Chapter sixteen
FRIDAY, 21 MARCH 2003, 13.30
Eadie Sykes, driving back from the Marriott, felt strangely lightheaded. After the darkness of the post-mortem and a conversation she should never have inflicted on someone in Kelly's position, she'd ended up with the interview of her dreams: a full-frontal glimpse of a father racked by guilt, determined to share his grief and anger with as wide an audience as possible. Deaths like Danny's, he'd muttered at the end, gave you nowhere to hide. No one should ever have been that alone.
Afterwards, in the privacy of his hotel room, she'd given the man a hug and apologised. She should never have been so direct, so brutal. Down there in the coffee shop, he'd had every right to walk away.
Kelly had given her a strange smile.
'If I knew you better, I'd say you did it on purpose,' he'd told her.
'You'd make a great lawyer.'
'You really believe that?'
'Yes.' He'd nodded. 'I do.'
Now, driving back through the city, Eadie wondered if what he'd said was true. Manipulation was part of the game, she knew it was, but this morning for once she felt she'd lost control completely. There were times when she saw no point fighting the truth and the sight of Kelly in the coffee shop had been one of them. The fact that some kind of relationship had survived was a bonus she'd no right to expect, as were the contents of the digital cassette she'd tucked in her bag.
Back at the Ambrym offices and feeling infinitely more cheerful, she found J-J hunched over the PC. Beneath a day's growth of beard, he looked pale and withdrawn. His eyes had a watchfulness, an intensity, that she'd never seen before, and when she tried to coax him into the beginnings of a conversation, he plainly wasn't interested. Normally, J-J could fill a room with his warmth and enthusiasm, almost deafen you with his animation and his exploding bubbles of sign. Today, though, he was practically invisible.
Last night at the flat, before Joe came round, they'd had a long set-to about the Daniel Kelly project. Deeply uncomfortable with his own role in the student's death, J-J wanted nothing more to do with the production. He'd been OK with the research and the reading, more than happy to make friends with the people they were trying to help, but what had happened in the taping session had shocked him. There were ways you didn't push people, he'd signed, short cuts you shouldn't take. Eadie, in his view, had ignored all that and he was ashamed to have been part of what followed. The same had happened at the police station. It was a game they were playing. There were weird rules and lots of stuff you weren't supposed to talk about, and no one seemed to realise that someone had just died. That his dad, of all people, should be part of this pantomime he'd found inexplicable. He was, once again, ashamed.
Eadie, who had limited room in her life for the concept of shame, had defended herself and Faraday with some vigour. In J-J's world, she told him in an elaborate mime, he'd never make an omelette because he could never steel himself to break an egg. Sometimes the hard thing to do was the right thing to do. J-J, who loved omelettes, was mystified.
What did eggs have to do with Daniel Kelly?
At this point, thankfully, J-J had started to laugh. Eadie cemented an uneasy truce with an offer to phone for a takeout curry and they'd been expecting the delivery when the speakerphone buzzed. Instead of the driver from the Indian Cottage, a small, rotund emissary from the Stop the War Coalition came puffing up the stairs. He understood Eadie had been taping video sequences from the evening's demo. He'd also been told that she had access to broadcast-quality editing software. Eadie said yes to both questions and found herself listening to a proposal she found instantly irresistible.
Comrades in London, said the man, were recording broadcast feeds from Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based Arab news station. Twenty-four hours into the war, their footage from areas under bombardment in Baghdad and Basra was already graphic. This kind of material would never find its way into Western news coverage, not least because it might shame the watching audience into doing something about this obscene adventure.
The Stop the War Coalition were therefore wondering about the possibility of somehow showcasing the worst that Al Jazeera might be able to supply.
Eadie had got there before him.
'Three elements.' She'd tallied them on her fingers. 'The Arab footage. UK protest sequences. And all that jerk-off stuff we're seeing on BBC News 24.'
'Jerk-off stuff?'
'Cruise missile launches. Guys loading bombs onto airplanes. Carrier battle groups Tank commanders riding into battle. Apache gunships.'
'Top GunV
'Exactly.'
The activist had liked that a lot. A call to London confirmed that the first whack of Al Jazeera footage could be FedEx'd next day. BBC News Z4 pictures could presumably be recorded off-air. For now, Eadie would have to make do with her own tapes of the Pompey demo but extra footage would soon be available from other protests elsewhere in the country.
Eadie said there was no need to use Federal Express. She had a broadband link that could carry incoming video.
'What about money?'
'Forget it.'
'No charge?'
'Not a penny.'
'Copyright?'
'Ignore it. We're at war.'
'And you've got someone to sort all this out?'
'Indeed.' Eadie shot J-J a look. 'I know just the guy.'
Now, fifteen hours later, J-J was sieving Eadie's rushes from last night's demo for the best shots. She leaned over his shoulder while he quickly played the highlights: kids bursting out of HMV in the shopping precinct to join the march, two old ladies clapping as the column of protesters swept past, a pit bull pissing on a discarded placard featuring George Bush.
As the images came and went, Eadie realised that J-J had a real talent for cutting to the meat of an event like this. Maybe it was the fact that he was never distracted by the soundtrack. Maybe the media gurus were right when they insisted that TV and film had an overwhelmingly visual logic. Whatever the explanation it didn't matter because Eadie could sense already that footage like this, inter cut with the other material, could play to any audience in the world. This was the true Esperanto of moral outrage, a torrent of visceral images that would relocate the business of war to where it truly belonged. No longer a pain-free crusade peddled to the voters on the back of half-baked intelligence, but real babies, everyone's flesh and blood, blown apart in the name of freedom.
J-J got to the end of the out-takes from the demo. Some of Eadie's passion seemed to have rubbed off on him and he grinned up at her when she gave him a hug. Funny, she thought. Show J-J a real-life tragedy unfolding in front of his eyes, and he doesn't want to know.
Multiply that single death a thousand-fold, and he can't wait to get stuck in.
'Al Jazeera?' she signed.
'Nothing yet.' He fingered his watch, then shrugged.
Early afternoon, the McDonald's on the turn-off beside the MZ7 was packed. Faraday spotted Wallace and his handler in the far corner by the window. Wallace had commandeered a four-seat table and was tucking into a treble cheeseburger with a brimming cone of fries.
The handler was a DS, Terry McNaughton, who had served under Faraday for six busy months at Highland Road, a tall, relaxed-looking thirty-year-old with a smile that could open any door. Two years later, he'd swapped the Top Man suits for jeans and a dark blue button-down shirt.
The moment he saw Faraday, he got to his feet and left the table.
Wallace followed, abandoning the burger but hanging on to the fries.
