Newsdeath

by Ray Connolly

  Under his table in Studio B Huckle opened his eyes again, and once more put his hand down between his legs further to explore the hole in his thigh. His fingers gently examined it. And then as he felt them soaking again in the warmth of his own blood it occurred to him almost casually that it seemed the effect of the bullets had been neatly to castrate him.

  Amused by the irony of it all he almost wanted to laugh.

  Chapter Twenty

  Huckle woke several times during the night thinking that he was hearing angels singing. Then, as he lay there in the darkness of his room, with sweat matting his hair and forming into a puddle along his top lip, he recognized the sound of Christmas carols coming from some less lonely part of the hospital. Reassured he slipped back into fitful sleep, to be chased and tormented by further spectres of his own death.

  When he was conscious he knew he would not die, that the wound in his thigh had been repaired, and that the bullet had not castrated him. When he was awake he knew all of these things and was grateful for his good fortune. But then in sleep he would remember nothing of the providence which had carried him on a stretcher out of the bullet-ridden Capital building, pushed him into an ambulance and raced him to safety and an operating theatre at University College Hospital. He would, in his dreams, remember only that he was going to die and that he was both frightened that he had taken out no insurance against the damnation of his immortal soul and angry that he had not succeeded in getting to the real story behind PUMA.

  For a day he had been listed as ‘seriously ill’, mainly due to the loss of blood he had suffered, but he was always going to recover. And by the third day, Christmas Day, he was, despite the patch which had stitched together the inside of his thigh near its junction with his groin, mentally as alert as ever.

  Had he been unfortunate enough to have been merely one of the hostages involved in the siege instead of the star witness he might have found himself pushed into an open ward where road crash, coronary and hernia victims would have spent their Christmases telling relatives about the celebrity in the adjacent bed. But there was much to be discussed between Huckle and the police investigators. A small room, decorated like a Christmas card shop, was found for him, where despite his weakness from loss of blood, he went through marathon debriefing sessions for Howlett, Kinney and colleagues. They were polite with him, even courteous, but they were not over-friendly. And they made it very clear that he was to do the talking, and they were to be the listeners. At one point he had suggested that he would like to see the newspapers or hear the radio news, but Howlett was adamant that he should not. They wanted, Kinney told him, to hear his side of the affair. Access to other reports might colour his memory and observations.

  They did, however, give him the barest details of how the siege had ended. Eyna and Danny were both dead, with not a single thing on their bodies to identify them. Shelley had been killed by Danny, and Dave Wright had died after shooting Danny and trying to fight his way past a corridor full of armed policemen, two of whom had received superficial injuries. The survivors of the terrorist group were at different prisons spread across London.

  ‘And that’s all?’ Huckle said, not altogether seriously. Kinney made the fatality roll sound like the classified football results.

  Kinney looked embarrassed: ‘Someone you don’t know probably … a girl called Patsy Peters was found hanging in her cell at Holloway the morning after the siege collapsed.’

  ‘After she heard that Eyna was dead?’

  ‘I imagine so.’

  Huckle went silent then and remembered how Eyna had spoken almost fondly of Patsy Peters. For a moment he wondered about the exact nature of their relationship.

  When Huckle had first realized that virtually the whole of his conversation with Eyna had gone out over the air he had felt a surge of excitement. It had to be the best story he was ever to become involved in. But the more he tried to talk about Eyna’s political connections the more mystified he became by the attitude of the police towards what she had been saying. Weren’t they interested in what she had said, he asked. But each officer in turn simply shrugged and mentioned something about it not being up to them to become involved in politics.

  On the evening of Christmas Eve Susan had come. She had visited twice earlier but he had been hardly articulate. Now they found that neither had a great deal to say to each other. Nothing had changed because of what had happened. There was no reason why it should. There was no talk of PUMA. It did not, thought Huckle, concern Susan. And since she had been asked by Kinney not to discuss the matter, it came as a relief to her not to have to be evasive when her husband was still so ill.

  Then on Christmas Day, despite the dreams and nightmares, the restrictions were lifted, although a single policeman was kept on duty at the end of the corridor in case of reprisal attacks by PUMA sympathizers. After breakfast, telegrams, cards and presents were brought in, including a portable television as a gift from John Lloyd and colleagues who all promised to visit as soon as they were allowed. By lunchtime Huckle’s bed was strewn with messages of goodwill and congratulations. At five past twelve Winston was allowed in.

  For a moment the two men looked at each other without saying anything. At last Winston sat down on the chair by the bed and helped himself to a grape, sent with grateful thanks from Charlie Brown and everyone at Capital Radio.

  ‘Happy Christmas,’ said Winston.

  Huckle smiled at his friend’s attempt to appear nonchalant. ‘What’s going on, Winston?’ he said at last. ‘I can’t get anybody to tell me anything.’

  Winston shook his head. ‘I don’t know. I’m confused. Everybody’s confused. We’re all running round in circles.’

  ‘But you heard the broadcast. You heard what she said.’

  ‘That’s the trouble. She seemed to be saying a lot, but actually she said very little, other than to admit that the rest of PUMA were stooges. Another thing … offically she still doesn’t exist. They might have the corpse of a girl you knew as Eyna, but, so far, nobody has any idea who she really was or where she came from.’

  ‘So what’s the official line on her? That she was a CIA agente provocateuse?’

  Again Winston shook his head: ‘That would be too easy. No, there is no official line. No one knows how much of what she said can be believed. Some people think that she was working for the extreme right wing … the CIA, if you like. Others think she was being run on KGB money … or at least by some left-wing Arab government. And then there are those who think that the CIA is run from Moscow and vice versa, anyway …’

  Huckle thought to himself for a moment. ‘It’s political surrealism, isn’t it? Left wing, right wing … what does it all mean any more? And does it matter, anyway?’

  Winston took another grape: ‘No. Not really.’

  ‘So why did Shelley kill her?’

  ‘The argument is that he killed her because she had duped all of them. He killed her because he’d been used. To him it wouldn’t matter who she worked for, even if he was able to understand the difference, which I believe in his particular case was questionable.’

  Huckle closed his eyes: ‘I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it. I nearly got myself killed to get her talking, and we’re still no nearer the truth.’

  Winston laughed. ‘Come on. You saved your life by getting her talking. But don’t expect anyone to thank you. They’ll send you all kinds of get-well cards. You may even get a letter from the Prime Minister, but you opened a Pandora’s Box that would have been better left closed. It’s much easier for everyone to imagine that urban terrorists are just a bunch of freaked-out yobs than to have to worry about the hidden forces behind them. You made the police and security forces look silly, and since they can’t come up with any ready answers they still look silly. The Home Secretary has ordered an official enquiry … but no one expects to discover anything.’

  ‘What about Lloyd? What about the paper?’

  ‘He’s delighted. We’ve been having a
field day. Monday had the highest circulation since Bobby Kennedy got shot. If I were you I’d ask for a rise the minute you get back. They can’t say no …’

  After Winston had gone Huckle closed his eyes. Now he could see clearly the face of Eyna as she turned to him that last time. And again he saw that sudden pattern of lead which burst through one side of her body and out the other, taking sprays of blood as it went. She had been so cool: so thoroughly self-possessed. Did she believe the things she had told him? Or was she, like Danny, just another mechanic who worked for the highest bidder? He would never know. In a way, he didn’t care. Although he knew that she had come to within a fraction of having him killed, he still found that her face lingered in his brain, not as the fearsome thing it had become during those hours of the siege, but as the comfort it had brought during the days and nights in the darkness of his room on the farm. She was like no one he had ever known before: capable of gentleness, but always likely to perform feats of callous cruelty. He wanted to know more about her: to discover who she was; what country she was from; and what path had led her into indiscriminate murder and political subterfuge. Now she would remain for ever an enigma: a mystery woman who had attracted him like a moth to a lamp, and who had nearly snuffed out his life without a drop of concern. And he wondered whether he had loved her.

  Kirsten came on Christmas night. She had telephoned earlier in the day to ask if it would be all right, and Huckle had been pleased to send a message that it would be more than all right. For once she was late, and several times during the usual Christmas Day television programmes he’d checked his watch wondering what could be keeping her. Private rooms in hospitals on Christmas Day have a special loneliness.

  The bounce was gone from her. She slipped in quietly, bundled inside her furs as usual, but it was a different, more withdrawn Kirsten. She looked older. She looked tired.

  ‘I thought you were dead,’she said at last, holding his hand, but afraid to kiss his face in case he might think she was making emotional demands upon him.

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘I taped your death …’

  Huckle was puzzled.

  ‘I mean I went to your flat and I taped your conversation with that woman … you always said your only regret would be that you wouldn’t be around to record your own death …’

  Huckle nodded slowly: ‘And did I die … honourably?’

  She nodded: ‘You sounded very calm …’

  ‘I think in a way we all want to die with dignity.’

  There was a pause between the two of them, and he felt her crushing his hand. Lying on his back he strained his eyes to see her expression in the dim light, but her face was turned away from his.

  At last she spoke again: ‘But you’re alive …’

  ‘And you, too.’

  Again a silence descended over them. There was nothing that either could think of to say to the other. Again Huckle was aware that the PUMA affair had changed nothing for him. He was still the same man with the same appetites and failings. And she still had the same needs. Their conversation was little more than a series of verbal prompts for each other.

  Kirsten stayed for an hour and a half. It was Christmas night and she had nowhere else to go, but when the matron suggested that perhaps Mr Huckleston’s recovery might be accelerated if he were to have some rest, she did not appear over-anxious to prolong her stay and, promising to be back the next day, she left him alone.

  It was quiet when she had gone. Somewhere in the hospital he could hear more carols being sung and he felt lonely, his small room with the hard-board and frosted glass walls, iron bedstead and bare floor reminding him more of a prison than a hospital. He wanted to sleep again, and to get away from the fact that he had to plan his future but he found sleep impossible. When he turned out his light the face of Eyna always came back eerily to him, bewitching him with her smile. He did not regret her death, her death had made possible his life, but he regretted what she had been. And the more he thought of her, the less relevance Kirsten and Susan and the children seemed to have to his life. It was Eyna who controlled his thoughts, Eyna who was the centre of his brain.

  At just after midnight he pulled the bell by his bed, and when the nurse appeared he asked if she would turn on his television again. She was reluctant, but finally agreed, provided he kept the volume well down. He said he would and she left the room.

  Huckle looked at the television. It was the end credits to a period piece film about the American Civil War. He had seen it before, and had the music taped. He hummed the theme as the last credits rolled. He looked at his watch. It was ten past twelve on Boxing Day morning.

  Suddenly the cosy festive atmosphere of a televised Christmas was broken: ‘Before our next programme we are going over to the newsroom,’ announced a sharp and urgent voice.

  Huckle looked quickly back at the television. A grim-faced lady news announcer was filling the screen. He felt as though he were stretching his ears to hear what she was saying. But there was no need. Her voice was very clear.

  ‘St Paul’s, Westminster Abbey and Westminster Cathedral are tonight on fire,’ she said, her voice stiff and earnest. ‘We understand that fires were started in all three churches just a short time ago, and are believed to have been caused by incendiary devices. Reports are coming in of explosions being heard in the region of Ludgate Hill and Westminster. The fire was discovered at Westminster Abbey at about eleven-fifteen, and within ten minutes the other two churches were in flames. Police and fire appliances from all over central London are rushing to the blazes. It is not known yet whether there are any casualties.’ The newsreader paused, then added grimly: ‘We shall be giving further details of the fires as we receive them until we close down at one-thirty this morning.’

  The screen then went to black and the spinning globe of the BBC1 station identification went up before the announcement of the next movie.

  Huckle stared open-mouthed at the screen. It was starting again! Nothing he could imagine could be so well designed to get under the finger nails of public opinion as setting alight London’s three biggest churches on Christmas Day. Eyna had said that her’s was only the first in a series of assault groups. This had to be the second wave.

  The audacity of the attacks stunned him. Eventually the fires would be blamed on some group of dissidents or other, and no doubt sooner or later someone would be found responsible for lighting the matches. But they wouldn’t be the real culprits. They, like PUMA, were just the cannon fodder.

  Huckle lay back and closed his eyes. Immediately he saw the face of Eyna, her smile gently mocking him. Maybe she was right, he thought. Perhaps the country does need an authoritarian government. Perhaps it is all historically inevitable …

  But in the meantime it was going to sell an awful lot of newspapers.

  For my children Louise, Dominic and Kirren Connolly

  This electronic edition published in July 2011 by Bloomsbury Reader

  Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP

  Copyright © Ray Connolly 1978

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  ISBN: 9781448205356

  eISBN: 9781448204915

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