Jacob was pissed off. He knew that lawyer tart, Beck, in Darwin, was stuffing him around. Once upon a time she had been only too happy to take his good money for scraps of information. And, largely because of her, he had made it big time, the journalist that everyone was talking about.
But now she seemed to have got cold feet. When he rang her work receptionist, asking to talk to her, she was always busy and never returned his calls. When he tried to ring her mobile it went to message unanswered, when he emailed her private email she never replied. He knew he could not use her government work email – way too dangerous for him and her if it was shown he was trying to pervert the course of justice.
He thought of upping the ante, doing something more direct with her work to scare the pants of her, perhaps leaving a message with her secretary that Jacob Shoesmith a journalist from the London’s Fleet Street needed to talk to her urgently about the Susan MacDonald case.
That would really put a scare into her. He also thought about his threat to send the bank deposit slip for the most recent sum he had paid her bank through to her boss in the mail with a ‘please explain’, anonymous of course. But that was just a threat. She would lose her job if anyone followed that trail and the goose laying golden eggs in the Susan story would stop laying.
Plus he had enjoyed his nights with her when he visited Darwin, she was only a mediocre sort to look at, good body but face a bit angular for his taste, but she was really hungry for sex when he got her between the sheets, her other recent bonks had obviously been limited with a sick mother. So he recalled the two nights spent with her as memorably good, they had turned each other on big time, perhaps his black body made her horny, her milky white thighs certainly had that effect on him. It would be nice to do it again at least one more time.
But, for now, she needed to deliver something. He had money waiting to send her. But she needed to use inside information to reopen the trail on the Crocodile Girl which had gone cold. He licked his lips, savoring finding that Susan tart, sticking a camera in her face as they brought her back to jail.
It had been far and away the biggest story he had ever broken. He had followed it from the start, from when they unearthed those clues saying the crocodile was not the real killer. The crocodile had only come along after the bloke was dead, finishing the murderer’s work. Instead it had come out that someone with a girl sized footprint had finished of that Australian Outback dude, Vincent Mark Bassingham, whacking him on the side of the head with a big lump of wood and dragging him to the water. This person obviously expected the crocodiles to do the rest and leave no trace. So he knew from the start she was as guilty as hell the way she had deliberately tried to hide the evidence. No lovers tiff this, but rather a cold and calculated murder from a clever but thoroughly nasty little bitch.
He had to give it to her; she was a great actress, deserving an Academy Award for her Saint Susan role in the murder trial. She had barely spoken, silence and beauty were such effective weapons when put together, playing the martyr image. But he had cracked that open, with a bit of help from the Darwin girl, Beck. He found that she spread herself around pretty well, that was her past history. Now she must have moved on to a newbie. Pity she and Vic had not stuck, he was sure he could have found Susan through him if he knew where she was. But he had seen Vic’s plane ticket for Canada, 18 months or so after Susan vanished. Jacob’s sources had told him the word was that Vic was all broken up.
A bit after Vic’s going abroad, rumors had surfaced about Susan having been found in Queensland. Beck had fed this rumor to Jacob, back when she was talking to him. She told of a vague story of a person who looked just like her working in a town up north. So he had jumped on a plane to there and spent a month looking around for anything that was real. He checked out the obvious places, Cairns, Townsville, he went to the smaller places and resorts, checking out all the shops and bars and businesses, flashing her photo and cash around and telling that he would pay well if anyone knew where she was. He had been pretty well everywhere except the blackfella places where no one in their right mind would go. And he had found zip.
But still the rumors bubbled around. When she vanished she was too pregnant for an abortion. A nurse at the hospital told him it was twins. He imagined her now with two small children. She should be easy to find.
He remembered the adrenalin rush from that time almost two years ago when his piece, ‘The Two Faces of Susan Emily MacDonald’, had been far and away the highest rating story of the English tabloids. Then Beck had told him about her going by her middle name. He thought that was both weird and a bit silly, as if by taking that name she could vanish.
Back then he got part of his story came from an earlier boyfriend, Edward, definitely still a bit smitten by her. Edward told Jacob the story of how she had dumped him and how she was a party girl, always willing to try it on with new men. To add to that he had the story of her shagging both the outback bloke, Vincent, Mark B or whatever and at the same time that rich dude, David. Then, the instant she was out of jail on bail, Beck told him she was shagging the helicopter pilot. At that point he knew he had gold, a true English tart, giving plenty on her back but quick to put the knife in when she no longer wanted it.
Not to mention the way she proudly carried that belly full of arms and legs from her contest, who knows whose it really was, perhaps one each to two fathers, seeing as the nurse also told her they were a girl and boy, not identical. The brats in her belly did not come from being a good girl who only went to church. So, when it was added to the crocodile killer, it was a story of sensation made in heaven. It had pushed him right to the top. He loved being in that place where his name was on everyone’s lips. But then it slowly slid away. As it did he slowly slid down the ratings and pay scales.
Now he had to make the story come alive again, it would be even bigger if he could find her now, particularly after all the Saint Susan TV publicity her red headed friend had done last year. He knew, if he could find a way to get that Beck bitch to fill him in on what she knew, he could crack it. Perhaps he should double the offer to twenty big ones. He thought about it for a minute. Yes, he was sure that would bring her round. He knew she needed a lot more cash for her mother’s treatment. Beck may not want to talk to him but her mother’s part time nurse had no such scruples. She had told him about the need for a new wheelchair for ten big ones. So it stood to reason that if she needed that cash just for one thing then she would need more cash for other things as well.
So she must be playing hard to get to put up the price. He needed to get out there and get in her face. Nothing like more pillow talk, after a good fuck, to bring her around. Being there in person would make it very hard for her to refuse him, either the money or the sex.
Having decided how to move it along he booked his flight to Darwin for next week. It was a small town and Beck would be easy to catch up to. Who knows, after he bonked her, paid her and got what she knew, he could spend a couple more weeks working all those Queensland towns again himself, if he talked to enough people and threw plenty of cash around he would surely dig something up.
That afternoon he got an OK from his boss for a ten thousand pound cash advance to pay his source, and another five for his own expenses for the trip he had booked. His boss was as hungry as him for a new big splash, but his patience was starting to wear thin.
“I don’t mind paying for results and you certainly delivered in spades a year or two ago on this one. But you have nothing to show for the money we have laid out since then. It is time to move on if this does not pan out. Plenty of local stories in our part of the world that you need to put a bit more effort into or your pay packet will take a haircut at your next performance review.
“So I am cutting you slack for a month to go and run this to ground. But, if it does not happen, you better find some other big stories while you are out there, or perhaps only a job at half pay or a new job will be in the offing.”
Jacob could feel his ears burning as he walked outside. With all the trouble that Rupert M and the other big boys had had over the last couple years it was getting harder and harder to use underground sources to crack the big ones in England. He was done with piss poor jobs, with a thousand hopefuls looking over his shoulder and waiting for him to trip and fall.
That was why he had decided for cash this time; if it blew up he wanted no money trail back to him and an inquiry. With a month in Australia, if he could live sensibly, this big wad of expenses would leave enough to pay Beck well and still leave him free to chase down other stories. His boss was right; he needed to find other things to pursue even if this panned out. No one could live forever on one story. He needed to dig into the other girls that were part of this, perhaps some new trails and sensations there.
The coverage on TV of this story had been very soft and lovey-dovey, the making of a new bunch of martyrs. That was fine and all, but what the public most hungered for was raunchy, out there stories; the requisite mix of sex, violence, horror and tragedy. They were his staple fare, goodies got boring.
As he walked home he thought how he had risen from his own humble beginnings, a black kid, with a Jamaican mum and mixed up north African bits on the other side, it was a muddled whether Egyptian, Moroccan or Ethiopian was dominant, but he got a bit of it all.
So his rise from a promising school student to a cadetship with a tabloid daily then to a journalist in his own right had been a big deal in his family. When he had risen to the top of the pool, the year before last, that had been a really big deal. He had spent his large income freely to impress family and friends. Now it was hard to think about taking a drop back to being another middle level journalist, who made a living – just.
The funny thing was when he had dug quite bit into the bloke Vic’s background, the black kid from a town camp made good as a helicopter pilot and then running his own show, had felt a sort of brotherhood with him. So, when Vic seemed desperate to shack up with the Susan witch-bitch after his miraculous survival, Jacob felt protective of him. Perhaps that had a small bit to do with the hard-ball way he had decided to play this girl’s story, leaving no room in his mind for sympathy for her.
He could let such things as kindness get in the way; he had to look after himself to stay as number one super trash digger in the tough journo game.