Original Sin (2 page)

‘So, come on,’ she said impatiently, ‘who was there?’

Jemma rattled off a list of household names. ‘There were a few Hollywood names as well. I had the misfortunate of seeing that foul producer Larry Goldman in the buff. He has man–breasts the size of space–hoppers.’

‘What about photos? We need photos.’

In her twelve years in newspapers, the unwritten law had always been ‘assume they won’t sue’, and Tess had always found that it was an accurate enough yardstick. She had a little black book of litigious stars and those who rarely took legal action, but when anybody did seek to challenge a story they had printed, the onus was on the newspaper to prove what they had written was true. That was why photographs were essential for a story like this.

‘The quality isn’t great,’ said Jemma, opening her laptop to flick through the digital images she had taken. ‘I used a spy camera that I’d hidden in the house during the afternoon.’

Tess leaned over her shoulder and pointed at an image of a flaxen–haired blonde. ‘Who’s
this
?’ she asked. The woman was wearing nothing but a strap–on and a Venetian mask and stood astride a naked fat man on his hands and knees.

‘That’s Larry.’

‘But who’s the woman?’ said Tess hopefully.

Jemma shrugged. ‘Some hooker, I think.’

Tess’s excitement was starting to wane. So far, this wasn’t the big–noise story she was hoping for. Ten years ago, a cheating MP had been front–page news; but today hookers and studio heads did not shift newspapers like footballers and soap stars.

‘Do we have anything clearer of a bigger name?’ she asked hopefully. ‘What about a soap actress?’

‘How about this?’ said Jemma, enlarging an image with a triumphant look.

The picture was grainy. The man in the shot was naked and bent over what appeared to be a line of cocaine. Tess frowned and squinted.

‘Don’t you recognize him?’

Tess shook her head. ‘Who is it?’

‘Well, maybe you’ll see better in this one.’

Jemma clicked onto an image of a black van. You could clearly make out somebody was being carried into the back of it on a stretcher.

‘Shit,’ said Tess, her eyes widening. ‘What’s going on here?’

‘The same guy being stretchered into a private ambulance,’ said Jemma with a smile. ‘He’s at a private hospital in West London now.’

‘So who is it?’ asked Tess.

‘Sean Asgill.’

It took Tess a second to recognize the name. Sean Asgill was a New York playboy. Heir to a cosmetics family fortune. Handsome and wealthy, he was a fixture in the society pages with a string of model and actress girlfriends. It was a headline all right: “Tragedy at A–list Sex Party”.’

‘Christ,’ said Tess. ‘Did he … die?’

Tess felt bad asking, but it was an occupational hazard for someone in her job, wishing the worst on people because it made a better headline.

‘I followed the ambulance on my scooter and I told the nurse I was family. She told me it was a suspected ketamine overdose. Asgill probably thought it was a line of coke. Apparently he’s in a coma. I hung around for a bit and, after half an hour, this guy of about fifty turned up. His dad maybe? I scarpered pretty quickly.’

Jemma looked at Tess hopefully. ‘So what do you think? Is it the splash?’

Tess shook her head. The irony was that, in the States, this would not only be front–page news, it would also lead the TV news and would probably even make waves in Washington. Sean Asgill’s sister had just become engaged to the son of one of America’s richest and most powerful men, which made her brother’s drugs overdose at a sex party very hot gossip indeed. But over here, Sean Asgill was virtually unknown outside of society columns.

‘We’ll talk about this later,’ whispered Tess, snapping the laptop closed as Dom walked back into the room, naked except for a small towel wrapped around his waist, his tanned skin glistening with droplets of shower–water.

‘What are you two gossiping about?’ he smiled, clearly enjoying the two women’s eyes on him. ‘And where’s my tea?’

*

The
Sunday Globe
was a newspaper whose glory days were long gone. Tess sat back in her chair and looked at the chipped paintwork and tired carpet: the state of the office reflected the paper’s decline. After twenty years as a
Daily Mail
wannabe with a dwindling circulation, it had been bought by ruthless media mogul Robert Jenkins, who had turned it into a red–top tabloid, but the change of direction had failed to boost sales; Jenkins had ruthlessly cut costs and jobs to keep afloat. He certainly hadn’t spent any money on improving the working conditions, thought Tess, shutting down her temperamental and near–obsolete computer. When the
Globe
’s much–loved editor, the jolly, corpulent, fifty–something Derek Bradford had had a heart attack and died, Tess had been considered a shoo–in for the top job. Even though she was only twenty–nine, she had paid her dues: five years in local papers doing hard news, women’s editor at the
Mirror
, features editor at the
Sunday Globe
, and finally deputy editor. Quite a CV for someone her age. She’d been disappointed but not entirely surprised when, six weeks ago, the vacant editorship had been given to Andy Davidson, number three on the daily paper and Wentworth golfing buddy of the proprietor. Robert Jenkins had long been labelled a misogynist; she’d even heard that he’d once laughed that, as far as the editorship of one of his flagship titles was concerned, he ‘wanted to fuck Tess Garrett, not give her the top job’. Well, he could go and fuck
himself
, thought Tess angrily, taking a quick swig of coffee. It was why she was determined to use this week in the editor’s chair to prove her boss had made the wrong decision.

Tess stood up, smoothed down her Armani skirt and slipped on her sharply tailored jacket; it was time to show them who was boss. Every morning at ten a.m. the
Sunday Globe
had a news conference for the editorial team and, as today was Friday, the urgent item on the agenda was the splash for the Sunday front page, the first edition of which was sent down to the printers at six p.m. on Saturday night. Friday was therefore the most hectic time of the week, with the staff often working right through the weekend until the early hours of Sunday morning, ready to change the splash if a better story came in. In newspapers, the front page was everything.

‘So. Nothing obvious for the splash yet,’ began news editor Ben Leith boldly, when the key editorial staff were gathered around the oval conference table. Tess narrowed her eyes. She knew Ben was after her job, but there was no need to blatantly undermine her at the first opportunity.

‘Well, what
do
you have?’ asked Tess pointedly. ‘Speaking as news editor.’

Leith sighed. ‘There’s still the air hostess/prostitutes story hanging around. But the lawyers think the airline might sue.’

Tess grimaced. That particular story had been filed three weeks earlier and so far Andy had passed it over, leaving it for a dire week when there was nothing to splash with. Tess certainly didn’t want to run the lame–duck story in her week as editor.

‘We have Serena Balcon’s hen–night shots,’ said Jon Green, the
Globe
’s photo director eagerly. ‘She’s in Miami topless.’

Tess shook her head. ‘Great for inside, Jon, but we can’t run a nipple shot on the cover.’

‘Yes, the nips are out in every shot,’ replied Jon, looking a little deflated. ‘Although we could always put globes over her tits for the cover–shot. Readers might think it’s funny,’ he said, gaining a few sniggers from the younger members of staff.

‘I think people want to see Serena’s nips,’ said Ben Leith, seizing another opportunity to put pressure on Tess. She reminded herself that the news editor was best friends with the editor, Andy, and would no doubt be reporting everything back to their boss.

‘Maybe we can run something next to the logo’, said Tess, firmly, ‘but it’s not the big story.’

Leith looked sulky and muttered something about feminist bullshit under his breath, but Tess ignored him.

‘Let’s take a view at four o’clock conference. Ben, can we meet after lunch? I have a stringer working on a story which we might be able to turn into the front page.’

She stalked back to her office, sat in her chair, and swivelled it to stare out of the window. Her reflection stared back at her. Dark eyes, a strong brow, creamy skin with good bone structure; a face to be reckoned with.
A glamorous newspaper editor’s face
, she smiled grimly. That meeting was exactly the reason she was struggling to enjoy this week as editor. There had been none of the empowering buzz she always thought she would feel in the editor’s chair, and she had been tense and crotchety all week. It was not that she didn’t think she was up to the job – she had spent her whole adult life wanting to be a newspaper editor, from the first time she’d seen
The Front Page
and
His Girl Friday
as a little girl, to the day when she had got her first paying job as news assistant at her local rag in Suffolk, where she’d covered village fetes and bicycle thefts, and she knew she could do it better than anyone. What bothered her was the acknowledgement that she was just wasting her time. That the new editor and the CEO were just biding their time until they could get rid of her in the most inexpensive way possible.

Just then, the phone rang. It was Andy’s assistant Tracey.

‘I have a Mark Wilson in reception for you.’

Tess didn’t recognize the name, but had an instant intuition that whatever Mark Wilson wanted it was going to be trouble.

‘He says he’s acting for the Asgills, if that makes any sense to you?’ said Tracey.

‘Oh shit,’ groaned Tess under her breath. This was exactly why she hadn’t broken the Asgill story in the meeting: she wanted to be sure of it; she didn’t want word to get back to Andy of the story that never was. She walked over to the small window of her office and snapped the blinds shut just as there was a sharp rap on her door.

Mark Wilson was mid–forties, dressed in a conservative tailored suit and carrying a silver briefcase. He held out a card, but Tess simply slipped it into her pocket. She didn’t need Mark Wilson to tell her he was an expensive lawyer, because he looked exactly like every other expensive lawyer she had ever met.

‘Tea? Coffee? Water?’ Tess asked, motioning towards a seat in front of her desk.

‘Straight to business I think, Ms Garrett,’ he said as he settled down. ‘Some illegal photographs were taken of my client at a party in St John’s Wood last night.’

‘I know,’ said Tess, refusing to be intimidated. ‘Sean Asgill was partying so hard he ended up in a high–dependency unit at a North London hospital.’

Wilson looked slightly taken aback by the blunt, attractive woman seated across from him, but quickly rallied.

‘Well Ms Garrett, you’re an experienced journalist,
one assumes
,’ he said. ‘So I don’t need to remind you of the privacy laws at issue here. Sean Asgill was enjoying a night out in a private place and that privacy has been invaded.’

Tess looked at him, determined to stand her ground, particularly after Wilson’s snipe about her experience. In fact, Tess had been in this situation many times before. Andy Davidson didn’t do much hands–on editing and was more often to be found schmoozing politicians and publicists; he certainly never dealt with Rottweiler lawyers. It was Tess who was sent to deal with them, and, as barely a week went by without some celebrity publicist or media lawyer threatening the
Globe
with injunctions, Tess knew the law backwards.

‘I’m well aware of the law, Mr Wilson,’ said Tess, counting the points off on her slim fingers. ‘Number one, and correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t this incident involve heavyweight drug usage? Heavyweight
illegal
drugs, I might add? Number two, it didn’t happen at Mr Asgill’s private residence; in fact it was at a public event, and a morally controversial public event at that.’

Wilson smiled thinly. ‘That’s rich. Your newspaper talking about morals.’

Tess took a sip from the glass of water in front of her. ‘This is a drug overdose at a sex party, Mr Wilson. It’s not as if we stormed into the Pope’s bedroom. You and I both know that no judge in England will grant an injunction on those photos based on privacy. Besides, as your client is very high profile, I believe we could argue public interest, given the circumstances.’

‘Please, this is a young, vulnerable man who ingested ketamine mistakenly,’ said Wilson in a more conciliatory voice.

‘Vulnerable?’ snorted Tess. ‘Well, I don’t know Sean Asgill, but from what I read he’s hardly Tiny Tim. He’s a playboy whose fast living has finally caught up with him.’

Mark Wilson’s face was impassive but Tess knew she had got him. He stared at her for a few moments, then shrugged slightly.

‘I take it you haven’t written your splash story yet?’