by John Boyne
‘We’re planning a little business venture,’ I repeated, my voice raised a little higher now to avoid interruption. ‘The funding is in place, we’ve already started recruiting in fact. It’s a satellite broadcasting station. Mostly news and lifestyle shows, a few imported TV dramas from the States. The quality ones. Subscription based, of course. What we’re looking for is a managing director. Someone to run the day to day operations, bring a little expertise to the business, make the decisions on the shop floor, so to speak. We all intend to be fairly hands off, although not entirely asleep you understand, and we need someone we can rely on and who understands the media world as it’s run today. Someone who can make the station work. In short, James, we’d like you to do the job.’
I sat back with a fairly satisfied smile, pleased with the simplicity of my explanation and the way that his face appeared to be betraying more eagerness by the moment, particularly at the words ‘managing director’, ‘make the decisions’ and ‘we all intend to be fairly hands off. There was silence for a few moments before he sat forward in his chair, smiled widely and took the cigar out of his mouth.
‘Gents,’ he said, his eyes positively lit up with excitement, ‘let’s talk numbers.’
As things turned out, the numbers, when suitably tweaked, proved satisfactory to all concerned, as did a previously unexpected demand for a five per cent share in pre-tax profits, something which I was glad to give him in lieu of annual bonuses for a initial three year period, and within a month he was showing up for work before the early-morning cleaners and leaving after the late-night janitors. Over the course of the following two years, he made momentous decisions for the station, some of which I approved of, some of which made me a little uneasy, all of which proved correct my decision to employ him in the first place. He brought in a solid team of anchors and reporters, most notably Ms Tara Morrison who owes him a lot, and rearranged the schedules constantly to provide natural leads in and out of carefully planned programming. Market share grew considerably, and we all made money. Together, we became a success.
Alongside our business accomplishments, James and I became good friends. We were very different types of men but we respected each other and enjoyed each other’s company. We argued across the boardroom table but always with a healthy regard for the other’s opinion and the success of the station. We met once a month, alone, for a meal and drinks where the rule was that we did not mention anything to do with the station but spoke instead of politics, history and art. Our lives. (Of course, he was a little bit more honest with me about his life than I ever was with him about mine, but such is the way of all good relationships; one has to be a little economical with the truth, particularly when there is absolutely nothing to be gained by revealing all.) He worked reasonably well with P.W. and Alan, although they were not close, and it was this very fact which confused me as I took a taxi to James’s home that early March morning, through a drizzly London mist. What on earth was P.W. doing there and what circumstances had led to James’s death? I would have feared the worst, but had no idea whatsoever what ‘the worst’ might be. As I paid the driver and stepped outside the cab, I paused for a moment on the street outside, which was quiet and deserted. The lights in almost all the houses were off but there were five streetlights shining brightly. James’s house was in darkness, except for the bay windows in the front room, where heavy curtains were drawn, a thin light breaking through where they did not quite meet. I took a deep breath and ran up the steps to ring the doorbell.
Two days later, with the exhausting events of the previous forty-eight hours behind me, I sat down behind my desk and dialled the unfamiliar number carefully. The connection seemed to take for ever and it rang for quite some time before being answered with a shout by what sounded like a young Cockney woman with pins in her mouth.
‘Twelve!’ she shouted into the phone and I raised an eyebrow in surprise. Had I rung the right number? Was ‘twelve’ her name? Was she some sort of robotic answering device? ‘Set twelve!’ she shouted now.
‘Set twelve!’ I repeated loudly, for some unknown reason, making it more of a command than anything else.
‘Set twelve!’ the voice said again. ‘Who is this?’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said quickly, gathering myself together as I realised that she meant ‘set’ as a noun, not a verb. ‘I was hoping to speak to Tommy DuMarque please.’
‘Who is this?’ she asked again, more suspiciously this time. ‘How did you get this number?’
‘He gave it to me, of course,’ I said, surprised by the aggression in her tone. ‘How else would I -’
‘This isn’t some stalker, is it?’ she asked and my mouth fell open. I didn’t know what to say. ‘Or a journalist’ She spat out the word with the distaste of someone who knew they would never read their own name in a newspaper. ‘Tommy’s filming at the moment,’ she added then, her tone a little less suspicious now as if she was suddenly afraid of just who I might actually be and whether I had any involvement in the continuation of her employment. ‘He won’t be finished for another – oh no, hold on. There he is. I’m not sure if he’s busy though. Who can I say is calling?’
‘Tell him it’s his Uncle Matthieu,’ I said, suddenly feeling exhausted again. ‘If it’s not too much trouble, that is.’ The phone slammed down on a table and I heard a whispering in the background and Tommy’s voice rising, saying, ‘It’s all right, honestly,’ and then, ‘Five minutes, OK?’ in a louder voice before he picked it up.
‘Uncle Matt?’ he asked and I sighed with relief.
‘At last,’ I said. ‘That was a most unpleasant girl. Who was she?’
‘Just some runner. Don’t worry about it. Thinks she’s the director or something. God knows. This is the private number after all.’
‘Well, whatever. I just wanted to phone you to say thanks, that’s all. For what you did the other night. It was much appreciated.’
Tommy laughed as if it had been nothing at all, as if that kind of thing happened to him all the time, something which worried me. ‘No sweat,’ he said. ‘Listen, you’ve helped me out often enough, right? Glad to be able to give a little bit back.’
‘I must admit to feeling a few pangs of conscience,’ I said. ‘You don’t think it was a little immoral what we did, do you?’
T don’t believe in shit like that,’ he said nonchalantly. He paused and I said nothing, waiting for him to fill in the silence. I wanted him to reassure me, to tell me that my actions were proper and accountable. I’ve lived a long time and, while I may not have ever been a saint, I like to think that I’ve never deliberately hurt anyone since Dominique, particularly not my friends. ‘The way I see it is that the guy was dead anyway, all we did was fix it. There’s nothing that you or I or any of those creepy friends of yours could have done to make him any better or any worse. You got dragged into something that was nothing to do with you, that’s all. You need to pick your friends better, Uncle Matt.’
‘I wouldn’t exactly call them friends,’ I pointed out.
‘Don’t let your conscience get to you,’ he said. ‘You didn’t kill him.’
‘No, I suppose not.’
‘So just relax. It’s behind us now. We sorted a situation, that’s all. Let’s move on, OK?’ He sounded like a character in his television show. I nodded but still didn’t feel completely happy about the way things had worked out.
‘Thanks, Tommy,’ I said eventually, realising we had nothing more to say on the matter, that if it needed further consideration then I would have to do it on my own. ‘We’ll speak soon, yes?’
‘I hope so. The testicular cancer is in remission now, you’ll be glad to hear. I’m getting the all clear from the doctors later on today. So it looks like I’m not going to be looking for work any time soon, which is just as well as the last thing I need right now is more cashflow problems.’
‘The what?.’ I asked, sitting up in surprise. ‘What testicular -? Oh,’ I said quickly, laughing as I collapsed b
ack in the seat again. ‘What’s his name’s, you mean.’
‘Sam’s.’
‘You have to stop thinking that you are your character, you know.’
‘Why? The rest of the country thinks I am. Some old bag attacked me in Tesco’s yesterday and said it was my own fault for screwing around with Tina behind Carl’s back. She said it was God’s revenge on my balls.’
‘God’s revenge, yes,’ I said with a sigh. T have no idea who any of these people are, you understand. I must start actually watching your programme.’
‘I wouldn’t bother,’ he replied, as if he was responding to a journalist’s question with a pre-prepared statement. ‘Sure, there’s a certain element of gritty inner city realism that reflects and transposes the breakdown of the traditional family circle in London, the historical shared memory that is, into a contemporary desire for singular pleasures and personal gratification, and as such there are universal themes to be explored, but the writing’s shit and the acting’s rushed and repetitive on a quotidian basis due to the lack of rehearsal time and production directives for as few takes as possible. Everyone knows that.’
I paused for a long, long time, blinking away my surprise. ‘ What?’ I asked eventually, unsure that that sentence had just come out of my drug-taking party-going nephew’s mouth. ‘What did you just say?
‘Forget about it. It’s just TV,’ he said, laughing loudly. ‘It’s just fiction. It’s all makey-up.’ He paused and waited for me to say something further but I had nothing else to add. What could I possibly add to that? ‘Later, Uncle Matt,’ he said eventually to the silence, laughing as he hung up. I held the receiver in my hand for a few moments, listening to the dial tone before setting it back in place and closing my eyes to remember. There was no doubt about it, for once one of the Thomases had helped me out. And it made a pleasant change.
P.W. opened the door and grabbed me by the shoulders dramatically. His hair, which he grows long on one side of his head before combing it all the way across his pate to the other ear, was hanging askew, like a curtain falling just beneath his left ear. It was most unattractive. He wore a pale blue shirt with dark half-moons of perspiration looming beneath the armpits and he was in stockinged feet. ‘Thank God,’ he said in a harried tone, pulling me inside and closing the door behind me quickly. ‘I don’t know how this happened,’ he began. ‘We were just... we were ... we were ...’
‘Calm down,’ I said, stepping back as an overpowering smell of liquor hit me. ‘My God, man. How much have you drunk tonight?’
‘A lot,’ he said. ‘Too much. But I’m sober now, I swear it.’
And he was too. He looked to be the most sober man in the country, although his face was pale and he was shivering slightly. I moved towards the door which led to the living room and, as my hand reached for the knob, he placed his own on top of mine, forcing me to stay where I was for a moment. I looked at him. ‘Before you go in there,’ he said quickly, ‘I want you to know that it wasn’t my fault. I swear it wasn’t my fault.’
I nodded and felt a sudden rush of fear, mingled with panic. I was genuinely afraid of what horrors I might find on the other side of the door. In the end, while the actual result was as bad as I had feared, the scene itself was unremarkable. James was sitting on the floor, his back to the sofa, fully clothed, his legs slightly parted with a large glass of Scotch sitting between them. His arms lay palm upwards by his side. His eyes were open and he was staring at the opposite wall. Although I knew instantly that he was indeed dead, my eyes immediately darted to the other side of the room, to see whom he was looking at. Over there, in semi-darkness, huddled up on an armchair with another glass of Scotch for company was a young girl of no more than eighteen years of age. She was shivering violently and hugged her entire body to herself as she stared back at James, their eyes locked together as if they were engaged in some ridiculous contest. ‘Get me a blanket,’ I said quickly to P.W., who stood hovering behind me nervously, waiting for my reaction. ‘In fact you’d better get me two.’ He disappeared and reappeared a moment later with two heavy blankets, one of which I laid over James’s body. The moment I did this, the girl snapped back to life, looking at me with wide eyes. I came towards her with the other blanket and she shrank back, her whole body attempting to press itself back into the seat in panic.
‘It’s all right,’ I said quietly, holding one hand in the air in a gesture of friendship. ‘It’s just to keep you warm, that’s all. I’m here to help.’
‘It wasn’t me,’ she said quickly. ‘It’s nothing to do with me. He said he could handle it, that’s all. Said he’d done it before.’ She was surprisingly well spoken for a girl who was obviously a teenage prostitute. Her inflections were those of the private school, her manner that of the educated, the rich. James’s type of girl, no doubt. She had a pretty face and wore little make-up, although her eyes were circled with mascara too richly applied, which was running a little now in the heat of the room.
‘How old are you?’ I asked quietly, kneeling before her as I tucked the blanket into the chair.
‘Fifteen,’ she said quickly, answering me with the polite speed and honesty that she might direct towards a tutor or parent.
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake,’ I said, spinning around and staring at P.W. in disgust. ‘What the fuck have you two been doing here?’ It’s not my way to curse but her answer had stung me. ‘What the fuck has gone on here tonight?’
‘I’m sorry, Matthieu,’ said P.W., his mouth busy chewing his fingernails, his face streaming tears. ‘We didn’t know. She said she was older. She said -’
A spark of light caught my eye and I looked at the ground where a silver teaspoon lay, its centre slightly brown, a tiny bubble blinking at the lip. I picked it up and stared at it for a moment before dropping it to the ground. ‘Jesus fucking Christ,’ I said again, marching over to James’s body and pulling back the blanket. The girl screamed as I pulled up his shirt sleeve and saw the hypodermic syringe nestled securely in a vein, its lever pushed in, its load emptied. ‘What was in here?’ I asked. ‘What did he use?’
‘It was her!’ cried P.W. petulantly. ‘She brought it over here. She said it would make it better.’
‘That’s a damned lie,’ screamed the girl. ‘You said you wanted me to bring it. You said you needed it to have a good time. You gave me the fucking money for it, you bastard!’
P.W. started to move towards her in a fury but I stopped him and pushed him back on to the sofa, where he narrowly avoided landing on James’s body. ‘Sit down!’ I said firmly, feeling as if I was breaking up a playground fight between a couple of children and not trying to stop a middle-aged man from slapping a girl forty years his junior. ‘Now tell me what happened.’
There was silence for a few moments as I waited for one of them to speak. Eventually, P.W. shrugged and looked up at me apologetically. ‘It was just supposed to be a bit of fun,’ he said. ‘That’s all. We were out for a few drinks. It got a bit rowdy. You know how he liked a drink. Made everyone else drink as much as him. We were getting a taxi. That’s when we saw her, that little tart over there.’
‘Fuck off!’ she screamed.
‘James went up to her, asked her did she fancy a bit, you know, and she said all right and -’
‘And that’s a lie too!’ she roared and I spun round and stared at her furiously, at which she sat back in the seat quickly with a whimper and looked like she might never speak again in this world.
‘Go on,’ I said to P.W., turning back to him. ‘Tell me it as it happened. The truth now.’
‘Well, we got back here,’ he said, ‘and we were all set for it, you know. I was going to go first and then let James have a go. He said he’d been having a bit of trouble recently. With the old todger, you know. Said he needed something to help him get it up. Asked her what she had and that’s when she produced the heroin.’
‘But that would knock him out altogether!’ I said in protest, turning back to look at her. ‘What w
ere you thinking of?’
‘Don’t you dare shout at me,’ she cried. ‘It’s not my fault. You think I wanted that fat bastard banging away on top of me? I told him what I had, he said he wanted heroin, I asked him had he used it before and he swore he had so I gave it to him. I didn’t care as long as I got paid. I’m not his fucking mother, you know.’
‘Look at him!’ I roared. ‘He’s dead, for Christ’s sake.’
‘He stuck the needle in,’ said P.W., ‘and then he just started shaking all over. His mouth was dribbling and he had some sort of fit. Collapsed on the floor and a minute later he stopped moving altogether. That’s when I picked him up and set him against the couch. It was no one’s fault really. No one can blame either of us. He did it to himself.’
‘Jesus, P.W.,’ I said, staring at him. ‘You’ve hired a prostitute. And she’s fucking under age at that. You’ve got drugs here. Hard drugs. And a dead body. There’s not a single legal thing in any of those sentences.’
He buried his head in his hands and started to cry some more. I looked across at the girl who was watching him with disgust and who, for some reason, had taken a nail file from her pocket and was sawing away at her nails with some speed. ‘I’m going,’ she said when I looked at her. ‘It’s got nothing to do with me.’
‘Sit down,’ I said. ‘No one’s going anywhere. Not ‘til I decide what to do for the best. Nobody moves from this room until I say they can. And I don’t want to hear a sound, all right?’
I went out into the hall, like the parent of two small children caught talking to each other late at night, and closed the door behind me firmly. I even considered locking it but the key was on the other side. I sat down on the stairs and thought about the situation as it had presented itself to me. I could just walk away, I thought. I could open the front door, go down the stairs and go home. Leave them to it. It’s nothing to do with me, after all. Sure, a taxi driver had taken me here and my fingerprints would be all over the place by now, not least on the hypodermic syringe, but I had a good story. I could explain it away, surely. And whatever happened to those two in there; well it was hardly my problem, was it? I could just walk away.