7

Judith strode into Alex Carter’s office and, with a flourish, presented him with a four-page article. Wearing a new, black, wrap skirt which revealed rather more of her legs than other garments in her wardrobe, she leaned across his desk at a particular angle so that her womanly assets, delectable in Wonderbra, were presented to him at eye level.

‘Two thousand incisive words on the information vending industry,’ she announced.

For a moment, Carter was uncharacteristically bedazed. Then he leaned back in his chair and regarded her carefully before saying, ‘My, my! We have turned over a new leaf.’

Judith shrugged. ‘You know the old saying, “If you can’t take the heat, don’t stay in the kitchen.”’ She cocked her head. ‘I’m staying.’

‘I’m pleased you’ve taken my comments on board.’ There was a hesitance in Carter’s voice, as though he half suspected her of setting him up. ‘Delighted, in fact.’

‘It’s already paying dividends,’ she responded encouragingly.

‘Indeed, it is.’

Judith had had five bylined features published in the past three weeks. She hadn’t actually originated them, of course; she’d got a couple of PR spinners to churn out articles, which she redrafted, quoting a few extra sources, and, tra-lah, presented Carter with his precious ‘output’.

Now Carter looked her up and down with undisguised relish. ‘I can see you’re working your way to becoming a highly valued member of the City desk,’ he grinned.

She returned the smile, amused by the transparency of it all. ‘I don’t just want to be valued,’ she told him, running her hand down her thigh, ‘I want to be the best.’

Carter’s tongue flicked briefly across his lower lip. ‘No harm in setting high goals,’ he told her.

Strutting her way across the crowded newsroom, she headed towards her desk. Her new wardrobe had provoked mixed reactions from her colleagues, from bewildered disbelief to pure venom in the case of Alison MacLean, who’d slipped in the City Editor’s ratings ever since Judith had adopted her new approach. In fact, Ali darling had cornered her in the Ladies’ a fortnight before, after the first outing of her wrap skirt.

‘You may think you’re getting ahead,’ Alison had murmured poisonously, her own mini so high it barely covered her crotch, ‘but let me warn you, as a friend, you’re playing a dangerous game. Alex is fickle as fickle can be. You’re flavour of the month one minute, then he dumps you the next.’

‘Really?’ Judith supposed she should feel sorry for her colleague, but pity was an emotion hard to feel with a long, red talon wagging in your face. ‘How long do you think I’ve got?’ she asked, wide-eyed.

‘Got?’

‘As flavour of the month. I mean, are we talking literally here?’

Alison was caught off guard by this line of questioning. She stepped back. ‘One month. Maybe two.’

‘Oh, well. That’s all right then.’ Judith was casual.

An expression of deep puzzlement passed over Alison’s features.

‘That’s all I need,’ Judith told her.

‘Why?’ Alison was suspicious. ‘Are you leaving?’

‘Leaving?’ Judith snorted. ‘I’m not leaving, I’m getting promoted!’

Alison shook her head with an expression of self-righteous indignation. ‘You know, you’re even more arrogant than I gave you credit for,’ she told Judith. ‘You’re more likely to be fired than promoted.’

‘Well, if I am fired,’ Judith delivered a withering glance in the direction of Alison’s mini, ‘at least I’ll have more than a fanny pelmet to fall back on.’

Back at her desk, she removed the plastic wallet containing the Jacob Strauss investigations from her handbag. In the end, she hadn’t been able to resist her journalistic impulse to follow up this story. She had decided to proceed – but with extreme caution. She was keeping her notes on disk – she certainly wasn’t risking leaving them on any computer. When she’d told Alison MacLean that two months was all she needed, she hadn’t been joking. That was as long as she’d given herself to finish her investigations; she couldn’t keep up this charade with Carter for ever. The idea of doing an Alison to buy time and keep Carter off her back had come up over a few pints with Ted Gilmour. She suspected Ted had his own motives for urging her in the direction of her new wardrobe, but that was another story. The point was, for the past three weeks, since her meeting with Denise Caville, she’d been editing press releases and flashing plenty of cleavage, and Alex Carter had been sweet as pie, with not a harsh word exchanged. For the moment, at least, her position on the City desk was secured.

In the meantime, having double-checked Merlin’s sources, she now had enough to run a story that would be the lead business piece of the week. It would no doubt be picked up by the US media and turn into an even bigger story in America, where Jacob Strauss was so much better known.

But Judith had already decided against that course. Apart from its being lazy journalism, every instinct told her that Jacob Strauss’s rapacious greed and managerial incompetence hadn’t come to an abrupt end once he’d joined Starwear. The full might of Starwear’s promotional machinery may have kept his activities concealed, but that didn’t mean there weren’t other ways of getting to the truth.

Besides, Judith reckoned she knew where to look. When Jacob Strauss joined Starwear, and until his recent appointment as CEO, his title had been President of Starwear’s International Division. At the time he’d been brought on board, Starwear divided its activities into three geographic territories – America, Europe and ‘International’. It was this latter category to which Jacob had been assigned, and Judith wondered if Nathan had put Jacob into International on the basis that it was where he could do least harm. Five years before, International Division had comprised a miscellaneous assortment of factories and markets, including developed countries such as Japan and Australia, as well as the developing territories of India, Thailand and Indonesia.

As manufacturers the world over began the stampede to set up factories in developing countries, where labour was significantly cheaper than anywhere else, Starwear’s International Division suddenly acquired a new importance; a decision was taken by the Starwear Board to shift as much production of Starwear products into the developing world as possible. The trouble was, few of the existing production plants in developing countries were equipped for huge production volumes. Which was where the Quantum Change programme came in. Calling in Forbes, the management consultants, Jacob Strauss had asked them to come up with a way to transform Starwear’s production processes, as quickly and painlessly as possible. Forbes had toured all the Starwear sites involved and retreated to their cerebral majesty before presenting a two-inch-thick document which gave detailed recommendations on what ought to be done. The figures showing production improvements looked impressive.

Quantum Change had been duly implemented. And for a worrying few months afterwards, it looked as though the huge costs of the multi-country operation had been entirely wasted. Far from sharp increases in productivity, there was actually an overall decline, with labour problems and mechanical breakdowns temporarily closing down some of the factories. Behind the scenes, Judith learned from a contact at Forbes, there had been furious rows between senior Forbes consultants and Jacob Strauss, with both sides blaming the other for the potential catastrophe threatening not just International Division, but the whole of Starwear. Three shadowy off-shore companies, Zillion, Kraton and Quivelle, had been buying up Starwear shares in huge numbers. They were obvious front operations – but no one knew for whom. Judith had discovered all three were incorporated in the Isle of Man and owned by Swiss-based trusts – their true ownership was impenetrable. Jacob Strauss had been paranoid that Ed Snyder, a sportswear rival and former Starwear director who already held substantial stock, was about to mount a hostile takeover.

For a period of several months, Jacob Strauss disappeared from public view, leaving Nathan to reassure Wall Street and the City that Quantum Change ‘teething problems’ would soon be dealt with. And, after a worrying transition period, true enough, the turnaround occurred. International Division came back from the brink to triumph. Not only were Forbes’s upbeat productivity forecasts met – they were comfortably exceeded. Fears of takeover abated and Jacob Strauss now emerged as the man who had transformed Starwear International, and Quantum Change was regarded as the model of future sportswear manufacturing.

It was about a year later that, for the first and only time, rumours started circulating about Starwear and child labour. At first, the story had been confined to gossip on the trading floors and second-hand sources. Then a tabloid newspaper had run a story that was careful not to accuse Starwear directly, but did report on the rumours about ‘a major sportswear manufacturer’. It was at that point that Nathan Strauss had insisted Starwear respond to the whispering campaign before it started gaining any credence. Judith had read the media statement issued by Nathan, which said he was outraged by the suggestions of employment practices that ran completely against all that Starwear stood for. She had also watched an interview of Nathan, over and over. Run by Bloomberg news service at the time of the press release, the high point of the interview showed Nathan delivering his message to the camera with rabbinical severity: ‘Starwear has never used child labour,’ he declared, ‘and never would use child labour. The very idea of it is an abomination. Those who are spreading these lies, and bearing false witness, will have the full weight of the law to answer to.’

He couldn’t have put it any plainer. And his statement had the desired effect: there had never been another word about the child labour issue. Judith was struck by the lack of curiosity on the part of analysts and journalists about why it was that Quantum Change had over-delivered on even its own heady forecasts. Had it under-delivered, of course, there would have been close questioning. Flaws would have been found, blame would have been attributed, heads would have rolled. But over-delivery was great for profits and, so long as it continued, everyone seemed happy to go along with the explanation that it was all because of Jay Strauss and his Quantum Change programme.

Judith decided she needed to know more about Quantum Change, and confidentially phoned Jo Ayreshaw, her contact at Forbes, and formerly one of her brightest contemporaries at Oxford. Jo quickly told her that Forbes couldn’t hand over any information about Starwear for which the company hadn’t given formal approval. But, she also said, the Quantum Change model had proved to be such a success that Terry Derwent, the Forbes director in charge of the programme, had done the rounds of several business schools, lecturing on what had been achieved for Starwear, with the company’s full approval. As a result, there was already detailed information about Quantum Change available.

A trip to City University, one of the business schools Derwent had visited, and a search of the library, soon produced a number of documents which Judith, after standing in the library’s interminable photocopying queues, eventually took away with her and studied in painstaking detail. At the same time as pursuing this line of investigation, Judith had also tried the official channels. She’d telephoned about half a dozen different people at Starwear, under the guise of researching a straight piece on Change Management. She had to exercise extra care not to arouse any suspicions, she knew, but the change management people in London, the Starwear International headquarters in New York, the operations divisions of Starwear in India and Thailand and Indonesia had all given her the same response: all journalist calls are to be referred to our PR agency. And the agency looking after Starwear in London? Lombard.

In the five years she’d been a national journalist, Judith knew enough about Lombard, both directly and through reputation, to give the agency a wide berth. Not because Lombard couldn’t be relied upon to produce a highly sanitised version of reality for her to write up. It was just that, once having come to the attention of the Starwear account handler at Lombard, she’d never hear the last of it. Lomboids had a reputation for relentlessness without equal. Any journalist expressing the remotest interest in a client would be chased and harried and leaned upon until the right form of words appeared in the newspaper. And if the right form of words didn’t appear, then the future prospects of a journalist getting access to any of Lombard’s many other blue-chip clients were slim, to say the least.

It wasn’t future access that concerned Judith right now. It was the far more imminent prospect of harassment. She had no desire to have to fend off telephone calls from silver-tongued PR-ettes, trying to merchandise their version of events. If they so much as suspected that her line on Starwear was going to be less than positive, they’d start jumping, not only on her, but on Alex Carter too – and, while she carried out her investigations, that was a complication she could well do without.

She was still trying to work out how to get a door at Starwear to open when, to her enormous surprise, she had received a call from the secretary of none other than Mark Hunter, Operations Director of Starwear International. Mr Hunter understood she had been making enquiries about the Quantum Change programme; would she care to visit Starwear’s Cavendish Square headquarters, next time Mr Hunter was in town, for a full briefing?

Judith collected up the plastic wallet of carefully selected Quantum Change documents she had removed from her handbag, slipped them in her briefcase, and made her way across the noisy newsroom. Having got Alex Carter off her back, at least for the moment, she could disappear off to meetings without any questions being asked. Downstairs, she made her way out of The Herald building, walked up to the main road, and had to wait only a few minutes before flagging down a taxi. ‘Cavendish Square,’ she told the driver.

If it was important to make sure that Lombard didn’t get wind of her investigation, she reckoned, it was even more important to keep Alex Carter in the dark. As the black cab purred its way along the Embankment, she thought how, even in these miniskirted, Press Release-driven times, she was still skating on thin ice with Carter. He could turn on her at any moment – Alison MacLean had been right about that. If it suited Carter, she could suddenly find herself consigned to the supplements desk without explanation. If Carter benefited, she could arrive at work one day to find her investigation of Jacob Strauss had been hijacked. Eager though she was to share her discoveries and suspicions, and to have the benefit of someone else’s perspective, she realised that, right now, silence was her best counsel.

Starwear’s Cavendish Square headquarters were a model of restrained elegance. Established by Nathan Strauss, the global high command for Starwear was accommodated in a magnificent Georgian building,decorated with an understated sophistication which was a testament to the former Chief Executive’s taste – and that of his wife’s. Judith was surprised to find that Starwear’s entire executive offices comprised just three floors – and quickly realised that the company’s huge operational staff must be based wherever the organisation had factories or distribution hubs.

It wasn’t long after arriving that she was shown up a sweeping staircase, decorated in stately-home style with huge oil paintings, to a meeting room in which two dark-suited men were waiting. Mark Hunter was tall, broad-shouldered and blond-haired, the whiteness of his shirt seeming to emphasise the darkness of his tan. Greeting her with a slow, Southern accent, he radiated laid-back confidence. With him, short and bespectacled, was Dr John Eaglesham, Vice-President of Operational Planning and, on first impressions, thought Judith, clearly a propeller head.

It was only a few minutes before the two of them had slipped into the Mark and Dr John routine, a presentation of Starwear’s Quantum Change programme which they’d evidently delivered many times before. It began with a six-minute corporate video, showing various Starwear factories in the developing world, before and after the ‘QC’ programme – a distinction which was nothing if not impressive. That was followed by ten minutes of Dr John, explaining the rationale for the programme, and explaining how it had been implemented, with the aid of trade-off analyses, flow charts and performance models. Then Mark Hunter, whose handsome good looks were, Judith suspected, matched by an extremely well-developed ego, talked about the impact of Quantum Change on Starwear as a brand, and how it made the company virtually impregnable in the market.

It was a slick performance, the video imagery well supported with detailed documentation, and all delivered with an upbeat, almost evangelical zeal which left no doubt that QC was the best thing that had happened to Starwear in recent years. Judith absorbed all this, and when invited to ask questions afterwards, followed up on some of the aspects mentioned in the video before Mark Hunter handed over a VHS copy for her file. While she was interested, it wasn’t the reason she’d come here today. But she knew what game was being played – she was every bit as capable of playing it herself. Which was why she declined to reveal her cards when asked if she had any questions.

It was only after they’d finished with questions and had spent a few minutes informally chatting about the manufacturing industry in Britain that Judith asked, while sweeping her papers up into her briefcase, ‘By the way, am I right in thinking your QC factory in India has eight production lines?’

Both men nodded in unison. ‘Correct,’ replied Hunter.

‘And the India income figure in the latest Starwear Annual Report – that’s the product of your QC factory in Jaipur, is it?’

‘The Jaipur plant is our only operation in India,’ Dr John nodded.

Judith clicked in the catches of her briefcase, lifted it off the table, and paused, about to leave. ‘It’s just that I was reading a Forbes report about Quantum Change, and it said the maximum output of any QC production line is 1,200 units an hour, or 9,600 across all eight lines. But your annual report suggests an output nearly double that.’

Hunter didn’t hesitate. ‘Well the Jaipur plant has exceeded all expectations.’

Judith noted the furrowed brow of Dr John Eaglesham. She nodded. ‘So I understand. But double the output? Forbes must have got it badly wrong to have underestimated—’

‘Forbes’s forecasts weren’t that far off,’ Eaglesham interjected. Then, looking up at Hunter, ‘There were other factors which inflated the income figure for India in the latest report.’

‘Yeah,’ Hunter was nodding now, ‘proceeds of a disposal.’

‘Oh?’ Judith nodded for him to go on.

‘When we originally bought Hydrabull Textiles, to get into India, we acquired a whole load of stuff that was peripheral to our main business. Last year we sold off some property.’

Judith was heading towards the door. ‘Must have been quite a big sprawl.’

Hunter was running fingers through his hair. ‘I guess. It was some … office block in Delhi.’

Five minutes later, Dr John Eaglesham regarded his colleague across the room with a furious expression. ‘Why in Christ’s name did you say that?’

‘Don’t get heavy with me, John. You were doing the prompting.’

‘Prompting about a disposal, not stuff about an office block.’

Hunter shook his head. ‘I couldn’t just say “a disposal” and not tell her what it was.’

‘I thought the plan was that we’d say we’d get back to people—’

‘If I said I’d get back to her, she’d have got suspicious. Why wouldn’t I know about the disposal of a ten-million-pound asset?’

Eaglesham turned and stared out of a window overlooking Cavendish Square. After a pause he said, ‘We’d better tell Elliott North. Damage containment.’

‘I don’t think that’s such a good idea.’

‘Not for you, maybe.’

Mark Hunter’s position as Vice-President of Operations had been tenuous ever since the Forbes débâcle. The last thing he needed now was for Jacob Strauss to get wind of the fact that he’d mishandled the briefing of a potentially difficult investigative journalist.

Striding over to Eaglesham, Hunter seized his colleague by the shoulder and wrenched him round so that they were facing each other. ‘You listen,’ he seized him by both shoulders and shook him as he spoke in a furious, choked voice, ‘don’t even think of threatening me. If it wasn’t for me, you’d still be number-crunching at Deloitte’s. I put you where you are. I made you! And if I go down I’ll make fucking sure you come down with me.’

Eaglesham’s face had gone suddenly ashen as Hunter held him, like some quaking prey, in his powerful grip, before he threw him back against the boardroom wall with a thud.

After a few moments, Eaglesham pulled himself up from the wall with as much dignity as he could muster, straightening his skewed spectacles and fumbling with his tie. He looked aghast in the full force of Hunter’s fiery resentment.

‘Anyway,’ Hunter towered over him, ‘how’s she going to find out?’

To doctors and the nursing staff of The Monastery, Claude Bonning was a popular and much-admired figure. A regular visitor, every Wednesday, come rain or shine, to the private nursing home for the mentally ill, the President of Family First would come to spend time with his sister Jeannie who had been at The Monastery for longer than nearly all its serving staff. Claude had brought her over from Montreal more than twenty years earlier. The poor dear had completely lost her mind and her memory – except for brief glimpses of her early childhood in Montreal, which would appear as sharp images through the mists, she had no idea where she was or how long she’d been there.

That particular Wednesday in early October, he arrived at four p.m., as usual, driving his car past the sweeping lawns and rhododendron borders, towards the magnificent, mock-Gothic building, before making his way inside, and down the familiar passage to Jeannie’s ward. It was at the front of the building, overlooking the lawns and their magnificent flower borders, vibrant with autumn colour. Jeannie was sitting staring vacantly out of the window, a TV soap blaring in the background.

‘Hello, my dear.’ He kissed her on the cheek.

‘Oh, hello.’ She looked up at him. ‘Have you come to take me for my walk?’

‘Of course I have.’

He often wondered how much she recognised him; if she knew who he was. He wondered if she’d know him at all if he went away for two or three months. But it was too depressing a subject to dwell on, so he would focus only on the here and now.

‘Would you like to walk with me today, or go in a wheelchair?’

‘I think the wheelchair – it’s such a nice day.’

‘Yes, isn’t it.’

Having helped her into the wheelchair, he manoeuvred her out through the French doors and on to the path which wended its way through the beautifully landscaped gardens. It was so peaceful out here in the gardens. Every time he visited her he couldn’t avoid the irony of his own observation that it was a wonderful place to think – but thinking was the one thing of which Jeannie was completely incapable.

As he pushed her along the pathway, the slanting rays of an autumn sun were warm on his face.

‘Well, Jeannie,’ he told her after a while, ‘it’s caught up on me, at last.’

It had been a possibility from the start, of course, and in the early days when he’d just started seeing Launa, his wife, the problem had preoccupied him greatly. But the longer he’d been married to Launa – and they’d just celebrated their eighteenth anniversary – the more remote the possibility seemed. Then the call from Elliott North, a bolt out of the blue which brought it all back into horrifying definition.

‘I always hoped it would be our little secret – just you and Launa and me. And Him upstairs, of course,’ he chuckled sadly, pushing the chair through an arch in a hedge and out to where the gardens were wilder, less constrained.

‘I can’t think how it could have come out. They must have investigated me, looked into things. But you know, my darling, I still think I did the right thing. There was no reason anyone needed to know you’re my wife. You made me promise, when we married, never to leave you, and it’s a promise I’ve always kept. Launa understood. She wasn’t worried; she cares for you too.’

Jeannie began humming the theme tune from the TV soap that had been on in her room.

‘But there are people who wouldn’t understand. They wouldn’t see past the legalities. And in my position with Family First, it’s not just the personal and professional disgrace, it’s the organisation I’m worried about too. How would it recover? I can see the headlines now, “Bigamist”. That’s the word they’d use.’

They came to a park bench, where he parked the wheelchair and sat down, taking one of her hands between his own.

‘I didn’t see what I could do, except go along with them,’ he said. ‘I haven’t wanted to tell Launa – she’s so happy at the moment, building a life for herself with the children off her hands. And now this. Oh, Jeannie, what am I to do?’

As they held each other’s eyes, he wondered, with the same sharp pain that he’d felt so very many times in the past – did she understand anything at all of what was going on?

Then something caught Jeannie’s eye. ‘Oh look.’ She pointed.

A large box kite was flying high overhead, a long tail of coloured ribbons dancing beneath it.

‘It’s a kite,’ Claude told her.

‘Yes. A kite.’ She looked back at him. ‘I feel like a kite.’

Elliott North’s flat in Onslow Gardens was part of an exclusive square of grand, Edwardian homes, with doric columns, bay windows, and balconies overlooking the private garden around which the houses had been built. In this South Kensington sanctum of establishment money, the aura of privilege and wealth was as inescapable as the luxury vehicles which occupied the residents’ parking bays – Jaguars, Audis, Grand Cherokee Jeeps.

North’s own flat was no mere bachelor pad. It had three spacious double bedrooms with en-suite bathrooms, a study lined with mahogany shelves from chair rail to ceiling, a dining room he never used, and an unusually large sitting room with French doors leading out on to the balcony. The flat had been furnished throughout in the finest taste, and with the benefit of a generous budget, by a well-known interior decorator just off the King’s Road. Kevin McLeod had attended to everything, from wallpaper to furniture to soft furnishings, including a pair of magnificent damask curtains in the sitting room, which swept with theatrical majesty from a high, tassled pelmet, down to the floor, secured at either side by tie-backs, to allow late-afternoon sunlight to flood into the room.

North hadn’t seen the flat when he bought it. Nor had he been at all involved in its interior decoration. Starwear’s London office had seen to all that, couriering over papers to sign and briefs to check over, to which he had paid scant attention. For the fact was, North had very little interest in the niceties of his living arrangements. He didn’t care if he lived on the first or second floor, or whether his bedroom was blue or yellow. That kind of thing meant nothing to him. His only concern had been location; so long as his home was no further than a five-minute drive, or a twenty-minute walk from The Boltons, he would be happy enough. Because, in that ultra-exclusive residential enclave, a magnificent, four-storey detached mansion, which boasted one of the few remaining private ballrooms in London, had been recently acquired, at a cost of £5 million, by Starwear’s new Chief Executive Officer, Jacob Strauss. Jay had arrived from New York with his wife, Amy, and family; their two teenage daughters would be flown back to America every term until they completed their schooling. For the next few years, at least, London was to be home for Mr and Mrs Jacob Strauss.

North sat in his sitting room wearing a burgundy velvet dressing gown and scanning his laptop for e-mails. He’d never really been big on clothes, but the dressing gown was something he was proud of because Jay had given it to him about three years ago in New York. He still clearly remembered the day in Saks. Jay Strauss rarely ventured anywhere near a shop, all his stuff was bought for him. But that particular day, they had been caught up in traffic in the back of Jay’s limo, when the gown had caught Jay’s eye from across the sidewalk. Urging him out of the car and into the store, Jay had walked right in, demanded he remove his suit jacket and try on the gown for size, before buying it for him on the spot.

‘I’m not saying there’s anything less than satisfactory about your physique.’ Jay had touched North’s hand. ‘It’s just that there are moments when it’s useful to have something to wear that’s not a suit.’

North knew exactly which moments he was referring to. The next time one of them came along, he had slipped into his new, quilted, velvet dressing gown, provoking great admiration from Jay. North had become so attached to the garment, in fact, that when the time had come for him to pack his belongings for the move to London, it was one of the few items he insisted on bringing over with him – most of his wardrobe being shipped over a few days later.

It wasn’t only the luxuriance of it which made North fond of the gown – it was also the fact that Jay Strauss had bought it for him. For while Elliott North had long-since resigned himself to the fact that he was one of society’s outsiders, one who lived on the fringes of normal intimacy, on the subject of Jay Strauss his feelings ran very strongly indeed. The bond between them was as compelling and intimate and reciprocal as could be. And he never, for one moment, forgot whom he had to thank for his success.

That spark of mutual recognition had been there from their very first meeting. At the time, North had been running his own PR agency out of a shabby office in Brooklyn. North Media claimed specialism in ‘marketing and corporate communications’, a term deliberately designed to mean all things to all people. He called it an ‘agency’, but in reality it was just him, a telephone, a coffee-stained PC, and a box of index cards on which were written the names of a few dozen not-very-important in-house PR managers and local businesses whom North hoped might, in time, become his clients.

North Media had come about by necessity rather than choice. While his peers had always found North abrasive and unfathomable, his awkwardness hadn’t mattered so much when he was at the very beginning of his career in PR. By the age of twenty-eight, however, he’d been expected to meet clients and establish rapport, to create the chemistry needed for new business wins. He hadn’t been a success in this department, and it was on the grounds of ‘poor interpersonal skills’ that his employer, Ketchum PR, had let go of him. Hence North Media, and the hand-to-mouth subsistence it provided. He had one retained client, a small, local insurance broker whose fee just covered the rent, and added a couple of other small-time regulars. Apart from that, he’d take whatever one-off projects he could get.

Then one day he got a call out of the blue from Douglas Cameron, Corporate Communications Director of Starwear. There was a project he might be able to help them with, Cameron told him; would he be available for a briefing at Starwear HQ later that day? All the time he was talking to Cameron, North was getting more and more excited. And curious. How was it that the PR head honcho of one of the world’s biggest brands had decided to call him in? North had never written to him to solicit business; he wouldn’t have wasted the stamp. What, in Christ’s name, did he have of any interest to a heavy hitter like Douglas Cameron?

Later that day he’d presented himself at the reception of Starwear Tower, on Madison, wearing a fresh shirt and tie bought specially for the occasion. Escorted up to executive offices on the penthouse floor, he was met by Cameron in a modern boardroom replete with Starwear iconography and float-framed photographs of major Starwear events. No sooner had Cameron sat him down with a cup of coffee, however, than the Corporate Communications Director had excused himself, returning to the room a few minutes later with Jacob Strauss himself. Mr Strauss would brief him directly, explained Cameron, before wishing North a good day, and bowing out of the room.

Jacob Strauss’s dazzling good looks were, in the flesh, every bit as compelling as when North had seen him on television. It wasn’t only the tanned blondness, the sensual smile, the athlete’s body. It was also the way he held himself, his every movement imbued with as much poise as though he were still on piste; North couldn’t help being bowled over by his charisma. Jay quickly explained how it was he who had asked Cameron to set up this meeting. One of North’s fliers had come to his attention, the one outlining North Media’s services, and showing a photograph of ‘Elliott North, Chairman’. He’d thought the flier was well put together, he told North, and wondered if North Media would consider producing a flier for one of their new trainer lines?

Who was going to say no? From the moment Jay had explained what he had in mind, North suspected there was an ulterior motive; in Jay, he’d seen something of himself. And sure enough, in the ensuing weeks, as the two of them saw more of each other, that initial spark of recognition developed rapidly into a full-blown sexual adventure. North had embarked on the most thrilling journey of his life. Both men, of course, had to exercise extreme care. Jay Strauss was so high-profile that his every appearance in public was a potential media event, and Starwear security men monitored his every move. He was a married man, and the leader, in America at least, of a sportswear firm that put healthy families at the heart of its promotional campaigns. Scandal could not be allowed to touch him.

Over the next two months, things changed dramatically for North Media. During dinner in a private suite at The Plaza, Jay put a proposition to Elliott North which he had no difficulty accepting. Starwear’s long-established public relations agency in New York was Hill Stellar, one of the largest operations in the country. What Jay proposed was that North sell North Media to Hill Stellar. It would look strange, Jay explained, if he was seen to have continual contact with a one-man operation in Brooklyn. Under the auspices of Hill Stellar, however, their level of contact could be as high as they liked without raising the slightest suspicions. What’s more, although he would work out of Hill Stellar’s offices, he would continue to run as an autonomous business unit, working exclusively for Jay. North’s only question had been about Hill Stellar what if they didn’t want to buy North Media? Jay had only laughed.

‘You just leave that to me,’ he’d assured North. ‘We spend so much with those guys every year they’ll do exactly what we tell them to. Besides, one way or another, I’ll be funding the purchase. So, what do you say to a million dollars?’

A short while later, Elliott North bought himself an apartment on the Upper East Side. He also became the proud driver of a Porsche, courtesy of Hill Stellar, and enjoyed all the benefits of an American Express – Gold Card – expense account. Gone were the days of chasing after business. When he wasn’t involved in an assignment on behalf of Jay Strauss, which soon became most of the time, he was keeping an eye on the other Starwear activities being run out of Hill Stellar. Quickly discovering that his close contact with Jay conferred a special status on himself, he learned that he barely needed to raise his eyebrows about an idea and it was squashed flat. The merest hint that Jay might like something was quickly translated into fully worked-up proposals. For the first time in his life, Elliott North had power; he had truly relished terrorising the staff of Hill Stellar.

This happy state of affairs may have long continued. But there were several security lapses and word began to get out. Rumours started flying about the place, and it was only his own efforts, and that of a privately commissioned firm of fixers, that succeeded in keeping stories out of the media. He and Jay had to adopt a very low profile until the dust settled. After six months, they were still wondering if things were safe when Nathan committed suicide; at an emergency meeting held the afternoon that the news came through from London, it didn’t take them five minutes to decide that Jay should move to London when he was appointed Starwear’s new CEO.

There were complications with North’s transfer. Hill Stellar’s equivalent in London, Lombard, had a strong relationship with Nathan Strauss lasting many years. Jacob Strauss was virtually unknown, and while that had certain advantages, it also meant that Elliott North, as Jay Strauss’s spin-doctor numero uno, didn’t carry nearly so much clout among his PR peers as he had in New York. What’s more, though Jay Strauss had got Mike Cullen to take on his special adviser without much persuasion, it wasn’t quite the same deal he’d struck with Hill Stellar. Now, North was regarded as part of Lombard’s Starwear team – but he’d never been a team player. Not only did he have Cullen breathing down his neck these days, he also had to deal with the likes of that ponce d’Andrea. Then there was the Taylor woman, in it completely over her head.

He could do without having to deal with the Lombard lot all the more because, as he found out soon after arriving, British journalists were far more likely to run around printing hugely damaging stories than their American peers. Unlike America, where the dollar was Almighty, and success to be worshipped, he discovered that in Britain, success was a source of resentment, and tall poppies were there to be cut down. If the risks involving Jay and him were big in New York, they were ten times bigger in London. All of which meant that their affairs had to be conducted with the utmost secrecy and vigilance. A point that Jay, judging by his increasingly wild demands, had completely failed to understand.

Now, as he sat in the sitting room of his Onslow Gardens flat, the laptop resting on his velvet-gowned knees, North scrolled through incoming e-mails. Part of his vigilance was to keep close tabs on individual journalists who could cause trouble, and deal with them if they got out of line. It was the strategy which had protected Jay – and him – in New York, and which was imperative here, although d’Andrea was less than enthusiastic about seeing through the results of his monitoring – as the de Vere exercise had shown. That time, he’d had to take matters into his own hands.

Reaching an incoming e-mail from Monitoring Services, North noted the subject title: Judith Laing. He quickly opened it. Following that week’s traffic meeting, the alarm bells ringing in his ears the moment Tim Wylie had mentioned Judith Laing’s activities, North had gone straight to Monitoring Services to demand a biographical update.

As he scrolled down the information they’d sent him, he became even more perturbed. Judith Laing was trouble, there was no doubting it. First of all she was very smart – North knew you didn’t get into the British equivalent of an ivy-league university without serious intellectual fire power. Second, she was anti-establishment. Reading through a list of articles she had penned while at The Guardian, including the scoop for which she’d won an investigative journalism award, North decided she was a hardened leftist. Big business was her natural enemy. All her important pieces had been about environmental disasters, or third-world exploitation or discrimination in the workplace – she was no armchair commentator, or newsroom hack. But worst of all was her commitment. As he scrolled through her earlier associations at Oxford, he groaned loudly; Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Women First, NUSEA – she’d been involved in them all at some time. According to d’Andrea’s note,she’d even had an affair with the President of NUSEA who was in her year.

The idea of her sniffing around Starwear was a nightmare made real. Cullen’s charm offensive might be enough to see her off, but he doubted it. He’d had to deal with a dozen Judith Laings in his time. And if she kept on digging, as she probably would, he wouldn’t be left with any choice but to bring a permanent end to her enquiries. D’Andrea would go ballistic, just as he had over de Vere. He’d fiddle and fret and talk about having Laing transferred to some other remit at The Herald. But North felt no compunction at all about ordering the final solution. There was simply too much at stake to risk anything different; as long as Judith Laing remained alive, she could surface from nowhere and blow them all out of the water.

He was mulling this over when the telephone rang. ‘You’re ready?’ asked Jay, as always dispensing with preliminaries.

‘Sure.’

‘Half an hour?’

‘I’ll put the champagne on ice.’

‘You do that, sport.’

‘I’ll be waiting for you …’