NINES INCHES.

by Colin Bateman.

For my brother David.

1.

It was a dark and stormy night.

Or it might have been, for all the light getting into the office. I was three floors up, and the only hint of an outside world came from a skylight overshadowed on two sides by newer, taller buildings that blocked out ninety-nine per cent of whatever vague sunlight was managing to break through the otherwise solid grey of a Belfast spring afternoon. Somewhere in the far distance there were bagpipes, rehearsing for marching season. And pneumatic drills, tearing up footpaths, providing ammunition for marching season. We had moved on, and then put it all into reverse. It was like married life; we never knew if we were coming or going.

I had a nice desk, a laptop, a lamp, a phone and a family bag of Smarties. I was sorted for E's.

I was trying to remember the last time the phone had rang, or if it should be rung, when the intercom buzzer sounded and a garbled voice said, 'Starkey? Can I come up?'

In a better, more prosperous world, I might have had a security camera to tell me who it was, but as it was, I had to rely on my investigative skills to find out.

'Who are you and what do you want?'

There was an audible sigh. 'It's Jack Caramac.'

'Jack Caramac off the radio?'

'Yes.'

'Do you have an appointment?'

'Yes.'

'Just let me check.'

I drummed my fingers on the desk. After a couple of months I said, 'Jack Caramac, is it?'

'Yes.'

'Is it raining out there?'

'Yes.'

'Do you have an umbrella?'

'No.'

I said, 'Jack Caramac, Jack Caramac, Jack Caramac . . . oh yes, Jack Caramac. Your appointment is for three fifteen.'

'Yes.'

'It's only three ten.'

'Let me up, Starkey, you bollocks, or I'll take my business elsewhere.'

'Smoothie,' I said, and pressed the buzzer.

Jack Caramac not his real name, incidentally, in case you're a moron had, as they say, a good face for radio. If you took a bag of Comber spuds and sucked the goodness out of them and refilled them with Polyfilla so tight that it leaked out of their pores, then you'd have an idea of Jack's complexion. I have no idea if potatoes have pores, but that's neither here nor over there, where a man who ran naturally to fat but who felt compelled by his listeners to try every diet under the sun was squeezing through my door. He ballooned, he deflated, he ballooned he deflated; his skin now had the elasticity of bamboo. As he lumbered into the office, it was clear that he'd recently hit the wall on his latest attempt. As he shook my hand and smiled, there was evidence of Crunchie between three of his capped front teeth.

He sat and said, 'Jesus, get a lift, I'm all out of puff.'

'Exactly why I have stairs,' I said. 'It sorts the wheat from the chavs.'

He had on a black sports jacket, black trousers, a black shirt open at the neck. It all looked designer expensive. But it was a bit pointless. People would just say he was a well-dressed fat bloke. He looked around very briefly and said, 'What a dive. I can't believe you have an office above a butcher's shop.'

I shrugged. 'It's cheap, and the sausages are amazing.'

He looked at me. 'Same old Dan,' he said.

'Same old Jack,' I said.

I'd known Jack Caramac for twenty years. In fact, since before he was Jack Caramac. He was a journalist once. So was I. I'd covered hard news, and tough stories, and put the boot in often, but always with a smile; I'd also been a columnist, which had brought me a certain amount of fame, and infamy. In some ways I was the print equivalent of what Jack had decided was the better career for him: for the past fifteen he'd hosted a call-in show on Cityscape FM, Belfast's most popular commercial radio station. But there was a crucial difference: my journalism was never about me; Jack's show was all about him, and exploiting the misery or mental imbalance of others. By and large, the kind of people who phone radio shows are the last people in the world you'd want to spend any time with: they are the loudmouths, the bigoted, the numbskulls and the egotists; they are the moaners, the blinkered and the self-righteous. They are the religious maniacs, the cynics, the warmongers and the apologists. They are also usually more to be pitied than scorned. It was not an accusation you could place at the large feet of Jack Caramac. Though he was the living embodiment of all of these personality disorders, somehow his whole became something more profound than its constituent parts; nobody particularly liked him, but everyone wanted to listen to him. In the business he was known as the biggest cunt this side of Cuntsville, and he loved it. I used to think I rubbed people up the wrong way, but Jack took the biscuit. In fact, he took the whole tin, and usually between meals.

'Never thought you'd end up like this,' he said.

'Like what?'

He flapped his flappy hands around my pride and joy and said, 'This. Man, Belfast Confidential used to be a licence to print money. Where did it all go wrong?'

'Who says it went wrong? I sold up, and now I'm a gentleman of leisure, taking on whatever jobs interest me.'

'This wouldn't be the same Belfast Confidential you sold for one pound because it owed a million quid?'

'They covered my debt, and I was a pound up on where I was when I went in. This day and age, who can complain about that? Anyway, did you just call round to rain on my parade, or is there something I can do you for?'

'Well,' he said.

'Well,' I said.

'I heard you were out of the journalism racket, and into like . . . investigating. Like a private eye.'

'I'm nothing like a private eye. I offer a boutique, bespoke service for important people with difficult problems.'

'Dan, no offence, but that sounds a bit wanky.'

'It's my specialist subject. I was, as you know, one of this country's leading journalists. That's still what I do, except I don't publish unless my client requires it. I enquire. I get answers. Then you tell me how you want me to deal with those answers. That can mean referring them to the forces of law and order, or using my public relations expertise to spin them into something positive. You know, on Facebake, or Twitter, maybe the Ulster Tatler, all the new media.' I cleared my throat. 'Have I sold you on me yet?'

'Only because I've nowhere else to fucking go.'

I smiled. He smiled.

'I'd make you a coffee, but the kettle's broke. I can send down for some mince if you like.'

'You're a funny man, Dan. But I don't need funny. I need help.'

'You were kind of vague on the phone.'

'I don't like phones.'

'You spend your whole life answering them.'

'That's different. That's work.'

'Oh yeah. The shock-jocking.'

'I'm not a shock jock.'

'As I am not a private eye.'

'I'm the people's champion.'

I raised an eyebrow.

'The problem,' he said, 'is that one of my people is threatening me.'

'So isn't that par for the course?'

'This is different. Usually it's just the nutters being annoying, but this time . . . this time they actually did something. They took my kid.'

'Took?'

'Yeah. I think so.'

'You think . . .? Jack?'

'He's frickin' four, he can't exactly tell me, can he? But he was gone for about an hour. And when he came back, he'd a note in his pocket.'

'What kind of a note?'

Jack slipped his hand into his jacket and pulled out a piece of paper. He set it on my desk and pushed it across.

'Is that blood?' I asked.

'Jam,' said Jack.

The note said: Shut the fuck up.

2.

I had been riding high, and then suddenly I wasn't. Belfast Confidential, the crusading news/vacuous celebrity magazine I inherited from my late friend Mouse, had given me a glimpse of the good life, and then the bitch of an economy had snatched it away. My tendency to burn bridges hadn't helped. Print media was dead and everything on the web was free; nobody was prepared to pay for what I did best, which was putting a spanner in the works. I was trying to reinvent myself, and Patricia thought she would give me a hand by chucking me out of house and home. Thirty-three minutes after I left, she'd changed her Facebook status to single. I would have changed mine to couldn't give a fuck if there had been a fucking button that allowed me not to give a fucking fuck.

Now here she was crossing the Lisburn Road, barely a hundred yards from my office, and entering the Shipyard, my city's most prestigious restaurant, looking fantastic for forty-two. Patricia, not the restaurant. She wore her hair long, dyed brown, and her clothes tight. Even the contempt of familiarity couldn't prevent me giving her the kind of once-over I normally reserved for strangers. She looked hot, and she knew she looked hot. She was bad to the bone.

I said, 'Are you going somewhere later?'

'No, I'm having dinner with you.'

'Oh. Right. It's not exactly dinner, it's only gone five. Is there a mid-afternoon equivalent of brunch? Not quite dinner.'

'High tea? Does it matter?' She smiled. I tapped my upper teeth and nodded at her own. 'Lippy?' she asked.

'No more than usual.'

She rubbed at her teeth. There was nothing there, but that wasn't the point. She would be wondering if everyone she'd spoken to since she left home had noticed her mistake. Of course she wouldn't have called it a mistake. She'd have called it a faux pas. She had developed certain airs and graces while the money was good at Belfast Confidential, and now that it was gone, she was still trying to hold on to them.

'Better?' she asked.

I pointed to a different tooth. She rubbed some more. In marriage, it is the small victories that are important, particularly as the larger ones are hard to come by.

And we were still married. Just about.

She said, 'So to what do I owe the honour? Last time we ate somewhere as plush as this . . . come to think of it, we've never eaten somewhere as plush as this.'

'A small celebration.'

She raised an eyebrow. Before I could continue, a waiter arrived at our table and asked if he could get us a drink.

I said, 'White wine, please.'

He said, 'Perhaps a Chardonnay or a Sauvignon Blanc?'

I said, 'Don't confuse me with science. White wine, and something for the mother.'

He kind of half laughed, in that patronising way waiters do, forgetting for the moment that they are fucking waiters. Patricia ordered a Smirnoff vodka and Diet Coke and said, 'I hate it when you do that,' as soon as he'd left.

'Do what?'