Newsdeath

by Ray Connolly

  ‘Can I have a drink of orange then? My throat hurts.’ The sudden maternal discipline had driven the teasing out of the child’s mind.

  Susan poured a drink into a glass. ‘Go on. Back to bed. Daddy will come and see you in a minute.’

  Letting the sides of her lips turn down in an exaggerated expression of disappointment the child took her drink and made her way back up the stairs to her bedroom. From the living-room Huckle could hear the sound of the television schools’ programme.

  Susan picked up her cup of coffee. ‘So?’ She looked at him.

  He opened the copy of the paper he had brought to show her. ‘I thought you ought to see this.’

  Susan looked at it for a few minutes. ‘My, my …’ she was almost scoffing, ‘you’re turning detective now, are you, as well as everything else?’ She read on for a few moments. ‘What did he look like … I mean with his throat cut … what does it look like?’

  ‘For God’s sake Sue, the man was dead … I didn’t stand staring at him … it was horrible. I threw up.’

  She looked at the police photofit impression of the girl.

  ‘What about this girl then? She looks familiar. Jane will probably think that she’s another of your fancy women if she sees this.’

  ‘She’s too young to be thinking things like that.’

  ‘You’re too old to be getting up to things like that.’

  Here they were again: bickering at each other, thought Huckle. There just didn’t seem to be any way they could communicate without ending up spitting cute one-liners at each other. He dodged the looming war of words.

  ‘She looks familiar because she looks like you.’

  ‘No she doesn’t.’

  ‘Well I thought she did. Just a fraction. I only caught a glimpse of her, but when I did it made me think about you. They based their sketch on my description.’

  Susan heaved a sigh of relief. ‘Well it must be nice to get back on to the front page … and what a way to do it.’

  ‘There’s no reason to start bitching at me.’

  Susan smiled. ‘I’m sorry, love. I didn’t mean to. I really am pleased for you … I mean I’m pleased that you’re back in the thick of things.’ She paused again. ‘On television last night they said that the main PUMA targets were to be media people. If you’ve seen too much, you could be a prime target.’

  Huckle shook his head. ‘No, I don’t think so. I’m small beer for these guys. They’re after the big names, not the meddling little reporters.’

  ‘Why did you come?’

  Suddenly Huckle didn’t know how to answer her; he shrugged his shoulders, shifted his weight from one foot to the other, and looked out of the window across the clothes blowing in the damp wind on the washing line, down to the end of the garden where a row of fir trees charted the years of his children’s Christmases. ‘Oh, I don’t know. I suppose I wanted to tell you to be on your guard. You know, to keep your eyes open. Just in case …’

  ‘In case of what …?’

  ‘Well, in case of what you warned me about. It’s a million to one shot, but I wanted to tell you to be aware of it. To be just that little bit more careful than usual.’

  ‘Why us?’

  ‘No reason. But these PUMA people seem to be a gang of lunatics, and it’s impossible to tell how a lunatic is going to react to any given situation. I don’t suppose Joe Chambers ever thought he’d end up with his throat slit … anyway I’m probably being silly.’

  Huckle finished his coffee.

  ‘You’re the one who should be careful.’ Susan looked at him fondly.

  ‘Well, yes. Look, I’ll just pop up and see the children before I go.’

  ‘Yes … but remember, no lying to them. They know when you do, and they don’t like it any more than I do.’

  Huckle nodded wearily. The last thing he wanted now was a lecture from his estranged wife. He made his way through the hall and up the familiar port-coloured carpet of the staircase. The house was clean and polished and smelt of warm ironing. He liked that smell. It reminded him of his childhood. From the stairs he could see Charles sitting watching television, totally content in his solitude. Everywhere was so neat and tidy and right. And he was wrong. Susan kept a good home, and was a good mother, and he was the failure as husband and father: the lying husband, the buffoon of a father.

  From the top of the stairs he looked down across the hall. The house had become a foreign country. It was now Susan’s home completely: he recognized nothing as signifying his existence. He realized that there had been no need to warn Susan about anything, and that that wasn’t the real reason he’d come, anyway. He’d come because he needed some affection, some warmth. Something that Kirsten, with all her kindness and physical efforts, couldn’t offer. He’d simply wanted to see who he really was. But he’d come to the wrong place. He didn’t belong there any more.

  If he had a home at all now it was the paper. It was the centre of his life; the place he aimed for when he had nowhere better to go. It was, he thought, a gentleman’s club without the gentlemen: a place where one could snooze away heavy lunches, hiding one’s head in the newspapers, blocking out the incessant tele-type chattering of thirty typewriters; the shrill jangling of dozens of noisy phones, tethered to overhead junction boxes by umbilical cables which hung down like creepers across the quarter of an acre of open plan wood and leather tables, and aluminium chairs: tables packed to overflowing with spiked stories, handouts and tickets and notes. It was, he thought, as he returned there that afternoon after his arid encounter with the family, like one gigantic stretched out litter-tip where people worked with an energy and enthusiasm geared to the events of the moment. It was a dirty place, of smoke and ash and coffee spilling everywhere, and people eating doughnuts: but it was a friendly place, an egalitarian society. There were of course minor class differences: the diary people generally spoke better and wrote about more esoteric things than the news reporters; and the feature writers pretended to be a caste apart. But for Huckle, who fell in the middle of nowhere socially since education counted for more than experience but less than breeding, it was a refreshing mixed salad of a place, where everyone worked for everyone else, albeit usually unknowingly or begrudgingly, and where the actual labour of producing a newspaper bound the separate elements together in a mutual camaraderie.

  He found Winston sitting at his desk studying the last edition which had just been delivered by the copy boys. Despite floods in the south-east, more strikes at British Leyland, some further alleged revelations about one of the Kennedys’ sex-life, and a further run on the pound, the front page had changed little since the early morning, except that the two main stories had been swopped over, so that ‘POLICE SEEK MYSTERY BLONDE IN PUMA KILLING’ had become the lead, while Joe Chambers’s demise had been relegated to a tie-in piece down the page. There was one other difference: at the top of the page and above the headline was a picture of Huckle, with a large eighteen-point caption across all six columns explaining proudly their man’s presence at the scene of the two murders.

  Huckle slumped down in his chair next to Winston. Winston didn’t look up, but tossed the paper to him. ‘You’re a star,’ he said.

  Huckle looked at the paper with mixed feelings: it would be foolish to deny that seeing himself up there gave him a buzz, yet at the same time he wasn’t sure that he wanted to be too closely connected with this particular story.

  ‘Anything new?’ he asked at last.

  Winston shook his head. ‘It’s unbelievable. No one has any idea who or what PUMA is. The police are sending up smoke screens to imply that they’re on to all kinds of leads, but they’re lying. According to Carol McGough every squatter in London has been raided, but they’ve come up with nothing.’

  ‘What about the BBC?’

  Again Winston shook his head. ‘Any one of two thousand people or more could have pulled that stunt. It looks as though they’re ruling out anybody directly involved with the telecine department. They�
�re working on the theory that someone else at Television Centre managed to get past the security and pinch the can of film for half an hour or so. It’s possible. Anyone wearing a fireman’s uniform has the run of the place. Every person who works down there is being checked, but even that won’t prove anything. It could easily have been some outsider who happened to know his way around.’

  ‘What about Joe Chambers?’

  Winston smiled. ‘I think we got it right, but I don’t think poor little Joe knew what he was getting into.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘No further leads from him. Another dead end. Whatever he knew he won’t be passing on to anyone, now.’

  ‘And the PUMA manifestoes?’

  ‘There are thousands of Xerox machines in London. They’re all being checked on. The forensic department is the best bet. They’re piecing together bits of the bombed car. You don’t buy detonators and sodium chlorate at Woolworths. Somebody must know where it came from.’

  Huckle looked at Winston quizzically. ‘How do you know so much, anyway?’

  ‘I’m a good reporter.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I bribed a few people. Ten quid bunged in the right direction can work wonders.’

  Huckle laughed at Winston’s quiet audacity. ‘You really should have been a private detective. You love it, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Winston.

  ‘Anyway, where does all this lead us?’

  ‘Well, the police are looking for an intelligent, probably psychotic, group of anarchist revolutionaries, with a grudge against the media, a high capacity for organization, experience of bomb making, and a thorough knowledge of people in television. They’re also inclined to think that the people they’re after won’t have previous records …’

  ‘Well …’ Huckle stared again in silence at the front page. ‘Rather them than me.’

  Chapter Nine

  Kirsten didn’t come round that night. He didn’t expect her to. He knew how she must feel. Once, a long time ago when he’d been a student, he had made the mistake of telling a very pretty girl that he loved her. And he remembered with crippling hurt the long silence that had followed as he’d seen her search for kind words by which she might explain that she did not love him. It was, at that time, the worst moment in his life. She’d just sat there in his car and played with her gloves and handbag, and said something about how she loved him too, but as a friend, not in ‘you know, the other way’. And then they’d both sat and said nothing for what seemed like an eternity measured by tiny razor cuts into his soul, while the acacia trees in the wood where they’d parked shed a snowy blossom over the old Humber that was his first car. It had been a desolate moment, as embarrassing for her as it was despairing for him, and they had not seen each other after that day. There was nothing further to be done. He had played his hand and said too much: and now he couldn’t unsay it. They couldn’t pretend that that awful moment had never happened. Probably Kirsten felt the same.

  For once he had eaten a hamburger snack on the way home from the office, and when he arrived there at a quarter past eight he was happy at the prospect of an early night. There were no interesting messages for him from the answering service, and although his mind was a turmoil he turned to his old hobby. Taking a new tape out of its plastic container he determined to make yet another compilation of his favourite songs for playing in the car. It was a lonely and memory-provoking task, as he pulled out dozens of albums looking for favourite songs for transferring to tape. Every song had a story for him, since that was the way with popular songs: every favourite having associations that added a new poignancy to his self-image of a lonely man playing a sort of game of solitaire with revolving cassettes and turntables.

  By eleven-fifteen he had completed one side of the tape. Deciding to complete the job on some other occasion he turned off the music and going into the kitchen poured himself a glass of milk, rubbing his brow with the cool of the bottle to dampen the dry heat of the apartment, the way he had once seen it done in a film. While he was caught in this reverie of himself in the mould of a Hollywood character the telephone rang. Was it Kirsten, he wondered immediately, unsure whether he would be glad or sorry. If she should want to come around should he encourage her?

  ‘Hello?’ he said, picking it up, trying to make his voice sound as though he were not confused how to respond.

  There was a silence, then he heard someone breathing at the other end of the telephone. Again he repeated his greeting, his voice a directive that the caller should identify himself.

  ‘Is that Mr Huckleston?’ It was a woman’s voice, dark and grave and rich.

  ‘Yes. Who’s that?’ Something was itching inside Huckle’s brain, sending tremors of excitement through him. Instinctively his hand went out and turned on his phone pick-up tape recorder.

  ‘You don’t mind if I call you Huckle, do you?’ Now the voice was gently mocking. There was, he thought, the slightest trace of a north-European accent.

  ‘Who is that?’

  ‘Can’t you guess?’

  ‘No. Look, let’s stop playing silly games, shall we? Do you want to talk to me or not?’

  The voice at the other end of the telephone laughed. Huckle watched the volume needle on the tape recorder leap in three little jerks in time with the gentle convulsions of humour. He waited for what he knew now to be an inevitable introduction.

  ‘I think you saw me the other night … in Pelham Street.’

  Huckle suddenly realized he had no idea of what to say.

  ‘I saw the picture of me in your paper … I’m afraid it wasn’t very flattering. No one will recognize me from it. It made me look like Frankenstein’s monster …’

  ‘What do you want?’ Huckle was beginning to pull himself together again.

  ‘Just to talk.’

  ‘Talk about what?’ ‘PUMA.’

  ‘Who are PUMA?’

  ‘We’re the bogeymen!’ She said the word flippantly, but there was something in the way she expressed it, in its childhood associations with an illogical fear of the unknown, that caused a cold breath of fear to escape from Huckle’s lips. And as he stood there, watching the tape spools turning and listening to the barely audible breathing at the other end of the line, he caught a glimpse in his brain of the mutilated stomach of Sheila Fairclough, and remembered how as they lifted her into the ambulance the blanket over her had become dislodged. It was an image that he must have driven from his mind until this moment. Then he saw the lip-stick red slit across the underside of Joe Chambers’s chin, and remembered that Chambers had been a fair-haired young man and that his long hair had become entangled in his own blood until it had matted around his neck. Again he found himself feeling sick at the violence he had seen.

  At last he spoke again. ‘What do you want with me?’

  Again the voice came lilting back down the phone at him, this time almost flirtatiously, the voice of a siren, he thought. ‘I want to meet you.’

  ‘You’re crazy. The only place we’ll ever meet will be when I identify you in the dock at the Old Bailey

  Again came that haunting laugh. ‘Don’t be silly, Huckle. I think you’re frightened, aren’t you? Believe me there’s nothing for you to be frightened of. Your name isn’t on the list. In fact you’ve been very helpful to us so far.’

  ‘What list are you talking about?’

  ‘Meet me and I’ll tell you.’

  ‘If I meet you I’ll end up like Joe Chambers.’

  Suddenly the voice at the other end of the phone became cold. ‘Joe Chambers was a mistake. I hope you aren’t going to behave so foolishly.’

  ‘What do you mean, “a mistake” …?’ Huckle could sense that he had gained a momentary advantage.

  The response was ice-sharp. ‘He was a sexist pig, an enemy of the people, and was found guilty of crimes against womanhood. For that he paid the full penalty.’ The flirting, beguiling, almost tantalizing voice of a moment ago had been replaced by the monoton
ous drone of the litanist. The lack of emotion in the voice gave Huckle a further strength.

  ‘But he was also useful to you.’

  ‘Huckle,’ the voice had become coaxing again. ‘Why don’t you just meet me? I think we have a lot to talk about.’

  ‘No, thank you.’ In his mind Huckle puzzled over the notion that he ought to keep her talking long enough for the police to trace the telephone call. But there was no way of contacting anyone. Here he was with the most wanted woman in Britain on the phone to him and there was no way of getting a message out. At best he could keep her talking. ‘What do you hope to achieve with PUMA?’ he asked.

  ‘Didn’t you read our manifesto?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But your paper didn’t publish it.’

  ‘None of the papers published it. It wasn’t worth the space.’

  ‘We’ll see about that …’

  Suddenly the conversation was cut by the high-toned squeal of the Sony tape as it reached the end of the cassette. Immediately Huckle’s hand dropped down and he turned it off. Now the voice was cold and angry again.

  ‘Have you been recording me …?’

  Huckle swallowed, and tried to sound sincere: ‘No … what d’you mean?’

  ‘Don’t lie … that was a tape recorder.’ Huckle could feel the anger in the woman’s voice.

  ‘Okay … it was,’ he said casually, cursing to himself that he’d used a Sony tape. It was the only make to have a high tone bleeping alarm system to signify the end of recording.

  ‘What are you going to do with it?’

  ‘Wait and see.’ Something about the woman’s anxiety made his reply jaunty and teasing.

  ‘I warn you. Don’t give it to the police.’

  ‘And I warn you. Don’t threaten me … why don’t you tell me some more about PUMA?’

  ‘I’m warning you …’

  Huckle broke in. ‘I don’t think you told me your name, did you …? My mother always told me not to speak to strange women.’

  Suddenly the line went dead as the caller hung up. He replaced the receiver and taking his wallet out of his jacket found the home number that Kinney had given him and made the call.