Oh Marina Girl

by Graham Lironi

  ‘Goodbye.’

  ‘Ian Thome,’ I said. ‘I need to speak to you about Ian Thome.’

  ‘Who’s Ian Thome?’

  ‘He wrote a letter in my paper in response to your review of a book called Original Harm by Tom Haine.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And I really need to speak to you about it — today.’

  There was a hesitation and then a sigh of exasperation.

  ‘I’m on my way to the Mitchell Library. Meet me in the general reference section in half an hour. I’ll give you five minutes.’

  I arrived ten minutes early, scanned the room, but found no obvious candidates who corresponded to the voice of Niamh Toe. I endured the eternity of the next ten minutes glancing at the door, my watch and an encyclopaedia that lay open before me and within which I was attempting to appear engrossed. For the umpteenth time that day, I began to feel that I was being watched.

  Two minutes later than the time allotted for our assignation, a striking girl entered. She had flawless Cadbury-coloured skin; bee-stung lips and swaying hips that she swayed straight past me and out the other door without making eye contact. Could that have been her? Should I follow her? I listened to her retreating footsteps grow faint until I substituted my doubt-filled inertia for action.

  ‘Excuse me!’ I called, my voice reverberating along the chequered tiled corridor. She stopped and glanced back to find me running towards her.

  ‘You don’t happen to be Niamh Toe, do you?’ I enquired, fighting for breath.

  ‘No,’ she said, already turning away, consigning me to history with a flick of a corkscrew-curled fringe.

  I stood for a moment, rooted by her rhythm, then turned heel and returned to the reference section.

  On re-entering the room, I ignored the inquisitive glance from an unfamiliar librarian and, instead, carried out a rapid reconnaissance which confirmed that no new browsers had entered. Then, over in the far corner, I noticed that the entrance doors were swinging. Someone had just exited. I sprinted over, pushed them open, and scanned an empty corridor for someone who might look a likely candidate for Niamh Toe. Disconsolate, I returned to mope around until I’d convinced myself it was hopeless to wait any longer.

  On my return, the librarian glanced at me again. I met her glance with a glare.

  ‘Can I help you?’ she asked.

  ‘Not unless your name’s Niamh Toe,’ I said.

  She gave me a look and smiled (to herself — not to me).

  ‘You wanted to ask me something about Ian Thome,’ she said.

  ‘That’s right,’ I confirmed, flustered but attempting (and failing miserably) to disguise it. ‘Have you read his letter in response to your review?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Can I show it to you?’ I asked, already retrieving it from my shirt pocket.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I’ve been told it’s scathing.’

  ‘So was your review,’ I said. She shrugged.

  We’d reached an impasse. I seized the opportunity to assess her.

  She wore no make-up. She had no need to. That said, I was intimidated more by her manner than her beauty. Though terse, I suspected that she was shielding a fragile ego. I knew all about that. She appeared incapable of penning the other letter folded in my pocket.

  ‘Words can occasionally incite a chain reaction of excitable — even extreme — responses,’ I said, alluding to the threatening letter to gauge her reaction (there wasn’t one).

  ‘Haine’s book incited a strongly-worded critique from you; your critique incited a vehement defence of Haine from Ian Thome; Thome’s letter incited an extreme response from somebody else — ’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I don’t know yet — but I need to find out very quickly.’

  ‘Why?’

  I hesitated, glanced at my watch, realised that I had no time to act coy, and summarised my predicament — without revealing the precise nature of the kidnapper’s demands.

  ‘Am I a suspect?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course not,’ I said.

  ‘Why not?’

  I was starting to find her directness unsettling.

  ‘Have you ever heard of Craig Liddell?’ She ignored this blatant diversionary tactic.

  ‘Why am I not a suspect?’

  ‘Because,’ I stumbled, ‘you don’t look capable of such a thing.’

  ‘Looks can be deceiving,’ she said. ‘What does a kidnapper look like?’

  ‘I don’t know — not like you. Should you be a suspect?’

  ‘Who’s Craig Liddell?’ she asked, and I told her, not realising till later that she’d deployed my own diversionary tactic against me.

  I explained that the letter writer was agitated about Original Harm and antagonistic towards its author while her book review revealed her to be a woman of conviction and wondered aloud whether she was aware of any individual or organisation whose views mirrored those expressed within the letter.

  ‘Have you even read Original Harm?’ she asked.

  chapter six

  crosswords

  Niamh Toe’s remark confirmed my worst fear — art was imitating life which, in turn, was imitating art. It was the conclusion I’d been trying to avoid reaching ever since I’d read the letter: the kidnapper was most likely a member of The Amino.

  In Original Harm, The Amino is an embryonic subculture characterised by a late-teenage middle-class suburbanite reaction to the liberal values held by its parents. It’s a group of extremist ascetics most easily identified by their negativity — anti-drink, anti-drug, anti-promiscuity, anti-abortion, anti-homosexuality, anti-atheism — whose underlying philosophy could most easily be summarised as anti-tolerant. In Original Harm The Amino had taken its new Puritanism to its illogical conclusion by seeking to enforce it through escalating acts of violence and terrorism.

  But whilst Original Harm was based on fact, it was, nevertheless, a work of fiction, and I knew that The Amino was fictitious; or at least it had been (and I did do) — until then.

  A glance at my watch threw me into a panic and I rushed back to the office to find that the afternoon mail had arrived, replenishing my never-ending supply of letters. In a state of consternation, I set off for the kitchen to brew myself a cup of peppermint tea to try to contrive some semblance of composure, gather my thoughts and determine a course of action which would somehow solve the dilemma I’d unwittingly designed for myself to stumble into.

  I noticed the paper’s freelance crossword compiler sitting in a corner of the kitchen playing Scrabble by himself. Chris (I didn’t know his surname, he was only ever known as ‘Chris the Crossword Compiler’) invited me to join him in a game. When I declined, I must have pierced myself with a pang of guilt at the thought that I might have affronted him; at least that’s the only reason I can think why I proceeded to confide in him.

  I heaved a sigh and told him all about the anonymous letter; reminded him of the cruel fate that had befallen Craig Liddell; summarised the contents of Niamh Toe’s book review and Ian Thome’s letter I’d published by way of response; outlined the plot of Tom Haine’s Original Harm; told him how I’d discovered Ian Thome’s number and address in the phone book but had been unable to make contact with him, though I subsequently had been able to make contact with Niamh Toe, who seemed to suggest that the key to deciphering the identity of the letter writer could be found in Original Harm and that he was most likely a member of a fictitious organisation called The Amino. When I’d finished, I asked him what I should do about the letter.

  ‘You must ask Kerr to print it on tomorrow’s front page,’ he said.

  ‘Wouldn’t that be succumbing to blackmail?’

  ‘It’s not your responsibility,’ he insisted. ‘The alternative is blood on your hands.’

 
I sighed. He was simply articulating what I already knew but, of course, I hadn’t told him the whole story. I had my reasons for not running to Kerr straight away. It was my responsibility. I thanked him for his advice and started to head for my desk.

  ‘I wonder,’ commented Chris, ‘if it’s merely coincidence that all the names of the characters in your little story — with the exception of Craig Liddell — are anagrams of “I am not he”?’

  This observation was, of course, no mere insignificant coincidence, and, whilst it caught me off guard, it didn’t come as a complete surprise — for reasons that, if you haven’t already guessed by now, are about to become clear.

  Let me explain.

  As you know, there’s never any shortage of letters for me to edit. Even so, a couple of days before that fateful morning, I’d succumbed to a long suppressed desire to be a letter writer rather than a letter editor (there are participants and spectators in life, writers and readers, and, while I’d almost resigned myself to the fact that I belonged to the latter categories, I’d always wanted to pluck up the courage and at least have a stab at breaking through to the former) so that, for the first and last time, I wrote a letter myself, under the pseudonym Ian Thome. It never occurred to me that there would be such an overreaction to it or that there might be a real Ian Thome who would become implicated.

  But that doesn’t really explain why I chose to publish the particular letter I did.

  Whilst I was obviously unsurprised by Chris the Crossword Compiler’s observation that the name Ian Thome was an anagram of ‘I am not he’, I was also unsurprised by his observation that the name Tom Haine was a variation of the same anagrammatic pseudonym — because I am also the author of Original Harm.

  I published my debut novel under a pseudonym for a number of reasons, partly to deflect any forthcoming adverse criticism directed at myself, but — in an admittedly shocking example of double standards — I made my pseudonym an anagram of ‘I am not he’ because my vanity meant that, in the event of a favourable critical reception, I wanted readers to realise that Tom Haine was a pseudonym and to become intrigued about, and perhaps proceed to decipher, my real identity.

  When Niamh Toe’s scathing review appeared in the pages of my own paper, confirming my fear of being subjected to ridicule, I succumbed to the temptation to defend myself (under the guise of the pseudonym Ian Thome — why I chose to employ an anagrammatic variation of the pseudonym under which I published the book I can’t easily explain) by publishing a letter full of praise for myself.

  But this is where Chris the Crossword Compiler’s observation really did surprise me. It hadn’t occurred to me that the name Niamh Toe was also an anagram of ‘I am not he’. What could this mean? I couldn’t begin to hazard a guess and so it was with a sense of unease that I reread the anonymous letter in an attempt to make some sense of it all.

  Then, when I reread the reference to Craig Liddell’s murder, I realised that Toni Mahe — the name of the mysterious hotel guest and prime suspect of his murder — was also an anagram of ‘I am not he’. This realisation more than surprised me; it more than disturbed me — it terrified me.

  chapter seven

  filling empty space

  It was with a sense of trepidation that I returned to my desk and attempted to refocus my attention on the editing of the letters. I was now convinced that I’d unwittingly put some unsuspecting innocent called Ian Thome’s life at risk and — more to the point — had placed myself in a perilous position too. What was I to do?

  For the remainder of the afternoon I swayed between the two options which presented themselves to me: confess all to Kerr, spout contrition and beg for forgiveness; or take the incriminating evidence of the letter into a toilet cubicle, tear it to shreds, throw it into the lavatory, piss on it and flush it out of my life with a view to denying all knowledge of its existence should its author ever feel obliged to demonstrate his sincerity and fulfil his threat.

  On several occasions I found myself approaching either Kerr’s office or the toilet before returning to my desk to fret further on the matter until, finally, a third way occurred to me; a compromise lurking somewhere in the sprawling expanse separating confession from denial.

  I approached Kerr’s smoke-filled aquarium and, after an interminable pause pregnant with wavering resolve, knocked on his door. He bade me enter with a gruff command and, through the swirling clouds, the impatience of his glare demanded I justify my intrusion.

  I approached his desk, proffering the crumpled letter in my outstretched hand.

  ‘I don’t know whether this is from a crank or what,’ I said, attempting to sound unconcerned and conscientious, breathing shallowly in a forlorn attempt at minimising the damaging effect of passive smoke inhalation, ‘but I thought I’d better run it past you, just to be on the safe side.’

  ‘What is it?’ he barked, regarding the letter where it lay with disdain.

  ‘It’s a letter,’ I said.

  ‘I can see that,’ he snapped before being convulsed by a dry coughing fit. ‘Why have you brought it to me?’

  I sighed. I’d much rather he’d read it for himself. Now I’d have to explain its contents to him. I did so as concisely as I could.

  ‘When did you receive it?’

  ‘Just now,’ I lied.

  He looked at his watch.

  ‘Fuck this,’ he said, sighing to himself. I shrugged and also sighed in a half-hearted attempt at empathy.

  My strategy, my third way, it will now have become clear, involved passing the burden of responsibility over to my editor whilst simultaneously seeking to conceal the extent of my own duplicitous role as the unwitting architect of the predicament. It was a risky strategy, of that there was no doubt, but, so far as I could fathom, its failure would leave me occupying a position no worse than either of the alternative avenues open to me so that, at the very least, it might buy me some time.

  Kerr grabbed a phone and lit a cigarette, sucking on it for dear death as he dialled.

  ‘Who’re you calling?’ I asked, wondering if he’d already made a decision on whether or not to contact the police and, if so, how I felt about it — it was a decision I’d been avoiding making since receipt of the letter.

  ‘Findlay,’ he barked. Bill Findlay was the paper’s managing director and Kerr’s closest link to the board of directors. My newspaper was only one of a portfolio of media titles, comprising an evening tabloid, a sister Sunday, a magazine division and significant stakes in local television and radio stations, owned by the company.

  Kerr looked up at me. ‘We’re going to have to call an emergency meeting — and you’ll be attending.’

  He addressed me in such a disgruntled fashion and with such an accusatory tone that, if I hadn’t been absolutely positive that there was no way that he could have known that I was responsible for the predicament in which he now found himself, I would have been convinced that he knew that I was.

  Whilst I had been aware that I no longer had the option of destroying the letter and denying all knowledge of its existence, it was only now that I realised that it was also too late for me to proffer a full and frank confession. I’d embarked upon the third way and there was now no alternative but to proceed.

  A few moments later, Kerr’s impeccably power-dressed PA was summoned into the aquarium to transform barked orders into immediate administrative action. Kerr exited his aquarium and strode to the lift. We stepped out onto the top floor to find that the board had already convened in the opulent oak-panelled boardroom.

  If I was intimidated by Kerr’s PA then I was overwhelmed by the almost palpable power and impenetrable sense of self-worth emanating from the stern-faced, middle-aged, middle class men who constituted the board of directors. Their grudging tolerance of Kerr and refusal to acknowledge my own presence presented me with an enlightened perspective of the paper’s hierarchy and I rea
lised that, for all the years I’d been there and fancied that I’d become a vital component of an organisation, the operation of which I felt I had an implicit understanding as a consequence of years of daily experience, I remained no more than an overhead that could be dismissed and replaced on a whim with no necessity for deliberation and no perceived detrimental consequence worthy of consideration.

  I had a sudden insight that the board of directors’ entire perception of the paper was the exact opposite of my own in that, whilst for me adverts were what got in the way of editorial, so far as the board was concerned, editorial was the stuff that filled the empty space around the ads. The difference in our respective perspectives was that fundamental and, once I realised it, I found it hard to believe that I’d been oblivious to it all these years. I thought of a new pseudonym for myself: Phil Space — but by now it was too late.

  Kerr’s PA slipped into the room and handed him copies of the letter. The board members took their seats around the mahogany table as a hidden door in the oak panelling opened on the far side of the room. A white-whiskered man shuffled into the room and slumped in the nearest chair. I noticed a discreet flesh-coloured hearing aid protruding from his left ear. The murmuring had concluded on his entrance.

  At the other end of the table Findlay cleared his throat, thanked the board members for their presence and invited Kerr to summarise the situation. Kerr indulged himself with the briefest glance of disgust in my direction (a glance made not only to underline to me — but also to signal to his attentive audience — that he held me directly responsible for the predicament within which he now found himself) before rising to distribute copies of the letter around the table, starting with White Whiskers. As he did so, he said, ‘Gentlemen, the letter you have before you was received by our letters page editor’ — here he nodded to me — ‘no more than five minutes ago. As you can see, it’s a quite blatant attempt by an apparently dangerous extremist to force us into publicising his point of view. I’ve called this meeting to determine collectively an appropriate response. Firstly, we have to decide whether or not to take its threats seriously — ’