Leo’s moustache was so grand and so mesmerising in its scope and its audacity that it could always be depended upon to make friends squint, strangers gawp, dogs growl and babies squeal. Unfortunately (as with all this world’s artifacts of peerless pulchritude: The Golden Gate Bridge, The Cistine Chapel), Leo’s barbel was confoundedly difficult to preserve in all its hirsute glory.
And so it was — on that relentlessly icy winter morning — that while Ted surreptitiously struggled to accurately describe the general whereabouts of Wesley to his mysterious interlocutor, Leo was quietly holed-up inside the office’s tiny back cloakroom, deeply engrossed in the brief but complex daily ritual of combing out and re-waxing his moustache.
Fortunately this process always necessitated — Ted knew not why — the boiling of a kettle, and above its steamy whining he calculated that Leo could probably detect little from the office area beyond the repetitive mutter of distant voices sparring. Even so, as he finally turned to apprehend his fact-seeking friend across the clean, smooth span of his low-quality, high-glossed MDF desk, his gentle face remained cruelly bleached by a pale fog of unease. ‘Oh I know perfectly well where Wesley is, locationally, it’s more his state of mind that interests me.’
The man who spoke was known as Bo because his surname was Mackenzie, and the calf-length gaberdine mac was his main sartorial preference (even during climatic conditions generally thought inappropriate to the wearing of protective garb).
In all other respects though — excluding the mackintosh and the nickname — he bore absolutely no resemblance to Columbo the TV detective. He was not an ingenious sleuth. He had little grasp of irony. He was an improbably tall ex-tennis pro with perfectly straight eyes, badly receding black hair (which he grew long to the rear, hoisting it up neatly into a glossy ponytail) and a pathological inability to dither: the kind of inability, in fact, only ever possessed by the successful gambler (who’ll always call a spade a spade, except, of course, when he doesn’t), the pulpiteer and the bully.
He and Ted went way back. They’d attended school together. And after, when Bo’s legendary backhand had buckled (during a much-publicised Canvey-based charity mixed-doubles match with a popular local lady councillor, a post-menopausal pop singer and a lesser-known royal biographer) he’d funnelled his considerable energies into the fertile field of major and minor-league sports journalism.
Unfortunately, Bo’s imagination in print (and, alas, also out of it) had always been rather cruelly curtailed by the rudimentary stylistic limitations of serve and return. But Bo was not now, nor ever had been, the kind of man to allow a scandalous want of talent to impede his indomitable physical encapsulation of spunk and grit and zeal.
‘But how do you know where he is?’ Ted asked (diligently ignoring the question about Wesley’s state of mind). ‘How could you possibly know he was in the library?’
Bo scowled, ‘Internet, stupid.’
He waggled his right foot. On the floor just next to it stood a small, rectangular, fabric-coated bag containing his laptop and a choice combination of other high-tech journalistic gadgetry.
‘Really?’ Ted’s innocent eyes widened. ‘You’re saying it actually records where Wesley is, from moment to moment, right there, on your portable computer?’
‘Yes,’ Bo growled, ‘how the heck would I know otherwise?’
‘You’re saying he’s…’ Ted paused as the true horror of the situation descended upon him, ‘he’s bugged?’
Bo snorted, ‘Don’t be ridiculous. It’s nothing like that. People keep tabs. His people. They watch him. They ring in. They help each other. It’s a voluntary thing.’
‘Good Lord,’ Ted mulled this over for a minute, ‘that’s terrifying.’
‘How?’ Bo was uncomprehending.
‘How what?’
He took a deep breath, ‘How is it terrifying that Wesley’s on the internet? Everything’s on the fucking internet. That’s precisely what it’s there for.’
Ted smiled sagaciously, ‘Remember 1984?’
‘All too clearly. The year I lost my virginity.’
Ted stopped smiling, ‘You lost your virginity at ten years of age?’
Bo looked unremorseful. ‘I was two years younger,’ he expanded nonchalantly, ‘than your dear friend Katy Turpin, who kindly plucked my cherry from me.’
Ted’s colour rose slightly. ‘Anyhow,’ he rapidly continued, ‘I didn’t mean the year, I meant the novel. 1984. We read it at school. The film starred John Hurt.’
Bo shrugged.
‘John Hurt,’ Ted reiterated. ‘He was in The Elephant Man. He was nominated for an Oscar.’
Bo stared at Ted in scornful bemusement, ‘The Elephant Man? What the fuck does a film have to do with anything?’
Ted picked up a bendy ruler from his desktop and manipulated it between his two hands, carefully. ‘A book,’ he murmured gently, ‘it was a book, originally.’
Bo looked up coolly so that he might make a meal out of inspecting the ceiling fan, but instead found himself blinking into a rather uninspiring strip light. After a couple of seconds he focussed in on Ted again. Ted had suddenly acquired a fluorescent white stripe across his nose.
‘God, Rivers,’ in his pique Bo returned temporarily to the reassuring cruelty of formal class lingo, ‘why I ever even gave you the time of day at school still remains a monumental fucking mystery to me.’
Ted said nothing. Bo, he mused, had clearly forgotten the exact nature of their scholastic interactions. Maybe this blip indicated some deep psychological problem involving malfunctioning synapses? Or perhaps — and more probably — the simple act of forgetting helped him to sleep a little sounder during the long, bleak hours of the early morning (although, frankly, Bo did not — he had to admit — look in any way like a man who had ever suffered from a shortage of shut-eye. He was devastatingly vital; spruce as a fine Swiss pine).
On considering Bo’s spruceness — and its implications in terms of any illusions he may’ve clung to relating to the existence of a fair and vengeful deity — Ted’s throat involuntarily contracted and his mind turned briefly to Wesley’s story about the supposed cruelty of ancient Roman pigeon farming. He wondered whether Bo might jump for this scrap — did it qualify as newsworthy? — but before he could speak, Bo spoke himself.
‘So does he think it’s frightening that he’s on the internet?’
‘Uh…’ Ted’s brain fizzed. He put down the ruler and fingered his tie, ‘I don’t know. I didn’t ask him. How could I? I only just this second found out about it.’
‘Oh come on, Rivers,’ Bo hissed impatiently, ‘after spending well over an hour in his company, even a cretin like you must’ve unearthed something printworthy.’
Ted tried to think for a moment, ‘I found out…’
He paused, then spoke, all at once, in a guilty rush, ‘I found out that he lost his hand after he fed it to an owl. But I don’t think you should write about that. It seemed very personal.’