After the show she doesn’t dally or drop hints about a lift, just gives me a half-wave as she gathers her coat around herself and clacks off down the corridor. I slouch off to the non-smoking smoking room and stand apathetically looking down at street lamps defining the ways out of the city. In the middle distance a police car or an ambulance with its lights flashing slicks silently onto the ring road.
The Call Log printout is where I left it on the window sill. I pick it up and turn again to the entry for Hassan Malik. Near the foot of the same page my eye is caught by Oliver Dunn’s name and number, recording the first attempt he made to contact me off-air. I feel almost duty-bound to call him, to report back. About what, exactly? The only thing that has happened since we spoke earlier is that I’ve presented probably my all-time worst radio programme, and Ollie will know that better than most if there’s a gnat’s-worth of critical faculty in among the super-fan mush. Maybe the compulsion to call him is driven more by my need for reassurance than his. Anyway it’s well after two in the morning. I imagine even Ollie will be cuddling into his teddy bear by now. Somehow he seems like the kind of person that might go into an epileptic fit if I dragged him out of a deep sleep.
Drag him out of a deep sleep. On impulse I lift the receiver and start dialling. It’s not Ollie I’m phoning; I’m trying the number for Hassan Malik. The ring tone feels different from earlier, not louder but more insistent, not searching but drawing someone in. It’s still ringing, longer than before, but I’m not giving up this time. I know it’s going to be answered. I’m conscious of my breath matching the rhythm from the phone, supporting the effort. There’s a click from the other end. My breath holds.
“Who is this?”
The voice is female, sleepless. I can feel blood draining from my muscles.
“Is…? I’m sorry for calling so late… matter of some urgency. Would it be possible to speak with Hassan Malik?”
Pause.
“Hassan Malik?” I give it more of an ee sound this time. “Am I talking to Mrs... Khan?”
“Who is this?” she says again. “What do you want?”
"I’m… It’s all a bit complicated, actually. The thing is… I just wanted to check that Mr Malik is all right.”
Her voice is suddenly curt. “Hassan Malik is dead. Please don’t call here again.”
My mouth opens but the words won’t come. In any case there’s nobody left to hear them. We’re disconnected long before I can say I’m sorry to the widow Amina Begum Khan.
III
I’ve never been Neville Crawcrook’s blue-eyed boy – he’s flirted with the idea of sacking me a couple of times when we’ve had those my way or the highway kind of conversations – but he’d be the first to admit I’m one of his best turner-ups. One of the compensations of starting your shift so late is that you can get over most hangovers by the time you need to come in. Over the years the only nights people have sat in for me have been planned vacations, except for the one time I ended up in A&E for fifteen stitches when I tried to break in through the window after Linda locked me out of the house. And the only reason I was so anxious to get in was to rescue my car keys so I could go to work. Plus I made it for the final two hours, bandages and all.
I’m not saying I’ve never been ill. Some nights I’ve had to run to the Gents between links with the shits or throwing up my guts with some bug I’ve caught. But I’ve been back in place to open the pot right on cue and not missed a beat. Doctor Theatre.
This is altogether different. I suppose my GP would say there’s nothing wrong with me physically (not that I’ve been to him to find out), but I just can’t move out of my room. It’s something similar to the feeling I had after my night on the settee, but far worse. I feel trapped, like Gulliver in an illustration I remember from a book I used to have as a kid. Gulliver wakes to find that hundreds of little people on the island have tied him down with thousands of tiny ropes, so many all over his body that he can’t move, big as he is. Or like Samson after all the strength has sapped out of him.
It takes me until halfway through the afternoon just to pick up the receiver and call in sick. Even though I leave the phone on the floor not three feet away from me I can’t rouse myself to answer it when it rings an hour or so later; the station, probably, calling me back with some question or other. By teatime I drag myself to the tap for a cup of water and on my way back to bed I’m at least able to switch on the radio. I drift in and out of sleep as it plays in the background, awake enough by ten o’ clock to register that Simon Barnes has been drafted in to babysit my show.
Even while I’m feeling this bad there’s a part of me demanding to know why I’m indulging in such self-centred angst. It’s as if I’ve somehow discovered an unsympathetic twin brother inside myself, angry with me, bullying, insisting I snap out of it. I can’t explain myself to this brother. I don’t know the cause, except that it’s obviously related to the death of Hassan, even though with a bit of effort I could rationalise my way out of responsibility for that one – I didn’t turn the gas on/shove the pills down his throat/tie the rope round his neck/pull the trigger... or whichever way he went. It was his act, his choice. Just as it was his choice to call me and leave a sort of crossword clue about it. It’s no more my fault than, well, happening to be in the car park to see that girl run away and get caught again.
She’s somehow part of this weight on me as well. She must be – the symptoms came on just after it happened. Or maybe before that. Maybe it’s been tugging on me unnoticed for a while. Perhaps it’s to do with Sam, or Marni, or Linda… There’s a whole queue of women I can blame, and I will once I can think straight, once these damn hooks lose their grip on my nerve fibres.
Around midnight the telephone on the floor rings again. I must have been drifting away as I have the sensation of being pulled back, not into the room but into the sound. It’s taken on that relentless tugging job from the little men on ropes. My brain is sucked into the vortex of it, the insistent, echoing spin of it. I fall in so deep that after its first assault the tone loses its sharpness. I’m enveloped, submerged, folded in so thickly that the sound blankets me from itself, dulls, anaesthetises.
How long it rings I haven’t a clue. At some point I must have fallen back into a cocoon of sleep. The next time I feel anything like consciousness I can sense the daylight at the curtain through my eyelids, and after a while I notice that the late morning show is playing in the room, Kelly Coyle sitting in for Simon Barnes so he can recover from sitting in for me. I still have no inclination to get up. I put a pillow over my face to shield me from the damp light that’s seeping through from outdoors and stay prone on my back for an hour or more, waiting for enough energy to return so that I can spend some on assessing my precise level of crapulence. Rain starts outside, beating against my window.
I’m still lying there motionless when from nowhere a thought strikes that jars my attention. I grab the pillow away from my face and stare wide-eyed at the ceiling. Hassan Malik is a terrorist. He is a suicide bomber. He wasn’t just saying goodbye to his wife; it was a signal, something others were waiting for. That’s why he was so measured, so calm. That’s why he didn’t just send her a fucking Valentine card.
I have absolutely no evidence for this but the certainty of it goes through me like an electric charge. I throw the covers off and leap out of bed, accidentally sending my telephone spinning across the floor. Having jumped up so readily, I’ve no idea what to do next, and I stand unsure and stupidly naked in the middle of the room. I’m not about to run bare-arsed down the high street like Archimedes shouting Eureka! Eventually I do make a move, searching under the furniture for my phone, but can’t find a use for it once I’ve fished it out from under my desk, so I stick the phone back in its cradle, switch my laptop on and start to get dressed.
While the screen splutters into life I peek through a chink in the curtains at the rain, and register my second small shock of the day. Oliver Dunn is standing beneath the bus shelte
r on the other side of the road, looking straight up at my window. I dive out the way as if I’m being sniped at, landing on my backside between the bed and the wall. From there I creep up to the window-sill and lift the bottom of the curtain a fraction. It’s definitely Ollie. He’s wearing a cheap yellow waterproof, so thin I can still see his red tee-shirt underneath, and he’s holding a limp carrier bag with both hands in front of him. His being there can’t be a coincidence. Anybody waiting for a bus would naturally be watching for it coming, not peering directly, deliberately up at the building like this. What’s he playing at? How did he get my home address?
When I told Marni that Oliver was my stalker I wasn’t uneasy about it. I was showing off a bit, truth be told, bigging myself up for her benefit. Ollie’s attentions have never really been a bother. I’ve tolerated him, liked him even in a stray puppy-dog sort of way. But finding out where I live, parking himself outside my door… he’s beginning to worry me, and it’s not his welfare I’m concerned about. I’m starting to feel closed in. Or closed in on.
Still crouching on the floor I’m at eye level with the telephone sitting on the base unit, with the display reminding me of the two calls I’d ignored. I reach out for the phone and scroll through the menu for the missed numbers. The late afternoon one is from work as I’d surmised. The call that came through the night was also from a local number, and I’m pretty sure I recognise it. The jeans I was wearing yesterday are lying on the settee. I make sure the curtains are pulled to before I stand up and walk over to take out the crumpled paper I’d stuffed in my back pocket before I left the station. The log entry for Oliver’s telephone matches the second missed number on my display. So that’s my address and home telephone number he knows, along with everything else he has in his Marc Niven compendium. He’s not as green as he’s cabbage-looking, Mr Oliver Dunn.
To complete the set he has another message waiting for me when I log on to my work email. This is a strange one, sent 12.38 am.
Marc,
Sent incase you see tho I know your ill not like YOU and pray its not a CURSE like you here about. I dont like useing the other way’s for reason of privasy evryones intitled to same as Joe public, well more even cos of rest needed speshally if sick or overtyed. Im the one shoud have rememberd that SORRY Marc about phone ringing Only one to blaim ME but forgetin and with been desprit to tell you about (sumthing FYEO about you know WHO we talkd about soon) Reason been for secrise for the NEWS Ive found to tell you been very very strainged indeed and NOT for others. (ie new sam &setra) Only BAD coud come only thing Im sure of that. So desprit what to do so IF I dont here from you PLAN is to be aroundabout but TO NOT DISTURB. Also to bring EVERDENCE inc as well DATE/S for beleiveing as I woudnt not if not in BLACK AND WIHTE wich youll know more than me about cheking for. And what to do with. A PREIST maybe, coud be one thing, or the same like in there religuin. For the SOUL to Rest In Peece (RIP). To me thats the IMPORTANT thing. And no need for panic or scarrd about it. So hope your feeling a bit better Marc and not too wory I will just wait and not to nock (or not ring if a bell) or disturb.
GET WELL SOON!
Yours truly, Oliver Dunn (Mr)
I can’t figure all this babble about religion and priests (the SOUL for Christ’s sake), but it takes him a few points up the nutter scale in my opinion. What’s this guff about praying and curses? About not getting scared? For me this is definitely edging into psycho territory.
I creep back across the floor to have another peek through the curtain. There’s a double-decker bus parked at the stop, obscuring my view, but when it moves off I see Ollie in the same place as before, only now he seems to be eating what looks like a Mars Bar. From the hem of his waterproof to his trainers he’s showing spatters from the wet road. How dangerous can a guy be who doesn’t have the nous to stand back from the edge of the pavement?
I look through his email again without making any more sense of it, before logging onto the BBC News website. I’m almost disappointed to see no reference to terrorist strikes or suicide bombs. Not domestically, anyway. They are so common in Afghanistan and Iraq these days they barely rate a mention. Maybe that’s where Hassan was off to. Another recruit for Al-Qaeda or the Taliban or whoever. There’s no shortage of British Asians prepared to be cannon fodder, apparently. Often they don’t even tell their families. Was Hassan copping out of confronting his wife about his decision? Leaving his farewell message with me instead? Where was she when he called me? At her mother’s? Upstairs in the bedroom?
No, the timing doesn’t support the notion that he went abroad. He was already dead by the time I spoke to the woman, not much more than 24 hours after he talked to me. The whole suicide bomber thing doesn’t wash, just me jumping to conclusions based on foreign names and… well, prejudice if I’m honest. I should be reassured. If he had turned out to be a terrorist I’d have more than one death on my conscience. But somehow the idea was energising me, and now I’m back to square one. I’ve got to find out what happened to this guy, if only to ease this clamp off my brain.
I try googling Hassan Malik. The name seems to be the Asian equivalent of Smith – I get more than 132,000 hits from the UK alone. I’m just thinking of keywords to refine my search when the telephone rings once at my elbow. I answer it automatically, realising too late it could be Oliver Dunn. But it’s Meg Reece calling from her office.
“Marc, that was quick. You’re up and about then?”
“Oh, hello Meg. Just testing myself out, yeah. I’m hoping to get in tonight.”
“Don’t worry, don’t rush yourself,” she says breezily. “I’ve asked Simon Barnes to sit in again. He did a good job last night.”
“Yes, I heard a bit of it. Sounded fine, yeah.”
“So I’d rather you make sure you’re one hundred percent before you come back in. Don’t want you under par on-air, do we?”
“No, really,” I say, my antennae beginning to twitch, “I’m sure I’m going to be OK to come in. I’m not one to ...”
“It’s fine, honestly,” she insists. “There’s nothing spoiling. That’s what I was ringing to tell you. It gives us a chance to give Simon a good try-out.”
“What do you mean, try-out? Simon’s had his show the best part of a year now…”
“On a different slot, I mean. It’s always best to keep your options open, isn’t it, keep things fresh. You know we like to try things differently now and again. Good shuffle of the pack sometimes doesn’t go amiss.”
“What you saying, Meg?” My hackles rising now. “Nobody’s said anything to me about a reshuffle. Leaving aside the breakfast show I’ve got some of the best figures on the station…”
“Slipping, though. You’ve got to admit that.”
“All the ratings are down, it’s an industry thing, it’s not just me.”
“Simon’s are up, actually,” Meg comes back.
“Well, bully for him. Best to leave him where he is, then.”
“I’m not saying anybody’s moving anywhere for the moment,” Meg says. “Look, I don’t want to get into this right now, with you not well...”
“You started it.”
“Cool it, Marc, will you?” There’s a steely pause, then she continues. “I just rang to check how you were and to let you know the ship isn’t sinking without you. OK?”
“OK.”
“Right. There’s a time and place for conversations about the future.” I can hear her gathering herself before she switches into agony aunt mode. “Marc, I know you’ve had some… personal issues lately. I fully understand why you’re feeling a little tense…”
“I’m not tense.”
Her sigh is almost graphic in its impatience, her hand crushing a glass. But she maintains her forced calm. She didn’t get to be Neville’s lieutenant without mastering that full range of management skills. Or skill set, I think they call it now.
“Well, whatever. Enough said.” She signals the end of the round. No knockouts, no submissions. I put one in after the
bell.
“So you don’t want me to come in, then?”
“Come in when you’re one hundred percent, Marc. Not before. We’re cool with that.” And she rings off.
Meg’s call has left me thoroughly antsy. For the next couple of minutes I walk randomly around my flat knocking the heel of a hand against bits of the furniture, the fridge and door jambs. Every so often I pass one or other of the two hanging mirrors, never failing to stop and scowl at my reflection, leaning forward as if I’m about to head-butt myself, then staring transfixed for a while at the anger, maybe madness, in my eyes. I only stop when I mis-hit a swipe at the wash-basin, punch a tap and finish scrunched up, tears welling, squeezing the pain out of my ravaged knuckles.
One day off and they’re trying to unload me. I’m going to get down there now, lug that box file stuffed full of fan letters from my drawer and plonk it on Neville Crawcrook’s big shiny desk. On the way out I’ll stuff my Sony Award up Meg Reece’s tight arse.
11:59 Page 4