The Chinaman Read Online Free Page B

was she any younger than seven or eight. Curious.
    â€˜Please,’ said the old man behind him and Edgington turned round to see him holding out his hands. ‘Please, the picture.’
    Edgington took over the big framed photograph and handed it to him. He didn’t speak, he didn’t know what to say.
    The old man cradled the frame in his arms and then hugged it to his chest. There were no tears and he made no sound, but the intensity of his grief was painful to watch.
    â€˜Who did this to my family?’ he asked eventually.
    â€˜The IRA,’ said Edgington. They were the first words he’d spoken in the room and his voice sounded thick with emotion. He cleared his throat and Griffin looked up, surprised that he’d spoken. ‘The IRA have claimed responsibility,’ he said.
    â€˜IRA,’ said Nguyen, saying each letter slowly as if hearing them for the first time. ‘What is IRA?’
    Edgington looked at Griffin and she raised her eyebrows. Was he serious? He sat down next to the old man.
    â€˜Terrorists,’ he said quietly.
    â€˜What do they want, these terrorists?’
    Edgington was stumped for an answer and he looked helplessly at Griffin. She shook her head, knowing that what the old man needed was sympathy and a sedative, not a political discussion. The man turned to her. ‘What do they want?’ he asked her.
    â€˜They want British troops out of Ireland,’ she said reluctantly.
    â€˜How does killing my family do that?’ he asked.
    She shrugged. ‘Is there someone I can get to come and take care of you?’ she asked. ‘Do any of your family live nearby?’
    â€˜I have no family,’ he said quietly. ‘Now I have no family. I am alone. These IRA, will you catch them?’
    â€˜Yes,’ she said, looking him in the eye.
    â€˜And will they be punished?’
    â€˜Yes,’ she repeated. Lying was coming easily to her today.
    â€˜Good,’ said the old man. He nodded as if satisfied.
    The second edition was coming off the presses when Woody finally got back to the office. He slumped in his chair still wearing his raincoat. He’d spilled something down the front of it and when he dropped his head on his chest he could smell whisky. ‘What a waste,’ he mumbled.
    The reporter at the desk next to his leant round a potted plant and said: ‘Simpson is after your arse, Woody.’ There was more than a hint of sadistic pleasure in his voice as he passed on the bad news. Like Woody he was a freelance and each time a freelance was shafted there was more work to go round for everyone else.
    â€˜Thanks,’ said Woody, determined not to show how worried he was. He needed the work, God he needed the work, and he’d been banned from most of the London papers over the last twelve months or so. He was finding it harder and harder to get through a shift without drinking, and that didn’t go down well in the new high-tech world of modern newspapers. In the old days, the days when reporters looked like reporters and they worked on typewriters that sounded like typewriters, then the Street was full of characters – men and women who could take their drink and whose work was better for it, and who would be fondly forgiven if they were found late in the evening, flat on their backs under their desks. The news editors then would call for the office car and have them sent home. If they were really badly behaved then perhaps a just punishment would be handed out, a nasty door-stepping job in the pouring rain or a night-time road accident in the middle of nowhere, character-building rather than malicious. Not these days. These days most of the journalists seemed to be straight out of university with weak chins, earnest eyes and stockbroker voices. Few of them could even manage shorthand, Woody thought bitterly, and it was a common sight in the newsroom to see them plugged into tape-recorders transcribing their