"But before you do that, I need to borrow your pink pa.s.sport."
"My whatnow?" I tilted my head like a confused puppy.
"This place you go to. Bar Humbug. c.r.a.ppy name for a bar if you ask me."
"Are you on the turn, boss? I tell you, there"s someone out there for everyone, even someone of your- of your calibre."
"I"m not on the bleedin" turn. Psych found a reference to it, didn"t you?"
Simon turned up the snark. "Some forum - is that better, ginge, happy with that word, are you, forum? - some forum, some bitter young queen going all handbags. Said the Archivist was always propping up the bar at Humbug, had given him the brush-off there."
This was a plant, surely, I thought. Unless it was real actual honest journalism, in which case the Archivist could have been any one of a dozen bar-proppers I could recognise even if I couldn"t put a name to. I hoped St Paul"s weren"t trying to push the spotlight onto Quiff or someone. And then I realised that for all I knew Quiff was the Archivist. Maybe the whole secret squirrel thing could be run from there when Quiff fancied a drink. Maybe Quiff downed a special vodka and all the tables flipped over to the peep show.
All I could do was go along with whatever it was. I knew someone at the college was watching. I tried desperately not to peek at the camera and give it a little thumbs up.
"OK," I said, "so what"s the plan?"
"Me and you," said Geoff. "We go down and give it the once over."
"You need me for that? It"s not that big. And I"ve given it the once over more times than I care to remember."
"Well, you needn"t think I"m going to that place by myself."
I laughed. "Fine. Conor Geraghty, ace reporter, chaperone to the straights. First Manish and now you. Of course, you can"t go dressed like that."
"Like what?" He spread his arms and looked down. Pale blue shirt and a gut hanging over his slacks. I"d seen far worse, but it was worth the wind-up.
"Like that! We"ll have to butch you up a bit."
"Geoff," said Simon, cutting in. "Far be it from me to interrupt all this flirting, but if we"re done, can I borrow you for a moment?"
"You"re just stealing him from me now, so you can have your wicked way with him on the fire escape. And I thought it was me you liked." I turned to Manish, who was enjoying this. "Men! They"re all b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. You mark my words, Twiglet."
"Enough," said Geoff. "Clear off back to your desks."
The two Londoners disappeared into a secret huddle out of sight, and I tried not to climb the walls in panic. All in hand, said the Archivist, or his shy blond representative on Earth with all the hands, and I had to trust him. Surely with their network gizmo it should"ve been the work of seconds to insert a seek-and-destroy virus that hopped between the computers taking an axe to the log files? But then most of my knowledge about this sort of thing came from TV shows and films where the pa.s.sword was always guessed on the second try and everything looked and sounded like a fairground ride, and when it went wrong the computers exploded as if they had a tank full of petrol.
I thought maybe I should mosey on over to Simon"s computer and at least try to look for something. I"d just got as far as telling myself not to be such a c.o.c.king idiot when they bounced back into the room, laughing and joking, and entirely failed to kill me. I took this as a good sign.
Geoff can barely walk ten metres without stopping for a rest and a cake, so he drove us across town, creeping in a few minutes ahead of the usual lunchtime traffic. It felt like getting in a teacher"s car at school, with the other kids looking and pointing and you turning crimson and rea.s.suring them that you"re not related and that no services were about to be rendered, for cash or grades or otherwise.
"So who runs this Humbug place?" he asked as we drove.
"A guy called Eddie," I said. The fewer words I allowed myself to say, I thought, the better. I clamped my mouth shut. It"s like talking to royalty: only speak when spoken to. "He"s decent enough." Shut up.
"Fancy him, do you? Or have you had him already?"
"No, and no," I said, slowly.
"Not ticked him off your list?"
"I don"t have a list. n.o.body has a list."
He laughed. "Not so mouthy, are you, ginge, without Twiglet to flash your teeth at."
"I see where you"re going with that, Geoff, and you"re wrong."
"You"d be all over him given six pints and a head start. Go on, admit it."
I couldn"t tell whether this was the usual office wind-up or something else, goading me into revealing more than I ought, something he could use against me.
"Sounds like your fantasy, Geoff, not mine."
"f.u.c.k off," he said, with the extended syllables of denial, and let it go.
We turned left into a road slicing between some shops and a pub, and approached a bridge.
"How many gay guys do you actually know?" I asked. "I"m guessing, now correct me if I"m wrong, that you don"t have that many gay friends."
"The wife knows one. Lifeguard where she goes swimming. She reckons he"d only save the men."
"Yeah, that"s right, cos it"s a well-known fact that straight boy lifeguards only save women."
I caught a quick glimpse to the left of some rowers out on the river, and another crew outside their boathouse with their boat over their heads.
"This chip you"ve got on your shoulder," said Geoff. "You always had it?"
"Why, are you hungry? They do nuts at the bar." I wasn"t in the mood to tell him my life story.
"Seriously. Lose the att.i.tude."
We drove through the trees past Midsummer Common. I remembered my chat with Seb beside the bridge I could just see in the distance, and his story, and what Geoff had done to his family.
"I think it"s a very healthy att.i.tude," I said. "You can"t be a journalist without a cynical soul and a thick skin."
"And you can"t be a journalist without making a mistake every now and then."
We turned right at a roundabout. Was this trip a pretext for a chat about looking into his past? Would we claim the last s.p.a.ce on the car park roof before a tussle to the death? The story ending with a ginger smear on the ground, or a crushed marrow, or both?
"What do you think about the immigration story, ginge? Right or wrong?"
I took a deep breath. "It looks like a story," I said. It certainly did: that was the plan. Baiting the race-baiters. Giving them a shovel and an X on the dirt and hinting at gold.
"You"d put your by-line on it?"
If I did you"d take it right off again, I thought.
We slowed for some traffic lights. A coach came roaring past.
"More immigrants," he said, laughing, and I did too.
I answered his question. "I- well, if it holds up I"d put my by-line on it. Might be-" Don"t say made up, don"t say made up. "Might be a misunderstanding. Might be all above board. Might have to spike it, go back to the story about the missing tenners or the car impaled on the traffic bollard."
"Yeah. Easy, ain"t it, this newspaper business." He laughed again, but I didn"t laugh this time.
We queued, and looped up inside the multi-storey to the roof, and we didn"t tussle, and neither of us ended up a little worse for wear on the pavement. We took the lift down and toddled at tourist pace towards Humbug.
I was glad that Geoff didn"t mention the Cambridge Union as we pa.s.sed by. I hoped he"d forgotten all about the mysterious man with his mysterious tip and his mysterious non-p.i.s.sing-over-the-balcony.
The surreality of being in a car and on foot with Geoff paled into nothing compared to his appearance in a gay bar. He stood just inside the entrance, arms crossed, piggy eyes narrowed towards doggy, sniffing in the place.
Humbug was in its daytime mode so the aroma was mostly martinis, coffees and nappies. There was a small collection of those off to our left. The long bar was freshly polished. Behind it, Eddie frowned at some mechanical part in his hand that by all accounts should still have been attached to the coffee machine. Quiff sat, as antic.i.p.ated, in Quiff"s usual chair, wearing Quiff"s usual hat. To Quiff"s usual left, just one of the high tables in the bar was occupied: by Seb. My heart leapt out of my chest and ran screaming from the building.
It wasn"t Seb"s typical fashion selection. He"d normally wear something from the current decade, at least. This was older, greyer, half a size too small. Dark grey shoes. No socks. As we walked in he didn"t look up, and he didn"t look round. He simply stared out of the window and held a coffee cup by his mouth with both hands.
Normally of course I"d have rushed up, said h.e.l.lo, and offered him some witty banter and my body, not necessarily in that order. But with the fashion police about to arrest him for crimes against humanity and with Geoff at my side, not a chance. This was a St Paul"s operation, no doubt about that. At least one of the CCTV cameras was surely patched straight through to the Archivist, who right now was probably sitting in an enormous leather armchair stroking a fluffy white undergraduate. Unless it was Quiff.
"You"re buying," I said to Geoff and walked to the bar. "Have you broken that machine, Eddie? I"ll need a strong one. This is my boss, Geoff." I smirked as Eddie looked over. "He"s all yours."
Eddie scanned Geoff up and down. "Should I go and order in all the pies?"
"I"ll have an expresso," said Geoff.
"What was that, darling? An expresso? I think we might be all out of expressos. They went very very quickly." He laughed. "I could do you an espresso though. An esss-presss-o."
"Whatever," said Geoff, not altogether feeling the humour. "And whatever ginge wants, and a gag for yourself."
"A gag?" Eddie stage-whispered to me behind a hand: "Forward, your boss, isn"t he?"
I was beginning to enjoy this little adventure out of the office.
"Who"s this fella?" Geoff asked me, indicating Quiff. "Is he here all the time?"
"He can speak, you know," said Quiff. "I don"t believe I"ve had the, uh...?"
I smiled to Quiff. "I think he"s asking you, do you come here often?"
Geoff stuck out a hand towards him. "The name"s Geoff Burnett. I"m the editor of the Bugle."
Quiff shook daintily and then wiped his hand unconsciously on his purple chinos. He didn"t give his name, I noticed, and I wasn"t going to volunteer it.
"I"ve said before, I"m not talking about my operation again," he said. "Not with you, and not with any newspaper."
At that last word I heard a clatter behind me: Seb"s coffee cup rattled in its saucer. I looked round, as did Geoff. Seb sat studying the shop opposite carefully as if nothing had happened. I began to see what might be going on here.
Geoff turned back to Quiff. "I"m not interested in your bleedin" operation, mate. Unless it went wrong. Did it go wrong?"
"They all say that, love, until they find out."
"Listen. I want to know what"s going on." The words had the menace of something that usually comes just after "This is the police" and just before the door flies off its hinges.
"You"ll have to enlighten me, dear." Quiff straightened his furry hat. "I gave up the crystal ball several years ago. There was no future in it."
"I"m talking about-"
"Espresso for sir," said Eddie, pushing a small cup Geoff"s way. "Be careful, with your hands you"re like the Incredible Hulk. Except, you know," that stage whisper again, "in retirement. And a black one for you, Conor dear, wasn"t it? Fussy much?" He stroked his right eyebrow with a little finger.
Geoff was getting impatient. "When you queers have finished playing f.u.c.king mother."
"I think you"ll find the f.u.c.king mothers are over that side of the room, dear." He pointed to the gaggle with babies in the corner. "And enough of the queers, if you don"t mind, or I"ll have you barred from every pub in town." Said with a charming smile, as always.
"Enough," said Geoff, as if these people worked for him.
I swear the smile on my face was about a mile wide.
He continued: "This is about St Paul"s, and that Flowers geezer."
Seb"s coffee cup rattled again.
"Flowers geezer?" said Eddie. "You mean a florist? We do get a couple of florists in here. Strange boys. Two pansies short of an arrangement, you might say. I think it"s the pollen. Right up the nose." He rubbed a finger across his nose and sniffed hard.
"Shut the f.u.c.k up, Doreen, or whatever your name is," said Geoff. "St Paul"s College. Spencer Flowers. Illegal immigration. Tell me everything you know."
Seb"s coffee cup rattled for a third time and he climbed down noisily from the stool. He called out "I- I must-" in a strong Chinese accent, pointing outside, and moved hurriedly towards the door.
This got Geoff"s attention. "Hey! Wait!" he cried. "Do you know anything about St Paul"s? Stop for a couple of seconds."
Seb attempted to hide his face: and Geoff was sold.
"Come back! Conor - after him."
Seb was outside and running. I followed, knowing that I mustn"t catch him, at least not anywhere Geoff could see. Seb did the right thing, skidding off to the side at the end of the alley and up towards the market. Even on a Tuesday lunchtime it"d be full of stalls and full of people, easy to hide in. Before I lost sight of Humbug I checked back: Geoff was puffing along in pursuit. I could hardly call it hot pursuit. More like a hot pursuit you"ve forgotten about and only come back to five minutes later. The kind of pursuit that"s not even hot enough to dunk a biscuit in.
Seb was way too fast for me, crashing along between a couple of bikes and a couple of baby buggies, looking like he"d taken a wrong turn in the Communist Party hundred metre sprint. Decent pair of legs on the guy. Not that I"d noticed before, mind. I saw him stop by the market and spin round and wave to make sure I could see him, and then dip into the stalls somewhere between the forty-nine varieties of soap and the Cambridge-branded tea towels that were almost identical to the Oxford-branded tea towels and the London-branded tea towels.
When I finally caught up with him he was standing by a pile of sculptures made out of sc.r.a.p metal, testing a finger against a buffed edge.
"Fancy dress is it?" I panted, hands on knees. "Almost got a glimpse of ankle there. Careful, you might set me off."
"I found that quite invigorating," he said, not out of breath in the slightest, the git. "It should pique Burnett"s interest, at least."
"What happens now? Do I wrestle you to the ground and accidentally kiss you?" I stood up straight and blew hard. "Jeez, I need the gym."
"Now you go back and tell him you lost me."
"Right. I should"ve guessed it"d be my fault."
Seb smiled. "I shall speak to you later."