Mark Sanderson - Snow Hill

His colleagues had unaffectionately dubbed him Pencil and ridiculed him behind his back, but Patsel survived by virtue of a Machiavellian grasp of office politics. Even so, it was an open secret that the humourless Hun was looking to jump ship—he had been at loggerheads with either the night editor or the editor-in-chief ever since Johnny had joined the paper.

As much as he longed for Patsel’s departure, Johnny was terrified by rumours that Simkins might be poached to replace him.

The sooner Johnny got promotion, the more secure he’d be. However, to achieve that he needed to make a splash—and that meant a spectacular exclusive. The one that had made his name was a piece exposing a drugs racket at St Bartholomew’s Hospital. A senior pharmacist had masterminded a scheme whereby he and his cohorts were making a fortune on the black market, selling drugs from the hospital’s pharmacy. At a time when patients were struggling to pay for every pill, his cut-price rates had, he claimed, been an act of charity —a noble motive undermined by the fact that not many people needed addictive painkillers in wholesale quantities.

The whole thing had been going on under Johnny’s nose for a while before he smelled a story; back then, his mind had been on other things. It was during a visit to his dying mother that he had been surreptitiously offered cheap morphine by a member of the medical staff. He would have accepted, except that the drug was useless when, as in this case, the patient had bone cancer.

Johnny used his rage at his mother’s imminent death to work tirelessly—with Bill’s help—to expose the racket. The finished piece had raised questions in Parliament and renewed demands for the establishment of a National Health Service. However, apart from a few more prison cells being filled, nothing came of it all.

Johnny’s reward had been promotion from office junior to fully-fledged reporter. Unfortunately, thanks to Patsel, that had translated into the dubious distinction of reporting from the Old Bailey.

Court reporters—not to be confused with those that dealt with the affairs of the once German residents of Buckingham Palace—were afforded little respect because their authors were spoon-fed the copy. They did not have to sniff out stories, follow up leads or track down witnesses. They only had to get off their backsides when the judge stood up. Trials dealt with the aftermath of crime in a calm and clinical fashion. There was none of the excitement of the hunt, no vying to get ahead of the pack in pursuit of your quarry.

To make matters worse, Simkins—who was not confined to the courtrooms of the Old Bailey—had just landed a scoop that had eclipsed Johnny’s drug-ring effort, being simpler and juicier.

On the very morning that the police released details of the murder of Margaret Murray, a nineteen-year-old girl who worked for a firm of solicitors, the Chronicle had run an interview with the killer’s wife. It was an excellent piece of reporting—except, in Johnny’s indignant opinion, it should never have been written at all. Simkins had come by his exclusive using dubious means.

The moment the tip-off came in from his source inside the Metropolitan Police, Simkins had got on the phone to Scotland Yard. Realising that no information would be forthcoming if he identified himself as a reporter, he’d passed himself off as the concerned spouse of the man in custody. Though his normal speaking voice was tainted with the trademark drawl of an Old Harrovian, Simkins was a master of verbal disguise. Shortly after their first meeting, he had taken to calling Johnny at the crime desk with bogus complaints about his latest report or cock-and-bull tip-offs delivered in a variety of accents ranging from a thick Irish brogue, Welsh lilt or stage Cockney. His ability to mimic women’s voices as well as men’s was uncanny. Nevertheless, Johnny, who was not that wet behind the ears, soon caught on. The pranks had, however, taught him a valuable lesson: it was always advisable to meet informants face-to-face. In the flesh it was easier to be certain that someone was who they said they were, and he could watch for the tell-tale clues that revealed when they were lying.

Unfortunately the dozy detective Simkins spoke to at the Yard had fallen for the ruse and told him everything he needed to corroborate the story. Having winkled out the address of the arrested man—“He’s told you where we live, has he, officer?”—Simkins had gone straight round there.

Turning up on the poor woman’s doorstep ahead of the local constabulary, he’d given her the impression that he was a plain-clothes detective, and then delivered the news of her dear husband’s arrest.

Until that moment, Mrs Shaw had believed her Arthur, a travelling salesman for a toy company, was away on business in Newcastle. Within minutes she had learned that he’d been unfaithful to her, that he’d got a young secretary not even half his age in the family way and, in the heat of a furious post-coital row about a backstreet abortion, had strangled the poor girl to death. Mrs Shaw had thought the worst she had to fear was a visit from the tallyman. That was before Simkins came along and revealed that her husband of seventeen years was destined for the scaffold.

Simkins’ exclusive had not stinted on the woman’s shock, anger and grief. He had captured in minute detail every aspect, right down to the dreary landscape reproductions on the wall of the spick-and-span parlour where she sat sobbing uncontrollably; the ember-burns on the hearth rug; and the half-excited, half-fearful reactions of the neighbours who, alerted by her cries, had gathered in glee by the railings, peering through the open door for a glimpse of whatever misfortune had befallen the Shaws.

Part of Johnny admired Simkins’ skill and brass neck, but he’d vowed he would never stoop to such underhand methods. It wasn’t that he was a prig: he simply refused to inflict such pain on another human being—especially when it was for no better cause than the amusement of others. Bill’s motto when it came to composing a report was “titillation with tact”. Well, Simkins had no tact. If he had stopped for one moment to imagine how his mother might have felt if she’d found herself in Mrs Shaw’s position, then Johnny was sure his conscience, however atrophied, would have silenced him.

Johnny had lost his own mother two years ago. Watching her die a long and painful death had knocked the stuffing out of him. An only child with no near relatives, he’d had no one to turn to but a few close friends, like Bill and Matt and Lizzie. It was only afterwards that he’d learned how much they’d been worried about him. Somehow, he’d bounced back. Instead of letting the bitterness overwhelm him, he’d managed to maintain his cheery outlook—in public, at any rate. He had learned how to conceal his emotions. Professional callousness, a prerequisite of the job, often clashed with personal compassion, but the two were not mutually exclusive. The best journalists were those who managed to bring both detachment and compassion into play when writing their copy.

Wiping away the last crumbs of his lunch, Johnny shook off all thought of Simkins and returned to studying the typewritten note that had been delivered by the District Messenger Company soon after eight thirty that morning. He had no idea who had sent it. The thin white envelope was sealed and stamped with thick black letters: PRIVATE & CONFIDENTIAL. The tip-off inside could not have been more succinct:

A SNOW HILL COP HAS SNUFFED IT.

Johnny had checked all the news agencies for bulletins on a dead or missing policeman and drawn a blank. He’d tried calling the press bureau at Scotland Yard and the desk at Snow Hill but in both cases the response was the same: they had no idea what he was talking about. The messenger company claimed they had no record of who had paid for the message to be delivered. Now he pulled out his notepad and drew a line through Rotherforth and put a question mark next to Matt.