When I finally caught up with him he was standing by a pile of sculptures made out of scrap metal, testing a finger against a buffed edge.
“Fancy dress is it?” I panted, hands on knees. “Almost got a glimpse of ankle there. Careful, you might set me off.”
“I found that quite invigorating,” he said, not out of breath in the slightest, the git. “It should pique Burnett’s interest, at least.”
“What happens now? Do I wrestle you to the ground and accidentally kiss you?” I stood up straight and blew hard. “Jeez, I need the gym.”
“Now you go back and tell him you lost me.”
“Right. I should’ve guessed it’d be my fault.”
Seb smiled. “I shall speak to you later.”
He skipped off, zig-zagging between the rows of stalls and dodging tourists fanning out banknotes in funny colours in exchange for shapeless wooden items.
I walked back towards Geoff shaking my head. He’d barely reached half-way to the market. “Lost him in the stalls, boss,” I said. “Great deals on seventies vinyl, though. Something tells me you’re a man with a needle.”
We returned to Humbug but Quiff had gone, spooked by Geoff, and Eddie was distraught that his most reliable income stream had suddenly dried up. If Quiff had any sense, I thought, he’d do his liver a favour and stay away for the rest of the week.
We returned to the office with Geoff firing on however many battered cylinders he still had remaining. “Developments, boys, developments. Round the table, please.”
He recounted the tale of Eddie and Quiff and the enigmatic Chinese man. Mysteriously, it turned out that my memory was mistaken and in fact we both gave chase. We were apparently two New York cops crossing busy streets and hurdling cars, and avoiding old ladies with shopping baskets on wheels and tiny yapping dogs. Naturally it was still ginge who lost the chinky, as he so delicately put it.
“Right, Twiglet,” said Geoff. “How’s your Flowers piece? Anything juicier than you had this morning?”
Manish shook his head.
“OK. Spiked. We need to focus on hunting down this Chinese fella. Get on to that. Bound to be reports. Stood out like a bollock in a bikini, didn’t he ginge?”
“You want me to investigate Chinese people in Cambridge?” Manish asked. “It’s Cambridge! The place is full of tourists! Chinese people, Japanese people, Korean people. Every day there’s a new tour.”
“They don’t run off when you mention St Paul’s.”
“I bet some of them do. I bet some of them run towards it, too.”
“I don’t care,” said Geoff, showing Manish the hand. “Can’t you get Faceplace or whatever it’s called to list everyone in Cambridge? I thought it could do that sort of shit. Or some app or something? Knobsquare? If not, go out on the streets. Find him. He’s key to this.”
“What do you want me to do?” I asked. “After all, I know what he looks like. You want me to doorstep the college? He’s bound to go in or out at some point.”
I was thinking how I could pop by Spencer’s and see what kind of a state he was in, and maybe have a relaxed couple of hours with the illegal immigrant and a plate of illegal digestives.
“Good idea, ginge. But not today, they’ll be expecting that. He’ll have warned them, assuming he can speak English. And the college toffs know what you look like, they’ll be sniffing out for you.”
So I got to lay out the classifieds, and Manish had the onerous task of spending the afternoon on Facebook and Twitter, and inventing increasingly outrageous search terms to throw at Google.
“Hey, Twiglet,” I said quietly about an hour later when Geoff and Simon were nattering away about something. “Your Spencer story. Did you find out anything you haven’t told the boss? Something I might, you know, need to worry about?”
“He likes gin,” Manish replied, scrolling down another set of search results.
I grinned. “I know that much. He likes a lot of gin.”
“There’s not much out there about his life before Cambridge. I guess he went to a shit school, doesn’t want to talk about it. It’s all just research papers and men, pretty much. Not many friends outside college, hasn’t spent long in the real world. I could possibly spin a piece about him getting his PhD by knobbing around, call it Cocktor Flowers or something, but that’s about it. He’s pretty clean. Dirty, but clean.”
I nodded. It was about what I’d expected. A long row of notches on his bedpost, no long-term relationships, no secret wife, and no slaves locked in a basement — at least as far as anyone could tell. About as close to angelic as I’d been expecting.
The afternoon was deadly dull, the time passing slower than a caravan on a motorway. Laying out the classifieds was Geoff’s equivalent of giving you lines. I must not lose the bleedin’ chinky fella, I must not lose the bleedin’ chinky fella, For Sale, 04 Peugeot, good condition, crack in windscreen, one lady owner, Contact Saucy Susan for intimate massage, no pooves. Did these people not have the internet? Most of my brain was otherwise engaged watching Manish’s screen.
I saw the tweet at the same time he did. In amongst a huge scrolling list of tweets that mentioned St Paul’s — mostly all about the charity race, with a thousand different but identical photos of the four Beatles projected onto the college — was one that said: “Thoughts of Chairman Wang: Have saki? Will travel”.
“Aha!” said Manish. “This looks promising.”
The bio of the person who’d sent the tweet said he was an undergraduate at St Paul’s. The face was unfamiliar, and its left half was mostly obscured by a great slice of black hair that acted like an eye patch.
We looked at the guy’s other tweets. Mostly the usual student woes about early morning lectures — as early as ten o’clock! — and the exorbitant price of their subsidised beer. Oh, and would anyone like a ticket for the May Ball at a hundred and fifty? But over the last few days there’d been some grumbling about our honoured guest and the odd gag about his name.
“Do you have a Twitter account?” I asked. “I bet you do. I bet it’s called Twiglet. Does it say you work for a newspaper?”
He did have a Twitter account. It wasn’t called Twiglet though. We tweaked the bio to make it more student-like — subtract job, add essay crisis, change to profile photo with a pool cue in hand — and deleted a couple of tweets that made him look vaguely professional and grown up. I was sure it didn’t matter that much, but at least I learned how much he hated Birmingham City football club, and that was my Christmas present to him sorted.
Trail covered, we sent a message to the one-eyed tweeter: “Whose Chairman Wang?” I was particularly pleased at the use of whose instead of who’s — a touch of authentic student there, I thought. We hung around hitting refresh on the page waiting for a response, since we could tell he was online from the timestamps on the newest tweets. By the look of it he was currently having an angels-on-a-pinhead discussion with a beard at Trinity about the influence of Baroque madrigals on the works of Kylie Minogue, and by the time they’d written about four words in each tweet they’d run out of the 140 characters they were allowed. Despite my pushing, Twiglet refused to send them both a tweet telling them to get a room.
We finally received our reply after a couple of minutes of constant reloading. One-eye tweeted to Manish: “Annoying guy, passing through college lol x”.
“Ask the guy’s name,” I said. “And add an x. I think you’ve pulled.”
Manish tweeted: “That his name? Chairman Wang? x”
A reply came back straight away this time: “No lol it’s Wang Ming. Nice cue! ;-) lol x”
“Yeah, Twiglet, you’ve pulled. Jeez, I’ve got to get myself one of those cues. Right, now ask what room he’s in.”
“Which one, the tweeter or this Wang Ming?”
“Why, are you interested in Captain Nerdseye there? Go for it. A whole new world’ll open up for you. With all the lols he looks like he spends most of his time in fits of laughter anyway, which is what you
’re used to when you’re naked.”
“Sod off.”
Manish tweeted back: “Where can I find Wang Ming? x ;-) lol”
“Jeez, don’t overdo the emotishite, it’s not sign language you’re writing.”
Another quick response: “Who are you?”
“He’s stopped laughing and kissing,” I said. “I think you’re dumped already. And we’re rumbled.”
We didn’t reply to that tweet. And shortly the other tweets blinked out as one-eye deleted them to cover his tracks. It didn’t matter: we had the name we wanted, which was not coincidentally the name they wanted us to have. Dance for your puppetmasters, boys.
We took the name to Geoff, after first figuring out how we were going to explain Twitter to him without having to describe the entire genesis of the internet yet again, and also why I was in a double-act with Manish rather than helping Diana, 45, look for “companionship” in Chesterton High Street while her husband was “away”. Being the sophisticated multi-cultural that he was, his first reaction to the name Wang Ming was to say it sounded like a Chinese takeaway, so I said that Geoff Burnett sounded like a racist arsehole, which I have to admit didn’t go down amazingly well.
nineteen
The Deception
I found Seb in the cacophonous dining hall enjoying, if one could call it that, a college salad. He was becoming a rather familiar figure around the three courts these nervous days, hardly the anonymous donor of blessed memory. He wore his cunning disguise as Mr Wang, our honoured temporary guest, and the unsubtle fragrances he emitted, courtesy of a chemist in the purview of the Archivist, helped ensure him a satisfying exclusion zone. Although most of the college were aware of the situation we battled, they were not aware of the reality of Mr Wang, of the person beneath the disguise. The continuing reminder of his presence assisted greatly in realism.
The noise of the hall obscured our conversation from ears both present and absent.
“Mr Wang, how delightful,” I said as I eased myself down opposite him on the old, much-buttocked long bench, scanning for splinters. I selected the least cloudy of a cowering clutch of glasses and poured myself some water. I was most certainly not eating.
More confidentially, I said: “I understand yesterday’s excitement with the gentlemen of the press produced the desired effect.”
“It did. They now have my name. And also, so I am told, the network tap is working very well indeed. They are discovering many exciting things about me.” He seemed almost proud.
“All bad, I hope and expect,” I said. I took a sip of water, hoping it had not been piped here directly from the Cam.
“It is an ingenious device, that tap. The ability to modify data on the wire, as Arthur put it, is proving extremely helpful. And it was an inspired choice of cover name. There was a real Wang Ming, you know, many years ago.” He forked something limp and dripping into his uneager mouth.
“The Archivist is nothing if not thorough. I wonder,” I waggled a finger in a circle in the direction of his mouth, “was that some variety of leaf?”
“I am not entirely sure.” He chewed and cogitated. “It has a texture rather like potato. Any taste it once had has been bred quite successfully out of it. Would you like to try?”
“I shall pass, thank you. I prefer my food readily identifiable. I have a SPAIN meeting to attend shortly, hence the reason for my dropping in upon you, and I’d rather not have a college lunch escaping in its many varieties from either end.”
Seb grimaced. “It will I suppose add depth to my character, assuming my character is not dead and buried. How may I help?”
“The race, Seb. More particularly and delicately, the buckets. I have moderate concerns I hope you shall allay. We have processed over a thousand registrations. Can you possibly lay your generous hands upon such a number of containers?”
“You have my word. I will bring in five thousand just in case. Where do they need to go? Do you think this used to be a tomato?”
I peered at the item his knife prodded tentatively, like a bomb-disposal robot at a discarded sports bag.
“Or a sweet pepper,” I said. “Or possibly a kidney. The Master — Amanda, that is — was insisting that we distribute the buckets evenly between the rooms of volunteers, to avoid upsetting the serenity of college and its historic vistas. This morning I inquired nervously of Dennis whether he might overturn that ruling. He responded, and I quote, feng shui Chatteris bollocks bollocks, and said we could pile them up on New Court lawn around the fountain.”
Seb grinned and nodded his approval, then resumed the hunt for any remaining food on his plate. “How is the dear old man doing? Enjoying the power?”
I considered carefully before answering: the unblinking eyes still gazed upon us, and Dennis could tune in if he desired and practise his lip reading. “I do believe it’s taken fifteen years off his age,” I said, smiling. “He dislikes the Admin dungeon, of course, and felt no more than a child perched behind Amanda’s monstrous desk, so he performs his duties above ground where there are windows and life. It is, as it were, a quite literal breath of fresh air. I do strongly caution you not to eat that.”
Seb glanced at me and I shook my head. He shrugged and unforked the item, designed to resemble a pickled onion and yet, I knew from gastroenteritic experience, lacking any of the features traditionally associated with such a food.
“What is it? Or was it?” he asked.
“I suspect strongly it was excreted by a genetically engineered alien-vegetable podule, steaming and shivering, in the darkest recesses of the kitchen where none dare roam unaccompanied. Though I might have seen a former celebrity being forced to gnaw upon it on a reality television show, after it had been recently liberated from an animal, possibly a marsupial. Either way, please consider it an onion for illustrative and decorative purposes only.”
He laid his knife and fork on the plate in surrender. “At least I now understand how everyone at this college is so skinny.”
“A popular theory is that the kitchen interprets five a day to mean pure chemical elements rather than fruit and vegetables. Today’s special is, I think, shredded tantalum with a mercury sauce. We probably have a geiger counter somewhere if you have concerns.”
“How big do these buckets need to be?” he asked.
I indicated a diameter and height using my hands. “A standard adult size. Of sufficient volume to satisfy a common or garden builder in his labours. We are not making sandcastles, for the avoidance of doubt. Imagine how much you will be vomiting later, and allow for that.”
There were of course only three of us present at the SPAIN meeting: myself, Helen and Dennis. The oppression and latent volcanism of the previous meetings were thankfully absent, and the discussion was punctuated by laughter in a scandalous break from tradition. Dennis, in particular, impressed by remaining almost entirely awake.
The meeting felt rather decaffeinated, in point of fact. Unquestionably better for us and no less flavoured, although lacking a certain bite, a kick, to keep us on our toes. It would take a while to overcome the lady’s absence. Occasionally there would be a memory, a bitter flashback, a toxic flood. I resolved to leave any and all biros in my bag until required.
The main order of business per the agenda that I allowed Helen to produce and circulate, and thus assuring my presence on her Christmas card list for the foreseeable, concerned the system for counting the donations we hoped would arrive by bucket post-race. Helen had procured two machines and enlisted via means undisclosed the assistance of a number of bank tellers who would be less overwhelmed than student volunteers by the presence of such a density of Her Majesties rendered unto metal and paper. She had also detailed a process — a production line, almost — for the handling of the buckets as they arrived at the finish. It fit precisely our requirements, and she flushed with success and our congratulation.
Then to what was the more nerve-wracking moment, and a moment of some significance for the event and for the col
lege. We all sat properly upright, and Dennis notched up the sensor on his hearing aid.
It was time to select which two colleges of the university would become designated as the honorary St Ringo’s and St George’s.
The plan of record in my original proposal had stated a random selection from the available pool of thirty — St Paul’s and St John’s already being spoken for, of course, from the full pack of thirty-two.
Dennis, however, brought forward a last-minute amendment as I placed crinkled names into a porter’s threadbare bowler upon an unfolded map of the city.
“Dear jeebus, not Girton, not Girton,” he said. “Not Girton.” An unexpected additional repetition suggested strong feelings indeed.
I sympathised. Girton College has many attractions, not one of which is its distance from the city centre — near four kilometres. There would be slim charity pickings along the bland old Roman road to The North, with spectators overwhelmed by the corpses pushed to the side as competitors expired to and fro. Girton is the Outer Hebrides of Cambridge. Beyond, desolation.
“In opposite vein, Dennis, perhaps we might also excise Christ’s and Emmanuel,” I said — both colleges immediately adjacent to St Paul’s, one on each side.
“And by the same token, Trinity?” suggested Helen, tapping on the map, that college being the neighbour of St John’s.
I sensed an outpouring of short-held doubts. “I agree. We should ensure a full-bodied quadrilateral rather than a beheaded triangle or worse, a thick line,” I said, invoking various religious blessings upon the Ordnance Survey.
Motion carried without a formal vote or, helpfully, any record other than the Archivist’s. I removed the offending four colleges from the bowler. As the senior in role, age and true age, Dennis was granted the honour of withdrawing the first name. Helen took the second.
I tossed a coin and said: “For first name: obverse Ringo, reverse George.”
The coin came up Ringo. “Dennis?”
The Pink and the Grey Page 21
