Malcolm Tucker was displeased, tossing a limp, cold chip back onto the paper where it deflated into a soggy length of refined carbohydrate.
To be honest, he was well sick of listening to Julius prattle on and on and on and on. It was as though he'd mastered a new form of breathing that allowed him to inhale oxygen in through his radio-dished-sized ears. If the Bald Moon of Saturn hadn't been so bloody useful Malcolm would have had him thrown out hours ago – battered one of his appendages ready for the deep fryer...
As it was, the irritating sod was a fountain of fucking knowledge and that was vexing Malcolm as much as his cold dinner bleeding oil over the antique table.
Malcolm dismally tried to mop it up with a serviette. Even that was a fucking cheap piece of rubbish. Fuck, he may as well commit and polish the table with grease. Give it a nice, British sheen.
"Just – do you 'ave a pause button or something?" Malcolm muttered, holding his hand in front of Julius like a traffic warden. All he needed was a high-vis vest. "You've been on transmit for aeons."
Julius canted awkwardly, peering around the obstacle. "If my presence is boring you, I can always leave..." Smugness filtered through his voice like a stain.
Oh how Malcolm wished he could volunteer an honest answer... "Not at all, Lord of Arnage," he casually joshed. "I have to take a piss – keep your greasy fingers off the furniture – yeah?" He added, standing.
Fuck he'd been sitting down so long he could feel his joints re-aligning. They clunked into place with all the subtlety of a smoke stack demolition.
Dust-heavy air sank over him in the hallway. Malcolm tilted his head up, closing his eyes to the flickering lights, fighting against their inevitable deaths. A moment of peace. He cherished it.
The click of heels.
"Sam? Not now, Sam..." He muttered.
Her footsteps turned and retreated.
For a moment Malcolm regretted that.
Two hours deeper into the night, Julius appeared to be bored of his own voice. He'd started flapping about, tossing flippant remarks at the time instead of fucking off like the other malfunctioning carbon units. When he did finally go it was just in time. Malcolm was five paragraphs short of offering a blow job if only to stop his ears bleeding.
Tucker flinched at his internalised rant. That was a nasty fucking vision – something he could add to the general state of affairs.
To cleanse his thoughts, Malcolm strolled around his office, turning lamps off – prodding the fire into a sad, smoky pile of ash, puffing his precious pillows back up and drawing all the curtains save the one nearest his desk. He lingered there, in the dark – alone, watching London go about its business. Gradually, its lights flickered out. It never properly stopped. The same bullshit went on, dragging from one day to the next. Nothing much had changed since the Romans built a few fancy henges in the mud – or was that the drunken pagans after a heavy night of mushroom licking? Useless stone circles... yeah nah, that was probably the fucking locals. The Romans were more interested in manufactured warfare – hence the creation of politics. What a monumental waste of time that was. They'd have been better off howling at the moon with skull-fulls of ale.
Actually, he looked a bit like a shit-faced pagan.
Malcolm drew a fragile figure, watching the world. His younger self would have had something venomous to say about the state of his suit, which was little more than a crushed pair of grey pants with a white shirt rolled up to his elbows. Sometimes Malcolm felt like he was holding onto the world with his fingernails. Maybe he was.
This time, Malcolm didn't hear his P.A. slip into the room. She was carrying his jacket in her arms. Carefully, she paused behind him, long enough for her boss to detect her presence before she rolled down his sleeves and draped the jacket over his shoulders. Sam helped him into it as they had done a thousand times before. They'd said nothing. There wasn't really any need. It had been a terribly long week and after it all, it was clear that Tucker wasn't ready to go home. It was as though he was booting down or something – processing.
Sam watched him carefully before she did something new. Her hand, still on Malcolm's arm, tightened. She stepped forward until her body pressed lightly against his back. In a single, smooth motion she brought her arms gently around him. Sam was very careful, embracing him from behind as he continued to stare out the window with those sharp eyes of his.
He tensed against her. Rejection was his default behaviour but Sam persisted until he leaned back slightly.
Minutes passed and then she was gone, slipping out of the world with the smoke from the fire.
Malcolm, alone again, reached to touch the place on his arm where her hand had rested a moment ago. He didn't know what he felt – a connection to the rest of the world – or maybe just Sam... Maybe it didn't matter. If this all went south and it very probably would, what was the point in dragging her any further into this? None at all... He said firmly to himself. At the risk of being slapped again, Malcolm kept his thoughts to himself and finally went home.
Malcolm fucking hated the weekend. It started early with the only newspaper the general public bothered to read slammed into his door by some spotty-faced, bike-riding infant. Retrieving it was worse. Sometimes he had a little game with himself where he tried to guess which member of parliament would appear on its cover – ass out. If he got it right, he'd reward himself with a bagel. God sometimes he prayed for a natural disaster. At least he'd get to forgo the shouting before breakfast.
Breakfast... That was a pretty loose term for his thermos of congealed caffeine. Where was Sam with his skinny caramel latte? Oh that's right... weekend. Fuck weekends.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Malcolm's gaze was dredged up from page three of his paper. He stared at the door which such intensity it should have burst into flame.
"This is not a good idea, Ollie. Actually, no, I take that back. This is a shite idea. This is – is – standing in front of a Nazi art collection on the second of September, nineteen forty-five."
"Glen?"
"What?"
"Sh!" Ollie rubbed his mittens together. It was bloody freezing – or maybe that was because they were standing in front of Tucker's house and he was an ice demon, creating his own little artificial nest of - "Morning Malcolm!" He tried to sound cheery and certainly didn't mention anything about the navy dressing gown the lord of darkness was wearing. Were those moons and stars in the print?
Malcolm shifted his vicious gaze between prat one and two. "Are you lost? 'Cause you look like you've spent the last twelve hours being mauled by a bear and dragged through the snow."
"Not lost – um – as such."
Glen had gone pale green. A perfectly normal reaction to impending decapitation. "We're ah -"
Malcolm's patience was about as thin as the veneer of skin covering the pulsing vein between his eyes. "You've got about three seconds before I tear Ollie's legs off and fuck you with them."
That didn't help Glen's nerves. "It's Dan. Miller. Dan Miller."
"He's a bit -"
"Bit well-"
"That is to say-"
"-that-"
"-he's-"
"Could you hurry up please, or I'm gonna hit you with my thermos..."
Glen swallowed. "Gone."
"So?" Malcolm shrugged. "It's Saturday morning. He's probably passed out in a back alley with half a bottle of Cointreau. Why am I caring about this?" Glen held out the silver monstrosity also known as Dan Miller's phone. Malcolm's eyes sharpened a bit but he wasn't worried – yet. "He left his phone in the office. Not exactly headline stuff."
Glen fiddled with the phone and brought up the last txt received. It was from Tucker.
Malcolm eyed the message incredulously. "I didn' send that."
"Are you sure?" Ollie chirped.
"Pretty fucking positive!" Tucker hissed, causing the pair to step backwards. "If I wanted to threaten the cunt I'd include .gifs of bunnies getting their furry heads ripped off."
"He has a point there," Ollie was forced to admit.
"I have to call Jamie – find out which one of his hack-friends is in our phones again." Malcolm turned to leave but Ollie caught him by the sleeve.
"What do we do?"
"Let go of my arm if you want to keep your hand fer a start..."
Ollie did. "I mean, about Miller?"
Malcolm shrugged dramatically. "I don't know. Have you tried looking for him?"
"No – our first thought was to come over to your place for a ritual slaughter," Glen replied dryly, earning a smirk from the devil.
"Well, does he have a wife or a girlfriend – recurring hooker or dungeon master that might know where he is?"
"That's the thing..." Ollie had to think about whether he wanted to follow Malcolm inside when he beckoned them to follow. "You asked for a cardboard cut-out minister so what you've got is -"
"A boring fuck."
"What Glen said. What are you doing?"
"Everyone's got a mother," Tucker replied. "She'll know where the little shit is. He probably sent himself the txt so he could go play squash with his Spanish lover. What now?"
"Miller's an orphan," Glen closed the front door. Tucker's house was much the same as before only this time it smelled of coffee rather than booze. "His mother is missing, presumed dead when she fell off a cruise ship in the middle of the Bahamas. Dan Miller Senior was the victim of a hit and run and his brother was killed in action four years ago."
"Christ. I asked for boring not a George Orwell novel. Coffee?"
Ollie took him up on the offer and regretted it. He could feel his heart hammering against his rib cage as he ingested near lethal doses of the stimulant. No wonder Tucker was highly strung.
"He's got nearly forty-eight hours to resurface."
"Just the four, actually," Ollie choked.
"Biscuits. You brought me biscuits." Tucker leaned against his door frame, snow tapping softly against his face. He'd changed into a more respectable jeans and a jumper when it became clear that they were in the opening bars of a symphony.
"Out of the way, Malcolm."
"I thought we agreed it was, 'Bond'?"
It was too cold for this. Sam pressed the packet of biscuits to his chest and nudged him firmly, pushing him inside the house.