Lovers and Liars (54 page)

‘And are you killing this story?’ ‘No, Pascal. I’m not.’

He rose, moved across to the large plate-glass windows, looked out thoughtfully for a while, then turned back. The light winked against his spectacles. He gave Pascal a sharp look.

‘Gini seems to think I’m a pushover. Some kind of poodle. Well, she’ll learn in due course. You don’t get where I’ve got by being weak. And you don’t advance your career long-term by bowing and scraping when some boring old fart like Melrose snaps his fingers. What you do is, you smile, and you say yes, Lord Melrose, of course, Lord Melrose - and then you carry right on. Only take a more devious approach. Save the direct confrontation for when it really counts . He smiled. ‘Like, about fifteen seconds before the presses start rolling. Or even later, when the papers actually hit the streets. That way, if the story’s good enough, he doesn’t dare to fire you. And if he does, you’re still a hero, the fearless editor.’ He grinned suddenly. ‘Eat shit, Melrose, because I’ve got five other job offers. That’s my general approach.’

There was a silence. Pascal extinguished one cigarette then lit another. He said slowly, ‘I think you’d better bring me up to date. Obviously, a lot has been happening that I’ve missed.’

‘Oh, a very great deal.’ Jenkins gave a knowing smile, and returned to his desk. He sat down. He picked up one of the phones on his desk. ‘Hold all calls for fifteen minutes, Charlotte. All calls, you’ve got thatT He replaced the receiver, and gave Pascal

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a long assessing look. ‘When did you last get some sleepT he said. You look like hell, do you know thatT

‘Very probably.’ Pascal shrugged. ‘There are reasons for that.’ ‘I rather thought there might be. All right. Listen, Pascal, and listen carefully. I’m only going to say this once.’ He paused. ‘First

ltl,of all, there’s the question of who else knew you’d be working on t is story

hi That question has been exercising Gini quite a lot. I’m afraid I wasn’t straight with you before. I will be now. James McMullen knew. It was agreed between us last December, when he handed over that tape. Two weeks before he disappeared. He asked specifically that you work on it - which surprised me, but apparently he’d seen your war photographs as well as your recent work. Gini was my suggestion, agreed by him. Who else he told, I don’t know, but there’s one obvious candidate, though he claimed it was better she didn’t know.’

Use Hawthorne?’

‘Precisely. It’s also possible,’ Jenkins paused, frowning, ‘it’s possible our conversation was overheard. We were careful, obviously. I never went to his flat. He never set foot in this building. We met well away from other fucking journalists, and on that occasion, when your names were discussed, we met at the Army & Navy Club/ he said, then added, ‘There’re a few other things you should know, and they concern Johnny Appleyard. I thought his importance was tangential, and I was anxious to keep it like ‘that. That’s why I didn’t mention it at first. I realized I was ‘wrong when I heard that he was dead … Then we come to the

interesting part/ he said. ‘We come to this last weekend, ,.,and to the dinner I attended with Gini last night.’ He smiled. -‘A concatenation of circumstances, Pascal. It’s when I realized

there had to be more to this than just a sex scandal.’ His face -took an expression of triumphant delight. ‘That’s when I realized that this story was really big.’

‘WhyT ‘Because I was leaned on, Pascal. Leaned on in a surprising way. Leaned on very heavily indeed. Always a good indicator, that.’ He paused. ‘How much do you know about Lord Melrose?’

‘He’s the proprietor of the News, obviously. He inherited his papers from his father. He has three others in this country, two in Australia, one in Canada, and one in,the States. I gather he’s a friend of Hawthorne’s, or so Gini said.’

‘Correct. But the most important thing about Melrose from our ‘point of view now, is that he’s an Establishment man, through

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and through. Friends in high places everywhere, including the Security Services, though Melrose tends to keep very quiet about that. We’ve had run-ins before, as a result. It happens like this: from time to time some nice discreet civil servant takes Melrose out to lunch at the Athenaeum, or Brooks’s, it’s usually somewhere like that. This man waits until they’ve served the coffee and the port, then he has a quiet word in Melrose’s ear. If one of his papers is on to something a bit sensitive, the man steers Melrose off. Come on, old boy, national security and all that, time to call off the bloodhounds. Now, sometimes Melrose listens, and sometimes he remembers his nice liberal conscience and tells his friend to get lost. Last Friday, Melrose went to one of those lunches.’

‘Last Friday?’

‘That’s right.’ Jenkins gave a sly grin. ‘Unfortunately, I’d kind of neglected to mention the Hawthorne investigation to Melrose

- shockingly remiss of me, yes? So when Melrose found out, he wasn’t pleased. In fact, he was mad as hell. What made it all rather worse was that this nice discreet faceless old Etonian was alarmingly well informed. Not only did he know we were working on the Hawthorne story, he knew the name of my source.’

‘He mentioned McMullen by nameT

‘To Melrose? Yes, he did. And he explained to Melrose that McMullen was very bad news. Not only had he been peddling a pack of lies to me about an eminent man, but - apparently the old Etonian and his friends had had their eyes on McMullen for some time. As had their cousins across the pond. The British files on McMullen went back a long way - a very long way, Pascal. They hadn’t looked at them in some time, but when they got them out and dusted them down - this was last summer - they found they were several inches thick.’

‘Let me get this straight. According to Melrose McMullen had been investigated before? By British Security?’

‘Yes, he had. Last summer, the Americans joined in the act. For which there’s a simple explanation. They did so from last July onwards, at John Hawthorne’s behest.’ Jenkins tapped his fingers on the desk. ‘Now, Melrose’s reaction to all this was to panic,’ Jenkins went on. ‘He went into one of his flaps. He asked for the weekend to think it over, and his Etonian friend bought that. Then, on Sunday morning, at seven-thirty on Sunday morning, his friend John Hawthorne called him up personally. Then the shit really hit the fan.’ Jenkins grinned. ‘I was telephoned at home, summoned to chAteau Melrose, and given a straight choice. Kill

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the Hawthorne story, or go in Monday morning and clear my desk.’

,,, Pascal said nothing. He was thinking about the timing. Hawbome called the morning after Mary’s party. These manoeuvres re taking place as he and Gini had left for Venice. He looked ck at Jenkins.

,,,,‘So - what did you doT he said.

‘I bought myself a little time - and I’m fucking good at that. I a lot of injured outrage, banged on about censorship. I made elrose feel like a fascist, and since he really fancies himself as a

ral, that did the trick. He gave me forty-eight hours to decide, condition I published nothing in that time, obviously. And he . eed to go back to his Etonian friend, and get some more infortion. I said I wasn’t being fobbed off with a whole lot of vague

ap about McMullen being suspect. I wanted a few facts. The way Irose was going on was ludicrous. McMullen could have been in pay of Moscow, or he could have been late paying his taxes - it

as as loose as that. So Melrose toddled back to the Athenaeum or wherever. I came in Monday morning, heard about Appleyard’s eath and put our Italian stringer on to it that morning. I also ordered up every file on Hawthorne in existence. Mistake.’

‘WhN,?’ Y Because some fucking devious bastard told Melrose what I’d odone.’

‘Who told him?’

‘I don’t know. But when I find out, they’re dead.’ Jenkins paused. ‘Finally Hawthorne had another go at Melrose, the next ght. We were all at this bloody dinner. Hawthorne made this

ucking sanctimonious speech about press freedom, then he took is old friend Melrose into a comer and really laid into him. entioned libel, criminal libel, a few things like that. Whereupon

Ki eirose lost his nerve totally, and we were back to square one.

11 the story or else.’

‘And you agreed? This was last nightT

‘Of Course I agreed. We bide our time, right? Gini’s off the story, at looks good. That ought to help convince them I’m playing ball, nd then-‘

‘You’re not playing ball?’

Jenkins gave him a very sharp glance; his glasses flashed. ‘You on’t knmv me very well, Pascal. Genevieve-bloody-Hunter doesn’t knov%, me at all. Let’s put it this way. I was a working-class

y once. A scholarship boy at a major public school. It left

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me a bit chippy, a bit sensitive about certain things. Like, I’m not too fucking keen on the old-boy network. I’m not too fucking keen on old Etonians who take other old Etonians out to lunch and lean on them. I’m not too fucking keen on WASPs like Hawthorne who preach one thing and do another - and when they all start to pressure me, I smell a rat. And I start thinking

- if they’re that worried, that keen, it has to be major. Maybe even more than we realized.’

He leaned across and unlocked a drawer of his desk. He extracted a large manila envelope, and passed it across the desk. ‘Go on working on this/ he said. ‘But cover your fucking tracks. I can’t be involved. I don’t even know wjhat you’re up to, all right? When you’ve got what we need, we can always rope Gini back in, if necessary. Get the pictures on Sunday and we’re halfway there. Once we have pictures, Hawthorne’s screwed. Even Melrose won’t be able to protect his old friend then. Then we can really get to the bottom of this story. It’s more than beating up on blonde call-girls once a month. It’s more than a kink for expensive blow-jobs when the girl’s wearing black gloves. There’s something more, Pascal, I can smell it, and it’s not recent, either, not a taste Hawthorne developed in the last four years, the way McMullen told me. It links back to earlier events. I may not know what they are

- yet - but there’s been a cover-up, and it goes back a long way. Take a look through this.’

He tapped the envelope. Pascal looked at it. It was sealed, and it was thick.

‘What is thatT

‘Details of John Hawthorne’s exemplary military service. I got it faxed from a friend in Washington yesterday. Plus some details on my friend McMullen. Details I never bloody well knew.’

‘Is he a security risk?’

‘Difficult to say.’ Jenkins made a balancing gesture of the hand. ‘He was vetted for the Army, obviously. Some of this stuff came via Melrose’s spooky friend, so it may or may not be reliable. It certainly doesn’t look as if McMullen spent his entire army career in the Parachute Regiment. He’s possibly more dangerous than I realized.’ Jenkins paused. ‘Most interesting of all, his links with John Hawthorne go back much further than he claimed to me.’

‘Where to?’ Pascal asked sharply.

‘Oddly enough, to something Hawthorne touched on last night in his speech-!

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-Where to, NicholasT

‘To Vietnam,’ Jenkins replied. ‘Now how about thatT

4ini walked slowly along the huge marble-floored entrance hall the museum. From here, she told herself, there were many es from which she could be watched. There were staircases, ies, pillars; innumerable places where, if he wished, James ullen, could conceal himself. Presumably, she thought, as turned and slowly retraced her steps, McMullen would wait,

d approach her when it suited him. The roles of hunter and ted were reversed.

““Perhaps the best thing was simply to linger here. There were other visitors to the museum on a wet mid-week January

111orning. There was a party of schoolchildren, being shepherded

ards the museum shop; a group of dispirited Japanese with corders, one or two solitary figures, examining the classical ads and torsos on exhibition.

ne more time, she walked slowly down the gallery, then med. Nothing. A tomb-like somnolence hushed the air; her tsteps echoed; no-one approached.

After a while, she decided that this main hall was too open, too public. She mounted one of the marble staircases which to the first floor, and rapidly became lost. She lingered by e cases containing Roman coins and pottery. She turned into

other room, and found herself in a glass-walled cul-de-sac lined th blind Grecian heads.

i ‘Down some stairs, along a corridor, up some stairs and she s in the Egyptian galleries. She watched her own reflection, a cial ghost, as she passed along the cases filled with images of s. Once, she thought she heard movement behind her, a light tfall, but when she turned, there was no-one there. She bent to cases, exan-dned the oil and grain jars, the papyrus scrolls, the pottery grave relics, and the more gorgeous ornaments with

princes were lovingly sent on their journey into the afterlife. looked at gods in the shape of hawks, and the shape of cats. ir painted stares met hers; on the glass she traced the ochre black of their eyes. She listened intently. Nothing. She was still

She confronted line upon line of mummies, some standing, lying, some still in their gilded and painted outer casings, e protected only by the swaddling of their bandages.

SO many, so lovely, so various and so fearsome, these ways of th. She looked at a Pharaoh’s son, laid to rest in garments of

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scarlet, lapis and indigo, painted calm on the painted likeness of his face. The air smelled dusty; in this, the older part of the galleries, the display cases made a second labyrinth within the outer one of the museum itself. She had to pass around, between, behind the dead. They cornered her, and she decided to wait elsewhere, in a more conspicuous place.

She returned to the main entrance, went outside, bought a newspaper, and returned to the museum again. In the caf6, where the schoolchildren were making a hubbub, she sat down. No-one approached.

The early edition of the Evening Standard led on John Hawthorne’s speech the previous night. The headline was: US Ambassador Slams ‘Nazi’ Arab States. An incendiary description of Hawthorne’s comments, she thought - and the comments seemed to have had an inflammatory effect. According to the Stop Press, demonstrations had begun outside the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square, and outside the London headquarters of several American banks. There had been dashes with the police.