Written in Scars(3)
There was no time to dwell on it. Amy marched him straight to the studio floor. She talked, briefing him on what was about to happen, but Logan didn’t listen. His mind was still in the green room with a charity worker called Sam.
Hands came at him, removing his jacket to fit a microphone pack to his belt and run a wire to his collar. Logan stood there passively, letting the production team do their stuff and make him camera ready, no longer caring what he looked like. As someone ran their fingers through his hair, brushing it from his forehead, he finally snapped back into focus.
He was here to do a job, it was time to pay attention.
While a pre-filmed report ran for viewers on screen, Amy escorted him onto the set, and sat him on a sofa beside the show’s presenter Gilly Jacobs, who had taken off her trademark glasses, to have her make-up refreshed. Logan had seen Gilly on TV dozens of times before. Unlike most of the shows he’d appeared on during this book tour, North-East Tonight was broadcast in his own region and he was familiar with all the presenters. She was smaller in reality than he’d imagined. Most TV personalities were. Prettier too, despite the heavy make-up, though her perfume was sweet and overpowering. She wore a strange giraffe print dress that he couldn’t imagine would work well on camera.
A show-runner began the countdown, Gilly put her glasses back on, gave Logan a cursory smile, and they were live on the air.
These promo interviews were all the same, especially on TV, where time was much shorter than radio, but the enthusiasm Gilly injected into the introduction surprised him.
“Tonight, we’re lucky to be joined on the sofa by a very special guest. Logan Crawford is the quintessential local-boy-made-good. Born in County Durham, he became a celebrated journalist and war correspondent, covering conflicts in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen, before embarking on a career as a novelist. His previous two books have sold over three million copies worldwide. His latest novel Guilty as Hell, a psychological thriller, is out now and getting great reviews. Logan Crawford, welcome to North-East Tonight.”
Logan gave the viewers the benefit of his broad smile. “Thank you very much Gilly. That was some introduction. I hope I can live up to it.”
Gilly, reacting to the mega-watt smile, put down her tablet and gave him her full attention. “Well, I have to admit I read your book last night and slept with the light on. So how does a nice North-East lad end up writing such scary thrillers?”
Logan was an old hand at these interviews and milked his four-minute slot to the max; subtly flirting with Gilly and the camera while getting across all the pertinent details about the book. It was a skill he’d honed over years as a journalist, telling the same stories and anecdotes every time while making them sound fresh. What inspired him to write this book; what made it different to other thrillers on the market; why he didn’t get frightening by his own stories. His publisher loved him for the confident way he sold each book. When other authors came across as shy, introverted or deadly serious, Logan was charming and personable with a permanent twinkle in his eyes.
The slot was over in an instant.
The camera pulled away from him and Gilly turned to read the autocue from another direction. An assistant lead Logan to the edge of the set where they removed the mike. As they fiddled with him he saw Sam and Inspector Watt on the other side of the studio being wired up for their own interview. Watt appeared brusque and stony faced while Sam stood inert and let the team do what they had to.
Logan couldn’t take his eyes off the younger man. Sam’s magnetism was off the scale.
Back in the green room, the volume on the TV had been returned to full. Logan sat down to watch. He’d had every intention of getting out of there as soon as he was done, but that was before meeting Sam. No way was he leaving until he’d seen him again. In all likelihood, he’d been wrong about the chemistry between them. Maybe Sam was one of those guys who gave everyone one-hundred percent of themselves when they met. He’d seemed friendly enough. Perhaps he was like that with everybody.
The only way to find out was to wait.
On screen, Gilly wrapped up a feature on the revival of tourism for a seaside town in Northumberland. Introducing Sam and Watt, she began by listing the statistics for knife crime in the area. The figures were shocking.
“In a one-year period, there were almost twenty-thousand sentences and cautions handed out for knife related offences. Hundreds of people are caught carrying blades in this region every day.”
Really?
Logan watched the screen incredulously. He had no idea this was such a problem for the area. No wonder Inspector Watt had looked at him like an idiot when they arrived. He must have sounded like a complete fool.
“Now I’m joined by a young man who knows first hand the dangers of knife-crime. Eleven years ago, when he was just seventeen, Sam Radcliffe was enjoying a night out with friends in Newcastle when the group were attacked by Roy Lynn, a thirty-two-year-old man from the Byker area. Lynn, a stranger to the boys, attacked them with an eight-inch kitchen knife. Seventeen-year-old Benjamin Roswell suffered fatal injuries in the unprovoked attack. Sam Radcliffe survived the ordeal and is now a volunteer for the charity Supporting Victims.” The camera pulled back to show Sam and Inspector Watt sitting solemnly on the sofa beside her. “Sam, thank you for joining us tonight.”
Sam’s story came as a shock. Logan had no memory of the incident. Eleven years ago, he realised he’d have been working abroad, reporting on the conflict in the middle-east, out of the country for months at a time. He’d had little awareness of the news back home. What a terrible thing to happen to a bunch of kids.