I ask myself if I’ve collected enough material. Do I have sufficient ammunition to create this never-before-seen novel? I’ve already filled one of my blue, A5 Collins 384-page notebooks – the ones I’ve always used for note taking – and am now on my second. I think there’s a lot of good stuff in here, some great stories that could form the basis of an interesting novel. (Like a few days ago, this man walked out of a building down in the city holding a pistol to his head, shouting, looking up at the hills, and a minute later blew his own brains out. He saved us doing it for him. How considerate is that!) And if it doesn’t make a great novel, or if I can’t be bothered to write such a novel, then I could sell the notebooks themselves. Last November Bill Gates paid over thirty million dollars for a Leonardo da Vinci notebook, and that’s definitely set me thinking. I mean, I can’t help wondering, just briefly, if I could interest the computer nerd in purchasing – no, investing in – one of my notebooks, possibly both. I’d be happy enough with a million, in fact I’d be happy with any sum at all so long as it’s greater than £500,000. As the kids in the school playground would have put it, in their crude, juvenile way, raising a rigid digit, ‘Spin on that, Mr Information Man.’
I have to admit I’m becoming increasingly preoccupied with sniping, and increasingly less preoccupied with my writing. Just conceivably, the creativity and artistry of my work in Sarajevo is proving to be more satisfying. It’s certainly more financially rewarding than writing fiction. Soon I could even have enough money to visit Amis’s dentist in the States. Gilhooley, who’s been my partner for a few months now, has started to hint in a blatantly obvious, even mercenary way, that he deserves a percentage of my earnings. He even named a figure: forty per cent of everything I earn, but I suspect that could be a bargaining ploy, an opening gambit. Needless to say, I’m not happy about this. I point out to him that although, financially speaking, my bottom line is extremely healthy (I never forget I’m addressing a headmaster), as yet I’m nowhere near as well off, say, as – picking a name at random –Mr Martin Amis. So he’ll definitely have to wait for any possible remuneration for his services. ‘Anyway,’ I add, ‘I always understood you were a volunteer?’ He doesn’t answer me.