monitor. Now the receptionist was tapping phone keys. 'Could you sign in here, please?'
By the time I'd done so and she'd finished her call, a machine had spat out a nice little plastic credit card with my name printed on it to hang round my neck on a nylon tape.
'Would you like to take a seat over there? Someone will be down.'
It was just like the office at Vauxhall Cross, only with a hint of politeness. They even had black, steel-framed leather settees. Above them, glass cabinets were crammed with silver and glass trophies. They'd obviously won a lot of awards and didn't mind everyone knowing.
I pulled my invoice from my bomber. Three hundred euros a day for ten days, printed out at an Internet café near Paddington station on the way to the airport.
Another battery of flat screens showed Dom waffling with an attractive, petite Arab woman in her thirties. Her head was covered with a white scarf. The rest of her garb was long and black. As they talked, they walked across a dustbowl strewn with rubble. It just had to be Afghanistan. The mountains in the background gave it away – and if they hadn't, the figures in blue burqas did. They scuttled about like big blue pepper-pots. The camera focused on her head. She waffled away silently above the caption: 'Afghan women's aid worker'. She seemed too un-weathered and beautiful to be working in the dust.
A new caption told me this was an excerpt from Veiled Threats, the documentary that had made Pete and Dom famous. It had won two Emmys and a host of other stuff. The station was very proud of them.
The tribute was working. It made me think of Pete fucking about with his tin hat on.
'Mr Stone?'
I dragged myself back from the last time I'd seen him. I didn't know why the Polish accent surprised me. It was a Polish station, after all, and I knew the voice. I looked up to see a girl in jeans and a polo-neck jumper.
'I'm Katarzyna. Everyone calls me Kate.'
I stood up and shook hands with a very smiley young woman. She looked just as her voice had told me she would. She pointed at my arm, a little unsure what to say. She managed, 'Ouch,' and a sympathetic smile.
'It's OK. What do I do with this?' I held up my invoice.
She took the sheet of A4. 'I will try and get a cheque for you today.'
I followed her to the lift. She was embarrassed. She was seventeen or eighteen, just starting out in life. She was getting the hang of it and wasn't quite sure how to act, and I was fed up with it. We didn't say any more to each other. I was fine about it and so was she.
The lift doors opened and three of the smokers rushed in to join us. The reek of nicotine breath filled the metal box.
The doors opened again into a large, open-plan office. Again, it could have been Vauxhall Cross if it hadn't been for the trendy water-bottle dispensers and coffee machines. People were on the phone or hunched over their PCs. Worktops were littered with piles of magazines and newspapers. At the far end the newsreaders' desks were in plain view so we could see how hard-working they were. That particular section, however, was cut off by soundproof glass so the newsreaders could shout at each other and call each other dickheads without it going on air.
Glass-walled offices lined the left side of the big open space. My very quiet new mate led me to a fanatically tidy desk. A woman I assumed was Moira sat behind it.
She wasn't what I'd been expecting. For starters, I wouldn't have predicted the inch-thick layer of makeup. She was maybe mid-fifties, and didn't show a wedding ring. Maybe she was trying hard to compete with the likes of Kate. A far-too-thin blouse revealed her bra, and the look continued with a mini-skirt and knee-high boots. Her hair was jet black. Her eyelashes were so long they looked like spiders' legs. Either everyone was too scared to tell her, or they disliked her so much they couldn't be bothered.
'Come in, Nick.'
Her accent was as Irish as Bertie's Pole, and her arrogance levels twice as high. She glanced at my friend. 'Coffee.'
I turned to Kate. 'No, I'm fine.' I'd always hated the girl-go-get-coffee thing. I'd had enough of it myself when I was a young squaddy, getting pushed around from