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  For Matthew and Isaac

  Johnny Cash shot a man in Reno,

  just to watch him die.

  Rob Cullen bought curly kale in Tesco’s,

  just to watch it wither.

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Welcome Page

  Display Options Notice

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1: The Dead and the Quick

  Chapter 2: The Return of the Native

  Chapter 3: Mr Turner’s Prize

  Chapter 4: Hong Kong Phooey

  Chapter 5: The Good, the Bad and the Quite Ugly

  Chapter 6: The Eagle Has Crash Landed

  Chapter 7: The Next to Last of the Mohicans

  Chapter 8: Dog Day Mid-Afternoon

  About Papercuts

  Reviews

  About Colin Bateman

  Also by Colin Bateman

  An Invitation from the Publisher

  Copyright

  CHAPTER 1

  THE DEAD AND THE QUICK

  The way Rob heard it, Billy Maxwell choked on a Twix in the middle of an editorial meeting and they were so busy arguing about the unfair distribution of that week’s stories that they didn’t notice until he slid out of his chair onto the linoleum floor. When they asked if he was okay, they got a death rattle in response. They tried everything, but it was Billy’s time. He was fat and fifty and opening the Twix was the most exercise he’d managed in years. Legend had it that Janine in Advertising was left to stand watch over him, like he was going somewhere, while everyone else ran about in a blind panic, and while she was there she unpeeled the untouched leg of the Twix from Billy’s cooling hand and ate it. When he got to know her later, Rob realized that this was probably true. Janine was ruthless.

  Now Rob was striding out of the George Best Airport staring around him like any other native lured reluctantly back for the first time in twenty years. On the plane some auld doll had said to him he wouldn’t recognize the place and he thought, Yes I fucking will, but she was right, it was different, and not just shiny and new, there was something in the air, initially exhilarating but also somehow artificial, like Pine Fresh. The taxi driver was asking him if he was just here on business, but then caught a glimpse of him slipping into his black tie, gave him a nod, and said nothing else till they got to the church on the Donegal Road.

  He had known Billy loved his football team, but not this much: the coffin coming in to the pumping Everton theme from Z-Cars, except they got the timing all wrong so that the hummable bit everyone knew was over by the time they were half-way down the aisle, leaving Billy to travel his last few feet to the weird, staccato jazzy bit that formed the latter part of the tune. Still, it would be another story to tell, and there were lots of stories about Billy and they all came out in the pub later. Rob knew some of the faces, older, more haggard, run to fat or emaciated, and he supposed his wasn’t much different – less hair, more poundage – but he didn’t know any of them well enough to chat about anything personal, which was a good thing.

  In the early evening, a little the worse for wear and just about to make his exit, a pugnacious-looking fella, looking like he was in the same boat, caught his eye at the bar, nodded and said, ‘Grand man, so he was.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Rob, ‘taught me everything I know.’

  ‘Really?’ The fella moved closer. He was probably in his forties, a little heavy but with a good smile coming out of a neat beard. ‘You in the business, too?’

  ‘Aye, the Guardian,’ Rob said.

  ‘Ballymena Guardian?’

  ‘No, the Guardian. London.’

  ‘Really? Seriously? And you came all this way to...?’

  ‘Like I say.’

  Rob finished his pint and set it on the bar. Before he could turn to leave, the fella clicked his fingers and said, ‘two more.’

  The barman didn’t look very impressed at being clicked at. Rob started to say that no, really, he had to be going, but he only had a cheap room waiting for him and he knew he’d only end up watching telly with a bit of a headache, and he might as well delay that misery for a while longer, so he accepted the pint and they stood and talked newspaper business. The fella’s name was Gerry Black and he ran the weekly paper Billy Maxwell had been editing twelve miles down the road in Bangor before his confectionery-related demise. Rob remembered Billy as a take-no-prisoners sub on the daily News Letter at the tail end of the Troubles, and couldn’t really picture him running a local paper in a comfortably middle-class and long-faded seaside resort. Gerry said his paper was the sort of place where old journalists came to die, and on this occasion, literally. Billy had actually started out on the same paper when he was a teenager before making a swift exit for Belfast. ‘You either get out within three years, or you’re there for life,’ said Gerry. ‘Nothing’s changed.’

  They were in the process of ordering their second pint when Rob noticed a blonde woman in a dark suit just along from them, staring hard at his drinking companion, one hand on the bar, fingers drumming. She drained a shot glass, then moved along to them. She was good-looking, maybe late twenties with a long thin nose. She was slightly the worse for drink herself, but then most of them were. Rob expected a showdown. It was the nature of funerals. And weddings. He turned to pick at the few remaining sandwiches sitting on a platter on the bar behind him as the woman said, ‘Gerry. A word.’

  ‘Ah now, Alix,’ said Gerry. ‘Let me get you a drink.’

  ‘I don’t want a drink, Gerry, I want paid.’

  ‘Alix – this is hardly the time.’

  He started to turn back to Rob, but the woman, Alix, all glare and flared nostrils, grabbed his arm.

  ‘It’s exactly the time! I’m sorry he’s gone and all that, but I haven’t been paid in a month and I’m starving.’

  Rob, drink allowing him to think it might defuse the situation, lifted the platter and offered it to her. Alix gave him a look of utter disdain. He set it back down, though he couldn’t help smiling. Actually, he thought it was a smile, but it was more of a smirk. He understood this because she pointed it out.

  She said, ‘What the bloody hell are you smirking at?’

  Rob held up an apologetic hand and said, ‘Nothing’ through the tuna sandwich he had just squeezed into his mouth.

  She probably would have had more to say to him if Gerry hadn’t draped an arm around her shoulders and given her a squeeze. ‘Alix, darling,’ he said, with her stiffly against him for just a moment before she pushed his arm off, ‘Alix, darling – it’s not my fault. Billy was a great editor, but he couldn’t manage for toffee. If he doesn’t – didn’t – send the paperwork through to me, then I can’t, couldn’t, process it – but it’s not a problem. Just tell me how much it is and I swear to God I will sort it out.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Now.’ He pulled a chequebook out of his jacket and set it on the bar. He patted his pockets again and found a pen. ‘Sorry – I’ve taken my eye off the ball a bit. Alix – your second name?’

  She let out a sigh. ‘Cross.’

  He repeated her full name as he wrote it out. Then he said, ‘And how much are we talking about?’ When she told him he raised an eyebrow, but kept writing. He signed and dated the cheque and tore it out and handed it to her. She looked at it, and her eyes widened slightly. ‘Just a little extra as well – call it a... a bereavemen
t bonus. Billy would have wanted it. He always spoke very highly of you.’

  Alix took the cheque and blew on it before folding it carefully. ‘I... Sorry,’ she said. ‘Just—’

  ‘It’s fine. Now go and have another wee drink and then I’ll see you bright and early tomorrow.’

  It was a double-edged dispatch. She turned away without giving Rob a second glance. Gerry shook his head and said, ‘She’s trouble with... a gorgeous ass.’ He held his hands up and said, ‘Sorry, you’re not allowed to say that. I mean arse.’

  He gave Rob a theatrical wink, and then did the clicking thing for more drinks. Rob had been having renewed thoughts about an exit strategy, but the pint was suddenly there before him and he was cut off at the pass again. And he didn’t really mind talking newspapers because Gerry was lapping it all up, almost star-struck. Rob remembered when he was on a local, how easily impressed he’d been by anyone on a daily. He’d started there, too, different town, up the coast, but weekly papers were the same everywhere, or had been. Family-owned and -mismanaged.

  It was early evening by then, and the after-work crowds had started to arrive, so they pounced on a vacated snug and kept nattering, and somehow three or four or maybe five more pints were consumed. Somewhere along the line Gerry said, ‘I like you Rob. It’s good to see someone do well for themselves. You must have liked Billy a lot, all the way back from the Big Smoke for a few pints and curly sandwiches.’

  ‘Ah, it’s not that far. And yes, he trained me up and then told me to get the hell out of Dodge. But the good old days, when journalism...’ He gave Gerry the helpless hands and Gerry nodded but then looked suddenly thoughtful. He took another sip, then put his hands on the table, clasped, and rubbed the two thumbs together.

  ‘Cards on the table?’

  ‘Sure. Why not, aren’t we old pals?’

  Gerry smiled and said, ‘My paper, the Bangor Express—’

  Rob snorted involuntarily. ‘That’s what you call it? The Bangor Express?’

  ‘Sure I do. What’s wrong with that?’

  ‘I’ve been to Bangor. There’s not a lot of express about it.’

  ‘It might surprise you.’ Gerry raised an eyebrow. ‘Or probably not. We’ve been around a hundred years, you know, never missed a week. That’s some going. Now – cards?’

  ‘Sorry, yes...’

  ‘My paper – the aforementioned and much-derided Bangor Express – is, if you’ll excuse my language, dying on its fucking feet. It’s been in the family for ever, but we’re losing money hand over fist. Tell you the truth, it’s not my main interest. It never was. I’m into property. Correction, I was into property, the paper was always a bit of a side line, motored along quite nicely without much care and attention needed, and it has, or had, a bit of prestige about it, makes me sound more interesting that I’m a newspaper proprietor, a regular Rupert, than just doing up run-down properties and selling them on like any jumped-up brickie. But it’s only when the property went tits up that I took a proper look and realized that actually it wasn’t motoring on nicely at all but pissing money down the sink. So whether we’re joining the late-lamented Billy underground around this week or next, I don’t know. But I do know it can’t go on the way it is.’

  ‘Papers are going that way, Gerry. You’re not the only one.’

  ‘I know that. But I can’t help thinking, there’s something good there it’s just – you know like that pond weed you get, that chokes off everything? Like that, or something. Something that needs to be teased out, nurtured, turned around.’ He took another big drink. ‘In fact, I have a plan.’

  ‘Good to have a plan,’ said Rob.

  ‘Oh yes.’ He took out his chequebook and slapped it on the table. ‘So I’m going to write you a cheque for how much so that you’ll pop down the coast with me, take a look at the set-up, and tell me if there’s something worth saving or I cut my losses and get out? What do you say?’

  ‘I’d say cut your losses and get out now.’

  ‘Five hundred quid for a day’s work.’

  ‘You’d be pouring good money after bad. And I can’t, honestly, I’m on the first flight in the morning.’

  ‘Book another. Out of the thousand quid I’m going to give you.’

  ‘No, Gerry, I appreciate the offer, but really. Have to get home. And besides, the Guardian is not the Bangor Express – different world. Find someone who knows about local papers. Probably in this bar, it’s stuffed full of reporters who’ll know more than I do.’

  ‘I don’t want anyone else. I want you.’

  Rob burst into laughter. Gerry too.

  ‘Ah, fuck it,’ he said. ‘Thought I’d give it a lash. Fair enough. If you can’t, you can’t. But I do believe it’s your round.’

  Rob bought the drinks.

  Gerry bought some more.

  About ten, they went for a kebab.

  They got back into a different bar, later, with some band playing. They were doing Beatles covers, badly. Rob didn’t actually remember going back to the hotel, or falling asleep fully clothed on top of the bed, or throwing up in the middle of the night. He was aware it was morning because he’d forgotten to close the curtains and the rare Belfast sunlight was streaming in. His throat was raw, and he knew he’d started smoking again. He wanted coffee, but his head was too sore to move. His forehead felt odd, and it was only when he touched it that he realized it was because there was something stuck to it. A piece of paper. He peeled it off and struggled to focus on it. Eventually he came to realize that what he was holding in his hand was an Ulster Bank cheque for £1500 made out to his name and signed by one Gerry Black.

  *

  His head was busting, not just from the drink. It had been that way of late – there was a weight on him, on his shoulders, in his brain, in his heart, his soul, in the pit of his stomach. Avoiding it, displacing it, was an art form he had not yet mastered; nor, he suspected would he ever; that was the point of it. It wasn’t one thing, it was several, within his power, without, depending on his mood, the time of day. He had been accused a lot of late of not being there; today, physically, he certainly wasn’t, a geographical displacement that he’d leapt at, the funeral of a friend, or a former friend, of a colleague, of a mentor to whom actually he’d not given a thought in years. Billy had been all of those things, but Rob had never been one to look back, always forward. The backward glance was only caused by his accidentally stumbling on the news of Billy’s death, but the jump to attend was not purely caused by the loss.

  His head was not helped by the stop-start diesel racket of the train. Half an hour down the line from Botanic, sun was blasting through the window so much that he switched to the shady side only to have a yammering kid and an endlessly patient or neglectful granny get on at Titanic Halt. And Rob was thinking, Titanic, what the fuck happened to Bridge End? Everywhere he looked, Titanic, a big sunk ship.

  Rob had been to Bangor before, a few times. As a kid, a day out to the seaside, but then he remembered going one day with his folks and the seaside was gone, replaced by a monstrous concrete marina and they never went back after that. Once or twice as a journalist, one of those towns that had escaped the worst and even the least of the Troubles – three bombs in thirty years, a handful of shootings; hell, there were towns in Surrey that had had it worse, nearly. He got off the train and had a hot choco in the station and swallowed some pills and bought some mints and located the Express office half-way up the main street, Pizza Hut on one side, a Chinese herbalist on the other. He pushed through the door and a smiley woman on the desk left him standing there while she flicked through a bound file of papers. The decor was early seventies, no natural light, fluorescent beamers with dead insects inside dulling the glow, oil paintings on the wall with cobwebs hanging off them, stacks of papers, advertising department and salespeople at the front, behind them an open-plan editorial with what must have been Billy’s office beyond. There was a partition wall, largely glass, and then typesetters in a bungalow, a
variety of small presses for commercial jobbing but none remotely big enough to produce a newspaper. The girl on the desk finally noticed him and asked what he wanted, and when he asked for Gerry Black she looked at him suspiciously, and, he thought, defensively, and asked if he had an appointment and he said ‘Sort of’ because he was vague on the time he was expected, in fact he was vague about the latter half of the previous evening, but she nodded at him and was turning to fetch her boss when by chance he appeared at the bottom of the office and waved up, then ushered him through a waist-level swing door. ‘Dead on time, chum,’ he said. They turned right just before editorial, into a small kitchen where the troops were already mustered on mismatched plastic chairs, hugging mugs and looking nervous. Alix he remembered from the funeral, though she looked at him blankly; a young fella in a slightly-too-big-for-his-shoulders sports jacket; an older guy, older than Rob certainly, with a sour, suspicious look on his face, mostly bald, shirt and tie but corduroy trousers and soft shoes. Together with Billy, that made four to put out a newspaper, which was some going.

  Gerry stopped him by a sink filled with unwashed coffee cups and stained with a ring of dried sediment around the rim and nodded at his team. He said, ‘Look at your faces! I told you, it’s nothing to be worried about – Rob, Rob Cullen is an old friend and he’s here purely to give us the benefit of his experience, formerly as a top reporter across the pond and now as a senior management consultant... just a wee bit of time and motion to see how we’re doing, and what we can maybe do a wee bit better. Okay?’

  The older guy nodded and said, ‘Are you closing us down, Gerry?’

  ‘Peter – no. Of course not. You don’t kill a cash cow. You milk it.’

  They all looked at him, variously hoping that he would or would not continue with the analogy, but Gerry deflected to Rob and said, ‘You’ll hardly know he’s here. He’ll work out of Billy’s office for now.’ He thumbed behind him. Peter started to say something but Gerry cut him off with, ‘No, no decision yet – we’ve only just buried the guy, it would be... unseemly to replace him so quickly. But thank you for leaving your CV on my desk.’