“He’s pretty good at fun,” Ben said.
“Well I want them to be fun for everyone,” Gareth said, picking harder at the label. “Including me, yeah, Ben? Including me. So no more spiky-haired gay scene twats at my nights.”
“I thought it was more of a quiff,” said Ben, putting his headphones back on — but there was no need, Gareth had already departed, leaving his bottle behind.
“I don’t think I’ve ever co-authored anything before,” Ben said, staring at the blank document on his laptop as if it was going to bite him. “I’ve barely authored anything.”
“Look,” Dr Bill said, out of the tiny Skype window in the corner. “Just write up what dealings you and Daniel had with these people, and I’ll write up what happened when I tried to chase up on it, and then we sort of…weld it together like two halves of a nicked car and hope no one notices our writing styles don’t match.”
“Is that what you do with Phil Jacy?” Ben asked, his hands hovering uncertainly over the keyboard. “Because they always read really smoothly.”
“God no,” Dr Bill said, sniggering into his beard. “No. He rants into a speech-to-text program and then I go through and correct all the science and we both put our names on it before either of us have sobered up.”
“All the secrets I’m learning about the scientific establishment of this country,” Ben tutted, under his breath. “I thought you were a bunch of starchy professionals.”
“You could write an exposé,” agreed Dr Bill, straightening up. “But first, you have to write this and I have to write this. I find a timer usually helps. And also Phil not sending me four hundred tweets a minute to distract me on purpose.”
“Okay.” Ben tapped his teeth with his thumb. “Do we have to include some sort of mandatory reference back to the sputum tests? They’re in every single article at the moment. You know, one red is normal, two is probably something else, three means it’s triple-test time?”
Dr Bill snorted. “No, the editor will throw one in if they want one in. Somewhere completely unsuitable, in my experience.”
“Okay.” Ben readjusted himself.
“Ankle okay?”
“Mmhm.”
“You could just get Daniel to write up his dealings himself,” Dr Bill offered, apparently also suffering from a bad case of not wanting to get started, “just to make this even more a stylistic car crash.”
“I don’t think he’s going to be contributing anything for a bit,” Ben said, taking his hand away from his mouth. “He sent me an email this morning about setting the entire laboratory on fire and moving to Guatemala to become a stripper.”
“Borna growth problems?” Dr Bill said, with a sympathetic smile. “You should tell him statistics don’t spend as much time refusing to cooperate with quite the same arbitrary mean-spiritedness.”
“He informs me that ‘epidemiology is maths for people who like maths entirely too much’,” Ben said.
“Well, he’s not wrong.”
“Okay. I can always change the opening paragraph later, right?”
“Right, of course.”
“Let’s do this.”
“After you…”
“This,” Sherazi said, neatly dividing Ben from the departing class like a sheep dog picking out a marked sheep, “is shaping up to be a fantastic conspiracy thriller, Mr Martin.”
“Is it…” Ben said, backing into a table. Sherazi didn’t have her coffee cup in her hands, and he was a little worried this meant she was about to try and choke him.
Sherazi bent the newspaper back, squinted at it with an expression that aged her about twenty years, and said, “Disappearing sources — emails rifled through — not one but two attempts at bribery of public health related officials, if we’re stretching the term a little, no one in this country likes social workers — and a circumspect but damning reference to which company both Mr X and Mrs X contacted before coming down with a bad case of being missing, bonus quote from family members stating that they are devastatingly worried about their absent son and daughter-in-law.” She folded the paper back again.
“That’s…” Ben pulled a desperate smile. “That’s what I…we…wrote?”
“Good grief.” Sherazi pulled back a little and turned her head away.
“Sorry.” Ben put his hand over his mouth.
“See a doctor.”
“I am,” Ben pointed to the newspaper. “Collaborating with him, in fact.”
Sherazi rolled the newspaper up with both hands. “Be very, very glad that the law of this land mistakenly says I’m not to thwack you repeatedly around the head with this,” she said. “Don’t you respond to my hard-practiced attempts at pastoral care by being flippant, or I’ll ram this where nothing so august has ever been rammed before.”
Ben, briefly reminded of Daniel, smiled into his hand. “Fporry.”
“Well,” Sherazi said, letting the paper unfurl a little. “At least you’re working with a professional this time.”
“Mmhm,” said Ben, hopefully.
“Have you thought about what you want the eventual outcome of this to be?” Sherazi added, pointing the partially de-fanged newspaper at him.
Ben shook his head.
“You’re going to want to,” Sherazi said. “Digging for facts is working, but if you want to do something with this, you’re going to have to work out what. And what they have.”
“What do you mean?” Ben asked, keeping his hand up.
“I mean,” said Sherazi. “One, do you want to hang onto this story without anyone else getting into it? Two, what consequences are there going to be in following it all the way to its conclusion? Three, what do you think you can achieve by exposing the truth, whatever that turns out to be?”
“A merit?” Ben asked.
Sherazi narrowed her eyes and began re-rolling the newspaper. “Ouuuuut, out you go, get out of my classroom.”
Ben unrolled the futon at four in the afternoon and lay face-down on it. The TV, beside him, flashed noiseless images of trade agreements, peace talks, murder investigations, dog shows, and the roll out of sputum tests to pharmacies across the country, retailing at ten quid, or free to OAPs and under-18s, pregnant women, and receivers of disability benefits.
His phone went blonk.
“No,” Ben said into his pillow.
Blonk.
“Go away,” said Ben. “I’m not here.”
Blonk.
“I’ve died,” Ben told his pillow. “The number you have called has not been recognised.”
Blonk blonk.
“Fuck off.”
He rolled onto his back, felt around on the floor for his phone, and eventually dropped it on his own face from a distance of six inches.
Ben picked it up again and stared at the succession of messages.
Morgan P: Austerity drinklympics tonight!
Ina Metsian: Everyone is very broke so we’re going to Martha’s.
Ina Metsian: You’re vehemently invited.
Ina Metsian: Adamantly invited. Come out and have free drink lavished upon you.
Ina Metsian: Everyone misses youuuu.
Ben dropped the phone back on his face. It blonked very loudly.
Morgan P: Come out, come out.
Ina Metsian: Come out, oh famous journalist and consort of the Radio 4 intelligentsia, and tell me why your name came out of my tutor’s mouth.
He groaned, and laboriously composed a reply:
Ben M: Can’t. Have eaten all the pies. Too fat to leave the house. Sorry.
Ina Metsian: What if I need a body pillow? What then? Come out, you sad bastard.
Ben M: Impossible to move
Morgan P: >:(
The conversation petered out, but before Ben could resume lying on his face trying to digest more rice and peas than he perhaps should have eaten, particularly given how long it had now been in the fridge, he made the mistake of looking at Facebook.
“Too many,” Ben muttered, ignoring a list of
invitations, solicitations, and unanswered “other” in the triple digits.
There were also a number of chat messages, mostly from Ina, Morgan, Martha, and a variety of other people who’d clearly been day drinking and wanted his company and everyone else’s that evening.
And one from a former colleague.
Becky ‘Blossom’ Paramountel: Just thought I’d let you know because I don’t want this to come as a surprise but Maggie’s in London this week saying hi to a load of us vol/duns so use this knowledge as you wish. Places to avoid/come to depending on how things are: Wahacca Westfield White City tomorrow night, Roast Borough Market this evening, Breakfast Club Spitalfields the day after tomorrow, and I think there’s a pub crawl through Marylebone the day after that.
Hope you’re well, babe, is that college thing okay? I’d be well scared of going back to education after all this time.
“Why the hell would I want to know that?” Ben asked, with a sinking heart and a faint sense of petty violation.
No, he thought, getting up and picking up Minnie as he passed her, London’s mine, you got Manchester, go away.
He turned up the volume on the TV as an afterthought, flicked away from the news, and settled on Tom Kerridge claiming to improve breakfast foods. He took out Dr Bill’s second book, which he was dipping in and out of on the grounds that medical trials came close to what he needed to know about and that it might be polite to know what his acquaintances did for a living, and completely failed to read any more of it.
Whoawhoa, Minnie said angrily, as he turned her upside-down.
“‘Hi Ben’,” he complained, as Tom Kerridge used the word ‘lush’ about forty times, “‘just thought you should be under house arrest for a week’.”
“Should probably call her,” said Ben, putting his phone down and beeping Minnie on the nose.
Whoa, Minnie repeated, trying to skin his hand, and then to bite it.
“What I like to do is rub in a girt load of chili powder down the back side, and then sprinkle a tiny bit of this on the front,” said Tom Kerridge, as the camera moved in for a close up.
Ben recalled with an unpleasant start that this was one of the shows Maggie was doing production on, and switched back to the news.
“Post,” Kingsley said, coming in the door with his bike over his shoulder. He dropped the bike against the wall and threw a handful of envelopes at Ben. “You’re supposed to be picking this up, you lazy doss-house reject.”
“Haven’t been downstairs today,” Ben said, gesturing to a pair of jogging bottoms and a t-shirt that had a running gag from four years ago on it. Maggie-induced quarantine, he accepted, might have gone a little overboard, but it did at least keep him out of the cold weather.
“So I see,” Kingsley moved off, with his own letters in hand. “Or cleaned the fucking kitchen, Ben, nice one.”
“Sorry.”
“I should have taken that fifteen grand and got a new flatmate,” Kingsley complained, but Ben wasn’t listening any more.
The envelopes amounted mostly to circulars, begging letters from various political parties pretending they cared about his views in the hope of winning a vote, a letter of thanks from Oxfam for the cow he’d donated on his mother’s behalf this past Christmas, and something official-looking which had been hand-written but also had the envelope franked.
“Weird,” said Ben, opening it.
There was a large header. It involved a crest, some names with a lot of letters after them, an address, and a logo.
Dear Mr Martin,
This is an informal notice on behalf of our clients.
Our clients appreciate the difficulties inherent in student life and the pressures of a working journalist, and as such do not wish at present to pursue more final legal action against you. However, in light of your recent work they request with all due courtesy that you exercise caution in which names you choose to mention in future articles.
The letter continued in the same vein for a few paragraphs, but what Ben understood from it was that someone was deeply, deeply angry with him and that if he continued to annoy them, they were — it was hinted — prepared to chase him with an enormous box of lawyers and slap him with every possible accusation until he sat down and behaved himself.
“Jesus fuck,” said Ben, curling up like a woodlouse.
“Yeah and when the milk goes off, Ben, you—” Kingsley stuck his head out of the kitchen, still dressed from head to toe in his complex medley of cycling gear, and squinted at him. “Fuck’s wrong with you now?”
Ben waved the letter wordlessly.
“What?”
“Lawyers,” Ben croaked.
Kingsley sighed. “Alright, you know what.” He threw his hands up and went back into the kitchen. “I will visit you in jail.”
Ben took a long fifteen minutes wrestling with his breath. Kingsley passed him, stared, shook his head, and went into the bathroom, slamming the door behind him.
“Right,” Ben said, watching the paper shake in his hand. “I know. I know someone who can. Yeah.”
He laid the letter on his knees, took several deep breaths, and picked up his phone.
“Benjy!” Matthew said with confused delight. “You just caught me, my man, I was going to dinner and then back to the grindstone. Been seeing your name in the papers now! Journalism thing’s working out for you, I take it?”
“Uh, yeah,” said Ben, dubiously. “Thank Steph for that, uh, the contact at UCLH, that was really useful.”
“Will do,” Matthew said with dutiful insincerity. “If I can get to her beyond the blizzard of used nappies. Between you and me, I’m camping out here for a bit of peace and quiet, ha ha!”
Ben looked down at the letter again. “Matt, do you know anything about—” he read off the name of the firm. “As, well, as the legal insider you are.”
“Oh, boy.” Matthew made a contemplative noise that sounded like someone blowing a raspberry. “Yeah, I do. Corporate law specialists –“
“I figured,” Ben said.
“—lots of very high-profile clients. They’ve got a news conglomerate, the mining people — Australian company, can’t remember the name, but they handle the British dealings — used to do G4S but I think they dropped them — oh, the pharmaceuticals, I expect that’s what you’re after?”
“XXXXX/XXXXXX?” Ben asked, still staring at the letter. His legs had begun to bounce.
“Yeah, Ben, I, er, I wouldn’t go trumpeting that name about, if I were you,” Matthew said, and in his voice it was possible to hear the grimace on his face, and a slight suck of his teeth. “They’re, well, they’re the big boys and they will play rough with you if they feel even a little bit threatened. Probably best to put the shhh on whatever it is you’ve got planned.”
“I got a letter from them,” said Ben.
“Ah,” Matthew’s voice changed somewhat. “Yes, well, I can’t…you know I can’t help you with any of this, right?”
“Figured,” Ben said.
“I mean, I can recommend a couple of people who maybe could, in a pinch, probably—”
“I can’t afford it,” Ben said, letting the letter slide off his knees. “But thanks.”
“Yah,” Matthew said, thoughtfully. “I don’t know that any of them have really done any pro-bono work, sorry, my man.”
“Not to worry,” Ben said, through a constricted throat and a sense of numbness working its way through his body, “give my, give my love to Steph.”
“Shall do,” said Matthew. “Must catch up sometime.”
“Fuck,” said Ben, as Matthew hung up.
He rubbed his face, took off his glasses, and rubbed his eyes.
“Fuck,” Ben added, for good measure. He checked the time, and wondered if a panic-stricken call at this hour constituted pushing his luck.
The TV showed a scrolling bar reading: KBV Sputum tests sell out in first week.
“Fuck it,” said Ben, scrolling through his contacts again.
> The TV showed some images of empty shelves, presumably for viewers who didn’t understand what “sell out” meant. Ben passingly wondered why he hadn’t just Googled the company; all Matthew had done was give him heartburn.
“Ah,” said Dr Bill, by way of a hello. “I was expecting something from you. I’m afraid I’ll have to be quick, at Broadcasting house again and they’re giving me very dirty looks for having my phone on, but we don’t actually need to — oh what? — no, we don’t actually need to be in the studio for a minute anyway, so I’m just going to get the lift back to the bar for a minute—”
There was some intermittent noise.
“That’s wonderful but I can use an access lift on my own,” Dr Bill said with some acidity. “I’m a grown adult, not a five year old. Yes, thank you.”
There was a little more intermittent noise, and the sound of machinery.
“God I hate being nannied by a bunch of children,” Dr Bill complained. The dead echoes sounded as if he’d made it into the lift. “Sorry about that, fucking over-enthusiastic, under-paid runners trying to talk me through the lifts as if I was unsupportably stupid and, also, haven’t been to this fucking building three times this month already. That’s the BBC for you.”
“Sounds about right,” Ben said, holding his breath still.
“Got a letter?” Dr Bill asked, with rather less petty frustration.
“Y-es,” said Ben trying to take a deeper breath and not quite managing.
“Tremendously impressive-sounding firm of corporate lawyers?”
“Yes.” Ben rubbed at his face with his free hand. “And no money for a lawyer whatsoever.”
“Wouldn’t worry about that,” said Dr Bill with a kind of blasé humour that Ben couldn’t have hoped to have emulated under the circumstances. “Got one as well, Natalya had one yesterday, different wording but similar idea: ‘shut the fuck up or we’re coming for you with knives’.”
“Argh,” Ben said.
There was a loud bing and some more machinery noise, then a lot of loud conversation.
The Next Big One Page 35