Shooting Sean Read online

  Shooting Sean

  Cannes, Killing & Kidnap

  Colin Bateman

  Copyright © 2001, Colin Bateman

  The right of Colin Bateman to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All character in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real person, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  For Andrea and Matthew

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  1

  Las Vegas is my kind of town.

  Which is a pity because I was sitting in a gentrified bar on Great Victoria Street, Belfast's Golden Mile, or kilometre, and not that golden, waiting to meet the shitehawk who'd cheated me out of thousands.

  It had been raining for thirteen days in a row. It wasn't quite a deluge of biblical proportions, but it felt like it. It thundered out of the sky, stinging. It wasn't even nice weather for ducks; they hid under bushes and dreamt about small children with mouldy bread. Or so I imagined. Summer was supposed to be just around the corner, which would have been fine in a square world, but it was round, and it felt like we could wait for ever.

  I sat nursing a Diet Coke, my back to the window, wondering if they'd played the music as loud in my day, and then checked my reflection in the bar mirror in case I'd suddenly turned into Val Doonican.

  The place was buzzing with students. They all looked perfectly normal and happy. Many sported little goatee beards. Some of the guys did as well. They were young and enjoying themselves, although for all I knew they were out of their heads on Ecstasy or whatever drug was in vogue or Cosmopolitan. I was out of touch. I had not been in a bar in months.

  This had been my local, once. And now I didn't know a soul. Not even a barman. The bouncer on the door had glanced at me on the way in and I'd nodded hello, but I think he was only wondering what an old git like me was doing hanging about in a student bar. I could have stopped and explained to him that it hadn't always been a trendy student bar, that it had once just been a spit-and-sawdust pub with peeling wallpaper and a dart board and piss-covered toilet floors and a cast of mouldy old men who smelt of pigeons, sweat and pigeon sweat, who studied the racing form in the Daily Mirror and complained about the loudness of the music from a jukebox which contained only singles by Smokie, Racing Cars and Abba. I could have told him all of this, but whoever tried explaining anything to a bouncer without getting thumped?

  And then my arm was jostled and Sam Cameron was standing there grinning like the tooth fairy suddenly stumbled on a set of dentures.

  'Dan.' he said, 'how are ya?' Before I managed to get my scowl in place he said: 'Jeez, this place has changed.' He lifted my glass and sniffed at it.

  'Diet Coke,' I said.

  'Ah. Right.' He raised an inquisitive eyebrow.

  'I don't drink any more,' I said. A moment later I added, 'Or any less. I'm on duty.'

  'Working?'

  'Babysitting.'

  Cameron looked about him for any sign of a baby.

  'In about half an hour. So make it quick.'

  'Dan, I detect a certain chilliness towards me.'

  'You always were quick on the uptake.'

  'I didn't think you'd be the type to bear a grudge.'

  'And I didn't think you'd have the nerve to show your face north of the border after what you did to me.'

  'Dan,' he said. He turned to the bar and ordered himself a Sprite. He glanced back, jangling the money for it in his hand for a moment. 'A Sprite and a Diet Coke. How the mighty have fallen, eh?'

  'Right.'

  He smiled and settled himself into a seat. He took a drink. He smiled. He took another drink. He smiled.

  I said, 'What the fuck are you looking so happy about?'

  He shrugged. 'Just full of the joys of spring.'

  'Well, if you're so fucking happy, howse about giving me the sixty grand you owe me?'

  'Dan. C'mon. I don't owe you that.'

  'Yes, you do, you piggy-eyed, pudding-bowl-hair-cutted bastard. You floppy-mouthed, shite-stirring . . . bollocks, thing, stuff . . .'

  I trailed off. I'd even lost the knack of . . . that.

  'You've been preparing that one for a while,' he said.

  'On the contrary, I've been trying not to think about you at all.'

  It was a lie, of course. I'd thought about him a lot. And after discussing our situation with Patricia before coming to this meeting, we'd agreed maturely that either I got some financial satisfaction or I splattered what little brains he had over the footpath.

  It went like this. Two years before, he had hired me to write a book about Fat Boy McMaster's unsuccessful challenge for the world heavyweight title, a doomed attempt to take Mike Tyson's crown at Madison Square Garden on St Patrick's Day. I'd realised before I was long into it that it didn't matter a twig that Fat Boy was hopelessly outclassed, what was important was the possibility that his manager Geordie McClean would make millions from it. Fat Boy was on funeral expenses. Anyway, it turned out to be more than just a fight. Fat Boy's sister got kidnapped by some renegade Sinn Feiners and he got blackmailed into calling for the British to get out of Ulster, as if they needed any encouragement. In some small way I helped to get her back. Fat Boy put up a good show in the ring, got flattened in the end, avoided hospital, became a national hero, wrote his own book, cut a couple of records, then landed his own television chat show.

  The boy done well.

  I was one of the first guests on his chat show. My own book on his illustrious career had sold extremely well, particularly in America, and I was in line to receive anywhere between sixty and a hundred thousand in royalties – Cameron had been too cheapskate to come up with anything much by way of advance. Two weeks before he was due to hand over the cheque, he got hit with a libel suit. Not me. Cameron had published a book about the music business; the author had carelessly named the head of a radio station as someone who wasn't beyond accepting cash in return for airplay, and the head had sued. A jury awarded him half a million in damages, and Cameron's company went down the tubes with my money. So Fat Boy invited me onto national television to discuss my poverty and have a good laugh.

  He was a good guy, but, hey, this was television.

  What you don't have, you don't miss.

  That's the old saying.

  But fuck it, I missed it.

  What was worse was seeing Cameron bounce back a few weeks later with a brand-new company and hit number one in the bestseller lists with his first publication, The Little Book of Panic, a ridiculous farrago of homespun philosophy for the e-generation that earned him a million.

  No wonder spring was in the fucking air.

  'So a
t least you're in a position to pay me back.'

  'No, I'm in a position to pay you to do something else.'

  'I wouldn't work for you if you were the last person on earth.'

  'Yes, you would, Dan. You're here.'

  'I was curious.'

  'More than that. You're short of cash.'

  'I'm not short of cash.'

  'Yes, you are. I haven't seen your by-line in a year.'

  I shrugged. He had a point. Somehow, after having a bestseller, it gets difficult to go back to scrambling around for little stories about little people. Especially when some fucker owes you sixty grand.

  'Dan, you have to let bygones be bygones.'

  'That's what Mark Chapman said.'

  'I'm not Mark Chapman.'

  'That's a matter of opinion.'

  'Dan, legally . . .'

  'I don't give a fuck about legally. I give a fuck about what's right.'

  He took a sip of his Sprite. 'Since when?'

  I sighed. I got up off my seat. 'I have to go.'

  He nodded. 'I didn't know you had a kid.'

  'I'll sell you him for sixty grand. Ginger hair included.'

  'Dan, don't be so hostile.'

  He tapped his fingers on the bar. I sat again. It was raining hard against the window. The hip-hop crap on the jukebox was really getting on my wick.

  'Did you ever finish that novel?'

  'Yes.'

  'I don't suppose you'd care to show . . .'

  'Fuck off.'

  'Do you go to the movies at all, Dan?'

  'Are you asking me out?'

  'No, I'm asking you if you go to the movies at all.'

  'Some.'

  'You'll know Sean O'Toole, then.'

  'You don't have to go to the movies to know Sean O'Toole. Everybody knows Sean O'Toole. He's a fucking fixture in Hello! Lifestyles of the rich and vacant. Patricia reads it all the time. She loves the expensive houses she can't have because some cunt ripped sixty grand off of me.'

  Cameron stood up. He took out his wallet and extracted a card. He wrote a number on the back of it, then placed it on my beer mat. My Diet Coke mat. 'Dan, I'm staying at the Europa. Give me a call if you calm down. Give my regards to Trish. And stop being such a wanker.'

  He walked out of the bar.

  Nobody calls me a wanker and gets away with it.

  There were girls, students, student girls perhaps, looking at me. I shrugged. I ordered a pint of Harp.

  No. Sorry. Everybody calls me a wanker and gets away with it.

  2

  I spent another three hours in the bar. It was a re-familiarisation process. It wasn't exactly unpleasant. I didn't talk to anybody. I listened. I watched. I drank. It could all be counted as research, and therefore tax deductible. Or so I deluded myself. I didn't pay tax. How could you pay tax on fuck-all squared in a box? Patricia was earning twice as much as I was and only working three days a week in the civil service and the rest of the time looking after Little Stevie, and the government paid for that as well.

  I was at a low ebb.

  I needed a motivation class.

  I had no job, and could barely manage my signature without getting writer's cramp. I was broke. I had a wife I loved and a child I mostly kind of loved, and my social life had gone to the wall.

  No more nights out, no more parties, Jesus, almost no more friends. There are compensations to having a child, of course, just sometimes it's hard to put your finger on them. Particularly when it's not your child, although I tried not to think about that, or even mention it, unless I was drunk and then I'd tell complete strangers even if they weren't the slightest bit interested and standing on the other side of the bar eating crisps.

  I was a goldfish.

  A hamster on a wheel.

  It wasn't Patricia's fault. She didn't keep me on a tight leash. She'd say, go out, but then add if you must. In the old days I wouldn't have heard that last bit, or I'd ignore it, but now it was harder, harder with Little Stevie playing on the floor. He was a wee cutie. He loved me to bits.

  He was born with ginger hair. Then for a brief, hopeful moment it faded. Then it grew back with a vengeance and I was depressed. I don't know why. There is nothing spectacularly bad about ginger hair. It's not as if Hitler was ginger. Or Neil Diamond. Indeed, one is inclined to speculate how much worse the world might have been if either of them had been born what we sarcastically refer to as strawberry blond, but in truth the problem would not have arisen. Nobody votes ginger, and recording contracts are not doled out to ginger baps. Think about it. Name one.

  Simply Red.

  Well, you can stick your Simply Red records up your hole.

  By the time I left the bar the sun had finally begun to poke through the clouds. It hadn't quite stopped raining, but it was light enough to walk as far as a bus stop. We no longer had our terraced house in the Holy Land. Sold up, moved three or four miles up the road, still in Belfast, but out into the suburbs into a nice bungalow with an overgrown garden and a nice view of other nice bungalows. The estate should have been called Nice Bungalows, but it wasn't. It was called Fairview, and whoever named it must have had a keen sense of humour, or none at all.

  When I finally arrived outside our nice bungalow I found Patricia standing in the garden crazy paving. She just looked at me, her hair sweated and little bits of cement on her face like the Gorgon with dandruff, and I walked past her into the house for a pee and all I had was a tut to accompany me.

  When I had finished and downed a pint of water, I stood in the doorway watching her for several moments. There was a pile of broken flagstones she'd had delivered the week before, and there was sand and cement powder and buckets of water, and she was mixing it all up with an expertise I found frightening. I couldn't even mix drinks without falling over. Little Stevie was deftly mixing and moulding his own cement. I'm not sure exactly what he was making, but it seemed certain that it would soon harden into something that I would later break my toe on.

  'You should take that up professionally,' I said to Patricia as she hammered another piece of flagstone into place. She didn't look up. 'You could call it Patricia's Crazy Paving. Or just shorten it to Patricia's Crazy.'

  She sighed and said, 'You're not funny, Dan.'

  'I think you'll find my readers disagree.'

  'You don't have any readers, Dan. That was then, this is now.'

  'S.E. Hinton.'

  'I'm sorry?'

  'That Was Then, This Is Now. A novel by S.E. Hinton, she did Rumblefish and The Outsiders. Not Camus, the other one with the teen gangs and . . .'

  'Will you stop parading your fucking literary shite and give me a hand?'

  'Did I ever tell you that if you managed to clean up your language you could pass for Wilde himself?'

  'Did I ever tell you, you were an arsehole?'

  'Marty Wilde, of course.' I remained in the doorway. After a while I said, 'I don't garden, Trish.'

  'Above it, are you?'

  I thought about that for several moments, then nodded.

  'For the last six months,' she said, 'you seem to have been above everything.'

  'Except you.'

  She looked at me.

  'You may take something sexual out of that if you wish,' I said.

  'Don't start, Dan.'

  'What did you think this morning when you got up: either I'll have sex with my husband or I'll crazy pave the garden? Shit, I think I'll crazy pave the garden.'

  'Don't be such a wanker, Dan.'

  There comes a point when being called a wanker changes from being one person's abuse to being the consensus of opinion. I sighed. Little Stevie, having tired of art, came up and put a handful of wet cement on my groin.

  My favourite trousers.

  I shouted at him and he started crying.

  I picked him up and he put his cement hands on my favourite shirt.

  I didn't used to be like this about clothes. Maybe Trish was right. Maybe I was getting airs and graces.


  'Did you talk to Sam?'

  'Si.'

  'Did you get the money.'

  'Ni.'

  'Did you kill him?'

  'Nay.'

  She sighed and hammered another broken flag into place. 'Do you want to tell me what happened?'

  I shook my head. She looked at me. I said: 'He wants me to work for him again.'

  'He didn't offer you the money?'

  'No. Of course not. It's gone. We know that.'

  'So what did you say?'

  'I told him to fuck off.'

  'Fair enough.'

  'Fuck . . . off,' said Little Stevie.

  'Oh, shit,' said Trish, dropping a flag and hurrying across to take Little Stevie Cement out of my arms.

  'Shit,' said Little Stevie.

  'Oh, fuck,' I said.

  'Stop it, for fuck sake!' Trish shouted, turning away with Little Stevie in her arms and giggling at the same time. Then she launched into a long involved story about naughty words and what happens to little boys who use them. It was pretty tame stuff. What she really needed was a big stick with a nail in the end, but I guess times have changed.

  I took him inside and put him down in front of the telly with the Cartoon Network. Scooby-Doo was on. Except it was some crappy modern version with a Scooby Junior and not so much add. Still, he didn't seem to mind. I could already see cement prints forming up on the settee, but I let him be. Indoors, like outdoors, was Patricia's domain.

  I took two cans of Harp from the fridge. They were the last two of a crate I'd bought at Christmas, and the fact that they were still unopened constituted some kind of sad personal best. They were exactly three months past their drink-by date. I had no idea what drinking expired alcohol could do to you beyond giving you a sore head in the morning, but I was prepared to take the risk. I'm that kind of guy. Living life on the edge, and formerly, beneath the hedge. I gave a can to Patricia and she nodded gratefully. She popped it. I popped mine. We didn't clink tins. There was no need to. We loved each other, we just had a funny way of showing it.

  She said: 'What are you going to do?'

  'About life in general, or general Sam?'