The Dead Line

by Holly Watt

  It rocked him.

  I’d like to ask you about your clients . . . I’m sorry, I know this is difficult . . .

  He couldn’t speak for a moment, but then his face tautened, the anger surging.

  ‘Dr Greystone?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about . . .’ The words were strangled. ‘Who did you say you . . . Go away . . .’ He paused, then almost a shout. ‘Get out of my house.’

  Casey held her ground.

  ‘You do know, Dr Greystone, I’m afraid.’ Harder now. ‘The Post has been investigating your activities for several weeks . . .’

  ‘Get out of my house, or I will call the police.’

  Familiar as a dance.

  ‘We’ve spoken to two different women who say you coordinated their illegal surrogacy programme in Bangladesh,’ said Casey. ‘I personally visited one of the sites where women are being held against their will in Chittagong.’

  ‘I’m calling my lawyers. I’m calling the police.’

  Greystone was walking towards the door with the jerky movements of extreme shock. He was thin under the blue shirt, Casey noticed, almost scrawny. The unctuous charm was quite gone.

  ‘Just so I am clear with you, Dr Greystone. The Post is planning to publish several articles about your activities in both Harley Street and Bangladesh. The articles are due to appear in tomorrow’s paper.’

  Greystone yanked open the front door.

  ‘Get out. Get out.’

  ‘There’s one last thing,’ said Casey. ‘Were you working alone, Dr Greystone? Was it you doing all this by yourself?’

  She stepped out of the door, turned back to look at him.

  Knowing he could slam the door, he calmed down very slightly.

  ‘I will be writing about the ownership of Portunus Marine,’ Casey tried again. ‘The company that bought the Tephi and the Beauvallet, where the women were being held. Do you have any comment to make about Portunus?’

  Greystone froze, his eyes gleaming, the gold-rimmed glasses askew. Then he snapped back to the moment. ‘Leave me alone,’ he snarled, and the door slammed shut behind him.

  It was rarely dignified.

  Casey opened her satchel, and pulled out a long, detailed letter. An R-2-R – a right to reply – giving the target every opportunity to respond. All the allegations, in careful legalese. It was hard to fight when it was all on tape, but people still gave it a go sometimes, their lawyers rubbing their hands in glee.

  I knew she was a journalist. Every time.

  Almost casual now, Casey posted the letter through the door and turned away.

  ‘Did you get him?’ Dash was waiting as she walked through the door.

  ‘No denial.’

  ‘He’s had every opportunity to respond?’

  ‘I’d say so. Give him a few more hours.’

  Dash stood there, eyes narrowed. Then he pushed back his hair with a sharp gesture. ‘Let’s get him.’

  58

  The Post swung into action, Ross lashing his team along. He crouched over a desk in the conference room, red pen in hand.

  ‘Xav, I’m going to need another hundred and fifty words for the leader,’ he shouted across the room. ‘We’ve been given more space. And Graphics, where the fuck are you on that Bangladesh image?’

  Anthony, the Post’s head lawyer, was reading through Tess’s piece in despair. ‘We’re admitting we know the identity of some of Greystone’s clients,’ he protested. ‘What if the authorities demand to know who they are? I can’t keep up with how many laws they’ve broken. They could all end up in jail.’

  ‘They’re sources,’ Ross growled. ‘We protect our sources.’ As he spoke, Ross was proofreading a map of Bangladesh. ‘Why the fuck’ – he crossed out a word with a red slash – ‘can’t any of these morons spell Chittagong?’

  ‘Archie.’ Dash rang his political editor, based over in the Post’s scruffy office in the heart of Parliament. ‘We need some strong words from the Opposition about the dangers of surrogacy. Inquiries, questions in Parliament, you know the sort of thing. Paul Heyworth should be up for raising it in Parli. He’s always useful.’

  As he put the phone down, Dash shouted across the office. ‘Sadie.’ Another of the feature writers appeared at the door of the conference room. ‘Can you pull together eight hundred words on slebs who’ve opted for the surrogacy route? There are loads of them, aren’t there? Lots of pics for that one please. Talk to Stan.’

  ‘That’ – Ross rubbed his hands as Stan, the picture editor, scuttled to find the photographs – ‘will really do the numbers online.’

  ‘But for the love of Satan,’ Anthony howled, ‘don’t imply they’ve all been off to Bangladesh with Greystone!’

  They all gathered round Ross’s computer to send the story live, faces lit up by the screen. Dash stood a step away from the desk, almost laughing at Anthony’s despair. Just one click of a button, genie from the bottle, and they watched the story sweep around the newsroom.

  The story would dominate the paper tomorrow, with all the power of a gathering wave, the big, bold, angry headlines demanding a strange sort of justice.

  Casey imagined people peering at their screens like doctors in a laboratory, the heads shaking, the eyes narrowing. She imagined the politicians later on television. Lips compressed, eyes concerned, so carefully outraged. She thought about the ire on daytime television, the shudder down Harley Street and the flickers of terror in homes across the country.

  Not a secret, any more. A big, awkward mirror to the world.

  ‘Fucking great stuff,’ emailed Jessie Miller within seconds.

  ‘Bastard,’ wrote another rival, and she didn’t know if he meant her or Greystone.

  At her desk, Casey stared at the photographs of the house in Hampstead, the tall building in Harley Street and the long-range snap of the doctor leaving his rooms. That photographer would have sat in his car, halfway down the street, and Greystone would never even have known he was there. They could photograph people in near-darkness now. She traced Greystone’s face on her proof, staring down at him.

  And for a second, she felt almost content.

  59

  Dash ordered them to spend the night in the hotel next door. Casey failed to sleep, listening to the growl of traffic outside. Ed had waited for her at the airport. He had come to see her.

  ‘Be careful,’ he had messaged her earlier. ‘Please take care of yourself.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘You won’t.’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  She smiled at the memory. Then she thought of Poppy, just a couple of floors away, and the grin faded.

  ‘Poppy’s fine,’ Miranda had insisted. ‘The only problem is that the nanny thinks I am a terrible mother. We have to track down the Burton-Smiths.’

  Casey had called Emily and Dominic again and again, the phone ringing out impotently. Tillie had reappeared in the office late in the evening: the neighbour hadn’t seen the Burton-Smiths for days. The dog was nice, though. I got special dog chocs.

  The Post’s security guards paced the corridor outside Casey’s room all night, and she was back in the office before dawn, hurrying down the street, glancing over her shoulder. Dash was already there, skimming through the pile of rival newspapers delivered as soon as they were printed.

  ‘You all right?’ He didn’t look up. ‘Good follow-up from the other papers.’

  ‘Fine.’ Casey fiddled awkwardly with a stack of books, sent in for review.

  ‘Keep going on it then,’ he said. ‘I know what you’re thinking. We’ve got a second tranche of stories to publish today, anyway. I read your piece about that girl, Romida. It’s very good, Casey.’

  Dash rarely handed out compliments. Casey stared at him blankly. Savannah had sent her a photograph that morning. Romida and Shamshun, wrapped around each other, Shamshun crying with joy. In a new tent, tiny, barely high enough to stand upright. Back where they started, but with a strange sort of happi
ness.

  ‘There is more to the story,’ Casey said stonily, trailing off towards the conference room. ‘Much more. But everyone involved will dive for cover now.’

  Hessa ricocheted in a few minutes later, Miranda just behind her.

  ‘Tom is barely speaking to me,’ Miranda said, almost to herself. ‘I don’t know how this is supposed to work.’

  ‘What’s going on with Greystone this morning?’ Hessa asked, not listening.

  ‘Greystone’s being investigated by various authorities,’ said Casey. ‘Tillie’s outside the house in Hampstead, with a crowd of hacks. I imagine Greystone will be arrested at some point.’

  ‘Are the wife and kids there?’ Miranda asked.

  ‘Not as far as anyone knows. Certainly no photographs of them going in or out.’

  ‘The thing is,’ said Miranda thoughtfully, ‘that we can promise anonymity to Vivienne Hargreaves and so on. But Greystone can take the whole pack of cards down with him. He’ll have all the names.’

  ‘I know.’ Casey had been worrying about it. ‘But surely it would just make things even worse? And Vivienne said he’s been careful with documentation at the clinic if nothing else.’

  ‘So what now?’ Hessa was electric with energy this morning, bouncing from one foot to the next.

  ‘Now,’ Casey said thoughtfully, ‘we try and work out what the hell has happened to the Burton-Smiths. We try and figure out if there is anyone else behind Greystone. And we find out who is hunting us.’

  Miranda waited until Hessa was out of the room. ‘When should we call the police? About Dominic and Emily?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Casey despondently. ‘If we call the police, they could lose Poppy for ever. We don’t actually know anything has happened to them yet.’

  She stood up, and began to roam around the big newsroom. The room was filling up slowly, reporters scuttling to their desks as Ross glowered at them.

  ‘I liked how that democracy piece turned out, Sophie,’ the Comment editor was saying, all joviality. ‘Or Sophia, should I say? Demos, kratia . . .’

  Casey spun around, striding back towards the investigation room.

  ‘Hessa.’ Casey hurried to her desk. ‘What is the name of the company that owns the Harley Street building?’

  ‘Aceso Incorporated.’ Hessa didn’t have to glance down at her notes.

  ‘Aceso,’ Casey said. ‘Portunus. Arachne.’

  ‘Arachne?’ Miranda asked. ‘Where did Arachne come from?’

  ‘Could Arachne have been the name of that garment factory in Chittagong?’ asked Casey. ‘Hessa, you said that the name on the sign didn’t make any sense in Bengali. That it wasn’t a normal Chittagonian word.’

  As she spoke, Casey was scrolling through her phone to the photograph snapped from the tuk-tuk in Sagorika.

  ‘Ar-ack-ny,’ Hessa tried out the Bengali syllables in her mouth again. ‘Yes,’ she said carefully. ‘Arachne could be right.’

  ‘Arachne was a weaver,’ said Casey. ‘In Greek myth.’

  ‘Arachnid,’ said Miranda. ‘Spiders.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Casey, tapping at her computer. ‘So Arachne Incorporated could be the vehicle for the weaving interests. Garments, in this case. And then Portunus was the ancient Greeks’ god of ports, so that could be the company he uses for buying and selling ships. And Aceso is the goddess of the healing process. So that makes sense for the Harley Street building.’

  ‘One second.’ Miranda stood up. ‘Peregrine,’ she shouted across the office.

  Peregrine Courtenay wrote the Post’s crossword every morning, before lunching with the paper’s astrologer. They often spent lunch hastily cobbling together a horoscope for Aries, because the astrologer had forgotten it on the Tube. Today, Peregrine wore a maroon smoking jacket, mustard trousers and alarmingly bright red socks. His eyebrows bristled severely. Cressida occasionally begged to be allowed to make him over for the fashion pages.

  ‘He’s a perfect Before shot,’ she would wail.

  ‘My dear girl,’ Peregrine would respond, outraged.

  ‘Peregrine,’ Miranda coaxed him now. ‘Could you possibly read through this list of companies, and see if any of them have ancient Greek links?’

  The eyebrows looked approving. ‘Of course.’

  Miranda handed him a list of companies put together by Hessa. They sat in an impatient silence as Peregrine read through them, humming gently to himself.

  ‘I’m afraid not that I can see.’ He handed back the list. ‘I am sorry that I am unable to help, Miranda.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ said Miranda.

  ‘I’ll be off then.’

  Peregrine pushed himself out of his chair.

  ‘Rhapso,’ he said, almost to himself.

  ‘I’m sorry, Peregrine?’ said Miranda.

  He pointed to the black bag leaning against the wall, the smart carrier bag Cressida had shoved at Casey all those days ago, with the long silky ribbons. ‘Rhapso,’ Peregrine said again. ‘She was a nymph worshipped in Athens. Her name comes from the Greek word “to sew” or “to stitch”.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘And that gives us the word rhapsody.’ Peregrine didn’t appear to have heard Miranda. ‘From rhaptein and ōidē, meaning song or ode. Sewing songs together; rather lovely really.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ said Casey.

  ‘Of course.’ Peregrine looked stern. ‘It’s just odd that they’ve used a thunderbolt as a logo. The thunderbolt represents Zeus, of course.’

  Casey pushed her hair back from her face, thinking carefully. ‘There was an oak-leaf image on the garment factory in Bangladesh,’ she said slowly. ‘What would that represent?’

  ‘Zeus,’ said Peregrine promptly. ‘He and Hera were the oak god and oak goddess, of course.’

  ‘There’s an eagle on the Aceso paperwork.’ Hessa was looking through her notes.

  ‘The eagle is one of his symbols too,’ Peregrine agreed.

  They contemplated it for a moment.

  ‘So maybe,’ Miranda said, ‘the parent company of all these different operations is Zeus. The king of the gods. Almost an inside joke.’

  ‘Indeed. Perhaps.’ Nodding, Peregrine ambled out of the office.

  ‘That means it definitely can’t be Dylan behind it all,’ said Casey after he had left. ‘I never thought it was him anyway, but he said all his businesses were run out of Bangladesh. So why would he bother with a building in Harley Street?’

  ‘Fine,’ said Miranda. ‘It’s not Dylan. But who is it? That man you just saw in the airport?’

  Casey shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. He looked like someone who fixed problems.’

  ‘Could Greystone himself have been Zeus?’ asked Hessa.

  ‘That receptionist in Harley Street,’ Miranda remembered. ‘She said that Dr Greystone worked all hours. Could he possibly be operating these different businesses, right the way around the world, while also running a fertility clinic? It was a serious operation, that Harley Street place. There’s no doubt about that.’

  Casey was shaking her head. ‘It can’t be Greystone,’ she said. ‘There has to be someone else.’

  ‘I’ll ask Cressida if anyone on the fashion team has any idea who is behind Rhapso,’ said Miranda. ‘There’s a chance they may know.’

  ‘Declan Bentley might know too,’ said Casey. ‘He has excellent spies.’

  He had texted her earlier: ‘Rhapso still seem to be in business. Sort it out, love.’

  ‘All these companies are registered in the British Virgin Islands,’ said Hessa. ‘Which means it’s the same problem we always have. No shareholder info.’

  Casey dropped her head into her hands. ‘Bloody hell.’

  They sat there in silence for a moment.

  ‘I’m going for a run,’ said Casey. ‘I can’t think.’

  She always ran when she was struggling with a story. Breaking down the battle into stride after stride after stride.

  ‘G
o to the gym,’ Miranda’s head jerked up. ‘Don’t go outside.’

  Casey hated the Post’s tiny gym, and its warm, grimy air. She climbed on the treadmill, unenthusiastically. In her head, she ran the big loops around Hyde Park. Past the shouts of Speaker’s Corner. Past the Serpentine, swans serene. Past the Round Pond, Emily crying. Thoughts of Emily jolted her back to the gym.

  Casey pushed buttons and accelerated, feet pounding. There was a seam of an idea in her mind, buried deep. A miner digging along a thin vein of hope.

  Who are you? Tell me who you are.

  Portunus. Rhapso. Arachne. Aceso.

  Zeus.

  Everything hurt. Lungs screaming, legs burning.

  Who are you? Who are you? Who are you?

  She almost fell off the treadmill when her phone rang. She scrambled across to her bag and snatched it up. ‘Hello? Casey?’ A voice, wavering. ‘It’s Emily.’

  60

  ‘Emily?’ Casey jumped up. ‘Oh, I’m so glad to hear from you. Are you all right?’

  ‘I’m fine.’ Emily sounded awkward, almost abrupt. ‘I’m sorry not to have called you earlier, Casey. We’re away from London. I didn’t have any phone reception . . .’

  ‘Oh,’ Casey hesitated. ‘Are you . . .’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  There was a silence.

  ‘Poppy’s here in London,’ Casey went on. ‘And she’s beautiful, Emily. She’s absolutely perfect.’

  ‘Thank God.’ Emily’s voice changed, immediately tearful. ‘Thank God.’

  ‘Where are you?’ Casey asked. ‘Shall we bring her to you?’

  All at once, the sobs burst out of Emily, hard, rasping sounds. ‘Oh, Casey . . .’

  Casey could hear Dominic’s voice in the background, harsh with tension.

  ‘Can you bring her to me, Casey?’ Emily managed. ‘I need to see her. I’ve been waiting . . .’

  ‘Of course,’ Casey grinned. For the first time in days, she felt an emotion close to happiness. ‘As soon as I can.’

  ‘Promise me you’ll bring her?’

  ‘I will, Emily. I promise.’

  ‘I’ve got to . . .’ Emily fought for air. ‘I need to . . .’

  ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can.’