A Million People, Hadley Read online

  I realised then, for the first time, that I felt something other than the thrill of talking to, being with, someone beautiful and famous. It wasn’t pleasant.

  “Don’t worry about the sandwich,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said, still looking at the door.

  “I mean, it’s Mian Langhari, for heaven’s sake.” His perfume was stinking the whole place out. “I think he may have just bowled a maiden over.”

  “He’s a famous cricketer.”

  My little joke went down well. Not! Boy oh boy, she was transfixed.

  “Don’t worry, Marina,” I said. “I can see my own way out.”

  “Yes, yes, thanks. Eternally grateful. Bread in the bread bin. Next to the Goblin Teasmaid.”

  She walked slowly to the door, Mian Langhari no doubt leaning against something appropriate on the other side, maybe still with an article of clothing on. A sock, perhaps. Or a batsman’s glove. On the end of his dick. She walked in and closed the door gently after her without so much as a farewell smile in my direction.

  It did briefly occur to me to go to the door and look or listen through the keyhole. Listen and learn. But that would never have done, not with the network of ancient spies in the house. So I let myself out by the front door and walked to the leafy avenue to wait for a taxi. I looked at the ground. I was so perplexed. It didn’t occur to me that I had yet another huge story on my hands.

  I went to the bar in the basement of the Islamabad Grand and sulked at a table eating a dry cheese sandwich and watching a cricket game that was a lot less exciting than the commentators seemed to think. I walked back to the guesthouse and climbed the stairs to my room, hearing the clinking of pool balls on the pink table before I reached the top. That was all I needed. First drums and hissing kettles, now clinking fucking pool balls.

  “Eh-up, ’Ad-leh. Fancy a game of pool?”

  Oh lord. “Oh, it’s you. What a coincidence.”

  “Aye, it’s me. Todd. Yorkshire Todd.”

  “Todd, of course. What brings you here?”

  “Well, it’s my nature to be friendly to everyone. So here I am. Fanc-eh a game?”

  Did I fancy a game of pool with Todd? Given the choice, I would rather have had my scrotum cut off with a rusting scalpel, folded double three or four times and hammered into shape and glued on to the end of a pool cue. But I didn’t say that. Todd was leaning to the side and pulling balls out of the middle pocket.

  The angle, catching the light from an ugly elliptical floor lamp, highlighted the cotton wool in his left ear.

  My heart sank a little. Then rose a little. I was, after all, a journalist. “Depraved appetites,” Marina had said.

  “Sure,” I said. “What do you play?”

  “Stripes and solids. Two shots on a foul. But no backward shots after a foul.”

  “Sounds good. And if one of us pots the black by mistake?”

  “Game over,” he said.

  “Of course.”

  “I was wondering. Do you know who I am?”

  “I know you found a good Yorkshire ‘roob’.”

  Todd was carefully lining up the triangle, making sure the spot-solid-spot sequence was absolutely right. Bit too fussy, if you’d asked me. I saw cotton wool in his right ear as well.

  “I am Colonel Makhdoom’s personal aide.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  He still wasn’t finished with the triangle. “You see, you say. What do you see?”

  “I see that security is second to none in Pakistan.”

  “But it is, Mister ’Ad-leh.” He looked up from the triangle. “And that is why I am here. To make sure you are safe. To make sure your visit is secure.”

  “I feel very secure, thank you, Todd. Thanks to you and the Pakistani security services.”

  “Who breaks?” he asked.

  “Sorry?”

  “Shall I break?”

  He was talking about the game, not my legs, which was good. “Please, Todd. Chocks away.”

  He fussed around with the white ball, bending down like a golfer, lining up angles. Just smash the fucker, for fuck’s sake.

  “I have a role in security that ensures all our overseas visitors are safe,” he said, one eye closed as he looked down the table.

  “That’s great.”

  “But it behoves our visitors not to take unnecessary risks.”

  Still he didn’t look at me. What did he know? What business of his was it anyway? Stand your ground, Hadley.

  “Risk is my middle name,” I said.

  Todd looked up. “What did you just say?”

  “I mean, this is my business. As a journalist. To find the story. To take acceptable risks.” I didn’t tell him that I spent five days a week sitting in a comfortable chair editing incredibly boring stories, correcting the possessive of “it” from “it’s” to “its”. Sometimes I would mix it up and change “its” to “it’s”.

  Todd lined up his shot, his left hand on the table in a fist, not with the fingers splayed. “Oh, I see. As long as we understand one another.”

  “Of course.”

  He potted into the pack gently, leaving the white too close to a stripe and a solid up against the left side cushion to give me any chance.

  “Sorry, ’Ad-leh. I have the experience, you see. To tuck the white behind coloured balls.”

  “Terrific break. Well done.”

  “And while you consider your next move, perhaps I could offer you a word of advice.”

  I walked around the table, scrutinising my options from every angle. I was fucked. “Of course,” I said. I was backed against the cushion with a stripe and a solid a millimetre away. What could I do?

  “The colonel’s wife is a real lad-eh,” he said.

  “Yes, I agree. She’s magnificent.”

  “Ah, but she has one habit which is far from lad-eh-like, if you get my drift.”

  “She has?”

  “She gets, how should I say politely, a form of satisfaction from making her husband a green-eyed monster.”

  “I see.”

  “That’s good. That you see, I mean. He gets jealous. And when he gets jealous, he becomes very passionate, if you follow my line of reasoning.”

  “I think I do.” How could I take a shot with Todd talking non-stop?

  “With his wife, I mean. So it’s just a word of advice. The colonel’s wife can be very affectionate with men. It is a little game. A play.”

  “I understand completely, Todd.” Who the fuck did he think he was talking to? “Thank you so much for the heads-up.”

  “Aye, just a word of warning, like. Tell me, ’Ad-leh,” he said. “Changing the subject if you don’t mind. Can you tell me, in a word, which country invented the vacuum suction cleaner?”

  Once, twice, three times a lad-eh. Fucked on’t table. Fucked in’t conversation.

  “Funny you should ask that,” I said.

  “Funn-eh? Why’s it funn-eh?”

  “No. Sorry. I was being sarcastic. What I meant was: what a strange question.” What a depraved question.

  “Well, do you know, like?”

  I stood up straight and thought about it. “Um, at a guess, I would say it would have to be America.”

  Todd raised his head, picked the chalk off the overhead light and tended to his cue.

  “Pakistan,” he said.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Pakistan. So few people know that.”

  “Are you sure it’s true?”

  “You find it unbelievable?”

  “No, not at all. I just don’t think it’s correct.” I couldn’t concentrate on the game. I tried to pot myself into safety and put the white in the middle pocket.

  “Bollocks,” I said.

  “You think it’s bollocks?”

  “No, I mean bollocks about that shot. I’ll Google the vacuum cleaner.”

  “That won’t give you the full truth.”

  I wasn’t quite sure about the urgency to find out but I
pulled out my phone and searched. “Here we go. Vacuum cleaner. Invention. Oh, we’re both wrong. Hubert Cecil Booth. England. 1901.”

  “Well, it would say that.”

  “You think it’s inaccurate?”

  “It’s heavily biased.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “In favour of the West.”

  “Why would they lie about who invented the vacuum cleaner?”

  “To isolate Pakistan. To make us look weak. I am a senior aide to a Pakistani politician. Look up me and see what you get.”

  “I don’t need to do that,” I said. “You have two shots.”

  “Mister ’Ad-leh.”

  “No, really. I potted the white. Two shots.”

  He rested his cue against the glass-panelled door, leant on the table, knuckles against the baize, sighed and shook his head.

  “When are you going to see the wood for the trees?” he asked, his head lowered. I could see a bald patch about the size of a sparkly ear ring. He raised his head slowly. His features had changed. Solemn all of a sudden, as he had been in Rick’s Cafe. He looked like he had had a stroke.

  “The wood?”

  “Yes, dear fellow. The wood, like. The big picture.”

  I looked around the table. “But I potted the white. You get two shots.”

  He stood erect, turned slowly and picked up his cue. He turned it around so he was holding on to it by the thin end. He raised it above his head and smashed it on the table. Two balls left the surface and headed for the stairs. Bits of wood hit the ceiling. He was looking at me with a slurring, down-turned mouth, a jagged foot of willow in his left hand. One of the guesthouse staff came running up the stairs to see what the commotion was and Todd waved him away.

  “I think that may be two shots to me,” I said.

  Todd picked up the black and threw it through the window. After the smash I heard it bounce once on something hollow. He was leaning on the table again, panting. He mumbled something under his breath.

  “Sorry?” I said.

  He looked up. “Read my lips,” he said. “I insist.”

  “Insist on what?”

  “Don’t play games, Mister ’Ad-leh.”

  “I’m not. I mean, we were playing a game. We were playing pool, but you’ve put paid to that.”

  “I insist on you being my servant.”

  Oh lord. Here came the depravity. “Wait a minute. Has it been you calling me at all hours?” As if I didn’t know. It made perfect sense. “I don’t understand what you just said. I don’t know what you want.”

  “Do not try to delude yourself. It need not take long. But it needs must be done.”

  “What needs must be done?”

  “You know exactly. You must be my servant. Before the Ides of March.”

  “Before the Ides of March? What are you on about?”

  “You see, you see. You are already mocking me. That will never do. I have heard your Roman references. Talking about the Coliseum. I have to insist on you becoming my servant.”

  Three staff appeared with brooms and dustpans and started to clean up the mess. Not a word of apology from Genghis Khan. And wait. If he had heard me mention the Coliseum with Marina, he had heard the whole conversation. And the colonel. They had heard me stumble at making a pass. They would have heard all she said about men. And about Todd. About him being depraved and violent in the degree of infinity.

  “I am a journalist with the Shrubs news agency,” I said. “I am not sure what you are asking. I am afraid I have to leave.”

  “Oh don’t be such a fool,” Todd said. “Look around you. Look at these men cleaning up the mess around us. The glass everywhere. Doesn’t that give you any ideas?”

  “I’m afraid not, no.”

  I was hugely homesick for Hong Kong and anyone who lived within a mile of my New Territories home. The door to my temporary Islamabad home was ten feet away from the pool table and did not offer much in the way of security right there and then. I would head back to the Islamabad Grand. I started downstairs.

  “Remember my advice,” Todd said.

  That was it. I was gone. What a git.

  CHAPTER SIX

  OUR ISLAMABAD OFFICE is a handsome brick villa with two white-painted arched verandas leading out on to well-tended lawns. Bougainvillea bushes hide the French doors into the high-ceiling rooms of what was once a family house, with extensive kitchens and rooms for the servants. For security reasons, there is no sign saying “Shrubs”. We tell visitors to look for the rubbish skip, which is always covered in crows a foot and a half long which flee when anyone approaches, crapping over the grass, the watchman’s hut and office cars.

  “Mister Hadley, you are back!”

  It was my first day in the office since I had arrived. I reached out to shake hands with Shafiq, the affable manager, when an explosion rattled the windows, sending the crapping crows into shrieking panic.

  “Stay safe, Marina,” I said, surprising myself.

  Shafiq and I went to the front door. A plume of smoke was rising from near the law court. Palakorn was ambling up the drive towards us.

  “It’s nothing,” he said. “Some kids playing with pipes.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “They set one off this morning. They’re no more than firecrackers.” He walked between Shafiq and me into the office. “You can drive off in your fancy car with Marina and leave me here. Believe me, it’s nothing.”

  I introduced myself to the reporters, neither of whom I had met before. A bully of a bureau chief had sacked all the staff a few years earlier, erasing decades of combined knowledge and integrity with one careless flick of the wrist. I unloaded my things on to a spare desk. Apart from Gary, who wasn’t there, there were two text reporters, two photographers and one TV cameraman. My phone went.

  “This is Hadley.”

  “Hadley? Rodney. Opposition running with a bomb exploding near a law court.”

  “It’s nothing, Rodney. Palakorn checked. Some kids playing, that’s all.”

  “Ah, okay.”

  “Thanks anyway for the heads-up.”

  “Okay.”

  The phone rang again.

  “Hadley? It’s Gary.”

  “Gary! Good to hear from you. Sorry I couldn’t make the party. Are you coming in today?”

  “Sorry, I’m out meeting sources. I’m calling because one of those sources said there had been a bomb blast near the office.”

  “Wow, so quick. Yes, no need to worry. Nothing big. Thanks for the heads-up though.”

  He hung up. Shafiq came to my desk to introduce someone. My phone rang.

  “It’s me again.” It was Gary.

  “Hi.”

  “An intern is coming in today. I was wondering if…”

  “I think she’s already here.”

  “Oh great. Can you do the usual, introduce her to the system et cetera, show her around? I will see her tomorrow. She comes from a very conservative family. Just a heads-up.”

  “Sure. Leave it with me.”

  He hung up. A lot of heads were up today.

  “Hadley,” Shafiq said. “This is Yasmin who is joining us as an intern.”

  I stood up and shook hands with Yasmin, an earnest woman of about twenty-six with purple lipstick and a loose burgundy-coloured veil partially covering her hair.

  “Great to meet you,” I said. “I’m afraid Gary isn’t coming in today. But please sit down and we can have a little chat.”

  My phone rang.

  “Hadley?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s Fagin, my old China. How’s it going?”

  “All well, thanks. Kind of busy right now.”

  “Okay, I’ll be brief. We’ve heard a bomb’s gone off.”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “Okay. That’s all I needed to know.”

  “Thanks for giving me the heads-up.”

  But imagine if it had been something and you’re trying to write the story very
quickly and update it constantly as more information came in and every two minutes some bastard rang you to tell you what you already knew. It was infuriating. And you couldn’t be rude to these people, because the next time, when it really was important and you didn’t already know about it, perhaps they wouldn’t bother picking up the phone to call you.

  “Sorry, Yasmin, I keep getting these calls about a bomb blast that was nothing. I have to be very polite in how I reply.”

  “Yes, I saw it. Please, it is of no importance.”

  That’s what I’m trying to fucking tell them, I wanted to say. But I remembered Gary’s heads-up. Conservative family. My phone rang again.

  “Hadley?”

  “This is Susan from London.”

  “Hi Susan.”

  “AFP are running a story about an explosion in Islamabad…”

  “Thanks Susan. We’re on it. Thanks for the head.” I hung up. “Zup,” I added.

  Yasmin was frowning. “I think Susan may be a little confused,” she said.

  “Indeed. Where were we?”

  “You thanked her for the head.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “I am not cognisant of whether it is the same in your country, but the phrase has a connotation…”

  “I realise the connotation. It was a mistake.”

  “She’s probably checking back through her diary, ripping through the pages, as we speak.”

  “Yasmin, drop it, please. Where were we?”

  “You were to introduce me to Shrubs. Please explain to me how you send the stories all round the world.”

  “Ah, now that’s interesting.”

  “Show me, please.”

  I was distracted, briefly, by two herons bonking on an air-con on the wall of the primary school next door. They were either herons or gannets. They looked very thin and I briefly wondered if they were globally threatened. Good to see them bonking if they were.

  “Well, there are different ways,” I said. “If it is what we call a bulletin, which is the most important news, like an assassination or coup, you would type just the one line in capitals here. Like this for instance.”

  I wanted to show her what a funny man I was. I wanted to make her laugh. I didn’t want her to think of me as a desk-bound middle-aged fucker who got off watching pigeons getting off on an air-con. Something colourful and edgy. Something about giving head? Too coarse. Something about a politician being blown up outside the Shrubs office? Too close to the bone.