by Paul Ilett
Twigg wasn’t about to give her the pleasure of seeing him rattled or upset. And he certainly wasn’t going to let her think he doubted his own judgement. “So, amid this melodrama you’ve just inflicted upon me, all you basically have to report is that a few people have denied our story,” he replied. “Which is what we expected anyway.”
“We look foolish and desperate.”
Twigg smiled, opened his laptop and started to type. “He’ll be booed off the stage tonight,” he said, without looking up. “And all this negative publicity has created a rift with his partner. He’s not back in London just for the Brits. He’s here because he and his other half have separated.”
Oonagh’s eyes grew wider and wider. “What? What on earth are you saying?” she asked, with obvious frustration. “Booed off stage? Separated? Says who?”
Twigg sat back in his chair and crossed his arms. “We will. Tomorrow,” he replied, cheerfully.
CHAPTER 12
Derek Toulson had despised Jason Spade from the moment they first met. He had nothing against the paparazzi in general, but it infuriated him when poorly educated people earned more than he did. And Derek knew Jason earned a lot more. Indeed, he suspected Jason had amassed a personal fortune that ran well into seven figures. During the late 90s, when Jason’s infamy was at its peak, there had been a well-publicised bidding war for his services with a flood of offers from across the world including tatty US celebrity magazines and European tabloids. But Howard Harvey put a stop to all attempts to poach his star photographer by agreeing an exclusive and extremely lucrative contract the likes of which no photographer had seen before, or since.
Derek, on the other hand, had joined the company only a few years earlier and hadn’t negotiated a particularly good deal for himself. He couldn’t bear the thought that he earned less than a man he considered little more than a fat, flatulent, badly dressed pervert who seemed to do little else but lumber around the building leaving the pungent pong of body odour in his wake. But he didn’t hate Jason just because of the money. It was also the disproportionate amount of clout that Jason had within the Harvey News Group. He resented the way that Jason’s name was spoken with reverence by most of the staff at the Ear. It was the sort of respect, perhaps even dread, that he liked the mention of his own name to generate.
But Jason was a big hitter at the Ear: he was in another league to Derek and Derek knew it. Jason had a special relationship with all the key players like Howard, Twigg, Valerie and Colin, and no matter how hard he tried, Derek had continually failed to elevate himself above a supporting role. Twigg merely tolerated him, Howard would often get his name wrong and Gayesh had used him to write his kids’ CVs and job applications. Even recently, Sam Harvey had refused his requests for a one-to-one, instead meeting him en masse with the other senior staff.
That scalding sense of irrelevance was the main reason Derek took so much pleasure in bullying his own staff. It sickened him to feel so unimportant while a pleb like Jason swanned around like he owned the place. During his years in local government, he had been at the centre of everything. He had sat at the top table, been a part of all those meetings which took place behind closed doors and influenced pretty much every decision across the authority, and he made sure the Jason Spades of the world knew their place and stayed there. That was not the case at the Daily Ear, however, and Derek knew it wasn’t a situation that could be easily changed. Together, Jason and the others had been bonded by a blaze of public fury and one of the fiercest media storms the UK had ever witnessed. The uproar that followed Pearl Martin’s suicide had been unprecedented and almost everyone believed it would close the Ear and potentially land some of its senior staff in prison.
Just as it looked as though the game was up, Twigg had engineered the most astonishing fight back. He booked Colin onto every daytime TV show that would have him, set Valerie loose against the presenters of Newsnight and Today, publicly appointed Jason as chairman of a new photographers’ standards committee and then called in every favour the paper had. Rumour had it Twigg had even pressed the Prime Minster into pulling a few strings to stop any criminal charges being brought. In the end, the storm passed and they all survived to fight another day. It was a unique experience that had linked Jason with the others in a special way and it had all happened several years before Derek had joined the company. The inner sanctum had remained closed to him ever since.
But Adam Jaymes’ Project Ear had provided him with hope. It had given him the opportunity to put himself at the centre of the drama and finally infiltrate the top team. By the time Adam Jaymes had uploaded his final exposé, Derek fully intended to have the keys to the inner sanctum and blocked entry to Jason Spade forever. “You’re the biggest risk we have,” he growled at Jason, who was sitting on the other side of his desk looking barely awake. “A great big, fat, stinking risk.” Derek’s office door was closed, but he knew his voice carried beyond the wall of glass. He wanted his team outside to hear him and not just so they would know he was putting Jason Spade in his place. He wanted them to see him taking on someone many considered untouchable. No one, Derek had decided, was beyond his grasp anymore.
He leant over his desk and pointed his finger within inches of Jason’s face. “So,” he continued, a dribble of hate-filled saliva escaping from the corner of his mouth. “You need to tell me now, anything you have that Adam fucking Jaymes might use against us. Anything at all, I need to know it now.”
Jason didn’t flinch. He sat, a mountain of flesh slumped onto a chair, and stared at Derek with a puzzled expression as though he couldn’t quite understand why some jumped up PR guy was even speaking to him. A few moments passed quietly and nothing was said. The only noise was Jason’s crackling, rasping breath and the occasional creak of his chair. And just as Derek was about to enquire if Jason was having a stroke, the photographer replied with a stern voice, “I don’t like people poking their finger in my face.”
“Perhaps you’d respond more effectively to a cattle prod,” Derek replied, withdrew his hand and sat down. “You clearly haven’t been paying attention. I would have expected you to be the first person through my door when Adam Jaymes started his campaign against us. I did not expect to have to chase after you.”
“I’ve been busy,” Jason said, gruffly.
“Too busy counting your money?” Derek replied through curled lips, unable to keep his resentment at bay. But he’d given himself away, and Jason’s sudden smile made him immediately regret what he had just inadvertently revealed.
“No, some of us have work to do,” Jason said, “and real work too, not just poncing around with a flip chart.”
“You fat wanker!” Derek screamed and lurched out of his seat so he could yell directly into Jason’s face. But before he could get his feet solidly onto the floor, Jason shot up from his chair, grabbed Derek’s arm and in a single, lightning fast move spun him around and wedged him face down onto the desk with his hand pushed tightly up his back towards his shoulder blades. Derek screamed again, this time in pain as he felt his joints in his arm and shoulder squeezed and stretched so far it seemed like they would snap. “No, no don’t!” he squealed, through the half of his mouth that wasn’t jammed against the surface of his desk.
Through the big glass wall, he could see his team pretending they weren’t watching what was going on presumably, he thought, so they would all have an excuse for failing to come to his aid. But he could see at least three of them surreptitiously taking pictures on their phones.
“You listen to me,” Jason wheezed into Derek’s ear. “I don’t put up with shit like this from some jumped up Johnny-come-lately like you.” He pushed Derek’s arm even further up his back, and smiled as he heard a gentle clicking noise from Derek’s shoulder.
Derek squeaked, his voice high-pitched and frail. “I ... I think you just dislocated my shoulder.”
“You speak to me like that again ... in fact, you so much as look at me again, and I’ll rip your fucking arm
from its socket and beat the living crap out of you with the stump.” With that, Jason pushed himself off Derek’s back, stood upright and brushed his podgy hand through his own hair.
Derek turned round, rubbing his shoulder, and sat onto his desk, gently shaking with the shock of what had just happened. “I’ll have you fired for this,” he snivelled. “I’ve got witnesses. A whole fucking office of witnesses.”
But with an alarming calmness, Jason just grinned at him. “Go ahead. Make your little complaint. See how many seconds pass before you’re asked to clear your desk.” And then, with a deep growl from his behind, he released the most nauseating stink into Derek’s office which he then tried to wave in Derek’s direction. “A little something to remember me by,” he said with a big smile and left the room, closing the door tightly behind him.
Derek covered his mouth and nose with his hand and remained on his desk, unable to move. He knew he had nowhere to take his complaint. All of those HR barriers that had protected him from staff complaints over the years were there four times over for Jason. Derek knew he was dispensable, and that Jason was not. And if he complained to the police he’d effectively make himself unemployable. Twigg would make sure of that. His one consolation was the knowledge that Jason was definitely going to be on Adam Jaymes’ hit list. How could he not? And at least Derek could make it clear to Twigg and Sam that he had tried to prepare for that eventuality but had, instead, been brutally assaulted. He then shifted round on his bum ever so slightly, and glared through the glass wall at his team. He knew that for the rest of the week, he was going to make their lives a living hell. Every single fucking one of them.
Everyone in the newsroom was on their feet applauding and cheering as Colin and Valerie made a heroic return, hand-in-hand. It was a perfectly orchestrated moment, devised to send a strong message of defiance to Adam Jaymes and the outside world that the Daily Ear, once again, was down but not out. Twigg had made it clear at the morning meeting that he wanted to give Colin and Valerie a big welcome back, and that he expected nothing less than a standing ovation. Derek had then briefed the staff about what they could and could not do. And on this occasion, just this once, they were allowed to take pictures and tweet them but only if they used the specific hashtag #pressfreedom.
It was a moment of triumph that briefly lifted the spirits of the Ear’s editorial team. With Sam Harvey at his side, Twigg shouted across the newsroom and requested quiet. Apart from a few ringing phones, the enormous office and its dozens of reporters fell silent. “Colleagues,” he bellowed, “I’m not going to lie to you! It’s been tough. And I believe we have some great challenges yet to come. But this is a great newspaper, with great staff. The best. And we have been through far worse than this in the past. We have a job to do, and we’re going to keep on doing it. Whatever Adam fucking Jaymes throws at us!”
Then, with the newsroom applauding once more, he and Sam officially welcomed back Colin and Valerie and they all retired to the editor’s office. “Oonagh’s got her team monitoring Twitter and the newsfeeds,” Sam said, as the four of them sat around Twigg’s desk, “so we’ll see how it goes”. Valerie managed to stop herself from rolling her eyes, but did let slip a quiet groan at the use of Oonagh’s name.
“I think it’s time we turned up the heat on Jaymes, and some of our competitors who are enjoying this far too much,” Colin said. “The BBC’s all over it like a rash. Usual bollocks, of course. Too many BBC journalists with too much time to think up too many stupid news angles. But they started it, with that fucking Newsnight episode. We haven’t done enough to question what the BBC’s role is in all this.”
“We’re looking into that at the moment,” Twigg replied. He could see Colin was champing at the bit, ready to dive straight back into a face-off with the BBC. But he needed his senior team to be prepared and clever. Twigg knew he had made mistakes over the previous few days. He had allowed his anger and frustration to get the better of him, and as a result he had forsaken his methodical way of working in favour of knee-jerk decisions. As much as he hated to admit it, Oonagh had been right to question his judgement. His attempts to turn the tables on Jaymes had failed miserably and, prompted by his confrontation with Oonagh the day before, he had taken some time out to review public opinion, the mood in Parliament and the feedback from their own readers. Felicity had pulled the information together for him, and it had not made pleasant reading. It was clear, on this occasion, that there was no margin for error. The public was enjoying every second of Project Ear and was waiting with baited breath for Adam Jaymes’ next exposé. The Ear’s own readers were only slightly more on side, but largely seemed to think it would be good for the senior staff to eat some humble pie for a change. And most disappointing of all was the realisation that his closest allies in the police and Parliament were keen to keep the scandal, and Twigg himself, at arm’s length. The Daily Ear was on its own. “Sam and I have discussed this at length, Colin. We have to be seen to be taking this on the chin, and then carrying on as normal,” he said.
“Are you mad?” Valerie said, with an uncharacteristic tone of dissent. She and Colin stared at Twigg, as though he had committed the worst of betrayals.
Twigg waited a moment, expecting Sam to wade in and support him. But, as usual, Sam sat quietly on the side-lines waiting for the conversation to happen around him, not with him. “I don’t want to get involved in a wider argument with the rest of the media,” Twigg said, “because we will lose that argument.”
“You don’t know that,” Colin argued, clearly frustrated. “If we don’t widen the discussion, the focus will stay on the Ear. And this isn’t just about us, it’s about press freedom.”
“No one is on our side, Colin,” Twigg stated, loudly. “Like it or not, Adam Jaymes’ rationale for Project Ear has won enormous sympathy with the public and, shamefully, with many parts of the media too. We cannot allow ourselves to look like hypocrites and if we kick up too much of a stink about Project Ear that is exactly how we will look. So they’ll be no legal action, no injunctions, no more editorials.” Twigg paused and then with a sigh added, “And, for the time being, no more negative stories about Adam Jaymes.”
“We’ll look like fools,” Valerie said, her voice beginning to grate with dismay and anger. “Did you see the newsstands after that horrific Newsnight episode where they sandbagged poor Colin? Every single paper had the story on their front page apart from the Daily Ear. Our lead story? More tripe from our royal correspondent and his obsession that Princess Diana had Dodi Fayed’s love child. I have to say, Leonard, that I think you and Sam would see things differently if you were sitting where Colin and I are sitting right now.”
Twigg stared at her, and nodded to acknowledge her point. “Well, perhaps in a few days that’s exactly where I’ll be,” he replied. “But for now, my decision stands. Now go on, the pair of you, back to work.”
Valerie and Colin returned to the newsroom. They didn’t speak, but as they went their separate ways they exchanged a look of sadness that exposed their mutual feeling of complete betrayal. Valerie could feel an anger swelling through her veins and decided to channel it into her next piece of work – an annual round-up of the top ten women she believed were too ugly for TV.
“Tough, but I think you handled that very well,” Sam said.
Twigg huffed. “Yes, I did, didn’t I?”
Sam went to stand up from his chair, but shuffled back down and then looked towards Twigg for an indication that he was willing to hear a suggestion. Sam wasn’t used to this, playing fast and loose with his own ideas, but he knew the stakes were high for the Ear and himself and was willing to stick his neck out, just this once.
“You want to say something?” Twigg asked, a little surprised to see Harvey Jr putting his head above the parapet for a change.
“A proposition, actually,” Sam replied. He paused for a moment, and hoped his voice wouldn’t waver while he delivered his idea to Twigg. It wasn’t entirely his idea, of course
. He’d had a phone conference with some of his old team in LA to brainstorm the situation. But he had organised it on the hoof, with little time to properly brief them about the history behind Project Ear and Adam Jaymes’ grievances against the Harvey News Group. They also didn’t completely understand the complexities of the British media and its relationship with the cult of celebrity. So, on this occasion, he was taking a risk and putting forward an idea that was mostly his own. Because he knew that, apart from his father, Twigg was the one person he had to convince of his worth. Without his endorsement, Sam would not be able to maintain his reputation in London as a credible business person. “As you made clear, we have no supporters. None of any value, anyway,” he said. “And I know our sales are, quite bizarrely, going up at the moment but that’s just in the short term. Those extra readers are just here to gawp, not remain loyal.”
“I don’t disagree. Your point?”
“Adam Jaymes has us on the ropes. And, by the sounds of things, he’s barely started. I’ve looked over the reputation management reports Derek has prepared. And Leonard, if I’m honest, they worry me greatly. There are a few in there that could close the Ear tomorrow, and land most of its senior staff in court.”
Twigg didn’t respond. He knew what Sam was talking about. Those historical indiscretions that had seemed routine in their day but, in these more enlightened times, would now be considered criminal.
“The only way to close this situation down now, and quickly, is to invite Adam Jaymes in to meet us. We can listen to everything he has to say and find out exactly what he wants us to do. I’m not talking surrender, just an amicable truce.”
Twigg glanced to the ceiling as though drinking in Sam’s words and giving them great consideration. But as he turned back to Sam, it was clear he had simply taken a moment to calm himself before responding, and had the look of a strict schoolteacher who had caught a boy talking at the back of the class. “I’ll be speaking to your father about this later today,” he said, his voice filled with contempt. He waved his hand towards the door and then opened his laptop and started to type, dismissing Sam and his hare-brained scheme without a second thought. Sam had never been on the end of Twigg’s anger before and he suddenly understood how such a little, unassuming man could carry so much gravitas. There was something inexplicably frightening about being in Twigg’s bad books. As he left the office and made his way through the newsroom, he began to understand why so many hard-nosed journalists suddenly became speechless in the man’s presence through a profound fear of saying the wrong thing. Over the years the news team had even created a new word, Twanic, which described a sudden uncontrollable fear or anxiety resulting from a missed call from Leonard Twigg. This reaction was so commonplace and well documented that the news desk just used the word like it was an everyday thing. “Dave’s on the phone, having a Twanic attack. Anyone know why Twigg wants to speak with him?”