The elevator creaked upward. Kevin felt a familiar physical sensation of anticipation. He always did just before knocking on a door for a story. The feeling was not unpleasant, but it was invariably mixed with a trace of worry that he might not score.
The top-floor landing was graced with a token square of thin nylon carpet and a few fading water-colors, tasteless but inoffensive. There were four flats, each with a bell, a letter box, and a peephole. Kevin found 5C, took a deep breath, and rang the bell.
There was no answer. After a while he rang again, then put his ear to the door to listen. He could hear nothing. The tension drained out of him, leaving him a little depressed.
Wondering what to do, he walked across the landing to the tiny window and looked out. There was a school across the road. A class of girls played netball in the playground. From where he was, Kevin could not tell whether they were old enough for him to lust after.
He went back to Fitzpeterson's door and leaned on the bell. The noise of the elevator arriving startled him. If it was a neighbor, maybe he could askThe sight of a tall young policeman emerging from the elevator shocked him. He felt guilty. But, to his surprise, the constable saluted him.
"You must be the gentleman's brother," the policeman said.
Kevin thought fast. "Who told you that?" he said.
"The porter."
Kevin came at him fast with another question. "And why are you here?"
"Just checking he's all right. He didn't turn up for a meeting this morning, and his phone's off the hook. They ought to have bodyguards, you know, but they won't, these Ministers." He looked at the door. "No answer?"
"No."
"Any reason you know of he might have been… well, ill? Upset? Called away?"
Kevin said: "Well, he rang me up this morning and sounded distressed. That's why I came." It was a very dangerous game he was playing, he knew; but he had not lied yet, and anyway it was too late to back out.
The policeman said: "Perhaps we should get the key from the porter."
Kevin did not want that. He said: "I wonder if we should break the door down. My God, if he's ill in there…"
The policeman was young and inexperienced, and the prospect of breaking a door down seemed to appeal to him. He said: "It could be as bad as that, you think?"
"Who knows? For the sake of a door… the Fitzpetersons are not a poor family."
"No, sir." He needed no more encouragement. He put his shoulder to the door experimentally. "One good shove…"
Kevin stood close to him, and the two men hit the door simultaneously. They made more noise than impact. Kevin said: "It's not like this in the movies," then bit his tongue-the remark was inappropriately flippant.
The policeman seemed not to notice. He said: "Once more."
This time they both put all their weight into it. The doorpost splintered and the female half of the lock came free, falling to the floor as the door flew open. Kevin let the policeman go in first. As he followed him into the hall, the man said: "No smell of gas."
"All-electric flats," Kevin said, guessing.
There were three doors off the tiny hall. The first led into a small bathroom, where Kevin glimpsed a row of toothbrushes and a full-length mirror. The second stood open, revealing a kitchen, which looked as if it might have been searched recently. They went through the third door, and saw Fitzpeterson immediately.
He sat in an upright chair at his desk, his head in his arms, as if he had fallen asleep over his work. But there was no work on his desk: just the phone, a glass, and an empty bottle. The bottle was small, and made of brown glass, with a white cap and a white label bearing handwriting-the kind of bottle chemists use to dispense sleeping pills.
For all his youth, the policeman acted commendably fast. He said: "Mr. Fitzpeterson, sir!" very loudly, and without pause crossed the room and thrust his hand inside the dressing gown to feel the prone man's heart. Kevin stood very still for a moment. At last the policeman said: "Still alive."
The young constable seemed to take command. He waved Kevin toward Fitzpeterson. "Talk to him!" he said. Then he took a radio from his breast pocket and spoke into it.
Kevin took the politician's shoulder. The body felt curiously dead under the dressing gown. "Wake up! Wake up!" he said.
The policeman finished on the radio and joined him. "Ambulance any minute," he said. "Let's walk him."
They took an arm each and tried to make the unconscious man walk. Kevin said: "Is this what you're supposed to do?"
"I bloody well hope so."
"Wish I'd paid attention at my first-aid classes."
"You and me both."
Kevin was itching to get to a phone. He could see the headline: I SAVE MINISTER'S LIFE. He was not a callous young man, but he had long known that the story which made his name would probably be a tragedy for someone else. Now that it had happened he wanted to use it before it slipped through his fingers. He wished the ambulance would hurry.
There was no reaction from Fitzpeterson to the walking treatment. The policeman said: "Talk to him. Tell him who you are."
This was getting a bit near the bone. Kevin swallowed hard and said: "Tim, Tim! It's me."
"Tell him your name."
Kevin was saved by an ambulance in the street. He shouted over the noise of the siren: "Let's get him onto the landing, ready."
They dragged the limp body out through the door. As they waited by the elevator, the policeman felt Fitzpeterson's heart again. " 'Struth, I can't feel nothing," he said.
The elevator arrived, and two ambulance men emerged. The elder took a quick look and said: "Overdose?"
"Yes," the policeman said.
"No stretcher, then, Bill. Keep him standing."
The policeman said to Kevin: "Do you want to go with him?"
It was the last thing Kevin wanted to do. "I should stay here and use the phone," he said.
The ambulance men were in the elevator, supporting Fitzpeterson between them. "We're off," the elder said, and pressed the button.
The policeman got out his radio again, and Kevin went back into the flat. The phone was on the desk, but he did not want the copper listening in. Maybe there was an extension in the bedroom.
He went through. There was a gray Trimphone on a little chipboard bedside unit. He dialed the Post.
"Copy, please… Kevin Hart here. Government Minister Tim Fitzpeterson was rushed to hospital today after attempting to commit suicide point paragraph. I discovered the comatose body of the Energy Ministry's oil supremo after he had told me comma in a hysterical phone call comma that he was being blackmailed point par. The Minister…" Kevin tailed off.
"You still there?" the copytaker demanded.
Kevin was silent. He had just noticed the blood on the crumpled sheets beside him, and he felt ill.
17
What do I get out of my work? Derek Hamilton had been asking himself this question all morning, while the drugs wore off and the pain of his ulcer became sharper and more frequent. Like the pain, the question surfaced at moments of stress. Hamilton had begun badly, in a meeting with a finance director who had proposed a schedule of expenditure cuts amounting to a fifty-percent shutdown of the entire operation. The plan was no good-it would have helped cash flow and destroyed profitability-but Hamilton could see no alternatives, and the dilemma had made him angry. He had yelled at the accountant: "I ask you for solutions and you tell me to close up the bloody shop!" Such behavior toward senior management was quite intolerable, he knew. The man would certainly resign, and might not be dissuaded. Then his secretary, an elegant unflappable married woman who spoke three languages, had bothered him with a list of trivia, and he had shouted at her, too. Being what she was, she probably thought it part of her job to take that kind of maltreatment, but that was no excuse, he thought.