Newsdeath

by Ray Connolly

  ‘Pick up the telephone,’ said Eyna.

  Huckle looked at her, but even before his mind could consider the possibility that there might be a reprieve she was shaking her head.

  ‘No. Not Howlett. I want you to call this number.’ She passed him a piece of paper with a London number typed on to it. ‘That will put you through to LBC. You’re going to be a radio commentator. I want Howlett to know and to hear that we mean what we say. I should say this will make exciting radio, wouldn’t you?’

  The full extent of what she wanted him to do hit Huckle in waves as though he were walking into great billowing gusts of suffocating air. ‘I can’t do it,’ he said. ‘I can’t … they won’t let me …’

  ‘I think you will find that you can. When you get through to that number I want you to convince them that you are who you say you are. They, no doubt, have had more than enough hoaxers in the past few weeks.’ Huckle continued to shake his head. ‘You will commentate upon the event, because if you don’t we will bring in one of the girls and then you will have two deaths to report. Do it my way and you might even save a life. Can you imagine what public opinion will be saying by a quarter past twelve? By this afternoon this station will be back on the air. And there need be no more deaths.’

  ‘There needn’t be any.’ Huckle’s voice was so weak, that he could hardly hear himself.

  But Eyna heard him. ‘Seemingly that is not to be our decision.’

  It was now just past twelve o’clock. Eyna looked at her watch. And waited. Huckle picked up the telephone.

  Kirsten did not know that Arabs celebrated Christmas. This Christmas she did not expect to be celebrating anything, but she had to drag her mind off the disappearance of Huckle. In the way that she had overcome every reversal and disappointment, she had thrown herself even more thoroughly into her work. This week her work was concerned with the organization of a mammoth Christmas party for the children of several Arab embassies in London. It was being held at the Park Tower Hotel in Knights-bridge, and it was Kirsten’s job to ensure that everyone got enough jellies, every child got a Christmas present in keeping with the wealth of his country’s delegation, and Father Christmas didn’t turn out to be a Zionist. At another time the idiocy of some of her instructions might have amused her: but Kirsten was beyond amusement.

  She heard of the Capital Radio attack on the BBC’s Radio 4 news at eight o’clock while dressing in her Battersea apartment. The newsreader had given all the information which was then available, only mentioning at the end of the item that there was no indication whether journalist John Huckleston was among those in the PUMA party of attackers. Instinctively Kirsten knew that he was there. At first she had debated with herself whether she should wait outside Euston Tower with the fans of adventure, but common sense and an undefeatable sense of duty bade her make her way to Knightsbridge instead.

  All morning she tried to concentrate on the arrangement of chairs for the offspring of Trucial State millionaires, and was careful not to seat any young princes near any of Ghadafi’s lot, but her mind stayed with the passing news, and she returned to her little office with increasing frequency as the twelve o’clock deadline approached. Finally someone in the banquet hall mentioned that, as they were catering for young sheiks, they ought to buy a supply of gobstoppers, since they always reminded him of sheep’s eyes. With her stomach almost churning as the staff around her chuckled at the joke Kirsten went into her office and closed the door.

  At first she listened to a programme about farming on the radio; then, checking her watch for the millionth time, she turned to the all-news programme LBC, Capital Radio’s rival and now the only independent radio station operating in London. It was just twelve o’clock when she found it, hiding on 269 metres on the Medium Wave, and she listened once again to a repetition of the news. Still no incident had been reported, and LBC’s man on the spot was reporting no sign of any activity inside the building. The police were, it seemed, playing their now familiar waiting game. ‘A game of bluff,’ said the reporter, ‘a game of bluff that several Capital Radio employees cannot afford to let them lose.’ It was a grim, ringing cliché with which to end the report, and the studio newscaster, Michael Arnold, quickly ran through the rest of the news.

  So nothing had happened yet. Kirsten almost breathed a sigh of relief. Then the tone of the announcer changed; she felt a sense of fear, as though a knife had been turned inside her stomach. The announcer was suddenly saying that they had a call from journalist John Huckleston inside Capital Radio. The edge of urgency in his voice was razor sharp.

  ‘Hello John … John Huckleston … you’re phoning us … how did you get your call out?’ Michael Arnold was at a momentary loss to know exactly how to take this call.

  ‘Hello … yes, this is John Huckleston and I’m at Capital. I’m phoning you because they, that is, PUMA, have asked me to …’

  Arnold interrupted. ‘We understand that the deadline was due to run out at twelve o’clock, John. Has there been any incident yet? We know that so far power has not been returned to Capital’s transmitters …’

  Kirsten could feel the anguish in Huckle’s voice as he spoke again. While Michael Arnold was floundering to find the right style in which to approach this situation, Huckle’s voice sounded as if it had been washed clean of energy.

  ‘Please … please don’t ask me any questions … I can’t answer them … I’m phoning you because these people here still can’t broadcast in the way they want, and so they have decided that the first execution is to be carried out now.’ He paused and his voice wavered … ‘Oh God …’

  Kirsten heard Michael Arnold take a quick intake of breath, as though he were going to interrupt again, but instead the sharp distortion of Huckle’s telephone voice began again. ‘The name of the man is George Delaware. He works at Capital Radio as a security officer … I’m in main control …’ Between everything Huckle said there were long pauses and occasionally his voice shook with emotion. Kirsten turned her radio volume higher. ‘When PUMA broke in here last night he was tied up and blindfolded. Now they’ve put ear plugs into his ears so he can’t hear what I’m saying. He is being led now to the other side of the studio … there are just four of us in here … but all the others are in agreement with the sentence … they are guarding the other hostages and the ways into the building … the whole place seems impregnable …’ For a moment Huckle’s voice faded away, and Michael Arnold, the station announcer, broke in with a quick ‘John’ to ascertain that he was still there. Then Huckle came back. ‘The man, George Delaware … he doesn’t know what’s going to happen to him … he can’t see or hear anything. They’ve turned him with his face to the wall. He’s standing still … Oh God … No … No … No …’ Suddenly Huckle was shouting at somebody else in the studio at Capital. And then the sound of a loud shot exploded over the air.

  In main control Huckle felt the telephone drop from his hand on to the engineer’s console in front of him. Where George Delaware’s head had been pointed a moment earlier was now a sticky mess of blood and bone and hair and something that looked like mucous sticking to the wall and beginning to slide down the white acoustic panels of main control. Beneath the mark the body of Delaware, with a hole blown through the back of the head, was crouched in a seemingly penitent position, a posture into which it had been thrown by the blast. What an undignified position in which to die, was all that Huckle could think. Behind the body Danny stood swaying on the soles and toes of his feet holding the Czech Skorpion revolver which he had used to shoot Delaware. Eyna walked across the studio and holding out her hand took the gun from him. Only then did she notice that Huckle had stopped talking into the telephone.

  ‘You’re forgetting your commentary,’ she said simply.

  ‘You bastards.’ That was all he could think of to say.

  ‘Pick up the telephone and tell the people, or there will be another little exercise at four o’clock.’ Eyna’s voice was shaking. She pointed the revolver i
n the direction of Huckle.

  He picked up the telephone. ‘Hello … I don’t know whether you can still hear me or not … but …’

  ‘Yes, John, what happened? Can you tell us what happened? We heard shooting.’ The LBC announcer had no idea whether this broadcast was still being broadcast live, but he had to keep Huckle talking. Everything had happened too quickly for him.

  ‘George Delaware is dead. They shot him in the back of the head. He’s dead … and if someone doesn’t do something soon there will be another killing at four o’clock … the next one to die is to be a woman called Patti Horrocks … She has a little boy …’ Suddenly he broke down and began to cry. ‘Listen, everyone out there. Everybody in here is going to die unless you do something. I mean, you’ve got to turn the transmitters on again. These people … they’re lunatics or something. Nothing matters to them. They just want to broadcast … they want to speak to the people … they’ve lost touch with rationality completely … you can’t reason with them. I know it’s a political decision and everything, but nothing is worth seeing these people killed for no reason. In the name of God, the transmitters have to be turned on again. Nothing that they can say over the radio can be as bad as what they’re going to do if they don’t get what they want … nothing … please before four o’clock. Don’t let them do this again.’

  At that moment Eyna stepped forward and, pulling the telephone out of his hand, replaced it on to the receiver. He turned away from her. In the background he saw Dave enter the room and look dispassionately at Delaware’s body.

  ‘Messy, isn’t it?’ Dave screwed up his nose. Then, clearing his throat, he spat casually in the direction of the corpse.

  Patti Horrocks never tried to be brave: she didn’t want to meet death with dignity. She wanted to live. She wanted to go home to her child. No one told her directly that she was to be the next person to be executed but the sudden silences, the clock-watching, and the eyes that turned away from her whenever she asked her colleagues and stone-faced captors who might be the next person to die, eventually told her that it must be she. Sick with fear and loneliness she sank to the floor and cried, not the wounded animal scream of the captured prey, but the lonely and desolate cry of despair. After the body of George Delaware had been removed by Danny and Dave from main control she and Frances were returned to the tele-communications room under the guard of Jenny Silas. Their candle was now low, and as their room had no access to daylight it had an eerie tomb-like quality. Since the electricity supply had been cut the switchboard lights were no longer lighting up, but when out of curiosity Jenny Silas picked up one of the telephones she found that she was being addressed by someone who was threatening her with a public hanging. She offered some obscenities in reply and replaced the telephone. Meanwhile Patti’s eyes had become fixed upon the red stain of death left against the white wall where George Delaware had been murdered. She had not heard the explosion of the gun, but she could guess what had happened.

  Not all of Huckle’s commentary on the execution had been broadcast live by LBC. When the programme producer had first received Huckle’s call he had been disinclined to believe that this was not a hoax: after all it was twelve o’clock, the time set for the first execution. But one of the reporters in the news-room who had worked alongside Huckle on several stories during the past couple of years was in no doubts as to the caller’s identity. At that point it had been decided to put Huckle’s call directly through live on to the Morning Show. Whatever he had to say would, by any standards, be a considerable scoop for the programme.

  The death of George Delaware, the gunshot sound of a man being murdered live over the radio had, however, ended the scoop. No one had believed that murder could actually take place on the radio; but it had, and now there were certain to be questions about the wisdom in allowing the phone call to be broadcast live. It had been a calculated risk that the producer and editor of the programme had both considered worth taking, and later events were to prove them right. While Huckle was continuing with his commentary, switchboards all over London were lighting up with listeners’ horror at what had happened and demands that Capital be allowed to broadcast again before there was any more senseless killing.

  Anyone who might be remotely worth protesting to was inundated with calls. Seemingly every office of the BBC, radio and television, had callers wanting them to do something, just as though they were able, and every newspaper in Fleet Street was besieged with people demanding that they do everything possible to save the life of the next hostage. Although the second part of Huckle’s commentary had not gone out live, it had been taped and since it was comparatively innocuous it was broadcast within half an hour of the execution. Feeling left out of the excitement, the BBC World At One news programme managed to buy a copy of the whole tape for transmitting just over an hour after the event. For LBC it had been a scoop, now every time the tape was played their station was part of the news itself. In Fleet Street the evening papers replated their front and back pages with news of the execution and transcripts of Huckle’s commentary - ‘courtesy the London Broadcasting Company’. It was a good day for news, and a great day for LBC.

  One person who did not hear the original broadcast was the Metropolitan Commissioner of Police. He was, at twelve o’clock, standing behind a metal, bullet-proof sheet on the roadway below Euston Tower staring up manfully towards Capital Radio, while Press photographers snapped away at the commander in the field. Already he had had to fight increasing pressure on him to admit that his forces were unable to control the situation, and the usual demands for bringing in the army to deal with the threat had already gone out from those who saw a military solution to everything. But he was resisting. His men had everything that was necessary for a satisfactory conclusion of the siege. The only thing that the army could offer would have been tanks and heavy artillery, and that would have meant a loss of life on a scale larger than any which would have been acceptable.

  He had faith in Howlett, who was in charge of the police siege, and whose force had been augmented with men from D Division, the Blue Berets, themselves mainly ex-army men who were arms experts and were at that moment poised to burst into Capital the moment it was considered there was any reasonable chance of getting in without killing all of the hostages. The police had everything under control: the whole building was ringed by armed police; they were on the roof and they were in the basement. The men from C7, Scotland Yard’s technical support services, had installed all kinds of sound bugs, cameras with mirrors which took television pictures round corners and up and into the first floor rooms of the station, and even remote-controlled tear gas canisters. The police would win as always if they were given time to out-wait the terrorists. But that, as Howlett had said, was a political decision.

  That decision was reached at a hurriedly called meeting between the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary, the Minister for Posts and Telecommunications, the Chairman of the Independent Broadcasting Authority and the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police in Downing Street at three-thirty that afternoon. Eyna had been right. Public opinion would not stand for the systematic murder by timetable of hostages in a Central London radio station. There was no alternative, save sending in the Blue Berets with machine-guns blazing, and that left the possibility that the whole of Euston Tower would be blown sky high. Whatever happened life must be protected. Already the tape of the execution of Delaware had been broadcast right around the world. If it meant that Britain looked as though she were being soft on terrorists, then that would have to be accepted.

  And so at a quarter to four in the afternoon, with Patti Horrocks now in such a state of collapse that it was doubtful whether she would have realized what was happening to her had the execution taken place, there was a sudden flickering and the lights of the building came on again, with a brilliance which made the bat-eyed hostages and their captors blink at each other in disbelief. As Huckle sat there, slouched now against the console of main control, he heard cheering fr
om around the building, as the PUMA members celebrated their victory. But, though his eyes were watering and unfocussed in the new light and his body felt bruised and torn, he could see nothing other than the patch of blood that was all that remained of George Delaware. As realization of what must be happening reached him the telephone on the desk above him began to ring. Moving towards him Eyna, still fresh and alert, nodded and indicated that he should answer it. He pulled himself to his feet. It was Howlett to say that, now the electricity was back on, PUMA would be able to start broadcasting just as soon as the engineers could reconnect the transmitters.

  ‘Thank God … thank God,’ murmured Huckle. Eyna again put down the phone, and turning towards Bill Adams, the engineer, who was sitting motionlessly staring at the once-again twinkling lights of the studio Christmas tree, she asked him politely to get back to work.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The final editions of the evenings went on to the streets at just before five o’clock that night, so heavy in enormous black headlines that commuters on their way home quickly found their fingers covered in coatings of black ink. All day long the front pages had been changing as the story developed, one shock headline coming on top of another, but now, almost as though PUMA were running a timetable especially for evening newspapers, they had the climax of the day.

  Standing behind the back-bench in the main newsroom, editor John Lloyd considered a page proof of his last edition. He couldn’t remember a London story which had developed so rapidly. The first edition that morning carried the news of the siege; then at lunchtime and throughout the afternoon the front page had changed twice as he and the chief sub editor had rejigged the murdering of George Delaware and a subsequent transcript of Huckle’s commentary for LBC. Now at a quarter to five, and with virtually every page of the paper taken up with different aspects of the siege, Lloyd had been able to print the headline he had had standing by all day, a massive 156-pt caps across six columns ‘RADIO PUMA’, while over and under it he had run, in correspondingly massive type, headline details of the other siege events of the day. PUMA had got what they wanted: control of the air waves, and the biggest advertising campaign for any radio station ever launched anywhere in the world. There would be few Londoners who that night would not be turning to 194 metres, Medium Wave, to find out what was happening at the besieged Radio PUMA.