Chapter Twenty-Four
Edward rang Aspinall on the move. It had only just occurred to him that some people were still completely unaware that anything was happening today in Sidmouth, much less that the biggest news story in the town’s history was about to slam into this quiet spot on the seaside like a sixty-foot freak wave.
‘I need the news studio and I need to broadcast into all the afternoon programmes,’ Edward said as soon as Aspinall picked up.
‘What the hell, why? No!’ was Aspinall’s immediate reaction.
Edward put his phone on speaker. ‘I’ve got information on the child’s death.’
‘What bloody child’s bloody death?’ swore Aspinall. ‘I’m off-base today.’
‘I don’t have time for this,’ said Edward.
‘You have time for the controller of the radio station or you won’t work another day there.’
Edward hesitated.
Aspinall came back in. ‘Remember you’re on a warning. Remember I’m having to find half a million quid to underwrite those ridiculous promises you made.’
As she stopped at lights, Kim mouthed: ‘Don’t fall out with him.’
Edward said: ‘A child died this morning. She was in the pizza restaurant after the motorbike rider attacked it. I think we can call it an attack now. I have a source. He was carrying a radioactive substance.’
‘Jesus wept! And the radiation killed her? Like a nuclear device?’ Aspinall, at the other end, was aghast. Edward could hear movement, as if he was exiting a building.
‘I think she put something in her mouth.’
Kim roared away as the lights went green.
Aspinall said, ‘Get yourself into the station now. I’ll meet you there. We’re about to do the biggest day’s work of our lives.’
When he hung up, Edward said: ‘Dammit. Wendy Wrigley.’
‘What about her?’ Kim asked.
‘She’s getting lost in all this.’
‘Can’t we just tell her what you found in the forest?’ Stevie asked. ‘Suicide by bolt.’
‘Well, I was going to check something first with Jordan Callintree. He’ll have crime scene photos on file.
I just wanted to be sure we chose the right bit of forest,’ said Edward, ‘but after this I don’t think he’ll ever speak to me again.
’ He added, almost to himself: ‘This is the biggest scoop of my life.’
Kim dropped him at the radio station and left to take Stevie back to the vicarage.
Edward ran into the building, with its Sunday security, and found Aspinall waiting in reception.
Edward remembered that moment before the meeting with the listeners, at Harpford Hall, when both their hands were wrapped around the same door handle and his boss was refusing to let him through to the stage. This was different.
‘I just want to avoid a fuck-up here. I need you to tell me your source.’
‘Actually I can. She was literally shouting information at us so it’s not a secret. It’s a professor who does forensic work. I went to see her to sound her out, and she turns out to be doing the job on Toppings.’
‘How did I miss the kid’s death? … No,’ continued Aspinall, talking to himself, ‘I can explain that. I was with family upcountry. I—’
‘It’s a Sunday,’ Edward cut in. ‘You’re allowed not to have signal.’
‘I’m not! Okay, I’m going to announce the news flash. I’ll go in to see Crispin.’
Crispin Desmith (pronounced: der-smith) was the old actor who presented ‘Sunday Delight’.
The two-hour programme, an orgy of Fifties music and musical theatre, was a concession to listeners who were angry about the younger presenters.
People joked that Crispin Desmith had been born Del Smith and adjusted his name to become more interesting. He wouldn’t like the intrusion.
‘Let me deal with it gently,’ Aspinall said.
‘I can’t tell Crispin it doesn’t matter what he thinks.
He wears a cravat and drinks port on the weekend and he has contacts in Arts Council England who, whisper it, fund fifty per cent of DJ Satan because he’s diverse.
Crispin needs to be tiptoed around. Leave it to me. We ask his permission.’
‘Really?’ Edward thought he was paying Crispin too much respect. For once, the out-of-controller was treading carefully.
‘If we ask, he says yes. If we tell, he says no. Now run me through what you’re going to say.’
‘The motorbike rider is Russian or certainly from the Russian-controlled area of Ukraine. He released a radioactive substance when he crashed. A child swallowed some of it. She is dead.’
‘God Almighty. I was with my grandchild.’
‘It all broke quite suddenly.’ This was wasting time. ‘The thing is, I don’t know if the police even know what I’ve found out yet.’
‘Can you call your source at the station and at least tell them?’
‘I think this is going to burn my source.’
‘Why?’
‘He won’t want me to know what I’ve been told. Let’s wait until five minutes before we broadcast. Then I call him – them.’
‘Five minutes is now. Call him, him or her,’ said Aspinall. ‘Tell him what you know and ask for his comment. Meanwhile I’m going to talk to Crispin.’
Aspinall went into the studio next door during a track from Carousel, using his body to barge the door, stiffly, all the motion in the hip, as if he was a faulty clockwork toy.
Edward surreptitiously pressed the reverse-talkback button – something he would normally never do, because it was snooping.
It allowed him to hear the conversation.
‘Crispin, could you give way to a newsflash please?’
‘Who from?’
‘Read by Edward himself.’
‘Hmm, Edward,’ repeated Crispin, as if weighing up the value of his colleague’s contribution. Edward feared he was about to hear some awful side remark: That useless idiot. But it did not come. Crispin said he would make space in twenty minutes, after three o’clock.
‘No, Crispin, that’s too late,’ said Aspinall.
Crispin harrumphed. ‘Fine, I’ll do it after playing the Porgy and Bess Overture.’
‘Well, how long is that?’ asked Aspinall as Edward listened.
‘Just under eleven minutes,’ said Crispin, leaning back in his chair and showing a square of hairy stomach where a button on his shirt had popped open. Plaid shirt, green paisley cravat.
‘Crispin,’ said Douglas Aspinall, voice trembling with anger that was barely suppressed, ‘we’ll do it straight after this, what is it?’
‘How can you not know? “If I Loved You” from Carousel, containing the famous line—’
Edward clicked the talkback off, just as Douglas turned and beckoned him, evidently unaware he had been listening in. Edward said, ‘I need five minutes.’
‘Hello Edward,’ said Crispin, as Edward pushed his way into the studio. ‘This finishes in three.’
‘Perfect,’ said Douglas Aspinall. ‘Now you go call your man,’ he directed.
Edward moved back out and stood in the narrow gap next to a huge jackboard which had been left from the station’s pre-digital days. Here he could speak without anyone hearing. But would Jordan Callintree even pick up?
To his surprise, the police officer was at the other end after one ring.
‘Jordan, it’s Edward.’
‘I know. I’m sorry I’ve been—’
‘You’ve been busy. You don’t ever have to give me the time. I understand. You were incredibly helpful at the start.’
‘We have a real crisis now, Edward.’
‘I saw you on TV, outside the hospital. That poor girl.’
‘I know, what an absolute tragedy. The family vicar broke the news, basically, and we’ve been running to catch up.’
Edward momentarily lost his nerve. ‘I, um, I need your help with Wendy Wrigley, the crossbow killing case. It’s a big ask. She’s been onto me to help her. I just need you to help me with the crime scene photos.’
‘You’re calling about that now?’ Jordan’s voice was incredulous.
Edward took a breath. There must be less than a minute left on the Carousel song. ‘No. No, I’m not. I’m about to go to air with some information about the Toppings crash. You need to know.’
‘What?’ asked Jordan Callintree.
‘I’m going to protect my source, because the person seemed very agitated, but here is what we’re about to broadcast. The capsules the motorbike rider dropped were radioactive.’
‘What?’
‘Yes.’
‘How … no, I would know!’
‘I’m sorry, that’s what happened.’ Without mentioning the professor, Edward ran through some of the other details that would be in her report. When he had finished, Jordan Callintree said, ‘And am I mentioned?’
‘I won’t mention you.’
‘But the chopsticks?’
‘Can you confirm she used them?’
‘It’s that bloody professor, isn’t it? She hasn’t been in touch with us yet!’
‘Do I take that as a confirmation?’
He was silent.
Edward said, ‘I can’t tell you who I spoke to. I guess it will be obvious. Jordan, I have to go—’
‘The professor. Bastard. I can’t stop you, can I? Putting this out?’
‘No.’
‘The bloody chopsticks.’ That really was confirmation. Silence, then: ‘I want to thank you for telling me and for keeping my name out of it.’
It was the slightest pressure, but Edward felt it like a vice. Ten seconds later he was in the studio, ignoring the red light. He took the chair opposite Crispin, conscious that the old actor had been forced to fill for a full minute and was fuming.
Crispin said: ‘Opposite me is Edward Temmis, presenter of the evening phone-in. You have rushed in with a newsflash about the horrible events on Friday.’
Voice wavering with nerves, aware that this was the most significant moment of his career, Edward said: ‘The crash at Sidmouth pizza parlour two days ago may not have been an accident. A child has died, and police are investigating whether the biker, who had links to Russia, deliberately attacked the pizza parlour with a …’ Here he paused. ‘A radioactive substance.’
Crispin reached both his hands sideways, like a man on the roiling deck of a ship seeking a solid object to cling to – his programme was now at the centre of a national incident, maybe even a global event. Crispin asked a question into the microphone.
‘You say radiation. But how was that delivered? Did he spray something, or what?’
Sitting next to Edward, Douglas Aspinall did a furious cutting motion against his throat: No questions, Crispin, please.