Falling Off Air (32 page)

It was scrawled on headed London University paper, and I assumed it was what Adam had written in a hurry on the afternoon
of the day of his death, when he realized that he could not speak to the priest face-to-face.

Dear Joe,

I need a safe place to keep this tape, and I hope you will provide it for me. Do take a look if you want to—I'm not entrapping
you with pornography—but it won't mean anything to you. Nor will it put you in any danger, since no one who matters knows
about this.

The thing is, I'm afraid if I keep it someone might try to take it from me or destroy it. And since I've been trying for months
now to decide what to do, it would be a pity if the decision was taken out of my hands. Paula's death makes that decision
urgent, and I hope that when you return we will be able to have our first proper conversation about my situation.

With deep apologies for all this 007 stuff.

Yours, Adam

I looked up and found Father Joe watching me.

“He's writing as if there's just one tape,” I said, “but there are four.”

“There's only one that's significant, perhaps,” he offered.

“Have you watched them?” He nodded. “Including this one?” I picked up the tiny MiniDV tape.

“I borrowed a friend's camera last night,” he said. “You should take it—take all of them—and watch them. It scares the crap
out of me.”

I
started at the beginning, because I didn't know where else to start. I put the videotape numbered “one” into the machine,
pressed the “Play” button, and Adam's face, like his e-mailed words on the computer, rose ghostlike before me on the screen.
I bit my lip. If I had descended into death to eavesdrop on their cyber conversation, today I was bringing Adam and Paula
back to life.

It is immediately obvious that what I have here are the rushes, the unedited film, from
A Carmichaelite Mission,
the documentary that was never shown. There is not, at this stage in the process, any voice-over. Suzette is presumably behind
the camera. Traditionally, there would be both a cameraman and a producer, but as an independent producer Suzette has chosen
in many of her projects to be both, using a small but sophisticated digital camera that produces broadcast-quality footage.
It is partly an economy, one less wage to pay, but largely a matter of style. She makes films that are intimate, where the
viewer follows people around, eavesdrops on conversations, takes them into situations in which a large camera might be more
intrusive. Her camera lives in a large brown leather shoulder bag that also contains a collection of used and unused tapes,
as well as her makeup bag, her credit cards, and her palmtop computer. She had chosen to put Adam into some of the scenes
with Paula, so that their conversations could be filmed. I get such pleasure from watching Adam work that I forget at first
that Father Joe was scared by something. I sit back in my chair and I think how proud my children should be of their father.

There is old footage of Paula Carmichael as a child: pretty, talented, good, just as she grew up, giggling as she dances for
the camera at her twelfth birthday party. Adam talks to her about her childhood. I have rarely seen him hit the wrong note,
but this interview is unusual for the immediate rapport the two of them strike up. They are at ease in each other's company.
There is no flirtation, rather you would believe that the two of them had been friends for years. So, when they sit down and
talk about the past, Adam ends up chattering as much as she does. Partly it's a technique, to draw her out, but I've seen
technique before, and it's more than that. I guess it would never have made it into the final cut, but here it is for my delight,
Adam talking with real affection about his parents.

They both, Paula and Adam, had happy childhoods, and I'm glad. It helps to balance out the end. At one point Adam cracks a
joke about his mother, and it touches some chord with Paula, and the two of them are practically rolling around giggling.
Even I start chuckling, and then I stop short. Where is Paula's famous depression? I am expecting an earnest, dutiful Paula,
struggling to be cheerful against the odds. This Paula is laughing so hard she can't speak.

I start to watch more closely and to think as I'm watching. What of Suzette, behind the camera, seeing what I'm seeing? But
that's normal, I've been there, I know what it's like: three people, two of them undergoing some sort of chemical reaction
in front of you. I find that when it's me behind the camera I pretty much write myself out of the equation, I see it all through
a lens. Besides, if Suzette was in love with Adam, she would have seen that this thing with Paula was not sexual. Paula has
not prettified herself for the camera. She looks great, she looks happy, but she looks her age.

We follow Paula to the Houses of Parliament. She gives a running commentary as the camera follows her through the corridors
of power. It is funny, it is sharp.

“I could devote my life to this, you know,” she says over her shoulder. “It's like a drug. You can be as bitchy as you like,
and believe me when I'm in here, I'm bitchy. Even the boys are bitchy here. There's nothing that gives me a bigger high than
delivering a death blow to some sad fascist on the other side of the house in a debate.”

“So why don't you devote yourself to it, why bother with all the other stuff?” Adam's voice asks.

“Because it would be self-indulgent,” Paula replies. “I have limited resources in terms of time and energy and I can use both
to be a better person than I can be here.”

“Aren't you just a little bit depressed?” I find myself muttering at her. “Not even a tiny bit?”

It is clear that she is not. It is clear, indeed, that she loves her life.

At home, Paula makes a meal for Richard and Kyle and his elder brother George. I'm not convinced she knows one end of the
chopping knife from the other, but her family look pleasantly surprised when she puts roast lamb on the table for them. Richard
gets out a bottle of champagne—this is clearly a special event—and carves, joking for the camera, “Now I remember why I married
her.” Very sweetly, at the end of the meal, Kyle gets up and goes and kisses his mother on her cheek. She looks at him with
something approaching wonder, and he slopes out of the room, hands in pockets.

We follow Paula from project to project. Along the way we hear from people who work with her, from Rachel Colby, who speaks
of Paula's ability to “get her hands dirty and her heart broken.” We see Paula in a hostel for the homeless, at an inner city
playgroup, and at a hospice, all funded to some extent by the Carmichaelites, and staffed in part by Carmichaelite volunteers.
At last Paula's face shows distress, sorrow, even grief.

“I wouldn't have the motivation to do any of this if I wasn't personally involved,” she tells Adam. “I know some people in
the caring professions say you have to keep your distance or you won't survive. But frankly, you keep your distance, and you
don't get close to what needs to be done. I tell all my volunteers to cry, howl, tear your clothes. Have sleepless nights.
It's right to feel that way when things are horribly wrong.”

“Don't you get depressed?” Adam asks.

“I get terribly, terribly depressed,” Paula answers with a crooked smile. “There are days when life looks bleak from the moment
I get up in the morning to the moment I go to bed, and everyone around me knows it. When I'm down I'm foul to be with, I've
been told that enough times. Then something goes right and I'm high as a kite. I've seen kids do drugs and let me tell you,
when things are going well I'm on a bigger kick than they are. I know some people would call me manic, I have great lows and
great highs, but that's what propels me through life. It's the beauty of hills and valleys. I'm not going to build my house
on a plain.”

By now I have watched the three videotapes, and while I have been moved by what I've seen, I have not yet been scared. I dig
out my 3-chip camera and put the MiniDV tape inside, then play the tape through the TV. Around about this point, absorbed
as I am, I have a strong urge to pee, and a stronger urge for coffee. I am about to hit the “Pause” button when I notice something
that makes me forget my bladder and my caffeine craving.

We are now at the opening ceremony for a drug rehabilitation project in Cornwall that is funded by the Carmichaelites. Rachel
Colby is there to help with the media, and hanging around in the background of the picture I see a man who looks to me very
much like Dan Stein. He's only there for an instant, and then he disappears. I rewind the tape, I replay it. I am ninety percent
certain that the man is Dan Stein, but I tell myself that I am stressed and tired and perhaps seeing things. The man has a
camera slung around his neck. Dan, the photographer who does not hang people on his walls. It doesn't mean he doesn't photograph
them. I hope I am mistaken. If Dan is there, he has lied to me and to Finney, and why would he do that? This cannot be another
coincidence. If it is Dan, I cannot think of an innocent explanation.

I let the tape play on then, curious to see whether he appears again, but the film makes a sudden change of place. We are
in what looks like a squat, a dirty mattress against a wall that has lost most of its plaster, sheets hung across the windows
as makeshift curtains. A boy, perhaps sixteen years old, is sitting on the mattress, his face blotchy. He is thin and pale,
his shabby clothes hanging loose on him. It is not clear who else is in the room with him, nor who is doing the filming.

The boy looks ill. There is a sickly sheen to his skin. He unfolds a tinfoil wrap, then cooks up the drug on a spoon over
the flame of a lighter. He holds a syringe in his mouth while he tightens the tourniquet around his arm and waits for the
vein, but instead, his chest shudders as he begins to retch. He leans to one side, as if to vomit. The camera shot swings
away from the boy and to the ground. The sound is still good.

“What's the matter?” The voice, hard, annoyed, is familiar.

“I'm going to puke,” the boy groans.

“Great.” Again, I hear the voice that sounds like Dan, angry and frustrated, before the screen goes blank. Presumably the
boy is allowed to vomit without it being recorded for posterity. There is a limit to viewers' tolerance of the gritty, after
all. When the pictures return to the screen he is sitting there again, even paler than before, if possible, beads of sweat
visible on his forehead.

“Are you sure about this?” I hear Paula's voice, concerned, doubtful. “You know you don't have to do this.”

“For Christ's sake, let him get on with it,” the man who sounds like Dan mutters.

The boy glances toward the point from where Paula's voice has come, then at the place where the voice that may be Dan's comes
from. He lifts the syringe and with a jerky impulse pushes the needle through his skin and into the vein. The camera settles
for a moment on the boy's face as the drug takes effect and the tension subsides, his muscles loosening. Then, for an instant,
the boy's face is suffused with panic. He convulses. Someone in the background mutters, “Shit.” The camera cuts again, and
this time the screen goes blank, as though they have fallen off air.

T
HERE are days that should be cut out of our lives and pasted directly in hell. The next day was one of them. I had watched
the tape over and again until late at night, then lain in bed worrying over it. When someone pounded on my front door at six
the next morning, I hauled myself out of bed and went to see who it was. I realized my mistake in an instant. A camera flashed
in my face and I slammed the door, but not before a man outside had hurled a rolled up newspaper inside. Shaking, I bent down
to pick it up and took it into the kitchen. I removed the rubber band and unrolled it, pressing it flat on the tabletop.

It was a copy of the
Chronicle,
and when I saw the byline, Bill Tanning, I stared down at the front page with real fear. Had I ever done anything to Tanning
to make him hate me, or was I just fair prey? A large black-and-white photograph took up at least half the page. At first
I thought it was an ad: a picture of a man and woman kissing, his hands entangled in her hair. A headline said:
SLEEPING WITH THE SUSPECT
. I sat down hard on a chair and forced myself to read the story.

Detective Inspector Tom Finney, who heads the investigation into the murder of Adam Wills, is today expected to be removed
from his post and suspended from duty pending a full inquiry into his passionate relationship with Robin Ballantyne. Redhead
Ballantyne, 35, was Wills's former lover, and police have repeatedly refused to rule her out as a suspect in the hit-and-run
murder of the popular broadcaster. Ballantyne's car was used in the killing.

Two days ago, Detective Tom Finney passed to this newspaper alleged facts that seemed to point the investigation away from
Ballantyne and toward some other, so far unnamed, killer. Journalists from our newspaper, however, were suspicious of Finney's
motives. When those who are charged with upholding justice on our behalf falter in their task, then others must step into
the breach. It was in this spirit that journalists from this newspaper decided to keep Finney under surveillance. Yesterday,
their patience paid off and they spotted Finney, 39, engaged in passionate clinches with the supposed chief suspect.

Finney, who recently separated from his wife of five years, approached Ballantyne's house in the middle of the afternoon.
Barefoot, and dressed only in jeans and a tight-fitting T-shirt, she opened the door to him and greeted him enthusiastically.
He moved inside and was seen removing his coat. Ballantyne is the mother of Adam Wills's twins, Hannah and William, but there
was no sign of the children.

Some time later Finney and Ballantyne were visible reclining on a sofa. They kissed repeatedly and embraced in a highly sexual
way.

Contacted by this newspaper, Commander Perry of the Metropolitan Police said that if the allegations were substantiated Detective
Inspector Finney would be suspended “for as long as it took.” This paper has passed to Commander Perry the photographs it
obtained as a result of its investigation. This newspaper has also learned that Finney was suspended for two months last year
after allegations that he had acted unprofessionally in a case concerning a female suspect. Finney was cleared, but one police
source told the paper Finney, “remains under a cloud to this day, and he should be watching his back, not following other
parts of his anatomy.”