them. The public can see that they’re not just arresting no-hope amateurs, they are arresting Major Figures. Now, of course, the bigger the arrest the bigger the story and this is where the journalist plays his part. This is the Sinful Symbiosis operating daily in the cheap papers. What a merry- go-round , and no one to shout boo!
I can think of a personified example to illustrate the trinity of cops, crooks and Fleet Street hacks.
There’s a journalist who comes into the Snax Bar about twice a week named Desmond. Desmond Raeburn. He must be in his late forties, perhaps older. A big guy with shifty eyes and a clammy handshake. He has this air of intrigue and conspiracy about him, like a corrupt detective: I know something you don’t know. He can ask if we have any bacon sandwiches and you feel like you’ve got to be careful in your reply. Charlie who works with me says he’d sell his mother down the river for a tip-off and I think he’s right.
He looks a lot older than his years. You can smell the drink on him across the room. White, white skin. Eyes that have almost disappeared. Dirty greasy glasses. A half-smoked cigarette permanently in the corner of his mouth. Traces of his last meal always in the corners of his mouth too. A manner that is simultaneously ingratiating and intimidating . He’s the chief crime correspondent of one of the Sundays, ‘Scotland Yard’s Most Trusted Correspondent’, ‘The Reporter with the Ear of the Metropolitan Police’ and, in his own words, ‘The Crown Prince of Crime Reporters’.
Desmond would not know how to investigate a story tosave his life. He writes what the police tell him to write. He’s a publicity agent for the coppers pure and simple. His office should be in Scotland Yard not Fleet Street. They call him in, give him the bare details and he jazzes it up and makes them look like the Lone Ranger. All detectives are ‘gang-busters’, ‘crime-fighters’, or ‘knights in the war against crime’ who ‘wage war’ on the underworld with ‘scarcely a thought for personal safety’ and are content to know ‘the job is done’ and ‘the citizens of London can sleep peacefully in their beds’. This sort of drivel is trotted out every weekend. The close relationship doesn’t end when the copper retires. Then we get the obligatory Murder on My Manor: The Memoirs of Detective-Chief Inspec tor Backhander (‘As told to Desmond Raeburn’). Plugs for the book follow in his column over the next few weeks and this saves work as Desmond can then recycle what’s written in the book (which is just recycled from his column anyway). He gets paid for the same stuff three times. Nice work if you can get it.
Desmond is always saying that if I hear anything I should tell him, as he pays well for a good story. I told him about the Duke of Edinburgh regularly visiting these two black prostitutes in Dolphin Square, and how I overheard one of the coloured girls talking about it to her friend, in hushed tones, in the Snax Bar. But that’s not all. The Duke was being blackmailed by an international syndicate of guys in expensive suits with Italian names who had secretly taken photographs. A great story. A really great story. I know it was because I made it all up.
The first thing Desmond does with a good story is phone his pals up at the Yard. He’s shopped more petty criminals than the rest of London. And I wouldn’t be surprised if he also collected an informer’s fee. ‘Money is what it’s all about, son,’ he says, and I guess it is. That is certainly what motivates the bent coppers who take weekly ‘contributions’ from all of the bigger villains in London. It’s known as ‘licence money’.
One Saturday morning Desmond staggered into the Snax Bar and said he had a problem and that I had to help him. He led me to a corner table, sat me down, looked hither and thither as though we were in a den of spies (or, worse, other journalists), pulled his chair up, sat
I can think of a personified example to illustrate the trinity of cops, crooks and Fleet Street hacks.
There’s a journalist who comes into the Snax Bar about twice a week named Desmond. Desmond Raeburn. He must be in his late forties, perhaps older. A big guy with shifty eyes and a clammy handshake. He has this air of intrigue and conspiracy about him, like a corrupt detective: I know something you don’t know. He can ask if we have any bacon sandwiches and you feel like you’ve got to be careful in your reply. Charlie who works with me says he’d sell his mother down the river for a tip-off and I think he’s right.
He looks a lot older than his years. You can smell the drink on him across the room. White, white skin. Eyes that have almost disappeared. Dirty greasy glasses. A half-smoked cigarette permanently in the corner of his mouth. Traces of his last meal always in the corners of his mouth too. A manner that is simultaneously ingratiating and intimidating . He’s the chief crime correspondent of one of the Sundays, ‘Scotland Yard’s Most Trusted Correspondent’, ‘The Reporter with the Ear of the Metropolitan Police’ and, in his own words, ‘The Crown Prince of Crime Reporters’.
Desmond would not know how to investigate a story tosave his life. He writes what the police tell him to write. He’s a publicity agent for the coppers pure and simple. His office should be in Scotland Yard not Fleet Street. They call him in, give him the bare details and he jazzes it up and makes them look like the Lone Ranger. All detectives are ‘gang-busters’, ‘crime-fighters’, or ‘knights in the war against crime’ who ‘wage war’ on the underworld with ‘scarcely a thought for personal safety’ and are content to know ‘the job is done’ and ‘the citizens of London can sleep peacefully in their beds’. This sort of drivel is trotted out every weekend. The close relationship doesn’t end when the copper retires. Then we get the obligatory Murder on My Manor: The Memoirs of Detective-Chief Inspec tor Backhander (‘As told to Desmond Raeburn’). Plugs for the book follow in his column over the next few weeks and this saves work as Desmond can then recycle what’s written in the book (which is just recycled from his column anyway). He gets paid for the same stuff three times. Nice work if you can get it.
Desmond is always saying that if I hear anything I should tell him, as he pays well for a good story. I told him about the Duke of Edinburgh regularly visiting these two black prostitutes in Dolphin Square, and how I overheard one of the coloured girls talking about it to her friend, in hushed tones, in the Snax Bar. But that’s not all. The Duke was being blackmailed by an international syndicate of guys in expensive suits with Italian names who had secretly taken photographs. A great story. A really great story. I know it was because I made it all up.
The first thing Desmond does with a good story is phone his pals up at the Yard. He’s shopped more petty criminals than the rest of London. And I wouldn’t be surprised if he also collected an informer’s fee. ‘Money is what it’s all about, son,’ he says, and I guess it is. That is certainly what motivates the bent coppers who take weekly ‘contributions’ from all of the bigger villains in London. It’s known as ‘licence money’.
One Saturday morning Desmond staggered into the Snax Bar and said he had a problem and that I had to help him. He led me to a corner table, sat me down, looked hither and thither as though we were in a den of spies (or, worse, other journalists), pulled his chair up, sat
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