Having It All (14 page)

‘Come on, Bert! For God’s sake, you must have something sexier for the splash than Yuppie begging!’ David turned angrily to the News Editor. ‘Yuppie
beggars have been on the front page of the
Sun
for days. Where’s
our
story? The one no other paper has reported? Shit, we’re a
news
paper, not fucking
Reader’s Digest
!’

David looked round at the earnest young faces of the reporters and subs at the midday editorial conference and considered losing his temper. Their ideas for the lead were crap. None of them
would know a good old-fashioned story if it got up and bit them. The trouble was most of them had come to the
Daily News
direct from university or journalism college with maybe a few
months on a local newspaper before they thought they were too grand for the provinces and buggered off to find a job on one of the nationals.

None of them, David thought angrily, had ever actually had to
look
for a story, piece it painfully together from fragments of gossip, interview and hard slog. They wouldn’t know
what door-knocking in some God-forsaken council estate in the freezing cold to get some vital bit of information was like. They had never had to break the news to an unsuspecting wife that her
husband had just been killed on the M25, or doorstep a bent councillor in front of his wife and kids.

Not that David had ever relished doing these things – who would? – but it toughened you up. It made you realize that journalism came from the streets. It wasn’t found in press
releases or Government handouts, it was something you mined for and broke your back over and occasionally, very occasionally, you exposed Watergate. These kids probably thought Woodward and
Bernstein were a comedy act.

‘There’s a good story Brian came up with about a granny who foiled a rapist with a hatpin,’ volunteered Bert nervously.

‘It’s not a good story,’ David snapped, ‘it’s a
great
story. It’s got everything we’re looking for. Bravery. Humour. Sex. I know. I read it in
yesterday’s
Star
.’

Bert looked uncomfortable and glanced round at the assembled reporters for ideas.

‘I’m working on something that might make.’

David swivelled round to see who was talking. It was a new young woman reporter who’d just joined them from the
Northern Echo
. David thought her name was Susan. No, something
funny. Suzan. That was it. Maybe they actually made their reporters leave the building once in a while on the
Echo
.

‘OK. Fire away.’

‘It’s a police corruption story. I got a tip-off about an officer in the Serious Crimes Squad fitting people up. It seems to check out. I think I’m close to cracking
it.’

For the first time that day, David looked interested. And he realized why he’d remembered Suzan. It wasn’t just her funny name. It was because she was stunning. Trying not to notice
how attractive she was but concentrate on what she was saying, David kept his eyes at a safe distance from her long legs, which she was making no attempt to disguise in a black miniskirt.
‘How close?’

‘Not close enough, David,’ Bert cut in. ‘I’m sorry, Suzan. It’s a good story, but it isn’t ready. Print now and you’ll blow the whole thing. It needs
time.’

Suzan looked disappointed. David smiled at her, recognizing in her hunger an echo of his own fifteen years ago, not wanting to discourage the only sign of initiative he’d seen all
morning.

‘So, there isn’t a single decent original story ready to make?’

David was greeted by a wall of silence as a dozen or so reporters shifted in their seats and each wished they had a scoop up their sleeves that they could produce like a rabbit from a hat and
earn David’s good opinion.

‘There is one other possible splash . . .’

David couldn’t understand why Bert was being so coy about it. ‘Well? What is it?’

‘These. Mick Norman brought them in today.’ He pulled a series of black and white ten by eights out of a folder. They were candid photographs of an emaciated man lying in a hospital
bed. Picking them up, David saw they were of Jim Johnson, until recently the top comic in England, the only comedian who could fill a house anywhere, anytime.

‘But Jim Johnson’s dying. The word is he’s got Aids.’

Bert looked embarrassed. ‘It certainly looks that way.’

‘Where did Norman get these, for Christ’s sake?’

‘From a freelance.’

‘And why didn’t he flog them to the
World
? The
World
pays twice as much as us. I’ll tell you why. Because even the fucking
World
wouldn’t stoop
that low. For God’s sake, Bert, it’s out of the question.’

Bert looked relieved. ‘OK. OK. I just thought I’d mention it.’

‘Right. You mentioned it. You can all get back on the job. We’ll just have to hope that something turns up by this afternoon. Come back in an hour, will you, Bert, and we’ll
run through some more options. And, Bert, try and see if you can come up with something better?’

David paced around, kicking the wastebin savagely until it showered paper all over the room. Then he took off his jacket, sat down and switched on his screen and began to whiz
through the Press Association tapes. He’d find a bloody lead himself if he had to!

It was months since he’d rolled up his sleeves and he was engrossed in a promising story of how a bunch of mums had cleaned up the crime on their tough housing estate by tackling the young
thugs themselves when the phone went.

‘David,’ Logan Greene’s PA cooed in the sultry tones that belied her terrifying efficiency, ‘would you mind popping up to see Logan for a few minutes?’

Logan was all smiles when David knocked on the door, so he knew something was wrong. And he wasn’t alone. Mick Norman was perched on the side of his desk, looking as though it were his
own.

‘David, hello. I just wanted a quiet word about these shots of Jim Johnson.’

David felt himself tense up. ‘What do you want to know, Logan? We didn’t use them because it would be a gross invasion of the man’s privacy. What’s more we’d be
breaking the law, for God’s sake. Showing up at a man’s deathbed and recording his dying gasps is exactly what this new law’s trying to prevent.’

‘There is a way round that.’ Mick Norman spoke for the first time. ‘I talked to the photographer. He didn’t break in. He got the nurse’s permission. He wasn’t
trespassing. The law just bans trespassing. So we could still use them.’

David looked at him in dislike. Mick Norman was twenty-seven, and a classic product of the Greed Decade. Ambitious and self-serving, he thought morals were old fashioned and expendable. Instead
of a heart he had a private health-care scheme.

‘And how much did this “freelance” pay the nurse to let him in? Or are you suggesting she let him in out of the kindness of her heart because she so admires the methods of the
tabloid press? For God’s sake, Logan, the whole thing stinks!’

‘We need those photographs, David,’ Logan said quietly. ‘The
World
is beginning to wipe the floor with us. We’ve got to stop the slide.’

‘Not by using disgusting photographs of someone’s dying breath. People love Jim Johnson, Logan. He’s an institution. They don’t want to see him like this, emaciated,
covered in sores. The whole thing will backfire. Do you remember when the
World
showed a photograph of the victim in the Brentwood rape case? The girl who’d been gang-banged and
tortured? People were so disgusted they actually
lost
readers. And we will too.’

Mick Norman looked as though he were going to interrupt but suddenly Logan waved him to be quiet. ‘OK. Maybe you’re right. We won’t use the photographs.’

David looked at Logan curiously. Why had he suddenly caved in? David would like to think it was the power of his own arguments, or some latent morality in Logan that had made him see sense, but
he knew Logan too well. Logan didn’t have a moral sense any more than Norman did. There had to be another reason which David didn’t understand. Yet.

Assuming the interview was over, David got up to go. He was halfway to the door when Logan spoke again. ‘David?’

‘Yes, Logan?’

‘We need a scoop. Soon.’

‘I know, Logan. I know.’

David watched Liz lean forward over her dressing-table and finish doing her eye make-up for the party. She was looking beautiful these days. Success suited her. She’d
never been one to bother too much with her appearance – in fact when Bruce Oldfield caused a stir by saying English women preferred spending money on ponies and school fees instead of
designer frocks, she’d cried ‘Good for them! Very healthy too!’ – but all the same she’d bought a few more good clothes and they suited her.

But he wished to Christ they didn’t have to go to this party tonight. He was still wound up over that business with Logan this afternoon and the last thing he felt like was small talk with
a bunch of self-important TV producers. At least it would be over by nine and they could go and have a decent meal. And fortunately the booze always flowed like water at Metro parties so if things
got too boring he could always get drunk.

Gently he pushed a lock of Liz’s hair away from her neck and kissed it. To his surprise she flinched ever so slightly.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘Sorry. I’m a bit jumpy. Conrad’s getting to me. He’s up to something and I don’t know what. He’s been overruling me at every turn. I’m trying to fight
for standards and he just thinks I’m a pain in the arse. Britt was right all along. He only wanted me for window-dressing. Now that he’s found he can’t walk all over me, I think
he may want me out.’

‘Oh come on now, losing you would look terrible for Metro.’

‘Maybe. But it might be good for me.’ She looked up at him in the mirror wondering if he would understand.

But his face was closed and irritated. ‘Why, for God’s sake? You’re earning a fortune, everyone envies you . . .’

‘It’s just that I always seem to be working. I hardly ever see the children any more. God knows what it’s doing to them.’

‘The kids are fine. They’re blooming. They adore Susie.’

‘OK, God knows what it’s doing to
me
then. All I seem to do is work and fight with Conrad. What happened to fun? To seeing friends? Even to reading bedtime
stories?’

‘The price of success maybe.’

‘Then I’m beginning to think it’s too high a price.’

For one chilling moment David saw the way the conversation was going. Liz was getting fed up with her job, might even chuck it in, just when he could any day find himself out on his ear. No
longer the whiz-kid, the was-kid. And the fear made him sharp with her.

‘For God’s sake, Liz. You have to make sacrifices if you want a lifestyle like ours. You have to fight for the things you want.’

Liz looked round their interior-designed bedroom with its vast bed canopied in Osborne & Little fabric. It had cost £25 a metre, and that was without the matching chairs and dressing
table. Not to mention the subtly toning wallpaper in the
en suite
bathroom which the designer had insisted was a must.

‘Maybe I don’t want them that much any more.’

David sat on the bed angrily putting on his shoes. ‘Well I do! You’ve always had things too easily. All your life Mummy and Daddy coughed up for the school fees, the car, the
holiday, the new dress. Well mine didn’t because they couldn’t afford to. And it’s made me want to fight for them myself. OK, so Conrad’s a shit. Of course he is.
That’s why he got the franchise. But shits have their uses. You’ve got to learn to work
with
him instead of against him all the time. Give him a little of what he wants and
he’ll do the same for you.’ David loathed himself for his hypocrisy. Had he given Logan what he wanted? No, he wanted the right to be honourable even when he was losing his temper with
Liz for doing the same.

‘And if I can’t?’

David thought for a moment of the vast mortgage, and the school fees, and the nanny and the cleaner, and he felt like his father when he was two pounds overdrawn at the bank and it gave him an
ulcer. He knew he should tell her that they weren’t as secure as she thought, but maybe she would despise him. Men were supposed to provide, that was their job.

‘Liz, don’t even think about it! You’d loathe it at home. You’d run back to work in five minutes!’

‘Ginny seems to thrive on it. And my mother.’

‘And what about
my
mother? Living her whole bloody life through my father and me instead of having a life of her own. Surely that’s not what you want?’

‘I don’t know. Would that be so terrible?’ She looked into his eyes, and found them wary, as though he were a tourist frightened of being conned into a sale by some
fast-talking foreign trader.

‘It wasn’t the deal between you and me.’

‘When did we ever discuss it?’

‘We didn’t need to. We knew.’

‘Well maybe we’d better discuss it now.’

‘We’re going to a party. Your party. You’re supposed to be there to greet everyone. You’re the Big Cheese, remember, the most powerful woman in television.’

‘Yes,’ answered Liz bitterly, ‘I remember.’

‘He thinks I’m turning into his mother.’ Liz applied another coat of bright red lipstick in the Ladies at Metro TV and watched Britt smooth down her dress. It
was the only explanation she could think of for why David was being so unsympathetic. It could be this circulation problem, of course, maybe it was more serious than he’d let on, but David
had never let work get between them before. Ever since they were married he’d made it a cardinal rule not to dump his work problems in her lap. Sometimes she wished he would. She hated the
idea of him suffering in silence without turning to her. But that was David, and she’d learnt long ago that you couldn’t change people, you had to love them for what they were.

All the same, maybe she should push him this time. This was too important to let it go. When they got home tonight she’d have a serious talk to him. If he was worried about work, maybe she
could even help.