Kill For Love (3 page)

Then the lights changed, and, as she moved
forward again, she pictured Jeroboam sitting in class, silent and invisible.
She’d made him cry. She wished she hadn’t.

Chapter Four

She felt at home in the WSN
building, Kate reflected, as she slipped her car down the ramp into the underground
parking area and then took the lift up to the newsroom. If the Third World was where she wanted to be when she was
working, it was here, the WSN-TV studios, not her house, she thought about when
she was away.

Occupying renovated warehouses on
the south side of the Thames just east of Blackfriars Bridge,
WSN, without the wealth and resources of Sky or CNN, was a minnow when it came
to foreign news gathering. But, rather than apologise for its lack of reach,
the station’s policy was to make it a virtue. What WSN offered, boasted its
station ident, was a "closer-to-the-edge" look at the news. It was an
attitude that suited Kate perfectly.

 
Because of Jeroboam's disruption of her morning she was late getting to work,
and it was nearly two when she reached her place on the foreign desk. Across
from her Ned Swann, the bull-mouthed foreign editor, was making a telephone
call. "Someone in our picture library says he doesn't think the body
hanging there is that of Alibuzir," he was shouting down the line to Kandahar. "She thinks
it looks too young. Are we absolutely positive it's him?" A battle in Afghanistan
had brought a roadside execution. It was part of a foreign editor's job to make
sure that the right name was given to the right corpse, especially when the
corpse was well known enough to be recognised by viewers.

Frowning her sympathies for the
correspondent in Kandahar,
Kate took her seat by the window. From here she could watch the traffic on the river
below, though more usually she faced the electronic litter of the newsroom,
with its computers, telephones, banks of monitors, and, over the foreign desk,
a digital clock which told the time in different cities around the world.

Alongside her Chloe Estevez was
looking at a monitor where report of a tornado in Texas
was giving way to a story about a father and three young daughters who’d been
found dead in their home in Birmingham.

"Pretty kids," Chloe observed
as a photograph of three fair haired girls on the back of a Shetland pony
appeared. “The word is it looks like a mass poisoning."

Pressing a headset to one ear,
Kate listened to the commentary for a few moments.

“…after the three children failed to turn up for school this morning.
West Midlands Police say that they wish to speak to Elizabeth McDonagh, the
children's mother, a pharmacist, who has not been seen since yesterday…"

A tall figure was hovering at her
side. It was Beverly, the intern, smiling, wanting to talk.

"Wasn't last night the most perfect evening of your
entire life!"

“The
best?
” Kate put down the headset. “Well, I think there may have been
one or two more fun moments over the years. I had a good time camping on Exmoor with the Girl Guides when I was eleven, though it
rained every day, and …”

“I meant Jesse. I was in the
middle of the crowd. He was incredible. Don’t tell me you weren’t impressed. I
recorded your report and played it back when I got home. You
were
, admit it!”

“Oh
him
! Yes. He was all right, I suppose. Until I met him, I mean…”

"You
met
Jesse! Oh my God!" Beverly
turned to Chloe. "Did you hear that? She actually met him!”

Across the desk Chloe was
smiling.

"What was he like? What did
he say? Did you speak to him? Is he as dreamy close up...? Yes! Don’t answer
that. I know he is! Those eyes! Did you touch him? I mean, like, shake his
hand, or…what did he say?” Beverly
was almost giggling with excitement.

Kate laughed. "I'll tell
you about it later. Now what about getting me some coffee?"

"Anything for someone who
met Jesse..." And Beverly
hurried off to the canteen.

Shaking her head, Kate turned
her attention to the pile of mail lying on her desk. Apart from a postcard from
Hetty, the foreign desk’s secretary who was honeymooning in Barbados, it consisted mainly of Press
releases from embassies, relief agencies and environmental movements. There was
also a fan letter. Usually letters from the public were either complaints,
questioning a detail in a report, or flattering, complimenting her on her
appearance. Now and then, however, a more personal preoccupation emerged, such
as today's invitation from a businessman with a tyre concession in Syria who
wanted her to telephone him to talk "about sex and associated matters to
our mutual pleasure and ultimate satisfaction".

"Now that's friendly,"
she said, passing the letter to Ned Swann who'd lost his connection to Kandahar.

Swann's wide nose sniffed at the
perfumed notepaper as he read it. "The bastard could at least have
suggested a collect call," he grumbled. "Syria isn't cheap. I'm not having
you giving phone sex on my budget."

Amused, Kate examined a photograph
of the correspondent that had fallen from the envelope. In early middle age, the
guy wasn't bad looking, if a little heavy. "I must look desperate, because
he obviously thinks he'll be doing me a favour.”
 

"Well, you never know. It
could be a real live Road to Damascus
experience for you!" And Ned punched another phone number.

“I never will know.” And
dropping the letter into a wastepaper basket, she turned on her computer. There
were over twenty messages waiting. Some were old and routine, which she
continued to ignore, along with an effusive one from Seb Browne thanking her
for her work at the Gadden concert and suggesting lunch some time. Immediately she
began to conjure up excuses. Browne chased girls. She didn't have time to waste
dodging him.

The most recent message was the
most important. It was from the editor-in-chief's secretary, asking if she was
free for a meeting with him that afternoon.
   

"At last!" she
breathed.

Neil Fraser put down his teacup
and smiled awkwardly over delicate half moon glasses, incongruous ornaments on
such a powerfully built man. "The trouble is, Kate, at the moment people
are nervous."
   

"Nervous?" She was
puzzled.

Fraser nodded.

"Why? I don't
understand." Kate hadn't touched her cup. The very offer of tea had
surprised her. Tea was never offered when good news was about to be imparted.
Tea came with sympathy.

"Well, I suppose, after what
happened, the worry is that…sometimes you go further than is good for you or
your team."

This was not the conversation
she'd anticipated. "I'm a reporter..." she began and then stopped in
surprise at herself. It had come out sounding like an excuse.
 

"And a very good one. But
you take risks."

Kate stared at Fraser across his
wide desk. Once a celebrated rower, now, at 55, he looked as though his shirts were
too flimsy to contain his muscle bulk which was melting into sponge flesh.
"I don't get it. I thought WSN was supposed to be 'closer-to-the-edge'. If
we step back we become like all the others."

Fraser's embarrassment faded. He
was a proud man and didn't enjoy having a marketing slogan thrown in his face.
"No one's talking about stepping back. But there's a difference between
taking acceptable risks to pursue a story, and being so…so over-eager you
endanger…well, not only your own life but the safety of…”

He didn’t complete the sentence.

So finally it was in the open.
After weeks of being fobbed off with petty excuses she was hearing it straight.
"
Over-eager?
You think that’s
what I am?”

Fraser played with the spinning
glass globe WSN symbol which sat on his desk, then looked up. “What I think,
Kate, is that I’m not sure you're ready to go back yet. Owoso was..."

"I'm absolutely ready."
 

He didn’t give an inch. "I
think you're still...a little..." He hesitated, seeking the appropriate
word.

"A little what? Emotional?
Shell shocked? Unbalanced? Disturbed?
Over-eager!
"

"You witnessed a nightmare.
You said it yourself in your reports. We saw the pictures. It was worse than
that."

She didn't need reminding.

“Look, you've been ill. Recovery
takes time. You're expecting too much of yourself…"

She’d heard enough. "So I'm
grounded? Is that what you're saying?"

Fraser measured his words.
"I think, at this moment you can be of more use to us working here in London, a special
correspondent, perhaps...taking a few turns as anchorwoman. You're good at
that."

"Where you can keep an eye
on me, too, right?"

Fraser picked up his cup.

She sat at her desk and watched
as the speed of the afternoon accelerated. Asia had long since passed the news
torch to Europe and now it was becoming America's turn in the eternal
global relay of action, reaction, information and counter action. Reports were
coming in from Kabul, New
York, Moscow, Iceland, Brazil
and Washington.
She felt left out, shut out of the rest of the world. Fraser's words played in
her mind. Was he right? Did she drag cameramen and producers into jeopardy?
Then, as always, the question: had her presence and the presence of the camera
made it happen?

"You got the message about
Jesse Gadden, did you, Kate?"

She crawled out from her
ruminations. "I'm sorry?"

The temporary secretary pointed
at her monitor. "I left it with your messages when you were in your
meeting."

She turned to her screen.

“Someone called Petra
Kerinova telephoned about your request for an interview with Jesse Gadden. She
says nothing can be promised, but she's discussed it with him and would like to
speak to you, if you could return her call,”
the message ran, ending with a
phone number.

She frowned: Petra Kerinova, the Estonian gatekeeper. Was this
is? Was she now reduced to pursuing rock stars? “Not today,” she said aloud.

Chloe accompanied her down to
their cars after work. "It'll come right in the end, I'm sure," she
consoled.

"Are you saying you think
he's right, that I'm not ready to go back yet? Do I make people nervous?"

"All I've heard is that you
blame yourself too much for what happened, and you don't have to.”

"So why?"

"My bet is Fraser's being
leaned on. You know how it is...insurers, doctors, maybe even shareholders. It
doesn't look good when a star reporter ends up in the bin with battle fatigue,
no matter how many prizes she's won." And Chloe smiled.

For the first time all day Kate
laughed. No one had described the expensive private hospital she'd been
admitted to on returning from Owoso as the “bin” before. "But I'm
better," she said.

"All you have to do is
convince your employers."

Her little street was in darkness
when she arrived home, the yellow sodium light that normally illuminated her
corner having recently developed a fault. Leaving the Citroën under a plane
tree, she made her way across to her house.

It was only as she reached her
front door that she sensed his gaze. Someone was watching her. She turned
around. Nothing moved. She waited. Then turning back to the door, she slipped
her key into the lock and stepped quickly inside.

Immediately her shoe touched
something in the dark. Delicately she transferred her weight to the other foot.
Then, reaching for the switch, she turned on the light. Lying on the mat, on
top of the afternoon’s junk mail, was a Snickers bar.

She picked it up and smiled. She’d
guessed right. Switching the light off again, she peered out of the narrow hall
window. Across the road the dark shape of a youth emerged from behind a tree in
the front garden of one of the grander houses on the opposite corner. Then,
apparently satisfied with his evening’s vigil, he trotted away, back into the
shadows of his life.

Tearing the brown wrapping paper
from the chocolate bar Kate watched him go. “All right, Jeroboam, forgiven,”
she murmured to herself as she took a bite. “So long as you didn’t steal this,
too.”

Chapter
Five

 
The days moved forward uneventfully. She was
angry at no longer being a foreign correspondent, but, if a term working in London was required, she
would make the best of it. Bending to Seb Browne’s persuasion, she even
returned Petra Kerinova’s call, but wasn’t surprised when told she was
unavailable. Instead she took an assignment following ponies from a New Forest
horse sale to a French slaughterhouse, on to a pet food cannery, and back to a
supermarket…on the fringe of the New Forest.

 
That took up most of the week, after which
there was a trip to Cambridge
to see a young academic who'd locked himself in his flat after his research
grant had been taken away. He was a tall American mathematician with thin, fair,
frizzy hair called Chris Zeff, and the story she was following was the result
of his hobby. He was a computer hacker.

“It isn’t like I stole anything
or gave away secrets. I just wanted to take a look at what Cambridge had on me,” he complained
indignantly. “Can you believe, they just took everything about me word for word
from my Yale files! And they were wrong.”

“You hacked into your Yale files,
too?”

“Of course.”

“Anywhere else?”

“Well, yes, maybe…” he said
vaguely, which sounded to Kate as though he’d had a look at anything and
everything he could find on Chris Zeff. “It seems to me I have a right to know
what errors these people are holding on me. Don’t you think? I didn’t change
much.”

“You changed things, too?”

“Only the mistakes. I just wanted
to make sure that everything they have is right. I was doing them a favour.”

Brilliant as he was, there was a
dotty innocence about him. The university authorities wouldn’t even have known
he’d hacked into their system if he hadn’t grumbled too loudly that their
information was incorrect. Now there was a possibility of criminal charges.

"What are you going to do?”
she asked, sitting on his bed, watching as bailiffs took away his computer,
while his heavily pregnant girl friend, Zena, silently served them herbal tea
from a thermos flask.

"Go on a hunger strike, I
guess."

“Well yes, that’s an idea, I
suppose. But before you do let’s go and get something to eat, shall we.” And
she hauled the couple and the cameraman off to a pasta bar on

“The thing about computer
hackers,” Zeff explained as he ate his fettucini, “is that we aren’t all
criminals. There can be an ethical dimension, too.”

“But how do those who hold the
information know that the guy hacking in understands that ethical dimension and
isn’t a robber or a terrorist?” Kate asked, amused.

“They don’t. But if you could see
how much material they have on you, you’d be amazed at how much isn’t quite
right. And if it’s not right it has to be wrong. And that can’t be right
either, can it?”

Alongside him, Zena shook her
head solemnly.

Kate left it at that. Telling him
to get in touch if there were any further developments, she wished him luck and
returned to London to put together what, if she was being honest, was an
over-sympathetic package. His boyish honesty had got to her.

She had nothing against stories
like this: they were the bread and butter of news television. But they weren’t
how she saw herself.

She spent most of Saturday
shopping in the West End. Fraser had mentioned
her doing some anchor work in the studio, so, she reasoned, she would need some
anchorwoman clothes, sensible suits and blouses, items she would claim on her
WSN expenses. And then, unable to resist it, she bought an expensive new party
dress, too. In cornflower blue cotton, too flimsy and too low cut to wear in England
except on hot days, it was sheer extravagance. She wouldn’t be able to put that
on expenses. Then, laden with bags, she popped into HMV at Fulham Broadway on
her way home.

Jeroboam was waiting on her doorstep
when she got back, a book in his lap. Next door, her neighbours, the Motts,
stood at their window watching him with suspicion.

"Well, well, you're
early," she said as she opened the car door. She was relieved to see him.
She'd been half afraid he might stop coming.

"Not really," he
replied, and helped take her shopping from the car.

Reflecting that if his mother
hadn't been able to give him much of a start in life, she had at least taught
him good manners, she smiled her thanks. Then, irked by her neighbours' stares,
she turned the smile on them.

Embarrassed to be caught
snooping, the Motts waved awkwardly and pulled back, exchanging words. They
were a couple in their mid-thirties, employed by the same merchant bank, in the
services of which they left home at seven every weekday morning, not returning
until after nine at night. They loved their jobs and presumably each other, but
they did not, they’d made clear, love Jeroboam's habit of hanging around
waiting for Kate to come home.

"He litters the street,
loafing around outside in the rain like that," pear-shaped Lois Mott had complained
one day, when enquiring who he was.

"He wouldn't if you asked
him in," Kate had retorted.

As they entered the house
Jeroboam would, she knew, be wondering what was in the HMV bag, but he wouldn't
ask. Someone must have once told him it was rude to ask questions.

"I thought we'd treat
ourselves today," she said as, reaching the kitchen, she pulled out some
crumpets and put them into the toaster. She'd bought them especially for him.

Jeroboam beamed, put the kettle
on, then took down a cup and saucer for Kate and the yellow M&Ms mug he
liked for himself.

She watched him fondly. It took
so little to make him happy. On a whim, she opened a bag and held up her new
dress. "What do you think?"

He looked surprised, probably unused
to having his opinion sought on women's clothes.

"You do like it, don't
you?"

"It's very nice," he
murmured at last, his face bright with embarrassment.

"That's all right then. For
a moment I thought it might not suit me and I'd have to take it back." And
putting the dress away, she took the crumpets out of the toaster and began to
butter them.

Jeroboam made the tea. He would
never be a good looking boy, his Afro-Filippino face was too squashed for that,
his nose too flat and his mouth disproportionately wide: a funny face really.
But he had a guileless charm. Once, while trying out a new lens, she'd taken
some photographs of him, but he was camera shy and the results had been
disappointing. Now she was of the view that he probably looked his best in the
police mug shot held in his file at the Hammersmith and Fulham Youth Offending
Scheme offices.

“Anyway, have you had any time to
read by yourself?” she asked as, sitting at the kitchen table, he finished the
last of the crumpets.

Tentatively Jeroboam opened his
book. It was his favourite,
Bill And
Harry
, an anthology of stories about two twelve year old boys on the
slippery edge of delinquency who lived on a sink estate in Liverpool.

"
Bill and Harry at the Zoo
. I've read that."

"Very good. Let's see how we
get on then, shall we?"

He flinched nervously, then began
to read, slowly and carefully.
"One
day in the school holi-days, Harry th-th-thought it would be a
good...id..."

"Idea... A good
idea..."

"...a good idea to go to the zoo and steal a...mo...monk-ey."

Kate smiled.

"'What will we do with a mon-key?' Bill asked. 'Well,' said Harry,
'monkeys have very long arms and are good jump-ers. If we had one of our own we
could trai...train it to be a goal-keeper...'"
He was already
giggling, although it was apparent he must have practised reading the story
several times.
"'Why would we want
to do that?' asked Bill. 'Well', said Harry, 'if it was any good, we could sell
it to Man…ches...ter...'"

"Manchester."

"'Manchester
Un...ited...for twenty mill...million pounds', said Harry."
Now Jeroboam
laughed out loud.

Kate laughed with him.

"'But won't they not-ice that it's a monkey?' asked Bill. 'It
won't matter,' said Harry. 'He'll fit in there. They're all monkeys at
United.'"

"Well done," she enthused.
She meant it. Somehow Jeroboam had been left behind when learning to read, but
all he really lacked was confidence and practice.

His face puckered in pleasure and
he took a gulp of tea. Then he continued with the story.

It would never have occurred to
her to teach remedial reading before her breakdown. "Perhaps it would help
if you had something to take your mind off yourself," a nurse at the Princess Diana Hospital
had suggested one afternoon as Kate had stared into the abyss. She'd dismissed
the idea, as she'd dismissed everything during those weeks, but the nurse had
persisted. "Seeing as you read so much, why don't you lend a hand with people
with reading difficulties and show them what they're missing," had been
the next suggestion.

Again Kate had brushed the
thought aside. And so it had gone on, until, if for no reason other than to
shut her up, she’d eventually promised to make enquiries when she was well
enough.

The following day the nurse, a
New Zealander of pioneering zeal, had brought her a booklet from the education
department of the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. “Volunteers are
always needed,” she'd explained.

Jeroboam had been kicking a
football against a wall, when, discharged from hospital, Kate had gone to meet
him at the education centre. She'd assumed at first he was younger than fifteen,
and only on being introduced had she noticed the soft down of an adolescent moustache.
His mother, Maria Elena, was Filippino and his father something else, but never
a factor in the boy's life, anyway. When Maria Elena had first come to Britain she'd worked as a nanny, sending money
home to Manila.
Now she cleaned the trains overnight for London Underground, mother and son
living near the top of multi-storey block on a council estate. It wasn't the
best start in life, but a bright child might still have done well. Jeroboam was
not very bright. Too insignificant to be bullied, he was a fringe person who
watched the games of the world from the sidelines.

They read about
Bill and Harry
for over an hour, and
with every chapter he improved.

"I'm going to have to get
you another book," Kate said as he turned the final page. "You're
really doing very well now."

He blinked with pride.

She changed the subject.
"What about your mother? Did she give you a hard time over the CDs?"

The smile disappeared.

"Did she shout? As bad as I
did?"

"Worse."

"She loves you. She worries
about you."

He didn't reply.

"You never told me why you
took the CDs when you haven't got a CD player?"

Now he was embarrassed.

She took a guess. "Was it to
play them to me? To show me why you liked them?"

His brown eyes misted with tears.

She got up from the table.
"Well, I shouldn't really reward you, because it really was pretty bad,
but...well, you left me a Snickers bar, so..." Going to her shopping she
put her hand inside the HMV bag, took out a Twist-O and the Koolboys CD and
went across to the player.

Jeroboam watched in astonishment.

"Hey, come on, don't you
dare look so surprised. If I can teach you to read, you can teach me about hip
hop.” And sitting down next to him she waited for the music to begin.

It did. With a vengeance. Putting
a hand to one ear, she quickly turned the volume down, then back up a little,
when she saw his worried expression. Politely she listened, tapping her foot
occasionally when she thought it appropriate, smiling when Jeroboam smiled at
some joke in the lyrics, looking pretend disapproving when the words became
violent or sexy. Throughout, Jeroboam listened, transfixed, as only teenage
boys can be by overloud rock music, smiling up at her occasionally, reassuring
himself that she really was enjoying it.

At last the record ended.

"Yes, well, that
was...really good, wasn't it...? I mean, interesting…sort of rhythmic more than
melodic, I suppose. But, yes, I think I can see what you like about Twist-O and
the Koolboys."

"Do you
really
like it?"

"Yes. Sort of. I mean, not
as much as you, obviously. But I don't suppose you're crazy about…well,
Coldplay, are you?"

"Coldplay!" He looked
at her as though she'd said a dirty word.

"Don't worry, just teasing.”
Suddenly a thought struck, and she dived back into the bag for a couple of
other CDs she’d bought. "What about Jesse Gadden? Do I get street cred if
I listen to him? Is it still called 'street cred'? It sounds a bit old
fashioned. I don't want to get the terminology wrong."

Jeroboam screwed up his face as
he looked at the records.

"You don't like him? Millions
of people think he's the best thing since, well...the last best thing! But I
don't know." And opening the cover she slipped a disc into the CD player.

Miserably the boy waited. After a
moment Gadden’s high voice razored through the room.

"This one makes dogs' eyes
water," she joked weakly.

Jeroboam wasn't amused. He got
untidily to his feet.

She turned the music down.
"You're leaving? Don't you want to listen?”

 
He shook his head, already on his way out.

“Okay! I'll keep your CD here, if
you like, and we can play it again next time."

She followed him to the door,
wondering what she'd done to upset him. "Anyway, it's been an excellent
day. What about next week? Do you want to call to make a plan?"