by Carmen Reid
‘Here we go, here we are,’ she heard Bella say, ‘I’ve found a copy . . . Look at this. It’s an inventory of everything that the hospital sold to Wolff-Meyer. It includes “a unique selection of brain tissue samples removed from corpses and preserved in wax in the 1800s”.’ Bella continued to read from the document as Jo came and peered at the screen with her: ‘“Each comes with full annotations: causes of death, symptoms of illness, age and medical history of the patient. This is a unique medical record of infectious illnesses and other causes of death in London in the latter half of the nineteenth century.”’
‘Jesus. I thought they just made a donation. I didn’t realize they’d bought the contents of the department. How the bloody hell can the hospital be allowed to sell this?’ Jo exclaimed. ‘Shouldn’t it be preserved for the nation or something, like all those god-awful portraits that impoverished aristos keep bequeathing to us “in lieu” of death duties?’
‘You’ll probably find it was a private hospital at the time the collection was made, so now it’s the private property of the trust. Probably someone from Wolff-Meyer sits on the board of the trust. Maybe they want to set some old diseases on the loose, sell a few new drugs.’
‘I’m trying not to think that,’ Jo admitted. ‘I mean, I’m trying to say there might be a good explanation, that it’s good science to look into what was knocking people off in the 1800s and learn from it. Maybe they were hoping to pick up some variations which they could make more effective vaccinations from.’
‘Hopefully,’ Bella said. ‘But I don’t think you’re going to find out tonight. Look at this,’ she pointed.
The words on the screen were transforming into an unreadable numeral code and computer hieroglyphics.
‘I think maybe, Jo, just as a precaution,’ Bella was clicking, dragging, typing rapidly on the screen, ‘you should get your things together, but slowly and naturally as if it’s all part of the plan and leave the building. Just in case anyone arrives to chat to us.’
‘You’re joking? What about all that juicy stuff on the pertussis outbreak I was hoping to look at?’
‘Not tonight, I’m afraid. We’ll have to come back another time. I have to be on the safe side, here, I don’t think an arrest for breaching security protocol would look so great on my CV.’
‘OK, look I’m packing, I’m smiling casually for the camera. And now I’m all set to go. Glad to have been of help to you tonight, Mizz Browning.’
‘Glad you could make it too. We must break into some top security files some time soon.’
‘Can I ask them to call me a cab, down at reception?’ Jo wanted to know.
Bella shook her head: ‘Best not. Just leave without a trace,’ but there was a smile with this.
‘I will phone you, very soon.’
‘If I can get this to calm down, I’ll see what else I can find for you, OK?’ Bella said and then, just as Jo was at the door, she added: ‘Do you think I should have my eyes done? You know just over here? Before I go to New York?’ She put her fingers on both sides of her face. ‘It’s just, they’re really starting to hood. I don’t think Botox can hold them up for ever.’
‘You’ve had Botox?’ Jo asked, quite appalled enough with that. ‘You’ve had Botox?’ she repeated, ‘Look, I’m not even going to discuss facelifts with you. And certainly not right now. You’re gorgeous, you stupid woman. You are also insane. What is the matter with everyone?’ And with that Jo headed out of the room in the iron grip of the size five shoes and down the long corridor to the lift.
Two streets away from the building, she had to take the shoes off again. Her feet were already shredded and bleeding, she was going to cause permanent damage if she went a step further.
It was ridiculous to walk the pavements of London in bare feet, she was risking much more than bleeding blisters doing this, but she knew that just two streets down was an all-night caff frequented by cabbies where you could almost always get a taxi.
There was an acute damp chill in the air she recognized as the temperature drop that happened just before dawn. She felt so tired, achingly, deep bone tired. She wanted a hot bath, lavender oil, to sneak into her daughters’ bedroom, smooth down their covers, kiss them and run a hand over their silky hair, and ten uninterrupted hours of sleep in a clean bed. And absolutely not one of those things was coming her way. For a passing moment she wondered if she was still up to this job. If she still had the energy for the office politics, the hours, the travel, the stress. Then the jab of adrenalin at the details scribbled on notepaper in the inside of her handbag revived her.
The faintest sliver of light was visible behind the tall buildings ahead of her. The sky was about to turn pale pink, and when she finally landed a cab, she would be driven home through the cool, quiet grey of a London dawn.
At home, she would wash, change, make herself a cup of tea, then get into her car and set off on the final phase of this little adventure.
Chapter Eighteen
A few drops of red wine rubbed into tired skin overnight can work wonders as a moisturiser.
The Sun
Saturday: 6.20 a.m.
Jo had once explained it to someone like this: if you want to catch an interviewee at home, then the rules of journalism are as follows. You must leave your house at daybreak, with an address and a map. You must head out of London, passing a petrol station to fill the tank, jamming the fuel receipt into the bulging section of wallet dedicated to work receipts, that are supposed to be logged, filed and returned on a monthly basis. Although no journalist on earth seems to be capable of this.
You must buy, at the drive-thru beside the petrol station, a large coffee that tastes of almost entirely nothing and an apple pie which does not count as a nutritious breakfast and the filling is guaranteed to squish out and scald the roof of your mouth so badly that for the next three days you have a rough patch there.
You must then drive, paying close attention to the road map, road signs and motorway turn-offs while listening intently to the radio news because today is the day we go to press and everything that happens today is important. You must also, because you’ve had no sleep the night before, try very hard to stay awake.
According to the rules, you must be in your car parked outside a potential interviewee’s house before seven o’clock. This way, should they be leaving early that day, perhaps to avoid the attentions of the press, they are not likely to have left until you’ve had a chance to try and speak to them. But if, when you arrive at 7 a.m., a car is parked in the driveway and the curtains drawn, then the rules are that you must not knock the door until after 8 a.m. Any earlier would be considered bad manners. Not something you could be reported to the Press Complaints Commission for exactly, but bad manners nevertheless.
Jo followed the rules to the letter and pulled up in the dinky little village of Lower Stenton shortly after 7 a.m. The address she was looking for turned out to be a glamorous white house right on the village green. A car was parked on the other side of the white gate and curtains were pulled closed over each of the windows.
She would have to sit tight in her car and wait for an hour or so. She had plenty to do: a thick stack of the day’s newspapers to plough through and her Savannah interview to write. The problem was that she was hardly going to be inconspicuous parked up in the middle of a sleepy, nosy little place like this.
Sure enough, just twenty-five minutes later, a police car appeared. It pulled up behind her car and the two officers, a PC and a WPC, got out with their caps on and walked towards her.
Jo opened her car door and leaned her head out, smiling as charmingly as she could manage for them.
‘Good morning,’ said the PC. ‘I imagine you know why we’re here.’ The WPC nodded by way of greeting and gave a little smile.
‘Good morning, officers,’ Jo began. ‘So sorry you’ve been called to check up on me. I’m Her Majesty’s press, I’ll get my ID out for you.’
‘Are you?’ PC sounded almost impresse
d. The strategic use of ‘Her Majesty’s’ got them every time.
He took her card, looked it over, handed it to his colleague then gave it back to Jo with words: ,’ wasn’t aware we had any celebrities living in the village of Lower Stenton.’
‘We don’t just do celebrities, you know,’ was her irritated reply. ‘There are a few tiny little gaps to fill with real news, in between the stories about Posh’s latest shopping spree and the current size of Kate Winslet’s bottom.’
‘So what brings you here then, Ms Randall?’ PC asked.
‘I’m hoping to interview someone who lives a bit further down this street,’ she explained. ‘I’m just waiting till they’ve had a chance to get up.’
‘Fair enough,’ said the WPC.
‘So what’s that all about?’ PC wanted to know. ‘A kiss and tell?’
By now, she would have quite liked to tell him where to stick his nosy questions, but with the police, politeness must always, always prevail. Politeness was even more important than being in the right, she’d found.
‘Now, now,’ she smiled, determined to make this sound as purring and as friendly as she could manage: ‘Unless the laws of the land have changed lately, I don’t think I’m required to tell you anything about it.’
‘World exclusive, eh?’
‘Something like that.’ She wanted to smack him, she really did.
‘We’re just responding to a call-out, madam.’ Why did they do that? Why did policemen always call you madam? And when did the changeover occur? That first madam? Instead of Miss?
‘We received a call about a suspicious person in a car, answering to your description.’ There was another police classic: ‘answering to your description’.
‘Are you telling me I look suspicious?’
‘Well, no, not really,’ PC answered.
‘Not really? Charming!’
Both officers were smiling with her now.
‘But anyway,’ she added, ‘you were good enough to come. In London, I could phone up to report an armed robber in my bedroom and no one would turn up for hours.’
They listened but gave no nod of agreement; obviously they weren’t going to join in any criticism of another police force.
‘OK, so, you’ve checked up on me . . . all is well.
Would it be very rude if I asked you not to stay for too much longer, because you’re making me look really dodgy?’ Jo broadened the smile with this, knowing they couldn’t argue with her.
When the PCs had got back into their squad car and pulled off, she took out her phone: 7.42, about time to call Jeff, because she shouldn’t really be out here without newsdesk approval.
She pressed the relevant speed dial on her phone.
‘Have you beaten me to the office?’ were the words Jeff used instead of ‘hello’.
‘No, no, I’m in Bedfordshire.’
‘What the hell are you doing there? I need you to write up the Savannah piece and give me something fresh on whooping cough.’
‘I’m out here trying to get you something very fresh,’ was her slightly snappy reply. ‘I’ve been up all night on this, Jeff,’ she added. ‘I would love to be in my bed, I wouldn’t have driven out here if it wasn’t for a very good reason.’
‘No, I suppose not,’ he answered and there was something soothing to it, which for a moment made her close her eyes and think with longing about sleep.
‘I’m too old to stay up all night,’ she told him, ‘not without major pharmaceuticals.’
‘So why did you?’ he asked.
‘I’ve got this great lead on Wolff-Meyer.’
‘Well, that’s a major pharmaceutical.’
‘Oh, ha, ha. I’m not going through it all on the phone, but there’s another reason for this whooping cough outbreak. I’m waiting to doorstep the person with the grudge who might like to tell me all about it.’
‘I see.’ He didn’t ask any more, and Jo knew this was because he trusted her, knew that her instinct was good. If she thought this was important enough to be doing on a Saturday morning, when there was so much other stuff still unwritten, then it almost certainly was important enough.
‘Keep in touch,’ he added. ‘You know you need to start filing soon. By the way, Dominique phoned in yesterday evening to say she’s quit. Gone to the Mail as a feature writer. Did you know about this?’
‘No!’ was Jo’s reaction, ‘the Mail? God . . .’ Something that had puzzled Jo for days was suddenly clear. ‘She probably put them onto the twins’ family. But they’ve still not run that story, have they? So we could if we wanted to.’
‘We can . . . and they never did sign the bigger contract, did they? So we get it for £2,500. And if it fits with the fresh and convincing new line we’re still waiting to hear from you.’
‘Yup, yup, I know, I’m getting onto this as soon as I can. OK?’ She was distracted by the departure of Dominique. Ambitious, cunning, clever girl. . .
Aidan’s triumph in the Savannah story had probably been the final straw. Dominique could never stand it when he got a better story than her. Maybe she’d had an offer she was considering and she’d finally decided to jump. Jo had been mentoring Dominique for almost a year and she hadn’t even called to tell her first.
‘We have to get her back,’ Jo told Jeff.
‘Who?’
‘Dominique! She won’t start till Monday, I’ll call her tomorrow.’
‘Are you serious? She’s sold your story from under your nose, been in secret talks to leave, is obviously far more ambitious than we even guessed . . .’
‘Exactly,’ Jo said. ‘We need her back. She and Aidan have to get a pay rise and work in my crack team. The Health and Environment SAS.’
There was a pause at the other end of the line.
‘Oh go on,’ Jo urged, ‘I know you think of us all as family.’
‘Family?’ he sighed. ‘Some bloody, psychotic, dysfunctional bloody family,’ he answered. ‘How much of a pay rise are you expecting me to find them?’
When she told him, all he could say was: ‘Don’t hold your breath.’
‘I’ll call her later,’ Jo said.
‘OK, well, speak soon.’
‘Bye.’
As soon as she’d hung up, her phone rang again and she saw Simon’s number. She hoped this meant her children, rather than her ex-husband, were up early.
‘Hi, Mum,’ Mel’s voice came on the line.
‘Hello darling, how are you?’
‘Fine, fine. Daddy’s going to make us pancakes when he gets up.’
‘How nice. You go and get him up, then.’
‘He said we can wake him at eight o’clock and not before, he’s busy kissing Gwen in there or something, eeeeugh . . . yuck.’
Jo would have liked to agree, but instead said: ‘Now, now. Tell me a joke instead.’
‘Oh, I know, I know! If you’re American when you go into the toilet and you’re American when you come out of the toilet, what are you when you’re in the toilet?’
‘I have no idea. And I thought I told you I don’t like toilet jokes.’
‘This is not rude, I promise, Mum.’
‘OK then, what are you?’
‘European. Geddit? You’re a peeing.’
‘Very good. How’s Netts? Is she with you?’
‘Yes, I’m reading her a story.’
‘That’s very nice of you. What are you doing today?’
‘I dunno yet. Bicycles in the park maybe.’
‘Good. Shall I say hello to Nettie?’
‘Yeah, speak to you later.’
‘Bye-bye, big kiss.’
A silly, smoochy kissing noise came back and then Nettie’s voice was on the line.
‘Hello, Mummy.’
‘Hello, big pumpkin. How are you?’
‘I got a joke too.’
‘Have you?’
‘What are you in the toilet?’
‘Ermm, I don’t know.’
‘A fish.’ This wa
s followed by raucous laughter.
‘Very funny,’ Jo replied.
‘Bye-bye then,’ and with that Nettie hung up.
‘Bye,’ Jo was left to say into the receiver. Some days she wondered if she would make it through another 24 hours without them. She missed them even physically: the squishy soft weight of Nettie in her lap, the bony, angular cuddle of Mel. Missed them, missed them, but realized that no solution was going to be perfect and at the moment, this was the best they could all do.
The dashboard clock was crawling towards 8 a.m. Her daughters would get Simon out of bed and she would go to the white house and knock the door. It was a bit early for a Saturday. She would probably find Joan in a dressing gown. But too bad, this was going to be a very busy day, she had to get it started. And then there was the bladder situation. The early morning coffee would have to go somewhere, some time soon. And this didn’t look like the kind of village to have a public toilet.
OK, 8 a.m. was now registered on the dashboard. Time to gather herself together and go and knock on Joan Theroux’s door.
Jo switched off her mobile, no time for interruptions now, shoved her computer underneath the passenger seat, slipped her handbag over her shoulder and stepped out onto the pavement.
She wondered how many people were at their windows watching her go down the street. In a little village like this, people noticed. No, make that, in a little village like this, people called the police.
Through the white gate and up to the low red door, which she already knew was number 15, she went. The front curtains, matching red, were still drawn, but she put her finger on the brass bell and gave her practised ring . . . counting to five slowly . . . so that it was long, but not too long. A definite ring.
Jo waited for forty seconds or so, listening carefully for any sounds of movement, then rang again.
She was certain someone was home, because the upstairs curtains had been opened in the hour she’d sat in the car and she’d already driven right round the house, making sure there wasn’t a gate at the back. She uncrossed her arms, took a step back from the doorstep and prepared to give her friendliest smile.