the reporters called a bollocking.
Arthur had surprised him by talking, not about the way he had barged
into the conference, but about the story. He had asked: “What was the
voice like?”
Kevin said: “Middle-aged man, Home Counties accent. He was choosing his
words. Maybe too carefully–he might have been drunk, or distressed.”
“That’s not the voice I heard this morning,” Arthur mused. “Mine was
younger, and Cockney. What did yours say?”
Kevin read from his shorthand. “I am Tim Fitzpeterson, and I am being
blackmailed by two people called Laski and Cox. I want you to crucify
the bastards when I’m gone.”
Arthur shook his head in disbelief. “That all?” “Well, I asked what they
were blackmailing him with, and he said, “God, you’re all the same,” and
put the phone down on me.” Kevin paused, expecting a rebuke. “Was that
the wrong question?”
Arthur shrugged. “It was, but I can’t think of a right one.” He picked
up the phone and dialed, then handed the receiver to Kevin. “Ask him if
he’s phoned us in the last half hour.”
Kevin listened for a moment, then cradled the handset. “Busy signal.”
“No help.” Arthur patted his pockets, looking for cigarettes.
“You’re giving it up,” said Kevin, recognizing the symptoms.
“So I am.” Arthur began to chew his nails.
“You see, the blackmailer’s biggest hold over a politician is the threat
to go to the newspapers.
Therefore, the blackmailers wouldn’t ring us and give us the story; That
would be throwing away their trump card. By the same token, since the
papers are what the victim fears, he wouldn’t ring us and say he was
being blackmailed.” With the air of one who comes to a final conclusion,
he finished: “That’s why I think the whole thing is a hoax.”
Kevin took it for a dismissal. He stood up. “I’ll get back to the oil
story.”
“No,” Arthur said. “We’ve got to check it out.
You’d better go round there and knock on his door.”
“Oh, good.”
“But next time you think of interrupting an editor’s conference, sit
down and count to one hundred first.”
Kevin could not suppress a grin. “Sure.” But the more he thought about
it, the less chance he gave the story of standing up. In the car he had
tried to recall what he knew of Tim Fitzpeterson. The man was a
low-profile moderate. He had a degree in economics, and was reputed to
be clever, but he just did not seem to be sufficiently lively or
imaginative a person to provide blackmailers with any raw material.
Kevin recalled a photograph of Fitzpeterson and family–a plain wife and
three awkward girls–in a Spanish beach.
The politician had worn a dreadful pair of khaki shorts.
At first sight, the building outside which Kevin now stood seemed an
unlikely love nest. It was a dirty gray thirties block in a Westminster
back street. Had it not been so close to Parliament, it would have
become a slum by now. As he entered, Kevin saw that the landlords had
upgraded the place with an elevator and a hall porter: no doubt they
called the flats “luxury service apartments.” It would be impossible, he
thought, to keep a wife and three children here; or, at least, a man
like Fitzpeterson would think it impossible.
It followed that the flat was a pied-a-terre, so Fitzpeterson might have
homosexual orgies or pot parties here after all.
Stop speculating, he told himself; you’ll know in a minute.
There was no avoiding the hall porter. His cubbyhole faced the single
elevator across a narrow lobby. A cadaverous man with a sunken, white
face, he looked for all the world as if he were chained to the desk and
never allowed to see the light of day. As Kevin approached, the man put
down a book called How to Make Your Second Million and removed his
glasses.
Kevin pointed to the book. “I’d like to know how to make my first.”
“Nine,” said the porter in a patiently bored voice.
“What?”
“You’re the ninth person to say that.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“Then you ask why I’m reading it, and I say a resident lent it to me,