Up All Night

by Carmen Reid

  Aidan had the decency to nod and not look too ticked off. She knew she was taking advantage; if she’d asked Dominique to do this job, she’d probably have been dealing with a temper tantrum. Dominique liked to work on her own thing, did not like to do anything which could be interpreted as an errand for Jo.

  ‘Thanks very much,’ Jo added, ‘I really appreciate it. Really sorry to land you with the babysitting job again.’

  Now Jeff . . . she would have to tackle Jeff straight away and get the money out of him.

  She walked over to the newsdesk and stood by the side of Jeff’s chair, waiting for him to finish a phone call.

  ‘Good, good. That sounds very good,’ he was telling the person on the other end. ‘The editor will love that.’

  She hoped this meant she’d caught him at the right moment.

  ‘Jo?’ He put the receiver down and swivelled his chair to face her, although she could see the flashing lights of two other calls holding on his line.

  ‘Got any money?’ she asked him.

  ‘For a coffee?’ he replied.

  ‘No. For an exclusive.’

  ‘Oh-oh. Don’t like the sound of this.’

  ‘The Townells want £2,500 for their story. I can only do £500 and that’s if I put off the freelance who was going to file an eco-tourism piece to us.’

  ‘Two grand?’ Jeff wanted to check, ‘for the whooping cough vaccine twins?’ He rubbed the palms of his hands over his face. ‘Or else?’ he asked.

  ‘They go to the Mail. And they’ve already spoken to the Mail, so Aidan’s on his way down there to guard the door.’

  ‘Bugger. I thought we were going to get this one, at least, for free.’

  ‘Me too,’ she added. ‘Big bugger.’

  ‘£2,500 . . . won’t take any less now.’

  She shook her head: ‘Don’t think so.’

  Jeff’s pen was being squeezed mercilessly between his fingers.

  ‘OK, OK, well, we can juggle some things about. Defer a few payments . . . and sort this out somehow. You say OK.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she fired him a smile. ‘I better get some decent stuff to go with it. Make it worth a page three with a sidebar on the front, huh?’

  ‘Yes please.’

  Mick phoned back once he’d received the email and made something of an embarrassed apology.

  ‘This is fine,’ he told Jo. ‘I’ve phoned the Daily Mail to say forget it, but they say someone’s already on the way down.’

  ‘You can’t even speak to this person,’ she warned him, ‘or you’re in breach of our contract. OK? My deputy, Aidan -’ that would annoy Dominique – ‘is on his way to help you. The Mail will be very persistent. But just keep away from them, please.’

  There was a pause while Mick registered what he’d done – made himself the subject of a little Fleet Street dogfight.

  ‘Aidan Brodie is my reporter, he’ll phone you before he rings at your door, so you’ll know it’s him. If I were you I would get out of the house for the day, because the other reporter will be very persistent. I’m sure you’ll get promised all sorts of things. But, to be honest, Mick, £2,500 is a lot for your story.’

  And that wasn’t a lie. Although vast sums were occasionally paid out by papers for big celeb stories or news of international profile and saleability, ordinary people rarely made four figures. Especially at her paper, which was always operating on freshly squeezed budgets. The Mail had more money: in her heart of hearts, Jo had already resigned herself to the fact that this story might be snatched from under her nose. Annoying, very annoying, but nothing else she could do right now, apart from start broadening it out . . . maybe she could find another child . . . no need to give up on finding another family yet . . . finding some fresh angles.

  She would phone the doctor, as her anonymous friend had recommended.

  Ringing the surgery number got her through in a few moments to Dr Paul Taylor directly.

  Jo explained who she was, said she was planning a story on the new Quintet injection and did he know much about it.

  ‘Jo Randall,’ he’d said, recognizing her name, ‘I’ve read lots of stories by you.’ And then he’d hung up, which was the kind of thing that you did get used to in her line of work. But still, it came as something of a surprise.

  She gave a long sigh and began to punch his surgery number back into the phone. But a call flashed up on line two, so she decided to take that instead.

  ‘Jo Randall.’

  ‘Hello, hello there, Ms Randall. . . sorry about that. It’s Dr Paul Taylor here, I’m calling you back on the mobile. It’s just. . . well. . . easier this way.’

  ‘Oh . . . OK . . . well, hello.’

  ‘Quintet,’ he said quickly. ‘You’re doing something on Quintet, are you? About time too. I don’t know much about this injection. I don’t think anyone does – including the manufacturers – but all that I do know is bad.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Would you like to meet up? That would be best, then I can tell you more.’

  ‘Yes, good idea—’ but before she could get out the wheres and whens the doctor added: ‘I take a break between twelve and one today. I know you journalists are always in a hurry. I’ll meet you at ten past twelve on Primrose Hill, the first bench you come to if you take the Fitzroy Road entrance. Does that sound OK?’

  ‘Ermm, well . . . yes. Unless you’d prefer a cafe round there or something a bit more comfortable.’ She knew she would.

  ‘No, no, the park is fine. You’d better take my mobile number, just in case you need to change the plan.’ He gave her his number, then hung up again without any further warning.

  ‘Oh for goodness’ sake!’ Jo said out loud, irritated. She suspected he was totally cranky and she didn’t have time for this. She dialled Green Tony’s number. He picked up on the first ring for a change.

  ‘Green Party HQ.’

  ‘Tony, it’s Jo Randall, your most persistent caller. Your telephone stalker, your serial dialler.’ She tried to sound friendly, although by now she was very irritated with him too.

  ‘Ah, Jo.’

  ‘Don’t “ah Jo” me. This better not be another one of your long-winded excuses.’

  ‘Savannah just isn’t ready for this yet,’ he said. To her ears, it sounded annoying and pompous.

  ‘Well, she better bloody well get ready, cos the newsteam are going to be staking her out all day every day starting Saturday unless I get this interview.’

  ‘Oh rubbish,’ was Tony’s response.

  ‘They are. The editor has spoken. He’s desperate – in love with her or something – she has to talk, one way or another.’

  ‘How very sinister,’ Tony said. ‘Well they’ll be wasting their time. Jo, don’t do this to her or you’re going to be way out of favour. You’ll go into the Siberia section of my contacts book.’

  ‘And just where do you think you are in mine?’ she shot back. ‘You’re in the frigging Arctic, about to go into bloody global-warming meltdown.’

  He did at least laugh at that.

  ‘She is thinking about it,’ he spelled out, wanting this conversation to be over.

  ‘She is never off the telly, Tone,’ Jo commented. ‘Why won’t she do a newspaper chat?’

  ‘She’s nervous. It’s so much more personal. More open to interpretation by the journalist. She finds TV quite easy. She can say what she wants, the way she wants to say it. Newspapers give her the jitters. Her campaign has been flawless,’ he gushed. ‘She couldn’t have done better if she’d been running for the White House. She doesn’t want to muck it up now.’

  ‘This isn’t about mucking it up. This is the icing on the campaign cake. This is me.’ Jo didn’t like the pleading tone in her voice now. ‘I’m a huge fan of hers.’

  ‘I know. Just leave it with me a bit longer. Please.’

  ‘Why don’t you let me ask her?’ Jo tried. ‘I can tell her what I’d like to talk about, reassure her.’

  ‘Ve
ry persuasive, Jo, but I don’t think so.’

  ‘Just ask. Please.’ Jesus. This was getting tiresome. The wannabe politician, for God’s sake, making like a Hollywood diva. It was almost strange. For a moment, it fleetingly crossed Jo’s mind to wonder what Savannah was so anxious not to reveal.

  Once she and Tony had said their goodbyes, she hung up and looked at the latest text on her mobile:

  ‘Need to talk, see you at bday party. Simon.

  She didn’t think Simon could text. It had probably taken him four attempts and fifteen minutes to type that out, just like most other 40-year-old men.

  A lovely family birthday party at Simon’s flat with her parents and Gwen in attendance. That would just cap her day perfectly.

  ‘I have to go out,’ she told Dominique a little wearily and began packing the necessary items into her handbag.

  Half an hour later Jo was sitting on the designated park bench in the sunshine watching the good mummies of north London pushing their fat organic babies about in three-wheeler buggies.

  She was just finishing off the sandwich she’d bought round the corner and thinking how nice this was – Woman escapes from office to enjoy sun and sandwich – when she felt a tap on her shoulder.

  ‘Can I ask your name?’ said the short man behind her. He was wearing a raincoat with the collar up, a hat and dark glasses.

  ‘Can I ask yours?’ was her frosty reply. If this was Dr Paul Taylor, then he definitely ‘had issues’. ‘I’m meeting someone on this bench at ten past twelve,’ the man said.

  ‘So am I. . . Look, it’s bound to be me you’re meeting, I’m Jo Randall,’ she said.

  ‘I’m Dr Paul.’ He held his hand out to her and they shook.

  ‘Bit warm for a raincoat and hat, isn’t it?’ she couldn’t help asking.

  ‘Er, yes . . . probably. But I have to be careful.’ When her eyebrows shot up, he added: ‘Maybe if you’d been hauled before the General Medical Council on entirely trumped up charges which proved that your confidential files had been closely examined and maybe if you’d had notification from Scotland Yard that your surgery phone was being tapped, you might see it slightly differently.’

  ‘Well yes,’ she could only agree, ‘I probably would.’

  Dr Taylor sat down at the other end of the bench.

  Perhaps in response to her comments, he took his hat off, revealing sparse hair the same sandy colour as his beard, and undid the belt of his trench coat.

  Underneath the coat, his thin frame was clothed in a dapper suit, shirt and tie.

  ‘Do you think you’re being followed?’ she asked him.

  ‘No. But I was worried that you were.’

  ‘Being followed?!’ she asked, incredulous. ‘I don’t think Wolff-Meyer have quite got the resources to tail every reporter in London, have they?’

  ‘You’re not just any old reporter. If anyone’s going to investigate Quintet properly, it’s going to be you, isn’t it?’

  ‘Well. . .’ she felt a slight flush at the compliment.

  ‘Here’s hoping.’

  ‘You have to realize,’ Dr Taylor went on, ‘if you’re going to take on a corporation like Wolff-Meyer, they will be very interested in you. Very interested.’ She couldn’t help smiling at this. ‘They know where the office is, they can come and find me any time they like,’ she said and added the tip: ‘If you don’t want people to notice you, Dr Taylor, blend in. You should have come in your jogging gear, or just the suit without the coat and hat. No one would have batted an eyelid. Now everyone for miles around is convinced I’m talking to the park flasher.’

  Jo reached into her handbag for her smallest notebook and a pen, then set her tape recorder out between them. To reassure him, she placed another notebook on top to disguise it.

  ‘That’s not going to bother you, is it?’ she asked. ‘No, no, fire away.’

  ‘Have you always been a private doctor, or did you use to work in the NHS?’ she began as a warm-up.

  ‘Oh I was NHS for years,’ Dr Taylor told her. ‘Here in London and also in my home town. I must have done almost twenty years in the NHS. I’m absolutely committed to the idea of an NHS even though it’s like working in Communist Russia. I only began to go private when the NHS decided they weren’t going to allow single vaccinations any more. Even though single injections were and are, as far as I can see, safer and much more widely trialled and trusted than combinations.’

  ‘Do you think combination injections cause problems?’

  ‘I don’t think, I know,’ he said. ‘The possible side effects come listed on the side of the box.’

  ‘So, Quintet?’ she asked. ‘I take it you’ll be antiQuintet just because it’s a combination vaccine?’

  He gave a small laugh and began to brush at something on his trouser leg: ‘There are a lot more reasons to be anti-Quintet than that. This is the injection that will give all the other combinations a bad name.’

  ‘How so?’ she encouraged him.

  ‘Well, Quintet: how long have we had it in Britain now?’

  ‘Two and a half months,’ she prompted him. ‘But it’s been in use in Canada for several years.’

  ‘Oh yes, Canada,’ he said, smiling. ‘We all think Canada must be a very safe and progressive place to test out a new vaccine. But I can give you some contacts over there who’ll fill you in.’

  ‘Yes. . .’

  ‘Canada is in fact a dream place to test out a new vaccine if you’re a drugs company,’ he told her. ‘Reason number one: no doctor has to report a patient’s bad reaction to a vaccination in Canada.

  ‘Reason number two: only bad reactions within a very limited time frame can be blamed on a vaccine over there.

  ‘Reason three: the public aren’t allowed to access data on vaccine trials. So we’re all in the dark, really.’

  Dr Taylor suddenly seemed to take an intense interest in a woman about 300 metres away.

  ‘Has she got a camera?’ he asked.

  ‘Who? The woman in the red top?’

  He nodded. His hand was reaching for his hat.

  ‘Calm down, will you?’ Jo tried to soothe him. ‘She’s probably taking pictures of her dog. Look, over there, it’s one of those beige poodles. Do you think industrial spies come with poodles?’

  The doctor put his hat on anyway.

  ‘It may interest you to know, Ms Randall, that there have been two changes to Quintet since it was licensed, but no authority made Wolff-Meyer apply for a fresh licence. One of the injection’s preservatives has been changed from a mercury-based ingredient to an antifreeze-based ingredient. The whooping cough element has also been altered. All you need to know about that is that it’s been blamed for a spate of whooping cough outbreaks.’

  Jo was scribbling and underlining at speed. If this was true, it was all much better than she’d expected.

  He went on to tell her of a Canadian parent-run website where she would be able to make contact with families who believed their children had been damaged by Quintet.

  Just as she was noting down these details, she heard the tiny click that meant the first side of her tape had come to an end. She stopped him for a moment, popped the tape up and turned it over.

  ‘Quite an old-fashioned way to store information these days isn’t it?’ Dr Taylor asked.

  ‘Kind of reliable though,’ Jo replied. ‘Digital recorders scare me. I think I’d find it hard to track down small conversations in the middle of huge digital megabites.’

  ‘And where do you keep your tapes?’ the doctor asked.

  This wasn’t a question she was keen to answer.

  ‘At work,’ she replied, although this was only partly true. Many important tapes were also stored in a jumbled disarray in a suitcase on top of her wardrobe at home.

  ‘I shouldn’t need to tell you that if you’re going to investigate vaccinations, make copies, store them in different places and take care. If you poke about in the right corners and start asking the right quest
ions, they will come looking for you. Just think about what happened to me,’ he warned, making eye contact again, so she wasn’t in any doubt about how seriously he meant this.

  ‘But you got off, you’re still practising,’ she reminded him.

  ‘Yes . . . but my peace of mind, not to mention my faith in human nature, has been rather dented.’

  He took another long look at the woman in the red top and scanned the open green parkland in front of them: ‘Why is Quintet so particularly interesting this week?’ he asked. ‘Because of the whooping cough outbreak?’

  ‘Yes. But we’ve also had a family approach us who say it has damaged their twins.’

  The doctor nodded: ‘Push multiple diseases into small children along with the cocktail of preservatives needed to keep those viruses in a usable state and sooner or later, something nasty will happen.’

  ‘But a case of measles or whooping cough can be very nasty too,’ she reminded him.

  ‘In medicine we are often stuck between two evils: the illness and what it can do to you, or the medicine and what it can do to you. But we certainly don’t want to be creating new evils,’ Dr Taylor said.

  ‘Hmm . . .’ as Jo paused to consider this, her mobile began to buzz at her from inside her handbag. ‘I’m so sorry, but I just need to check who that’s from.’

  Jo pressed the message button and the text slipped across her screen: Phone ASAP Mail here, Aidan.

  ‘I’m so sorry, slight crisis at work, I’m going to have to call this person back.’

  ‘No problem, I’ll go for a little stroll, shall I?’ the doctor asked.

  ‘Thanks,’ she replied, dialling Aidan’s number, wondering if the worst had already happened: Aidan outside on the pavement, the Mail cosied up inside with the Townells, stealing her nice little exclusive from right under his nose.

  ‘Aidan, Jo. What’s happening?’ she asked as soon as he picked up.

  ‘I’m really sorry. . . ’ Oh-oh. She could hear the anxiety in his voice. ‘The reporters from the Mail are outside and Mick wants to let them in to hear what they have to say.’