Utterly Monkey (22 page)

‘Right…What happens if there
is
stuff in the report that impacts on the bid?’ Danny was thinking
what a fucking waste of time.

‘Well, it’s like you said, there were no deal-breakers in it.’ He could detect a smirk in Freeman’s voice. ‘So can you manage to take the offer document to the printers? You won’t get yourself locked in the cab or anything?’

Danny grinned at the side of his head, ready for the partner to look up and smile, but instead Freeman just stood there, facing the door, and staring up at the numbers lighting and fading as the lift descended. Danny smothered an urge to elbow him in the back of the head.

‘Sure, I can do that.’

‘Good. Adam Vyse rang me earlier to see how we were getting on and he said you should take it down. Good experience for you. Adam’s overseeing the bid logistics tomorrow morning.’

Tom Howard was sitting at the oval meeting table in Freeman’s office, papers fanned out in front of him. He was a handsome, cleanly-drawn man in his late forties with the slightly dampened demeanour of a person reformed–alcohol, Danny thought, or possibly gambling–but the heat of his smile when Danny approached made it obvious that Howard detested Freeman as much as he did. The partner bobbed like a spring at his elbow, and thrust Danny’s report back at him. ‘Make two copies of this.’

Ignoring him, Howard reached over the table and offered his hand to Danny.

‘Tom Howard.’

‘Danny Williams.’ Howard had a businessman’s practised grip.

‘You’ve been over in
Belfast
, I hear.’

He said it like Belfast was just south of Baghdad.

‘That’s right, doing the due diligence.’

‘That where you got the shiner?’

‘Oh no, nothing like that.’ Danny raised his hand to his eye. There was still a slight puffiness.

‘Anything to worry about in the contracts?’

‘Not really. A few small points you should be aware of. They seemed a good team over there.’ Danny lifted his report off the desk.

Freeman snorted, ‘Tom, couple of issues we actually
do
need to resolve this evening…I’m concerned…’–he sat down at the table opposite Howard and thrust out his hands to hold an invisible bowl–‘…about capital.’ Howard nodded thoughtfully. Freeman gently shook his bowl a few times.

‘I’ll go and make some copies of this,’ Danny said, brandishing his report. As he moved to the door, Howard glanced over at him a little fearfully. The look reminded Danny of something. In the corridor he realized it was the standard look that the abused wife in a soap opera gives the policeman, unable to speak but aware that his imminent departure will leave her alone with her husband.

Security rang through to tell Danny the cab had arrived. The bid–all 173 pages of it–was ring-bound with a plastic coil. He put the blue folder containing it into his leather satchel. The bottle of Bush was nearly empty. He shook it and then squeezed it into the bag alongside the folder. It was 2.37 a.m. He wanted a cigarette. The problem with taxis at this time in the morning was the talkative drivers. Normally his cabbies were terse and polite but in the early mornings, when most fares were presumably trying to fight or fuck or puke in the back of their vehicles, the drivers would invariably want to chat to a sober passenger. Sometimes it was pleasant. Often it was not. The driver would frequently describe a detailed legal case involving a relative. And then ask your opinion. Danny climbed into the cab.

‘Evening…Borough is it? You know the road?’

‘Marshal Street. 224 Marshal Street.’

‘Yeah I know it. Bermondsey side.’

Danny leant back against the seat. The driver pulled away from the kerb.

‘You working late then?’

‘Unfortunately.’

‘What? Big court case is it?’

‘No, not really, a takeover.’

‘Oh yes?’

‘Yep.’

They were driving down Ludgate Hill. Small grey clouds massed on the horizon below an impassive moon. The streets were shrink-wrapped and glossy so it must have rained. There was a cold breeze coming in through his window so he shut it. The lights went red and the cab pulled to a stop. There was no one about. Danny listened as the timer for the green man frantically tick-tick-ticked.

‘You get in a fight?’

‘Smashed my head on a chair,’ Danny said. He could change the story. It was his choice.

‘You drunk?’ the driver continued.

‘No, just clumsy,’ Danny said apologetically.

‘You Scottish?’ This driver has a nice line in question formation, Danny thought, as he accidentally made eye contact with him in the rearview mirror. Both looked away immediately.

‘Northern Irish.’ Danny was trying to unscrew the cap from the bottle of Bush without the driver noticing.

‘Really? My mum’s Northern Irish. Lives in Cardiff now though.’

‘Right.’

‘She’s from Donaghadee.’

Danny kept silent.

‘We used to go there all the time when I was a little ’un. She used to have all these rhymes. Not rhymes. I don’t know what you’d call them. Sayings.
Augher, Clogher, Fivemiletown
. Funny things to teach kids.’

‘It’s a funny place.’

‘It’s a
lovely
place. The Northern Irish are really friendly to tourists.’

‘Just not to each other.’ The driver wasn’t listening.

‘She used to say to us
If I weren’t so Ballymena with my Ballymoney
…’

‘I’d build a Ballycastle for my Ballyholm. I know that one.’

The lights had changed and they still weren’t moving.

‘It’s green now,’ Danny said, trying to sound relaxed but feeling absolutely crushed. It was almost three in the morning and he was reciting nursery rhymes in a cab. He shouldn’t be doing this job. He shouldn’t be making so much money for banks and corporations; and for himself. He earned more than a doctor. He should have
been
a doctor.

‘You over here long then?’

‘About eight years I suppose. In London for five.’

‘You like it? Very different I suppose.’

‘It’s okay. I’ve too much work.’ The standard response. Danny felt bored by himself.

‘I picked a girl up last week. Twenty-one she was, and she’d been working three days on the trot. No sleep.’

‘From Monks?’

‘No, one of the others. The one over by London Wall. What do you call it? Crazy bunch you lot. Can’t be good for you. I said to her,
You’ll wreck your health love
…’

‘Yeah.’

‘Look at me. What age do you reckon I am?’

The man looked about fifty.

‘Forty?’

‘Fifty. I’m fifty years of age. No one can believe it. And you know why I look like this? No stress. I work when I want to. Or when I need the money. And then when I don’t, I play golf.’

‘That’s a good life.’

‘No, it’s not. It’s rubbish. I told my son,
You study so you don’t have to drive a poxy cab all day. You get good grades and you’ll end up in a nice office, have a career
.’

‘What does your son do?’

‘He’s a fireman. Marshal Street, did you say son?’

‘Right.’

Danny had lost track of the sense of the conversation. He felt he was being obscurely tricked. They were crossing the Blackfriars Bridge. He wanted to get out and walk. London looked best from the river. Seeing the city sliced into cross sections gave you a sense of distance and scale. They were heading to a place called Lion Printers. Danny was thinking about tomorrow morning. He would have to get up, go to work, and take shit from Vyse. He was delivering a bid that would get people sacked. Margaret and Lillian. Jack Shannon. And another few thousand besides. He was the instrument of their demise. The team and the client would go out for a meal if their bid was successful, and he would have to watch Vyse gloating and grinning in victory. The taxi had reached Borough now. The nervous flicker of a TV played on the window of someone’s first floor flat. A white man in a long black coat was walking very fast along the pavement. They
stopped at more lights. The driver started singing, in a surprisingly mellow voice.

‘
I wish I was in Carrickfergus, only for nights in Ballygrand.

I would swim over the deepest oceans, the deepest oceans to be by your side
.’

His head tilted to allow him to make eye contact with Danny in the rearview mirror.

‘She used to sing that as well, my mum. Lovely song that.’

‘It is.’ Jesus Christ, Danny thought, I’m about to start crying. I am very unhappy. I am an unhappy person. The taxi driver went on talking.

‘You know, the last time I drove through Borough at night I saw a fox.’

‘There’s a lot of them about.’ Danny drew the tissue from the pocket of his jeans and quietly blew his nose.

‘No there isn’t. That’s the only time I’ve ever seen…Marshal, Marshal, here we are.’

They turned left into a narrow one-way street.

‘It’s along here somewhere. There’s 18, 22, what’s the number again?’

‘224. It’s called Lion Printers.’

‘Must be way up the other end.’

The street was lined with huge buildings, gyms and lofts and art galleries converted from workhouses, tanneries, factories. It was a valley of industrial death. This was what was left of Victorian Britain: this ironwork of gates and fire escapes crawling over the regimented brickwork, an orderly world where Christian salvation could be reached through a solid work ethic. But Danny didn’t believe in God. And he had lost his faith in work. He
heard himself speak. ‘Actually mate, can you take me back towards the office?’

‘You forgotten something?’

‘Yeah I have.’

He was wasting his life.
Let someone else do it
. The cab took a sharp left into another alley and turned again back towards the river. The buildings thinned and then they were out onto the wide thoroughfare of Blackfriars Road. As they crossed onto the bridge again Danny leaned forward and asked the driver to pull up for a minute.

‘Are you going to be sick? No puking in the cab son. Fifty quid to get it valeted.’

‘I’m not going be sick. I just need you to stop for a second, okay?’

‘Well…no puking in the cab. Or boking, that’s what my mum calls it. No boking.’

The cab pulled up in the middle of the bridge and Danny got out, carrying his satchel. The driver wound down his window.

‘You’re not depressed are you son? Not as bad as all that is it?’

‘No, I’m fine. Just want a breath of air. I’ll be two minutes.’

‘Take as long as you fancy. Meter’s running.’

Danny lifted the bottle of Bush and the blue folder out of his bag. He unscrewed the whiskey and tipped the few drops that were left over the side, into the Thames. Then he wedged the empty bottle under his arm and opened the ring-bound folder. The first few pages of the bid fluttered and he ripped them off. He dropped the folder on the pavement and rolled the pages up before
pushing them into the bottle. Their whiteness darkened where they touched the wet sides. He screwed the lid back on tightly and held it over the side by the neck, swinging it like a pendulum. And then he let it go. One second, two seconds. A remote splash sounded. He watched for the bottle to bob back up before it passed under the bridge but it didn’t. It was making him dizzy looking down into the water. There was a breeze lifting off the river that brought the smell of the whiskey on his hands up to his face. He lifted the folder off the pavement, peeled the top sheet from the rest of the bid, and let go. It flickered away and then swung down to the water. He ripped off another. And then he whipped off a flurry of them, five or six, and they turned and wheeled like paper planes. It seemed an age before they reached the water, patching it for a second with wet white squares before they were carried out of sight. He opened the ring binder and emptied the rest of the paper over the side in a clump but before it hit the river the wind caught it, and broke it up into a stream of frantic doves. And then they were gone.

He turned around, still holding the empty blue folder. The bemused cabbie was staring at him out through the open window.

‘Should you have done that son?’

‘Yeah…It had a mistake.’

He climbed back in.

‘Could you take me home? Sofia Road? Off Kingsland?’

‘You’re the boss…You going to be all right?’

When Danny stepped out of the cab by his flat, his legs almost gave under him. He was fucked. He had done
something irrevocable, something unfixable The bid must be halfway to Deptford by now. Everything flowed. If he’d delivered the offer to the printers, Margaret and Lillian would have lost their jobs. He preferred not to deliver it. It would have been like sacking his aunties. It had suddenly seemed pretty simple. He didn’t
have
to deliver it. To pretend there were no other options was the easiest thing in the world. He got a monthly salary, not to mention free gym membership, health insurance, a private pension plan and subsidized canteen food, to compensate him
for
pretending. He got business cards to carry in the jacket pocket over his heart, where soldiers used to keep their Bibles. There was an employment contract of course. But there were other obligations apart from those set down in twelve point font to be countersigned and dated. He could survive pretending his actions were small and complete in themselves but this was untrue. It was misstatement. Lawyers know about consequences. They know about loss and they know about fault. He had made so many mistakes. He could have helped Hughes.

Leaving a man dead or dying on the floor of his home. Which you’ve just broken into. He should look up
Allen’s Criminal Law
to check if the charge was murder or manslaughter. It would turn on intent. He was panicking now, and leaned into his stone gatepost to steady himself. The satchel slipped from his shoulder and he set it onto the wall. There was no going back to fix that or change this. He had left Hughes. And now he had fucked up the bid. He had, intentionally, fucked up the bid. He would be fired. And he would have to sell his flat. He might even be sued, and then maybe jailed. He had to calm down.

He would explain that he’d suddenly felt ill and needed to come home. And that then he’d passed out. Food poisoning. A safe bet. Overly graphic details. He remembered once ringing up his first trainer Jim and describing the colour of his imaginary vomit (pearly yellow) before spending the day in bed with Olivia. He would get all of this sorted. He would write out a list. He would have a large spliff and write out a list. He lifted his bag and walked towards the door. As he slipped his Yale key into the lock he was momentarily cheered by a sudden thought: Adam Vyse’s week would get off to a wonderfully shitty start.

He turned the key and pushed but the door snagged short. Geordie, the idiot, had slid the chain across. He turned to see the tail lights of the taxi wink out of the end of the street. He took his mobile from his satchel and tried Geordie’s number. As he waited for the call to get through he glanced up and down the road and became sharply aware of a sensation unusual in the city. He was utterly alone. Then he noticed a window was lit several doors down on the far side. Every residential street in London seemed to have its own insomniac, in the way that the best country estates used to boast a hermit secreted in their grounds, someone to live on in our absence. Each road also required a single extinguished streetlight, the puzzle of a broken chair on the pavement, and one locked-out tenant trying to wake his slumberous flatmate. Geordie’s mobile was turned off. He would have to shout. Pushing his head into the three-inch gap, he stage-whispered, in short syllabic bursts, ‘Geord.’

‘Jan.’

‘Geord.’

There was no response. The silver Ikea clock ticked in his hallway. A television was on somewhere but not in his flat. He tried again, louder this time.

‘Geordie.’

‘
Wake
up.’

This was ridiculous. First he was locked in and now he was locked out.

‘GEORDIE.’

A door scraped open and timidly Geordie asked, ‘Hello?’

‘Geordie, it’s Danny. I’m
here
. You put the fucking chain on.’

‘Shit, sorry mate.’

Geordie shut the door and opened it again the whole way. He was only wearing a pair of pants. ‘You’re back late. You get it all sorted out?’

‘Kind of. Are those my pants?’

‘Yeah, I ran out of clean clothes.’

Danny walked past him into the kitchen.

‘You want a cup of tea?’

‘Aye, all right. Everything okay?’

‘No, not really.’

Geordie nodded, crept into the boxroom and reappeared in the kitchen in one of Dan’s T-shirts and a pair of his tracksuit bottoms. He closed the kitchen door behind him very carefully. Janice was still asleep in the bed they’d made from the sofa’s cushions.