Doctor Criminale Read Online Free PDF

parked in shadow at the end of a dirty alley. Above rose the great bank office blocks, where in vast galleries money-shufflers sat before computer screens, scanning the datasphere for those pulses
that construct the mad fiction of economic reality. Meantime, in the scanner van down below, we did much the same, sitting before a bank of monitors selecting the images that construct the mad
economic reality of fiction. And that was how, sitting in an old van in a dirty alley, I stared at a TV screen and watched the Booker Prize for Fiction, just as I might have done at home. Except at
home I would not have had a thong-tied girl squeezed next to me on one side, a sound engineer on the other, all of us trying to sit on one chair and drink from the same bottle of champagne.
    Nor would I have seen the pictures the viewers didn’t – glimpses of the gritty real life of your everyday Booker banquet. Distinguished diners sat beneath distinguished portraits,
scoffing what looked like a distinguished dinner. A cabinet minister yawned in boredom as he listened to the advice of his lady companion. A loose hand slid under a tablecloth, then up a nearby
velvet skirt. ‘I suppose you know the winner already,’ I said, taken by a sudden cunning journalistic thought. ‘We have to, to get the cameras to position,’ said Ros.
‘Fine, why not tell me, one journo to another,’ I said, ‘Then I can rush back and grab the first interview.’ ‘No way,’ said Ros, ‘Knowledge is
power.’ ‘I thought journos liked to help each other,’ I said. ‘The way the countries in the Balkans like to help each other,’ said Ros, ‘You’re kidding.
News isn’t a sweetheart business. Of course, if you were really smart you could work it out from the camera set-up.’
    I looked along the bank of monitors. On one a scatter-haired writer, mouth open and full, stopped short as she stared into a camera that must have seemed to jump out of the beef Wellington.
‘That one,’ I said. ‘No,’ said Ros, as the camera panned away towards a waitress tripping over a cable, ‘Five more to go.’ There was a shot of a woman slipping a
microphone down between her breasts. ‘Her,’ I said. ‘Germaine Greer getting ready for the studio discussion,’ said Ros, ‘You know your problem? You’re tele-dumb.
Pass the bottle.’ ‘This interview,’ I said, ‘If it’s so bad, why not just drop it? Or let’s do it again.’ ‘Would you?’ she asked. ‘Of
course,’ I said, ‘One journo should always help another.’ ‘No, you wouldn’t,’ said Ros, ‘And don’t call me a journo, I’m a film-maker.’
‘Isn’t it the same?’ ‘No,’ said Ros, ‘You write stories, I make art. And don’t think this stuff is my usual work, I’m just here helping a friend.
I’m really an independent.’
    ‘I know all about independents,’ I said, ‘My Islington terrace is full of them. They set up little companies with five-pound bank loans and then work up series costing eight
million. They send a treatment to Channel 4 and sod-all happens. You see them every night begging drinks down the local pub.’ ‘Those are the wankers,’ said Ros, ‘I prefer
the real thing. When I want something to happen, it happens. Oh look, something’s happening.’ And so, onscreen, it was. At the instructions of the Booker chairman, the guests had all
suddenly risen as one from their eating, and were heading full speed for the lavatories. ‘Must be five minutes to go,’ said Ros, ‘Are you comfortable?’ ‘Yes, not
bad,’ I said. ‘Make the most of it,’ said Ros, ‘You won’t be.’ Soon the guests were resuming their seats, and putting on strange plastic expressions. The writers
closed their mouths, the Fionas adjusted their vast hats, the agents hid the bottles of wine, the cabinet ministers sat upright. Suddenly the lighting changed, somewhere a wolf started howling, the
screen credits rolled, and then the presenter smiled through the