Games Makers: A London Satire

by Andrew Calcutt

In the morning, Dinky logs on and gets straight to it.

  I am a writer, right, going to write my way out, write a way through, write myself into the centre of things.

  He's logged onto his Twitter account. Fires the first one off straightaway, without a second's thought: Brutal,bloody and degrading.The spectacle I shall make of myself will not be pretty,but it will be true to the way we live now.

  Tweet.

  It's out there immediately, the first indication that Dinky is up to something. But what is he up to? And who's going to know? Does he even have any followers? Until now only a handful of people have ever read his tweets (though that may be about to change).

  He's typing again. Not so fast this time.

  Shall we go then,you and I,to launch ourselves into eternity?

  Tweet.

  Come on, Dinky, you mean you haven’t decided yet?

  It’s make your mind up time, Boyo, or people are going to get bored.

  Swang off with me,and we will explode together,me and the other me that’s looking at me all the time.

  Tweet.

  ‘Swang’? Oh, really? I suppose that’s something you do with your ‘wang’, is it? It’s not for you to make up words, y’know. Dr Johnson, you ain’t.

  Like two pirates dropped from the gallows at the same time.

  Tweet.

  Now that’s more like it. Anything to do with Pirates of the Caribbean, got to be good. You know they were filming in Greenwich a few months ago, and Johnny Depp turned up at a primary school that was doing a project on pirates. Top man.

  Tappety-tap-tap. No, it’s not Blind Pew from Treasure Island, but the sound of Dinky’s fingers on the keyboard, rattling away again: tappety-tuppety-tap. Chirpy, chirpy, tweet, tweet.

  I would be the ambassador, mediator, host.

  Tweet.

  I’m sure you would, mate. Don’t we all want to be Jesus Christ?

  In the destruction I shall cause,you and you and you,will be connected through me. That is the best I Tweet.

  That’s really the best you can do? Certainly not the best at counting, are you? Even when it tells you how many you’ve got left, you can't manage to stay inside 140 characters. Duuh!

  Not that I want nirvana for myself. Just a clear night's sleep every night and wake up to a good cup of coffee.

  Tweet.

  And you expect us to believe that? You expect us to be interested in you when that’s all you want out of life? And death. Y’ know, life and death really matter to some people.

  COME AGAIN, LAD. I’M SURE YOU CAN DO BETTER THAN

  THAT.

  I never asked to be Judas. Neither did he. I would prefer to stay a crazy dumbsaint,but I cannot return the cold stare of the stars.

  Tweet.

  Too bloody cryptic, mate. Too clever by half. Just give it to ’em straight. Here, I'll do one for you: Boom! Boom! Lights are going out in London town.

  People are dying. Tony Skance thinks he has planned a PR stunt, but he doesn’t know Dinky Dutta will be doing it for real.

  Tweet.

  Better, much better. Now get on with the next one.

  Those women with bodies like grapes, their bodies will be crushed in the explosion. I will cause them to die so that London may live.

  Tweet.

  Way to go, Dinky. Tell it like it is. Tell them how it’s going to be. Anyone that’s listening, that is.

  (4) Locating the materials 

  Dinky has done the shopping. He dressed smart as if to take part in City-type activities, then went out to collect the bomb-making materials which, you must understand, are not to be made into a bomb; only the makings of an explosive, galvanising, London-wide, media-led experience.

  Enough adjectives for you to spot the difference?

  And now they – the ingredients of the bomb that isn’t going to be one, are safely stowed in a capacious sports bag; while he – Dinky, the pseudo-suicide bomber, is on an escalator coming up from the Jubilee Line at Canary Wharf.

  One among the stream of people flowing upwards to the mouth of the station. Walking out of the gunmetal grey atrium and back into sunlight. Once again, it’s a bright, bonny day.

  Turns right past Smollensky’s, then Carluccio’s (a couple of nervous customers on the terrace, meeting there for the pre-meeting before the board meeting that might cost them their contract), and into one of many underground shopping malls.

  Of course he’s on camera. On this estate, all the main thoroughfares are covered. But there’s nothing to make a security guard look twice, even if he happened to be looking. Why would anyone have doubts about a slim young man, coffee-coloured, elegant, carrying a sports bag and an over-the-shoulder laptop case, wearing a pink shirt and a grey suit?

  Nice camouflage, Dinky.

  Good call, discarding that shirt with the cutaway collar: would have put you back in 2009; stuck out a mile.

  An excellent choice, if I may say so, sir.

  First stop, first drop. Where, where, where?

  Promising, over there. It’s a bank branch closed for refurbishment – ‘we look forward to welcoming you to our new branch in December 2012’. With a hardboard partition at the front, extending out into the walkway, screening off the guys banging about inside. Except by the sound of it, there are no guys inside and no work going on right now.

  Right ho!

  So carry on walking. Don’t stop abruptly, then fumble finding a way in. Keep it smooth. Walk on until there’s a crossroads between two shopping corridors, then circle round the square and come back. Good. Now you can see the doorway on this side, can’t you? Conveniently open, with a space inside that’s nicely secluded.

  Silly idea: write an update of the Just William stories re-located to Docklands.

  This could be the Outlaws’ den!

  Back to business.

  Call out, ‘Hello?’, as if expecting to meet someone in there. But no, just as you thought, there’s no one there. Move quickly, then: push laptop bag behind you, so it’s resting on your back, out of the way. Take camera out of jacket pocket with left hand, turn on, lens cover opening – good. Sports bag on floor, unzip with right hand, remove the rectangular can containing one litre of acetone, place it on the floor near the entrance. Now move further in and turn around so that you are looking back through the opening. You should be able to see a row of shops, nicely framed, all the way down to Waitrose. Point the camera and just in the shot is a stack of those magazines they give away round here, Docklands Life, or something like that.

  The point is that the picture will show where it’s been taken, right? Nice big tin of Acetone (blue Helvetica letters, white background) set against Canary Wharf location, identifiable as such. All in the frame, yes? So press the button, feel the shot (slightest vibration). When the little light goes from red back to green – there you go, take it again. Now change the camera mode to check they came out all right. Fine. Both of them fine. Replace acetone can in sports bag. Camera turned off, returned to pocket.

  What’s to hang around for? Let’s go.

  And back into the stream of human traffic, gliding quietly along the polished floors. Walking with measured purpose; not stridently so.

  Put yourself in the shoes of the people around you. All of them doing a softly softly shuffle, no kerfuffle: people to see, deals to do – best done cool. So take your time, Dinky, enjoy looking around, clocking that cherry red handbag (Rupa would like it), and the wiggle in the walk of the woman in front.

  Nicey, nicey. Heh, heh, heh.

  Now there’s a bench, no one sitting on it, and next to it a bin marked ‘dry recyclables’. How convenient. Let’s be the first, shall we, and have a little sit down? This time I think we’ll have the contraband out of the sports bag first.

  Sulphuric acid, bottle of, out of the bag into the bin (one seamless movement – very good), which is thankfully almos
t full so the bottle can just rest on top of all the other stuff that’s in there. OK, now lean over the bin as if you’ve just dropped something into it that you didn’t mean to. Easily done. Happens all the time. Have a half-smile ready to play on your lips: my cufflink, my wedding ring (no, that’s overdoing it). O, what a fool I am. And while you’re peering in there for whatever it is, the camera should come to hand; and it should get turned on.

  Wow, baby! You really turn me on.

  What we want is close to a bird’s eye view, but not dead-on. Give it a bit of slant so you can see the bottle of acid in the centre of the top circle, and, on the side of the underlying cylinder – the bin, you idiot!, you should be able to read ‘dry recycl’.

  Doesn’t matter if the other letters are out of shot.

  It’s got the Canary Wharf colour scheme to clinch it.

  You are shooting in colour, aren’t you? Sorry, just checking.

  He is sweating now; pale and thin-lipped, like the ugly guy in Dog Day Afternoon. Unusual for Dinky, who is normally plumped up and ready for kissing.

  (Of course, Al Pacino – that’s who Dinky usually looks like. But a bit darker, and – not hard – taller).

  Anyway, the colour comes back into his cheeks as he rejoins the irregular army: patrolling the malls, avoiding eye contact, scanning each other occasionally, constantly checking their phones.

  You,re doing all right, Dinky. You,re doing all right. Only one more to go and you can sail away.

  Whoops! Where’s he gone? OK, we can see him again, now. He’s turned left off the mall into a white-tiled corridor. Sign above the swing doors says Exit and Parking, with a little squiggle next to Parking.

  Corridor goes straight for 10 metres, before a right turn, and a left shortly after; then a short stretch to the exit. Press Here to Exit, it says on a square pad next to a single door.

  Dinky presses it, the door opens, he doesn’t go through. (At least he knows it’s working – clever.) Instead he retraces his steps back to the right turn in the corridor (though now, for him coming back, it’s a left), where there is some sort of vending machine.

  Now we’re getting it. You put money in here to pay for car parking tickets or tokens. Something, anyhow, to swipe your vehicle through the barrier and out of the underground car park. But you don’t get to the actual car park this way, and it looks like this machine is rarely used, which means the corridor it’s situated in, is not much travelled, either.

  Well done, Dinky, another good location!

  With your nose for it, maybe a future for you in covert operations. Apply to MI5.

  You’d have to forget the arty farty stuff, though.

  He’s already three-quarters of the way through the routine; this time with hydrogen peroxide as the featured object, posed tellingly alongside the Docklands car parking ticket machine. Photos OK –

  check; returns camera to pocket. Might have been better to replace the hydrogen peroxide first: every second it’s in plain view is another moment of liability; but still, this is good work. Impressive. And we’re off.

  Except he isn’t. Instead of moving on, Dinky is getting more things out of the sports bag, and lining them up on the polished floor, in the space between the ticket machine and the left-hand sides of the corridor, where they intersect at the corner.

  Very discreet. With Dinky squatted down in front of them, it’s hard to make out what they are.

  But it doesn’t matter what they are. They shouldn’t be there, you shouldn’t be here, you bloody maniac!

  (5) Stir it up