Either Side of Midnight : A Novel (2020)

by Stevenson, Benjamin

  ‘Murder,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ Gareth scoffed.

  ‘It wasn’t a suicide. It was a murder,’ Jack repeated, more confident now. Louder. He could see Gareth deciding whether or not to laugh in his face. Jack continued. ‘We have compelling evidence that the pornography on Sam’s work laptop was planted to draw the attention away from his death.’ They didn’t. Jack didn’t even know what was on there or how much they had found. ‘That Sam was under duress from a third party at the time of his death.’ He wasn’t, but to create a victim, you had to create a killer, and Jack thought ‘third party’ sounded particularly ominous. ‘He didn’t own a gun. One must have been supplied to him.’ That was a guess, but a reasonable one under Australian gun laws. ‘And Sam loved his partner. Why would he do this in front of her? Unless he felt like he had to?’ Jack could see Gareth processing the information, but the key was to keep his assertions short and in a flurry, a verbal assault of such pace that no single point could be focused on, where enough convincing half-truths somehow wound up feeling whole. Jack didn’t need to fill Gareth with proof, he just needed to make it feel like he could. The lies slid out his mouth. Throat oiled. Practised. ‘Someone did this to him. He would have felt like he didn’t have a choice.’

  Gareth gripped and massaged the leather on the back of his chair. Jack knew if he responded with a statement it meant he’d bought most of it. If he responded with a question, Jack still had a long way to go.

  ‘What is your compelling evidence?’ Gareth asked.

  Damn.

  Harry drew a breath, opened his mouth. Jack put a hand on his shoulder, as if to say, I’ve got this. Harry swallowed his words.

  ‘Well, I can’t tell you that, can I?’ said Jack. ‘Otherwise I can’t sell it to Channel 12.’

  ‘Wait. I thought—’

  ‘Gareth, I produced one of the highest rating television shows you’ve ever seen. I’ve been in jail for a year and a half, sitting on my arse. I’m not going to sit in this boardroom any longer than I have to.’ Now it was Jack’s turn to stand up. Harry, not on-script, missed the cue. He sat there, gormless. ‘I hope you enjoy explaining at the AGM how a murder was committed in your very own station, and not only did you not notice, but another channel got there first. Thank you for your time.’ Then, curtly: ‘Harry.’

  Harry caught up and rolled his chair back.

  There was a long pause. The leather of the chairback squeaked under Gareth’s thumbs. ‘I don’t have a crew,’ he said eventually. A statement.

  Got him. Now Jack was doing Gareth a favour. Meeting him in the middle. All Jack’s old tricks were coming into play.

  Gareth continued, ‘Production’s onsite with our dating competition.’

  ‘Luckily, we don’t need one,’ Jack said. ‘We’re still working on discovery. The two of us will do just fine. In fact, I don’t need anything formal from you right now. Once we break the format, we can talk production.’

  ‘And your evidence?’

  Jack ignored this. ‘I need all the footage from the day of the shooting. Of Midnight Tonight and your security cameras. And I want to be able to go where I want and talk to who I want. After we’ve done a bit of groundwork, I’ll send you the bible.’ A series bible was a document that laid out all the episodes, plotlines and character arcs, as well as information on the look and feel of the program. By pretending he had it, Jack was reinforcing he was in a position to pitch to other networks. ‘You’ll be the first to see it.’

  ‘It’s exclusive?’

  ‘It’s exclusive.’ Jack reached his hand over the boardroom table, which took a fair lean. It was an easy thing to promise, exclusivity of a program that wouldn’t exist. Everything in television is an easy promise.

  ‘Get your thingy out,’ said Gareth. ‘You can record this bit.’

  Jack took out his recorder, placed it on the table. Pressed record.

  Gareth stooped over the table to be closer to the mic. Spoke vertically. ‘I’ve got first-look at the documentary you plan to make on the death . . .’ Gareth paused. ‘The murder, of Sam Midford.’ Gareth straightened, and grabbed Jack’s hand at last. ‘Agreed?’

  ‘Agreed.’

  ‘Harry Midford is also in the room as witness.’ Their hands stayed connected.

  ‘Sure,’ said Harry.

  ‘Right. You can turn it off.’ They separated. Gareth pointed at the device. ‘I want a copy of that. I’m serious. Channel 12 has given away the winner of our last three singing competitions, and this year’s Top Cook. It’s like they’re determined to take us down. You thought you got sued last time? If Tom Dwyer sees this before I do, I will hunt you.’

  ‘You’re jealous of Dwyer’s ratings pull?’ Jack wheeled his chair back to sit again, in invitation to continue. Gareth didn’t mimic him.

  ‘Fuck no. Dwyer couldn’t pull the skin off a burn victim. No more questions now. Follow me,’ Gareth said, and started moving. Jack pocketed his recorder and followed. Knowing when to quit was one of his newer skills. Harry tactfully waited until Jack had walked in front of him, placing a gap between him and Gareth, before falling in behind them. Gareth led them out of the boardroom, back to the elevator, talking over his shoulder as he went. ‘Midnight’s show was in Stage Three. We haven’t packed it up yet. Weren’t really sure what to do with it. Plus, it looked good as set dressing for news crosses. No one else had that. You know your way around, right?’

  They were at the elevators now. Glass walled, looking out into the central space that was ringed by each floor. Just like the prison, mused Jack. But making TV has more cigarettes.

  Jack looked over the railing. Right-angled cubicle walls made the ground floor look like a maze. It was calmer up here, on the corporate floors. Editing suites, including Jack’s old office, were in the middle. Sound stages were on the bottom, ringed around the news floor. Jack knew where Stage Three was. He nodded. Gareth pressed the down button.

  ‘I’ll send Beth Walters down to meet you. She’s Sam’s executive producer. Well, she was.’ He held the door open with a forearm. Jack and Harry stepped inside and Jack deliberately waited. Harry pressed the button for One. Gareth kept talking. ‘Beth will get keycards set up for you.’ He paused a second, arm still barring the lift, and looked between the two of them. ‘I’m not sure how to put this in corporate wording for you, Jack.’

  ‘Plain’s fine.’

  ‘Don’t fuck me, okay?’ He removed his arm. Pointed. ‘And send me that recording.’

  CHAPTER 7

  ‘Mate.’ Harry slapped a thick hand on Jack’s shoulder, back to his shiny-grinned boisterousness. ‘Compelling evidence. Jesus. Even I believed we had something.’ Then he rattled his fists up and down, as if running on the spot, an energetic tic. ‘This is fun!’ The elevator was not big enough for Harry’s exuberance. Jack rested the back of his head on the glass. He was tired. Harry was still talking. ‘Bowman swallowed it, but, shit, he really doesn’t trust you.’

  ‘I just spent a year and a half in prison for lying,’ said Jack. ‘You shouldn’t either.’

  Jack hadn’t been prepared enough to come back here. The whole building was triggering. The epileptic rotation of adverts. The rustle of the ground floor. Any of the bathrooms where, sometimes, at ten in the morning, Jack on his knees and a man snorting a line off the basin would lock eyes conspiratorially. I won’t tell if you don’t. He let the cool glass of the elevator chill the nape of his neck. The corners of his mouth tickled with saliva. Anticipation. Spear at his throat.

  He’d lied, but he’d also been lied to. Gareth was only interested when Jack had raised the potential of another station’s scrutiny. Channel 14 would have received plenty of that already, but only while the death of Mr Midnight was still a tragedy. Gareth was probably thankful that Sam’s laptop had turned up what it did, because the eye of judgement would have shifted, the attention less worthy. In case it shifted back, Gareth wanted control of Jack’s story. Which meant he was keen to guide
the story away from something else. But Jack had expected nothing less from Gareth, who had a company to protect. He had been prepared to spar with the CEO.

  It was Harry Midford who surprised him.

  The problem was that he and Harry hadn’t had a proper interview in the prison. Jack had taken everything he’d been told at face value because Harry held the promise of writing Jack’s cheque. They’d had one half-hour meeting behind bars, a brief phone call, and then this morning. He had only been home eighteen hours; he hadn’t had time to do background. He didn’t know Harry at all.

  But Gareth did. Sure, maybe they’d met at a premiere or an afterparty, but that didn’t seem right. Harry knew him well enough to be intimidated. He’d been doing this flashy showman bit for Jack but dropped it with Gareth. That was more than casual. In the boardroom, Harry had talked intelligently and fluidly about the behind-the-scenes issues with Midnight Tonight. And, when they’d stepped into the elevator, Jack had waited for Harry to press the button for the first floor. How had he known how to get to Stage Three? Jack figured most people would guess that sound stages were on the ground floor. They’re big, they have high ceilings for lights and no one wants to lug equipment upstairs. But Stage Three was opposite the elevator, so if they went to ground they’d have to weave through the news desks. It was faster to get out on the first floor and walk around on that level, before going down the stairs. Gareth had asked Jack if he knew where he was going. Harry shouldn’t have had the foggiest. Let alone a shortcut.

  They got off the elevator. Harry took a moment to lean on the banister and look down at the news floor.

  ‘You used to work here,’ Jack said, propping his elbows on the railing too.

  Harry turned to him. Jack saw his cheek twitch, that gleam of a smile taking an extra second in revealing itself. Like framing a shot to catch a flash of violence but keep a PG rating intact. Draw the knife as the curtains close. Something cracked in Harry’s brow, furrowed, and his teeth retreated. Jack could see he had to make a conscious effort to push the cowards forward. Then he was smiling like Jack had never said anything. Jack doubled down and took out his recorder, flashed it like a tough guy showing off the butt of a pistol, sitting on his hip behind a pulled-back jacket. The same power in this device, Jack was remembering. Words were once his weapons.

  ‘I’m assuming on Midnight Tonight,’ said Jack. ‘You don’t anymore. Which means something happened.’

  ‘Which means bad blood. Sure.’ Harry finished Jack’s thought process for him. He turned back to look out over the space. Muttered, ‘Fair guess.’

  ‘You’re paying me to pretend this is a murder,’ Jack said, not bothering to dress it up. ‘I’ll play. But it doesn’t work when both of us are acting.’

  ‘Bowman’s a prick,’ Harry said, straightening and walking towards the stairs. Jack fell into step beside him. ‘If that’s what you’re after.’

  ‘Grudges make good motive.’

  ‘It’s TV. Everyone’s got one. Throw a dart.’

  ‘Say I hit Gareth.’

  ‘I’d shake your hand.’ Harry put his mask up again, then he sighed. ‘Fine.’ He breathed it like a petulant child. All that was missing was the foot-stamping. ‘Sam and I met him in Montreal. He said he thought we’d be great on TV, gave us the show, which went to pilot. It was a big deal – we were only twenty-four. That was when it was The Midnight Show.’

  ‘The Midnight Show?’

  ‘Back when we were the Midnight Twins. Five years ago. Keep up.’ Jack had no idea what Harry was talking about, but now he’d got him talking he didn’t want to cut him off. ‘The pilot went well,’ Harry continued. ‘The network was frothing. And then Bowman takes Sammy into his office, tells him I’m dead weight. Tells him they’ll only go to series if Sam goes it alone.’

  ‘He dropped you?’

  ‘I quit.’

  ‘Sounds like you were pushed and told to say you jumped,’ Jack said. ‘They forced you out.’

  ‘You can put it like that if you want, but it wasn’t Sam’s fault. It wasn’t fair on him to make that decision, so I made it for him.’

  They reached a huge industrial door, floor to ceiling with hydraulic pistons crisscrossing the frame, like the door of an airport hangar. It slid from left to right, and was currently open half a metre. Dark inside. A lightbox on the wall next to the opening – ON AIR – was grey. Off.

  They walked into the gap single file. It was pitch black, the light soaked up by the black floors, walls and ceiling all designed to keep the stage lights focused. The thin panel of light from the doorway didn’t stretch far. Jack could sense the size of the space, his body intuiting the cavernous room. He edged in after Harry. Neither of them knew where the light switch was. He could sense a hulking mass to his right. The audience seating, he assumed. Several hundred chairs on a portable rake. He looked to the floor, hoping for some luminescent tape, laid down in guidance. Nothing. The studio lights had probably been off for days, nothing to charge the tape’s glow. He followed the soft shuffle of Harry’s similarly slow, exploratory steps, and wondered, for a glimmer of a second, if this was a man he needed to be afraid of.

  ‘What about the money?’ Jack said.

  ‘I told you it’ll clear.’

  Harry was further ahead than Jack had guessed. He raised his voice. ‘I meant that Gareth made Sam rich. Left you out. Greed’s just as good as a grudge for motive.’

  ‘It’s TV,’ Harry echoed. ‘Every motive plays. Sex. Money. Greed. Power. Drugs. Revenge.’ He listed them off like the swirling buzzwords on the promo upstairs. They might have even been the same ones. He was right, too. Focusing on such motives wouldn’t narrow down suspects – not in this business. ‘Half the people here would kill to sit in that chair. Your dartboard’s getting pretty clogged.’

  ‘He still made Sam a star. And a fortune.’

  ‘I created the format, so I still get two per cent. And Sam made me a consultant. Though of course Bowman didn’t want me near the thing so it was more honorary than actual work, but that was a bit more in the pocket. He looked after me. Money’s not a problem.’

  It hasn’t come into my account yet, Jack thought. ‘You work?’ he asked.

  ‘I told you, I have residuals.’

  ‘You walked away on good terms?’

  ‘Sure.’

  In the dark, Jack was more tuned in to how Harry was talking, not just what he was saying. The same way listeners could zero in on a specific moment on a podcast. Everything’s significant under scrutiny. A cough becomes a confession.

  If he were producing this conversation, Jack would have split the audio, jacked up the volume of the bass in the cough and pulled back from the speaking voice, increased the ambient noise to add clutter, and suddenly it would seem like nerves. Jack used to use all those tricks. If he’d been editing Harry, he would have left a larger pause between their words to signify that Harry was deflecting, but in person Jack had realised Harry’s tic. The way his voice almost physically shrugged when they’d talked yesterday on the phone. Harry answered questions he didn’t want to answer quickly, casually, and in the affirmative. As if hearing what you wanted to hear would get you off his back. Sure from Harry Midford meant if that’s what you want.

  ‘Bullshit,’ Jack said. ‘Your brother would have had more power the longer the show went on. Season by season. These shows work like that. You’re the star first. Then you’re the executive producer. Then you’re running your own production company and controlling the thing top to bottom. He could have brought you back if he wanted.’

  ‘We had a falling out,’ Harry said.

  ‘Over?’

  ‘Me leaving.’

  ‘That was five years ago.’

  ‘Yeah. Okay. We had a falling out five years ago. Over the show. You record that?’ Short answers. Deflection. His footsteps stopped. Jack stopped too, in case he crashed into him. ‘Jesus. You ask questions and restate the answers. No wonder you get good sound bites. It’s
like talking on a hamster wheel.’

  ‘You paid for this,’ Jack reminded him. They stood, faceless, apart in the dark.

  ‘It was normal, brotherly stuff. Okay? Nothing to want him dead over.’

  ‘What was he like, leading up to his death? Did you notice anything?’

  ‘We didn’t really talk.’

  ‘Didn’t really?’

  ‘Didn’t at all. Okay? Where are you going?’ Harry had heard Jack start to move again.

  ‘Because of your falling out?’

  ‘Sure.’ There it was again. Sure.

  ‘That was five years ago.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Harry was moving too. There was a clunk as he hit something. Swore.

  ‘You haven’t talked for five years and yet you know your brother well enough to know he wouldn’t kill himself?’

  Harry took a long time to think on his reply.

  Jack, who had made his way to the green glow of the exit sign and used its residual light to track a light switch on the far wall, stayed with his finger on the switch but kept the lights out. Let Harry stew.

  Normally, an interview like this would be challenging. That was why prison interviews were so hard to get truth from, because they were always over the phone. On the flip-side, they made great TV. It’s easy to make an inmate a victim – innocent, framed – when all you’re doing is playing their crackly voice over a still image. It’s easy to make a cop look dirty when you can zoom in on them sweating, pulling at their collar. Characterisation is in the framing. Keep anyone the audience is supposed to like away from the focus of the shot. Because people don’t look natural on screen, they look uncomfortable – pallid or flushed without stage make-up, sweating under lights, squinting as they’re not used to the glare. And uncomfortable looks guilty. If you want a victim shot – a tear-laden, splotchy-cheeked, snot-dribbled testimony – the line between insincere and emotive is all down to how natural they look on camera. Even the grieving widows have to be pretty enough to be ugly.