In The Presence Of The Enemy (2 page)

“Anything else, Mr. Luxford?” she asked, which is what she asked deferentially every evening before she left for the day. “A blow job, Miss Wallace,” Rodney silently replied.

“On your knees, woman. And moan while you do it.” He chuckled in spite of himself at the thought of Miss Wallace—decked out as always in her twin set, her tweeds, and her pearls—on her knees between Luxford’s thighs. To hide his amusement, he quickly lowered his head to examine the rest of his Cadbury bar.

Luxford had begun f lipping through the unopened letters. “Phone my wife before you leave,” he said to his secretary. “I shouldn’t be later than eight this evening.”

Miss Wallace nodded and vanished in silence, trodding across the grey carpet towards the door in her sensibly crepe-soled shoes. Alone with
The Source
editor for the first time that day, Rodney slid his bum from the windowsill as Luxford reached for the letter opener and began on the envelopes at his right. Rodney had never been able to understand Luxford’s predilection for opening personal letters himself. Considering the political bent of the newspaper—as far left of centre as one could get without being called Red, Com-mie, Pinko, or any other less-than-salutary sobriquet—a letter marked
Personal
might well be a bomb. And far better to risk Miss Wallace’s losing fingers, hands, or an eye than for the newspaper’s chief editor to make himself the potential bull’s-eye in a crackpot’s target.

Luxford, of course, wouldn’t see it that way.

Not that he would worry over Miss Wallace’s exposure to risk. Rather, he would point out that it was an editor’s job to take the measure of the public’s response to his newspaper.
The
Source
, he would declare, was not going to achieve the coveted top position in the circulation wars by having its chief editor directing its troops from behind the battle lines. No editor worth his salt lost touch with the public.

Rodney watched as Luxford perused the first letter. He snorted, balled it up, and fl icked it into the wastepaper basket. He opened the second and scanned it quickly. He chuckled and sent it to join the first. He’d read the third, fourth, and fifth and was opening the sixth when he said in an absent tone that Rodney knew was deliberate, “Yes, Rod? Is there something on your mind?”

What was on Rodney’s mind was being done out of the very position Luxford was occupying: Lord of the Mighty, imprimatur, head boy, senior prefect, and otherwise vener-able editor of
The Source
. He’d been elbowed aside for the promotion he bloody well deserved just six months back in favour of Luxford, told by the swine-faced chairman in his plummy voice that he “lacked the necessary instincts” to make the sort of changes in
The Source
that would turn the tabloid around.

What sort of instincts? he’d enquired politely when the paper’s chairman broke the news to him. “The instincts of a killer,” the chairman had replied. “Luxford has them in spades. Just look at what he did for the
Globe
.”

What he’d done for the
Globe
was to take a languishing tabloid largely dedicated to fi lm star gossip and unctuous stories on the Royal Family and transform it into the highest-selling newspaper in the country. But he hadn’t done it through raising standards. He was too attuned to the times for that. Rather, he’d done it by appealing to the baser instincts of the tabloid’s readers. He’d offered them a daily diet of scandals, of sexual escapades of politicians, of Tartuffery within the Church of England, and of the ostensible and highly occasional chivalry of the common man. The result was a veritable feast of titillation for Luxford’s readers, who by the millions slapped down their thirty-five pence each morning as if
The Source’s
editor alone—and not its staff and not Rodney, who had
just
as many brains and five years’ more experience than Luxford—held the keys to their contentment. And while the little rat gloried in his increasing success, the rest of the London tabloids fought to keep pace. All of them together thumbed their noses and said, “Kiss my arse, then”

each time the Government threatened to force some basic controls upon them. But
vox popu-li
held no water in Westminster, not when the press were lambasting the Prime Minister each time a fellow Tory MP did his part to underscore what was appearing more and more to be the essential hypocrisy of the Conservative Party.

Not that seeing the Tory ship-of-state sinking was a painful spectacle for Rodney Aronson. He’d voted Labour—or at worst Liberal Democrat—ever since casting his fi rst ballot.

To think that Labour might benefi t from the current climate of political unrest was extremely gratifying to him. So under other circumstances, Rodney would have enjoyed the daily spectacle of press conferences, outraged telephone calls, demands for a special election, and dire predictions of the outcome of local elections due to be held within weeks. But under these circumstances, with Luxford at the helm where he would probably remain indefinitely, occluding Rodney’s own rise to the top, Rodney chafed. He told himself his discomfort grew from the fact that he was the superior newsman. But the real truth was that he was jealous.

He’d been at
The Source
since he was sixteen years old, he’d worked his way from a factotum to his present position of Deputy Editor—second in command, mind you—on sheer strength of will, strength of character, and strength of talent. He was
owed
the top job, and everyone knew it. Including Luxford, which was why the editor was watching him now, reading his mind like the fox he was, and waiting for him to reply. You don’t have the instincts of a killer, he’d been told. Yes. Right.

Well, everyone would see the truth soon enough.

“Something on your mind, Rod?” Luxford repeated before dropping his gaze again to his correspondence.

Your job, Rodney thought. But what he said was, “This rent boy business. I think it’s time to back off.”

“Why?”

“It’s getting old. We’ve been leading with the story since Friday. Yesterday and today were nothing more than a rehash of Sunday and Monday’s developments. I know Mitch Corsico is on the trail of something more, but until he’s got it, I think we need to take a break.”

Luxford set letter number six to one side and pulled at his overlong—and trademark—

sideburns in what Rodney knew was a demonstration of editor-considers-subordinate’s-opinion. He picked up envelope number seven and inserted the letter opener beneath its flap. He held that pose while he replied.

“The Government has placed itself in this position. The Prime Minister gave us his Recommitment to Basic British Values as part of the party manifesto, didn’t he? Just two years ago, wasn’t it? We’re merely exploring what the Recommitment to Basic British Values apparently means to the Tories. Mum and Dad Greengrocer along with Uncle Shoemak-er and Granddad Pensioner all thought it meant a return to decency and ‘God Save the Queen’ in the cinema after films. Our Tory MPs seem to think otherwise.”

“Right,” Rodney said. “But do we want to look like we’re trying to bring down the Government with an endless exposé of what one half-witted MP does with his dick on his own free time? Hell, we’ve plenty of other grist to use against the Tories. So why don’t we—”

“Developing a moral conscience at the eleventh hour?” Luxford raised a sardonic eyebrow and went back to his letter, slitting open the envelope and slipping out the folded paper inside. “I wouldn’t have thought it of you, Rod.”

Rodney felt his face grow hot. “I’m only saying that if we’re going to aim the heavy artillery at the Government, we might want to start thinking about directing fire at something more substantial than the off-hours bonking of Members of Parliament. Papers have been doing that for years, and where has it got us? The berks are still in power.”

“I dare say our readers feel their interests are being served. What did you tell me the most recent circulation figures were?” It was Luxford’s usual ploy. He never asked that sort of question without knowing the answer. As if to emphasise this, he gave his attention back to the letter in his hand.

“I’m not saying we ought to ignore the extra-marital bonking that’s going on. I know it’s our bread and butter. But if we just spin the story so it looks like the Government…”

Rodney realised that Luxford wasn’t listening.

Instead, he was frowning at the letter he held.

He pulled at his sideburns, but this time the act and the consideration accompanying the act were both genuine. Rodney was certain of it. He said with rising hope that he was careful to expunge from his voice, “Something wrong, Den?”

The hand that held the letter screwed it into his palm. “Balls,” Luxford said. He threw the letter into the rubbish with the others. He reached for the next one and slit it open.

“What utter bullshit,” he said. “The great unthinking populace speaks.” He read the next letter and then said to Rodney, “That’s where we differ. You apparently view our readers as educable, Rod. While I view them as they are. Our nation’s great unwashed and greater unread. To be spoon-fed their opin-ions like lukewarm porridge.” Luxford pushed his chair away from the conference table. “Is there anything else this evening? Because if there isn’t, I’ve a dozen phone calls to return and a family to get home to.”

There’s your job, Rodney thought once again. There’s what I’m owed for twenty-two

years of loyalty to this miserable rag. But what he said was, “No, Den. There’s nothing else.

At the moment, that is.”

He dropped his Cadbury wrapper among the editor’s discarded letters and headed for the door. Luxford said, “Rod,” as Rodney pulled the door open. And when he’d turned to Luxford, “You’ve got chocolate in your beard.”

Luxford was smiling as Rodney left him.

But the smile faded instantly once the other man was gone. Dennis Luxford swung his chair to the wastepaper basket. He pulled out the letter. He uncrinkled it against the surface of the conference table and read it again. It was composed of a one-word salutation and a single sentence, and it had nothing to do with rent boys, automobiles, or Sinclair Larnsey, MP:
Luxford—

Use page one to acknowledge your
firstborn child, and Charlotte will be
freed
.

Luxford stared at the message with a heartbeat thumping light and fast in his ears.

He swiftly assessed a handful of possible senders, but they were so unlikely that the only conclusion he could reach was a simple one: The letter had to be a bluff. Still, he was careful to sort through the remaining rubbish in such a way so as not to disturb the order in which he’d thrown away the day’s post. He rescued the letter’s accompanying envelope and studied it. A partial postmark made a three-quarter moon next to the fi rst class stamp. It was faded, but legible enough for Luxford to see that the letter had been posted in London.

Luxford leaned back in his chair. He read the first eight words again.
Use page one to
acknowledge your fi rstborn child
. Charlotte, he thought.

For the past ten years, he had allowed himself to ref lect upon Charlotte only once a month, a quarter of an hour’s admission of paternity that he’d managed to keep secret from everyone in his world, Charlotte’s mother included. The rest of the time he forced the girl’s existence to diminish in his memory.

He’d never spoken to a soul about her. Some days he managed to forget altogether that he was the father of more than one child.

He scooped up both the letter and its envelope and carried them to the window where he looked down at Farrington Street and listened to the muted noise of traffi c.

Someone, he knew, someone quite close by, someone in Fleet Street or perhaps in Wap-ping or as far away as that soaring glass tower on the Isle of Dogs, was waiting for him to make a wrong move. Someone out there—

well-versed in how a story completely unrelated to current events gained momentum in the press and whetted the public’s appetite for a very conspicuous fall from grace—anticipated his inadvertently laying a trail in reaction to this letter and, through laying that trail, forging a link between himself and Charlotte’s mother. When he’d done that, the press would pounce. One paper would uncover the story.

The rest would follow. And both he and Charlotte’s mother would pay for their mistake.

Her punishment would be a pillory followed by a quick descent from political power. His would be a more personal loss.

He was sardonically amused to note how he was being hoist with his own petard. If the Government had not been facing even more certain damage should the truth about Charlotte be known, Luxford would have assumed the letter had been sent from Number Ten Downing Street in a gesture of how-does-it-feel-to-be-on-the-receiving-end-for-once. But the Government had as much interest in keeping the truth about Charlotte buried as had Luxford himself. And if the Government was not involved in the letter and its obliquely minatory message, then it stood to reason that another sort of enemy was.

And there were scores of them. From every walk of life. Eager. Waiting. Hoping that he would betray himself.

Dennis Luxford had been playing the game of investigative one-upmanship too long to make a false move. He hadn’t turned the tide of
The Source’s
declining circulation by being oblivious of the methods used by journalists to reach the truth. So he decided that he would toss out the letter and forget about it and thus give his enemies sod all to work with. If he received another, he’d toss out that one as well.

He balled up the letter a second time and turned from the window to throw it with the others. But in doing so, he caught sight of the correspondence his secretary had already opened and stacked. He considered the possibility of yet another letter, not marked this time for his eyes only, but sent unmarked so that anyone could open it, or sent to Mitch Corsico, or to one of the other reporters who were currently on the scent of sexual corrup-tion. This letter wouldn’t be phrased so obscurely. Names would be mentioned, dates and places would be manufactured, and what had started as a thirteen-word bluff would become a full-blown hue and cry for the truth.