by Holly Watt
‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen him before,’ said Ed.
‘Me neither,’ said Casey. ‘But surely he wouldn’t expect me to just get into a car with him?’
‘You might.’
Exhausted, in a Heathrow so familiar, where she thought she was safe. Assuming the newsroom had sent out a car for her. A shudder went down her spine. ‘They might think I would,’ she corrected him.
‘Well then.’
They watched the man waiting for her. ‘Are you sure he is working alone?’ asked Casey.
‘No.’
‘We should follow him,’ she murmured. ‘Or maybe . . . Maybe I should just walk up to him, see what happens.’
‘Casey.’ Ed turned to her, the anger flaring. ‘He could be waiting to kill you, for God’s sake. You have no idea. You just don’t know.’
‘Not just like that in an airport. Surely?’
‘You’re not doing it,’ he said. ‘Absolutely not.’
‘Well, what then?’ Casey stared across the airport. ‘We need to find out where he is going. Who he is working for.’
The man was watching the exit gate, cat at a mouse hole.
‘He doesn’t know what you look like,’ said Ed. ‘He didn’t react when you walked out.’
‘You grabbed me pretty fast.’
‘Even so. He missed you. He was expecting you to walk up to him.’
They watched him for a few more minutes. Briefly, keeping her voice steady, she told him about Erica Whiddon.
‘You have to be careful,’ Ed breathed out. ‘Promise me.’
Their eyes met. Around them, the crowd ebbed and flowed. She could sense him standing very close, his body tense.
You promised.
‘I need to get to the office,’ Casey said briskly. ‘I need to keep working, and find out who is behind all this.’
‘It would be tricky to follow him from here anyway,’ said Ed, equally efficient. ‘He’ll probably have a car.’
For all the filmic car chases, it was hard tracking a car, especially without being spotted, especially one driven by someone who checked, always watchful.
‘He could be here for hours,’ said Casey, ‘before giving up. There are flights from Nice all day.’
‘Call Dash,’ said Ed. ‘Tell him to send two reporters to keep an eye on him, and try to work out where he goes.’
‘All right,’ said Casey. ‘All right.’
Ed and Casey arrived in the office at the same time as Miranda.
‘Shit,’ Miranda had said, when Casey rang from Ed’s car. ‘And we have no idea how many other people may be on our case too. Shit.’
Staring out of the car window, Casey told Miranda about the murder of Erica Whiddon.
‘They probably,’ Miranda said flatly, ‘have similar plans for you.’
‘Drive straight into the underground car park,’ Dash messaged Casey two minutes later. ‘I’ll tell them to have it open as you arrive.’
Dash was waiting for her as she walked into the office, cutting her off at the doorway to the investigations room.
‘Are you OK?’ His eyes were on Casey’s.
‘I’m fine.’ She pushed away his concerns.
‘We need to publish now,’ said Dash. ‘As long as we don’t publish, they’ll think the story can be stopped by offing you.’
‘I know,’ Casey said. ‘But I need more time, Dash. We’re not there yet. We haven’t—’
‘We’re close enough,’ said Dash. ‘And I can’t take the risk . . .’
‘Give me one more day,’ said Casey.
‘You’ve already had that.’
‘I can’t . . . not yet.’
He glowered at her. ‘You can have a few more hours,’ he said reluctantly. ‘Then that’s it. And I’m getting more security into the building. Operate out of that central conference room. Janet can order in some sandwiches. You stay here.’
Casey sighed. The bleak little conference room looked out into a small internal light well. The only view was broken blinds, and 15 feet to a blank brick wall. They had started using that room for investigations after one of the early leaks. After a big information dump especially annoyed the government, and the men in grey suits had turned up.
‘The Chinese can work with a direct line of sight,’ they’d said, peering disapprovingly out of the smeary windows in the main office. ‘They can track everything you type from the other side of the road. And what you say, mind. They shine lasers on the windows, and transcribe that. It’s a total pain, to be honest.’
‘Fine,’ Casey snapped at Dash.
The head of news walked away from her, across the newsroom, swatting the air with his notebook.
Hessa and Miranda looked at Casey, crumpled, still carrying her small suitcase, the sequined black dress crushed inside.
‘Are you all right?’ asked Miranda. ‘You look like hell.’
‘Thank you.’ Casey felt her mouth twist into a grin. ‘I’m fine. But we have to work out who is behind all this.’
‘Poor Erica Whiddon,’ said Hessa quietly.
‘I don’t suppose they’ll get very far on tracking her killers either,’ said Miranda, as Casey collapsed at her desk. ‘It sounds like a professional job.’
Talking quickly, Casey explained her meeting with Delacroix. ‘I thought if we could find out who is running that shipping yard, we might be a step closer to working out who is in charge of the whole thing,’ she finished. ‘But . . .’
‘Portunus Marine?’ Miranda shook her head as she stopped speaking. ‘Don’t know them.’
‘I’ll look for everything available about Portunus Marine.’ Hessa turned to her computer. ‘But there may not be much.’
‘And I’ll try the name on a few shipping people I know,’ said Miranda. ‘We might get lucky.’
‘We’re running out of time.’ For a second, Casey felt the despair clutch at her. ‘What if Portunus is just another dead end? Whoever is behind this will just disappear . . .’
The room fell into silence. Casey scowled at her notes. She had pages of them now, spread out across her desk. She moved them around, matching facts to each other, one at a time.
‘Portunus Marine,’ she murmured. ‘Portunus.’
‘Poppy’s fine,’ Miranda said, when she returned a few minutes later. ‘She’s still in the hotel, with Nina Reynolds.’
‘I can’t get through to the Burton-Smiths,’ said Casey. ‘I don’t understand it.’
Miranda bit her lip. She stood, and walked to the door. ‘Tillie,’ she shouted across the newsroom.
The young reporter was at the door to the investigations room in seconds, like a puppy to the rattle of a lead. ‘Can I help?’
‘Can you go to this address in Surrey.’ Miranda tore out a page from her notepad. ‘And see if there is anyone around. There’s a neighbour at number thirty-eight, ask her. She’s got a terrier called Choccy. Talk about the dog, not the Post, OK?’
Tillie bounded off, glowing. Hessa scowled at her retreating back, with the gleam of competition, and Casey laughed out loud.
The day wore on, the precious hours rushing past. They had moved into the gloomy conference room, Robert joining them neat in his suit. Ross sent across other reporters to bolster the team, all carefully briefed, all hiding their excitement.
As they worked, Casey crawled all over Portunus Marine, and got nowhere. Portunus. Portunus. Portunus. The words stopped making sense.
After a few hours, Miranda looked up, arms spread hopelessly.
‘No one knows a bloody thing about Portunus Marine. Sorry, babe. But we’ve got enough for this story, you know. You’ve nailed Greystone.’
Hessa was keeping an eye on the coverage of the death of Erica Whiddon. The story of the murdered diplomat was breaking on the wires, just a small story for now. There were no clues, no arrests. The Foreign Office had put out a short, sad statement.
Casey felt the walls of the conference room close in. Picking up her coffee, she pro
wled around the office, searching for inspiration, and willing the clues to fall into place. She paced past Sport. She fidgeted with piles of newspapers. She hesitated by the newsdesk, half-listening as Ross dealt with today’s crisis. A stringer in Venezuela snatched, and Ross spitting down the phone: ‘He’s been kidnapped in fucking South America. Frankly I’d leave him there, but the branding people say I can’t.’ Ross waited a beat. ‘Well, I’ve told the branding lot that his ransom can come out of their fucking budget. That shut them right up, let me tell you.’
He peered up at Casey. ‘Don’t look at me like that, you. That lot’ll let him go in a few days anyway. They always do. As he’d fucking know if he’d done any sodding research on those jokers in the first place.’
Casey threw a pencil at her news editor and walked on, knowing there was no querying Ross in this mood. Some days he reminded her of a schoolboy with his magnifying glass, burning ants one by one.
Casey paused by the Comment desk. ‘We’ve got such an insightful piece coming in from the shadow deputy PM,’ Sophie, one of the editors, was saying. ‘Really exploring the ancient Greeks’ understanding of democracy . . . Demos and kratia. That delicate balance. Just so meaningful.’
Behind her back, Casey could feel Ross rolling his eyes. Ross took a lot of joy in winding up the Comment desk.
But the day was wearing away. Casey read through Robert’s piece: a careful dissection of what they knew about Greystone’s activities. Gabriel Bantham’s role had been carefully sculpted. The daring diplomat who bent the rules to save a baby: a sort of truth. The words bounced off Casey’s brain like hailstones.
Arthur, the Post’s crime correspondent, had hammered out a short article on the mysterious death of Erica Whiddon. Hinting, only. Sir William Cavendish’s name appeared nowhere in any article, the spotlight delicately angled away.
Tess Dulverton, who could concoct features in a few effortless minutes, had put together a story on Vivienne Hargreaves. On the second day, Tess’s article would focus on Dominic and Emily. They were all carefully anonymised as promised, glued together from fragments of Casey’s notes.
‘Have you heard of phantom limb syndrome?’ Zoe says, as tears fill her eyes. ‘Your mind sends back those flashes, bursts of pointless pain.’
And at the bottom of the article, the careful warning: All names have been changed.
And Laura, the Post’s chief opinion writer, had written a searing evisceration of the surrogacy industry, scalpel-clinical and burning with rage.
Casey peered at Laura’s words, forcing them into her mind.
‘Casey.’ Dash appeared beside her. ‘We need to move on this.’
‘Dash . . .’ But his jaw was fixed.
‘Go and front up Greystone.’ It was an order. ‘Get it done. Get him.’
57
Casey hesitated outside the opulent house. The gold sterile mansions stretched away on both sides of the avenue. The house next door to the Greystones’ was still empty, windows boarded. Someone had graffitied the garage, in an angry flash of red. Turning away, Casey pondered the Greystone house, safe behind its tall black gates. The Porsche Cayenne she’d seen on her last visit was parked next to a silver Aston Martin.
A pickup, private security, cruised down the street. As it passed Casey it slowed, just fractionally, just for a second. Almost unnoticeable, but that most discreet of warnings: We’ve noticed you.
Casey’s eyes followed the pickup as it grumbled along the street, past where Ed was waiting in his car. He had insisted on driving her up to north London, with one of Dash’s new security people tense in the passenger seat.
‘But you’re not coming in with me,’ she said. ‘I need to go in alone.’
‘It’s not safe,’ he had insisted. ‘The Dhaka team may have warned him about the raid on the Beauvallet. You can’t.’
Casey thought about Ed waiting patiently in the airport. The kindness, the concern: so unfamiliar.
‘Thank you,’ she said quietly. ‘But I have to go.’
Now Casey glanced at the intercom, and discounted it. There was an art to getting people to talk, but there was often a simple luck in getting to them in the first place. A phone could be put down in a second, the fragile connection cut so easily. Face to face was easier to assess, calculate, rush. Even if she hated it.
But how to get to him? Casey had tailgated dozens of people through apartment doors; it was the sort of illegality that rarely bothered the police. She had approached targets with any number of excuses. They all had, everywhere. Right the way up to the new Prime Minister’s wife, once, blinking on her doorstep in the dawn after an election. She had blearily signed for a big bunch of flowers, tugging her nightie to decency, glancing up too late at the wall of photographers. It had been worth a whip-round for that bouquet.
It was a beautiful day, the sky a scrubbed bright blue, spring rustling in the new green leaves.
Just then, Casey stiffened, hound to a scent. A blonde woman had walked out of the house, the slam of the door loud in the silent street. Her car keys in her hand, it was just a few steps to the Porsche, but the woman paused, glancing up at the sky.
Clio Greystone, Casey thought. The wife.
Casey assessed her dispassionately. Tall, with the same blonde hair Casey saw everywhere. A golden shimmer, with just enough expensive chestnut lowlights to avoid that hint of brass. Clio had an aquiline nose that a woman with slightly less confidence might have had tailored by some Harley Street artist. But it gave her face an elegance that was set off by a curving mouth.
She wore a beautifully cut blue dress, a leather jacket thrown over the top for the spring chill. Long legs ended in studded ankle boots, and Casey had seen Cressida carrying that bag last week. Balenciaga, at a guess.
A nice little trophy, she thought.
As Casey watched, Clio threw the keys back into her handbag and strode towards the gate. There was a bounce in her step, and the builders on the scaffolding opposite watched her appreciatively. A side gate purred open.
The Greystones’ road ended on a pretty high street, with several boutiques and a picture-perfect café that served cupcakes in a rainbow of colour. Casey followed Clio down the street, her mind racing. She walked past Ed and the security man, parked up, without a flicker.
At the café, Clio peered through a window, and a bell jangled as she pushed the door open.
Casey tapped at her phone. ‘Keep talking.’
‘Sure,’ said Miranda, and Casey stayed chatting on her phone as she walked into the café. It was a small space, just a few tables. Mismatched teacups, riotous geraniums and curling rococo chairs. The cupcakes were a burst of colours, decoration in their own right: lemon meringue or blueberry, chocolate mocha or red velvet.
Clio, restrained, had ordered only a coffee, and was moving to one of two empty tables. They were next to each other, Casey was relieved to see.
Casey made her way to the counter, only glancing at the display. ‘Lemon raspberry,’ she said randomly. ‘And fresh mint tea.’
‘I’ll bring it over,’ the waitress smiled, and Casey sat down, almost next to Clio.
As she sat, Casey was talking quietly on the phone. ‘I don’t know what to do next . . . You don’t know what it’s like . . . They don’t know why it won’t work. I can get pregnant’, a gleam of a tear in her eye. ‘I just can’t stay pregnant.’
Clio was flicking through a pile of magazines stacked on the windowsill, but Casey knew she was listening.
Casey spoke for a few more minutes, then hung up the phone. She dug through her handbag, failed to find a tissue and smudged away mascara with a fingertip.
‘Here.’ Clio was holding out a tissue.
‘Thank you,’ Casey choked.
‘Sounds like you’re having a difficult time.’ Clio was all wide-eyed sympathy.
‘Oh,’ Casey managed. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t meant to bother anyone . . .’
‘Gosh, don’t worry,’ Clio smiled at her.
> Sweet-natured, Casey diagnosed. Mother of two: lunches and charity balls and PTA. Regular tennis, and a lot of Pilates. Four holidays a year, at least, and welcomed by name – and a wide smile – at every shop on Bond Street. Casey smiled back weakly.
‘In fact,’ Clio went on, ‘I know someone who might be able to help.’
They talked for a long time over the lemon raspberry cake, Clio telling Casey about various friends who’d had, ‘Well, you’d call them miracles, honestly.’ Until finally they were leaving the little café, with a glowing smile at the waitress behind the counter.
Clio led the way back down the road – ‘I’ll take you to meet my husband; it’s less than five minutes away, so convenient.’ Just a few steps from the gate to the house, and then Clio was throwing her keys onto the hall table, shouting, ‘Darling, I’m home.’
The hall was large, double height, with a white marble floor leading away to a distant kitchen. Stairs edged with black wrought-iron banisters swept towards a glittering chandelier.
‘I wonder where he is.’ Clio looked around. ‘He’s usually absolutely flat out at work, but he’s at home today for some reason.’
As Casey peered up the stairs, Greystone appeared at the banisters, urbane in chinos and a smart blue shirt. He didn’t look dangerous, Casey thought. But then, neither did she.
‘Darling, this is Cassandra,’ Clio sang out. ‘I’ve told her all about you.’ Clio finished the introductions, and then grabbed her car keys. ‘I’ve just remembered. Got to pick up Tamara. Back soon.’
The daughter, Casey remembered. Just thirteen. She would be ensconced in the expensive London day school just around the corner. Or bunking off to the shopping mall, more likely.
Greystone and Casey stood awkwardly as Clio’s boots clattered down the stairs.
Still smiling, Casey started to speak, sympathetically at first, because she often tried sympathy first. ‘Sorry to bother you. I’m Casey Benedict from the Post. Just a few questions . . .’