The Quiet Man

Organised Crime

Another one. Look at that. Well. It’s not as if there aren’t always arrests in London, even ones broadcast live on telly. Couldn’t this be unrelated? Part of some other tragedy, someone else’s? I suppose it could. But look at them: three men in suits, good ones. Westwood? Who knows. I can’t tell. But they’re television executives, they probably always wear suits with surnames. They’re the types who would have been impressed by Moriarty. They would have been taken with him. They were: of course they were.

They’re keeping their heads down, covering their faces with their hands. They know how news programmes work, they know the cameras will zoom in on their faces if they show them. Yet more elements of organised crime, arrested for unspecified charges, even the newsreader is commenting on that. The outrage of it. What, is this getting too close to home for her? She probably knows these men, they might be friends of hers. Or she knows their wives, or their kids go to school together. They stand next to each other in lifts, they buy coffee at the same place in the mornings. Something like that. Why them? Why now? Trumped up charges, she says, with a question mark. No: no, I don’t think so.

Moriarty had to have some connections in order to create evidence of a fake telly programme; I found those copies of The Storyteller in a second hand shop in Dulwich, in the discount bin. How did they get there? Someone made them, someone released them. They were branded with the BBC logo. Moriarty and his dead eyes, his fake smile, he had tentacles everywhere, even at the Beeb. Not anymore. Here they are. They’re handcuffed and being filmed as they’re led out of the building.

So. They’ve broken through into that side of his operations now, too. I knew it would happen, I just never imagined it would take this long. Three years of commenters at The Strand telling me about their fond childhood memories of Richard Brook reading them fairy stories with puppets in the background. His soothing voice, they told me. I fell asleep with that programme on, remember the one about the grim reaper? That one gave me shivers. People are so suggestible. They’re idiots, most of them. Unthinking idiots.

I never thought I’d be the one saying that. Well, someone’s got to.

“You know them?” The barman asks me that. He looks familiar, but I can’t place him. I haven’t been here before, have I? Maybe. Mary might have brought me here; a lunch with some important person or other, someone from marketing, someone from the press, I don’t know. I’ve had enough of those lunches that they all blend together: linen napkins and ornate spoons, I don’t know. I don’t remember. He looks up at the telly over the bar. “Friends of yours?”

It’s a joke, is it? Why would I be friends with television executives? He’s mocking me. Of course he is: I’m at some posh party at this hotel I would never have been able to afford before now, filled with publishing types, all of whom want to talk about books, and me, and my career, and Sherlock and his amusing and amazing genius, and I’m sitting at the bar in a ridiculous-looking tuxedo, with a bow tie on for god’s sake, watching a newsreader complain about the arrest of three men from the BBC. There’s a blown-up photo of me in the lobby, meant to look as if it’s not posed, as if I just happened to be standing on a quaint road somewhere in Devon, caught by surprise by a professional photographer. It’s not a leap, really. I must look like the sort of person who knows men who wear suits like that.

He smiles at me, he points at the screen. Oh: I know what he means. Not the executives, not the criminals: the police. The police are on the telly too, their faces are obvious. I recognize a few of them. They look proud of themselves, illuminated by all the camera flashes. This is live, they know they’re on telly. They push the heads of the men down as they get inside the car. High profile people, criminals, caught. Caught on camera. The newsreader is still complaining.