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Table of Contents
Title Page
Chapter 1: London, April 10th 2011
Chapter 2: London, April 11th 2011
Chapter 3: Exeter, April 12th 2011
Chapter 4: Penhallam, April 12th 1643
Chapter 5: Bude, April 13th 2011
Chapter 6: London, April 14th 2011
Chapter 7: London, April 20th 2011
Chapter 8: Bude, April 22nd 2011
Chapter 9: Penhallam, April 22nd 1643
Chapter 10: Penhallam, April 22nd 2011
Chapter 11: Penhallam, April 23rd 2011
Chapter 12: Penhallam, April 24th 1643
Chapter 13: Sourton Down, April 25th 1643
Chapter 14: Exeter, April 25th 2011
Chapter 15: Hartland Point, April 26th 2011
Chapter 16: Exeter, April 27th 2011
Chapter 17: Penhallam, April 27th 2011
Chapter 18: Bude, April 28th 2011
Chapter 19: Derby, April 28th 2011
Chapter 20: Derby, April 29th 2011
Chapter 21: London, May 2nd 2011
Chapter 22: Devon, May 14th 1643
Chapter 23: Penhallam, May 17th
Chapter 24: Penhallam, May 18th
Chapter 25: The village of Billipur, Kashmir, India – six months later
The Voice Within
by
Roger Penfound
Published by
Performance Media Ltd
Email: [email protected]
© Performance Media Ltd 2014
Roger Penfound has asserted the right under copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
You can obtain more information about other publications and about offers and free downloads from Roger Penfound’s web site: www.rogerpenfound.com
Chapter 1: London, April 10th 2011
A slight movement in the bed. A breath that wasn't his own. A sudden sense of not being alone. He forced his eyes open and immediately remembered. It had been one of those work binges. Everyone in the pub till throwing out time then on to a club till three. He turned his head slowly and saw her. She had reddish hair tangled around her head. Her back was naked and he assumed the rest of her was too. She was a new recruit – he remembered that. Fresh from university. The paper was full of thrusting eager young women like her who easily succumbed under the influence of drink to the persuasion of hacks like him. But he knew the form. When she awoke she would be distraught. She wouldn't remember how she got here and would be terrified that she had somehow jeopardised her job. Or she might be one of the aggressive ones – threats and abuse, possibly the hint of extortion. He groaned inwardly. What was her name? He had made a mental note – an image to help him remember. Something to do with moss. It couldn’t be moss – no-one was called that. Heather, that was it. Heather. In a moment, he would wake her gently. Tell her it was alright, that's how it was in the newspaper business. You worked hard and played hard.
His musings were suddenly shattered by a thunderous noise from outside. He leapt naked from the bed, accompanied seconds later by Heather who was holding one hand to her mouth and the other ineffectually over her pubic hair. Voices screamed incoherently accompanied by the sound of heavy beating on the front door. His mind raced with scenarios. Someone had died – his mother, his son. Perhaps it was an old enemy. Someone he'd written about and upset. He scrambled to the floor in search of clothes, coming head to head with Heather who had the same idea. Last night they had abandoned their garments with undue haste and now had to navigate a tangle of socks, tights and underwear. He found his shorts knotted round her bra.
Racing down the stairs, he tripped in the half light and fell down the last few steps.
"Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!" He pulled himself upright, clasping his aching right thigh. "Who is it? What do you want?"
"Police. Open the door! We have a warrant to search your property."
His knees almost buckled as he steadied himself against the wall. He had no choice. He turned the lock and pulled the door open.
"Douglas Penhallam. We are investigating alleged offences of phone hacking. We have reason to believe that you may be hiding information that you did not disclose to us at your recent interview."
"But I've told you all I know. How dare you fucking do this to me! Let me see that warrant."
Three officers pushed past and raced into the flat. They wore black combat suits. He heard a scream from Heather upstairs.
"This is absurd." His words echoed in his head like an old movie soundtrack.
"Shall we go inside, Mr. Penhallam, sir? You must be getting cold standing there just in them shorts." He looked down at his near nakedness. A trickle of blood meandered slowly from his thigh to his knee. He had never before felt so vulnerable.
In the lounge, which still contained the detritus of last night's excessive drinking, they made him sit down whilst they searched the premises. He caught sight of Heather being led down the stairs with a sheet draped around her. She was sobbing loudly. They were having a whispered conversation just out of his earshot. He looked around the dishevelled room. Drawers had been pulled open. His papers were spread over the table, slowly absorbing some of last night's spilt coffee. His laptop had been sealed into a plastic bag.
"Mr. Penhallam," began the senior officer, his hands clasped in front of his paunch. "We have reason to believe that, when you were formally interviewed under caution last week in connection with Operation Weeting about alleged phone hacking offences, you failed to disclose information which could be of significant value to our enquiries. Our investigations this morning have confirmed our suspicions. I therefore have no alternative but to arrest you and to take you to a police station for further questioning."
"But this is crazy. I told you all I know. What didn't I disclose?"
"Douglas Penhallam, I am arresting you on suspicion of unlawfully intercepting voicemail communications. You do not have to say anything, but ..."
He sat in his boxer shorts on the settee, not believing what was happening to him. Did this really happen in Britain in 2011?
"… it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence."
One of the policemen was now pulling his arms behind his back and securing them with a plastic restraint. Outside he could see Heather being helped into a police car.
Suddenly, he felt his bladder give way.
He was in a cell-like room facing two police officers across a grey metal table. A sallow- faced solicitor with thinning hair sat silently by his side. First, there had been the ritual insults and protestations of innocence.
"You idiotic bastards! You've already interviewed me once. I told you all I know – and that's nothing. I've never hacked into anyone's phone and I don't know anyone who has."
Then the game play.
"But, Douglas, we've got new evidence. Evidence that tells us that you did know what was going on. Some of your junior reporters have already admitted hacking."
"You're lying. I don't believe you have new evidence. Who gave it to you?"
"From the top, Douglas, from the very top. Lord Halshaw."
"Lord Halshaw? Now I know you're lying. He may be a bastard but he'd never stoop so low as to shop his own people."
"Think about it, Penhallam." It was a different policeman this time. One who'd been standing in the shadows at the back with his arms folded. "L
ord Halshaw doesn't want to get smeared with this hacking business. It smells and it's potentially damaging to his relationship with the PM. He needs scapegoats and you're one of them. If I were you, I'd plead guilty and get it over with. That way the courts will be more lenient. You could be out within a couple of years." An assenting chuckle rippled round the sterile interview room.
After his release at midday, he returned to his flat to change out of the clothes he had hurriedly assembled that morning – now damp with perspiration. The place had been ransacked. His office had been almost cleared. The computer had gone and so had many of the files that contained contact details and copies of some of his more notable stories. He stood among the chaos feeling dejected and alone. His descent over five years from a reasonably happy man living with wife and son in a suburb of Wimbledon to a late 'fortysomething' alcoholic living alone in a wrecked flat near Kilburn had been meteoric. Once one of the most feted reporters on his paper, with a string of awards to prove it, he now spent his time looking over his shoulder at aggressive cub reporters eager to bypass his authority on their way to the top. And above him was a tight-knit management team headed by the paper's owner, Lord Halshaw, whose increasing influence on journalistic freedom was stifling the campaigning culture that had led the paper to become the scourge of many in the public sector.
He was jolted out of his introspection by the sound of his mobile ringing. Struggling to remove it from his pocket, he saw the name 'Prick' – a name he reserved privately for the managing editor, James Welland – a childish taunt but he enjoyed it.
"James, thank God you called! Do you know what happened to me this morning?" Welland had been a cub reporter with him in the mid-80s. They had both been eager and idealistic, working together on major scoops such as the East End vice rings that ensnared some senior figures from both ends of the political spectrum. While he had continued to fine-tune his investigative skills and to build his network of informants, James had networked instead with the management team and gradually carved out a niche for himself, ensuring that relationships cemented in some of London's finest restaurants found expression in the headlines of The Nation's Voice.
"Doug, I think you should come in immediately and see me."
"Too bloody right I should! I want you to make a formal complaint. Do you know they were hammering on my door at five this morning? I want them nailed, James, do you hear me?"
"Just get to my office, Doug. Be there in twenty minutes." The line went dead.
The offices of The Nation's Voice were situated in a tower block at Canary Wharf – part of the regeneration of London's docklands which had transformed derelict warehouses and run down terraces into glittering parcels of real estate. New high rise office blocks thrust themselves confidently into the sky proclaiming the economic supremacy of the market. However, many of the pristine suites remained stubbornly empty, victims of the lingering recession that had attached itself like a lead weight to the faltering UK economy.
Doug hurried out of the underground station and jogged towards the building. He sprinted up the steps to reception, waving nonchalantly to the security guard as he normally did.
"Er, Mr. Penhallam, sir, would you just wait a minute? We've been asked to escort you upstairs to the Director's Suite."
The elderly guard, bedecked with gold braid and sergeant's stripes, got up from his desk and moved towards him.
"But I know where James Welland is. I go there every day. I'm meeting him in his office."
"No sir. The meeting's been changed to the Director's Suite. I'm to take you up in the executive lift." The executive lift – shit – that was normally reserved for old man Halshaw himself and any of his cronies he was entertaining in the exec dining room. His senses flashed warning signs.
The lift sped effortlessly to the fourteenth floor where the doors opened onto a world carpeted in thick cream pile with walls covered in golden flock fabric. The effect was to deaden any noise and deprive the senses of their normal means of orientation. He followed the security guard along the corridor to the room known affectionately as the 'sherry-go-round'. It was where Lord Halshaw greeted his most valued guests to sip sherry before embarking on a modest five course meal, washed down with cabernet sauvignon from his own vineyard in Tuscany. The security guard knocked on the door and pushed it open. Sitting at the round oak table, James Welland had his gaze fixed on a file, his thick black glasses intermittently reflecting the sunlight. Beside him sat a woman in a grey suit. He had seen her before – probably from HR. Her hair was pulled back tight by a comb clamped to the back of her head.
"What's all this about then, James? Couldn't we meet in your office? No need to treat me like royalty."
"Please sit down, Douglas."
His unease began to grow. He noticed that the security guard had not left the room but was standing to attention by the door.
"So what's to be done then, James? These cops have got to be put in their place. Unless there's someone else behind it – someone high up who's got it in for the paper – or for Halshaw. Trouble is, that's half the country. Let me do an investigation, James. I'll …"
"Stop it, Douglas. That's not what this is about."
"What is it about then?"
"You're out, Douglas – finished."
"What do you mean, finished?" he replied, trying to suppress a feeling of mounting panic.
"Lord Halshaw wants you out. He's been concerned about you for some time. There've been mistakes."
"What sort of mistakes?"
"Things like leaving that list of police informant names in a taxi. That could have been devastating if it hadn't been for the driver handing them in. And your drink problem. The Cabinet Office informed me that you were definitely the worse for wear when you interviewed the Home Secretary last week."
"This is crap, James. I get the stories, that's what matters. It's the oxygen that keeps this paper going."
"We've turned a blind eye for too long, Doug. This phone hacking business is turning messy. Some of your younger reporters have admitted hacking into celebrities' phones. And they say that you knew about it – you condoned it. There's one who says you showed her how to do it."
"That's bollocks, James, and you know it!" exploded Doug as he began for the first time to realise the severity of what was being said. "I've no idea how to hack into a phone. I’m a Luddite, you know that. Give me names. Who's accusing me?"
"One of your junior reporters. Young woman called Heather Jones. Mean anything to you?"
Doug felt a shiver as the implications became apparent.
"I was going to get rid of her, James. She's unreliable. Her way of getting back at me."
"It's no good, Douglas. Lord Halshaw has made up his mind. You've got to go. Miss Elliot here has got the …"
"Like fuck I'm going to go! I'm not going to be kicked out like some limp junior office clerk at the whim of you and that bastard, Halshaw. My stories helped build this paper. I suppose you know there are procedures, tribunals, the union – all that stuff. I'll drag you through the courts and sue you for every penny I can get."
"Then you leave me no choice."
"What do you mean?"
"Expenses. We've been tracking your expenses for the past couple of years. They're a joke, Douglas. A work of total fiction."
"Come off it, James. We all know there's a bit of latitude on expenses, there always has been. You know, the extra bottle of Krug passed off as a train journey to Birmingham. We've all done it."
He saw the woman from HR with the scraped-back hair looking at him with her mouth open. James Welland had his eyes lowered and his face looked flushed.
"It's more than that, Douglas – I mean, as if that's not bad enough," he added with haste in an apparent attempt to appease the woman from HR. "We've got a list here. You'd better take a look."
He felt physically sick as he recognised some of the entries on the first page.
'21 February: lunch at the Golden Drake for political analysts
– £1,650.00.'
A receipt was attached but it was clear to anyone that it was a fake. The accounts department knew it but that's how it was done. It was how it had always been done. What mattered was getting the story and if you did that they turned a blind eye.
"Look at the fourth one on the list," commanded the managing editor. "How do you explain that?" He scanned the list. The fourth one was for a first class rail trip to Edinburgh to attend an awards ceremony for investigative journalism.
"What's wrong with that? I've always been encouraged to attend those things. Keep the profile up and all that."
"You didn't go. You'd put in leave at the same time. You were getting careless."
He felt his usual persuasive logic draining away. In the face of irrefutable evidence, he was clutching at straws. In desperation, he resorted to the one technique that had got him out of tight spots before – anger.
"Now listen, you prick," he said with venom as he got up from his chair and moved menacingly towards the table. "I've served this bloody paper faithfully for twenty years and if you think ..."
He felt the surprisingly strong grip of the security guard close around his right forearm. The woman from HR was out of her seat and backing towards the window. The managing editor was in a half sitting, half standing position, thrusting his face towards him with his lip curling like an angry Doberman.
"You're expendable, Penhallam. We've got enough on you to have you sent down for a long time."
After that it was all downhill. Three more security guards were called and he was escorted through the editorial suite to collect his belongings. His iPad, personal photos, his ancient cushion and some books he claimed as his own were packed into plastic bags and then he was led out towards the lifts. The usually noisy room fell quiet and people looked sheepishly away. He wasn't popular, he had trodden on too many toes. Only Raff, his closest ally and fellow troublemaker, got up to acknowledge him.
"I'll see you in the usual place in half an hour. You're going to need someone to talk to."
The Voice Within Page 1