by Richard Dee
I listened to Dave for a few moments as he told the group that they were welcome to stay, as long as they joined in keeping the place neat. He said that he would help get them back on their feet if he could, but crime or untidiness was not tolerated, nor was drunkenness or drug use. He was trying to help, which was a lot more than could be said of the authorities. A couple of them looked upset at his speech and wandered off. I introduced myself and gave him my press card.
He frowned. “We get a lot of your sort here, always looking for a story, for someone to blame. The people who stay here are good people, I help them when the official system’s given up. I won’t have them kicked when they’re down.”
“Relax,” I told him. “I’m not one of the vultures. I’m looking for someone and your name came up.” I told him what I had told Linda, what she had said. I decided against offering him money, he had obvious pride in what he did and it might not be tactful.
“A Layla Balcom lookalike, with a tattoo and Linda said come and see me?” he said. “Give me a minute.” He went inside his hut and closed the door. I could hear a conversation; my name was mentioned. He was either talking to someone inside or making a call.
He finished talking and opened the door, leaning on the frame. “OK, here’s the deal. I might know about her, but I’m going to have to ask you to come back.”
“Fine, when?”
“Don’t be impatient, I’ve got your number, I’ll be in touch.” He backed inside and shut the door.
“Well?”
We were back in the apartment, it was evening. The setting sun was framed in the arch of the Rock. Large multi-coloured balloons, filled with tourists, bobbed close to my open window. I could hear the roar of their gas burners. Gaynor grinned. “You were right, I spotted one of Rivers’ reporters as I rode the bus.”
“No-one was with me at the camp, you must have drawn them off.”
“Thanks to Angie. What did Dave say?”
“He’ll call me.”
She nodded. “After he’s checked you out.”
Chapter Six
While I was waiting for Expressway Dave to call, it turned into a game, we were all looking. Not just for Layla and the girl with the tattoo but for what each other was up to. There were processions of journalists all over the place, all following each other and all trying to hide what we had found from each other.
The best job to have, in those hectic first few days, was to be one of the other Layla Balcom lookalikes. The best of them had to go into hiding after a while, some of our rivals actually hired them to spread disinformation. We were getting tip-offs; when we investigated we found that they were imposters. Angie and her agency must have made a fortune.
We never found a trace of the girl with the tattoo. If you believed Linda, that meant she must have achieved Layla’s purpose and been told to vanish. It wouldn’t have been hard, all she needed to do was wash the electro-static shampoo out of her hair, dump the contact lenses and she could return to anonymity. So far nobody had picked up on what Linda had told me about Layla’s intention, with her away it might stay that way.
Hendrix didn’t say any more about Igor, he must have mollified him, he asked us what we were doing, we told him about the girl but not what we suspected was Layla’s plan. For all we knew, it might not be true, even if it was, Igor didn’t need to know. I hated the deception but consoled myself with the knowledge that it wasn’t risky. If anyone else found out, we could always claim innocence and let them take the flack.
The thing was, it couldn’t go on. We were spending so much time on Layla that nothing else was getting done. In an effort to get back to some sort of normality, a truce was arranged, between all the major editors, together with a meeting to set some ground rules. As it happened it was going to take place on my yacht, True Story. Most of the main players in the hunt for Layla agreed to meet up for a day’s sailing, not that they took much persuading. My yacht parties were legendary, it seemed like the ideal venue to try and sort out what was going on and what to do about it.
It was a beautiful day when I cast off from my berth in the marina and together with Gaynor and a crew of about twenty, we hoisted the sails and set off to find a quiet bay. We sailed with the prevailing wind, pushing against the tide. I liked the feeling of achievement that I got from handling the sails, reading the wind and controlling the elements. A few of the other reporters helped me adjust the rigging and took turns at the wheel. Based on past experience, on the way back they’d be too drunk to handle the sails. I wouldn’t be drinking much as I was in command. We’d probably use the engine to return; tacking and bouncing about wouldn’t be much fun on my own, so I made the most of it.
There were gossip columnists from every magazine, some had brought juniors with them, in anticipation of beer and barbequed ribs. There were a few that I didn’t recognise but they all seemed to be with the people that I knew, even though I was too busy to say hello to everyone. One thing that I did insist on, I had made it a condition, was that all recorders and cameras were turned off and left in a big box in the main cabin before we sailed.
Our readers would never have believed it, but we were not the antagonistic bunch we appeared to be, away from the circulation wars we got on reasonably well. Friends might have been stretching the relationship a little, it didn’t mean that we trusted each other when it came right down to it. Although our work made us rivals, we behaved differently in private. Which was another reason to meet on the boat, if readers saw us being civil to each other in public, they might not have been able to understand it.
* * *
I followed the usual route from the marina, through the arch in the Rock, then I turned off and lost all the other craft as I cruised between the islands until we were alone.
We anchored off one of the Jigsaw Islands, that archipelago on Centra that was a haven for water sports, as well as organised crime. I put the ladder over and we swam while the barbeque got going. People water-skied with the turbo-tender. Then we ate and drank in the late summer sunshine. Naturally, there was only one subject for conversation.
“What are we going to do then?” asked Cliff Gregory, the lead reporter for Celebrity magazine. They were our biggest competitor after Rivers, who hadn’t come along. He professed a hatred of water, unless there was a drop of whisky in it. He told us that he would be sending a couple of his minions, which accounted for the two that none of us recognised. They kept to themselves, hauling ropes when shouted at, drinking beer, but not talking much.
“Has she definitely gone?” asked one of the freelancers.
“Well, between us we’ve looked everywhere,” Cliff said. “It’s almost like she never existed.”
“Perhaps she just wants a bit of peace,” someone else suggested. It seemed like a good idea to reinforce that idea, even though I had said I wouldn’t lie for Igor. I joined in, trying to defuse the tension with a half-truth.
“Maybe she just wants to get away from it all for a while?”
They turned on me as a gang turns on the weakest. “What do you know, Miles, you’re her favourite after all; has she given you an exclusive?”
There were leers. “Maybe he’s got the inside story?”
“Maybe he’s got her hidden somewhere.”
“Where are you keeping her?”
I had said so many times that we had never met, and they were supposed to be knowledgeable, they must have known that we hadn’t even exchanged a word. But it didn’t stop them; they had drunk enough of my alcohol to loosen their tongues. And unlike me, they were not afraid to make up what they couldn’t prove.
Then someone standing behind me shouted out, “It’s obvious, she’s been kidnapped.” It was the sort of throwaway remark that people made when they’d had a few drinks. In the present circumstances, it probably wasn’t the best thing to say. Everyone except me started shouting about ransoms and how, maybe, she was doing it to spoil Igor’s impending wedding.
Igor had hoped I could calm
things down; instead, they were heating up. It was a good job that Gaynor was around, she could tell Hendrix that I had tried, he could tell Igor. I turned and could see the two juniors who had come in place of Rivers, one was on his phone, fingers blurring as he scanned the feed. At least I hoped that was what he was doing. Wait a moment, I thought that we had agreed that there would be no phones.
“You’re not flashing messages, are you?” I asked him. Everyone stopped what they were doing and looked.
“Just starting a rumour,” he grinned, half drunk and wide-eyed. “Kidnapping is a great angle, wish I’d thought of it.”
I raced down to the cabin and grabbed my phone. Turning it back on, I opened up the flash app as I raced back up on deck.
“You stupid fool,” I shouted, loud enough to get everyone’s attention. “What have you done?”
Cliff grabbed the boy’s phone, looked at his screen. “Oh crap, that’s really blown it now,” he said. He threw down the phone, picked the boy up and deposited him into the water.
“What’s he said?” asked Gaynor. Cliff bent over and picked the boy’s phone up from the scuppers. He handed it to me.
The message read, ‘Miles Goram claims Layla Balcom has been kidnapped.’ There was a picture of me. Already there were pages of replies and shares, it was going viral and it was all a lie.
The boy was splashing about, he was too drunk to swim to the ladder, someone threw him a lifebuoy. “You’ll back me up, won’t you, Cliff?” I said, expecting to get an automatic yes.
He hedged, “Well you did say it.”
“No, I didn’t. Someone did but it wasn’t me.”
He looked unconvinced. “I’m sure I heard you, but OK, anyway, this was all supposed to be off the record.” There was the noise of the tender starting up and we all rushed to the side. His friend, the other man that nobody had recognised, had climbed aboard it, he let go the mooring line and drove it over to the boy in the water, who climbed aboard.
“Why did you send that message?” Cliff shouted, waving the phone in front of him.
He shrugged his shoulders. “Seemed like a good idea,” he shouted back. “Goram’s so bloody whiter than white. He knows something, now he’ll have to tell us.” His mate engaged the drive and the tender shot away.
Cliff tossed the phone in after them. “Don’t!” I shouted as he pulled back his arm but it was too late. “We could have used it to find out who he was.”
“Oh yeah,” Cliff said, suddenly serious.
“Who were they with?” I asked the shocked crowd, as they disappeared into the distance, on my bloody tender! Nobody knew, or if they did, they didn’t let on. The more we discussed it, it seemed that everyone had assumed that someone else had asked them. We had all thought they were representing Rivers, as we talked we realised that they had never actually said that. Nobody had ever seen either of them before.
Rivers, when we managed to reach him, denied all knowledge. “Was that today?” he said, “as far as I’m concerned, none of my people were there. Why would I want to stir things up? Mind you, I’m annoyed to have missed it. I’ve seen the feed; it’s a bit of a leap isn’t it?”
There was no doubt that the incident had changed our mood. What had happened had sobered us up, it felt like the situation was slipping out of any control that we might have had over it. We sat down and talked seriously. Like it or not, something had started, now we had to decide what to do about it. After a lot of arguing, and blaming me for letting them on board, we agreed that it would be sensible to pool our efforts and stop the stupid fighting over any news, it was doing us no good whatsoever.
As for the kidnap rumour, Melvin, one of the nerdiest reporters you could ever meet, managed to hack into the flash network and delete the message and all the comments. His fringe bobbed and he talked to himself as he concentrated on the screen of his phone.
“The trouble is,” he explained, sunlight glinting on the frames of the thickest glasses you had ever seen. “I’ve had to delete the posters account to do it, so any chance we had of finding out who he was is at the bottom of the sea with his phone. Unless we find your tender and his DNA.”
It meant that all the replies had also gone, the people who had seen it couldn’t share it, or even prove it had existed. Would it be enough? We had been planning to stay out longer, watch the sunset but the mood had changed. I weighed anchor and headed for home.
As we motored back under the arch, there was a trickle of posts on the feed, asking if anyone knew where the original post had gone. Conspiracy theories abounded; according to some, the police had discovered her body and were keeping it quiet, the federal police were searching the sector for a wrecked ship, she had died and had already been buried. It was awful to watch and wait for the next comment to appear.
To say that Hendrix was annoyed would be putting it mildly. “I’ve had Igor on the phone, and he’s hopping mad,” he said to us when we arrived at my mooring. He had driven out to meet us on a weekend evening, which told us how serious things were. “I won’t be able to convince him it’s just a circulation thing this time.”
“It wasn’t me,” I protested. “Ask Gaynor, or even Cliff come to that, the man wasn’t with anyone, nobody checked his identity.”
He gave me a look, “You’re the bloody Captain,” he said, “nobody my arse, you should have checked.” He was right of course, there had been too much going on, “we all thought that Rivers had sent him. Whatever; he’s gone. Stolen my tender too.”
“Well, the tender’s the least of your worries. You’d better have something to tell Igor, he wants to see you in the morning.”
Chapter Seven
The Balcom building was massive, well over a hundred floors and it dominated the city, in a way that the Rock didn’t. While the Rock was an expression of nature, Balcom was a very human thing, its products touched and dominated everyone in the sector. ‘I’m bigger than this place’, it said.
Starting out as a small company on Terra, Balcom Industrial had developed the hyperdrive and ignited the exploration of the Galaxy. They jealously controlled its secrets, no hyperdrive functioned anywhere without a Balcom overseer. Balcom also manufactured every sort of mechanical device, wielded more power than any government. They owned the mineral rights to planets, employed millions. If they had wanted, they could have stopped the Federation working at a stroke.
I was shown into Igor’s presence. He was sat behind a huge desk, completely devoid of any paperwork, just a framed photograph of Layla.
“Mr Goram, sir,” said the secretary, closing the door behind me.
He looked up, I saw the piercing eyes, the face of the man who had inherited one of the largest companies in the sector and had made it bigger. His influence spanned humanity. In a way, he was the true ruler of the Galaxy.
“Well?” he said, his voice surprisingly soft.
I said nothing, there was nothing that I could say. I looked everywhere but at him, my eyes were drawn to the picture of Layla.
“Well?” he shouted. “I thought I could trust you. Hendrix told me you were a good man, my daughter trusted you, she said you were honest. Now, when it comes to it, you’ve let us all down.”
“Wait a moment—” I started to answer but he shut me up.
“I’m not interested in your excuses. If you know where she is, tell me.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m looking but so is everyone else, you say that you know me, you’ll know that I don’t have an agenda. I’m genuinely worried about her.” I was poised to ask him if he knew what Layla had to do that was so important; if only I hadn’t hesitated.
“Well don’t just stand there, go and fix the mess you’ve created.” He pushed a button on his desk; the door opened. “Show Mr Goram out,” Igor said. “He won’t be welcome again unless my daughter is with him.”
When I told her what had been said, Gaynor wasn’t surprised. “It’s all got a bit complicated,” she said. “But it suggests that Igor has no
thing to do with Layla leaving. If he hasn’t sent her, then who knows what she’s up to?”
“Maybe she just can’t bear to be around Donna,” I suggested. “Or she can see what she’s doing to her father.”
Chapter Eight
Gaynor’s phone bleeped once, waking me up. Beside me, she stirred. There was a pause, then she muttered, “It’s not about Layla, go back to sleep.” I looked at my watch, it was two a.m. She’d had an important message from someone though; she slid out of bed and headed for the bathroom.
I heard the apartment door shut and got up, I had to move quickly if I was going to follow her. I probably shouldn’t have, but I wasn’t keen on her being out and about, alone, at night. If it wasn’t about Layla, then it must be the crime story I had handed her. The city was safe enough, if you were sensible, even at night. It was where she might be headed that bothered me; who she could be seeing. I dressed quickly, it couldn’t have been more than a minute when I followed her out of the door. One of the lifts had only just arrived on the ground floor, the other appeared in a few seconds that seemed like hours.
Gaynor had left her keys on the table by the door, which meant that, wherever she was going, she was walking. Most public transport had stopped at midnight. I got to the street and looked left, nothing. I looked right and saw her, a hundred metres away.
I kept to the shadows and followed her. She headed towards the expressway, not stopping or looking behind her. I wondered if she was going to see Expressway Dave, but she turned off down a rubbish-strewn alley before she got near to his camp. I crept closer, peered cautiously around the corner. She was thirty metres away, talking to a figure, his face hidden in the shadows. I moved carefully towards them, keeping to the shadows. Inside the alley it was quiet; the tall buildings muffled the noises of the occasional vehicle. I kept away from the few lit windows, dodging around and behind the piles of rubbish from restaurants and shops. Rats scuttled. Both of them heard the noise. I saw them tense.