Paper Money

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.

He needed a way to shine-something which would make the Post's executives notice him and say: "Young Hart is good-are we making the most of him?" One good break could do it: a hot tip, an exclusive interview, a spectacular piece of initiative.

He had thought he had found that something today, and he had been wrong. Now he wondered whether it would ever happen.

He stood up and went to the Gents'. What else can I do? he thought. I could always go into computers, or advertising, or public relations, or retail management. But I want to leave newspapers as a success, not a failure.

While he was washing his hands, Arthur Cole came in. The older man spoke to Kevin over his shoulder. To Kevin's astonishment, he said: "Sorry about that, Kevin. You know how it gets on that news desk sometimes."

Kevin pulled down a length of towel. He was not sure what to say.

Cole moved across to the washbasin. "No hard feelings?"

"I'm not offended," Kevin said. "I don't mind you swearing. I wouldn't care if you called me the biggest bastard on earth." He hesitated. This was not what he wanted to say. He stared in the mirror for a moment, then took the plunge. "But when my story appears in the paper without half of the facts, I start to wonder if I ought to become a computer programmer."

Cole filled the basin with cold water and splashed some on his face. He fumbled for the towel and wiped himself dry. "You ought to know this, but I'll tell you anyway," he began. "The story we put in the paper consisted of what we know, and only what we know. We know Fitzpeterson was found unconscious and rushed to hospital, and we know there was an empty bottle beside him, because you saw all that. You were in the right place at the right time, which, incidentally, is an important talent for a reporter to have. Now, what else do we know? We know we got an anonymous tip that the man had spent the night with a whore; and that someone phoned up claiming to be Fitzpeterson and saying he was being blackmailed by Laski and Cox. Now, if we print those two facts, we cannot but imply that they are connected with the overdose; indeed, that he took the overdose because he was being blackmailed over the whore."

Kevin said: "But that implication is so obvious that surely we're deceiving people if we don't print it!"

"And what if the calls were hoaxes, the tablets were indigestion pills, and the man's in a diabetic coma? And we've ruined his career?"

"Isn't that a bit unlikely?"

"You bet. Kevin, I'm ninety percent sure that the truth is the way your original story read. But we're not here to print our suspicions. Now, let's get back to work."

Kevin followed Arthur through the door and across the newsroom. He felt like the heroine in the movie who says: "I'm so confused, I don't know what to do!" He was half inclined to think that Arthur was right; but he also felt that things should not be that way.

A phone rang at an unattended desk, and Kevin picked it up. "Newsroom."

"Are you a reporter?" It was a woman's voice.

"Yes, madam. My name is Kevin Hart. How can I help you?"

"My husband's been shot and I want justice."

Kevin sighed. A domestic shooting meant a court case, which in turn meant there was no way the paper could do much of a story. He guessed that the woman was going to tell him who had shot her husband and ask him to print it. But it was juries who decided who shot whom, not newspapers. Kevin said: "Tell me your name, please?"

"Doreen Johnson, five Yew Street, east one. My Willie was shot on this currency job." The woman's voice cracked. "He's been blinded." She started to shout. "It was a Tony Cox job-so just print that!" The line went dead.

Kevin put the phone down slowly, trying to take it in.

This was turning out to be one hell of a day for phone calls.

He picked up his notebook and went to the news desk.

Arthur said: "Got something?"

"Don't know," Kevin told him. "A woman phoned up. Gave me her name and address. She said her husband was on the currency raid, that he was shot in the face and blinded, and that it was a Tony Cox job."

Arthur stared. "Cox?" he said. "Cox?"

Someone called: "Arthur!"

Kevin looked up, annoyed at the interruption. The voice belonged to Mervyn Glazier, the paper's City editor, a stocky young man in battered suede shoes and a sweat-stained shirt.

Glazier came nearer and said: "I may have a story for your pages this afternoon. Possible collapse of a bank. It's called the Cotton Bank of Jamaica, and it's owned by a man called Felix Laski."

Arthur and Kevin stared at one another.

Arthur said: "Laski? Laski?"

Kevin said: "Jesus Christ."

Arthur frowned, scratched his head, and said wonderingly: "What the hell is going on?"