Elizabeth George - Believing the Lie

Zed Benjamin had never been called into the office of the editor before, and he found the experience simultaneously disconcerting and thrilling. The disconcerting half of it resulted in massive sweating of the armpits. The thrilling half of it produced a heartbeat he could actually feel, for some reason, in the pads of his thumbs. But since from the first he’d believed it essential to see Rodney Aronson as just another bloke at The Source , he attributed both the sweating of armpits and the pulsing of thumbs to the fact that he’d switched from his one summer suit to his one winter suit rather too early in the season. He made a mental note to change back to the summer suit in the morning and he only hoped his mother hadn’t taken it out to be cleaned once she saw he’d made the switch. That would be, Zed thought, exactly like her. His mum was helpful and earnest. She was too much of both.

He sought a distraction, easy enough to find in Rodney Aronson’s office. While the editor of the newspaper continued to read Zed’s story, Zed began to read the headlines on the old issues of the tabloid that were framed and hung along the walls. He found them distasteful and idiotic, their stories a form of pandering to the worst inclinations in the human psyche. Rent Boy Breaks Silence was a piece on a kerb-crawling encounter between a sixteen-year-old boy and a member of Parliament in the vicinity of King’s Cross Station, an unseemly romantic interlude unfortunately interrupted by the advent of vice officers from the local nick. MP in Sex Triangle with Teenager preceded the rent boy breaking his silence and MP Wife in Suicide Drama followed hard on its heels. The Source had been on top of all these stories, first on the scene, first with the scoop, first with the money to pay informants for salacious details to juice up a report that in any legitimate paper would either be written with discretion or buried deep inside or both. This was particularly the case for such hot topics as Prince in Bedroom Brouhaha, Kiss-and-Tell Equerry Shocks Palace , and Another Royal Divorce? , all of which, Zed knew very well from gossip in the canteen, had topped The Source ’s previous circulation figures by over one hundred thousand copies each. This was the sort of reportage for which the tabloid was known. Everyone in the newsroom understood that if you didn’t want to get your hands dirty sifting through other people’s nasty bits of laundry, then you didn’t want to work as an investigative reporter at The Source.

Which was, admittedly, the case for Zedekiah Benjamin. He definitely didn’t want to work as an investigative reporter at The Source . He saw himself as a columnist-for-the- Financial Times kind of bloke, someone with a career providing enough respectability and name recognition to support his real passion, which was writing fine poetry. But jobs as respectable columnists were as scarce as knickers under kilts, and one had to do something to put food on the table since writing excellent verse wasn’t about to do it. Thus Zed knew it behooved him to act at all times like a man who found the pursuit of the social gaffes of celebrities and the peccadilloes of members of the royal family journalistically and professionally fulfilling. Still, he liked to believe that even a paper like The Source could benefit from a slight elevation from its usual position in the gutter, from where, it had to be said, no one was gazing at the stars.

The piece that Rodney Aronson was reading demonstrated this. In Zed’s mind, a tabloid story did not have to swim in lubricious facts in order to capture the reader’s interest. Stories could be uplifting and redemptive like this one and still sell newspapers. True, stories like this one weren’t likely to make the front page, but the Sunday magazine would do, although a two-page spread at the centre of the daily edition wouldn’t have gone down bad either, just as long as photographs accompanied it and the story made a jump to the following page. Zed had spent ages on this piece and it deserved a gallon of newsprint, he thought. It had exactly what readers of The Source liked, but with refinement. Sins of the fathers and their sons were featured, ruined relationships were explored, alcohol and drug usage was involved, and redemption was achieved. Here was a feature about a wastrel, caught in the deadly embrace of methamphetamine addiction, who at the eleventh hour of his life — more or less — managed to turn himself around and live anew, birthing himself through an unexpected devotion to society’s lowest of the low. Here was a story with villains and heroes, with worthy adversaries and enduring love. Here were exotic locations, family values, parental love. And above all -

“It’s a snore.” Rodney Aronson tossed Zed’s story to one side of his desk and fingered his beard. He dislodged a flake of chocolate therein and popped it into his mouth. He’d finished a Cadbury Hazelnut while he was reading and his restless eyes took in his desktop as if seeking another indulgence, which he didn’t need, considering a girth barely hidden by the overlarge safari jacket he favoured for workday attire.

“What?” Zed thought he’d somehow misheard and he rooted round in his mind for anything that rhymed with snore as a means of reassuring himself that his editor hadn’t just condemned his piece to the bottom corner of page 20 or worse.

“Snore,” Rodney said. “Snore as in sleep as in put me to sleep. You promised me a hot investigative piece if I sent you up there. You guaranteed me a hot investigative piece, as I recall. If I went to the expense of putting you up in a hotel for God knows how many days — ”

“Five,” Zed said. “Because it was a complicated piece and there were people who needed to be interviewed so that the objectivity one wants to maintain — ”

“All right. Five. And I’m going to want a word about your choice of hotel, by the way, because I’ve seen the bill and I’m wondering if the bloody room came with dancing girls. When someone is sent the hell up to Cumbria for five days at the expense of the paper, promising that a whiz-bang story will be the outcome…” Rodney picked up the piece and used it to gesture with. “What the hell exactly have you investigated here? And what in God’s name’s this title all about? ‘The Ninth Life.’ What is this, something from one of your highbrow lit -ra-cher classes? Maybe creative writing, eh? Fancy yourself a novelist, do you?”

Zed knew the editor hadn’t been to university. That was part of the canteen gossip as well. Sotto voce had come the advice soon after Zed’s joining the staff of The Source : For God’s sake and for your own good, don’t cross Rod with anything that reminds him you have a first or a second or a whatever in something even vaguely associated with higher education, mate. Can not cope and thinks you’re taking the piss, so keep it shut when it comes to that kind of thing.