A Very Accidental Love Story (35 page)

Eloise was working fast and furious today though, and in the space of twenty minutes, had already covered both foreign and political; a developing story of a government minister accused of planning corruption during the property boom … One to watch and monitor closely, she told the room to much nodding and grunting, as she briskly dealt with the story and moved on.

Wish some random outsider would step in and edit my life, she found herself suddenly thinking from out of nowhere as she stretched across the table to get her next set of briefing notes. Wish some higher being would decree from some heavenly conference table exactly what I need do to solve my own personal drama, and bark instructions at me as to how best I could move on from here.

Some bleeding chance, she sighed, suddenly realising that the room had gone scarily quiet as everyone just looked at her in a semi-trance, totally unused to her drifting off into space like this.

And so, picking up the pace, she moved onto domestic. As it happened it was pretty quiet, the lead story being the justice minister issuing an outright condemnation of the scenes of violence that had accompanied an Apprentice Boys parade up in Derry the previous day. Which they’d already covered in glorious technicolour and which, in spite of Ruth’s table-thumping hissy-fit about giving it a full half page, Eloise was anxious to move on from.

‘So what’s happening in the courts today?’ she asked the table.

‘Not much, but the next few days should get a lot more newsworthy, as it happens,’ replied Joe McHugh, courts correspondent; by a mile the elder statesman of the room.

‘No hot, leggy models suing any of our rivals for defamation this week, then?’ Kian from sports joshed to sniggers round the table. ‘Pity, we need a few shots of a former Miss Ireland with mascara dribbling down her face after being cross-examined. I see the photo caption now:
Not All The Fake Tan In The World Can Help Her Now …
’

‘Shhh, give it a rest Kian. Sorry, go on Joe,’ said Eloise, scribbling furiously on the sheaf of notes in front of her.

‘Okay then, here’s my lead … Name Michael Courtney ring a bell?’ Joe casually threw across the table at her.

Everyone else in the room continued on as normal, the low hum of conversation still buzzed, the world kept turning round on its axis.

Only Eloise looked up sharply from her notes.

‘What about him?’

‘He’s finally standing trial early next week. Should be juicy. He’s been in a holding prison in Portlaoise for almost three months now while they’ve been trying to gather enough witnesses to testify against him. Which of course, is easier said than done. Might be worth a page six though or even in time, a page three. I’ll see what I can do. But for now, I can at least get you five hundred words on what’s he’s up for and what the likely sentence is. Plus, just to remind readers exactly the kind of hard-case this guy is, maybe I could do a short profile of what it was he allegedly did, that eventually landed him behind bars. What would you say to maybe four thousand words?’

Again the low background drone of chat continued. Only Eloise stayed totally focused on Joe, her face growing whiter by the minute.

‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘We’re not covering it. And no mention of what he is or isn’t allegedly up for.’

‘Now hang on Eloise, the Michael Courtney trial will be a good one, well worth …’

‘I said no,’ she almost barked back at him, then instantly wished she could claw back how irrationally snappy she’d sounded, the minute the words were out of her mouth.

‘I’m just saying, people will want reminding of what happened, for God’s sake it was well over three years ago now. I just think we should bring them back up to speed, that’s all. It was a huge page one at the time, you’ll remember. Big story.’

‘I remember perfectly well thanks, I just don’t think it’s news right now. Sorry Joe, it’s a no.’

‘Well, if we don’t, you do know that the
Chronicle
will be sure to splash it …’

‘So let them. Gimme something else instead. Right then, who’s next? Okay Kian, seeing as how you won’t shut up, let’s hear from sports.’

And the meeting moved on and almost no one appeared to notice. After all, the
Post
frequently dropped stories deemed beneath it, that were too tabloidy, not worth the attention of the paper of record. This was a fairly small story in the grand scheme of things; what could possibly have made it any different?

But directly across the table from Eloise, Seth had been quietly drinking it all in.

Scarcely able to believe his luck.

Just another few days max, he thought. That’s all he had to wait.

And then everything would be in place.

Funny, but in years to come, Eloise would look back on this surreal moment as though it hadn’t really happened to her at all, but to some other being that had stepped inside her skin for the day. It took a long, long time for her to be able to even recall, let alone process the exact sequence of events, but she was fairly sure the nightmare had all started in the early hours of the morning as she sat in her office, bashing out the following day’s editorial.

A knock on the door. Sir Gavin himself, dressed casually in a golfing jumper and trousers, like he’d unexpectedly been hauled off a golf course and reluctantly had to be dragged back into the office to deal with some emergency. Immediately an alarm bell rang in her head. What the hell was he doing here? He was rarely around in the mornings, was in fact famous for keeping as far from the building as possible until lunchtime at the earliest. Even more worrying; the T. Rexes had already had their weekly meeting/grilling/hauling over the coals with her the previous day, so why would he need to see her again so soon? And if he did want an emergency meeting with her, why not just call her and summon her up to the T. Rexes’ floor, like he normally would?

He very pointedly didn’t call her Madame Editrix either.

Very Bad Sign.

Come in, sit down, she’d managed to say calmly enough, only the slight tremble in her hands betraying just how nervous she was. Janus-like, her head was normally focused in two directions so she’d always know exactly what any unexpected meeting was about, but for once she was completely stumped.

‘We need to talk,’ he’d said, easing his considerable girth down into the chair opposite her. He had a newspaper tucked under his arm, which he faux-casually spread out across his lap. Annoyingly, he laid it out face down, so she couldn’t read what was on it, but she was pretty certain it was their rival paper,
The Chronicle.
One she made it a point of principle never to buy, read or even glance at, on the grounds that she begrudged that shower of bastards the extra business.

So what was Sir Gavin doing with the rival paper?

‘Just a little chat, one on one, you and me privately Eloise, before the board will want to see you. I felt it was the very least I could do for you.’

Oh Christ, she’d thought, this is worse than I thought. Far worse.

‘Name of Michael Courtney ring a bell with you?’

She nodded mutely, suddenly sick to her stomach. Years of instinct instantly telling her exactly where this would lead. She immediately felt like someone who knew for certain they were about to be murdered, but just couldn’t guess how. Hung, drawn or quartered.

‘It’s come to my attention …’

Via Seth Coleman of course, she thought, her quick mind jumping ahead. Who else would bring this on her?

‘… That for whatever personal reasons you may have had, you buried a story about him, Eloise. Care to comment?’

She bit her tongue, not sure where to start. He knew the truth, she was certain of that. He’d been told. And now there was nothing for it but to face the music.

‘Because,’ she stammered awkwardly, ‘I felt at this point, the story wasn’t sufficiently newsworthy.’

Weak, stupid, lame. She knew it as soon as the words tripped out of her mouth. She knew it and what’s more, so did he.

‘Not newsworthy?’ he replied, eyeballing her coolly. ‘The crime boss single-handedly responsible for most of the heroin trade in the city? Whose reign of terror takes in a spate of tiger kidnappings, bank raids, art theft, you name it … And you, as editor, decide this somehow isn’t newsworthy?’

Eloise couldn’t ever remember a time in her life when she’d felt so small. She had to at least try to defend herself, but what to say?

‘As I say, Sir Gavin,’ she said weakly, her voice sounding so faint it was as if it was coming from another room, ‘I had every intention of monitoring it in a few weeks’ time, as the trial progressed, but at this point, felt that there was little to be gained from covering it.’

‘So, no connection at all with the fact that Michael Courtney just happens to be the same boss your close friend Jake Keane worked for? And even more disturbingly I now hear, actually served a prison sentence for?’

Oh Christ, she thought, physically starting to get nauseous, he
really
knows. Knows everything. But if Seth had been the one to rat her out, then who told him in the first place? Her mind raced, working backwards at the speed of light.

And then suddenly it all fitted. Jim Kelly, the bloody Snoop Dog himself, that’s how. Who else could possibly have that information? Wasn’t that how she’d found out about Jake in the first place for herself? And what could have been easier for Seth Coleman than to prise it out of him behind her back?

Now she suddenly felt weak at the enormity of what hit her. Because she hadn’t a leg to stand on here. She knew it, Sir Gavin knew it; it was official. Game over. She’d fucked up, royally fucked up. And all for what? For a man who wouldn’t return her calls, who’d effectively vanished into thin air and who it was doubtful she’d ever even see again.

But if she thought she’d heard the worst of it, she was very much mistaken.

‘And then, as if things weren’t looking bad enough for you,’ said Sir Gavin, picking up
The Chronicle
from his lap and tossing it across the desk to her, ‘this was brought to my attention at my golf club this morning by a colleague, who, let’s just say, happened to recognise a familiar face from the directors’ weekend.’

Christ, what now? Eloise thought, greedily taking the paper from him and doing a lightning-quick scan of the front page. But there was nothing there. She speed-read through the headlines again, in case she’d missed something, but no, nothing. Basically just a rehash of what the
Post
had already run with, lazy shower of unimaginative hacks, she found herself angrily cursing them.

‘Turn to page five,’ said Sir Gavin calmly, almost passively, fully aware that he held whatever career still lay ahead for her in the palm of his hand, but chose to wear this power lightly.

Eloise did as he asked, and there it was.

Her worst nightmare come to light. Exactly what she’d tried to bury in the first place. In black and white, for all the world to see.

As usual, Joe McHugh, her court correspondent, had been on the money. She hadn’t run with it, so therefore her rivals had.

Beside a half page photo of Michael Courtney and a full exposé on the charges police were levelling against him, was a two-inch banner headline that screamed, ‘
AND MEET THE COHORTS WHO LOYALLY SERVED HIM
’.

Five names were listed below, but it was only when she saw the very last one that her heart physically twisted in her ribcage.

‘… the youngest of his henchmen, convicted of driving the getaway van during the 2010 raid on a post office in Arklow, Jake Keane. Keane, 31, however, operates under many aliases and was recently released on parole from Wheatfield prison …’

It got worse.

There was a photo of Jake too, albeit a bad one. Clearly a police mugshot taken under fluorescent strip lights, one of those incriminating photos that could manage to make anyone look like they’d just massacred a roomful of orphans.

‘So Eloise, my obvious question to you is,’ said Sir Gavin, his round, florid face puffed scarlet with … what exactly? Mortification? Embarrassment? Hard to tell. ‘is exactly how long do you think it will take for the connection between Jake Keane and you to be traced? And what then? You do understand, it’s the reputation of this paper that I have a sacred duty to uphold.’

She couldn’t meet his gaze, but felt his eyes burning into her and knew she’d have to come out with something, however pitiful. Suddenly she was aware of her mouth moving but without necessarily finding the sound to come out of it. Pointless for her to protest that Jake had been guilty of nothing more than weakness and being unable to say no to a bad crowd he’d got in with when he was barely a teenager. Pointless to try and explain that he’d done the crime, done the time and had paid his debts to society.

She wasn’t stupid; all those long months ago, when she first discovered he was serving time in Wheatfield, she’d made precisely the same assumptions that everyone else was probably making right now. Initially she’d been petrified, determined never to allow Lily within ten feet of a convicted criminal. She’d had him down as a hardened serial offender, an unreformed bad boy who’d more than likely nick the credit cards and car keys out of her handbag if she ever was reckless enough to come into contact with him.

But all that had changed in a single phone call. She’d spoken to the prison governor who’d put her completely straight about Jake. He’d patiently gone through Jake’s file with her and explained that this guy wasn’t like any of the others. Yes, he’d got himself involved in one job for Michael Courtney, but as a driver, nothing more sinister. He was an accessory, a first-time offender who’d been tried and found guilty and was now deeply repentant for what he’d done and highly unlikely ever to reoffend. He’d made a stupid mistake, had fallen in with a dodgy crowd who he’d borrowed money from, and their way for holding him to that debt was to coerce him into acting as their driver for that one job. If you were ever to meet with him, the governor patiently explained to Eloise, you’d see what I mean. This wasn’t your usual low-rent criminal; Jake genuinely had been in the wrong place at the wrong time and had now most definitely learned his lesson, the hard way.