Believing the Lie - Elizabeth George [2]
“What?” Zed thought he’d somehow misheard and he rooted round in his mind for anything that rhymed with snore as a means of reassuring himself that his editor hadn’t just condemned his piece to the bottom corner of page 20 or worse.
“Snore,” Rodney said. “Snore as in sleep as in put me to sleep. You promised me a hot investigative piece if I sent you up there. You guaranteed me a hot investigative piece, as I recall. If I went to the expense of putting you up in a hotel for God knows how many days— ”
“Five,” Zed said. “Because it was a complicated piece and there were people who needed to be interviewed so that the objectivity one wants to maintain— ”
“All right. Five. And I’m going to want a word about your choice of hotel, by the way, because I’ve seen the bill and I’m wondering if the bloody room came with dancing girls. When someone is sent the hell up to Cumbria for five days at the expense of the paper, promising that a whiz-bang story will be the outcome…” Rodney picked up the piece and used it to gesture with. “What the hell exactly have you investigated here? And what in God’s name’s this title all about? ‘The Ninth Life.’ What is this, something from one of your highbrow lit-ra-cher classes? Maybe creative writing, eh? Fancy yourself a novelist, do you?”
Zed knew the editor hadn’t been to university. That was part of the canteen gossip as well. Sotto voce had come the advice soon after Zed’s joining the staff of The Source: For God’s sake and for your own good, don’t cross Rod with anything that reminds him you have a first or a second or a whatever in something even vaguely associated with higher education, mate. Cannot cope and thinks you’re taking the piss, so keep it shut when it comes to that kind of thing.
Thus Zed trod carefully with his reply to Rodney’s question about the title of his piece. “I was thinking of cats, actually.”
“You were thinking of cats.”
“Uh… having nine lives?”
“Got it in a basket. But we’re not writing about cats, are we.”
“No. Of course not. But…” Zed wasn’t sure what the editor wanted, so he altered direction and plunged on with his explanation. “What I meant was that the bloke’s been eight times in rehab, see, in three different countries and nothing worked for him, and I mean nothing. Oh, maybe he’s been clean for six or eight months or once for a year but after a bit it’s back to the meth and he’s wasted again. He ends up in Utah, where he meets a very special woman, and suddenly he’s a new man and he never looks back.”
“Presto, change-o, that’s about it? Saved by the power of love, eh?” Rodney’s voice sounded affable. Zed took heart from this.
“That’s exactly it, Rodney. That’s what’s so incredible. He’s completely cured. He comes home, not to the fatted calf but— ”
“The fatted what?”
Zed backpedaled swiftly. Biblical allusion. Obviously a very bad way to go. “Stupid remark, that. So he comes home and he starts a programme to help the unhelpable.” Was that a word? Zed wondered. “And not who you’d expect him to help: young blokes and girls with their lives ahead of them. But rejects. Old blokes living rough, society’s detritus— ”
Rodney glanced his way.
Zed hurried on with, “Social rubbish getting its next meal from the inside of wheelie bins while they spit out their rotting teeth. He saves them. He thinks they’re worth saving. And they respond. They’re cured as well. A lifetime of booze and drugs and living rough and they’re cured of it.” Zed took a breath. He waited for Rodney’s reply.
It came evenly enough but the tone was suggestive of a lack of enthusiasm for Zed’s defence of his reportage. “They’re rebuilding a bloody tower, Zed. Nobody’s cured of anything and