The Judgement Book

by Simon Hall

  She stood up from her desk, looked taller than earlier. The other hacks pretended to be engrossed in their work, but Dan knew they were watching. Lizzie bawling out an errant reporter was a favourite spectator sport. He’d enjoyed it often enough himself. It was most entertaining, given the one proviso – that you weren’t the hapless victim. Today though, he seemed to have a target painted on his chest, and she was taking careful aim.

  ‘Don’t know what you mean,’ Dan replied, edging towards the edit suites. He could defuse her anger by revealing his scoop, but didn’t have the time. He wondered if it was more the case that he didn’t have the inclination. The best tactics might be to let her work herself up, then produce his surprise. The result could be wonderfully deflating.

  A sharpened fingernail began jabbing at the air, those thin lips working themselves into a blur. ‘I mean telling the cops to call a press conference. And then revealing the prostitute angle! The story’s running everywhere. Every hack in the bloody country has got it.’

  A stiletto ground into the carpet to complement the fingernail. She’d changed from the lower heels of earlier to four-inch stilettos, gleaming black and sharp as an icicle. Lizzie kept at least half a dozen pairs of shoes in her office and had been known to change them several times a day according to the oscillations of her mood.

  ‘I let you go help them to help us,’ Lizzie raged on. ‘Instead you end up blowing our exclusive!’

  He edged further towards the door. ‘Would I do something as stupid as that?’

  She didn’t answer, just summoned up a laser stare which suggested that was exactly what she thought. Dan raised his hands calmingly. ‘Look, I’d better get on with this edit. There was no way the rest of the media wouldn’t get on to the story. It’s just too big. The cops had no choice but to call a press conference.’

  Her lips tightened and Dan could sense the explosion coming. He continued quickly before the detonation. ‘But I can guarantee you I’ve worked it so I’ve got you an exclusive angle, which every other hack will be cursing themselves they missed. And even better, they’ve got no chance of getting it now either.’

  The stiletto stopped grinding the carpet.

  ‘Go do your edit then,’ she said menacingly, sitting back down. ‘I’ll suspend judgement, for now. But it had better be good.’

  It was, Dan thought, as Jenny edited the last shot of the lunchtime report. Even if he did say so himself, it was damn good. He wondered whether to give the Royal Television Society Awards Panel a call, to make sure they didn’t miss it. Perhaps it would be best to log their number in his phone. It felt like that kind of a case, filled with the promise of more extraordinary developments to come.

  The report followed the classical formula for telling a TV story. Start with your best pictures, then move on to your strongest interview. Hook the viewers from the first seconds.

  It opened with the striking shot of the billboard, screaming letters, red on white. It effectively told the story on its own.

  VOTE WILL FREEDMAN MP, PROSTITUTE PARTY

  Dan added a few lines of commentary about how Wessex Tonight could reveal this was the way the blackmailer planned to expose Will Freedman, and the reason why, the MP’s liaison with the prostitute. Then it was a clip of Adam at the press conference, talking about how disgusting the crime was.

  ‘That’s amazingly human for a cop,’ Jenny said as she edited the extract into the report. ‘It’s the first time I’ve ever heard one say anything so powerful and sensible.’

  Sitting behind her at the computer, still working on his script, Dan favoured himself with a wink.

  After that came a few pictures from last night of the Freedman house and the police activity with Dan recapping on how the MP was found dead. Then another clip of Adam, about the blackmailer being dangerous and the urgent need to catch them.

  Dan walked back into the newsroom at 1.25 and made a show of sitting next to Lizzie to watch the bulletin on one of the bank of monitors on the wall. She didn’t speak, just stared at the screens.

  The titles played, the story was introduced, ran and ended. There was no reaction from his editor.

  Dan sensed a challenge, so he didn’t comment but kept his face set and watched the rest of the bulletin. Calls for more help for alcoholics in Cornwall, a big water-main burst in north Devon, Exeter City Council increasing efforts to recycle more domestic waste and the inevitable “And finally”, an appeal to help hungry hedgehogs awakening from hibernation.

  ‘Right, here’s the plan for tonight,’ Lizzie said, when the bulletin was over. ‘I’ll have more of the same from you. I was thinking of sending the outside broadcast truck for you to do a live update from Freedman’s house, or the cop shop. But I’ve got an obituary on him being put together and a live from Westminster about the reaction there, so I won’t need it.’

  Dan pointedly folded his arms and adopted an expectant expression. Not a word of thanks, he noted. Certainly not an apology for her outburst of only an hour ago. But that wasn’t Lizzie. The sorry word wasn’t in her vocabulary. The best you could hope for was a disguised apology, sometimes so well hidden it was nigh on impossible to discern. A miniscule needle in a mountainous haystack.

  But Dan sensed it coming, and kept quiet. Smugly quiet, he suspected.

  ‘You worked late last night,’ she said. ‘You can go home when you’re done.’

  And now, Dan told himself, comes the caveat. It was ever thus. As reaction follows action, and night day, so any ground given must instantly be retaken, or, at the very worst, marked for unfailing attention later.

  ‘But – but! – I want you on call at the weekend. I want you ready for anything. I want you out there at the slightest hint of a development. And I want it on air as soon as it happens. This story’s got real legs. It’s not just a runner, it’s a sprinter. If anything comes up, I want you straight on it.’

  ‘Lovely, thanks,’ said Dan, trying to sound enthusiastic.

  He slowly got up from his chair, gave her plenty of time. He wasn’t finished, wanted to force just the slightest hint of recognition, make a nudge of headway in one of his seemingly eternal battles with his editor.

  Dan fumbled for his satchel, picked it up and they stared at each other. He tried to keep a straight face.

  ‘Oh, and not a bad report either,’ Lizzie added finally and painfully begrudgingly.

  Dan took that atom of victory as his leave to depart.

  Chapter Six

  A TRAFFIC JAM WOUND up the hill from the Charles Cross roundabout. Dan joined the back, wondering on a whim whether one day, if he continued working so closely with the police, he might be entitled to a flashing blue light that could help him cut through such irritants. It was only four o’clock, but the weekend exodus from the city had begun.

  No such luck for him, despite Lizzie’s promise of allowing him home. He had more work to do. Adam wanted another chat about the case and how it was playing in the media and naturally no, it couldn’t wait. Around Dan, the faces in the windscreens wore a mix of resignation and frustration at the hold up, and relief that the long-awaited Friday afternoon had finally arrived.

  Dan stared at the ruined Charles Church as he queued to get through the roundabout. The traffic was moving in random staggering steps, like a drunkard’s uncertain progress home. The sun was still strong in the sky and all the cars’ windows were down, a line of elbows leaning out. He’d lived in Plymouth for ten years now, but still found it hard to believe that, despite the nationwide abundance of evidence of their insensitivity, the faceless planners could ever have thought the fitting way to treat such a powerful and dignified memorial as the church was to encircle it with a roundabout.

  Dandelions spotted the thin lake of grass around the ruin with their vivid yellow heads. A bare-chested man worked at cutting back some of the waxy ivy weeping from the empty stone arches of the windows. The church was blind, the rainbow eyes of its stained-glass windows lost to the screaming shrapnel of the B
litz. Almost 70 years ago it was now, the monument standing as a reminder of Europe’s descent into barbaric darkness, and the terrible price paid in the struggle to stay in the light.

  Dan realised he’d driven around the church so many times, but never got out of his car to walk through the ruins. He must, he told himself. He owed it to the past and the bygone people who had suffered for his present. Maybe he would explore it with Claire when they were next in town. It would be an experience the better for sharing.

  Dan reminded himself to call Claire later and was pleased at the thrill the thought brought. He was looking forward to their walk tomorrow. Him, Claire and Rutherford, atop a windy cliff, gazing down on an azure sea, with an old inn, dinner, and a few pints of ale to follow. A perfect Saturday.

  Adam stood waiting in the MIR, staring out of the windows, arms folded and apparently drifting in thought. A couple of uniformed officers worked away at computers, but otherwise the room was deserted. Dan noticed several new pieces of paper had been stuck onto the felt boards.

  The detective sensed his look. ‘Some progress,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you about it in a minute. Don’t get comfortable,’ he added, as Dan went to sit down. ‘I thought we’d go out for a beer and have a chat. I’ve had enough of this place. Worked all right, didn’t it?’

  ‘Our little scene in the press conference?’

  ‘I thought so,’ said Adam.

  ‘Me too.’ Dan nodded. ‘I couldn’t see any other way to make sure the prostitute angle was confirmed unless it was by you. The way we played it saves you the hassle of being accused of sullying a man’s reputation and getting drawn into a political row about sleaze. But it still ensures the story’s splashed everywhere.’

  ‘Spot on and just what we need,’ replied Adam. ‘It’s been all over the national radio and TV, and the internet news sites too. I’m told all the papers are running it tomorrow. You’re a cunning one, aren’t you? Maybe you should have been a crook.’

  Or a detective, Dan thought to himself wryly.

  They walked into the city centre, towards the waterfront and Barbican. It was one of the few areas of Plymouth that hadn’t been levelled in the war and still boasted the white buildings and dark wooden beams of the Tudors. The jam at the roundabout had eased and the traffic flowed smoothly out of the city.

  ‘We’ve all got them, you know,’ Adam mused.

  ‘What?’ Dan asked, a little thrown by the pronouncement.

  ‘Guilty secrets. Everyone has. I certainly have – look at the ways I’ve connived with you on some investigations.’

  ‘You’re talking about Freedman, and why he killed himself?’

  ‘Yep. One moment of weakness. Giving in to himself. It gets found out and that’s it, life over.’

  ‘We’re hardly talking the same degrees though, are we? We’ve always bent the rules for the right reasons. Catching criminals.’

  ‘But what we’ve done has been illegal. And it’s certainly been an abuse of our positions. For both of us it’s hardly the way we’re supposed to work.’

  ‘What we’ve done has been harmless though, surely. In fact, more than that – it’s for the greater good.’

  ‘As no doubt Freedman thought what he was doing was harmless. No one suffered, no one had to know. All I’m saying is that we all have secrets. I think that’s what rankles with me about this case. Freedman was a good man, he made one slip, and that was it. If there was any comeback, it should have been between him and his wife, and no one else. Not some threat to make it a national scandal.’

  They stopped at the bank by the post office for Dan to get some money from a cashpoint. The detective took off his jacket and even loosened his tie. The phenomenon was almost worth a news story. The wonders of the magic of the weekend.

  ‘Where do you fancy for a drink?’ Adam asked. ‘I’m not fussed about sitting outside. I don’t want anyone overhearing us.’

  Dan thought for a moment, then said, ‘What about the Ginger Judge? It’s about the best Plymouth’s got and excellent if you want to be discreet. It’s where the lawyers go to talk about cases over lunch. You can see them all glancing over their shoulders before they speak. It’s like animal behaviour, better than going to the zoo.’

  They walked on, past the 1970s court complex, a squat, two-floor block of concrete and glass. Adam stopped to admonish a couple of young lads on skateboards who were trying to use the side of the building as a ramp. He waved his warrant card before they had a chance to loose off any abuse and they slouched away. An old man shook the detective’s hand, congratulated him, saying too few people intervened these days. It had become a walk-on-by society. Dan nodded his agreement.

  ‘Nice place,’ said Adam, as they pushed open the Ginger Judge’s door. There was a scattering of people at the tables, mostly men. Dan noticed nearly all wore the pinstripe suit and striped shirt of the lawyer’s uniform. Some even boasted red braces too. It was the classical case of the professional bubble; what was accepted within a career was comical to the rest of the world.

  Dan picked a table in the corner farthest from the door, got the drinks, a couple of pints of guest ale from a brewery on the Isles of Scilly. He’d first met the beer when he was in the Scillies doing a story about the islands’ vulnerability to climate change and rising sea levels. When he was unwillingly moved from Environment Correspondent to Crime he used to feel a powerful tug of nostalgia at thoughts of his previous professional life. No longer.

  The lurid underworld of lawlessness had him hooked.

  He had his new existence to thank for meeting Claire too. The memory of his early clumsy, stumbling chat-up lines made him wince. How life can change in one brief moment. Environment to crime, one job where he was getting stale to another where every day held a surprise, and, that great wonder he thought would never come, finally perhaps even finding a partner.

  Dan often tried to stop himself thinking it, scarcely dared to hope, as if it might frighten away the elusive prospect of happiness. He could have thanked that prostitute he paid for an interview, a transgression which gave Lizzie the excuse she was looking for to switch his job.

  From the ridiculous can indeed grow the sublime.

  ‘Very good,’ said Adam, sipping at his drink. ‘And a fine place. Do you come here often?’

  Dan grinned. Hadn’t he used that one with Claire?

  ‘Cheers. Good line. Better than some of mine, anyway,’ he said. ‘Yes, I do come in fairly often. I like it because the tables aren’t all crammed together, the way they do in places more interested in making money than looking after customers.’

  A middle-aged couple walked in. She headed for the bar and he the toilets. Unusual role reversal, Dan mused. He noticed the place had had a make over since he’d last been in. The stripped wooden floor shone from a polish and a couple of large pine-rimmed mirrors had been added to the walls. The big glass windows were cleaner too. A blackboard hung behind the bar with “Today’s Specials” written floridly at the top in chalk. There was a tempting looking list of dishes. Fried local shark, rib eye steak, Caesar salad, vegetarian lasagne. Dan felt his stomach rumble.

  ‘So what’s this progress you mentioned then?’ he asked Adam.

  ‘Not a great deal, really. We’ve interviewed that bill poster guy, but didn’t get anything from him.’

  ‘Nothing at all?’

  ‘No. The chap’s not too bright. The posters get delivered to his house, along with instructions about where to put them up and he does it. The Freedman one came with a letter on headed paper, saying put it up at Marsh Mills. He chucked the letter away in some bin in the shopping centre he says, and the search teams can’t find it. They get emptied too often. So no go there.’

  ‘What about the poster itself?’

  ‘Made by a company in Bristol, big group. They got a call asking them to design a poster like the one you saw. The caller said they needed discretion as it was a trial for a political party, and they wanted to keep the idea secret. The
company’s quite used to things like that, apparently. So they got paid in cash, designed the thing and some despatch rider came to pick it up. Again, that’s standard. We’ve had no luck finding the rider. It was probably someone picking up a few quid on the quiet. So no go there either.’

  Dan sipped at his beer. ‘It’s one hell of a way of exposing someone though, isn’t it? The Worm would have known the moment the poster went up that thousands of people would see it. The media would start asking questions, the police would investigate, and that’d be it. Secret blown.’

  ‘Yep,’ replied Adam. ‘It’s certainly creative criminality. It tells us we’re dealing with someone clever and ruthless, who’s planned this well. He had that poster made, so when Freedman didn’t solve the riddle he could expose him straight away. Merciless. But in a way Freedman cheated him by killing himself first.’

  Dan sat back on his chair and breathed out heavily. ‘Not much of a victory for Freedman I’d say. What about his agenda then?’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Well, this is no ordinary blackmailer, is it? The only ones I’ve ever heard of want money. Not ours. For him, it’s something else. Publicity. Some cause. Something more important to him than money.’

  Adam nodded. ‘Yes, and that’s reflected in the note, isn’t it? It goes on about your filthy and rotten kind. So what does the Worm mean by that? Politicians? Men? Successful people? Powerful people?’

  ‘I guess we’ll find out, won’t we? When the next blackmail note arrives with the next unsuspecting victim.’

  Adam loosened his tie further, then took it off and hung it on the back of his chair. ‘And another thing. Why the riddle? Why torment the victim further by setting a riddle he can’t solve?’

  ‘It’s a power thing, isn’t it? Increasing the Worm’s power over him, and probably the police too.’

  A gush of laughter erupted from a table in the far corner. As if on cue, the three lawyers sitting there all looked over their shoulders. A waitress walked out from the kitchens and propped open the front door. It was getting hot in the bar. Dan tried, but mostly failed to blame it on the sunshine. In a place so popular with the legal profession, there was bound to be an excess of hot air.