The Mentor

We were told about his death by the head of station, Giles Meredith, a loose-fitting man who seemed to bumble his way through life. To me, he was always a slightly comical figure, but my father seemed to respect him (and now, with thirty plus years of experience, I can appreciate that what you see isn’t necessarily what you get). My parents had been to Meredith’s house a couple of times for dinner parties, but this was the first time he’d come to ours. He took charge of the situation straight away, guiding me and my mother through to the living room, ignoring my mother’s increasingly frantic questions until we were both sitting on the sofa. When he told us what happened it didn’t sink in at first. I thought there must be some mistake, they’d got the wrong person. I kept expecting the living-room door to clatter open and my father to walk in, pipe steaming, a sly smile on his lips. My mother fell into a long silence and then she started screeching. It was the most hideous noise I’d ever heard. I wasn’t sure what to do. I felt I should probably be crying, but I couldn’t. So I sat on the sofa while Meredith tried to console my mother, hands on lap, staring into the middle distance and wondering what was going to happen now.

My mother didn’t die as such, she sort of faded away; after Father was murdered she became less and less substantial until she ceased to exist altogether. First to go was her mind. I got home from school one day to find my grandmother there. There was gin on her breath and disappointment in her eyes. Without an iota of compassion she informed me that my mother had been locked up in the nuthouse, and I was going to live with her because families looked after each other and wasn’t that just fucking marvellous? When I told her there was no way I’d ever live with her she called me an ungrateful bastard and hit me so hard I was sent spinning to the floor with bells ringing in my head. From the get-go I was under no illusions of the way things were going to be. I saw my mother twice more, once in the flesh and once in a casket. The week before my mother died, my grandmother took me to the asylum. She dragged me through the screaming corridors to a dark windowless room. There were four beds in there, each containing the mummified remains of something that might once have been human. This was most definitely the last stop. My mother was in the bed nearest the door. Around her sunken eyes and collapsed cheeks, I could make out the shape of her skull. Her skin was loose yellow parchment hanging from her bones and she weighed next to nothing. With each inhalation there was a moment of suspension at the top of the breath where there was no movement, moments that seemed to go on forever, and each time I thought that was it she’d exhale and hitch in another rattling gulp of air. Thankfully, her eyes stayed shut.

It was only natural I should want to join MI6, but it wasn’t easy. With no help from my grandmother, who spent most of her time either pissed, comatose or beating me, I got a place at grammar school. While there I discovered I had a knack for drama. Playing different characters gave me a temporary escape from the real world, and how I needed that escape. I won a scholarship to Cambridge where I studied psychology, and during my final year I was approached.

The rain eases and the circles in the river shrink, loosen, then disappear altogether. I could go anywhere, be anyone, start all over again. I’ve got the aliases established, got the necessary skills to pull them off. I could be an engineer, an academic, a financier, you name it. Everything’s stashed away in a safe place. Full documentation: passports, driving licences, NI numbers, complete histories, the works. Nobody knows about Stewart Graves or Graham Webster or Harry Mortimer. It would be easy to sneak out the country. The safest way is to head to Ireland, make my way to Dublin and catch the first plane out. But I won’t do that. Not yet, anyway.

I head back to my hotel, an anonymous no-star affair in a part of town that won’t be featuring in the travel guides anytime soon. London’s the perfect hiding place: nobody sees anyone, nobody sees anything. The occasional glance to make sure I’m not being followed, more out of habit than necessity. The streets get narrower, the shadows deepen. The Invisible Ones are huddled in doorways with blankets pulled around them, one hand protecting their few meagre belongings, the other wrapped around a tin of Special Brew or Woodpecker or meths. A scrawny Jack Russell yaps, and a slurred voice growls for it to shut the fuck up.

‘Got any spare change?’

The voice is behind me, off to my left. I turn slowly and see a dark figure hovering in the shadows.

‘Come on,’ the voice says, ‘you’ve got cash to spare.’

‘Fuck off,’ I tell him.

He steps into a streetlight and I get my first good look at the Ratman. His face is long with eyes sunk deep in their sockets, black coronas surrounding them. He’s got that junkie stare, rotting teeth and skin the colour of old marble. His clothes are held together by dirt: three jumpers and a coat, odd shoes that are way too big, hair hidden under a dirty fur-lined Cossack hat. He uses the back of his fingerless glove to wipe away the snail trails under his sharp nose.

‘Just a quid,’ the Ratman says. ‘Just a quid and I’ll fuck off and never bother you again. Promise.’

‘You’ll fuck off now,’ I tell him.

‘For a fiver I’ll do whatever you want. Anything.’

Smiling, I walk towards him. He gulps and his throat is so scrawny it looks as if he’s swallowing a golf ball. The Ratman looks around uncertainly, takes a step back, out of the light and into the shadows, looking for safety where there’s no safety to be found. He backs up to a wall and comes to a standstill. I motion him forward with a wiggle of my index finger. He looks left, looks right, searching for a way out, but in the end all he can do is walk towards me. As he steps back into the light I study his face carefully. The sodium distorts it, and as I stare it starts to change, morphing into all the faces I’ve grown to hate so much over the years. I can feel the anger rising, spreading through me from tip to toe, and I do nothing to hold it back. So often in life we are forced to suppress our real emotions, those primal desires that originate in the most ancient parts of the brain. And sometimes we are given the opportunity to let them loose and for a few glorious moments we know what it means to be truly alive. A deep breath, adrenaline coursing through my veins, heart doing double time.

‘What did you say?’

The Ratman doesn’t reply, just stands there paralysed, wearing a terrified expression.

A step forward. ‘You’re a worthless piece of shit, do you know that?’ In that sentence I hear echoes of my grandmother; my brain conjures up memories of her alcohol-soaked breath.

‘Sorry,’ the Ratman manages. ‘I didn’t mean to—’

‘Shut the fuck up, okay? I’ve had enough of your whining and your whimpering. You’re pathetic, do you hear me? You make me sick.’ Up close the Ratman’s stink is overpowering, the smell of decay and piss and hopelessness. ‘Do I look like a queer?’

‘No,’ he says, then adds a shaky: ‘Sir.’

‘No, sir, is right,’ I tell him.

Without warning I head-butt him full in the face. He stays upright for a second, blood spurting from his nose, then folds to the ground. The Invisible Ones stir in the shadows but nobody comes to help. When you’re this far down you are really and truly on your own. I rip off the Cossack hat, grab him by the hair and pull him to his feet, punch him twice in the face. Two sharp jabs. Steam rises from the front of his trousers and tears streak his dirty cheeks.

‘Don’t kill me,’ he whimpers. ‘Please don’t kill me.’

I’m so close I can smell the fear, the heat coming off his face. I want to kill him, I really do; I’ve never wanted anything so badly in my life. I let go and he drops to the ground. He’s trembling all over, nothing but a pathetic bundle of rags. I hunker down, crouching at eye level to get a better look. His sunken eyes are big and wide, the tiny spark in the pupils might be hope. His eyes lock with mine and the spark flickers, fades then disappears. He’s convinced I’m going to kill him.

I stand up and walk away. Behind me, The Invisible Ones are leaving the safety of the shadows, cautiously making their way towards their fallen comrade. I don’t need to turn around to confirm that help is the last thing on their minds. Even this far down there’s someone worse off than you, someone you can take advantage of, even if it’s just to steal a pair of odd worn shoes and a battered old Cossack hat.

10

‘Come on, Paul, wake up.’

Aston wished the voice away and rolled over on the sofa with a cold leather squeak. Shivering, he pulled the thin jacket in tight and buried his head under a cushion. A hand grabbed his shoulder and tried to drag him back around. He buried himself deeper into the sofa, resisting the insistent pull, telling himself this wasn’t happening.

‘Don’t you dare turn your back on me, Paul. We need to talk.’

A shiver ran up Aston’s spine. We need to talk. Those four words always spelled trouble. And lately that’s all she seemed to want to do … talk. Laura sure knew how to pick her moments. It was way too early to deal with this.

‘Stop pretending to be asleep. I know you’re awake.’

The hand became a fist that pounded against his arm. The blows weren’t hard and he swiped blindly, swatting as though they were mosquitoes.

‘You’re going to sit up now. And you’re going to talk to me. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.’

‘Leave me alone,’ Aston mumbled into the sofa. ‘Need more sleep.’

Laura stopped hitting and started shaking again, using both hands this time, gripping hard enough for Aston to feel her fingernails digging into his arm ‘Okay, okay,’ he said. ‘Let me get my act together, eh? I don’t think that’s too much to ask. What time is it anyway?’

‘Just gone half seven.’

‘And you want to talk now? Jesus, Laura, can’t this wait?’

‘No, it can’t wait, Paul.’

Aston rolled over and lay on his back for a moment, psyching himself up. It was all coming back to him. Slowly. After leaving the laptop with Mole, George suggested they find a late bar. Aston hadn’t needed much persuasion. Making up for lost time, they’d started with doubles then hit the trebles. It was around this point that everything became a bit hazy. Aston opened his eyes and sharp sunlight pierced his brain, making his head spin and his stomach churn. He was still fully dressed: his tie a loose noose around his neck, the tail trailing over his shoulder; shirt and trousers wrinkled and smelling like a wino’s. His jacket was a crumpled mess and nowhere near thick enough to deal with the morning chill. There was a half empty bottle of JD by the side of the sofa. Presumably he’d carried on drinking when he got home, drank until he’d passed out. He sat up and rubbed at his face. Wishing that the demons in his head would stop clattering around, he attempted a smile. ‘Don’t suppose you’d be a sweetheart and get me a coffee and a couple of aspirin?’

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