“What about Barbra Streisand? Or Cher?”
“What about one of those pricks that’s always mowing the greens when you’re trying to play golf?”
“How about my cousin? The cunt maintains that vinyl sounds better than a CD! Reckons it’s got more ‘warmth’…”
So here they were. Through eyes as narrowed as they could be without actually being shut, Fenton followed the deliberations. It was 2.36 am. His eyeballs were smouldering coals. The light they let into his brain felt like jagged glass. It hurt his head to look at things. At the Maoists, doing what they were doing. At Gus, who kept turning his way to deliver this series of suggestive winks. At the jemmied window. At the whole width of the illegally entered bar, idiotically ablaze with fluorescent light.
“Col, what’s the name of that fat lady in our film workshop that never shuts up?”
“What, that mature-age one? The one who re-reads the complete books of Jane Austen once a year?”
“Yeah, her. Let’s do her.”
Here – to say it again – they were. Had anyone in the history of crime ever done this before? Broken into a premises and then just sat down in it with all the lights on and compiled a death list? What was the point? Couldn’t they be doing it at someone’s house? Admittedly Gus’s original vision had involved an assumption that they would be able to get the beer taps going. But when doing so had proved to require some measure more complicated than just pulling down on them, that whole consideration had become void. Why then were they still here, still sitting in the fully lit bar? Were they insane?
Well, the answer to that part was no longer in much doubt.
“And what about that joker that always sits next to her? That wanker with the curly hair. The one that does the experimental theatre.”
“Yeah, write him down. I hate that dude.”
With due solemnity Warren added each fresh nominee to the death list’s swelling ranks. His scalp bore signs of untimely removal from its pillow. Rogue clumps of hair stood at strange angles to it, as if a soundless gale were whipping through the room. Out in the night, in the recesses of the dark window, a reflection of the conspirators hung like a crooked slide. The striped shirt protruding from beneath Blue’s jumper was quite plainly a pyjama top.
“What about the Feminist in Residence? I’ve heard she’s a lesbian.”
“Well what about the Lesbian in Residence then? Why not just do her?”
“Is she a feminist too but?”
“Hey, what about that lady at the newsagent?” offered Warren, looking eagerly up from his notebook. “Blue, you know her. The one that always gives you this dirty look whenever you buy a porno. Never provides you with a paper bag for it. Always makes you ask for one. Let’s do her.”
“Steady on, Wozz.” This was Gus, surfacing from his long silence at last. “Be reasonable.” He gave Fenton, before Fenton had a chance to look away, another one of those personalised winks. “If we knocked off every chick who did that …” He made a gesture of futility with his smoking hand. Warren looked contritely at the table. “I mean, Charmers has been known to frown on some of my more hardcore purchases. And that’s just the stuff she knows about. But it’s never crossed my mind to eliminate her for it. Let’s not lose our heads here. Let’s not lose all perspective. Actually, Wozz, that’s reminded me. You’d better whack her down on your apologies list. Charmers. I reckon that’s only fair, given I never even told her there was a meeting on…”
While Warren rather sulkily took down her name, Gus shifted forward with purpose in his chair, preparing to say something more. Until a moment ago he had been content to remain a spectator, slung smokily back from the table, grimacing occasionally, watching things unfold in the manner of an indulgent uncle on the sideline of a junior soccer match. But now he seemed constrained to get something off his chest – to articulate something that was in danger, perhaps, of falling by the wayside.
“I don’t want to fuck up the flow, comrades,” he clarified first, encouragingly. “Far from it. But let’s try and remember – this is a political death list we’re talking about here. This isn’t just a smorgasbord of the world’s great turds. Like, Smithy’s cousin. Granted, the bloke sounds like an absolute goose. You won’t get any argument from me on that. But from a political standpoint, the mere fact that the guy’s a dick is neither here nor there. Unless he also happens to be … I dunno, a leading industrialist or something, well he’s got no real business being on a Maoist death list. You see what I’m getting at?” He looked reasonably round the table. “We’re not savages. Let’s try and keep our personal grudges out of it. We’re not …”
He trailed off. Something in Warren’s notebook seemed to have caught his eye. He frowned towards it for a closer look. The tolerant smile was slipping from his face. “Wozzer you fool!” he groaned. “You’ve put her on the bloody death list! Here. Give it here.”
Clamping his cigarette between his displeased teeth, Gus beckoned for the notebook with both hands. Warren, blushing fiercely, handed it over. Gus tore out the offending page and crushed it into a ball. “If she ever clapped eyes on that,” he said, his eyes sweeping the room for a bin, “I’d be the dead man.” He spied a receptacle near the far wall. He chucked the crumpled death list at it. The death list fell way short. Fenton watched it roll to rest on the carpet. He made a mental note to covertly retrieve it before the night was done, to stash and retain it for future use against Gus.
Gus, sliding the notebook back to Warren: “Fire up a whole new list, mate. And this time,” he sagely said, “let’s try and keep it sane. Matter of fact” – yet again he found it necessary to wink suggestively in Fenton’s direction – “matter of fact, why don’t I kick this one off myself. You’ll like this one, Fent. I’ve been keeping him up my sleeve for you. Robert Browning.”
In silence Fenton watched Warren write the words Death List at the top of a new page, and enter Robert Browning’s name on the line beneath. He felt considerably wider awake now. His heart wantonly boogied. He could feel Gus looking right at him with an expectant smirk. Apparently some display of enthusiasm was required of him, some verbal or physical tribute to Gus’s flair for target selection. So: knowing he would hate himself for it later – indeed hating himself for it already – Fenton looked back at him, and allowed his face to assume the expression that seemed to be expected of it: an expression of pleasant surprise, the expression of a connoisseur of political homicide whose high standards of death list compilation have just been more than met. On top of all the other things he’d done to Browning, was he now going to be party to his placement on a death list? No. That would be beyond the pale. He categorically must not let it happen.
“I thought you’d like that one, Fent,” said Gus with a satisfied grin. “The guy’s a dickrash, am I right? Word has it you’ve ditched his course a couple of weeks back. Got a bit sick of his contempt for democracy, did you?”
Fenton merely nodded. Yes, he was now decidedly awake. But his mind, strangely enough, was refusing to give the Browning problem the unwavering attention it deserved. It remained far more interested in that discarded first death list, lying over there on the carpet in full view. He had to have it. He was halfway to deciding that it needed to be got right now, without another moment’s delay, so that he could start attacking this Browning thing with a clear head.
“I assure you mate,” Gus was saying, “you’re by no means alone there. I had my own run-in with the bald-headed berk a couple of years back. I absented myself from one or two of his classes, and the elitist bastard bloody failed me for it!”
“I don’t see how that’s more political than my cousin,” Smithy put in moodily.
“Settle down, Smithy,” Gus sternly replied. “The man’s a dead-set elitist, as Fent’ll be the first to tell you. Fent? Where you off to champ? The dunnies are that way.”
“Just getting rid of this,” Fenton explained, striding towards the crumpled-up death list.
“Relax,” Gus laconically said. “I’ll get her on my way out.”
“No I’ve got it.”
“Suit yourself, you security-conscious bugger,” Gus shrugged. “So what do you say mate?” he called back without looking. “Is Browning the go or what?”
“Absolutely!” Fenton called in return. He picked the death list up and conveyed it towards the bin, keeping the full width of his body between the Maoists and his cunning hands. “Someone along those lines, sure.” He passed his left hand over the bin’s mouth – while tucking the death list deftly into his front pocket with his right. “A lecturer, a University official – someone like that.” He returned to his chair. “Although I must say, I liked your industrialist idea as well.”
Gus firmly shook his head. “Nah, Fent. I shouldn’t of said that. That was a bad example. I was forgetting about my guiding principle there, which is to keep this thing simple. Keep it realistic. Let’s face it, this is our first go at this sort of thing. We’d be idiots to bite off more than we can chew. A guy like Browning – I reckon that’s about as high as we want to aim at this stage. He hasn’t got any security entourage or anything like that. We don’t have to track him down or seek him out. Basically he’s a sitting duck – and I reckon that’s pretty much exactly what we’re after, this time round. You’ve got to be prudent about these things. You’ve got to walk before you can run. We don’t want this to turn into one of those pie-in-the sky bizzos where you aim too high and then never end up doing it.”
This information came as a grave blow to Fenton, who had been proceeding on the assumption that this was and always would be precisely such an enterprise. “Sure,” he agreed, nodding a lot. “Point taken. But as you say, Gus, there’s the political element too. We want this to make a statement, as you say. And a guy like Browning … I don’t know. It’s a statement, sure. But at the end of the day, is it enough of a statement?”
Gus shrugged, as though he no longer found this point especially important. “I respect your ambition, Fent. But remember, a lot of the statement part’ll come afterwards. After we’ve knocked him off. With our claim of responsibility and that. Bear in mind, the minute he turns up dead, we’ll have Wozzer on the phone putting in our official claim …”
Warren’s face came uneasily up from his notebook and said: “Hang on. How does that work exactly?”
Gus frowned. “What do you mean, how does it work? You ring up the pigs and tell them we did it.”
“But don’t they…” Warren’s features worked with bafflement behind his tinted glasses. “Wouldn’t they just come straight round and arrest us?”
Gus heartily laughed. “Wok, don’t you watch the news mate? The pigs don’t arrest you just cause you make a claim of responsibility! They assume you’re lying, mate.”
“So what’s the point of claiming it then?” Warren asked.
Gus glanced at Fenton with an embarrassed half-smile, as if to assure him that this unedifying side-show would be dealt with before he knew it. “You claim it,” he informed Warren, with a hint of aggression, “to get your name in the papers. Really and truly, mate. What bloody century have you been living in? Every man and his dog claims responsibility for this sort of thing. Stop looking so worried, you silly dick. They’d never arrest us just for that.”
Fenton said: “Unless nobody claims it except us.”
Gus looked round at him with a startled frown. “Jesus, Fent,” he admonished. “Don’t you start!” He turned back to Warren. “He’s having you on, Wozz. His tongue’s firmly in his cheek. He knows full well that simply never happens. But look – just say it does. Just say for the first time in bloody history there’s only the one claim of responsibility. Even then they won’t arrest us, because we’ll just tell ’em it was a fake claim. That’s the beauty of the whole concept. A lot of the time, the real perpetrator never makes a claim at all. A lot of the time all your claims are fake. Even if there is only the one. You get me? A claim by itself means nothing, mate. Legally, it proves bugger all.”
“Why don’t we just not claim it then?” Warren proposed.
Gus bemusedly shook his head. “Be sensible, Wozz. Fair dinkum. We’re not going to all the troubling of doing the bloke so we can not even put in a bloody claim for it! Fuck that. I’m not doing all that work just so some other mob can take solo credit for it. It’d make no sense. But look – if it’ll make you happy, you can chuck in a fake claim as well as our one. You can ring up in a funny voice and pretend you’re an Anarchist as well. That way we’ll be covered whatever happens. Happy?”
“Or,” Warren said, “we could just wait till the Anarchists killed someone …”
Gus’s goodwill was running out. “Pull your head in, Wozz. We’re not here to complicate matters, for Christ’s sake. We’re here to move forward. We’re here to get ourselves a name. And as far as I’m concerned, I reckon we’ve got one. In the shape of Browning. Personally, I haven’t heard a better suggestion all night.”
Quite suddenly Gus was speaking as if the meeting was over. Was it? Had Fenton missed something? Had he fallen asleep during some key phase of proceedings, some thoroughgoing ten-minute discussion about the merits of Browning’s name?
“And I know,” Gus went on, while producing a colossal set of car keys, “that Fent feels the same way. So let’s call it a night, shall we? We can work out the logistics of it next time. I don’t know about you ladies, but me and Fent have got nice warm beds to get home to.” He jangled his keys in a masterful way. “You right for a lift, Fent?”
“We’ve finished with the list then?” Fenton said.
“Unless someone’s got a better suggestion than Browning, yeah.”
Fenton looked round the table at the other Maoists. Patently, they were not about to put forward any further nominees. They’d had their fun now. Like Gus, they were ready to go home. Col and Smithy were hunched forward on their chairs, waiting to be dismissed. Blue had both arms above his head, having a good stretch.
Fenton said, “We’ve given up on the idea of Smithy’s cousin, then?”
“Rest assured, Fent, we’ve ditched that ridiculous option.”
“Oh,” Fenton said.
Gus, struck by the clear lack of brio in that monosyllable, stopped jangling his keys. He looked at Fenton sharply. “Is there a problem, Fent? Speak up, mate. I don’t want any bloke to walk away from this thinking he hasn’t had a fair go.”
“I don’t know. It’s just …”
“It’s just what?”
“Well, call me a purist, but I keep going back to your idea of a leading industrialist.”
“Christ Fent, are you still on about that? It was a slip of the tongue, mate. I wish I’d never even said it. A name, that’s what we really need out of this. I’m adamant about that. And let’s face it, who can name a leading industrialist off the top of their heads? Who can name any industrialist off the top of their heads? Frankly, I’m not even that sure what an industrialist is …”
“But it won’t take us long to find out the name of one, surely,” Fenton pointed out.
“Maybe for next time, sure.” Gus looked at his watch.
“Or even for this time.”
Gus stiffened. He smiled, but the smile was forced. “Fent, I’m not that sure I’m with you. I’m starting to get confused. Do you dig the Browning option or don’t you? I’m starting to sense you’re not that keen on it. I’m dog-tired here mate, so fuckin’ correct me if I’ve got hold of the wrong end of the stick. But I’m – I’m getting this vibe that you actually reckon it’s a pretty shithouse idea. And that … Well, I’m a little bewildered by that, to be honest. To be honest, I thought he was a pretty good idea. I still do. But look, if you’ve got a better idea, let’s hear it. I mean, Christ” – he reasonably spread his hands – “I’ve got no great stake in doing Browning. If you can think of someone better, fire away. Give us an alternative. And if it’s a halfway decent one, we’ll ratify the bastard and give Browning the flick. It makes no difference to me, mate. This thing’s bigger than any one person. All I ask is that we walk out of here with a name.”
The other Maoists were getting sick of this. Fenton could feel them aching to leave, hating him with their eyes. Warren sat forward over his half-shut notebook, waiting for Gus’s go-ahead to close it the rest of the way.
Fenton said, “How about … I don’t know, somebody higher up. Someone in the University hierarchy?”
“I go back to the name question, Fent. We need a fucking name.”
“Oh I don’t know their names. But it wouldn’t be hard to find them out.”
Gus breathed slowly in. He tilted his chin back, as if giving this suggestion some really serious and fair-minded thought. Then, with terrible finality, he shook his head. “Nah, them guys are all too old,” he quipped, trying to keep things nice and friendly. “They’d die of natural causes before we could sort out the fine print. So: we’ll stick with Browning, shall we? We’ll push through with him. And we can maybe look at one of those guys for next time round. Now, do you want that lift or not?”
“There is one name I can think of,” Fenton said.
Now he felt the junior Maoists looking at him in a new way: with an unseemly kind of pleasure, with a lust to see him take both barrels of Gus’s gathering wrath. It was an unwelcome sensation, finding yourself at the centre of something you didn’t even want to be at the edge of.
“Just,” he carefully added, “as an option.”
“Option my arse,” Gus tensely replied. “Put it on the table, Fent. If it’s better than Browning we’ll ratify it. If it isn’t, then for God’s sake throw your weight behind Browning so we can all go home and get some sleep. You can’t say fairer than that.”
Oh but you can, thought Fenton. You can say much fairer than that. You could say, for example, that nobody had to get liquidated at all. Couldn't you? Or maybe such an outcome was too much to hope for now. Maybe the time for that discussion had come and gone. Maybe such thinking had now become laughably naive, ridiculously utopian. He felt very cold, as if the roof of the bar had been ripped away and the whole weight of the night sky was pressing directly down on him.
“Ivan Lego,” he said.