Something had occurred, but when Rodney responded to the sound of raised voices and crashing bodies by throwing open the editor’s office door in a display of his deep and abiding concern for Luxford’s safety, the last thing he expected to see was the red-haired woman sprawled out on the floor. Mr. Hostility had been lurching over her, which suggested that he was the one who’d put her there. What in hell was going on?
Once Luxford—always the personification of gratitude—summarily ordered him out of the office, Rodney considered the possibilities. Red-Hair was a photojournalist to be sure. There was no other explanation for the camera bag she had with her. She’d probably come to sell some photographs to the paper. The Source bought pictures from free-lancers on a regular basis, so it wasn’t unusual for a photographer to show up with a clutch of dandy and potentially embarrassing snaps of one notable figure or another, from a member of the Royal Family looking downright unroyal, to a political figure making undignified whoopie. But free-lancers with pictures to sell didn’t generally peddle them to the chief editor of the paper. They didn’t even meet with him. They met with the photo editor or one of his assistants.
So what did it mean, Luxford squiring Red-Hair into his office? No, that wasn’t quite it, was it? It was Luxford hustling Red-Hair into his office. And Luxford making damn sure that no one had a chance to talk to her. Or to Mr. Hostility, for that matter. And who the hell was he?
Since Hostility’d scored a neat TKO against the redhead, Rodney could only assume that the man was determined to keep her photos out of the paper. Which suggested he was somebody. But who? He didn’t look like somebody. He didn’t look like anybody. Which itself suggested that he was featured in the photos with a somebody whose honour he was there to protect.
Quite a charming thought, that. Perhaps the days of chivalry weren’t dead. Which did make one wonder what Mr. Hostility was doing decking a woman. By all rights, he should have simply decked Luxford.
Rodney had been keeping his eye on dear Den since the Harrods rendezvous. He’d spent last evening at The Source, where he’d seen to it that Luxford’s nerves were kept on edge by dropping by his office every hour or so and making anxious noises about when the presses were going to run the morning’s edition. Luxford told him twice to go home, but Rodney hung about, sniffing round for an indication of why Luxford was pushing the print delay to the danger point. It was his duty to keep an eye on things, wasn’t it? If Luxford was cracking as it seemed he was cracking, then someone had to be there to sweep up the pieces when he broke apart.
Rodney decided that the delay had to do with the meeting at Harrods. He decided that he had misunderstood that meeting altogether. While he’d first assumed that Luxford was bonking the woman he’d met, he’d had to shift his thinking round when the printing delay fell immediately upon the assignation’s heels.
It had to do with a story, of course. Which—setting aside that tender moment of physical contact in the restaurant—did make a hell of a lot more sense than an affair. After all, Luxford had nightly—not to mention morningly and afternoonly—access to the statuesque charms of the Fabulous Fiona. The woman in Harrods had been something of a moderate looker, but she was nothing in comparison to the Wondrous Wife.
Besides, she was in the Government, which made it even more likely that she had a story to tell. And if that was the case, then it had to be one hell of a page-turner involving the biggest of bigwigs: the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Home Secretary, maybe even the PM himself. The most stupendous stories usually involved the high-level bonking of low-level bonkees, especially if secrets pertaining to national security were part of the pre-or post-coital encounter. And it did rather make sense that a female member of the Government, her feminist nature boiling with outrage at the callous use of her sisters, had decided to play the whistle-blower. If she was going to blow the gaff about someone important, if she wanted to ensure her safety and her anonymity, and most important if she was able to make a connection with a newspaper’s editor, why not take the story directly to him?
Of course, of course. Hadn’t Luxford been pounding away at the keyboard of his computer when Rodney returned from Harrods yesterday? And what else could he have been holding up the presses for if not for confirmation of a story? Luxford was no fool. He wouldn’t run an expose of anyone’s experiences in the seamier side of pinch-and-plunge without at least two independent confirmations. Since the source was female, she was also potentially a woman scorned. Luxford was too wily a newsman to get caught in the middle of someone’s thirst for vengeance. So he’d waited, he’d held up the printing of the paper, and when she hadn’t been able to produce anyone to verify her accusations, he’d killed his own story.
Which still didn’t answer the question of who the devil she was.
Since he’d returned from Harrods, Rodney had been using his free time to scroll religiously through back issues of The Source, looking for a clue to the woman’s identity. If she was a member of the Government, surely they’d done a story involving her at one time or another. He’d given up the project at half past eleven last night, but he’d gone back to it this morning whenever time allowed. Shortly before noon, while in the midst of Mitch Corsico’s report on the latest developments in the Rent Boy Rumba (Larnsey had met at length with the PM; he would make no comment upon exiting Number Ten; Daffy Dukane had taken on an agent who was willing to negotiate terms for an exclusive interview but it was going to be costly), Rodney had latched on to a Corsico remark about “doing some browsing in the library” and mentally smacked himself on the forehead. What the hell was he doing sifting through back issues of the newspaper for a clue when all he had to do to uncover the identity of the woman in Harrods was to stroll down three floors to the tabloid’s library and flip through The Times Guide to the House of Commons to see if Luxford’s source was indeed an MP and not some civil servant with access to a government car?
And there she was, smiling up from Chapter 19 with her overlarge spectacles and her overlong fringe. Eve Bowen, the MP from Marylebone and Undersecretary of State at the Home Office. Rodney whistled appreciatively at the information. She was indeed a moderate looker but, the Fab Fi aside, it was even more obvious now that Luxford hadn’t been meeting with her because of those looks.
If she was a Junior Minister, Bowen was ranked somewhere round third to fifth in importance at the Home Office. That put her into the regular company of movers and shakers of the highest importance. What she was offering Luxford must be pure gold, Rodney decided. So how the hell was he going to find out what it was so that he could pass the information on to the chairman in an aside that would enhance Rodney’s persona as a ruthless newshound, a sagacious editor, and a beloved confidant of the mighty? Aside from reading Luxford’s mind for the code word that would give him access to Luxford’s computer terminal, where with any luck he could find the story the editor had been writing the previous night, Rodney didn’t have a clue. But he’d made progress with the discovery of Eve Bowen’s identity, and there was cause for celebration in that.
Her identity was a sure first step. With that as a starting point, Rodney knew he could call in a few debts that were owed him from several of the lobby correspondents at Parliament. He could get on the phone with one or more of them and see what he could dig up. He’d have to be careful how he did it. The last thing he wanted was to set another paper on the trail of a story that The Source was about to break. But handled with finesse…somehow connecting his curiosity to current events…perhaps revealing the paper’s intention to examine the role of women in Parliament…even going so far as to claim he was seeking the female reaction to the male MPs’ recent rash of trouser dropping…Surely he could uncover a detail that might mean nothing to a lobby journalist but everything to Rodney who knew about Bowen’s private meeting with Luxford and therefore who would also know how to interpret an aberration in her behaviour that might otherwise go disregarded by others.
Yes, yes. This was the answer.
He reached for his Filofax. Sarah Happleshort popped into his doorway, unwrapping a stick of Wrigley’s spearmint.
“You’re on,” she said. “A star is born.”
He looked at her blankly, his thoughts taken up with which one of the lobby correspondents would most likely be taken in by his call.
“The understudy’s dream has come true.” Sarah’s elbow jutted out in the general direction of Luxford’s office. “Dennis had an emergency. He’s left for the day. You’re in charge. Do you want the crew in here for the news meeting? Or shall we use his office?”
Rodney blinked. Sarah’s meaning became clear. The mantle of power settled over his shoulders, and he took a moment to savour its warmth. Then he did his best to look appropriately concerned and said, “An emergency? Not something wrong with the family? His wife? His son?”
“Couldn’t say. He left with the man and woman he came in with. D’you know who they are? No? Hmmm.” She looked over her shoulder and across the newsroom. Her next words were thoughtful. “Something’s up, I expect. What d’you say?”
The last thing Rodney wanted was Happleshort’s quivering nose on the scent. “I say we have a paper to get out. We’ll meet in Den’s office. Gather the others. Give me ten minutes.”
When she left to do his bidding—how he liked to think of it in those lofty terms—Rodney went back to his Filofax. He leafed through it quickly. Ten minutes, he thought, was more than enough time to place the phone call that would secure his future.
What Helen and Deborah had described to him as squats were really more like squats in the making, St. James discovered. They sat in a derelict row on George Street, a short distance away from a chi-chi-looking Japanese restaurant possessing the rare luxury of a car park behind it. St. James and Helen left the MG there.
George Street was typical of modern London, a street offering everything from the dignified presence of the United Bank of Kuwait to abandoned tenements waiting for someone to invest in their future. The particular tenements that he and Helen walked to had once been shops with three floors of flats above them. Their ground floor display windows and their glass doors had been replaced with sheets of metal over which had been nailed a diagonal striping of boards. But the windows above street level were not boarded, nor were they broken, which made the flats above the shops desirable as squats.
As St. James looked the buildings over, Helen said, “There’s no way someone could get in from the front.”
“Not with the way they’ve been boarded up. But no one would chance going in through the front anyway. The street’s too busy. There’s too much risk of someone seeing, remembering, and later phoning the authorities.”
“Phoning…?” Helen looked from the tenements to St. James. Her voice quickened with excitement. “Simon, you don’t think Charlotte’s here, do you? In one of these buildings?”
He was frowning at the buildings. He didn’t respond until she said his name and repeated the questions. Then it was only to say, “We need to talk to him, Helen. If he exists.”
“The vagrant? Two different people in Cross Keys Close mentioned having seen him. How on earth could he not exist?”
“I agree they saw someone,” St. James said. “But didn’t anything about Mr. Pewman’s description of the man strike you as odd?”
“Just the fact that he could describe him so accurately.”
“There’s that. But didn’t the description seem remarkably generic, exactly what one would expect a dosser to look like? The duffel bag, the old khaki clothes, the knitted cap, the hair, the weathered face. Particularly the face. The memorable face.”
Helen’s own face brightened. “Are you saying the man was in a disguise?”
“What better way to recce the area for a few days?”
“But of course. Of course. He could rustle through rubbish bins and keep his eye peeled for Charlotte’s movements. But he wouldn’t be able to snatch Charlotte dressed like that, would he? She’d have been terrified. She’d have caused a scene which someone would have remembered. So when he knew her comings and goings well enough, he’d drop the disguise altogether and snatch her then, wouldn’t he?”
“But he would have needed a place to change. To change without being seen. To become the tramp and then unbecome him when it was time to take Charlotte.”
“The squats,” she said.
“It’s a possibility. Shall we have a look around?”
Although squatters were protected by law in the country, there was a procedure one had to go through in order to avoid being charged with breaking and entering private property. A squatter was required to change the locks on the doors and to put up a sign declaring his intention of occupying an abandoned residence. He was also required to do this prior to police intervention. But someone who didn’t wish to draw attention to himself, someone who especially didn’t want to be an object of interest to the local police, would not seize the rights to a building or a flat in the typical manner. Rather, he would make his takeover as surreptitious as possible, gaining access to a building through a less conventional means.
“Let’s try round the back,” St. James said.
The row of buildings was offset at either end by an alley. St. James and Helen chose the closest one and followed it to a small square. One side of the square was taken up by a multi-storey car park, two sides by the backs of buildings on other streets, one side by the back gardens of the tenements on George Street. These back gardens were walled in, enclosed by at least twelve feet of sooty bricks with their tops overgrown by whatever straggling plantlife was able to flourish without a gardener’s care. Unless a squatter had come prepared with rock-climbing equipment in order to clamber over the wall, the only way in appeared to be at the near end of the alley.
Here, two unlocked wooden gates opened into a small brick-walled courtyard, one side of which comprised the looming wall of one of the back gardens. This courtyard was filled with the detritus of previous inhabitants of the building: mattresses, box springs, dustbins, a hosepipe, an old perambulator, a broken ladder.
The ladder looked promising. St. James dragged it out from behind one of the mattresses. But its wood was rotten and its rungs—where they existed at all—didn’t look as if they’d support a child’s weight, let alone the weight of a fully grown man. So St. James discarded it and considered instead a large abandoned and empty dumpster. It sat behind one of the courtyard’s wooden gates.
“It’s on wheels,” Helen noted. “Shall we?”
“I think so,” St. James said.
The dumpster was rusty. It didn’t look as if its wheels would turn. But when St. James and Helen positioned themselves on either side of it and began to heave it towards the garden wall, they found it rolled quite easily, as if it had been oiled for the purpose.
Once it was in position, St. James could see that the dumpster would easily provide a means of scrambling over the wall. He tested the strength of the metal sides and the lid. They appeared sound. Then he saw Helen watching him uneasily, a frown drawing a line between her eyebrows. He knew what she was thinking: Not exactly an activity for a man in your condition, Simon. She wouldn’t say it, though. She wouldn’t want to run the risk of wounding him with a reminder of his disability.
“It’s the only way in,” he responded to her unspoken concern. “I can manage it, Helen.”
“But how are you going to get back over the wall from the other side?”
“There’ll be something in the building I can use. If there isn’t, you’ll have to go for help.” She looked doubtful about this plan. He said again, “It’s the only way.”
She thought about it, apparently accepted the idea, and yielded, saying, “Let me at least help you get over. All right?”
He gauged the height of the wall and the height of the dumpster. He nodded his agreement to her modification of his plan. He heaved himself awkwardly to the top of the dumpster, assisted by an upper-body strength which had increased over the years since his lower
body had been disabled. Once standing on the lid, he turned back to Helen and pulled her up to join him. From where they stood, they could reach the top of the brick wall, but they could not see over it. Helen was right, St. James realised. He was going to need her assistance.
He cupped his hands for one of her feet. “You first,” he said. “I’ll need your help to get to the top.” He gave her a boost. She gripped the mound of mortar that fashioned the wall’s cap. With a grunt and a heave, she straddled it. Once in a secure position, she took a moment to examine the back of the building and its garden.
“This is it,” she said.
“What?”
“Someone’s been here.” Her voice was tinged with the thrill of the chase. “There’s an old sideboard that’s been upended next to the wall inside. So someone could get in and out easily. Here.” She extended her hand to him. “Come have a look. There’s a chair as well, for getting down off the sideboard. And there’s even a path that’s been tramped through the weeds. It looks fairly fresh to me.”
With his right hand on the wall and his left gripped in hers, St. James strained his way up to join her. It was no easy feat, despite his words of assurance to her a moment earlier. One dead leg encased in a brace however light-weight did nothing to make his life easy. His forehead was damp with perspiration when he’d finally completed the activity.