by Simon Hall
No matter how many times Dan looked at it, in how many different ways, he couldn’t see any hidden meaning.
Lizzie had rung again, demanding a story. It was a quiet news day and they were desperate for anything he could provide. Dan had just about managed to fob her off with more vague talk of something being likely to happen and him needing to be with the police to make sure they got the exclusive. But being fobbed off had never become his editor. She was growing increasingly agitated.
He found himself strangely tempted to tell her the truth, about the two new notes, the deadline for solving the riddle and tomorrow’s promised release of the Book, complete with its section on a certain Dan Groves. He wondered why. Perhaps it was the classic spin doctor’s art of preparing the ground for bad news, or simply to make an early appeal not to be sacked?
He’d ended the conversation by telling her something seemed to be happening and that he had to go and see what it was. He’d call her back later with some kind of story, he said. But he had no idea what.
All he knew was that he had to be here. With Adam to do his best to break the code, find the Book and save them both, and with Claire, to support her as they decided what to do about their baby. Dan raised a hand, wiped his forehead. It felt strangely hot, as if there was too much going on in his mind. There were just 29 hours to their deadline.
Eleanor and Michael sat at two desks next to each other, studious like children in a class. She had a small pile of books, he had his laptop. But both had also come up with no ideas about what the final code might mean. Dan worked with them on his thought about seeing a good land. They’d checked reference books, thick works on Plymouth’s history and the countless computer memories gathered on the internet, but they’d got nowhere.
At the front of the room, Adam either paced back and forth in front of the felt boards or sat heavily on the edge of a desk, his head bowed. He was a study in thought. Each time a telephone rang, he jumped for it. Each time there were no new leads to report.
Claire worked at the phones, coordinating the inquiries they had left to cover. The team checking the churches had come up with no famous original memorial and not even a hint of a lead. A couple of technicians from the Square Eyes division had been working on the internet to see if they could trace any web site which might be used to post the Judgement Book. They’d found nothing. The list of possible suspects Dan and Adam had discussed earlier in the car had yielded no progress.
They all knew it, but none would say. No one dared.
The investigation had stalled.
Claire and Dan exchanged occasional glances. She looked pale, and her eyes were still red. One hand rested automatically over her stomach.
They’d had a brief chat earlier, agreed to leave the row behind. Such emotions were inevitable; her hormones were racing, he had never been in this position before, they were amidst the tension of a major investigation.
Dan was almost convinced that all was more or less OK.
Almost.
More or less.
It was hardly the most romantic of moments, huddled in a narrow gap between two police vans in the yard behind Charles Cross. Dan very much wanted a hug. But all he got was tears.
‘I can’t go on like this,’ Claire sobbed. ‘I just can’t. We’ve got to get it sorted. It’s eating away at me, every hour, every minute, every second. I can’t think about anything else. What are we going to do?’
And he’d had no reassuring words to give her, no magical solutions, nothing but more uncertainty. ‘I don’t know. I just don’t. I keep thinking of what having a baby would mean. I don’t know how we’d cope. Your job, my job, Rutherford, where to live. Any of it.’
She buried her head into his neck, didn’t reply, just whimpered. Dan held her close, but she didn’t squeeze him back and he couldn’t still her sobbing.
‘We’ll work it out,’ he tried to soothe. ‘We will. I promise. We’ll work something out.’
‘But what? What?!’
And that was the fatal question, the one without an answer. Dan hugged her tighter, tried to think. And then, with vindictive timing, a policeman had jogged up to one of the vans, muttered some excuse about a call out, and driven it off.
Dan tried to stop her, but Claire walked quickly away, her face buried in a handkerchief. All she could say was, ‘We have to get it sorted. I just can’t go on like this any more.’
And the words hadn’t stopped resonating in his head.
He gulped hard, was about to get them all another round of teas and coffees when his mobile warbled. Lizzie again, and this time she was fizzing.
‘Need you on a story. Urgent!’
‘What?’ He tried not to panic, instead find another excuse. ‘But I’m at Charles Cross, waiting for developments on the blackmailer case. It’s a cracking story. We don’t want to lose sight of it, and I reckon...’
She cut in. ‘Do you have any developments?’
Dan stared over at Claire. She was looking at him too, and he could see her face was ready to crack. It felt like the weight of emotion it held back was growing too powerful to resist. He couldn’t leave her now, not to go chasing some stupid story. He had to be here with her. She needed him, her eyes were full of it.
The icy voice on the phone again. ‘I said, do you have any developments that will make us a report for tonight?’
If only he could tell her about the two new notes, the final riddle. It was a fantastic story. But Adam wouldn’t let a word get out. They had to concentrate on the investigation, couldn’t afford the distraction of the media frenzy it would create. The pack of reporters and photographers was still hanging around the front of the police station.
‘I’ll take that as a no then,’ came the merciless voice once more. ‘Get moving. Now! North Devon Zoo. They’ve had a break in and lost loads of their rare animals. Great TV story. It’s our lead for tonight. Nigel will meet you there. I’m sending the outside broadcast truck too. I want a report and a live.’
‘But Lizzie, I …’
‘Enough! I know how much you love playing detectives, but this is breaking news. I shouldn’t have to point out it’s your job. Get going. Now!’
Dan could feel Claire’s eyes fixed on him. Her lips were trembling.
‘But Lizzie, I don’t want to lose sight of this case. It’s one of the biggest stories we’ve ever had. I think ...’
She interrupted again, and her voice was acid calm. ‘It’s very simple. Go do the story and do it well or start looking for another job.’
She hung up. He stared at the mobile, felt a sudden screaming desire to fling open a window, hurl it out, enjoy the sight of it shattering on the street below. But he knew he had no choice. Dan briefly closed his eyes, took a breath and stepped down from the window ledge, the noise echoing around the silent room.
‘Got to go,’ he said to Adam, but couldn’t help himself looking at Claire. ‘There’s a story I have to do in north Devon.’
Adam shrugged. He looked tired and defeated, his shoulders slumped. ‘Go ahead,’ he said wearily. ‘You’re hardly missing anything.’
Dan walked to the door, paused, looked back at Claire. Her head was bowed over her desk, her hair falling across her face in that way he always found irresistible. She didn’t look up.
The drive to north Devon took two hours. It was one of the worst in the region, full of frustrating twisted and sinewy roads with only the rare release of some dual carriageway. And when you were in a rush you could always guarantee at least a couple of tractors and caravans to get stuck behind. It was one of the hazards of the South-west, tourists and farmers, both working to a pace of life at least fifty per cent slower than the rest of the world.
Dan couldn’t concentrate on the story he was going to cover. All he could think about was Claire. He kept seeing her with that other man, hand in hand, pushing a pram.
The newsroom rang to update him on what happened. A gang of raiders had burst in, tied up the staff and filled a
van with animals. They knew exactly which ones they wanted. Two breeding pairs of Galah Cockatoos had been taken, a colony of dozens of Geffroy’s marmosets, nine black-eared marmosets, a pair of Rainbow Macaws and two yellow-winged Amazon parrots. The animals were worth tens of thousand of pounds and probably destined to be sold to collectors.
Dirty El also called. He too was on the way to the zoo. All the national papers wanted pictures. Not even the usual tormented entertainment of his burbled and painful limerick cheered Dan.
‘El, he always loved the zoo,
The creepies and the crawlies too,
But now they’re out,
Up goes the shout,
Get us pics, pursue, wahoo!’
Loud was already there when Dan arrived, Nigel standing beside him. They’d been in the newsroom when the tip-off came through and Lizzie had scrambled them first. Dan checked the cameraman’s watch. Almost five o’clock. They had an hour and a half until they were on air.
Such deadlines, and so merciless, Dan thought miserably. Tonight’s programme, and the countdown to the release of the Judgement Book.
‘I’ve got you a few pictures already,’ Nigel said. ‘So that takes the pressure off us a bit. I’ve done lots of general shots of the zoo, plus plenty of the animals that are left. You can talk about “cockatoos and marmosets similar to this” being stolen. The boss is bringing me some old photos of the actual animals. I’ll film those in a minute.’
Dan thanked him and excused himself to go to the loo. It was a priority after that long, frustrating drive. His mouth was dry too, and his ulcer was stinging hard. To save time he called Claire while he was in the toilets. He had more bad news and he wanted her to know now.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he began. ‘I really am. But I couldn’t get out of it. It’s a big story for us.’
‘It’s OK, I understand.’ She sounded flat, distant, almost indifferent.
‘Claire, I’m sorry, really. It’s the worst time for something like this to break. I want to be with you, not here, believe me.’
‘It’s OK,’ she repeated. ‘I’ll see you later. I’ll wait up.’
Shit. Just – simply – shit. How the hell was he going to tell her? He couldn’t put it off, he didn’t have a choice.
‘Claire, I hate to say this, but I’m not going to be back tonight. They want me to stay up here to do a follow-up story for tomorrow.’
The mobile line hummed and clicked. Dan thought he heard a gulp, but couldn’t be sure.
‘Claire? Claire!’ he urged. ‘I’m sorry, I really am.’
‘It’s OK,’ she said again finally, and her words sounded hollow, empty of feeling. ‘I’ll be fine.’ Her voice caught and she struggled to finish. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow. Got to go.’
‘Claire! Claire, please,’ Dan shouted, but she’d hung up.
He twice tried to ring back, but got her answer machine. Dan glared at his mobile, then put it back into his pocket. He’d have to call her again later. He loosed off a machine-gun string of expletives, making an old man walking into the toilets stare and shake his head. It was an effort not to lash out at him, vent the seething venom.
Dan walked with Nigel to see the layout of the zoo for the outside broadcast and did a quick interview with one of the keepers. Other journalists and photographers were arriving, El amongst them. He had his biggest lens on the front of his camera and stroked it lovingly as he clicked off his snaps, the trademark sleazy grin shining on his face.
Dan sat in the outside broadcast truck to edit the report. Loud was wearing a shirt adorned with strutting Rainbow Macaws and kept giggling, pointing at them, then the monitor screens. Dan scarcely noticed. He had to force himself to think about the story he was writing, be professional. He wondered if this would be the last report he produced. The theft of some animals from a zoo wasn’t exactly the blaze of glory he’d always had in mind for the end of his career.
It was half past five. They’d need 15 minutes to prepare for the live broadcast. They only had 40 to cut the report.
Time to shift. Stop worrying about craft and polish, just cut and burn. News was the art of the possible.
He started the story with pictures of the cockatoos and macaws, their spectrum of plumage lighting the monitors, and talked about them being worth thousands of pounds and probably stolen to order. Their breeding programme had also been destroyed, almost twenty years of work gone in the few minutes of the raid.
Then came a clip of interview with the keeper. He could have been an actor, played the part perfectly, broke down and cried, right on cue. Dan felt tears forming in his own eyes as his mind ran once again to Claire. He imagined her sitting alone in a dark cubicle in the toilets at Charles Cross, trying to stifle her sobs.
Loud laid down some pictures of the marmosets, while Dan talked about how vulnerable they were to shock, how they could easily have died already because of the stress of the raid. Their tiny, human-like faces looked pitiful to match his words. He finished the report with some general pictures of the zoo, writing about how and when the gang had struck and the photos Nigel had filmed of the actual animals, asking the viewers to keep an eye out for them in newspaper adverts and pet shop windows. Loud spun the edit controls and they watched it back.
‘Not a bad report,’ the engineer grunted begrudgingly, his forest of a beard twitching. ‘Almost worth coming all the way here for.’
It was a quarter past six. Time to plan the live broadcast.
‘I’ve got it all rigged up,’ said Nigel. ‘We’re going to use the radio link camera. That way you can do a little walk through the zoo wherever you want without any problems with cables.’
Dan hopped down from the truck and thought fast. ‘I reckon we start with me by the empty cages and I go on about how they should be full of birds,’ he said. ‘Then they can bring in my report. During that time, we relocate to another cage with some birds or animals behind for a live interview with the owner.’
Dan tried another call to Claire. He got her answer machine again and swore to himself. She was deliberately avoiding him, she must be. Two swelling emotions collided in his mind, anger and guilt. He felt like running to his car, jumping in and gunning the engine back to Plymouth.
He called Adam. Still no progress on the investigation. That last, vital clue to the riddle was the key the detective thought, but Eleanor and Michael had had no luck in solving it. They’d worked through all the reference books on Plymouth, all the web sites they could find and even spoken to local historians. Michael had put it through every computer program he had, but hadn’t found any hint of an anagram or hidden meaning in the words.
The sentence taunted Dan. “See have mind good land, Plymouth.”
Something in Plymouth or about the city, it had to be. But what? He knew he had no idea. And if Eleanor and Michael, with all their knowledge and experience couldn’t solve it, what chance did he have? Twenty-four hours, that was all they now had to crack the code or the Judgement Book would be released and with it the end of his career and Adam’s too.
And if he was honest, “end” was a masterpiece of modesty. It would be a crash, a spectacular, a fireball of flame. There would be shock and scandal. Dan would be pursued by the press pack, become notorious, his name always branded with the story of the Judgement Book.
He must get back to Plymouth first thing tomorrow morning. He’d have to find a way. Perhaps convincing Adam to put out a story on the new blackmail victims would be the best idea. That would give him a reason to return. Dan needed to be with the investigation, and Claire too. But what story could they release that might help them solve the code?
He could think about it later. He had to concentrate on the outside broadcast. But he knew that whatever happened he was going back to Plymouth tomorrow. If Lizzie really wanted to sack him, so what? He was going to be out of a job the moment the Book was released anyway. He might as well get back home, be there to try to find the thing and save his relationship too.
&n
bsp; ‘Studio to Dan, do you hear us?’ came Emma’s voice in his earpiece. He bit his ulcer and gasped at the stab of pain, but at least it forced him to concentrate. ‘Two minutes to on air, Dan. Standby.’
‘You OK?’ asked Nigel. ‘You’re looking a bit out of it.’
‘I’m OK.’
His friend’s look said the attempted reassurance was hopelessly unconvincing. Dan could feel his mind again drifting to Claire. He tried to concentrate, focus on his words.
‘A shattering blow for one of the region’s best known zoos tonight,’ came Craig’s voice. ‘Raiders have stolen scores of rare and highly valuable parrots and monkeys from North Devon Zoo. Our Crime Correspondent Dan Groves is there live for us.’
‘Cue Dan,’ Emma prompted.
‘Yes, Craig, these cages,’ he said, gesturing behind and beginning to walk past them, ‘should have been full of life here this evening, birds stretching their colourful wings, chattering to each other, feeding and settling down for the night. Instead, they’re poignantly empty, as are many others in the zoo, the animals stolen in what looks like a well planned raid.’
They cut to his report. Two short minutes to reposition themselves for the interview. Dan and Nigel marched over to the zoo’s owner. He was standing in front of a cage of lazing cheetahs.
‘One minute to you, Dan, come on, hurry it up,’ came Emma’s harassed voice.
Nigel manoeuvred the two of them around to get the animals in the background of the shot.
Emma again, ‘Thirty seconds, come on, come on!’
Nigel spun the focus and exposure rings on the camera and finally gave a thumbs-up. Dan gazed at his reflection in the lens. Was it his imagination, or did he look forlorn, lonely and lost?
A shout in his ear. ‘Cue Dan. Cue, man!’
He was spurred instinctively into action. ‘With me now is Oscar Kennedy, the zoo’s owner. The viewers will understand the financial loss. But for you, it’s more than that, isn’t it? It’s the loss of years of work.’
The man stared, and Dan wondered if he was going to dry up. But he began talking, softly and hesitantly, and all the more powerfully for it.
