Newsdeath

by Ray Connolly

  Inside the foyer the two security men, George Delaware and Rolf Stevens, looked up from their newspapers. Every night at around twelve they would receive the following morning’s papers from a fellow security officer who worked around the corner at Euston Station. For two hours they would peruse them, and then for the rest of the night they would puzzle over the crosswords, taking it in turns to have The Times first. Delaware spotted Eyna before his colleague.

  ‘This a friend of yours?’ he asked good naturedly. Delaware didn’t have much to do with women.

  Rolf Stevens looked up at the girl. She had the widest of smiles you could have imagined: ‘Bloody hell,’ he said in appreciation. ‘I wish it was.’

  Eyna waved towards him, and he got up and moved towards the door, leaving Delaware at the back of the reception area in the way they had been trained. They were unarmed. Facing Eyna through the glass doors Rolf Peters could see that she was one of those wonderfully confident and attractive women who can be careless about their dress because they breathe good looks and personality. From the far side of the glass she was mouthing something at him, something which he could not understand. He looked puzzled. She repeated what she had said. Still no wiser he shook his head, looking even more bemused. By now it had almost become a matter of a courtship, he felt. She was flirting with him through the glass. These women! He sometimes wondered why he had ever got married.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ he called at last and went to open the glass doors. At the back of the reception area George Delaware watched him with some amusement. He could see how pretty the girl was, and all that throwing her hair back and giggling didn’t delude him for one minute. She wanted poor Rolf for something. Probably she had a date with Charlie Brown. Those disc jockeys were sex mad. But there was Rolf wanting to believe that it was him she was after. Watching the two of them was quite a little pantomime. It never for one minute occurred to him that she might be anything other than another pretty girl stopping by at Capital on her way home. Pop music radio stations seemed to attract girls like this.

  Rolf Peters opened the door and smiled at the girl: ‘I thought you were doing a mime show for a minute.’

  Eyna laughed, her hair falling back, and her shoulder bag slipping from her shoulder. She hoisted it up again. ‘It’s Charlie Brown tonight, isn’t it? Can you get me in? We knew each other years ago … I’d like to surprise him.’

  Rolf knew his orders: ‘Sorry. No way. No surprises while he’s on the air.’

  Eyna was still laughing: ‘Oh, come on.’ She moved a step nearer to Rolf Peters.

  He leaned against the open glass doorway looking at her. She was lovely. Lucky Charlie Brown. ‘No. It’s impossible.’

  Slowly Eyna moved forward again. She was still smiling. ‘Okay. I’ll tell you what,’ she said, and then leaning close she spoke so softly that he had to bend his head forward to catch what she was saying. Her body was right up to his by this time. It was a nice sensation. Perks of the job, he thought to himself, as he realized he could smell her perfume. He bent his ear towards her mouth and listened. ‘Don’t move or I’ll blow your balls off,’ she hissed. He would have moved in shock except for the fact that he was suddenly aware of a piece of iron pushing into the lower part of his stomach. ‘Now I want you to let me in and no hints to your friend or you’re dead, okay?’ she went on.

  Rolf Peters, with his back to George Delaware, nodded. Opening the door wider he backed in a couple of paces. At the desk Delaware was watching them. Suddenly he was puzzled. But it was already too late.

  ‘Don’t move or I’ll kill your friend,’ shouted Eyna suddenly. Delaware’s first thought was to press the alarm button which connected him with the local police, but even as he thought about it, he saw the look in Rolf Peters’s face. It was one of fear. Then he saw the gun, a small .22 calibre revolver, which the girl must have pulled out of her shoulder bag when she went into a huddle with Peters. Almost as he saw all this, he realized that, standing outside the glass front of the building, was a group of people all armed with machine-guns, all pointing them directly at him. Had he pressed the alarm they would both most certainly be killed. He didn’t move.

  Quickly the reception area filled with armed people. He noticed how someone passed the pretty girl a machine-gun as soon as they were all inside. There were seven of them, and one unarmed man, whose face looked vaguely familiar.

  ‘Right, against the wall … quickly,’ the girl commanded.

  Huckle was fourth in, just ahead of Dave who was covering him. As he entered the building he felt an instant fear for the two security men. They had failed in their job, and, one way or another, they were certain to suffer. As soon as the PUMA members were inside the building, Neil Maxwell pushed the door shut again. The key was still in it. He held his automatic in his left hand as he locked it and Huckle realized for the first time how heavy one of those weapons must be as Neil’s wrist muscles tensed under the weight.

  After a first ejaculation of sound, a purely impulsive thing, as the shock forced a burst of air from his lungs, Delaware said nothing, but huddled next to Rolf Peters against the wall, bending his body forwards in an attitude of fear. Huckle looked up the sweeping steps of the building towards the first landing, where he knew the Capital studios were situated. They were empty. No one had heard the disturbance. Huckle looked at George Delaware: he was a big, bull-necked man of about forty-five, with black hair like patent leather swept from a hairline which began just two inches above his eyes. Huckle didn’t doubt that he was strong, but cowering in shock against the wall, he looked weak and cringing. Rolf Peters was younger, fair, not bad-looking, but too thin, in a black uniform meant for a bigger man. Without speaking again Eyna led the way up the semi-circle of sweeping staircase which led from the reception area to the studios. Apart from herself each of the PUMA members was carrying some kind of bag in addition to their guns. They reached the top of the short flight of stairs more or less in a group, with the security guards and Huckle walking in the middle of them.

  ‘Shelley, this will be your post.’ Eyna stopped and turned towards the big man. He nodded and turned around to face back the way they had just come. From this position he could cover any attempts to enter the studios, and with the walls and thick banister as protection he had plentiful cover.

  Quietly Eyna opened the swing doors leading to the studios. As she did the sound of the last few bars of the Carpenters’ record could be heard, followed by the chocolate voice of Charlie Brown. It was, he was saying, twelve after three, in these wee small hours, and what better time was there than to listen to the governor himself … and smoothly the strings of Nelson Riddle led into a Frank Sinatra song: ‘In the wee small hours of the morning, when the whole wide world is fast asleep …’

  Despite his fear Huckle smiled inwardly at the irony of it all. They were now cramped together on the landing of the first floor of the tower block which made up the radio station, waiting while Dave and Danny scouted ahead to check that no one was still in the hospitality room at the corner of the corridor. Huckle could smell whisky on Neil Maxwell’s breath, and looking up into the brown eyes of the bearded black man he wondered whether he too was frightened.

  The interior of the radio station was made up of four corridors which formed a square, on the outside of which were offices and on the inside studios. Huckle knew from earlier visits that the main control area was built like a small pentagon into the centre of the square formed by the corridors, and that although there was only one direct entry from the corridor there was access to it from two other studios which connected with the opposite sides of the square: the object being that the station’s three studios could be seen and operated by anybody in main control. So, militarily speaking, main control and the studios formed the keep of the castle; the corridor the moat; the outer offices the ramparts.

  For a second the group waited at the junction where two corridors met: but the voice of Frank Sinatra was all they could hear. Then, at a signal from
Eyna, Danny and Dave dashed forward again down one corridor and disappeared from sight. Huckle had no doubts that they were heading straight for the nerve centre of the station, the main control room. At another signal from Eyna, Neil Maxwell and Michael Hickmore ran down the other corridor, opening doors and glancing inside the offices as they went. Eyna listened carefully, her automatic rifle trained upon Huckle, while Kate Springfield kept the security men covered. There was no need for such precautions. Huckle was well aware of the titanic figure of Shelley behind them, blocking the way out of the building. Suddenly a short burst of machine-gun fire came from the direction of main control. Huckle could see the muscles tightening across Eyna’s jawline. He expected the music, which he could hear still coming from the various loudspeakers scattered around the studios, to go off the air, but it didn’t. The record kept right on playing. At that moment Michael Hickmore reappeared around the corner of the corridor, herding in front of him the two women from the telecommunications room; Patti Horrocks virtually having to support her colleague Frances, whose expression suggested that she had woken up into a bad dream. At the same time down the other corridor Dave was now marshalling Charlie Brown, the engineer Bill Adams and Shirley the producer, whom he had discovered and duly terrified with a burst of gunfire in main control.

  ‘If anyone tries to escape they’ll be killed. Understand?’ Eyna’s voice cut through the atmosphere. The hostages understood.

  Huckle looked at the Capital Radio employees. In the background Frank Sinatra was still singing, and he wondered how long the record would play without being changed. Then he wondered whether the police were already outside the building. He could not believe that an alarm system somewhere had not already alerted the nearest police station. He looked over his shoulder and saw Shelley crouched over his machine-gun. There could be no possible help for any of them from the front entrance so long as he was there.

  Eyna spoke tersely to the group. ‘We don’t want to have to hurt anyone,’ she said, looking the hostages up and down carefully. ‘But if anyone does attempt to escape or to help the police we will kill you without question.’

  At that moment, as if to emphasize her words, there came a short burst of machine-gun fire from the other side of the building. Everyone froze. Then Hickmore ran forward, looking carefully around the corner, almost bumped into Dave who was now elated with excitement.

  ‘Some geyser had been hiding under a table and was trying to get out through a window. I helped him down. He won’t be coming back.’ His expression implied that he had enjoyed his first kill.

  Eyna turned to the hostages. ‘Who was that?’

  Bill Adams, the engineer, swallowed and stuttered out a name. ‘It must have been Alan Pigott … he’s one of the engineers from the Post Office building upstairs.’ He let out a long sigh, and then added, ‘Oh Christ!’

  Eyna regarded the group without emotion. ‘You can see that we mean what we say. Now listen very carefully. I expect the police are already arriving outside. They won’t get in. All entrances into the building are blocked by our people, including the two skylights which go out on to the roof and up into the rest of the tower block. No one will get in to help you, unless we let them. If they try to force their way in then they’ll die and you’ll all die. I think you can believe that, can’t you? Now I want you all to go back to your jobs. You will be watched all the time by one of us, and if you make any attempt to summon help you will be shot. Do you understand?’

  No one answered, so great was the shock. The main group had now been rejoined by Martin, who had come in the back way, Neil Maxwell and Danny.

  Eyna repeated herself, this time with an edge of irritation creeping into her voice. ‘I asked if that was understood?’

  This time there was a general murmuring, and Huckle noticed that the disc jockey Charlie Brown was holding the hand of the girl in horn-rimmed glasses and T-shirt.

  ‘Right, off you go,’ said Eyna, and with Dave pointing his weapon towards Shirley, Bill Adams and Charlie Brown, and Kate Springfield covering the two telephonists, the group broke up. At that moment a noise was heard downstairs by the front entrance, and suddenly from behind them Shelley let burst with the heavy rattle of machine-gun fire. The whole group pressed forward down the corridor.

  Eyna smiled at Huckle. ‘I think,’ she said, ‘the police are aware of our presence.’ With that she turned her gun towards Huckle and pointed him in the direction of main control. ‘I expect as a journalist you always liked being at the centre of things,’ she murmured as they entered the control room. ‘We’d better get to work before they do something silly and cut us off.’

  They, that is, the men responsible to the Independent Broadcasting Authority, did that silly something at that very moment. Without warning the light which told the engineer that the programme was being transmitted went off. Although the Frank Sinatra album still played, there was now no public out there able to hear it. Charlie Brown took the pick-up off the record.

  Huckle looked towards Eyna. ‘You knew this would happen,’ he said.

  She smiled again. He could see she enjoyed the tension of the situation. ‘Of course. Now comes the time to negotiate. You’d better start praying.’

  At almost the moment that the members of PUMA had entered the Capital Radio building their presence was known at the local police headquarters in nearby Tottenham Court Road. There had been so many telephone threats to Capital in the past that an alarm device which was set off whenever anyone passed across the front entrance had been installed. The overnight security man could, if he wished, negate the effect of the device, but in this case Delaware had neither the opportunity nor the desire to do so. Of course no one had ever pretended that the security men and the various alarm systems were any real deterrent should anyone seriously wish to invade the station. Nothing short of armed guards, machine-gun turrets and a twenty-foot-high live electric fence could hope to do that. But if anyone did get into Capital Radio and decided to hang around for more than a couple of minutes the alarm system made their capture more or less inevitable.

  Thus within three minutes of the alarm being sounded three police cars full of armed officers had drawn up in streets adjacent to the building. Externally nothing appeared different, but one thing had changed. At the end of the song ‘In The Wee Small Hours’ the listening officers in their cars below might have expected to hear Charlie Brown cueing in another record or maybe playing a jingle if everything was all right. But there was nothing. Just ten seconds of silence before the Nelson Riddle orchestra started up again with another Sinatra track, ‘Tenderly’. Ten silent seconds and then a track from the same album? The driver of the first car to arrive outside Euston Tower looked across at his companion.

  They both had the same thought. If there was one thing that you never got from Capital Radio it was silence. On radio a five-second pause sounds like the trip to eternity and back: on commercial radio five seconds of silence means lost listeners and eventually lost revenue. Ten seconds …? No way … For a half-moment the two men looked at each other; then with a mutual exchange of shrugs, they climbed out of their car and began their quick walk across the wide pavement outside Euston Tower.

  Suddenly their walk was interrupted by the sound of machine-gun fire and breaking glass. As they raced for the cover of the concourse area to the west of the building they saw a body drop with a squelching thud into a large puddle of rainwater which had collected where a draining grid had become clogged with city debris. It was the body of Post Office engineer Alan Pigott. Now, all around the building police cars were drawing up, lights flashing wildly, and young men in blue uniforms were being organized into little groups, all keeping well clear of the building itself, all straining their eyes up into the night to try to see the exact positions of the gunmen.

  And then into that first moment of confusion, before the siege had even properly begun, walked the slight, dark and cheerful figure of Ali Mustaph, twenty-year-old medical student from University
College who was on his way home from a Christmas Party in Camden Town. If he hadn’t been a little drunk, he might a few moments earlier have recognized the sound of machine-gun fire, but in his happy state he thought he heard the sound of someone (inexplicably at this hour) using a road drill, and thinking nothing of it he turned the corner from Hampstead Road into Marylebone Road, pausing as he always did to look at the pictures of the disc jockeys stuck in the ground-floor Capital Radio windows. He didn’t, at first, see the police, huddled in their groups, nor they him, since most eyes were glued to the first floor, but then as he moved towards the double glass doors of the radio station he saw the reflection of flashing blue police lights in the glass windows. Turning, he wondered as he walked what might be the object of so much police attention.

  By the time anyone had reacted to his presence he was virtually opposite the Capital front doors. As he watched the activity in front of him he heard sudden running steps approaching across the wide pavement. But before he was properly aware of what was happening he found himself being hurled to the ground in a headlong tackle. In a reflex effort to get free from this mystery assailant he heaved himself towards the entrance foyer, just in time to have his head, shoulders and neck riddled with machine-gun bullets from the edgy trigger finger of the strategically-placed Shelley inside the building.

  Howlett was in his car heading towards Capital Radio by three thirty-five. Already there had been two civilian deaths and a police constable was dangerously ill and being raced to the emergency casualty unit at University College Hospital. All hospitals in the area were being asked to stand by in readiness for massive casualties. Ali Mustaph lay where he had been killed. To move him would have meant going into the line of the gunman’s fire.