Crossing the Line

by Solomon Carter

  “This is a busy place. You really should have called ahead. She could be back any time or she could be hours yet. Who can say with dear old Lucy? Just wait in the lobby until you get bored.”

  The man walked away.

  “Well, he was nice,” said Jess. “I hope his dick drops off.”

  “With an attitude like that, it probably did a while back.”

  The pinstriped man walked back in the direction he came from, before he was intercepted by another. The other man was broad shouldered, with a rectangular stubby head. He had sunken eyes and he nodded towards Eva and Jess as he spoke to the man in short sentences. He sounded gruff but they couldn’t make out his voice. Then both men turned towards them together.

  “Shit,” said Jess. “Here they come.”

  “Play it cool. No harm done yet.”

  He arrived and folded his arms.

  “You are looking for Lucy Stroud. She is not here.”

  The man’s voice was gruff and marked with an Eastern European accent, accent du jour.

  “We know. Your colleague told us to wait outside.”

  “Who are you? What do you want with Lucy?”

  The man stared at them. He was pushing at Eva for truth or for a sign of lies and she knew it. Like this man, she had been trained in looking for signs of lying, using Neuro Linguistic Programming techniques. She knew how to prevent most ‘leaks’ by monitoring her movements and restricting certain tells of her hands, eyes and posture.

  “I have something for Lucy Stroud the world needs to know. It’ll be a smash.” Eva stared him down, avoiding the wrong move of her eyes as she began to invent more back-story. “A senior legislator, a man who should know better is totally corrupt, making dirty money from his inside knowledge and using public funds for his own kicks. He is making money at the expense of people suffering out there, profiting from his relationship with the government to boot. It’s a scandal and it needs reporting.”

  “Why do you come here? Is this one of those ridiculous conspiracy theories? What kind of newspaper do you think this is?”

  There was plenty of subtext to his questioning. It was innuendo, more hook and bait than on the end of an angler’s line, but Eva was determined to play her part as innocent, and now perhaps hurt.

  “This is no bloody conspiracy theory. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. I’m a whistle-blower, understand? I’m taking a big risk just by being here. Please, I just need to speak with Lucy.”

  “A troublemaker? Troublemakers are most unwelcome here, do you understand?”

  “I thought you were a newspaper. Newspapers report trouble, don’t they?”

  The sunken-eyed man studied her. He was hard faced, athletic and looked intelligent. If anyone here knew the whereabouts of Dan Bradley it would be someone like him. She met his gaze evenly, and it was like a joust, like they were competing. Jess observed and understood most of what was going on. But Mr Antiques Roadshow was growing impatient.

  “Mr Nvotski ensures work goes smoothly here. You shouldn’t have come up here.”

  Nvotski nodded.

  “Lucy Stroud doesn’t handle complicated business or legal matters like those you’ve described. That’s my… department.”

  He smiled, a mixture of false charm and sycophancy.

  “I’ll speak to Lucy Stroud or I go to a rag that pays for a big story like this,” she looked back at the Russian.

  Antiques Roadshow tutted. “You are wasting your time. And probably mine as well. Bloody lunatics,” was his final word, aimed at the Russian and he walked away in a hurry.

  Nvotski spoke. “What are your names?”

  “Jenny Anderson and Vicky Forbes. I can’t tell you anymore. We could be in serious trouble if this gets out before time.”

  “Is that so?”

  “You heard me”

  “You could be in serious trouble, you are right.”

  “I’m somewhat confused. I thought you said you don’t like trouble here,” said Jess.

  “Let me add some clarity. People have tried to cause us trouble before. It backfired. It always does. Some people are trying to cause us trouble today. It is already backfiring upon them right now.”

  “Perhaps there should be an exposé on you,” said Jess.

  “I don’t like this,” said The Russian. “I am watching, understand. Remember what I said,” he spoke at Jess while jabbing a big fat nail-bitten finger into the air. He walked away with a military gait.

  “He thinks he knows, but he isn’t sure. They can’t have heard back from Bogdanis yet.”

  “Hopefully Bogdanis is face down floating down Barking Creek. What now?”

  “He watches us from his perch and we look around without being too obvious. What can you see?” asked Eva.

  “It’s open plan. But again, there are too many people here who Marka won’t want to know about his kidnapping fetish.”

  “Yes. And from what I see, there isn’t much hidden space on these two floors. Space can be deceiving, but both offices stretch towards the limit of the outside walls. Both offices fill the building wall to wall, meaning there’s a lack of hidden spaces for keeping people captive. Which means…?”

  They spoke quietly at the edge of the room, feeling eyes upon them.

  “It means that we’ve ruled out two floors. So it means Dan could still be in Marka’s flat after all.”

  “Possibly, but I doubt it.”

  “So you think he could be on the first floor?”

  “Or there is another space altogether. That one, what’s his name? Nvotski? He makes me think we’re close. I know it. They are spooked and on the defensive. And that’s because Dan is here and they know some people are after him. Or it could be they are worried about Bogdanis, which amounts to the same thing.”

  “Right. Two floors down. Now what?”

  “Let’s keep our cover story going for a minute. Lucy Stroud’s desk is over there. Let’s go and write a message on her desk like the two persistent little whistle-blowers we are.”

  “Why bother, Eva?”

  “Verisimilitude.”

  “Very sommily what?”

  “Keeping up our story. We’re not leaving yet, they need to believe in us still. And because I want to look out of that window by her desk.”

  “Whatever you say,” said Jess, confusion and resignation in her voice. The walked across the office floor cornering around journalist’s desks and cubicles where hacks were typing hurriedly. Nvotski was standing in the corner of the room on another side; he was on the phone. His sunken-eyed face made everything seem dangerous. There was a cheese-plant on Lucy Stroud’s desk, the kind of thing she supposed people had on their desks in the movies with office scenes, along with a mess of papers, scribbles and a calendar. There was a laptop computer, open with an image of a silver Porsche parked at a jaunty angle. Behind the Porsche was a horseshoe bay, a golden beach, Palm Trees and a sparkling mid-blue sea.

  “Write a note, Jess.”

  “Why?”

  “Do it.”

  “What do I write?”

  “Write that we have a big story about a top lawyer caught up in corruption – a scandal involving money from the state.”

  “How the hell did you make that up?”

  “Maybe I didn’t. It happens all the time. And more importantly it covers our arse when Nvotski looks at the note. Which he will do as soon as we are gone.”

  Eva made a theatrical show of glancing out of the window, as if the eye-catching vista had taken hold of her imagination. She dawdled towards the window and looked out across the city huddle of Shad Thames, a mixture of old red brick and brown brick historic buildings, like industrial buildings, which had been gutted and filled with clean modern lines, with some lovely new silver carbuncles added to some. Then she looked up and beyond to the skyscrapers outside of Shad Thames and to the right, back towards the Gherkin, the Shard and the glass spires of the city. Just before she stopped admiring the view, she dropped her gaze straig
ht down, vertically. She took just two seconds to scan the entire area – memorised - and then she idly pulled away from the window and turned with a faint smile back towards Jess.

  “Have you finished the note?”

  “Yep. Have you finished enjoying the view?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Then let’s go.”

  They made their way past the banks of desks. They passed by Antiques Roadshow, but he was on the phone and disliked them enough to keep his back turned as they passed. Nvotski watched them the whole way. Eva felt his gaze as clearly as if she had been staring back. They had aroused his suspicions, but hopefully the note would scale it back.

  “Goodbye. What are your names again?”

  “Jenny Anderson and Vicky Forbes. Don’t worry. I’m terrible with names as well. Can be embarrassing, though, don’t you think?” said Eva.

  “Do I look embarrassed? Names and faces, I’ve got you, remember.”

  “How could we ever forget?” said Eva, and turned away through the double doors back to the lifts in the second floor lobby.

  The first floor seemed similar to the first two initially, except on a closer inspection of the personnel. There were younger people on the first floor, fashionable even, some with writerly pretensions such as full bloom ‘arty’ sideburns and horn-rimmed spectacles, and women with ‘arty’ angular haircuts which would have made less svelte and attractive women seem rather odd. The age range of the people here said two things loudly – one, this was a junior floor, where less senior people worked and two, it was where the administrative functions of the building took place. There was a bank of telephony staff, young women in starter jobs, and beyond them one where the arty types did their much artier work. There was a big logo on the wall which said D.Net giving away the function of the floor. This was the internet arm, the online newspaper of The Daily, the place where the tech-heads resided alongside apprentice journos. The first floor had its own Nvotski. A thin man in a blue pinstripe suit looked out from a side office, peering at them with menace. Nvotski must have briefed him already.

  Eva scoped out the big room. “Jess, check the other side. There are no viable side rooms for holding a prisoner here.” Same as before, the place was almost all open plan apart from some clear glass cubicles. If only Marka had planned ahead, he could have installed prison cells on every floor.

  Jess nodded and walked through the lobby to the opposite door, which was a mirror image of the first, down to the same age demographic of teens through to mid-thirties folks, all fashionistas. Jess didn’t like some of these people on principle, but before she could turn around to leave, a man with a skinny but kind-of-cute body in a grey slim-fit shirt walked over to her. He had deliberate three-day stubble on his face, carved with straight angular lines, and the same horn- rimmed spectacles.

  “You’re looking for Lucy Stroud, aren’t you?” Jess recognised he was from her own stock, polite with an Essex/London accent lurking around the edges. It threw her. He wasn’t the usual stamp of idiot she expected him to be.

  “News travels fast around here.”

  “Well it should do, don’t you think?” said the man, without seeming facetious.

  “What about it?”

  “She’s over there, now, talking to MacLeod, the web editor.”

  He pointed a long finger in the direction of a girl with an angular bob hair do. The woman was chatting animatedly with a tubby man wearing a red lumberjack shirt and a ginger goatee. She wasn’t tall, and she was an animated mad thing, full of jumping beans as she spoke to the nodding, chin-stroking lumberjack. “Oh, thanks,” said Jess.

  “You want to speak with her now? I heard you’ve got some kind of scoop to give her.”

  Jess nodded, smiling like a loon. “Yeah! I think I’d better get my colleague first.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll get her to see you. Who shall I say is here?”

  Jess racked her brains for the right combination of letters, sounds and characters she was supposed to remember when Eva said those names. But she couldn’t. Especially now, with the handsome man in spectacles staring her out, and the sassy-kick-your-arse journo with the don’t-mess-with-me hair in front of her.

  “Um. Friends.”

  The man smiled and made a little laugh. “Yeah... And what are your names?”

  “Oh. Andrews and Fox.” Pure bullshit and she knew it. That wasn’t it at all.

  “Fine. And you are?”

  “Fox?” The little question mark sound made it sound so very unconvincing she wanted to cry.

  “Well, of course you are,” said the young man, smiling. He began to walk away in the direction of the woman with the bob. “Lucy!” he called, but the woman didn’t look around. And as he moved, the man in the blue pinstripe lurking in the office called out to the nice looking man,

  “Darren?”

  Blue pinstripe was tall enough to fill up the whole door frame. He hung his arms from the frame like a monkey, indicating his power and authority over the whole room. As much of a looker as he was, Darren, obeyed the man like a good little minion, walking double-quick towards his boss. Before he arrived, Jess was gone. She met Eva in the lobby by the lifts.

  “I’m sorry. We’ve got a problem, Eva.”

  “What is it?”

  “Lucy Stroud is in there. Bigger problem - I forgot our names and there is a Nvotski Mark 2 in there who is about to find out.”

  “Forget it. Let's go now. Forget about Lucy Stroud. She’s not a threat. The Nvotskis are the threat. Let’s take the stairs.”

  Eva pushed into the door marked fire exit, and found a concrete staircase. Their shoes clattered down the steps. There was no sign of anyone above them, or below. They made it to the ground floor and opened the door out into the reception area. The receptionists had their backs to them. Jess and Eva had arrived at the rear side of the reception area. There were some white double doors behind them leading further away from reception to a bright area and a throng of people standing around chatting. Eva and Jess moved past them as gracefully as they could. Beyond the throng was another set of doors which looked markedly different to the rest of the building. They were dark grey and solid looking, more about industry and function than aesthetic appeal.

  “Through here. Quick.”

  Eva pushed the door open and marched past a bank of tables and a gathering of executives engaged in a modern style break-out setting where the only informality is the pretence involved. The executives looked up but said nothing, and Eva walked on purposefully. Jess followed after, copying her as best she could, which was just good enough.

  The grey doors opened into an industrial space of grey walls and machinery. There were conveyor belts and computer screens and a Big Bertha mess of a machine eating up tons of space in the centre of the room, combined with a bank of mechanical devices. Men here wore blue overall uniforms and went about their tasks within and around the machinery. The room was too quiet, but the workers appeared to be setting the machine to perform at any moment. Eva looked around the space. There was a large grey roller-shutter door at the rear, half-hidden by machinery and a parked forklift truck. There were smaller side doors as well, dark grey with yellow signs on them. This area was the print room, and the metal shutter door was for loading up vehicles to dispatch The Daily across the city.

  Eva scanned the area. “There are six doors which could lead to others. There is an outdoor space too. I saw it from upstairs. It looks pretty incongruous, just a yard really, but it contains an outbuilding too.” Jess nodded but looked blank. “The outbuilding looks out of place, like it doesn’t fit in with the rest of this place.”

  “You think he’s in there?”

  “It’s a possibility.”

  “So where do we start?”

  “We try each door in turn. Stick really close by me now. Whatever happened to Dan happened somewhere around here, I’m sure of it.”

  They turned left past the machinery and followed a walkway delineated by a nea
t and continuous green paint mark on the floor. They passed doors with various assignations on them, including toilets, storage and staff rooms. But there were other unmarked doors; all of them were solid grey doors with metal kick plates at their base. Eva pushed the first one and it opened into blackness, light from the print room following in behind them, illuminating a small room filled with stacks and reams of paper and shelving. This one had no other doors. They closed the door and moved on. The next door opened into a tight corridor that ran parallel with the wall. Eva hesitated, and then walked in. “I can’t see a light switch. Hold it open for me.”

  She walked as far as the weakening light would allow, and found another door just within the darkness. There was a seam of light underneath it, faint and very thin, and it issued a cold draft. Eva pressed her shoulder against its cool surface - the door wouldn’t budge a single millimetre in its frame. Eva pondered. Then a noise came from Jess’s direction, a clatter and some voices.

  “Eva, come back quick!”

  Jess withdrew into the light and the spring hinged door closed Eva into the darkness. “Jess!” Eva hastily skittered down the dark corridor, her shoulder bumping off an unseen wall. She found the edge of the doorframe, and snatched up the handle. It opened into the grey light and noise of the print room floor. The artificial light came from the heavy strip lights above, and a drone of power fed the idling press. Eva looked left and right, and heard male voices coming from nearby just beyond the first bank of machinery. Jess was out of sight. Eva wanted to call out but she held back. She had to listen now and panic later. The door she had just found led to the outside. It led to the bunker she had seen, she was sure of it. It explained the light and the draft. The outbuilding - it had to be there. Now Eva could hear men talking.

  “They came down here. They came into the break room at the front, but they looked like administration girls, so I paid no attention.”