Chapter Twenty-Four #2
‘I have all this from a very reliable source, and we suspect there is a direct link between the radiation and the child who died. The radiation was delivered in small ampoules – there may have been a large number, but the fire took them and the child’ – his voice wavered – ‘the child swallowed one. Nina Lopez.’
‘She was radiated by something nuclear?’
Again, Douglas made the throat-cutting motion with his forefinger, and now leant forwards and hissed: ‘Porgy! Porgy!’
Edward said, ‘The police will face criticism because they had two radioactive ampoules to analyse. They did not take precautions with them, and indeed, there is a report that Acting Chief Constable Jane Thorne used chopsticks to move the substance around.’
Douglas’s head snapped up. Crispin’s eyes widened. ‘What?’
‘Yes, chopsticks. The capsules were handed over for analysis to a local forensics expert without any precautions, and as a result there are questions about how far and wide the radiation may have spread, and whether anyone else was endangered.’
Douglas hissed, ‘Porgy!’
‘We’ll play some more music for a break in these incredible revelations,’ said Crispin. ‘The Overture. To misquote the great Elaine Paige, you know it so well.’
The music started. A crash of cymbals, a swirl of strings and then a lone bassoon, the xylophone, and the strings again.
Crispin muted the speaker.
Aspinall said, ‘You weren’t supposed to go Paxman on him. Are you okay, Edward?’
‘Yes. Fine.’ Edward stood. His phone was already bouncing with incoming calls, and now he saw Aspinall’s was too.
‘Right,’ said Aspinall, muting the calls on his handset. He ignored Crispin completely. ‘I want to get you in the news studio and you’ll basically hold the fort.’
‘Great scoop, Edward,’ said Crispin. The two broadcasters bared their teeth in presenter-smiles. They had total understanding of each other. They had not needed a manager to barge in and force agreement.
There was one caller Edward could not ignore. He had changed Jordan Callintree’s name in his phone so no one who saw a call from him flash up could identify the source. Now it said STARSKY. And Starsky was ringing.
‘You didn’t mind the chopsticks?’ Edward asked his caller.
‘I know that came from Veitch. It must have done. She’s hung up all her phones. I’m blue-lighting to her home now.’
‘You’re not going to arrest her?’
‘I need to help her,’ said Callintree.
Edward was in the news booth, a much smaller space than the main studios.
He was unable to shake the idea that someone might remotely open the large microphone suspended from the ceiling and listen to his end of the conversation, as he had done with Crispin.
So he detached the cable from the end of the microphone.
To be sure, he pushed his chair into the corner of the room, leant back against the black acoustic padding and covered his mouth as he spoke.
‘Hey,’ Edward hissed, ‘don’t rush inside when you get there, there may be radiation.
And don’t blame Veitch for this. She’s been treated shockingly. ’
‘Thorne had a bad attitude with her. I wanted to use Flo Veitch because she gets stuff done fast. Anyway,’ said Callintree, ‘the chopsticks line is devastating. Um, I’ll look into that Wendy Wrigley thing for you if you quietly keep me posted … the crime scene pics you wanted?’
‘Oh yes. Thank you.’
‘I can’t send you any of the doctor’s body.’
‘God, I don’t need that.’ Edward could not believe how amenable Callintree was being. ‘I’m at the radio station. Do you want me to do another appeal in a few minutes? Are you still looking for some of the families?’
‘There is about to be a panic, so yes. Radiation takes us straight to Litvinenko, Salisbury, all that. That’s World War Three.’
A sudden thought struck Edward. ‘Is everyone in the pizza parlour in danger? My friend Stevie Mason was there.’
‘I don’t know. I am still taking this in. Maybe we’ll have to get everyone tested. Me as well.’
The musicals show would end an hour early, at four p.m., despite Crispin Desmith threatening to resign over the schedule change.
Aspinall told Edward he would be on the air for fifteen minutes at a time – from four till quarter past, from half past till quarter to, etc.
During each period of downtime, he would try to get more information on what was going on.
‘Speak to your source, get the latest. Who’s your researcher?’
‘Melody.’
‘I’ll get her in. You have a police source too, right?’
‘Yes. But he’s cheesed off with me.’
‘Why?’
‘The entirety of that broadcast was news to him.’
‘Okay. Then do your show as questions. The whole show as questions. “What do you want the police to do?” “Why would someone spray nuclears around a café?” “If it was an attack, why did the motorbike rider die?” “Was Toppings the target?” All of that. Lots of questions, lots of calls.’ Douglas looked at his phone.
‘I had an alert on, and … hmm.’ He swished at the screen. ‘Well, events are moving.’
Andrea Lopez had posted on Instagram again. Her profile was now just a black rectangle and said MOTHER OF NINA, all in capitals.
Thank you for your prayers and love. Gabriel and myself gone in hospital because radiation. Being tested now. Can’t see darling Nina and hold her body. LOVE YOU NINA DARLING YOU ARE WITH GRANNY GRANDPA NOW. She thought they were sweeties.
‘She thought her granny and grandpa were sweeties,’ Douglas repeated. ‘It breaks your heart.’
‘No,’ said Edward, staring at the words. ‘No, the sweetie reference is something else. She ate some items she thought were sweeties. So not just one of them.’
‘Good God!’ Aspinall exploded. ‘How vicious are these Russians, doing that to a child?’
Edward sat for five minutes and thought about how to move things on. On the TV broadcast that they’d watched at Barbara’s house, Callintree had said only: ‘There is no evidence as yet that anything happened to Nina Lopez as a result of her presence in the pizza parlour.’ He texted Callintree:
How many ampoules did Nina eat?
The reply came straight back.
Two. Kept another two.
So four had been removed from the pizza parlour?
It was incredible. Edward began his broadcast. Melody came in.
They took calls. He now had a lot of information, most of it not officially released, and the station was being bombarded by enquiries from media in London: BBC Radio 5 Live, Sky News, newspapers like the Sun and Mirror.
Douglas came in with a scribbled note telling Edward to STAY IN THE STUDIO.
Melody would act as producer/reporter. Edward got into a rhythm of facts, where he became familiar not just with the substance of what he was saying but with every syllable:
The accident at Sidmouth Pizza Parlour may have been a terrorist attack.
It is not clear if the pizza house was the intended target.
The motorbike rider, who had Russian/Ukrainian connections, was killed at the scene but his bike spilled a radioactive substance.
The police need to speak to every single person who was in the pizza parlour and it is urgent, urgent, urgent that if you or your family members were present when the crash happened that you get in touch with Devon Police immediately on the special hotline number which you’ll hear in a moment.
The radioactive substance was contained in small ampoules. They spilled on the floor. Nina Lopez ate two and died. She kept another two which are being tested. Ampoules left in the restaurant were destroyed by fire.
The Home Secretary will make a statement. Please stay away from the promenade in Sidmouth.
Edward’s moment of exposure lasted ninety minutes.
Longer than he might have expected. He spoke almost continually.
Occasionally Melody would rush in with an update.
They had also got a freelancer, Alfie Burton, who sounded like a child when he spoke on the phone, to get as close as possible to the burnt-out pizza parlour and give updates.
He did it very well, even if he tended towards melodrama – ‘You sense even the seagulls are aware, coming in low over the cliffs, squawking with their usual merriment but turning abruptly, silently, as they see the yellow and black of the police tape below them.’
The exclusion zone was now a hundred yards in all directions.
Listeners rang in tears. The vicar at Nina Lopez’s church rang to urge prayer and said he was fasting in support of the Lopez family.
‘The child not even five, it is so wicked, so wicked!’ Then he was crying too.
‘And in pursuit of what, victory in a foreign war?’ People were jumping to all kinds of conclusions about why Russia might have launched the attack.
The most obvious was that there had been a different target, but the motorbike rider had slipped on oil and crashed early.
‘I am fasting,’ said the vicar, as if that could stop a war or bring back a child.
Edward knew his moment of exclusivity was ending when Alfie, speaking live on his mobile, was suddenly drowned out by a helicopter in the air above him.
Edward looked out of the window and saw a second chopper pass so close to the building that he stepped back.
Alfie had stopped speaking in the racket.
Edward could not hear himself think. The livery on the helicopter looked military.
Now Alfie was shouting. ‘The police, the police in the air above me – two of them. No, more.’
Edward texted Jordan Callintree.
Helicopters?
The detective replied immediately.
London have arrived. MI5, army, even the Met. Expect hundreds literally. Police chief in trouble.
Edward resisted asking any follow-up. Douglas had appeared in the control suite next door and was visible through the thickened panes of glass.
He was making a circle shape with his hands which Melody and Edward stared at in puzzlement.
Alfie was talking from the site, describing the arrival of soldiers.
In Edward’s headphones, Douglas Aspinall’s voice came: ‘Vinyl. Record. I’m making a record shape. Have put one in for you.’
Certain songs did not run the risk of being inappropriate, whatever the context. ‘Fields of Gold’ by Sting. ‘Angel’ by Sarah McLachlan. ‘Dreams’ by Fleetwood Mac. Douglas had loaded Sting. Alfie was talking about people in hazmat suits coming out of a van on the promenade.
‘How can you see all this?’ Edward asked, knowing the young reporter was at least a hundred yards back.
Alfie’s voice was permanently high-volume, but a monotone, as if he was a bagpipe with a leak.
Edward imagined the young man reading a bus timetable with the same urgency – ‘THE NUMBER 38 IS DUE IN EIGHT MINUTES BUT WON’T STOP OPPOSITE THE CHURCH’ – but it was far better to be engaged with a story than stupefied.
Alfie said loudly: ‘I brought my binoculars and I found a flat roof,’ and Edward was immediately filled with admiration. He had been like this once, insatiable for airtime.
‘Keep us posted. We play Sting now and will return to our normal programming after this. News on the hour …’ A loud, angry crackling in his headset made him correct. ‘News on the half-hour as well as we all come to terms with this. And thank you, Melody, for the last, what—’
‘Two hours,’ she helped, showing her teeth at the other microphone. ‘I pray for everyone and especially for the Lopez family and law enforcement who have to enter the building as everyone else runs out.’
The song came on. To Edward’s surprise, Douglas came in with a smile. The short man threw his arms out, which Melody mistook for an attempt to hug her. As she moved towards him to return the apparent hug, he backed off in horror. He turned to Edward and said, ‘Good job, boss.’
Boss! ‘Were people listening?’
‘Are you kidding? I think we had an hour where the whole world was listening. Our website crashed with people trying to access the live stream from the USA. And then,’ he said sadly, ‘well.’
‘Well?’ asked Melody.
‘Not possible to be exclusive for long these days.’ He held up a tablet, its screen glowing with a headline from Sky News. HOME SECRETARY PRESS CONFERENCE LIVE AT FOUR P.M.
The Sting record had only a minute to run.
Douglas saw Edward glance at the timer on the digital player.
‘Don’t worry. Crispin has gone home – “I decided not to resign because I am proud of this station” – and Miriam Tamla is in.
She’ll pick up after this record from 3B. God knows we need some Motown.’
‘I quite fancy a bath,’ said Edward.
‘Oh, you’ll stay I think,’ said Douglas. ‘We’ll need more from your police source.’
‘I’m not sure I can trouble him again tonight.’
‘They’re panicking,’ said Melody. She reached for her phone and read a story from Twitter. ‘“The police chief of Devon kept the nuclear material in her desk drawer and used chopsticks to move it around”. That’s literally the headline.’
‘Crikey,’ said Edward.
‘She’ll have to resign tomorrow, I should think, and that’ll be another story for you.
’ Douglas looked utterly unmoved by his own brutal assessment.
His mind must have made a logical jump, because he said to Edward: ‘Don’t start thinking your show is safe as houses.
You’ve done a good day’s work, but you still cost me hundreds of thousands with that damned Harpford Hall performance.
But yes, that was a solid shift today. I want you both here till midnight.
Can you do that for me? Broadcast live whenever you want.
The rest of the time, aggregate the information that’s coming in.
Alfie will stay on his rooftop with the binoculars, assuming no one shoots him. ’