He nodded. “You bet. They do Knicker-Nickers’ World… and Morris Dancers’ Monthly…”
“The Ferret-Fanciers’ Gazette…”
“Which Depilatory?…”
“Matchstick Modelling Today…”
“The Cribbage Quarterly…”
“Oh yes,” Ellie Fenchurch concluded. “Swordfish magazines’ll explore any niche market there is. You see, the thing about ferret-fanciers or matchstick-modellers is: there may not be that many of them, but, by God, they’re loyal. Circulation guaranteed to stay steady. All the same articles get recycled – with slight editorial adjustments – every three or four months, production costs are pared down to the bone, but, in spite of all that, the punters just keep on buying.”
Mrs Pargeter looked bewildered. “I thought Swordfish was about the big newspaper titles – the daily and the Sunday one. That’s what they’re known for, surely?”
Ellie Fenchurch shook her head. “Don’t you believe it. Those’re the public profile, yes, but they both make a big loss. Swordfish’s profit comes from the advertising it sells for local papers and the specialist markets. I mean, if you’re trying to sell protective underpants for people who want to do ferret-down-trouser tricks in pubs, there’s not many places you can advertise, is there? Got to be The Ferret-Fanciers’ Gazette, hasn’t it?”
“I suppose so.” Mrs Pargeter smiled. “What’re you up to at the moment, Ellie?”
“Right this minute, I’m just off to do a character assassination on an Australian soap opera star.”
“Oh, nice.”
“Well, I’ll enjoy it. But that won’t take long. Once he knows I know about his very close interest in sheep, I think the interview could come to an abrupt end. How’s about lunch? You not going to be with Ricky all day, are you?”
“Hour, maybe,” said Truffler.
Ellie Fenchurch looked at her watch. “Great. See you both at the Savoy Grill half past one. We’ll all get thoroughly rat-arsed.”
“But, Ellie,” said Mrs Pargeter ingenuously, “I didn’t think journalists drank these days.”
“No, of course they don’t.” Ellie Fenchurch let out a snort of laughter. “And, what’s more, politicians don’t take backhanders!”
∨ Mrs Pargeter’s Plot ∧
Fifteen
These days, Mrs Pargeter thought regretfully as she and Truffler were ushered into the presence of Inside Out’s editor, even journalists’ offices don’t look any different from anyone else’s offices. The huge floor-space covering a whole storey of Swordfish House, the rows of open-plan low-walled cubicles, each centred on the winking coloured screen of a computer, could have belonged equally convincingly to a bank or a mail-order firm or an insurance company.
What she thought of as the hack’s natural environment-battered manual typewriters, overspilling wicker wastepaper baskets, encrusted coffee cups with cigarette butts floating in them, a half-bottle of whisky in the bottom desk drawer, and maybe even the odd green eye-shade – had vanished for ever. Journalism had followed the route of so many professions, hands-on human contact giving way to a life lived by remote control, its reality distanced from its operators through the medium of the microchip.
Dear oh dear, thought Mrs Pargeter, not like me to be so maudlin. She pulled herself together with the memory of some words the late Mr Pargeter had often spoken to her. “Everyone should home in on what they’re good at, Melita my love. You’re good at being positive. So be positive. There are quite enough people out there who’re good at being negative, but what you’ve got going for you is something much rarer.”
She smiled at the recollection as she leant forward to shake the hand of Ricky Van Hoeg, editor of Inside Out. His superior status over the other hacks at least gave him the right to a small cubicle in the corner of the office, but its glass walls and open door did not make it seem very separate from the hushed, open-plan keyboard-clacking environment outside.
Ricky Van Hoeg was in his thirties, earnestly bespectacled, with the look of someone whose life mission it is to sell you a mortgage. Mrs Pargeter wasn’t sure what she was expecting – or even wanting – but it wasn’t this. She would have hoped that the editor of a prisoners’ whereabouts magazine might have some minimal element of loucheness about him.
But Ricky Van Hoeg showed not a flicker of the unconventional. He had, she later discovered, started working for a property company’s house magazine, then moved across to Swordfish Communications as a sub-editor on Dentifrice and Floss Monthly. From there he’d been promoted to deputy editor of Morris Dancers’ Monthly, and recently moved to take over Inside Out.
He spoke about his job with pride but without humour. He showed his guests the mock-up for the next month’s cover. There was a glossy colour photograph of Wormwood Scrubs gates. Contents promised inside included: GATE FEVER: IS IT ALL IN THE MIND?, HOW TO ORGANIZE A COMING-OUT PARTY, AMATEUR DRAMATICS FOR A CAPTIVE AUDIENCE, MAKE YOUR PINUPS REALLY LAST – TRY SHRINK-WRAPPING, as well as regular features – NEWS OF THE SCREWS: WHICH ONES HAVE BEEN TRANSFERRED WHERE?, THE GOOD NICK GUIDE – WINSOME GREEN, plus of course our invaluable listings: WHO’S IN WHERE, HOW LONG, WHAT FOR, AND DID THEY DO IT?
“All going all right then, Ricky?” asked Truffler after they had shown proper appreciation for the mock-up.
“Excellent. Circulation on the up and up.”
“Well, stands to reason. When you’ve got a prison population that’s going up and up…”
Ricky Van Hoeg gave the detective a narrow look. He didn’t want his achievements underestimated. “Our circulation is going up at a faster rate than the prison population,” he said coldly.
Mrs Pargeter instantly defused any potential atmosphere between the two men. “Obviously means you’re doing a very good job, Ricky.”
“I like to think so. Anyway, what can I do for you, Mr Mason?”
“It’s a touch of the old quid pro quo,” Truffler replied. “You remember, I helped you out with some info on the Machete Murders Retrospective you done?”
“Yes, of course. And very useful it all turned out to be.”
“Good. Well, now I need a bit of gen on a couple of lags, and I thought you’d be the geezer to help out.”
“No problem. We have a variety of research resources here at Inside Out. If we have serious difficulty in finding out about people, we put out requests for information on the Internet. That’s proved very successful. But let’s start with the basic, shall we?” Ricky Van Hoeg turned to his computer and deftly punched at the keyboard. Rapidly changing images flickered across the screen. “Are the people in question actually inside at the moment?”
“No, no, both very much on the loose. That’s why we need to know about them.”
“What’re their names?”
“Well, what I’ve got’re kind of, like, nicknames…”
“We have people listed on the database with their noms de guerre as well as their real names. Some of their aliases run into the hundreds, but…” Ricky Van Hoeg continued with the smug pride of a bank manager unveiling a new savings account, “… we can run a search according to any parameters you care to specify and find them within seconds. So what’re the names?”
“Clickety Clark and Blunt,” said Truffler.
Ricky Van Hoeg immediately keyed in the information. The screen split down the middle. Two photographs appeared. They were not the same poses as those Truffler had produced, but their subjects were easily recognizable.