A Cursed Place

by Peter Hanington

  ‘Initial this and send it back if everything’s kosher.’

  He did this and before long the fax was fully employed, printing out five, ten, eventually forty-eight pages of photocopied newspaper articles, typed notes and scribbled addendums. There was a PS at the end of the last page. ‘No phone calls from now. Read all this then Skype me from the busiest internet café you can find.’

  Beneath that was a jumble of letters that Patrick assumed must be a Skype address. No thank you, no sign off and although McCluskey clearly thought this the safest form of communication, she still hadn’t used his name or hers. Still, there were plenty of other names and dates and details in this stack of single-sided A4. Enough to keep him busy reading for a good long time. The question was when he would have the time to do that alongside all his BBC commitments. The shop attendant sold him a brown envelope to put the papers in and charged him fifty cents a page for the use of the fax.

  ‘It is cheap yes?’

  ‘Yes, thanks.’

  ‘This is a pleasure …’ She paused, obviously nervous. ‘But I am not really sure that I should have told you about the horse racing.’ She wore a worried smile.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to tell anyone.’ He watched her eyes flick in the direction of the hotel entrance.

  ‘Especially not Mr Kip?’

  ‘Especially not him.’

  She looked relieved.

  ‘Thank you, my name is Ada.’

  ‘I’m Patrick.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you. If other fax messages arrive for you then I will let you know.’

  ‘It’s a deal.’ He held out his hand, which Ada took and briefly held, rather than shook, the colour rising in her cheeks as she did so.

  Patrick would have liked to start reading the intriguing pile of documents right away, but he had another radio piece to make first. He thought about taking the faxes back up to his room and locking them away inside the safe, but a familiar voice in his head suggested otherwise. Better to keep them with him. He tucked them down at the bottom of his canvas and leather grab bag and headed for the hotel door.

  Eric was briefing the boy about what he needed him to do. ‘How is your memory Sammy?’

  ‘It is good, I remember everything – all my brothers’ and sisters’ birthdays, they all ask me when the birthdays are. My mother’s birthday I never forget. I know all the names of all the streets here. And in Kowloon—’

  ‘Fine, good. You know Hing Yip?’

  ‘The Commercial Centre? Yes …’ He scratched his head. ‘So I would go down Connaught Road, past—’

  ‘That’s fine. Take this …’ He handed him his phone. ‘Put it somewhere safe and here’s what you do …’

  Sammy was determined to complete the task Eric had entrusted to him in double-quick time; he took a shortcut he knew between two tower blocks and was almost at the Hing Yip when a confused-looking tourist, wearing a green anorak and backpack and with a lost look on his face, waved him down. The man was after directions. He was trying to find a street that was just a couple of hundred yards from where they were standing, but he seemed baffled by what Sammy thought were very easy-to-understand instructions. The young Hongkonger checked his watch before deciding that it would be easier just to walk the man to where he needed to be. He led him another hundred yards down the main road, then up a side street, walking quickly in the hope that the westerner would follow suit. Halfway up the side street, Sammy felt a hand on his tracksuit collar. At first he thought the tourist must have stumbled and he turned ready to help. The man hit him hard in the face with the heel of his hand, breaking his nose with one blow. Sammy tried to scream but the westerner’s hand was quickly across his mouth, muffling the sound. The man threw him hard against a nearby garage door then swept his legs away and pushed him flat down onto the floor, placing a boot on his chest to hold him there. Sammy tried to yell again, but there was blood in his nose and mouth. The man looked back over his shoulder, then knelt down, pinning Sammy to the ground with one knee on each arm. He took a canister of pepper spray from his backpack, the same type the Hong Kong cops used, and sprayed a blast of the pepper directly into Sammy’s eyes. When the boy opened his mouth to scream again, he put a longer blast of pepper spray straight down his throat. Placing the canister to one side, he clamped one hand over Sammy’s mouth and pinched his nose closed with the other. The boy’s eyes were red and tear-filled, they darted about, looking for rescue but finding none. When eventually he realised that he was not being robbed or assaulted, but that this man meant simply to kill him, Sammy stared at the westerner – confused, scared. Looking for an answer to a question that he could not ask. The man stared back, interested but unmoved.

  It took less than a minute for Sammy Kwok to die. His assailant propped his dead body against the metal garage door in a pose that might suggest sleep, or drunkenness. He took both the phones that Sammy had on him, his bank card and student ID. The kid was dumb to have been walking around with things like this on him. He would strip the phones and send the dead boy’s details to a Dropbox address he knew by heart. They would take care of the rest.

  22 Content Provider

  NEW BROADCASTING HOUSE, PORTLAND PLACE, LONDON

  As far as Carver was concerned, the worst part of being seconded to the School of Journalism, by a country mile, was having to go to the monthly BBC management meetings. They took place in a big glass box on the ground floor of the even bigger glass box that was New Broadcasting House and every significant department in BBC News was expected to attend.

  William arrived early, partly because he preferred to be early for everything, but also to make sure he got his spot on a low purple sofa in a corner of the room furthest from the action. Most of the endless to and fro took place around a long white table in the middle of the room, where the Head of News, Head of Newsgathering, Head of the rolling TV news and all the other Heads of stuff sat. The BBC bosses’ meeting was of great interest to everyone apart from anyone who’d had the misfortune of having to sit through it. Carver’s very keen student, Naz, had recently asked him what the fabled meeting was about.

  ‘It’s about an hour of my life that I’ll never, ever get back.’

  It was an eight a.m. start and William arrived at quarter to. The large room was empty apart from Naomi Holder, editor of the Today programme and his old boss. She looked her usual smart self in flat shoes, a dark green sweater and black cigarette pants. Naomi was given special dispensation to say what she needed to say early in the meeting and then run back upstairs so she could catch the best part of the 8.10 interview on her own programme. Not that there was a best part these days – in Carver’s humble opinion. A bunch of mediocre Tory and Lib Dem MPs who, for some unfathomable reason, were being introduced to the listening nation as Secretaries of State for this and that.

  ‘Hey William. How you doing?’

  Carver nodded. ‘Fine thanks Naomi.’

  ‘Good, you look well, I like your corduroy jacket.’ William chose to ignore this and, having hung his jacket on a coat stand by the door, took his usual seat. He’d nicked a few of the broadsheets on his way through the newsroom – no one else seemed to read the papers these days – and he laid these down on his lap; at least he’d have something to read during the meeting. ‘How’s the teaching going? Have you got a good bunch of kids?’

  ‘There are a few good ones, a couple.’

  ‘Excellent. Let me know if you want to send any of them my way for a try-out at some point.’ Carver nodded. This was a generous offer and typical of Naomi; it was a pain in the arse taking a BBC sponsored trainee on and most of the bosses did everything they could to avoid it.

  ‘Thanks, I appreciate that. There might be someone, a little further down the line.’

  ‘Cool, let’s stay in touch.’

  He and Naomi got along a lot better now that she no longer had to try to manage him day to day. When he’d asked her for some time away from reporting she’d been supportive, and
the Head of News had described the reference she’d written for Carver when he went for the School of Journalism secondment as ‘not so much glowing as incandescent’.

  ‘So have you heard about today’s special guest?’ Carver shook his head. ‘Elizabeth Curepipe is supposed to be paying us a visit.’

  ‘No shit? Curepipe as in Public Square and all of that stuff?’

  ‘The one and only. Expect lots of fresh haircuts and aftershave from the boss class.’

  ‘Bugger.’ He looked around. ‘This room is going to be heaving, isn’t it?’ Naomi nodded. ‘Are you still planning to leave early?’ Maybe he could have her seat, nearer the door and a source of ventilation?

  ‘Are you joking? I’m here for the duration this time. I want to see this show, start to finish.’

  ‘What’s she doing here?’

  ‘There’s gonna be some kind of announcement. A partnership between us and them is what some people are saying. Very hush-hush. Your old friend Julian Drice is the warm-up act.’ Carver racked his brains and from out of the fog he saw a small man in a blue tailored suit with steel-rimmed glasses and a damp handshake.

  ‘That tosser?’ Drice had held a senior position at the BBC for a while, in between working for various prestigious PR companies and a fizzy drink manufacturer. One of his jobs at the BBC was to chuck out the dead wood. He’d tried unsuccessfully to persuade Carver to take redundancy. ‘What’s he doing at Public Square?’

  ‘He’s their head of press and public affairs these days.’

  ‘You’re joking? Incredible.’ It never ceased to amaze Carver how infinitesimally small the correlation between ability and career advancement seemed to be these days.

  ‘Well, he’s moved around a lot. I’m guessing his CV looks pretty impressive by now.’

  ‘But it doesn’t include successfully sacking me.’

  ‘That’s true …’ Naomi smiled. ‘Now you mention it, that’s probably why the poor guy’s having to struggle by on three hundred and fifty thousand pounds a year working for the world’s biggest tech company.’

  Carver pulled a face. ‘Public Square is the third or fourth biggest I think.’

  Naomi laughed. A clump of BBC bigwigs was gathering outside the door and there was a palpable sense of excitement. Carver shuffled through his blanket of newspapers before picking up the Financial Times and disappearing behind it.

  By eight a.m. as he feared, the meeting room was standing room only, with just one seat left empty, a brand-new black ergonomic number placed in between the Head of News and his deputy and anticipating the arrival of the star turn.

  But first they had to put up with a full fifteen minutes of Julian Drice. Public Square’s press man was still sporting the tailored blue suits, but he’d swapped the steel-rimmed glasses for contact lenses and the Oxford brogues for a soft loafer the same colour as the suit. He’d decided to experiment with his facial hair as well, with mixed results. Underneath the well-tended salt-and-pepper beard, the weak chin was still clearly visible – to Carver at least.

  Drice began by extolling the many virtues of his employer, Public Square’s mission to connect the world, its unprecedented reach and influence. For several minutes he blethered on about clicks and hits and memes, which to Carver’s inattentive ear made Drice sound like a malfunctioning machine. Still, pretty much everyone else in the room was listening intently and there was lots of nodding and it was all going swimmingly for Drice until, in the time it took for him to look down at his notes and back up again, he saw that he had lost his entire audience. Every pair of eyes was now looking past him and out of the glass room at a tall, impeccably dressed woman with shoulder-length blond hair and red lipstick. She smiled in a somewhat self-effacing-looking fashion and motioned to Drice to keep going. But it was pointless and he galloped through the last page of his notes before beginning a well-rehearsed introduction for his ‘friend and boss – mainly my boss’ … pause for laughter, of which there was some … ‘Elizabeth Curepipe’. The crowd around the door parted and she walked into the room with a measured stride, heading for the empty chair. She stopped to shake a few hands and exchange a few words with several senior people as she went. On reaching her seat, she stayed standing and smiled, properly now. This smile swept the room like a follow spot. Each face it lighted upon smiled back, a few people blushed and glanced away, others managed to hold her gaze. About a quarter of the room started to give serious thought to having their teeth whitened. A couple of women who were sitting near to Carver were whispering brand names that meant little to him.

  ‘Is that Max Mara or Armani?’

  ‘Mara top, Mugler skirt.’

  ‘Right. Of course.’ She paused. ‘I would sell one of my children to look like that.’ Elizabeth Curepipe took her seat and folded her hands on the table in front of her. She sat, smiling and nodding and laughing in all the appropriate places, as the Head of News told everyone how excited he was about this partnership with Public Square. How excited he was to have Elizabeth and her team here today and how exciting the future looked. When he’d finished being excited, he invited Elizabeth to say a few words. Drice hastened to her side with a handful of cue cards, but she waved him away. This felt rehearsed to Carver, but maybe it wasn’t. He was racking his brains, trying to remember the details of a recent newspaper story about Public Square. It was back in the spring – something to do with how much tax the London-based part of this tech giant had paid the previous financial year – a paltry sum, he seemed to recall. He patted at his trouser pockets and felt his wallet but no phone. He must have left it in the corduroy jacket. Carver nudged his neighbour and pointed at his mobile, which the young man was holding out in front of him like a hymnal. He glanced at Carver before grudgingly handing it over.

  Curepipe’s presentation was designed to impress more than inform, but a few facts leaked out. She wanted the BBC’s help with a new mission – improving the service Public Square provided for the benefit of all: she wanted to educate and enrich her millions of customers as well as entertaining them. With that in mind she wanted to news-ify Public Square. Carver winced.

  What Elizabeth Curepipe wanted was content – although for most of her pitch she remembered to talk about this in terms of stories and news, unlike Drice, who had repeatedly referred to journalists as content providers. Carver loathed this reductive description of his chosen trade and he wasn’t alone. The proposed partnership between Public Square and the BBC was a win-win. It quickly became clear that many things in Elizabeth Curepipe’s world were a win-win and a lot of other things were no-brainers. In return for helping to make Public Square feel more newsy, the commercial arm of the BBC would receive a percentage of the ad revenue that could be ploughed back into local journalism. ‘We want to help you make a bigger BBC splash globally and then reinvest it locally.’ Heads were nodding, faces smiling. ‘What’s more we’ll all get to learn a lot more about what audiences want to read and listen to and watch.’

  It took him a while but eventually Carver found the figure he was looking for; he held the phone up for his neighbour to see, pointing at the number. The man shrugged.

  ‘Can I have my phone back?’

  Sure.’ Carver handed it over and watched while the bloke selected his settings and pressed firmly on clear search history. Carver nudged him in the ribs again.

  ‘That doesn’t work. They hold your whole search history on record for years. For forever, some say.’ The guy shook his head and pocketed the phone.

  Curepipe was talking about ‘leveraging the power of data and technology to raise us all up.’ Looking around the room, Carver remembered the recent Thought for The Day that he’d heard: ‘All flowers bend towards the sun’. Whenever it seemed like the energy in the room was in danger of falling away, she would smile. Elizabeth Curepipe was a businesswoman, but her smile was a movie star smile.

  ‘I’ve taken too much of your time already, I know …’ Heads shook. ‘But I’m aware that up ’til now I’ve only be
en making a business case for this partnership.’ She paused. ‘I would be remiss if I didn’t tell y’all that there is a personal side to this project too. The BBC means a lot to me and the truth is that this project would also be a way for me to honour my old man. My dad …’ her eyes flicked in the direction of the ceiling and other eyes followed, as though they might find Curepipe Senior hovering around up there. ‘My dad used to love listening to the BBC news when it popped up on our local NPR station. He’d tune in on his old shortwave wireless wherever he was in the world. He told me that it was the only news service that you could really trust. I remember that cheesy old theme tune you guys used to use, it’s burnt into my memory in fact – Libbybolero is it?’ Several voices piped up with the correct title. The BBC Head of News went one step further and attempted to hum the opening bars of Lilliburlero.

  ‘Da de da de da de da …’ A warm nostalgic feeling filled the room and Elizabeth Curepipe smiled again before finishing her pitch and asking, in a rather unassuming way, whether anyone might be interested in asking a question? Two thirds of the hands in the room went up and she picked a few. Carver got the impression that most of the people asking questions were doing so in order to get a few seconds of her undivided attention or so they could say afterwards that they’d spoken to Elizabeth Curepipe. The questions were dull and without challenge. Tell us more about your father, tell us a little about those new headquarters of yours, can you tell us how you got started as an entrepreneur?

  ‘Well …’ Curepipe paused, creating the impression that this was a question she hadn’t been asked a thousand times before, ‘… I remember my mom and dad telling me from a very early age that I really could be anything I wanted to be …’