A Snowball in Hell

by Christopher Brookmyre

  Besides, it was just spoilsports who were trying to stop him. He was a popular figure, after all. ‘He only says what everyone else is thinking,’ claimed his editor, Jeremy Seele, ‘and in an age when people are gagged by political correctness, he’s got the courage to wear his heart on his sleeve.’

  He spreads the sheaf unintentionally with his right hand as he leans on it in his effort to climb gradually to his unsteady feet. He’s decided he needs to physically explore the room, maybe see if moving about the place shakes loose any sense of familiarity. He grimaces as he reaches a standing position, the ascent of a few feet proving slightly more of a change in altitude than his head can comfortably endure. He stands still for a few moments, like he’s making sure he can manage that before trying anything as ambitious as walking. He’s dressed in just a pair of pants, one of the leg-holes riding up his crack and exposing his left bum-cheek, a fold of his belly overlapping the elastic stretched around his abdomen. For a guy never done castigating the lazy, he’s done well to disguise his athleticism. He turns slowly to his right and looks at the two doors: as with any hotel-room layout, the near one must lead to the bathroom and the far one to the corridor. He can’t see a wardrobe or a chest of drawers. Bladder is very full. Time for a pee. Maybe his clothes are in the bog. He sighs and it turns into a yawn, even a bit of stretching going on there. Starting to come round. A pee, maybe a shower. He’ll work this out after that. A mate taking the piss, perhaps?

  He turns off the TV as he passes, and makes his way slowly towards the first door, gripping the circular handle. It doesn’t move. He tries the other direction, still nothing. He gives it a dunt with his shoulder, then has a go at pulling and pushing the handle while twisting his wrist. The door remains closed.

  The TV switches itself back on. He turns sharply to look at it, confirming where this sudden sound has come from. He sees himself on the screen, responding to the record low score the judges have handed down.

  I saw it, it was a fucking injustice, mate. You were worth at least half a point more than that total.

  The locked bathroom is not good, not good at all, and not just because he’s realising how much he needs to pee. Could all be a joke, what with the SCD on telly, but something’s telling him to worry. He goes for the other door. It’s locked too. He stands back a second, breathes, tries again, in case he’s just got himself in a state. No luck.

  His attention turns inevitably to the curtains, the promise of light beyond, an answer to where the hell is he. He walks across the room, round to the other side of the bed, and pulls the right-hand edge of the right-hand curtain slightly away from the wall so that he can just peek behind it. His face contorts in his consternation at what he finds; or rather what he doesn’t, that being a window. He hauls the curtains apart and finds only a rectangular white plastic panel, illuminated from behind, and on top of this is a transparent laminated blow-up of another choice quote from his column.

  The Daddy. More like the slightly strange unmarried uncle.

  The press response plays out as I intended; the better to contextualise the truth when it emerges. Starts off as a bit of a kicker story, the other tabloids having their fun as it comes out that their rival’s big-name columnist has gone awol. Lots of ‘Jeffrey Bernard is unwell’ references when his page has to be filled by some other cirrhotic twat while the paper’s senior staff dispatch minions to scour every drinking hole in London in the hope of finding him before the competition do. By day three, Jeffrey Bernard on a bender has become Stephen Fry bailing out of that play. Police have gained entry to his home and reckon his passport is gone. It looks like McDade has left the country. Rumours abound. There is some deal afoot to switch papers. He is in bother with the Revenue. He is under cover, planning to sneak back into the UK by illegal means to show how easily our borders were being penetrated by asylum seekers .

  I let it all simmer for four days, then post McDade’s heart, pinned to his sleeve, direct to Jeremy Seele. I knew they’d get a DNA match, save me taking the risk of dumping the body somewhere they would find it. Then I wait for the presses to roll.

  Funny, his paper comes over all coy and unsensational in announcing this unquestionably earth-shattering development. None of the ghoulish slavering over the visceral details that normally colours their reporting of such excitingly blood-drenched discoveries, nor the uninformed speculation about sexual depravities that may have preceded or even led to the grim deed. All the more admirably understated given that I had handed them a head start (or was it heart start?) on the competition, a genuine exclusive to splash. Have I succeeded in ushering in a new era of restraint and sensitivity in the British press’s attitude to murder? I bloody well hope not, given what else I’ve got lined up. Of course, it soon emerges I had no reason to worry. The rest of the press fail to suffer the same sudden bout of squeamishness, filling their boots with undisguised alacrity. Naturally, with no details other than what the police and McDade’s employers are prepared to reveal, they have to fill the void with two things: constructing their own competing versions of the late Daddy’s life, and speculating blindly about the manner and motive behind his death.

  Very disappointingly, it takes two days before any of them show a sufficient knowledge of the history of their own profession as to recall that vital organs had been posted to the press during the hunt for Jack the Ripper. And again, they don’t quite warm to the theme as much as one might expect. A murderer putting the press front and centre while invoking the most famous serial killer in British history? They should have been spraying their pants at the prospect of further atrocities. Amazing what a sobering effect it has on them to think that their profession might be the one being preyed on for a change, and that it is a different kind of whore who might find himself giving new meaning to the phrase ‘newspaper hack’.

  Yes, they might be a bunch of two-faced, back-stabbing twunts, but they can still pull together when facing a common threat. Spirit of the blitz and all that, gorblessem. Hence beaucoup quality po-faced revisionism in all printed recollections of the departed, facilitated by the impressively audacious hypocrisy only the British tabloids can truly pull off.

  People will no doubt say I was sadistically cruel to the man, but for a few days at least, I turn him into a fucking hero: from a pot-bellied, beery-chopped little bigot into a paragon of British values and a legend of journalism. Oh, the humanity. What a tragic loss! All that charity work, apparently. (No specific charities are named, but that is surely down to his colleagues respecting his well-known modesty regarding such matters, rather than there not actually being one with any record of him having lifted a finger for.) A wonderful colleague to work with. Admired by his readers, feared by his enemies. And as for those accusations of minority-bashing and that slight blemish of being referred to the PCC, where it isn’t Photoshopped out of the picture altogether, it is justified as stout-hearted, fearless defence of his principles. He called it like he saw it in the face of the PC backlash; what you saw was what you got, didn’t care if his views were fashionable or popular (yeah, right); unflinchingly endured the slings and arrows blah blah cliched blah. His paper even manages to wheel out his local Asian shopkeeper so that they can play the ‘look, some of his best friends were darkies’ card.

  A man of principle, no matter what else anyone might say. That is the consensus. Love him or loathe him, you had to respect the fact that he stood by his beliefs. The phrase ‘he wore his heart on his sleeve’ is entertainingly conspicuous by its absence, but his journalistic heroism is rendered so unquestionable that they are all but erecting a statue to the prick.

  For a few days.

  I hold off until it has reached what I estimate to be its zenith before leaking the video on to the web. I time it for when I know the final editions have gone to print, so that the press are effectively a whole day behind the biggest story in the country – cutting them out of the news cycle and underlining their growing obsolescence.

  It’s funny watching McD
ade’s newspaper trying to get the file-hosting sites to delete it. The same paper whose online edition runs links to the Saddam execution and hostage beheading videos. The best part is witnessing this endangered species of a medium doing a King Canute act in the face of the technology that is superseding it. There are no exclusives and no injunctions in cyberspace. Once the file is on the web, I know it will proliferate exponentially. Christ, b3ta.com are already Photoshopping image-captures from it for sick laughs before the first print response will hit the streets.

  So let’s go back to that video now, shall we? Okay, where had I paused it? Oh yes.

  McDade stands back so that he can read the text.

  How did we ever lose our moral grip to the extent that the muesli-munchers convinced us we need to be ‘understanding’ of murderers, rapists and other scum? Can you imagine trying to explain to school children that they mustn’t step out of line because if they do, they’ll get taken to one side and given counselling? Better still, can you imagine that classroom about half an hour after that particular lesson has sunk in? Now fast forward to those same kids all grown up. ‘I felt like shooting this jeweller and ripping off his store, but the threat of being sat down with a psychologist stayed my hand.’ Don’t do the crime if you can’t face the sympathetic ear.

  It’s ridiculous, but I’m not laughing.

  Criminals need to fear prisons. Prisons need to punish.

  Who would you rather find yourself locked in a room with?

  A thug who knows anything he does to you will be paid back in years of hard time, hot sweat and cold fear, or one who knows the scariest thing he’ll face as a consequence is a weekly session with a Guardian-reading sociologist called Quentin.

  He stares at the panel for a few seconds. He recognises the words, doesn’t have to read them all; he remembers. But he’s starting to ask himself why he’s seeing them in lights, and more pressingly, what significance they have to what he now understands is his captivity.

  I let him ponder that for a while, long enough for him to try both doors again. His bladder’s really insistent by this point. The doors remain locked. He tries to shoulder the one he reckons leads to the bathroom, then when that fails to budge, takes to thumping the one he has assumed to be the exit. There is, of course, no bathroom; and for this piece of excrement there is, most definitely, no exit.

  At last, he speaks.

  ‘Hello? Hello? Okay, come on, you’ve had your joke. Who’s there? Come on, for fuck’s sake, I need to piss.’

  There’s an edit on the video at this point, black screen captioned: ‘Time passeth’, with a digital clock fast-forwarded to show twelve minutes elapsing. It fades up the action again to show McDade pacing the carpet between the two doors.

  ‘Listen,’ he calls out. ‘I need to piss, and if you don’t let me out, I’m pissing on your fucking carpet, all right? I’m warning you.’

  Yeah, he’s giving out warnings at this point. Still the Daddy.

  ‘Okay, that’s it.’

  With which he stands in one corner, gets out his piggly-wiggly little tadger and urinates copiously on to the laminated floor.

  Another ‘Time passeth’ caption. This time six hours.

  He’s rather fraught when we see him again, sitting on the bed, biting his thumbnail and looking like he’s thinking seriously about the comfort sucking it might once more afford.

  A voice suddenly booms through the room, causing him to shudder and stiffen.

  ‘Darren McDade,’ it says. He looks around for the source, but it seems like it’s coming from all directions at once. ‘Are these your words?’ I ask, and cue the lightbox to flash.

  ‘Who’s there?’ he asks, getting to his feet.

  ‘Are these your words?’

  ‘Well of course they’re my words, you know they’re my cunting words. Who the fuck is this?’ He’s trying to sound defiant; there’s anger in there, but he can’t quite disguise the fear.

  ‘Read them aloud,’ I demand.

  ‘Listen, whoever you are, you’ve had your fun. But I’m warning you, I’ll be having mine. Do you know who I... I mean, you should bloody well remember who I am. I’ve got a lot of friends in the police, cops fucking love me. And if you don’t let me go right now, you’ll be falling down a lot of stairs when they get you in custody, do you understand?’

  Six more hours passeth. The floor getteth wetter.

  ‘Read them aloud,’ I request again.

  He reads the passage perfunctorily, doesn’t exactly sell it. But who needs to be an orator when the words themselves carry such weight. Oh, and when the words espouse such sincerely held principles.

  The TV switches itself back on, no longer showing SCD. Instead, it displays CCTV footage of a tall, heavy-set but muscular, shaven-headed white male, stripped to the waist the better to show off a body, arms and scalp so oversubscribed with tattoos as to resemble a public lavatory wall bearing at least a decade’s graffiti. Hard to gauge his age: could be anything between thirty-five and fifty, but however long he’s lived, he’s clearly lived hard. Very, very, white-supremacist-prison-gangcrystal-meth-biker-crew hard. He’s pacing a short, blank-walled room, restless, twitchy, apparently muttering to himself, though it’s a silent feed.

  McDade stares at the screen, questions racing through his mind. His captor? A fellow prisoner?

  Then the image switches to an identical blank-walled room, this time accommodating another tall, imposing-looking figure: an athletically built black male dressed in a pair of grey jogging trousers and a tight t-shirt. Looks early thirties, maybe more, maybe less. There’s still youth in his face but a tiredness in his eyes. He is leaning against a wall, arms folded. He looks calm, patient, maybe just a little calculating.

  McDade gets a look at him too, then the screen splits vertically to show both of them simultaneously. There are time codes in the bottom-left corner of each image: date, hour, minute, seconds. This is now.

  Time to play.

  ‘Mr McDade,’ I tell him, ‘I have gone to a lot of trouble – a lot of trouble – to arrange this little rendezvous with these gentlemen. The stakes are very high – well, your stake is anyway – so I would advise you to listen most carefully. The two men you can see are both visitors from the USA. Both men are convicted murderers. Both men were jailed for horrifically brutal gang-related killings. Both men served more than fifteen years for their crimes. Of more immediate pertinence, both men believe they are about to enjoy unfettered, unchaperoned and uninterrupted access to a secret, anonymous police informant whose testimony was crucial to their convictions. Both men are also under the correct impression that there is very little chance of anything they do to you ever coming to the attention of the authorities.’

  With this, the TV switches to a news report updating the ongoing search for the missing journalist, before flashing up a couple of scanned pages from the early press coverage.

  ‘Nobody knows where you are, Mr McDade.’

  McDade says nothing, but casts a glance towards the doors, then back at the screen with an aghast scrutiny.

  ‘Now, here’s where it gets fun. As we’ve seen from the previous footage, you’re a jolly good sport when it comes to game shows, so I’ve lined up a little challenge for you – and don’t worry, this one won’t involve any dancing. One of these men spent the last five years of his sentence undergoing a voluntary rehabilitation programme. The other did nothing but hard time in one of America’s most notoriously brutal penitentiaries.

  ‘To get out of this room, you’re going to have to pass through a chamber containing one of these convicted murderers. If you can get past the man who is waiting for you beyond the door of your choosing, you are free to go. To make it an informed choice, I will tell you that the door on your right, which you previously believed to be the bathroom, leads to Mr Rehab; and that the door on the left, which you previously believed to be the way out, leads to Mr Hard Time. I will not tell you which of these two men is which, but I will remind you th
at both have been informed that you were instrumental in their convictions.’

  He stands frozen, his focus alternating between the doors and the split-screen view on the TV like he’s watching a tennis match. He stands like that for a couple of minutes, then sits down on the edge of the bed and folds his arms.

  ‘Nah,’ he says. ‘This is a wind-up. It’s a fuckin’ wind-up. It’s that cunt Beadle, Candid fucking Camera or something.’

  That’s when he hears the gas beginning to pump into the room. He bolts upright again in response to the sound, which is coming from a vent high on the same wall as bears the light panel. A quick sniff tells him it’s the North Sea’s finest.

  ‘The cubic volume of this room and the lack of ventilation means that the concentration of gas in the air will become lethal in approximately six minutes, Mr McDade. That’s how long you have to choose which door you believe offers you the safer route out.’

  He instinctively puts a hand over his nose and mouth. It’s not going to save him, but it proves he understands there is no option to abstain. He looks at the screen again. The biker-nazi guy is prowling, unable to contain himself. If there was a sofa in there with him, he’d be pulling the stuffing out of it. The black guy remains impassive, occasionally shifting which leg most of his weight is resting on, biding his time.