Excerpt: Hell On Earth

Angela and Peter stepped out of the lift into the lobby of Radio Hell at about ten to eight and found turmoil. Two men were arguing incomprehensibly about air time and contractual obligations. A woman was desperately collecting and examining sheets of typescript, putting them into a pile. Another man in a cheap, badly fitting jacket and a large pair of headphones stopped shouting instructions down the phone and ran up to them looking red faced and panicky. "Angela," he panted, "there's a panic on. Can you read the news?"

"Why? What happened?" Angela tried to work out what was going on around her. Panic didn't quite seem to cover it.

"Alvar's gone missing."

"Missing?" Angela grasped the scale of the problem. Alvar Liddel was the finest newsreader the world had ever known — God alone knew why he had been sent to the Ninth Circle — the only person who knew how to interview an old age pensioner who had left her false teeth in the dishwasher, how to report from a courtroom or a bomb site, and where the sugar was. Without Alvar Liddel, the radio station was an ocean-going liner without a rudder, a Wild West sheriff without a horse, a driverless train, a factory without light or power, an axe without a handle, a bank robber without a getaway car, a field of sheep without any of those yappy black and white dogs. And the seconds-hand of the clock was passing the number 9, so there was no time left to find him. "Oh, my G— I mean, what the devil are we all going to do? Where's he gone?"

"We don't know. That's what 'missing' means. Don't panic, though, because now is your big chance. Stand in for him. Studio two, go on the green light, here's..." he reached out and grabbed the woman's sheaf of typescripts, "...the script. Go!"

"Me stand in for...?"

"That door there, with the '2' on it."

On a loudspeaker behind the reception desk, the time signal started.

"I'll see what I can do."

The time signal finished.

Angela dashed to the desk. She found an earpiece and she was almost ready to read the script when the green light went on.

"This is the news, and this is Alvar Liddel reading it." She read the 1940s catch phrase in an exact rendition of Alvar Liddel's unmistakeable voice.

"That's amazing!" In the lobby Headphones called out to nobody in particular. "She's got the voice exactly. Drinks all round, guys! We're not washed up after all!"