Spring by David Szalay

of a friend of his, Ed O’Keefe, who used to work for a national tabloid and was sent by his editor to doorstep Ian Hislop in the village where he lived. He was told to get a shot of Hislop laughing to illustrate a piece on a natural disaster. He arrived in the village on Friday afternoon. There was no sign of Hislop. Nor was there any sign of him on Saturday. Finally, on Sunday morning, he emerged. He was on his way to church and he said, ‘Who the fuck are you? What do you want?’ Ed O’Keefe explained that he just needed a shot of him smiling. Hislop told him to fuck off, and went on his way. For the next week, Hislop wouldn’t stop scowling, and finally poor Ed—­unwashed, unshaved, and sore from sleeping in his car—­headed back to London to face the wrath of his editor. Then, just as he was leaving, his engine started spewing smoke and exploded, and Hislop, who was watching him leave, exploded wth laughter, and, ignoring the flames, the quick-­thinking pap whipped out his Nikon and got the shot.
    ‘Sangfroid,’ Fraser said. ‘Should’ve been a war photographer.’
    She smiled. She looked at the time. It was twenty past eight. She had finished work well over an hour ago, and she was still there, in the institutional light, listening to him.
    ‘I suppose I should go,’ she said.
    ‘Okay.’
    She didn’t move, though. ‘How long do you stay here? Do you ever go home?’
    ‘Never,’ he said, smiling.
    She looked at him sceptically. ‘Well, I’m going home,’ she said. She stood up and started to put on her coat. He watched her. ‘You can stay here if you want.’
    ‘If that’s okay.’
    ‘M-­hm.’ She opened the door, letting in noise from the lobby. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow then.’
    ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Sleep well.’
    ‘You too. If you do sleep.’
    It was hard to say whether the pills were having any effect on her heart. It was still thumping with unwarranted force as she walked to the tube station. She wondered why he still wore his wedding ring if his marriage was over.
    The next day, in the middle of the afternoon, someone phoned him on his mobile. Something short and to the point. ‘Yes, okay,’ Fraser said, and hung up. ‘She’s on her way down,’ he said, starting to prepare his equipment.
    ‘Through the lobby?’
    ‘Possibly.’
    There was nothing unusual happening in the lobby. The other paps—­standing in their notional pen near the entrance—­did not seem to know that their long days of waiting were almost at an end. When one of the lifts pinged and the doors parted, Fraser moved urgently forward. It was not ‘Jane Green’. The other paps had noticed him, however, and were themselves now starting to prepare. Though life in the lobby went on as normal, the sudden tension of the paps seemed to be spreading to other people. The security guards sensed that something was afoot—­they seemed to be moving into position, in fact—­while some of the doormen and porters had stopped what they were doing and were trying to see what it was that had unsettled the paps. This in turn had some of the more perceptive members of the public doing the same thing. She stood at the front desk and watched the numbers over the lift doors slowly descend.
    When it happened, it happened quickly. Two lifts pinged simultaneously and some people poured out of each. At first this tightly knit dozen merely walked, quickly and with purpose, towards the doors, where two long silver Mercedes had pulled up outside. When the paps fell on them, however, they started to move faster. There was suddenly a lot of shouting. There was pushing and shoving. The paps had scattered from their pen and were everywhere. As soon as the lifts opened, Fraser had sprung forward and was now where the fighting was fiercest. Other paps were walking backwards towards the doors, firing off flashes as they went. And they walked straight into still more paps, arriving at a sprint from their futile vigil in Park Street.