Tony Black - Gutted

I made my way to my former employers’ premises — oh yeah, once I had prospects, gym membership, the whole nine yards. The paper used to be based in one of the city’s old baronial buildings. They sold it, turned it into a hotel. The office is now housed in one of Edinburgh’s many chucked-up-in-five-minutes jobs. I hear if times get tough the building can be quickly converted into a shopping mall. Forget about the workers who spend all their waking lives in there; best to keep those options open. The way newspapers were going since the web came along, I could see a Portakabin on the horizon.

As I walked in the front door I looked about for Auld Davey. He’d been the doorman since Adam was a boy. Okay, it was a wee while since I’d been in the place but things had changed — Davey’s desk was gone for a start. I looked about for someone. Nobody in sight. Then I spotted it: a touch screen on the wall.

What the fuck?

Davey had been carted, then.

Departments were listed on a kind of spider-graph. I tapped ‘Editorial’. Faces from the newsdesk flashed up.

‘Holy crap, it’s like Press Gang!’

To a one they were twenty-somethings. Did any of them have the shoulders for this job? I scrolled up the K-ladder, found the man I was after. My esteemed former editor, Mr Bacon, or Rasher as I still called him, was clinging to his job in a world of much younger, brighter, sparklier new recruits.

I pressed his ‘call’ button.

‘Hello,’ I said, too quickly. The computer screen was still loading. Felt a bit stupid; checked over my shoulder instinctively. No one had clocked my mistake.

An electronic beep came from the box, ‘connected’ flashed up on the screen. ‘Hello, Bacon here.’

‘Bingo.’

‘Excuse me?’

I tried again. ‘Ah, hello… just so chuffed to have this screen thing working.’

A note of impatience crept into Rasher’s voice. ‘Who is this?’

‘Well, I wasn’t expecting the red carpet but perhaps a bit more of a welcome after that last scoop I handed you.’ I’d delivered the results of my previous case — and attendant political sleaze — in a package with a bow for Rasher.

‘Dury! By the cringe… I’ll buzz you.’

‘You what? I’m here at the front door. Don’t pull the old “I’ll call later” caper.’

A huff. Loud one.

‘Dury, I mean the gate… I’ll buzz the gate open. Grab the lift to the top floor, I’ll get you in the newsroom.’

Felt like a dope, not for the first time. ‘Right. Gotcha.’

The lift was marked ‘elevator’. Made sense: Christ, we’re all so mid-Atlantic now, aren’t we? As I ascended I saw the place had changed more than I’d imagined. The biggest department, by a country mile, was advertising. There used to be a running joke between the sales force and the reporters that their work paid all the wages. The old joke never took into account the reason why people were buying the paper in the first place; it looked like the idea had filtered all the way up to the boardroom.

The newsroom had been decimated. I remembered the days when this place hummed with activity. Now it was a sorry reflection of its former glory. The staff numbers must have been cut by fifty per cent, padded out a bit by a few kids chasing work experience. I shook my head.

Rasher was in full flow, blasting a subeditor for a headline. ‘“ Heartless thieves”,’ he roared. ‘“ Heartless thieves”… Is there another type?’

I crept up, said, ‘Well, there’s the thieves that took the Stone of Destiny.’

Sniggers.

Rasher turned, black-faced, ready to pounce. His mutton chop sideburns caught stray static as he creased his face. ‘Dury, I might have fucking known!’

I’d got away with it. He offered a hand, said, ‘Man, you’re a sight for sore eyes.’ He’d put on a Sean Connery accent: ‘sight’ came out as ‘shite’. Like I could argue with that.

‘You’re still hanging in there, then… Bit thin on staff, no?’

He raised an arm, circled a finger for effect. ‘You’ll see more than a few changes, Gus.’

‘Oh yeah, at least one or two.’ I could remember when newsrooms reeked with ciggie smoke; this lot, at a guess, were green-tea drinkers.

‘Would you like the tour?’

I smiled, a wry one. ‘Eh, another time maybe… I’m, er, here on business.’

Rasher stopped still. ‘Sounds ominous.’

I knew my smile had slipped. ‘It is.’

He led the way through the newsroom. Not one reporter looked away from their screen. It was like a call centre, or worse, a battery farm. In my day reporters did their job on the streets. I wondered if this lot would last a day without Google.

Rasher closed the door to his office, pulled out a chair, waved sit.

‘Thanks,’ I said.

‘Coffee?’

My lip twitched — a betrayal, what poker players call a ‘tell’.

‘Ah, of course,’ said Rasher. He dipped into a drawer in his desk, produced a bottle of Talisker. ‘A drop of this, perhaps.’

He had my number.

‘So, you mentioned business…’

That I had for him. In spades.

‘The Corstorphine Hill murder… what have you got on it?’

Rasher leaned forward in his chair, looked uneasy. ‘You’re working that?’

‘Not really. I just got started.’

‘How come?’

‘That tip-off you got last night?’

‘Bizarro — guy on the scene.’

‘Yeah… that was me.’

He looked scoobied. ‘That was you? Who found the body?’

I spilled. Told him about stumbling over the corpse; think I stumbled over a few of my words in the telling. The memory was chilling.

Rasher beamed. ‘That’s a page-one exclusive.’

‘You what?’

‘I’ll give you a front-page byline for that… The story in your own words: “How I happened on the murder scene”. Fucking magic stuff.’ He was out of his chair, flashing headlines at me as he perched on the edge of his desk. ‘This is top flight, Gus. Jesus, thanks for bringing this in.’

The idea of resurrecting my writing career sent my mind racing. What would my ex-wife make of that? It would be an eye-opener for Debs all right.

I played Rasher, said, ‘I’m actually after information.’

‘Fire away, whatever I can do to help flesh out the article.’

The word ‘flesh’ sent a jolt through me.

‘I picked up the name of the victim. I take it plod hasn’t let you know yet.’

Rasher sat down, leaned forward and put his elbows on the desk. ‘I spoke to the wee arsewipe this morning… Didn’t give me a thing, except that “waiting to notify next of kin” shite.’

‘Johnstone?’

‘That’s him. Right cheeky wee cunt — thinks he’s doing you a favour when he’s really just doing a job we pay him for.’

‘I met him last night. He doesn’t know I have the name.’

Rasher opened his palms. ‘Well, I’m all ears… and it stays here.’

He didn’t need to add that last bit — I knew Rasher wouldn’t run the name until plod had released it. I said, ‘Thomas Fulton.’

Rasher leaned back, tucked his hands behind his head, ‘The Moose.’

‘You know this guy?’

He was up again, pacing about the room. The static from the cheap carpet tiles set his sideburns twitching once more. ‘You don’t remember the skinny wee runt, Gus?’

‘I thought I’d heard the name.’

Rasher picked up the scoosh bottle, topped himself up then offered me a refill. I nodded.

‘Moosey was the one the police had down for the Crawford kid’s mauling.’

I came up blank. ‘The what?’

‘The kid that got attacked by a pit bull. They reckoned it was Moosey’s dog… Never managed to pin it on him, though.’

I twisted round to face him. He’d dropped his pitch, found a reverent tone, was enough to capture my interest. ‘Why not?’