Christopher Brookmyre - Parlabane 04 (13 page)

'Oh yes.'

'You don't let me down. You are my ambassador to pr0n, man.'

'Later.'

Kirk out.

Dawn Yuill. Wow. Falling out of her party frock with verified nipple-inshot. Something to look forward to indeed. And from a source image, too, rather than scanned in from newsprint with the next page's inverse headline buggering up the contrast and obscuring the merchandise. The former
Scotland Tonight
frontwoman was not exactly a knock-'em-dead beauty, but the prurient interest/titillation factor was paradoxically amplified by her sheer ordinariness, even that hint of frump about her. Since moving to the bigger playing field of the London media, she had thrown her lot in with the clean-up-TV shower, playing the role of high-profile prude when she wasn't fronting 'lifestyle' shows or, Lord help us, her Sunday morning 'let's pretend religion still has a role in popular culture' pseudo-current affairs sham. None of these higher purposes, however, had placed her above whoring this same schoolmarmish image in the most hypocritical fashion, when she did that profile-boosting photo-shoot, ostensibly for the
Radio Times
but liberally distributed in advance to the red-tops. It depicted her as a classroom disciplinarian with more black leather than blackboard, calculated to fuel the secret fantasies harboured by Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells when he wasn't tuning into her Sunday show or reaching for the Basildon Bond. For all of that, a stolen paparazzi shot of her inadvertently displaying one breast was worth far more, for example, than last week's candid, topless-onholiday pics of nubile young thing Karen Lewis, because you knew Karen was going to deliver the goods at some point: if not thanks to a telephoto lens in the Caribbean then when the script demanded it in whatever low-budget Britflick she thought was a career step-up from soapland and her failed singing career. But Dawn Yuill, well, it was more than a matter of exposed flesh. It felt like a victory.

It was a privilege of living in this media-saturated era that there was a camera standing by on fast-repeat shutter to capture the moment should any female of even microscopic celebrity happen to fall out of her dress, slip her 74

bikini top off or venture out at night in a frock and underwear combo that underestimated the near X-ray properties of modern professional flash photography. And thanks to the internet, or 'Satan's switchboard' as Finlay approvingly referred to it, these images could be instantly and endlessly shared, like an exchange of infinite bubblegum cards in the great playground of pr0n. (Not all images could be shared, it had to be said, and not for purposes of exclusivity or selfishness. There were only three people in this world, as far as he knew, who had seen the full-frontal nude digital pics of June Shelley
without
a four-foot tube of Natraline lip-balm protecting the sitcom actress's modesty. Those three were Tom Kerr, the photographer who had conducted the shoot (and quietly shot more than June Shelley noticed), Rory, who came up with the campaign ('Your lips feel naked without it'), and Finlay, who was allowed to view them only on Rory's machine but most definitely not allowed copies. If they ever surfaced anywhere public, in fact if they were even known to exist, June Shelley would very quickly become the least seen but highest earning nude model in British history. But that, in itself, was half the thrill.) Rory was a collector. All boys were collectors, to a greater or lesser degree, and of sicker or healthier things. There was probably a valid, anthropological explanation for it, this male compulsion to hoard and catalogue, from diesel locomotive serial numbers, to Hawkwind off-shoot backlists, to body-part trophies. In the grand scale of these things, Rory didn't reckon he scored particularly high on the sad or harmful indices, but it did sometimes bother him that he couldn't really say why he was doing it or what exactly he thought he was collecting. What was it about these images, posed and knowing or stolen and intrusively voyeuristic, that drove him not just to look but to retain? Was it that by glimpsing the hidden parts of the body he was capturing part of the soul, as was the mythic aboriginal superstition? He didn't know; he only knew that he was compelled to collect. If there was a manifest benefit beyond the immediate gratification upon first view, it was in the curious feeling of comfort and reassurance he felt when he saw on TV - or even more so, met in the flesh - a woman of whom he owned such an image. It diluted the threat, the mystery, the power that they otherwise held, defused whatever inexplicable force made him feel, well,
impotent
, if that was still the right word to describe a condition so chronically marked by raging hard-ons.

The bar was satisfactorily populated as Rory made his entrance. He cringed any time someone used the phrase 'fashionably late' (mandatorily followed by gratingly self-congratulatory laughter), but there was something to be said for getting one's timing right for even the most modest of gatherings. The first person there always looked a little sad and desperate, whether for alcohol or company; and if you got there too soon after, you'd be one-on-one with the 75

loser, with later arrivals unable to distinguish who'd got there after whom. Nightmare.

More satisfactory was the informal - but importantly not uniform - dress code, as it was always a pleasure to see how the female company scrubbed up. He understood the practical and levelling considerations of those fleeces, but they had an unforgivingly obscuring effect on the eye candy. If any woman had nipples capable of making a visible indent in those things, then he didn't
want
to see them.

He checked his watch. With dinner eight for eight-thirty, he wasn't 'fashionably late', and was relieved, noting a couple of absentees, not to be 'ostentatiously last' either. Not that his entrance went unheralded in any case.

'Here comes the man of the moment,' called out Grieg Rossi, still hearty in his congratulations, which suggested an ongoing insecurity about having been the first man to fall. Nobody had blamed him for losing the base - that was down to inexperienced tactics and Jack Parlabane's admirably deft duplicity

- but he was still behaving like the OG-scoring defender towards the striker who's bailed him out with an equaliser. Oh, and a late winner too, not to sell himself short.

Rory stopped in the doorway and placed his hand on his heart. 'I only did what any one of us would have done in the same circumstances,' he said.

'Hear, hear,' applauded erstwhile team-mate Kathy McKenna, in a dress that made up for lack of cleavage with some quality pokiosity, both rasps making a dainty but divine impression in the blue cloth. 'Well said. So now you can reprise the sentiment when we tell you it's traditional for the flag-capper to buy the drinks.'

'Absolutely,' he replied, a round being a small price to pay for the opportunity to be simultaneously magnanimous and victorious in company. It was therefore a modest disappointment to be reminded that UML were picking up the tab for everything. Besides, he was the only one without a glass anyway. Everyone was a lot more chatty and relaxed than might have been expected, so chalk one up to UML for the ice-breaking properties of the afternoon's hostilities. More than vindicating Rory's stance against the professional cynicism of Jack the Hack, it had been not only a morale-boosting exercise, but definitely a team-building one too. As well as the obvious unifying aspects shared on one's own team, there had been an irresistible instilling of respect for the other side, too. Tactical move and counter-move, skill, stealth and audacious gunplay, these were the things being discussed and dissected, with compliments towards one's opponents being the principal thrust of conversation.

'I loved the way you. . . '

'I thought I had you until you. . . '

'You played it dead right with that move. . . '

76

Pride of place in the small but cosy, whisky-lined bar was a UML-inscribed laptop sitting on a table next to Tim Vale's camera, to which it was linked by a USB cable. On screen was a repeating slideshow of brilliantly lively pictures from the game; pictures, it should be mentioned, that no-one had any idea he was taking at the time, as no-one had even seen him between the first and last moments of the match. Given his decisive late intervention, it would be churlish to say it had limited his contribution to the red team's success, but it was clear that he had spent the majority of his time silently and invisibly sniping for images rather than opponents. Consequently, the shots had that natural and kinetic, heart-of-the-moment look that you only saw in pictures when the subjects weren't self-consciously aware of being photographed. He had captured their expressions wonderfully, and email addresses were being hurriedly scribbled down for the receipt of copies. UML were bound to be delighted, as would be Kathy and her partner. Whatever Parlabane contrived to write about the experience, the camera didn't lie about what a good time everyone was having. Rory made a mental note to ask for a look at the guy's portfolio when they got back down the road. He seemed a little long in the tooth not to have made a name for himself with snaps like that. Maybe he'd come late to it, or had a pedigree in another field. No matter, he had something Rory could definitely use when the right campaign came along.

Parlabane, to be fair, was not being the cooler-than-thou spoilsport smartarse Rory had feared, but it was worth remembering that journalists took a professional pride in being duplicitous, two-faced bastards, so his instinct remained one of caution while in his midst. He was chatting to Toby Seaton, the other source of minor unease and discomfort on this trip. It had always been a finite possibility that Rory and Toby would run into each other again, though not a possibility he'd ever enjoyed contemplating. The longer it had gone on without happening, the more he'd believed that meant it never would, on the grounds that if they hadn't bumped into each other already, then their circles must be comfortably distant. But there Toby had been, outside the minibus, looking even more nervous and apologetic than ever; different, changed in many ways but still unmistakable. They'd acknowledged each other through tentative eye-contact, and an awkward exchange of where life-has-taken-us info would be required at some point, but, fortunately, in all probability that would be it. Neither would be wanting to stick on a
Now That's What I Call
Eighties
CD and go ambling down memory lane.

Rory was handed a second glass of champagne by Liz, who'd had her back to him prior to that as she chatted to Joanna, the podgy IT type who'd apparently compensated for presenting the biggest target by providing the sharpest strategic advice. Grieg, her colleague from Catalyst Solutions, had provided no such nous, as being in Human Resources he wasn't party to the late-night 77

geek fests that had honed Joanna's tactical awareness. Liz revealed herself (though that was hardly the right word) to be wearing a rather stiff-looking tartan frock that circled her neck just above the collarbone and described her chest in only the most elliptical terms. It wasn't unattractive by any means

- let's face it, Liz seldom was - but it was a rather disappointingly starchy number nonetheless. For business, Liz always dressed sharply, even elegantly, but she never wore anything that betrayed any information about what lay beneath. Nothing sheer, nothing clinging, no lycra, and not even a hint of peanut bumps on a winter's morning: it left so much to the imagination that it was practically a blank canvas. In frustration he sometimes wondered whether her dress sense factored in the consideration of denying his prurient gaze, and in his more paranoid moments whether this was in response to his being conspicuously leery. If so, then at least she hadn't circular-emailed the entire sisterhood. If Fiona from Accounts started turning up in black polonecks and Arran sweaters, that was the time to worry.

Earlier in the week, Finlay had made a crack about this weekend being Rory's big chance to 'get a few drinks into her and see what happens when she lets her hair down and you're both away from prying eyes'. Rory had been horrified, not least by the thought of her suspecting this to be his motive. The letting-her-hair-down part he'd hold his hand up to, but anything further sounded like a nightmare. They had a company to run, a business relationship and important responsibilities that would all still be waiting for them next week. Besides, never mind a few drinks, a woman like Liz would need GHB before she let Rory near her. He wasn't too proud to say he considered her out of his league. She had a good ten years on him, and that wouldn't, shouldn't matter, but the age gap seemed far more pronounced simply because she made him feel very immature. That was in fact an important dynamic in their relationship, something they both played off creatively, but the notion of it having a sexual manifestation was like a fourteen-year-old making a pass at a maturely sophisticated auntie.

All he'd really hoped for with regard to the trip was for the informal atmosphere to reveal what she dressed like in less buttoned-down mode, and maybe to be thrown a few titbits to fill in a little of that canvas. Some hope. The tartan dress was letting on even less than the yellow fleece, with only a glimpse of tantalisingly black bra-strap on offer beneath the shoulder seams. There was compensation to be had elsewhere, though. The waitresses he'd seen flitting around were kitted in crisp white blouses without obscuring frills or (disaster!) pinafores. One was buxom, just the right side of plump, the other delicately petite, and both featured discernible lace beneath translucent cotton. Just as well, really, given that the guest side so far only had Kathy's contribution to commend it, with her business partner Emily Bell yet to make 78

her appearance.

'The hero of the hour,' Liz said. 'Joanna here was telling me how you took out her and Emily before your victorious flag run.'

'What can I say, I've always been a natural lady killer.'

Liz rolled her eyes, but at least she was smiling as she did so.

'You must make certain allowances for Rory. He has to channel so much of his creative gift into his work that there's not always much left for other areas of expression.'