“Somebody has.” The rage I’ve been withholding is nearly uncontrollable now. “What’s the trick this time, Frank?”
“There’s no fucking trick,” Wayne shouts and swings around to exhibit the photograph to my colleagues. “See what it says? “Have a good life, Kylie,’ and it’s him saying.”
“Mr Goodchild, Mrs Goodchild,” Paula murmurs. “I’m going to have to ask—”
“Don’t try getting rid of us,” Wayne warns her. “We’re not on any fucking show now.”
“Give me a moment, Paula.” I don’t want them to leave until I’ve exposed Patterson’s trick to everyone. “Mrs Goodchild, you must have seen what happened,” I say as gently as I can. “Your friend Frank made it look as if he was being led to me when he knew that was there all the time.”
“He didn’t, Mr Wilde.”
“I really do find that hard to believe.”
“Don’t you fucking call Marg a liar.”
“Wayne,” she pleads, but he looks unwilling to be calmed, and Paula lifts the phone on Trevor’s desk. “Will you send someone up to Waves, please?” she says. “There’s a disturbance.”
“Mr Wilde.” Kylie’s mother seems as anxious to resolve the situation as I am. “Mr Jasper didn’t know your picture was in Kylie’s album,” she says. “Nobody did.”
“Kylie had a rubber band round it when we got it from her room,” her husband says. “Mr Jasper wanted something she’d had a long time.”
“There’s no band on it now,” I have to point out
“It snapped in my bag.” Mrs Goodchild seems to grow aware of the caricature of Mohammed, and hurriedly closes the album. “It was shut like this when I gave it to Mr Jasper,” she assures me, “and he never looked inside.”
I’m sure she must believe this. Her husband plainly wants me to, but Wayne looks eager for me to deny it. Instead I say “I’m sorry, I honestly can’t remember her at all.”
“If you ever met her you’d remember,” Wayne protests, “and you fucking did.”
“Mr Wilde,” Kylie’s mother says, “could you have sent her your picture?”
“Nobody’s ever asked for that, I’m sorry.”
“I knew you hadn’t,” says Jasper—says Patterson.
This is so blatantly opportunistic that I turn on him. I’ve clenched my fists and opened my mouth before Paula hurries to let in two uniformed security men. I could almost feel they’re here to restrain me—that’s the effect they have, so that I succeed in saying only “If I remember anything about your daughter I’ll be in touch.”
“Fucking make sure,” Wayne mutters.
Paula watches the security men usher him out, followed by Patterson and the Goodchilds. As soon as the door closes she says “Better not keep the listeners wondering what’s happened to you, Graham.”
“I’m sorry if I was responsible for any of that.”
“I expect Waves will survive,” she says and waits until I hurry into the control room. Did Trevor or Christine see the photograph of Kylie Goodchild? I haven’t time to ask, and perhaps this isn’t the place either. “Thanks for filling in, Trevor,” I say to the microphone as well as to him. “I’ve just been trying to help Kylie Goodchild’s parents. I wish I could have done more, but I’ve nothing to be ashamed of.”
10: On The Site
We’re crossing the road by the Palaces when Christine says “Can you still not remember her, Graham?”
“That’s right, I really can’t remember.”
“No need to shout at me.”
I’ve only raised my voice to be heard over the howl of a police car. I don’t even know why she was reminded of Kylie Goodchild, since Jasper’s posters have been replaced by advertisements for a production of Carousel. The police car overtakes on the wrong side of the road, spattering my feet with a remnant of this morning’s rain, as I say “I said I remembered the class from her school. There was nothing to single her out, that’s all.”
“Slim and getting on for my height with long hair.”
“How many girls would that be? Anyway, you don’t need to tell me what she looked like.”
“She had a lot to say for herself.”
“Give me some examples.” When Christine shakes her head I say “There you are, you don’t remember as much as you think.”
“I know she had plenty to say to you. She seemed to want to talk to you more than anybody else.”
“If I didn’t know better I’d say you were jealous.”
“You should know better.” Christine falls silent while a second police car races past, flashing its disco lights, and then she says “I expect her boyfriend would have been.”
“The thug with one word on his mind?” The thought of Wayne prompts me to add “He wasn’t with her class that day that you remember.”
“I don’t believe so. He’d have seen you sign the photo for her, wouldn’t he?”
I don’t seem to have wanted this answer. As we reach Waves a train worms its way around an elevated bend, so that the photographs below the windows look as if they’re being folded up. The lobby doors sidle aside, and the guard at his desk gives me a sharp look—perhaps he’s more on the alert since he had to deal with Wayne. I’d show him my badge if he didn’t know me well enough.
It’s Obesity Obliteration Day. The jingle and the slogan for Wilde Card shut me into my headphones, and then my voice does, never quite conforming to how it sounds inside my head. It’s flatter, more Mancunian, and is that what everybody except me hears when I speak? “Just water for my lunch today,” I’m saying. “That’s my gesture for the occasion. I hope nobody thinks it’s a rude one…”
This is my bid for the style Paula thinks our new owners would prefer, and I think it makes me sound like a Frugo cashier chatting at a checkout. The callers want to argue, though not about this. Dave from Mostyn objects that the name of the day is offensive—that we ought to say overweight, not obese. Julie from Withington thinks it isn’t offensive enough—that the greedy are offending the rest of us by eating too much of our food and expecting us to pay for their bad health and just by making us have to look at them. Hilary from Whalley Range maintains that parents of corpulent children should be required to wear T-shirts saying I’m A Fat Kid’s Mam or Dad. It’s time to play an ad for Frugoliath exercise equipment, after which we have Peter from Didsbury. He’s so outraged by all the comments he calls weightist that he sets about broadcasting his glandular history at length. I’m about to cut this short, since I think he has more than made his point, when Christine says in my headphones “Do you want this next call? It’s about Frank Jasper.”
“I don’t need protecting from him, Chris.”
“Only it’s the lady you recorded at the Palace. Cheryl from Droylsden.”
I gaze hard at Christine, not least because I didn’t mention that the woman came to Waves. “Let her at me,” I say and go back on the air. “Thanks for all that, Peter. Now here’s Cheryl from Droylsden on quite another subject, aren’t you, Cheryl?”
“You didn’t tell me you were going to invite Mr Jasper back.”
“I didn’t invite him, he came unannounced. Anyway, you had another chance to hear him.”
“I didn’t.” Just as resentfully she adds “My friend says you wanted to get rid of him.”
“Not for a moment, Cheryl. If he’d like to get in touch I’ve a few more questions for him.”
“My friend says you only have him on to make him say what you want everyone to hear.”
“I don’t think I could force Frankie to say anything. That’s his trick.” I nearly lost control there—Frankie was the name he disliked at school— and so I don’t pause before saying “When he was on yesterday—”
“My friend says you cut him off”.”
“Somebody he brought was using language we can’t broadcast.”
“She thinks you used that for an excuse.”
“Is she there, Cheryl? By all means put her on.”
“I’m
on my own.” This reminds me she’s recently widowed, but before I can apologise Cheryl says “She wouldn’t talk to you anyway. She says you won’t let people have their say if you don’t agree with them.”
“I really don’t think—”
“See, you’re doing it now, and she says you did to Mr Jasper. She says you didn’t want anyone to hear what he had to say about you.”
I can’t let rage make me speechless. “By all means tell everybody what that is.”
“He was saying you were mixed up with the girl they’re looking for.”
“Her name’s Kylie Goodchild, Cheryl. Everyone should keep a lookout for her, but I don’t think there’s any use looking round here. At me, I mean, or anybody else here for that matter.”
“Mr Jasper wouldn’t have come without a reason.”
“I signed a photograph for her, that’s all. I did for half her class when they came on a school visit.”
I think Cheryl had no answer to that until I hear a muffled sound. She has put her hand over the mouthpiece. I feel as if I’m being forced to believe in an unseen presence—as if Jasper has brought off one of his tricks. In a few moments she declares “My friend says—”
“I thought she wasn’t supposed to be there.”
“She’s just come in.” As I refrain from wondering aloud if the friend even exists, Cheryl tells everyone “She says you said you never saw the girl at all.”
“Honestly, nobody needs to be scared of me,” I say with all the calm I can produce. “Your friend’s more than welcome to speak up for herself.”
“I told you, Mr Wilde, she won’t come on your show. It’s a pity you didn’t mention the photo while Mr Jasper was there.”
“Frank knows all about it, trust me, and so does everyone else who was here.”
“Maybe you should hope that’s all he knows.”
That’s at least one innuendo too many, and my rage breaks loose. “Unlike our Frankie, I’ve nothing to hide.”
Christine blinks at me through the window, but I’m glad I said that. At the end of a silence sufficiently intense to belong to more than one person Cheryl demands “What are you saying about Mr Jasper?’”
“For a start he was brought up in Manchester, and he’s gone to some trouble to see his public doesn’t know.”
“He’s never from round here.” I can’t judge whether Cheryl is proud that he’s local or far too belatedly skeptical about him, even when she objects “How would you know?”
“Not from the Internet. He’s covered his tracks there. Your friend heard me read his past, though, didn’t she? The scar I was talking about, he got that in Hulme.”
Cheryl muffles the mouthpiece again before retorting “She wants to know how you can say that.”
“Because it’s true. If anybody thinks I played some kind of trick by recognising him you’d have to wonder if he—”
“Graham.” Christine is holding up a hand as well. “Look at his web site,” she says urgently in my headphones. “Go to the sidebar.”
I type Patterson’s false name in the search box and bring up the site. There he is, baring a sample of his bronzed chest and opening his eyes wide as if they’re as guiltess as ever. I find the sight not much worse than irritating, even when my gaze shifts to the sidebar—and then I have an unwelcome suspicion. I click on the button that says LIFE, and up comes his biography. Frank Jasper, born Francis Patterson in Hulme, Manchester. I know that wasn’t there last week, but now the site spells out details of his boyhood.
11: It Was Written
“It isn’t as new as you think, Graham.”
“Believe me, it is.”
“But if you look at the date—” Christine says and brings up the properties of the biography page on her monitor.
“I nearly fell for that myself. All it says was that the page was made a year ago. I’m telling you it wasn’t on his site last week.”
“What was, then?”
“It must have said the page was under construction. Don’t you see what he did? He made the page and stored it till he had to put it on his site.”
Wilde Card has just ended, and we’re at her desk. Before bidding me a sad farewell Cheryl from Droylsden hoped I’d open my mind long enough or wide enough to see the truth. I thought she might have attracted more of Patterson’s supporters onto the air, but the next caller thought obesity should be taxed and the parents of the roly-polies in particular, which provoked enough arguments to fill up the rest of the hour—all of it that wasn’t occupied by ads for Frugold jewellery and Frugoggle spectacles and the Frugodsend charity card. Now Christine says “Why would he want to do that?”
“So he could put it up if anybody found him out and say he never hid the information in the first place.”
I’m attempting to keep my voice down, but perhaps it reaches further than it needs to, because Paula Harding says across several desks behind us “Are you two conducting a post mortem?”
“I think the subject’s dead,” I say, “and I’m the murderer.”
Perhaps she wasn’t joking as much as I took her to be, if at all. “Let’s continue it in my office,” she says, and when Christine makes to follow me “I’m talking to Graham.”
I overtake her just in time to hold open the door of her office. She perches on the cushion that adds stature to her chair and switches off Rick Till or at least hushes the computer. Her head sinks—she might be miming some kind of confirmation—as I lower myself onto the flatulent leather chair. “Well,” she says, “this is getting to be a regular event. One of your listeners has been in touch.”
“Should I guess which one?”
“Cheryl Needham from Droylsden.”
“She’s changed her mind, then. She said she wasn’t going to bother you, bother speaking to you, I mean. She thought you’d just be on my side.”
“I listened to your show.” Paula lets this and her gaze gather weight before she says “You’re getting edgier, Graham.”
Is she referring to how I feel just now? I do my best to match her ambiguity by saying “So long as it’s what’s wanted.”
“Cheryl was right, I’m afraid.”
I’m hearing Hannah Leatherhead’s invitation as I say “Right about what?”
“No need to go for me, Graham. I’m not one of your contestants.” She pauses as if she’s searching for a more accurate term and says “She was right that I’m on your side.”
“Oh, I see.” This seems inadequate, and so does “Well, thank you.”
“I told her it’s the style you’re known for and I didn’t think you’d actually been rude to her, but obviously it’s her privilege to take it further if she really wants to. I think whatever you said to her about Frank Jasper would have been wrong.”
“You won’t hear any argument from me.”
“So long as I do when I switch you on.” Paula lets me glimpse a smile that can hardly signify a joke and says “It’s true he never said he was local. He does his best to sound as if he’s not.”
“He’s saying he is now on his web site.”
“I expect you must have made him. Anyway, he should be proud to admit it.” Paula leans forward, which doesn’t disturb so much as a strand of her cropped glossy hair, to murmur “You knew each other, didn’t you?”
“That’s it. The whole truth.”
“I don’t know if you should give it away on the air. Keep people guessing,” she says and sits back. “It’s just a pity you didn’t remember signing Kylie Goodchild’s photograph while you had Jasper on the air.”
“I might have except for dealing with her boyfriend. You couldn’t have known what he was going to be like.”
“I don’t suppose Jasper did either.”
“Patterson,” I can’t help saying. “Too busy talking to my nameless grandfather again, maybe.”
Paula lets out a sound that falls short of a laugh. “What was his name, by the way?”
“My grandfather? Wilfred.”
�
��Not that unusual,” Paula says as the phone shrills on her desk. “Yes, he’s here,” she says after listening to someone as inaudible as Jasper’s sources and extends the receiver to me. “It’s somebody about your show.”
“Do you want me to take it here?”
“Why, would you prefer not?”
“It’s your office,” I say and lurch almost onto all fours in my haste to seem eager instead of defensive. The leather cushion sends a whoopee in my wake as I grab the receiver and step back. “Hello,” I mutter. “Graham Wilde.”
“Gosh, I can barely hear you, Graham. It’s Hannah Leatherhead.”
“Oh, hello.” I need to find somewhere to look other than at Paula—along the canal beyond the window behind her desk. “Wasn’t I going to call you?” I say not much louder.
“Hold on just a second.” In little more Hannah says “Is that better?”
It isn’t for me. She has switched her phone to loudspeaker mode, rendering her voice close to painful in my ear. I can’t hold the receiver at a distance in case Paula hears something she shouldn’t—I want to be sure of the situation before I reveal it. “We ought to talk soon,” I tell Hannah.
“We should. I was just calling to say I’m back in town sooner than expected.”
I don’t know if Paula is watching me, but I can sense her attention, which feels as if a security camera is focused on me. If psychics existed, perhaps this is a taste of how they’d feel. It seems to turn the rest of my surroundings less substantial, especially a line of figures standing on a footbridge against the glitter of sunlight on the canal. The best response I can give Hannah is “Glad to have you back.”
“So whenever you feel like a chat, I’ll be around.”
“Well, not right now.”
Do I need to avoid using Hannah’s name in front of Paula? Before I can decide Hannah says “Am I being slow? Can someone hear?”
“She might.”
“Oh, what a clot.” A silence leaves me thinking Hannah has ended the call until she returns unamplified. “There, I’ve turned myself down,” she says. “Shall I wait to hear when you’re ready?”
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