Chapter 18 #2
‘I don’t have to bring you into this by name,’ Jo was talking quickly, trying to say as much as she could before the door closed on her again, ‘I know a lot about this already and I just need to ask you for some more background information.’
‘Please,’ Joan looked genuinely frightened now, ‘leave me alone.’
The door shut with a bit more force this time.
Jo walked slowly back to her car. She suspected someone like Joan would usually talk by the second or third day you came back to them.
But there was no time for that. She would have to give it an hour and try again.
Sometimes people just needed a bit of time to come to terms with the fact that the press was onto it and the inevitable was going to happen, before they could make the decision to speak.
Climbing back into the passenger seat, Jo took out her computer.
At least she could start writing up the Savannah story.
The whooping cough situation was trickier: she had enough information to write a story, but it was all from a dodgy source…
er, well, computer hacking? Make that an illegal one…
She needed Joan in person backing it all up.
She connected her mobile phone to the laptop so she could check this morning’s emails.
There was an email from the Wolff-Meyer press officer.
In line with latest recommendation from the government, we would urge parents to have their children protected with the Quintet five-in-one vaccination. This injection has been extensively trialled and found to be overwhelmingly safe.
There is no significant evidence to suggest that Quintet can cause whooping cough or is linked to brain damage, epilepsy or seizures.
Jo flipped on the car radio and kept one ear out for the news. There was a name and mobile phone number at the bottom of the statement, so she unplugged her phone from the computer and punched in the number.
It rang for a long time, and finally a woman’s voice answered.
‘Hello, is that Nicola Stoppes?’ Jo asked.
‘Yes, can I help you?’
Jo introduced herself.
‘Right, yes, I’m duty press officer, what can I do for you?’
‘Hang on a sec,’ Jo told her. The beeps announcing the on-the-hour news headlines had just sounded on her car radio.
A deep male newsreader voice began to go through the headline news. Whooping cough was the third item on the agenda. The coma girl was ‘showing signs of improvement’ but a second child in hospital was now judged to be ‘critically ill’. No new cases of the illness had been reported for a second day.
Jo turned her attention back to the phone call.
‘Nicola, I want you to get a response from Wolff-Meyer for me on this question. Did a rogue strain of whooping cough from the Wolff-Meyer lab in Bedford escape and cause the current outbreak, which is proving extremely serious? Two children are critically ill. OK, that’s the question.
‘Now just to underline it: we have good reason to believe that the Wolff-Meyer research lab is the sole cause of this outbreak. Not the Quintet vaccinations, but the lab itself. Have you got that? And please, Nicola,’ Jo added, ‘don’t mess me around on this.
Get the question to the person who needs to see it.
I don’t want to hear that you couldn’t contact anyone, because I’ll know that’s rubbish. My deadline is 12 noon. All clear?’
It certainly seemed to be clear to Nicola, but not altogether welcome. When Jo clicked off the phone, she had several decisions to make.
First of all, she called Jeff back.
‘You have got someone at this hospital, haven’t you?’ she asked him as soon as he answered.
‘Where the whooping cough children are?’ was his response.
‘Yeah.’
‘Aidan’s there. He’s briefed to phone both of us if there’s any word.’
‘Oh, good.’
‘Take it you’re not having any luck.’
‘No. Not yet. But I’ll sit in the car. Trying her again later.’
‘Better get writing.’
‘Yeah. Don’t worry, I was coming to that.’
‘Were you? Nice of you to think of us back here in the office getting our arses chewed off by Spikey.’
‘Now there’s an image.’
It felt cosily private holding his voice to her ear. ‘What did you want to talk to me about, Jeff?’
‘We’ll save it for tonight, if you’re still on for that.’
She’d missed an entire night’s sleep but somehow still seemed to be functioning, and now Jo heard herself agreeing to join him for the Saturday night post-office drinks.
After a brief catch-up chat with Aidan, she put her phone to the side, opened a new file on the computer and finally began typing:
Savannah Tyler, the woman who hopes to become Britain’s first ever Green MP next week, has spoken for the first time about the death of her only child and how the tragedy has inspired her fight for a cleaner, Greener Britain.
Ms Tyler, now 44, watched her severely allergic baby son, Felix, die in her arms of an asthma attack eight years ago.
With the emergency services on the line, Ms Tyler fought to save 19-month-old Felix but she tearfully admitted: ‘When I saw he was really going… I had to stop. I had to put the phone down, stop battling and just hold him for one moment longer. Let him go in some sort of peace.’
Jo didn’t need to double-check that quote, like many other words from interviews done over the years, it had been imprinted on her mind.
Just months before her son’s death, Ms Tyler had lost both of her beloved parents in an airplane crash. The combination of the two tragedies sent her into a depression that ruined her relationship with Felix’s father, Philippe Teyhan, and led to many dark years.
Baby Felix suffered from multiple allergy syndrome, a condition not widely understood when he was alive.
He was allergic to most of the common chemicals found in every household and suffered chronic eczema and asthma.
Ms Tyler who, if the polls are right, will take a seat in parliament for Oxford North in next week’s by-election said: ‘I’m a scientist by profession but my special interest in the far-reaching and long-term effects of chemicals on our planet is inspired by Felix.
I think about him every single day and about the kind of world I would have liked to hand on to him.
I suppose you could describe what I do as a tribute to my beautiful baby boy. ’
It was hard to repress both the tearfulness and the buzz of excitement Jo felt as she wrote this. It was true that some stories just wrote themselves.
A half-glimpsed movement made Jo lift her head, just in time to see Joan stepping out of her house. Bugger!
She moved the laptop to the driver’s seat, grabbed her keys and scrambled out of the car door. Slamming it shut, she started to run down the road.
Joan heard the slam, saw her and began to speed up to get away from her. ‘Ms Theroux!’ Jo called out as she was almost level with her. ‘I don’t want to follow you about all day, but I’d really like to talk to you.’
Joan continued walking briskly with her head tucked down.
Jo walked beside her. ‘There’s another child critically ill in hospital today, did you know that?’ she asked.
This seemed to slow Joan for a moment, but then she carried on walking.
‘I know this is in the hands of the lawyers. I know you are taking Wolff-Meyer to tribunal and that they are accusing you of negligence. But I still think there are ways you can safely talk to us about this.’
Joan looked round at her with something close to amazed fear on her face.
‘How do you know this? Have they been talking to you?’
‘No, not the people in charge of Wolff-Meyer, but some other people down the line, like yourself,’ Jo lied. Well, what else could she do? Admit to spending a whole night hacking into files?
‘Who?’ Joan asked, but at least she had stopped walking now.
‘Look, I have to respect their request for anonymity.’
‘Would you respect my anonymity?’ Joan said breathlessly.
‘I’d prefer to use your name, use your picture and let everyone know that you’ve nothing to be ashamed of,’ was Jo’s response to this.
There was a pause. Joan was obviously thinking hard.
‘You’ve already spoken to someone else?’ Joan asked.
‘Yes.’ Jo hoped the God of White Lies wouldn’t strike her down on the spot. It was far from ideal to not tell the truth, but if it helped bring important truths to the surface, she was willing to do it occasionally and for the right reasons.
‘You already know what’s happened?’ Joan asked.
‘Yes.’ Same prayer to the same god.
Joan’s shoulders sank a little. Jo took this as a sign of something she’d observed in other reluctant interviewees: Joan had probably been living and worrying about this for weeks, maybe it would be a relief to finally talk.
Slowly Joan turned and began to walk back towards her house without saying anything. She pushed open the gate and said the four words Jo had been praying to hear.
‘You’d better come in.’