Free Lethal Profit by Alex Blackmore Page B

uncharacteristically panicky and out of control in a way she had not allowed herself to feel for many years. She thought about March. She wondered if he was playing games with her but how on earth could he have gotten hold of Jackson’s phone? She had thought again about their encounter – how he had called her to set it up; how he seemed already to know where she was staying. But these texts didn’t seem to match his bulldozer style. Other than March, Leon and Valerie she knew no one in this vast city. But then the texts could be coming from anywhere.

SEVEN
    T ERRY D OWLER SAID GOODBYE TO S OPHIE and climbed into the waiting taxi. He was a journalist who loved a good sensation. There had been a time in his life when he had wanted desperately to be a critical, intellectual success, to be able to produce highbrow, wordy pieces on politics, art and culture, but the opportunities had always passed him by. His parents owned a fish shop in Essex, he hadn’t been to a redbrick university and he’d never even had a whiff of the old boys’ network, let alone joined it. Although he’d certainly seen it in action – the upstarts fresh from their Oxbridge quads waltzing into the newspaper, bypassing the open-plan ‘pit’ where he and the other drones sat, ferreting out stories for a byline above a two-paragraph feature on one of the lost pages between the sport and the classifieds. If Terry and his ilk ever found a story really worth writing it was taken away from them and given to one of the office occupiers. Terry had grown more resentful as the years had gone by and he’d taken every opportunity to stick one to the posh boys and the intellectuals. When the offer of a move to a red top had come in, he’d jumped at the chance but it hadn’t eased the bitterness he felt at being kept so low by his old employers. Now he spent his days using his web of contacts to get him the latest dirt on footballers’ affairs, pop stars’ breakdowns and politicians’ dirty little secrets. And he’d made himself a good name. For a tabloid hack.
    That morning one of his sources had come to him with a story so unbelievable he’d told them to stop wasting his time. That was before they produced an eye-witness source of their own – a French woman named Sophie, who had a conspiracy theory about the death of a kid called Jackson Scott. Terry had jumped straight on a train to Paris and spent the afternoon getting the full story, including an interview with the woman in question. Not a bad-looking blonde as it happened, so it had been a pretty pleasant way to spend a couple of hours. Now, equipped with the sound recording on his iPhone as well as the photos he’d taken, he was on his way back to the Eurostar terminal to get everything to his editor to write up for the next day’s paper.
    â€˜Geoff, it’s Terry.’
    â€˜Where the hell are you, Terry? We’ve got two Premiership boys playing away from home again and we need someone on the story before the lawyers get an injunction.’
    â€˜I’m in Paris.’
    â€˜Paris? What the fuck are you doing there?’
    â€˜I’ve got something, Geoff. It’s big. Really big. I’ve been doing an interview, I’ve got everything we need. No other paper has this story, we’ll be the first to break it.’
    Terry could hear the hesitation on the other end of the line. Geoff was clearly angry that he’d inexplicably disappeared abroad on the company’s time and expense account, but the temptation of the story was winning him over.
    â€˜What have you got?’
    â€˜I can’t say,’ Terry replied quickly into his phone as he climbed out of a taxi in front of the Gare du Nord. ‘I don’t know who might be listening. Honestly, Geoff, this is massive. It’s front page broadsheet, but these people don’t trust anyone they don’t know. I got this through a friend