How to Make Friends with Demons by Graham Joyce

about whether Bob Dylan was fundamentally any good.

    When I got back to the Lodge, I saw light leaking under the door to Fraser's room, which incidentally was located directly beneath mine. My dander was still up, and fuelled by the beer I decided to go and have it out with him again. I went to hammer on his door, but something made me tap very gently, almost furtively.

    There was the sound of a brief scuffle from inside the room, and then silence. I listened at the door. I could hear things being packed away. I tapped again.

    "Just a minute."

    Soon enough, Fraser opened the door. He beckoned me in and closed the door behind me.

    Something about the room took me by surprise. All sorts of crap was pinned to the walls: yellowing pages torn from books; newspaper articles; photocopies with lines illuminated by a highlighter pen. But distracting me from it all was the fact that his nose was up like a prize-winning tomato from the horticultural tent. Perhaps it was the beer but I had to suppress a snigger. He saw it.

    "Glad you think it's funny. And the hospital confirmed that it is definitely broken, so I'd be glad if you wouldn't touch it again. They said it will heal on its own but it's still very painful."

    "Sorry," I said.

    "Apology accepted."

    "I'm not apologizing!" I said.

    "You just did."

    "No, I said "sorry," but I'm not apologizing. That is, I'm sorry I'm not sorry I broke it. The waggle yes, the break no."

    "You're pissed."

    I sighed. He was right, I was: I'd drunk six pints of wallop on an empty stomach. I looked round for a chair and let myself collapse into it. "Talk," I said.

    He put his hands on his hips and looked hard at me. "I will talk. I'll tell you everything. In fact I desperately want to tell someone, so I'm glad it's come out. But I'm not telling you while you're drunk."

    "Glad what's come out?"

    "The thing I will tell you about when you're sober."

    "Tell me now."

    "When you're sober."

    "Tell me now or I'll break your other nose."

    "See, you are pissed. Forget it. In the morning I'll tell you everything. But right now I'm going to bed. You can stay there or you can go."

    With that Fraser kicked off his shoes, peeled off his socks and jumped into bed. That he was otherwise fully dressed didn't surprise me. He always did look and smell like he slept in his clothes, and this confirmed it. He'd turned his back on me, and had either closed his eyes or was staring at the wall. I was faced with the choice of rousting him out of his bed or leaving.

    I surveyed the room again. The newsprint and the pages ripped from books and the photocopies spoke of a mind out of control. I wondered what Dick Fellowes had made of it. Though when I stepped across to look at the untidy collage more closely, some of it was just football league tables, but pinned up next to scraps torn from a Bible; or lecture notes adjacent to full-colour magazine adverts for lawnmowers.

    Fraser was snoring—or pretending to. Maybe it was the effect of the swollen nose. I thought about punching him again, hard, maybe on the leg. Instead I left him to snore.

     

Chapter 11
    On her return from lunch, Val told me that someone had chained himself to the railings at Buckingham Palace. Just the kind of everyday lunch time report you look forward to while working in one of London's many offices. Meanwhile I had to telephone the junior minister's office about the wretched government youth initiative. A chirpy female switchboard operator put me through to a decidedly non-chirpy staffer—the one who puts-the-powder-on-the-noses-of-the-assistants-to-the-junior-minister—who told me he was unavailable.

    "Not chained himself to the railings, has he?"

    "Pardon?"

    "A joke. A small jeu ."

    "Who is this?"

    I'd already told the dolt who I was, but I repeated my name, rank and number.

    "Ah," said the staffer. "I think we just needed to know whether we had your support, that's all."

    "I'm calling to discuss that very matter with the