She composed her features and stood up.
The doctor looked grave. “Your husband will live,” he said.
She put her arm around her son. “What have they done to him?”
“Shotgun pellets. Close range.”
She was gripping Billy’s shoulder very hard.
She was not going to cry. “But he’ll be all right?” “I said he’ll live,
Mrs. Johnson. But we may not be able to save his eyesight.”
“What?”
“He’s going to be blind.”
Doreen shut her eyes tight and screamed: “No!”
They were all around her, very quickly; they had been expecting
hysterics. She fought them off. She saw Jacko’s face in front of her,
and she shouted: “Tony Cox done this, you bastard!” She hit Jacko.
“You bastard!”
She heard Billy sob, and she calmed down immediately. She turned to the
boy and pulled him to her, hugging him. He was several inches taller
than she. “There, there Billy,” she murmured. “Your dad’s alive, be glad
of that.” The doctor said: “You should go home, now.
We have a phone number where we can reach you …”I’ll take her,” Jacko
said. “It’s my phone, but I live close.”
Doreen detached herself from Billy and went to the door. The sister
opened it. Two policemen stood outside.
Jacko said: “What’s this, then?” He sounded outraged.
The doctor said: “We are obliged to inform the police in cases like
this.”
Doreen saw that one of the police was a woman.
She was seized with the urge to blurt out the fact that Willie had been
shot on a Tony Cox job: that would screw Tony. But she had acquired the
habit of deceiving the police during fifteen years of marriage to a
thief. And she knew, as soon as the thought crossed her mind, that
Willie would never forgive her for squealing.
She could not tell the police. But, suddenly, she knew who she could
tell.
She said: “I want to make a phone call.”
ONE P.M. KEVIN HART ran up the stairs and entered the newsroom of the
Evening Post. A Lad in a Brutus shirt and platform shoes walked past
him, carrying a pile of newspapers: the one o’clock edition.
Kevin snatched one off the top and sat down at a desk.
His story was on the front page.
The headline was: GOVT. OIL BOSS COLLAPSES. Kevin stared for a moment at
the delightful words
“By Kevin Hart.” Then he read on.
Junior Minister Mr. Tim Fitzpeterson was found unconscious at his
Westminster flat today.
An empty bottle of pills was found beside him.
Mr. Fitzpeterson, a Department of Energy Minister responsible for oil
policy, was rushed to hospital in an ambulance.
I called at his flat to interview him at the same time as PC Ron Bowler,
who had been sent to check after the Minister failed to appear at a
committee meeting.
We found Mr. Fitzpeterson slumped at his desk.
An ambulance was called immediately.
A Department of Energy spokesman said: “It $ appears that Mr.
Fitzpeterson took an accidental overdose. A full inquiry is to be made.”
Tim Fitzpeterson is 41. He has a wife and three daughters.
A hospital spokesman said later: “He is off the critical list.”
Kevin read the whole thing through again, hardly able to believe what he
was reading. The story he had dictated over the phone had been rewritten
beyond recognition. He felt empty and bitter. This was to have been his
moment of glory, and some spineless sub-editor had soured it.
What about the anonymous tip that Fitzpeterson had a girlfriend? What
about the call from the man himself, claiming he was being blackmailed?
Newspapers were supposed to tell the truth, weren’t they?
His anger grew. He had not entered the business to become a mindless
hack. Exaggeration was one thing-he was quite prepared to turn a drunken
brawl into a gang war for the sake of a story on a slow day-but
suppression of important facts, especially concerning politicians, was
not part of the game.
If a reporter couldn’t insist on the truth, who the hell could?
He stood up, folded the newspaper, and walked across to the news desk.
Arthur Cole was putting a phone down. He looked up at Kevin.