Paper Money

6

Herbert Chieseman switched on the light, silenced the alarm clock, turned up the volume of the radio, which had been playing all night, and pressed the rewind button of the reel-to-reel tape recorder. Then he got out of bed.

He put the kettle on, and stared out of the studio apartment window while he waited for the seven-hour tape to return to the start. The morning was clear and bright. The sun would be strong later, but now it was chilly. He put on trousers and a sweater over the underwear he had worn in bed, and stepped into carpet slippers.

His home was a single large room in a North London Victorian house which was past its best. The furniture, the Ascot heater, and the old gas cooker belonged to the landlord. The radio was Herbert's. His rent included the use of a communal bathroom and-most important-exclusive use of the attic.

The radio dominated the room. It was a powerful VHF receiver, made from parts he had carefully selected in half a dozen shops along Tottenham Court Road. The aerial was in the roof loft. The tape deck was also homemade.

He poured tea into a cup, added condensed milk from a tin, and sat at his worktable. Apart from the electronic equipment, the table bore only a telephone, a ruled exercise book, and a ballpoint pen. He opened the book at a clean page and wrote the date at the top in a large, cursive script. Then he reduced the volume of the radio and began to play the night's tape at high speed. Each time a high-pitched squeal indicated that there was speech on the recording, he slowed the reel with his finger until he could distinguish the words.

"… car proceed to Holloway Road, the bottom end, to assist PC…"

"… Ludlow Road, West Five, a Mrs. Shaftesbury-sounds like a domestic, Twenty-One…"

"… Inspector says if that Chinese is still open he'll have chicken fried rice with chips…"

"… Holloway Road get a move on-that PC's in trouble…"

Herbert stopped the tape and made a note.

"… reported burglary of a house-that's near Wimbledon Common, Jack…"

"… Eighteen, do you read…"

"… any cars Lee area free to assist Fire Brigade at twenty-two Feather Street…"

Herbert made another note.

"… Eighteen, do you read…"

"… I don't know, give her an aspirin…"

"… assault with a knife, not serious…"

"… where the hell have you been, Eighteen…"

Herbert's attention strayed to the photograph on the mantelpiece above the boarded-in fireplace. The picture was flattering: Herbert had known this, twenty years ago, when she had given it to him; but now he had forgotten. Oddly, he did not think of her as she really had been, anymore. When he remembered her he visualized a woman with flawless skin and hand-tinted cheeks, posing before a faded panorama in a photographer's studio.

"… theft of one color television and damage to a plate-glass window…"

He had been the first among his circle of friends to "lose the wife," as they would put it. Two or three of them had suffered the tragedy since: one had become a cheerful drunkard, another had married a widow. Herbert had buried his head in his hobby, radio. He began listening to police broadcasts during the day when he did not feel well enough to go to work, which was quite often.

"… Grey Avenue, Golders Green, reported assault…"

One day, after hearing the police talk about a bank raid, he had telephoned the Evening Post. A reporter had thanked him for the information and taken his name and address. The raid had been a big one-a quarter of a million pounds-and the story was on the front page of the Post that evening. Herbert had been proud to have given them the tip-off, and told the story in three pubs that night. Then he forgot about it. Three months later he got a check for fifty pounds from the newspaper. With the check was a statement which read: "Two shot in?250,000 raid" and gave the date of the robbery.

"… leave it out, Charlie, if she won't make a complaint, forget it…"

The following day Herbert had stayed at home and phoned the Post every time he picked something up on the police wavelength. That afternoon he got a call from a man who said he was deputy news editor, who explained just what the paper wanted from people like Herbert. He was told not to report an assault unless a gun was used or someone was killed; not to bother with burglaries unless the address was in Belgravia, Chelsea, or Kensington; not to report robberies except when weapons were used or very large amounts of cash stolen.

"… proceed to twenty-three, Narrow Road, and wait…"

He got the idea quickly, because he was not stupid, and the Post's news values were far from subtle. Soon he realized he was earning slightly more on his "sick" days than when he went to work. What was more, he preferred listening to the radio to making boxes for cameras. So he gave in his notice, and became what the newspaper called an earwig.

"… better give me that description now…"

After he had been working full-time on the radio for a few weeks the deputy news editor came to his house-it was before he moved to the studio apartment-to talk to him. The newspaperman said Herbert's work was very useful to the paper, and how would he like to work for them exclusively? That would mean Herbert would phone tips only to the Post, and not to other papers. But he would get a weekly retainer to make up for the loss of income. Herbert did not say that he never had phoned any other papers. He accepted the offer graciously.

"… sit tight and we'll get you some assistance, in a few minutes…"

Over the years he had improved both his equipment and his understanding of what the newspaper wanted. He learned that they were grateful for more or less anything early in the morning, but as the day wore on they became more choosy, until by about three p.m. nothing less than murder in the street or large-scale robbery with violence interested them. He also discovered that the paper, like the police, was a lot less interested in a crime done to a colored man in a colored area. Herbert thought this quite reasonable, since he, as an Evening Post reader, was not much interested in what the wogs did to each other in their own parts of London; and he surmised, correctly, that the reason the Post was not interested was simply that people like Herbert who bought the Post weren't interested. And he learned to read between the lines of police jargon: knew when an assault was trivial or a complaint domestic; heard the note of urgency in the operations-room sergeant's voice when a call for assistance was desperate; discovered how to switch his mind off when they decided to read out great lists of stolen-car numbers over the air.

The speeded-up sound of his own alarm clock came out of the big speaker, and he turned the deck off. He increased the volume on the radio, then dialed the Post's number. He sipped his tea while he waited for an answer.

"Post, g'morning." It was a man's voice.

"Copytakers, please," Herbert said. There was another pause.

"Copy."

"Hello. Chieseman here, timing at oh seven fifty-nine."

There was a clatter of typewriters in the background. "Hello, Bertie. Anything doing?"

"Seems to have been a quiet night," Herbert said.