The Hidden Man - Charles Cumming [9]
‘What about Mark? What about your brother? Can he cook?’
Ben laughed, as if she had asked a stupid question.
‘Mark doesn’t know one end of a kitchen from the other. Anyway, he’s always out at night, with clients or away at the club. Spends a lot of his time travelling overseas. He doesn’t get much chance to be at home.’
‘Really?’ Jenny was putting on her shoes. ‘What time’s he due back?’
She’s interested, he thought. They always are. They see photos of Mark in the hall and they want a chance to meet him.
‘I’m not sure. He just called on the phone from Heathrow.’
‘Right.’
From her reaction, it was clear that Jenny would not have time to stay. Picking up her bag, she soon made for the stairs and it remained only to pay her. Ben had thirty pounds in his wallet, six five-pound notes which he pressed into her hand. They were walking towards the front door when he heard the scratch of a key in the lock. The door opened and Alice walked in, talking rapidly into her mobile phone. She did a double-take when she saw Ben standing at the foot of the staircase beside a tall, slightly flushed pretty girl and he raised his eyebrows as a way of saying hello. Jenny tooka step back inside.
‘That’s not the point,’ Alice was saying. Her voice was raised to a pitch just below outright aggression. ‘I told her she’d have a chance to read through the piece. To checkit. That was a promise I made.’ Jenny found herself standing awkwardly between them, like an actor waiting to go onstage. ‘So if you go ahead and print it, her whole family, who I’ve known since I was six fucking years old, are going to go…’
Ben smiled uneasily and felt the dread of the phone call’s aftermath, another workcrisis the dutiful husband would have to resolve. ‘Thanks, then,’ Jenny whispered to him, moving towards the door. ‘Same time tomorrow?’
‘Same time,’ he said.
‘About midday?’
‘Midday.’
‘Your wife’s lovely,’ she mouthed, standing below him on the threshold. ‘Really pretty.’
Ben merely nodded and watched as Jenny turned towards Ladbroke Grove. Only when she was out of sight did he close the door.
‘But that’s exactly what I’m saying, Andy.’ Alice had kicked off her shoes and was now stretched out on the sofa. A great part of her lived for arguments of this kind, for the adrenalin surge of conflict. ‘If the article appears as it is…’ She pulled the phone away from her ear. ‘Fuck, I got cut off.’
‘What happened?’
Ben came over and sat beside her. Her cheekas he kissed it was cold and smelled of moisturizer and cigarettes.
‘You remember that piece I wrote about my friend from school, the girl who was arrested for drug smuggling?’ Alice was redialling Andy’s number as she spoke. Ben vaguely remembered the story. ‘It was supposed to be a feature but the news deskgot hold of it. Now they’ve gone and made the girl out to be some kind of wild child who should have known better, exactly what I promised Jane we wouldn’t do.’ She stared at the read-out on her mobile phone. ‘Great. And now Andy’s switched his phone off.’
‘Her name is Jane?’ The observation was a non sequitur, but Alice didn’t seem to notice.
‘She came to me because she knew the press would be on to her sooner or later. She thought she could trust me to tell her side of the story. I’m the only journalist her family knows.’
‘And now it’s been taken out of your hands?’
He was trying to appear interested, trying to say the right things, but he knew that Alice was most probably lying to him. She would have leaked the story to the news deskin the hope of winning their approval. Alice was ambitious to move from features into news; the more scoops she could push their way, the better would be her chances of promotion.
‘That’s right. Which explains why Andy isn’t returning my calls.’
‘And how did Andy get hold of the story?’
Her answer here would prove interesting. Would she confess to showing the interview to a news reporter, or claim that it was taken from her desk? Each time there was a crisis of this kind, Alice inevitably