Hack

by Graham Johnson

  Let’s Do It To Them, Before They Do It To Us. Phelps had to go, no two ways about it. By patiently asking leading questions, I was able to get Wayne to come out with all kinds of bullshit on tape.

  On the size of his cult: ‘We’ve got about 80 members now.’ (In his dreams. All bollocks by the way – Wayne had never met 80 people in his whole life.)

  On girls: ‘Around 10 are still at school, mainly girls. I’ve had sex with most of them. But we don’t see that as wrong. My current girl is 15 and she has lovely firms breasts. She’ll go for as long as you want her to go . . .’ etc. (I suspected Warhammer Wayne was a virgin himself. But the pervy detail would go down well with the Sunday League footy players that draped the paper over their thighs in the car on the way to the game.)

  Drug dealing: ‘I used to make £200 a day selling speed. But with The Family I get to meet a lot of kids and I’m sure we can build a market there.’

  Arming for a Waco-style siege: ‘I’ve bought a sword and a gun. Weapons are expensive, but we need more to protect ourselves.’

  More ego-massaging and more egging on and within minutes, Phelps has gashed his wrists a little, and was daubing black magic symbols over the face of a teenage girl. However, the pièce-de-résistance of my blag was to persuade Phelps to put on a blood-rites ritual at the local graveyard. Initially, Phelps had said no, explaining that it wasn’t a full moon.

  ‘But I must see how you do it with my own eyes,’ I blagged. ‘You’ve got to teach me how to make a sacrifice so that I can go back to my cult and show them how to do it correctly.’ Phelps and his gang fell for it and later that night we entrapped them into our hire cars and off we went to a stone altar in nearby Sandsfoot Castle. To be fair, it wasn’t hard to blag them. One of the more backward disciples lived in a village where he said the people at the bottom of the hill didn’t speak to the residents at the top because of a feud that had gone on for hundreds of years. It was that kind of scene.

  ‘By the way,’ I said, helping Phelps to get on top of the gravestone. ‘Do you mind if we take some pictures so that I can show our followers exactly what you do?’ Cue photographer Paul Ashton gets out his 15–20 grand’s worth of professional cameras. Within minutes, with a bit of direction from me, Phelps had slashed his wrists with a rusty razor and a 15-year-old girl was sucking out the dripping gore.

  Barely able to contain my laughter, I said: ‘What’s that like?’

  She said: ‘Wayne’s a strong leader. It feels good to belong because we’re so close.’

  Phelps added: ‘I am ready to kill for my followers and they are ready to die in sacrifice for The Family.’

  One of his mates called Bobby chipped in: ‘We do this every month. Wayne’s blood tastes sweet. It’s beautiful. I will die in honour and in battle for the Family.’

  The story made a great splash.

  Front Page Headline: ‘Vampire Sex Cult Preys on Virgins.’

  Inside page headline: ‘Blood Lust. Investigation: Sick Black Magic Sect.’

  Caption: ‘Feeding Frenzy: Maniac High Priest Phelps grips his schoolgirl recruit after forcing her to drink blood from his slashed chest.’

  Suckers: ‘Bobby and Carr feed off Phelps.’

  Strapline: ‘Victim Loretta – Phelps must be stopped before he kills a child – he terrified me.’

  ‘Sick menu – Phelps snacks on Bobby’s arm.’

  Strapline: ‘Twisted Satanist turns teenagers into sex Zombies.’

  Intro: ‘An evil vampire-worship sect has launched a terrifying crusade to lure and defile schoolgirl virgins all over Britain. News of the World investigators witnessed sickening midnight scenes as Satanist high priest Wayne Phelps paraded his latest 15-year-old victim. In the ruins of a Dorset castle the pervert boasted how he robbed the girl’s innocence and forced her to be a sex slave.

  “I enjoy sex with young girls,” he roared, “I’ve even had virgins in graveyards.”

  Already one disturbed victim has been admitted to a psychiatric unit after suicide attempts. But still Phelps’ shameless disciples – dubbed The Family – vow to spread their sleazy web nationwide.’

  It wasn’t long before I was seeing this type of story on the box in the form of Trash TV. Vanessa, Trisha, then The Jeremy Kyle Show were characterised by obscenities, explosive guests and in-studio fighting. The underclass playing up like dancing bears for the underclass watching them at home on daytime telly. The next day I was inundated with herograms. Like a thunder-flash from the gods, the Editor bestowed on me my first picture byline. Proudly, I posed in my Dorset bed and breakfast in my old dogtooth sports jacket while Paul the photographer took my portrait.

  But the ultimate accolade was waiting in my in-tray back at the office. Carefully, I opened the envelope and unfolded the headed notepaper. The deep blue of News of the World letterhead solid like a bank. A herogram from Stuart Kuttner praising me for landing a world-beating exclusive without incurring extravagant costs. He used it to lecture his high-spending reporters. Rebekah flew past in a flurry of red hair: ‘Great hit on the vampire,’ she cooed. ‘Really spooky – the readers love it. We should do more of that kind of thing.’ She smiled knowingly. I wonder what she was cooking up.

  18

  No Excuse

  ‘Sign here,’ bleeped Kuttner, handing me the form for my first cash advance. ‘Thanks, Stuart,’ I said humbly. ‘I’ll spend it wisely.’ The Cunt passed over the envelope containing £800 to his new golden boy. I was a good bet. The cost-cutter. The reporter who delivered like a B-movie producer – on time and on budget. Not like the Fake Sheiks and the Low Level Nevilles of this world, with their helicopters and entourages of bodyguards and tape-transcribers. Their toppy Max Clifford buy-ups wiping out budgets like footballers’ wages. Draining the Cunt of his colour like embalming fluid. The Cunt smiled approvingly at his tame functionary. ‘I won’t let you down,’ I replied, almost clipping my heels together, before backing out of his office gently.

  Flash money for a hooker job. Shirley Ann Lye had been on. ‘Got a facking good one for you,’ she cackled. I could smell her house-white breath down the line. Straight down the Wine Press. In a whirlwind fluster of booze and hangers-on, she intro’d me to the former manager of pub rockers and Live Aid openers Status Quo. A relaxed deal-maker in need of a few quid since a fall-out with the band. The ex-Quo guy told me about the young daughter of a top Law Lord judge-type VIP who was working as a high-class hooker in a London clip joint. Good story. Nice upmarket sleaze – the advertisers’ll get a stiffy on over that. Not to mention our porno mag-reading, woman-hating demographic. Icing on the cake will be a decent Sunday-for-Monday follow in the Mail, whose lower-middle-class readership also loved a good hate. By that time, poor girl will probably have topped herself anyway. All good stuff.

  Before we got off to the sex club to check out the story, Shirley wanted me to meet a couple of shifty-looking, hang-dog ex-coppers in the corner of the Wine Press. One of them was called John Ross, notorious for breaking the story about the death of MP Stephen Milligan, who was found wearing stockings and suspenders with an orange in his mouth. Ross was a former detective sergeant in the Flying Squad who worked closely with the Sun. He was later cleared of bribing a serving officer for a story.

  ‘C’mon,’ Shirley implored, ‘Ross is an important person to know in this game. I’ll introduce you. We can get some good stories off’f ’im and I’ll split the tip fee with him, if they make.’ But I was half-suspicious of delaying tactics. That she had her eye on the £800 flash money in my pocket: a free night out. So I blanked them, fucked them all off. I couldn’t be arsed with coppers, never mind dark-horse ones and early retirement merchants. Too much of a mad, incestuous scene. Hurt, hard stares over the bar. Anyway I had no time. Drunk up. Too much of a bigshot these days. Got enough contacts. I was keen to crack on with the Quo man and the tale of the judge’s daughter.

  ‘Let’s go and destroy her life,’ I said as we hit Fleet Street and hailed a cab. We headed d
own to the hostess bar off Regent Street where the Status Quo guy had made small talk with the girl in question, on a jolly a few nights earlier. Inside, the livestock were parading themselves among the foreign businessmen and Russkie-mafia types. Crammed into a dark holding area above the old-fashioned cabaret floor. Wide-eyed, heavily made up Anne Bancroft look-a-likes. Short leather skirts, hard bodies, fighting age. Gymed-up to death at expensive Chelsea health clubs and kids at private school. You wouldn’t believe how much money these high-class brass make. And you wouldn’t believe the respectable houses they leave behind when they come out to work. Secret lives and desperate housewives.

  Their merry dance involved eyeing up the punters to see if they’re for real or blagging it. Checking out their Rolexes for fakes. Looking for the Arab regulars who’ll take back two or three of them at a time to their Bedouin tents, pitched up on the roofs of the better hotels. None of the girls want to pick up a dud John by accident. A time-waster who isn’t going to drop at least a grand on them for a few hours’ fun.

  After about 20 minutes at the bar, the contact ID’d the target sitting alone under a dim gaslight-style lamp in the corner. Tape on, right over. Sweet nothings were forbidden by the moody-looking management. Unless the punters ordered a bottle of bubbly to go with the raspberry velvet coverlets and false flowers on the cocktail tables next to the disco. No wonder Ray said I would need £800 – one bottle was £150 and the girls were encouraged to get the clients drunk and ply them with more. A basket of thin, reheated school dinner chips was a cool nifty. Who was I to complain? That’s how these places made their graft.

  Shy and pale, I could tell at once that Claire wasn’t really a pushy tart, hell-bent on bleeding me dry. Much younger than the cougar cattle at the bar. Nervously, she fiddled with her auburn hair and I could tell she was as embarrassed as I was. But it wasn’t long before I had her laughing, flirting even by the second bottle. My cover story was that I was a self-made music mogul, who owned a recording studio and a string of coolio indie retail shops. Coyly, she giggled from under hair held in place by one of those posh-girl Alice bands, her head slightly tilted to one side. Something of the Princess Diana about her. Something vulnerable.

  ‘Oh, I wish I had a boyfriend like you,’ she suddenly lamented. ‘My parents would be so proud. You’re young and successful. You’re exciting, and you’ve built up this big business all on your own. You’re the kind of guy they want me to marry.’

  This is going in the right direction.

  ‘What do they do?’ I asked. She tee’d me up like a dream. ‘Your folks, that is . . .’

  ‘Oh, well, my dad’s, well . . .’ she hesitated, so I smiled encouragingly.

  ‘Well he’s a big-wig in the legal profession,’ she whispered, right off the bat.

  ‘Wow, that’s cool,’ I said, lining up my next leading question. ‘D’you mean like a barrister or something?’

  ‘No. Well, yes. Kind of. Literally he’s a big-wig,’ she giggled again. You couldn’t help liking her. ‘He’s a judge.’

  ‘Wow. Mad one.’ I said, trying to appear nonchalant, eyes dipping into my tray of pound-per-chip McCain’s served up by the gangster bastards that ran the place. Claire wasn’t stupid – she’d been to one of the top public schools in the country. I didn’t want to spook her so early on, so I let her fill the pause. Holding your tongue and fighting the urge to work the tape, is one of the hardest things to do on an undercover job. We want her words, not mine. The spectre of the News of the World Legal Manager Tom Crone was lecturing me from his bed, in my head.

  ‘My dad’s kind of well known,’ Claire went on. ‘He’s a judge. Or at least he was. Now he’s been promoted, and he’s actually the boss of all the other judges.’ Insecure, she was relieved to tell me this, as if to put some distance between herself and mutton low-life, jealously looking over from the pen where they waited to be picked out.

  ‘Kind of like the Lord Chancellor kind of thing,’ she continued. ‘But with a different title . . . I don’t know exactly, but he’s quite important anyway.’ Bingo! The story was true – and I had the first key admission on tape. Now I just had to wheedle out his name.

  No problem because then she started spilling her heart out. These tarts and their hearts. The way they carry on.

  ‘But I don’t really get on with my parents.’ she went on. ‘My dad’s a very successful guy, very driven. So is my brother. He came down to London and got a big job, making loads of money. Me, I’ve done nothing. I’m the black sheep, I’ve achieved nothing and I’ve let everyone down. That’s why I’m here, working in this place. Well, at least, until I can get it together anyway.’

  Claire looked a bit red-ringed blubby around her eyes. I clocked the scratches on her bony arms. A self-harmer? Eating-disorder? A St Trinian’s snorter? These left-on-the-shelf IT girls – being posh fucked them up Tamara-style. All that status anxiety, even at an early age. Too dim to cut it in the professions. Too flaky to catch a Cityboy and settle down. I felt sorry for her. She was clearly depressed.

  ‘My dad’d freak out if he ever found out if I was working in this hell-hole, doing this – hostessing, getting paid to go with men.’ The phrase ‘go with’ weighed down on the sentence. I gulped guiltily, draining the dregs of the £35-a-glass relabelled Asda champers. Well, he’s going to fucking flip on Sunday, I thought. When he sees a picture of himself, grinning in his ermine fancy dress, next to a grainy Kodak disposable of his Little Princess, splayed all over my hotel bed in her suzzies. And splashed all over the World’s Greatest Newspaper. M’lud is going to hit the fucking roof, no two ways. I wouldn’t want to be at the next Christmas dinner with them all.

  Hostess bar protocol prohibits Johns from propositioning brasses in the bar. But after 500 pounds’ worth of acidy heartburn, and customary dropsies to the slippery maître d’, Claire was finally given safe passage to leave the premises by an Albanian doorman. Next stop, the hotel. The crucial point in the night.

  The plan was to get Claire to offer me a menu of sexual services, along with a price list on tape. (Legal deal-breaker.) Get her to pose up for some saucy pics. Before making my excuses and leaving. Mentally, I ticked off the 101 things on my legal and journalistic checklist. Before leaving the bar, I slipped off into the cold, smelly bogs – a forgotten-about cost-centre in a vice industry cash cow – and covertly checked the quality of the tape. Flushing the toilet as I went, to hide the noise of the playback. For fuck’s sake – as I suspected. Very crackly and noisy background from the cattle market. Plus the ’70s Saudi-friendly disco music was washing in and out of Claire’s voice recording like a ghost at a séance. Frustratingly, I’d now have to go over all of the previous admissions I’d got out of her in the bar, within the controlled environment of the hotel room, just to make sure we were all shipshape again. The only problem was that I was getting tired now. And it never worked out as good second time as it did the first. Finally, while I was having a piss, I phoned the snapper outside to tell him to get ready to take a picture of Claire and me coming out of the jazz bar. ‘I’ll stand under the street lamp,’ I told him, ‘so there’s enough light.’ Then, a second one of us going into a hotel. This time the lights of the lobby, come Sunday, would illuminate Claire’s sordid double life, for all to see.

  Outside, the night air suddenly knocked me out. Making me a little unsteady on my feet – the bubbles had gone to my head fast. In the cab, I got a bit of the twirlies, battling to stop the enclosed leatherette spinning around. I was losing focus. Inversely, I started talking more jarg to Claire. The more Claire asked me about my pretend life, the more it got real. I started boasting about all the top bands I had signed to my record label – Oasis, the La’s, the Happy Mondays, the Beatles. I told her about my imaginary dance label. Holiday homes on Ibiza and Santorini. Recording studios in Cotswolds country mansions. But it wasn’t only the booze talking. By that time, I had told so many lies in my life, that falsehood now blurred into truth as routine. I actually began
to believe my own blags, and felt more comfortable in them than in the harsher outside world. The irony was that deep down I was trying to escape reality – trying to get away from the job and all the terrible things that went with it.

  Claire was falling for it big time as well. Falling for me, in fact. I began to feel protective of her. After checking into our room, I tried to get focused again. But couldn’t shake the gloom that I’d broken the cardinal rule – never get drunk on a hooker job. My head was getting clouded.

  I realised that she hadn’t asked me for any money yet – you can’t call her a brass if she doesn’t charge money. So I brought up the subject. Astonishingly, she wasn’t really interested. Was this girl really a hooker? Had she done this before? Eventually she agreed to take a few hundred quid off me – an essential element of the story if I was going to describe her as a prostitute.

  As soon as we got inside, Claire jumped on to the bed. Without prompting, she started to peel off her clothes excitedly. Her dress, a dark blue twin set rimmed with white piping and a thin belt. The kind that you might see on a Tory MP’s wife overlaid with pearls, slipped around her ankles.