Oh, God, what sort of poor pathetic loon was I, caressing the woman’s tampons and staring fondly, love-struck, at her toilet seat, for fuck’s sake? Get fucking real, Kenneth. And get fucking moving, fuckwit. I put the tampons back and replaced the box, then did the wiping-finger-touched-surfaces bit again.
I went down to the locked door on the first floor. I had a little more time to look around. The house was furnished in a slightly dated respectable style that was probably about right for the building. Actually it looked a lot like some of the slightly more modern hotel suites Ceel and I had been in. She must have felt at home. Not as stiflingly hot, though.
The study door opened with the key and I let it close behind me. The study was more old-fashioned than what I’d seen of the rest of the house. The big desk was un-ironic retro, with a gold-tooled burgundy leather top and a brass lamp with a green glass shade. The computer was a Hewlett Packard with a big plasma screen. Ha! I’d just known Merrial wouldn’t be a Mac guy. I couldn’t see any sign of a gun safe, but I guessed it might be hidden.
The answering machine was on its own little table near the door. I looked at it accusingly, as though this was all its fault. You see the trouble you’ve put me to, you nasty little piece of office-beige shite? I moved towards it.
That was when I heard the siren.
It must have been on the fringes of my hearing for a couple of seconds. I’d been feeling a general unease, which seemed at odds with the fact I was now within sight of the thing I’d spent so much effort, angst and sweat getting to. Then I realised: a siren. The Emergency Services. You stop hearing the sound in a big city after a while.
If you’re driving – and providing you’re not the sort of cack-brained bozo who can have a fucking twenty-tonne fire engine right behind him with its lights flaring and its siren screaming and still not realise it’s time to Get The Fuck Out Of The Way – then you do still take notice when you hear a siren; you start looking at side streets, checking the rear-view every few seconds, watching for people pulling out of the way or bumping up onto kerbs or swerving into bus stops to clear a path for the vehicle with the blue lights. Otherwise, you hear it but you pay no attention unless it signifies something you’re waiting for, or it keeps getting louder all the time until it gets very loud and then stops.
I listened to the siren get closer and closer.
Doppler, you fuck, I thought. Fucking Doppler your fucking woop-wooping arse on past. Don’t stop. Don’t pull up here, in the mews or in the square outside. Keep on going. Let it be an emergency somewhere else. Let it be a cop car en route to a robbery on the King’s Road or an ambulance heading for a boating accident on the river or a fire engine attending a false alarm at a shop; let it be anything at all but not a patrol car coming to check on a suspected break-in at the rear of Ascot Square.
I stood there, staring at the answering machine, knowing that I should keep going, knowing that the sensible, per cent-ages-wise course of action was to keep doing what I was doing, get at the tape, wipe the fucker, wipe the fucker twice, make sure it was clean and I and Celia were in the clear… but I couldn’t. I had to hear what was going to happen with that damn siren. There would still be time to wipe the tape even if the sound did stop right outside anyway, but I just couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything until I knew. Closer, closer. Did they use a siren in such a situation? Would that not be like the stupidest thing to do if you were hoping to catch the crims in the act? Give the fuckers plenty of warning. Give them time to scarper with their bags of swag and their stripy jumpers and their eye masks, before the rozzers caught them bang to rights and they went to chokey so fast their feet didn’t touch…
My own phone went, vibrating against my hip. I jumped as though zapped with a cattle prod then pulled my right-hand glove off and held it in my mouth while I withdrew the mobile from its holster. I was whimpering again. I was getting good at whimpering. My hands were shaking so much I almost dropped the phone. I flipped it open. Phil. I clicked, No, don’t answer and put it away again, trembling fingers missing the holster three or four times. The siren was still coming closer. I put my glove back on.
Go past, go past. Oh, just fucking go past… Saint Doppler, I appeal to thee to intercede on my behalf… Oh, fuck off; what a load of fucking shite. Next I’d be appealing to the patron saint of atheists.
The siren’s note started to deepen. I let out a breath I must have been holding for a minute or more. A roaring noise in my ears began to fade and the room took on more colour and stopped looking like the view down a pipe. Jeez, I must have been close to blacking out there.
Never mind. A candle would be lit at the shrine of Saint Doppler after all. Red shifted, of course.
I walked over to the skinny table and the answering machine. It had a little black-on-green LCD display which was in message counter mode at the moment. Five messages. I was still staring at the machine when it rang.
I jumped. ‘Fuck!’ I screamed. Then, ‘You fucking bastarding little cunt!’ At the time, this seemed only reasonable.
The machine clicked after four rings. ‘There’s nobody here right now,’ Ceel’s calm, beautiful voice said.
‘Yes there fucking is!’ I screamed hoarsely, shaking my fists in front of my chest.
‘Please leave a message after the tone.’
‘No!’ I yelled. ‘Don’t fucking bother! Whoever the fuck you are, just fucking fuck off!’
Another click, and a hum as the machine’s tape wound itself forward. Then, ‘Aow hullo yes my name is Sam I’m calling on behalf of BT we would just like to check that you know of our latest offers for domestic customers I’ll call again at a later time and hope to discuss these offers with you thank you goodbye.’
‘Fuck off!’ I screamed as the phone clicked again and the tape started to wind itself back to Ceel’s announcement at the beginning. Fucking typical, I thought. Go ex-directory because you’re fed up getting junk calls from fucking double-glazing salespeople and what happens? You get fucking junk calls from B fucking T. At least I ought to find it reassuring that even metropolitan crime lords weren’t immune from that sort of shit.
When the machine had gone quiet again, I carefully identified the Function and Clear buttons. They were big enough to use with the heavy gloves still on. I pressed one – the black and green display asked Clear All Messages? – followed by the second button. Nothing happened.
I’d been stooping. Now I stood up.
Actually something had happened; the display now read No Messages. But there was no more clicking, no humming, no other sounds at all.
Was that it? It didn’t seem right. Was that all there was to it? Shouldn’t it wind forwards and wipe the tape after Ceel’s introduction?
I guessed not. It would just forget about the messages sitting there already recorded and record over them when there was another incoming call.
Was that good enough? It should be. That was the way the machine worked. As far as it was concerned, there had been no messages. If you tried to play the tape, you’d get nothing, just No Messages.
But the message I’d left was still there. The words were still printed there in patterns of magnetised stripes on the little brown ribbon of oxide-coated plastic. If you took the micro-cassette out of the answering machine and put it in an ordinary dictation machine you’d still hear what I’d said.
I pressed Function again. Re-record Message? No. I pressed Function again a few times until I got to the No Messages screen again. I was sweating now. I couldn’t decide what to do. In theory, it was all fixed now; mission accomplished. Definitely time to Get To Fuck.