One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night

by Christopher Brookmyre

  The tales featured the same old tired cast of over-celebrated characters and exaggerated incidents. Glory days on the football pitch, playground misdemeanours, resultant beltings from teachers, pubescent sexual innnuendo and juvenile pugilism. He did his best to join in but found he had nothing to contribute; or at least nothing involving himself, just witness testimony of stories already being told in the first person by those around him. The only point at which he had become the focus of attention was when it emerged that he was unique in never having been assaulted by David Murdoch.

  ‘He must have had a fuckin’ force-field roon’ him,’ remarked one.

  ‘Either that or he was invisible,’ offered another, that smart-arse McQuade. ‘Are you sure you were in oor class, Gavin? Maybe you’ve invited the wrang year to your reunion.’

  Yeah, yeah, laugh it up, he’d thought, watching them clutch the last remnants of that once-upon-a-time when they were somebodies in a limited little world. But who’s fucking invisible now?

  Things finally started to look up during his speech, when he noticed Catherine slipping quietly out of the main doors, judiciously choosing her moment when all eyes were on him. That was the Catherine he knew and loved: going up to her suite to prepare for a private little reunion just between the two of them, while everyone else would be busy tucking into the buffet. The lustful glances she’d been receiving all night had made him all the more frustrated that she wasn’t making the true nature of their relationship a little more obvious to those who were admiring her. However, once he’d seen her leave the room, the thought of those glances made him all the more horny, as though he was the receptacle of everyone else’s cumulative desire.

  He’d cut short the speech, declared the buffet open and headed for the lift. There were tingles running through him by the time it reached the top floor. That gorgeous tight dress she was wearing … dreadful waste to take it off. Just ride it up around her middle, maybe against the back of the chaise longue …

  There was no reply when he knocked at the door, but then she’d more likely be waiting for him to enter, as the master of the house shouldn’t need to be asked. He swiped his card through the slot, another ripple of anticipation pulsing through him as the lock clunked beckoningly open.

  He made his way inside to find the suite in darkness. Enticing, he thought, but tonight he wanted to see her. He placed the keycard into the NRG-Sava and flicked on the lights.

  The place was empty. Catherine’s overnight bag lay next to the dresser but the bed was undisturbed. He called her name twice to no reply. Unless, he suddenly thought, she had gone to his suite. It was out of bounds with Simone in residence, but maybe she was being a naughty girl, perhaps even by way of demonstrating who really ought to be in his bedroom.

  Gavin was about to go along the hall to find out when it struck him that he hadn’t seen Simone for a while, either, the bitch making a point of not being present during his big speech. The nightmare scenario entered his head of her going upstairs and finding Catherine in their suite, until he remembered that Catherine had no way of getting in. So where the hell was she? He picked up the phone. Idiot Boy Jamie the Geordie receptionist answered it.

  ‘Hello, Jamie, it’s Mr Hutchison here. Do you happen to know where Miss O’Rourke is?’

  ‘Ehm, I think she went to check on a guest who didn’t come downstairs to the party. She asked me for his room number. It’s still on the screen. Room 322.’

  ‘And which guest would that be?’

  ‘Ehm, let’s see. Just callin’ up the details. Right. The name is Murdoch, David, Mr.’

  ‘—’

  ‘Are you all right, sir? Sir?’

  Gavin went straight to the fridge and poured himself a very large whisky. He’d vowed to stay straight all night so that he was at his brightest, opting to drink in the occasion instead. But that was before the occasion began to taste like yesterday’s sick. He knocked it right back and had another. And another. After so many kicks in the groin, no-one would deny he needed analgesia. Not only was that ego-on-toast Matt Black here, at the behest of his backstabbing bint of a wife, but so, it turned out, was that uber-psycho turned ‘victim of society’ Davie Murdoch, who despite terrorising every last one of them, was being talked of almost with reverence by the assembly of losers downstairs. And as if his balls hadn’t quite been sledgehammered enough, Catherine had fucked off in the middle of his big speech to go to the bastard’s room!

  Was there anything else that could possibly go wrong tonight? Not that he could think of. Apart from one of the guests turning out to be a serial killer and topping the whole sodding lot of them, but then he wasn’t so sure he’d consider that a bad thing right now.

  Well, he thought, the warmth of the whisky beginning to course through him, he wasn’t going to just sit here and take it. He’d a good mind to throw these uninvited tosspots off the edge of the bloody rig. Gatecrash a place like this and you had to think about the downsides, didn’t you? Bastards. He’d show the lot of them.

  21:12 laguna room 322 the uninvited ii

  Davie flipped through the channels again, barely watching what was flashed before him as he clicked ahead to the next one. In time he switched the thing off and returned the remote to the bedside table. He sighed, placing his hands either side of his face, elbows resting on his thighs, feeling a mixture of failure, depression and embarrassment. He had travelled a hell of a long way for a quiet night in. He wanted Collette. He wanted to see her smiling at him across their living room while Geni and wee D walloped him about the head and body with inflatable plastic zoo animals.

  The blank screen and the blank walls mocked him in his useless solitude. His jacket sat accusingly on a chair by the door, like a sulky child who’d been promised an outing then been let down by Daddy at the last gasp. He’d even got as far as gripping the handle before hearing other doors open and close in the corridor beyond. Footsteps and voices.

  ‘Is that you, Tommy?’

  ‘Allan! Christ, how you doin’, Aldo? You’re lookin’ great. Allan, this is my wife, Lorna.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Lorna. This is Nadja.’

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Hi there.’

  ‘We’re not married. Actually, I got her from an escort service, and she doesnae speak much English.’

  Thump.

  ‘Oow.’

  ‘Ha ha ha ha.’

  ‘Leave the jokes to your friend Matthew, darling, huh?’

  ‘Aye, sure, honey.’

  ‘God, it’s amazin’ to see you, Aldo, it really is. I suppose we’d better get used to this or we’ll be sayin’ it all night. Every five minutes. “Wow! I cannae believe it’s you!” “Jesus, look who it is.”’

  ‘Yeah, till we remember we all hated each other.’

  ‘Aye, right enough. Paul Duff works in the bookie’s on Auchenlea main street. Wonder if he’s offerin’ odds on how long before the first barney.’

  ‘So I heard you’re in criminal law these days, Tommy, is that right …’

  Davie had let go of the handle and stepped back from the door. Tommy Milligan and Allan Crossland. He’d smashed Tommy’s head off one of the massive bins behind the dining hall; punched and kicked Allan down the big steps to the football pitch. He didn’t even remember why, if there had ever been a why.

  He couldn’t do this.

  When he arrived, he’d loitered at the back of the group while the others queued to check into their rooms. He’d been last off the bus, last off the helicopter, back of the line, out of sight. A bloke he’d assumed to be Gavin Hutchison was talking to people as they waited around the reception area, accompanied by a woman he recognised but couldn’t put a name to. Caroline sounded plausible but he wasn’t sure it was quite right.

  ‘Catherine’ he heard someone call her. That was it. She was saying hello to everybody, individually, while Hutchison was cherry-picking longer conversations. Davie’s stomach hollowed with the understandi
ng that she’d inevitably get to him, and when she did, this charmed spell of anonymity would forcibly be broken. It seemed crazy, but he felt scared.

  Actually, maybe it wasn’t that crazy. In the days when he knew these people, he’d always been scared. The difference now was that he’d learned responses more sophisticated than sticking a boot in their faces. He exercised one of them then, slipping away quietly to the toilets and waiting there until the voices died and everyone had dispersed.

  More sophisticated, yes, but not much more constructive. It would be easier later, at the party, he’d told himself. And it probably would have been, if only he’d had the front to go downstairs and enter the bloody thing.

  Still the jacket sat there, but he knew he wasn’t putting it back on.

  Coming here at all had been a mistake, he thought, then retracted that. It had been right to try. Better to make the trip and find the gates closed than spend the rest of your life wondering. He could go home to Collette and the kids now and never look back again. Wasn’t that what he’d wanted anyway?

  Then there was a knock at the door, causing him to sit up straight. He didn’t reply, relieved the TV wasn’t on any more. They’d go away in a minute. No-one knew he was here, so whoever it was had the wrong room.

  The knock was repeated.

  ‘David?’ called a female voice, tentative, nervous, like she might run away if he did open the door. ‘David Murdoch?’

  Which changed everything. She knew he was in there, knew who was in there. Taking a deep breath, he got up and opened the door. She didn’t run away. They stood and stared for a long second, mutually aware of there being no going back now that they had seen each other.

  ‘Can I come in?’ she asked eventually.

  Davie searched for the right way of saying yes but failed to find one involving words. A bewildered nod and a standing aside served in lieu. She walked in but didn’t seem any less awkward than had she stayed out in the corridor.

  ‘Catherine, isn’t it?’ he managed.

  ‘Catherine O’Rourke,’ she confirmed. Something fell into place.

  ‘You’re the … I mean, you’re “RSVP Catherine O’Rourke, Clamour PR”.’

  ‘That’s right. Business unavoidably mixed with pleasure. Except that you didn’t.’

  ‘Didn’t what?’

  ‘RSVP.’

  ‘I know. Sorry, I—’

  Catherine was effusive in heading off his apology, appalled that he thought she was chiding him. ‘No, no, I’m just saying. I had no idea you’d be here until I saw you in the lobby earlier. Then you disappeared. I thought I’d catch up with you later, but you didn’t materialise at the party, so …’ She bit her lip, devoid of the professionally affable poise she’d shown downstairs. There was something going on here that Davie didn’t get.

  ‘So what, are you contractually obliged to say hello to everybody on the guest list, no matter where they are?’ he asked. The atmosphere badly needed humour, but his own awkwardness sabotaged his delivery. Accompanied by such a faltering apology for a smile, it could as easily have been a put-down.

  She reciprocated with an equally unconvincing attempt.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘But I was aware that you hadn’t appeared at the ballroom tonight, and I was wondering …’ She sat down on the edge of his bed and sighed, blowing air through her lips like a pressure valve. She looked up at him for a moment, then looked away again as she spoke.

  ‘I was wondering why you had come all this way and then not shown up at the party, so I thought I should see whether there was something wrong. Then I remembered your vanishing act at reception and it struck me that if there was something wrong and you didn’t want to see anybody, the solution wasn’t for me to go bothering you.’

  Davie felt there was an obligation to acknowledge the obvious and invite an explanation.

  ‘But you did anyway.’

  She nodded. ‘You couldn’t face them, could you?’ she asked.

  He shook his head.

  ‘But somehow you feel you must.’

  Davie nodded, this time with a half-decent smile in reward for her perceptiveness.

  ‘Well, same goes for me,’ she explained, making what was obviously a testing effort to look him in the face. Whatever was going on, he still wasn’t getting it.

  ‘You couldn’t face them?’ he asked.

  ‘I couldn’t face you.’

  Davie was lost. He moved his jacket to one side and sat down opposite the bed.

  He remembered Catherine O’Rourke. It was hard not to: she’d been one of the most attractive girls in the school, and he couldn’t imagine her getting kicked out of anyone’s bed for farting these days either. He recalled the name now as much as the face, a necessary adjunct to changing-room sexual discussion. A byword for beauty, lust and impossible desires, as much as his had doubtless been for violence, anger and fear. What he didn’t remember was ever having any kind of interaction with her whatsoever.

  (Unless)

  ‘None of the others know you’re here,’ she told him. ‘Or that you’re missing, rather. You weren’t on that big guest list in the lobby.’

  ‘Oh yeah, because I didn’t RSVP,’ he replied, smiling, further confused but half-hopeful that she was changing the subject.

  ‘No, because you were never on it,’ she explained, apologetically.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘It’s Gavin’s party, you see. He submitted a list of names to me, and yours wasn’t one of them. Please don’t be offended.’

  After watching her sit there, so portentously burdened, Davie couldn’t help but laugh that this was what had been worrying her.

  ‘Never bother,’ he said. ‘I wouldnae want me at my school reunion. Why d’you think I’m skulkin’ aboot up here?’ He looked in her face for the appropriate smile of relief but, perplexingly, it wasn’t forthcoming.

  ‘So who invited me?’ he asked. ‘You?’

  ‘Well, not quite. My PA came in kind of sheepishly one morning and told me Gavin’s wife, Simone, had phoned to request that invitations go out to a couple of people he hadn’t put on his list. One of them was you. She also asked that Gavin be kept in the dark about it. The two of them aren’t the most happily married couple in the world.’

  ‘Why me?’

  ‘She was mischief-making, I think. She invited you and Matthew Black because Gavin specifically didn’t want either of you here.’

  ‘Gavin didn’t invite Matt Black? Me I can understand, but I mean—’

  ‘I brought it up myself when I saw the list. He was afraid there’d be tabloid reporters crawling all over the place if it got out that Matt Black was coming, and he said he could do without the resort getting drug-party headlines before it had even opened.’

  ‘But you went ahead with Simone’s requests, anyway. Both of them.’

  Catherine nodded.

  ‘Even though she’d have no way of knowing if you hadn’t.’

  She nodded again, this time biting her lip once more. Davie still wasn’t getting it, but suspected whatever ‘it’ was, he was heading in its direction.

  ‘Like I said, Matt I can understand,’ he continued. ‘He’s a big star and everybody would want to see him on the off-chance he turned up. But why me, Catherine?’

  (Unless)

  ‘This isn’t easy for me,’ she said. She ran a hand through her hair, as though composure without would substitute for composure within. ‘Even when I approved the invitations, I suppose I thought it would make no difference, as you weren’t likely to travel all the way from America just for this. I didn’t hear back from you, so I’d got used to the idea that you wouldn’t be coming and I wouldn’t need to have this conversation after all. Then boom, there you were in the lobby.

  ‘When you didn’t appear at the party I was sort of relieved, but then I realised that if I didn’t talk to you now, I’d be carrying this around for the rest of my life.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘What is it, Cather
ine?’ Davie asked softly.

  She took a breath.

  Then what sounded like a volley of gunfire beat her to breaking the silence. They looked at each other suddenly, then burst out laughing at the fright they’d got, the noise having broken the growing tension in the room.

  ‘God,’ she said, holding a hand to her chest. ‘Fireworks. I thought for a moment—’

  The noise repeated itself, then again, then more frequently. Screams could be heard mutedly through the windows. Davie got to his feet and reached for the sliding door to the balcony. The crackling bursts and the sounds of hysteria became clearer as soon as he pushed the panel back a few inches.

  ‘Jesus fuckin’ Christ, what’s gaun’ on?’

  He moved rapidly to the edge of the balcony, Catherine emerging just behind him. As soon as he caught a glimpse of the scene below, he pushed her back and ducked out of sight himself.

  They scuttled inside, bowed low, and tumbled to the floor together once they were through the doorway. Tears were forming in Catherine’s terrified eyes as the sounds of screams and gunshots continued to rise from the terrace. Her mouth attempted to shape words but got nowhere.

  ‘Wh – what are we going to do?’ she managed in a broken whisper.

  Davie climbed to his feet and looked around the room, though for what he wasn’t sure. He’d left his big book of escaping from terrorist situations at home. Hide, was the first answer that came to mind, but it seemed like a poorly defined concept. He needed specifics.

  ‘We’ve got to get out of here, that’s for starters. We’re like rats in a trap. Come on.’