Chapter 20
The small and shabby old Swan pub, a world away from the glossy wine bars and other drinking ‘venues’ that surrounded the newspaper offices, was the bolthole of choice for newsroom refugees on Saturday night.
The Swan had a sticky floor, gloss paint on the walls and a fierce landlady. The pub was probably kept in business by the Friday and Saturday night drinking habits of the entire news group.
In the course of a long and frantic afternoon at her desk, Jo had filed her Savannah Tyler exclusive, her Quintet damage warning story for children with family history who were at risk – which came complete with the Townells’ interview and one other – and, perhaps most important of all to her, her story about the leak of an antiquated whooping cough strain from the Wolff-Meyer laboratory, which had made a cluster of already vaccinated children dangerously ill.
It counted as one of the best weeks of her career, but she didn’t feel happy or elated. In fact, she was so wound up that she was seeking solace in a series of vodka and tonics in the rowdy bar, which was already filling up with other reporters.
The only story that was absolutely 100 per cent running was the Savannah piece. She’d seen that laid out, headline, picture and all. The other stories were still, after 7 p.m. on press day, ‘with the lawyers’ both from the newspaper and Wolff-Meyer.
Wolff-Meyer had finally contacted her to say they would only make a response via their legal team to the newspaper’s legal team. Spikey and possibly the group editor were both involved. She’d seen them bobbing in and out of the lawyers’ office all evening.
‘It’s out of your hands,’ Jeff had told her.
‘Go to the Swan, have a drink, calm down, I’ll come and tell you when I know what’s happening.
’ That had been over an hour ago now. She could see Vince coming back in holding printouts of the first edition front page in his hands.
He handed them out magnanimously around the bar.
‘No!’ The Swan’s landlady was gawping at the main headline. It was Vince’s child abuse allegation.
‘Not him! I don’t believe it. He’s got kids of his own. That’s terrible!’
‘You can go ahead and believe it… every single word. He’ll be officially charged next week.’
‘No!’
Unfortunately, Vince was coming over to stand beside Jo and she was going to have to force herself to take a look at the printout.
‘Savannah’s here,’ he told her. ‘Sidebar obviously,’ which meant it was the garnish at the side of the page, the words on the side of his brilliant scoop.
‘Another drink?’ he asked.
‘Why not?’ she replied, knowing perfectly well how many reasons there were not to.
She wasn’t far away from being sloshed; she had already forfeited the right to drive her car home, so would have to come back to work tomorrow to pick it up…
She might need to have another conversation with the lawyers or her editor and she wasn’t going to be in a fit state to do it.
Not to mention the fact that she’d used up her week’s entire alcohol unit allowance round about Tuesday: ‘Vodka and tonic, please.’
She heard him ordering it and adding: ‘Double please, it’s Saturday night after all.’
Turning back to Aidan and Declan, she tried to remember what they were all talking about before Vince and his front page appeared.
‘I really miss her, I really do. No one in newspapers is happily married, I can tell you that for free,’ Declan was informing Aidan sadly.
Oh yes – Declan’s divorce. How could she forget?
‘Are they, Jo?’ Declan added, putting an arm around her shoulder. ‘Jo’s just like me. Divorced. Husband couldn’t take the paper pressure any more, could he?’
‘Erm, I think it was maybe a little more complicated than that. Anyway, don’t scare Aidan. He’s not even interested in marriage yet; he certainly doesn’t want to talk about divorce.’
‘And then there’s Jeff—’ Declan added.
‘Jeff’s been married for twenty-odd years,’ Jo smiled. ‘He’s the exception to your rule.’
Declan shook his head vigorously, causing the Guinness level to swing dangerously in his glass.
‘He’s moved out. The missus as well. They’re putting the house on the market.’
Jo couldn’t believe what she was hearing: ‘Jeff’s splitting up from his wife?’ She wanted to be sure she’d heard this right.
Declan nodded.
‘What’s happened?’ she asked.
‘Don’t know.’
‘When did it happen? He hasn’t said a thing.’ Although obviously he had; he just hadn’t said a thing to her. Clearly this was what he had been planning to talk to her about tonight. Maybe he wanted to ask advice or have her shoulder to cry on.
‘I think it all came to a head a month ago. He’s been staying in a hotel since then anyway.’
‘In a hotel?! I can’t believe it,’ she said.
‘So has your mystery techie been revealed?’ Declan wanted to know.
Jo, head still reeling with the Jeff news, nevertheless had an answer for this question: ‘Bexley Computing Systems Ltd. I had a tip, the tech department followed it up and it checked out. Don’t ask me how.
The company won’t admit anything and apparently the program that was shuttling my emails about has been dismantled, but I’m getting a new super-secure desktop and laptop, courtesy of Mr de Groote. ’
Jo didn’t mention the other mystery that the techies had solved for her: the anonymous emailer.
‘Got any good friends at the Green Party?’ head technician, Manzour, had asked her.
‘Lots,’ she’d told him.
‘The noreply@yahoo messages are generated by subsidiary of a Green Party chat list. Someone’s been quite clever to suss this out and get messages to you through it.’
Savannah? Jo had wondered. Had Savannah led her directly to the Wolff-Meyer story?
‘What’s the news on your stories this week?’ Declan asked next. ‘Are they all going in?’
Jo double-checked the time on her watch then fished in her handbag for her mobile. They really should know by now.
As she speed-dialled the news desk, she glanced round the bar and saw Jeff walking in. She clicked the phone off and waved him over.
‘How much have you had?’ was his first question.
‘Never mind that. Just tell me what’s happening.’
‘I just want to know if I should get you another, or if you’re already dangerous.’
She pulled a face.
‘Look—’ he glanced at Declan, Aidan, Vince and the other professional nosy parkers all subtly pretending they weren’t trying to overhear this conversation. ‘Let’s go to a quiet corner.’
She picked up her bag, slid off the bar stool and followed Jeff to the decidedly unglamorous space at the top of the stairs leading to the toilets, where they stood to talk. She had a bad feeling. Jeff jangled at the loose change in his trouser pocket.
‘So, we’re going to run the Quintet damage stories: the twin and the other baby.
OK? That’s all running,’ he began. ‘Even better, it’s running with a full admission from Wolff-Meyer that Quintet has the potential to harm children with certain family or medical histories and both the public and the medical profession need to be made fully aware of this possibility.
So, I think you’ll agree that’s a major breakthrough. Well done.’
She managed a smile at this, despite the horrible sinking feeling building in the pit of her stomach.
Jeff was handed a pint by a passing journalist which he accepted with a grateful nod.
‘In the Wolff-Meyer statement which now accompanies your story – headlined on the second edition front page, by the way, and all over pages six and seven – Savannah’s a full page three,’ he went on, ‘Vince’s is one, four and five.
But anyway, in the statement, Wolff-Meyer say they are rushing out a screening questionnaire to be given to every parent bringing their child for vaccination to try and pinpoint the rare children who could be damaged and prevent them from having the injection.
They have asked for full information about your cases—’
‘Well, they can buy the bloody paper then,’ she interrupted.
‘And they insist they will enter into talks with any concerned families.’
As Jeff paused to take a long sip at his drink, she was shocked to see that his wedding ring, the fat gold band which was as much a part of his hand as his solid fingers, was gone. Since when?! How had she not noticed this crisis going on in his life?
‘But—’ he began.
‘But?’ she repeated. ‘There’s a very big but, isn’t there? You’ve struck a deal? The old whooping cough variant story gets spiked, in return for all this, doesn’t it?’
He nodded slowly and took another long sip.
‘They are not prepared to admit to any liability for the current whooping cough outbreak. They are extremely pissed off about that. They have promised severe litigation action against the slightest suggestion that this is their fault or in any way to do with them. They are overly interested in where our information comes from…’
‘I bet they are. Didn’t you tell them to have a look through the emails they’ve stolen from my computer?’
‘Our lawyers did put to their lawyers that we had evidence of espionage.’ Jo suddenly felt her heart squeeze. What if Wolff-Meyer likewise had evidence of espionage?
‘They said they would conduct an internal inquiry into the matter. We helpfully provided them with the name of Bexley Computer Systems Ltd, as provided by our technical department.’
‘Oh good,’ she tried to relax a little. Bella was excellent at her job. She would have covered her tracks.
‘The Department of Health has been issued with guidelines to quarantine cases, and all those in contact with those cases have been given a ‘special’ vaccine by Wolff-Meyer. There haven’t been any fresh cases for two days, so they are hoping the illness has been contained.
But there’s no way we can run that virus variant story,’ he said.
‘We don’t have the evidence in black and white.
So, we can’t go with it unless we want to feel the force of a multi-million-dollar lawsuit. ’ He added.