11:59

by David Williams

  My technique with Philip Mann is more or less polite evasion, which is what Simon should have used with the call from Lee. (Yes, I know he was caught on the hop – I’m not trying to shirk all the blame.) Mann is persistent, though.

  “So you’re saying that widow was a slip of the tongue?”

  “Of course, yes. It happens all the time. People get nervous, they say the wrong words under pressure.”

  “Hmm. What did he mean to say?”

  “I…Well, I don’t know. The moment was gone, you see.”

  “You haven’t talked to him since, then?”

  “No, no.”

  “Right.” Mann clicks his pen against his teeth and scrutinises me from his position about a foot above my hairline. I feel as if I’m being questioned at the school gates by a PC trying to finger somebody for a misdemeanour. He continues. “I’m just wondering, in that case, how you can be so certain it was a slip of the tongue.”

  “Call it professional judgement.”

  “And in your professional judgement, Marc, would you say that you were talking to a ghost?”

  “I wouldn’t, Philip, no. You see, I don’t believe in ghosts. Do you?”

  He doesn’t answer me, says instead, “I’m just trying to find out who this guy is, or was. It’s a real mystery, isn’t it, Marc?”

  “Actually, I’m finding it a bit of a bore. And you can quote me on that. So if you don’t mind, Philip, I’ve got things to do.”

  As I walk off, he calls out to me. “Does that include preparing for your show? Will we hear you on the radio tonight?”

  In lieu of reply I give him an ironic two-fingered salute on my way to the car park.

  Unfortunately I wasn’t aware that his photographer was in hiding, taking pictures with a long lens, probably throughout our interview. The one they use is of me walking away from the station, flashing the V-sign. Philip Mann is nowhere to be seen in the picture, so it looks as if I’m making the gesture to everybody in the building behind, which suits their headline to a tee.

  DJ leaves disgracefully

  The thrust of Mann’s story is that I’ve effectively been sacked for my poor handling of the original call from Hassan Malik. The official line from the station is that I am on sick leave, but it is obvious from the unattributed information Mann uses in the article that they have been furiously spinning against me to cover their tracks. For example:

  Listeners were shocked that Niven – who once famously kept a suicide caller talking on the line while a rescue operation got underway at Stephenson Bridge – failed to react to the strange and apparently disturbed message from Hassan Malik, and subsequently blocked the many who rang to express their concern over what they had heard. The award-winning presenter confirmed today that he had not tried to make further contact with Malik and described the deepening mystery surrounding the call as ‘a bore’.

  Simon Barnes, who has been sitting in for Niven since the incident, will again host Nightwatch tonight and is expected to do so for the foreseeable future. Radio industry sources say it is unlikely that Niven, who has presented the phone-in show for seven years, will return.

  The one consolation I can find in this attack on me is that I have only become the centrepiece of the story for lack of any hard evidence about the real identity of the man calling himself Hassan Malik and, more importantly, any contact with Amina. The only reference to her comes near the end of the article when Mann mentions that the house in Prince Albert Road has been deserted and relatives are unable to confirm her whereabouts. Good for them.

  Not so good for yours truly. The photo certainly doesn’t do me any favours – three days growth of beard and, if I’m honest, a distinct lack of kempt, makes me look like shit - and Mann has even cleverly used my previous brownie points (rescue hero, award-winner) to illustrate my dramatic fall from grace, like the bishop caught in flagrante delicto with the actress. I’m fucked, basically.

  I’m not so much angry as… well, to be honest my over-riding emotion is intense loneliness. I’m not trying to come over as some kind of bleeding heart, just telling it like it is. When things go wrong in your life you usually have somebody to turn to, don’t you? In the old days it would be Linda, at least until the last year or so of our marriage, then it was Sam. Sam very much so. Now it’s me and my reflection in the mirror. Cue sodding violins.

  The predictable thing to do right now is to get drunk. That’s exactly what Meg and Alice from HR (You’re not in the bar now) would expect of me. There’s not a drop left in the flat so I’d have to go out to the off-licence or the pub. And, yes, I do go out, risking curious stares from folk over their copies of tonight’s Chronicle. I don’t even take the car, exposing myself even more, and maybe that’s because there’s something in me hell-bent on alcoholic oblivion, but I don’t rush to the local or the city centre watering-holes. I do something infinitely sadder. I catch the bus at what I now think of as Oliver’s stop and retrace our journey all the way to the reading room of the public library.

  I start thumbing through back issues of the regional newspapers, just as Ollie and I had, but I’m not here to unearth more facts about the Hassan Malik case. That would be altogether too rational. No, I’m looking for references to Marc Niven. I have some rough dates in mind - various OBs and events I’ve been involved in, the odd corporate do, the suicide caller story of course, the launch of my show – but I’m also skipping randomly through, happening on the odd photograph or half-remembered headline, most of which I already have in my press cuttings file at work. It was thinking about that file, regretting that I hadn’t picked it up on my way out, that has brought me here.

  The last couple of years are still in hard copy, but once I delve further back I have to start using one of the antiquated microfilm readers, spooling through editions of the Chronicle one year at a time, awkwardly at first until I develop the knack of it. The reels and the appearance of the newsprint behind the glass make even recent history seem much older. I can’t understand why they haven’t invested in some more up-to-date digital process, but they haven’t, so I’m forced to spin through hopefully without the benefit of key-word searches and the like.

  I say forced but of course there’s no imperative for me to do any of this and it has no purpose or end to it. If I was called on to justify what I was doing I might say I’m gathering evidence for a possible tribunal, but that would be a lie since I have no notion of going down that route. Playing amateur psychologist on myself, I guess I’m trying to reconstruct my crushed ego, or maybe I’m just searching for evidence that I exist. Don’t ask me what that means, I have no idea. I only know that every so often the tedium of the search is relieved when I come upon a smiling photograph or a couple of paragraphs with my name in it, and I register the tiniest blip of pleasure before I carry on.

  The library closes at eight and I still have a couple of reels to look through with only quarter of an hour to go, which is why I get quite peevish when a library assistant comes across with a polite five minute warning about re-spooling the one I’m busy with, “as we’ll be closing shortly.”

  “But I’m not finished yet. It says eight on the door.”

  “Just a matter of tidying up, sir. We do have to lock up by eight.”

  “And turn back into a pumpkin?”

  “No need for that, sir. I’m just trying to do my job. We’re open ten till eight tomorrow. If you’d like to finish what you’re doing.”

  The last bit is ambiguous, but I take it as an order and grudgingly rewind the spool on the machine. I’ve been lost in my daft obsession for the past couple of hours, but this minor altercation is all it takes to refuel the bitterness in me. By the time I’m back on the street I’m ready to punch out a shop window. I walk along with my fists clenched in my coat pockets, scoping nameless victims for murder, until I come to the lane where Ollie and I found our drab pub, and head there to murder a drink instead.

  There are two things about pubs like this that save at least a fe
w of them from being swept away by city centre yuppification or laid waste under the weekend stampede of teenage bingers. The first is that occasionally - working almost incognito, camouflaged by the surface grime and general dilapidation – there will be a landlord who actually cares about the quality and taste of the beer a whole lot more than he does about the marketing, or the customers, or the housekeeping. The second is that they can just about survive by accommodating misanthropes and misfits, low maintenance loners who compensate for not buying generous rounds for friends they don’t have by staying the course, drinking steadily and repeatedly at the same three-legged table from early doors till the bell tolls. Tonight The George and Marc Niven are made for each other.

  With the horse-racing long since finished the TV channel has been switched, not to Sky Sports News or MTV as in most other places, but to ITV 1, where it plays with the sound turned off over the heads of the drinkers, its tawdry images clashing with the dinge below. I watch the screen only when the adverts come on, struck by the mute sexiness of Andrex toilet paper cascading down some stairs, a girl’s finger on the capstan of a roulette wheel, a dolphin in blue water. Otherwise there’s plenty to divert me from sluicing down my Black Sheep too urgently as the night wears on - there’s fluff to gather from the bench seat I’m sitting on, drips to soak up with a beer mat after I’ve separated the layers of card to make the mat more absorbent, brand names to mull over on the coasters and behind the bar, a maze of soldering to follow with my eyes from one end of the imitation stained glass feature to the other, then back again. I can even watch the levels going down in other glasses; that’s a good guide when you’re drinking on your own, like having company.

  Three or four refills in (maybe five, who’s counting? anyway, I’m kind of on holiday), when a group to my left have supped up and gone, I shuffle along to where two benches meet, and sit in the angle between, resting a shoulder blade on the back of each bench. It’s a secure place, and it gives me a director’s view of the pub. I may have inadvertently said “Action!” out loud as that thought occurred. Someone standing with his back to me turns and looks, as if he’s just seen a flash bulb go off, then says something to his wife, or girlfriend, or mistress, who looks over at me too, just for a second. His floozy, maybe, that’s what they’d call them in the 1950s when this pub had its heyday. She looks the type.

  Once I’ve drained my glass in this new position I have a difficult dilemma. A fairly sizeable group has just wandered in from some event next door and The George is enjoying (putting up with) one of its rare busy half-hours. There are a few people standing now, in twos and threes, since there’s not enough space for them to sit together. I don’t want to give up this hard-won seat, but it’s time to go back to the bar, and I also need a pee. I’ve been a bit foolish to empty my glass, because whether I leave it on the table or take it with me to the bar, whichever, it could be interpreted as quitting, and one of those groups might take over my table and this whole section of bench, whereas (I say this word carefully to myself, developing my argument like a logician) whereas if I’d left just the right amount of beer in the glass I could have kept my claim staked while I got another. Too late for that now. I’ll just have to take a chance, leaving my coat on the seat sufficiently spread out, like a German towel, and hope they take the hint.

  I leave my empty glass on the table as an extra deterrent and walk very deliberately to the bar, to give everybody the right signal, but then I sneak off to the Gents before I order, not wanting to take my drink with me to the toilet or to leave it on the bar where it might get spiked or spat in, you never know

  It’s a cramped bog, and there’s already somebody at one of the two urinal bowls. I try the lav door but that’s locked, so I have no option but to stand uncomfortably close to this tallish bloke to pee. As I pull it out he turns his head just like John Cleese in that ancient ‘I look down at him’ sketch. He’s quite shameless about it. I have a sudden urge to get back at him for this by pissing on his shoes. I’ve started to swivel when he suddenly zips up and steps away, leaving me to spill a splash of piss on the floor as if it was an accident instead of a protest. He gives me a look of contempt on his way out, but it’s him that doesn’t wash his hands.

  After I’ve negotiated my return to the bar and ordered, and I’m turning to get my bearings for taking my fresh drink back to my seat, I see the worst has happened. Two couples that had been standing facing each other nearest my table have taken it over, one bloke squeezed between the two women in my director’s place and the other one perched on a stool the other side. As I come up holding my beer I see that my coat is lying folded across another empty stool next to them.

  “Saved this seat for you, pal,” stool bloke says, like he’s doing me a favour.

  “No thanks, I’ll just stand. Going in a minute,” I say, nearly spilling my full pint as I reach over to grab my coat and hang it on my free arm. One consolation is that the wanker from the Gents is not with them. They do seem to be looking at me funny, though. At last the uglier one of the women says, “We were just talking about you, actually. You’re that man from the radio, aren’t you? The one what does the phone-ins.”

  Not any more, I’m thinking, but not out loud, or was it? Then I’m wondering whether they know me cos they know me or cos they’ve seen my picture in tonight’s paper. Was it just tonight? It seems longer ago than that. Longer ago and farther away.

  “Is it you, then?” says squeezed-between-two-women bloke.

  “I am he as you are he as you are me, and we are all together,” I say, cleverly.

  “Eh?”

  “I am the walrus.”

  Pretty woman gives a little smile. Which one does she belong to? The smile was definitely for me, either way. I sit down on the stool and push my glass onto the crowded table, slopping the beer a little. “Marc Niven,” I say, to her only.

  “That’s the name,” ugly sister pipes up. “I said it was Marc summat. You were in the paper today, weren’t you?”

  “Was I? Dunno. Never bother. Regular currants.” My brain said occurrence but my voice definitely said currants, I heard it. I take a gobful of beer and roll it around with my tongue to get my mouth working properly.

  “Drowning your sorrows. You got sacked, didn’t you?” says the guy sitting in my place, who looks like a sleaze ball.

  Slight burp as I swallow to answer, nothing they would notice. “No such thing. They made a cock-up. I told them, sort it out, not coming back till you do. Position to do it, see. Man of my…” What am I talking to him for? I turn back to smiling girl. “You listen?”

  “Sorry?” Leans forward a touch. She has this cute way of raising her eyebrows.

  “You listen my show?”

  Sleaze ball sneaks his arm behind her, his fingers fiddling with her hair. I can tell she’s embarrassed about him interfering with her like that cos she’s blushing, but she keeps her attention on me.

  “I’m not really a radio sort of person,” she says. “What sort of music do you play?”

  “What sort of music do you like?” She really is a looker, close up.

  “Oh, I don’t know, all sorts really. Charts stuff.”

  “Tell you what, tell you what, have you got a pen? Anybody pen?” I lift up my glass to bring the coaster out from underneath, taking another mouthful while the beer’s handy.

  “Christ, he’s going to give you his autograph now,” says sleaze ball, grabbing pretty girl’s shoulder and pulling her towards him. Prick. Stool guy gives me a biro he finds in his jacket pocket and I hand it across the table with the beer mat.

  “Just write your name down on there, and any song you’d like. Pick a song, any song. I’ll play it for you, my show. Don’t normally do requests, but for you. Happily.”

  “Thought you didn’t have a show,” says the other one, put out cos she hasn’t been given the chance.

  “Soon. Next time,” I tell my one. “’Fact, put your number down and I’ll phone you when it’s coming on.
Personally.”

  “Fuck off,” says sleaze ball.

  “I don’t think I can write on this,” says pretty girl, holding just the corner of the beer mat with her finger tips. “It’s a tad wet.” The others laugh at her, which hardly seems fair.

  “No worries, no worries,” I say. “’Nother one here.” I scrabble among the cluster of drinks on the tables, feeling for a dry mat. That stupid prick opposite must have had his glass too near the edge. It gets just the slightest nudge from my knuckles and it topples off the table, dowsing his crotch with lager. He jumps up, yelling, and makes the whole thing worse by kicking his leg against the table, sending more glasses flying. Now everybody’s up, backing away from the mess. It’s like somebody’s just vomited in the middle of a crowd. The rest of the pub turn round to stare at us.

  “You rat-arsed fucker,” yells sleaze ball, trying to put the blame on me as a pissed-off barman emerges from behind the counter with a mop. In the background I can see John Cleese whispering some poison to one of his gay crowd of gawkers. I’ve had my fill of the lot of them, so I pick my coat out of the puddle under the table and leave.

  As I’m crossing the pedestrian precinct I catch a glimpse of the big clock and have to double-check with my watch to confirm it’s already gone ten to eleven. I’m not sure when the last bus is, but it’s odds on I’ve missed it. I search through my trouser pockets to see what I’ve got left for the taxi fare, but there’s only some small change from buying the drinks. I feel around my coat for my wallet and for a few seconds the alarm bells are ringing - those bastards in the pub have nicked it while I was away to the loo. Panic over, here it is in my inside zip pocket. I open the wallet to make certain there are still some notes there, and my eyes come into focus on a corner of white sticking out of one of the credit card slots. I pull on the corner and find the business card Emmanuel gave me. Printed on the card is a simple message and one line of an address: