h.e.l.lo. Promising.
He met my eyes. "Please."
I held on for a second and then let go of his arm and put the notebook away. "Fine, have it your way. You bought me a mojito, I"m off duty for this round at least."
"Thank you."
There was a brief silence.
"So, you come here often?" I said.
Finally, he smiled. A true smile with some eye crinkle, a bit of tension loosened.
"That"s better. You have a decent smile. I"m not nervous, I"m Irish. If there"s a gap I fill it. Not that sort of gap. Not always, anyways. Are you going to say anything or do I have to talk all night?"
Seb quietly and deliberately sucked hard on the straw in his mojito. The ice shimmered and shifted and I saw him begin to relax as the alcohol bit and worked its magic. I took a long draw of my own, and struggled to keep my stupid mouth zipped. Rule one: STFU.
"I confess I was unsure," he began hesitantly, "whether it would be you at the Union or your editor Mr Burnett."
"Geoff doesn"t do Friday nights. Or any nights. We"re not that sort of paper. We"re barely any sort of paper."
"I wondered whether he might want the scoop for himself rather than delegate it to you."
"Ah, well, there are scoops and there are scoops. And this wasn"t a scoop. It was a potential scoop, just a tip-off. Believe me, if it grew into something he"d be undelegating the h.e.l.l out of it."
Seb stared at his drink and mashed the ice with his straw. Someone behind me was smoking a cigarette and boasting, and if the lit end got any closer to my face he"d be boasting about my elbow in his kidney.
"Come on," I urged. "I"m off duty. No notepad, no wires. I sit naked before you. Don"t go all shy on me now."
"It is not a matter of shyness, Conor." He met my eyes again: dark, intense, black sambuca chasers.
"What then? Don"t make me use the word inscrutable."
He blinked, then smiled sarcastically and flipped me the finger - and that"s when I knew I was getting somewhere. But he said: "To be honest: there is no scoop. There is no story."
I didn"t have an itch but I scratched the back of my head anyway. "You know, I could"ve stayed at home tonight. Watched a bit of news and Corrie, put my feet up with a zombie book. Maybe a glug of whisky in my tea to make the pain go away. Instead I was sent to, frankly, the dullest debate since Jeremy Kyle did curtains, and got kicked out on my a.r.s.e for some minor photography. And then you dragged me here to this h.e.l.l-hole-"
"You dragged me, I think," Seb interrupted.
"True, but-"
"And you are here every Friday."
"That"s as maybe. Wait-"
"And now you wonder why you have never seen me here."
"Yeah, so how-"
"I thought you wanted me to do the talking?"
Neither of us spoke for a few seconds. I frowned at him. "Who are you?" I asked.
"Your round, I think."
"Oh, no," I said. "I know that trick. I may be naive and innocent but you can"t pull that one on me. I"ve seen the movies. Cut to me at the bar, picking up another couple of mojitos, turning round, and poof! you"ve disappeared. And then a hot Swede comes up and delivers a line really badly about whether that drink"s for him, and I fast forward a couple of minutes to the good bits. Or maybe I"m getting confused with something else."
"I am perfectly happy to buy another round."
"Right, now you want to own me," I said with a grin. "It"ll take more than two mojitos to own me, mysterious guy who calls himself Seb. About three more, for future reference. Listen: if you go to the bar, I"ll give you the money."
I dug out some cash and kept as close an eye on Seb as I could while he went for the drinks. He might still make a run for it, I knew, in fact I thought it was pretty likely, but I could see both entrances to Humbug and had a decent speed on me, mojitos or no. I kept trying to fool myself I had the upper hand, even though the only piece of dirt I"d squeezed out of him so far was about a certain Mr Conor Geraghty. Got a great story for you, Geoff: reporter gets kicked out of Union and is played like a banjo. No, no source on the record. Fired, you say? What a coincidence!
I lost sight of him amongst the crowds at the bar - many familiar faces, who might also know Seb, which would explain how he knew I was always at Humbug when I"d never seen him. Or maybe I just hadn"t noticed him.
The sound system notched up a few decibels: some new manufactured anthem or other.
I pulled out my phone to attempt some research, but I had nothing to go on. I had no photo to send to any sources for identification, not that I had many sources. All I could throw at the internet was "Seb" or "Seb Cambridge" or "Seb Union" and they wouldn"t get me anywhere. If anyone at Humbug did know him, I had no idea who. As for that guy at the Union he waved to, Kermit or Mr Snuffleupagus or whoever the h.e.l.l: not a d.a.m.n clue.
I imagined myself sprinting down the alley after Seb screaming just tell me your name like an infatuated teen crushing on the high school jock.
He finally reappeared from behind a bouncer - walking, not running, and even better carrying a tray full of mojitos. It looked like he"d bought the third round to save time, and I fancied him even more. Thankfully he hadn"t snagged a fresh catch of hangers-on. I knew what these guys were like, hooking onto any unaccompanied man and flapping about begging for sc.r.a.ps. I knew what they were like because I was pretty much one of them.
"I took the liberty," he said, placing the tray of minty goodness on the table.
"Are you trying to get me drunk, Sebastian? It is Sebastian, isn"t it?" It was time to push for some answers while I could still hope to remember them.
"One day you will make a fine investigative reporter," he said.
"But not today, is that what you"re saying? Hey, I"m starting small. It might be Seb short for something wacky like Sebarnacle, or it might be your initials, or any number of unlikely things."
"Sebastian."
"Great. Last name?"
"In good time."
"I can"t write a story with just your first name. You"re not Madonna, or Kylie, or Diana, or Rupert."
"Remember, you are still off duty. And you have no story. Nothing you are going to print, anyway." He chuckled.
"Right. Well, cheers for that."
A fresh infusion of mojito livened me up a little, and the smoker behind me moved on so I wasn"t so murderous. Time to set out the facts, as he"d gone quiet again and I couldn"t stop myself.
"OK, here"s what I know. It was you who called Geoff, but you weren"t sure whether it"d be him or me at the Union. It was me that pitched up, and you seem to know all about me, which by the way I"m finding simultaneously scary and highly arousing, so that leads me to think it was me you wanted to appear and not Geoff. I have no idea what you were planning to do at the Union, but whatever it was wasn"t the real point of the exercise, which is some kind of scoop you"re not telling me about that"s to do with me. How am I doing so far?"
Seb had listened carefully, nodding along, with his hands wrapped around his gla.s.s. "Pretty good. Mostly correct."
"What I don"t know is why you"re all coy and defensive. Is it the ginger?" I rubbed my beard. "For the right guy it comes off, but then doesn"t it always. In any case it"s not properly ginger, not offensively ginger."
Seb tugged at his cuffs. "To be honest, I had no demonstration planned at the Union." He looked at me with the barest hint of a smile. "Had your editor appeared, then simply I would not have appeared. Had you not... embarra.s.sed yourself, my intention was eventually to move across the gallery to speak with you."
I frowned. "That"s a very strange way to ask someone out on a date. A smile and a h.e.l.lo usually does the trick, and frankly with me both of those are optional. I"m not exactly picky. Why didn"t you just sit right beside me in the gallery? Would"ve saved me a h.e.l.l of a lot of face."
"I wanted to see what you would do."
"What I did was b.o.l.l.o.c.ks it all up. Was that good? Did I pa.s.s?"
He grasped his gla.s.s and spun it slowly on the table. "Not exactly. You were rather slapdash. Hasty. Reckless."
"That"s me. Those three words and more. You should hear what Geoff calls me."
"But I think you will do," he said, sucking on the straw.
We spent the next couple of mojitos on nothing more than smalltalk. It was mostly me doing the talking. I didn"t get his surname, his home town, his college if he was at college, his job if he had a job, or anything. The notebook still in my bag was empty to the brim with facts about Seb.
I couldn"t decide whether he was quiet because I wasn"t - and the more mojito"d I became, the quieter I wasn"t - or because he was just one of those types. That was the more likely, I figured. I reckoned he was the sort of guy who"d be the first to spot flames curling out of an upstairs window over the road but the last to say anything. Not in a malicious way - he"d be quietly heroic and emerge smoke-damaged and coughing with a baby and a puppy, and then vanish into the night hand-in-hand with a fireman. But me, I"d be setting records clattering down the fire escape and into the nearest pub, going look at the size of his hose and forgetting I was a reporter.
So I told him all about myself, of course, about growing up in Dublin, about my father"s vanishing act, my journey of unrelenting self-discovery that somehow led to a season ticket to Humbug, all the usual sort of b.o.l.l.o.c.ks. He probably knew it all already. He probably had a manila folder somewhere with all my movements for the previous six months - and worse, the guys I"d slept with. There weren"t that many: I was pretty much Captain Bravado.
The evening grew late, tipping toward midnight, and the ma.s.sed ranks of drinkers began to disperse or be dispersed slowly to their pits or wherever came next. The wind gradually left our sails and for the first time I felt the chill of the night, despite the lamps.
We went back inside the bar to finish off our drinks. It was still too loud for any kind of decent conversation and, more to the point, anything other than the grossest of flirting. And several mojitos in I"d given up on discovering Seb"s mysterious story: other things were on my mind. When he suggested a walk, I couldn"t agree fast enough.
"Where are we going?" I asked him.
"I live by the river."
"Cool," I said, though that didn"t narrow it down much. I didn"t care.
As we left the bar we had to jump out of the way of some kind of octopus woman, all arms, storming out. I didn"t recognise her. She looked like Helena Bonham-Carter in a kind of a Grim Reaper make-over. She swept along the alley ahead of us, people leaping out of her way in case she snuffed them out with a touch. I think I heard her say the name Spencer - that was the baldy drunk with the beercuffs. I had to laugh.
Some part of my journo brain was still awake as we walked. The cogs turned silently, a.n.a.lysing the route. We walked south along the Roman road, the city"s spine. Most likely that cut out the posh colleges - the ones with all the cash and the river views. That still left dozens of others, though, and he might have been a student living out of college anywhere in town. If he was a student at all.
"May I ask you a question?" Seb began.
"Is it the top or bottom thing? You"re forward after a few gla.s.ses, aren"t you? I"ll have you know I"m strictly-"
"No, not that. This is an ethical question."
I wondered where this was going, as I wondered where we were going. We"d barely reached M&S, and we were being pa.s.sed by drunk kids bouncing off each other and heading to a club. A couple of hi-vis types in caps - cops or pretend cops - promenaded just ahead of us.
I looked at Seb. "I"m not sure how ethical I am after a night of mojitos, but try me. I might surprise myself."
A short pause. He was inspecting the pavement as we walked. "How do you feel about your editor?"
"Geoff? He"s too old. Never met a pie he didn"t like. And I can"t stand Londoners."
"I mean professionally."
"Oh." It was going to be one of those deep-and-meaningfuls setting the world to rights, was it? "Is this a trap? Is this all a big ruse to root out disloyal staff? I"ll proudly sing the corporate song if I have to, I think it"s about dustmen and trousers."
"I do not work for him. I want to know what you think."
I wasn"t sure the alcohol had affected him at all. He was a little more talkative, perhaps, but he wasn"t mulleted. Neither of us was walking in a zig-zag.
We crossed the road by a packed taxi rank, turning down an unidentifiable offer from a taxi driver and avoiding a couple of beery cyclists taking the scenic route home.
I used the time to consider what to say. "He"s a s.h.i.thead, I guess. A greasy fart in a lift. All the empathy of a blocked drain. Does that help?" I looked for Seb"s reaction: nothing. "I"m not really doing the job for his benefit, if that"s any better. I need the money and the experience, and I"m getting a trickle of both. First sniff of a better offer and I"m all sayonara, suckers."
He nodded and said nothing for a while. We turned between Christ"s and St Paul"s, onto Christ"s Lane: a narrow old pa.s.sage paved with cobbles, with high stone walls on either side cast into sharp relief by b.a.l.l.s of yellow light inset along its length. I could hear music and laughter from a first-floor window on the St Paul"s side, and there was a sweet smell wafting down that might have gotten someone into trouble.
"They sometimes call this little alley Romans," I said to break the silence. "It"s a Cambridge theological joke. If it helps, I don"t think they"re meant to be funny. It"s something about epistles. Not entirely sure what, I haven"t been a good Catholic boy for several years now. These days it"s usually called St Paul"s Back Pa.s.sage, what with the college"s reputation and all. Well deserved, too."
"Yes, I know."
"Did you go there?" Bam! with the journalism.
"No." Woohoo, a negative fact.
There were another few seconds of quiet, which I was beginning to recognise meant another question bubbling up.
"Has your editor ever asked you to... embellish a story?"
I made a kind of hissing sound. "You"re asking the wrong guy. No point trying to embellish what I"m allowed to do. Yesterday a p.u.s.s.ycat with a history of drug-dealing and prost.i.tution was run over by person or persons unknown but believed to be linked to the Mafia and on a bicycle."
"But would you?" asked Seb, voice raised a little. "Are you loyal to him - or loyal to the truth?"
"Jesus, this is getting heavy. Ask me again when I"m sober."
I could see him becoming agitated, a little more expressive in the gestures. It might have been the alcohol finally kicking in, I guessed.
"What about phone hacking, email hacking, dirty tricks? Does he get you to do those?"
I shook my head as we pa.s.sed the bus terminal. The trees along both edges of the path through Christ"s Pieces were lit by strings of bulbs bobbing into the distance, thick constellations between the branches. I kept my eyes open for bikes without lights, the little s.h.i.ts.
"Hacking? That"s all big boys" stuff," I said. "We"re a tiny, tiny paper. We tell the truth. I think we tell the truth. I try to. It"s as dull as Hull on a wet Thursday in November, but it"s accurate, give or take a stolen by-line. Accurate, you know, as long as I"m allowed my notepad." I mimed scribbling. "If you ask me, the dodgiest things we do are the puns in the headlines. We spend more time on these than on writing the s.h.i.te that follows them."
Silence again, which I filled before a new question could be asked. "You know, at the risk of sounding defensive, we"re not all horrible people. Sure, I wouldn"t give Geoff the time of day if I didn"t get paid for it, and the red-tops with their brown envelopes and private investigators on the sly, they"ve done bad things. But it"s not what I do. Not what I want to do. I want to make life better, investigate the a.r.s.eholes and get "em put away. I"m one of the good guys, I promise you. Now, are you gonna tell me what this is all really about?"
A quiet voice: "Yeah."
"Off the record."
"Yeah."
"Then fire away. I"m all ears, apart from the mouth."