"Blood Hunt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harvey Jack)

NINE

January 13

I suppose if this turns into a story, I’ll have to credit Marco with the genesis-though he’d probably stress he’s more of a Pink Floyd fan. He wears a T-shirt which must date back to Dark Side of the Moon. It’s black with the prism logo on it-only he says it’s a pyramid. Sure, but light doesn’t enter a pyramid white and come out the seven colors of the rainbow. It only does that with prisms, so it must be a prism. He says I’m missing the point, maaann. The point is, the album’s a concept album and the concept is everyday madness. Pure white light into a myriad of colors. The everyday gone mad.

But then why is it a damned pyramid? Why not a teacup or a toaster or even a typewriter? Marco laughs, remembering that party of his and how I looked at a poster on his wall and thought it was sailing boats on a rippling blue sea, pictured near sunset with some heavy filtering.

And it wasn’t. It was pyramids. It was the poster that came with Dark Side of the Moon and I was sober when I mistook it. Sober as a judge. Later, I was drunk as a lord and trying to get my hand up Marco’s girlfriend’s kilt until she reminded me, her mouth shiveringly close to my ear, that Marco had done a bit of judo in his time and part of his left ear was missing. So, fair enough, I retracted my hand. You do, don’t you?

Where the fuck was I? The story. The story.

It’s about madness, too: that’s why I used the Pink Floyd reference. I could use it as a lead into the story proper. “Tales of Everyday Madness.” Was that a book or a film? Did someone give me that at charades one time? Absolutely impossible. Yes, charades, at Marco’s party. And Marco’s team was making half its titles up. The bastard even dumped in some that were in Italian.

Marco is Italian, and that is also relevant to the story. This is a story he told me last night in the Stoat and Whistle. I said to him, why haven’t you told me this before? Know what he said? He said, this is the first serious (not to mention intelligible) conversation we’ve ever had. And when I thought about it, he was probably right. What’s more, he only got round to telling his story because we’d run out of Tottenham jokes. Here’s the last one we told. What’s the difference between a man with no knob and a Spurs player? A man with no knob’s got more chance of scoring.

See, we were desperate.

“Anything?” Fliss asked. She had her own sheaf of paper in front of her, as well as a second mug of coffee.

“I think he was drunk when he typed this.”

“Full of spelling mistakes?”

“No, just full of shit.”

They were back in the Crouch End flat. They’d brought a carry-out back with them-Chinese this time, with some lagers and Cokes bought from the corner shop. The tin trays of food sat half-uneaten on the living room’s coffee table.

“What about you?” Reeve asked.

“Photocopies mostly. Articles from medical and scientific journals. Looks like he was calling up anything he could find on mad cow disease. Plus on genetic patents. There’s an interesting article about the company that owns the patent on all genetically engineered cotton. Might not be relevant.” She gnawed on a plastic chopstick. The chopsticks had been fifty pence a pair extra. Reeve rubbed his jaw, feeling the need for a shave. And a bath. And some sleep. He tried not to think about what time his body made it; tried to dismiss the eight hours he’d wound his watch forward, and the sleep he hadn’t taken on the plane.

He started reading again.

Marco is a journalist. He’s over here for a year, more if they like his reports, as London correspondent for some glossy Milan rag. They keep faxing him to say they want more royal family, more champagne balls, more Wimbledon and Ascot. He’s tried telling them Wimbledon and Ascot come once a year, but they just keep sending the faxes to their London office. Marco’s thinking of chucking it. He used to be a “serious” journalist, real hard copy, until he sniffed more money in the air. Moved from daily to weekly, newspaper to magazine. He said at the time he was just sick of journalism; he wanted easy money and a break from Italy. Italian politics depressed him. The corruption depressed him. He’d had a colleague, a good friend, blown up by a parcel bomb when he tried to zero in on some minister with Mafia connections. Ba-boom, and up and away to the great leader column in the sky. Or maybe the elevator down to the basement, glowing fires and typing up the classifieds.

Marco told me about some of the scandals, and I was matching him conspiracy for conspiracy, chicanery for chicanery, payoff for payoff. Then he told me he covered the Spanish cooking oil tragedy. I recalled it only vaguely. 1981, hundreds died. Contaminated oil-yes?

And Marco said, “Maybe.”

So then he told his side of it, which didn’t quite tally with the official line at the time or since. Because according to Marco, some of the people who died hadn’t touched the oil (rapeseed oil it was-memo to self, get clippings out of library). They hadn’t bought it, hadn’t used it-simple as that. So what caused the deaths? Marco’s idea-and it wasn’t original, he got it from other researchers into the area-was that these things called-hold on, I wrote it down-Jesus, it’s taken me ten minutes to track it down. Should’ve known to look first on my fag packet. OPs, that what it says. OPs were to blame. He did tell me what they are, but I’ve forgotten. Better look into it tomorrow.

“OPs,” Reeve said.

“What?”

“Any mention of them in the stuff you’re reading?”

She smiled. “Sorry, I stopped reading a while back. I’m not taking it in anymore.” She yawned, stretching her arms up, hands clenched. The fabric of her sweater tightened, raising the profile of her breasts.

“Shit,” said Reeve, suddenly realizing. “I’ve got to get a room.”

“What?”

“A hotel room. I wasn’t planning on being here this late.”

She paused before answering. “You can sleep where you are. That sofa’s plenty comfy enough; I’ve fallen asleep on it a few times myself. I’ll just check out Newsnight if that’s all right, see what I’ve missed today and what I can expect to read tomorrow, and then I’ll leave you to it.”

He stared at her.

“It’s all right, really it is,” she said. “You’re perfectly safe with me.”

She had blue eyes. He’d noticed them before, but they seemed bluer now. And she didn’t smell of perfume, just soap.

“We can read the rest over breakfast,” she said, switching on the TV. “I need a clear head to take in half of what I’m reading. Bovine spongiform encephalopathy: it doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue, does it? And nor does it trip off the eyeballs. Bloody boffins just refuse to call it mad cow disease. I hope to God that’s not what this is all about, the beefburgers of the damned-and bloody John Selwyn Gummer stuffing one down his poor sodding daughter’s throat. Do you remember that photo?”

“Why do you say that?”

She was engrossed in the TV. “Say what?”

“That you hope it’s not about bovine spongy whatsit.”

She glanced at him. “Because it’s been covered, Gordon. It’s old news. Besides, the public are physically repelled by scare stories. They’d rather not know about them. That’s why they end up in the Grauniad or Private Eye. You’ve heard of the right to know? Well, the good old British public has another inalienable right: the right not to know, not to worry. They want a cheap paper with some cartoons and funny headlines and a good telly section. They do not want to know about diseases that eat their flesh, meat that makes them mad, or eggs that can put them in casualty. You tell them about the bow doors on ferries, they still troop on and off them every weekend, heading for Calais and cheap beer.” She turned to him again. “Know why?”

“Why?”

“Because they don’t think lightning strikes twice. If some other bugger has died that makes it so much less likely that they will.” She turned back to the TV, then smiled. “Sorry, I’m ranting.”

“You have a low regard for your readers?”

“On the contrary, I have a very high regard for my readers. They are discriminating and knowledgeable.” She turned the sound up a little, losing herself in the news. Reeve put down the sheets of paper he was still holding. Sticking out from below the sofa was a newspaper. He pulled it out. It was the paper Fliss worked for.

“Isn’t he a dish?” she muttered, a rhetorical question apparently. She was talking to herself about the news presenter.

Reeve went through to the kitchen to boil some more water. He knew he should call Joan again, let her know the score, but the telephone was in the living room. He sat down at the kitchen table and spread out the paper which he’d brought through with him. He started examining each page, looking for the byline Fliss Hornby. He didn’t find it. He went through the paper again. This time he found it.

He made two mugs of instant decaf and took them back through to the living room. Fliss had tucked her legs beneath her and was hugging them. She sat forward ever so slightly in her chair, a fan seeking a better view, though there was nothing between her and her idol. Then Reeve was in the way, handing her the mug.

“You work on the fashion page,” he said.

“It’s still journalism, isn’t it?” Obviously she’d had this conversation before.

“I thought you were-”

“What?” She glared at him. “A proper journalist? An investigative journalist?”

“No, I just thought… Never mind.”

He sat down, aware she was angry with him. Tactful, Gordon, he thought. Nil out of ten for leadership. Had he told her he appreciated all she’d done today? She’d halved his workload, been able to explain things to him-bits of journalist’s shorthand on the disks, for example. He might have been there all day, and spent a wasted day, instead of which he had something. He had the genesis; that’s what Jim had called it. The genesis of whatever had led him to San Diego and his death. It was a start. Tomorrow things might get more serious.

He kept looking at Fliss. If she’d turned in his direction, he’d have smiled an apology. But she was staring unblinking at the screen, her neck taut. Reeve seemed to have the ability to piss women off. Look at Joan. Most days now there was an argument between them; not when Allan was around-they were determined to put up a “front”-but whenever he wasn’t there. There was enough electricity in the air to light the whole building.

After Newsnight was watched in silence, Fliss said a curt good night, but then came back into the room with a spare duvet and a pillow.

“I’m sorry,” Reeve told her. “I didn’t mean to imply anything. It’s just that you never said anything, and you’ve been acting all day like you were Scoop Newshound, the paper’s only investigative reporter.”

She smiled. “Scoop Newshound?”

He shrugged, smiling also.

“I forgive you,” she said. “First one up tomorrow goes for milk and bread, right?”

“Right, Fliss.”

“Good night, then.” She showed no sign of moving from the doorway. Reeve had pulled off his blue cotton sweater and was wearing a long-sleeved white T-shirt. She appraised his body for a moment, and gave a smile and a noise that was halfway between a sigh and humming, then turned and walked away.

He found it hard to sleep. He was too tired; or rather, he was exhausted but not tired. His brain wouldn’t work-as he discovered when he tried carrying on with Jim’s notes-but it wouldn’t be still either. Images flitted through his mind, bouncing along like a ball through a series of puddles. Snatches of conversations, songs, echoes of the two films he’d watched on the flight, his trip on the Underground, the taxicabs, the Indian restaurant, surprising Fliss in the kitchen. Songs… tunes…

Row, row, row your boat.

He jerked from the sofa, standing in the middle of the floor in his T-shirt and underpants, trembling. He switched on the TV, turning the sound all the way down. Nighttime television: mindless and bright. He looked out of the window. A halo of orange sodium, a dog barking in the near distance, a car cruising past. He watched it, studied it. The driver was staring straight ahead. There were cars parked outside, solid lines of them on both sides of the street, ready for tomorrow’s race.

He padded through to the kitchen on bare feet and switched on the kettle again. Rooting in the box of assorted herbal tea bags, he found spearmint and decided to give it a try. Back in the hallway, he noticed that Fliss’s bedroom door was ajar. More than ajar in fact: it was halfway open. Was it an invitation? He’d be bound to see it if he used the kitchen or the bathroom. Her light was off. He listened for her breathing, but the fridge in the kitchen was making too much noise.

He waited in the hall, holding the steaming mug, until the fridge switched off. Her breathing was more than regular-she was snoring.

“Morning.” She came into the kitchen sleepy-faced and tousling her hair. She wore a thick tartan dressing gown and fluffy pink slippers.

Reeve had been out and purchased breakfast and newspapers. She slumped into a chair at the table and grabbed a paper.

“Coffee?” he asked. He’d bought a packet of coffee and some paper filters.

“How did you sleep?” she asked without looking up.

“Fine,” he lied. “You?”

As she was folding a page, she glanced up at him. “Soundly, thanks.”

He poured them both coffee. “I’ve found out what OPs are.”

“Oh?”

“I’ve been doing some more reading.”

“You were up early. So, what are they?”

“Organophosphorus treatments.”

“And what are those when they’re at home?”

“Pesticides, I think. Marco and others think the Spanish cooking oil thing was all to do with pesticides.”

She drank greedily from her mug and exhaled. “So what now?”

He shrugged.

“Are you going to talk to Marco?”

Reeve shook his head. “He’s got nothing to do with it. He’s just a catalyst. Jim wasn’t researching the Spanish incident, he was looking at BSE.”

“Bovine spongiform thingy.”

“Encephalopathy.”

“How did he make the leap from cooking oil to BSE?”

“He remembered something he’d heard.”

So I phoned Joshua Vincent, and told him he probably wouldn’t know me. He said I was correct in that assumption. I explained that some time ago the paper had received a press release from his organization, the National Farmers’ Union, concerning BSE. He told me he wasn’t working for the NFU anymore. He sounded bitter when he said it. I asked him what had happened.

“They sacked me,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because of what I said about BSE.”

And I began to sniff my story. Now if only I can persuade Giles to fund me…

“So what are you doing today?” Fliss asked. She’d had a shower, dried her hair, and was dressed.

“Trying to find Joshua Vincent.”

“And if you can’t?”

Reeve shrugged again; he didn’t want to consider failure, though really it should be considered. With any plan, there should be a fallback position.

“You could talk to Giles Gulliver,” she suggested, dabbing crumbs of toast from her plate.

“That’s an idea.”

“And then?”

“Depends what I learn.”

She sucked at the crumbs. “Don’t expect too much from Giles, or anyone like him.”

“What do you mean?”

She grabbed the newspaper and opened it to a full-page ad-vertisement, placed by Co-World Chemicals. “Don’t bother read-ing it,” she said. “It’ll put you back to sleep. It’s just one of those feel-good ads big corporations make up when they want to spend some money.”

Reeve glanced at the ad. “Or when their consciences are bothering them?”

Fliss wrinkled her nose. “Grow up. Those people don’t have consciences. They’ve had them surgically removed to make room for the cash-flow implants.” She tapped the paper. “But as long as Co-World and companies like them are throwing money at advertising departments, publishers will love them, and the publishers will see to it that their editors never print anything that might upset Sugar Daddy. That’s all I’m saying.”

“Thanks for the warning.”

She shrugged. “Will you be here this evening?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. I’ll have to see how it goes.”

“Well, I’ll probably be late. There’s a second Giannini’s opening in Covent Garden and I’m invited.”

“Giannini’s?”

“The designer.”

“Hold the front page,” he said. She scowled and he held up his hands. “Just a joke.”

“I want to know what you find, no matter what. Even if it’s only a phone call from Scotland, let me know.”

“Sure, it’s the least I can do.”

She left the kitchen and returned again wearing a coat and carrying a briefcase. She made show of adjusting the belt on the coat. “Just one thing, Gordon.”

“What’s that?”

“What are you going to do about the flat?”

He smiled at her. “It’s yours for as long as you want it.”

Finally she looked at him. “Really?” He nodded. “Thanks.”

Maybe he’d found his fallback position. If he didn’t get any further with Jim’s story, he could always track down her ex-boyfriend and make a mess of the rest of his life. She came over and pecked him on the cheek.

Which was payment enough in itself.

He found a telephone number for the NFU, but nobody could give him a forwarding address for Joshua Vincent. A woman who had tried to be helpful eventually passed him on to someone who had more questions than answers, wanting to know who he was and what his connection was with Mr. Vincent.

Reeve put down the telephone.

Maybe Vincent lived in London, but there were several Vincent J’s listed in the phone book. It would take a while to talk to them all. He went to Jim’s notes again. They were a hodgepodge of the detailed and the rambling, of journalistic instinct and alcoholic excess. There were jottings on the backs of some sheets. He hadn’t paid them much attention, but laid them out now on the living-room floor. Doodles, circles, and cubes mostly, and a cow’s warped face with a pair of horns. But there were names and what looked like times, too, and some telephone numbers. There were no names beside the numbers. He tried the first one and got a woman’s answering machine. The second just rang and rang. The third turned out to be a bookmaker’s in Finsbury Park. The fourth was a central London pub, the one Fliss and her journalist colleagues used.

The fifth was another answering machine: “Josh here. Leave your message and I’ll get back.”

An evasive message. Reeve severed the connection and wondered what to say. Eventually he dialed again.

“Josh here. Leave your message and I’ll get back.”

He waited for the tone.

“My name’s Gordon Reeve, and I’m trying to locate Joshua Vincent. I got this number from my brother’s notes. My brother’s name was James Reeve; I think Mr. Vincent knew him. I use the past tense because my brother is dead. I think he was working on a story at the time. I’m hoping you can help me. I’d like to find out why he died.”

He gave the flat’s telephone number and put down the receiver. Then he sat down and stared at the telephone for fifteen minutes. He made more coffee and watched it for another fifteen minutes. If Vincent was home and had listened to the message straightaway, even if he wanted to check James Reeve had a brother, he would have been back by now.

So Reeve telephoned Fliss’s paper, spoke to Giles Gulliver’s assistant, and was put through to the editor at last.

“Good God,” Gulliver said. “I can’t believe it. Is this some sort of joke?”

“No joke, Mr. Gulliver. Jim’s dead.”

“But how? When?”

Reeve started to tell him, but Gulliver interrupted. “No, wait-let’s meet. Is that possible, Mr. Reeve?”

“It’s possible.”

“Just let me check my diary.” Reeve was put on hold for the time it took him to count to sixty. “Sorry about that. We could have a drink at midday. I’ve a lunch appointment at one, so it would make sense to meet at the hotel. Would that suit you? I want to hear everything. It’s quite ghastly. I can hardly take it in. Jim was one of-”

“Where’s the hotel, Mr. Gulliver?”

“Sorry. The Ritz. See you there at midday.”

“Good-bye, Mr. Gulliver.”

And still Joshua Vincent didn’t call.

In Jim’s notes, Giles Gulliver had always been “the old boy” or “the old duffer.” Reeve was expecting a man in his sixties or even seventies, a newspaperman of the old school. But when he was shown to Gulliver’s table in the Ritz bar, he saw that the man half-rising to greet him from behind a fat Cuban cigar could only be in his early forties-not much older than Reeve himself. But Gulliver’s actions were studied, like those of a much older man, a man who has seen everything life has to throw at him. Yet he had gleaming eyes, the eyes of a child when shown something wondrous. And Reeve saw at once that the phrase “old boy” was perfect for Giles Gulliver. He was Peter Pan in a pinstripe.

“Good man,” Gulliver said, shaking Reeve’s hand. He ran his fingers through his slicked hair as he sat back down again. They had a corner table, away from the general babble of the bar. There were four things on the table: an ashtray, a portable telephone, a portable fax machine, and a glass of iced whiskey.

Gulliver rolled the cigar around his mouth. “Something to drink?” Their waiter was standing ready.

“Mineral water,” said Reeve.

“Ice and lime, sir?”

“Lemon,” said Reeve. The waiter retreated, and Reeve waited for Gulliver to say something.

Gulliver was shaking his head. “Hellish business. Surprised no one told me sooner. I’ve got a sub working on the obit.” He paused, catching himself. “My dear chap, I’m so sorry. You don’t want to hear about that.”

“It’s okay.”

“Now tell me, how did Jim die?”

“He was murdered.”

Gulliver’s eyes were hidden by the smoke he’d just exhaled. “What?”

“That’s my theory.”

Gulliver relaxed; he was dealing with a theory, not a story.

Reeve told him some of the rest, but by no means all of it. He wasn’t sure of his ground. On the one hand, he wanted the public to know what had happened in San Diego. On the other, he wasn’t sure whose life he might be endangering if he did go public-especially if he went public without proof. Proof would be his insurance. He needed proof.

“Did you know Jim was going to San Diego?” Reeve asked.

Gulliver nodded. “He wanted three thousand dollars from me. Said the trip would be worth it.”

“Did he tell you why he was going?”

Gulliver’s phone rang. He smiled an apology and picked it up. The conversation-the side of it Reeve could hear-was technical, something to do with the next day’s edition.

Gulliver pressed the Off button. “Apologies.” He glanced at his watch. “Did Jim tell me why he was going? No, that was one of the irritating things about him.” He caught himself again. “I don’t wish to speak ill of the dead…”

“Speak away.”

“Well, Jim liked his little conspiracy; and he liked to keep it his own secret. I think he thought it gave him more power: if an editor didn’t know what the story might be, he couldn’t come straight out and say no. That’s how Jim liked to play us. The less he told, the more we were supposed to think he had to tell. Eventually, he’d give you the story, the story you’d shelled out for, and it was seldom as meaty as you’d been led to believe.”

Listening to Gulliver, especially as the whiskey did its loosening, Reeve could hear hard edges and jagged corners that were a long way away from the public school image Gulliver presented to the world. There was street market in those edges and corners. There was street smart. There was city boy.

The fax bleeped and then started to roll out a page. Gulliver examined the sheet and got on the telephone again. There was another technical discussion, another glance at the Piaget watch, a tug at the crocodile wristband.

“He didn’t tell you anything?” Reeve persisted, sounding like he didn’t believe it.

“Oh, he told me snatches. Cooking oil, British beef, some veterinarian who’d died.”

“Did he mention Co-World Chemicals?”

“I think so.”

“In what connection?”

“My dear boy, there was no connection, that’s what I’ve been saying. He’d just say a couple of words, like he was feeding an infant egg from a silver spoon. Thinking he was stringing one along…”

“Someone killed him to stop the story.”

“Then prove it. I don’t mean prove it in a court of law, but prove it to me. That’s what you want, isn’t it?” Gulliver’s eyes seemed clearer than ever. He leaned across the table. “You want to finish what Jim started. You want an epitaph which would also be a revenge. Isn’t that right?”

“Maybe.”

“No maybe about it. That is what you want, and I applaud you. I’ll run with it. But I need more than you’ve given me, more than Jim gave me.”

“You’re saying I should finish the story?”

“I’m saying I’m interested. I’m saying keep in touch.” Gulliver sat back and picked up his glass, washing the ice with the amber liquid.

“Can I ask a question?” Reeve said.

“We only have a minute or so.”

“How much does CWC spend a year on advertising in your paper?”

“How much? That’s a question for my advertising manager.”

“You don’t know?”

Gulliver shrugged. “CWC’s a big company, a multinational. They own several subsidiaries in the UK and many more in Europe. There’s UK production and some importation.”

“A multimillion-pound industry, with a proportionate advertising budget.”

“I don’t see-”

“And when they advertise, they do it big. Full-page ads in the broadsheets and-what?-maybe double-color spreads in the financial glossies. TV as well?”

Gulliver stared at him. “Are you in advertising, Mr. Reeve?”

“No.” But, he might have added, I was well briefed this morning by someone on your fashion page. The fashion page, apparently, was a sop to certain advertisers.

Another glance at the watch, a rehearsed sigh. “I have to go, unfortunately.”

“Yes, that is unfortunate.”

As Gulliver rose, a hotel minion appeared and unplugged his fax. Fax machine and telephone went into a briefcase. The cigar was stubbed into the ashtray. Meeting most definitely over.

“Will you keep in touch?” Gulliver implored, touching Reeve’s arm, letting his hand rest there.

“Maybe.”

“And is there any good cause?” Reeve didn’t understand. “A charity, something like that. You know, for mourners to make donations to, as a mark of respect and in memory.”

Reeve thought about it, then wrote a phone number for Gulliver on the back of a paper napkin. “Here,” he said. Gulliver waited for elucidation. “It’s the number of a bookie’s in Finsbury Park. They tell me Jim owed them a ton and a half. All contributions gratefully received.”

Reeve walked out of the hotel thinking he’d probably never in his life met someone so powerful, someone with so much influence, a shaper and changer. He’d shaken hands with royalty at medal ceremonies, but that wasn’t the same.

For one thing, some royalty were nice; for another, some of them were known to tell the truth.

Giles Gulliver on the other hand was a born-and-bred liar; that was how you worked your way up from market stall to pinstripe suit. You had to be cunning, too-and Gulliver was so slippery you could stage ice dancing on him and still have room for the curling rink.

The phone was ringing as he barged into the flat. He willed it to keep ringing and it obliged. His momentum took him onto the sofa as he snatched the receiver. He lay there, winded, trying to say hello.

“Is that Gordon Reeve?”

“Speaking.”

“My name’s Joshua Vincent. I think we’d better meet.”

“Can you tell me what my brother was working on?”

“Better yet, I think I can show you. Three stipulations.”

“I’m listening.”

“One, you come alone. Two, you tell nobody where you’re going or who you’re going to meet.”

“I can accept those. And number three?”

“Number three, bring a pair of Wellies.”

Reeve wasn’t about to ask questions. “So where are you?”

“Not so fast. I want you to leave Jim’s flat and go to a pay phone. Not the nearest one. Try to make it a pub or somewhere.”

Tottenham Lane, thought Reeve. There are pubs along that stretch. “Yes?”

“Have you got a pen? Take down this number. It’s a call box. I’ll wait here no longer than fifteen minutes. Is that enough time?”

Reeve thought so. “Unless the telephones aren’t working. You’re taking a lot of precautions, Mr. Vincent.”

“So should you. I’ll explain when we meet.”

The line went dead, and Gordon Reeve headed for the door.

Outside in the street, just before the corner where the quiet side road connected with Ferme Park Road, there was a dull-green British Telecom box, a metal structure three feet high which connected the various landlines into the system. A special key was used by technicians to open the box’s double doors. The key was specialized, but not difficult to obtain. A lot of engineers kept their tools when they left the job; an ex-BT engineer could open a box for you. And if he’d moved to a certain line of work, he could fit a call-activated recorder to any of the lines in the box, tucking the recording device down in the base of the structure, so that even a normal BT engineer might miss it.

The tape kept spooling for a few seconds after the call had ended. Then it stopped, awaiting retrieval. Today was a retrieval day.