Mr Liddell’s murder remains unsolved and it would appear that the anonymous kidnapper of Mr Thome is claiming responsibility for it.
John Kerr, editor, has condemned the death threat as ‘a sickening and cowardly attack on free speech’.
See feature page 7 and leader page 11
I was made breathless from the effects of a potent cocktail of excitement at the notoriety with which Original Harm had become associated and fear for the inevitability of my imminent discovery. If Chris the Crossword Compiler had spotted the anagrammatic link, then it wouldn’t take long for some of the paper’s more astute readers to deduce it too and proceed to speculate about the motivation lurking behind it until they uncovered me, at which point they might be excused for leaping to the conclusion that there was a direct link between the identity of the individual behind the anagrammatic link and the identity of the kidnapper.
It occurred to me that another motivation for seeking the swift identification of the kidnapper, in addition to securing the safe release of the innocent hostage whose ordeal I had inadvertently orchestrated, was to deflect any such suspicion from falling on me.
I hurried home to spread out the paper on my kitchen table and pore over the feature and the leader column, foraging for any new and potentially valuable snippets of information to help me plan an appropriate course of action.
The feature on page seven gave the background behind the front-page teaser by detailing accounts of Niamh Toe’s review of Original Harm and Ian Thome’s letter defending the book. In an inset item, Kirsty Baird re-reviewed Original Harm (broadly echoing, though in less strident terms, Niamh Toe’s critique — given that she’d commissioned it and already edited it, she could hardly contradict it) whilst, in a neighbouring piece, Professor Paul Buchanan of the University of Glasgow, a specialist on the psychology of terrorism (I had published several of his letters on previous occasions) speculated about the motives of the blackmailer and whether or not the death threat should be taken seriously (he felt that, on balance, it would be ‘folly to dismiss it out of hand’).
As I finished the article and turned to page eleven, the rustle of the paper told me that my hands were trembling. When I saw the leader column, my anticipation was engulfed by exasperation as I read a Mark Twain quotation. I’ll reproduce the column for you verbatim, as always.
‘It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.’
Perhaps Mark Twain is right and this paper has indeed been imprudent in practising what it preaches but, if so, we make no apologies for that.
Papers like this one exist to report news — not become entangled in it; but when we do, it is imperative that we defend the twin freedoms of speech and conscience, the very poles of the axis around which we revolve.
Yesterday we were presented with a letter which left us confronting something of a dilemma: whilst it represented a direct attack on the aforementioned principles upon which we were founded, if we were to leap instantly to defend these principles, then an individual would be murdered as a direct consequence.
Letters from outraged cranks making empty threats are not unknown to newspapers and, usually, they are disposed of without further ado, or else the offending items are turned over to the police.
However, we decided to make an exception of yesterday’s letter.
We did so because we felt there was sufficient reason to believe that the threat it contained was not empty, but loaded. That, certainly, was the conclusion arrived at by Professor Paul Buchanan, an expert on such matters whose advice we solicited.
The chief factor in our decision to take the threat seriously was the link made between the murder of the book reviewer Craig Liddell, which the kidnapper appears to claim responsibility for, and the threat to the life of Ian Thome: both were advocates of free speech and it would appear to be more than mere coincidence that Craig Liddell’s throat was cut and that this is the same method of execution with which Ian Thome is threatened.
The burden of this specific and direct threat of a fatal consequence proved too great for us to ignore and meant that, in this unique instance, and after prolonged agonising over the dilemma with which it presented us, we opted to publish the kidnapper’s letter.
We did so because we recognised that, ultimately, our precious freedoms of speech and conscience are incorporeal and, whilst priceless to us, when weighed against a human life, worthless.
No principle should be considered absolute: if it is accepted as such, we soon forget the reasoning behind it and our defence of it descends swiftly into a mire of blind faith. Instead it must be subjected constantly to rigorous revaluation and revision and tested against each particular circumstance that presents itself.
In this particular circumstance we felt that the most appropriate way to demonstrate our faith in free speech was by publishing the kidnapper’s letter seeking to deny that very right — not because we were bowing to the kidnapper’s demands, but because, through the act of publishing his abhorrent message, we reinforce the right of free speech.
There is, undoubtedly, an irony in demonstrating the right of free speech by publishing a letter attacking that very right, but life is awash with ironies, and this is not the only irony in this matter.
A further irony is that the kidnapper’s death threat has given Original Harm, the book it is so desperate to suppress, prime exposure, without which it would more than likely have languished in obscurity.
The kidnapper’s reprehensible methods, too, will alienate all public sympathy for his arguments and, instead, direct it towards the novel he so despises.
It is worth stressing that, by publishing the kidnapper’s letter, we have not abandoned, but reinforced, our principles. We abhor the actions of the kidnapper and this paper will be fighting for freedom of speech and conscience long after he is dead and gone because we consider such freedoms as fundamental to this country.
It is also worth noting that, whilst we have opted to publish the letter on the front page of today’s newspaper, we refuse to comply with the kidnapper’s demand that we undertake not to publish such views as those expressed by Ian Thome again — whatever threats, or subsequent actions, the kidnapper might make.
Craig Liddell was an advocate of free speech and he was murdered. Ian Thome is an advocate of free speech and he is threatened with murder. This paper advocates free speech but refuses to pass a death sentence on Ian Thome.
One final irony: whilst we are unwilling to sacrifice a single human life on the altar of free speech, we simultaneously believe that this principle is ultimately of infinitely greater importance than any individual.
I struggled to comprehend the implication of the inclusion of a Mark Twain quotation in the leader column; it really did seem a case of a coincidence too far, but if its presence could not be explained by coincidence, then why was it there? I had no answer, which unsettled me, and so I proceeded to reread the front page and the feature and the leader column with mounting irritation. Finally admitting defeat to the Twain enigma, I cast the paper aside and gulped down cornflakes, showered, shaved, shit, caught the 44 into work and scanned the paper once more en route.
chapter thirteen
the price of free speech
As I reread the leader column on the bus into work I could see that its author was attempting to persuade himself, as much as his readers, of his arguments; seeking to salve his conscience and justify the paper’s capitulation to the kidnapper’s demands. The column amounted to little more than a pre-emptive defence against anticipated criticisms.
Then it struck me that I had no idea who the leader writer of the paper was. It had never occurred to me before. It was not a column that I was in the habit of reading, despite the fact that it appeared alongside the letters. Perhaps, given the inclu
sion of the Mark Twain quotation, the leader writer was implicated in the affair?
Flicking back through the paper to reread the article on page seven to see if I’d missed any other Twain quotations, my eye was caught by a black and white photograph that dominated page nine. It showed a mass of scattered bodies of slaughtered men, women and children in a village square — twenty or thirty corpses left to rot where they’d been hacked or bludgeoned or shot; flies swarming over the skewed limbs and mud and blood drenched rags — a grotesque image which, for the first time, despite having read numerous reports of the atrocities, forced me to realise the horror of the genocide. It was one thing to read the gruesome statistics of ethnic cleansing and conceive the horror; it was quite another to confront the photographic evidence.
On arrival at the office, I squeezed into the crowded lift to the first floor and, unable to resist the temptation, before I even removed my coat and hat, stopped and glanced at the purple paperweight pinning down the pile of letters on my desk.
‘Morning,’ sighed Kirsty Baird, teacup in hand, on her way to the kitchen.
‘Morning,’ I obliged.
‘How’s the missus?’ she asked.
‘Fine,’ I smiled. ‘She’s fine.’
I removed my raincoat and jacket, took off my homburg, hung up my umbrella and ventured into the kitchen to make myself a cup of peppermint tea. But before I started slitting the envelopes, I put on my specs, after wiping the lenses with a crumpled hankie to which I’d applied a sliver of saliva, booted up the computer to start printing out the e-mails, shuffled and stapled the faxes and rifled through the envelopes in the hope of discovering an exotic postmark. By this time, my tea had cooled sufficiently to allow me my first slurp.
A small padded envelope attracted my attention but, noticing that I’d been left voicemail, I was distracted momentarily from opening it. I keyed my code into the phone and listened to a Stephen Hawking-esque monotone intone ‘Intolerance will not be tolerated’ and felt the full weight of responsibility for the commitment of a personal atrocity on an unsuspecting innocent.
I opened the Jiffy bag and extracted a blue velvet jewellery box that I prized open with all the tentativeness of a trainee bomb disposer. Inside, on a cushion of white satin, nestled a transparent convex disc similar in size and shape to a contact lens. Puzzled, I re-examined the envelope and fished out an overlooked postcard with ‘The price of free speech’ scrawled in familiar bog-standard handwriting on one side and ‘Sometimes life imitates art’ on the other.
My phone rang and Kerr summoned me into his smoke-filled aquarium.
‘This is Ms Pardos,’ he said, indicating a figure lurking in a corner, shrouded in his smoke.
She was dressed in black and when she approached me, measuredly, the grey clouds that had enveloped her swirled into the space she vacated and trailed after her, beseeching her to stay in their embrace. Her footsteps made no sound. The way she moved conveyed that she was, and always would be, at ease with herself and with any given situation that might present itself to her to do with as she pleased. She moved as if she was weighing me up and deciding when to pounce.
‘Pleased to meet you,’ I said. She was only looking at me but it felt as if she was inspecting me.
‘We’ve met before,’ she said. It was only then that I recognised her as the girl with the flawless Cadbury-coloured skin, bee-stung lips and swaying hips I’d mistaken for Niamh Toe at the library the previous day.
‘Ms Pardos is investigating yesterday’s death threat,’ said Kerr.
‘Are you a detective?’ I asked.
‘Private detective,’ she clarified.
‘Then you’d better take a look at this,’ I said, handing her the jewellery box.
I took her to the Space Bar, where she ordered coffees and settled down to quiz me.
‘So it wasn’t just coincidence that you were in the library yesterday?’ I asked.
‘Coincidences are rare,’ she said, stirring half a teaspoonful of brown sugar into her coffee; hypnotising me with the circular motion of her sugar pink nails.
‘Have you been following me?’
‘Something like that.’
I was unsure how to respond, so I didn’t.
‘Are you scared?’ she asked.
‘Should I be?’
‘Perhaps.’
We sipped our coffees.
‘Tell me about yourself,’ she said.
‘What d’you want to know?’
‘You decide.’
‘I’m the letters page editor,’ I said. ‘I edit the letters page.’
‘Is that it?’ she said.
‘What d’you want to know?’
‘How long have you been the letters page editor?’
‘Too long.’
‘You don’t like it?’
‘No. I was being facetious. It’s a trait. I love it. I’ve done it for ten years.’
‘You’re in a rut?’
‘I’ve got to get out of it.’
‘You’re right — it is a trait,’ she said. ‘Are you married?’
‘No.’
‘Kids?’
I shook my head. ‘Is this an interrogation?’
‘Does it feel like an interrogation?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why don’t you ask me some questions?’
‘I’d need to be interested in the answers.’
‘Aren’t you?’ she said, adopting a wounded tone.
I shrugged. ‘Are you married?’ I asked.
‘No.’
‘Kids?’
‘No.’
‘Available?’
She didn’t answer.
‘Sorry, I can’t help myself. Why were you in the library at the same time as me?’
‘I’d had a phone call instructing me to be there.’
‘Who from?’
‘It was anonymous.’
‘So was the letter. D’you think the phone call was from the kidnapper?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Was the voice male or female?’
‘I couldn’t say for certain — it had been electronically tampered.’
‘So, what’s your next move?’
‘We’ll analyse the contents of your jewellery box.’
We sipped our coffees.
‘Yesterday you mistook me for Niamh Toe,’ she said. ‘Did you find her?’
‘I thought I did but now I’m not sure.’
‘Why were you looking for her?’
‘I wanted to speak to her about the letter.’
‘Why?’
‘I thought she might have written it.’
‘Why?’
‘Because Thome’s letter was critical of her review.’
‘And you thought she might have kidnapped him for revenge?’
I shrugged.
‘It doesn’t sound very likely, does it?’ she suggested.
‘No,’ I admitted.
‘Who do you think wrote the letter?’
‘I’ve no idea. Who do you think made the anonymous phone call?’
‘Why didn’t you take the letter immediately to your editor?’
‘I wanted to establish if it was genuine before pestering him with a crank.’
‘Did you?’
‘Not totally — but I don’t think it’s from a crank.’
‘Why not?’
‘Something about the way it’s written — and the fact that I received that this morning,’ I said, indicating the jewellery box.
We sipped our coffees.
‘Have you read Original Harm?’ she asked.
‘No.’
‘Do you know anything about its author, Tom Haine?’
‘No.’
‘He doesn’t
exist,’ she said.
‘Excuse me?’
‘It’s a pseudonym.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘I asked the publisher.’
‘Who’s the publisher?’
‘Tina something — Home,’ she said.
‘And how did you get in touch with her?’
‘Through the PO Box number on the title page.’
‘So who did write the book?’ I asked, attempting not to sound perturbed.
‘I don’t know yet. I didn’t press the issue, but I will. Have you heard of Toni Mahe?’ she asked, pronouncing it May. I’d always pronounced it Ma-hay.
‘No. Should I know him?’
‘Not necessarily. Count yourself lucky. What do you make of The Amino?’
‘They’re just fictional, aren’t they?’
‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘They’re in that book you haven’t read.’
We sipped our coffees.
‘What are you prepared to do to get out of it?’
‘Out of what?’
‘The rut.’
‘What rut?’
‘The rut of being a letters page editor. You said you’d been in the job too long.’
‘I also said I loved it,’ I said. ‘If you’re going to convict me of facetiousness then you better handcuff me now — I confess — guilty as charged.’
We sipped our coffees.
‘Is there anything else you want to tell me?’ she asked.
‘Like what?’
‘Nothing,’ she said, her patience run out. ‘Call me if anything occurs to you.’
She rose from her chair, then seemed to change her mind and sat back down.
‘What do you believe in?’ she asked in a fresh tone.
‘What d’you mean?’
‘Nothing,’ she said.
She left me mulling over our conversation, struggling to resist an urge to lick her lipstick trace off her cup and run after her to confess my disastrous deception.
‘I believe in you,’ I said to myself.
chapter fourteen
Oh Marina Girl Page 7
