Paper Money (20 page)

The doctor looked grave. "Your husband will live," he said.

She put her arm around her son. "What have they done to him?"

"Shotgun pellets. Close range."

She was gripping Billy's shoulder very hard.

She was not going to cry. "But he'll be all right?" "I said he'll live,

Mrs. Johnson. But we may not be able to save his eyesight."

"What?"

"He's going to be blind."

Doreen shut her eyes tight and screamed: "No!"

They were all around her, very quickly; they had been expecting

hysterics. She fought them off. She saw Jacko's face in front of her,

and she shouted: "Tony Cox done this, you bastard!" She hit Jacko.

"You bastard!"

She heard Billy sob, and she calmed down immediately. She turned to the

boy and pulled him to her, hugging him. He was several inches taller

than she. "There, there Billy," she murmured. "Your dad's alive, be glad

of that." The doctor said: "You should go home, now.

We have a phone number where we can reach you ..."I'll take her," Jacko

said. "It's my phone, but I live close."

Doreen detached herself from Billy and went to the door. The sister

opened it. Two policemen stood outside.

Jacko said: "What's this, then?" He sounded outraged.

The doctor said: "We are obliged to inform the police in cases like

this."

Doreen saw that one of the police was a woman.

She was seized with the urge to blurt out the fact that Willie had been

shot on a Tony Cox job: that would screw Tony. But she had acquired the

habit of deceiving the police during fifteen years of marriage to a

thief. And she knew, as soon as the thought crossed her mind, that

Willie would never forgive her for squealing.

She could not tell the police. But, suddenly, she knew who she could

tell.

She said: "I want to make a phone call."

ONE P.M. KEVIN HART ran up the stairs and entered the newsroom of the

Evening Post. A Lad in a Brutus shirt and platform shoes walked past

him, carrying a pile of newspapers: the one o'clock edition.

Kevin snatched one off the top and sat down at a desk.

His story was on the front page.

The headline was: GOVT. OIL BOSS COLLAPSES. Kevin stared for a moment at

the delightful words

"By Kevin Hart." Then he read on.

Junior Minister Mr. Tim Fitzpeterson was found unconscious at his

Westminster flat today.

An empty bottle of pills was found beside him.

Mr. Fitzpeterson, a Department of Energy Minister responsible for oil

policy, was rushed to hospital in an ambulance.

I called at his flat to interview him at the same time as PC Ron Bowler,

who had been sent to check after the Minister failed to appear at a

committee meeting.

We found Mr. Fitzpeterson slumped at his desk.

An ambulance was called immediately.

A Department of Energy spokesman said: "It $ appears that Mr.

Fitzpeterson took an accidental overdose. A full inquiry is to be made."

Tim Fitzpeterson is 41. He has a wife and three daughters.

A hospital spokesman said later: "He is off the critical list."

Kevin read the whole thing through again, hardly able to believe what he

was reading. The story he had dictated over the phone had been rewritten

beyond recognition. He felt empty and bitter. This was to have been his

moment of glory, and some spineless sub-editor had soured it.

What about the anonymous tip that Fitzpeterson had a girlfriend? What

about the call from the man himself, claiming he was being blackmailed?

Newspapers were supposed to tell the truth, weren't they?

His anger grew. He had not entered the business to become a mindless

hack. Exaggeration was one thing-he was quite prepared to turn a drunken

brawl into a gang war for the sake of a story on a slow day-but

suppression of important facts, especially concerning politicians, was

not part of the game.

If a reporter couldn't insist on the truth, who the hell could?

He stood up, folded the newspaper, and walked across to the news desk.

Arthur Cole was putting a phone down. He looked up at Kevin.

Kevin thrust the paper under his nose. "What's this, Arthur? We've got a

blackmailed politician committing suicide, and the Evening Post says

it's an accidental overdose."

Cole looked past him. "Barney," he called. "Here a minute." Kevin said:

"What's going on, Arthur?" Cole looked at him. "Oh, fuck off, Kevin," he

said.

Kevin stared at him.

Cole said to the reporter called Barney: "Ring Essex police and find out

whether they've been alerted to look for the getaway van."

Kevin turned away, dumbfounded. He had been ready for discussion,

argument, even a row; but not for such a casual dismissal. He sat down

again, on the far side of the room, with his back to the news desk,

staring blindly at the paper. Was this what provincial diehards had

known when they warned him about Fleet Street? Was this what the nutcase

lefties at college had meant when they said the Press was a whore?

It's not as if I'm a lousy idealist, he thought. I'll defend our

prurience and our sensationalism, and I'll say with the best of them

that the people get the papers they deserve. But I'm not a total cynic,

not yet, for God's sake. I believe we're here to discover the truth, and

then to print it.

He began to wonder whether he really wanted to be a journalist. It was

dull most of the time.

There was the occasional high, when something went right, a story turned

good and you got a byline; or when a big story broke, and six or seven

of you got on to the phones at once in a race with the opposition and

with each other something like that was going on now, a currency raid,

but Kevin was out of it. But nine tenths of your time was spent waiting:

waiting for detectives to come out of police stations, waiting for

juries to return verdicts, waiting for celebrities to arrive, waiting

just for a story to break.

Kevin had thought that Fleet Street would be different from the Midlands

evening paper he had joined when he left the university. He had been

content, as a trainee reporter, to interview dim, self-important

councilmen, to publish the exaggerated complaints of council house

tenants, and to write stories about amateur dramatics, lost dogs, and

waves of petty vandalism. He had occasionally done things he was quite

proud of: a series about the problems of the town's immigrants; a

controversial feature on how the Town Hall wasted money; coverage of a

lengthy and complex planning inquiry. The move to Fleet Street, he had

fondly imagined, would mean doing the important stories on a national

level and dropping the trivia entirely. He had found instead that all

the serious topic--politics, economics, industry, the art--were handled

by specialists; and that the line for those specialist jobs was a long

line of bright, talented people just like Kevin Hart.

He needed a way to shine--something which would make the Post's

executives notice him and say: "Young Hart is good-are we making the

most of him?" One good break could do it: a hot tip, an exclusive

interview, a spectacular piece of initiative.

He had thought he had found that something today, and he had been wrong.

Now he wondered whether it would ever happen.

He stood up and went to the Gents'. What else can I do? he thought. I

could always go into computers, or advertising, or public relations, or

retail management. But I want to leave newspapers as a success, not a

failure.

While he was washing his hands, Arthur Cole came in. The older man spoke

to Kevin over his shoulder. To Kevin's astonishment, he said: "Sorry

about that, Kevin. You know how it gets on that news desk sometimes."

Kevin pulled down a length of towel. He was not sure what to say.

Cole moved across to the washbasin. "No hard feelings?"

"I'm not offended," Kevin said. "I don't mind you swearing. I wouldn't

care if you called me the biggest bastard on earth." He hesitated. This

was not what he wanted to say. He stared in the mirror for a moment,

then took the plunge. "But when my story appears in the paper without

half of the facts, I start to wonder if I ought to become a computer

programmer."

Cole filled the basin with cold water and splashed some on his face. He

fumbled for the towel and wiped himself dry. "You ought to know this,

but I'll tell you anyway," he began. "The story we put in the paper

consisted of what we know, and only what we know. We know Fitzpeterson

was found unconscious and rushed to hospital, and we know there was an

empty bottle beside him, because you saw all that. You were in the right

place at the right time, which, incidentally, is an important talent for

a reporter to have. Now, what else do we know? We know we got an

anonymous tip that the man had spent the night with a whore, and that

someone phoned up claiming to be Fitzpeterson and saying he was being

blackmailed by Laski and Cox. Now, if we print those two facts, we

cannot but imply that they are connected with the overdose; indeed, that

he took the overdose because he was being blackmailed over the whore."

Kevin said: "But that implication is so obvious that surely we're

deceiving people if we don't print it!"

"And what if the calls were hoaxes, the tablets were indigestion pills,

and the man's in a diabetic coma? And we've ruined his career?"

"Isn't that a bit unlikely?"

"You bet. Kevin, I'm ninety percent sure that the truth is the way your

original story read. But we're not here to print our suspicions.

Now, let's get back to work."

Kevin followed Arthur through the door and across the newsroom. He felt

like the heroine in the movie who says: "I'm so confused, I don't know

what to do!" He was half inclined to think that Arthur was right; but he

also felt that things should not be that way.

A phone rang at an unattended desk, and Kevin picked it up.

"Newsroom."

"Are you a reporter?" It was a woman's voice.

"Yes, madam. My name is Kevin Hart. How can I help you?"

"My husband's been shot and I want justice."

Kevin sighed. A domestic shooting meant a court case, which in turn

meant there was no way the paper could do much of a story. He guessed

that the woman was going to tell him who had shot her husband and ask

him to print it. But it was juries who decided who shot whom, not

newspapers. Kevin said: "Tell me your name, please?"

"Doreen Johnson, five Yew Street, east one. My Willie was shot on this

currency job." The woman's voice cracked. "He's been blinded." She

started to shout. "It was a Tony Cox job, so just print that!" The line

went dead.

Kevin put the phone down slowly, trying to take it in.

This was turning out to be one hell of a day for phone calls.

He picked up his notebook and went to the news desk.

Arthur said: "Got something?"

"Don't know," Kevin told him. "A woman phoned up. Gave me her name and

address. She said her husband was on the currency raid, that he was shot

in the face and blinded, and that it was a Tony Cox job." Arthur stared.

"Cox?" he said. "Cox?"

Someone called: "Arthur!"

Kevin looked up, annoyed at the interruption.

The voice belonged to Mervyn Glazier, the paper's City editor; a stocky

young man in battered suede shoes and a sweat-stained shirt.

Glazier came nearer and said: "I may have a story for your pages this

afternoon. Possible collapse of a bank. It's called the Cotton Bank of

Jamaica, and it's owned by a man called Felix Laski Arthur and Kevin

stared at one another.

Arthur said: "Laski? Laski?" Kevin said: "Jesus Christ."

Arthur frowned, scratched his head, and said wonderingly: "What the hell

is going on?"

THE BLUE MORRIS was still tailing Tony Cox. He spotted it in the car

park of the pub when he came out. He hoped they would not play silly

buggers and breathalyze him: he had drunk three pints of lager with his

smoked-salmon sandwiches.

The detectives pulled out of the exit a few seconds behind the Rolls.

Tony was not concerned.

He had lost them once today, and he could do it again. The simplest way