Noose (2 page)

‘Oh, fine, fine. What an idiot I was, though, causing so much fuss! Sorry. So, sorry.' A big, stagey, ‘
So
sorry.' At once then she started the boiling water flimflam, telling it with lots of face pulling and minor groans to indicate the extent of her stupidity. Yes, actress. Very successful young actress, so there
would
have been enough in the meter. He wondered if she worked out the explanation alone or whether, as Percy Lyall suggested, she'd had expert public relations advice. Her agent might already have visited.

Ian, of course, kept ‘glamorous' in his head for the statutory description of her, but she wasn't made-up now, and at some moments between the gushes of self-mockery she seemed almost haggard and resentful at being alive still, as if sure suicide would have been her grandest performance yet. He searched for resemblances to his father. Was there something about the slant of those light-blue eyes, and an unusual depth from the bottom of her nose to her top lip – supposed to be characteristic of a comedian? Well, Dad was one, but without knowing it. Daphne's tale about the boiling water had its giggle aspect, too – the daft unlikelihood.

She seemed to become unsettled by the thoroughness of his gaze, though someone with her attractions should have been used to men staring. ‘I look pretty rough, I expect,' she said.

‘I've enjoyed a lot of your stuff on television,' he said.

‘Oh?' She was thrilled and real pleasure sweetened her face, rather than the put-on, jolly, self-mocking chirpiness.

Ian said: ‘Look, I might get thrown out in a minute. Can we talk about – about the gas? What's your first memory after waking?'

‘My first memory? Oh, being slapped twice across the chops, to bring me round. And then the ambulance. Have you ever been carted off as an emergency in an ambulance?'

Yes, he'd been carted off as an emergency in an ambulance. And screaming for his mother. But this bedside meeting wasn't about him. He said, ‘A siren? Flashing blue light?'

‘
So
frightening, ambulances,' she said. ‘Those terrible bright red blankets, and the shine on all the metal gear.'

‘Is this stuff about the boiling water total garbage?' he replied. ‘Your flunkeys have been along and told you what to say? They don't like “Star in suicide bid”? Not good for the image, is it? Not good for their percentage.'

‘Flunkeys?'

‘You're an investment. There'll be an organization behind you, won't there? A manager. An agent. An impresario. They have to look after their property – you.' Percy Lyall had spoken about Ian's empathy flair – spoken about it satirically, but with some truth there, too. Occasionally, though, in this game an amount of brutality – verbal brutality – had to take over: when time was short, for instance, and when you suspected you were being soft-soaped.

‘No, it isn't like that. Not at all,' she said. Her voice had weakened, though, as if she'd been knocked off-balance by what he said. She wouldn't have been able to get her lines to people in the back row of the stalls.

‘Is it a love affair? Something gone wrong between you and a man? Was it a serious relationship, at least from your point of view, and suddenly it's finished?'

She looked startled. ‘Why do you say that?' she said.

‘Has he disappeared, perhaps with another woman? The gas wasn't an accident, was it? As I see it now, you—'

‘“Disappeared” with another woman?'

‘Something like that.'

She stared about the ward, as though searching for Matron, to ask her, ‘How come this rude, offensive, gutter reporter can get in here to torment me?' Aloud she said, ‘What do you know?'

‘It's a guess, a reasonable guess, that's all. “
Cherchez le gaz, cherchez l'homme
.”'

‘What do you know?' She whispered the question. They'd suddenly entered an area of secrets, though there remained for now one secret she wouldn't be dealing with – her/his father.

‘I'm asking, no more than that,' he said. ‘This kind of thing – it's usually a matter of a fractured romance.'

‘You see scores of such cases, do you? Professionally?' She turned away from him and began to sob.

‘Oh, look, I'm sorry,' Ian said. ‘I'd hate to hurt you, believe me.' He leaned forward over the bed and gently touched her hair. ‘Look, Daphne, you and I might …'

He'd been about to cough the familial lot to her, or the familial lot as it might be, but those hospital security people plus a ward sister arrived at the bedside just then. They had Amber with them. They told Ian and him to leave at once. They said Ian was blatantly upsetting a patient and it couldn't be allowed. Her recovery would be set back.

‘But we're only here to help,' Ian said.

‘You're reporters. You're here to help yourselves,' the sister said.

‘Out, please,' one of the guards said. ‘Out now.'

In the corridor afterwards, Ian gave Amber all the boiling-water quotes and full atmospherics of Daphne's blue silk jacket, the old pyjamas, the way her face seemed to sag and crumple now and then, though no gas smell in her hair. Maybe they'd given her a full rinse.

‘This is total, routine fucking rot, isn't it – her account of things?' Greg said. ‘You can buy it by the yard from some protect-your-reputation firm.'

‘Sure.'

‘So, what's the real story? Man trouble? He's dumped her?'

‘Not that I discovered,' Ian said.

‘Is she up the duff? You wouldn't con me? I was the one who should have been talking to her.'

‘Why weren't you?'

The ward sister came out from her office. She'd be in her mid-thirties, long-faced, auburn-haired, authoritative looking, not too friendly, good, enticing legs. Ian thought something had messed up to a major extent in her life, and being a ward sister with her own office and the power to vet visitors didn't totally compensate. You could meet people like this: grudge driven. ‘That was quite a little shock when someone brought your names and the papers' names up from Reception. I've often seen your byline on reports – that's the term, isn't it, byline – and wondered,' she said.

‘Wondered what?' Amber said. ‘About me? About him?'

‘Him. Whether he was the same one. The same Ian Charteris. I can see now the age is about right.'

Charteris felt a second, disturbing, frightening tug into the past. At least disturbing, and maybe frightening. First Daphne West, now this. But he couldn't work out yet what the sister meant. ‘Age about right for what?' Ian said. ‘Have we met before? I've done other hospital tales from here.'

She answered to Greg Amber, not to Charteris. ‘Back in 1941 he got a man hanged, you know.'

‘He
what
?' Amber said.

‘He was a kid of eleven or twelve then,' the sister replied, ‘and he got a man hanged. His words helped get a man hanged. They did quite a bit of hanging in those days.'

‘No, I didn't know,' Greg said. ‘That right, Ian?'

Yes, it was right. How did she know about it, though? Why should she care about it, though? Why should she blurt it now, though? ‘A man got
himself
hanged,' Ian said. ‘He stuck a knife into his brother because of money. All sorts saw it. Several described what happened.'

‘But you told the story so well in court the jury was bound to convict,' she said.

‘He's good with stories,' Amber said.

‘It wasn't a story,' Ian said. ‘Daphne West tonight is a story. The other was evidence. There's a difference.'

‘What
is
this, Ian?' Amber said.

‘You read about it in the Press at the time, did you?' Ian asked her. ‘You must have some memory!'

She nodded. ‘Yes I did read about it in the Press. But I knew about it anyway. It had touched my life.'

‘I don't get it,' Ian said.

‘You sent a man I loved, and who loved me, to the drop,' the sister said. ‘He'd been swindled, and because he struck back against that duplicitous, greedy bastard brother he was hanged.'

‘Oh, God,' Ian said.

‘Is that right, Ian?' Amber asked.

‘This is terrible,' Ian said.

‘It's right all right,' she said.

Yes, it might be. ‘Back then, he did tell me he was on his way to see a lady,' Ian said. ‘You?'

‘Me,' she said.

‘An air raid had stopped him. We talked by the public shelter in our street. I was going to bring you a note from him to say what had happened.'

‘Were going to, but didn't.'

‘I couldn't.'

She spoke again to Amber: ‘And this one actually went down to the prison to see the execution notice posted – so proud of himself, purring while the noose snapped a neck inside, glorying in it, squinting at the notice on the prison door eventually, saying it had been done nice and tidily. People made a fuss of him. His mother advertised him.'

‘Were you there as well, then?' Ian said.

‘As well?' she said.

‘Oh, there was a woman present who scared my mother,' Ian said.

‘Not me. Why would it be? But I had to be there.'

‘You sent those postcards – the nine postcards?' He softened his voice. As Percy Lyall had said, Charteris could do that, and do it well.

‘Postcards?' Amber said.

‘There were anon postcards,' Ian said. ‘But what happened to you afterwards?' he asked her. ‘You moved to London?'

‘Afterwards, this is what happened to me, in due course,' she said, giving a little wave, apparently meaning the hospital and her job.

‘Have you got … well, a family?' Ian asked.

‘Would I have?' she said, and walked away, back towards her office.

‘I don't follow all this,' Amber said. ‘What nine postcards?'

‘Leave it. Daphne's the story.' That's how Ian would prefer it. He knew that however he wrote up Daphne West and phoned the words in, the
Daily
Mirror
machine would shape it to the correct tabloid formula. In fact, when his piece led the paper
next day, it struck Ian as one of the most brilliant and ruthless exercises in coding he'd seen for at least weeks. He did not claim complete credit – wouldn't want it; he'd have liked the report to be gentler with Daphne. Same genes? One or two gifted sub-editing touches had been applied, though.

By ‘coding', he meant that the story appeared to say one thing but actually said something else, something much more risky and unpleasant. Well, naturally: if it were not risky and unpleasant no code would be necessary. Newspapers often went in for what might be called ‘reverse writing' when the topic was legally dangerous. For instance, suppose the prevailing idea was that Mr A had murdered his wife, Mrs A; a reporter would ask Mr A, ‘Did you murder your wife, Mrs A?' Of course, Mr A would reply, ‘No.' And the paper could then say: ‘Mr A denied yesterday that he had murdered his wife, Mrs A' – which meant everyone deduced that Mr A
had
murdered Mrs A, but the paper couldn't get done for libel.

The essence of the Daphne West story as published lay in two words placed reasonably close to each other during the opening few sentences. The words had alliteration, both beginning with g, but although the paper
loved alliteration, it did not contribute all that much here, possibly nothing. No, but one of the core rules of tabloid reporting was this: if the adjective ‘glamorous' – as in ‘glamorous star of film and television', or ‘glamorous model', or ‘glamorous girl-about-the-night-spots' – yes, if the adjective ‘glamorous' appeared somewhere near the word ‘gas', as noun, or adjective itself, as in ‘gas stove', the story's real message – immediately cottoned on to by the reader – was this: ‘beautiful woman's failed love-affair suicide attempt', no matter what it seemed to say on the surface about a mere accident involving the beautiful woman and gas and/or gas stove.

Naturally, Ian knew this convention and, besides, he didn't want to say anything too blunt about Daphne's attempt. Sis? He'd had to say something, therefore, without saying it. He had, of course, lined up ‘glamorous' and ‘gas' in his copy. But he hadn't done it with top skill. The sub-editing magic, or voodoo, recast his sentences, and managed to place ‘gas' only just over thirty words from ‘glamorous', rather than Ian's fifty, so that even someone fairly dim and interruptedly reading the paper
while strap-hanging on the Tube, or washing up in a breakfast cafe, would get the underlying hints. Suicide, or a try, was a crime in Church and State law and plainly to accuse someone of it might be offensive and could be libellous. Even leaving the illegality out of things, it would be harmful to the career of a famous figure to suggest s/he despaired of everything and, therefore, actually and evidently despised the public and its adulation, or even despised the public
because
of its adulation, and would prefer sudden death, thanks very much. Thus, the code.

Another way to hint that what had happened derived from no mischance or carelessness, but from a boredom with – even contempt for – life, was to say in the story: ‘All seemed to be going so brilliantly for her/him lately, yet a few more minutes' delay would have meant the end of this superbly promising career of the star from Such-and-Such and Such-and-Such.' Ian had written it like this, with Daphne West's name filled in and the stage, film and TV credits. It was an invitation to readers to look beyond the career glitter, and mawkishly wonder whether all that kind of stuff could really satisfy, because her love life must be rocky, just like any quite ordinary person's might be.

Tabloids relished – lived by – mawkishness but would have called it ‘basic human emotion common to all'. The
Mirror
longed to strengthen the tie-in with a large part of the paper's ten to fifteen million daily readership, and gravely preached how a rise to money and fame could not necessarily satisfy. Subs liked to supply a moral and knew basic Scriptural teaching, such as ‘What shall it profit a man/woman if he/she shall gain the whole world and lose his/her own soul?' Soul here having a wide significance, and meaning, among other factors, domestic and bed joy with a hubby or wife chosen for truly loving, not materialistic reasons.