The Hunt and the Kill

by Holly Watt

  That was the nightmare. Miranda was often woken in the night by the thought of being scooped by another newspaper.

  ‘It won’t take much longer,’ Casey promised. ‘Do you want another coffee?’

  She stood up and stretched. Most of the big newsroom was in darkness, only the night editor’s desk a glow of light.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Casey asked.

  ‘That’s AJ, the new night editor.’ Miranda came to stand beside her.

  ‘What happened to Aaron?’

  ‘Oh. It must have happened while you were … ’ Miranda started to laugh. ‘Aaron resigned at 3 a.m. in the morning a few days ago. He updated the online splash headline to ‘Ross Warman is a slave-driving fuckwit’ and stormed out of the building. The headline was only changed back when Ross woke up at 5 a.m., because obviously the site is the first thing he checks every morning. One of the subs was moaning, saying they’d all hoped it would be up for at least another hour, given that Ross had rung in to scream at them at 2.30. He only left the sodding office at midnight.’

  ‘Ross is deranged,’ said Casey.

  ‘He’s even worse than usual at the moment,’ Miranda yawned. ‘Git.’

  It was Flora Ashcroft who came up with the solution. She arrived for work experience, pale but determined. Eric and Sophie were on holiday together, so Flora sat at Eric’s desk, next to Casey.

  Flora delighted everyone by making buckets of tea, and even endeared herself to the home affairs editor by tracking down a terrorist’s great-aunt in Bury.

  ‘Although I’m not absolutely convinced the great-aunt isn’t the bomb maker,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘So it might be best if that’s not your first ever doorstep. Now, there’s this Libyan chap … Even Five haven’t been able to … ’

  Casey told Flora she was investigating Adsero, but left out the possible existence of Corax. It seemed too cruel.

  And late one evening, Flora spun her screen towards Casey. ‘Didn’t you want to know where Elias Bailey would be appearing next? How about there?’

  ‘The 14th Pharmaceutical Research and Development Symposium,’ Miranda read aloud from her computer screen a few minutes later. ‘It’s as if they design the names to be dull.’

  ‘I think they do, actually.’

  Miranda looked up at Casey and Flora.

  ‘How on earth did you find out, Flora? We couldn’t see his attendance promoted anywhere. Well done.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Flora. ‘I just trawled and trawled.’

  ‘I’ve just rung the hotel to check,’ said Casey. ‘He’s definitely going.’

  Just checking that you knew that Mr Bailey prefers a room on the east side of the building.

  Of course. I will make a note on his booking.

  ‘Well done, Flora,’ Miranda nodded. ‘And where the hell is Wrocław anyway?’

  ‘Poland,’ said Casey sweetly. ‘We drove past it once on the way to Katowice, if you recall?’

  ‘How could I forget?’

  ‘Anyway,’ Casey smiled at Miranda as Flora headed back to her desk, ‘Bailey is a keynote speaker at that symposium and I am sure the organisers would be delighted if a British health minister happened to be in town.’

  21

  The organisers were indeed delighted. Ambrose Drummond was swiftly inserted into the programme of the 14th Pharmaceutical Research and Development Symposium, and given a prominent billing.

  ‘Wrocław?’ Drummond had roared at Tillie, over a quick drink at his club. ‘Never heard of it.’

  ‘It’s in Poland. Meant to be charming. And my boss would be so appreciative if I could have a meeting with Mr Bailey.’

  Drummond scrolled through his diary. ‘Meant to be in the constituency that weekend. Christ, I suppose even Wrocław will be better than that.’

  ‘We’ll organise everything. And I’m sure you’ll get a most generous bonus.’

  ‘All right. I’ll mention it to the department. But make sure I get a decent bloody suite.’

  ‘Of course, Mr Drummond.’

  Tillie and Hessa coordinated Drummond’s visit to Wrocław. Drummond ordered his special adviser to find a current email address for both Bailey and his executive assistant.

  ‘Oh, I’m sure his spad loved that,’ Miranda laughed, when she heard about it.

  Serena Brackenbury, Drummond’s elegant special adviser, was well known in Westminster for regarding her current role as a tedious stopgap before she stood for a safe seat and continued her inexorable rise. The MP in the constituency neighbouring Drummond’s was 79 and rheumatic, and Serena spent most of her time on the rubber chicken circuit, flicking her poker-straight blonde bob and chatting up party members.

  Once Serena had resentfully tracked down Bailey’s email address, Drummond messaged the Adsero chief executive, copying in Tillie. ‘Elias – it’d be good to catch up in Poland. My assistant Jilly will sort out all the details,’ Drummond typed airily.

  As far as Drummond was concerned, Tillie was Jilly. The rhyme was enough to make Tillie glance up.

  ‘Maybe you’ll be Dora, one day,’ Tillie said to Flora, as they ran out to get a sandwich, and Flora’s eyes lit up.

  Bailey had responded within minutes, briskly ordering his assistant to fix a time and place for a meeting in Wrocław.

  ‘It’s all coming together,’ Casey grinned. ‘Good work, Jilly.’

  ‘And now I’ve got to write a bloody speech for him,’ grumbled Hessa later. ‘He said he can’t ask Serena to write it, because she’ll ask too many questions about what on earth he’s doing in Wrocław.’

  ‘Well, at least you’re not having to write stories about the crisis in mental health care and the meltdown in A&E waiting times,’ said Casey. ‘And for God’s sake, don’t accidentally change government policy with some random speech in Wrocław.’

  The Post had been involved in an inadvertent switch of government policy at least once before. Two floors up from the newsroom, there was a boardroom where caterers served salmon en croute and strawberries and cream to visiting politicians or pop stars or minor royals. One or two of the Post’s favoured columnists – never the reporters, they were kept well away – would pop up for a jolly gossip, before the guest was given a congenial tour of the newsroom.

  The ambitious leader of the then opposition had been visiting the Post for lunch three years earlier. Over coffee, after a couple of glasses of Sauvignon Blanc, the last editor of the Post had held up his hand, fingers spread out. ‘There are five things you need to do about education,’ he began, launching into a recital of one of the Post’s most recent leader columns, listing the points off his fingers.

  ‘And then, bugger me, I couldn’t remember the last one,’ he told his giggling political team later. ‘I was going to look like an absolute tit, so I had to make something up on the hoof.’

  A year later, the new government solemnly voted through the changes.

  ‘All right,’ Hessa said gloomily, deleting a paragraph from her speech. ‘No new government policies.’

  Dash, busy with a terrorism crisis, waved through the budget for the Wrocław trip.

  ‘I thought you said the Drummond sting was pretty much there?’

  ‘When we checked the recording, the wording wasn’t quite right. Too wink and a nod,’ Miranda lied. ‘He needs to really spell it out.’

  ‘Fine. But that story is costing a bloody fortune.’

  ‘Yes, sorry. Also, we think he may be about to drop Warwick in it somehow.’

  This wasn’t true, but it sounded plausible. Colette Warwick was the Health Secretary, Drummond’s boss. Fiercely ambitious, she evidently irritated Drummond, Miranda had noted from the transcripts. Younger than Drummond – and significantly brighter in Miranda’s opinion – Warwick was creeping closer to the overall crown, and Drummond resented it.

  ‘Everything OK with Casey?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ nodded Miranda. ‘She wrote up a very interesting article on MRSA last week. Did you see it? All about how some st
aph infections become resistant to all the standard antibiotics.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah.’ Dash turned back to the big televisions that dominated the newsdesk. The Home Secretary was talking. ‘Can you turn that up?’

  Casey and Hessa flew to Wrocław the afternoon before Drummond arrived, with a couple of large boxes among their luggage. They checked into a big hotel that looked out over one of the pretty, pastel-coloured Wrocław squares. The Old Town Hall dominated the view, Gothic and forbidding. In the distance, church bells jingled merrily.

  ‘It’s very beautiful,’ said Hessa.

  They had booked two standard rooms, as well as the presidential suite for Drummond.

  ‘He’ll demand it anyway,’ sighed Hessa.

  They picked up two keycards for each of the three rooms, and as soon as the bellboy had disappeared, they went to work.

  The presidential suite had two large bedrooms, each with superking beds piled high with cushions. There were grey marble bathrooms and a generously-sized sitting room connecting the two bedrooms. The sitting room had plump gold and silver striped sofas, gilt-edged mirrors and heavy walnut furniture. The wallpaper was gold damask, and the curtains a dark yellow velvet.

  Within minutes Casey had fixed tiny microphones to the underside of the coffee table. As Casey worked, Hessa placed a small sculpture on a sideboard and a reading light on a desk beside the sofa. She tucked the hotel’s own reading light neatly into one of the empty boxes they had brought with them. Hessa then took a small oil painting of a Russian grand duchess off the wall on the opposite side of the room, and hung a disapproving Polish count in her place. She stepped back to check that the portrait was level, then nodded with satisfaction.

  Before flying out, Hessa had looked up the presidential suite on Expedia. The website fortuitously provided photographs of several different angles of the sitting room.

  Hessa, Flora and Sagah – a surveillance genius who operated out of an attic in Holborn – had gone shopping on Tottenham Court Road for the reading light. The sculpture and the disapproving Polish count came from a cheap auction house in south London. All three items matched the decor of the hotel room perfectly.

  ‘I even changed the plug of the reading light so it’s compatible with Polish electrics.’ Sagah had kissed his fingers. ‘It’s that sort of attention to detail that really makes me stand out.’

  Flora had touched the Polish count with awe, Hessa watching her with a proud indulgence.

  Now Hessa gave the room one more check. She doubted that the hotel’s hurried housekeeping staff would notice the difference. And even if they did, it was almost impossible to spot the tiny cameras buried carefully in the sculpture and the light. She peered closer. The pinhole in the Polish count’s moustache was quite invisible; Drummond would never notice the wide-angle lens peeping through. The cameras were all motion-activated, working off Wi-Fi. Tiny infrared LEDs allowed them to operate in the dark.

  ‘That Polish count matches the colour scheme even better than the grand duchess,’ said Casey admiringly. ‘You are clever, Hessa.’

  ‘I was reading about theatre props,’ Hessa grinned. ‘About how sometimes a prop is designed to look more real than the actual item. Forced perspective, it’s called.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Michelangelo’s David was designed to be seen from below.’ Hessa polished the base of the reading light. ‘Because he was meant to be positioned on the roof of the cathedral, so his head is slightly larger than you might expect. Same thing for the Statue of Liberty.’

  ‘I did not know that.’ Casey stepped forward to nudge the Polish count a quarter of an inch to the left.

  ‘And they used to build raked stages,’ said Hessa. ‘Stages that slope up from the audience so that when an actor was at the back of a set, he would be higher than the one closer to the audience. Quite literally upstaging him. It’s all a question of perspective.’

  ‘It must have been awkward to walk on them,’ said Casey.

  ‘It was,’ said Hessa. ‘You’d have to sort of limp along. They don’t do it with modern theatres. They changed how the audience sits instead.’

  Hessa was on her knees by the coffee table, checking the microphones again.

  ‘Even if Drummond did spot them,’ Casey said, ‘he’d assume it was only the Polish secret services.’

  ‘They’re probably recording it all too anyway,’ said Hessa. ‘I do wish we could divvy up the transcribing.’

  22

  As Elias Bailey walked into the hotel suite, his two bodyguards took up a position outside the door. Drummond met Bailey at the door, all good cheer, guiding him towards the sofas. Can I get you a drink, tea, coffee? Good to see you, Bailey.

  Bailey came to an abrupt halt as he saw Hessa, sitting in one of the big gold and silver sofas. Hessa rose to her feet and smiled, putting out her hand.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ Drummond was closing the door, ‘Have you met Jessa Uddin, Elias? She runs StellaBiotics in India.’

  ‘I don’t think I have heard of it.’ Bailey shook Hessa’s hand. ‘How do you do?’

  In the room next door, Casey and Miranda were sitting in front of three laptop screens. The feeds were showing footage from the reading light, the sculpture and the disapproving Polish count. Casey felt like a theatre director, peering out from the wings, hoping – desperately – that no one would miss their cue. Sidelined, and she hated it.

  ‘No,’ Miranda had been firm, ‘you can’t.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘It’s Hessa’s story,’ Miranda said. ‘And after Mauritius … ’

  ‘But—’

  ‘No.’

  And Casey had nodded, defeated.

  Bailey walked into the feed from the reading light, giving a close-up of his face. As Casey stared at the scowling eyebrows, she felt an uncontrollable rage, sharp as a stitch.

  You.

  You killed Ed. I know it.

  I know it.

  She sensed Miranda turn towards her.

  ‘Casey … ’

  ‘I’m fine,’ she spat out the words.

  As Drummond completed the introductions, Bailey nodded curtly at Hessa. The chief executive of Adsero was a tall man, solid across the chest and shoulders. He gave no sign of being affected by the heart transplant. There was an impression of resilience about him, a robustness.

  In fact, he dominated the room with an intensely physical presence. This man would not, Casey thought, be pleased to discover he was being manipulated. The puppet’s puppet: it would trigger absolute rage.

  On the laptop screens, Hessa looked small beside him.

  ‘We operate out of Hyderabad,’ Hessa was saying smoothly. ‘We’re not on the scale of Adsero yet, but we’re working on it. It’s an honour to meet you, Mr Bailey.’

  Casey remembered the first time she had met Hessa, in the queue for the vending machine at the Post. She had been so shy then, a junior reporter ducking her head when she came up with a clever solution to a problem, almost inaudibly. Now Hessa smiled at the pharmaceutical tycoon with just the right balance of assurance and sycophancy, then turned to the Health Minister to say goodbye. In her smart tailored suit, spiky patent heels and sheer Heist tights, she was immaculate.

  ‘Jessa was just leaving,’ Drummond announced, as Hessa handed her business card to Bailey. ‘But why don’t you hang around for a bit, Jessa? I’m sure Mr Bailey has helpful words of advice for a young entrepreneur like yourself.’

  On the screens, Casey watched Bailey’s eyes go to Drummond, one eyebrow slightly raised. Then Bailey relaxed: he knew he was being set up to meet Jessa Uddin, thought Casey. But Hessa’s real identity would never occur to him. Bailey tucked away her business card in an inside pocket.

  ‘Of course. Where are you based in Hyderabad, Jessa?’

  ‘We’re actually up by Kazipally,’ Hessa spoke fluently. ‘Just off the outer ring road.’

  Hessa had never visited India, but she had spent hours researching the Hyderabad antibiotics
industry, gazing with horror at photographs of brown choking rivers, of toxic green lakes.

  Casey crossed her fingers.

  Bailey sat down in the middle of one of the sofas, while Drummond perched neatly in an armchair.

  Drummond steered the conversation confidently. He was good, thought Casey. All those years of navigating the Parliamentary tea rooms showed. He was charming, entertaining, a couple of well-timed jokes. One crack at the PM’s expense: a reminder of the balance of power in that particular relationship.

  The steel was more evident in Bailey. Ignoring Hessa, he reeled through the issues he wanted to raise with Drummond. Tax breaks on R&D, data access, an upgraded road to one of Adsero’s factories in Lincolnshire.

  Drummond parried, nodded, promised to look into it and get back to you, I’ll have a word with the PM. By the way, Elias, have you ever thought about making a donation to the party?

  Hessa sat and smiled. Agreeing with Bailey, joking with Drummond.

  And finally, Drummond moved on to antibiotics. ‘When I was visiting a hospital in Carlisle the other week,’ he said, ‘they mentioned they were starting to see quite a lot of resistance to zentetra.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Bailey’s South African accent grew stronger, ‘Zentetra’s been a great antibiotic for two decades or so, but the bacteria are starting to fight back now.’

  ‘But you’ve got another one coming up?’

  ‘Saepio,’ Bailey nodded. ‘Should be out soon.’

  Bailey would be careful talking about any new drug. The information was highly market sensitive. A breakthrough would send Adsero’s share price flying. Rumours of a duff drug – and millions of research dollars down the drain – would echo bleakly around the City. Although Bailey owned a huge chunk of Adsero, there were still rules, strict ones.

  ‘So saepio’s the next gen zentetra?’ asked Hessa.

  ‘It is. But saepio is a lot better than zentetra,’ said Bailey firmly. ‘We’re very pleased with it.’

  ‘I’ve heard that some of the new tetracyclines are performing really strongly,’ said Hessa. ‘It’s an interesting area.’