The Stars’ Tennis Balls (31 page)

Cosima Kretschmer appeared to be the only calm person in the studio. The director up in the gallery was deep in a telephone conversation with his channel controller who had a lawyer on the other line. ‘Keep going,’ the controller ordered. ‘We’re okay. It’s up to Barson-Garland. He can hardly sue us for defamation on his own show.’

‘It is my suggestion,’ Cosima was saying, ‘that you have consistently downloaded obscene and mostly illegal pictures of youths onto your computer. You have masturbated in front of these images and then deleted them.’

Several parents had clamped hands over the ears of their children, who writhed and wriggled in their attempts to work free.

‘You have just earned yourself one terrifying court case!’ Ashley yelled, pointing a finger at her and shaking with rage.

‘That is your privilege. I have video pictures of you doing precisely that.
Yes!’
Cosima repeated as a sudden hush fell on the studio and all eyes turned to stare at Ashley. ‘I have hours of videotape showing you masturbating in front of the screen in the study of your own house in London.’

‘Such footage would be completely inadmissible in any court,’ said Ashley, a terrible weight swelling in the pit of his stomach,
‘if
it existed, that is. Which they do not. You are getting yourself further and further into trouble, young lady.’

‘But we are not talking about
any
court. We are talking about
this
court,’ Cosima continued remorselessly. ‘Your court. You cannot have any objection to my showing my evidence here.’ She pulled two cassettes from her briefcase. “‘There are no steps that should not be taken in the name of the family, in the name of decency.” Your own words. True or not, Mr Barson-Garland?’

Ashley stood frozen in the centre of the studio. Brad Messiter led a baying chorus of ‘True or not? True or not?’ The voices fused and swelled in his head. His mouth opened and closed, but his eyes followed the video cassettes that Cosima was brandishing above her head, never leaving them for a second.

‘I have printouts of your diary too, Mr Barson-Garland,’ Cosima’s free hand dipped into her briefcase and brought out sheaves of paper. ‘What extraordinary reading they make.’

Ashley screeched in rage and made a half lunge towards her. At the last minute he veered away from her and ran from the studio, dropping his microphone on the floor. Blindly, he butted his way past security officers too startled and confused to know what to do. He tore down the corridors and into reception, barely noticing the cluster of BBC employees staring at the screens set into the wall. He pushed his way out of the glass doors and hurtled madly through the horse-shoe forecourt and out onto Wood Lane. He heard voices raised behind him but he charged through the security gate and into the street. Cabs were lined up on the rank and he hurled himself at the first, scrabbling at the door.

‘All right mate, all right. Calm down.’ The driver released his central locking switch and Ashley threw himself onto the seat.

‘St James’s!’

‘I know you! You’re that Barson-Garland bloke.’

‘Never mind,’ Ashley’s breath came in huge gulping sobs. ‘Duke Street, as fast as you can.

‘Right-o. Shame that Bill of yours was never passed. It’s about time those perverts were brought to book. Got kids myself.’

Ashley felt in his pocket and almost wept with relief when his fingers closed around his leather Smythson key wallet. He had left the keys in his dressing-room the previous week and had been forced to return to Television Centre at midnight to retrieve them. He had cursed himself at the time but had that not happened, he would never have decided to keep them in his pocket today. He looked out of the back window of the cab and saw a crowd streaming from the studio audience door at the side of the building.

‘Had that Gary Glitter in here once,’ said the cabby.

As Ashley had feared, a small crowd had already gathered in Mason’s Yard. A handheld TV light focused on his front door and was turned towards the cab as it swung into the alley from Duke Street.

‘Strewth, you’ve got a few fans, then,’ said the cabby, shielding his eyes. ‘Going to make you party leader are they?’

Ashley pushed a twenty pound note through the glass and opened the cab door, his keys ready. ‘Keep the change.’

‘Very generous, guv’nor. You’ve got my vote!’

‘Mr Barson-Garland! Mr Barson-Garland!’

‘I have no comment, no comment. No comment. No comment at all.’

He pushed his way through the press of people, head down, key outstretched towards the door.

‘Is there any truth in these allegations?’

‘No comment, I tell you! I have absolutely no comment.’ He slammed the door on them and bolted it. As soon as he was alone, the tears began to flow.

The telephone upstairs in his study was ringing. He wrenched it from its socket and stood on the carpet, tears flowing down his cheeks. All around him were displayed the symbols of his success. The Romney portrait of a Sir William Barson that he had allowed people to believe was his ancestor stared down at him, hand on hip. His first editions of Gibbon, Carlyle and Burke gleamed on the shelves. And on the desk stood his computer.

It was a lie. All a lie. They had trapped him. For some evil, terrible reason they had trapped him into revealing himself. Video cameras in his study! It was inconceivable. Who would do such a thing? Inconceivable. Yet, they must have known. They could not have guessed that it was his practice to…

He woke his computer and input the first password. The diary files were also password protected, security within security. No one could have penetrated them. He double-clicked the most recent entry, made yesterday, when the world was still at his feet. The system demanded a second password, which he gave. The diary pages loaded themselves and he looked at them.

Sad news about poor old Rufus Cade. By all accounts a ‘drug hit’, as these things are termed. I suppose it was inevitable. From schoolboy on, it was apparent that dear Rufus was destined for a life of dependency and decline. What Americans would call ‘an addictive compulsive personality’ or some such hogwash. I have not seen him since he called upon me some five years ago with an embarrassing request for money to invest’ in a footling scheme to start up a model agency. I shall attend his funeral, I think and pray for the salvation of his soul. Grace will not be denied him.

A gratifying review of the first programme in the
Telegraph
this morning. It seems I am ‘a natural performer combining ease of manner with a steely refusal to be diverted from the hard moral questions’. Look out, David Starkey!

Gratifying!
Would he ever use that word again? Or any word like it? Wiping back his tears, Ashley scrolled down until he saw something that made his heart stop.

Red!

Impossible, but true.

The last paragraph of his last diary entry was in
red.
Ashley never messed about with coloured text. Never. The paragraph was in a different font too. A font he never used.

His eyes hardly dared drag themselves to the bottom of the screen. If he read the paragraph he would know for sure that it was not a mistake, not the result of some inadvertent series of mouse clicks on his own part. He did not want to know any such thing. But he had to read on.

Hypocrite, lecteur, mon semblable, mon frиre!
Not for the first time do I find myself reading your diary, Ashley Garland. You have not graduated far have you? From masturbating into school boaters to masturbating at pictures of schoolboys. What a pathetic failure of a man.

All pretence, snobbery, intolerance, bluster, bigotry and show. With such a brain as yours you could have gone so far, Ashley Garland. With such a cold, constipated heart, however, you were always destined for disgrace, ruin and humiliation. I wonder how they will treat you in prison? You fake, you pervert, you canting hypocrite. My revenge on you is complete. May you rot for ever in the burning filth of your own corruption.

The red text swam before Ashley’s eyes. He pressed his hands to the side of his head and pushed inwards, as if forcing his brain to concentrate. Tears dropped onto the keyboard.

This was insanity. Wild madness of a kind that could not be explained. He had his enemies. He was not universally liked, he knew that. He had always known that. But such demented hatred?

A flashing folder icon on the computer desktop caught his eye. It was entitled ‘Yummee!’ and Ashley knew that he had never seen it before. He double-clicked the folder which showed itself to contain over two thousand files, all of them in picture and movie formats. He double-clicked one at random and his screen was filled with a video clip of such clarity and unspeakable, uncompromising physical detail that he caught his breath. The participants were all male and under age.

The doorbell rang.

Ashley closed the file instantly and dragged the whole folder to his desktop waste basket.

The doorbell rang again.

Ashley emptied the wastebasket. A window came on screen.

Cannot delete without password

Ashley input his password and tried again.

Password incorrect

Ashley tried his secondary password.

Password incorrect. System shutting down…

Ashley stared unbelievingly at the screen as it went blank with a fizz and crackle of static.

The doorbell rang for a third time.

A flashing blue light was reflected on the wall behind the computer. Ashley rose, went to the window and looked down through the curtains. A battery of flashlights almost blinded him and he stepped back.

‘Damn you all,’ he sobbed, his whole body trembling. ‘Damn you all.’

A picture arose in his mind of his mother and sister in Manchester. They would have been watching the programme. Perhaps with neighbours. There was a news camera down in the yard below him pointing up at his window. Yes, they would be watching now, white faced and ashamed, hands over mouths. The neighbours would have crept away and dashed to their houses and television sets. Everyone from chambers, everyone in the Conservative Party would be watching. His wife, she was watching too and her father would be saying ‘Told you so, something not quite top drawer about your Ashley. Thought so from the first.’ Oliver Delft, he would have watched and already he would have scratched Ashley’s name from his list of useful contacts. The news would have got round the Carlton Club and they would all be crowded into the television room, watching. Everybody would watch him being led away and everybody would watch his trial.

No, they would not. No one would watch him. No one. The doorbell rang again and a distorted voice, amplified by a megaphone, called up from the street below.

‘Mr Barson-Garland! My name is Superintendent Wallace. Please let us into the house. The yard will be cleared of cameras and press, you have my word.’

Ashley stumbled into the kitchen. His Sabatier knives gleamed invitingly. Those few friends that he had knew Ashley to be a fine cook. His knives, like everything else about him, were perfect. He pulled one from its wooden block and returned to his study, crying like a child.

All his life, he realised, he had felt like an antelope being chased by a lion. The hot stinking breath of fate had pursued him close but he had always found new spurts of speed, dazzling new zig-zags of energy and wit that had kept the beast away. Now he was finally being shaken in its jaws and he didn’t care. Damn them, damn them all! It wasn’t his fault. He had never chosen to be who he was. He had never chosen to be ugly, to be bald, to be ‘not quite top drawer’, to be attracted by youth, to be socially inept, to be despised by the arrogant ease and vanity of Them. Them with their flops of silky hair and flops of silky charm. Damn them all!

He pushed the knife into his throat and twisted it round and round and round.

At the same time he heard the door downstairs being beaten open and saw, through the jets of blood pumping from his neck, that his computer had come to life. He imagined, and it must have been imagination, that he read these words crawling across the screen like tickertape from left to right in bright red letters.

Ned Maddstone sends you to hell

His mind had time to wonder why, in the delirium of his last moments on this mean earth, the name of Ned Maddstone should have come to him. Perhaps it was appropriate. Ned had been the archetype of Them. The very pattern-book of ease and flop-fringed assurance.

Ashley died cursing the name and the very thought of Ned Maddstone.

Simon Cotter locked his office door and descended the stairs three at a time, slapping his thigh as he went.

‘Three!’ he whispered.

Albert and the others were still crowded around the television. They turned expectantly as Simon approached.

‘I couldn’t raise him on the phone,’ he said. ‘He must have disconnected himself. Oh look, the BBC is being coy, have you tried Sky News?’

Albert found the remote control and they all gazed up at the screen as live pictures played of a stretcher being rushed through the smashed front door of Barson-Garland’s London town house.

Simon made a note to himself to call the editor of the
LEP
first thing. There was much to be attended to: an obituary, a new Voice of Reason – so many little things.

Oliver Delft took his pulse while running on the spot. Ninety-eight, not bad. He blew out five or six times and looked round the square, allowing his breathing to settle into a calmer rhythm. He did not like his wife to see him even slightly out of breath, so as a rule he would stay on the doorstep until he was able to go back into the house presenting the appearance of a man who has done no more than walk to the post-box and back.

Light was leaking into the sky from the east. Through the trees he could see that one or two of the Balkan embassies had their lights on. On a number of occasions in the past he had surprised his staff by warning them of impending crises, simply on the basis of his observations of ambassadorial windows, an irony that pleased him in this so-called digital age.