The Quorum (36 page)

Eventually, Dolar wound down and went to sleep. He rasped like a chainsaw. This was not the sort of thing that happened to Mark Amphlett. This, he realised with a profound coldness, was the sort of thing that happened to Neil Martin.

* * *

He woke in the night, and took a moment to remember where he was, to realise this was not a further nightmare. Someone else was in the cell, crouched by the sink, a shaft of light brushing his head. He was balding and bearded, dressed in what was once, a million years ago, a suit.

Mark hadn’t woken up. He was dreaming still.

Leaning into the light, the new prisoner showed his face. It was Mark’s own, obscured by a fuzz of beard, forehead and cheeks deeply creased. He held a pair of broken glasses.

‘I let Michael drive,’ the other Mark said, Somerset accent absurdly thick. ‘Neil and Mickey could handle ’en, I knew that. Wanted to clear off, with Pippa, I did.’

His own voice sounded different. Not the difference he heard when watching himself on TV. This was a stranger with his vocal cords. There was tiredness in every word.

‘I lost thic place. Noth’n ever come out right for I.’

The other Mark tried to fit his glasses together on his face but they kept falling apart.

‘I’s like they bloke in Neil’s books,’ he said, an idiotic sad smile appearing. ‘The Eternal Loser.’

From the shadows of the lower berth, Mark looked at himself. A crack of panic appeared in his dream, and he gripped the edges of the bunk, determined not to scream.

‘Neil done well for hisself, though,’ the other Mark said, with a horribly pathetic smile. ‘He deserves ’en, all the work he done.’

The other Mark’s neck was scrawny, dirt in the lines under his ears. His fingernails were blueing and broken.

‘Michael and Mickey too. Real talents, they.’

They couldn’t keep him in this cell much longer. He must go free soon.

Musing, the other Mark said, ‘Wonder whatever happened to thic Pippa?’

* * *

In the morning, he was woken by gargling. Dolar turned to Mark and looked seriously, disapprovingly. He stood hairily naked at the wash-basin.

‘I really think you should like reconsider your statements on Bill Burroughs...’

Mark turned his face to the wall. He considered praying. It had been a long time. They said Catholicism put a brand on your soul in infancy. He hadn’t thought much of his alleged religion since school. His sister Liza, pregnant and married at sixteen, had turned religious the way some people become drug addicts, and her occasional ill-spelled postcards - always asking for something - were full of ‘God’s Will’.

‘Burroughs really
understands
the way the world is put together, man. He knows all about the fish police from Jupiter.’

Mark looked up at the bottom of the upper berth and tried to construct Sally Rhodes’s face in his mind. He never had connected with her. Perhaps that was when it’d all begun to fall apart.

* * *

‘I’m afraid we can’t find you on the electoral register and all the numbers you gave us are unlisted.’

WPC Cotterill, who had the sort of face usually found advertising frozen foods, was apologetic. She understood he was an innocent passerby who had the misfortune to be involved in a riot. It was unspoken that they would forget him insulting a police officer if he forget the baton across his knees. Last night the Chief Constable of Greater London had made a law and order speech, promising the instigators of the Cranley Gardens Troubles would be duly punished. Stiff sentences were expected.

Mark recognised justice. In the end, he
was
guilty. If not for the Quorum, there wouldn’t have been a riot.

He hadn’t been charged so they’d have to let him go soon, he thought. WPC Cotterill kindly told him the Chief Constable was claiming the Prevention of Terrorism Act ought to apply, which meant the police could keep hold of suspects for weeks without making any formal case.

‘Terrorism?’

‘The English Liberation Front are a political faction.’

‘They looked like a bunch of obnoxious yobs to me.’

She asked him if he’d been fed properly. Would he like a cup of tea? Something to read?

‘I could do with a cell without a hot and cold running hippie.’

She smiled sympathetically and told him he was well off. Among the other arrestees were a vanload of ELF stormtroopers who embarrassingly bumped into a panda car fleeing the scene of the crime. He could be in with them.

‘You could phone Pippa’s parents. They live in Scotland. The number was in my wallet but I can’t remember it offhand. It’s in Edinburgh. 031 something...’

‘What’s his surname?’

His heart plunged. ‘McDonald.’

‘Anything more than Edinburgh?’

‘No. Sorry. Everyone calls Pippa’s Dad Jock, but I don’t think that’s his real name. It’s what they called him in the Army.’

She tried to look bright. ‘Not much use, I’m afraid. But we’ll try!’

* * *

Sure Dolar was asleep, he tiptoed to the toilet. Blissfully, his bladder let go of fifteen cups of police tea. He directed the stream at the porcelain rather than the water. The quiet swish didn’t wake his cellmate.

A low moan sounded out. Mark’s stream backed up, a crawl of urine clogging his urethra with a needle of pain.

He turned and saw himself huddled by the sink. Moonlight shone like a shaky halo around the battered figure. The black streaks on the other Mark’s face were blood. One eye was bruised shut, a network of barely scabbed cuts cobwebbing his cheek. His suit was ripped along its seams. Black splotches of blood marred the lapels. Tonight he didn’t speak, just keened like an animal and hugged his knees, rocking back and forth.

Mark sat on the cold floor and looked at himself.

‘Looks like we’re in the same boat,’ he said.

* * *

‘I tried the magazine you mentioned,’ WPC Cotterill said on Monday morning, ‘
The Shape?’

It was obvious she had never heard of it. He’d have to do something about market penetration.

‘Thank God. Did you talk with Laura-Leigh?’

She was puzzled. ‘They weren’t very helpful, I’m afraid. The girl thought I was asking for Mark Amphlett and said he wasn’t available.’

She was trying not to say they doubted he was who he said he was.

* * *

On Monday afternoon they let Dolar out. A patient woman -Janet of Planet Janet fame - came to collect him and ease him through the station, calming his outbursts, signing papers as if picking up a sheep worrier from the dog-pound.

‘Remember Bill Burroughs,’ Dolar shouted as a parting shot. ‘He’s the man who knows...’

Mark was left alone with his cold thoughts.

* * *

He imagined how many quadrillion McDonalds were listed in the Edinburgh area. He fantasised his saintly WPC calling all their numbers and asking for ‘Jock’.

The corridor outside the cells was quieter than it had been. On Saturday, ELF goons and looters had shouted and taunted each other. Now Mark was one of the last remaining arrestees in custody.

He couldn’t shake the cold out of his bones. The black ink on his fingertips seemed to have turned sticky. His knuckle ached under the weight of the Quorum Ring.

When a constable came round with tea and a slice of bread and butter, he gave him a message to relay to WPC Cotterill, asking her to call Sally Rhodes Security Services. As his employee, Sally could identify him and get him out of here. At last, he felt he had done something positive.

W
ith Ginny returning Melanie to the rich kiddery, he was alone in the house, pretending to tidy his desk, when the papers came. The regular deliverer, a sprightly and conscientious pensioner on a slave-wage from his newsagent son, rang the bell. He dawdled to the door

‘There’s prob’ly been a mistake,’ the pensioner said, holding up a
Basildon Echo.
‘I’ve never even
seen
this one before.’

‘No,’ Michael said, ‘that’s right. I put in a special order.’

The paper man looked at him askew. It was inconceivable anyone should forsake the
Ham and High
for a Basildon paper. Michael didn’t have to explain himself to a tradesman. Today, the
Echo
should run his letter of comment. That should settle the hash for good.

He had spent a full day drafting and redrafting a rebuttal of the infamous Gary Gaunt slurs. He’d read and reread Gaunt’s original review (much more detailed and waffle-headed than his Worst of Year mention) and could answer it on every point. He’d culled testimonial quotes from real newspapers. To the accusation that he was a ‘toothless Tom Sharpe’, he had an ultimate counter: an approving write-up
by
Tom Sharpe, from one of the Sunday heavies. He’d been tempted to photostat his dental records. Nothing wrong with his choppers.

The
Echo
lay on his desk. Its front page headline declared ‘School Teacher Retires’. Hardly a circulation-grabber. ‘Inside: Full Jumble Sale Details’. His lip curled in a practised sneer.

He wanted to savour the moment. In the kitchen, he made himself a Quorum coffee. Midnight black with a swirl of cream. Mark invented it on New Year’s Day in 1975, experimenting with Michael’s parents’ percolator. They’d vowed to standardise their coffee-drinking habits. Before, Michael had taken instant with milk and sugar and liked it.

As he returned to the study, the long-case clock chimed half past ten. By now, he should be three and a quarter pages into a day’s work. He hadn’t even touched the computer. Last week, with the moves and the fading gasp of holiday chaos, he’d only managed a few hours (four pages). Later, he could catch up. If needs be, he could amphetamine through the night.

After a swallow of caffeine, he looked through the
Echo
. Dull as day-old dishwater. Gardening, charity, weddings, funerals. When a Basildonian died, an obit could be headed ‘Another One Gone, And a Good Job Too’.

After last week’s show, there’d been a gaggle of whine-ins from the Basildon area. Satire? We don’t do that here, guv.

At last: Letters to the Editor.

‘Letter of the Week’ was from S.M. Charles, who was disturbed by ‘our slide towards a godless society in our attitude to the monarchy’. For that, No Sex Charles got the editor’s weekly basket of fruit, from Constantinou’s High Street Grocer. Next up was a platitudinous screed from a retired colonel with a drastic solution to the crisis in the former Yugoslavia. Yup, bomb the blighters!

For a moment, he thought the
Echo
hadn’t printed his letter. Then, crammed between a stack of ads for lawnmowers and fanbelts, he found it. Headlined ‘I’m Not Crap, Author Writes’, his letter was reduced to ‘Dear Sir, while Gary Gaunt is entitled to his opinion of my novel
Ken Sington
(Real Press, £17.99), I should like to point out it has been enjoyed by many. Sincerely, Michael Dixon.’ His original had been three pages of close argument.

‘Our Reviewer replies,’
the paper continued in italics, ‘
Bestsellers are a funny breed. Mike (Friend of Basildon) Dixon regularly tops charts but have you met anyone who admitted to reading his books? He sells because he’s on telly, especially around Christmas when people buy books they don’t have to read themselves.
As
a critic, I
did
have to read
Ken Sington.
Anything I do to spare others undue suffering is worthwhile.’

Michael hated being called ‘Mike’.

* * *

Fuming, he prowled through the house. For Christmas, his sister had given the family a set of six ‘unbreakable’ mugs. Now, he decided, was the time to put them to the test.

They bounced cheerily off the tile kitchen floor with no ill effects. He went upstairs and pitched one out of the window, aiming for the wall at the end of the garden. The mug ricocheted intact into Ginny’s roses. Venturing outside, he unlocked the shed and selected tools.

He took out his workbench and, after anchoring its legs with bricks, put a mug in the vice. He spun the handle and the vice exerted its grip. He imagined Gary Gaunt’s albino toad head in it. His wrist hurt, but after as many turns as he could manage the mug still wasn’t cracked. With a hammer, he battered. The handle snapped but the main body of the utensil would not be breached. Blows resounded.

Finally, he took out the heavy firewood axe. He swung it and missed. The blade caromed off the iron lip of the vice. With his second try, he scored a direct hit. The
faux
unbreakable mug crunched into fragments. He hadn’t even had to use the chainsaw.

If Candace still had the receipt, she could get a refund.

* * *

After five phone calls, he obtained a number for Tom Sharpe. Newspapers, publishers and agents were all willing to help Michael Dixon. It was one of the advantages of being well-known.

As he stabbed out the number, he felt a crescendo of triumph. He was really achieving something. To his frustration, a machine answered. He left a long message, humbly asking Tom to put his thoughts on
Ken Sington
in a letter and send them to the
Basildon Echo
to counter vile slanders issued by said nauseating rag. He didn’t assume to put words in the mouth of an accomplished wit, but ventured to suggest a few choice phrases that came to mind.

Though the machine beeped and cut him off before he’d quite finished, he felt satisfied. Gaunt could hardly argue with his idol, Tom Dickens-of-the-Day Sharpe. That should settle his smug little bunny-eyed hash. Yes indeedy. And it’s a big goodnight from Al Bino.

Actually, Sharpe was over-rated. The comparison kept coming up and Michael resented it. If he weren’t a familiar TV face, he’d be reviewed better. If he were just a novelist, he’d be held as at least Sharpe’s equal. The cosy critical community that ruled the literary world had a prejudice against television, a greater prejudice against anything popular or successful. In Britain, they hate people who are too bloody clever. Doing one thing well was bad enough, but doing two or three was showoffy. Liliputian intellects like Gary Gaunt always gathered to pull down giants.