The Enemy Within, page 29
I must have disposed of another five or six aborted drafts over the next few days and sleepless nights. My mind just kept on going over and over the same ground, and ending up in the same dark places. I was so maddened from lack of sleep I could barely think straight. How could Liam have put me in this situation? Was walking out of my life not punishment enough already?
It was late on Thursday evening and I was sitting in my room in the dark when I heard the phone ringing down in the hallway. I waited a while to see if anyone else was going to answer it before padding downstairs in bare feet, leaving my door on the latch, and picking up the receiver.
‘Tommy?’
I knew the voice, but at that moment I couldn’t place it. ‘Who’s that?’
‘Tommy, it’s Gary. Liam’s here, Tommy. He’s in Brighton, I’ve just seen him.’
FIFTEEN
‘You’ve seen him? Where?’
I couldn’t take it in.
‘At work. I mean, I was at work. He was just…hanging around.’
‘Where?’
‘I’m doing waiting shifts at one of the big hotels, and he was there, wearing a suit. I think he must be staying there. I saw him twice before I clocked off. Can you come down?’
My heart was beating at what felt like twice the natural speed. ‘I…yeah. Yeah, of course I can.’
‘Tonight, though? I mean, he might be gone in the morning.’
I looked at my watch. It was already nearly half past nine. ‘I don’t know… Yes, I guess I could.’
My heart had sped up at the thought of seeing Liam again. I could barely stand still. I tried to kid myself it was just the thought of confronting him, having it all out, but it wasn’t that; it was the thought of his face, the back of his neck, the smell of him…
I could hear Brian saying something in the background. Gary’s voice came through muffled: he had put his hand over the receiver. ‘No, I know. Look, I’ll sort it. He deserves to see him.’ He came back on loud and clear. ‘Can you get the train down?’
‘Yeah.’ I thought for a second. I couldn’t afford the train. ‘No. I’ll get the coach. I’ll see you at your place, yeah?’
‘Sure. We’ll wait up for you.’
‘Gary, did you speak to him?’
‘No, I was serving, and he was right over the other side of the room. I don’t think he recognised me, either; I’ve dyed my hair since he last saw me. They don’t really go for bleached hair and earrings at The Grand. And then I saw him again, just now – well, half an hour ago – when I was coming off shift, he was standing in the foyer, and I nearly went over and said something, but I thought if anyone was going to, it should be you. Besides, we’ve been warned not to confront the guests.’
‘Confront?’ Something suddenly struck me: something I’d clocked on daytime telly a couple of times in the past few days before switching channels in horror as quick as I could. ‘Gary, this hotel – is it something to do with the Tory conference?’
‘That’s right!’ he said enthusiastically. ‘They’ve got Maggie Thatcher staying there and everything! I’ve not actually seen her yet but my friend Michelle was on silver service the other night and…’
‘I’m on my way,’ I said bluntly, and slammed the phone down.
I took the stairs two at a time back to my room, only stopping to grab my leather jacket, keys and wallet before heading straight back out again. Thankfully I had some cash because I’d only picked up my giro three days before. It was ten to ten as I left the house: I had no idea what time the coaches to Brighton ran until, but if I was too late I would never be able to forgive myself.
Liam. In Brighton. At the same hotel as Mrs Thatcher. It could only mean one thing.
Victoria Coach Station was as hellish as it always is after dark, but luckily there was a National Express leaving for Brighton just a few minutes after I arrived, so I didn’t have to spend long hanging around with the drug addicts and derelicts. My ticket cost more than I would have liked, but I could worry about that later. Assuming there was a later, of course. I had no illusions about what I was heading towards. If Liam, fresh from smuggling God knows how many bullets and explosives into the country, had booked himself in to the same hotel as Mrs Thatcher, and presumably most of the rest of her government too, there was very little chance that everyone would be making it out alive.
And whatever happened, I was on my way to put myself right in the middle of it. That much I had been certain of from the second Gary phoned me. It didn’t feel like something I had a choice about.
There was just one thing I couldn’t be sure of. And that was whether I was rushing there helter-skelter to try to stop Liam – or to join him.
It was only once the initial shock of it all had worn off, and the coach was gliding through the silent streets of South London, that I had the chance to properly consider that question. It wasn’t something I could have ever said out loud, but here, sitting here in the anonymous darkness at the back of a half-empty coach, I could admit it. Liam was a killer. I had no choice but to accept that, even if I would never be able to reconcile it with the man I knew for as long as I lived. But the killer of Mrs Thatcher? That, I got. That, I barely needed to think about for a moment.
All the mental torture I’d been subjecting myself to those past few months had been over the innocent victims of the IRA: my friend Luke, those motherless kids at County Hall, the horribly maimed horses in Hyde Park, all the other people who’d done nothing more than be in the wrong place at the wrong time. But if ever there was a definition of the right place at the right time, this had to be it. The ruling class, the entire government, all gathered together to celebrate themselves, to join in jubilation over what they were doing to the country. Starving out the miners. Forcing us to accept fascism. Crushing dissent wherever they found it, with the full weight of the law and the boots and truncheons of the boys in blue to back them up. Filling the country up with nukes and letting Ronnie Reagan turn us into his fifty-first state while telling us war was peace and freedom was doing what you’re told, and anyone who thought differently had no place in Britain. The absolute conviction that money was the only measure of anything that matters, and screw the poor or the weak or the unemployed or anyone else that gets left behind. And if there was the chance, in one fell swoop, one single act, to end it all, wouldn’t I – wouldn’t we all? – have a right, a duty even, to take it? Whatever it took?
Maybe I’d spent too long agonising over what the rules of war should be, when everything that was starting to come out about what exactly had happened in the Falklands showed that Maggie could not care less. Except that that, too, brought me straight back to the issue that was fundamental to all this. I had very little time for God, but even I had to admit He was pretty sound on the basics. Thou shalt not kill. Principles don’t get much clearer than that. I might have done some bad things in my life – certainly a lot of things the Bible comes down pretty hard on – but there were lines I had not, would not, ever even come close to crossing. Things I knew instinctively were wrong, and that cried out for justice, even back in the day when I was at my most desperate point. If it was wrong for politicians to wipe out those ordinary people whose existences had become inconvenient to them – and I had never needed to stop and consider that one for a single second – then it had to work the other way too.
My father had this phrase he’d taken to using in recent years whenever we disagreed on something, delivered in his usual tone of disgust: ‘Oh, university arguments.’ And for the first time, as the coach pushed on through the night towards the South Coast I got an inkling of how he must feel: it was infuriatingly easy for me to slip into looking at this as the detached academic I’d so enjoyed dressing myself up as over the past few years. Coolly presenting both sides, considering every point until I could come back with a clever counter-argument, and treating the whole thing like some arid ethical debate – as opposed to real life; something that was actually happening right then; the clock – possibly literally – ticking.
And it got me nowhere. By the end of the two-hour journey I was no closer to an answer. The only thing I knew for certain was that I needed, desperately, to see Liam again and hear his justification for what he was doing from his own mouth. He owed me that much.
We pulled into Brighton coach station at ten past midnight, and I was the first off, not caring that I had to push past other passengers as they dithered over putting their coats on and pulling their bags out of the overhead lockers. There was a bitterly cold wind blasting in from the seafront, so I took the back roads round to Brian and Gary’s place in Kemptown, walking as fast as I could. There were a few late-night revellers still out, a lot of them dressed up in posh clothes. I passed two blokes in dinner jackets walking along swigging from a champagne bottle, supporting a giggling woman in a full-length balldress between them, with her arms flung around both their shoulders. When I first clocked them I thought they were middle-aged, but as I got closer I realised that, despite their appearances, they were probably younger than me. ‘Where can we get more booze?’ one of the men demanded as I passed them, waving the bottle imperiously in my direction. ‘I don’t know. I’m just visiting,’ I muttered without breaking pace.
The lights were still on when I hammered on Brian and Gary’s door ten minutes later: they’d been as good as their word and both waited up, though Brian was already in his slippers and dressing gown, over pyjamas that looked like actual silk. ‘Get in here,’ said Gary, throwing his arms round me and hugging me tight, before ushering me on and into a looser but no less affectionate squeeze from Brian. Their place was lovely. Brian had done it out with antiques – the ones he says he ‘can’t bear to sell’ – and dark red and green wallpaper. It’s not big, but it feels cosy rather than over-full. Brian took my jacket to hang up as Gary steered me through to the kitchen. He looked totally different to the last time I’d seen him, when his hair had been spiked and Sun-Inned to the max. Now it was a respectable brown, flattened down and brushed forward to hide the patches where he wouldn’t admit he was receding.
I made him go through every detail of where and when he had seen Liam again as he forced a glass of Tia Maria on me. He’d obviously had several himself already: he was completely oblivious to the urgency of my questions. ‘He’s had his hair cut short,’ he told me. ‘It looks really good, actually. Sorry.’
‘You’re certain it was him, though?’
‘Hundred per cent. I clocked him the minute I saw him – nearly dropped the plates I was carrying. And then, like I say, I got a good look at him later on in the foyer, just before I finished my shift. I was collecting glasses in the bar, and you can see straight through.’
‘What was he doing?’
Gary shrugged. ‘Just hanging around, near the front doors. I think maybe he was waiting to meet someone?’
‘Jesus.’ After all this time, I was so close to him now.
Brian was watching us, leaning in the kitchen doorway. ‘Sorry if Gary freaked you out when he phoned you. But we both thought you ought to know, given the…circumstances.’
‘No, no, I’m really grateful,’ I assured him. ‘I just… I’m trying to think what to do next.’ I meant immediately, but of course there was no way for Brian, who was blissfully unaware of what was really happening, to know that.
‘I can come down with you in the morning, if you like?’ he suggested as Gary took my glass away and refilled it. ‘See if we can find him? I don’t need to open up the shop until nine thirty. You know, if you want some moral support.’
Gary slammed the bottle down on the table, exasperated. ‘We’ve been through this. He could be gone by then!’
This was obviously an argument that had been going on before my arrival. Brian shoved his hands into the pockets of his dressing gown and looked sternly at his partner. ‘Tommy can’t just go rushing in there in the middle of the night! You said there were police on the doors! And besides, how’s he going to find Liam at one in the morning? You don’t know what room he’s staying in. You don’t even know if he’s staying there for certain.’
‘Well if he’s not, it’s not going to do much good going there at breakfast time, is it?’ said Gary heatedly, but accurately.
Brian sighed and turned to me. ‘I’m sorry, Tommy. But look, the offer stands. Sleep on it and see how you feel. I’ve made the sofa bed up for you again. You know where everything is.’ He padded over and gave an uncooperative Gary a kiss on the forehead. ‘Sorry, I’m whacked; going to have to turn in. I’ve got a busy day tomorrow. You’re on the lunchtime shift again, are you?’
‘Yup,’ Gary confirmed grumpily. He didn’t look in his partner’s direction as he headed off into the bedroom. But once the door had clicked shut behind him, he leaned forward and spoke to me in a low voice. ‘Listen, I’ve worked out a way I can get you in there tonight. You can’t miss this chance.’
I nodded desperately. ‘Gary, I’ve got to go there now. Right now.’
‘That’s the spirit.’ He downed his drink and gave me a grin. ‘Get your kit off, then.’
SIXTEEN
‘What?’ Surely I couldn’t have heard him right – but in that case why was Gary standing up and undoing his trousers? Brian had only just left the room. He was only across the hall.
‘You’re going to need to wear my uniform.’ He shucked the pleated black trousers down and started pulling them off over his socks. ‘Then you can use my ID card. It’s fine: they have staff on all through the night to do room service. They’re the best shifts; the tips are ginormous.’ He checked his watch. ‘Besides, it won’t be all that long till the breakfast shift are clocking on.’
‘Right.’ I started undoing my own shirt. ‘Good idea. But aren’t they going to spot that I’m not you?’
He snorted and fished in the pocket of the trousers, pulling out a bit of paper laminated in plastic, about the size of a credit card, and holding it out towards me. There was no photo on it. ‘Not so long as you tell them your name’s Gary Parker. There’s over a hundred of us on the books. They don’t check.’
I turned the pass over in my hand. No photo on the back either, just two signatures: Gary’s own, and another validating it from the Deputy Food and Beverage Manager. ‘That should get you everywhere,’ Gary assured me.
‘Brilliant.’ I tore my shirt off and started pulling down my jeans. Gary disappeared into the flat’s small bathroom and came back with a crisp white shirt on a hanger, in a considerably better state than the crumpled one he was wearing over his stars and stripes boxer shorts.
‘That’s a relief,’ he whispered as he handed it over, jerking his head towards the closed bedroom door. ‘I was worried I was going to have to disturb her indoors to get a clean one.’ As I shrugged it on and did it up he left the room again, rummaging in the pocket of one of the coats hanging in the hallway and returning with a handful of dark material which he held out to me.
‘What’s that?’
‘Bow tie. Don’t worry; it’s on elastic. You don’t have to tie it.’
‘Thanks.’ I took it from him and looped it over my head, smoothing the collars of the shirt down over the flimsy elastic strip. My heart was going nineteen to the dozen. All I could think of was getting to the Grand Hotel and confronting Liam. What exactly happened next I had no idea: I found it impossible to consider anything beyond that moment. My only urge, now that I knew he was nearby, was to be moving, actually doing something after all those weeks of inertia.
Gary reached over and tweaked the bow tie. ‘That’s it. You look like a born waiter. Tuck your shirt in.’
It was lucky neither of us had ballooned since our days on the Dilly: we’d been skinny little chickens then, and I still wore thirty-inch-waist trousers, even if there was a little bit more poking over the top of them these days. ‘Your shoes’ll have to do,’ said Gary, glancing down at my Dr Martens. ‘At least they’re black.’
‘Where am I going?’ I asked him impatiently.
‘It’s on the seafront, the other side of the pier. You can’t miss it. But the staff entrance is round the back, off Russell Road, down the side of the multi-storey. You’ll know when you’re close: they’ve got barriers up right round the block. Just show ’em that card and you’ll be fine.’ He was ushering me to the door, picking up on my sense of panicked urgency. ‘Good luck.’ He pecked me on the cheek and pushed me out into the night.
I hadn’t picked up my jacket. It was freezing now, the wind dashing brine into my face. I forced myself to measure my pace, not to give in to the instinct that was telling me to run all the way towards the hotel, towards Liam. Don’t do anything to arouse suspicions, I told myself. Right now, the most important thing is to go unnoticed. There were a few people still on the streets in Kemptown, a lot less dressed up than the ones I had encountered earlier, but despite a couple of hopeful looks in my direction and a request for a light I ignored them all. As I turned the corner onto the seafront the numbing wind redoubled, but I could see the lights of the pier twinkling ahead of me and, beyond that, the great illuminated wedding cake that was the Grand Hotel. I pushed my frigid hands deep into my pockets and, head down, strode on.
It took me about twenty minutes to get there. Remembering what Gary had said, I turned off ahead of the bollards where I could see policemen stopping cars, and made my way through the back streets to where the car park’s concrete bulk loomed. There was the alleyway down the side of it, just as Gary had told me. Only a crash barrier across it, guarded by a single policeman. This must be the right place. Now I just needed my luck to hold, for once.
