The Dead Beat (4 page)

Billy crumpled his coffee cup into a bin and headed for the reception desk of the intensive care ward. Martha tagged along behind.

‘Look upset and follow my lead,’ Billy said.

He furrowed his brow and spoke to the nurse. This one was in her thirties, short hair, lip stud and Arabic tattoos.

‘We’re here to see our dad,’ Billy said. ‘I think he’s just been brought up from surgery. Gordon Harris. Our mum should be here already.’

‘She just went through,’ the woman said. She was immediately mothering him. She checked her screen. ‘He’s in room six, I’ll buzz you through.’

‘Thank you.’ Billy’s voice was earnest, troubled.

The security door clicked and he pulled it open.

So easy.

At the other side of the door, Billy shook his head. ‘Security in this place is terrible.’

They found room six.

Gordon didn’t look much different from earlier in the ambulance. Laid out on a bed, connected to various machines, bandages around his head, an oxygen mask over an opening at his mouth.

Samantha sat crying next to him, holding his limp hand. They stood watching her from the doorway. She let go of his hand, which fell to the bed. Then she slapped it.

‘You idiot,’ she said. ‘I hate you for this.’

She slapped his hand again, twice.

Martha stage-coughed. Samantha turned slowly, unashamed.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘Just wanted to see how Gordon was doing,’ Martha said.

She introduced Billy. She could see him switching on a small MP3 recorder in his pocket, the green light winking. He sat next to Samantha with the recorder nearest to her and put his hand on top of hers.

Billy spoke quietly to her and she replied in stops and starts, angry and confused and distressed. He comforted her. Martha watched them in a daze. This was what it meant to be a news reporter, secretly recording a conversation with a woman as she sat weeping next to her husband in a coma. Martha had spent three years studying the theories and skills of journalism, but never once pictured a scenario like this. Maybe she was just naïve. She felt a tremble in her stomach as Billy and Samantha whispered to each other.

She came round to the other side of the bed and stood next to the heart-rate monitor. She could smell antiseptic and that adhesive you get on plasters. Here was a man who had destroyed his own head trying to end it all, and he smelt like a kid with a grazed knee. She breathed deeply, wanted to get a scent of death or destruction into her lungs, but there was nothing. She closed her eyes. Pictured Gordon sitting up, casually unwrapping the bandages from his head. She realised she didn’t even know what he looked like when he had all his face. All she could picture was the raw, bloody flesh where his nose should be, the empty eye socket, red and angry and accusing.

She opened her eyes.

Billy patted Samantha’s hand and gave her a business card.

‘If you need anything, Samantha, anything at all, just get in touch. Please. Gordon is a good friend.’

 She nodded and sniffed as Billy got up, angling his head for them to leave.

‘Let’s hear it, then.’

Martha was in McNeil’s office, a large glass box at the back of the building overlooking the Crags. She didn’t know his first name and no one had used ‘Mister’ when referring to him, just McNeil. He was in his fifties, white hair, broken nose. Solid, no bullshit. He was the editor of the
Standard
.

Also in the office were Billy and a woman Martha was introduced to as Rose, veteran crime reporter on the
Standard
. Rose was a handsome woman, maybe hitting fifty, curvy in a red blouse, matching heels and big gold hoop earrings. Martha liked her immediately.

She lifted the Walkman from her bag and McNeil raised his hand.

‘Wait, what the hell is that?’

‘A Sony Walkman.’

‘What I meant to ask was what fucking decade is this? Have I slipped back in time and emerged in the early nineties?’

‘It’s all I have,’ Martha said.

‘Give it here,’ McNeil said.

She handed it over. She had rewound the tape to the start of the side when she got back to her desk, or rather Gordon’s desk. V had greeted her with wide eyes as she slumped in her seat, already up to speed thanks to a call from Billy.

‘I covered for you,’ V said. ‘Christ on a bike, though. Pastyface, huh?’

Billy had come over a couple of minutes later.

‘McNeil wants to see you.’

‘McNeil?’

‘Your boss.’

Martha looked at V.

V made a shooing motion with both hands, a theatrical gesture. ‘Shit, girlfriend, go talk to McNeil. This could be a break. I don’t really need a work experience here, I can do three jobs at once. I’ve been doing that for months anyhoo.’

Billy pointed at the Walkman on the desk. ‘Bring that.’

McNeil was turning it round in his hands now. ‘Shit the bed, it’s heavy, eh?’ He flipped the tape slot open then snapped it closed. Fiddled with the back, removed the battery cover then slid it back in. ‘Is it at the start of the tape?’

Martha nodded.

McNeil pressed Play and they all listened.

The sound of her own voice was disconcerting, too high and squeaky. She was glad that she’d been polite. She listened to Gordon’s voice. He was shitting himself, she could hear it.

As she listened, she was replaying the whole conversation in her memory, already burned in there for ever. The others in the room were once removed from it, just voices on an old cassette, but she was right back there, at the desk, scribbling her crappy shorthand, gazing at the mess of V’s desk, wondering when this nutter was going to get off the phone so she could relax.

But she couldn’t relax. Then or now. She was tensing up in the office, aware of what was coming, the climax of it, the brutal snapping of this chain of words being casually spilled onto magnetic tape. Rearranging the ions. She was gripping the strap of her bag tightly, holding her breath, her jaw sore from clenching her teeth.

Bang.

She jumped all over again.

Everyone else in the room tensed as well. They were all uselessly staring at the Walkman sitting on McNeil’s desk. The tape spools kept turning. Martha thought that was indecent – didn’t they know what had just happened? Didn’t they know it was over? They should stop out of respect.

‘Shit,’ McNeil said.

Rose and Billy shook their heads.

Martha heard her own voice swearing on the tape, shouting down the line. Then calling on Billy. This was Groundhog Day, living it over and over. It had only happened this morning and it was already a myth, cemented into her life. She tried to imagine telling this story twenty years from now around a middle-aged dinner party. She couldn’t. Too personal, too private, she would be exposing too much of herself.

The four of them stood in silence, just the hiss of the cassette, a tiny creak of its old motor mechanism. McNeil reached forward and switched it off.

He turned to Rose. ‘Well?’

She shook her head, still staring at the Walkman.

‘Shit,’ she said. ‘Gordon. I can’t believe it.’

‘You knew him pretty well, right?’ Billy said.

Rose looked at him. ‘A long, long time ago. Haven’t had anything to do with him recently.’

Something in her voice made Martha think that wasn’t the whole truth.

‘What do you think?’ McNeil asked her. ‘Any angle I’m missing?’

Rose frowned. ‘It’s not news. Except maybe the gun.’

‘Yeah, that’s what I figured,’ McNeil said. ‘You happy for Billy the Kid to keep tabs on it for now?’

Rose looked at Billy. There was something between the two of them. A closeness. A kindness, maybe.

‘Yeah, that’s fine.’

McNeil turned to Billy. ‘OK, hotshot, keep in touch with the cops about the gun and let us know if you hear anything. But don’t let it get in the way of your regular work with the evening paper.’

McNeil looked at his watch, a chunky silver thing. ‘Balls, I have a meeting upstairs with some management in nappies. We’re done here.’ He turned to Martha. ‘Thanks for bringing this to me.’ Something seemed to occur to him. ‘Are you all right? I mean, the shock and that.’

Martha nodded as she picked up the Walkman and put it back in her bag.

McNeil turned to Billy. ‘This could be the start of your rehabilitation, Billy boy, don’t fuck it up.’

He turned to Martha. ‘And you’re work experience, yeah?’

Martha nodded.

McNeil gave a dry smile. ‘Well, it seems we need cover on the obit desk for a while.’

‘I suppose,’ Martha said.

‘Keep in touch with Billy on this. You never know, could turn into something. And both of you report to Rose if you discover anything. Understand?’

They both nodded, like schoolkids being told off.

Martha glanced at Rose, who looked like she was somewhere else, frowning to herself.

‘Now, all of you get out my office,’ McNeil said. ‘I have to go and explain to some quisling fucks how to run a newspaper.’

Martha and Billy stood outside McNeil’s office.

‘What did he mean about your rehabilitation?’ Martha said.

Billy looked at his watch. ‘I’ll tell you another time.’

Martha shook her head. ‘International man of mystery, eh?’

Rose came out the office behind them.

‘Billy, I’m just heading home, my shift’s over. You need me to pick up anything on the way?’

‘No thanks, I’m fine.’

‘OK, see you back at the flat, then.’

Rose still looked like she was fretting over something. Martha watched her go. She had a great figure for someone kicking fifty. Martha turned to Billy.

‘You live with her?’

‘Not like that.’

Martha smiled, on the wind-up. ‘Like what? I never said anything.’

‘But I know what you were thinking.’

‘She’s a good-looking cougar right enough.’

‘Stop it.’

‘Into the MILF thing, yeah?’

‘I said stop.’ A serious tone in his voice, she’d touched a nerve. ‘I’m sleeping in her spare room. Rose helped me out when I needed it. You have no idea. She’s a good friend.’

‘OK.’

‘I only met you six hours ago and you’ve already got me into some crazy shit.’

‘I already got us both a possible news story, you mean.’

Billy shook his head. ‘Just go back to your desk and write some nice obituaries, OK?’

So that’s what Martha did.

Despite V’s claims from earlier, deadline was approaching and they didn’t have the pages properly laid out yet. Martha chased one of the freelancers and got copy in, then began subbing it onto the page. Standard eight-hundred-worder on some retired old colonel. It seemed like the vast majority of their obits were ex-army officers who’d seen out their last years shooting animals on Highland estates. Lots of pictures of old guys with whiskers standing next to mounted deer heads and the like. Martha wondered why they didn’t do obits of ordinary people. It seemed like a last bastion of class snobbery – only the well-to-do were worthy of having their lives laid out for the ever dwindling readership to pore over as they sipped their morning tea or mid-afternoon Pimm’s or whatever.

V got her letters pages finished early and helped out with the last scraps of stuff to do, all the fiddly stuff which seemed to take much longer than it should’ve. Then at 7.53 p.m. the pages were fixed and sent, and Martha and V leaned back in their chairs like old pros and made puffing noises.

‘Some first day on the job, huh?’ V said.

‘Yeah.’

‘That thing with Pastyface was fucked up.’

‘Yeah.’

V reached into her desk drawer and pulled out a tartan Thermos flask, the kind that old grannies use. She unscrewed it and took a long, showy drink, then wiped her mouth and the rim of the flask and handed it over.

‘Maker’s Mark,’ she said. ‘Proper bourbon. None of that Jack Daniel’s crap.’

Martha took the flask and looked round the office. It was busier now than earlier, but still only about half the desks were occupied. Billy was at his desk, tapping away.

‘Drinking on the job?’ Martha said to V.

She shrugged. ‘Whatever gets you through the nightmare, missy.’

Martha took a slow pull from the flask and felt the heat rising in her. She passed the flask back.

‘What’s the deal with Billy over there?’

‘The original gangster.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘You don’t know?’

Martha shrugged.

‘Don’t you read the papers, Fluke?’ V took a swig from the flask and handed it over. ‘I thought you wanted to be a news reporter? I suppose this was a couple of years ago, you might’ve still been in short pants back then.’

Martha took a drink.

V leaned in. ‘Well, it’s not like me to gossip, but that’s Billy Blackmore. Ring any bells?’

‘Not really.’

‘I’ll give you a clue. Trainee crime reporter for the
Evening Standard
. Hit and run. Killed a crime lord. Got involved with the widow. Started a gangland feud.’

Martha’s eyes widened. ‘That was him?’

V smiled. ‘Oh yeah. Our pretty little paper tried to play it down, but the tabloids went to town on him.’

‘Shouldn’t he be in prison?’

V tapped her nose. ‘Prosecution fell through. Some misfiled paperwork, if you believe that bullshit. I think our Billy got very lucky or had friends in high places. Nobody gave a shit that a few drug dealers were dead. I think they were secretly happy that he’d done the city a public service.’

‘And he’s back working here?’

‘More friends in high places. He’s fucking that big tart Rose Brown on the crime desk.’

‘He says he’s not.’

‘He would. And she knows McNeil really well, if you catch my drift. So they took him back on. Mind, they gave him the shittiest job in the whole building, and that includes the poor sap who has to clean the toilets after I’ve been in there. Penance, I guess.’

Martha stared at Billy as she took the flask from V. She sipped and burned. Thought about Billy and Rose, about car crashes and injuries.

V took the flask back and screwed the lid on.

‘Speaking of the toilets, I’m away for a colossal dump then off to the gym. I need to be in tip-top shape for my next bout. It’s tomorrow, you should come. Here.’ She raked about in her drawer, pulled out a flyer and handed it over. ‘Bring the original gangster, he looks like he could do with a night out. It could be your first date, how romantic.’

‘Shut up,’ Martha said as she folded the flyer into her pocket.

V pulled on her coat. ‘You not leaving?’

Martha looked at Billy then back at V. ‘I’ll hang around for a bit.’

V sucked her teeth and made for the bogs.

‘The girl likes a bad boy,’ she said. ‘Shit, I can relate.’