Newsdeath

by Ray Connolly

  ‘Did you see it?’ he gasped.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What d’you think?’

  Huckle didn’t think anything. He didn’t know what to think. He tried to be flip. ‘I think they spoiled the best scene in the picture.’

  ‘The mornings will have a field day on this.’

  Huckle agreed: mentally he could picture the way the Mirror and the Sun would handle the story. ‘Don’t worry. They haven’t got much time. They’ll leave enough for us.’

  ‘Any point in going over to the BBC now?’

  Huckle thought for a minute. ‘No. The BBC won’t want to help so you won’t get past reception, the Press Office there won’t hear about it until they see it in the Weekly News Round Up for the deaf next Sunday, and the whole place will be crawling with police and people from the Daily Express, anyway. They’ll get whatever’s going tonight.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so.’ Winston sounded despondent. When something was happening he wanted to be part of it.

  ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, Winston,’ said Huckle. ‘I’ll be in early. We’re going to have a busy day, I think.’

  ‘Yes. Goodnight.’

  They hung up. Huckle looked at the phone. ‘Winston is quite the keenest lad I know. I’ll have to teach him how to conserve his energy if he isn’t going to push me out of a job.’

  He began dialling another number. Kirsten watched from the bed. ‘Who are you calling?’

  Huckle finished dialling, listened to the engaged tone, and then, leaving the receiver off, put the phone inside a sliding cupboard and closed the door blocking out the tone. ‘I was calling us. I don’t want any silly sod ringing me up in the middle of the night to go chasing pumas.’ He climbed back into bed. ‘Night news editors have no respect for the bodily needs of men like me.’ He ran a hand down across her body admiringly, the way some men do with a brand new and polished car.

  ‘Doesn’t it frighten you?’ asked Kirsten.

  ‘It would if I was a regular Tube traveller.’ And as a signal that Kirsten should now keep quiet and allow him time to think he turned off the bedside light, and putting one arm around her shoulders, held her close while he stared vacantly at the comedy show still running on the television. Kirsten knew his mood and didn’t argue, but allowed her head to rest on his chest. For a moment he wondered anxiously whether he should telephone Susan and tell her not to travel by Underground, but he immediately dismissed the thought. It would be absurd if he were to start panicking: that was for the London Transport and the Metropolitan Police. Besides Susan never went anywhere by Tube.

  Kirsten stirred and looked up when the late night news came on. PUMA was the lead story, but apart from telling what was already known and saying that the Bomb Squad were carrying out a special enquiry there wasn’t much to add, and the newscaster went quickly into the earlier events of the day.

  That night as Huckle lay in bed next to the sleeping body of Kirsten he wondered about PUMA, and he thought again about the tall blonde girl. But nothing he thought made any sense. It was truly curious, and in a way exciting. And he took a sleeping pill so that sudden sleep would make sooner the morning.

  For Howlett and Kinney the morning would come all too soon: for the unfortunate late staff at the BBC it seemed the night would never end. Within ten minutes of the broadcast three squad cars had converged on Television Centre, where, for the rest of the night, anyone leaving the complex had not only to show their BBC pass cards to their own security men but had also to give their names, positions and reasons for being in the building to the police, which in the case of two gentlemen from one popular music show and an assistant producer and lady research assistant from an educational programme, was not that easy to do. It sometimes seemed, observed one gentleman from religious programmes upon seeing the fate of his colleagues, tongue-tying themselves into deeper embarrassment, that the late Lord Reith had the Almighty on his side in keeping a vigilant eye upon the behaviour of these servants of the public.

  The immediate job facing Howlett and Kinney was to be briefed on the technical nature of what had happened. This unenviable task fell to the telecine operator. ‘The first I knew of it was when it went up there on the screen,’ he said.

  ‘But isn’t film checked before it’s transmitted?’ Howlett asked.

  ‘Always, and very thoroughly,’ came back the duty editor loyally.

  ‘When was this checked?’

  ‘It was rehearsed this morning,’ said the telecine supervisor. A moment before the arrival of Howlett he had in fact just completed some frantic phone calls to members of the day staff, ascertaining that the film had indeed been rehearsed.

  ‘So what happened then?’

  ‘What happened,’ said the operator, ‘was that someone had twenty feet of film made, brought it into the building, somehow managed to sneak past our security cameras, got hold of the fourth reel of The Third Man, unwound a bit, and cut his piece in, at some time after the film had been checked. That means some time today. Nice clean job, too. See the joins. Sellotaped both sides, that’s the sign of a professional. Then he rewound the film, put it into a can and there you go. By the time it had been on long enough for me to realize what was happening it was off again. That’s when we managed to cut the transmission.’

  ‘After the horse had bolted,’ said Howlett unkindly.

  ‘I didn’t know it was a bloody race,’ retorted the operator. It wasn’t his fault and he knew it, and he didn’t like being blamed for alarming half London.

  ‘We sometimes transfer film to video for transmission,’ said the duty editor almost apologetically, and quite irrelevantly.

  ‘But not always,’ came back Howlett, with a slight hint of sarcasm.

  The duty editor shook his head. ‘No, not always.’

  At four o’clock Howlett decided to call it a night. Most of the staff had gone home; and tomorrow the BBC, along with the police, would begin the full investigation. There was nothing further he could do. The whole complex was being searched from top to bottom but he didn’t expect to find anyone. Whoever had done this job was, he felt certain, sitting safely at home watching television when it had been broadcast. The staff in the telecine operations room would be worth talking to, but that wouldn’t be till the next day. Best to get what chance there still was of some sleep. Thank God, he thought, that he didn’t have to worry about the implications of the actual threat. ‘Tomorrow’s target: The London Underground,’ he read again, as Kinney had the film rewound for transportation to Scotland Yard. An awful lot of policemen were going to have a very busy day.

  Chapter Five

  Winston was on his way to the office well before Huckle the next morning. As usual he had his snack breakfast at an all-night café behind Smithfield Market, where the night meat porters would cross paths with those coming on to the day shift, and where the smell of bacon and eggs signified both breakfast and dinner for the two different shifts of workers. PUMA’s intrusion into The Third Man was dominating the headlines of all the popular morning papers, and was the main subject of conversation among the porters, those who had seen it telling those who had not, some with embellishments about sound, while others described the colour of the writing as blood red. One thing was agreed upon by everyone: they didn’t fancy travelling by Underground that day.

  The excitement of news fascinated Winston. Sometimes while lying in his bed alone at night he would try to analyse the obsession he felt for the process of news gathering and its dissemination, but it was, he thought, one of those uniquely satisfying occupations which defied all rational appreciation. In his case, he supposed, it was the love of gossip that charged him: certainly it was nothing to do with the idea of performing a public service. He could leave that to people who had a need to satisfy their consciences. To Winston news was finding out something that was happening; finding it out first, and telling the people first.

  He ate his breakfast in silence, listening to the gossip of the porters around him and the
music coming from Capital Radio out of a small blue Japanese transistor on the shelf behind the café owner, and watching a shipment of meat being unloaded into the warehouse across the road outside. The snow had stopped and turned to rain, and was quite washed away from the pavement across which the stiff pink and red striped carcasses were being carried. Winston, his daydream total, stared at the pavement and half imagined that he was taking a small penknife to the paving flags to scrape away the layer of animal fat, blood and sawdust which he knew covered the stones, a waterproof coating which caused the porters to walk carefully in the wet. But although his eyes saw the fatty deposit on the pavement, and his ears heard the morning noises, his mind was bemusedly tackling the concept of PUMA. A day and a half ago nobody had ever heard of PUMA: now it was the only subject of conversation. He wondered whether he should spend the morning riding the Underground and getting man-in-the-train reactions to last night’s threat. He knew it was possible that he would be sent out on such a caper by the news desk, but he rather hoped he might be spared the indignity. You could write pieces like that without leaving the office. Commuters, when questioned about anything from cricket to the hair-style worn by the leader of the Tory Party, invariably came up with the most predictable statements; platitudes fed to them by the media, and now recycled and spat back at it. Behind him on the seven o’clock radio newscast he heard the words ‘puma’ and ‘London Transport’, and a little later he gathered that no incident had as yet been reported. What a strange language it was, he thought. No one ever said ‘nothing’s happened’. There always had to be an absence of incidents. He put another spoonful of sugar into his tea.

  ‘I should think you lot are in for a busy day.’ The voice came at him with a breath of beer from behind. Charlie Phillips, broad-shouldered, curly dark-haired, all-Arsenal man was following it towards him, his trousers smeared with the grease of meat. Five mornings a week Winston would run into Charlie in the café, Winston on his way to work, Charlie about to go home. Of all the porters that Winston saw every day, only Charlie had any time for him or took any interest in his job. They had met after Charlie had spotted Winston at a local football derby between Queen’s Park Rangers and Arsenal. Winston was a QPR man: and Charlie wanted to convert him. From that meeting on the terraces, as both sides struggled to make a nil-nil draw look like a respectable afternoon’s work, the two had become more than acquaintances although not quite friends. It was from Charlie that Winston gauged the temperature of the man in the street.

  Charlie sat down next to Winston with his plate of bacon and eggs, burping up bubbles of beer before he began to eat. ‘What’s the real story behind this lot then, Winston?’ Charlie had a touching faith in the ability of members of the Press to know everything about all things before they were made public knowledge.

  Winston shook his head: ‘Don’t know.’

  For a moment Charlie considered him to see if he was telling the truth, then, wiping his chin with a paper napkin, he shook his head with an elderly gesture which implied that he had the wisdom of Solomon. ‘They’ve really got you going this time, haven’t they, old son?’

  Winston smiled: Charlie’s attitude of gentle derision always amused him: ‘Who?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Charlie, still shaking his head. ‘This PUMA lot. They’ve really got you working for them.’

  Winston knew what Charlie was driving at, but he smiled all the same.

  ‘They’ve got you eating out of their hands, whoever they are. Look at the papers. You’ve fallen for it completely. You’re being used. All they have to do is show something stupid on telly and you lot make it into the biggest scare since the V2.’

  Winston had listened to this argument before from Charlie, but it did seem peculiarly appropriate this morning. Charlie was sceptical of all newspapers, like many people who are secretly fascinated by them, but his ideas were never to be dismissed.

  ‘What you gonna do today then, Winston? Checking on them TV people? Searching the Tube for clues …? Looking after your friend Huckleston? That lad’s been very lucky.’ Charlie was always well-informed, but his scorn was never meant seriously. He knew and Winston knew that given a chance he would throw over his job in Smithfield and be down Farringdon Street and into newspapers in a flash.

  ‘I thought I’d do a feature about beef rustling in Smithfield,’ said Winston. It was time he was getting to the office.

  ‘Admit it. I’m right, aren’t I? People like you love stories like this, don’t you?’

  Winston looked at him and took out his money to pay for his breakfast: ‘Well, yes,’ he said. ‘Don’t you?’

  Huckle had been right in his assessment of the day: it was a busy time for everyone. Poor Carol McGough, despite the claustrophobia of which she had been complaining for the seven years she had worked on the paper, was sent off to ride the Underground at rush hour and talk to the commuters; the television correspondent was ordered down to Television Centre and told to stay there until he found something to write about; the crime department began chasing the police investigation; several other members of the reporting staff kept an eye on the security precautions provided by London Transport for its customers; and Winston was put on to finding out how eighteen feet of film could be shot and processed without arousing suspicion. ‘Someone, somewhere, must have seen that message either before it was filmed or when the film was being processed,’ the police had said in an early morning appeal for public co-operation, and it fell to Winston to follow up this aspect of the story.

  He discovered quickly that the actual photographing of the message wasn’t difficult. Anyone with a Letraset could have drawn the black puma and added the warning to it; and the cost of hiring an unblimped 35-millimetre camera for a day was as little as £50. Like the good reporter he was he checked with all the main camera hire companies - Samuelson’s, Humphrey’s, Shepperton Studios - but he was pretty sure that he was wasting his time. The police had already been on to all of them and had taken away details of everyone who had hired a camera in the past year. No one who was going to pull a stunt like this would have been amateur enough to have left their trail so exposed. It therefore seemed likely that the film had been shot either with a camera ‘borrowed’ specially for the occasion - that is, without the owner knowing about it - or it had been filmed outside the United Kingdom. At first another possibility was that the material had been shot on a 16-millimetre camera and then blown-up to 35 for cutting into the film, but that, he discovered, would have meant a further technical process at the laboratory, thus increasing even further the danger of discovery. At this point he decided that the game of hunt the camera was probably a red-herring, better left to the police, and began to wonder how the film, having been shot, might have been processed. Obviously none of the big laboratories like Rank or Technicolor would knowingly have touched such a piece of film, but that left all kinds of smaller operators, some of whom specialized in blue movies and who wouldn’t wish to draw police attention to their work. At the same time there was a considerable difference in gravity between handling the odd dirty movie and taking part in a plot which included explosives and murder.

  Whoever had been involved in the processing of that piece of pirate film must have some link with PUMA, he was sure, and after writing a short piece explaining how the film might have been made, and the problems in tracing the laboratory or camera, he set about playing detective. He knew that Scotland Yard would be on to the same tack, but he enjoyed the excitement of the story anyway, and the police didn’t always get the answers. There were, Winston knew, certain people who, while reluctant even to tell a policeman their name, would happily incriminate themselves before a camera or a reporter’s notebook.

  Huckle was at his desk by eight-thirty, which was very early for him. His first task was to write as good a description as he could of the girl he had seen, and then to leave it with the picture desk for publishing when Scotland Yard released their sketch. He worked hard at the piece, labouring th
e fact that he was the person who had seen her and that the police impression was based on his account. In such a way reporters promote not only themselves, but also their newspaper. All morning the whole office was waiting to hear that PUMA had carried out its threat to the Underground. At morning conference the editor had asked what arrangements had been made to cover the story. But when Mitford had followed up his resumé of his staff’s activities for the day and added ‘Pray God nothing happens, but if it does let it be in the evening newspaper time,’ he had received a curt and cold stare, which meant that he ought not to wear his cynicism so openly. It was true, anyway. The whole editorial staff of the paper, apart from the racing, property, fashion and women correspondents, were waiting to hear that something terrible had happened.

  At eleven o’clock Huckle received a call from Kinney: the picture was to be issued to the Press the following morning. In the meantime Commander Howlett wondered whether Huckle had time to go over to Television Centre to look over the telecine operations staff, just in case he recognized anyone there.

  There was an exceptionally large tonnage of policemen manning the entrance to the concourse area at the Centre, their security measures causing not a little congestion, and even more aggravation among the congested. Kinney spotted Huckle at the back of a group of Corporation employees as he was about to be questioned by a clearly exasperated police constable, who had had more smart alec answers that morning at the BBC, than he had heard in his entire career.

  Kinney took Huckle by the arm, his head just a little less skull-like than usual, thought Huckle, and less bobbly on his shoulders. He looked dog tired and had little crusts of sleep caught under his eyelashes. Obviously he hadn’t had time to inspect himself too carefully that morning. Standing a few feet away from Kinney was a member of the BBC’s own black-serge-uniform security department.