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  David Williams

  A Wild Wolf Publication

  Published by Wild Wolf Publishing in 2010

  Copyright © 2010 David Williams

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publishers, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed by a newspaper, magazine or journal.

  First print

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  E-BOOK EDITION

  ISBN: 978-0-9563733-5-9 (paperback)

  www.wildwolfpublishing.com

  This book is dedicated to the memory of Robbie, who was looking forward to reading it when it was finished. I'm sorry I didn't make it in time.

  I

  Ambient noise on the talkback line, then Marni’s words come through. “IRN’s standing by.” I smile at her through the glass and she presses slender fingers briefly to her throat, acknowledging the catch in her voice. Still getting used to the speaking parts. I wink and glance at the studio clock as I ride forward on the fader to the mike.

  “Exactly ninety seconds to midnight and the news. Less than two minutes to dig yourself out of a hole, guys. And women too, of course…” grinning at Marni. “We’re not the only ones who forget. Quick as we can, let’s see how many more relationships we can rescue before we all turn into pumpkins.” I fade in a driving music bed for urgency and look up at the first name flashing on the screen. “Graham on line 3, do you have a message of undying love for your partner?”

  There’s the usual startled pause before a hesitant Scots voice says, “Aye, I have, Marc, yes. I’d like to say Happy Valentine to Chris, please.”

  “Chris. Is that a man or a woman?” Marni looks quizzically through the glass at me and I shrug, mouthing ‘Whaa?’ as Graham answers. “Oh, she’s a woman, aye. Christine. My girlfriend - fiancée actually. Christine Proud.”

  “And is she proud of you, Graham?”

  “She will be now, I reckon, with speaking on the radio.”

  “Well, Graham, be sure to come back on when we’ve a little more time to chat. Thanks for your call, and give my best to your lovely lady Chris. We have another lovely lady on line 1.”

  “Is that me?”

  “I don’t know, is it?”

  Line 1 squeaks to someone next to her. “Ee, I’m not sure if I’m on or not.” I shake my head and look across to share the wind-up with Marni but she’s turned away at her keyboard, logging names and numbers as more green lights flash at her elbow demanding attention. Marc and Marni, it’s a perfect fit. My eyes stay on the sheen of her blonde hair as I talk to line 1.

  “How many Valentine cards did you get today?”

  “Who, me? None. Is that Marc Niven?”

  My eyes flick back to the screen. “Is that Emma?”

  “It is, yeah. I’m a first-time caller, Marc.”

  “And who’s that with you, Emma?”

  Giggles. “Oh, it’s just my friend Julie.”

  “And who’s the friend you’d like to give a message to?”

  “Well, he’s not really a friend. Not yet anyway. Just a lad I know from work.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Daniel. Dan.”

  “And where do the two of you work?”

  “Tescos in Long Valley.”

  “Oh, I was in there the other day.” Trying to picture Emma at the checkout. Dan stacking shelves probably. “You know, they had a whole aisle stuffed with Valentine cards. Hey, Daniel from Tesco in Long Valley, where’s Emma’s card?” More giggles from line 1. Marni looks round and smiles, peeling her headset off, strands of hair still clinging to it. “What do you want to say to Daniel, Emma?”

  “Well, just to let him know I like him an’ that, and if he wants to go for a drink or whatever he only has to ask.”

  “There you are, Dan, you only have to ask, cos Emma’s gagging for it. Can we fit a couple more in before we go to the news? Let’s talk to Hassan on line 2.” Marni’s making cup-tilting signals at me as I’m doing the cross-fade. I nod back. “Who do you want to give your heart to, Hassan?”

  His voice is steady and serious. We get all types. What possesses these folk to call up radio stations when they should be tucked up in bed? Or while they’re in bed. “I should like to send all my love to Amina. Amina Begum Khan.” Marni leans over the desk to draw big letters with her finger on the glass. T followed by a C. She draws her C the wrong way round from my point of view. Then she straightens up and poses with her palms out, questioning. Cute.

  “Amina, is it? Nice name. Wife or girlfriend?” I trump Marni’s mime with one of my own, standing to make the little teapot shape, gay as I can make it. Marni cups her chin in her hands and does a stage school pout, then turns to leave the ops room. Our little bout of theatrics has left a vestige of a wiggle on her bum, sexier still as she’s unaware of it.

  “Wife, yes,” says Hassan. “My widow. Mother of our darling child.” I’m watching Marni out of the room, still standing as I cross-fade to line 4 and lean into the mike again.

  “Excellent, thanks for calling. Now we’ve just got time to squeeze in…” peek at the screen “…Jed. Who’s the last lucky lady tonight?” Silence. “Jed?” and ‘Shit’ nearly out loud when I glance down to see my hand resting on the wrong fader.

  I guess the thing I’m most famous for (well, some of the nationals covered it, not just the local boys) is that I once talked somebody down from a suicide attempt. It was Friday night, loony night, and he’d managed to get himself right up in the arch of the Stephenson Bridge before he phoned us on his mobile. The police told me later he even had our number on speed dial so either he was a regular (not one on my radar) or he’d planned it all out before he went up there.

  To tell you the truth I usually get the girls to heave anybody who calls from a mobile. It’s not just that reception can be dodgy, more that you’re laying yourself open to all sorts of abuse when people are ringing off the street or from god-knows-where. Same goes for withheld numbers, I won’t be having them. I like the security of knowing you can always track people down if push comes to shove, and more importantly they know it as well so it keeps them halfway sensible. Most of the time anyway.

  This one was so obviously different, though. Sam was still with us then and she got the vibes straightaway when she took the call. She tapped the glass and I could see her jabbing at the talkback switch so I knew it was urgent before I heard her ask me to pick up 5. And there he was, perched a hundred feet over the river, crying on the phone to me before I even knew his name.

  To be perfectly honest, I couldn’t tell you now what he was called. I mean I found out at the time – god knows I said it often enough while I was calming him down, acting like I was his best mate - but I’d have to go back to my press cuttings to remind myself. My short term memory for names is OK but beyond that I’m a disaster. I reckon it’s talking with strangers night after night that does for it. The worst part is they expect you to remember them, say if they ring twice in the same week, and they can get quite shirty if you don’t, so I usually play along. I have it down to a fine art now, and I rarely get caught out.

  Half the time it seems as if you’re there to offer some kind of free therapy, open session. I’m not saying fifty percent of my listeners are mental cases but I do get more than my fair share. Our controller Meg Reece once had the bright idea of calling my show Nightwatch with Niven but she dropped it when I asked her if I was in charge of a radio show or a psychiatric ward.

  So I guess it was no real surprise when this poor bloke picked me to tell his troubles to. N
ot that it was a specially interesting story. Usual thing, really. Wife left him (join the club, pal), tried to stop him seeing the kids, in trouble at work for hitting the drink… blah, blah. It does wonders for your concentration, though, knowing that one word out of place, one hint of sarcasm or blame could send this fragile soul over the edge, literally, into the cold, dark river. I felt as if I was up there with him, and even while I was really listening to him, and really listening to my own responses, sieving them for anything he could misinterpret or take offence to, I found myself thinking about how he would die if he slipped off the bridge. Would the impact kill him? Would he be drowned? Poisoned by the mucky river? Could he even survive it, maybe, supposing he did fall? I was having this conversation with myself at the same time as I was talking to him, and both of us in the moment, forgetting we had thousands listening in and more joining all the time.

  Which there were. I don’t know how these things get about so fast. I suppose one person rings another going, ‘You’ve got to listen to this,’ then another, and so it spreads like a fire or the plague. There were people turning up at the bridge apparently, rubbernecking – so many, the ambulance and the firemen had a hard job getting through. That would have been an ironic ending, wouldn’t it, DJ’s suicide rescue foiled by his own fans.

  Would he have jumped? Not sure. All I could do was keep talking to him, trying to bring him down mentally while the real rescue workers got their act together. Sam did as much as me to help – she had the presence of mind to tip off the emergency services – but she got no praise for it, not even from the station. Or from me actually, come to think. I was the star of the show and I got the publicity. That’s the way of the world. There was even talk of a bravery award, which gave me quite a buzz until Sam gave me the hint about how stupid it would look, me accepting a medal for sitting in a warm studio while a fireman with a proper job was shinning up girders at the Stephenson Bridge in the rain. I put the word out that I didn’t think it appropriate, just glad to do my part etcetera.

  The incident did wonders for my listening figures for a few weeks at least. Whether people were tuning in every night expecting some other nutter to put himself on the line I don’t know but we didn’t have any more real-life dramas, not as intense as that one anyway. No more suicide watch. Not until tonight – and I didn’t even notice it.

  I grab a quick cuppa with Marni and about three minutes’ flirting time before we’re on again after the news, sport and weather. At the weekend especially the board’s lit up like a star ship just after midnight so I usually kick in with some back-to-back tracks while Marni’s working on the queue. When we’re not doing what I call message board stuff – dedications, quick competitions, that sort of thing – we normally ring the punters back if we decide to bring them on the show. That way I get to pick and choose a little, weed out the obvious drunks, block off the bores.

  Tonight I’ve teed up a couple of 70s classics, a mover and a groover. Devil Gate Drive followed by six-and-a-half languid minutes of your night owl favourite Hotel California - plenty of time to stick my head round Marni’s side of the suite to see what’s coming in.

  “Nick says Valentine’s Day is just another rip-off. Same with Mother’s Day, and you’re pandering to commercial interests.”

  “Did he say pandering? We have an intellectual on the line. OK, that’s good continuity, happy to start with Nick.”

  “Lee wants to know was Hassan making a sick joke or was he not right in the head.”

  “Hassan being…?”

  “Mmm, one of the Valentine calls, just before the news.”

  “Oh, yeah.” I remembered the low, serious voice, no detail. Seemed OK to me. “Don’t know where Lee’s heading with that, but I smell racist. Better ditch him. Next.”

  “Simon…”

  “Aggh. Too many boring bloody blokes. Where are all the women? Night like tonight, we need to get a bit of sexual chemistry going.”

  Marni smiles and pinks up a touch, the way blondes do. “We have a Lynn from Towngate.”

  “Hooray. What does she want to chat about?”

  “Knives on the street.” My forehead thuds on the door frame. “No, but there’s a kind of romantic element,” Marni says, lifting her hand towards me in such a comforting way I have to resist crumpling at the knees and putting my face in her lap. “Seems the trend is for the lads to get their girlfriends to carry their knives for them cos they’re less likely to be searched. Lynn found one in her daughter’s bag tonight.”

  “Well, leaving aside what she’s doing rooting about in her teenager’s handbag, that sounds quite promising. Tell you what, I’ll trail the urban violence thing for a while, get some steam up, and we’ll have Lynn first on after the break.”

  Twenty minutes later and I’m well into my stride. Nick turns out to be fair game – a bed-sit tree-hugger on a guilt trip because he’s just out of private school and into university. He’ll be back for more until he finds himself a girlfriend who can pretend to be listening to him without letting her eyes glaze over. After Nick it’s Joseph blatantly plugging some charity bike-athon he’s organising. Cheeky bugger even tries to wangle a promise on-air that I’ll come along and start the bloody thing. On your bike, mate, is what I want to say, but I can’t be caught dissing a do-gooder so I have to go in for some swift ducking and diving instead. If I ever pack in this job maybe I should try politics. Or boxing.

  I’ve cued the commercial break and am about to check we’ve got Lynn from Towngate on hold when Marni’s voice honeys my cans. “Sorry, Marc, I have an Oliver Dunn on the line. Claims he’s been on redial nearly half-an-hour. He needs to talk to you urgently, he says, but off the air.”

  Marni watches as I roll my eyeballs up, then she flicks the switch again. “He sounds quite desperate,” she says but I’m already shaking my head. Ollie Dunn is my train spotter. He knows more about the show than I do. He listens every night without fail, as he never tires of telling me, and he often pops into Reception between times, so I guess he only lives a few miles away. What else do I know about him? Not much. He’s probably roughly the same age as me, though it’s hard not to think of him as almost a child. I doubt that he has a job or if he does he must enjoy the ultimate in flexi-time since he always seems to turn up wherever I’m booked for a PA, taking pictures, queuing for autographs and giveaways. He must have some sort of brain to store all the trivia he trots out every chance I give him, but he has a special needs look about him and sounds, frankly, a shade retarded. For all his obsession with the programme he has been on-air only twice to my knowledge and both times got himself so tongue-tied it was painful. Whether he lives alone or still with his mam I’m not sure but I’ll bet you a pound to a penny there’s no other woman in his life. He must change his clothes occasionally - sometimes it’s the red and sometimes the white - but I’ve never seen him without one of our freebee tee-shirts stretched over his considerable paunch. Fashion statement, not.

  “I haven’t time for him, Marni. Tell him thanks for calling and can he put his question on an email. I’ll get back to him as soon as I can.”

  “He said be sure to tell you it’s really important.”

  “Everything’s important for Ollie,” I tell her. “But only for Ollie. I’ll fill you in on him later. Have you got Lynn standing by?”

  And I’m rolling again, righting the region’s wrongs, dishing out top-of-the-head advice and just generally taking the piss out of people in the nicest possible way.

  We’re off-air and ready to leave when Marni says, “Where’s the best place for me to get a taxi this late? I should probably have ordered one, shouldn’t I?”

  “What’s happened to your little Polo?”

  “My flatmate borrowed it to go to Edinburgh for the weekend. Her boyfriend’s working up there just now.” She flicks her hair over her coat collar with both hands, then looks up and smiles at me watching. Is this a come-on?

  “Don’t bother with taxis. I’ll give you a lift, no
problem.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t want to put you out of your way,” she says, but takes very little persuading otherwise and soon we’re heading towards Reception, practically arm-in-arm, when I spot somebody chatting to Ron the security man at the entrance. I pluck at Marni’s sleeve and we step out of sight around a corner. With her back against the wall and her coat half-open she looks primed for a snogging session.

  “What’s up?” she says, eyes wide, ready for mischief.

  “Ollie Dunn’s out front. My personal stalker. We’ll be here another half-hour if he sees me.”

  “What was his email about?”

  “Didn’t open it. Come on, let’s slip out the back, Jack.”

  “Eh?”

  “Nothing, just the jukebox in my head. Blame my parents. This way.” Marni and I sneak down a short corridor and through a fire escape at the side of the building. We manage to get to the car park and off into the night while our Ron’s still occupied with Oliver Dunn. Some security bloke he is.

  I had imagined Marni’s flat would be somewhere in town near to the bright lights but she directs me down the coast road and we’re soon five or six miles from the city, travelling in exactly the opposite direction to my place. Still, I’m not expecting to be heading back anytime soon.

  “So, am I lot different from Sam?” she says, nestling in and turning to watch me as I drive. This is potentially dangerous territory. I don’t know how much if anything Marni knows about my relationship with Sam or what made her leave when she did. I try some fishing of my own.

  “Did you get to meet Sam when you were appointed?”