He started reading again.
Marco is a journalist. He’s over here for a year, more if they like his reports, as London correspondent for some glossy Milan rag. They keep faxing him to say they want more royal family, more champagne balls, more Wimbledon and Ascot. He’s tried telling them Wimbledon and Ascot come once a year, but they just keep sending the faxes to their London office. Marco’s thinking of chucking it. He used to be a “serious” journalist, real hard copy, until he sniffed more money in the air. Moved from daily to weekly, newspaper to magazine. He said at the time he was just sick of journalism; he wanted easy money and a break from Italy. Italian politics depressed him. The corruption depressed him. He’d had a colleague, a good friend, blown up by a parcel bomb when he tried to zero in on some minister with Mafia connections. Ba-boom, and up and away to the great leader column in the sky. Or maybe the elevator down to the basement, glowing fires and typing up the classifieds.
Marco told me about some of the scandals, and I was matching him conspiracy for conspiracy, chicanery for chicanery, payoff for payoff. Then he told me he covered the Spanish cooking oil tragedy. I recalled it only vaguely. 1981, hundreds died. Contaminated oil-yes?
And Marco said, “Maybe.”
So then he told his side of it, which didn’t quite tally with the official line at the time or since. Because according to Marco, some of the people who died hadn’t touched the oil (rapeseed oil it was-memo to self, get clippings out of library). They hadn’t bought it, hadn’t used it-simple as that. So what caused the deaths? Marco’s idea-and it wasn’t original, he got it from other researchers into the area-was that these things called-hold on, I wrote it down-Jesus, it’s taken me ten minutes to track it down. Should’ve known to look first on my fag packet. OPs, that what it says. OPs were to blame. He did tell me what they are, but I’ve forgotten. Better look into it tomorrow.
“OPs,” Reeve said.
“What?”
“Any mention of them in the stuff you’re reading?”
She smiled. “Sorry, I stopped reading a while back. I’m not taking it in anymore.” She yawned, stretching her arms up, hands clenched. The fabric of her sweater tightened, raising the profile of her breasts.
“Shit,” said Reeve, suddenly realizing. “I’ve got to get a room.”
“What?”
“A hotel room. I wasn’t planning on being here this late.”
She paused before answering. “You can sleep where you are. That sofa’s plenty comfy enough; I’ve fallen asleep on it a few times myself. I’ll just check out Newsnight if that’s all right, see what I’ve missed today and what I can expect to read tomorrow, and then I’ll leave you to it.”
He stared at her.
“It’s all right, really it is,” she said. “You’re perfectly safe with me.”
She had blue eyes. He’d noticed them before, but they seemed bluer now. And she didn’t smell of perfume, just soap.
“We can read the rest over breakfast,” she said, switching on the TV. “I need a clear head to take in half of what I’m reading. Bovine spongiform encephalopathy: it doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue, does it? And nor does it trip off the eyeballs. Bloody boffins just refuse to call it mad cow disease. I hope to God that’s not what this is all about, the beefburgers of the damned-and bloody John Selwyn Gummer stuffing one down his poor sodding daughter’s throat. Do you remember that photo?”
“Why do you say that?”
She was engrossed in the TV. “Say what?”
“That you hope it’s not about bovine spongy whatsit.”
She glanced at him. “Because it’s been covered, Gordon. It’s old news. Besides, the public are physically repelled by scare stories. They’d rather not know about them. That’s why they end up in the Grauniad or Private Eye. You’ve heard of the right to know? Well, the good old British public has another inalienable right: the right not to know, not to worry. They want a cheap paper with some cartoons and funny headlines and a good telly section. They do not want to know about diseases that eat their flesh, meat that makes them mad, or eggs that can put them in casualty. You tell them about the bow doors on ferries, they still troop on and off them every weekend, heading for Calais and cheap beer.” She turned to him again. “Know why?”
“Why?”
“Because they don’t think lightning strikes twice. If some other bugger has died that makes it so much less likely that they will.” She turned back to the TV, then smiled. “Sorry, I’m ranting.”
“You have a low regard for your readers?”
“On the contrary, I have a very high regard for my readers. They are discriminating and knowledgeable.” She turned the sound up a little, losing herself in the news. Reeve put down the sheets of paper he was still holding. Sticking out from below the sofa was a newspaper. He pulled it out. It was the paper Fliss worked for.
“Isn’t he a dish?” she muttered, a rhetorical question apparently. She was talking to herself about the news presenter.
Reeve went through to the kitchen to boil some more water. He knew he should call Joan again, let her know the score, but the telephone was in the living room. He sat down at the kitchen table and spread out the paper which he’d brought through with him. He started examining each page, looking for the byline Fliss Hornby. He didn’t find it. He went through the paper again. This time he found it.
He made two mugs of instant decaf and took them back through to the living room. Fliss had tucked her legs beneath her and was hugging them. She sat forward ever so slightly in her chair, a fan seeking a better view, though there was nothing between her and her idol. Then Reeve was in the way, handing her the mug.
“You work on the fashion page,” he said.
“It’s still journalism, isn’t it?” Obviously she’d had this conversation before.
“I thought you were-”
“What?” She glared at him. “A proper journalist? An investigative journalist?”
“No, I just thought… Never mind.”
He sat down, aware she was angry with him. Tactful, Gordon, he thought. Nil out of ten for leadership. Had he told her he appreciated all she’d done today? She’d halved his workload, been able to explain things to him-bits of journalist’s shorthand on the disks, for example. He might have been there all day, and spent a wasted day, instead of which he had something. He had the genesis; that’s what Jim had called it. The genesis of whatever had led him to San Diego and his death. It was a start. Tomorrow things might get more serious.
He kept looking at Fliss. If she’d turned in his direction, he’d have smiled an apology. But she was staring unblinking at the screen, her neck taut. Reeve seemed to have the ability to piss women off. Look at Joan. Most days now there was an argument between them; not when Allan was around-they were determined to put up a “front”-but whenever he wasn’t there. There was enough electricity in the air to light the whole building.
After Newsnight was watched in silence, Fliss said a curt good night, but then came back into the room with a spare duvet and a pillow.
“I’m sorry,” Reeve told her. “I didn’t mean to imply anything. It’s just that you never said anything, and you’ve been acting all day like you were Scoop Newshound, the paper’s only investigative reporter.”
She smiled. “Scoop Newshound?”
He shrugged, smiling also.