'What is it?' the editor said mildly.
'I just took a phone call from Timothy Fitzpeterson, a Junior Minister in the-'
'I know who he is,' the editor said. 'What did he say?'
'He claims he's being blackmailed by two people called Laski and Cox. He sounded pretty far gone. He-'
The editor interrupted again. 'Do you know his voice?'
The young reporter looked flustered. He had obviously been expecting instant panic, not a cross-examination. 'I've never spoken to Fitzpeterson before,' he said.
Cole put in: 'I had a fairly nasty anonymous tip about him this morning. I checked it out-he denied it.'
The editor grimaced. 'It stinks,' he said. The chief sub nodded agreement. Hart looked crestfallen.
Cole said: 'All right, Kevin, we'll discuss it when I come out.'
Hart went out and closed the door.
'Excitable fellow,' the editor commented.
Cole said: 'He's not stupid, but he's got a lot to learn.'
'So teach him,' the editor said. 'Now, what's lined up on the picture desk?'
14
Ron Biggins was thinking about his daughter. In this, he was at fault: he should have been thinking about the van he was driving, and its cargo of several hundred thousand pounds' worth of paper money-soiled, torn, folded, scribbled-on, and fit only for the Bank of England's destruction plant in Loughton, Essex. But perhaps his distraction was forgivable: for a man's daughter is more important than paper money; and when she is his only daughter, she is a queen; and when she is his only child, well, she just about fills his life.
After all, Ron thought, a man spends his life bringing her up, in the hope that when she comes of age he can hand her over to a steady, reliable type who will look after her the way her father did. Not some drunken, dirty, longhaired, pot-smoking, unemployed fucking layabout'What?' said Max Fitch.
Ron snapped back into the present. 'Did I speak?'
'You were muttering,' Max told him. 'You got something on your mind?'
'I just might have, son,' Ron said. I just might have murder on my mind, he thought, but he knew he did not mean it. He accelerated slightly to keep the regulation distance between the van and the motorcyclists. He had nearly taken the young swine by the throat, though, when he had said, 'Me and Judy thought we might live together, like, for a while-see how it goes, see?' It had been as casual as if he were proposing to take her to a matinee. The man was twenty-two years of age, five years older than Judy-thank God she was still a minor, obliged to obey her father. The boyfriend-his name was Lou-had sat in the parlor, looking nervous, in a nondescript shirt, grubby jeans held up with an elaborate leather belt like some medieval instrument of torture, and open sandals which showed his filthy dirty feet. When Ron asked what he did for a living, he said he was an unemployed poet, and Ron suspected the lad was taking the mickey.
After the remark about living together, Ron threw him out. The rows had been going on ever since. First, he had explained to Judy that she must not live with Lou because she ought to save herself for her husband; whereupon she laughed in his face and said she had already slept with him at least a dozen times, when she was supposed to be spending the night with a girlfriend in Finchley. He said he supposed she was going to say she was in the pudding club; and she said he should not be so stupid-she had been on the pill since her sixteenth birthday, when her mother had taken her up to the family planning clinic. That was when Ron came near to hitting his wife for the first time in twenty years of marriage.
Ron got a pal in the police force to check out Louis Thurley, aged twenty-two, unemployed, of Barracks Road, Harringey. The Criminal Records Office had turned up two convictions: one for possession of cannabis resin at the Reading pop festival, and one for stealing food from Tesco's in Muswell Hill. That information should have finished it. It did convince Ron's wife, but Judy just said that she knew all about both incidents. Pot shouldn't be an offense, she declared, and as far as the theft was concerned, Ron and his friends had simply sat on the supermarket floor eating pork pies off the shelf until they got arrested. They had done it because they believed food should be free, and because they were hungry and broke. She seemed to think their attitude was totally reasonable.
Unable to make her see sense, Ron had finally forbidden her to go out in the evening. She had taken it calmly. She would do as he said, and in four months' time, when she was eighteen, she would move into Lou's studio apartment with his three mates and the girl they all shared.
Ron was defeated. He had been obsessed by the problem for eight days, and still he could see no way to rescue his daughter from a life of misery-for that was what it meant, without a shadow of doubt. Ron had seen it happen. A young girl marries a wrong 'un. She goes out to work while he sits at home watching the racing on television. He does a bit of villainy from time to time to keep himself in beer and smokes. She has a few babies, he gets nicked and goes inside for a stretch, and suddenly the poor girl is trying to bring up a family on the Assistance with no husband.
He would give his life for Judy-he had given her eighteen years of it-and all she wanted to do was throw away everything Ron stood for and spit in his eye. He would have wept, if he could remember how.
He could not get it out of his mind, so he was still thinking about it at 10:16 A.M. this day. That was why he did not notice the ambush sooner. But his lack of concentration made little difference to what happened in the next few seconds.
He turned under a railway arch into a long, curving road which had the river on its left-hand side and a scrap yard on the right. It was a mild, clear day, and so, as he followed the gentle bend, he had no difficulty in seeing the large car transporter, piled high with battered and crushed vehicles, reversing with difficulty into the scrap yard gate.
At first it looked as though the truck would be out of the way by the time the convoy reached it. But the driver obviously did not have the angle of approach quite right, for he pulled forward again, completely blocking the road.
The two motorcycles in front braked to a halt, and Ron drew the van up behind them. One cyclist heaved his machine onto its stand and jumped up on the footplate of the cab to shout at the driver. The truck's engine was revving noisily, and black smoke poured from its exhaust in clouds.
'Report an unscheduled stop,' Ron said. 'Let's work the routine like the book says.'
Max picked up the radio microphone. 'Mobile to Obadiah Control.'
Ron was looking at the truck. It carried an odd assortment of vehicles. There was an elderly green van with COOPERS FAMILY BUTCHER painted on the side; a crumpled Ford Anglia with no wheels; two Volks-wagen Beetles piled one on top of the other; and, on the upper rack, a large white Australian Ford with a coachline and a new- looking Triumph. The whole thing looked a bit unsteady, especially the two Beetles in a rusty embrace, like a pair of copulating insects. Ron looked back at the cab: the motorcyclist was making signs at the driver to get out of the convoy's way.
Max repeated: 'Mobile to Obadiah Control. Come in, please.'
We must be quite low, Ron thought, this close to the river. Maybe reception is bad. He looked again at the cars on the transporter, and realized that they were not roped down. That really was dangerous. How far had the transporter traveled with its load of unsecured scrap?
Suddenly he understood. 'Give the Mayday!' he yelled.
Max stared at him. 'What?'
Something hit the roof of the van with a clang. The truck driver jumped out of his cab onto the motorcyclist. Several men in stocking masks swarmed over the scrap yard wall. Ron glanced in his wing mirror and saw the two motorcyclists behind the van being knocked from their machines.
The van lurched and then, incomprehensibly, seemed to rise in the air. Ron looked to his right and saw the arm of a crane reaching over the wall to his roof. He snatched the microphone from a bemused Max as one of the masked men ran toward the van. The man lobbed something small and black, like a cricket ball, at the windshield.
The next second passed slowly, in a series of pictures, like a film seen frame by frozen frame: a crash helmet flying through the air; a wooden club landing on someone's head; Max grabbing the gear stick as the van tilted;
