Дик Фрэнсис - Break In

I walked the two miles back to the hotel and sat in my room for a while there contemplating the walls, and then I went down to find the rented Mercedes in the underground park and drove it out to Chiswick.

‘You’re incredibly early,’ Danielle said, faintly alarmed at my arrival. ‘I did say two a.m., not half after eleven.’

‘I thought I might just sit here and watch you, as no one seemed to mind me being here last time.’

‘You’ll be bored crazy.’

‘No.’

‘OK.’

She pointed to a desk and chair close to hers. ‘No one’s using that tonight. You’ll be all right there. Did you get that cut fixed?’

‘Yes, it’s fine.’

I sat in the chair and listened to the mysteries of newsgathering, American style, for the folks back home. The big six-thirty evening slot, eastern US time, was being aired at that moment, it appeared. The day’s major hassle had just ended. From now until two, Danielle said, she would be working on anything new and urgent which might make the eleven o’clock news back home, but would otherwise be on the screens at breakfast.

‘Does much news happen here at this time of night?’ I asked.

‘Right now we’ve got an out-of-control fire in an oil terminal in Scotland and at midnight Devil-Boy goes on stage at a royal charity gala to unveil a new smash.’

‘Who?’ I said.

‘Never mind. A billion teenagers can’t be wrong.’

‘And then what?’ I said.

‘After we get the pictures? Transmit them back here from a mobile van, edit them, and transmit the finished article to the studios in New York. Sometimes at midday here we do live interviews, mostly for the seven-to-nine morning show back home, but nothing live at nights.’

‘You do edit the tapes here?’

‘Sure. Usually. Want to see?’

‘Yes, very much.’

‘After I’ve made these calls.’ She gestured to the telephone and I nodded, and subsequently listened to her talking to someone at the fire.

The talent is on his way back by helicopter from the race riot and should be with you in ten minutes. Get him to call me when he can. How close to the blaze are you? OK, when Cervano gets to you try to go closer, from that distance a volcano would look like a sparkler. OK, tell him to call me when he’s reached you. Yeah, OK, get him to call me.’

She put down the receiver, grimacing. ‘They’re a good mile off. They might as well be in Brooklyn.’

‘Who’s the talent?’ I said.

‘Ed Cervano. Oh... the talent is any person behind a microphone talking to the camera. News reporter, anchor, anyone.’

She looked along the headings on the board on the wall behind her chair. ‘Slug. That’s the story we’re working on. Oil fire. Devil-Boy. Embassy. So on.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Locations, obvious. Time, obvious. Crew. That’s the camera crew which is allocated to that story, and also the talent. Format, that’s how fully we’re covering a story. Package means the works, camera crew, talent, interviews, the lot. Voice-over is just a cameraman, with the commentary tagged on later. So on.’

‘And it’s you who decides who goes where for what?’

She half nodded. ‘The bureau chief, and the other coordinators, who work in the daytime, and me, yes.’

‘Some job,’ I said.

She smiled with her eyes. ‘If we do well, the company’s ratings go up. If we do badly, we get fired.’

‘The news is the news, surely,’ I said.

‘Oh yes? Which would you prefer, an oil fire from a mile off or to think you feel the flames?’

‘Mm.’

Her telephone rang. ‘News,’ she said, and listened. ‘Look,’ she said, sounding exasperated, ‘if he’s late, it’s news. If he’s sick, it’s news. If he doesn’t make it on to the stage at a royal gala, it’s news. You just stay there, whatever happens is news, OK? Get some shots of royalty leaving, if all else fails.’ She put down the receiver. ‘Devil-Boy hasn’t arrived at the theatre and it takes him a good hour to dress.’

‘The joys of the non-event.’

‘I don’t want to be scooped by one of the other broadcasting companies, now do I?’

‘Where do you get the news from in the first place?’

‘Oh... the press agencies, newspapers, police broadcasts, publicity releases, things like that.’

‘I guess I never wondered before how the news arrived on the box.’

‘Ten seconds’ worth can take all day to gather.’

Her telephone rang again, with the helicoptering Ed Cervano now down to earth at the other end. Danielle asked him in gentle tones to go get himself a first degree burn, and from her smile it seemed he was willing to go up in flames entirely for her sake.

‘A sweet-talking guy,’ she said, putting down the receiver. ‘And he writes like a poet.’ Her eyes were shining over the talent’s talents, her mouth curving from his honey.

‘Writes?’ I said.

‘Writes what he says on the news. All our news reporters write their own stuff.’

Another message came through from the royal gala: Devil-Boy, horns and all, was reported on his way to the theatre in a bell-ringing ambulance.

‘Is he sick?’ Danielle asked. ‘If it’s a stunt, make sure you catch it.’ She disconnected, shrugging resignedly. ‘The hip-wriggling imp of Satan will get double the oil fire exposure. Real hell stands no chance against the fake. Do you want to see the editing rooms?’

‘Yes,’ I said, and followed her across the large office and down a passage, admiring the neatness of her walk and wanting to put my hands deep into her cloud of dark hair, wanting to kiss her, wanting quite fiercely to take her to bed.

She said, ‘I’ll show you the studio first, it’s more interesting’, and veered down a secondary passage towards a door warningly marked ‘If red light shows, do not enter’. No red light shone. We went in. The room was moderate in size, furnished barely with a couple of armchairs, a coffee table, a television camera, a television set, a teleprompter and a silent coffee machine with paper cups. The only surprise was the window, through which one could see a stretch of the Thames and Hammersmith Bridge, all decked with lights and busily living.

We do live interviews in here in front of the window,’ Danielle said. ‘Mostly politicians but also actors, authors, sportsmen, anyone in the news. Red buses go across the bridge in the background. It’s impressive.’

‘I’m sure,’ I said.

She gave me a swift look. ‘Am I boring you?’

‘Absolutely not.’

She wore pink lipstick and had eyebrows like wings. Dark smiling eyes, creamy skin, long neck to hidden breasts like apples on a slender stem... For Christ’s sake, Kit, I thought, drag your mind off it and ask some sensible questions.

‘How does your stuff get from here to America?’ I said.

‘From in here.’ She walked over to a closed door in one of the walls, and opened it. Beyond it was another room, much smaller, dimly lit, which was warm and hummed faintly with walls of machines.

‘This is the transmitter room,’ she said. ‘Everything goes from in here by satellite, but don’t ask me how, we have a man with a haunted expression twiddling the knobs and we leave it to him.’

She closed the transmitter room door and we went through the studio, into the passage and back to the editing rooms, of which there were three.

‘OK,’ she said, switching a light on and revealing a small area walled on one side by three television screens, several video recorders and racks of tape cassettes, ‘this is what we still use, though I’m told there’s a load of new technology round the corner. Our guys here like these machines, so I guess we’ll have them around for a while yet.’