“At the MP’s house?”
“I was first on the scene.”
“That’s my boy,” Rodney murmured.
Corsico modestly lowered his gaze to his notebook and made much of studying it. Then he went on. “I was delivering flowers, actually.”
Rodney grinned. “Ingenious.”
“And?” Luxford said.
“She’d been praying up a storm on her knees in the sitting room, and once I told her I’d be more than pleased to share her devotions—which took a good forty-five minutes, let me tell you—we had a cuppa in the kitchen and she spilled the beans.” He jockeyed his chair about so that he was no longer facing the table, but instead facing Luxford. “The kid went missing last Wednesday, Mr. Luxford. Supposedly she was snatched off the street, most likely by some pervert. But the MP and her husband never reported it to the cops. What d’you think of that?”
Rodney blew a soft whistle of amazement. Even he hadn’t been prepared for this. He went to the door and swung it open, ready to call in Sarah Happleshort to revamp the front page.
Luxford said, “What are you doing, Rodney?”
“Getting Sarah in here. We need to move with this.”
“Close the door.”
“But, Den—”
“I said close the door. Sit down.”
Rodney felt his hackles rise. It was the tone that got to him, that bloody assurance of Luxford’s that his every command would be obeyed. “We’ve got a damn solid story going,” Rodney said. “Is there some reason you want to quash it?”
Luxford said to Corsico, “What sort of confirmation have you got on this?”
“Confirmation?” Rodney said. “This is the naffing housekeeper he’s been talking to. Who’d know better that the kid was snatched and the police weren’t called?”
Luxford repeated, “Have you got confirmation?”
Rodney said, “Den!” and knew that Luxford would kill the story unless Corsico had been sharp enough to cover every conceivable base.
But Corsico came through. He said, “I spoke to someone at three of the divisional police stations in the Marylebone area: Albany Street, Greenberry Street, Wigmore Street. There’s no record in any of the collators’ offices of anyone reporting this kid missing.”
“Dynamite,” Rodney breathed. He wanted to crow, but he contained himself. Corsico went on.
“That didn’t make sense to me. What parents wouldn’t phone the cops if their kid disappeared?” He tilted his chair back and answered his own question. “I thought, perhaps, it might be parents who wanted her gone.”
Luxford remained expressionless. Rodney gave a low whistle.
“So I thought we might get ahead of the game if I did some more digging,” Corsico said. “Which is what I did.”
“And?” Rodney asked, seeing the story begin to take shape.
“And I found out that Bowen’s husband—a bloke called Alexander Stone—isn’t the father of this kid in the first place.”
“That’s hardly news,” Luxford pointed out. “Anyone who follows politics could have told you that, Mitchell.”
“Yeah? Well, it was news to me, and an interesting twist. And when a twist comes up, I like to follow where it’s leading. So I went to St. Catherine’s and looked up the birth certificate to see who the father was. Because I figured we’d want to interview him eventually, right? The grieving parent? With the death and all?” He grabbed his denim jacket and drove his fist into one pocket, then the other. He brought out a folded piece of paper, which he unfolded, smoothed against the top of the table, and handed over to Luxford.
Rodney waited, breath held in anticipation. Luxford looked the paper over, raised his head, and said, “Well?”
“Well what?” Rodney demanded.
“She hasn’t given the father’s name,” Corsico explained.
“I can see that much,” Luxford said. “But since she’s also never identified him publicly, this hardly comes as an overwhelming surprise.”
“Maybe not a surprise. But a possible connection and, more important, a definite way to spin the story.”
Luxford returned the copy of the certificate to Corsico. As he did so, he seemed to study the young reporter, the way one might examine a life form one can’t quite identify. “Where exactly are you heading with this?”
“No name entered on the birth certificate? No report of the kid’s disappearance made to the police? It’s all about withholding information, Mr. Luxford. It’s the prevailing theme, the theme of this poor kid’s birth in the beginning, the theme of her death in the end. We can spin the story round that for a start. If we do—and an editorial about the insidious nature of family secrets would be nice as well—then believe me, even a twit would be able to dig up the nasties about MP Bowen for The Source afterwards. Because if Larnsey and the rent boy are any measure of what we can expect from the public, as soon as we spin this story round Bowen’s tendency to withhold crucial information, every enemy she has will be ringing us up with a tip that will take us right where we want to go.”
“Which is where?” Luxford asked.
“To the guilty party. Which, I’ll wager, is the ultimate piece of information she’s withholding.” Corsico raked his hair back into place. It immediately unraked itself. “See, it only makes sense that she knows who snatched the kid. It’s either that or she arranged to have the kid snatched herself. Those two are the only possible explanations for why she didn’t phone the cops straightaway. The only reasonable explanations as well. Now, if we tack that information onto the fact that she’s kept the identity of the kid’s dad a secret all these years…well, I think you can see where I’m heading, can’t you?”
“Actually, I can’t.”
Rodney’s antennae immediately went up. He’d heard that tone of Luxford’s before. Deadly even, utterly polite. Luxford was playing out the rope. If he had it his way, Corsico was going to pick it up, loop it round his neck, and hang himself directly. And the story with him.
He started to intervene, saying in what he hoped was a decisive tone, “A solid piece of investigative journalism so far. Of course, Mitch will be taking it one step at a time, with confirmations all the way. Correct?”
But Corsico didn’t get the hint. He said, “Listen, I’ve got twenty-five pounds that says there’s a connection between the kid’s disappearance and the father. And if we start sifting through Bowen’s background, I’ve another twenty-five that says we’ll find it.”
Rodney silently told Corsico to still his blabber. He tried to give him the cut-throat sign to shut up, but the reporter was intent upon making his points. After all, Luxford had always loved them before. What reason was there for Corsico to think he wouldn’t love them now? This was just another Tory they were going after. Hadn’t Luxford been regaled by Corsico’s every effort to sink the Tories so far?
“How tough could it be to find the connection?” Corsico was saying. “We’ve got the kid’s birth date. We count back nine months from it and start nosing round Eve Bowen’s background to see what she was up to then. I’ve even made a start.” He rustled through two pages of his notebook, read for a moment, said, “Yeah. Here. The Daily Telegraph. She was a political correspondent for the Daily Telegraph then. That’s our starting point.”
“And where do you go from there?”
“Don’t know yet. But I’ll give you my best guess.”
“Please do.”
“I say she was shagging a major player in the Conservative Party, to grease her way onto some constituency’s candidacy list. We’re talking Chancellor of the Exchequer, Home Secretary, Foreign Secretary. Someone like that. Her pay-off was a seat in Parliament. So all we have to do is find out who was shagging her. Once we’ve got that, the rest of the story’s just a matter of camping out on his doorstep till he’s ready to talk to us. And that, you’ll see, will be the connection we’re looking for between this”—he waved the birth certificate—“and the kid’s death.”
“Ch
arlotte,” Luxford said.
“Huh?”
“The child in question. Her name was Charlotte.”
“Oh. Right. Yeah. Charlotte.” Corsico scribbled into his notebook.
Luxford placed his fingers on the dummy front page, straightening it to line up with his desk. In the silence among them, the sound from the newsroom was suddenly amplified. Telephones ringing, laughter welling up, an individual yelling, “Shit! Someone save me! I’m dying for a fag!”
Dying was it, Rodney thought. He could see what was coming as surely as he could see the next Kit Kat bar he was planning to inhale the moment this meeting was over. The only thing he couldn’t see was exactly how Luxford was going to pull it off. Then the editor enlightened him.
He spoke to Corsico. “I expected far better of you,” Luxford said.
Corsico stopped writing, although he kept his pencil poised. He said, “What?”
“Better reporting.”
“Why? What’s the—”
“Better work than this bullshit fairy tale you’ve just spun for me, Mitchell.”
“Now, wait a second, Den,” Rodney intervened.
“No,” Luxford said. “You wait. Both of you. We’re not talking about a member of the public here: Lucy Law-and-order who follows every dictate and toes every line. We’re talking about a Member of Parliament. And not just any Member of Parliament but a Government Minister. Do you actually expect me to believe for an instant that a Government Minister—an undersecretary of bleeding state, for the love of God—would ever phone her local police station and report her daughter missing when she can walk down the hall and have the Home Secretary handle the problem personally for her? When she can demand discretion? When she can have as much secrecy as she wants? In a bloody Government that makes secrecy its watchword? She could make this case the highest priority at Scotland Yard and no police station in the country would be wise to the fact, so why the hell do you think some station in Marylebone would happen to have it on report? Do you actually want me to believe we have a front page story upon which we’re going to build a case against Bowen because she didn’t phone her local bobby?” He shoved his chair back and surged to his feet. “What kind of journalism is this? Get out of here, Corsico, and don’t come back until you have a story we can run with.”
Corsico reached for the copy of the birth certificate. “But what about—”
“What about it?” Luxford demanded. “It’s a birth certificate without a name. There are probably two hundred thousand just like it and none of them constitute news. When you have the Home Secretary or the Commissioner of Police going on record with the story that they knew nothing about this kid’s disappearance prior to her death, then we’ll have something to hold up the presses about. In the meantime, stop wasting my time.”
Corsico started to speak. Rodney held up his hand to stop him. He couldn’t believe Luxford would go so far as to use this as a reason to kill the entire story, no matter how much he apparently wanted to. But he had to make sure. He said, “Okay. Mitchell, we go back to square one. We double-check everything. Get three confirmations.” And he quickly went on before Corsico could argue. “What’s the front page going to be for tomorrow, Dennis?”
“We’ll go with the Bowen piece as written. No changes. And nothing about the absence of fantasy police reports.”
“Shit,” Corsico breathed. “My story’s solid. I know it is.”
“Your story’s manure,” Luxford said.
“That’s—”
“We’ll work on it, Den.” Rodney caught Corsico by the armpit and quickly manoeuvred him out of the room. He shut the door behind them.
“What the hell?” Corsico demanded. “My stuff is hot. You know it. I know it. All that bullshit about—Look, if we don’t run it, someone else will. Come on, Rodney. Jesus. I should just take this story over to the Globe and sell it to them. This is news. This is hot. And no one has it but us. Damn it. God damn it. I ought to—”
“Keep working on it,” Rodney said quietly, casting a speculative look at Luxford’s office door.
“What? I’m supposed to try to get the Commissioner of Police to talk to me about a Member of Parliament? What a bloody laugh.”
“No. Forget him. Follow the trail.”
“The trail?”
“You think there’s a connection, don’t you? The kid, the birth certificate, all that?”
Corsico settled his shoulders and adjusted his spine. If he’d been wearing a tie, he’d probably have straightened its knot. He said, “Yeah. I wouldn’t be going after it if it wasn’t there.”
“Then find the connection. Bring it to me.”
“And then what? Luxford—”
“Bugger Luxford. Dog the story. I’ll do the rest.”
Corsico flicked a glance at the door of the editor’s office. “It’s a hell of a story,” he said, but for the first time he sounded uneasy.
Rodney grabbed his shoulder and gave it a jerk. “It is,” he said. “Go after it. Write it. Give it to me.”
“And then?”
“I’ll know what to do with it, Mitch.”
Dennis Luxford pressed the button that would switch on the monitor of his computer terminal. He dropped into his chair. The figures on the monitor began to glow, but his eyes didn’t focus on them. Switching on the monitor was merely an excuse for something to do. He could turn to it and display an avid perusal of its gibberish should anyone suddenly walk into his office and expect to see The Source editor watching over the pursuit of a story that no doubt at this moment had every reporter in London doing industrious spadework into Eve Bowen’s life. Mitch Corsico was only one of them.
Luxford knew how unlikely it was that Mitch Corsico and Rodney Aronson had been convinced by his show of editorial outrage. In all the years that he had run The Source and the Globe before it, he had never moved to block a story that held as much scurrilous promise as did this tale of MP Bowen’s failure to phone the local police about the abduction of her child. And it was a Tory tale to boot. He should have been glorying in the number of pleasing opportunities such a story presented. He should have been rabid in his eagerness to mould the revelation that Evelyn had failed to phone the police into a clever and sententious indictment of the entire Tory party. There they were, religiously touting their Recommitment to Basic British Values, one of which—one could only presume—was supposed to be the Basic British Family. And when the family was threatened in the most heinous of fashions, through the abduction of a child, a noted Tory minister did not, our sources tell us, so much as involve the proper authorities in a search for that child. Here was an opportunity to massage meagre facts into a story that would portray the Tories once again as the flim-flammers they truly were. And he had not only not grasped that opportunity. He had done his best to eradicate it.
At the most, Luxford knew, he had only bought some time. That Corsico had got on to the birth certificate so quickly—that he had a sensible plan for excavating Evelyn’s past—told Luxford how unreasonable it was to expect the secret of Charlotte’s birth to remain a secret now she was dead. Mitchell Corsico had the kind of initiative which he—Luxford—would once have revelled in. The boy’s instinct for ferreting out the path to the truth was astounding, and his ability to cajole people into telling that truth was in itself a work of art. Luxford could hobble his progress by placing restrictions upon him, by laying down specious surmises about the Home Secretary and New Scotland Yard and ordering the boy to check each one out. But he could not halt that progress save by giving him the sack. Which would serve only to prompt him to take his notebooks, his Filofax, and his nose for news to a competitor, the Globe most likely. And the Globe wouldn’t have Luxford’s reasons for thwarting a story that would expose the truth.
Charlotte. God, Luxford thought, he’d never even seen her. He’d seen the propaganda photographs when Evelyn was standing for Parliament, the candidate posing at home with her devoted, smiling family at her side. But that had b
een the extent of it. And even then he’d passed over the pictures with nothing more than the contemptuous glance he gave to all the candidates’ posturing during a general election. He hadn’t really looked at the child. He hadn’t bothered to study her. She was his, and all he actually knew of her was her name. And—now—the fact that she was dead.
He’d phoned Marylebone from the bedroom on Sunday night. When he’d heard her voice, he’d said tersely, “The television news. Evelyn, a body’s been found.”
She’d said, “My God. You monster. You’ll stoop to anything to bend my will, won’t you?”
“No! Just listen to me. It’s in Wiltshire. A child. A girl. Dead. They don’t know who she is. They’re asking for information. Evelyn. Evelyn.”
She’d hung up on him. He hadn’t talked to her since.
Part of him said she deserved to be ruined. She deserved a very public objurgation. She deserved to see every detail of Charlotte’s genesis, her life, her disappearance, and her death put on display for the judgement of her countrymen. And she deserved to be toppled from her position of power as a result. But another part of him couldn’t be a party to her downfall. Because he wanted to believe that whatever her sins, she had paid for them fully with the death of this child.
He hadn’t loved her those few days in Blackpool, any more than she had loved him. Their shared experience had been nothing more than bodies connecting, their concupiscence heightened by the fact that they were polar extremes. They had nothing in common but their ability to debate their opposing viewpoints and their desire to be seen as the victor in every polemic they embarked upon. She was swift-witted and confident. He, a verbal swordsman, hadn’t intimidated her in the least. Their disputes generally ended in draws, but he was used to decimating his opponents thoroughly and failing to decimate her with words, he had sought other means. He’d been young enough and stupid enough that he still believed a woman’s submission in bed was a declaration of male supremacy. When he’d finished with her and was flush with the swagger of what he’d brought her to and how, he’d expected radiant eyes, a somnolent smile, followed by a delicate and decidedly feminine fading into the closest woodwork from which she would henceforth allow him to reign among their colleagues supreme.