Doodlebug is a script I wrote three years ago and actually just dusted off for this competition, so the win has given me new impetus to develop it. I’ve already had fantastic notes from Jean Betts at Playmarket to give me a steer on writing a new draft. I’ll post a scene from Doodlebug once that new draft is finished.

 

In the meantime, look at the picture below and imagine what it would be like in this connected age to be greeted by this instead of your usual browser start page…

 

Here’s one that I wrote in the early hours during the week, when I was still stuck at the half-way mark (but sneakily telling people I was further along to keep up the morale!)

THIRTY-ONE

Rome, September 11

For a moment I didn’t know where I was. Everything was glowing green. I felt like I was on a cloud, a porcelain face floated above me. It appeared to be the goddess Venus. Her robe came into focus, the outline of a bare breast beneath it. She walked around me. I looked over to the left. Several people were sitting on white beds eating and drinking, talking and laughing, ignoring me.

There were lots of people like me, lying, watching the psychedelic images that were projected on the domed ceiling. Venus put down a carafe of wine. I followed her jewelled hand down, obsessed by it.

I was high on coke for the first time in over a year. I vaguely remembered standing in the glitzy toilets of the Supper Club, someone chopping out lines on the cistern, three of us squeezed in, taking turns to put our noses to the cool marble.

The images on the roof were of dolphins, darting through the water, appearing to swoop in from the roof, an aura of turquoise around them. I sensed I was on a raised podium. I rolled over and looked down. I was lying on a mezzanine of beds. Below, on the ground floor were more beds, people lying on them, drinking, talking, making out. The robed goddesses walked around topping up drinks. In the corner, a guy stooped over a laptop, controlling a trippy synth soundtrack.

I felt a buzzing in my pocket, not for the first time tonight. I fumbled at it and the cool mirrored phone slid onto my chest, still buzzing. I pressed the answer button.

“Hullo? Morgan is that you? I can’t hear you? Hang on.”

I sat up and shifted onto my hands and knees. I crawled among the couples, tangled limbs, hang bags and disgarded clothes and found the staircase down to the ground floor. I delicately descended the narrow steps, gripping the railing tightly.

Downstairs I headed into the lobby where the music wasn’t as loud.

“Morgan? Rome. What’s wrong? I know I said I was coming back after Germany, but-,”

Morgan sounded edgy, upset. Then he delivered the bad news.

“I lost the Mercedes gear.”

I took it in.

“What do you mean you lost it?” I said.

“I left it on the tube. I forgot it.”

“What the fuck, Morgan? Did you look for it?”

“Someone took it, they can’t find it.”

“They can’t -, How could you be so fucking stupid? Do you know how much that shit is worth?

He stuttered, tried to get his words out failed.

“It’s okay, I’ll get some- I’ll do something. I can get us money.”

“No Morgan, no more credit card scams, you’re finished with them, remember how close they came to finding you last time. None of that shit, they can find you through your computer.”

I looked across the lobby. A man was sitting on a couch with his back to me talking to a woman. I studied the back of his head, he turned slightly, side on. Pearse, or so I thought until he shifted further around. Someone else entirely. I wiped my soar eyes.

Morgan was babbling on over the phone, I was suddenly irritated with it all, these long distance phone calls with nothing but bad news from the slovenly 27 year old, wanting money or merchandise, then losing the merchandise. I flared up.

“That Merc stuff was supposed to keep us going for the next couple of months. What the hell is wrong with you?”

There was an uncharacteristic silence from London.

“Are you completely off your pills?” I asked, remembering the little brown bottle disappearing into the rubbish bin outside the Mater in Belfast.

“Yes,” he said.

“Do you think it’s a good idea, like to cut them out so quickly? You’ve been on them 10 years at least,” I said.

“I don’t need them,” he said defiantly. “And I don’t need you!” The phone line disconnected.

“Fuck you too.” I hung up and turned to head back upstairs. I needed another hit of something to get the night back on track. A man was blocking my way, leaning against the wall. I recognised him from the press trip earlier in the day. He wore an outdated brown suit, white hair to his shoulders. He looked like Einstein, minus the moustache. I nodded at him.

“Can you believe this place? Avante garde bullshit!” His voice was heavily accented from somewhere east.

“Why are we here?” He asked.

“I think it’s because it’s the best place in Rome and the people from the shipping company want to impress us.”

He rolled his eyes.

“All I want is some pasta. They say the kitchen is closed. You hungry?”

Now that I thought about it, I was. Ravenous. We’d skipped dinner, headed straight for the club after the cocktail party on the Costa Magica, the largest cruise liner of the Costa group, our sponsor on this particular excursion.

“Yeah,” I said.

“let’s see if the cook is in a good mood.”

We walked towards the kitchen.

“By the way, I’m Simeon Bratov, Kommersant Journal, Moscow.”

“Steven Man, EuroTimes.”

We shook.

“You know I once tried to subscribe to EuroTimes through the website -,” I cut him off.

“Give me your card, we had problems with the sign-up engine. I’ll get subs to look into it.”

At the entrance to the kitchen, a lone sous chef was cleaning up, washing down the benches.

“Can we get two bowls of pasta?” said Simeon.

“The kitchen is closed,” the chef responded. The Russian mumbled under his breath.

“Hang on.”

He disappeared into the lobby and returned trailing Antonio, the head of corporate affairs for the Costa Line.

“Tell this man I’ll cook the spaghetti myself and tip very generously,” he said, pushing Antonio towards the kitchen.

There was a rapid-fire conversation in Italian between the suited shipping executive and the crumpled chef, some money appeared from Antonio’s pocket and was pressed into the cook’s hands. There was more protesting but his will was slipping. Eventually he threw down his towel on the bench and walked out of the kitchen. Antonio gestured us in.

“Don’t take too long.” He said.

Simeon took off his jacket and rubbed his hands together looking around the expansive kitchen. He turned on the gas, a blue hissing flame came to life on one of the hobs. He clattered a pan onto it and reached for a jug of olive oil. Under a table he found a sack of onions and handed them to me.

“You chop them, I’ll make a nice sauce,” he said.

I stood in front of the chopping board and selected a long knife from a rack in front of me. I realised I was slightly drunk. This would take some concentration. I started slicing onions and soon my eyes were stinging.

“What’s your story then Steven?”Asked Simeon bringing a pot of water to the boil, unwrapping some fresh pasta he’d taken from the giant steel fridge.

“You do a lot of these trips?”

“Yeah, it’s the business beat, you know, lots of conferences, press conferences, the beast to be fed and all that.”

“But you didn’t take a note all day,” he said, looking at me sideways.

“Shipping doesn’t interest you?” he enquired. I was sprung and drunk and unable to figure out how to get out of this one. Anyway I felt comfortable with the old guy, a bit like how it used to be with John.

“You know what?” I said. “I don’t know the first thing about shipping. I got an email on my phone, I was about to head back to London, I came here because I didn’t want to go home, simple as that.”

He lowered the pasta into the water.

“I used to do these trips because it was the only way out of the country. I was free, even just for one night, being in a nice hotel in the west, Paris or Vienna or somewhere.”

He shook the pan.

“Where’s the garlic?” He scraped the garlic I’d chopped up into his hand and threw it on the pan. It started to fry with s sizzle, the smell made me all the more hungry.

“I was a scientist, in the Urals, until an experiment went wrong,” said Simeon.

He shook his head.

“I wasn’t allowed in the lab any more so I worked for the science journals, if I couldn’t do it, I’d write about it. By the time it all fell apart, I didn’t know how to do anything else. In Russia, it is one job for life. The Soviet way. Only in the new Russia there’s no room for the journals. So now I write about anything.”

“A flea rancher, just like me.”

“Pardon?” He said, confused.

“On nothing,” I said, backing away from the onions to wipe the tears from my stinging eyes.

“Fuck me.”

“And you,” he continued, probing “what’s your story?”

All the usual scenarios I’d spun before were on the tip of my tongue, I could have rolled any one of them out. But I sensed I wouldn’t be able to get any of them past Simeon. I’d only just met the guy, but he’d already seen through me. Lying was pointless.

“I’m a complete fake. And I don’t know what I’m doing any more.”

He didn’t respond immediately, the sound of sizzling garlic and bubbling water filled the void.

“You think you have gone off the path?” He enquired finally.

“I hardly know what I am. Maybe, maybe I’m a bad person. The worst even. I really don’t know what I am capable of.”

I looked at the dull blade, my blurred reflection in it.

“Good and bad? We all have both in us. All cats are grey at night.” Said Simeon.

“And all those who carry long knives are not cooks,” he said watching me staring at the knife.

“Hurry up with my onions.”

I handed him the chopping board and he scraped them into the pan. The oil welcomed them with a sharp hiss.

I was standing beside him in front of the cooking food. He reached over and put his hand on my chest, directly over my heart.

“Everyone knows here what they are capable of. Don’t try and deceive yourself or let yourself be deceived.”

He took his fist away, held it up in front of my face.

“Otherwise, this is all you have.”

He opened his fist and blew theatrically as though blowing dust from his upturned hand. Dust or ashes.

A few hours later I found myself once again in an airport in that darkest of times before the sun begins to rise. The Alitalia desk was already open and had moved my flight forward. I stood in the departure lounge looking out across the tarmac as a golden glow began to light the eastern sky.

Morgan’s phone went once again to voicemail.

“Morgan I’m coming home. I’m sorry. Sorry for everything. I shouldn’t have gone to Germany, I shouldn’t be here. I’ll set it right. See you soon.”

Anyway, here’s chapter 22 for you - it’s getting harder to post chapters without giving away important plot spoilers. This one doesn’t give away too much - the next one, chapter 23, is pivotal to the plot explaining what has made Steven the way he is and illuminating Pearse for what he is…

TWENTY-TWO

Budapest, August 5

After that text I’d received from Pearse in Chicago I’d waited for him to get back in touch. A day went past, me sitting on the bed in that dump of a motel room expecting the phone to go, or even a knock on the door.

There had been nothing. I’d texted him again with no response and his phone, predictably, went to voicemail. It seemed to be the fashionable thing to do these days – not answer your phone.

I was at an internet cafe near O’Hare, about to book a flight back to London when the invite to Hungary had come through from the Hungarian Development Agency, an organisation whose press list I’d been on for a couple of years but had so far yielded nothing. With Morgan presumably at Uncle Paul’s, I didn’t fancy heading back to the loft and I still didn’t know how safe it was anyway.

So I took the offer of a business class flight to Budapest and accommodation during the press tour which would focus on Hungary’s economic transformation five years after the country joined Europe’s increasingly less exclusive economic and political club - the European Union.

I paced up and down on the steps outside the convention centre, waiting for Pearse to show. He walked across the concourse slowly, looking around him, taking in the passing convention goers. Finally he was standing in front of me, a step higher.

“What are you doing here?” I said.

Pearse shrugged. “Fifth anniversary of Hungary getting EU status, it’s big news!”

He gestured with his hands, exaggerating.

“Bullshit,” I said sternly. “What happened in Shanghai?”

“Didn’t you get the videos?” he shot back.

He stepped down, level with me now.

“You were impressive in Shanghai. Handling those two beauties. How things turned that night…”

He started walking down the steps, I followed him.

“Look, the videos,” I said. “I don’t remember anything, I can’t even –“

“You’re saying that’s not you on the bed those two gook chicks riding you at the same time? That’s not you in the cellar, with her lying there on those sacks of rice like a -”

“Enough,” I said.

He shrugged. We reached the sidewalk, the entrance to the convention centre was choked with Skodas, taxi drivers waving at us, trying to win our business. Pearse walked through them and out onto the street. I followed.

“What the hell happened that night?” I said.

Pearse stopped abruptly and turned around.

“You came alive Steven.”

“I felt sick.”

“The next day? That’s normal the first time.”

“The first time what?” I said angrily.

A tram rumbled past just them, the concrete vibrating beneath our feet, the screeching of metal on metal.

“In Shanghai you opened a vein, you couldn’t get enough. You’re horrified at what happened, but at the same time you want more.”

He had to shout over the noise of the tram. His words hit me like a brick. I had to stifle a shudder. I felt light-headed, a montage of images from the videos blurring together, running through my head, replaying at speed.

“I’m not like you,” I managed, finally, once the noise had receded.

“Maybe you’re right Steven,” said Pearse. “After all, I’m a journalist, you’re a fraud.”

“What?” I said half-heartedly, knowing what was coming.

“Fake company, fake subscriber base, fake credentials. You fooled that lot back there, but I figured it out,” he said. There was no malice in his voice, just a cool frankness. He was enjoying this, but restraining himself.

“Is that why you tried to break into my apartment? To spy on me?”

He was determined to keep the upper hand.

“Come on Steve, you look like the kid whose mom just found a pile of Playboys underneath his bed. You think I’m going to rat you out, after what we’ve been through together?”

“We haven’t been through anything together,” I hissed.

“Well, the video tape…,” said Pearse, trailing off.

Pearse walked on and I followed him, watching the back of his suit jacket flap in the breeze. We came to a busy intersection and he went to cross, no regard for the cars nosing through. Horns blared at him. I jogged to keep up, scooting around the side of a small but fast-moving Peugeot.

“Bastard!” Someone shouted at me.

We got to the other side of the road and again Pearse stopped. We were in front of a squat, pale blue building. It was freshly-painted and well-maintained by Hungarian standards.

“Sixty Andrassey Avenue,” said Pearse. “The Nazis used it, then the Arrow Cross Party which did Himmler’s dirty work purging the Jews. Then the communists inherited it. How many people went in there and were never seen again?”

He stood squinting up at the building, its tall dark windows revealing little of what was inside.

“People let it happen Steven, again and again. Community, government, liberty? You’re fucking me up the arse.” He touched the smooth stone of the building, the former headquarters of successive secret police regimes.

“See Steven, in a world of supposed order people went into that building believing there was truth, justice, safety, between those walls. What did they get? They got nothing, because deep down we don’t really care. Society? Gimme a break. That’s why men like us Steven are so fucking rare. We understand this, you and I. We go after what we want, we take what we desire because we know it’s all bullshit. We’re all one step away from walking into that building and disappearing forever.”

We stood on the footpath in the afternoon sun, people passing by oblivious, both of us watching the pedestrians march along on their determined paths.

“Say Steven, you like art?” Pearse patted me on the shoulder.

“Come on, I know a good place.” He began walking and once again I found myself following him.

I was really firing last night, fuelled by a bottle of Johnnie Walker which I took to bed along with my laptop. Before I knew it, it was 3am and I’d written 3000 words. Funny thing was I woke up at 9am feeling better than I have in months.

The story is pretty rough around the edges, but I’m reasonably happy with the 20 chapters I’ve got through so far, there’s definitely something decent to work with there in draft 2. Anyway, here’s chapter 13 of Junket.

THIRTEEN

London, July 22

The minicab braked with almost enough force to throw me off the seat. It certainly woke me up. We were at the entrance to Myers Lane which ran between the dilapidated warehouses on either side. The Iranian driver obviously didn’t want to go any further off the beaten track.

I handed him thirty pounds and climbed out of the cab, taking my bag from the boot. It was the beginning of a beautiful day in London. Overhead, the whine of jet engines signalled planes heading for Heathrow.

The warehouses were silent, locked up. An old Ford Escort sat on the side of the lane, its windows covered in condensation. I put down my roller bag and rattled up the cobbled lane to the flaking, graffiti-ed particle board door with the padlock on it. Next door a sign hung from rusty chains advertising a English language academy.

For years it had been a base for teaching illegals English until it had been raided and shut down. Morgan and I were happy for the peace – the students had smoked and played football in the lane below – but we’d also been tapping free internet access from the language school. That had dried up when the Pakistani owners had been turfed out.

I opened the door and hoisted the bag as I climbed the stairs. Even from here I could hear the chaos of a violent video game – Morgan was obviously still up. I swung the upstairs door open with my foot as a hail of machine gun fire blasted out from the home theatre system dominating one wall of the bare brick room.

Morgan was sitting in the middle of the leather couch, his back to me. He was wearing his holey Megadeth t-shirt – no doubt it hadn’t been washed since I’d been down the Laundromat before I left. On a big screen in front, a soldier was walking through a cathedral holding an oversized machine gun. Mutant creatures swung down at him from all angles, but he blasted them away, gory pulp splattering in every direction.

I gently put down my suitcase and tip-toed over to the table we’d rescued from the skip at the back of the engineering shop across the lane. It was littered with FedEx and UPS boxes, most of them opened and empty. There were electronic gadgets spread across the table, bubble wrap and polystyrene padding thrown to the side.

I walked up behind Morgan. He was seven years younger than me but already he had a bald patch developing. He was sitting there on the couch oblivious, his fingers expertly working the fat Xbox controller. The sound emanating from the borrowed Bose speakers was deafening. You could feel the wind kicking from the bass speaker lying on the dusty floorboards beneath the screen.

I slapped my hands down on Morgan’s shoulders.

“Jesus Christ!”

He leaped off the couch spinning 180 degrees to face me. He threw the controller at me. Luckily I caught it. I threw it on the couch grinning at him. He looked puffy, unshaven, dirty. His droopy right eyelid twitched as he struggled to get over the shock. He put his hands on his head, trying to calm himself.

“What’s that?” I asked, nodding at the flat screen TV.

“That’s your surprise dummy. LG sent it. I said we’d devote a page to it in the summer lifestyle supp, supp –“

“Supplement,” I finished impatiently. “What supplement?”

Morgan grinned at me. He may have been dropped at birth and numerous times afterwards, but he wasn’t stupid.

“They want it back,” I enquired?

“Did I sign anything saying I’d give it back?” He shrugged.

“Got anything for me,” he said looking down at my suitcase expectantly.

I lifted my well-worn suitcase onto the couch and unzipped it. Nestled among the stale shirts was a black box. The case was roomier on the return flight given that I’d ditched the blood-stained tuxedo.

I’d stuffed it into a bin in the service alley behind the Grand Hyatt. I’d waited half an hour until the area had been free of people before ditching the clothes. On the way back I’d noticed the red glow giving away a CCTV camera. That was fine. Someone had to be watching to have spotted me. The chances of that were slim.

I handed the box to Morgan. His eyes lit up.

“So what’s been going on?” I asked examining the discarded takeaway wrappers and pizza boxes stacked on the chipped formica bench that represented our kitchen.

“We lost internet access for a while. I hacked into the wi-fi from the antique car place. They were using WEP, was easy to crack. Astin01 is the access point, oily321 is the access code.”

I nodded. Internet access was our lifeblood. Without it we had to trek down to the internet cafe to update the website. No updates, no snippets on Google News and that meant the people who assembled the lists weren’t being bombarded with tempting headlines from EuroTimes offering exclusive coverage behind the pay wall for a 12 month subscription of only 799 pounds. No place on the list meant no more junkets.

Morgan opened the box and delicately lifted out a big ball of glass engraved with Chinese characters. He frowned, disappointed.

“What do we have on eBay?” I asked.

“Rats and Mice,” he said, mimicking one of my favourite sayings and annoying me in the process.

“I need more stuff to flog.”

He flopped back down on the couch, the soldier frozen on the screen in front in the process of throwing a grenade. I went to the grimy window and looked down. Old Fowler was hauling back the door to his panel shop opposite. Fowler was the one guy in the area who knew of our existence up here but he was a good sort, kept to himself, didn’t ask questions.

I’d been worried when Morgan and I had emerged from the warehouse one night, coming face to face with him. But he’d engaged us as though we were neighbours.

“Alright son?” he’d said to Morgan sensing from the start there wasn’t something right about him.

“Anything you need fellas, let me know. And keep an eye on my place, eh? Had too much stuff ripped off over the years.”

“So all the China stuff went up?” I asked Morgan approaching the iMac sitting hibernating on the bench.

“A bit of it,” he mumbled studying the crystal ball.

“I’ve been busy surviving on nothing,” he said accusingly.

“No kit to flog!”

The empty parcels on the table suggested otherwise. Morgan got off the couch and approached the swivel chair in front of the Mac. He tapped the keyboard and the screen came to life.

“What’s the source?” He asked.

“Search for AP and Jeffrey Ratz, R-A-T-Z. Reuters and Stephen Wang, p-h, not v.

“Not like you Stevie.” He said.

He typed rapidly, his fingers moving quickly on the keyboard, once white, now a grubby cream. He squinted at the screen reading from Google News.

“China’s new power struggle by Jeffrey Ratz of Associated Press,” he announced deliberately.

He clicked on the link and opened the story.

“I’ve got some nice graphics from that free Brookings Institute website,” he added.

“I’ll Google for some generic Shanghai photos.”

I sat down on the couch and took my shoes off, letting the business class socks breathe.

“Cut and paste, but change every second word,” I reminded Morgan.

He had a habit of stealing large slabs of text from other stories. Plagiarism was too easy a way for EuroTimes to get busted. You could change every second word and disguise your tracks in cyberspace.

Sure a story may read pretty much the same as any other one coming across the wires, but in the age of instant dissemination of news and the reliance of reporters on packaged content and press releases, that was pretty much the norm. As long as the language was different, the headlines were uniquely composed, you might be saying the same thing but no one could pin you down as a rip-off merchant.

“Three pars on the front page, the rest behind the firewall,” I said.

“The Great Chinese firewall,” Morgan came back.

I ignored him.

“Gi-, Gimme a new intro,” he said.

I closed my eyes and tried to pull together the random strands I’d picked up from that dinner the first night in Shanghai.

“Okay, try this one, bro. As a modern wave of nationalism sweeps China, driven by the newly assertive middle class –“

“hang on!” Morgan shouted.

I carried on regardless, I knew his touch-typing was 120 words a minute at least.

“- and the politicians pandering to them, Asia’s giant is being pushed into a conflict over geopolitical clout as well as its political history. Steven Man reports from Shanghai.”

He rattled away on the keyboard, then silence.

“You know Stevie, you could just about do this for real.”

I closed my eyes. I was thinking of that hard basketball beneath Michiko’s aqua blue dress in Tokyo and the eight minute video sitting on the fancy phone in my pocket. They were both most definitely for real.

She said the first draft of her first attention was utter crap too, but from it, following numerous revisions, a worthy manuscript sprung. I’m hoping the same can be said for Junket. For those who know the feeling of waking up somewhere unfamiliar, the previous night’s exploits a complete blank to you, here’s chapter 7.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

SEVEN

The metallic rumble had come and gone an endless number of times but I assumed them to be part of the uneasy dream playing like a loop of grainy video in my head. Finally I sensed the intruding noise existed in the real world. I opened my eyes.

I was lying in a bright, white corridor, on my side, my right cheek against the gritty pavement. It occurred to me for the first time how hard the concrete floor was and how stiff and sore my body was. I tried to move but couldn’t. Straight across from me a man was sitting rocking back and forth, a dirty laundry bag beside him. He was flanked by large backlit advertisements, one for a Samsung TV, the other for HSBC.

He sat looking up the corridor playing with his wispy beard. Feet came into view, people passing by, dozens of them, hurried and determined, ignorant of my presence. I truned my head painfully to see the corridor full with people making their way down it towards me. I was in some sort of public thoroughfare, a subway tunnel, most likely. I scrambled up and lent against the wall as a pulsing wave of pain cross the front of my head. I groaned and closed my eyes. Another rumble from above, a familiar sound, like being in the tube stations in London.

I looked down at my hands. They were filthy, covered in mottled brown, my fingerprints standing out, the lines caked with the filth. I looked down at myself. I licked my left index finger. The unmistakeable rusty taste of blood.

My white shirt was covered in blood, dried blood. I stared at my chest uncomprehending. I touched myself delicately, alarmed. My entire left side was painful to the touch, my shoulder stung as the fabric of my shirt moved against it.

Commuters were beginning to pass by in numbers so I closed by tux jacket, hugging it to myself.

What the fuck is going on?

I summonsed all my energy to drag myself up the subway wall. Again I looked at my hands, splotched brown, the cuffs of my shirt painted with a random pattern of red flecks. There were a pile of DVDs lying on the ground, my souvenirs from the market. I bent down painfully to pick them up and joined the flow of people moving down the tunnel.

The central platform at Shanghai Central Train Station was already teeming with early morning commuters. A digital sign read 6.13.AM. A public address squawked a babble of mandarin, massive signs flicked up rows of Chinese characters. People zigzagged across the platform, some eyeing me for a second before moving on. Nothing made sense. There was nothing to orientate myself, nothing to hold onto.

I shuffled away from the platform out of the rush. A sign in the shape of a stick man caught my eye. I cut back across the platform and entered a sour-smelling block of toilets. I entered a booth, unzipped my fly and took a piss into the steel bowl. My cock hurt. There was a crusty film of blood over it. I made a conscious effort not to examine my hands again, my shirt, the rest of me. I just focused on the relief of emptying my bladder. Maybe seeing myself in the mirror would help me better understand the state I was in.

I walked out of the booth. A Chinese businessman was standing at the wash basins, combing thin grey hair across his liver-spotted scalp. I walked to a basin two away from him and ran the water. I looked at myself in the mirror. My face was no worse than usual for a big night out – a thin coating of stubble, bloodshot eyes. It was the stains on the shirt that alarmed me. I took off the tux jacket. The entire front of the shirt was soaked in blood. The arms remained pristine white. Whatever had happened the previous night, it had happened with my tux jacket on, even if my pants had somehow been off.

The Chinese man was looking at me. I glanced again at the mirror and realised what a disturbing sight I must look. But he just kept combing his hair. Finally he ran the water over his comb wiped it on a handkerchief and walked out of the toilets.

I took off the shirt and threw it in a bin mounted in the wall. There was a V-shaped stain in the hollow of my neck and other red smears on my chest where blood had settled. On my left shoulder were some razor-line scabs that ended in welts of torn flesh. The whole of my left side was bruised. I prodded myself carefully. No broken ribs at least. I turned around and craned my neck to look at my back. More of the thin scratches on my back had drawn blood. The discolouration of bruising.

I felt the pockets of the tux and found my wallet and the phone were still there. Suddenly I had an urgent desire to get out of there, to get back to the hotel and the relative familiarity of the Grand Hyatt. I put on the tux jacket, stuffed the DVDs into the jacket pocket and headed for the door. I stopped halfway, came back and scrubbed my hands. The water swirled a murky brown against the porcelain sink.

Outside, Shanghai was already alive, the constant cacophony of two-stroke bike engines, taxis, trucks, air-conditioning vents and machinery creating a constant high-pitched roar that hurt my ears. I headed straight for the first veedub I could find and climbed in the back.

“Grand Hyatt,” I said and collapsed back in the seat as a wave of nausea washed over me.

My favourite books usually have impact from the beginning, something that draws you in, gives you a taste of the world you’ll be inhabiting for the next little period. George Orwell came up with the best opening line ever: “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking Thirteen…”

Immediately you know something isn’t right and that first chapter hooks you in magnificent fashion. The first chapter of Stephen King’s latest novel, Duma Key is another example of compelling scene setting - pity the rest of the book doesn’t live up to it.

Anyway, more writing tonight, which is when I love writing best. I’m aiming for 5000 words or 10 per cent of the target total in the first weekend… that’d be a reasonable start…

A UK-led group of climate researchers claim their research has demonstrated for the first time that human activity is responsible for significant warming in both polar regions.

Rising Arctic temperatures and the accelerating retreat of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean has been widely reported in scientific journals and the popular press. However, these changes have not formally been attributed to human influence because of sparse observations and natural variability… more at the SMC.

Only the Greens and United Future were able to respond to the deadline given. The comments of Greens co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimmons and United Future leader Peter Dunne are published on the SMC website.

But when you’ve a deadline of November 30 to write 50,000 words of a novel, you tend to get over the agonising quickly and start banging out words. I just finished chapter 1 of my globe-trotting hi-tech thriller Junket, which is in the vein of Joseph Finder’s Paranoia. That’s what National Novel Writing Month is all about and I’ll be grinding out words the rest of the month along with tens of thousands of people around the world who just want to write (and finish) a novel.

I’m also going to be publishing the occasional chapter here on Griffin’s Gadgets as I go. Excuse them being a little rough around the edges - this is a first draft and they’re written at breakneck speed. Nevertheless, here’s chapter one of Junket…

ONE

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Shanghai, July 7

For the first time in months, I wasn’t jet lagged. In the back of the black limo, cool air blew out of vents in the roof. Through the tinted window a lumbering Emirates jet descended on its way into Pudong, an oily haze of avgas in its wake.

For the first time in months everything was okay. Morgan was well fed and happy, taking his medication, putting his computer programming skills to good use. We had a regular supply of packages turning up to the Pimlico drop box, so the eBay listings were mounting up, a few big ticket items too, so they’d be some serious Sterling sitting in the PayPal account for Morgan to draw on as he needed.

The London joint was secure again now that the language school below had been vacated, leaving the Isle of Dogs hideaway isolated and forgotten once again. I had enough airpoints to circle the world a half dozen times and as far as the myriad collection of PR flacks, marketing jocks, spin merchants and conference organisers keeping me afloat knew, EuroTimes Business was still among the most respected, subscription-based online news magazines covering European business affairs.

Most importantly, I was still on the list, still on the junket trail, still riding the gravy train and no one was any the wiser. Yes, for the first time in months, there wasn’t anything to worry about.

The Chinese chauffeur looked at me in the rear view mirror, a wireless mobile headset pulsing blue in his ear. He murmured to himself, humming along to the wispy Chinese folk music playing low on the stereo. Out on the six lane highway, a fleet of Volkswagen taxis, all the same boxy model in dark navy, glided along, past slower trucks and vans – Toyotas and Nissans, Japanese hand-me-downs.

I finally opened the press pack I’d carried from London – a thin dossier of paper embossed with the logo for Shanghai Bell Telecom. It was another itinerary prepared especially for Steven Man, managing editor of the EuroTimes business journal, written in that stilted PR speak layered with English as a second language awkwardness.

The pages were loaded with formal meetings, factory visits and tourism excursions. I scanned them looking for something that might bear fruit. In Asia, there was usually a decent present, the thinly-veiled bribe. In Shenzhen a couple of years back, it had come in the form of two hookers a couple of low-level, local Government officials lined up. It would have been insulting to turn them down.

A journalist’s code of ethics dictates that freebies are out, but I’d seen the most experienced reporters, big names working for Reuters, Bloomberg, the WSJ, discretely take their goodie bag back to their hotel room. Some things are just too good to pass up.

This gig was being hosted by a telephone company, so surely there’d be some nice expensive gadget or other on offer. When would the little felt, gift-wrapped boxes appear? On the first night after the welcome banquet, or later in the piece, once the Chinese executives had extracted some value from the western guests?

The restaurants listed for the formal dinner sounded expensive. I’d never had a taste for real Chinese food – too bland, insipid.. Give me a plate of crisp wontons and some fried rice over a hundred dollar bowl of shark fin soup any day.

Then there was the accommodation – the Grand Hyatt, one of the finest hotels in the sprawling city. I’d had lunch there once before and had always been determined to come back and check in. The lodgings were what had hooked me on this trip. I just needed a day or two in luxury, between thick sheets, a mini bar at my disposal, a high room overlooking the city. It was time for some much needed R&R after months of hard graft, Morgan’s meltdown and a couple of disasters that had nearly blown the lid off the EuroTimes scam.

I opened the zip bag containing my collection of press credentials, all professionally put together by Morgan in Photoshop and printed to plastic using a fancy printer Kodak had “lent” us for a product review to go in the Boys Toys section of the website. We should have held onto it, but the money had dried up, so we flicked it on Trader Bin for 400 pounds.

Ironically, the National Union of Journals press card was still paper and a passport photo covered in adhesive plastic, a dawdle to forge. Morgan had lasered off the paperwork before I left the warehouse for Heathrow - in a manic rush as usual. I shuffled a set of four passport photos out of the bag and onto my lap and tore one off. I positioned it carefully on the green press pass and pealed off the adhesive backing. I coated the whole think in plastic thumbing over the picture I’d had taken at the end of a drunken week spent in Bangkok which resulted in my passport being stolen.

I looked slightly frazzled in that photo, which betrayed the fact I’d been up for 36 hours straight before it was taken. But it would do fine. I slipped the press pass into my suit pocket and put the paperwork back in its folder. Through the window loomed the city, dominated by a hulking tower – the Grand Hyatt herself. I pressed a button on the arm rest and the tinted window rolled down. The sound of car horns, truck engines, the blast of clammy air, a mumble of disapproval from the driver. I did a quick survey of the towering glass structure I was bound for and put the window up.

The Blackberry in my breast pocket buzzed, delivering some message from a different timezone, a different continent. I ignored it, lying back against the cool leather, breathing slow and deep, dozing off, thinking of the friendly brunette in the jacuzi in Houston last month. She was an analyst for Conaco Philips. A crazy night at the Swan, the gaudy centrepiece of Disney World’s hotel complex. I’d definitely be taking a side trip through Texas on the next US excursion for some more analysis.

The car slowed as we left the highway and entered a tunnel. We emerged into a grey haze of inner-city smog, towering office blocks, building sites covering in bamboo scaffolding, mid afternoon traffic choking every piece of tarmac in sight. Finally we rolled up into the sweeping entrance to the Grand Hyatt. The driver was out quickly, opening the door for me, shattering the cocoon of silence.

I stood gazing up at the 150 floors above me as the driver took my bags into the lobby, which featured a massive mosaic of a dragon on its curved roof. I smiled at the receptionist as I approached the counter.

“Checking in, Steven man, guest of Shanghai Bell.” I kept it businesslike, clipped, just short of impatience.

She tapped away on her computer silently, scrolling through screens, taking longer than these things should. I looked around the lobby, Asian business men with comb-overs and grey suits, bell boys in crisp black waist coats, a woman playing a soft jazz number on a grand piano on a raised platform. She had a split in her dress that went all the way to her waist, exposing her slender thigh.

“There’s no record of…”

I frowned, leant over the desk, irritation stirring. Booking mistakes went with the junket territory – there are a lot of vacuous people in PR and booking a hotel room, rental car, airplane ticket often proves too much for some of them. It was usually sorted out quickly, but a messed-up booking had on occasion meant me covering the bill on my own credit card until I could be reimbursed. That wasn’t an option since the Amex limit had been knocked back to 1000 pounds.

Äh, here it is. Mr Man.”

I exhaled slowly, showing nothing. She slid a card key and letter across the counter. I banged the counter lightly, pleased.

“Incidentals?” I asked.

“They are all on the Shanghai Bell account.”

“You’ve just made my day, luv.”