Harry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (part one - Murder Your Darlings)

Chapter 2

What about Meredith Greer? Meredith Greer, reporter at large. Or Meredith Greer, roving reporter. No. Too old sounding. Meredith Greer would hold a much higher position. Meredith Greer would be nothing less than editor in chief; scrutinizing your work unfavourably through the narrow, rectangular lenses of her horn-rimmed spectacles, before lowering them onto the bridge of her strong, roman nose and scrutinizing you with exactly the same disfavour.

"Do it again!" she would bark, haughtily skimming your pages back at you across the top of her stately desk. "And properly this time!"

No, the roving reporter's job would belong to someone younger; a Casey Lane or a Becky something. Casey Lane, roving reporter. See! It just works. Vivacious. Determined. Never taking no for an answer. Casey Lane would suffer no such indignities at the desk of Meredith Greer. Casey Lane's work would always be impeccable. Casey Lane would anyway not have the time to stand around at desks being brow beaten by her so-called superiors. Casey Lane had real work to do. She would be always out and about, investigating murders, infiltrating drug gangs, liasing with the various police departments, going on ride-alongs. Casey Lane, roving reporter: the truth and nothing but the truth about the world we live in today!

Myrtle O'Dowd, editorial assistant didn't quite have the same ring to it. 'Dowdy' they'd called her in high school, and here now too, sometimes. Was it any wonder, then, that she had low self-esteem?

She gazed wistfully out from behind her laptop at the vacant desks in the office. One thing's for sure, neither Casey Lane nor Meredith Greer would ever have to stay late to catch up with the filing while everybody else was in the pub; or to 'breathe some life' into the latest batch of local interest stories, the closest she ever got to real journalism: 'Hospital parking wrangle escalates.' 'Bingo hall charity night a runaway success.' 'Big hearted business owner gives Becca a new lease of life.' She seriously doubted whether she had enough breath left in her to make these stories interesting. Three years of media studies for this! Filing and photocopying and answering the phones; even making the tea! There was a hierarchy to be respected, they said; rules to be obeyed; a specific career path to be followed. But that was nearly five months ago now and here she still was. She longed for a real story. Something big. Something meaty. Something that would make her name. She longed to be out in the field amid the glamour and the glory. She longed, in fact, to be anywhere but here, in this office, giving the kiss of life to stillborn stories about businesses in need of publicity helping cripples in need of new wheelchairs. Oh, my God! That's terrible! She quickly checked her thoughts and thanked her lucky stars that no-one was around to hear them. Just then a phone rang somewhere in the office.

Miss Myrtle O'Dowd, lowly editorial assistant, got grudgingly up from her desk to answer it, hardly suspecting that by doing so she would radically alter the course of her life; that she would become, in media circles and beyond, the veritable talk of the town; that everything, but everything, would change: her job title, her standing, her name even; or that her framed photograph would henceforth proudly adorn the wall of the editor's office and that she would be held up as paragon - a paragon! - of courageous journalism; that she would, in short, be 'Dowdy' no more.

"Hello-o," she sang faux-cheerily, just as she had a thousand times before. "The Quasi-Subterranean Pickle."

"Yes, hello," said the aging voice on the other end of the line. "May I speak with one of your reporters, please?"

Myrtle cast her eyes over the empty desks in the office.

"I'm afraid," she said, "that...that I'm the only reporter here at the moment. Is there something I can help you with?"

She felt her face flush scarlet.

"Yes," said the voice. "Perhaps there is. But may I first ask what kind of reporter you are exactly?  I just need to be sure, you understand, that I have the right man, or woman, for the job."

"Of course," said Myrtle boldly. "I'm a roving reporter."

To all but Myrtle O'Dowd the silence that followed this last exchange would have been instantly attributable to the raising of a skeptical eyebrow.

"I see." said the voice. "A roving reporter? And may I also ask your name?"

"Casey," blurted Myrtle, before her conscience could intervene. "Casey Lane."

Again silence. The voice, it seemed, was mulling something over.

"Okay, miss Lane," it said finally, "I should like to arrange a meeting. My name is Bitterman, Harold Bitterman, and I have a story to tell that will, in all likelihood, increase your circulation tenfold. Not to mention that of your newspaper."