Chapter Four

Paul and Iain sat with JRK in Paul’s Escort on the Abbey car park. The only other vehicle still there was Chris’ van. Chris joined them, easing himself onto the vacant front passenger seat.

“Right: my contact will message my mobile once he’s had a peep at their site. He’s going to forward copy to my workstation in the van …. ” he nodded his head in the direction of the adjacent vehicle “ … as soon as he’s got anything.”
JRK looked at his watch.

“Almost eleven already: it’s cutting it fine ….”

Chris shook his head.

“You can forget being able to stop them publishing it: Monday’s edition will already be printing, it’s likely to be on the street of London by about 5 a.m. All we can do at this point is hope to get a court injunction to prevent them milking it for further sensational articles and speculation the rest of the week, or until they find a new target.”

Chris was fiddling impatiently with his mobile, and almost dropped it when suddenly it chimed, indicating a New Message. He toggled a button, reading a message of confirmation on the screen, and looked up.

“I guess you’d better come and read over my shoulder: I had to promise my ‘snout’ that I wouldn’t print it: he’s close to paranoid about being fingered, and he says the photo in particular is dynamite – if it’s genuine.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Let’s go and have a look shall we, Paul? But at a guess, since I know he’s good with photos, I’d be inclined to guess that he has grounds for thinking it could be faked in some way.”

When Chris booted it up, the monitor in the mini-studio showed “1 New Message”. Without further comment he clicked on the button. The text was uncompromising.

It began with what had to be a heading, as it appeared in capitals.

                                                LOVED TO DEATH

This was followed by an empty, framed space. Chris pointed to the left margin of the e-mail, where an icon was displayed under “Attachments”.

“It says, jpeg: I assume it’s where the photo will be placed on the page, right under the banner headline.” he said, and scrolled past the blank until he came to the main body of text:

“These shocking photographs were taken by our reporter, and show the sleazier side of the not-so-private lives of two Labour MPs in Liverpool.”

“For any reader who finds identical twins difficult to tell apart – and, let’s face it, who doesn’t? – the one on top is still (as far as we know) alive, but has already done the ‘honourable thing’ and asked to be relieved of her position by applying for something called the “Chiltern Hundreds”, the nearest thing an MP can do to resigning from the job. As far as the Sun is concerned this was merely a question of “jump or be pushed”, as we can see no way in which an MP caught in such a compromising position could expect to remain in office.”

“Let’s have a look at whatever they’ve printed, Chris!” JRK grunted, reluctantly “We’re fighting blindfold until we’ve seen it!”

Clicking the jpeg icon, Chris stiffened as if bracing himself for a physical blow. The screen dissolved and reformed as a slightly fuzzy but very readable photograph.

The photograph showed two near-naked and unquestionably female forms. A sheet (or something similar) was draped across the buttocks of the upper figure Beneath the rear view of this bouffant-haired female, Pamela Baird’s well-known facial features could be made out, her eyes closed, her lips parted.

The text continued in a fresh paragraph:

"They spent nine months wrapped around each other in the womb, before they were born. That was beautiful, natural, inevitable.

This disturbing picture appears to show that some people never grow up.

This, we suggest, is ugly, unnatural, and totally unacceptable.

Yet, if  this is not an example of an illicit lesbian relationship between two people elected for the express purpose of upholding the laws of the land, then it can only be something far more sinister ………

Or does the surviving twin think necrophilia is acceptable in the UK today?”

Four disbelieving pair of eyes read and re-read the terse, uncompromising news copy.

The tableau was eventually broken when JRK whistled softly and shook himself, as if awakening from a fitful daydream. Suddenly, Paul was aware that his head was pounding from the beginnings of oxygen starvation: he’d been holding his breath for far too long. Chris’ lips moved in silence as he scrutinised the text once more: Iain stirred himself.

For several seconds nobody spoke: none of them was sure exactly how they ought to be reacting to what they saw displayed on the screen.

The first sound came from Chris, an almost inaudible fragment of a query or exclamation.

“Hang about …..”

Coming from Chris’ lips, which had developed the unconscious (and unnatural) veneer of “received” Oxford English pronunciation, this Scouse phrase might have sounded faintly comical: in the circumstances, nobody found anything to laugh about.

Using the mouse he framed and enlarged a detail around the neck of the uppermost female figure. A delicate chain appeared: it seemed to be some sort of fine necklace.

Zooming slightly closer, Chris played with the image until it was on the point of pixellating, and suddenly from the image the heart-shaped centre of the charm threaded onto the chain resolved itself into two letters, a flowing, stylised PB in a cursive roundhanded style which they each sensed they ought to recognise.

“Looks like Italic lettering, or something similar” muttered Iain

“Probably a commissioned piece, custom made” offered Paul, who had dabbled a bit in calligraphy and had a girlfriend who made bespoke jewellery for a select few friends. He also had an idea of the probable cost of such work: it didn’t come cheap.

Chris spotted the flaw in the argument straight away.

“But if that’s supposed to be Angela ‘on top’, as the reporter claims, why is she wearing a necklace with a PB amulet?” he demanded.

JRK bent closer and picked up a magnifying lens.

“Look again: the lettering’s reversed: it’s mirrored, right to left!”

There was only one explanation, and Paul voiced it first.

“The picture’s been doctored, as your ‘snout’ suspected, Chris! The figure lying “on top” is actually Pam Baird’s body, shot from a different angle and superimposed over the original!"

“So in all probability Angela Baird was never even there – or at least, not inside the house, unless she had her own key which I suppose is possible …. but the ‘compromising position’ the Sun claims to have photographed them in is just a tissue of salacious lies aimed at selling a dirty story to the sort of pervert who habitually buys it! After all, smut sells: isn’t that their usual way of selling themselves?”

Looking at the shot more dispassionately, and with what they’d discovered about the how and why of the photograph’s history to guide them, several details in the shot failed the test of intense scrutiny. The waist of the “upper storey” as JRK irreverently dubbed her was too slender to belong to an MP of the Baird sisters’ middle-age, and was almost certainly an anonymous body from the library of young wannabee actresses who had posed for their five minutes of fame on the paper’s Page Three, with the head cropped and replaced with a superimposed rear view shot which could in fact belong to any female who sported a hairstyle similar to that of either of the twin sisters. Then, there was something which jarred about the lack of creases or other crumple marks in what was supposed to be a sheet draped over the model’s buttocks, as if the cover was unnaturally tight.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s not a sheet at all, but just a piece of card or something suggesting a straight line to cover up the “Cur & Paste” job someone’s done in putting this picture together!” was Chris’ opinion, and who was to suggest otherwise?

“Okay: we’re pretty sure we know how it was done: but can we prove it?” Chris frowned. “After all, it’s not as though any of us are experts in IT or photography! We have to be certain of our grounds before we call their bluff ……………. !”

JRK suddenly slapped his forehead.

“Maybe there’s an answer to that, as well: Paul, remember I said Brian Stanners had e-mailed me? If I’m not mistaken, software is his IT speciality …. Look, it’s getting late, later than I’d intended to keep everyone, and we can’t prevent the damage of this initial article now anyway! Go home, get some sleep: I’ll fire off an e-mail to Brian tonight and explain our predicament, maybe get a few things rolling. I’ll contact you all during the day, okay………?”