On the other hand, the people inside the house were mass murderers.
‘You’re sure he guaranteed safe conduct?’ Oliver asked. ‘I’m only concerned for Dale, you understand.’
‘Absolutely safe conduct,’ the chief assured them, ‘and I trust him. Why would he harm you? He needs you. The guy is feeding off the media. With our cooperation he’s a star, a superstar. Without it he’s just a nobody who’s going to get the chair. He needs us as much as we need him.’
Dale and Oliver exchanged nervous glances. It occurred to them both that a person who craved fame could get quite a dollop of it by murdering the Coffee Time team on live TV. On the other hand, what an opportunity! They would be fearless seekers after truth, war correspondents, risking all to bring the numberone story of the decade into the nation’s lounges.
Their boss pressed home his advantage. ‘I’m telling you he’s given us an unequivocal guarantee.’ He lowered his voice. ‘But listen, we don’t have to tell the world you got that guarantee. We can let the world think you’ve gone in there with no guarantee of your safety at all, because that’s how much the people’s right to news and current affairs means to you.’
‘Wow,’ said Dale.
‘ “Wow” is right. They’ll probably give you the medal of honour,’ the chief added.
‘And of course we do have a very real duty to the public,’ said Oliver, who was ever conscious of his selfappointed status as one of the nation’s premier moral guardians.
‘So that’s settled,’ said the chief. ‘The equipment is fairly simple. I’ll get one of the guys to run through it with you, and after that all you’ve got to do is take your clothes off and we’re cooking.’
He nearly got away with it. For a moment he thought he had.
He hadn’t.
‘Take our clothes off?’ Dale stared, aghast.
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s no problem,’ said Murray, trying to hustle them along.
‘You mean change our clothes, surely,’ said Oliver. ‘You mean you want us to put on combat fatigues, no doubt.’
Like all news reporters, Oliver relished the idea of donning a flakjacket and looking like a soldier.
But the Chief of News and Current Affairs did not mean change their clothes. ‘I mean you’ll have to take your clothes off. The guy’s worried about concealed weaponry. What’s the big deal?’
‘Ahem,’ said Oliver, clearing his throat nervously, ‘I think the question is one of presentation.’
Dale and Oliver looked good and were proud of it. Their image was the classic template of the news anchor team, the standard by which all other news anchor teams were judged: he silver and dignified in his late fifties, she cute and feisty in her midthirties. In the studio, with their makeup, hairspray and designer power clothing they looked, quite simply, superb. The American dream behind a desk; like some splendid ambassador and his gorgeous second wife.
The problem was that underneath the story was rather different. As, indeed, it normally is.
He, for instance, wore a corset. She was midway through a cellulitereduction programme. He had two massive and unpleasant hernia scars. She had an insane tattoo on her thigh, smudged by botched efforts to have it removed.
He suddenly remembered that his housemaid was sick and he was into the second day of his last, rattiest pair of jocks. It suddenly occurred to her that she was planning an aprèsshow tryst with her new lover, the second assistant floor assistant. She had therefore come to work wearing a pair of lacy scarlet splitcrotch panties with a heartshaped hole cut out of the bottom.
‘Hey, we can get you new underwear for Christ’s sake,’ Murray said. ‘We can put makeup on your blemishes.’
‘I don’t think so, boss,’ said the head makeup artist, who was hovering in the background. ‘Oliver and Dale use quite a lot of foundation on their faces. If the same proportions are applied to their whole bodies, I don’t think they’ll actually be able to walk.’
‘I really do think, Chief,’ said Oliver, ‘that the proper place for the nation’s premier anchor team in a crisis like this is in the studio – controlling the operation from the centre, so to speak. After all, generals don’t go into battle, do they?’
‘I’ll do it, but only with a body double,’ said Dale, who had not really thought it through.
And so Oliver and Dale missed their chance at media immortality but, much more importantly, they kept their nasty bits under cover. Considerably relieved, the two of them retreated to the studio, where their wonderful researchers had already lined up an exclusive interview for them with Dove, the actress whom Bruce had reduced to near tears at the Bosom Ball.
As it happened, Police Chief Cornell, already miffed at having his authority usurped by the news broadcasters, would not have allowed Oliver and Dale to do the job anyway. ‘We’ve got to use an experienced newsgathering team,’ he insisted, ‘preferably one that’s seen combat. If we send in someone who fumbles or fucks up, it could push this guy over. I want the best two journalisttechnicians you’ve got.’
And so the call went out for an experienced operator and recordist who had steady nerves and acceptable bodies and were reasonably relaxed about the state of their underwear.
Chapter ThirtyOne
The arrangements were made, and Wayne made his way down through the house once more, to await the camera crew.
Meanwhile Bruce paced about the lounge, desperately trying to think of a way out.
Scout was proud of how deeply Wayne ’s plan had affected him. ‘Ain’t Wayne smart, huh?’ she said.
‘I can’t do it,’ Bruce replied. ‘I just can’t.’
Velvet was with Brooke, attempting to redress her wound with torn cushion covers. She stared up at her father. ‘Daddy, you have to. This woman needs a doctor and you heard what he said he’d do to me. He said he’d shoot me in the mouth.’
Velvet was fighting back her tears but none the less was showing a strength of character of which her parents had been completely unaware. Years of wandering round shopping malls with too much money to spend had never brought out the best in her.
‘Yes, all right, Velvet. I’m sorry. I won’t let that happen. But I have to think. This is a very terrible thing for me. For us. Wayne ’s right, you see. Once I do this thing, my life as I know it will be over, no matter what I do, no matter what I achieve, this is all I will be remembered for.’
Brooke, whose life looked as if it was very nearly over already, tried to protest at this. Although it came out only as a gurgle, her meaning was clear: she felt her problem should be number one on the group agenda.
Bruce simply could not bring himself to agree. ‘Brooke, I know you’re seriously wounded, and, believe me, when I can do something about it I will, but right now I am powerless to help. And I have a problem too. Ten minutes from now the entire world is going to hear me confess to mass murder.’
‘But you’re being coerced. You can deny it afterwards,’ said Farrah. It had begun to dawn on her just how seriously Bruce’s defeat was going to affect her own fortunes.
‘Oh sure, Farrah. Some plea in mitigation – a retrospective claim to be a pathetic victim, outplayed and manipulated by a piece of scum out of the lowest trailer in the Midwest.’
‘You’d better watch your mouth.’ Scout did not like to hear Wayne spoken of in that way.
Bruce was too scared to care. ‘What? You want me to like the guy, Scout? Your boyfriend is a sadistic maniac, a heartless psychopath.’