"Precisely how long are you borrowing that stolen file for?" Malcolm asked, idly resigned to a well-loved chair in front of the fire.
If he was perfectly honest it was a pitiful attempt at a fire – too small, fake stone edging and chemically engineered, unidentifiable black lumps impersonating coal as though it were going out of style like Unob-fucking-tainium. Still, his office didn't have one, which seemed like a perfectly reasonable excuse to relocate their meeting to Sam's house. Bonus, she'd produced tea and biscuits.
Sam was over by her desk at the edge of the living room, photocopying under the lamp-light. Who even kept an industrial photocopier in their house? Fucking Sam. She probably had a small slave workforce under the floorboards and a larder stocked with bits of massacred ministers.
He got a bit of a chuckle out of that.
"Be serious," Sam scorned him quietly. "What are we going to do about this?" She waved part of the folder at him.
Malcolm had been avoiding the answer all morning. He glanced over to the bank of windows walling in one side of her house. Who willingly lived in a fish tank? The sun would come up soon. Maybe he didn't have many days left after all.
"If Weir uses this he's admitting a leak himself – throwing his own flesh and blood into the fire with us." He finally said.
"You don't think he'll risk revealing his brother as the leak inside the records office?"
He shrugged. "This wasn't an accident. It's not an impulsive moment in the mind of a clerk grasping for a second in the light."
She put the last of the file down and walked toward her boss. She stopped at a nearby couch, resting her hands on the rough fabric. "You've been framed."
Malcolm nodded. "I – recognise another name in the file," he admitted. "Did you happen to see who Simon's father was?" He waited for Sam to catch up with him. When dread registered in her eyes, he continued. "Politics was a bit of a gift for Weir Senior. His particular talents very nearly brought down a rising star. A young, foolish MP with more balls than sense."
Sam already knew that Malcolm was talking about their PM. Malcolm was always saving him, it had become his hobby. This was where it all started – the famous Tucker takedown that had earned him the fearful respect of Jamie, back when he was a cheap hack. "That wasn't your fault..."
"It was exactly my fault," he replied sternly. Malcolm was tired and angry. Mostly at himself. "When you unravel the life of another human being you take credit for the fall and the mess that comes after. The wonderful swan song of Tickel is poetic justice as far as Weir is concerned. He wants the world to see my blood stained hands. The skeletons are coming out of the ground, Sam, they're coming through the walls."
And by the depths of hell, she could see the fear in his eyes. He was looking at her because he knew where this was leading. Where it had to finish. The truth was coming and there was nothing he could do to stop it. Jesus, is this what regret felt like?
"No." Sam navigated her close-knit living room and stopped in front of the fire. "We're not giving up that easy."
"Sam..."
"Do you remember the first thing you said to me?"
"I told you to, 'fuck off'."
"You thought I was one of the hacks snuck into your office, pilfering state secrets."
A reasonable assumption at the time. Technically he hadn't hired a P.A. and generally speaking there wasn't an abundance of women loitering in his office. Truanting tabloid reporter was right up there with assassin for things you could find in Tucker's office. "You'd brought coffee and biscuits."
"Really wish I hadn't," she joked lightly. "I set a precedent for baked goods."
At least he smiled.
"Why'd you fucking stay with a short-tempered cunt like me – Sam?" His question was quite serious, unlike most of his curse-laden banter. "The job doesn't pay well. It turns you into a fucking zombie in the middle of a Michael Bay film where the apocalypse lasts three hours past its natural run time. The buildings are falling into the sea and the ice sheets have gone and fucking evaporated into a comet. Bruce Willis is dead and Goldblum's had his head torn off by a raptor."
That was a relatively accurate depiction of political life. Sam wasn't sure that she needed to stroke his ego – it'd be like sharpening the fangs on a lion and nobody needs one of those running about. "You're not boring."
"I'm not boring? Jesus. I'll put that on my epitaph then. Carve it in fucking stone. Here likes Malcolm Tucker. He wasn't a boring fuck."
"I always imagined it'd be an honour roll of murdered MPs."
He wasn't surprised that Sam had fantasied about his death. This time he throws his head back in a proper laugh. The glow from the fire was warm against his skin. It made him ever so slightly less vampiric. "Is that a list you're keeping?"
"Confirmed kills only. Anything you do in your free time is your business."
Gods he fucking loved her. "What's that?" He quickly distracted her by pointing to a notebook left on the coffee table. He made a grabby-hands gestures at her until she fetched it for him. "Is that the Ollie thing?"
"I don't know where his loyalty comes from or what sort of Dom/Sub relationship you've fostered but he came through for you."
Malcolm flipped through it, grinning. "Oh he's a useful little pawn."
"You've got to watch out for those."
"By the time Ollie limps his way to the end of the board I'll be on some fucking sand-infested island resort with a bottle of gin and a convenient lemon tree sprouting out of the warm sea."
"Be. Careful." Sam mouthed at him. He was too giddy for his own good.
She retired to her photocopier and Tucker eventually nodded off in the chair, diary slipping from his hand, surrounded by a debris of biscuit crumbs.
Dilemma.
It was near on six and Sam's boss was curled into one of her chairs like some enormous Serengeti cat. In all the years he'd parked in her living room, he was always awake in time. It's not like she could leave him there. If she was late, so was he. Besides, what the hell would Patrick make of it? Probably give him a decent heart attack to find a Funnelweb spider prodding the coffee machine.
"Malcolm..." she tried. Apart from the crackle of a near-dead fire, there was no sign of life. If people thought that he was scary awake, they should try his sleeping corpse.
Sam sighed and set her bag down before wandering over to the coffee machine. She set about making what was admittedly a dreadful cup of coffee. Sam was a tea person with woeful barista skills. Eventually she produced a cup lined with a black substance which she wafted under Malcolm's sleeping nose.
"S'shitcoffee wha...?" he mumbled, stirring.
Sam pulled back as he startled out of sleep. The first thing he saw was her and that startled him afresh.
"Time is it?" Malcolm asked, eyeing the coffee suspiciously.
She made him take the scorching cup. "After six." Sam turned as he unleashed a hail of abuse directed at the sun's position in the sky and the appalling beverage. "I have to go – have an errand to run," she held up the stolen file that needed urgent returning to the records office. "Lock up when you leave." Sam deliberately put the keys on the table while he was watching. He knew the drill.
Then she was gone. Malcolm was left to his coffee and the purring of Sam's cat who had taken up residence on the mat at his feet. "What are you so fucking happy about?" Tucker asked it. All he got in reply was an agitated tail flick.
The Abyssinian snow-ball got under his feet until he relented and fed it some biscuits. Malcolm used the spare bathroom, showering before changing into a freshly dry-cleaned suit still hanging behind the door which Sam had left here instead of bringing it into the office. It was almost like he lived here.
Finally, he scooped the keys up from the table and negotiated his way out the door, skilfully navigating the cat. One of Sam's neighbours was leaving too and waved pleasantly at him. Despite his natural tendency for murder, he waved back and wondered what the actual fuck had happened to his life.
"Are you suspending yourself from the trusses at night now?" Jamie blinked slowly at Malcolm's state. He'd always held a firm belief that Malcolm slept upside down in his office like a bat. When Tucker glanced up with a violent stare from tired eyes, Jamie worked it out. "You've gotta stop squatting on your P.A.'s couch. You know exactly how that fucking looks."
"It can look however it likes," Tucker snapped.
"Smug bastard. You are a PR nightmare," Jamie added, strutting around Malcolm's office. "If the press weren't terrified of waking up in a pit of fire they'd have you all over page 2."
"What?" That earned a smirk. "Like a -"
Jamie cut him short. "Yeah – with all your cock-ups on show. Great big, full colour, double page spread."
"Fuck off, Jamie. There's plenty of sport outside for you to blunt your teeth on. I'm already fucked. Too many cocks you know – spoils the experience of dying."
Jamie reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded bit of paper, holding it between two fingers as if he were making a bid for freedom. "You better fuckin' thank me."
Malcolm frowned and took it. "Sometimes you scare me, you mad, Scottish fuck."
"I'm your bloody genetically modified protege. Got all the best bits – except the eyebrows." Jamie waited while Malcolm laughed. "Seriously, how is this resurrecting itself? Don't we have a policy of cementing the dead in the London Underground? You and I signed a pact with the devil over this. I lost so much blood I had to murder half the electorate."
"Try not to create any more frown lines in your forehead. They're after me, not you."
"Maybe but they're gonna end up with Sam."
The two men fell silent.
The press were going to end up with Sam.
"Oh my god..." Sam stopped when she saw him sauntering down the hallway toward her. He had a weird fucking way of walking – like he expected a squabble of press in tow. It was either that or part of his soul had been torn out on his way out of hell. "Jamie..."
"We're goin' the other way," he said, taking her arm and spinning Malcolm's P.A. around in a flourish of drama. He held her tighter when she started to protest. "Trust me on this one. The front door is not a place you want to go."
They exited the records office by a fire escape. Straight onto the street, they crossed and vanished into a rubbish bit of park surviving between pavement and skyscraper. "What are you doing here?" Sam snapped at him.
"Rescuing you," Jamie replied.
This time, she managed to fight her way out of his grip. "No. You're not. What was at the front doors?"
"One of the best long-lens photographers I've ever come across."
Sam was starting to understand. It didn't matter if he was in the employ of the paper or Weir. "So what?" she replied, her voice lowered to a whisper. "I'm always in the records office – like every other minion of parliament. What of it?"
"Sam..."
"Don't call me, 'Sam'," she protested.
"Blimey, you're worse than he is."
"You call my boss, 'Sam'."
"I – the fuck?" How did she get him so lost in a language he was supposed to be a master of? "Listen. Stop being so difficult. I'm doin' yer a favour, darlin'. The last thing you need right now is your face in the paper. Being famous isn' brilliant."
"Weir's got nothing," Sam insisted. "Unless you know something I don't. You do. Jamie!"
"I'm helping. That's all you need to concern yourself with."
"Forgive me but it's a bit like being helped down a dark alley by Jack the Ripper."
"How long have you been wearing glasses?"
Tucker was nose deep in a newspaper, his heavy, black-framed glasses gradually making their way down his nose. With his hair slicked back, shirt sleeves rolled to his elbows and tie undone he was every bit the dream Sam wasn't supposed to have. Too bad the vision was wasted on Julius.
"How long have you been in my office?" Tucker snipped back, looking up, then added, "Is your head chiselled out of marble, or is that your normal fucking head?"
"It's my normal fucking head." Julius closed the door. "Malcolm, we need to talk!"
"You're Head of Blue-Sodding-Skies-Think-Fuck, all you do is talk. You talk so much it evaporates shit off the pavement and rains it down over the rest of us like the biggest plague-let-down since frogs. I mean, nobody likes Frogs but their superfluous presence isn't the end of the world unless you're a vegetarian."
Julius frowned. Shook his head. Opened his mouth to speak but Malcolm's P.A. burst in.
"Stop getting your pets to fetch me! I'm not a Frisbee." Sam froze when she saw Malcolm. Like Netflix with bad wifi, everything was starting to stutter.
"What's wrong?" Tucker asked her, adjusting his glasses.
"Absolutely nothing." Fuck.
"Do you speak entirely in retracted whispers? It's like policy at a séance."
"Your car is here."
As Tucker strolled past, he narrowed his eyes at Sam. She shrugged innocently.
"Get rid of that..." Malcolm breathed, pointing at Julius.