TEN
She had acquired, it appeared, both the ten-minute edition which had been broadcast as well as the half-hour original.
‘Did you see the programme on the box?’ Rose said.
I shook my head.
‘You’d better see that first, then.’
She had taken me to a small room which contained a semi-circle of comfortable chairs grouped in front of a television set. To each side of the set various makes of video machine sat on tables, with connecting cables snaking about in apparent disorder.
‘We get brought or sent unsolicited tapes of things that have happened,’ Rose explained casually. ‘All sorts of tapes. Loch Ness monsters by the pailful. Mostly rubbish, but you never know. We’ve had a scoop or sixteen this way. The big white chief swears by it. Then we record things ourselves. Some of our reporters like to interview with video cameras, as I do sometimes. You get the flavour back fresh if you don’t write the piece for a week or so.’
While she talked she connected a couple of wandering cable ends to the back of the television set and switched everything on. Her every movement was accompanied by metallic clinks and jingles, and her lily scent filled the room. She picked up a tape cassette which had been lying on the table behind one of the video machines and fed it into the slot.
‘Right. Here we go.’
We sat in two of the chairs, she sprawling sideways so she could see my face, and the screen sprang immediately to life with an interesting arrangement of snow. Total silence ensued for ten seconds before the Maynard segment of How’s Trade arrived in full sharp colour with sound attached. Then we had the benefit of Maynard looking bland and polished through a voice-over introduction, with time to admire the hand-sewn lapels and silk tie.
The interviewer asked several harmless questions, May-nard’s slightly condescending answers being lavishly interrupted by views of the interviewer nodding and smiling. The interviewer himself, unknown as far as I was concerned, was perhaps in his mid-thirties, with forgettable features except for calculating eyes of a chilling detachment. A prosecutor, I thought; and disliked him.
In reply to a question about how he got rich Maynard said that ‘once or twice’ he had come to the rescue of an ailing but basically sound business, had set it back on its feet with injections of liquidity and had subsequently acquired it to save it from closure when it had been unable to repay him. To the benefit, he suavely insisted, of all concerned.
‘Except the former owners?’ the interviewer asked; but the question was put as merely fact-finding, without bite.
Maynard’s voice said that generous compensation was of course paid to the owners.
‘And then what?’ asked the interviewer, in the same way.
Naturally, Maynard said, if a good offer came along, he would in his turn sell: he could then lend the money to rescue another needy firm. The buying, selling and merging of businesses was advisable when jobs could be saved and a sensible profit made. He had done his modest best for industry and had ensured employment for many. It had been most rewarding in human terms.
Neither Maynard nor the interviewer raised his voice above a civilised monotone, and as an entertainment it was a drag. The segment ended with the interviewer thanking Maynard for a most interesting discussion, and there was a final shot of Maynard looking noble.
The screen, as if bored silly, reverted to black and white snow.
‘Allardeck the philanthropist,’ Rose said, jangling the bracelets and recrossing her long legs. ‘Have you met him?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, now for Allardeck the rapacious bully.’
‘I’ve met him too,’ I said.
She gave me a quizzical look and watched me watch the snowstorm until we were suddenly alive again with Maynard’s charm and with the introduction and the first few harmless questions. It wasn’t until the interviewer started asking about takeovers that things warmed up; and in this version the interviewer’s voice was sharp and critical, designed to raise a prickly defensive response.
Maynard had kept his temper for a while, reacting self-righteously rather than with irritation, and these answers had been broadcast. In the end however his courtesy disintegrated, his voice rose and a forefinger began to wag.
‘I act within the law,’ he told the interviewer heavily. ‘Your insinuations are disgraceful. When a debtor can’t pay, one is entitled to take his property. The state does it. The courts enforce it. It’s the law. Let me tell you that in the horse racing business, if a man can’t pay his training fees, the trainer is entitled to sell the horse to recover his money. It’s the law, and what’s more, it’s natural justice.’
The interviewer mentioned villainous mortgage holders who foreclosed and evicted their tenants. Hadn’t Maynard, he asked, lent money to a hard-pressed family business that owned a block of flats which was costing more to maintain than the rental income, and couldn’t afford the repairs required by the authorities? And after the repairs were done, hadn’t Maynard demanded his money back? And when the family couldn’t pay, hadn’t he said he would take the flats instead, which were a loss to the family anyway? And after that, hadn’t mysterious cracks developed in the fabric, so that the building was condemned and all the poor tenants had to leave? And after that, hadn’t he demolished the flats and sold the freehold land to a development company for ten times his original loan for repairs?
The inquisitorial nature of the interviewer was by now totally laid bare, and the questions came spitting out as accusations, to which Maynard answered variously with growing fury:
‘It’s none of your business.’
‘It was a long time ago.’
‘The building subsided because of underground trains.’
‘The family was glad to be rid of a mill-stone liability.’
‘I will not answer these questions.’
The last statement was practically a shout. The interviewer made calming motions with his hand, leaning back in his chair, appearing to relax, all of which cooling behaviour caused Maynard to simmer rather than seethe. A mean-looking scowl, however, remained in place. Nobility was nowhere to be seen.
The interviewer with subterranean cunning said pleasantly, ‘You mentioned racehorses. Am I right in thinking your own father was a racehorse trainer and that you at one time were his assistant?’
Maynard said ungraciously, ‘Yes.’
‘Give us your opinion of investing in bloodstock.’
Maynard said profits could be made if one took expert advice.
‘But in your case,’ the interviewer said, ‘you must be your own expert.’
Maynard shrugged. ‘Perhaps.’
The interviewer said very smoothly, ‘Will you tell us how you acquired your racehorse Metavane?’
Maynard said tightly, ‘I took him in settlement of a bad debt.’
‘In the same way as your other businesses?’
Maynard didn’t answer.
‘Metavane proved to be a great horse, didn’t he? And you syndicated him for at least four million pounds… which must be your biggest coup ever – bigger than the Bourne Brothers’ patents. Shall we talk about those two enterprises? First, tell me how much you allow either Metavane’s former owners or the Bourne Brothers out of the continuing fruits of your machinations.’
‘Look here,’ Maynard said furiously, ‘if you had a fraction of my business sense you’d be out doing something useful instead of sitting here green with envy picking holes.’
He stood up fiercely and abruptly and walked decisively off the set, tearing off the microphone he had been wearing on his tie and flinging it on the ground. The interviewer made no attempt to stop him. Instead he faced the camera and with carefully presented distaste said that some of the other businesses, big and small, known to have benefited from Mr Allardeck’s rescue missions were Downs and Co. (a printing works), Benjy’s Fast Food Takeout, Healthy Life (sports goods manufacturers), Applewood Garden Centre, Purfleet Electronics and Bourne Brothers (light engineers).
The Bourne Brothers’ assets, he said, had proved to include s Me long overlooked patents for a special valve which had turned out to be just what industry was beginning to need. As soon as it was his, Maynard Allardeck had offered the valve on a royalty basis to the highest bidder, and had been collecting handsomely ever since. The Bourne Brothers? The interviewer shook his head. The Bourne Brothers hadn’t realised what they’d owned until they’d irrevocably parted with it. But did Maynard Allardeck know what he was getting? Almost certainly yes. The interviewer smiled maliciously and pushed the knife right in. If Allardeck had told the Bourne Brothers what they owned, collecting dust in a file, they could have saved themselves several times over.
The interviewer’s smugly sarcastic face vanished into another section of blizzard, and Rose Quince rose languidly to switch everything off.
‘Well?’ she said.
‘Nasty.’
‘Is that all?’
‘Why didn’t they show the whole tape on How’s Trade? They obviously meant to needle Maynard. Why did they smother the results?’
‘I thought you’d never ask.’ Rose hitched a hip on to one of the tables and regarded me with acid amusement. ‘I should think Allardeck paid them not to show it.’
‘What?’
‘Pure as a spring lamb, aren’t you? That interviewer and his producer have before this set up a pigeon and then thoroughly shot him down, but without the brawl ever reaching the screen. One politician, I know for certain, was invited by the producer to see his hopelessly damaging tape before it was broadcast. He was totally appalled and asked if there was any way he could persuade the producer to edit it. Sure, the producer said, the oldest way in the world, through your wallet.’
‘How do you know?’
‘The politician told me himself. He wanted me to write about it, he was so furious, but I couldn’t. He wouldn’t let me use his name.’
‘Maynard,’ I said slowly, ‘has a real genius for acquiring assets.’
‘Oh, sure. And nothing illegal. Not unless he helped the trains to shake the block of flats’ foundations.’
‘One could never find out.’
‘Not a chance.’
‘How did the interviewer rake all that up?’
Rose shrugged. ‘Out of files. Out of archives. Same as we all do when we’re on a story.’
‘He’d done a great deal of work.’
‘Expecting a great deal of pay-off.’
‘Mm,’ I said, ‘if Maynard was already angling for a knighthood, he’d have paid the earth. They could probably have got more from him than they did.’
‘They’ll curl up like lemon rind now that they know.’ The idea pleased Rose greatly.
‘How did you get this tape?’ I asked curiously.
‘From the producer himself, sort of. He owed me a big favour. I told him I wanted to do a shredding job on Allardeck, and asked to see the interview again, uncut if possible, and he was as nice as pie. I wouldn’t tell him I knew about his own little scam, now would I?’
‘I suppose,’ I said slowly, ‘that I couldn’t have a copy?’
Rose gave me a long cool look while she considered it. Her eyelids, I noticed, were coloured purple, dark contrast to the pale blue eyes.
‘What would you do with it?’ she said.
‘I don’t know yet.’
‘It’s under copyright,’ she said.
‘Mm.’
‘You shouldn’t have it.’
‘No.’
She bent over the video machine and pressed the eject button. The large black cassette slid quietly and smoothly into her hand. She slotted it into its case and held it out to me, gold chains tinkling.
‘Take this one. This is a copy. I made it myself. The originals never left the building, they’re hot as hell about that in that television company, but I’m fairly quick with these things. They left me alone in an editing room to view, with some spare tapes stacked in a corner, which was their big mistake.’
I took the box, which bore a large white label saying ‘Do not touch’.
‘Now listen to me, buddy boy, if you’re found with this, you don’t get me into trouble, right?’
‘Right,’ I said. ‘Do you want it back?’
‘I don’t know why I trust you,’ she said plaintively. ‘A goddamn jockey. If I want it back I’ll ask. You keep it somewhere safe. Don’t leave it lying about, for God’s sake. Though I suppose I should tell you it won’t play on an ordinary video. The tape is professional tape three-quarters of an inch wide, it gives better definition. You’ll need a machine that takes that size.’
‘What were you going to do with it yourself?’ I asked.
‘Wipe it off,’ she said decisively. ‘I got it yesterday morning and played it several times here to make sure I didn’t put the uncut version’s words into Allardeck’s mouth in the paper. I don’t need suing. Then I wrote my piece, and I’ve been busy today… but if you’d come one day later, it would all have been wiped.’
‘Lucky,’ I said.
‘Yes. What else? Files? There’s more on the tape, but Bill said files, so files you can have.’
‘Bill?’
‘Bill Vaughnley. We worked together when we were young. Bill started at the bottom, the old Lord made him. So did I You don’t call someone sir when you’ve shared cigarette butts on a night stint.’
They had been lovers, I thought. It was in her voice.
‘He says I have a tongue like a viper,’ she said without offence. ‘I dare say he told you?’
I nodded. ‘Rattlesnake.’
She smiled. ‘When he’s a pompous fool, I let him know it.’
She stood up, tawny and tinkling like a mobile in a breeze, and we went out of the television room, down a corridor, round a few corners, and found ourselves in an expanse like a library with shelves to the ceiling bearing not books but folders of all sorts, the whole presided over by a severe looking youth in spectacles who signed us in, looked up the indexing and directed us to the section we needed.
The file on Maynard Allardeck was, as Rose had said, less informative than the tape. There were sundry photographs of him, black and white glossy prints, chiefly taken at race meetings, where I supposed he was more accessible. There were three, several years old now, of him leading in his great horse Metavane after its win in the 2000 Guineas, the Goodwood Mile and the Champion Stakes. Details and dates were on flimsy paper strips stuck to the back of the prints.
There were two bunches of newspaper clippings, one from the Towncrier, one from other sources such as the Financial Times and the Sporting Life. Nothing critical had been written, it seemed, before the onslaught in the Flag. The paragraphs were mainly dull: Maynard, from one of the oldest racing families… Maynard, proud owner… Maynard, member of the Jockey Club… Maynard, astute businessman… Maynard, supporter of charity… Maynard the great and good. Approving adjectives like bold, compassionate, far-sighted and responsible occurred. The public persona at its prettiest.
‘Enough to make you puke,’ Rose said.
‘Mm,’ I said. ‘Do you think you could ask your producer friend why he hit on Maynard as a target?’
‘Maybe. Why?’
‘Someone’s got it in for Maynard. That TV interview might be an attack that didn’t work, God bless bribery and corruption. The attack in the Flag has worked well. You’ve helped it along handsomely yourself. So who got to the Flag, and did they also get to the producer?’
‘I take it back,’ she said. ‘Some jockeys are smarter than others.’
‘Very few are dumb.’
‘They fust talk a different language?’
‘Dead right.’
She returned the file to its place. ‘Anything else? Any dinky little thing?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘How would I get to talk to Sam Leggatt, who edits the Flag?’
She let out a breath, a cross between a cough and a laugh. ‘Sam Leggatt? You don’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘He walks around in a bullet-proof vest.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Metaphorically.’
‘Do you know him?’
‘Sure, I know him. Can’t say I like him. He was political correspondent on the Record before he went to the Flag, and he’s always thought he was God’s gift to Fleet Street. He’s a mocker by nature. He and the Flag are soulmates.’
‘Could you reach him on the telephone?’ I asked.
She shook her head over my naivety. ‘They’ll be printing the first edition by now, but he’ll be checking everything again for the second. Adding stuff. Changing it round. There’s no way he’d talk to Moses let alone a… a jumping bean.’
‘You could say,’ I suggested, ‘that you were your editor’s secretary, and it was urgent.’
She looked at me in disbelief. ‘And why the hell should I?’
‘Because you trade in favours.’
‘Jee–sus.’ She blinked the pale blue eyes.
‘Any time,’ I said. ‘I’ll pay. I took it for granted that this…’ I held up the tape, ‘was on account.’
‘The telephone,’ she said, ‘makes it two favours.’
‘All right.’
She said with amusement, ‘Is this how you win your races?’ She turned without waiting for an answer and led the way back roughly to where we had started from but ending in a small, bare little room furnished only with three or four chairs, a table and a telephone.
‘Interview room,’ Rose said. ‘General purposes. Not used much. I’m not having anyone hear me make this call.’
She sat on one of the chairs looking exotically sensuous and behaving with middle-class propriety, the baroque fa?ade for frighteners, the sensible woman beneath.
‘You’ll have about ten seconds, if that,’ she said, stretching out the bracelets for the telephone. ‘Leggatt will know straight away you’re not our editor. Our editor comes from Yorkshire and still sounds like it.’
I nodded.
She got an outside line and with long red nails tapped in the Flag’s number, which she knew by heart; and within a minute, after out-blarneying the Irish, she handed me the receiver silently.
‘Hello, Martin, what goes?’ an unenthusiastic voice said.
I said slowly and clearly, ‘Owen Watts left his credit cards in Bobby Allardeck’s garden.’
‘What? I don’t see…’ There was a sudden silence. ‘Who is this?’
‘Jay Erskine,’ I said, ‘left his Press Club card in the same place. To whom should I report these losses? To the Press Council, the police or my member of parliament?’
‘Who is that?’ he asked flatly.
‘I’m speaking from a telephone in the Towncrier. Will you talk to me in your office, or shall I give the Towncrier a scoop?’
There was a long pause. I waited. His voice then said, ‘I’ll ring you back. Give me your extension.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Now or never.’
A much shorter pause. ‘Very well. Come to the front desk. Say you’re from the Towncrier.’
‘I’ll be there.’
He crashed the telephone down as soon as I’d finished speaking, and Rose was staring at me as if alarmed for my wholeness of mind.
‘No one speaks to editors like that,’ she said.
‘Yeah… well, I don’t work for him. And somewhere along the way I’ve learned not to be afraid of people. I was never afraid of horses. People were more difficult.’
She said with a touch of seriousness, ‘People can harm you.’
‘They sure can. But I’d get nowhere with Leggatt by being soft.’
‘Where do you want to be?’ she asked. ‘What’s this scoop you’re not giving the Towncrier?’
‘Nothing much. Just some dirty tricks the Flag indulged in to get their Allardeck story for Intimate Details.’
She shrugged. ‘I doubt if we’d print that.’
‘Maybe not. What’s the limit journalists will go to to get a story?’
‘No limit. Up Everest, into battlefields, along the gutters, anywhere a scandal leads. I’ve done my crusading time in rotten health farms, corrupt local governments, nutty religions. I’ve seen more dirt, more famine, more poverty, more tragedy than I need. I’ve sat through nights with parents of murdered children and I’ve been in a village of lifeboatmen’s widows weeping for their dead. And then some damn fool man expects me to go sit on a prissy gilt chair and swoon over skirt lengths in some goddam Paris salon. I’ve never been a women’s writer and I’m bloody well not starting now.’
She stopped, smiled twistedly, ‘My feminism’s showing.’
‘Say you won’t go,’ I said. ‘If it’s a demotion, refuse it. You’ve got the clout. No one expects you to write about fashion, and I agree with you, you shouldn’t.’
She gave me a long look. ‘I wouldn’t be fired, but he’s new, he’s a chauvinist, he could certainly make life difficult.’
‘You,’ I said, ‘are one very marketable lady. Get out the famous poison fangs. A little venom might work wonders.’
She stood up, stretching tall, putting her hands on her heavily belted hips. She looked like an Amazon equipped for battle but I could still sense the indecision inside. I stood also, to the same height, and kissed her cheek.
‘Very brotherly,’ she said dryly. ‘Is that all?’
‘That’s all you want, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ she said, mildly surprised. ‘You’re goddam right.’
The Daily Flag, along Fleet Street from the Towncrier, had either been built much later or had been done over in Modern Flashy.
There was a fountain throwing out negative ions in the foyer and ceiling-wide chandeliers of thin vertical shimmering glass rods, each emitting light at its downward tip. Also a marble floor, futuristic seating and a security desk populated by four large men in intimidating uniforms.
I told one of them I’d come from the Towncrier to see Mr Leggatt and half expected to be thrown out bodily into the street. All that happened, however, was that after a check against a list on the desk I was directed upwards with the same lack of interest as I’d met with on friendlier territory.
Upstairs the decorative contrast continued. Walls in the Flag were pale orange with red flecks, the desks shining green plastic, the floor carpeted with busy orange and red zigzags, the whole a study in unrestfulness. Anger on every page, I thought, and no wonder.
Sam Leggatt’s office had an opaque glass door marked ‘editor’ in large lower-case white letters, followed some way below by smaller but similar letters telling callers to ring bell and wait.
I rang the bell and waited, and presently with a buzz the door swung inwards a few inches. Sam Leggatt might not actually wear a bullet-proof vest but his defences against people with grievances were impressive.
I pushed the door open further and went in to another brash display of rotten taste: black plastic desk, red wallpaper flecked in a geometric pattern, and a mottled green carpet, which as a working environment would have sent me screaming to the bottle.
There were two shirt-sleeved men in there, both standing, both apparently impervious to their surroundings. One was short, stubby and sandy-haired, the other taller, stooped, bespectacled and going bald. Both about fifty, I thought. A third man, younger, sat in a corner, in a suit, watchful and quiet.
‘Mr Leggatt?’ I said.
The short sandy-haired one said, ‘I’m Leggatt. I’ll give you five minutes.’ He inclined his head towards the taller man beside him. ‘This is Tug Tunny, who edits Intimate Details. That is Mr Evans from our legal department. So who are you, and what do you want?’
Tug Tunny snapped his fingers. ‘I know who he is,’ he said. ‘Jockey. That jockey.’ He searched for the name in his memory and found it. ‘Fielding. Champion jockey.’
I nodded, and it seemed to me that they all relaxed. There was a trace of arrogance all the same in the way Leggatt stood, and a suggestion of pugnaciousness, but not more, I supposed, than his eminence and the circumstances warranted, and he spoke and behaved without bluster throughout.
‘What do you want?’ Leggatt repeated, but lacking quite the same tension as when I’d entered; and it crossed my mind as he spoke that with his passion for security they would be recording the conversation, and that I was speaking into an open microphone somewhere out of sight.
I said carefully, ‘I came to make arrangements for returning the property of two of your journalists, Owen Watts and Jay Erskine.’
‘Return it then,’ Leggatt said brusquely.
‘I would be so glad,’ I said, ‘if you would tell me why they needed to climb a ladder set against Bobby Allardeck’s house at one in the morning.’
‘What’s it to you?’
‘We found them, you understand, with telephone tapping equipment. Up a ladder, with tools, at the point where the telephone wires enter the Allardecks’ house. What were they doing there?’
There was a pause, then Tunny flicked his fingers again.
‘He’s Allardeck’s brother-in-law. Mrs Allardeck’s brother.’
‘Quite right,’ I said. ‘I was staying with them last night when your men came to break in.’
‘They didn’t break in,’ Leggatt said. ‘On the contrary, they were, I understand, quite savagely attacked. Allardeck should be arrested for assault.’
‘We thought they were burglars. What would you think if you found people climbing a ladder set against your house at dead of night? It was only after we’d chased them off that we found they weren’t after the silver.’
‘Found? How found?’
‘They left their jackets behind, full of credit cards and other things with their names on.’
‘Which you propose to return.’
‘Naturally. But I’d like a proper explanation of why they were there at all. Wire-tapping is illegal, and we disturbed them in the act of removing a tap which had been in place for at least two weeks, according to the telephone engineer who came this morning to complete the dismantling.’
They said nothing, just waited with calculating eyes.
I went on. ‘Your paper mounted an unprovoked and damaging attack on Bobby Allardeck, using information gleaned by illegal means. Tell me why.’
They said nothing.
I said, ‘You were sent, Mr Leggatt, a special delivery letter containing proof that all of Bobby Allardeck’s creditors had been paid and he was not going bankrupt. Why don’t you now try to undo a fraction of the misery you’ve caused him and my sister? Why don’t you print conspicuously in Intimate Details an apology for misrepresenting Bobby’s position? Why don’t you outline the paragraph in red and get your two busy nocturnal journalists to scoot up to Newmarket with the edition hot off the presses like before, and while the town is asleep deliver a copy personally to every recipient who was on their earlier round? And why don’t you send a red-inked copy to each of Bobby’s owners, as before? That would be most pleasing, don’t you think?’
They didn’t looked pleased in the slightest.
‘It’s unfortunate,’ I said mildly, ‘that it’s one’s duty as a citizen to report illegal acts to the relevant authorities.’
Without any show of emotion Sam Leggatt turned his head towards the silent Mr Evans. After a pause Mr Evans briefly nodded.
‘Do it,’ Sam Leggatt said to Tunny.
Tunny was thunderstruck. ‘No.’
‘Print the apology and get the papers delivered.’
‘But…’
‘Don’t you know a barrel when you see one?’ He looked back at me. ‘And in return?’
‘Watts’s credit cards and Erskine’s Press Club pass.’
‘And you’ll still have…?’
‘Their jackets, a chequebook, photos, letters, notebooks, a diary and a neat little bugging system.’
He nodded. ‘And for those?’
‘Well,’ I said slowly, ‘how about if you asked your lawyers what you would be forced to pay to Bobby if the wire-tapping came to court? If you cared to compensate him at that level now we would press no charges and save you the bad publicity and the costs and the penalties of a trial.’
‘I have no authority for that.’
‘But you could get it.’
He merely stared, without assent or denial.
‘Also,’ I said, ‘the answer to why the attack was made. Who suggested it? Did you direct your journalists to break the law? Did they do it at their own instigation? Were they paid to do it, and if so by whom?’
‘Those questions can’t be answered.’
‘Do you yourself know the answers?’
He said flatly, ‘Your bargaining position is strong enough only for the apology and the delivery of the apology, and you shall have those, and I will consult on the question of compensation. Beyond that, nothing.’
I knew a stone wall when I saw one. The never-reveal-your-sources syndrome at its most flexible. Leggatt was telling me directly that answering my questions would cause the Flag more trouble than my reporting them for wire-tapping, which being so I would indeed get nothing else.
‘We’ll settle for the compensation,’ I said. ‘We would have to report the wire-tapping quite soon. Within a few days.’ I paused. ‘When a sufficient apology appears in the paper on Friday morning, and I’ve checked on the Newmarket deliveries, I’ll see that the credit cards and the Press Club pass reach you here at your front desk.’
‘Acceptable,’ Leggatt said, smothering a protest from Tunny. ‘I agree to that.’
I nodded to them and turned and went out through the door, and when I’d gone three steps felt a hand on my arm and found Leggatt had followed me.
‘Off the record,’ he said, ‘what would you do if you discovered who had suggested the Allardeck attacks?’
I looked into sandy brown eyes, at one with the hair. At the businesslike outward presentation of the man who daily printed sneers, innuendo, distrust and spite, and spoke without showing a trace of them.
‘Off the record,’ I said, ‘bash his face in.’