The Righteous Men (2006)

by Sam Bourne

  Will swiped his card and headed to the newsroom.

  He was glad to be here. He had not worked at the Times for long, but this office felt familiar. And he could not face going home. Just the thought of closing the front door and hearing the silence made him shudder. The pictures on the wall; Beth’s clothes in the cupboard; her smell in the bathroom.

  Even imagining it scared him.

  Besides, was this not what Yosef Yitzhok had told him to do in person, before he began communicating by texted riddle? Look to your work. Now, via Proverbs 10, he had been more specific.

  Will’s pace quickened as he walked into the newsroom, deliberately avoiding eye contact with anyone who might spot him. At this time of night it was mainly production staff, not friends of his, but still Will kept his peripheral vision switched off, focused only on reaching his desk.

  As he got nearer, glimpsing something over the flimsy partition wall, his heart thumped. There was a box, placed on his seat. Could this be what YY had been talking about? Had he been perfectly literal? Go to your office, it’s all there waiting for you. A box containing all the answers?

  Will knew it was pure fantasy, but he could not help himself.

  He sprinted the last yard or two, grabbed the box, feeling its weight and tearing it open all at the same time. It was much lighter than its size had suggested and hard to open too. Finally the two top leaves came apart, Will stuck his arm inside and felt something soft and fleshy, like a fruit. What the hell was this? He dug in deeper; it felt moist. He hooked his fingers through some kind of opening and, using it as a handle, pulled up the entire object.

  A Hallowe’en pumpkin. Will had poked his fingers through an eye socket.

  Attached was a card.

  The Better Relations Company invite you to a special evening …

  Some bullshit PR freebie. Invitations for promotional events in New York had become increasingly absurd and excessive: FedEx packages arriving at great expense, containing a silver key which turned out to be the ticket for the launch of the new Ericsson cell phone. The English Puritan in Will balked at such conspicuous waste. He picked up the pumpkin and hurled it across the pod towards a dustbin; it landed and split open by Schwarz’s desk. He’ll hardly notice.

  He glanced at the rest of the post: circulars and press releases.

  A few seemed to be new deposits — an invite for a party at the British Consulate in New York; a flyer for a convention hosted by some evangelical outfit, the Church of the Reborn Jesus; a notice about the Times healthcare scheme — otherwise, the pile of paper was just as he had left it on Monday, the last day he had been in the office.

  That was nearly a week ago; it felt like a lifetime. It seemed like an earlier, golden era — life before the kidnap. How lucky he had been, flying out of New York, then bombing down the backroads of Montana with nothing more grave on his mind than the fickle tastes of the National desk. Of course he had not appreciated it: he had even been idiotic enough to feel glum about his cock-up on the floods story. As if any of that mattered. One of Beth’s favourite songs floated into his head, or rather just one line of it. You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone … After a second or two, he was not hearing Joni Mitchell’s voice but Beth’s. She loved singing and he loved to listen to her. Gathering dust in the corner of their living room was an old acoustic guitar, a memento of student days when she would strum old songs of love and loss to herself. She sang only rarely these days; Will would have to bribe her to do it. But when she did, his heart would soar.

  Will could feel his eyes stinging. He wanted very badly to cry, to give into this memory of his wife that had caught him unawares. He wanted to fall into a chair, make a pillow of his arms and prolong the memory, to hold on to it the way a child wants to catch a bubble, never letting it burst.

  Instead he began searching for the notebook he had left here five days ago, the one he had filled up in Brownsville, writing on both sides of the pages.

  It was not under the press release pile, nor in the stack of magazines and papers Will had already begun to accumulate, waiting to be clipped. (A job he liked in theory but never got around to doing.) He checked the drawers, which he had loaded on his first day with Post-its, a handful of contacts’ business cards, batteries and an old cassette machine in case his mini-disc recorder broke down. Not there. He looked back at the desk-chair and on the floor and then rummaged through the papers all over again.

  He looked around the pod, his eye stopping on the photo of Amy Woodstein’s toddler son apparently wrestling with his mother, pushing her over from the side. They were both smiling, Amy wearing an expression of relaxed joy that neither she, nor anyone else, ever displayed in this newsroom.

  Suddenly he heard Woodstein’s voice in his head. My advice is to lock up your notebooks when Terry’s around. And talk quietly when you ‘re on the phone.

  Will turned himself around slowly. Neat as ever, Walton’s desk seemed to carry no excess paper. Just the single yellow legal pad.

  Will inched closer, his eyes instinctively darting left and right to check no one was around. He ran his hands along the desk, as if to confirm through touch that it really was as clear and empty as it looked. Nothing there. He checked below the yellow pad, to see if there was another stashed underneath. No.

  Now his hand was moving towards the desk drawer. Still scoping the room, he began to pull. It was locked.

  Will sat himself in Terry Walton’s chair, ready to mount the search for the key. He was sure it would be here somewhere: no one kept the key to a desk-drawer on a ring, did they? Will ran his hand underneath the desk, hoping to find it taped in place. Nothing.

  He sat back in the chair. Where could it be? The desk held only the yellow pad and a couple of lame mementos of Walton’s glory days as a foreign correspondent: a bust of Lenin and, most bizarre, a snow-dome in which the winter scene was not children sledging or reindeer riding but a fatherly-looking Saddam Hussein, his arms outstretched, reaching out to a young boy and girl running towards him.

  Ba’athist kitsch, doubtless picked up when Walton covered the first Gulf War. Without thinking, Will picked it up to give it a shake, to watch the blizzard fall on the great Iraqi tyrant.

  As the first flakes fell, he saw it. Stuck to the underside of this plastic bauble — a thin, silver key.

  ‘Good evening, William.’

  Will could feel his muscles seize up. He had been caught.

  He swivelled his chair around.

  The man was barely visible, standing in the half-light. Still, Will recognized his profile before he could even make out the features. It was Townsend McDougal, Executive Editor of The New York Times.

  ‘Oh, hello. Good evening.’ Will could hear the nerves, the exhaustion and the panic in his own voice.

  ‘I’ve heard of eagerness and dedication, William, but this is surely beyond the call of duty: spending Saturday night toiling not only at your own desk, but at that of a colleague. Most industrious.’

  ‘Ah, yes. Sorry. I was … I was looking for something. I think I might have left my notebook here. On Terry’s desk, I mean.’

  McDougal made a show of craning his neck and peering at the desk, as if searching it was a difficult task, when in fact it was uncluttered and visibly empty.

  ‘Doesn’t seem to be here, does it, William?’

  ‘No, sir. It doesn’t.’ Will was embarrassed by that ‘sir’. He was also aware of sitting so far back in his — Walton’s — chair, he risked falling over. Like a man held at gunpoint.

  ‘We didn’t see you in the office yesterday, William. Harden wondered if you had been kidnapped.’

  Will felt a feverish chill run along his neck, as if he was fighting a severe flu. He was so tired. ‘No, I was… I’ve been working on something. On a story.’

  ‘What kind of story, William? Do you have another unlikely hero for us? Another “diamond in the rough” like your saintly crack dealer? Another organ-giving gun nut?’

 
; Will had a dread thought. The editor was either mocking him or, much worse, voicing scepticism. The paper had been burned before by young men in such a hurry to make their mark that they had written works of short fiction rather than journalism, which The New York Times had swallowed whole and published on page one. People still spoke of the Jayson Blair scandal, which had toppled one of Townsend’s predecessors.

  Will realized what he now looked like. Unshaven and twitchy — and, unaccountably, in the newsroom late on a Saturday night at someone else’s desk. ‘It’s not what you think, sir.’ Will could hear his own voice slurring with fatigue. His mouth was dry. ‘I just wanted to check something about the Brownsville story. I was looking for my notebook and I thought maybe Walton—’

  ‘Why would Walton want your notebook, William? Be careful not to believe everything you hear in the newsroom. Remember, journalists don’t always tell the truth.’

  There it was again, another coded dig at Will and his stories. Was he accusing him of faking the Macrae and Baxter tales, albeit in the genteel language of a New England Brahmin? He may have had the accent and erect posture of a Massachusetts aristocrat, but McDougal’s unblinking expression was the poker face of a consummate office politician.

  ‘No, I was not believing anything. I just want to go through my notes.’

  ‘Is there something about the story you’re not sure of, William?’

  Damn. ‘No, I’ve just been wondering if there’s more there than I first realized.’

  ‘Oh, I would certainly assume that.’

  Another dig.

  ‘You need to be very careful, William. Very careful. Journalism can be a dangerous business. Nothing more important than the story, that’s what we always say. And that’s almost true. But not completely. There is always something far more important than the story, William. Do you know what that is?’

  ‘No, sir.’ He was back in the headmaster’s study.

  ‘It’s your life, William. That’s what you have to look out for. So, mark my words. Be very careful.’ He left a long pause before speaking again. ‘I’ll tell Harden you’re getting some rest.’

  With that, the editor withdrew back into the semidarkness and began his stately glide towards the National desk. Will fell back into Walton’s chair and let out what he knew was an audible sigh. The editor thought he was a junkie, about to go off the rails and ready to take The New York Times with him.

  And now he was ‘getting some rest’. It sounded like a management euphemism for suspension, while they investigated the veracity of the Macrae and Baxter stories. Was that why the notebook was missing? Had Townsend taken it as evidence?

  His fingers were still balled around the Saddam snow-dome, now misted over with clammy hand-moisture. He had held it tight throughout the entire conversation with Townsend. That would have looked great: not only wild-eyed, but his hand a permanent fist. As his fingers uncurled, he saw it again — the plain, thin key that would surely open Walton’s desk drawer. He knew it was madness to try it, having received an all but formal warning from the most senior man in US journalism. But he had no choice. His wife was a hostage and that notebook surely held the clue to getting her back.

  Will glanced left and right and back again to see if anyone was nearby. He turned a complete circle, mindful that Townsend had surprised him from behind. Then, in a single rapid movement he ripped the key from its sticky tape, ducked down and slid it inside the lock. One jiggle and it turned.

  Inside were multiple neat, fawn-coloured files. Between them, hardly concealed, was the tell-tale white metal spiral of a reporters’ pad. Will pulled it out and saw the scribble on the thick, front cover.

  Brownsville.

  Jesus. Woodstein was not kidding: Walton had stolen his notebook. God only knew why. The story had already been published. There was no scoop to be scooped. What possible use could it be to him? Will put it out of his mind: there were enough puzzles to be solved without adding Walton’s bizarre strain of journalistic kleptomania to the pile.

  Will wanted to start flicking through it right away, but he knew he had first to close the drawer, lock it, replace the key and return to his own desk — all without being spotted. Exactly what possibility he was guarding against, he was not sure. He had already been caught by the editor; the damage was done.

  Even so, Will made sure he was hunched over his own desk before he so much as opened the book. He devised a method. First, a rapid-fire search for something alien: a note stashed inside that he had failed to see, a scrawled message in a hand other than his own. Perhaps, through some sorcery that remained utterly opaque, Yosef Yitzhok had smuggled a message onto these pages. Look to your work.

  Will moved through it fast, scanning the lines in search of the unfamiliar. There was nothing, just his own scrawl. The newsroom was so quiet, CNN on Saturday evening mute, he could hear the pages turn. He could hear his own brain.

  Briefly, he became excited by a couple of lines that leapt out, clearly written by someone else, but they turned out to be contact details for Rosa, the woman who had found Macrae’s body, scrawled onto the page in her own hand. Will now remembered that he had promised to send her a copy of the piece once it was published.

  There was no mystery phone number, no smuggled message — not that there could have been with this notebook stashed in Walton’s filing cabinet since who knew when.

  Instead he would have to stare very hard at the one clue he knew this book did contain, the thing that had brought him here. There it was, on one of the last pages, boxed and ringed with asterisks: the quote that had made the piece, from Letitia, the devoted wife who had contemplated prostitution rather than let her husband rot in jail. The man they killed last night may have sinned every day of his God-given life but he was the most righteous man I have ever known.

  In an instant, Will was back in Montana, talking to Beth on the cell phone. It was, he realized, the last conversation they had had before she was taken. He was telling her about his day spent reporting the life and death of Pat Baxter. He could hear his own voice, speaking animatedly, before realizing that Beth was miles away.

  ‘You know what’s weird. It hit me straight away because no one uses this word, or hardly ever: the surgeon who operated on Baxter used the same word as that Letitia woman.

  Righteous. They even used it the same way: “the most righteous person,” “the most righteous act.” Isn’t that strange?’

  He had not pursued the point. He had rapidly realized Beth was elsewhere, preoccupied with the issue that should have been preoccupying him: their failure to have a baby. He felt his throat go dry: the thought that Beth might die never having known motherhood.

  He pushed the notion away, staring down at his own handwriting on the page. The most righteous man I have ever known.

  He had flirted with pointing out this uncanny echo when he wrote up the Baxter story but had ruled it out almost immediately. It would seem too self-regarding, noting a similarity between two stories whose only real common link was his own by-line. Baxter and Macrae lived at opposite ends of the country; their deaths were obviously unrelated. To notice a reverberation between one random murder and another only made journalistic sense if both cases were well-known, their details lodged in the public mind. That was emphatically not the case here, so Will had dropped it! He had not thought about it again until that evening, as he and TC stood either side of the homeless preacher in McDonalds. Every verse of Proverbs 10 he had incanted seemed to contain this same word, repeated too often to be a coincidence. Righteous.

  But these murders could not possibly be connected. Black pimps in New York and white crazies in the Montana backwoods did not mix in the same circles or have the same enemies. They had lived and died worlds apart.

  And yet, there was something oddly similar about these two eccentric tales. Both involved men who seemed suspect and yet had done a good deed. Or rather an extraordinarily good deed. Righteous. And both had been murdered, with no suspect yet arrested
in either case.

  Will swivelled round to face the computer screen. He logged on to the Times website and found his own story on Macrae.

  He would read it forensically, looking to see if there was anything else to go on.

  ‘… Police sources spoke of a brutal knife attack, with multiple stab wounds puncturing the victim’s abdomen. Local residents say the style of the killing fits with the latest in gangland fashion, as in the words of one, “knives are the new guns”.’

  The method of killing was entirely different. Baxter had been shot; Macrae stabbed. Will opened another window on the screen, allowing him to call up his Baxter story. He scrolled down, looking for the paragraphs with the forensic detail, time and method of death. Finally he came to the line he was looking for.

  Initially, Mr Baxter’s militia comrades suspected a macabre act of organ theft lay behind the murder. Unaware of his earlier act of philanthropy, they assumed Mr Baxter lost his kidney on the night of his death. As if to add weight to that theory, there were signs of recent anaesthesia — a needle mark — on the corpse.

  Will read on, looking for more, as if he had never read the story before. Now he wanted to curse whoever had written it: there was no more on the mystery injection. It had just been left hanging.

  He dug into his bag to retrieve his current notebook, the one he had taken to Seattle. He riffled through the pages to find the interview with Genevieve Huntley, the surgeon who had removed Baxter’s kidney. He remembered the conversation, sitting in the front seat of his rental car, cradling a cell phone to his ear. He had just let her talk, wary of interrupting the flow. According to the scrawl in front of him, he had not even asked about the recent needle mark. Looking back, he knew why. He had dismissed the whole business once the surgeon had told him about Baxter’s kidney op. The story had changed, from organ-snatching gore to righteous man and that inconvenient detail had got forgotten. He had forgotten it. Besides, Huntley had said there had been no more surgery so the recent injection idea did not fit.