Press Delete - Part 3

Previously in Part 1 and Part 2 of Press Delete, our talented, yet morally bankrupt hero James has found out that being a private investigator for a tabloid newspaper is not as glamorous as it used to be. Paralysed by indecision over what to do with an incriminating disc of evidence, he has gone to the office to try to buy himself some time...

PRESS DELETE - PART 3

‘Ah, James? James! JAMES!'

An anxious-looking middle-aged woman was trying to get my attention as I breezed past reception. I turned to look at her.

‘Hi! Ah, who are you here to see today?’

‘John. I’ve got to speak to John. It’s urgent.’

She smiled in a that’s what you think, sunshine kind of way and gestured to a large man sat on one of the leather sofas in the lobby. Well, he wasn’t so much sat on it, as he was sat in it. His bulk chafed against the arms of the sofa, pushed to breaking limit. As he rose, he just kept going up, up, and up. The sofa slammed to floor as it eventually broke free of him.

He walked over to me and extended his massive, clammy hand.

‘Hello again, James.’

‘Colin, always a pleasure.’

My hand disappeared inside his briefly, then was released covered in sweat.

‘Come with me, now.’

‘Yes, Colin.’

Colin’s car was a huge, black saloon that seemed to take up two spaces in the car park. Inside, it felt tiny. Colin took up about eighty percent of the available space. He was everywhere. His seat was back as far as it would go, and yet there was more of Colin to go around. His right knee seemed to go up to the window, his left leg covered most of the console, his right arm was crooked around the steering wheel and dashboard, and the left arm was resting on the back seat. I was only in this car with one man, but I was surrounded by him.

‘We have a problem James,’ he said in his booming, Cockney tones. ‘Quite a large problem.’

He looked at me with his tiny, crab-like eyes, embedded in his massive skull the way a snowman’s eyes are.

‘I see. What’s the problem, Colin?’

I’d like to say that fear was not detectable in my voice but I can’t.

‘Bit of work you’ve been doing. It’s known to us.’

‘Oh shit.’

‘That’s not the problem. We helped your employer with it to an extent, but had them go to you before it got too complicated. There’s some things that we can’t be involved in.’

‘So what is the problem?’

‘The problem is that my boss is the man who helped make it happen, and if you do anything rash, he could be for the chop.’

I let the words hang in the air between us.

‘Christ,’ I said finally. ‘Just to clarify Colin, your boss is still...?’

‘The Chief Constable, yes, he’s still my boss.’

People on the street looked anxiously at the car for a few seconds, as a muffled torrent of swear words were screamed by someone.

‘Sorry. Just had to get that out.’

‘I understand, James. It’s a very unfortunate situation.’

‘FUCKING UNFORTUNATE! Sorry, Colin.’

He produced a phone from his jacket and started punching numbers into with his massive sausage fingers.

‘Who are you calling?’

‘My boss. You’re going to tell him that there won’t be a problem.’

‘What? No! I mean, there won’t be a problem, it’s just...’

Colin narrowed his tiny crab eyes into even tinier dots of pure black hate as he stared at me.

‘What exactly are you intending to do with the disc, James?’

‘John wants it destroyed, and everything relating to it destroyed.’

His face creased up in a way that I interpreted as displeasure.

‘It’s important that we have it. We need to be sure of what’s on it, and then we want to destroy it.’

‘Well, John won’t be satisfied with that. He’ll assume you will try to use it against him.’
Suddenly Colin was an inch away from my face.

‘Why the fuck shouldn’t we use it against him? Why shouldn’t we just raid their offices, raid your home, take your car and lock the lot of you up? Why shouldn’t do whatever the hell we want, without any consequences, and destroy all of you!?’

I stared into those burning black orbs and felt like an ant.

‘There are rules... morals...’

‘That’s fucking right, James.’

He leaned back and surveyed the street.

‘There are morals. There are rules. That’s why you have to give it to me. Now.’

Press Delete - Part 2

Previously on Press Delete, our muck-raker hero James was wallowing in self-pity, earning the disgust of his object of lust, and receiving a creative - but undeniably thorough - bollocking from his superior.

Part 2 picks up immediately post-bollocking, so get reading and let me know what you think.



PRESS DELETE - PART 2

Once my bowels were sufficiently unclenched, I left Ye Olde Cocke Tavern and marched directly to my car, hidden behind a pair of dumpsters at the back of the Waitrose. I opened the boot. It looked like how I felt.

I rummaged through the folders, empty fag packets, newspapers and laptop cables until I found The Disc. I put into the front zipped pocket of my laptop bag and closed the boot.

I got into the car, found a warm can of supermarket-own-brand energy drink and lit up a fag.

Normally a couple of gulps of taurine diluted in sugar, combined with several sharp blasts on a fag gave me the strength to cock-punch God, but today, right now, the experience made me feel like a body rejecting a donor organ.

I needed something, or someone.

Lissa would be back in the office by now, working feverishly in an effort to remove what I had told her from her mind. Being published daily must be a bitch.

As my mind wandered away in search of someone else who could help, I seemed to find Lissa again, as though I was in a house of mirrors. Her eyes, disgusted. Her mouth, perfect. Her legs, cock-straightening. Her eyes no longer seemed so hateful. They were narrowed still, but now her mouth parted just slightly as her tongue caressed the upper lip. She was wearing a silk dressing gown that barely covered her arse, looking at me over her shoulder, her feet in towering heels.

The dressing gown fell to the floor.

‘Jesus!’ I exclaimed, sitting up straight, violently shaken from my doze by the sound of someone coughing.

A man in a high-vis jacket was stood in front of my car, staring at me.

He glanced at my burgeoning erection.

He didn’t even flinch, simply shaking his head and walking away.

‘Fuck off!’ I shouted, blasting the horn.

I moved around in my seat, trying to find a way of sitting that didn’t exacerbate my current predicament.

I grabbed the paper from the passenger seat.

Page after page of tits, with faces above them that looked more and more like Lissa.

After staring intently at the crossword for about ten minutes, I was finally able to sit comfortably. I glanced at the laptop bag on the back seat, giving it an accusatory look for harbouring the thing that would destroy me.

In the beginning, it was a terribly good business.

Information and the way it was found and traded was changing constantly, with every major innovation in technology. When I started, the Nokia 3210 was the must-have gadget. Now, I have a toaster with more computing power.

It was never just a knack for technology that you needed in this line of work. You had to have an innate lust for discovery.

Sure, I could work for months on the most tiresome topics, but even the most boring things, the most tedious targets, I genuinely lusted for their secrets.

I miss those days.

To think I almost did that start-up company with Gary in Manchester, a million years ago. Instead I used my gifts for evil.

Once I got myself established after a few months of networking and name-dropping, it all started happening fast. Soon editors, not just reporters, were calling me directly. For about three months I had fooled myself I was engaged in a noble pursuit.

I was uncovering corruption, sinister forces, backroom deals. I made several reporters famous with my information.

Now I was something else. A parasite. Something to be flushed. Hacks could smell me coming. They didn’t need to ask what I did or who I was, they just knew on first sight.

They say you are what you eat, and I eat sleaze. It starts to change you, ooze out of your pores, make you into a reflection of everything you despise.

I could pretend that my lack of productivity in the past week was down to moral reasons. The truth was that ever since I took on the Gower story, I had felt impotent. I was dealing with things that were, by anybody’s definition, morally repugnant, and this was something that if I really believed was wrong, I could fight it, or reveal it.

But I hadn’t. All I had, besides a car boot full of junk and a hard drive full of sleaze and speculation, was the feeling that no matter what I did, I was a bad person and a failed human being.

That was what The Disc represented.

After twenty minutes of drawing beards onto the faces of all the beautiful tit-owners in the paper, I finally left the delivery bay of Waitrose and drove to the office.

Press Delete - Part 1

Here's the first part of an ongoing bit of short fiction that has found its way into my brain this week.

The hacking scandal that recently brought about the closure of the News of The World has produced some shocking headlines, and revealed some insidious characters involved throughout the established press, government and even law enforcement.

I'm certain that next summer's, if not this Christmas', biggest selling paperbacks will feature this theme heavily, and I couldn't resist having a punt myself.

What kind of person would be part of these terrible wrongdoings? How would they justify it to themselves? At what point does a person's conscience come into play in this kind of work?

Meet James, a once highly-sought after information trader, now seen as 'something to be flushed' by the people who were once so happy to pay for his services...

PRESS DELETE - PART 1

‘Just tell him you won’t do it.’

The mouthful of whiskey and coke almost re-entered the glass via my nose.

‘Jesus! What? That would be even worse than actually doing it!’

She rolled her eyes. ‘Not really, not actually worse. Would it, really?’

‘Well-’

‘If you talked with your mouth instead of your arse for once, your brain might be involved in the process. Fuck,’ she spat, arriving quickly and angrily at her wit’s end
I sank the rest of my drink and held up my hand in conceit.

‘A slight exaggeration perhaps. Not deleting them is better for my reputation, sanity and integrity, but not for my career or livelihood. Fair?’

She rolled her eyes again.

‘Moral dilemmas have never been your strongest area, have they? Given what you do, I’m surprised you have even managed to hesitate.’

‘Wow, you really fucking hate me, don’t you?’

Her face morphed from anger into something softer, yet more painful. Pity.

‘I don’t want to hate you-’

‘Brilliant.’

‘Just shut up, will you? I don’t want to hate you James, but God, you make it easy sometimes. Why did you tell me all this? It’s horrible. Just horrible.’

I sipped at the glass whilst discarding various equally useless arguments against hating me.

‘I just need a real human being to tell me what to do. I don’t know what I am anymore.’

‘This isn’t good versus evil, James. This is the real world, where horrible things will happen no matter what you do. You have to look inside yourself and remember what you would have done before all of this started.’

‘I’d have started running.’

She sighed, ‘Another fine fucking mess.’

She finished her white wine and got up from the stool. ‘I don’t want to hear anything else about this.’

‘But I need your help!’

‘You need help, all right.’

‘Oh yes, very droll.’

‘Well there it is James, take it or leave it.’

‘What do you think? What would you decide to do, if it was you with this shit and not me?’

‘What I’m trying to decide James, is what I should buy to take away the taste of vomit in my mouth. Goodbye. Don’t call me.’

I watched her leave, more longingly than I meant to. Even the revelations of the past few days were not enough to intrude on any opportunity to observe Lissa from behind.

I grabbed the various detritus from the table and shoved them into my pockets. Just as I did so, a sharp buzz came from the Blackberry beneath the keys, lighter and ID pass I had just piled on top of it. I gingerly fished it out of my pocket and glanced at the screen.

John.

‘Shit,’ I said clearing my breath. ‘John! Johnno! The J-Bomb! Long John Silver! Johnny B Goode! The Johnster! ah... Johnny! How goes it?’

‘Talk to me, James. Where are we on the Gower situation?’

‘On it. All over it, John. Update very soon. Very soon indeed.’

‘Has it been done, James? I need something to say to... him.’

The last word came out of the phone heavier than lead.

‘I’m putting it all through the grinder as we speak. Making sure there’s no loose ends, no shit, no problems, no dead wood to worry about. I’m being very careful with this, Johnny Boy. Don’t you worry about it, let me worry about it.’

I heard the sound of John breathing for a few seconds. There was a faint scratching sound.
‘Okay James, I’ve written that down. You know, so I can announce that, what you just said to me, to the editorial staff and the chief execs of the entire company.’

He said it in a manner so calm that it made my cock shrivel. ‘Oh, and while I’ve got you on the phone,’ he said casually, as I physically winced in preparation for his onslaught, ‘I’ve just been contacted by a farmer who wants his four hundred tonnes of bull shit back. Since you you’re spraying the stuff all over my desk, my inbox, and now, my ear, I thought you might be the guy to go to.’

‘John, I-’

‘I NEED AN UPDATE IN ONE HOUR OR YOU ARE DEAD TO ME!’

‘John-’

‘AND BY DEAD TO ME, I MEAN THAT YOU WILL BE ACTUALLY, PHYSICALLY DEAD, BECAUSE I WILL HAVE KILLED YOU WITH THIS PEN!’

‘Jo-’

‘Please tell me that you understand James, or I will summon such terrible forces against you that amendments will be made to the Geneva Convention. One hour.’

I breathed for what felt like the first time in about an hour.

‘Yes, John. I understand.’

He hung up.

The 'Other' Blog

My 'statement of intent' for this is blog is to share writing, and thoughts about writing, that just don't fit anywhere else.

All my beer-related work will appear on my beer blog and on Rum and Reviews.

I'm hoping to use this blog as an outlet for short fiction, flash fiction and any other work that is outside of my main writing projects.

I will also be using this blog to pose questions and discussions on the writing 'craft'.

Posts to follow.

Chris.