Falling Off Air

by Catherine Sampson

  “Well, I'm not. Paula was what they call a lapsed Catholic, although how anyone could think of her as a lapsed anything I don't know. She had constructed her own belief system, a belief system that I would say ran parallel to Christianity. It had no place for Christ or God, but her concern for her fellow man and woman was, I would say, deeply religious. She thought I was misguided on the existence of God. She did not think I could commune with Him, but we did get on well and she asked my advice on matters of a spiritual or moral nature. It was Paula who introduced Adam to me. The two of them were good friends, and he was also at a point in his life where he was looking for some kind of spiritual framework. He grew up, as you know, in the Church of England, but he too would not have said he believed in a God. Neither of them felt inclined to ask me—or indeed God—to hear their confession.”

  The waiter delivered breakfasts to our table, and we paused to spread butter onto hot toast.

  “I'm just going to carry on talking, if you don't mind,” the priest said. “You eat while you listen. I'm talking to you now because of what I heard from Adam about you. I know what you mean about rewriting history, and I do respect that, but you should know that he did not take the end of your relationship lightly. I am sure you did not kill him, or I would not be talking with you now.”

  I nodded politely in between mouthfuls of fried egg and bacon. I knew he meant well, but I was profoundly irritated by the fact that Adam had been writing the book on my life all around town. I was also impatient. I was interested in the spiritual angst of Paula and Adam only so far as it impacted on their deaths, and I was afraid there was a way to go before Father Joe got there.

  “Well, what was it that was bothering them?” It sounded dismissive, but I wanted to goad Father Joe into a response.

  “I wish I could tell you,” he said, his clasped hands parting in a gesture that said, That's all.

  “You wish you could tell me?” I could hear the vexation in my voice.

  “I have never met two such circumspect individuals,” he said. “I can tell you that Paula was obsessed by what I might call sins of omission and sins of pride, and that she was overwhelmed and deeply depressed by a sense of guilt—and annoyed with herself for feeling guilt when she did not believe in a higher being who was capable of judging her. I can tell you that Adam had found in himself a sudden thirst for the meaning of life, and that he found his present state of affairs wanting in all sorts of ways. I have no doubt that the two of them had got into some sort of trouble, but in my conversations with them we talked only in the abstract and the theoretical, because as soon as I tried to probe the specifics they clammed up like a couple of schoolgirls caught smoking.”

  I puffed out my cheeks and exhaled slowly. Our eyes met, mine disappointed, his still curious.

  “Now I have to eat,” he said, “so it's your turn to talk. I want to hear about the children. Hannah and William, is that right?”

  I had no desire to talk. If I was going to leave empty-handed I'd rather have done it straightaway, but my plate was clean and he still had his breakfast sitting in front of him, and common courtesy dictated that I stay and indeed that I talk. I started grudgingly, very aware that he had heard much of this from Adam. He was a good audience, however, and I soon relaxed into it. He ate steadily, pausing sometimes just to raise his eyebrows, or to grunt or chuckle. His face was expressive, and I felt as though we were having a conversation, not as though I was reciting a monologue. I wondered whether this was a technique he had perfected, something he used on his congregation. Somehow my story drew to a natural break just as he mopped his plate clear of yolk. He licked his lips, patted them with his napkin, then looked up at me.

  “Adam came to see me on the afternoon of Paula's funeral,” he said. “I'd already left for the airport, so I missed him.”

  I stared at him, and he went on speaking.

  “However, he left me a package that I found on my return yesterday. He left it with instructions that it be locked in my office until I came back, and that is what happened.”

  He bent and picked up his briefcase from the side of his chair and drew from it a large padded brown envelope. This he placed on the table in front of me. He nodded his consent, and I reached for it and picked it up. It was unsealed. Inside were three videotapes as well as one much smaller tape about the size of a calling card that I recognized as a sixty-minute MiniDV tape. The videotapes were numbered one to three and bore the initials “CM,” but were not otherwise labeled. The MiniDV tape had no marking of any sort. There was also a note. Glancing up at Father Joe Riberra, and receiving another nod, I unfolded it.

  It was scrawled on headed London University paper, and I assumed it was what Adam had written in a hurry on the afternoon of the day of his death, when he realized that he could not speak to the priest face-to-face.

  Dear Joe,

  I need a safe place to keep this tape, and I hope you will provide it for me. Do take a look if you want to—I'm not entrapping you with pornography—but it won't mean anything to you. Nor will it put you in any danger, since no one who matters knows about this.

  The thing is, I'm afraid if I keep it someone might try to take it from me or destroy it. And since I've been trying for months now to decide what to do, it would be a pity if the decision was taken out of my hands. Paula's death makes that decision urgent, and I hope that when you return we will be able to have our first proper conversation about my situation.

  With deep apologies for all this 007 stuff.

  Yours, Adam

  I looked up and found Father Joe watching me.

  “He's writing as if there's just one tape,” I said, “but there are four.”

  “There's only one that's significant, perhaps,” he offered.

  “Have you watched them?” He nodded. “Including this one?” I picked up the tiny MiniDV tape.

  “I borrowed a friend's camera last night,” he said. “You should take it—take all of them—and watch them. It scares the crap out of me.”

  Chapter 29

  I started at the beginning, because I didn't know where else to start. I put the videotape numbered “one” into the machine, pressed the “Play” button, and Adam's face, like his e-mailed words on the computer, rose ghostlike before me on the screen. I bit my lip. If I had descended into death to eavesdrop on their cyber conversation, today I was bringing Adam and Paula back to life.

  It is immediately obvious that what I have here are the rushes, the unedited film, from A Carmichaelite Mission, the documentary that was never shown. There is not, at this stage in the process, any voice-over. Suzette is presumably behind the camera. Traditionally, there would be both a cameraman and a producer, but as an independent producer Suzette has chosen in many of her projects to be both, using a small but sophisticated digital camera that produces broadcast-quality footage. It is partly an economy, one less wage to pay, but largely a matter of style. She makes films that are intimate, where the viewer follows people around, eavesdrops on conversations, takes them into situations in which a large camera might be more intrusive. Her camera lives in a large brown leather shoulder bag that also contains a collection of used and unused tapes, as well as her makeup bag, her credit cards, and her palmtop computer. She had chosen to put Adam into some of the scenes with Paula, so that their conversations could be filmed. I get such pleasure from watching Adam work that I forget at first that Father Joe was scared by something. I sit back in my chair and I think how proud my children should be of their father.

  There is old footage of Paula Carmichael as a child: pretty, talented, good, just as she grew up, giggling as she dances for the camera at her twelfth birthday party. Adam talks to her about her childhood. I have rarely seen him hit the wrong note, but this interview is unusual for the immediate rapport the two of them strike up. They are at ease in each other's company. There is no flirtation, rather you would believe that the two of them had been friends for years. So, when they sit down and talk about the past, Adam
ends up chattering as much as she does. Partly it's a technique, to draw her out, but I've seen technique before, and it's more than that. I guess it would never have made it into the final cut, but here it is for my delight, Adam talking with real affection about his parents.

  They both, Paula and Adam, had happy childhoods, and I'm glad. It helps to balance out the end. At one point Adam cracks a joke about his mother, and it touches some chord with Paula, and the two of them are practically rolling around giggling. Even I start chuckling, and then I stop short. Where is Paula's famous depression? I am expecting an earnest, dutiful Paula, struggling to be cheerful against the odds. This Paula is laughing so hard she can't speak.

  I start to watch more closely and to think as I'm watching. What of Suzette, behind the camera, seeing what I'm seeing? But that's normal, I've been there, I know what it's like: three people, two of them undergoing some sort of chemical reaction in front of you. I find that when it's me behind the camera I pretty much write myself out of the equation, I see it all through a lens. Besides, if Suzette was in love with Adam, she would have seen that this thing with Paula was not sexual. Paula has not prettified herself for the camera. She looks great, she looks happy, but she looks her age.

  We follow Paula to the Houses of Parliament. She gives a running commentary as the camera follows her through the corridors of power. It is funny, it is sharp.

  “I could devote my life to this, you know,” she says over her shoulder. “It's like a drug. You can be as bitchy as you like, and believe me when I'm in here, I'm bitchy. Even the boys are bitchy here. There's nothing that gives me a bigger high than delivering a death blow to some sad fascist on the other side of the house in a debate.”

  “So why don't you devote yourself to it, why bother with all the other stuff?” Adam's voice asks.

  “Because it would be self-indulgent,” Paula replies. “I have limited resources in terms of time and energy and I can use both to be a better person than I can be here.”

  “Aren't you just a little bit depressed?” I find myself muttering at her. “Not even a tiny bit?”

  It is clear that she is not. It is clear, indeed, that she loves her life.

  At home, Paula makes a meal for Richard and Kyle and his elder brother George. I'm not convinced she knows one end of the chopping knife from the other, but her family look pleasantly surprised when she puts roast lamb on the table for them. Richard gets out a bottle of champagne—this is clearly a special event—and carves, joking for the camera, “Now I remember why I married her.” Very sweetly, at the end of the meal, Kyle gets up and goes and kisses his mother on her cheek. She looks at him with something approaching wonder, and he slopes out of the room, hands in pockets.

  We follow Paula from project to project. Along the way we hear from people who work with her, from Rachel Colby, who speaks of Paula's ability to “get her hands dirty and her heart broken.” We see Paula in a hostel for the homeless, at an inner city playgroup, and at a hospice, all funded to some extent by the Carmichaelites, and staffed in part by Carmichaelite volunteers. At last Paula's face shows distress, sorrow, even grief.

  “I wouldn't have the motivation to do any of this if I wasn't personally involved,” she tells Adam. “I know some people in the caring professions say you have to keep your distance or you won't survive. But frankly, you keep your distance, and you don't get close to what needs to be done. I tell all my volunteers to cry, howl, tear your clothes. Have sleepless nights. It's right to feel that way when things are horribly wrong.”

  “Don't you get depressed?” Adam asks.

  “I get terribly, terribly depressed,” Paula answers with a crooked smile. “There are days when life looks bleak from the moment I get up in the morning to the moment I go to bed, and everyone around me knows it. When I'm down I'm foul to be with, I've been told that enough times. Then something goes right and I'm high as a kite. I've seen kids do drugs and let me tell you, when things are going well I'm on a bigger kick than they are. I know some people would call me manic, I have great lows and great highs, but that's what propels me through life. It's the beauty of hills and valleys. I'm not going to build my house on a plain.”

  By now I have watched the three videotapes, and while I have been moved by what I've seen, I have not yet been scared. I dig out my 3-chip camera and put the MiniDV tape inside, then play the tape through the TV. Around about this point, absorbed as I am, I have a strong urge to pee, and a stronger urge for coffee. I am about to hit the “Pause” button when I notice something that makes me forget my bladder and my caffeine craving.

  We are now at the opening ceremony for a drug rehabilitation project in Cornwall that is funded by the Carmichaelites. Rachel Colby is there to help with the media, and hanging around in the background of the picture I see a man who looks to me very much like Dan Stein. He's only there for an instant, and then he disappears. I rewind the tape, I replay it. I am ninety percent certain that the man is Dan Stein, but I tell myself that I am stressed and tired and perhaps seeing things. The man has a camera slung around his neck. Dan, the photographer who does not hang people on his walls. It doesn't mean he doesn't photograph them. I hope I am mistaken. If Dan is there, he has lied to me and to Finney, and why would he do that? This cannot be another coincidence. If it is Dan, I cannot think of an innocent explanation.

  I let the tape play on then, curious to see whether he appears again, but the film makes a sudden change of place. We are in what looks like a squat, a dirty mattress against a wall that has lost most of its plaster, sheets hung across the windows as makeshift curtains. A boy, perhaps sixteen years old, is sitting on the mattress, his face blotchy. He is thin and pale, his shabby clothes hanging loose on him. It is not clear who else is in the room with him, nor who is doing the filming.

  The boy looks ill. There is a sickly sheen to his skin. He unfolds a tinfoil wrap, then cooks up the drug on a spoon over the flame of a lighter. He holds a syringe in his mouth while he tightens the tourniquet around his arm and waits for the vein, but instead, his chest shudders as he begins to retch. He leans to one side, as if to vomit. The camera shot swings away from the boy and to the ground. The sound is still good.

  “What's the matter?” The voice, hard, annoyed, is familiar.

  “I'm going to puke,” the boy groans.

  “Great.” Again, I hear the voice that sounds like Dan, angry and frustrated, before the screen goes blank. Presumably the boy is allowed to vomit without it being recorded for posterity. There is a limit to viewers' tolerance of the gritty, after all. When the pictures return to the screen he is sitting there again, even paler than before, if possible, beads of sweat visible on his forehead.

  “Are you sure about this?” I hear Paula's voice, concerned, doubtful. “You know you don't have to do this.”

  “For Christ's sake, let him get on with it,” the man who sounds like Dan mutters.

  The boy glances toward the point from where Paula's voice has come, then at the place where the voice that may be Dan's comes from. He lifts the syringe and with a jerky impulse pushes the needle through his skin and into the vein. The camera settles for a moment on the boy's face as the drug takes effect and the tension subsides, his muscles loosening. Then, for an instant, the boy's face is suffused with panic. He convulses. Someone in the background mutters, “Shit.” The camera cuts again, and this time the screen goes blank, as though they have fallen off air.

  Chapter 30

  THERE are days that should be cut out of our lives and pasted directly in hell. The next day was one of them. I had watched the tape over and again until late at night, then lain in bed worrying over it. When someone pounded on my front door at six the next morning, I hauled myself out of bed and went to see who it was. I realized my mistake in an instant. A camera flashed in my face and I slammed the door, but not before a man outside had hurled a rolled up newspaper inside. Shaking, I bent down to pick it up and took it into the kitchen. I removed the rubber band and unrolled it,
pressing it flat on the tabletop.

  It was a copy of the Chronicle, and when I saw the byline, Bill Tanning, I stared down at the front page with real fear. Had I ever done anything to Tanning to make him hate me, or was I just fair prey? A large black-and-white photograph took up at least half the page. At first I thought it was an ad: a picture of a man and woman kissing, his hands entangled in her hair. A headline said: SLEEPING WITH THE SUSPECT. I sat down hard on a chair and forced myself to read the story.

  Detective Inspector Tom Finney, who heads the investigation into the murder of Adam Wills, is today expected to be removed from his post and suspended from duty pending a full inquiry into his passionate relationship with Robin Ballantyne. Redhead Ballantyne, 35, was Wills's former lover, and police have repeatedly refused to rule her out as a suspect in the hit-and-run murder of the popular broadcaster. Ballantyne's car was used in the killing.

  Two days ago, Detective Tom Finney passed to this newspaper alleged facts that seemed to point the investigation away from Ballantyne and toward some other, so far unnamed, killer. Journalists from our newspaper, however, were suspicious of Finney's motives. When those who are charged with upholding justice on our behalf falter in their task, then others must step into the breach. It was in this spirit that journalists from this newspaper decided to keep Finney under surveillance. Yesterday, their patience paid off and they spotted Finney, 39, engaged in passionate clinches with the supposed chief suspect.

  Finney, who recently separated from his wife of five years, approached Ballantyne's house in the middle of the afternoon. Barefoot, and dressed only in jeans and a tight-fitting T-shirt, she opened the door to him and greeted him enthusiastically. He moved inside and was seen removing his coat. Ballantyne is the mother of Adam Wills's twins, Hannah and William, but there was no sign of the children.

  Some time later Finney and Ballantyne were visible reclining on a sofa. They kissed repeatedly and embraced in a highly sexual way.