Authors: Ian Rankin
Marco is Italian, and that is also relevant to the story. This is a story he told me last night in the Stoat and Whistle. I said to him, why haven’t you told me this before? Know what he said? He said, this is the first serious (not to mention intelligible) conversation we’ve ever had. And when I thought about it, he was probably right. What’s more, he only got round to telling his story because we’d run out of Tottenham jokes. Here’s the last one we told. What’s the difference between a man with no knob and a Spurs player? A man with no knob’s got more chance of scoring.
See, we were desperate.
“Anything?” Fliss asked. She had her own sheaf of paper in front of her, as well as a second mug of coffee.
“I think he was drunk when he typed this.”
“Full of spelling mistakes?”
“No, just full of shit.”
They were back in the Crouch End flat. They’d brought a carry-out back with them—Chinese this time, with some lagers and Cokes bought from the corner shop. The tin trays of food sat half-uneaten on the living room’s coffee table.
“What about you?” Reeve asked.
“Photocopies mostly. Articles from medical and scientific journals. Looks like he was calling up anything he could find on mad cow disease. Plus on genetic patents. There’s an interesting article about the company that owns the patent on all genetically engineered cotton. Might not be relevant.” She gnawed on a plastic chopstick. The chopsticks had been fifty pence a pair extra. Reeve rubbed his jaw, feeling the need for a shave. And a bath. And some sleep. He tried not to think about what time his body made it; tried to dismiss the eight hours he’d wound his watch forward, and the sleep he hadn’t taken on the plane.
He started reading again.
Marco is a journalist. He’s over here for a year, more if they like his reports, as London correspondent for some glossy Milan rag. They keep faxing him to say they want more royal family, more champagne balls, more Wimbledon and Ascot. He’s tried telling them Wimbledon and Ascot come once a year, but they just keep sending the faxes to their London office. Marco’s thinking of chucking it. He used to be a “serious” journalist, real hard copy, until he sniffed more money in the air. Moved from daily to weekly, newspaper to magazine. He said at the time he was just sick of journalism; he wanted easy money and a break from Italy. Italian politics depressed him. The corruption depressed him. He’d had a colleague, a good friend, blown up by a parcel bomb when he tried to zero in on some minister with Mafia connections. Ba-boom, and up and away to the great leader column in the sky. Or maybe the elevator down to the basement, glowing fires and typing up the classifieds.
Marco told me about some of the scandals, and I was matching him conspiracy for conspiracy, chicanery for chicanery, payoff for payoff. Then he told me he covered the Spanish cooking oil tragedy. I recalled it only vaguely. 1981, hundreds died. Contaminated oil—yes?
And Marco said, “Maybe.”
So then he told his side of it, which didn’t quite tally with the official line at the time or since. Because according to Marco, some of the people who died hadn’t touched the oil (rapeseed oil it was—memo to self, get clippings out of library). They hadn’t bought it, hadn’t used it—simple as that. So what caused the deaths? Marco’s idea—and it wasn’t original, he got it from other researchers into the area—was that these things called—hold on, I wrote it down—Jesus, it’s taken me ten minutes to track it down. Should’ve known to look first on my fag packet. OPs, that what it says. OPs were to blame. He did tell me what they are, but I’ve forgotten. Better look into it tomorrow.
“OPs,” Reeve said.
“What?”
“Any mention of them in the stuff you’re reading?”
She smiled. “Sorry, I stopped reading a while back. I’m not taking it in anymore.” She yawned, stretching her arms up, hands clenched. The fabric of her sweater tightened, raising the profile of her breasts.
“Shit,” said Reeve, suddenly realizing. “I’ve got to get a room.”
“What?”
“A hotel room. I wasn’t planning on being here this late.”
She paused before answering. “You can sleep where you are. That sofa’s plenty comfy enough; I’ve fallen asleep on it a few times myself. I’ll just check out Newsnight if that’s all right, see what I’ve missed today and what I can expect to read tomorrow, and then I’ll leave you to it.”
He stared at her.
“It’s all right, really it is,” she said. “You’re perfectly safe with me.”
She had blue eyes. He’d noticed them before, but they seemed bluer now. And she didn’t smell of perfume, just soap.
“We can read the rest over breakfast,” she said, switching on the TV. “I need a clear head to take in half of what I’m reading. Bovine spongiform encephalopathy: it doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue, does it? And nor does it trip off the eyeballs. Bloody boffins just refuse to call it mad cow disease. I hope to God that’s not what this is all about, the beefburgers of the damned—and bloody John Selwyn Gummer stuffing one down his poor sodding daughter’s throat. Do you remember that photo?”
“Why do you say that?”
She was engrossed in the TV. “Say what?”
“That you hope it’s not about bovine spongy whatsit.”
She glanced at him. “Because it’s been covered, Gordon. It’s old news. Besides, the public are physically repelled by scare stories. They’d rather not know about them. That’s why they end up in the Grauniad or Private Eye. You’ve heard of the right to know? Well, the good old British public has another inalienable right: the right not to know, not to worry. They want a cheap paper with some cartoons and funny headlines and a good telly section. They do not want to know about diseases that eat their flesh, meat that makes them mad, or eggs that can put them in casualty. You tell them about the bow doors on ferries, they still troop on and off them every weekend, heading for Calais and cheap beer.” She turned to him again. “Know why?”
“Why?”
“Because they don’t think lightning strikes twice. If some other bugger has died that makes it so much less likely that they will.” She turned back to the TV, then smiled. “Sorry, I’m ranting.”
“You have a low regard for your readers?”
“On the contrary, I have a very high regard for my readers. They are discriminating and knowledgeable.” She turned the sound up a little, losing herself in the news. Reeve put down the sheets of paper he was still holding. Sticking out from below the sofa was a newspaper. He pulled it out. It was the paper Fliss worked for.
“Isn’t he a dish?” she muttered, a rhetorical question apparently. She was talking to herself about the news presenter.
Reeve went through to the kitchen to boil some more water. He knew he should call Joan again, let her know the score, but the telephone was in the living room. He sat down at the kitchen table and spread out the paper which he’d brought through with him. He started examining each page, looking for the byline Fliss Hornby. He didn’t find it. He went through the paper again. This time he found it.
He made two mugs of instant decaf and took them back through to the living room. Fliss had tucked her legs beneath her and was hugging them. She sat forward ever so slightly in her chair, a fan seeking a better view, though there was nothing between her and her idol. Then Reeve was in the way, handing her the mug.
“You work on the fashion page,” he said.
“It’s still journalism, isn’t it?” Obviously she’d had this conversation before.
“I thought you were—”
“What?” She glared at him. “A proper journalist? An investigative journalist?”
“No, I just thought… Never mind.”
He sat down, aware she was angry with him. Tactful, Gordon, he thought. Nil out of ten for leadership. Had he told her he appreciated all she’d done today? She’d halved his workload, been able to explain things to him—bits of journalist’s shorthand on the disks, for example. He might have been there all day, and spent a wasted day, instead of which he had something. He had the genesis; that’s what Jim had called it. The genesis of whatever had led him to San Diego and his death. It was a start. Tomorrow things might get more serious.
He kept looking at Fliss. If she’d turned in his direction, he’d have smiled an apology. But she was staring unblinking at the screen, her neck taut. Reeve seemed to have the ability to piss women off. Look at Joan. Most days now there was an argument between them; not when Allan was around—they were determined to put up a “front”—but whenever he wasn’t there. There was enough electricity in the air to light the whole building.
After Newsnight was watched in silence, Fliss said a curt good night, but then came back into the room with a spare duvet and a pillow.
“I’m sorry,” Reeve told her. “I didn’t mean to imply anything. It’s just that you never said anything, and you’ve been acting all day like you were Scoop Newshound, the paper’s only investigative reporter.”
She smiled. “Scoop Newshound?”
He shrugged, smiling also.
“I forgive you,” she said. “First one up tomorrow goes for milk and bread, right?”
“Right, Fliss.”
“Good night, then.” She showed no sign of moving from the doorway. Reeve had pulled off his blue cotton sweater and was wearing a long-sleeved white T-shirt. She appraised his body for a moment, and gave a smile and a noise that was halfway between a sigh and humming, then turned and walked away.
He found it hard to sleep. He was too tired; or rather, he was exhausted but not tired. His brain wouldn’t work—as he discovered when he tried carrying on with Jim’s notes—but it wouldn’t be still either. Images flitted through his mind, bouncing along like a ball through a series of puddles. Snatches of conversations, songs, echoes of the two films he’d watched on the flight, his trip on the Underground, the taxicabs, the Indian restaurant, surprising Fliss in the kitchen. Songs… tunes…
Row, row, row your boat.
He jerked from the sofa, standing in the middle of the floor in his T-shirt and underpants, trembling. He switched on the TV, turning the sound all the way down. Nighttime television: mindless and bright. He looked out of the window. A halo of orange sodium, a dog barking in the near distance, a car cruising past. He watched it, studied it. The driver was staring straight ahead. There were cars parked outside, solid lines of them on both sides of the street, ready for tomorrow’s race.
He padded through to the kitchen on bare feet and switched on the kettle again. Rooting in the box of assorted herbal tea bags, he found spearmint and decided to give it a try. Back in the hallway, he noticed that Fliss’s bedroom door was ajar. More than ajar in fact: it was halfway open. Was it an invitation? He’d be bound to see it if he used the kitchen or the bathroom. Her light was off. He listened for her breathing, but the fridge in the kitchen was making too much noise.
He waited in the hall, holding the steaming mug, until the fridge switched off. Her breathing was more than regular—she was snoring.
“Morning.” She came into the kitchen sleepy-faced and tousling her hair. She wore a thick tartan dressing gown and fluffy pink slippers.
Reeve had been out and purchased breakfast and newspapers. She slumped into a chair at the table and grabbed a paper.
“Coffee?” he asked. He’d bought a packet of coffee and some paper filters.
“How did you sleep?” she asked without looking up.
“Fine,” he lied. “You?”
As she was folding a page, she glanced up at him. “Soundly, thanks.”
He poured them both coffee. “I’ve found out what OPs are.”
“Oh?”
“I’ve been doing some more reading.”
“You were up early. So, what are they?”
“Organophosphorus treatments.”
“And what are those when they’re at home?”
“Pesticides, I think. Marco and others think the Spanish cooking oil thing was all to do with pesticides.”
She drank greedily from her mug and exhaled. “So what now?”
He shrugged.
“Are you going to talk to Marco?”
Reeve shook his head. “He’s got nothing to do with it. He’s just a catalyst. Jim wasn’t researching the Spanish incident, he was looking at BSE.”
“Bovine spongiform thingy.”
“Encephalopathy.”
“How did he make the leap from cooking oil to BSE?”
“He remembered something he’d heard.”
So I phoned Joshua Vincent, and told him he probably wouldn’t know me. He said I was correct in that assumption. I explained that some time ago the paper had received a press release from his organization, the National Farmers’ Union, concerning BSE. He told me he wasn’t working for the NFU anymore. He sounded bitter when he said it. I asked him what had happened.
“They sacked me,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because of what I said about BSE.”
And I began to sniff my story. Now if only I can persuade Giles to fund me…
“So what are you doing today?” Fliss asked. She’d had a shower, dried her hair, and was dressed.
“Trying to find Joshua Vincent.”
“And if you can’t?”
Reeve shrugged again; he didn’t want to consider failure, though really it should be considered. With any plan, there should be a fallback position.
“You could talk to Giles Gulliver,” she suggested, dabbing crumbs of toast from her plate.
“That’s an idea.”
“And then?”
“Depends what I learn.”
She sucked at the crumbs. “Don’t expect too much from Giles, or anyone like him.”
“What do you mean?”
She grabbed the newspaper and opened it to a full-page ad-vertisement, placed by Co-World Chemicals. “Don’t bother read-ing it,” she said. “It’ll put you back to sleep. It’s just one of those feel-good ads big corporations make up when they want to spend some money.”
Reeve glanced at the ad. “Or when their consciences are bothering them?”
Fliss wrinkled her nose. “Grow up. Those people don’t have consciences. They’ve had them surgically removed to make room for the cash-flow implants.” She tapped the paper. “But as long as Co-World and companies like them are throwing money at advertising departments, publishers will love them, and the publishers will see to it that their editors never print anything that might upset Sugar Daddy. That’s all I’m saying.”