“Journalistic ethics for lazy arses who don’t go to Kyle’s classes,” Sherazi said, sitting down. “Go.”
“I’m worried—”
“You’re constantly worried,” Sherazi said. “I have never met someone so continually worried in my entire teaching career.”
Ben accepted this without correction, although internally his former therapist noted that the correct word was probably ‘anxious’ or possibly ‘panicked’. “I’m worried about potentially endangering a source.”
Sherazi looked at him for a moment, apparently expecting him to continue. When he didn’t, she screwed up her face as if looking for something in her teeth. “What do I keep telling you?”
“…stop being a massive coward?” Ben suggested. It wasn’t an uncommon refrain at the moment.
“No, not this time,” said Sherazi, “although that is eternally pertinent advice.” She sighed. “I wish I had a copy of it with me so I could thump you lot with it every time this comes up. Read. McNae’s.”
Ben said, “I—”
“It’s in the book. It is all. All of it, all of it, in the book.” Sherazi stabbed the table with her forefinger for emphasis. “If you are worried about endangering a source: it is in the book that quite a large number of journalists have been fined and in some cases gone to prison rather than reveal a source when ordered to by a judge. Contempt of court is an option. Anonymous sources, as you would know if you ever bothered to watch or read the news, are an option.” She threw her head back and made a sound like an exasperated walrus. “If you suspect you are under surveillance — although why you would be is beyond me — there are ways of contacting people that circumvent the usual channels. Anonymisers. Half the internet is full of useful little tools and tricks invented so that people don’t have to pay for their movies.”
Sherazi reached for her coffee, stopped, and gave Ben a suspicious look.
“And if you think they’re under surveillance,” she said, “the same tricks apply to them. Internet cafes are still around.”
Ben said, “And I definitely have to publish?”
“Yes.” Sherazi leaned forward so fast that Ben nearly fell off his S chair. “If what you have is worth worrying about. If you what you have is worth surveillance. If you what you have is worth your concern that revealing a source will lead to someone’s life being in danger, what you have has to be published.”
“Jesus,” muttered Ben.
“If it isn’t,” Sherazi said pleasantly, sitting back, “then calm the f—calm down, and read McNae’s or I will stick it somewhere I’m not legally allowed to tell you I’m going to stick it.”
It was dark by four that afternoon, and Ben felt his will to do anything drain out of him. He manfully considered going to Kyle’s evening class, and then rather more joyfully considered going home and watching a box set: in the end he sat under the brightest light possible in the library and soldiered through a library copy of McNae’s on source protection until it was time for Kyle’s class.
“Cancelled this evening,” Kyle said, after Ben had been sitting in the corridor outside the room for ten minutes. “Should have checked Moodle. I’ve got GCSE students to show around.”
By the time he got back to the flat, he could see his breath in front of him and the street lights were hallowed in grey ice crystals.
The light had gone in the stairwell: Ben felt his way up the wall, missed a step, caught his heel overhanging the next one, and fell back down two steps with a thump, landing on the same ankle he’d slammed in a tube door and which had just about started to recover.
“Motherfucker,” Ben blurted, and bit his tongue.
“Ello?” Kingsley opened the flat door and peered out.
“Evening,” said Ben, sitting on the stairs.
“What you doin’?”
“Crippling myself,” Ben said, trying to get up.
“You’re a dumb shit,” said Kingsley amiably. “Minnie, get the fuck back in there, don’t think I can’t see you trying to sneak out. Nuh—” he bent down and scooped up the cat. “—uh.”
They stood, and sat, in awkward silence for a moment.
“Can you actually stand up?” Kingsley said, at last.
“Yeah, probably,” Ben said, absolutely certain that he couldn’t.
There was another long silence.
“I’m taking your bag though,” said Kingsley, leaning forward with the cat stuffed under his arm.
“Yeah, thanks, Mum,” said Ben without rancour, passing it to him.
“Tss,” said Kingsley, in what Ben assumed was a good impression of his own mother. He disappeared inside, and Ben heard the bedroom door shut.
Kingsley returned a minute later, minus cat and minus bag.
“Get up off those fucking stairs, you fire hazard,” he said.
“Any minute now,” Ben assured him.
“I’ll call a fucking ambulance,” Kingsley said, leaning on the door to keep it open.
“It’s not broken,” Ben insisted. “I’m getting up, I’m up right now, I’m standing up.”
“I can see you,” said Kingsley. “You ain’t.”
“Oh shut the fuck up.” Ben got onto his hands and knees and crawled up the stairs into his flat. When he got to the doorway, Kingsley stooped, threw one long, wiry and muscular arm under his armpit and around his chest, and hauled him to one foot.
Ben hobbled over to the futon and flopped down onto it beside his bag. He took out his Macbook and checked it for damage, but the laptop seemed to have come out of the fall better than he had. To his surprise, so had his phone.
To: Khoo, Daniel; Yagoda, Natalya; Ben M
From: Dr Bill Greenhill
Subj: Guinea Pigs
No luck so far, most people I contacted before are out of the network and weren’t in it long enough ago to have known anyone from the relative time period, but I know a couple of them have what I can only call a parody of an Old School Tie thing going, and they might be able to help.
Kingsley opened his bedroom door to let the cat out.
“You’d better not be dying,” he said, as Minnie skittered across the floor and threw herself into a giant fluffy C shape at his feet. “Got everything to yourself for three days. So have lots of gay orgies.”
Ben nodded, making a point of gently squeezing his ankle. It made him see stars briefly, but no more Oedipal remarks came out of his mouth, which he took as a good sign.
“Going to Bristol,” Kingsley continued. “Seeing Lionel and Selena. You want anything from them when I’m there?”
Ben shook his head.
“Painkillers?” Kingsley asked, raising his eyebrows. “Crutches? A wheelchair?”
Ben gave him the finger.
Kingsley made an attempt at crossing himself and said, “Scuse the No Homo and shit but: tell me I don’t have to worry about you.”
“Yeah,” said Ben, uncomfortable.
“Like you’re going to eat food.”
“Bread sandwiches count as food,” Ben said, mostly to make Kingsley pull a face.
“But seriously.” Kingsley poked him in the back with the toe of his weird cycling shoe. “Fucking eat food.”
Ben thumbed through his emails on his phone while Kingsley tcch tcch’d to the cat from the kitchen.
To: Ben M
From: DJ Molly Doll.
Subj: (none)
Okay Ben I promise I don’t want to bring up Greenwich with anyone, especially not Gareth, but you’ve got to tell me if something’s wrong. Like not even as a professional thing, babe, just as a thing where I’m your friend and stuff. Because you’ve been a bit weird for a while and stuff but that was next level weird and I’m super-scared that something’s properly wrong with you. Has something happened?
He woke once, at around six, to the sound of Kingsley and Kingsley’s bike leaving the flat. He woke again, at eight, because some miserable approximation of daylight had begun to filter in through the windows and Minnie was purring by
his ear.
Ben woke again at ten because he rolled over and knocked his foot against the chair-stroke-coffee table, and this time he woke up very fast and very loudly.
When he’d finished terrifying the cat with some swear words he hadn’t known that he’d known, Ben struggled out from under the duvet and examined his ankle, which had, this time, swollen up into a definite sprain.
He was still contemplating how he was going to deal with this development when his phone rang.
“Ben? Hello?”
He hadn’t exactly been expecting a phone call from Dr Bill, and it took Ben a moment in his sleep-groggy and pained state to remember how to use the English language sufficiently to communicate the fact that it was indeed him.
“Wzfgh?”
“Some good news at last,” boomed Dr Bill, with far too much enthusiasm for before noon. “Only rather tempered with more questions. I think you should be here in person, we’re planning a council of war, so to speak, and given your role in this you ought to be here as well. How soon can you get to my place?”
“Not very,” said Ben, reaching slowly for a sock that he’d already worn twice. “I sprained my ankle last night and I haven’t tried standing up yet.”
“Hrm,” said Dr Bill, unperturbed. “Well, I’ll send you a taxi. You can always go down the stairs on your arse.”
“Er—” said Ben, remembering the days when he’d been able to cavalierly resolve problems with taxis. He hadn’t really had the income for it then, either, he just had less crushing awareness of how little money was actually in his bank account, and the assurance of it being replaced regularly. “What should I, should I do something with…it?”
“I’ll strap it up properly when you get here,” Dr Bill said with the calm authority of a man who was perfectly used to gluing people back together. “Bring your recording whatsit.”
Ben, who still had the Kapture on for some reason, and had the distinct feeling that he’d recorded about ten hours of snoring with occasional cat, said, “Right. Are you sure you want to—”
“Don’t be ridiculous and sort yourself out,” Dr Bill said, impatient. “The sooner you stop dithering on the phone the sooner I can call you a taxi. What’s the address?”
Ben’s embarrassment was compounded by the taxi driver offering to help him to the door of Dr Bill’s house, apparently under the impression that he was a patient, and then rejecting Ben’s insistence that he was fine to hop there himself, in order to stick one determined, no-nonsense, conspicuously Slav shoulder under Ben’s armpit and half-carry him to the door.
“Hello,” said Ben, when the door opened, and then, “Oh,” when the door turned out to have been opened by Daniel.
“Fuck happened to you?” Daniel demanded.
“I fell up the stairs,” said Ben.
“Jesus, you’re a fucking Argos catalogue of disasters,” Daniel lamented, closing the door behind them. “Want me to go and get one of Bill’s crutches?”
“It’s not that bad.”
“I’m asking because the alternative is me helping you to the living room,” said Daniel with a sharp smile. “So it’s either embarrassment or cooties.”
“I thought only Americans got cooties?” Ben put out an arm to balance himself against the wall.
“They’ve spread. Horrible epidemic.” Daniel held out his hand. “You’re having the gay germs, I don’t know where Bill keeps his crutches.”
Ben went to take Daniel’s hand, but Daniel grabbed him by the upper arm and with surprising strength for someone who looked like he lunched on an apple every second day, frog-marched him into the living room.
He was struck by how much more it resembled the scene from the summing-up of a murder mystery than last time: Natalya was perched in a high-backed armchair, and Dr Bill was staring at a phone sitting on a small table with his fingers steepled in front of his beard.
“What’s the good news?” Ben asked, as Daniel mercifully released him into another armchair. This one was covered in a wonkily-knitted blanket, which fell down onto Ben the moment he sat.
“Police called,” Natalya said, nodding at the phone. “Great progress made on an abduction which suddenly is once again a real concern.” She sounded only a little bitter about this.
“Okay?”
“We’re waiting for them to call back,” Dr Bill elaborated, pointing at the phone. “They were a little vague at first but once they’ve got hold of one of the officers involved we should be getting a phone call.” He stretched, and gave Ben a look which Ben didn’t quite understand. “In the meantime,” Dr Bill added, “I think I should see about your ankle.”
“It’s f—” Ben began, and Daniel, who had been standing behind him, punched him in the arm. “Ow.”
Dr Bill manoeuvred his wheelchair over to Ben and patted one of his own legs encouragingly. “Foot up.”
Ben made an attempt to remove his trainer until Dr Bill shoved his hand away and took it off himself. “Well, you’ve definitely fucked this up.”
“Great,” Ben told the ceiling.
“A sprain is a sprain is a sprain,” Dr Bill said with a shrug. “Daniel, can you pass me some zinc tape and a bit of gauze from the other room? Ibuprofen gel’s in the drawer with the blue spot on it. Thanks.”
As Daniel left, Dr Bill peered at Ben’s face for long enough that Ben began to feel uncomfortable.
“This would probably heal faster,” Dr Bill added, in a quieter voice than Ben was accustomed to hearing him use, and with a lot less fevered, high-speed pedantry than he used on the radio, “if you kept some of your meals down occasionally.”
“What?” Ben asked, glancing over Dr Bill’s shoulder at Natalya, who had picked up a book and was leafing through it without interest.
“I am sure you don’t need me to tell you this but it’s actually very obvious when someone is bulimic,” said Dr Bill, even more quietly. “Your hands, for one thing. Your breath, for another. Are you seeing someone about this?”
“I was,” Ben muttered. “But I got better. So I don’t any more.”
“I’d like to suggest,” said Dr Bill, as Daniel returned with a double handful of medical supplies, “that you start seeing them again, because it looks a lot like you’ve relapsed.”
Ben remained entirely silent while Dr Bill slathered very cold gel over his ankle and strapped it up as tightly as was possible under the circumstances, and Dr Bill didn’t say anything to him. Natalya replaced the book she’d been reading and resumed staring at the telephone, and the room began to feel uncomfortably quiet.
When the phone finally did ring, it cut through the tense silence like a fire alarm and nearly made Ben leap out of his skin.
Natalya leaned forward and hit the received button. “Hallo.”
The voice of a male police officer filled the room. There was something, Ben thought, checking the Kapture on his wrist, which seemed to permeate every police officer talking in the line of duty: a particular speed of speaking that radiated ‘police’ the way Dr Bill radiated ‘doctor’, and Phil Jacy didn’t radiate ‘comedian’. He wondered if it was possible to radiate ‘journalist’; thought about Sherazi and baulked slightly. He thought about Amanda DeWalt and baulked more.
“I understand my colleague’s informed you we have someone in custody,” began Sergeant Reardon, after introducing himself. “We thought you might like to know that we have one of the people involved in your unfortunate experience here at the station: he’s handed himself in about twenty-four hours ago and given a statement to the effect of—” there was a rattle of paper on the other end of the line, “—he no longer finks that the leader of his group — I apologise, I cannot read this acronym here — is operating in the interests originally stated. The rest of his group have been arrested and are currently being processed.”
Natalya clasped her hands together and slowly squeezed both of them in turn. “Does he have any explanation for what his…group…did?”
“Yes, s—ma’am,
he says,” there was another rattle of paper, “the belief of the group was originally that you and your colleagues at HPA Colindale were in receipt of backhanders from ‘Big Pharma’, I think this says, to stall your work on KBV and thus create more buyers for a cure.”
“Piffle,” Dr Bill said angrily, into his beard.
“Ergo,” said Sergeant Reardon, “they conspired to remove you from your home and to, apparently, infect you with KBV, in order to focus your efforts and give you, er, impetus, to work on a cure.” He cleared his throat. “I am required to ask if you have in fact undertaken a blood test, Mis-Doctor Yagoda?”
“Of course,” said Natalya.
Ben held his breath.
“So he is mistaken, is he?” asked Sergeant Reardon.
“I would imagine,” said Natalya, politely, “that a conspiracy theorist might not be terribly rigorous in acquiring infected blood, and that one might describe him as credulous when it comes to the purchase of such a substance.”
Ben exhaled slowly, and found he was digging the stubs of his nails into his forearm.
“I would like,” said Sergeant Reardon, in a preoccupied voice, “if we could call you back after discussing this with our newly-acquired, as you say, conspiracy theorist.”
“Of course,” said Natalya.
The call ended.
“Well,” said Daniel, but Natalya had her mobile out and was already flicking through her contacts.
She put her finger to her lips.
“Hello? Anil? Yes. You or the others may soon get a phone call from the police asking to verify my claim that I have been tested for KBV.” She paused, and listened. “I do not plan to ask you to violate your professional standards.” She paused again, and half-smiled. “I appreciate that. I have implied that the result was negative.”
She listened for a little longer.
“No, I don’t think they’re likely to. You are in a position to — yes, exactly. Thank you, Anil.”
She hung up.
“Colluding?” Daniel asked, once she’d put her phone away.
Natalya said, “The faith my team have in me is based on many years of good decisions.” She sat back in Dr Bill’s armchair and added, “Their desire to do right by me is I suspect the result of a refusal to be tyrannical with them and an act of shielding them from any, any shit that is rolled downhill in their direction.”
The Next Big One Page 26