Dead Air Read online

  ‘It was an organisational thing, Guy; I met the guy whose desk this landed on after people below him didn’t get the results they’d wanted. And arguably took it all too far.’

  ‘Who was it? Who is it?’ Phil asked.

  ‘Can’t tell you,’ I said. ‘Sworn to secrecy.’

  ‘Is this-?’ Boulen began.

  ‘Can I just point out that we’ve a decision to make about a radio show due to start in twenty minutes?’ Debbie said loudly, swinging our attention back to her.

  ‘Debs,’ I said. ‘The Breaking News, Lawson Brierley thing; I’m denying everything. It didn’t happen. It’s all a lie. They made it up.’ I looked at Boulen and smiled. ‘That’s the line I’m taking.’ He nodded, then smiled too, uncertainly.

  ‘But you’ve been charged,’ Debbie said.

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘We can take you off air.’

  ‘I know. So; going to?’

  Debbie looked at me as though I’d just crapped on her new couch. Her desk phone warbled. She glared at it, grabbed it. ‘Don’t you fucking understand English? I said no-’ Her eyes closed and she put a hand to her brow, making her glasses slip down her nose. She took them off and stared at the ceiling with tired eyes. ‘Yes, of course. Sorry, Lena. Put him on.’

  Each of us chaps looked at the other two.

  Debbie drew herself up in her seat. ‘Sir Jamie…’

  ‘Chumbawumba and “Tubthumping”. Good to hear the old signature tune all the way through there, bit of comfort music in these trying times, don’t you think, Phil?’

  ‘Knock people down and they just jolly well get back up again,’ Phil agreed.

  ‘Ms Nutter, Mr Prescott and I would all agree. But what makes you mention knocking people down, Phil?’

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ Phil waved one hand airily. ‘Just the lyrics of the song.’

  ‘Splendid. Time for some vitally important advertisements. Back in a mo if we haven’t been removed in the meantime for gross moral turpitude. Back, in fact, with Ian Dury and The Blockheads and “Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick”. Just kidding. It’s actually Cornershop and “Lessons Learned From Rocky One to Rocky Three”. Stop that, Phil.’ I FX’d the squeaky noise for Phil’s head shaking.

  ‘What are you like?’ he sighed.

  ‘Just keeping things topical, Phil.’

  ‘I despair.’

  I laughed. ‘Yeah, I know. It sounds pretty crap now but just you wait till later. It won’t even be pretty.’

  ‘Hit the ad cart, Ken.’

  ‘It are hitted.’

  We both sat back and put our cans round our necks as the ads played.

  ‘So far so good,’ Phil said.

  ‘Getting away with it,’ I agreed.

  ‘All my life.’ Phil glanced up at the portrait of Sir Jamie on the wall. ‘Wonder if himself’s listening in on the Internet feed.’

  Sir Jamie had called Station Manager Debbie from the archipelago he owned in the Caribbean. He’d just heard about the press getting hold of the Breaking News story and called to say he thought it was vitally important that I should do my show unless the station had no legal choice but to pull it. I did believe it was the first time I’d actually felt a mild glow of affection for the man. He’d even had Debbie pass me the phone and spoken a few words to me. He told me he was right behind me, right behind me, hundred and ten per cent.

  ‘I can only hope and trust,’ I told Phil, ‘that I am living up to the faith placed in me by our Dear Owner.’

  ‘Are we really going to take calls?’

  ‘I think we must, Philip. We owe it to our public.’

  ‘Yeah, right. Ken, what’s this about you hitting some bloke on the telly then?’

  ‘Sir, you have been grievously misinformed.’

  ‘So it’s not true then?’

  ‘Actually I was just talking in general, Stan; you have the sound of a man who takes the tabloids, so you have undoubtably been grievously misinformed for, well, years, I imagine.’

  ‘Come on, Ken. Did ya hit him or not?’

  ‘At this point I have to resort to the old diplomatic service thing of saying that I can neither confirm nor deny whatever it is you may have heard.’

  ‘But is it true?’

  ‘What is truth, Stanley? One person’s truth is another person’s lie, one person’s faith is another’s heresy, one person’s certainty is another’s doubt, one person’s boot-legs are another’s flares, know what I’m saying?’

  ‘You ain’t gonna tell nobody, are ya?’

  ‘Stan, I’m like the Egyptian fresh-water carp; I’m in denial.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The matter I believe you might be referring to is sub judice, Stan, or soon will be; the exact technical legal status it holds at the moment is not entirely clear, but let’s just say it’s better to treat it as definitely not to be talked about.’

  ‘All right. So, how’s that rubbish football team of yours up there in Jockland going to do then?’

  I laughed. ‘Now we’re talking, Stan. Which aspect of the profound awfulness of the Bankies did you wish me to elaborate upon, Stanley? The choice is wide and the show is long.’

  ‘Don’t really give a toss, mate.’

  ‘Ah; indifference. Good choice. Now… Stan? Stanley? Hello?’ I’d cut him off. ‘Ah, how oddly pointed was Stanley’s casual but cutting dismissal just there. Though in fact I have to point out that actually the Bankies are currently doing remarkably well in the league and are strong promotion contenders. However, I’m sure normal service will be resumed in due course.’

  I glanced at the callers’ screen. The girls were doing their best to weed out journalists – the system was flagging numbers of newspapers and if Kayla or Andi were suspicious, they asterisked the name (though in Kayla’s case, as well as * it could equally well be &, [, 7, 8, 9, U or I). One name and subject snagged my gaze instantly. Oh-oh.

  Name: Ed. Subject: Robe.

  ‘Ah… Toby; you’ve a beef about airport security.’

  ‘Yeah. Hi, Ken. It’s about glasses.’

  ‘Glasses?’

  ‘You can’t take nail clippers onto a plane nowadays, not even little ones, but people wearing glasses; no probs.’

  ‘Your point being?’

  ‘Glass-lensed glasses, right? Not plastic, right? Break a glass lens and you’ve got two perfect blades, right? Really sharp. Take them on? No probs. But nail clippers? I mean, nail clippers? No way. What’s all that about then?’

  I saw Ed’s entry on the screen disappear; he’d rung off. Point made, I guessed.

  ‘What a fine point, Tobias,’ I said. ‘There should be a sin-bin for spectacles and a choice of soft contact lenses for these astigmatic miscreants at every airport security scanner.’

  ‘Ed.’

  ‘Wot. The fuck. Were you doin. Tryin to get old of Robe?’

  ‘Oh, come on. Guess.’

  ‘I told you not to. I told you to leave it.’

  ‘I was desperate. But, listen; it’s all right now.’

  ‘It’s not all right.’

  ‘It is; he wouldn’t sell me a… you know. Wouldn’t even meet up. And-’

  ‘Fot you were a cop, didn’t he? Fot you was filf tryin to set im up.’

  ‘I did kind of get that impression. But-’

  ‘Now he’s givin me grief cos you got is number froo me. Froo me mum, Kennif; froo me mum. I am not amused.’

  ‘Ed, I’m sorry.’ I was trying to hold off from saying something like, Come on, Ed it’s not as bad as fucking your pal’s girl. ‘I was scared and I panicked, but I really am sorry.’

  ‘So you should be.’

  ‘But I don’t need the… article in question any more. That’s the good news.’

  ‘You don’t? Why not?’

  ‘It turns out it was something of a misunderstanding. I met with somebody who’s in the process of resolving the matter.’

  ‘You’re soundin like an accountant. As somebody got a gun to your
ead now?’

  ‘I think it’s going to be all right. Almost certainly.’

  ‘Right. So now you only got to worry about fascist boot boys comin round in the middle of the night an kickin your ead in in retaliation for fumpin this Holocaust geezer on telly.’

  ‘Oh, you’ve heard.’

  It had taken me most of the afternoon to get hold of Ed; his phone had been either off or engaged, and I hadn’t wanted to leave a message. I’d started trying as soon as the show ended. We’d had yet another meeting with Debbie and Guy Boulen, got some sandwiches sent down from the canteen for lunch in the office and then got round to some routine but necessary work for the middle part of the afternoon.

  When we were ready to leave Phil had walked round to a corridor with the appropriate view and seen that there were still some press waiting outside, so we’d called a taxi and a mini-cab to the underground car park; Phil, Kayla and Andi took the cab; they piled their coats and bags on the floor in a big mound that might just about have been big enough to hide a person and were duly followed. I left in the mini-cab’s boot ten minutes later. I’d already cleared it with Craig to stay with him for a day or two until all the worst of the fuss died down. The mini-cab stopped as arranged on Park Road and I got out of the boot and into the front seat.

  I finally got through to Ed after I’d settled in at Craig’s.

  ‘Course I’ve eard. You’re in the Standard, mate.’

  ‘Really, which page?’

  ‘Wot, you aven’t got one?’

  ‘Not yet. I’ll get one, I’ll get one. Which page? Which page?’

  ‘Um, five.’

  ‘Above the fold or below?’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The middle of the page. It doesn’t matter so much on a tabloid, but-’

  ‘You’ve got the whole page, mate. Well, part from a advert for cheap flights.’

  ‘The whole page? Wow.’

  ‘Says they reckon you did it cos you was under such stress from avin a def fret made against you an bein kidnapped an stuff.’

  ‘What?’

  Well, yuh.

  I shook my head. ‘Ridley Scott has a lot to answer for.’

  ‘What?’ asked Craig. ‘Making Black Hawk Down?’

  ‘Hell’s teeth, yeah, but no; I was thinking more of introducing the concept of Gratuitous Steam.’

  Craig glanced over at me. We were a bit drunk and a bit stoned, watching Alien on DVD after an early meal of a home-delivered pizza. We’d eaten it while watching the London local news programmes on the TV, in case I was mentioned, but I wasn’t. I wondered who the camera team had been this morning outside the office in that case, then decided that probably they had been from one of the TV stations but they hadn’t got enough good footage (maybe I should have got out, said something), or the story just hadn’t been judged important enough by the TV news editors.

  Craig was significantly less drunk and stoned than I was, plus he’d only eaten one slice of the pizza; he had a mystery date he wouldn’t tell me about, at nine. In the meantime: Alien. Craig was exactly the sort of guy who would gradually replace all his treasured videos with DVDs. He was also exactly the sort of guy who’d ration himself, buying one old film on DVD whenever he bought a new one being released for the first time. Alien was the latest oldie.

  Craig looked at me. ‘Gratuitous Steam?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, gesturing at the screen. ‘Look how fucking steamy it is in the old Nostromo there. Who the hell decreed space-ships dozens of generations after the shuttle – the Model-T of spacefaring craft as it will doubtless prove to be and not itself notoriously water-vapour-prone – would be so full of steam? I mean, why? And it’s been grotesquely over-used in practically every SF film and no-brain thriller ever since.’

  Craig sat and watched the film for a while. ‘Designer.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Set designer,’ he said authoritatively. ‘Because it looks good. Makes the place look lived in and industrial. And hides stuff, menacingly. Which is what you want in a horror movie, or a thriller. Plus it gives people like you something to complain about, which is patently an added bonus.’

  ‘Do I complain a lot?’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘Yeah, but, come on; that’s the implication. Do I?’

  ‘You have all these problems with films, Ken.’

  ‘I do?’

  ‘Take Science Fiction. What, according to you, is the only technically credible SF film?’

  ‘2001.’

  Craig sighed. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because Kubrick doesn’t allow noises in space. And because he was a genius, he knew how to use the no-sound thing, so you get the brilliant bit where what’s-his-name blows himself out of the wee excursion pod thing and into the airlock and bounces around inside the open airlock until he hits the door-close and air-in controls and it’s only then you get the sound feeding in; magnificent.’

  ‘And every other space movie-’

  ‘Is that bit less credible because you see an explosion in space and next thing you know there’s a fucking teeth-rattling sound effect.’

  ‘So-’

  ‘Though it has to be said, virtually every movie with an explosion in it gets the time-delay thing wrong, anyway. Not only do film directors seem not to understand that sound doesn’t travel in a vacuum, they also seem not to understand how it does travel in an atmosphere. You see an explosion half a fucking klick away, but the sound always happens at exactly the same time, not a second and a bit later, when you should hear it.’

  ‘But-’

  ‘Though there are signs of improvement. Band of Brothers had proper explosions. I mean, that was the least of its brilliance, but it was a sign they were taking the whole thing seriously, that the special effects people were making the explosions look like real high-explosive explosions look, with just maybe a single flash and stuff flying everywhere, rather than all this vaporised petrol or whatever it is; these great big rolling fiery clouds of burning gas, that’s so bullshit.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Yeah. Why does all this matter? It’s only the goddamn movies, Ken.’

  ‘Because it isn’t fucking true, that’s why,’ I said, waving my arms for emphasis.

  ‘So,’ Craig said, ‘what happened in that TV studio?’

  ‘I’ve told you.’

  ‘Yeah, you have told me, and you’ve told me that what you told me is the truth. But it isn’t what you’ve told other people, it isn’t what you’re putting in your sworn statement, is it?’

  I turned on the couch to face him, ignoring Sigourney and her doomed chums. ‘What the hell has that got to do with anything?’

  ‘Ken, you’re always banging on about truth and just sticking to the facts, but here you are telling lies in public.’

  ‘But there’s a point to all this! Haven’t you understood anything?’

  ‘I understand exactly what you’re doing, Ken,’ Craig said reasonably. ‘I even applaud it. I think.’ He stretched back in the couch, hands behind his neck. ‘I mean, it’s resorting to violence, which is more your bad person’s stock-in-trade reaction, but I see what you’re doing. All I’m saying is that in trying to make this point you’re having to compromise this thing about telling the truth even when it hurts.’

  ‘Craig, shit, come on; I’m no better than anybody else; I tell lies all the time. Mostly in the context of relationships. God, I’d love to be a dear, sweet, faithful, one-woman man, but I’m not. I’ve lied to… most of the women I’ve known. I’ve lied to my employers, to the press, to-’

  ‘And me?’

  That drew me up short. I sat back, thinking. ‘Well, there are… well, they used to be called white lies, didn’t they? Relatively unimportant untruths necessary to… spare people’s feelings, or to prevent people becoming complicit in… well, either complicit or-’

  ‘I do kind of know what a white lie is, thanks, Ken.’

  ‘Yeah; s
tuff that you need to tell people, even friends, if you’re being untruthful to somebody else.’ The on-board, on-line, on-message censor that was usually employed looking a few words or phrases ahead to make sure I didn’t swear on air was here doing something similar so that I didn’t actively lie to Craig, even as I was carefully not telling him the whole truth, which would have involved admitting I’d lied to him a lot about the night I’d spent with his wife. ‘I wouldn’t tell you the truth when I was off fucking somebody else if I thought that Jo might ask you if you knew where I was. Come on, man. You do it too; you’re doing it now. Where are you going later? Who are you meeting?’

  ‘That’s not the same. I’m just not telling you. You can’t compare refusing to tell at all with deliberately telling a lie.’

  ‘Yeah, but it’s still not being open, is it?’

  ‘So fucking what? You don’t have a right to know everything about my private life.’

  ‘But I’m your best friend!’ I looked at him. ‘Amn’t I?’

  ‘Best male friend, definitely.’

  ‘Who’s your best female friend?’

  ‘Well, what about Nikki?’

  ‘Nikki?’

  ‘Yeah; hey, I’ve known her all her life, for one thing.’

  ‘Yeah, but-’

  ‘We’ve had too many great times together to count, been through tough things too, plus she’s great fun to be with, she’s caring, funny, a great listener, understanding… What?’

  I was shaking my head. ‘You have to let the girl go, Craig. Okay, she’s a great pal and all that, but-’

  ‘I’ve let her go!’ Craig protested. ‘She’s at Oxford. She’s loving it; she hardly comes home any more, she’s got more friends than she knows what to do with. For all I know she’s already had more sexual partners than I’ve had in my fucking life. Ken, believe me, I’m pleased for her about all this and I don’t want to smother her in affection or anything. But she’ll always be a best friend.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Okay. But you have to be a bit funny about the sex thing.’

  ‘Ken, I had umpteen years to prepare myself for the fact my child would have an independent sexual existence. Credit me with some forethought. And some… understanding. We’ve talked about this stuff, Ken; the three of us. Nikki takes precautions. We didn’t raise her to be an idiot.’ He prodded me on the knee with one finger. ‘Anyway. That’s all beside the point. The point being that I’m being truthful in telling you I’m not going to tell you something, I’m not-’