by Simon Hall
Adam took a slow pace towards Dan. He swallowed hard, but held his ground.
‘If you do that,’ the detective said quietly, ‘you know exactly what it’ll mean.’
‘Oh whoopee fucking do,’ Dan replied, and turned and made for the door.
Chapter Fifteen
ON THE BUTTRESSES OF the war memorial on Plymouth Hoe are brass plaques which bear the names of seven thousand sailors who died in the First World War. Dan had once stood here with Nigel and his two young sons, and to attempt the impossible task of giving them an imaginable idea of the number of people who were killed in the Great War he’d asked James and Andrew to begin reading out the names.
They’d got as far as a couple of hundred before realising the extent of the task. And, as Dan had then said, remember that’s just one single memorial, for one solitary city, for one branch of the armed forces only. Multiply it by many thousands and you start to get some idea of the actual number of people who died.
The boys had gone quiet.
It was here the attack had been carried out. In the far corner of the garden, beneath a statue of a watching Royal Marine, instead of a line of five plaques there were five rectangles of discoloured stone.
‘I don’t believe it,’ Nigel whispered. ‘Of all the shocking stories we’ve covered, this, well …’
His words tailed off. Dan nodded, as did Inspector Paul Getliffe, the tall and balding man Dan had inelegantly chased down the stairs of Charles Cross police station, and to whom he had offered the power of television to help catch the thieves. The gift was duly not just accepted, but hugged and squeezed. The story would be broken on the lunchtime news. The outside broadcast truck was on the way and Lizzie had demanded a report, with a live introduction and summary.
‘Not bad,’ had been her verdict on the story. ‘It sounds like it is actually almost just about possibly worth letting you go off with the cops.’
Dan took that as a compliment, but didn’t raise the question of for how much longer he would be doing so.
Nigel got down onto his knees to film some low shots of the missing plaques, while Dan took the details of the story from the Inspector. The plaques had been stolen sometime overnight. They were held onto the wall by bolts, which had been sheared off. The suspicion was that the plaques would have suffered serious damage, but until they could be recovered it was unclear what state they were in.
The most damning part of the story was that the plaques had probably been stolen for their scrap value. The price of bronze had risen steeply of late. The police estimated the five plaques might fetch a few hundred pounds from a scrap dealer.
The names of around seven hundred men were inscribed on them.
Dan’s rough mental calculation put that at about fifty pence a man.
It was a point he would be making strongly in the script.
And all this at Christmas time, too.
From Adam Breen, Dan had heard nothing. He’d half expected a phone call, formally throwing him off the inquiry, and perhaps a few pointed remarks to go with it, but there had been only silence. He tentatively asked Inspector Getliffe about Adam, but the man had been discreet and said, in an understanding voice, ‘Don’t be too hard on him. He’s got a lot on his plate at the moment, and he’s having a difficult time.’
It was half past eleven, the sun high in the winter sky. Nigel shifted the camera aroundto film the great tower of the memorial, silhouetted against the passing clouds.
The sound of fast footsteps and a low moan made them turn around. A middle-aged woman was staring at the wall where the plaques had stood.
‘No,’ she wailed. ‘My grandfather’s name was on that one.’
She walked slowly down the stepsand ran a hand over the grey and black smears, the only reminder now of the stolen plaque. Dan stepped back and pulled the Inspector with him so Nigel could film. In one shot her reaction summed up the story.
They waited a couple of minutes for her to regain her composure, then Dan introduced himself and asked if she would be prepared to say a few words about the theft.
‘Damn right I would,’ came the forthright reply. ‘But you’d better have a bleep machine for cutting out swearing ready.’
* * *
From the studio, Craig read his cue with just the right note of appalled disbelief.
“Thieves have stolen some of the bronze plaques which commemorate sailors lost in the Second World War from the memorial on Plymouth Hoe. The attack has caused widespread outrage. Our crime correspondent Dan Groves is at the memorial now.”
Dan was standing with the tower behind him, said, “Yes, the memorial here is a poignant reminder of the sailors who died fighting for our freedom, but who have no grave except the sea.’
He began walking, Nigel panning the camera around to follow.
‘More than twenty thousand sailors are remembered here,’ Dan continued, gesturing to some of the bronze plaques he was passing, their faces flashing in the sunlight. ‘But in this corner, thieves have taken five plaques. Now the police are asking for urgent public help in getting them back.’
His report played. The viewers had already seen the wall where the plaques once stood, so Dan started the story with Rachel Parker, her wailing at the sight and her interview. It required a couple of takes before her words were acceptable for a daytime TV audience, and to Dan’s surprise, she hadn’t cried, but what she had to say was powerful nonetheless.
‘To do this – it’s a disgrace. It’s the lowest form of thuggery. It’s despicable. My grandfather and others like him gave their lives for the freedom of people today and to have some of them steal these plaques for a few pounds – well, they’re scum, that’s the only word I can use. Just foul, horrible scum.”
Then came some close ups of the wall and the marks left behind, and a clip of the interview with Inspector Getliffe. He too said what a dreadful crime this was and appealed to the public for help in getting the plaques back.
For his live summary, Dan reiterated that message, asking anyone who might know who was responsible, or had any idea what had become of the plaques, to get in touch with the police. He gave out the Crimestoppers number too.
‘Thanks for all this,’ the Inspector said, after the broadcast. ‘Do you think it’ll get much reaction?’
‘Oh yes,’ Dan replied emphatically.
Sometimes in life, all you can do is wait. As a journalist it was a fate which often befell Dan. Whether it was waiting for a jury to return a verdict, a police officer to emerge from a crime scene to grace the media with a comment, or perhaps even just sitting in the outside broadcast van, waiting for half past six to come around so he could present a live report.
But despite all his experience of it, Dan didn’t do waiting well.
Following the lunchtime news, the police had been inundated with phone calls. Inspector Getliffe said he had never known a more vociferous public response. Hundreds rang in, many just to voice their outrage, but some to say people they knew, or were aware of, or maybe even just thought were odd had been behaving suspiciously. Almost every scrap dealer in the area was reported as having a potential involvement.
Officers were sifting through the deluge of information, looking for the real leads in the barrage of anger. The Inspector thought the answer to solving the case would be in the information, but it would take time to follow it up and to carry out the necessary inquiries.
In the meantime, Dan waited. Lizzie had pronounced the story “pretty good”, praise indeed from her notoriously mealy mouth, but naturally she had immediately followed the words with a series of demands for Wessex Tonight . Another outside broadcast, another cut story, and preferably one that this time revealed the plaques had been found and the evil criminals apprehended. It would be best of all if a baying mob could be filmed outside the police station as the foul gang was brought in to face the vengeful might of richly deserved justice.
It was a shame, she added, that the fine old punishments of being hung,
drawn and quartered, tarred and feathered, publicly stoned, or simply just hanged, were no longer considered acceptable.
She concluded by saying it was a good job she wasn’t a judge, or the Home Secretary, to which Dan felt able to add his most heartfelt agreement.
It was coming up for two o’clock, the day still fine, but the sun now already making its way back down towards the horizon, adding an extra slice of chill to the air.
Dan sent Nigel and Loud back to the studios to get some lunch. For now, there was nothing else they could do. Inspector Getliffe had promised he would call as soon as there were any developments. There was no point trying to film anything else, or edit a new version of the story for later. They would have to see what the afternoon brought. So, for now, all they could do was wait.
Dan headed into town to get himself a sandwich and do some shopping. It was busy, just as he had expected, and he knew he still had no idea what to buy for Kerry. He sent her a text saying it would be lovely to meet at Christmas time, but deliberately avoided specifying when, then bought a pasty and a coffee from a takeaway shop and sat on a bench in the yellow sunshine, watching the hordes of shoppers charging by, and trying to think.
It wasn’t easy. Dan noticed his mind kept slipping to Adam, and wondering how the detective would throw him off the Bray case. He hoped it wouldn’t be an attempt at a public dressing down. His temper had never got the hang of such humiliations, tended to turn them into shouting matches. A quick phone call would be preferable, but so far he’d heard nothing. He wondered if all that would happen would be him turning up at Charles Cross tomorrow, having his pass taken away and being told dismissively to leave.
No doubt accompanied by gawping, grinning faces in each and every window.
Dan got upand started walking slowly past the shop windows, slipping through the human stampede and hoping for inspiration. He stopped at a lingerie shop, the dummies, judging from their expressions, delighted to be wearing a selection of red and black underwear. All that lace and frilly adornment looked itchy and hopelessly uncomfortable to him, but as there was such a mass of it, clearly it had to be ultra fashionable, irresistibly sexy, and all that a woman could ever possibly want.
Dan gazed at the windowand let his eyes run over the models. The prices were remarkably steep for garments made of so little material. The profit margins must be huge. It took him a few seconds to realise a couple of older women were watching him.
‘You’re that guy off the telly,’ one of them cackled.
‘Yes,’ he said resignedly at the dreaded words.
‘Hoping to get lucky?’ the other asked.
As he had apparently met the ageing female version of Morecambe and Wise, Dan thought he would respond in kind.
‘No, it’s a present for my mum,’ he replied.
When they didn’t laugh he added a smile to emphasise the jolly jape. They grinned too, one exposing far more teeth than it should ever be possible to fit in a human mouth, but Dan noticed they had begun edging awkwardly away.
‘It’s all a myth we like that stuff,’ the toothy one said over her shoulder. ‘If I were you I’d get your mum something else.’
Dan walked on, along the high street. He did have a vague memory that gifts of lingerie might not be as welcome amongst women as men thought. He would buy Kerry something else, something more creative and guaranteed to be enjoyed. But despite another half hour’s searching, inspiration continued to prove annoyingly elusive.
He was on the edge of abandoning the thankless questand starting to trudge back towards the Hoe, when another shop window display gave him an idea. Dan popped in, and after a few minutes chat with a very helpful sales assistant, the perfect present was duly purchased.
Loud was already back by the war memorial and engaged in a delightful operation to clean his grimy fingernails with a small screwdriver. He didn’t even have the decency to stop when Dan climbed into the van.
A small posse of media surrounded the memorial, TV crews filming, photographers snapping, reporters waiting, hoping to catch a visiting relative for a comment. It was just as Dan had expected. The story was already running on the national news. A government minister had expressed shock, a philanthropist had pledged as much money as it took to either find the plaques, or have new ones forged.
The story was building momentum nicely.
Dirty El bounced up to the van and poured out some burbled appreciation. Dan had called him earlier to tip the photographer off about the story. His pictures had been bought by all the national papers, earning El a pretty pile. It had lifted his mood to a level sufficient to prompt one of the dreadful rhymes El tended to produce at times when he thought life was favouring him.
‘This crime it’s a dreadful, scandalous horror,
To see the plaques, some chavs come borrow,
We’ve gotta help get ‘em back,
Let justice attack,
But meanwhile, El cashes in with a lorra …’
He waited for a couple of seconds, before adding the missing ‘loot!’
Even the notoriously insensitive Loud looked pained. ‘Yuk,’ pronounced Dan, who could think of no better judgement.
El took a mock bow. ‘Christmas night out on me,’ he babbled. ‘To mark my gratitude. And while we’ve got a mo and El’s luck’s running hot hot hot, any news on getting a snap of the pervy scoutmaster?’
‘No,’ Dan replied quietly. ‘And I don’t think I will have. I suspect my attachment to the police may be coming to an abrupt end.’
It was almost four o’clock. The sky was darkening fast. Time to get on with the edit. Dan made one final call to Inspector Getliffe. Officers were still out on a series of inquiries, some of which were looking promising, but so far there was no definite news about where the plaques might be and who could have taken them.
That meant tonight’s story would look much the same as the lunchtime version. They’d have to put up a couple of lights, so the viewers could see what had happened to the memorial, but the outside broadcast van carried a generator for just such occasions so that wouldn’t be a problem.
Dan again began the story with Rachel Parker, as she was the most powerful of the interviews, then added a clip of the Inspector, but also put in a snippet of interview with a veteran’s group and a local MP. Everyone wanted to voice their outrage on this story.
It was a simple edit and they were done by a quarter to five. Nigel offered to get them a round of coffees from a nearby café while they waited to do the live broadcast, a gift that was gratefully received. The sky was still clear and the evening was rapidly growing colder.
And then, with the work mostly done, the story changed. It was as though fate was in a whimsical mood, and merely awaiting her moment.
Dan’s mobile rang. Inspector Getliffe.
‘We’ve got the plaques.’
‘All of them?’
‘Yep.’
‘What state are they in?’
‘Three OK, two damaged.’
‘Where?’
‘A scrapyard just outside Plymouth.’
It was ten to five. Dan took some directionsand did a couple of quick mental calculations. It would be tight, but just about feasible.
‘Meet us at the yard?’ he said.
‘Now?’
‘Yep. We’ll do five minutes of filming of the plaques, a quick interview with you, then we’ll get it on Wessex Tonight .’
They were lucky. The traffic was light, the hour just before the onslaught of the rush and there were fewer cars on the road with the Christmas holiday. They got to the scrapyard just after five.
It was a sprawling place, thick with the smell of oil, filled with teetering piles of rusting cars and muddy and rutted ground. There were a couple of emaciated and rabid snarling dogs, both fortunately tethered with thick chains, and a welcoming sign which said, “Trespassers will be shot”.
The plaques were laid out on a blanket in the boot of a police car. Three had suffered scratches,
but two were twisted, bent and buckled, as if someone had tried to break them into pieces. Nigel concentrated his shots on those. The scores and marks cut through the columns of the names of the dead men.
It didn’t take much to imagine the viewers’ reaction.
Dan took a quick briefing from the Inspector, they did an interview, then jumped back in the car and headed for the Hoe. But now luck had turned against them. Every road they took faced them with more lines of static cars, rows of red tail lights stretching into the distance.
To save precious time Dan worked on the revised script as Nigel drove. One of the most important principles of news states that the freshest pictures should come first in a report, particularly when they’re as striking as the damaged plaques. But that would mean re-writing and re-editing the whole story, and that would endanger the cardinal rule.
Get it on air. In whatever form, forget the artistry, just beat the deadline.
Dan glanced at the clock. It was coming up to half past five, an hour until Wessex Tonight went out, and they were still sitting in sticky traffic. Time was acutely against them.
There was another way, and it would have to be tonight’s weapon of choice. Known in the news trade as the “Delayed Drop”, it was effectively a tease, the presenter telling the viewers there had been some major development, but without letting them see it until late in the story.
Nigel swore quietly to himself, turned down a back laneand started working his way through the rat runs. The car swung from side to side with his manoeuvres, the sodium streetlights highlighting the concentration on his face. They were making better progress now. Dan called Lizzie and outlined his idea.
‘Done,’ came the instant response. ‘If that’s what it takes. Just make it happen. Now stop wasting time talking to me and get on with it.’
It was twenty to six when they got back to the Hoe. Loud grabbed the tape, quickly spooled through the shots. Dan explained the plan, and the engineer nodded.
‘Bloody good idea. It’ll save me poor heart.’