Chapter 9
‘I’ve got IVF twins who are Quintet victims, according to their parents, and I’m aiming to find other children who have suffered to make the story stronger,’ Jo told the morning news conference, treading the fine line between trying to make it sound as good as she could without exaggerating.
Because this story meant a lot to her. She wanted it in the paper, but she didn’t want to oversell it and potentially blow it.
‘OK, let’s see what you come up with,’ was Spikey’s verdict.
‘The wind farms story is going well,’ she updated them on Aidan and Dominique’s research. ‘We all seem to be coming down on the side of building them in the North Sea. Although that’s the most expensive option.’
‘Hmm… Can Pictures mock that up for us? Massive windmills in stormy seas?’
’The picture desk editor nodded.
‘Nice,’ was Spikey’s verdict.
Jo registered the predictable little prick of jealousy that he seemed to like the other story better than hers – the one she was far more invested in.
‘What else is on your list then?’ he asked.
‘Britain’s asthma league table and how it relates to the air pollution stats – quite nicely, in fact.
We’re shelving How Green are the Royals for now, as agreed…
the latest research into the causes of senile dementia…
a few other bits and pieces, eco-tourism, and that’s us for the week so far. ’ Jo smiled around the table.
‘Nothing splashy then,’ Spikey concluded. ‘And no Savannah Tyler. Which is a bit disappointing.’ She caught the glance shot in her direction and felt stung.
‘The whooping cough vaccination story is really important, I think,’ she heard herself reply, feeling her stomach churn and cheeks flush as she stood up to him.
Aaaargh, she hated to do it, but it had to be done, or else she’d let him ride right over her, making her feel as if all the years spent working to get this job weren’t worthwhile.
‘The disease is proliferating,’ she added, trying to sound incredibly authoritative. ‘Another seven cases have been reported this morning. And all those children have already been vaccinated, so something strange is going on.’
‘But we’re not really getting to the bottom of that, are we?’ Spikey was clearly in the mood for a fight today.
He slid a weighty silver pen through his fingertips and rapped its end on the table a couple of times.
‘What’s the government saying? What about the manufacturers? Can no one shed any light on what has started all this?’
Jo, noticing that Vince was taking a deep breath and about to wade in, answered quickly: ‘We’re looking into all these aspects.
We’re asking the right questions. Obviously, when we write about vaccination side effects, we’re writing about something the Chief Medical Officer doesn’t want made public.
We’re not going to get a lot of support from the authorities or the drug companies on that. ’
‘Time for a couple of bodies from News to be helping, Jo, I think,’ came Vince’s suggestion.
‘Thanks for the offer, we’ll certainly come to you, if we need you,’ she said, as sweetly as she could, while thinking completely poisonous, how-Vince-must-die thoughts.
‘Well, it’s not the splash,’ the editor said in a way that signalled this was his final word on the subject. ‘Page three at best, probably five,’ he wrote in his notebook.
‘And Savannah?’ he added. ‘Didn’t we say she’ll be doorstepped if there still isn’t any word of her doing an interview?’
Jo could feel her heart sinking further.
‘I’m very close with this,’ she said, much more confidently than she felt.
‘If we barge in now that will be the end of it. She won’t talk, they won’t deal with us.
Just give me a bit longer. I’m optimistic and it will be worth the wait.
And if we don’t get her on her own, we can interview her with another Green candidate. Sort of a ‘Green Dream Team’ angle.’
Spikey let out a theatrically deep sigh.
‘You know no one wants to read that,’ he said.
Brutal, but fair, she couldn’t help thinking.
‘We want the scoop on Savannah,’ he added. ‘OK, you’ve got the rest of this week. But the by-election’s on Thursday next week, so this Saturday morning, News will doorstep her if you want to stay out of it,’ was his verdict.
‘Right. Leave it to me,’ was the coolest reply she could manage. She saw the smug expression on Vince’s face but then caught an encouraging smile Jeff fired in her direction and felt a little bit soothed.
Now it was Jason Caruth from Politics. Jo could barely stand him either.
He always whipped every little story up and tried to make it sound like the scoop of the year.
But his stories had a horrible habit of sinking like soufflés after a few checks on a Saturday afternoon, leaving everyone frantically searching about for things to put in the paper in their place.
‘Hold the front page,’ Jason opened with a smile. Jo hoped he was being funny: ‘Love across the party lines.’ He paused for effect, but the response was muted as nobody expected it to be true.
‘One Labour MP’s son is dating the daughter of a Tory lord,’ Jason explained.
There were chuckles at this. It was cute.
‘Nice,’ Spikey said and wrote a note on his list. ‘Nice headline, but not a splash. So, it’s Thursday morning and we await the front page. You know I don’t like that. What’s Showbiz got for us?’
Or, as Jo rephrased the question in her head: ‘Which celebrity Hollywood millionaire is opening their heart about the trauma of their recent illness – really just the time they spent in hospital recovering from cosmetic surgery – to plug their latest film?’
‘Victoria Beckham,’ the Showbiz deputy editor replied and everyone round the table groaned.
The Showbiz deputy, Elaine, a stick-thin, long-haired young lovely, drafted in from Elle magazine and doing her first conference because her boss was away for the day, looked mortally offended.
But it probably hadn’t been like this on Elle.
No, here she was dealing with the testosterone-fuelled shark tank of the newsroom.
Spikey wasn’t in the mood to discuss the showbiz agenda in depth so he merely nodded, scribbled on his pad and wound up the meeting with the words: ‘Go away everyone and get me a splash by the close of play, will you? Keep me off the pills,’ which may have been his idea of a flippant joke, but it prompted a slight mass panic as the conference attendees struggled to avoid each other’s eyes and choked back snorts of frantic laughter.
Jo got back to her desk to find a Post-It from Dominique stuck to her computer screen.
Phone Mick Townell
it ordered.
The father of the twins. She would phone him just as soon as she could. Right now, there was an entire list of calls to be made.
Vaccine manufacturers, for a start. Then the Canadian Department of Health – no, time difference, couldn’t do that till the afternoon. Green Tony. He had to get her something!
She scanned her email to see what was new. Press releases, press releases, nothing looked interesting. But then at the bottom of the list:
noreply@
That strange anonymous address again. She opened the message. This time it was a fragment of newspaper cutting that had been scanned in. She enlarged the screen so she could read the print.
Doctor who offered single injections hounded by smear attempt
was the headline. There followed a news story she remembered vaguely about a GP who allowed patients to pay for single vaccinations until he was called up before the General Medical Council on misconduct charges.
This cutting was from the end of the two-day hearing when the doctor had been exonerated, cleared of all charges.
‘I vowed I would clear my name and I have,’
Dr Paul Taylor had told reporters afterwards.
‘The medical establishment wanted rid of me by fair means or foul. They threw the book at me, but they’ve failed.’
The piece went on with background information to the case, also more about the doctor, where he lived, where he practised, how he became interested in single vaccinations.
Underneath the newspaper cutting was the simple typed line:
You should speak to him.
Plus a telephone number for his surgery.
Jo made another attempt to reply to the email but her message was sent straight back to her.
Anonymous tips – always a very suspect thing to act on. This could all be a red herring… a set-up.
She did a quick search of news stories about Dr Paul Taylor.
After a quick scan, she dialled Dr Taylor’s number.
But Dominique was waving at her. ‘Mick Townell, line three, says he really needs to talk to you,’ she explained. ‘Urgent.’
‘OK.’ Jo didn’t like the sound of this. She hung up the call she was making and picked up the other line.
‘Mick, hello it’s Jo Randall, sorry I didn’t get back to you earlier. I was in a meeting. How’s it going?’
‘Er, fine… we’re all fine…’ Then there was a loaded pause that made her feel uneasy before he added: ‘You’ve never come back to me to say how much you’d pay us for this story.’
Oh, right. It was going to be one of those conversations, where she tried to talk the interviewee out of the ludicrous amount of money they’d thought they could earn from her newspaper.
‘Mick…’ She decided not to bother with the publicising your case/donation to the charity of your choice line again. Instead, she told him: ‘We can give you ￡500 for your time. How does that sound?’
‘To be honest,’ he began, ‘it’s a bit low. The Daily Mail have phoned us—’
Oh, crappola was the only coherent thought forming in Jo’s mind. This story was about it be taken away from her by a rival. And that was not what she wanted. ‘And they’ve said ￡3,000 at least. Maybe more for a full interview and photographs.’
‘OK. Well, I can tell you that they’ve been known to exaggerate. What you’re offered before and what you get afterwards can be two different things. But anyway, have you agreed to do the story with them?’
‘Well… not exactly.’
This didn’t sound like the truth.