by Simon Hall
‘That’s a hell of a list,’ an older man grunted, prompting some nods of agreement.
‘Maybe, but it’s what we’ve got to do. We’ll hold a press briefing when we’ve got more to tell you.’
‘Can we name him yet?’ a younger woman asked.
‘We’re not doing so officially, but that’s up to you, of course. His family – what there is of it – is being told now.’
‘And is any of this on the record?’
The woman folded her arms, and there was some muted laughter from the pack.
‘Guess that’s a no then,’ one of the photographers said. ‘So when do we get some snaps and quotes?’
‘When Chief Inspector Breen gets here. He won’t be long.’
Dan just had time to glimpse some of the other reporters’ notebooks. The pages were filled with writing. He had managed only a title, “Lay-by murder.”
That was hardly going to make a story. He looked around, to see if he knew any of the other hacks. One woman looked vaguely familiar.
‘Hello,’ Dan said, above the noise of the rain. ‘It’s, err, Kate, from the Daily Press isn’t it?’
‘Karen, from the Weekly News.’
‘Sorry, yes, of course. So, what did she say? The detective?’
‘Sorry, I haven’t got time to talk at the mo. Got to file some copy. They’ll be doing another briefing later.’
Dan looked around for someone else to ask, but the pack had dispersed, returning to their cars to shelter from the rain. He swore again and jogged back to his own car.
The dashboard clock said it was coming up to nine. The late news was on air at half past ten. It was a fifteen-minute drive back to the studios and it would take at least twenty minutes to cut a report, if they really shifted. So he had to leave here by ten, at the very latest. He had an hour and he possessed no facts and an equal number of pictures.
Thunder rumbled around the sky.
It was not proving to be one of the better days in the life of Daniel Groves.
A thumping on the window startled him. The flattened distortion of a chubby, beaming face pressed up against the glass. The door opened and the soaking figure tumbled untidily in to the passenger seat. Such were the dramatic entrances of Ellis Hughes, the paparazzo known simply as Dirty El, a nickname he had worked hard to win and richly deserved. El’s deviousness in pursuit of a lucrative picture was legendary.
‘Evening, Dan mate. Surprised to see you here. Is there some angle about the local wildlife being frightened off by the shooting then?’
Dan explained that he was now a former environment correspondent, but a serving crime reporter.
‘Yip, yip, yahoo!’ El reached out a dripping hand and shook Dan’s. ‘Welcome to the foul world of filth. You’ll love it. Looks like we’ll be working together plenty now then.’
They’d long been drinking buddies, El living just half a mile down the road from Dan, right in the city centre, but they seldom met on stories. The photographer wasn’t interested in the cute and fluffy animal and countryside tales which were Dan’s staple. The snaps that sold were the shockers, so where there was scandal, there was El.
Which could now be very useful indeed.
‘What do you know about what’s happened then?’ Dan asked.
El looked puzzled. ‘Didn’t you get that briefing?’
‘No. I got here too late.’
‘Didn’t you get a tip-off?’
‘No,’ said Dan patiently.
‘So you don’t know nothing?’
This time Dan didn’t bother replying. El grabbed one of Dan’s scarves from the back seatand started drying himself off. ‘You got to get up to speed mate,’ he chuckled. ‘You’re so way behind you’re not even off the starting blocks. You’re trying to race Formula One in a Robin Reliant.’
Dan freed the scarf from El’s grip. It was his favourite. ‘So, what’s happened?’
‘It’s Bray, Dan mate. Big bad Edward Bray, the bastard businessman. He’s got his comeuppance. Someone’s potted him. Boom, boom, bye bye Bray! It’s a corker of a story. Everyone’s gonna want the piccies. El’s bread’s in the oven and it’s baking beautifully! Gotta go, think I see the big boss cops coming.’
El was out of the car door and lumbering inelegantly back towards the cordon. Dan groaned, briefly closed his eyes, then followed.
Nigel had arrived and was getting the camera out of the boot. He spotted Dan heading for the cordon and followed.
‘What’s going on?’ the cameraman asked. ‘I just got this call saying scramble and that you’d meet me here. Someone said you were doing crime now.’
‘We’re doing crime.’
‘Are we?’
‘Yep.’
‘So what’s going on? What happened?’
Dan wasn’t surprised to find he didn’t want to talk about it. ‘I’ll explain later. For now, we’ve got an hour and a bit to get something sensible together. Let’s get on with it.’
The pack had gathered again and Nigel pushed his way through, Dan beside him, holding the microphone. Positioning was all in a media scrum. The closer you were to the front, the better your shot and the clearer the sound.
There was a little resistance from the other journalists, but not much. This briefing felt different from earlier. No longer a gaggle, now the hacks stood orderly and arranged, like a class of children facing a feared teacher.
They’d formed a neat semi-circle, and had left a respectful distance between themselves and the focus of their attention; a tall and lean man, with dark hair and a swarthy complexion. He wasn’t wearing a coat, sheltered from the unrelenting rain by an umbrella the woman detective was holding above him. Despite the weather, he was dressed in a fine dark suit, clearly bespoke and expensive, and his shoes had somehow managed to evade the sticking mud and remain impeccable, even shining in the lights of the TV cameras.
El raised his cameraand loosed off a series of snaps. The man’s eyes flicked to him, narrowing, and El dropped the camera and mumbled an apology.
‘Who is he?’ Dan whispered.
‘Adam Breen. Greater Wessex’s top detective. He does all the big cases. You know it’s a singer and dancer of a story when he’s about.’
The man finished scanning the hacks, nodded to himself, and spoke. His voice was strong, effortlessly dominating the noise of the downpour.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming here this evening. You’ll appreciate enquiries are at an early stage, and so there’s only a limited amount I can tell you. But what I can say is this. We were called here at six o’clock this evening, when we found a man’s body. Paramedics confirmed he was dead. He had been shot at close range. I am assembling a team of detectives, and a major inquiry is getting underway. I would appeal to anyone who might have been passing here earlier, or thinks they know anything about what happened to get in touch. Thank you.’
A pause as the hacks finished their notes, and then came the questions.
‘Is it Edward Bray?’
‘I know some of you believe you are already aware who the victim is, but we are not confirming his or her name at the moment.’
‘What was the murder weapon?’
‘I can tell you it was a shotgun.’
‘Have you got any suspects?’
Adam Breen flicked at a piece of fluff which had attached itself to his sleeve. ‘Aside from the entirety of the human race, it’s too early at the moment to have any suspects.’
‘Was the victim killed here?’
‘We believe so.’
‘And he died instantaneously?’
‘Yes, we think so. Now, are there any more questions?’
Dan was writing fast, taking down the details. It was some story. He thought fast, wondered if he had all the information he needed. He was now a crime correspondent, however unwitting and unwilling, and it was a matter of pride for a good hack to pose a smart, thoughtful and perceptive question at a news conference. Sometimes it was simply to ge
t an answer, often just to show you were there and that you had the guts and nous to do it.
Maybe it was time to make his mark, to let the other hacks know a new boy was in town.
‘Err, Mr Breen?’ Dan heard himself saying.
‘Yes?’
He had the man’s attention. The camera whirred as Nigel zoomed in the shot for the close-up. The microphone was poised.
All was ready. It was time for the first question of his new job.
Better make it a good one. Sharp and slick. Professional and cool. Penetrating and evocative.
A question all the other journalists would envy.
The trumpet fanfare to herald the coming of a new age.
‘Do you think this was a …’ Dan hesitated, wondered just what it was he was going to ask. But all eyes were on him. There was no stopping now.
‘… was this a – umm – a professional hit?’
There was an odd silence. The detective studied him, folded his arms. ‘A “professional hit”?’
‘Err, yes.’
A couple of chuckles rose from the pack. A radio reporter whispered something about the rebirth of Chicago in the 1930s. All the hacks, all the photographers were staring at Dan.
And all were grinning.
It may not have been quite the mark he intended to make.
‘No,’ Adam Breen said finally, and his voice sounded wry. ‘I do not think this was a “professional hit”, as you so eloquently put it. In my experience, practiced assassins rarely lurk in forsaken lay-bys on rainy nights in the hope of finding their prey, nor do they use shotguns as their weapon of choice.’
The official television rule book says a reporter does his own little address to the eagerly watching world – a piece to camera – when a story suffers a scarcity of pictures and he has important information to impart. Or, sometimes, when he needs to look the viewer in the eye because he’s analysing or assessing a situation to give his expert summary, or perhaps simply when he needs to show he’s there, at the very centre of events.
The unofficial addendum says it’s simply about vanity. And it was surely the moment to announce the arrival of Wessex Tonight ’s new Crime Correspondent.
If he was going to have to stand out in the rain to get a story he might as well reap some glory for it.
When Adam Breen had retreated from the pack, Dan told Nigel to keep recording and did his spiel. He waited for his friend to film the lay-by, the constables on sentry duty and the forensics officers coming and going then took the camera tape and drove back to the studios.
Jenny was on the late shift and waiting. ‘Two rush edits in the space of a few hours,’ she noted. ‘You spoil me. And congratulations on the new job. I did warn you to watch out.’
It was a simple edit and they were finished by a quarter past ten. Dan started the report with pictures of the scene, talked about the discovery of a man’s body and the police beginning a murder investigation. The only tricky editorial issue was whether to suggest the victim was Edward Bray, but as the police couldn’t yet say whether his relatives had been told Dan had no trouble in deciding against it.
Ithad been drilled into Dan from the very start that one of the strongest rules of television, of all media in fact, is that bereaved people should never learn of their loss from a broadcast, newspaper or website report. If there is no good way to break bad news then there is a least worst method. That requires the input of sensitive humanity and certainly not the efforts of a hack.
Instead, Dan hinted at it, reported the victim was thought to be a well-known local businessman. He used a clip of Adam Breen, saying the man had been shot at close range and that a major investigation was getting underway. The story concluded with Dan’s piece to camera, telling the viewers the police wanted any witnesses to come forward.
As they checked the report back, Dan found himself wondering which of Edward Bray’s many enemies had been hiding in the rain and darkness of a lay-by, waiting with a shotgun, finally resolved on a course of action and ready to end a life. The slight pressure of a finger on a trigger, an echoing blast, a flare of fire and the shock of sudden death in one short second.
It reeked of hate and loathing, a septic grudge long nurtured and an irresistible lust for revenge. It was the stuff of books.
Dan wandered slowly downstairs to his car. It took a while to notice the rain had stopped. He aimed a grateful nod at the sky and drove the half mile home.
When he got back to the flat, he let Rutherford out and watched the dog scrabble around the corner to the garden. Dan stood in the doorway and gazed up at a clearing of stars in the night sky. He didn’t once think of the tablets in the bathroom cupboard, or the whisky in the kitchen, both of which he had feared would be needed to help him through the dark hours of the coming night.
He was too busy wondering what tomorrow would bring, as the hunt for the person who killed Edward Bray began.
He had an idea too. One which, if he could pull it off, would prove immensely helpful and even more fascinating.
Chapter Three
THERE ARE DAYS IN the darkest pits of December and January, the dreaded nadir of the sullen English winter, when it never truly gets light. The best you can hope is for the night to reluctantly give way to an opaque greyness at somewhere approaching nine o’clock in the morning, and for that dour, slatey state to persist until about three in the afternoon, when it simply gets dark again.
This was one of those days. But Dan hardly noticed.
He woke early, soon after six, feeling awake and refreshed, and took Rutherford for a run before getting in to the office well before eight. He didn’t go into the newsroom, that would be to invite all kinds of incredulous comments, and, more importantly, distractions. Instead Dan made straight for the corner of the building that was the News Library, unheralded repository of almost fifty years of the wisdom of the South-west. Since the inception of Wessex Tonight no important event had unfolded in the region that wasn’t recorded in pictures, interviews and commentary here.
Here too was Edward Bray, a living memory, and Dan wanted to get a better sense of the man.
He checked the computer’s index, rifled through the lines of shelves of video tapes, found the ten or so which contained stories on Bray, sat at one of the players and began to watch. Dan could vaguely recall some of the reports about him, most, as El had so memorably put it last night, on the theme of Bray the Bastard, at least in subtext. But what he discovered was both a surprise and a puzzle.
The first stories fitted the stereotype. There were a couple, dating back several years. Bray was a property manwho owned scores of houses and flats in Plymouth, and a change in the law had prompted him to remove a swathe of tenants before they accrued powerful new rights over how long they could stay in their homes, and what they could demand of the landlord.
Some of the people had tried to fight, so many in fact that two days had been set aside for the dozens of hearings at Plymouth County Court.
The report started with a group of people standing outside court, chanting “Save our homes, save our families.” Some were waving placards, all bearing the words “Bray the Homebreaker”. There were men, women and children too, even a couple of babes in arms, wailing along with the cacophony.
The reporter explained the protest was to draw attention to their cause, forty families facing eviction from Bray’s properties. As the day went on, family after family emerged from court, almost all in tears, all saying they had lost and would be evicted within a month. By the end of the day, even the judge had expressed sympathy with the people brought before her, but had also made it very clearthat the law was quite straightforward. If the landlord wanted the families out, then out they had to go.
The most powerful interview was with a man called Andrew Hicks. His wife stood beside him, her face hidden behind her hands, her muffled sobbing audible. He hugged her closeand told the reporter, “We’ve lived in that house for nine years. We moved there to care for my mum, who�
��s been getting more and more frail. She’s just over the road. We’ve got friends all along the street. We love it. We were going to start our own family there, when the time was right. And now he’s thrown us out for no better reason than that he’s worried we might make him splash out a few hundred quid on some decorating.” Hicks’s voice broke, before he rallied and finished with a choking, “The man’s got no heart. Bray’s a bastard, pure and simple.”
The next story came from the following night. There were more protests at court, but this time the banners had changed. Andrew Hicks’ emotive motif had found resonance. All read. “Bray the Bastard”. But the outcome of the day remained a familiar one. Another twenty families facing eviction.
There was no interview with Bray in either report. He’d refused to speak to any of the media. The best Wessex Tonight had managed was a snatched shot of him disappearing into a taxi. But even in that, Bray managed to convey his feelings. Behind his back, he flicked a V sign at the camera.
Dan tapped the desk in mock applause. The man was a pantomime villain. All he needed was a black cape, a fiendish cackle and a damsel in distress to tie to a railway line and the image was complete.
There was another report, dating from a few months later, when Bray evicted yet another swath of tenants from more of his houses. This time an MP got involved, pleading with the government for a change in the law. But the wheels of democracy never grind fast, if ever they grind at all, and the plea was briefly pontificated upon before being entirely ignored.
A year later came another story, and this time it was edged with new fury. Bray suffered days of protests outside his offices before the issue quietened. Some of the demonstrators were positively frothing and near-apoplectic. It was, Dan thought, the businessman’s own daft miscalculation. This time, Bray had picked not on mere expendable humans, but instead, defenceless animals, and, even worse, that bastion of English society, most treasured and untouchable of pets, the domestic feline.
The Wessex Home for Unwanted Cats was in financial trouble and in desperate need of a saviour. A fine Georgian building, just outside the city centre, it could hardly have been more attractive to a property developer. Word went round that Bray was in talks about its future. But this rumour had a most unexpected twist; that on this occasion the secretive businessman was motivated not by money but emotion. He was, it was said, a cat man himself; he had a couple of much favoured felines of his own.