Robert Young - Gatecrasher

Sunday. 8am.

It was the kind of morning that people stayed in bed for. A damp, grey dawn blew in off the river and across the thinning trees of the park. Three men gathered by the walled water’s edge. Their hands, thrust deep into pockets, drew overcoats tight against themselves as they tried to keep out the cold and the drizzle that swept about them.

One of the men looked sharper and more affluent than the other two. His long dark coat looked heavy and expensive, well cut. His brown hair, short and styled, barely shifted in the breeze. The other two wore jeans and cheap looking jackets, slightly ill-fitting. Plain and nondescript, they appeared altogether less sophisticated than their companion.

Though their only company in the park were joggers and dog walkers, squirrels and pigeons, they huddled close and spoke quietly and guardedly. Frequently they turned to look about them, their eyes scanning people as they passed, searching the trees and the shadows they cast.

Behind them the London skyline struggled out of the drab morning, a light fog blurring it gently as the sun drew lazily into the sky. Most eyes in the park looked past the men to landmarks beyond, or at the floor, the trees, the isolated greenery around them penned in by the city. Still they shifted uncomfortably, their exchanges brief, their gestures small and understated as they talked and their breath misted about their heads.

‘Tyler, don’t give me maybes. I don’t give a shit about maybes,’ the smart man said sharply as he turned to one of the men who had the squat solid build of a nightclub doorman.

‘Of course, I know that. All I’m saying is that at this stage, we shouldn’t have a problem,’ he explained more politely than his appearance suggested of him.

‘Absolutely sir,’ added the other. A tall, athletically built man named Matthew Drennan, he looked the smart man in the eye. ‘Last known sighting he was somewhere in Fulham.’ The line was delivered as though it should mean something. It was met with a disdainful shrug from the smart man.

‘Meaning what exactly?’

‘Well it wasn’t as if he were wandering around Whitehall sir or knocking on the door of the Telegraph. I think we can assume that he is out of our hair and I think that we have our friends in the east to thank for that too.’

‘We have our friends in the east to thank for a lot Drennan,’ he said with heavy sarcasm. ‘And whilst I am extremely eager to share in your mindlessly optimistic little worldview, I am more concerned with knowing what actually happened rather than what might have happened because I really do not want to start thinking about what could happen. So please, reassure me. Justify my occasional faith in your ability.’

It was Tyler, the doorman, who spoke. ‘We don’t have any definites at the moment but we are confident that there is no cause for concern … at present…’ he faltered at the glare this was met with but continued regardless, ‘…and we will have answers for you shortly sir.’

‘The right answers,’ added Drennan.

The smart man looked at them both sternly for a moment and then adjusted his coat against the rising wind. ‘Gentlemen, I rise at five o’ clock in the morning. I shower, take breakfast and dress and I leave my home at six o‘clock for the office. This gives you a window of one hour in which to call me and give me the answers I require. If I have to leave my home for work without this information I will become really rather agitated at the uncertain prospect of what might await me.’ As he spoke he inspected his fingernails and then looked briefly into both men’s eyes. ‘I am, of course, understood,’ he said softly but did not wait for confirmation and he turned and left the park at a brisk walk.

Tyler and Drennan watched him leave in silence and they turned together and began walking in the opposite direction. It was several minutes before either of them said anything when Drennan lifted a mobile phone to his ear and began to speak.

Saturday. 10pm.

The room was loud and lively, voices raised above the music and people laughed and danced in the dark, stuffy space. Nobody was sitting. That was a good sign.

Daniel Campbell pulled a bottle of wine from the rack behind him and began twisting a corkscrew into the neck. He offered the bottle to the three people grouped around him and then topped up his own glass.

‘So how long have you been here?’ asked one of the group, a short blond haired girl that had turned up with a friend of his.

‘About six months,’ he replied.

‘Six months? It’s taken six months to organise a flatwarming?’ said a tall, skinny man with a goatee as he slurped noisily at his wine.

Campbell shrugged.

‘So how can you afford to buy a place in Fulham? You must be minted.’ The tall skinny man again. Campbell looked at him and winked as he noticed how interested the girl suddenly looked in hearing his answer.

‘You know, the usual. Couple of enormous drug deals, bit of people-trafficking.’ He grinned as the three others laughed. ‘Sold a kidney,’ he added.

They laughed louder and the blond girl flashed a smile at him that Campbell thought he could grow to like.

‘No, Daniel’s actually landed gentry,’ said the other young man who had until now remained silent. ‘Father owns most of Leicestershire.’

‘Yeah. You can tell by the accent how posh I am.’

He began to drift around the room, greeting people and shaking hands, kissing cheeks. Campbell guessed that he knew probably only two-thirds of the people here but he had decided to make the invitation an open one rather than end up with a half-empty flat and a half-hearted party.

A few unfamiliar faces were par for the course anyway and as far as he could tell, most of those that he didn’t know, seemed to know people that he did and had tagged along with them. In any event, most of the guests that he spoke to seemed more than happy with their host and Campbell was enjoying his new-found popularity.

At one point he was drawn into a round of tequila shots, salt and lemon fetched from the kitchen, the bottle from his own cupboard. Everybody grimaced and groaned as they sucked on the sour fruit. Someone’s barely suppressed retching draw great amusement from the others.

More than once he spotted the short blonde girl that he had been talking to earlier, looking across the room at him. More than once he made sure that he returned her eye contact.

After chatting with a couple of work colleagues who he’d invited the week before after a few post-work drinks and then regretted it the next morning, he resolved to work his way back through the crowded living room to the blond girl. He turned to look for her, raising his glass to his mouth, trying hard to look distracted.

Suddenly he froze. The brutal, jarring sound of breaking glass and the thud of something heavy hitting the floor burst through the flat and silenced everyone, leaving just the sound of the music in the background, pounding like a heartbeat. His head snapped around to the source of the sound from the end of the hallway, toward the kitchen and something surged and slammed in his chest.

He could hear it in his head again like an echo as he ran and hairs danced on his neck. The shattering of the glass was almost to be expected, several hours into a drink-soaked party. But that other sound. A sort of crunching, thudding noise: of dropping. Of falling.

Slumped face down across the floor of his kitchen lay the figure of a man, his head surrounded by broken glass and, it seemed to the stunned Campbell as he stood there aghast, by a pool of blood that looked positively black in the soft light. Someone behind him screamed: the most perfect description of his own feelings.