chapter two

verbatim

Firstly, let me tell you a little about Craig Liddell.

Although I had no more than a passing acquaintance with Liddell, several of my colleagues had known him well — the city centre is sufficiently condensed to enable the more sociable members of the fraternity of those who earn their daily bread from the written word to congregate in cliques outwith office hours.

I was on the periphery of this incestuous circle — partly through choice (over recent years it had become infested with a plague of PR parasites who had infiltrated it with the objective of buying drinks for the circle’s other members with their paymaster’s moolah and bending the ears of the circle’s other members with their paymaster’s propaganda in the hope that it would subsequently appear in print the following day. More often than not it did, but I preferred to restrict my relations with such practitioners of the dark arts to a strictly professional basis, uncomfortable with the notion that the cultivation of friendships could only compromise my precious editorial integrity), partly through my lowly status as a letters page editor (it was not a position overburdened with kudos — which suited me fine since it meant that I didn’t have succeeding generations of overeager graduates fighting amongst themselves to replace me, unwittingly driving down the potential remuneration package through their competitive zeal), but mostly because of my unsociable preference for spending my lunch hour browsing amongst books of calligraphy in the Mitchell Library rather than contributing to the gossip masquerading as wheeling and dealing that takes place over extended lunch time G&Ts at the Space Bar (a name that ensured that I would never be permitted to forget my unfortunate faux pas).

Liddell had been a book reviewer on a lifestyle magazine, which made him an integral member of the incestuous circle. He had the kudos I lacked, the sociability I lacked and the ability to cultivate friendships with the PR parasites without allowing them to compromise his integrity, which I lacked.

If that sounds like I envied him then that’s because I did — but I certainly don’t envy what happened to him.

Liddell had a reputation amongst his fellow critics for being acerbic but fair, which meant that he had a reputation amongst authors for being scathing and unfair (though this grudge was seldom, if ever, shared by the author’s own PR parasites who, having already written off any given book, and with one eye already on the next launch for the next author on a burgeoning list, without exception confided to Liddell that, strictly off the record, they concurred with his criticisms).

It was only a month since Liddell had been killed and the reactions to his murder had dominated the letters page for days afterwards. My paper, and its competitors, had reported and analysed the incident in depth. This had, after all, been regarded by those members of the incestuous circle as an attack on one of its own; an attack on the very principle that allowed them to tell themselves that they were employed in a noble profession; an attack on what gave a purpose to their lives.

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.