Work Text:
The Black Swan, Oxford, 1991
Tom was drinking as if hangovers were as much a part of reality as the tooth fairy in a pub where being gown rather than town was likely to end in broken teeth. He didn't much care. It was as good a place as any for a wake for his relationship, his university career, his life.
At the moment he was mourning how much alcohol it took him to get pissed. Three beers, two chasers, and it hadn't taken the edge off this shitty day yet.
"Mind if I join you?" The man's voice came from behind him. London accent. Familiar and yet not.
Politeness was still so ingrained in Tom that a few beers couldn't wash it away. He didn't give an honest answer. "It's a free country," he grunted and knocked back the vodka chaser.
There was a soft laugh. "Yes, old son, I'm sure you think it is."
And what the fuck did he mean by that? Tom gazed down at the dark, dented mahogany of the bar, his finger breaking the surface tension of a puddle of warm ale, pulling the sign for infinity out of it over and over.
He'd been here an hour but he didn't feel drunker, just poorer. Susan still hated him.
A bar stool scraped on the wooden floor, obscenely loud to his ears. He looked across in irritation and almost toppled off his bar stool with surprise. "What are you doing here?" The sentence almost ended in a squeak.
The man gave him a cool, appraising stare. "Came to see you, of course."
Tom was trying for poker-faced, but was sure he probably just looked constipated. "I thought this was settled, Detective Inspector."
"Well, there's your first mistake." His companion unzipped his leather jacket and pulled out a packet of Marlboro Reds -- soft packet, the fine print that told you how fast they were going to kill you was written in Arabic -- and his wallet. He slid onto the bar stool with an easy grace, and shucked the jacket off his shoulders to reveal a very un-detective inspector-like black T-shirt. He looked Tom up and down, apparently amused.
Tom felt panic begin to crawl up from his gut, the same acid clawing he had felt that morning when Francis fucking Cordell told him there was a Detective Inspector Peter Salter waiting at the Porter's Lodge to interview him about fraud, deception and theft of university funds. The police had already spoken to Susan and Patrick, he said. Then Cordell had smirked, the smarmy bastard, as DI Salter led Tom into Dr Pearings' office.
And now DI Salter was here again.
"I didn't do *anything* wrong," Tom said through gritted teeth. "None of it was technically illegal."
"Technically? No. But investing the Social Justice Society's entire grant in the stock market without telling them doesn't make you Mother bloody Teresa either."
"Patrick and Susan co-signed the forms. We all wanted to raise the money."
"Patrick Reader is permanently stoned, which is probably the best way to get through the philosophy degree hereabouts, and you've been shagging Susan Mackay on and off since the second year. Neither of them has enough brains to fill a thimble."
He felt compelled to defend Susan's honour (not very compelled, mind you). "They're bright enough to be here."
"So they can pass exams. Hoo-bloody-rah." Salter held up a finger and the barmaid grinned and served him. She didn't ask what he wanted, just poured him a pint of Old Peculier.
"You're a regular here," Tom said.
"Ah, pissed yet observant. Yes, I'm all too familiar with this shithole."
Tom cringed, glanced around the pub, but no one had taken offence. Not one dirty look from the murky gloom of the snug. Salter grinned, tapping the cigarette packet on the bar so that one filter tip stood proud of the rest, a nifty party trick. He pursed his lips around it and with his left hand, sparked the zippo into an ostentatiously tall flame.
He proffered a cigarette to Tom, who shook his head. "Of course, you don't, do you," he said, slipping the packet back into his jacket. "Wise man."
Tom studied Salter. He was different. The fact that he had switched from blazer and tie to leather jacket and jeans was superficial. It was something more, something about his entire manner. That morning, as Dr Pearings looked on like a disappointed father, Salter had worked the whole story of the scam out of him, verbally roughing Tom up when he explained that the money had been returned, with enough profit to buy the half-share in the minibus, and disdainfully dismissing all explanations, as if he were auditioning for the role of bad cop in some cheap, American TV series. He'd moved fast, talked faster. Now Salter was all laidback confidence and friendliness. It unnerved Tom.
"So, Tom Quinn, isn't this the party season? Shouldn't you be out twinkling your toes with the hooray Henrys at some ball or other?"
"I'm not a one of them."
"What, the idle rich arseholes? No, you're not. You grew up sharing a bedroom with your brother in a two-up, two-down in Newcastle. But I bet you like to pretend it was Knightsbridge, some days."
He could have got that information from his university files, thought Tom, even as a voice in the back of his head said that no file was that detailed. No matter how hard Tom tried to leave his past behind and become someone newer, freer, someone sussed him out. Last year, the Honourable Francis Cordell. This year, some copper.
Where the hell was this going? "Look, Detective Inspector Salter, if this is..."
The other man rolled his eyes. "Oh please," he said. "Call me Peter. This isn't an interrogation, I'm just..." Salter waved a hand airily, wafting cigarette smoke in Tom's direction, "passing the time of day, looking for good company."
"I'm not good company."
"Tonight or in general?"
Tom looked down into his vodka chaser. Susan had made it pretty plain she didn't want to see him and he had only bought tickets to the ball to please her. How many of 'their' friends were really her friends was not something he wanted to find out yet.
He tipped his head back and emptied the glass of vodka down his throat. He barely felt the burn.
"What brings you to the Mucky Duck... is it love or money?"
"Sorry?"
"Jesus, shall we see if we can make it to polysyllables this time?" Salter waved to the barmaid again, who began coaxing a couple more vodkas out of the parched optics "Love or money? It's always one of the two."
Tom stared into his empty glass for a moment, wondering whether he was going to wake up at any moment, cocooned in sheets drenched in beer sweat, wondering why he was having a bizarre dream about a police officer harrassing him in the Black Swan.
"Well, let me think... Dr Pearings said he was 'considering my future' with the college, my girlfriend may never talk to me again and I'm in trouble with the police. So I'm guessing that it's love *and* money and that my life may be completely fucked."
Salter was making 'calm down' gestures with one hand. Tom realised how loud his voice had become, and murmured "So you'll forgive me if I don't want to be best mates with you, detective inspector."
Salter nodded and nudged a glass in Tom's direction. "Still. Have a drink."
He took a swig from his own, narrowing his eyes in pain/pleasure. Tom hesitated, then nodded his thanks. No point turning down free booze.
"I'm not a detective inspector."
A mouthful of vodka scorched a path down towards his lungs, bringing tears to his eyes. He tried not to cough but that would have meant not breathing for say, the next day or two. For what seemed like five minutes but was probably less than 15 seconds, he whooped and choked. A large, warm hand pressed against his back and through the white noise of the coughing he heard Salter laughing.
"Bastard," he wheezed. "You did that deliberately."
"Yes," Salter said, pressing a cold glass into his hand.
"I don't want any more vodka."
"It's water, you arse," Salter said. "Drink. It'll help."
Tom felt the threat of vomiting recede and the barbed wire around his throat ease. The pub's other patrons had turned back to their own conversations. He sucked in an ice cube and held it on his tongue for a while. The slow trickle of ice was sobering him up. As soon as he caught his breath, he was going to go home and crawl into bed and try to pretend today hadn't happened.
"Is this some sort of cosmic joke?"
Tom hadn't realised he'd spoken aloud until Salter replied: "Very probably."
Salter watched, the corners of his mouth twitching upwards and his eyes searching Tom's face, and Tom found his curiosity overwhelmed his need to leave.
"Who the hell are you, then?" he mumbled around a mouthful of melting ice.
"Peter Salter; that bit was true. I know Dr Pearings."
"You can be jailed for impersonating a police officer, you know"
"Really? How shocking." The sarcasm dripped from Salter's tongue. "Don't be a pompous twat, Tom. So... your scam."
Tom spat the ice cube back into the glass and dragged his scattered thoughts together. "For the last time, it wasn't illegal. I mean yes, in a narrow, technical sense, I shouldn't have done it. But it wasn't a con, no matter what..."
"I thought it was brilliant," Salter interrupted. Surprise silenced Tom. "Not exactly cricket, as they say, but brilliant. How much was it that you made, four grand?
"Four thousand, four hundred and sixty pounds on an investment of about eight hundred quid. I was lucky; I read about the companies in one of the research papers this summer. Then it was just a matter of shuffling the money around."
"So what was the problem? Why isn't Susan here with her arms around you, muttering 'darling you were wonderful?'"
"She objected to the firms I invested in."
"Coleridge," Salter said.
Tom nodded. "I put it in arms firms, and that is," Tom made air quotes with his hands, "'incompatible with the pacifist-socialist philosophy at the root of the society's aims'. Or so Susan says.
"Me, I thought our job was to take poor kids out on day trips, give their parents a fucking break for five minutes, which is pretty difficult to do when the minibus is knackered. You can wank on all you like about social justice but it doesn't mean anything if all you do is create a 'meaningful dialogue'. I thought we were there to help other people, not kickstart the fucking revolution."
Salter began to laugh and Tom found his own mouth stretching into a smile, unwillingly at first, then broader. "Tom Quinn, reluctant Trot."
Tom shook his head. "I never wanted to change the world."
"So what did you want to do?"
"Shag Susan Mackay mostly. But I liked the work too." Salter smiled at this. Tom rubbed his eyes. He was more than half-drunk in the shittiest pub in town and this was possibly the weirdest day of his life. "What was the point of the charade this morning? Did Francis fucking Cordell pay you to wind me up?"
Salter shook his head and took a long drag from the stub of his cigarette, then looked at Tom directly, as if he'd reached some kind of decision in his mind. "What were you planning to do after graduation, Tom?"
"Can't you answer a straight question?"
"I try not to. What are your plans?"
Tom shrugged. "Depends on what I get for my degree, I guess."
Salter tutted with impatience. "You got a first, congratulations, what's next? The City?"
Tom's mind was still catching on the words 'you got a first'. Please, let that one thing from Salter's mouth not be bullshit, he thought.
"Tom?"
"Maybe ... but I think you have to be really interested in money in its own right and I'm more interested in what it's used for. Plus, they're all wankers." He took a swig of beer, starting to relax again. "I thought maybe I would go for the Met's graduate training scheme. Well, until this morning, when I thought I might end up with a criminal record."
"I have a proposition for you," Salter shifted in his seat to look Tom in the eye. "Have you thought about government work?"
"Is that some kind of euphemism?"
Salter laughed. "In a way."