Oh Marina Girl Read online

  In the month since he was slain, Liddell had already become a martyr to the ideal of free speech.

  The high regard with which he’d been held by his peer group was confirmed by the swift establishment of a memorial fund that was soon swollen with generous donations seeking to provide financial security for the wife and daughter who survived him (he’d been the household’s sole breadwinner, his wife having adopted the role of full-time nurse to their mentally handicapped daughter, and he had died intestate with only modest savings to his name).

  Liddell had been found slumped in the armchair of a room in the Holiday Inn, his hands bound behind his back, his throat sliced and with a small hatchet lodged in his forehead. Judging by the amount of blood, which had clogged his body to the armchair, oozed down his trouser legs and trickled over his brogues to congeal on a fake fur white rug, some hours had passed before his body had been discovered by a maid’s routine visit to clean the room.

  The hotel register revealed that the room — a single with an uninterrupted view of a brick wall — had been booked in the name of Toni Mahe, who had paid by cash and checked out shortly before the discovery of Liddell’s corpse.

  Mahe’s name was suspected by the detectives investigating the murder to be false. This suspicion was reinforced by the discovery that the address Mahe had scrawled in the hotel register was fictitious.

  Liddell’s murderer had yet to be identified and the motive for the murder yet to be established, though umpteen conspiracy theories had flourished in the month since it had occurred. These ranged from the fanciful (a revenge attack perpetrated by an unhinged and overly-sensitive-to-the-point-of-paranoid author bearing a grudge against a savage review of his masterpiece) to the sordid (a secret sado-masochistic sex romp with an unknown prostitute — male or female, take your pick — with homicidal tendencies) but all, in some way or another, failed to provide a satisfactory explanation for Liddell’s murder.

  So much for Craig Liddell. What about the alleged ‘misguided defence of pernicious propaganda’ of Ian Thome’s letter, which had evidently prompted his kidnapper to abduct him?

  Once again, it might help you reach your own conclusions about Thome’s letter if I reproduce it for you verbatim. That way you can decide for yourself if it is indeed a ‘defence of intolerance’ or, rather, a reasoned argument simply put.

  Dear Sir,

  I feel that Ms Toe’s review of Original Harm, the debut novel from Tom Haine, was based on a misreading of the text.

  Whilst the book addresses the subject of abortion, which is a matter of life or death, the author neither seeks to steer his readers down a path leading to one particular point of view nor shirks from presenting his own.

  Contrary to Ms Toe, I happen to share the standpoint of Igor Harmnail, the narrative’s improbably-named anti-hero, that ‘life is no more nor less than a sexually transmitted terminal condition’ and that, ‘from the womb to the tomb, from abortion to euthanasia, whenever they find themselves confronted with a moral dilemma and faced with making a decision between right and wrong, the faithful are nothing if not consistent in their uncanny ability to always get it wrong’.

  I may speak from the luxury of never having to face the dilemma myself and, arguably, that very fact disqualifies my opinion from serious consideration but, just maybe, my impartiality permits the application of reason without the potent, yet poisonous, potion of doctrine and emotion to cloud the issue.

  The fact that Ms Toe is of a different sex to myself seems sufficient, in her opinion, for her to dismiss my views as irrelevant. Whilst she is, of course, entitled to her views, a book review seems an inappropriate place to express them and it is quite unprofessional for her to mount her soapbox at Haine’s expense. My suspicion is that Toe had her own personal agenda at play here and was guilty of grinding her axe at the expense of the dispassionate professionalism such an emotive subject deserves and requires.

  But, contrary to Toe’s superficial reading, Original Harm is not simply a book about abortion; rather, it concerns itself with the hijacking of such dilemmas by moral terrorists who swallow the dangerously nonsensical credo that ends justify means.

  Finally, Toe is apparently ignorant of the factual context which served as Haines’s inspiration for the book. For, whilst the dramatisation, and much of the characterisation, is fictional, Original Harm is based on a true story.

  Yours,

  Ian Thome

  So much for the letter. Hardly sufficient to prompt a kidnapping, don’t you think? Thome’s letter contains, certainly, a defence, but whether or not it constitutes a defence of ‘pernicious propaganda’ you are not as yet at liberty to judge.

  So, what? I’m conscious of the fact that, rather than enlightening you, the reproduction of this letter has probably, at this stage, succeeded only in baffling you further. If you can bear with me for a little longer, I’ll endeavour to explain the context, as I see it, which led to these extraordinary events.

  You will have gathered that Ms Toe is the name of the author of the review of Original Harm that had inspired Thome’s letter to the editor. Toe, whose first name is Niamh, is an occasional freelance book reviewer for the paper.

  Of course, you remain unable to state categorically whether this letter is a ‘misguided defence of pernicious propaganda’ or a reasoned argument because you are unfamiliar with Original Harm and its review.

  Let’s take the review first. Once again, I’ll reproduce it for you verbatim (it really is the only way to avoid misinterpretation):

  It is often said that the first and most important lesson writers learn is to write about what they know. Tom Haine has chosen abortion as the subject for his debut novel; a subject of which he seems singularly ill-equipped to write about meaningfully. He reveals next to no medical knowledge about the subject throughout his text; offers no comment on the stance (contemporary or historical) adopted towards abortion by the Church or Westminster or Holyrood; appears ignorant of the current relevant legislation; clearly has had no direct or indirect personal experience of abortion and, as a consequence of all these factors, brings no fresh insights to bear on the debate.

  Frankly, I, for one, found his muddled little lily-livered arguments offensive and unhelpful.

  All this could, arguably, be forgiven if only Original Harm could be shown to shine under the light of an analysis restricted strictly to literary merits but, alas, even under that artificially confined examination, it proves dull reading: its prose is turgid; its plot twists tortured; its characters one-dimensional stereotypes.

  If Haine has a talent, it is for threatening to deaden the acutely felt physical and mental pain of the reality of abortion under the anaesthetic of his banal prose.

  Perhaps if he had been a she and could write with his heart as well as his head, this book would have some merit. Unfortunately, Original Harm has no merit whatsoever.

  As it is obviously impractical to reproduce Haine’s novel verbatim, for reasons of copyright as much as reasons of space, I won’t. Instead, I’ll reproduce the summary that appears on its flyleaf (which is, of course, written with the express purpose of arousing your curiosity and enticing you to read the text — i.e. it could not be more biased).

  A gang of self-styled purists known as The Amino beats a doctor to death outside his clinic. The victim, who had been on his way to the hospital to help in the delivery of his second child, had written a defence of the existing legalisation of abortion in the previous day’s newspaper. The doctor’s wife gives birth to a boy less than an hour after her husband’s savage beating.

  Not only is Original Harm a carefully constructed thriller/killer; it’s a crafted commentary on the absurdity lurking at the core of conventionality; a sly slant on the surreality of reality and an all-too pertinent parable for the present, pondering the tolerance of intolerance and the intolerance of tolerance.

  You will perhaps
have already guessed that it is the beating referred to in the flyleaf, which is based on the ‘true story’, referred to in Thome’s letter.

  It is a matter of historical record that at precisely 11:33am on the morning of February 11 1992 in this very city, a Dr Joseph Kirk was attacked and beaten to death outside his clinic on his way to help in the delivery of his second child.

  So just who is this Tom Haine character anyway? Well, no photo or autobiographical information about him is given on the jacket of Original Harm. The author appears to revel in anonymity.

  chapter three

  a tight spot

  So much for context. Whether I’ve clarified or muddled things further for you I don’t know. Let’s return to the fateful events of the other morning.

  You’ll recall that I departed from my routine to rush to the Mitchell in a state of some consternation. At the library I scurried to the general reference section and yanked two thick phone books from a packed shelf, one listing the numbers of residents with surnames ranging from the letters L to Z located south of the Clyde, the second, of residents with corresponding surnames located north. My freshly licked fingers, trembling with trepidation, turned the pages of the first volume then traced down a row of names.

  When they failed to find the particular name they were searching for, this volume was discarded and they grabbed the second volume. However, again unable to locate the name they were seeking, my by-now inky fingertips were soon expressing their perplexity by drumming on the desktop, a habit which halted when I realised that the page where the particular surname I sought (and dreaded finding) would have been listed was missing.

  I returned to the office as quickly as I could to consult a copy of the same volume (why hadn’t I saved myself the trip to the library and consulted the office volume earlier? Two reasons. Firstly, I didn’t know which phone directory would list the name I was seeking and the selection of directories at the library was far more extensive than those at the office. Secondly, I sought to conceal my consternation from my colleagues) and confirm my worst fears.

  On my way back to the office I had an uneasy feeling that I was being watched, a feeling which, though I was unable to verify it, lingered until it solidified into a conviction. It occurred to me that I’d managed to entangle myself in something of a tight spot.

  Back at my desk, my worst fears were confirmed when I located the name I’d been seeking. This solved the puzzle of the letter and put me in a very tight spot indeed. Cursing my recklessness, I reread the letter for the umpteenth time that morning — the familiarity of the calligraphy continued to niggle me — then scribbled down the number and address from the phone book and glanced at my watch. There was hardly any time to think. What could I do? I tried the number. It rang out. I rang a taxi to take me to the address. As I left my desk, my letter opener — the skean dhu — caught my eye. I grabbed it, slipped it into my raincoat pocket and dashed for the lift.

  It occurs to me that I’ve neglected to tell you the name in the phone book, haven’t I? It was Ian Thome.

  chapter four

  alphabetti spaghetti

  The previous morning, Guy Fall had dragged himself out of bed as he did every other morning. He shared a subsiding flat at Holyrood Quadrant off Great Western Road with a fellow student with whom he was barely on speaking terms. The floral wallpaper peeled off the walls of his high-ceilinged bedroom, baring mushroom-brown damp stains. Tall, rain-pocked windows revealed the tenement’s back green strewn with sodden tabloids and porno mags, orange peel, empty and open rusting tins of baked beans and chopped tomatoes and an assortment of holey supermarket polythene bags.

  Chilled to the marrow, he kicked down his stale sheets and raised his head from the hollow indent of the yellowing striped pillowcase, pondering whether he was up to facing the laundrette or whether he could get away with postponing it for a further day or two. He yawned, stretched his limbs, cracking his joints, rolled himself onto his feet and stumbled off to relieve himself in the toilet, scratching his scalp, bracing himself for the arctic hall.

  He lived in standard student squalor but that didn’t depress him — only the laundrette, populated with its terminal captives of poverty, managed that. As a product of a middle-class suburban home located on the city’s northern outskirts, Fall equated squalor with liberation. He revelled in its decadence. It was temporary poverty. It gave him a baseline from which he would chart his progress. He’d recall it with affection in years to come when he’d achieved his ambition to be the creative director in the city’s hippest ad agency.

  Fall was in his first year of a full-time media studies course at Glasgow University, which he was studying as a career route into advertising. Advertising was his obsession. He was as passionate about ads as other people are about books or records or films or paintings. He was a connoisseur of adverts. He could recite taglines and whistle jingles from ads he’d seen when he was three years old. Adverts were visualisations of his conception of paradise. He yearned for reality to be like an advert.

  Conversely, he did all he could to avoid the news and never read a paper. If adverts were visualisations of paradise, newspapers — with their never-ending supply of fatal accidents, murders, genocidal atrocities and natural disasters — were daily confirmation of the reality of hell.

  But, as Fall shuffled into the toilet and stood shivering and pissing into the lavatory whilst a tap trickled lukewarm water into a grimy bath, his romantic notions of the glamour of squalor soon evaporated.

  His flatmate was a reclusive fellow student (who had never been spied on campus during daylight hours but had occasionally been sighted entering the flat from some all-nighter and heading for bed, passing Fall in the hall with a short sigh and an averted eye) with smooth white skin, whose diet seemed to consist solely of long-past-its-sell-by-date alphabetti spaghetti which, given that there had never been any evidence of used pots, pans or plates, he apparently consumed cold from the tin.

  But Fall didn’t pass him in the hall that morning. Instead, after crunching his way through slices of burnt toast and slurping a cup of instant coffee, he packed his bag with books and headed out for the lecture he was destined to miss.

  He was destined to miss it because, as he turned to lock the flat’s bottle-green storm doors behind him, a figure emerged from the shadows of the communal entrance, silenced him and dragged him back into the shadows.

  chapter five

  cross-reference

  It was these very storm doors that I pounded on with the palm of my hand, having lost faith in the doorbell, early the next afternoon.

  When there was still no answer, I extracted the scrap of paper once more from the breast pocket of my shirt to verify that I had the correct address. Once more, I became conscious of a distinct feeling that I was being watched. What now? Glancing at my watch, I cursed and hailed a taxi to return me to the office. I figured I’d better start editing some letters whilst I pondered my next move.

  By the time I reached the office a new line of enquiry had occurred to me so that, rather than starting to edit the letters, I approached Kirsty Baird’s desk instead. Kirsty Baird, you will recall, is the buxom blonde cultural commentator who happens to double up as the paper’s literary editor, and she furnished me with Niamh Toe’s mobile number — which meant that I was unable to deduce her place of residence from her area code — with an unsubtle wink of a mascaraed eye.

  There was no reply so I left a mumbled message on the book reviewer’s recall service, stressing the importance of her returning my call whilst striving not to sound overly anxious.

  As I waited on tenterhooks for my phone to ring, I started to select the letters I would edit for the next morning’s page with one eye on the clock and the other on the bevelled glass partition, behind which I could see the distorted bulk of John Kerr, the paper’s editor, puffing away in his smoke-filled aquarium. I was wondering whether to confe
ss to the predicament in which I found myself, his likely reaction to such a confession and its probable impact on my career prospects.

  Was this not a situation that I alone had created and should accept sole responsibility for? Would not a confession equate to a pathetic attempt to shift the burden of responsibility from my own shoulders on to those of a superior? Or was a full and frank confession not my last chance of admitting my error before plunging into a labyrinth of lies from which there would be no guaranteed return?

  I opted to ponder these questions further rather than act rashly, attempting, but failing, to concentrate on the letters at hand.

  Half an hour later I followed Baird into the kitchen, under the pretext of rinsing my teacup, in order to interrogate her about Niamh Toe. Baird proved to be as scatty as I had suspected. It transpired that she had never actually met Toe and only ever communicated with her via her mobile. I returned to my desk no more than a minute after I’d departed it to discover that a caller had left me a voicemail. I knew before I heard her voice that it was Toe. Her message was succinct.

  ‘Returning your call,’ she drawled, sounding as if she was chewing gum. ‘I’m on my way out and won’t be contactable for the rest of the day. Call me now or tomorrow after twelve.’

  I re-dialled her number immediately and when the ringing tone was replaced by a recording of her voice inviting me to leave a message I cursed aloud.

  ‘Tomorrow’s too late!’ I blurted after the tone. ‘This is urgent. Please call back.’ Twenty-nine seconds later (not thirty — I counted them) my phone managed to emit a split second of a ring before I yanked the receiver from its rest.

  ‘What’s so urgent that it can’t wait till tomorrow?’ she asked, disinterestedly.

  ‘I can’t explain over the phone — ’

  ‘You’d better try.’

  ‘I can’t — it’s a delicate matter — ’