Page 84 of Copper Script
ALOT HAPPENED AFTERthat in quite a short time.Mostly, Joel went to see Mr.Tony Wilson, editor of the Tribune.The conversation touched on a number of potentially sensitive issues, including how little either Aaron or Joel wanted to be part of the story.DDI Colthorne’s response was agreed to be unpredictable.
The Tribune took two days to consult its lawyers, and then, late on a Tuesday evening, Aaron went to the unofficial chief of the Big Five, Superintendent FP Wensley, at Scotland Yard and let him know the front page the Tribune would be running the next day.
***
JOEL WOKE UP VERY EARLYon Wednesday with a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.The Tribune’s editor had assured him that the presses could not be stopped, but he had still lain awake worrying that the Home Secretary might have been nobbled, an injunction issued.He wished Aaron was there to roll his eyes and explain that wasn’t how it worked, but Aaron would not be coming anywhere near him for some time.
The only thing more frightening than the idea that the story might have been spiked was the prospect that it was running.Joel lay in his single bed and listened out for the cries of newspaper sellers.When he heard what sounded like ‘Sammy Beech’, he let out a long breath, got up, and went to fish out his smartest clothes and his medals.He had a feeling he’d need them, and indeed, the barrage of journalists started very soon afterwards.
Joel gave every interview he could, having commandeered his thrilled landlady’s downstairs parlour.He did not mention Darby Sabini, or Aaron.He repeated again and again that Mr.Marks had come to consult him, that he had felt unhappy about the man’s death.They all asked him why he’d passed on the information to the press rather than the police.He asked them all, “What would you do in my place?”
It was long and exhausting.Towards the end of the day, some of the questions became more hostile, with a journalist from the Daily Express touching on whether he had a grudge against the Met, and asking pointedly if he’d ever been convicted of a crime.
They’d known that would come, and agreed that blaming his aberration on distress and illness after a traumatic war injury would be the path of least resistance.Joel hated that with every fibre of his being.He wanted to name Constable Sefton as an exploitative bully, to point out he had harmed nobody, to ask why it was a good use of police time to poke into his private life rather than rooting out the murderers in their own ranks.
He needed to focus on protecting Aaron, and on making sure Colthorne couldn’t muddy the waters.He needed to say,I was ill, unwell, I didn’t know what I was doing.It was an inexplicable lapse, a momentary madness.Common sense dictated he should.
Common sense collided with Joel, and lost.
“I’ve a conviction, yes,” he said.“Served my time, paid my debt to society.Who fed you that line?”
“Sorry?”
“I was just wondering, did you go looking into me of your own accord, or has a little bird in the Metropolitan Police been singing in someone’s ears?”
The journalist reddened slightly.“I’m establishing the facts, Mr.Wildsmith.”
“The facts are that DDI Colthorne owed Thaddeus Knight a fortune and lied about it when he investigated the man’s murder.That when Gerald Marks found evidence to that effect and told DDI Colthorne about it,hemysteriously died, and that DDI Colthorne didn’t mention any of that to the investigating officer,” Joel said.“Those are the facts.Not my facts, just facts, because I’m only the messenger here.Frankly, you can leave me out of all this and I’ll be happy.”
“You don’t want press?”
“Well, if the story says Handsome, Talented Graphologist Offers Reasonable Rates...”Joel said, and got a reluctant grin.“No, I don’t want press, because this isn’t about me, it’s about three dead men.And DDI Colthorne, of course.I hope some of your mates are asking him questions too?”
“We’re pursuing the story,” the journalist said, a little defensively.
“Someone else gets to talk to Colthorne while you’re stuck trying to make two paragraphs out of me?Did you piss off your editor?”
The journalist glowered.“About your conviction—”
“You’re swimming against the tide, mate.”Joel could feel sweat springing round his neck, but he was digging his heels in now.“You don’t want to be the one repeating Colthorne’s lines of defence when everyone else is exposing his wrongdoing.Some people are going to look pretty stupid for believing him.”He paused, inspiration striking.“Actually, I could name you one.”
“Who’s that?”
“Someone a lot more interesting than me,” Joel said, making very direct eye contact.“It depends if you’d rather write scandal about a graphologist nobody’s heard of, or a Bright Young Person who’s made a complete tit of himself.”
The journalist weighed that up, and grinned.“Go on.”
***
THE NEXT DAY ALL THEpapers ran the story on the front pages.The Daily Mail had managed to reach Sammy Beech’s family by telegraph; The Times had dug up some old friends of Thaddeus Knight; the Mirror had an immensely frank interview with Marks’s landlady.
The Express had the Paul Napier-Fox story as an exclusive.The journalist had gone straight to him and extracted a full admission that Colthorne had dictated the threatening letter.Paul tried to claim he’d gone along with it because Joel had unfairly maligned his integrity, but the journalist had also contacted Barbara Wilson, who did a gleeful job of eviscerating his character and morals.That would teach the swine to bully Aaron as a child.
The news had also had the effect of putting Joel’s profession in the public eye, and the letters begging for appointments started coming by the second post.Joel refrained from replying quite yet.The last thing he wanted was to be accused of profiteering from murder.He did, however, open them all just in case Aaron had written.
He desperately wanted to know what was going on at the Met.Commissioner Sir William Horwood had come up with a lot of pap about investigations taking time and the proper channels, but he’d be lucky.The brewing scandal had already been dubbed the IOU Affair by the press, and two of the papers were running observations about the rumours of a Sabini connection to King’s Cross CID.Joel just hoped Darby Sabini didn’t blame him for that.
Aaron had managed not to be interviewed by anyone, but there were a couple of blurry photographs of him entering Scotland Yard, grim-faced.He was of course featured in the story as the investigating officer on the Marks murder; he’d be answering a lot more questions behind the scenes, Joel knew.But they had wrenched the story from Colthorne’s hands, and prevented it from being quietly covered up, and on the whole, he was proud.
