run it through the speakers.’

  ‘You got it.’

  Shaw takes the offered headset and holds it awkwardly, like it’s a live crustacean, turning it until the mike is in front of his mouth.

  ‘Hello?’ he tries tentatively. ‘Hello? This is Shaw. Can you hear me? Over.’

  Angelique catches sight of Meilis rolling his eyes at this; he’s very lucky Shaw didn’t.

  There’s an expectant silence, lengthening to the extent that Shaw starts scrutinising the headset. Then Darcourt’s voice booms all around the room.

  ‘Detective Chief Superintendent Shaw. That’s quite a mouthful for the troops, n’est-ce pas?’

  Angelique finds herself putting her hand to her chest where that shotgun blast impacted. It’s him all right. Clear as a bell, unsettlingly familiar, in that weird accent. There’s very few traces of his native Scotland left, all smoothed over within a voice that has been speaking another language for years. She knows the effect well: some of her own pronunciations have altered as a result of her time in France, but in Darcourt’s case, it must be exacerbated by the effort of pretending to be someone else every minute of every day. Aware of her own tendency to switch between at least two, and sometimes more, she wonders what language he act
ually thinks in. She decides Prick.

  ‘I find they manage fine with “sir”,’ Shaw responds. ‘Listen, I’m glad you called. You never said what time your programme was on at, and I was wanting to set the video. Case it clashes with Corrie, you know?’

  ‘Mmm,’ Darcourt mumbles dispassionately. ‘It would be a tragedy if you missed it, I agree. And I hope that’s a figure of speech and you’re not really making do with some steam-powered old VHS. A television event of this importance warrants Sky-Plus at least, though a proper hard-disc recorder would be... decorous.’

  ‘Aye, I might splash out. I don’t suppose you’ve plans to release a DVD box set? Nah, you’ve been generous enough already, laying this on for free.’

  ‘I call it public service broadcasting, in the spirit of the late John Reith. This sexually repressed little backwater of a country needs to undo a few buttons and confront reality. The British zeitgeist is that of an entire people that has collectively never got over walking in on its parents having sex. I’ve heard Katie Lorimer called the unofficial mother of the nation, so I’m guessing if the nation sees Mummy playing an away fixture with the England captain’s wife, then its psyche will be forever altered for the better. Wouldn’t you agree?’

  ‘Not entirely. I’m a bit concerned about getting woken up in the small hours by the same wee nation because it cannae sleep for having nightmares since seeing its Saturday teatime favourite being raped and then hacked to death.’

  ‘So your money’s on Dale for the big fight? Yeah, mine too. Banking on it, really. Don’t imagine there’s many people want to see Danny Jackson humping either the WAG or the MILF. They want a fit, strong specimen like the good police officer. That’s the beauty of it, in fact. If everything goes to plan, the only person to die will be nasty, pudgy, racist, queer-bashing old DJ, and everybody probably figures he’s the most horrible and therefore kind of deserves it. They’ll make their peace with it, because the prejudices inherent in their supposed liberalism are really just another form of bigotry. Like I said, it’s a public service: the public need to hate guys like Danny Jackson to make them feel better, same as they need to hate me. Even more generously, I will be conveniently mopping up all their guilt for them, because I’m the one going to hell: they’re only watching.’