The Chinaman Read Online Free PDF Page A

tapes and breathing through their mouths. Woody remembered the purgatory he’d gone through to get his own spidery shorthand up to the required one hundred words per minute, and the rest of the shit he’d had to go through before he got to Fleet Street. Now the papers were all staffed by kids, kids who if you managed to drag them bodily into a bar would drink nothing stronger than bubbly water. Ian Wood was forty-two years old but at that moment he felt he was going on eighty.
    â€˜Woody!’ screamed a voice from the far end of the room. ‘Where the hell have you been?’
    The question was rhetorical, Woody realised, because it was swiftly followed by a torrent of abuse. He heaved himself out of the chair and ambled over to the source of the noise, hoping that if he got close it’d cut down the decibels and reduce the embarrassment factor. Simpson was sitting back in his reclining chair with his expensively shod feet on the desk. The news editor spent twice as much on a pair of shoes as the paper paid its freelances for an eight-hour shift. They were well polished and gleamed under the overhead fluorescent lights and Woody looked down involuntarily at his own soaking wet, brown Hush Puppies. Woody began to explain but Simpson cut him off and told him that he should have been back hours ago and that he was to get the hell out of the building and not to bother coming back, that he’d got pissed on the job once too often and that there would be no more shifts for him on the paper. Woody could feel that he was being watched by everyone in the newsroom, and he could tell without looking around that more than half the voyeurs were grinning and enjoying his discomfort. His face reddened. He knew there was nothing he could do, he’d have to wait until Simpson had calmed down, maybe some time after Hell had frozen over, but he couldn’t face the walk to the door, not with everyone staring at him. He opened his mouth to speak but Simpson waved him away and turned his back on him.
    Woody stood there swaying for a few seconds and then with every ounce of control he could muster he slowly walked across the newsroom, his head held high and his eyes fixed on the purple door that led to the stairs and the street and the pub. There was only one thing he wanted, other than a double Bells, and that was to get out of the room with what little dignity he had left intact. He almost made it. He didn’t notice the overflowing wastepaper bin and he crashed over it and sprawled against the door. He pushed the door but it wouldn’t budge so he pushed harder and then he saw the sign that said ‘Pull’ and cruel laughter billowed around him as he eventually staggered out into the corridor.
    He headed for the sanctuary of the King’s Head but realised that there would be other reporters there, probably knocking back Perrier with the way his luck was going, so instead he walked to the Coach and Horses. They wouldn’t cash cheques for him there, not since the bank had bounced one, but at least he wouldn’t be laughed at.
    It started to rain so he put up the collar of his coat and hunched his shoulders and he stuck close to the wall until he reached the pub. It was fairly busy with closing time fast approaching, but Woody knew that the landlord paid little attention to the licensing laws and that it would be many hours before the last customer left. He took off his coat and shook it before hanging it up by the fruit machine.
    â€˜Evening, Woody,’ said the barman, a teenager whose name Woody couldn’t remember. ‘Usual?’
    Woody nodded and the barman poured a double Bells. A woman sitting on a stool looked at the Bells bottle and then up at Woody. She shuddered. ‘You should try a real whisky,’ she said. She was sitting next to a man in a brown leather jacket and they both had glasses of amber fluid in front of them. Woody reached for his glass and toasted