by Bourne, Sam
Despite herself, Maggie could feel her head growing lighter, as if a warm mist was filling her brain, as if it might start floating. It’d been so long since anyone had regarded her as anything more than a handler of crises, she barely knew how to respond. Surely, this was what she wanted, to be treated as more than a glorified 911 service, to be viewed as a person of expertise?
‘So you’re envisioning a role in the national security team, is that right?’ She was forcing her voice to hold steady. ‘And obviously we take nothing for granted, but, if you win, either State or NSC?’
‘As you say, nothing for granted, Maggie. Nuh-thing. No measuring the drapes on this campaign. That’s a rule. Complacency kills you in this game. Kills you. We take nothing for granted until my hand is on that Bible and I’m swearing the oath – and not even then! Ellen’s rolling her eyes at me now. Sorry, Maggie. Some of them have heard that one before. But I mean it. No complacency.’
‘Sure. But part of the national security team?’
‘What’s that?’
‘Me. My role. I’d be part of the national security team.’
‘That’s how I see you. You’re tough, Maggie. That’s what everyone says. That’s us, eh, Maggie? Fighting Irish. My great-grandfather on my mother’s side. Donegal. Did I tell you I visited there a few years ago, back when I was chairing Foreign Relations? They rolled out the red carpet, I can tell you. “The prodigal son returns.” You get all that when you go back home? Course you do! You’re a rock star. Don’t be modest.’
Maggie hesitated, a pause that was so familiar to her. On the one hand, she didn’t want to labour the point, she didn’t want to seem pedantic, or boringly literal, or too demanding. And on the other, she knew a politician’s non-answer when she heard one. That’s how I see you was not the same as Yes.
‘So that’s a yes? A designated member of the national security team?’
Harrison let out a small sigh, then quickly restored himself, giving her a flash of those brilliant white teeth, which seemed to have had a fresh bleaching, doubtless for the upcoming campaign. ‘Look, my preference would be to give you as much scope as possible. Free rein.’ He crinkled his face. ‘I don’t want to tie you down with a narrow little title. Put limits on you. You’re too big for that.’
She smiled, reminded that in Washington a compliment was to be approached warily. It was almost always a diversionary tactic or consolation prize, a signal that you had missed out on the real thing.
‘You want to keep me free for other things.’
‘I want you to have authority across the campaign.’
‘In case something blows up perhaps.’
‘Exactly. You’ve got it.’
‘So a troubleshooter.’
‘Yes! I mean, no. Not at all.’
‘It’s OK. If that’s what you’d like me to do, you can just say.’
‘No, not at all. That’s not how . . . though of course . . . Look, you got me all tongue-tied here. I bet you hear that from a lot of guys, don’tcha! No, seriously, Maggie. I value your expertise in the foreign policy area. I really do. But, sure, if we hit some turbulence – and my plan is very much for that not to happen, believe me – but if we fly into some bumpy air, I’d want to turn to my most trusted navigation officer. Which could well be you. Maggie, I’m only telling you what you already know. Talk to anyone in this town and they’ll tell you. “You find yourself in a hole, you want Maggie Costello right next to you – because, God darn it, she’ll get you out.”’
After that, there was some more chat about the shape of the race, how he’d already locked up the key endorsements and how, knock on wood, things were looking just great. He checked that she was a full US citizen, despite the Irish thing. Maggie confirmed that, yes, she had become a citizen years ago, and that she’d been given FBI clearance to work in previous administrations, so working for the next one should present no problem. They both smiled at the confidence – not complacency, mind – of that.
At no point, Maggie noticed, did the president-to-be mention his vision for the country over the next four years, or sketch out a policy programme, either foreign or domestic. The closest he came was that reference to the janitorial burden that would rest on whoever came next, clearing up the mess left, and added to daily, by the current incumbent. Which, given the havoc and ruin of the last few years, struck Maggie as fair enough. Just undoing all that damage was a sufficient mission.
Aides were coming in and out throughout and now one lingered at the door with a tight expression that said, I mean it this time: you really have to finish. Harrison got to his feet, repressing a little groan at the effort, shook Maggie’s hand and headed towards the door. Maggie had just bent down, reaching into her handbag, when she jolted. She could feel two hands on her shoulders, giving a squeeze that made her jump. A second later there was breath in her ear and Harrison’s voice as he whispered: ‘Can’t wait to have you on board.’
Reflexively, she stiffened and, equally instinctively, tucked in her bottom, as if to prevent a grab or smack of her buttocks. It didn’t come, but her body had prepared for it. By the time she looked over her shoulder, the politician was out the door, a flutter of aides around him, including, she now noticed, several women, at least two of them in their twenties.
Can’t wait to have you on board. In a way, innocuous. Sort of thing a male boss might say to flatter any soon-to-be employee, man or woman. On board, part of the team, joining the gang. But said that way, in a whisper, nuzzled into her ear, it had another sound. Something about that construction: Can’t wait to have you. In that voice, and because the remark was addressed only to her, deliberately out of earshot of the rest of the team, even the ‘on board’ sounded sexual, as if it were a euphemism for something else. On board, on bed, in bed. Can’t wait to have you.
These thoughts galloped ahead of each other, while she stood, frozen, in the meeting room. Her face was hot; she was blushing. And then came the realization that she had said nothing – that she had stood mute, uttering not a word, not even a sound, of protest – and, with that, came anger. Not chiefly at him, the would-be, even likely, next US president, but at herself. How could she have not said anything? Why had she let him do that grabbing, pseudo-massage thing? What message had she sent to those two young women in his retinue? Hadn’t she, by her silence, told them there was nothing they could do, that resistance was impossible, that they just had to take it? If even she, an accomplished Washington player with a reputation of her own, could not push back, what possible hope did they have?
And then, as she gathered up her bag and headed for the door, the backlash began. Maybe she was getting this out of proportion. It was a friendly gesture. A little shoulder massage; hardly the end of the world. And he’s an old guy, from a different time. When he was coming up, that’s just how men were; no one ever told him it was wrong. Besides, people like their politicians to be warm and human, don’t they? Aren’t we always complaining if they’re too robotic, too managerial, too professorial? What he did was not that different to a pat on the back and an encouraging word: Good to have you with us. Get over it.
In the lift down, she let both voices slug it out until, by the time she was back outside and on the street, her chief thought was disbelief that here she was, yet again, having this internal argument. How many times had she been through this in her career, in her life? The tiny little gesture or remark that left you feeling unsettled, even shaken, but not so uncomfortable that you did anything about it. The episode that sat in that grey area, leaving you with no clear idea what to do.
She hailed a cab and was about to thumb out an email to the campaign chief of staff saying thanks, but no thanks. She thought better of it. Too quick: if she did that, they’d assume it was a reaction to what just happened. That itself would turn it into a thing. And right now she didn’t want it to be a thing. Not least because Tom Harrison might win the ele
ction and she might need to eat lunch in this town again.
Instead she opened up a WhatsApp message from her sister that had arrived nearly an hour earlier, while she was in the meeting.
All it said was Wow. Attached was a video that Maggie had already seen, because it had been widely shared since late the previous week. But the fact that Liz had wanted to pass it on struck Maggie all the same. Though Maggie would never say it to her face, her sister served as a one-woman focus group for Maggie, a reliable spokesperson for the real world. A teacher and mother of two living in Atlanta, Liz had never seen the Beltway, let alone lived within it. That fact had helped form an operating principle in Maggie’s mind, one that had come to seem like an iron law of political science: if something – a candidate’s message or a political scandal – had reached Liz, then it had truly cut through.
Maggie clicked on the video again, making this the fourth time. She wanted to watch it through her sister’s eyes, curious to see what Liz had seen in it. It was a forty-two-second video clip that, her phone informed her, had now been viewed two million times. It featured a woman in her mid-thirties, with short, dark hair and piercing green eyes. Maggie could see the comments posted underneath, including one from a journalist who had been among the first to share it, with these words:
If our politics is broken, and it is, then maybe we need to look beyond conventional politics and politicians. Maybe it’s time to pick someone fresh and untainted. Someone who can inspire, and is a real human being. Someone like Natasha Winthrop.
Chapter 3
Washington, DC, a few hours earlier
After she dialled 911, Natasha Winthrop barely moved. She stood for minute after minute in her study, staring down at the inert body on the floor. The sight of it froze her.
If anything, the horror seemed greater now than when he’d been alive. Then at least she’d had adrenalin powering through her system. Now it was receding, leaving behind pure terror. She could not take her eyes off the man at her feet, his eyes wide open. It was the strangest feeling: she was alone in the house, but not fully alone. She was with him.
The voice of rational thought, the inner voice that ordinarily she trusted most, was telling her that ‘he’ was now an ‘it’. That this corpse no longer posed a threat, that it could not do her any harm. But she was not listening to that voice. She could barely hear it. It was drowned out by the sheer fear pumping through her veins.
The fear had multiple components. Fear of a dead body, most certainly. Perhaps, she thought, if she had done more criminal law, handled more murders, she might have become inured to such a sight years ago. But for her, the mere presence of a corpse was utterly horrifying. There was also that fundamental fear of an intruder in the house, right here in this room. That terror had not receded simply because the intruder was dead. There was still the fear of what he had wanted to do to her, of what he had begun to do to her. His face was still there. She could look at it.
Twice she imagined that he would somehow strike at her again, as if this state of inertia were temporary, as if he would rouse himself and resume. Perhaps it was a trick, to make her lower her guard. Maybe it was part of the thrill for him, playing dead like this.
In a strange way, she didn’t believe she had killed him. He was a big, violent man. He was monstrous. It made no sense to imagine that she had overwhelmed him. Yes, she was fit; she could run 10k without too much trouble. She was relatively tall. But the idea that she could overpower a man like this, overpower and kill a man like this, how could such a thing be possible? There must be some other explanation, some other outcome yet to be revealed.
She stayed like that, immobilized for what felt like hours. She stirred only when she became aware of the damp on her shirt, where he had left his mark on her. She had the strongest urge to get it off, immediately, to rid herself of it. She began to undo the buttons, to wriggle out of it.
And then the rational voice, the lawyer’s voice, intervened and told her to hold on. She needed to stay just as she was. She was not to change a single thing. She needed the police to find the shirt on her, unaltered and . . . uncontaminated. She would need to show them what had happened. This was evidence. This was proof.
A memory came back to her, of a colleague who later became a friend telling a group of other female lawyers about rape cases. She’d told them that plenty of rapists exhibited sexual dysfunction. Either they couldn’t get an erection or, if they could, they were prone to premature ejaculation. ‘The weird thing is, they don’t seem to care,’ her friend explained to the group, who were listening rapt. ‘For them, penetration is not the main event.’ Apparently, the big thrill came later, when they masturbated over the memory of what had happened: in particular, when they recalled the state of terror of their victim. That was the real turn-on. Natasha remembered that conversation and shuddered.
And then it came, the loud thud. A single sound. There’s someone else here, she thought. She held still. She was waiting for a second noise, the creak on an upstairs floorboard that would reveal the direction of travel. Then she would know for certain who was here and how close he was.
When it came, the noise was solid and steady. Repeated three times. But it came from the wrong place. It seemed to come from outside.
It took her a long moment – maybe ten or fifteen seconds – to realize that what she had heard was, in fact, a knock on the door. It was when that thought had registered, after travelling at a fraction of the normal speed, that the knocking sound came again. There was a voice too. ‘Miss Winthorpe? Miss Winthorpe, can you hear me? It’s the police.’
After that, the adrenalin receded further still. Until then, she understood, she had been in a heightened state of awareness, noticing everything. She pictured herself as an animal, every hair on its skin raised, its nostrils twitching, every nerve ending attuned to even the tiniest sound or smell or signal. But now that there was another person in the house – there to help – she lowered her guard and allowed the adrenalin tide to go out. The result was utter exhaustion.
She watched as a succession of different people arrived, the house becoming fuller. She couldn’t take in their names and they struggled with hers, as always. ‘It’s Winthrop,’ she heard herself say several times. ‘Not Winthorpe, Winthrop.’
One thing she noticed, though, from the start: a confusion on their faces that told her that this was, from a policing point of view, an awkwardly complicated situation. She saw it in the pair of officers who came to the house first: two young women, one African-American, the other a Latina and both heavily armed. They seemed unsure how to approach her. Should they adopt the sympathetic voice they’d doubtless learned in training, reserved for when handling victims of rape and sexual assault? Should they be sitting her down, offering her a cup of coffee and taking her hand? Or should they be formal and wary, given that they were dealing with a woman apparently responsible for the corpse lying on the floor?
They resolved the dilemma by saying almost nothing. Not to Natasha anyway. Instead, they spoke into their radios, talking to ‘despatch’ and a variety of others through the crackling static. They watched her though: careful to be sure she didn’t touch anything and didn’t go anywhere.
Before long the house was bustling with people, some of them in full forensic gear: all latex gloves and paper shoes. As if they were about to go into surgery. Natasha was ushered out of the room. But the body – he – was still there.
In among all the various detectives and senior officers, there was one woman whose specific task was to look after Natasha. Her name was Sandra, and she introduced herself as the ‘chaperone’, though someone else referred to her as a Sexual Offences Investigative Techniques officer. Efficient and capable, but with a voice that was appropriately soft, she explained what needed to happen, one step at a time, often ending a sentence with ‘Can you do that for me?’ and ‘Is that all right, Natasha?’
First,
she took her to the bedroom, so that she could change clothes, slowly and with great care. Once Natasha had taken off an item, Sandra would place it inside its own clear, plastic bag, with a zip lock. She wore latex gloves. She explained that every item might contain a tiny speck of DNA that would be used to identify the ‘assailant’. That was the word she used. Slowly Natasha understood that, when it came to the assault on her, the crime scene was not the downstairs study – the crime scene was her body.
Ordinarily, the notion of undressing – and undressing fully – in front of a stranger would have thrown her. (Although not as much as it would throw some women: if you’ve lived with five other girls in the dormitory of a Massachusetts private boarding school, privacy becomes rather a relative concept.) But she was too numb to hesitate.
At one point, Natasha asked if she could use the bathroom. ‘I know it’s really difficult, but it’ll be better if you can hold on just a bit longer, until you have a chance to be examined by the doctor,’ Sandra said. ‘Can you do that for me?’ She was talking to Natasha as if she were seven years old. Normally that would bring a firm slapdown. But now Natasha did what she was told, slowly and in a daze. As if she had flicked the switch on herself marked ‘low power mode’.
Eventually, and now wearing loose sweatpants and a baggy fleece, she was led back downstairs. It was transformed: areas marked off with tape; officers in white forensic suits; and the sound of constant chatter on police radios. Natasha sat where Sandra indicated she was allowed to sit.
She couldn’t say how much time passed. It might have been minutes, it might have been hours. She could see that her own movements, her own cognition of what was going on around her, had slowed down. She seemed to be buffering. And yet one thing caught her eye.
She saw two police officers, one of the two women who had arrived first along with a senior detective, locked in conversation. She was briefing him, reading from her notebook. The detective was nodding, taking in what she was saying.