Chapter 26
Jonny rips off his earphones. ‘Shit. Ungood. Triple-plus ungood.’ He pulls his bag out and starts scrabbling through it.
‘Do you have another one?’
‘Of course I have another one.’ He’s got a small black object in his hand and is tweaking bits of it, trying to hook it up to his computer, typing to unhook the computer from the software of the last microphone with his free hand.
‘But I don’t have a third one, so if you could all try your hardest not to destroy this one, I would be super-grateful. ’
‘Who delivers it?’
‘Can’t be me, Wallace knows my face already,’ I say. ‘Can’t be Em, if the manager’s on the lookout for her. Can’t be you, Jonny. Elle?’
Elle twists her hands. ‘I’m really not a natural.’
‘You’ll be fine.’
‘I don’t have the clothes.’
The manager passes the table, shouting about the late-morning spot quiz they’re about to have, themed on the Alan Partridge canon.
He gives us a suspicious look – either that, or I’m suspicious that he’s looking suspicious.
He seems to have recognised Em somehow, even though she’s shoved a jumper back over her apron and pulled out her ponytail.
He keeps cruising past, and eventually he’s gone. We go back to working out what the hell to do.
‘Elle, it has to be you. You’re the only one who hasn’t already been spotted or raised suspicion.’
She plants her face in her hands. ‘What’s the cover? I can’t just go in and say I forgot to leave this microphone here.’
‘It just needs to be somewhere inconspicuous,’ says Jonny. Somewhere nobody will even think of touching for the rest of the meal.’
‘There’s a big old sideboard,’ says Em. ‘It’s got a load of old plates on it, looks like nobody’s moved them for years. You could hide the new mic behind one of those.’
‘Is it sensitive enough, Jonny?’
‘MI5 use these mics. As long as nobody runs a tap over it, it’ll be fine,’ says Jonny, not entirely managing to conceal his bitterness.
‘Apparently it’s not the only highly sensitive part of our team.’
‘Leave it, Em. Can I take those clothes off you?’
‘No.’
Em’s right. The barman is gazing out from behind the counter with an abstract but faintly troubled air, and shows no signs of going anywhere. If Em stands up, he’ll spot her apron and start asking questions.
‘Guys, we don’t have long to sort this out,’ says Jonny. ‘Can we just—’
‘Yes! God, yes. I’ll think of something. For the record, I’m really uncomfortable, everyone.’ And so, with no proper costume, no cover story, and looking as nervous as a piglet touring a sausage factory, Elle takes the microphone and walks towards the stairs.
We now go live to our correspondent on the first floor:
[Door opening sound effect.]
VANE: But that’s just the sort of thing you always said he was … Sorry, love, can we help you?
ELLE: Oh, hi, I’m just trying to, um …
Oh, God. She’s screwing it up. She sounds pathetically nervous.
VANE: Have we accidentally reserved the wrong room?
ELLE: Sorry?
VANE: Because we appear to have booked the centre of Piccadilly fucking Circus.
ELLE: I don’t—
VANE: First it’s that girl with the flowers, then it’s the wine, then it’s Terry saying hello, then the teenager asking about the food when we’ve only just got our menu, and now you.
Do you know why people book private rooms?
So they can get a bit of fucking privacy.
There is a sign on the door, if you can read.
WESTCOTT: Leave her alone, Con.
VANE: No, this is ridiculous. We’re here for a meeting. What do you want?
ELLE: Do I look like I work here? If you can keep a civil tongue in your head for five seconds, I’ll explain, you patronising shit.
[Downstairs, Jonny’s eyes widen. So do Em’s. So do mine.]
VANE: Excuse me?
ELLE: And by the way, I don’t think it’s a great look for a sitting MP, and a relatively senior one at that, to be swearing at a young woman, especially one who’s recording this conversation on her phone.
[Stunned silence both upstairs and down at this one.]
ELLE: Now, if you don’t mind, I was here last night for a party.
We booked this room and I left my watch over …
[Footsteps, rifling noises. The doors of the sideboard open and close.
] … over here . There. Was that so hard?
And now I’ll leave you to your dick-measuring contest or whatever it is you’re up to, you misogynist worms.
[More footsteps, back towards the door.]
VANE: Excuse me … excuse me. Look, I think I should explain. My friends and I are meeting here because we’ve been bereaved recently. I’m sorry for speaking out of turn.
ELLE: You’re lucky I’m in a good mood.
VANE: But you won’t play that to anyone, will—
[Door slams.]
Thirty seconds later, Elle rejoins us at the table.
‘That was amazing,’ says Em. ‘Where did you get that from?’
‘I just pretended I was you,’ says Elle.
‘Oh, babe.’
‘Can we focus?’ Jonny gestures at his headphones.
We all re-insert our earbuds and start paying attention to the conversation upstairs.
VANE: … thing is, if you apologise to people like that, they just go one step further and start asking you to resign. They’re absolutely unbearable. She’s probably never voted in her life. Just as well.
HAWTHORNE: At least you handled it with dignity.
VANE: People like that are the reason you can’t say anything to anyone any more. Fucking prudes. Like all Becky’s friends. Listen to this. She had some of her uni chums round last night, right? And all I say, all I say to them is—
WESTCOTT: Can we start our actual business here?
[Assorted grumblings coalescing around ‘yeah, all right’.
] Right. Thank you. As you know, we have to have the meeting of the Balham Brats today.
We’ll get to signing the official paperwork later.
But we have something much more important to do first, something the five of us – now four – have been working on for six months now.
VANE: All right, Ben, enough of the drama. We all know we’re serious about this.
WESTCOTT: Last autumn, you came to me with your selections. According to the rules of our organisation, we each had a hundred million to invest.
Holy shit. A hundred million pounds each? God. No wonder Davy wound up dead. If I was any of these guys, I’d probably have tried to bump off the other three too. It must have been one of them who did it. Or all of them. ￡25m each? Worth it.
WESTCOTT: So now I can present the results of our investment.
I knew it wasn’t a proper charity. I knew five men this powerful and corrupt must be up to something deep and dark.
All four of us lean in, ignoring everything around us.
Upstairs, Jonny’s ludicrously expensive microphone picks up the tiny sound of Ben Westcott clearing his throat, about to give us the evidence we need.