The Pink and the Grey by Anthony Camber Page B

big boys’ stuff,” I said. “We’re a tiny, tiny paper. We tell the truth. I think we tell the truth. I try to. It’s as dull as Hull on a wet Thursday in November, but it’s accurate, give or take a stolen by-line. Accurate, you know, as long as I’m allowed my notepad.” I mimed scribbling. “If you ask me, the dodgiest things we do are the puns in the headlines. We spend more time on these than on writing the shite that follows them.”
    Silence again, which I filled before a new question could be asked. “You know, at the risk of sounding defensive, we’re not all horrible people. Sure, I wouldn’t give Geoff the time of day if I didn’t get paid for it, and the red-tops with their brown envelopes and private investigators on the sly, they’ve done bad things. But it’s not what I do. Not what I want to do. I want to make life better, investigate the arseholes and get ’em put away. I’m one of the good guys, I promise you. Now, are you gonna tell me what this is all really about?”
    A quiet voice: “Yeah.”
    “Off the record.”
    “Yeah.”
    “Then fire away. I’m all ears, apart from the mouth.”
    He took a deep breath. “Do you know much about your editor’s past?”
    I stopped and turned to him. “Would you stop talking about the pissing editor and get on with your story?”
    He shushed me, a hand on my arm again, and walked on. “I am, I am. This is about him. Burnett. Do you know what he did before the Bugle ?”
    “A reporter on Fleet Street, is all I know. Does he have something on you? A little dirt? Is that what all this no-notepad stuff’s about, you want to tell the story properly? I can probably arrange—”
    “No. You are correct, he was on Fleet Street, twenty years ago. He was an investigative reporter, just like you want to be. He broke stories, like you want to, and sent people to prison, like you want to.”
    “Why do I get the feeling there’s a but coming up.”
    Emerging from the trees, we walked a few yards to a zebra crossing. There were still a few taxis trailing up and down. Were we heading towards Midsummer Common, I wondered? It looked very much like it.
    Maybe, I thought, he just said he lived by the river. Maybe he was planning to lure me to the riverside, break my back on a narrowboat and toss me in. Maybe the story might be about me after all. The pavement ahead peeled right, towards the river, and I consoled myself drunkenly with the knowledge that if he did bump me off there’d be a massive front page photo of me, albeit below the masthead where you don’t really want it rather than as one of the columnists’ mugshots along the top, the duck shoot.
    Seb took his time, apparently gathering his thoughts. I kept my mouth shut, and shivered.
    “My father had a business. It was moderately successful, not yet global but expanding. It had won an export award. A bright future awaited us, so we thought. And then your editor decided this could not be allowed to happen. He uncovered some financial irregularities — correction, what he thought were financial irregularities.”
    “Ah,” I said. I saw where this was going. I imagined a small silver key in his back, winding him up and up as he spoke.
    “He didn’t contact my father. Why not? Why not? It could all have been stopped there and then. Misunderstanding, or something. An apology, no hard feelings. But no, oh no. As far as we can tell he didn’t contact anyone from the company at all. Not a word! No phone call, nothing!” He was angry now. “Based on barely more than supposition and a source even the— even the Metropolitan Police considered unreliable, he and his editor went barrelling ahead and just printed the story. No regard for the truth. No regard for the effect on the business. No regard for the family.” He punctuated the sentences by chopping the chill air ahead of him. Someone across the street looked over at the noise.
    We skipped across a set of traffic lights and through a metal