"I told him all that." Evan realized he was close to tears, and felt ashamed. "I have never, in thirty years of banking, since I started behind the counter of Barclays Bank in Cardiff, passed a rubber check. Until today." He emptied his glass and stared at it gloomily. "Have another?"
"No. You shouldn't, either. Will you resign?"
"Must do." He shook his head from side to side. "Thirty years. Come on, have another."
"No," Arny said firmly. "You should go home." He stood up and took Evan's elbow.
"All right."
The two men walked out of the wine bar and into the street. The sun was high and hot. Lunch-hour lines were beginning to form at cafe's and sandwich shops. A couple of pretty secretaries walked by eating ice-cream cones.
Arny said: "Lovely weather, for the time of year."
"Beautiful," Evan said lugubriously.
Arny stepped off the curb and hailed a taxi. The black cab swerved across and pulled up with a squeal.
Evan said: "Where are you going?"
"Not me. You." Arny opened the door and said to the driver: "Waterloo Station."
Evan stumbled in and sat down on the backseat.
"Go home before you get too drunk to walk," Arny said. He shut the door.
Evan opened the window. "Thanks," he said.
"Home's the best place."
Evan nodded. "I wish I knew what I'm going to tell Myfanwy."
Arny watched the cab disappear, then walked toward his office, thinking about his friend. Evan was finished as a banker. A reputation for honesty was made slowly and lost quickly in the City. Evan would lose his as surely as if he had tried to pick the pocket of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He might get a decent pension out of it, but he would never get another job.
Arny was secure, if hard up: quite the opposite of Evan's plight. He earned a respectable salary, but he had borrowed money to build an extension to his lounge, and he was having difficulty with the payments. He could see a way to earn out of Evan's misfortune. It felt disloyal. However, he reasoned, Evan could suffer no more.
He went into a phone booth and dialed a number.
The pips went and he thumbed in a coin. "Evening Post?"
"Which department?"
"City Editor."
There was a pause; then a new voice said: "City desk."
"Mervyn?"
"Speaking."
"This is Arnold Matthews."
"Hello, Arny. What goes on?"
Arny took a deep breath. "The Cotton Bank of Jamaica is in trouble."
22
Doreen, the wife of Deaf Willie, sat stiffly upright in the front of Jacko's car, clutching a handbag in her lap. Her face was pale, and her lips were twisted into a strange expression compounded of fury and dread. She was a large-boned woman, very tall with broad hips, and tending to plumpness because of Willie's liking for chips. She was also poorly dressed, and this was because of Willie's liking for brown ale. She stared straight ahead, and spoke to Jacko out of the side of her mouth.
"Who've took him up the hospital, then?"
"I don't know, Doreen," Jacko lied. "Perhaps it was a job, and they didn't want to let on who, you know. All I know is, I get a phone call, Deaf Willie's up the hospital, tell his missus, bang." He made a slamming-the-phone-down gesture.
"Liar," Doreen said evenly.
Jacko fell silent.
In the back of the car, Willie's son, Billy, stared vacantly out of the window. With his long, awkward body he was cramped in the small space. Normally he enjoyed traveling in cars, but today his mother was very tense, and he knew something bad had happened. Just what it was, he was not sure: things were confusing. Ma seemed to be cross with Jacko, but Jacko was a friend. Jacko had said that Dad was up the hospital, but not that he was ill; and indeed, how could he be? For he had been well when he left the house early this morning.
The hospital was a large brick building, faintly Gothic, which had once been the residence of the Mayor of Southwark. Several flat-roofed extensions had been built in the grounds, and tarmacadamed car parks had obliterated the rest of the lawns.
Jacko stopped near the entrance to Casualty. No one spoke as they got out of the car and walked across to the door. They passed an ambulance man with a pipe in his mouth, leaning against an antismoking poster on the side of his vehicle.
They went from the heat of the car park into the cool of the hospital. The familiar antiseptic smell caused a nauseous surge of fear in Doreen's stomach. Green plastic chairs were ranged around the walls, and a desk was placed centrally, opposite the entrance. Doreen noticed a small boy nursing a glass cut, a young man with his arm in an improvised sling, and a girl with her head in her hands. Somewhere nearby a woman moaned. Doreen felt panicky.
The West Indian nurse at the desk was speaking into a telephone. They waited for her to finish; then Doreen said: "Have you had a William Johnson brought in here this morning?"
The nurse did not look at her. "Just a minute, please." She made a note on a scribbling pad, then glanced up as an ambulance arrived outside. She said: "Would you sit down, please?" She came around the desk and walked past them to the door.
Jacko moved away, as if to sit down, and Doreen snatched at his sleeve. "Stay here!" she commanded. "I'm not waiting bloody hours--I'm stopping here until she tells me."
They watched as a stretcher was brought in. The prone figure was wrapped in a bloody blanket. The nurse escorted the bearers through a pair of swing doors.
A plump white woman in sister's uniform arrived through another door, and Doreen waylaid her. "Why can't I find out whether my husband's here?" she said shrilly.
The sister stopped, and took the three of them in at a glance. The black nurse came back in.
Doreen said: "I asked her and she wouldn't tell me."
The sister said: "Nurse, why were these people not attended to?"
"I thought the road-accident case with two severed limbs looked sicker than this lady."
"You did the right thing, but there's no need for witticism." The plump sister turned to Doreen. "What is your husband's name?"
"William Johnson."
The sister looked in a register. "That name isn't here."
She paused. "But we do have an unidentified patient. Male, white, medium build, middle-aged, with gunshot wounds to the head."
Jacko said: "That's him."
Doreen said: "Oh, my God!"
The sister picked up the phone. "You'd better see him, to find out whether he is your husband." She dialed a single number and waited for a moment. "Oh, Doctor, this is Sister Rowe in Casualty. I have a woman here who may be the wife of the gunshot patient. Yes. I will . . . we'll meet you there." She hung up and said: "Please follow me."
Doreen fought back despair as they trod the linoleum corridor floors through the hospital. She had dreaded this ever since the day, fifteen or more years ago, when she had discovered she had married a villain. She had always suspected it; Willie had told her he was in business, and she asked no more questions because in the days when they were courting a girl who wanted a husband learned not to come on strong. But it was never easy to keep secrets in marriage. There had been a knock at the door, when little Billy was still in nappies, and Willie had looked out the front window and seen a copper. Before answering the door he said to Doreen: "Last night, there was a poker game here: me, and Scotch Harry, and Tom Webster, and old Gordon. It started at ten, and went on till four in the morning." Doreen, who had been up half the night in an empty house, trying to get Billy to sleep, had nodded dumbly; and when the Old Bill asked her, she said what Willie had told her to say. Since then she had worried.
When it's only a suspicion, you can tell yourself not to worry; but when you know your husband is out there somewhere breaking into a factory or a shop or even a bank, you can't help wondering if he'll ever come home.
She was not sure why she was so full of rage and fear. She did not love Willie, not in any familiar sense of the word. He was a p
retty lousy husband: always out at night, bad with money, and a poor lover. The marriage had varied from tolerable to miserable. Doreen had two miscarriages, then Billy; after that they stopped trying. They stuck together because of Billy, and she did not suppose they were the only couple to do that. Not that Willie shouldered much of the burden of bringing up a handicapped child, but it seemed to make him just guilty enough to stay married. The boy loved his father.
No, Willie, I don't love you, she thought. But I want you and I need you; I like to have you there in bed, and sitting next to me watching television, and doing your pools at the table; and if that was called love, I'd say I love you.
They had stopped walking, and the sister was speaking. "I'll call you in when Doctor's ready," she said. She disappeared into a ward, closing the door behind her.
Doreen stared hard at the blank, cream-painted wall, trying not to wonder what was behind it. She had done this once before, after the Componiparts payroll job. But then it had been different: they had come to the house saying, "Willie's up the hospital, but he's all right--just stunned." He had put too much gelignite on the safe door, and had lost all hearing in one ear. She had gone to the hospital--a different one--and waited; but she had known he was okay.
After that job she had tried, for the first and only time, to make him go straight. He had seemed willing, until he got out of the hospital and was faced with the prospect of actually doing something about it. He sat around the house for a few days; then when he ran out of money he did another job. Later he let it slip that Tony Cox had taken him on the firm. He was proud, and Doreen was furious.
She hated Tony Cox ever afterward. Tony knew it, too. He had been at their home, once, eating a plate of chips and talking to Willie about boxing, when suddenly he looked up at Doreen and said: "What you got against me, girl?"
Willie looked worried and said: "Go easy, Tone."
Doreen tossed her head and said: "You're a villain."
Tony laughed at that, showing a mouthful of half-chewed chips. Then he said: "So's your husband--didn't you know?" After that they went back to talking about boxing.
Doreen never had quick answers for clever people like Tony, so she said no more. Her opinion made no difference to anything, anyway. It would never occur to Willie that the fact that she disliked someone was a reason for not bringing him to the house. It was Willie's house, even if Doreen had to pay the rent out of her income from the mail-order catalog every other week.
It was a Tony Cox job that Willie had been on today. Doreen had got that from Jacko's wife--Willie wouldn't tell her. If Willie dies, she thought, I swear to God I'll swing for that Tony Cox. Oh, God let him be all right--
The door opened and the sister put her head out. "Would you like to come in, please?"
Doreen went first. A short, dark-skinned doctor with thick black hair stood near the door. She ignored him and went straight to the bedside.
At first she was confused. The figure on the high, metal-framed bed was covered to the neck in a sheet, and from the chin to the top of the head in bandages. She had been expecting to see a face, and know instantly whether it was Willie. For a moment she did not know what to do. Then she knelt down and gently pulled back the sheet.
The doctor said: "Mrs. Johnson, is this your husband?"
She said: "Oh, God, Willie, what have they done?" Her head fell slowly forward until her brow rested on her husband's bare shoulder.
Distantly, she heard Jacko say: "That's him. William Johnson." He went on to give Willie's age and address. Doreen became aware that Billy was standing close to her. After a few moments the boy put his hand on her shoulder. His presence forced her to deny grief, or at least postpone it. She composed her features and stood up.
The doctor looked grave. "Your husband will live," he said.
She put her arm around her son. "What have they done to him?"
"Shotgun pellets. Close range."
She was gripping Billy's shoulder very hard. She was not going to cry. "But he'll be all right?"
"I said he'll live, Mrs. Johnson. But we may not be able to save his eyesight."
"What?"
"He's going to be blind."
Doreen shut her eyes tight and screamed: "No!"
They were all around her, very quickly; they had been expecting hysterics. She fought them off. She saw Jacko's face in front of her, and she shouted: "Tony Cox done this, you bastard!" She hit Jacko. "You bastard!"
She heard Billy sob, and she calmed down immediately. She turned to the boy and pulled him to her, hugging him. He was several inches taller than she. "There, there, Billy," she murmured. "Your dad's alive, be glad of that."
The doctor said: "You should go home, now. We have a phone number where we can reach you . . ."
"I'll take her," Jacko said. "It's my phone, but I live close."
Doreen detached herself from Billy and went to the door. The sister opened it. Two policemen stood outside.
Jacko said: "What's this, then?" He sounded outraged.
The doctor said: "We are obliged to inform the police in cases like this."
Doreen saw that one of the police was a woman. She was seized with the urge to blurt out the fact that Willie had been shot on a Tony Cox job: that would screw Tony. But she had acquired the habit of deceiving the police during fifteen years of marriage to a thief. And she knew, as soon as the thought crossed her mind, that Willie would never forgive her for squealing.
She could not tell the police. But, suddenly, she knew who she could tell.
She said: "I want to make a phone call."
ONE P.M.
23
Kevin Hart ran up the stairs and entered the newsroom of the Evening Post. A Lad in a Brutus shirt and platform shoes walked past him, carrying a pile of newspapers: the one o'clock edition. Kevin snatched one off the top and sat down at a desk.
His story was on the front page.
The headline was: GOVT. OIL BOSS COLLAPSES. Kevin stared for a moment at the delightful words BY KEVIN HART. Then he read on.
Junior Minister Mr. Tim Fitzpeterson was found unconscious at his Westminister flat today.
An empty bottle of pills was found beside him.
Mr. Fitzpeterson, a Department of Energy Minister responsible for oil policy, was rushed to hospital in an ambulance.
I called at his flat to interview him at the same time as PC Ron Bowler, who had been sent to check after the Minister failed to appear at a committee meeting.
We found Mr. Fitzpeterson slumped at his desk. An ambulance was called immediately.
A Department of Energy spokesman said: "It appears that Mr. Fitzpeterson took an accidental overdose. A full inquiry is to be made."
Tim Fitzpeterson is 41. He has a wife and three daughters.
A hospital spokesman said later: "He is off the critical list."
Kevin read the whole thing through again, hardly able to believe what he was reading. The story he had dictated over the phone had been rewritten beyond recognition. He felt empty and bitter. This was to have been his moment of glory, and some spineless subeditor had soured it.
What about the anonymous tip that Fitzpeterson had a girlfriend? What about the call from the man himself, claiming he was being blackmailed? Newspapers were supposed to tell the truth, weren't they?
His anger grew. He had not entered the business to become a mindless hack. Exaggeration was one thing--he was quite prepared to turn a drunken brawl into a gang war for the sake of a story on a slow day--but suppression of important facts, especially concerning politicians, was not part of the game.
If a reporter couldn't insist on the truth, who the hell could?
He stood up, folded the newspaper, and walked across to the news desk.
Arthur Cole was putting a phone down. He looked up at Kevin.
Kevin thrust the paper under his nose. "What's this, Arthur? We've got a blackmailed politician committing suicide, and the Evening Post says it's an accidental overdose."
Cole looked past him. "Barney," he called. "Here a minute."
Kevin said: "What's going on, Arthur?"
Cole looked at him. "Oh, fuck off, Kevin," he said.
Kevin stared at him.
Cole said to the reporter called Barney: "Ring Essex police and find out whether they've been alerted to look for the getaway van."
Kevin turned away, dumbfounded. He had been ready for discussion, argument, even a row, but not for such a casual dismissal. He sat down again, on the far side of the room, with his back to the news desk, staring blindly at the paper. Was this what provincial diehards had known when they warned him about Fleet Street? Was this what the nutcase lefties at college had meant when they said the Press was a whore?
It's not as if I'm a lousy idealist, he thought. I'll defend our prurience and our sensationalism, and I'll say with the best of them that the people get the papers they deserve. But I'm not a total cynic, not yet, for God's sake. I believe we're here to discover the truth, and then to print it.
He began to wonder whether he really wanted to be a journalist. It was dull most of the time. There was the occasional high, when something went right, a story turned good and you got a byline, or when a big story broke, and six or seven of you got on to the phones at once in a race with the opposition and with each other--something like that was going on now, a currency raid, but Kevin was out of it. But nine-tenths of your time was spent waiting: waiting for detectives to come out of police stations, waiting for juries to return verdicts, waiting for celebrities to arrive, waiting just for a story to break.
Kevin had thought that Fleet Street would be different from the Midlands evening paper he had joined when he left the university. He had been content, as a trainee reporter, to interview dim, self-important councilmen, to publish the exaggerated complaints of council house tenants, and to write stories about amateur dramatics, lost dogs, and waves of petty vandalism. He had occasionally done things he was quite proud of: a series about the problems of the town's immigrants; a controversial feature on how the Town Hall wasted money; coverage of a lengthy and complex planning inquiry. The move to Fleet Street, he had fondly imagined, would mean doing the important stories on a national level and dropping the trivia entirely. He had found instead that all the serious topics--politics, economics, industry, the arts--were handled by specialists, and that the line for those specialist jobs was a long line of bright, talented people just like Kevin Hart.