-Track Twenty-One-
Believing himself to be a wanted fugitive and unsure of the limits of Captain Navarro’s power, Ollie remained in constant fear and felt paranoid. Having been back in England now for a week and shocked to find the news media reporting Kipper as Fossils, he knew the country was being misled.
Glancing around the cold dreary mildewed walls of his London flat, Ollie daydreamed about relaxing on a warm beach. He checked his email inbox, but there was nothing in it again.
‘Not even one reply to all those emails I sent.’ he thought and realised James Wilson must have told the other tabloids about him. Ollie knew that with no video proof to substantiate his claims, he would get nowhere.
Even though he had gleaned information from Steve about Fossils, he knew nothing about their lives in England. Determined to expose the truth, and knowing that if he could come up with proof against the lies reported, not only would he be exposing the biggest fraud in the music industry’s history, but his ticket to fame and fortune. However, he knew this would be difficult and with the money he’d spent escaping justice abroad and with no income, he was almost broke.
Since returning from Kazakhstan, he had driven around England following up leads given to him, which turned out to be wild goose chases and realised that the leads came from other journalists who he imagined sitting in their offices sniggering at the gullible Oliver Smith.
He recalled his last visit to a seaside town on the northeast coast where an abrupt pub landlord told him to fuck off and read the papers.
Ollie sighed and brought up a file on his computer: Hamster eats Freddie Starr. He read the file and thought. ‘I might as well follow up this old story. I need the money and it would go towards paying off my credit cards and rent,’ he thought. He spent the morning making phone calls, but the story turned out to be a hoax. Depressed, he bought a bottle of cheap whiskey and spent the afternoon drinking and daydreaming. He finished the whisky early evening, but too drunk to go buy more, he fell into a drunken sleep.
It was almost midnight when his phone ringing woke him.
Regaining his faculties, he looked at the number and shrugged.
“Hello, Ollie Smith speaking.”
The caller introduced herself and Ollie looked confused and said, “Sorry, I didn’t catch that… Susan who?”
With Susan and Billy ridiculed by the press, shunned by friends and old colleagues, and given menial duties in their workplace, the media coverage of Kipper infuriated them. Over the past few days, he appeared to be everywhere. Photographed in tailor-made designer suits and arriving at top venues in his Aston Martin V12 Zagato, accompanied by gorgeous women, usually top models or famous movie stars.
Billy and Susan knew that if they attempted to do anything to reveal the truth and someone in either of their companies found out, the consequences would be dire, and they both feared prison.
Susan now worked in the Virgin records pressroom, and when the manager assigned Susan her daily task, he knew that it would take her most of the day and into the night. He ordered her to reply to the emails for the press supervisor who was away on assignment. The supervisor received hundreds of emails a day to that email address which she only glanced at before deleting because it was a public site and usually adverts but the manager told Susan that she had to sift through them all and pick out any relevant ones. With the supervisor already being away for several days, Susan looked at her inbox inundated with emails.
Susan spent the day sitting in the supervisor’s office wading through emails. Although tedious, she felt happy being alone in the quiet office and not having to run back and forth with cups of coffee for staff, who, not so long ago, would have been fetching her hot cups of latte. Everyone now relished in making Susan’s life a misery and wanted to make the arrogant bitch suffer.
At 6:00 pm, she had almost completed reading and then deleting the emails when the manager came into the office.
“How are you doing, Ms McHale?” he asked.
“Almost finished, sir,” replied Susan.
The manager looked at his watch, grinned, and asked, “You have done the spam folder, haven't you?” He smirked, knowing that she wouldn't have checked the emails sent automatically to the spam folder, nobody did.
“No sir, I’ll delete it now,” said Susan and smiled.
The manager glared at her and said. “No Miss McHale, you delete nothing until you have checked them all. Sometimes an important email will end up in there by mistake.”
Susan felt angry and frustrated and wanted to burst into tears but did not want to give this man the satisfaction of seeing her frustration.
She clenched her fists, forced a smile, and cheerfully said. “No problem sir. I'll stay behind and do them.”
The manager smirked. “Good, and don’t forget to check them all.”
That evening the pressroom was silent, apart from Susan at a computer and a few cleaners. With only a few lights on in the office, it looked gloomy. Susan gazed out of the window into the London night and saw people below leaving work and a full moon hung above the tall buildings. She sighed and looked at the reams of spam mail on the screen.
She scrolled down the long list and thought ‘Shit! I'll just delete them all,' but as she was about to press the 'delete all,' button, she had second thoughts. ‘I know that bastard put something in there to catch me out by the way he smirked at me.’
“Fuck!” She screamed in frustration.
She plodded through, getting into a routine. Read... useless... delete.
Susan had been doing this for several hours when something in a subject bar caught her interest.
I have the proof about the real Fossils.
‘Hmm, what's this about I wonder?’ she thought.
She clicked on the email, and photographs along with text appeared, so she leant forward, read the story, and looked at the photographs. Her jaw dropped as she read the information and scrolled down further. Finding another email from the same sender, she opened it, read Ollie Smith’s report, and looked at other photographs. Having not seen the footage in Billy’s office, she thought. ‘I wonder if that’s them?’
Feeling excited, Susan forwarded the information to her email address.
“Fuck it!” She exclaimed, before deleting the rest of the spam folder.
Susan arrived home at their dingy London flat around 10:00 pm feeling weary but excited.
“Hi Susan, you look like you had a rough day,” said Billy pouring her a glass of wine.
Susan sat on the sofa, turned on her laptop, opened the email that she had sent, and waited for Billy.
“My car broke down again. I need to…” Billy stopped talking when he saw Susan smiling as she pointed to the picture of Ollie Smith with Steve in Siem Reap on the computer screen.
“That’s Strat,” he said, handing Susan her wine and sitting next to her as she flicked through the photographs.
“Where did you get those?” Billy asked and looked bemused as other photos came on the screen and he pointed and exclaimed! “That’s them. That’s the real Fossils!”
Susan smiled and told Billy they were in the supervisor's spam folder at the press office. Billy then read the articles Ollie had written and looked at Susan. “You know what this means?” he said smirking. “It’s the answer to our prayers. We can let this Ollie Smith reveal the truth without anyone knowing our involvement.”
Susan nodded while Billy pondered and then said. “We need to get this story out without being seen to be involved.”
He took a slurp of wine, pointed to a phone number on one of the emails, and said. “Okay Susan, call Ollie Smith.”