Papercuts

by Colin Bateman

  As he exited, Michael was glowing.

  Alix sat down opposite Rob and gave him an expectant look. He kept her waiting. Her story on Richard Turner’s triumphant homecoming was up on his screen. He clasped his hands in front of his face, and nodded at his computer.

  ‘Mmmmm,’ he said.

  ‘Mmmmm?’

  ‘You know something, Alix – this is a very smart piece, funny, vaguely ridiculous, and really quite moving. And they really didn’t shake hands in the end?’

  ‘Nope. But they went inside for a cup of tea, and nobody got thrown out through a window, so maybe it worked out okay. They didn’t come out and make a grand statement either. It wasn’t about the painting, just a misunderstanding about a girl.’

  Rob smiled. ‘Yes indeed. In fact, I should probably have guessed.’

  ‘Oh – of course! He told me he recognized you. You gave them a lift to London, didn’t you? All those years ago. So you know about it first-hand.’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘God love her. There’s been a few guys over the years I wanted to jump on a ferry to get away from, but she had the balls to do it. She must have been in some state. I suppose that’s love for you.’

  Rob laughed. ‘Oh she was certainly in a state. In fact, as I recall, they were going at it like rabbits in the back seat.’

  ‘They...? You mean Turner and—’

  ‘Oh yes, all over each other for the best part of three hundred miles. I didn’t know where to look.’

  ‘But she said...’

  ‘Of course she did.’

  ‘Gosh.’ Alix put her hand to her mouth. ‘That’s... that’s mad. So maybe... he was just there to see the wife? Do you think I should re-write it to reflect—?’

  ‘No, I don’t, Alix,’ said Rob. He paused then, and made a bit of a face. ‘In fact, and I’m very sorry to tell you this, none of it is really any of our business.’

  ‘But...’

  ‘Which is why...’ and he nodded at the screen, ‘the half of this will have to go.’

  ‘But you said it was smart and—’

  ‘And it is, but we can’t print it. It’s private, it’s personal, and legally a bit dubious.’

  ‘But...’

  ‘I know. Great piece, like I say, but we just can’t. Sorry.’

  Alix almost visibly deflated. She wasn’t entirely convinced either. If she’d been working for a proper tabloid, she was pretty sure they would have splashed it all over the front page. Sean had some spectacular photos of the wrestling match in the flower beds, but now it looked as if Rob wasn’t going to use those either. And the fact was that she wasn’t working for a tabloid, her job wasn’t to unmask the sordid past of a famous artist, or even to track down Nazis, it was to write a flattering profile of a local boy made good. She sighed. One day, maybe not too far in the future, she would be out of her small-minded, unexciting goldfish bowl of a provincial weekly. But until then...

  ‘Do you want me to do it?’ Rob asked. ‘Or do you want to have another crack?’

  ‘I’ll do it.’

  She stood up. Before she got to the door Rob said her name. When she turned, he was looking rather sheepishly at her.

  ‘I just wanted to say – again, I think – I did enjoy the other night. At the gallery.’

  ‘Yes, so did I.’

  ‘Just thought I’d be clear...’ He looked at his screen. He sucked on his bottom lip.

  ‘Well, that’s good,’ said Alix. She thumbed behind her. ‘Well, ahm, better get cracking on this.’ But she didn’t turn back. Instead she gave a little laugh. ‘What is it they say – is it, never meet your heroes? Richard Turner, well, he turned out to be a bit of a prick. But – I think you knew that all along, didn’t you?’

  ‘Kind of,’ said Rob, ‘and maybe I’m one, too.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  She didn’t remember much about the wine-fuelled events in and around the gallery, but she definitely remembered the almost-kiss, her surprise that they’d come so close, and her vague sense of disappointment that they hadn’t followed through. She thought he was talking about that, but no.

  ‘Richard Turner and Pat’s wife – I drove the pair of them those three hundred miles on the understanding we’d share the petrol. But when we finally got there, he confessed he’d no money left, but he had this portfolio of his work, so he pulled one of his paintings out and gave it to me instead. In fact I think it was an early version of that one we saw in the gallery.’

  ‘Really? Seriously? But that must be worth—’

  ‘—a small fortune? Yes, indeed.’ Rob sat back in his chair and put his feet up on the desk, he clasped his hands behind his head and momentarily basked in the acknowledgement of his riches. But then he smiled at her and said, ‘So it’s a great pity that I threw it right back at him.’

  ‘You did not!’

  ‘Did too,’ said Rob. ‘As the saying goes, I don’t know much about art, but I know what I like. And Richard Turner and his zebra crossing looked like a lot of crap to me then and still does now.’

  ‘But what a heartbreaker,’ said Alix.

  ‘No regrets,’ said Rob, ‘sure, what would I do with all that money?’

  ‘Yeah right,’ said Alix. ‘Anyway – if it’s any consolation, he is a prick and you’re not. But do be wary of prickish tendencies.’

  She gave him a coy little wink and turned out of his office.

  As he watched her go he thought that that was absolutely no way to talk to your boss. But he couldn’t stop the smile from spreading across his face.

  CHAPTER 4

  HONG KONG PHOOEY

  It is true to say that Rob did not settle easily into smallish-town life. He was close to the sea, and there were parks with ducks near by and the High Street and shopping centres and familiar fast-food outlets and a cinema within a short drive, so everything was very convenient, but it wasn’t what he was used to. If it wasn’t exactly foreign, then neither was it familiar, or reassuring or inspiring. He was acclimatized to the variety and anonymity of metropolitan life. Though he was from this place, this province, he had lived longer in England; though all of those years in London and Manchester had hardly softened his accent, it had smoothed out his prejudices and his history and his culture. And even if he had lived largely behind a desk, or in the bosom of a malfunctioning family, he missed the possibilities of a big city, the opportunities, even if they were rarely grasped. He missed the galleries, the museums, the theatres and the gigs, even if he only occasionally partook. Here he rented a nice, modern apartment, with a view of a main road. His neighbours seemed pleasant and he woke to the sound of distant seagulls, not the incessant roar of traffic. But he was alone. The only one who actually sensed this was Janine at work; she saw him mooning over a picture of his kids and suggested he got a cat. He did not want a cat. This experience was temporary, cats were for life.

  He had only been at the paper for a few weeks, and it ate up most of his waking hours; but there were always other hours to be filled. Instead of doing something, he mostly did nothing. He spent too long agonizing over groceries in the large supermarket on the edge of town. Johnny Cash shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die; Rob Cullen bought curly kale in Tesco’s, just to watch it wither. He could cook, but he had no desire to cook for one. By the end of his fourth week he was on first-name terms with the staff of the Hong Kong Palace.

  Rob avoided the HKP at weekends because it was busy and he didn’t want to look like a sad loner. During the week, when it was quieter, he didn’t so much mind looking like one. He enjoyed a bit of banter with Anna, his regular waitress. Her English was pretty good and they would chat when things were quiet. When she discovered what he did for a living she convinced him to run a piece on the netball team she played for at the local college; they were looking for sponsorship to help them travel to away matches. Rob set up a photo and Sean took one that was a bit cheesecakey but attracted quite a lot of attention in a quiet news week; the sponso
rship came through and Rob could have eaten for free the next time he was in, but he paid his way.

  This night Anna was all smiles as she brought him his regular bottle of Tsingtao beer. He said, ‘I’m guessing you won today?’

  ‘We did! We’re through to the finals in Scotland! First time!’

  ‘Excellent,’ said Rob. ‘That’s brilliant.’

  He picked up his menu and began to study it.

  ‘I do not know why you are reading the menu,’ said Anna. ‘Three nights a week, you have the same thing.’

  Was it really three nights a week?

  ‘Well, I might fancy a change. Let me see. Yes, indeed. I’ll have the chicken fried rice with curry sauce.’ Anna shook her head and began to turn away. ‘Aren’t you going to write it down?’ he called after her.

  ‘I already did. Ten minutes ago when you came in.’

  He had a paperback book with him, he had his phone to browse the Internet, and he had a notebook and pen in case he had any ideas for the paper. He never really switched off. His curry arrived and he ate it slowly and methodically, all the while thinking about some kind of a fitness plan. If he ate like this three times a week for much longer his heart would probably explode. There were nine other diners: one party of six, one table of three. It was all very quiet. When he was done with his main course, he lingered over his second beer. A different waiter, a young man making a valiant attempt to grow a moustache, picked up his empty plate; Rob nodded his thanks and returned his attention to his book; but then he became aware that the waiter hadn’t left; when he glanced up he saw that the young man in the white shirt and dicky bow was staring, transfixed, out of the window. Rob looked where he was looking and saw a police car parked across the street, with three cops standing beside it. A second police car pulled up, and then a third. At this point the waiter turned and charged towards the kitchen doors. A few moments after they swung closed, Rob heard raised voices; a few seconds after that, a man in a high-viz jacket barrelled through the front door, quickly followed by half a dozen cops. The high-viz man raised a laminated card and shouted: ‘UK Border Agency, stand where you are!’

  This was a bit pointless because there were only customers; the few other staff had melted away as quickly as Rob’s waiter. More excited voices from the kitchen. The party of six kept eating. The high-viz man led the police across the restaurant and through the swing doors. As they swung back into place Rob heard plates smashing, yells; his young waiter with the attempted moustache came racing back out and was quite close to the front door before he was rugby-tackled by one of the cops. Two others then sat on him until he could be handcuffed. The owner, who went by the name of Mr Smith, but only because he said his Chinese name was too complicated for the locals to easily remember, a chatty, friendly man who’d been in the town for forty years and had a broader Belfast accent than Rob’s, came and stood over the fallen waiter and let go with what might well have been a string of expletives aimed at the police but it was difficult for Rob to tell, what with them being in Mandarin. Two further staff were marched out of the kitchen while Mr Smith gave a running commentary and wrung his hands. The party of six called him over, drunkenly congratulated him on the entertainment, and asked if they could order more beer. The table of three sloped off, their meals eaten, without paying. Mr Smith let them go without a word. Rob finished his beer and gathered his belongings; he left money on the table; he was five days away from the next issue of the Express, so there was no urgency in interviewing anyone for a story, but he lingered outside and took some photos of the police activity, at least until he was warned off; he said he was press; a cop said he didn’t give a damn who he was but to stop taking photos. It wasn’t worth getting into a fight over. The arrested Chinese were in the back of a transit van; the cops were still moving in and out of the restaurant and being directed around by the guy from the Border Agency, who appeared to be quite frustrated, perhaps disappointed at his meagre haul. Rob returned to his car. He’d only had two beers, and a large meal, so he supposed he was okay to drive but was a little wary because there were so many police around. As he patted his pockets for his keys he was distracted for a moment by a very slight movement to his left, just on the periphery of his vision; and at first he didn’t realize what he was looking at; then he saw that it was a woman crouching by his car but facing away; he said ‘Hey’ and there was a sharp intake of breath and she turned towards him and in the orange gaze of the streetlight above he saw that it was his smiley netball-waitress friend Anna, and she looked terrified; she raised a finger to her lips and he nodded, but at the same time his right hand accidentally squeezed his keys in his pocket, pushing all of the buttons at the same time and inadvertently setting off the car alarm. The warning lights came flashing on and the alarm shrieked alarmingly, and everyone turned towards it. Anna leapt to her feet and sped right past him even as he said ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry...’ and the police took off in pursuit; she would probably have outrun them, but then two appeared from around the back of the restaurant and cut her off. Then they had her in handcuffs and were walking her past Rob towards the transit and he just stood there helplessly; she didn’t look at him, and if she had she probably wouldn’t have recognized him, she was crying so hard.

  Rob hardly slept. He felt so bad about Anna. Next morning the first thing he raised at the editorial meeting was doing a story on the raid on the Hong Kong Palace. Alix, Peter, Sean and Michael were sitting before him; Gerry was leaning in the doorway, arms folded, listening in.

  Gerry said, ‘I make it a strict rule only to cover restaurants that advertise in the paper.’ He turned and called across to Janine, looking through a filing cabinet on the other side of the office. ‘Hey, Jannie, does the Hong Kong Palace give us much business?’

  ‘No,’ said Janine, without looking round, ‘not yet.’

  ‘That’s the spirit,’ said Gerry. ‘And anyway, I’m not entirely sure our readers are going to be the slightest bit interested in some illegal—’

  ‘Could I just stop you there?’ Rob asked.

  ‘Yes, of course...’

  ‘Well, first of all, it’s not about whether the restaurant advertises, it’s a news story. And second – you see that door beside you?’

  Gerry looked at it. His brow furrowed. ‘What about it?’

  ‘Could you just read out loud what it says on it?’

  ‘Ah. Yes. Ed-it-or... very funny, Rob.’

  ‘I’m not being funny. Could you close it on your way out?’

  Gerry waved a warning finger at Rob. ‘It’s my paper, you know!’ he cried, before pulling the door closed behind him.

  Rob smiled after him, then turned to Alix: ‘Do you want to get on to the Borders Agency, see what they have to say? I’ll maybe have a talk with the guy who runs the restaurant, I kind of know him. Have a word with the college as well, one of the waitresses goes there, her name’s Anna, I’ll try and get a second name, but I know she plays on their netball team – the Aztecs? We carry their notes?’ He nodded at Peter. Peter nodded back. ‘Do you want to try them as well, Alix, see what they say about one of their star players getting arrested? Who’s our contact, Pete?’

  Pete said, ‘I’ll need to check. But before we go mad on this, if she’s Chinese, and it’s netball – can we just think about exactly who’s going to be interested? If she was local, or she was, like, an Olympian or something, I could see the local—’

  ‘It’s human interest,’ said Rob, ‘so other human beings will be interested.’

  ‘Not round here, they won’t. Maybe human beings in China.’

  ‘Peter, she lives here. It’s a local story. She’s come all the way over here to work, she’s not taking anyone’s job away and she just happens to be this terrific sportswoman who is bringing glory to her adopted town. So we are going to do this.’

  ‘That’s you put in your place,’ said Alix.

  Peter scowled at her.

  ‘Alix, take Sean with you to the college, try and
round the team up for some quotes, get a picture...’

  ‘Sexy, page three kind of...?’ Sean asked.

  ‘No,’ said Rob. ‘Michael, you’re for court?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘First time by yourself,’ said Alix. ‘Nervous?’

  ‘Not in the slightest.’

  ‘You should be, it’s bedlam.’

  ‘He’ll be fine,’ said Pete. ‘I taught him everything I know.’

  ‘That’s what worries me,’ said Alix.

  Pete scowled again.

  ‘You know,’ said Alix, ‘if you keep doing that, your face will stay that way. Oops, too late.’

  *

  Alix had only been back at her desk for a few moments when Pete stopped there and handed her a sheet of paper on which he had scrawled a name and a mobile phone number. ‘The guy that drops in the netball notes, Patrick Donegan. I think he’s the coach as well.’

  ‘Thought it would be a woman. Could you not have said that in there?’

  ‘It’s just come back to me.’

  Alix shook her head. She indicated Rob’s office and said, ‘You know, he’s not the enemy.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘No, he’s just trying to do his job.’

  ‘So you think he’s here for the long haul, do you?’

  ‘I think he’s—’

  ‘Oh, take your blinkers off, Alix. You don’t switch from a national paper to the likes of this place purely for the love of the aul’ sod. He’s here because he has nowhere else to go, and he’ll be off as soon as he gets a better offer. And as for exactly why he actually left the mighty Guardian – well, we don’t really know that yet, do we? Maybe you should start thinking about that before you start throwing all of your eggs into one basket, eh?’

  Alix shook her head. ‘I’m not throwing any eggs into any basket, Pete, I’m just doing my work. Fact is, he’s here, Gerry’s satisfied with his reasons for being here, and that’s good enough for me. Maybe if you weren’t so green with envy, you might see that he’s really not that bad, and he has a hell of a lot more imagination than Billy ever had.’ She stood up and quickly pulled on her jacket. She swiped the note Peter had given her off the desk, waved it in his face and said, ‘Thanks for this,’ gave him a fake smile and headed for the door while indicating for Sean to join her.