Bergen strap had scraped down my arm as I took it off and its weight had ripped the stitches from the skin.
Trolleys lined both sides of the corridor, loaded with old people coughing up shit. I couldn't tell if they were waiting for A and E or were just overspill from the wards.
The two Poles got very excited about something on the TV. I looked up to see, for maybe the tenth time since I'd been sitting there, the crystal-clear, black-and-white images of me tumbling into the sewage and Pete being my hero. Of course, the part where he'd killed people had been cut. Cameramen don't do things like that.
It was being played over and over again, not only because it was great bang-bang but also because it was being pushed out as a tribute to Pete – and to Platinum Bollocks, of course, for filming it. As for me, being security, thankfully I didn't get a mention. I was just 'a member of the crew'. No TV company wants it known that they have protection. It isn't good for the image.
I watched as I got hit and dropped like a bag of shit. The Poles were loving it. Real live bang-bang, filmed by a real live Polish hero.
I'd booked myself on to the next day's two p.m. Royal Jordanian to Amman. The flight had had the world's most obvious sky marshal sitting in the galley by the cockpit door. Kitted out in a very sharp suit and some of Russia's finest steel sticking out of his holster, he was even scaring the flight attendants.
We landed at three thirty, but there were no useful connecting flights till the morning. I'd spent last night on an airport bench because I wanted to be sure of a ticket for the nine a.m. BA to Heathrow the moment the desk opened – only to discover when it did that the airline will put you up in a hotel if you're waiting overnight for a connecting flight.
It had been last night that I fucked up my arm again. I sort of let them think I was a wounded soldier and they upgraded me to business all the way through to London.
I'd taken the fast train to Paddington, jumped into a cab and got the driver to take me to Guy's. I could have walked round the corner to St Mary's, but south London was more my stamping ground. Going to Guy's was a trip down Memory Lane.
Besides, it was closer to Brockwell Park.
24
I tried Dom's mobile for the fifth time since landing. Still only voicemail.
I rang Moira again. 'Has he called in yet?'
'No. Have you heard anything?'
'Nothing. I'm in London.'
There was a long pause. Something not very good was about to happen.
'Listen, Nick, with Pete gone and Dom missing, there isn't any reason to keep you on. That's it, I'm afraid. Send me an invoice for the days worked and I'll get our accounts department to sort it out.'
She wasn't one to mess about, was she?
'Nick, I have to go.'
So, that was it, then. No more pay cheques from TVZ 24.
A very pissed-off voice paged a doctor on the Tannoy. They might have installed CCTV since the 1970s, but some things about the place hadn't changed. The woman's voice sounded exactly the same as the reception staff had when I'd been there as a nine-year-old leaking red stuff.
I lived on the Tabard Estate, a few streets away, in a block of council flats thrown up after the war. They'd been built on a newly vacant site. Demolition had been cheap, courtesy of the Luftwaffe.
All the houses were given names associated with Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Apparently the pilgrimage had started from the Tabard Inn or somewhere. We ended up in Eastwell House: Eastwell was one of the stops along the pilgrims' route, they'd said. I'd never read the Canterbury Tales. I'd thumbed through the Canterbury Messenger once while waiting for a train back to Shorncliff barracks when I was a boy soldier, but that probably didn't count.
I went to a primary school near the chocolate factory, which for some reason us kids thought was owned by Bob Monkhouse. Another rumour flying round was that the sweet shop in Kirby Grove had a shed behind it stacked with Coca- Cola and R. White's lemonade. One dinner-time, a gang of us set off to scale the wall. Like a dickhead, I volunteered to be first up. I hadn't taken account of the broken glass set into the