2. And Taxes
two
And Taxes
One Week Before I Die
“Good evening detectives and sleuthers, it’s Gary Runcorn with this week’s episode of Unalive on Air. Brought to you all the way from the cozy, cramped, slightly pungent studio here at Swindon Sounds.
“On tonight’s schedule, we’re going to be re-examining an old case—the case of ‘The Old Dairy Disappearance’—and looking at whether a recent unexplained tragedy can shine light on what happened in the past.
“Now, if you remember about a year ago, I spoke about a farmer who mysteriously vanished along with his entire herd amid a money laundering scandal.
The grade two listed dairy site remained untouched in the north London suburb of Cockfosters for thirty years, until very recently when developers Clawson and Stoker bought the plot and started renovation work.
But that work was quickly abandoned when the gruesome body of a contractor was discovered one morning.
“I know what you’re thinking, thirty years is a long time, there’s no way to know if those two incidents are connected. But here’s what I’ve found out so far, and why I think there might just be more to it than meets the eye . . .”
“Replace me with what?”
I’m desperately trying not to yell. Heat rises in my body like mercury in a glass thermometer. It’s already bypassed my feet, my knees, my hips. Now the level’s somewhere around my belly button.
Barry Prestwich massages his temples and puffs out a breath, which shares both the volume and duration of a hot air balloon burner. “Music, Gary, music. Nobody tunes into the radio to listen to murder mysteries any more.”
Yes, yes, yes, Barry and Gary. It’s hilarious. Or so everyone tells us. Apparently it’s even funnier because the person on air right after me is named Terry. A slant rhyme at best, but these are the types of folk I’m forced to cooperate with on an almost daily basis.
Typically, I’m not the type of guy who gets angry. For the most part, I’m a level?headed, reasonable fella. I have a thinking brain and I actually enjoy using it. I like reason and data and critical analysis, and let’s just say it usually takes a lot to arouse anger in me.
However, right now, I’m pissed.
“Unalive on Air is a true crime show, Barry, not a fucking Jessica Fletcher Cabot Cove cosy drama. These are real bodies, real people, real killers, real stakes.”
Over the couple of years I’ve been broadcasting, I’ve helped to solve . . . okay, not hundreds, not even tens, but a few cold cases. Sadly, not all of them murders, but more than one of my “cases” has led to a conviction. How many amateur sleuthers can say that?
Unalive on Air isn’t just a two?a.m. radio show, it’s a public service.
Barry sucks his teeth, attempting to dislodge something from between his incisor and canine with his tongue.
“Then get a podcast, Gaz. People aren’t tuning into the radio any more to listen to some middle-aged ding-dong prattle on about nothing.
Especially not in the middle of the night on a fucking Monday when they’re either all asleep because it’s a school night, or they’re students and they’re pissed or stoned or .
. . what’s the trendy drug all the kids do these days?
” He removes his glasses, huffs on them, and scrubs the lenses on his shirt.
“Molly?” I suggest unhelpfully.
It’s weird seeing Barry’s features without his face furniture. His eyes seem so . . . regular sized. He’s long?sighted and his spectacles give him gigantic cartoonlike eyes. In complete contrast, my short?sighted vision is so bad that through my glasses my eyes appear as tiny grey pinpricks.
“Isn’t molly E?” he asks, sliding his spectacles back on and blinking enormous orbs at me.
“It is. Perhaps you’re thinking of ket, then?”
“As in ketamine? Horse tranquilizers?!” He doesn’t give me a chance to answer him. “I’m so glad I grew up in the seventies when none of this shit existed. In any case, Gaz, folks these days don’t want to be listening to the Tale of the Evil Cow Murderer.”
I mentally zip my mouth shut. Barry Prestwich often forgets that the internet exists and that other people understand how to operate it, and that Barry Prestwich’s halcyon days are well documented in a series of increasingly inflammatory photos, and are very, very accessible should someone simply type his name into any available search engine.
Also, I cannot stress just how fucking much I can’t fucking stand the nickname Gaz. Gaz, Gazzy, Gazza. They can all get in the sea, along with whatever mouth dropped them.
“Clearly people are tuning in,” I argue. “You did, or how else would you know I did a show about a dairy farm?”
“It’s my job to make sure all the content is compliant with station regulations.” Barry leans back in his chair and props his feet onto an upturned wastepaper basket. He has one of those fancy, high-backed, genuine-leather chairs. Important chairs for important people only.
I’m currently perched on a piece of office equipment that resembles a pair of toothpicks and some dental floss and has probably been pilfered straight from a skip.
It no longer has the up-down lever function, it barely spins, and one wheel has some kind of toupee-adjacent detritus wrapped around the axle, rendering the entire thing about as useful as a glass privacy door.
“It’s also my job to review the stats for each show,” Barry continues. “And yours is . . . Jesus, Gaz, it’s not good.”
I had known this. Known for a while, actually, but I’d been too frightened to look into the exact specifics. “How ‘not good’ are we talking?”
Barry removes his glasses and cleans them again. He either has chip fat in his eyebrows, or he’s buying himself thinking time. He heaves out another weighty sigh. “It’s the worst performing show currently airing on Swindon Sounds.”
There has to be a reason for that. “Well, I mean—”
“And I’m talking about the whole of Swindon Sounds. The entire station, not just Monday nights. You’re pulling in worse listener numbers than Eglentina and the vocal gymnastics of her tropical aviary.”
I scrunch up my face as though that will help shield me from the shame. I’m performing less well than a bunch of screaming macaws and their bird-brained owner, who coincidentally occupies the two-hour slot before mine.
“Last Monday you barely pulled in a dozen listeners. I checked the numbers, Gaz. Double checked them, in fact.”
“It’s just the time of day,” I argue. “If I were to be given an earlier airing, say afternoon . . . I’m sure . . . it wouldn’t be so—”
“And your catch-up listens have been worse.”
Fuck.
Fuckity fuck fuck.
In the past, I’d dabbled with a podcast or two. Though I never quite found my footing. Never truly discovered my audience, I guess.
Not that I’m looking to shift the blame for my failures, but I’d often wondered how much of this was down to my inability to gain any social media traction or following.
And when I say traction, I mean literally any presence at all.
The whole shebang scares the living shit out of me.
The thought of having to portray myself in the flesh to the wider world is nothing short of nightmare material.
So I’d never bothered. No Instagram, no TikTok, no Facebook, and especially, especially no YouTube.
One time, a friend of a friend of a friend needed to fill an empty slot in his programming on a city-wide radio station. I was told they were getting desperate, and Barry “things were different in my day” Prestwich had invited me to slide temporarily into the Monday night graveyard opening.
“I don’t care what you talk about or what music you play, I just need the schedule filled. It’s two hours, can you manage that?” he’d said to me.
“I have an idea to do a true crime type programme. Taking old unsolved murders and missing persons cases and . . . solving them essentially. I’d like to call it Unalive on Air,” I’d replied.
Barry had slapped his hands together. “Bloody brilliant. I love it. We’ll sort you out with a salary. It won’t be much, mind, but every little thing helps. Let’s book you in for the next month on a trial basis and review things down the road. What do you say?”
That was two years ago. The pending review never came.
Unless, of course, I counted all the four a.m. happenstance encounters with the man in the station’s kitchenette.
He’d always be wearing his sweaty plastic clogs with no socks, ladling creamer into his coffee, and telling me, “Great episode, Gaz, but let’s try something a little more engaging next week. ”
“I can’t fiddle the figures,” Barry says. “I can only document them and submit them to the producers, and when it comes to it, argue your case, but they want you gone. The higher ups. The station bosses.”
“Can I at least just—”
“No.”
“What about—”
“Nope. Listen, Gazza, I’ve been through the fucking mill with them.
They wanted to get rid of you ages ago, and I’ve fought in your corner for too long now.
You’re a decent bloke and I like you, but this ain’t what’s pulling in the listeners.
The execs are gonna give you one last episode.
It’ll air next Monday, and then you’re on your own. ”
I suck in a breath, a “but” right on the crest of my tongue. I swallow it. What’s the point? It’s static inside my brain, like the fuzzy, crackling buzz between FM stations. I slide my fingertips under my glasses and bury my eyes behind them while I try to lower my adrenaline.
“Sure,” I say, instead of spewing out any of the knee-jerk insults I’d been brewing.
“The good news is, with no station affiliations, you’re free to start up your own podcast.”
“Yep,” I say from between my palms.
“Only . . .”
I pull my hands away. “Only?”
“Only you can’t use any of the IP connected to the programme. The name Unalive on Air and the logo belong to Swindon Sounds, and if you use either on another venture, you will open yourself up to a world of legal ramifications.”