Out, he said. Out, Jesus, what a word, out.
When it first left his lips I was about to tell him he'd been out for years except he hadn't told his da. I was about to tell him that 'out' had never been a fecking issue. He'd been 'out', in that respect, from the first time he ever told me he was ill so he could piss off playing at Couples rather than discuss a job he was going on. And there was a first time, and a last time, and a lot of times in between. Friday nights, usually.
Now, just take a moment, if you will, and consider my boundless mercy and benevolence in this. Because if you had a boss, and you called him every Monday morning (for the sake of argument) complaining of the same Lost Weekend symptoms, how long would you have a job for? But no, not me. I indulged him. Let the boy have his fun. I've got nothing against it. Anyway, he always did well at his work.
Nothing ever got in the way of the work.
He never gave me any reason to get pissed off with him. Do you understand what I'm saying? Not until this, anyway.
Out, my flaming Christ. Out and he meant out of the life. Out of the game. Off the board, retired, gave it up, packed it in, said goodbye to all of that, put away childish things, shuffled off to join the choir celestial and pining for the fucking fjords… No, wait, that's a different thing. That's about being dead.
Yeah, I was right the first time, it's the same thing.
Out, though. Out. Jesus.
I let him walk away from me, after that. Couldn't really afford to be causing a scene. It's been a few hours now. The internet is still picking me out of its teeth, but the TVs are mostly clear again. Radio gives little barks of me out of the corners, scrolling between stations. Hidden in the white noise. That's all there is. I'll be gone by morning, though the message will remain.
What I mean, a couple of hours have gone by. And I'll tell you what I've found out. My dearest Moran has not fallen to the lowly post of store detective just yet. He's holding a dull, quiet desk at an office block right in the heart of St James'. Which is not awful; I should find out what sort of companies hold a spot there, get that access while the getting's good. But still… My Seb… I never put him to any undercover work, any long, wheedling insinuations, because I never thought he could sit at peace for this long.
I've been watching this CCTV feed since I got back to the flat and the most he's done is get up to change the newspaper he was reading for another from the reception coffee table. Telegraph, by the look of it. Seb doesn't read the Telegraph. Seb reads the Sun, and that's on a well-informed day. That's only when he's feeling smart, he ever reaches for the paper.
Oh, you say, oh, Jim, things have changed. You've been gone too long, things change.
Yes. Yes they do. Good for you. Clever you that noticed it. Things do change. But people, since when do people change? I never knew a person that changed. Evolved, yes, matured, developed, but not changed.
Nah. Nah, there's no way. 'Out' he says, and maybe even believes it, but he's not out. Things change, but hearts don't. He's still my Moran. He's just forgotten, because I haven't been around to remind him. Like a hermit in isolation forgetting his own name because no one calls him by it. He hasn't changed, not deep down. He's my Moran, as I remember. He'll come to his senses, wait and see.
He might need a bit of help, but he'll come to his senses.
As I watch, he gets up and wanders out of frame. Probably to fetch himself a coffee, answer a call. One of those bland, boring things the man in reception does. Don't know, never paid that much attention to the man in reception. Usually breezing past him while he shouts that I can't just breeze past him.
In his sudden absence, I pick up the phone.
This is a call I've wanted to make since I found myself abandoned at the top of Eddie's narrow stairs. Since things stopped going the way I expected. I just had a feeling that, if I made it then I might say a few harsh things, and say them too harshly to get the real point across. I've calmed down a bit now. Can handle it now, thanks.
"Hello?" Ah, the voice of the London office. Home base. The sound of it is round and muffled, a little wet; eating a lolly. This is the voice of the little lunatic I left keeping an eye on things, a scarred delightful little basket-case with no official name and a smile that covers her utter lack of moral compunction. I gave her that. The lack of moral compunction, not the smile. So when I left and locked the gates behind me, what better angel to leave behind?
…Oh, piss off. Take that look off your face. Like it's any worse than giving out cash and phones to homeless nobodies.
"Hello, Moneypenny."
She still giggles when I call her that. Then she keeps giggling. Little scraps of sentences start to peek through, "You were on the telly. And the computer. You were on BBC3 and BBC3 doesn't even come on until seven o'clock."
"Didn't I tell you? Are you saying you didn't believe me?"
"No, no, of course I did. But it was still really cool."
"Glad you enjoyed it."
"Now everybody knows I was right about you!" Yeah, that was the other thing about leaving someone so obviously unhinged to watch over my affairs; she wandered all round the town telling people I wasn't dead. She was removed from the funeral of Richard Brooke for laughing out loud. But nobody ever believed her. Sweet, obsessed, mental little thing, poor girl. Ought to be sectioned, for her own good.
"So they do," I tell her, quiet and patient as a Hindu idol, "You should be careful. All it takes is some copper or some spook to remember you giggling at the graveside, they'll be all over you." I listen to the air rush past her phone as she runs to the window, looking for the squad cars or the tinted windows. "Yeah, probably not this quickly."
"So can I come and see you yet? Is it safe yet?"
We'll see about that. How safe it is for her to come here depends entirely on how she performs during the rest of this conversation. "First things first-" I try to say, but she's excited, and still talking. In fact, she starts the conversation for me.
"Did you see Colonel Moran yet?"
"Yeah. Yeah. Saw him. And he said the funniest thing to me, angel, you'll never guess. Or will you? Let's see if you can guess. What was it he said to me?"
"Oh." She's in trouble. She knows it. There are rustling noises that may well be her adopting the foetal position. "Did he maybe tell you that he's not doing any more murders anymore?"
"…Something like that. So you knew that. Which leads me neatly to my next question. Did you not, even for a second, maybe think that this was quite an important piece of information for me to have?"
My sweetest angel (or she used to be, anyway) stumbles and stammers and lies. As best I can pare it down, she was aware of Moran's newfound respect for human life. She could not, however, figure out how to break the news to me. That's probably the honest version. There's another story, which she's pushing very hard, where she was only respecting his decision, allowing him to tell me himself and in his own way. She shouldn't be pushing that so hard; it's only making me want to ask her what the hell the point of having a spy is if she doesn't actually tell you what she discovers.
"You," I tell her instead, "were supposed to help facilitate my smooth, unhindered return and-"
"And you're really, really angry with me. I know. And you're not here to see me, but I'm proper, appropriately terrified. But it's not my fault he hasn't fired anything since you left except a paintball gun on his bloody stag weekend and-" Stop. I didn't say that out loud, and I don't think she does. Somewhere very far away she's still talking. His stag weekend. Not just a stag weekend, that he could have been invited to, but his stag weekend. That's what she said, isn't it? I ask her again. Just to confirm. "Oh," she says again. Apparently that's just how she acknowledges she's fucked up. "I said too much again, didn't I?"
"Now, at this stage, yes. Last week it seems you said far, far too little. Talk now. Prove your tongue is worth something and you won't have to ask Santa Claus for a new one."
"…Christmas was last week."
"And a year's a long time to stand silent. Better get to it."
"Well, it's legal now, isn't it?"
She tells me things. Lots of things, more things than I was really asking for or expecting. While she talks, I check them out. Looking at marriage records, employment details. It all gets very easy when this so-called spouse of Moran's turns out to have a Facebook page. I hang up on the Angel and turn to this instead.
Sebastian Moran-Kingsley these days, if you don't mind. The better half of Tom Moran-Kingsley, an Emergency department nurse at University College Hospital.
Well, at least he found himself somebody with a nice, steady career.
Look at that. Look at that right there. That's that beneficence, that emotional largesse of mine, at work again. Who else, I ask you, could go away and be dead and come back to find best mate married off without so much as a by-your-leave and be thinking about the fecking husband's prospects?
Me thinking, Well, alright, Moran, you've had your two-weeks holiday for the honeymoon. Time to get back to work, surely? Honestly, usually an employer doesn't lose you for months at a time unless you decide to procrea-
And then I scroll down. Now, don't get me wrong; I know my first year biology. I know what goes in where and where certain things can come out. So I know, I know in my heart, that the goofy little thing (who is far too old to be theirs anyway), who stands between my Seb and this Tom person, couldn't possibly have come from them.
But it's about four and a half feet tall, mixed race, with a mop of hair hanging over one eye like his one father and a big dopey smile like the other.
Briefly, I call the Angel back. "The child, the little person, explain that, what is that?"
"That's Peter? He's Tom's, from before. Don't know where the mum is now, couldn't find that out. You know him, though; you read him a story once, when you were being Rich and the Colonel was babysitting. They were only dating then, him and-"
"Oh God, will you shut up?!" I don't. I don't know these people. These normal people, this nurse and his son, I don't know anybody like that. I don't know anybody who's been dull enough to produce spawn without having some sort of agenda in mind for them. And unless that big toothy grin, that 'say cheese' rictus, is masking the green shoots of a trainee serial killer, that's not what's happened here. Jesus, fuck, I've heard of playing happy families but my good God, Sebastian, there is a line to be drawn! "No, no, wait, don't shut up yet. Answer one more question."
Fast, because she knows she's annoyed me too many times already today, "Yes, sir. 'Course, sir."
"Does poor Tom know what pirouettes our dear Colonel used to do for his pennies?"
Her torn, wretched silence tells me everything I need to know.