Head Shots

Keith Brooke

infinity plus singles #4

Published by infinity plus at Smashwords
www.infinityplus.co.uk/books
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© Keith Brooke 1999, 2011

 Smashwords Edition, Licence Notes

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The moral right of Keith Brooke to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

Contents

Head Shots
About the author
More about infinity plus singles

Head Shots

A few seconds ago, all was calm: just a small group, mostly men, gathered in the street outside a quiet little bistro. Sunday night on a north London street, nothing much happening. Could have been almost anywhere.

Now:

"Hey, Andy!" A lightning-flicker of flashes, a whirr of winding cameras.

"Over here, Andy!" A scrum of bodies, mostly men, converging on a man who has appeared in the bistro's doorway. A mad buzz of noise from the collected minds. "Andy, when ya gonna score for City, then?"

Anna-Louise is lost in the crowd, taken aback, as always, by the sudden change of tempo. She's a hack like all the others — a snoop, to be precise — but she's still in the friendly gossip-in-the-street mode and not yet in the elbow-your-rival-in-the-face-just-for-a-better-angle mode that the others have so smoothly adopted.

She rubs her rib-cage gingerly where Terry from PA has just caught her with his Nikon. Bodies all around her, she can barely see a thing: Andy Coghan is still in the doorway, hesitating. There's a woman at his shoulder, now, and two minders are pushing their way to the front, where they should have been to start with. There's still a mad buzz of confusion in Anna-Louise's head, spilling over from all the snaps and snoops around her.

"Hey Andy," she yells, her mid-European female voice slivering through the din, "you gonna tell us what does your wife think?"

There's a sudden lull and out of that a stab of anger, muffled in an instant, but it's definitely the footballer: she's got through, got a print of his thoughts. She squeezes the crystal block in her jacket pocket: she needs to record a whole sight more than that one blast of Coghan's mindset, but at least it's a start.

"Hey Andy! Why'd you sky that penalty yesterday?" The buzz closes in, the din smothers everything. Andy Coghan's minders force a path through the scrum. Their professional projections of mind noise serve to obscure anything that a drunken, goal-hungry striker out with his wife's attractive young sister might otherwise let slip to the gathered snaps and snoops of the nation's Press.

The footballer, his lover — whose identity had only been revealed by one of the Mirror's snoops the previous week — and their two minders force their way through to the waiting BMW. Behind them, there's a man in the doorway, trying his best to look shocked at the intrusion on his customers' privacy — but, rising above all the noise, Anna-Louise reads his absolute delight at all the attention, the knowledge that this is news and it's happening at his bistro and even though Andy Coghan and his cheap little slut of a sister-in-law might never come back there will be any number of people who think they will. He can hear the sound of countless credit cards being swiped and through his over-heated thoughts Anna-Louise can hear them just as clearly...

...but Anna-Louise has lost track of what's happening because of this fool with his greedy outpourings. She's still standing by the bistro's window, whereas the snaps are in an unruly flash-happy knot around the BMW.

There are two others still rooted to the spot: Julian from PA and some freelance she half-recognises from the Delaney hearing. The three exchange uneasy smiles, uneasy thoughts.

When you're trying to fine-tune in on a target, crude intrusions like the bistro owner's greed can knock you back. They'd all felt it.

Anna-Louise grins at Julian. "Jerk," she mutters, picturing a pig with its snout in a trough of shit. Julian and the other guy laugh and the bistro owner blanches a little. Maybe he's more sensitive than she credited. Any fool can sense other people's minds, after all.

But you have to be special to be a snoop. You have to be talented.

Motorbikes rev in the street as two of the snaps, cameras slung casually over their shoulders, set off in the wake of Coghan's BMW.

"Hey, Anna-Louise!" Frank from whatever agency hasn't got round to sacking him this week is leaning over the passenger seat of his Porsche, beckoning to her.

She rushes across, doesn't need the pervasive sex-vibe to know why a rival is offering her a lift in pursuit of the hottest story of the moment. She slams the door as he pulls out and U-turns to a chorus of squealing brakes. She thinks lesbian at him, hoping that's telling him no and not just stirring his juices even more.

"No wonder he's not scoring," mutters Frank as he races an amber light. They're heading sort of West Endish, unless Coghan's driver is planning to shake them off in the city and then go on someplace else.

Seven million, plus escalators, for two goals in fourteen games. The Coghan for England chorus has dried up since the player's uninspired start for City. And now, with all the scandal, it looks like one more hero's past his sell-by.

Anna-Louise stays cool, trying not to spill anything to Frank. The guy's okay — anyone who can have such a wreckage of a life and still be a top pro has to be something pretty special — but Anna-Louise is never comfortable with him. There's always the sense that he's in another league to her. And there's always the sex thing, too.

The BMW pulls up outside a wine bar in a side road just off Oxford Street. Immediately, a bouncer starts arguing with the hacks on bikes.

Casually, Frank cruises past in his Porsche. He waves at the other bouncer on the door and pulls up in a side street to park. Seconds later, he's escorting Anna-Louise into the bar.

Anna-Louise can't hide her surprise, a mental buzz of admiration.

"The Porsche always does it," he says, with a mindwash of sophisticated superfice, an intonation that he's in a class above all the other hacks and the bouncers recognised it in him.

Then she understands: he really is good — if the bouncers had sensed who they were they'd be hanging around outside the bar with all the others. Frank had projected their difference to the bouncer, created a mental image of just another punter. That's a trick she hasn't come across before.

They go to the bar and order. Pimms and lemonade for Anna-Louise, tomato juice for Frank. "Got to keep myself straight," he smiles. Seconds later, he's off to the gents, an image of a line of coke slipping past his mental guard. Deliberate, she realises: maybe older but still exciting, he's trying to project to her.

She sips her drink and eyes the clientele, samples the muffled jabber of their mind-noise. Mostly nobodies and C list celebs: a couple of musicians, a crystal artist, some faces from daytime TV. Woozy jazz from a five-piece in the corner engulfs everything, making it hard to focus. The singer is twisting the ether, seeding it with cloying sentiment. Part of the performance, part of the mental security offered by bars like this: anyone in the public eye is usually pretty good at masking their thoughts from the snoops, but when they get tired and emotional, when they get drunk or high, they let things out. So they hire minders to project noise all around them, and they come to bars where such noise is all part of the service.

Anna-Louise sips at her drink, fighting off a one-in-the-morning-and-why-the-fuck-am-I-still-on-the-job headache.

Frank is back at her side, eyes popping. She tries to sample him, but although his thoughts are fizzing he's too good to let anything slip. He smiles and she sees herself lying back, legs wide open.

She thinks lesbian thoughts again, but it's no good.

He leans forward, so close she briefly smells herself on him as if they've already screwed and not just in his head. "Darling," he says, "you're as queer as I'm the Pope."

She shudders, wondering how she's ended up like this. Just then she spots Andy Coghan at a table near the back of the bar. He's leaning forward, a hand on his sister-in-law's forearm. She wonders if he's sending as powerfully as Frank, if this girl — barely eighteen, by all accounts — knows the shape of his thoughts.

Anna-Louise guesses she can, even if she can't read them as clearly as a trained snoop could. She nods towards the lovers, says, "What now, then?" Back to the job in hand. Frank's a pro. She'll follow his lead, try to learn a thing or two.

"They're in a public place," he says. "There's a lot of interest in the story. I think we're justified in a direct approach."

She raises her eyebrows. Lets him continue.

"So we go over, introduce ourselves, ask him what his wife thinks about him shagging her sister."

She would never have been so direct herself, but she knows it makes sense: get Coghan angry, get the girl upset — and when their mental guards slip just make sure you're channelling it all into the crystal block in your pocket so the revelations can be edited and distributed with the morning papers.

He senses her hesitancy. "Fair game," he says. "He's a liar and a cheat and he's every kid's hero. You put yourself on a high pedestal, you better make sure no-one can push you off it."

But it's not to be. There's a guy heading towards Frank and Anna-Louise, a guy who's not even trying to mask his thoughts, the anger and violence forcing itself over the wash of jazzy blandness on the ether.

Frank pushes himself to his feet, starts to back off, hands raised.

The guy's drunk, so his punch misses and he staggers. But then he straightens and kicks at Frank, catching him on the shin, making him fall clumsily to one knee. Instantly, a bouncer is between them, shielding Frank from further blows.

A woman has rushed up behind the attacker and now she's clutching at him, trying to pull him back. She's upset, tears streaming, make-up smeared. She's sending triumph and anguish and bastard-Press-snoops and suddenly the thug is turning and embracing her, telling her to cool it as if he never lost his cool himself.

It's all over in an instant, and all these images — visual and mental — smash against Anna-Louise's consciousness. The woman is Patricia Walters — Candy Stubbs from Seymour Street. The thug is her boyfriend and manager, who also, Anna-Louise reads, likes her to tie him up with a washing line and piss on him (she squeezes the crystal block in her pocket, always the pro, always ready to record).

A few months ago, Frank exposed an affair Walters was having with another actor from the Street.

Walters and her manager haven't forgiven him, clearly.

Frank's standing now, and the bouncer has a hand on his shoulder, clearly indicating that he should leave. They don't like snoops in places like this. Bad for business.

Frank meets her eye, says, "Guess we'd better leave then, darling."

Anna-Louise straightens her shoulders, projects anger and humiliation, so powerful that everyone in the room must feel it. She steps forward and slaps his face. "You bastard," she hisses. "You were using me, you cheap, prying, slimy bastard!"