Break In

by Dick Francis

  ‘Or it could be transferred to Bobby Allardeck, as a first small instalment of compensation.’

  ‘I’ve heard enough,’ Pollgate said brusquely. ‘Return the property of our journalists immediately. There will be no compensation, do you understand? None. You will come to wish, I promise you, that you had never tried to extort it.’

  Under the civilised suiting he hunched his shoulders like a boxer, rotating them as a physical warning of an imminent onslaught, a flexing of literal muscles before an explosion of mental aggression. I saw in his face all the brutality of his newspaper and also the arrogance of absolute power. No one, I thought, could have defied him for too long, and he didn’t intend that I should be an exception.

  ‘If you make trouble for us in the courts,’ he said grittily, ‘I’ll smash you. I mean it. I’ll see to it that you yourself are accused of some crime that you’ll hate, and I’ll get you convicted and sent to prison, and you’ll go down, I promise you, dishonoured and reviled, with maximum publicity and disgrace.’

  The final words were savagely biting, the intention vibratingly real.

  Both Leggatt and Morse looked impassive and I wondered what any of them could read on my own face. Show no fright… ye gods.

  He surely wouldn’t do it, I thought wildly. The threat must be only to deter. Surely a man in his position wouldn’t risk his own status to frame and jail an adversary who wanted so little, who represented no life-or-death danger to his paper or to himself, who wielded no corporate power.

  All the same, it looked horrible. Jockeys were eternally vulnerable to accusations of dishonesty and it took little to disillusion a cynical public. The assumption of guilt would be strong. He could try harder and more subtly to frame me for taking bribes, and certainly for things worse. What his paper had already set their hand to, they could do again and more thoroughly. A crime I would hate.

  I could find no immediate words to reply to him, and while I stood there in the lengthening silence the door alarm buzzed fiercely, making Morse jump.

  Sam Leggatt flicked a switch. ‘Who is it?’ he said.

  ‘Erskine.’

  Leggatt looked at Pollgate, who nodded. Leggatt pressed the button that unlatched the door, and the man I’d shaken off the ladder came quietly in.

  He was of about my height, reddish haired going bald, with a drooping moustache and chillingly unsmiling eyes. He nodded to the triumvirate as if he’d been talking to them earlier and turned to face me directly, chin tucked in, stomach thrust out, a man with a ruined life behind him and a present mind full of malice.

  ‘You’ll give me my stuff,’ he said. Not a question, not a statement: more a threat.

  ‘Eventually,’ I said.

  There was a certain quality of stillness, of stiffening, on the far side of Leggatt’s desk. I looked at Pollgate’s thunderous expression and realised that I had almost without intending it told him with that one word that his threat, his promise, hadn’t immediately worked.

  ‘He’s yours, Jay,’ he said thickly.

  I didn’t have time to wonder what he meant. Jay Erskine caught hold of my right wrist and twisted my arm behind my back with a strength and speed that spoke of practice. I had done much the same to him in Bobby’s garden, pressing his face into the mud, and into my ear with the satisfaction of an account paid he said, ‘You tell me where my gear is or I’ll break your shoulder so bad you’ll ride no more races this side of Doomsday.’

  His vigour hurt. I checked the three watching faces. No surprise, not even from the lawyer. Was this, I wondered fleetingly, a normal course of events in the editor’s office of the Daily Flag?

  ‘Tell me,’ Erskine said, shoving.

  I took a sharp half-pace backwards, cannoning into him. I went down in a crouch, head nearly to the floor, then straightened my legs with the fiercest possible jerk, pitching Jay Erskine bodily forwards over my shoulders, where he let go of my wrist and sailed sprawlingly into the air. He landed with a crash on a potted palm against the far wall while I completed the rolling somersault and ended upright on my feet. The manoeuvre took a scant second in the execution: the stunned silence afterwards lasted at least twice as long.

  Jay Erskine furiously tore a leaf from his mouth and struggled pugnaciously to right himself, almost pawing the carpet like a bull for a second charge.

  ‘That’s enough,’ I said. ‘That’s bloody enough.’

  1 looked directly at Nestor Pollgate. ‘Compensation,’ I said. ‘Another of your banker’s drafts. One hundred thousand pounds. Tomorrow. Bobby Allardeck will be coming to Ascot races. You can give it to him there. It could cost you about that much to manufacture a crime I didn’t commit and have me convicted. Why not save yourself the trouble.’

  Jay Erskine was upright and looking utterly malignant.

  I said to him, ‘Pray the compensation’s paid… Do you want another dose of the slammer?’

  I walked to the door and looked briefly back. Pollgate, Leggatt and Morse had wiped-slate faces: Jay Erskine’s was glitteringly cold.

  I wondered fearfully for a second if the door’s unlatching mechanism also locked and would keep me in; but it seemed not. The handle turned easily, came smoothly towards me, opening the path of escape.

  Out of the office, along the passage to the lifts my feet felt alarmingly detached from my legs. If I believed Pollgate’s threats I was walking into the bleakest of futures: if I believed Erskine’s malevolence it would be violent and soon. Why in God’s name, I thought despairingly, hadn’t I given in, given them the jackets, let Bobby go bust.

  There were running footsteps behind me across the mock-marble hallway outside the lifts, and I turned fast, expecting Erskine and danger, but finding, as once before, Sam Leggatt.

  His eyes widened at the speed with which I’d faced him.

  ‘You expected another attack,’ he said.

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘I’ll come down with you.’ He pressed the button for descent and stared at me for a while without speaking while we waited.

  ‘One hundred thousand,’ he said finally, ‘is too much. I thought you meant less.’

  ‘Yesterday, I did.’

  ‘And today?’

  ‘Today I met Pollgate. He would sneer at a small demand. He doesn’t think in peanuts.’

  Sam Leggatt went back to staring, blinking his sandy lashes, not showing his unspoken thoughts.

  ‘That threat,’ I said slowly, ‘about sending me to prison. Has he used that before?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘On someone else.’

  ‘What makes you think so?’

  ‘You and your lawyer,’ I said, ‘showed no surprise.’

  The lift purred to a halt inside the shaft and the doors opened. Leggatt and I stepped inside.

  ‘Also,’ I said, as the doors closed, ‘the words he used sounded almost rehearsed. “You’ll go down, I promise you, dishonoured and reviled, with maximum publicity and disgrace.” Like a play, don’t you think?’

  He said curiously, ‘You remember the exact words?’

  ‘One wouldn’t easily forget them.’ I paused. ‘Did he mean it?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘What happened before?’

  ‘He wasn’t put to the test.’

  ‘Do you mean, the threat worked?’ I asked.

  ‘Twice.’

  ‘Jesus,’ I said.

  I absent-mindedly rubbed my right shoulder, digging in under the anorak with the left thumb and fingers to massage. ‘Does he always get his way by threats?’

  Leggatt said evenly, ‘The threats vary to suit the circumstances. Does that hurt?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your shoulder.’

  ‘Oh. Yes, I suppose so. Not much. No worse than a fall.’

  ‘How did you do that? Fling him off you, like that?’

  I half grinned. ‘I haven’t done it since I was about fifteen, same as the other guy. I wasn’t sure it would work with a grown man, but it
did, a treat.’

  We reached the ground floor and stepped out of the lift.

  ‘Where are you staying?’ he asked casually.

  ‘With a friend,’ I said.

  He came with me halfway across the ornate entrance hall, scopping beside the small fountain.

  ‘Why did Nestor Pollgate want to crunch Maynard Allardeck?’ I said.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Then it wasn’t your idea or Erskine’s? It came from the top?’

  ‘From the top.’

  ‘And beyond,’ I said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  I frowned. ‘I don’t know. Do you?’

  ‘As far as I know, Nestor Pollgate started it.’

  I said ruefully, ‘Then I didn’t exactly smash his face in.’

  ‘Not far off.’

  There was no shade of disloyalty in his voice, but I had the impression that he was in some way apologising: the chief’s sworn lieutenant offering comfort to the outcast. The chief’s man, I thought. Remember it.

  ‘What do you plan to do next?’ he said.

  ‘Ride at Ascot.’

  He looked steadily into my eyes and I looked right back. I might have liked him, I thought, if he’d steered any other ship.

  ‘Goodbye,’ I said.

  He seemed to hesitate a fraction but in the end said merely, ‘Goodbye’ and turned back to the lifts: and I went out into Fleet Street and breathed great gulps of free air under the stars.

  I walked the two miles back to the hotel and sat in my room for a while there contemplating the walls, and then I went down to find the rented Mercedes in the underground park and drove it out to Chiswick.

  ‘You’re incredibly early,’ Danielle said, faintly alarmed at my arrival. ‘I did say two a.m., not half after eleven.’

  ‘I thought I might just sit here and watch you, as no one seemed to mind me being here last time.’

  ‘You’ll be bored crazy.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘OK.’

  She pointed to a desk and chair close to hers. ‘No one’s using that tonight. You’ll be all right there. Did you get that cut fixed?’

  ‘Yes, it’s fine.’

  I sat in the chair and listened to the mysteries of newsgathering, American style, for the folks back home. The big six-thirty evening slot, eastern US time, was being aired at that moment, it appeared. The day’s major hassle had just ended. From now until two, Danielle said, she would be working on anything new and urgent which might make the eleven o’clock news back home, but would otherwise be on the screens at breakfast.

  ‘Does much news happen here at this time of night?’ I asked.

  ‘Right now we’ve got an out-of-control fire in an oil terminal in Scotland and at midnight Devil-Boy goes on stage at a royal charity gala to unveil a new smash.’

  ‘Who?’ I said.

  ‘Never mind. A billion teenagers can’t be wrong.’

  ‘And then what?’ I said.

  ‘After we get the pictures? Transmit them back here from a mobile van, edit them, and transmit the finished article to the studios in New York. Sometimes at midday here we do live interviews, mostly for the seven-to-nine morning show back home, but nothing live at nights.’

  ‘You do edit the tapes here?’

  ‘Sure. Usually. Want to see?’

  ‘Yes, very much.’

  ‘After I’ve made these calls.’ She gestured to the telephone and I nodded, and subsequently listened to her talking to someone at the fire.

  The talent is on his way back by helicopter from the race riot and should be with you in ten minutes. Get him to call me when he can. How close to the blaze are you? OK, when Cervano gets to you try to go closer, from that distance a volcano would look like a sparkler. OK, tell him to call me when he’s reached you. Yeah, OK, get him to call me.’

  She put down the receiver, grimacing. ‘They’re a good mile off. They might as well be in Brooklyn.’

  ‘Who’s the talent?’ I said.

  ‘Ed Cervano. Oh… the talent is any person behind a microphone talking to the camera. News reporter, anchor, anyone.’

  She looked along the headings on the board on the wall behind her chair. ‘Slug. That’s the story we’re working on. Oil fire. Devil-Boy. Embassy. So on.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Locations, obvious. Time, obvious. Crew. That’s the camera crew which is allocated to that story, and also the talent. Format, that’s how fully we’re covering a story. Package means the works, camera crew, talent, interviews, the lot. Voice-over is just a cameraman, with the commentary tagged on later. So on.’

  ‘And it’s you who decides who goes where for what?’

  She half nodded. ‘The bureau chief, and the other coordinators, who work in the daytime, and me, yes.’

  ‘Some job,’ I said.

  She smiled with her eyes. ‘If we do well, the company’s ratings go up. If we do badly, we get fired.’

  ‘The news is the news, surely,’ I said.

  ‘Oh yes? Which would you prefer, an oil fire from a mile off or to think you feel the flames?’

  ‘Mm.’

  Her telephone rang. ‘News,’ she said, and listened. ‘Look,’ she said, sounding exasperated, ‘if he’s late, it’s news. If he’s sick, it’s news. If he doesn’t make it on to the stage at a royal gala, it’s news. You just stay there, whatever happens is news, OK? Get some shots of royalty leaving, if all else fails.’ She put down the receiver. ‘Devil-Boy hasn’t arrived at the theatre and it takes him a good hour to dress.’

  ‘The joys of the non-event.’

  ‘I don’t want to be scooped by one of the other broadcasting companies, now do I?’

  ‘Where do you get the news from in the first place?’

  ‘Oh… the press agencies, newspapers, police broadcasts, publicity releases, things like that.’

  ‘I guess I never wondered before how the news arrived on the box.’

  ‘Ten seconds’ worth can take all day to gather.’

  Her telephone rang again, with the helicoptering Ed Cervano now down to earth at the other end. Danielle asked him in gentle tones to go get himself a first degree burn, and from her smile it seemed he was willing to go up in flames entirely for her sake.

  ‘A sweet-talking guy,’ she said, putting down the receiver. ‘And he writes like a poet.’ Her eyes were shining over the talent’s talents, her mouth curving from his honey.

  ‘Writes?’ I said.

  ‘Writes what he says on the news. All our news reporters write their own stuff.’

  Another message came through from the royal gala: DevilBoy, horns and all, was reported on his way to the theatre in a bell-ringing ambulance.

  ‘Is he sick?’ Danielle asked. ‘If it’s a stunt, make sure you catch it.’ She disconnected, shrugging resignedly. ‘The hip-wriggling imp of Satan will get double the oil fire exposure. Real hell stands no chance against the fake. Do you want to see the editing rooms?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, and followed her across the large office and down a passage, admiring the neatness of her walk and wanting to put my hands deep into her cloud of dark hair, wanting to kiss her, wanting quite fiercely to take her to bed.

  She said, ‘I’ll show you the studio first, it’s more interesting’, and veered down a secondary passage towards a door warningly marked ‘If red light shows, do not enter’. No red light shone. We went in. The room was moderate in size, furnished barely with a couple of armchairs, a coffee table, a television camera, a television set, a teleprompter and a silent coffee machine with paper cups. The only surprise was the window, through which one could see a stretch of the Thames and Hammersmith Bridge, all decked with lights and busily living.

  We do live interviews in here in front of the window,’ Danielle said. ‘Mostly politicians but also actors, authors, sportsmen, anyone in the news. Red buses go across the bridge in the background. It’s impressive.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ I said.
/>   She gave me a swift look. ‘Am I boring you?’

  ‘Absolutely not.’

  She wore pink lipstick and had eyebrows like wings. Dark smiling eyes, creamy skin, long neck to hidden breasts like apples on a slender stem… For Christ’s sake, Kit, I thought, drag your mind off it and ask some sensible questions.

  ‘How does your stuff get from here to America?’ I said.

  ‘From in here.’ She walked over to a closed door in one of the walls, and opened it. Beyond it was another room, much smaller, dimly lit, which was warm and hummed faintly with walls of machines.

  ‘This is the transmitter room,’ she said. ‘Everything goes from in here by satellite, but don’t ask me how, we have a man with a haunted expression twiddling the knobs and we leave it to him.’

  She closed the transmitter room door and we went through the studio, into the passage and back to the editing rooms, of which there were three.

  ‘OK,’ she said, switching a light on and revealing a small area walled on one side by three television screens, several video recorders and racks of tape cassettes, ‘this is what we still use, though I’m told there’s a load of new technology round the corner. Our guys here like these machines, so I guess we’ll have them around for a while yet.’

  ‘How do they work?’ I asked.

  ‘You run the unedited tape through on the left-hand screen and pick out the best bits, then you record just those on to the second tape, showing on the second screen. You can switch it all around until it looks good and you get a good feeling. We transmit it like that, but New York often cuts it shorter. Depends how much else they’ve got to fit in.’

  ‘Can you work these machines yourself?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m slow. If you really want to know now, you can watch Joe later when we get the oil fire and Devil-Boy tapes – he’s one of the best.’

  ‘Great,’ I said.

  ‘I’m surprised you’re so interested.’

  ‘Well, I’ve some tapes I want to edit myself. It would be nice to learn how.’

  ‘Is that why you came here so early?’ She sounded as if I might say yes without at all offending her.

  I said, ‘Partly. Mostly to see you… and what you do.’