Haterz

by James Goss

  The room itself was so dull. Deliberately dull. It was an anti-room. I’d hired enough of this sort of space. Light came in from high windows, presumably so that passers-by couldn’t gawp in, and so that people inside couldn’t daydream of a world outside.

  I think I was supposed to be frightened. Or nervously intimidated. I wondered about feigning the correct emotions. But I just felt really tired, and then there was the pisser that Guy had dobbed me in. I didn’t expect he’d be that fond of me right now, but this felt really... unfair. I mean, yes, I had kind of fallen in love with his girlfriend, and yes, I had kissed her, but to hold that against me seemed mean.

  The police seemed nice enough, and their questions were doing all the proper things. It was curiously like interviewing someone when you were out chugging. Lots of, “How do you feel about...?” and “Can you just talk me through...?” Over and over again.

  Too tired to muster a proper defence or character I produced a lacklustre Hugh Grant. I heard the recording back recently. “I’m afraid you must think me dreadful...” “It comes across to me as a prank, if prank is the right word...” and even “gosh” and “these pirates—they seem pretty ghastly people though, don’t they?”

  You can also tell I’m tired. Dog tired.

  They wander around the point of the conversation like lazy sharks, sauntering closer and closer to the real subject. There’s the occasional diversion.

  “Can we just ask—would you like to receive medical attention? You appear to have some small injuries to your face. We’d like to assess them, if that’s okay with you. Have you been in a fight?”

  I politicked how to answer that one. I figured that something like the truth would do no harm.

  “Ah, well... My friend Guy and I were engaged in... perhaps ‘horseplay’ isn’t quite the right word, is it? Anyway, we had an altercation, you could say.” It’s funny how when people talk to the police their diction jumps sideways, like they’re emulating an officer giving an “I was proceeding in a westerly direction” statement from a 1940s film. As if anyone ever spoke like that.

  We strolled back and forth and around that fight. They would sidle out a gently probing question, “What would you say the provocation for this altercation was?” See? Even they were doing it now. And I’d counter with something bashful, “Well, I’d say he was very cross with me.”

  Their eyes were clear. They both looked young and neat and just a little bored. This was clearly their routine. There was no chemistry or spark between them. Her name was Julia. His was Mike. They had that look of graduate trainees. Working steadily through an assignment.

  You could jab away, just a little, at their carefully constructed personalities. For instance, if you said something like, “Well, you know, some people are asking for it aren’t they?” they’d reply, “That’s quite an aggressive thing to say, don’t you think?” and you could then counter it with, “Well, he was very cross. I don’t blame him for lamping me.”

  We were basically knitting between us. They were painting me into a corner over the thefts. I was constructing a picture for them of Guy as a violent, unpredictable man. Mostly for my own amusement. Because he’d dobbed me in to the police. ‘Dobbed me in?’ See? It’s impossible to talk around the police properly. No matter what you do, where you try and move yourself, your inner ITV Drama voice comes out.

  I was being quite careful about the actual thefts. I told them I didn’t have an alibi, that I was watching the webcast. Both of these statements were true. They hadn’t yet asked me directly if I did it. There was a lot of, “We’re going to show you a piece of video. Would you agree that the person in this video could be you?”

  “Well, of course, it could be. But then again, it could be anyone. You’re going to just use the first bit of that, aren’t you? Well, I mean, fair play to you if you do. I wouldn’t blame you.”

  You can hear me on the tape. I’d punch me. I don’t quite know what I was playing at.

  THE MORE THEY talk about my situation, the more I realise how terribly alone I am. Oh, it’s nothing they were doing. It’s just that the penny gradually dropped. I’d been in here for a long time, and it had just been getting more and more boring. The last time I’d ever been in a police station was to report a stolen bicycle and they were far less thorough then. This was... forensic.

  Oh. That was the word. The troubling word.

  Thing is, we’d pretty much reached the end of the park. Or the centre of it. I was a bit confused about my metaphor. But basically, you know what I mean. I’d led them along a path, digging it as I went along. I’d thrown out my evening to them, my day, telling them that while I’d actually been hiring a van and breaking into people’s homes I’d really been chugging. It was a reasonable lie. It was solid enough. I stepped back to have a look at my handiwork. It looked fine. All things considered. But I knew there was something wrong with it. What was it? Something glinting in the sun, exposed in the light.

  “That all seems great,” said Julia.

  Mike nodded.

  “I was wondering,” she said. “Can we ask you something?”

  “Sure, shoot—er, oh, I’m most dreadfully sorry, I can’t remember your name.”

  “Inspector Franklin. Julia.”

  “Right, yes, right. Sorry. Anyway, ask away.” That was right. She was Inspector Franklin and he was... Mike... I couldn’t remember. I felt so tired and I was trying to remember their names. I’ve never been good at names, but this was worse than being at a party. I conjured up a mental image. A drawbridge? Oh right. His name was Keep. Couldn’t even remember his rank. Let’s call him Inspector Keep as well. Inspector Keep leaned forward. “We just wanted you to talk us through it all again.”

  This time Inspector Julia nodded.

  “Okay,” I said, glancing back down the path. Yeah. Seemed stable enough. I opened my mouth, ready to take the first step.

  “Only,” Inspector Franklin’s interjection was sudden, “before you start that, I just thought I’d say that a few months ago, your friend’s girlfriend died. There’s been some talk about the coroner’s verdict. Have you anything to say to that?”

  The roof of my mouth went dry. “No.” My voice on the tape recording is quite clear. Remarkably so.

  “And shortly after that, a number of threats were issued to Ms Dass when she began a relationship with Mr Hammond. Coincidentally, some of the people issuing these threats were themselves victims of assaults. Have you anything to say about that?”

  “No, no.” My voice sounded absurd. Like I was disputing the likelihood of rain.

  They both looked at me. They knew. They bloody knew.

  “No? Interesting.” Inspector Franklin said, her voice amazingly flat. How did she do that? “Anyway, could you walk us through that statement of yours?”

  “What?”

  “Your statement about the events of last night.”

  “Sure, I—” I swung my foot out onto the path. Only the path had vanished. I had no idea what to do next.

  THERE WAS A rap on the door. Inspector Franklin looked annoyed. Keep got up and went out. There was whispering in the corridor.

  She stared at me. I stared at her.

  Julia. She’d not said at any point, “Call me Julia,” but it was there. I knew her first name. We were sort-of friends. Perhaps if I told her, we could sort this out. No, that was lunacy. Unless I just told her about the burglaries. That was fine. Just a prank. Great. I was making a political statement. Or something.Julia smiled at me without smiling at all.

  I think I looked like a goldfish. On the tape you can hear a pop-pop noise.

  And then, absurdly, if you listen closely, you can hear me humming. Just very gently. It sounds as though it could be any tune. It could be. Absurd how you hum these things. But, if you knew the song, you’d know it was ‘Love In The First Degree’ by Bananarama.

  Then Keep came in. He didn’t address Julia. He didn’t really address me. He was speaking to me, but looking at a dr
ab grey patch of drab grey wall.

  “Your solicitor’s here,” he announced.

  My solicitor?

  OKAY. HERE ARE the facts about my solicitor.

  She looked exactly how you would expect a solicitor to look. Her name was Andrea and she just exuded that feeling of healthy country living. For all I knew she’d come straight here from walking the dogs and riding the horse. She was very smartly dressed, but wore her expensive clothes with the air of someone throwing on some old tweeds to do weeding. She looked constantly on the verge of laughter and greeted me as an old friend, and I had never met her before in my life.

  We met in a tiny little room little different from the tiny little room I’d already been in. I have no idea why they bothered moving me.

  She sat down and banged a file onto the desk. It was red, a vivid splash of colour in the muted space. “Paperwork,” she announced with a laugh. “It always creates a good impression. I feel naked without it and absolutely no one takes you seriously unless you have a folder, but really, it’s all on the iPad. This is mostly just print-outs of a couple of emails and directions from Google for finding the nick.”

  “But—”

  She rambled on, looking around the room as though planning on moving in and working out where to fit the sofa. “They always make police stations so hard to find. Whenever they say on the news ‘bailed to appear at’ I always roll my eyes and try and imagine the god-awful rabbit warren they’ll have hidden the poor sod in.”

  “Have I been on the news?”

  She barked at that. “Get over yourself, sunshine. This case is one up from rag week.”

  I flooded with relief. I gushed with it. I suddenly realised that I did care very much about what was going on.

  “Who—”

  Andrea seemed not to have heard. “You know, I’m often tempted to bring in a scented candle to these places. I’m sure I’d be told off.” She beamed. “Calendula, or blueberry, or just plain old chocolate. Something heady and sweet.” She pushed the folder towards me. “Anyway, paperwork, including the confirmation that I’ve been engaged to act as your solicitor.”

  I opened the folder. There really was very little in it. One sheet of paper said the following:

  This woman is your solicitor. You can trust her. By agreeing for her to represent you, you hereby agree to keep our relationship silent. She will get you out. In return, you must do one last thing for us.

  “Always read the small print,” beamed Andrea implacably. “Small print’s a bugger.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  NEVER MEET YOUR HEROES

  THE DOOR WAS opened.

  “Come in,” said the voice. It wasn’t an invitation. It was an order. “I know who you are.” A small, grating pause, as gum was chewed. “I mean, I know who you really are.”

  I stepped inside. The door closed.

  THE SMELL HIT you first. Teenage bedroom and mildew. A persistent musty sense of dirt. The place was so dark that smell was about all you had to go on at first. Then, like stars slowly coming out in the night sky, details presented themselves.

  The hallway was dark because it was wood-panelled, like a tiny baronial mansion. Dark red carpets soaked into the floor. Only one door was open off the hallway, and that was lit solely by the blue twinkle of a laptop screen. The heavy curtains were drawn. The thick air suggested they’d never been opened.

  Standing in front of me was a man. He looked like all of his photos, but only in the sense that, in person, you could kind of see how he could look like he did in his photos. In photos he was commanding and dignified, a bulky suited figure dominating the room. A huge bear of a man. In the flesh, he was simply quite a lot of flesh, squeezed into running gear that had never gone faster than a trot.

  So, I’d done smell and sight. Sound was also troubling. There was an odd wet clicky-clicky noise. I realised it was coming from his mouth. He was chewing gum constantly.

  This was it. I was standing in front of an internet pioneer. The man who invented the slogan, ‘All Knowledge Good.’ The man who thumped the desk until it agreed with him. Henry Jarman.

  And he knew who I was.

  WE STOOD THERE, in the foetid hall. It felt like a blind date. Except that on a blind date the only things you know about each other are what you want each other to know. And they aren’t true anyway. You’ve probably not bothered to update your favourite film for three years. You may say you ‘love cake,’ but what does that even mean? We’re just trying to make ourselves sound interesting. And we’re not.

  But I’d read everything about Henry Jarman. I’d worshipped him for years. Even when he was wrong, he was interesting. And he was here. In front of me. Which was awkward.

  And he was speaking, his lips were chewing, constant motion. And he was just staring at me. Every time he blinked, he chewed. It was like his eyelids were wet and sticky. It was a revolting sound.

  “See,” he breathed, “I have to be careful. It’s not as though I let anyone in to see me. Especially not an interview request from someone who claims to be a journalist, with a made-up name, who has never written anything, from a blog that barely exists. So I did some digging. And some more digging. And the more I looked the more I found out. And yet—” He stopped talking. He even stopped chewing for a long time. And then it came. A blink and a chew. “Yeah... You could call me a fan. I’ve long been interested in meeting you. I really have. All Knowledge Good, you see. You hungry? I know a really excellent place.”

  THE WALK TO the restaurant was awkward. For a start, Jarman had wrapped himself up like the Invisible Man, his eyes darting above his scarf niqab. “Got to be careful,” he murmured. “To be perceived is to be.”

  We trudged on, with the awkward and occasional small talk that happens between people who are uncertain of each other.

  “Cigarette?” he offered. I declined. “Force of habit. I don’t have any,” he sighed, still chewing manfully away. “Gave up. Used to smoke on the doorstep, but then it turned out They could see me. The scum.”

  Uh-oh. There’s nothing like a proper blast of paranoia when you’ve just met someone.

  We came to a halt outside what seemed to be an unprepossesing Indian restaurant. A yellow plastic sign said, ‘The TAJ.’ The phone number used the old 01 London area code.

  Jarman halted, a pilgrim in front of Xanadu. He slowly and theatrically unwound his scarf, sticking his neck out and sniffing the air appreciatively. As he did so, a muffled-up young woman, seemingly walking innocuously past, held up her phone with a flash-click, smiled and hurried on.

  Jarman turned to me, smiling with grim satisfaction. “See?” he intoned. “They’re everywhere.” Vindicated, he threw open the door and paused on the threshold, allowing the bell’s tinkle to fade away before announcing, “This is the finest food outside Delhi. Amazing. It will make you cry.”

  Then he led me in.

  The restaurant was dark and empty. Red velvet paper clung valiantly to the walls. Distantly, someone sang over a zither. A sign said, ‘Please wait to be seated.’ There were no other diners. There were no staff.

  Just us.

  The singer sang on, her wail rising to a scream that echoed off the fur of the walls.

  A kitchen door swung open and a waiter wandered past, carrying a half-empty bottle of Pepsi. He spotted us with some surprise and silently pointed us to a table.

  “Ah, my old friend! Away from the window, if you please, Imran,” boomed Jarman.

  The waiter shrugged, and wordlessly pointed us to a table in the middle of the room and went away.

  We sat down. There were no menus. Through force of habit, I hunted around for one. There was only an old piece of yellow rice stuck to the tablecloth.

  “Don’t bother,” growled Jarman. “The food here is exquisite, and I know the menu like the back of my hand. I’ll order for us both.” There was to be no question about this.

  We sat in more awkward silence until the waiter came back and then Jarman bellowed wh
at sounded like the entire menu at him. I began to understand his size from his definition of lunch. He refused to “talk shop” until after food, so we had another wait to endure. Jarman finally found a topic, holding court on an interview with him in the Metro the previous week: “The girl turned up and she asked stupid questions, so of course she got stupid answers,” he rumbled. “I don’t know why I bother. Life’s too short to think about people like that. I rang her editor and told him so personally.”

  I was sat in a restaurant with Henry Jarman waiting for lunch. This was my last assignment for the Killuminati. And I felt a terrible sinking feeling.

  THE NINJA HAD been waiting for me when I’d got home from the police station. The cat was weaving around her legs.

  “Right,” I said. “Hello.”

  Actually, it didn’t really come out like that. A fair bit of startled yelping went on. It’s not every day you find a hot Ninja in your living room. Her arms were crossed. She looked patient. Like... well, you know when you’re playing a video game and you can’t quite think what to do? The world’s exploding, dragons are attacking, and, lacking input, your central character just folds their arms and waits for instructions? The Ninja was doing that.

  She wasn’t quite tapping her feet. But she was curious.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  This was it, I guessed. Now I was working for the Killuminati again. All part of the package.

  “We’ve got to be careful from now on,” she said. Again, that hopelessly cool Scots burr. “Subtle. Getting the police involved—that was a mistake. You’ve got careless.”

  “And sending a ninja, that’s subtle?”

  “Subtler than you.”

  “Look... I’ve never said this to a ninja before, but would you like a drink?”

  “No.”