55. Always An Angle
That took a few seconds to register. How had they even got through her silent mode settings?
It kept ringing.
She hit answer. "Who the hell is this?"
"Ms. Rogers, this is Tania Brown from the Gaze," came a familiar, sneery voice. "You'll want to hear what I've got to say."
Sally blinked and her eyes rasped. Brown? "I don't. How did you get through to my phone?"
"Product of a misspent youth. But don't worry about that now. If you want any hope of saving your career, your colleagues, and your case, we have to move fast. I'm on the walkway outside your apartment. Come right now."
Sally opened her mouth to say something, but the line was already dead. She blinked and tried to steady herself. She thought about just going back to sleep, but the events in McMaster's office rolled back into her mind.
His deadline was 9 a.m. After that, her career in this country was over.
Was Brown here to gloat? Sally hadn't seen the video she'd made the other night yet; as far as she knew it hadn't even posted anywhere yet. Maybe this was the kicker? Drag her out at night, force some kind of blackmail situation in exchange for information?
A flash of anger cut through Sally. So the old dog had life in it still. That felt good.
She kicked the cold blankets away and stood on trembling legs, advancing to the glass. She could only see the dark of the river and the lights on the far bank, so she opened the door and stepped out onto the balcony. The concrete was icy on the soles of her feet.
Down below, a figure illuminated by a street light. Dressed in pink, her face angled up. She saw Sally and beckoned. What the hell was this?
She went back inside, dressed and headed out, taking the exterior steps rather than the elevator, so the cold night air kissed her skin. With each floor down, she felt her worn muscles loosen. At the bottom she emerged from the security gate and stepped out onto the Thames Path.
Several low pontoons splashed and scraped in their moorings at the bank. Streetlamps cast pools of light. Tania Brown was barely 20 yards away and well-lit, her shadowy colleague a few further on. She raised her arm in greeting.
Sally tucked her hands into her pockets and advanced.
"Thank you for coming, Ms. Rogers," Brown said swiftly. "I'll make this quick."
Sally stopped two yards away. It felt strange to be here, almost clandestine. "Talk fast, Tania."
"Oh I will," Brown said. "I'm on a deadline and you're the centerpiece. Our paper had some of its best circulation with that exposé on your past."
Sally felt her lip curling. "Your 'paper' called me the Bulletproof Belle. Said I was a coward, a ticking time bomb, and turned half of the NCA against me." Heat rose in her cheeks. "You know I'm about to get kicked out, is that it? You've come for one final twist of the knife?"
Brown gave a tight smile. "Bulletproof Belle. I forgot about that. It's good, but I can do one better."
"Let me save you the time. I'm not interested, Tania. I'm not for sale."
She turned and started walking back. This was a waste of breath.
"Are you sure?" Brown called after her. "Because if I've read you right, what they're doing to you now? Mayhew. McMaster. Even O'Connell? It must stick right in your craw."
Sally stopped. She didn't turn. It was tempting, but… "No. I don't want revenge. I made my bed. Now I'm going to lie in it."
She kept walking.
"What if you don't have to?"
That stopped her again. She looked back. Brown hadn't moved. "Not possible."
"Oh, it's possible." Brown took a step closer. "There's always an angle. Did you never wonder why I withheld our encounter in Rye?"
Sally's hands tightened into fists in her pockets. "So this is a shakedown? I've got nothing for you, Tania. If that means you burn what's left of me down, knock yourself out."
"Is it my turn, now?" Brown asked, then reached into her pocket and pulled out a small black object. Rectangular, a square patch glinting silver in the streetlight. "This is the only record of our argument in Rye. I swear." She pulled her arm back and hurled the device out into the Thames.
Sally watched, but it was too dark, the drive too small to track, though she'd glimpsed the item spinning through the light. It only confused her further.
"What the hell is going on here?"
"I'm not here to tear you down," Brown said. "If anything, I'm here to build you up. I think it'll play broad, since we're the paper that tried so hard to break you last time."
"What are you talking about?"
Brown held up her fist. "There's two things that drive clicks and engagement more than anything, Sally. Can I call you Sally? First, tragedy." Her index finger shot up. "The fall from grace. Scandal. Trauma. And your story had it all. Horror. Gore. Death. Cowardice. The lot."
"I'm leaving," Sally said, but didn't budge. She was transfixed, now.
"You want to take a guess what the second thing is?"
"I don't know, Tania. A failed attempt at redemption? You want to make me a martyr?"
Brown smiled. "Simpler than that. It's small boats."
Sally blinked. "What?"
"Small boat immigration on the south coast. There is nothing that riles people up more. Clicks come in their millions every time we run a piece."
Sally tried to put those pieces together. How was that relevant to her? Then the focus sharpened. The pieces began to click together. "You're talking about the Rooks?"
Brown snapped her fingers. "Precisely. The Rook brothers are traitors to this country.
They worked with the small boat gangs, making a mockery of our sovereignty.
That kind of betrayal, good old local boys getting smashed to bits by an American FBI agent in search of her redemption arc?
Well." She sighed happily. "I couldn't fabricate anything hotter. "
Sally just stared, still trying to make sense of this moment, whatever this 'offer' really was, outside her apartment in the dead of night.
"Take all the Rook nonsense, you fighting them in the mud, smashing your car into them, then spice it with the Louisiana massacre and the fact you dragged your partner off a bomb boat while your DCI was trying to pepper-spray you?
Hell, we've got a blockbuster that will drive the news cycle all week, saving your career in the process and maybe even keeping you on the case. "
Sally tried to swallow all that. It was crazy. Maybe, on some level, it began to make sense.
"It's not a teardown," she said. "You want me as a hero."
"The ass-kicking American who gets things done, rules be damned. Our readers will gobble it up. The British state, even British policing, has become sclerotic. Hamstrung, bounded, afraid. You're a breath of fresh air, and I'm going to make them love you."
"Love me?"
"You're the star player. A wild card, a maverick who plays fast and loose with the law, but someone they can believe in." Her expression took on a cold hard aspect. "Break a few eggs to get there, and they will only love you more. That's realpolitik. That's authentic. That's you."
Sally's voice came out hard and cold. "Emily Chakrati was not an egg."
Brown waved her hands. "Semantics, sweetie. Don't focus on the glass half full. The reality is, you slapped the shit out of the Rook boys for days, and that will sell papers and make shitcanning you impossible."
Sally gave nothing. "You heard Deputy McMaster gave me an ultimatum?"
"He didn't make a secret of it. Your deadline's at 9 a.m., right? Ask me, he was dropping chum in the water, hoping someone like us would bite."
"Why would he do that?"
"Who knows? Maybe he likes you. McMaster's a political animal; he knows which way the winds blow.
Sometimes, he directs the wind. Or he has us do it for him.
" She smiled. "We just need an exclusive with you to claim the narrative.
Recorded, sealed, up on the Gaze site before your deadline, and I guarantee the political pressure will evaporate.
Going after you will suddenly become toxic.
You'll become a national hero, kicking these treasonous gangsters right in the balls, hopefully solving a grotesque murder and putting a killer behind bars to boot. We all win."
Sally's mind roiled as she studied the vulture journalist before her. Could any of this actually go the way they suggested? It seemed too good to be true. It had to be. The devil only offered deals with a sting in the tail.
But she had nothing to lose.
"Un-hack my phone," she said.
"Done. It was simple, really. You need to take a closer look at your privacy settings."
"And I won't go on record. I won't snitch details of an active investigation to you. I can go on background, but that's it."
"Not enough," Brown countered. "I need something unique, or it's not an exclusive and I don't own it."
Sally's mind churned. This was already crazy, and she couldn't quite believe she was considering it. But if it kept her on the case? If it brought justice for Richter, Cagen and so many others harmed by this killer?
The choice became simple.
"Have you heard about Heraclitus?" she asked.
Brown's eyes narrowed. "Heraclit-who?"
Sally smiled. That came close to being background. Fragment B107, the eyes and ears theory. She weighed the costs and couldn't think of how sharing it would endanger the case or anyone working it. Plus, it was lurid. Vile.
"You'll love it. It's yours."
"Done."
Sally felt herself slipping but didn't care. "Just leave my contribution out of it. And get me back on that case."
"Honey, you'll be back in Dungeness by breakfast."