A Crooked Sixpence Page 24

  ‘And you then showed your version to those gentlemen?’

  ‘Yes, and they agreed that it was a fair account of what had happened.’

  ‘And you wrote the headlines?’

  ‘Under the supervision of the editor, Mr. Barr, yes.’

  ‘And the pictures?’

  ‘They were not my responsibility.’

  ‘You had no reason to doubt the facts supplied by Knight and O’Toole?’

  ‘None whatever. Their reports have always been completely accurate in the past.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Harrison, and sat down. Barker rose, hunching his shoulders under his gown as if to free them, like a boxer just climbed into the ring, and said in his high-pitched, cutting old man’s voice: ‘You say you wrote this...er...article, Mr. Stress?’

  ‘My name is Starsh-S-T-A-R-S-H,’ said Starsh, with the ghost of a smile. ‘The final version, yes.’

  ‘Oh, Starsh,’ said Barker, pretending to find the name difficult to pronounce. ‘But I have read this article with great care’—he picked up a copy of the Sun and briefly went through the motions of studying it—‘and I cannot find your name on it.’

  ‘You won’t,’ said Starsh patiently. ‘I merely arranged the article in its final form, subbed it, as we say in the newspaper trade, and the subeditor does not normally have his name on the story.’

  Oh?’ said Barker, apparently astonished. ‘Then this attribution here—“A Sunday Sun Exposure by Norman Knight”—is a piece of deliberate deception?’

  ‘It is normal newspaper practice,’ said Starsh.

  ‘I did not ask you that,’ said Barker. ‘We may all have our own ideas on what constitutes normal newspaper practice!’ He smirked at the jury. ‘Answer my question, please, is this a piece of deliberate deception?’

  ‘No,’ said Starsh.

  ‘You admit that it is untrue? Remember, you are on oath.’

  ‘I know I am on oath,’ said Starsh. ‘Mr. Knight was mainly responsible for the article, and so his name is on it.’

  ‘And you say that this is not a deliberate fraud?’

  ‘No.’

  Barker’s junior handed him a scrap of paper, and Barker held it close to his face, reading.

  O’Toole turned and whispered to Norman Knight, ‘He doesn’t know much about newspapers, does he?’

  ‘As much as you or I do,’ Knight whispered back. ‘His son is an executive on the Pic. It’s just an act for the jury’s benefit.’

  Barker finished his reading, and asked: ‘Have you ever seen the plaintiff before?’

  Starsh looked at her. ‘No, never,’ he said.

  ‘You know nothing about her?’

  ‘Only what Knight and O’Toole told me.’

  ‘Did you instruct them to “get the dirt on her”?’ Barker used the tone of a quotation for the phrase.

  ‘Certainly not,’ said Starsh. ‘I have never given an instruction like that in my life.’

  ‘You say that is not normal newspaper practice?’ Again, the last phrase sounded like a quotation.

  ‘Certainly not.’

  ‘And that is not deliberate deception?’

  ‘No,’ said Starsh, again with the ghost of a smile.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Barker, sitting down.

  Harrison was on his feet a second later.

  ‘Mr. Starsh, have you ever heard of a sub-editor getting a credit on an article?’

  Before Starsh could answer, Barker jumped up. ‘Surely, My Lord, we are interested in what the witness knows, not what he has heard.’

  The judge smiled. ‘I think Mr. Starsh might qualify as an expert in this matter, Mr. Barker,’ he said. ‘But no matter, I do not think the facts are in dispute. Have you any more questions, Mr. Harrison?’

  ‘No, My Lord,’ said Harrison.

  ‘Thank you, Mr. Starsh,’ said the judge, and Starsh bowed and left the witness-box. The jury followed him with their eyes as he climbed the stairs, ignored O’Toole and Knight, and sat behind them.

  There was a whispered conference going on between Harrison and Firebrace. Then Firebrace followed Starsh up the stairs and bent by O’Toole’s ear.

  ‘Mr. Knight is next, Mr. O’Toole,’ he said. ‘As you will be corroborating his evidence, I think it might be politic if you left the courtroom. You will hear your name called.’

  O’Toole patted Knight on the shoulder, and as he left the courtroom he heard Harrison say, ‘Call Norman Knight.’

  Outside in the corridor, O’Toole was accosted by a ferret-faced man he did not know. ‘Jim, you’ll be giving evidence, won’t you? You know me, from PA pictures.’

  ‘Yes, I will,’ said O’Toole.

  ‘The boys on the national dailies want pictures of all the witnesses,’ said the man. ‘Would you mind coming outside for a moment and posing?’

  ‘Of course,’ said O’Toole. He followed the man down the stairs, across the great hall and out into the Strand, where a photographer who had been leaning against the railings stubbed out a cigarette and came up oozing professional camaraderie.

  ‘Give us a nice smile, Jim,’ he said, bringing his camera up to his eye.

  O’Toole found himself composing his features into a frank, winning smile, and noted with subconscious approval that passers-by looked at him with interest, taking him for someone important. This was the first time anyone had ever been interested in him as a news story, and O’Toole felt a momentary friendliness for the photographer and his contact man, speculating about the million breakfast-tables where he would appear the next morning.

  ‘It’s a pleasure, boys,’ he said, as they thanked him. Then, returning to the corridor outside the court, he reflected that he was a minor participant in the case, had been no doubt photographed merely for the sake of a complete cover of the story, and would probably wind up as an unused picture yellowing in the photographic morgue. Still, he understood better why apparently sane people had been pleasant to him while he was manoeuvring them into some outrageous quotation.

  For more than an hour O’Toole paced up and down outside the glass door of the court, smoking. From time to time the cutting edge of Barker’s voice penetrated the door, but O’Toole could not make out what he was saying. His thoughts kept returning to the enigma of Starsh. Here was a man who had renounced the cause of Lenin and the international working class for the cause of Cameron Barr and the shareholders of the Sun without any apparent regret, who had scoffed at Norman Knight and his myopic idealism, who had turned off the vague objections of principle and humanity raised by O’Toole with thoroughgoing cynicism and Jesuitical logic-chopping; a man who had seen through the nineteenth-century subtleties of Marxism, and could not possibly accept the antediluvian tribalism of Jehovah and the Chosen People; but the same man, who seemed prepared to do anything to get Barr’s approval, was not willing to renounce the allegiance of a religion which he could not possibly believe, and must have known he was imperilling the paper’s shabby case with the meaningless ritual of hat and Old Testament, when he might easily have sworn the ordinary oath, in which no one nowadays believed anyway, or made an affirmation which would have established him with the jury as a convinced atheist and therefore a man of honour and principle. O’Toole felt, uncomfortably, that there was nothing at all for which he was prepared to make even so small a gesture, whether he believed in it or not.

  Warming to Starsh, O’Toole was beginning to look forward to his encounter with Barker. He had to admire the superb professionalism with which Barker had exploited the ignorance and middle-class priggish self-righteousness of the jury, but it seemed to him that a man who opened his case by contending that a reporter’s by-line was a fraud on the public had departed far from the issue of truth or falsity and converted the hearing into a childish debate, with so many points for matter and so many for manner, pick your side out of the hat and to hell with the rules of argument. Barker may be good at his business, thought O’Toole, but I’ve had a bit of experience at hoodwinking slow-
witted people with a simplified version of events myself.

  Then an attendant put his head round the door of the courtroom and called ‘James O’Toole’ as if there had been a hundred people to choose from. O’Toole went by him into the well of the court, where Harrison motioned him into the witness-box. O’Toole, feeling every eye on him, picked up the Bible he found in front of him, and the associate handed him the printed card. O’Toole felt the momentary uneasiness he always had when he had to open his mouth for the first time in front of English strangers, the consciousness of belonging to a slightly absurd nationality, and read off the card:

  ‘I swear by Almighty God that the evidence I shall give in this case shall be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.’

  O’Toole glanced at the jury, directly across the court from him: sure enough, several were suppressing smiles. ‘Provincials!’ he thought, turning to Harrison.

  ‘Your name is James O’Toole?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I believe you are an Australian, Mr. O’Toole?’

  ‘As it happens,’ said O’Toole, hearing, or imagining scattered titters.

  ‘And you are Mr. Knight’s assistant?’

  ‘That is part of my job, yes.’

  ‘Now would you tell His Lordship and the jury what part you played in the train of events which led to the publication of this article?’

  He’s making it rather obvious that he’s only doing this for the money, O’Toole thought, observing that Harrison was using a fatigued, almost timid tone, as if he had a headache,

  ‘I accompanied Mr. Knight to the plaintiffs flat,’ said O’Toole.

  ‘This lady?’ Harrison asked, indicating the other end of the bar table.

  ‘Yes,’ said O’Toole. ‘She welcomed us, and said that she had spoken to Mr. Knight on the telephone. In the flat she introduced a young woman whom she said was a friend. Then Mr. Knight and the young woman—I believe her name was Kathleen—left the flat to buy a bottle of gin...’

  ‘On whose suggestion?’

  ‘I don’t remember. After Mr. Knight and the plaintiff returned, the young woman stripped naked and the plaintiff asked me for money.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘She said she had to pay the rent. Then she partly disrobed, and at that point Mr. Knight and I left the flat.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘We returned to the Sun office, where I compiled a report on the events of the inquiry, and later I assisted Mr. Knight with the writing of the story.’

  ‘And what is your view of the accuracy of the published article?’

  ‘It squares with what I saw and heard,’ said O’Toole.

  ‘Thank you, Mr. O’Toole,’ said Harrison.

  O’Toole turned to face Barker, who rose with that same gesture of settling his gown aggressively over his shoulders.

  ‘What alias were you using that night, Mr. O’Toole?’ Barker asked.

  ‘I said my name was David McNaughton,’ said O’Toole.

  ‘Do you often use an alias?’

  ‘You wouldn’t expect us to say we were from the Sm, would you?’

  ‘I am asking the questions, if you please, Mr. O’Toole. Do you often use an alias?’

  ‘As often as I need to,’ said O’Toole. It sounded weak.

  ‘You say the plaintiff asked for money?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She said, “Give me some money”?’

  ‘Of course not,’ said O’Toole. ‘She said she had to pay the rent.’

  ‘And how is that a demand for money?’

  ‘I have to pay rent, too,’ said O’Toole, ‘but I wouldn’t tell you about it unless I expected you to help me.’ Keep that smart-aleck tendency under control, he thought. It’s fools they trust around here.

  ‘You say the plaintiff disrobed. What does that mean?’

  ‘She had on a housecoat and nothing underneath. She didn’t get it right off, but...’

  ‘I think that answers the question, Mr. O’Toole,’ said the judge, leaning forward.

  ‘Thank you, My Lord,’ said O’Toole, enjoying the unfamiliar style of address, and wondering if it touched any ancestral memory.

  ‘None the less, you say, on oath, that she was improperly dressed?’ Barker asked.

  ‘She was partly naked, if you call that improper,’ said O’Toole. He saw that Eileen, sitting beside Barker, was making an O of outraged disbelief. Poor bitch, thought O’Toole, she’s let them convince her that her story is true. Well, that’s her look-out.

  ‘Mr. Knight has told us that you supplied some of the more lurid phrases of the article,’ said Barker. ‘Is that the case?’

  O’Toole felt a surge of anger at the crude trick in the question. This is real all-in, he thought.

  ‘Did he say they were lurid phrases? I thought they were well justified by the situation.’

  ‘You are fencing with me, Mr. O’Toole,’ said Barker. And I just cut your ear off, said O’Toole to himself. ‘Did you, or did you not, write a part of this article?’ He held up the paper.

  ‘Yes, I did,’ said O’Toole.

  ‘But you have not put your name to it. Were you ashamed of it?’

  ‘No,’ said O’Toole. ‘I am not responsible for the credits on the stories.’

  ‘But was it not dishonest to allow this article to be attributed solely to Mr. Knight?’

  ‘It would have been dishonest to attribute it to me,’ said O’Toole. ‘I am only Mr. Knight’s assistant, it would be most improper to credit me with the responsibility.’

  Glancing at the jury, O’Toole thought he might have scored some sort of shabby point. Barker was deep in his notes. Honesty, O’Toole thought, has certainly come a long way from the primary meaning around here.

  ‘Are you responsible for the phrase, “The Vampire of Knightsbridge”?’ Barker asked, with distaste.

  ‘I may have been,’ said O’Toole. ‘It emerged from discussion.’

  ‘You think it fair to brand the plaintiff with this cheap slogan?’

  ‘Fair enough,’ said O’Toole.

  ‘Was it not a mere sensational phrase, designed to increase the circulation of your newspaper?’

  ‘I have no direct interest in the circulation of the paper,’ said O’Toole, adding to himself, and you know it. ‘We wanted a phrase to describe the plaintiff’s activities and that seemed a suitable one.’

  ‘You were not pandering to low tastes, you say?’

  ‘No,’ said O’Toole. This hardly seemed to cover the case. He wanted to add, some people like to do it, and some people like to read about it, and that’s the difference between Eileen and us, but when it comes to trotting out the clichés you win hands down.

  ‘Would you mind examining the article?’ said Barker, motioning to an attendant, who passed O’Toole a copy of the paper.

  ‘You see that photograph, ostensibly of the plaintiffs victim, as the article puts it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you responsible for it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you recognise it?’

  ‘The subject is wearing a mask,’ said O’Toole warily.

  ‘It is not a picture of the young lady you say was present, then?’

  The hell with you, thought O’Toole. This isn’t the Boy Scouts. Eileen is lying, Barker is lying, the judge is probably wearing corsets, and I’m not going to let this hired adjuster of the truth make an idiot out of me.

  ‘I would say it was.’

  ‘You’re not certain?’

  ‘I can’t identify a faceless figure with certainty,’ said O’Toole. ‘As far as I can tell, this is the plaintiffs professional assistant.’

  Barker flushed. ‘You are trying to be clever, Mr. O’Toole,’ he said angrily.

  ‘I don’t think we need pursue this, Mr. Barker,’ said the judge. ‘Mr. O’Toole, as far as you can tell, this is the young lady?’

  ‘Yes,’ said O’Toole.

  ‘Very well,’ said
the judge. ‘Proceed, Mr. Barker.’

  But Barker had sat down.

  Harrison, wearing a worried frown, rose to re-examine.

  ‘Mr. O’Toole, you have a lengthy professional experience of newspapers?’

  ‘Seven or eight years, yes.’

  ‘Have your reports been challenged before?’

  ‘Never.’

  O’Toole saw Barker bow his head toward the bar table and shake it impotently. He was inclined to agree with him. Still, he couldn’t expect to have a monopoly of low-grade arguments.

  ‘Thank you, Mr. O’Toole,’ said Harrison, and O’Toole left the witness box and walked across the well of the court to sit beside Norman Knight. He noticed that his hands were hot and aching.

  ‘How do you think it’s going, Norman?’ he whispered.

  ‘You did well, Digger,’ said Knight. ‘Starsh didn’t make much of an impression, but from that point I think we’ve taken most of the tricks.’

  ‘I rather admired him sticking to his Semitic guns,’ said O’Toole.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Knight. ‘He might have been afraid that Barker would pick him up on it, anyway. You can never tell.’

  ‘Who’s next?’

  ‘That’s all, I think.’

  But at that moment, Harrison said, ‘Call Victor Sprogg.’

  ‘How does Sprogg come into this?’ O’Toole whispered.

  Knight shook his head. ‘Don’t know,’ he said. They watched Sprogg walk timidly over the well of the court to the witness box, looking, with his protruding ears and an inappropriate fixed grin, like one of Nature’s martyrs on his way to the lions’ den, clearly doomed one day to dandruff, bad breath, bladder trouble, piles, rickety prostate and every other humiliating complaint known to man. This is the acid test of Barker’s strategy, thought O’Toole. If he gets tough with Sprogg, the jury will believe Sprogg if he says he’s Mao Tse-Tsung.

  Sprogg took the oath, stumbling over the minor parts of speech, and looked desperately round, like a cornered animal, until he saw Harrison.

  ‘You are the art editor of the Sunday Sun, Mr. Sprogg?’ Harrison asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And part of your duties is to have charge of the paper’s photographic staff?’