In The Presence Of The Enemy (47 page)

“We did a good job on Larnsey,” Ogilvie said. “And we did it without multiple confi rmations. Am I correct?”

There was no point to lying, since a conversation with Sarah Happleshort or Rodney Aronson would be sufficient to uncover the truth. “You are.”

“Then tell me this. Set my mind at ease.

Tell me that the next time we have these Tory louts by the balls, you’re going to know how to squeeze. You’re not going to let the
Mirror
, the
Globe
, the
Sun
, or the
Mail
apply the pressure for you. And you’re not going to back off by requesting confirmation from three, thirteen, or three dozen bloody sources.”

Ogilvie’s voice rose emphatically with the last four words. Luxford said, “Peter, you know as well as I that Larnsey’s situation was different to Bowen’s. Multiple confi rmations weren’t necessary in his case. There was nothing open to doubt. He was caught in a car with his trousers unzipped and his dick in the mouth of a sixteen-year-old boy. In Bowen’s case, what we have is a single statement from the Home Office and everything else fl oating somewhere between innuendo, gossip, and downright fabrication. When I have some facts that I can be assured are facts, rely upon them being printed on our front page. Until then…” He lowered his chair to its original position and faced the chairman squarely. “If you’ve a problem with how I’m running the paper, then you need to think about getting yourself another editor.”

“Den? Oh. Excuse me. I didn’t realize…Mr.

Ogilvie. Hello.”

Rodney Aronson had chosen his moment superbly. The deputy editor stood with one hand on the knob of Luxford’s door—which Ogilvie had left partially open, the better that his raised voice might drift out into the newsroom and shake up the troops—and his dis-embodied head poking into the aperture.

“What is it, Rodney?” Luxford demanded.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt. The door was open and I didn’t know…Miss Wallace isn’t at her desk.”

“How intriguing. Thanks for informing us.”

Rodney’s mouth curved in a thin smile that was belied by the sudden angry stretching of his nostrils. Luxford saw that he wasn’t going to accept being embarrassed in front of the chairman without doing something to return the favour. He said affably, “Right. Sorry. Not thinking,” and then displayed his weapon of choice with, “I just thought you’d like to know what we’ve got brewing on the Bowen situation.”

He made the assumption that his remark gave him entrée to Luxford’s office. He took a chair directly opposite the chairman.

“You were right,” he said to Luxford. “The Home Secretary did make a call to Scotland Yard on behalf of Bowen. A personal call, in the flesh. A snout’s confirmed it.” He paused as if in homage to Luxford’s wisdom in holding back on the story that the
Globe
was running. But Luxford knew that the last move Rodney would make was to risk attenuating the value of his own stock with Ogilvie by promoting Luxford’s. So he prepared himself for what was to come and began to line up his mental soldiers for a skirmish. “But here’s what’s interesting. The Home Secretary didn’t make this visit to the Yard until yesterday afternoon. Before that, the Yard hadn’t heard word one about the kid’s disappearance. So Mitch’s story was gold.”

“Rodney, we’re not in the business of wasting time in confirming other newspapers’ stories,” Ogilvie pointed out. He said to Luxford,

“Although if you’ve managed to get confi rmation today, I’d like to know why you couldn’t manage it yesterday.”

Rodney intervened. “Mitch was beating the bushes like hell, from yesterday afternoon till midnight. His sources were dry.”

“Then he needs new sources.”

“I couldn’t agree more. And when he saw the
Globe
’s front page this morning, he set about getting them. After I gave him some encouragement in my offi ce.”

“May I conclude from your smile that you’ve come up with something more?” Ogilvie asked.

Luxford noted that Rodney did not deny himself a look of triumph cast in his direction.

He veiled it, however, with a show of caution that did service as a stiletto inserted neatly between Luxford’s ribs. He said, “Please understand, Mr. Ogilvie. Den may not want to run with this new stuff, and I wouldn’t disagree with his decision, if that’s what it is.

We’ve only just got it from our snout at the Yard, and he may be the only one willing to talk.”

“What is it?”

Rodney’s tongue f licked across his lips.

“Apparently, there were kidnapping notes.

Two of them. They were received the same day the kid went missing. So Bowen knew beyond a doubt that the kid had been snatched and still she did nothing to involve the police.”

Luxford heard Ogilvie draw in a breath. He spoke before the chairman could do so, saying evenly, “Perhaps she phoned someone else, Rod. Have you or Mitchell considered that angle?”

But Ogilvie prevented Rodney from answering by holding up a large and bony hand. The chairman ref lected on the information in silence. His glance rose—not heavenward to seek the Almighty’s counsel—but wallward, where the chrome-framed display of
The
Source’s
circulation-winning front pages were hung.

“If Ms. Bowen phoned someone else,” he said thoughtfully, “then I suggest we let her tell us that herself. And if she has no comment to make on our story, then that fact can be displayed—along with the others—for the public’s consumption.” His gaze dropped to Rodney. “And the contents?” he said genially.

Rodney looked blank. He massaged his beard in a movement that bought time and served to cover his confusion.

“Mr. Ogilvie is asking about the contents of the kidnapping notes,” Luxford said in translation with cool courtesy.

The temperature of the statement wasn’t lost on Rodney. “We don’t know,” Rodney answered. “Only that there were two.”

“I see.” Ogilvie spent a moment considering his options. He finally announced his decision with, “That’s enough to build a story round. Is your man on it?”

“As we speak,” Rodney said.

“Lovely.” Ogilvie rose. He turned to Luxford and offered his hand. “Things are picking up, then. I can be assured, I trust, that I won’t have to come into town again?”

“As long as every story is solidly founded,”

Luxford replied, “it’ll run in the paper.”

Ogilvie nodded. He said, “Nice work, Rodney,” in a thoughtful fashion that was intended to communicate his evaluation of the two men’s relative positions at the newspaper. He left the room.

Luxford went back to his desk. He slid the photographs of Charlotte into a manila folder and returned the magnifying glass to his drawer. He punched the button to light his computer’s screen and dropped into his chair.

Rodney approached. “Den,” he said in a casual, introductory tone.

Luxford checked his appointment diary and made an unnecessary notation in it. Rodney, he decided not for the first time, needed a lesson to teach him his place. But he couldn’t think what the lesson would be while his mind was occupied trying to come up with options Evelyn might pursue to avoid becoming a target of the press. At the same time he wondered why he was concerned for her in the fi rst place.

After all, she’d dug her own grave in this matter and—The thought of graves chilled him, brought everything back to him in a sickening rush. It wasn’t Evelyn’s grave that had been dug. And she wasn’t the only one who’d assisted in the digging.

“…and generally because of that, as I’m sure you’ll understand, I wasn’t altogether up front with Ogilvie just now,” Rodney was saying.

Luxford raised his head. “What?”

Rodney rested a sizable portion of his beefy thigh on the front of Luxford’s desk. “We don’t have all the facts yet. But Mitch is on their trail, so I’d lay money on our having the truth within a day. You know, Den, sometimes I love that kid like he was my own.”

“What are you talking about, Rodney?”

Rodney cocked his head. Not listening, Den? his expression said. Something on your mind? “The Tory conference in Blackpool,”

Rodney said gently. “Where someone put Bowen in the club. As I said a moment ago, she was there, covering the conference for the
Telegraph
. And the conference began nine months to the day before her kid was born.

Mitch’s on the trail right now.”

“Of what?” Luxford asked.

“What?” Rodney repeated in gentle mock-ery. “Of Dad, of course.” With admiration he looked at the framed front pages. “Think of what it’ll do if we get an exclusive on this one, Den: Bowen’s unidentified paramour speaks to
The Source
. I didn’t want to mention the possibility of a story on the dad to Ogilvie. No sense in having him riding our backs every day when we may not be able to come up with a thing. But still and all…” He released his breath in a sigh that acknowledged
The Source’s
commitment to snuffling through the pasts of the country’s most prominent personalities in order to find a succulent truffle of personal history that would send the newspaper’s circulation into the double-digit millions. “It’s going to be like an A-bomb going off when we run it,” he said. “And we will run it, won’t we, Den?”

Luxford didn’t avoid Rodney’s gaze. “You heard what I told Ogilvie. We’ll run anything that’s solid.”

“Good,” Rodney breathed. “Because this…

Den, I don’t know what it is, but I have a gut feeling that we’re on to something as good as diamonds.”

“Fine,” Luxford said.

“Yes. It truly is.” Rodney removed his thigh from the desk. He headed in the direction of the door. But there he paused. He pulled at his beard. “Den,” he said. “Hell. I’ve just realised something. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. You’re the man we’re looking for, aren’t you?”

Luxford felt the chill from his ankles to his throat. He didn’t say a word.

“You can help us out, help Mitch out, that is.”

“I? How?”

“On the Tory conference,” Rodney said. “I forgot to mention. I drew in a chit over at the
Globe
and had a wander through their microfilms after I talked to Mitch.”

“Yes? What about them?”

“Come on, Den. Don’t hide your light on this one. The Tory conference? In Blackpool?

Doesn’t it ring any bells?”

“Should it?”

“I should certainly hope.” His teeth fl ashed like a shark’s. “Don’t you remember? You were there yourself, writing editorials for the
Globe
.”

“Was I,” Luxford said. Not a question, a statement.

“Yes indeed. Mitch’ll want to talk to you.

So why don’t you have a nice long think about who it was who might have bonked Bowen.”

He gave a slow wink and left the offi ce.

BARBARA USED
the hem of her jersey to blot the cold sweat from her forehead. She got up from her knees. More disgusted with herself than she’d been in recent memory, she flushed the toilet and watched the unsightly contents of her stomach whirlpool into oblivion. She gave her body a vigorous mental shake and ordered herself to act like the head of a murder investigation instead of like a whinging teenager going weak in the knees.

Postmortem, she told herself roughly. What is it? Merely the examination of a corpse, undertaken to determine the cause of death.

It’s a necessary step in a murder enquiry. It’s an operation performed by professionals on a hunt for any suspicious processes that could have contributed to the untimely cessation of physical functions. In short, it’s a critical step in finding a killer. Yes, all right, it’s the disem-bowelment of a human being, but it’s also a search for the truth.

Barbara knew those facts well. So why, she wondered, had she been unable to go the distance with Charlotte Bowen’s postmortem?

The autopsy had been performed in St.

Mark’s Hospital in Amesford, a relic of the Edwardian era built in the style of a French chateau. The pathologist had worked quickly and efficiently, but despite the professional atmosphere in the room, the initial thoracic-abdominal incision into the body had caused Barbara’s hands to sweat in an ominous manner. She knew immediately that she was in trouble.

Stretched out on the stainless steel table, the body of Charlotte Bowen was virtually unmarked, save for some bruising round the mouth, some reddish burn marks on the cheeks and chin, and a scab-covered cut on one knee. Indeed, the little girl actually looked more asleep than dead. So it seemed like such a defilement of her innocence to cut into the pearl flesh of her chest. But cut the pathologist did, tonelessly reciting his findings into a microphone that dangled above his head. He snapped away her ribs like so many thin branches from a sapling and removed her organs for examination. By the time he had taken out the urinary bladder and sent its contents off for analysis, Barbara knew she wasn’t going to be able to make it through what was to follow: the incision through the child’s scalp, the peeling back of her flesh to expose her small skull, and the high-pitched whizzing of the saw as it cut through bone to get to her brain.

Is all this necessary? she wanted to protest.

Bloody hell on a wafer, we
know
how she died.

But they didn’t, really. They could offer speculations based upon the condition of her body and where it had been found, but the exact answers they needed could only come from this essential act of scientifi c mutilation.

Barbara knew that DS Reg Stanley was watching her. From his position by the scales on which each organ was separately weighed, the man was glued to every expression that crossed her face. He was waiting for her to run from the room, hand clamped over mouth. If she did so, he would be able to snort, “Just like a woman,” in dismissal. Barbara didn’t want to give him an opportunity to deride her to the men with whom she was supposed to be working in Wiltshire, but she knew it was going to come down to a choice: She could humiliate herself by being sick on the fl oor or she could exit and hope she found a lavatory before she was sick in the corridor outside.

Upon reflection, however—with her stomach ever tightening, her throat closing in, and the room beginning to swim in her vision—she realised that there was another alternative.