Майкл Ридпат - Fatal Error

A small but stout woman with tight grey curls appeared.

Guy hesitated for a moment, but he recovered quickly. ‘Mrs Morris?’ he asked with his best smile, which was generally recognized as a pretty good smile.

The woman glowed. ‘Yes.’

‘Is your son in?’

‘You’re the people from the internet company, aren’t you?’

‘That’s right,’ said Guy. ‘I’m Guy Jourdan, Chief Executive, and this is my Finance Director, David Lane.’

‘Come in, come in. Make yourselves at home. Gary’s still at work, but he should be back any minute now.’ She led us through to a small living room. ‘Can I get you a drink?’ And then hastily, to make sure we hadn’t misunderstood her: ‘A cup of tea, perhaps?’

Guy and I sank into a deep chintz-covered sofa while Mrs Morris busied herself in the kitchen. Then we heard the front door open and close and a male voice call ‘Hi, Mum!’

‘Those internet people are here to see you, dear.’

Gaz appeared. He was a thin man in his early twenties, dressed in light blue shirt and blue trousers with red piping. A postman. Guy was wearing black jeans and a lightweight black polo-necked jersey. I was in an old denim shirt and crumpled green trousers. We all sat down on the three-piece suite and the takeover battle began.

He was no fool, Gaz. Guy started on some spiel about how ninetyminutes.com was a leading European internet holding company, when Gaz stopped him.

‘You’re just two blokes with some bullshit, aren’t you? I know all the footie websites, and ninetyminutes.com isn’t one of them.’ He had a prominent Adam’s apple that wobbled up and down as he talked, and he spoke with a sub-cockney accent. But he was right. ‘So how much will you pay me for Sick As A Parrot? Cash on the table.’

Guy smiled. ‘I discussed this with my finance man this morning, and we’ve got an opening offer.’ He looked across to me. We had discussed a price on the way, but I thought it was far too early to put it on the table. I decided to give Guy the benefit of the doubt and nodded sagely.

‘A pint of lager and a packet of peanuts,’ Guy said, with a smile. ‘That’s just a down payment, of course. There’s more to follow.’

Gaz frowned, then returned the smile. ‘That’ll get you to the table. Let’s go and discuss this properly.’ He stood up and called down the hallway. ‘We’re just going out, Mum!’

Mrs Morris rushed to the door to hold it open for us, and fluttered her eyelashes at Guy.

‘Nice cat, Mrs Morris,’ said Guy as he passed the plastic mog.

‘Oh, thank you. I do like cats. We’d have a real one, but Gary’s allergic.’

‘Bye, Mum,’ said Gaz, escaping through the wooden gate.

We continued the discussion in the pub around the corner. Guy bought Gaz his promised pint of lager, and he got one for himself and his Finance Director as well.

‘Sorry about the bullshit, Gaz,’ he said. ‘It’s what I do. I’ll give you the real scoop in a moment. But before that, tell me about the site.’

Gaz was happy to talk. He was proud of his work, as well he should have been. ‘I started it two years ago. At first it was nothing more than a home page. Then it sort of developed a following all by itself. I adapted it into a proper-looking site, people told other people about it, pretty soon it had more or less taken me over.’

‘How many visitors do you get?’

‘About a hundred thousand a month, last time I checked.’

‘Wow. It must take a lot of time to keep it up.’

‘It does. I spend almost all my free time on it. I don’t get much sleep. But I enjoy it.’

‘It’s very good,’ said Guy.

‘I know,’ said Gaz.

‘I can tell you’re an Arsenal fan. Why didn’t you just do an Arsenal site?’

‘There are two types of people who like football,’ Gaz replied. ‘The tribal type, who are looking for a grouping to give them some kind of identity, and those who just love the game. I’m not writing for the tribal type. Sure, it makes it much more interesting if you support one team or another, but I’m just as happy watching and writing about teams other than Arsenal. More happy: it’s easier to be objective.’

‘And do you design the website yourself?’

‘Yeah. That’s no problem. I studied physics and philosophy at uni, so I can get my head around a computer. At first I did the whole thing from scratch in HTML, but these days you get packages like Dreamweaver that make it all pretty easy anyway. Don’t get me wrong,’ Gaz said. ‘I’m not a geek. It’s football I love. It’s just that I understand computers and that’s how I tell people about football.’

‘So if you’ve got a degree in physics and philosophy, how come you’re a postman?’ I asked.

‘I like being a postman,’ Gaz replied defensively. ‘It gives me time to do what I like to do. And funnily enough knowing about Wittgenstein and the theory of matter didn’t seem to impress the recruitment people.’

‘It should have done,’ I said.

‘OK, OK. But where did you learn to write like that?’ Guy asked.

‘I’ve always written, ever since I was a kid. It comes naturally, especially when I’m writing about football. It’s like I’m compulsive. I just have to get it down.’ He sipped his beer. ‘What about you? Tell me what your real story is.’

Guy talked about his plans for ninetyminutes.com and for its growth. He admitted Ninetyminutes would need a lot of money to get off the ground, and that we hadn’t raised any of it yet.

Gaz listened hard.

‘What do you think?’ Guy asked him.

‘You’ve read my site?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then you know my views on the commercialization of football.’

‘Yes.’

‘Well?’

‘Do you like living at home?’ Guy asked.

‘It’s all right, I suppose.’

‘Wouldn’t you like your own place within walking distance of Highbury? Wouldn’t you like to write this stuff during the working day instead of at night or at weekends?’

‘Yes. But I don’t want to sell out. All the commercial sites are crap. They’re all pushing this TV station, or that football shirt. You can’t say the chairman is a wanker if he’s the one paying your salary. Or if his best mate is.’

‘That’s the point,’ said Guy. ‘The commercial sites are all crap. But so are the unofficial ones too. Even yours.’

Gaz raised his eyebrows. He wasn’t expecting this.

‘The design’s crap. Sorry, but it is.’

The colour rose in Gaz’s thin cheeks. He slammed his pint down on the pub table. ‘What’s wrong with the design?’

‘Gaz, we’re not here because of your eye for colour, or your sense of perspective. We’re here because you write the best stuff on the net and off it. But you need more. You need a good site design, you need a PR and marketing campaign so millions of people will hear about it, you need hardware that can deal with the traffic, you need people working for you who can write the stories you want in the way you want. You need someone to pay those people, you need someone to pay you, you need an office, a computer, time to think, time to watch football.

‘This site is going to be what you make it, Gaz. And it’s going to be big. And I’m sorry, but you’re going to make a shit-load of money out of it too.’

Gaz was listening. I watched his face. I could see Guy’s magic working on it. ‘OK. So, what’s the deal?’

‘Twenty thousand quid up front and five per cent of the shares of the company.’

Gaz looked from Guy to me. We let him think.

‘Thirty.’

‘Twenty-five.’

‘Done.’ Gaz held out his hand. Guy shook it. ‘And another pint of lager.’

‘So, what do you think, Davo? Six hours in the job, and we’ve already done our first deal.’ We were zipping down the outside lane of the M1 in Guy’s electric-blue ten-year-old Porsche, roof down, stereo and wind loud in our ears.