expulsion from in a robot
On the way back to the office I reflected on the café conversation. I suspected that Pardos knew all about my pseudonyms. I was troubled by the thought of her visiting Original Harm’s publisher because I’d published it myself. So who was Tina Home? I’d immediately recognised the name as yet another ‘I am not he’ anagrammatically-derived pseudonym and was anxious to learn the true identity of who was masquerading as my publisher. Or might Tina Home have been a concoction by Pardos designed to prompt me to contradict Home’s existence and unwittingly divulge the extent of my implication in the affair?
The vast majority of letters that morning were concerned with the escalation of war in central Europe, as I knew they would be. Whilst the majority of them were in support of the government’s policy of direct intervention, a significant minority took an opposing view. I had only partly digested the events leading up to the war and felt unqualified to take a particular stance on the issue. That morning, I read a couple of articles that I hoped would clarify it for me — a pro-interventionist piece by our chief political editor and an anti-interventionist column by our foreign editor alongside it — but, instead, they succeeded only in muddling me further. I read the first article and was convinced by its logic, then read the second and was convinced by its logic too. I could see both sides of the argument, but couldn’t see where I stood in relation to it.
A couple of hours later Pardos called to inform me, in her usual deadpan delivery, that, according to her forensic laboratory contact, the jewellery box had not contained a contact lens, but a lens extracted from a human eye, pausing momentarily to allow the full horror of this discovery to register before proceeding to ask me once more if I could tell her anything. Fighting to suppress a gag reflex, through eyes squeezed tight in a forlorn attempt to shield myself from being forced to contemplate the excruciating pain of having an eyeball sliced open should, God forbid, the torture victim happen to have been alive at the time, again, I answered that I could not.
Having been instructed by Kerr that morning to inform him immediately of any news concerning the jewellery box, I relayed Pardos’s information to him then went to the kitchen to refresh myself with a cup of peppermint tea. The kitchen was occupied by Dick and Hill, our sister evening paper’s investigative reporters who shared by-lines and just about everything else besides (from, it had been rumoured, wives, to the chicken tikka masala they were currently devouring with such gusto), huddled together, comparing notes in conspiratorial tones about their latest investigation.
Dick and Hill were a pair of old-style tabloid hacks who, over the years, had acquired the seen-it-all-before demeanour common to their profession. Nothing much could impress or surprise them. Their grasp of grammar might have been rudimentary, their prose might have required polish, but they were recognised by their peers as the best investigative journalists in the country by far. Their contacts throughout the city’s black market were comprehensive and the envy of their competitors. Between them they knew all the local loan sharks, dealers, bookies, pimps, DSS-scam landlords and underworld-connected licensees and, because Dick was Protestant and Hill Catholic, they were able to cover both sides of the city’s notorious sectarian divide. It was said that the police were constantly contacting them for help with their enquiries but that they adhered to a strict professional code of guaranteed anonymity for their sources.
There were better writers than Dick and Hill on the newspaper, but there were no better journalists. Their ability to deliver a regular supply of scoops, a consequence of their deft skill in extracting information from interviewees intent on maintaining a dignified silence, was renowned. It was an ability that could partly be explained by the fact that they spoke the same language as their interviewees. They had grown up in the same streets as their interviewees. They shared a common cultural history. Both interviewers and interviewees were ingrained with a breadth and depth of knowledge of Glasgow unique to the lifelong native and this mutual bond led to guards being dropped and confidences being exchanged. Dick and Hill were always working. Whether they were at the football (they shared an encyclopaedic knowledge about Scottish football and were hero-worshipped by, and role models for, the sports desk pups) or the pub (they seemed to exist on a never-ending diet of fags and shorts), they were invariably immersed in in-depth discussions about their latest story or snooping around people they knew that knew people who could help them progress a lead. Their lives were their work. Their work was their lives. There was something noble about that and I admired them for it.
I was about to leave the kitchen when I realised they were talking about The Amino. I paused in the doorway just long enough to overhear Dick mention Holyrood Quadrant, an address that struck me as familiar. Back at my desk, I extracted a crumpled piece of paper from my breast pocket and confirmed it to be the same address — the address I’d found in the phone book the day before — Ian Thome’s address.
I decided to pay it a return visit.
Once more, I pounded on the bottle-green storm doors, but still there was no reply. I had just resigned myself to the fact of another vain attempt to find the unfortunate Ian Thome when I heard a bolt being unlocked. A tall, pasty-faced apparition wrapped in a floral duvet slouched shivering in the doorway, scratching his scalp, a half-eaten tin of alphabetti spaghetti in his hand, waiting for me to explain my presence.
‘Sorry to disturb you,’ I apologised, ‘I’m looking for Ian Thome.’
‘You’ve found him,’ he yawned.
‘Oh,’ I said. He’d thrown me completely.
‘You thought I’d been kidnapped, didn’t you?’ he said.
‘I did,’ I admitted.
‘I’ve had reporters at my door all morning,’ he said.
‘Sorry to disturb you,’ I repeated, taking my leave.
I was left pondering the possibility that I might not have been responsible for the torture of an innocent after all. Perhaps it was all an elaborate hoax perpetrated by someone who had somehow deduced that I was both the author of Original Harm and the letter-writer defending it against criticism? But who would do that and why? The only person who I knew had deduced the anagram linking my pseudonyms was Chris the Crossword Compiler, but though he’d realised the link between them, there was no evidence yet that he’d linked them to me. I couldn’t conceive of Chris scheming anything so sinister yet, nevertheless, I made a point of revisiting him, just to reassure myself.
As I’d anticipated, Chris soon dispelled any doubts I’d entertained about his innocence, but then, whilst rummaging amidst precarious mountains of well-thumbed puzzle books, thesauri, dictionaries and encyclopaedias, he mentioned a call he’d received less than an hour earlier which he thought might interest me.
The caller had phoned to complain about a clue Chris had used in the crossword of the day before: nine across, one word, eight letters — the clue, expulsion from in a robot — the solution, abortion. The caller had enquired whether he (Chris) considered it appropriate to insert such a morally offensive topic as the brutal murder of an innocent life into a family crossword puzzle which he (the caller) and his young son had enjoyed striving to complete for some time now.
‘What did you say?’ I enquired, starting to wonder why he was telling me this, worrying whether he did perhaps know that I’d written Original Harm, or whether he was raising the subject simply because of its relevance to that morning’s front page.
‘What could I say?’ he said. ‘If he’d been ranting or raving, it’d have been easier to defend myself and dismiss him as a lunatic — ’
‘ — And if he hadn’t flattered you by claiming to be a regular player of your crosswords,’ I observed.
‘He claimed to be calling, not just on behalf of himself, but in his capacity as spokesman for an organisation — ’
‘An organisation?’
‘Yes — ’
‘What org
anisation?’ I could hear the irritation rising in my voice but I couldn’t help myself. My anxiety was inflating and I was impatient to have it deflated or validated before it burst.
‘He claimed to be the spokesman for the Scottish chapter of something called The Amino,’ said Chris. ‘It was his name which I thought might interest you.’
‘Oh?’ I said, striving to feign nonchalance.
‘Yeah — Noah Time.’
Chris waited to see that I had registered that this was yet another variation of an anagrammatically-derived ‘I am not he’ pseudonym.
‘So what happened?’ I enquired, struggling to contain my alarm.
‘I sought to placate him as much as I could,’ said Chris. ‘I apologised and told him that no offence was intended. He insisted on registering an official complaint on behalf of his organisation, in writing, so, in an attempt to pre-empt that, and in order to have written evidence at my disposal should his complaint ever lead to awkward questions being asked requiring me to account for myself, I offered to put my apology in writing too — ’
‘ — You have his address?’
‘Here it is,’ he said, handing it to me.
‘Let’s keep this between ourselves just now, OK?’ I suggested.
I returned to my desk to find a pile of neglected mail waiting to be disembowelled. Searching in vain for my skean dhu letter opener, I eventually remembered that I’d slipped it into my raincoat pocket the day before (although amused at my own sense of drama, I put it back into my coat pocket before leaving the office that evening). Midway through the pile I was struck by the familiarity of the handwritten address on an envelope and knew before I opened it that it was from the kidnapper. This time I took care not to discard the envelope, which had no postmark (meaning that it must have been hand-delivered some time during the morning). Inside, on the same bog-standard paper and using the same bog-standard biro as before, appeared the following familiar scrawl.
Intolerance will not be tolerated.
Thank you for publishing my letter on the front page of today’s paper; doing so saved Ian Thome from having his throat slit. I was, however, disappointed to note that you refused to promise never again to publish such a misguided defence of pernicious propaganda. Thome has duly suffered the consequences of your intransigence — I trust you received this morning’s package.
I’ve decided to give you a second chance to make your promise. Failure to do so will result in Thome’s death and your own capture and execution.
I marched straight into Kerr’s smoky aquarium and plopped the letter down on his desk.
‘What’s this?’ he demanded.
‘A letter,’ I said.
‘I can see that. Who from?’
‘The kidnapper.’
‘What does he say?’
I relayed the contents of the letter to him. Only then did Kerr read it for himself.
‘Fuck this,’ he sighed, reaching for his phone.
He spoke briefly to Findlay then summoned his PA, instructing her to have ten copies of the letter in the boardroom in five minutes. Then he exited his aquarium and strode to the lift, with me following in his wake. We stepped out onto the top floor to find that the board had already convened. Kerr’s PA slipped into the room and handed him copies of the letter. The board members took their seats around the oval table as the hidden door in the oak panelling opened and White Whiskers shuffled through it and slumped into the nearest chair. Findlay cleared his throat, thanked the board members for their presence and invited Kerr to summarise the situation. Kerr rose to distribute the copies of the letter around the table, starting with White Whiskers. As he did so, he said, ‘Gentlemen, the letter you have before you was received by our letters page editor,’ here he nodded to me, ‘no more than five minutes ago.’
I was stabbed by a sense of déjà vu.
‘As you can see, it’s another murder threat by the kidnapper. I’ve called this meeting to determine collectively an appropriate response — ’
‘ — What’s this bit about I trust you received this morning’s package?’ interrupted Whiskers, brandishing his photocopy.
‘A lens extracted from a human eye was delivered through the post this morning,’ explained Kerr, prompting a collective Pavlovian gasp as the board members, to a man, with the notable exception of Whiskers, reacted as I myself had done to the horror of this news.
‘Was it indeed,’ mumbled Whiskers, betraying not a flicker of consternation, before returning his attention to Kerr and, with a withering look, signalling for him to proceed.
‘Well, so far as I can see, we’re faced with two options: either we bow to the kidnapper’s demands, or we refuse to have our editorial policy dictated to us by a kidnapper; a course of action with a potentially fatal consequence for the hostage.’
‘Which option do you propose?’ enquired Whiskers. Kerr stalled and surveyed the room, searching for clues to help him gauge the mood of the board. They remained inscrutable.
‘Our leader column this morning explicitly states our refusal to have our editorial agenda set by a kidnapper,’ he said. ‘Unless we’re willing to undertake an embarrassing U-turn, we can only take the second option and refuse the kidnapper’s demands.’
‘Agreed,’ said Whiskers. ‘But should we risk sacrificing the victim to spare our blushes?’
Kerr shrugged his shoulders. Once more Whiskers scanned the boardroom but no answer was forthcoming.
‘What do you think?’ he asked, his gaze coming to rest on me. ‘It was your course of action we’ve followed so far. How do you propose we proceed?’
It was only then that I realised I’d assumed full responsibility for entangling the paper in this predicament (a responsibility which, to be fair, I couldn’t really complain about, given that I was implicated in the creation of the predicament to a degree beyond which any of the board could possibly have imagined) and that my continued employment rested on my ability to emerge with a solution to the dilemma at hand. It is to my shame that what I said next was not what I believed, but what I believed Whiskers wanted to hear. What I said next was not spoken after due consideration of the dilemma I found myself confronting, but with the immediate aim of keeping me in gainful employment.
‘I propose that, once again, we run the kidnapper’s letter on the front page — he condemns himself with each word he writes,’ I said, with as much conviction as I could muster.
‘I propose that, once again, we run a front-page story about the kidnapper’s demands within which we condemn his actions outright and set forth the thinking behind our own response to his demands. I propose that we seek to galvanise public support for our course of action by pre-empting any potential voices of dissent by sourcing a range of supportive statements from such influential groups as: a cross-party selection of MSPs; the police; human rights campaigners; religious leaders and a straw poll of public opinion. I propose that we spell out to this anonymous kidnapper that we will never be dictated to, that we stand resolutely by our editorial column of today and that no threat will sway us from our commitment to free speech. I propose that, once more, we exploit the opportunities for exclusivity that this second letter gives us. I propose that we set a substantial financial reward for any reader who can give us any information leading to the arrest of the kidnapper, that we set up a free dedicated hotline to that end and that we guarantee caller anonymity. I propose that we seek to lure this cowardly kidnapper from behind his shield of anonymity by inviting him to participate in a full and frank open debate about the issues at hand; offering him the opportunity to express his views in the paper in return for the release of the hostage — if he is sincere about his beliefs, then let’s challenge him to express them, goad him into our arena, mock and ridicule him and assume the moral high ground...’ Here I paused for breath and, I confess, dramatic effect; then, realising that I’d nothing more to say, I s
hrugged and said, ‘That’s what I propose.’
Unsure how to respond to my impassioned speech, the board glanced towards White Whiskers for guidance. Kerr leaned towards me.
‘You propose that we sacrifice the hostage,’ he said, in a voice only I could hear.
White Whiskers cleared his throat then began to nod.
chapter fifteen
something more than words
Before leaving the office I checked the address Chris the Crossword Compiler had given me. I was anxious to discover the true identity of Noah Time. I phoned Pardos, but the sound of her voice on answering the phone made me realise how cowardly my seeking her assistance would strike her, so I thought better of it and replaced the receiver without identifying myself then phoned a taxi instead.
It was already dark when I was deposited outside the Holiday Inn. I walked through a bustling foyer to the lifts where, after a deep breath, ignoring my mounting claustrophobia, I joined a small crowd entranced by the row of digits lighting intermittently above the doors and fidgeted with the letter opener in my pocket. Eventually the lift doors opened and the crowd exiting hustled past the crowd entering. I was the second last to enter. The doors were already closing when the last passenger squeezed in beside me. I felt her body pressing into mine and recognised her fragrance.
‘Level three, right?’ said Pardos, already stretching to push the button without awaiting my confirmation. I felt myself being elevated.
‘I take it this is more than just coincidence,’ I said.
‘I’ve told you what I think about coincidences,’ she replied.
‘I guess you just can’t keep away from me, can you?’ I said.
‘I see your trait’s still intact,’ she answered.
The doors pinged open and we exited.
‘So tell me, how did you know I was going to the third floor?’
‘I didn’t. It was a guess.’
‘It was a good guess.’
‘I’m a good guesser.’
Oh Marina Girl Page 8