13

‘Judith,’ there was relief in his voice, ‘am I glad to get you!’

‘Where are you calling from?’ She was suspicious.

‘Bernie’s.’

‘OK,’ she exhaled a cloud of cigarette smoke as she made towards the door of the pub, mobile clutched to her ear.

He glanced round Bernie’s study, at the wood shelves and leather-topped desk, the green curtains drawn round the bay window. There was a reassuring affluence, a well-heeled, ordered calm about the place which he very definitely needed right now – along with the Scotch, which glowed in the cut-crystal tumbler in front of him.

When he’d arrived, nerves still jangling from his discovery earlier that evening, Bernie had immediately prescribed a generous helping of Glen Morangie. He had wanted to keep quiet about it all until he decided what to do. But he couldn’t pretend to Bernie and Trisha, they’d seen how rattled he was. So he’d sworn them to secrecy and told them he was being followed; he didn’t know who by. They had been aghast; wasn’t it just a coincidence? He’d convinced them it was not. Why else had he sneaked over the back fence of his own house to get here?

They’d been even more startled when he announced he needed to get hold of Judith; did they have her mobile telephone number? They looked bewildered – after all the petulant hostilities over the past few years, what on earth was going on? Sidelong glances had been exchanged as he left the room. But from the moment he’d arrived home that night, he had known he had to make the call. Right away. From a safe place.

‘About last weekend,’ he said now, ‘we’ve got to talk.’

‘We do?’

‘I know I was … sceptical about what you were saying—’

‘Don’t you mean incensed?’

‘But a lot has happened.’

‘Oh, yeah?’

There was no avoiding her distrust. ‘No, really. It has. I’m not so sure any more. Not so sure about anything.’

The only response from the other end was the sound of her dragging on her cigarette, before another long exhalation. Then she said, ‘Well, sorry not to be bowled over by the idea of a chinwag, but for all I know you could be at the office recording everything I say. This could be a set-up.’

‘But it isn’t. Look, Judith,’ his tone was authoritative, ‘there’s no time to be precious. I can understand how you feel, but believe me, I’m not playing games. The fact is, you and I are both in serious danger right now.’

‘Why should you be?’

‘I’m being followed.’

‘Oh, really?’ she seemed unconvinced.

‘I was tailed home from the office tonight. The point is, I don’t know how long it’s been going on. They could have seen us together on Saturday.’

‘Well, thank you very much,’ she was sarcastic, ‘so the little visit was down to you.’

‘What little visit?’

‘My flat yesterday afternoon. Petty crime look alike – stole the video, trashed the place. But it was a professional job. No doubt they’ve been through my computer files. They wouldn’t have found anything.’

Both of them were thinking of Merlin de Vere.

‘You know who’s behind it?’ she asked.

‘That’s why we need to meet.’

Well, if we are to meet,’ she was prickly, ‘you’d better come unescorted.’

‘I have a plan.’

‘Yeah. Right.’

‘How about this Friday?’

‘Get a life!’ she snorted.

‘Well, you suggest a date.’

‘I’m going to need some time.’

‘And I need some answers.’

‘The thirty-first’s free.’

‘That’s over a fortnight away! Anything could happen.’

‘Charming. I don’t suppose you’ve worked out just what the hell I’m supposed to do about my personal safety?’

‘Actually, I have,’ he told her simply. ‘You’ve got to act normal.’ His voice was firm.

‘Oh, yeah, that’s a big help.’

‘Just act’, he ignored her sarcasm, ‘like everything’s totally normal.’

A few minutes later, he put the phone down and took a mouthful of Scotch, pulling a face as he swallowed. Taking action helped stave off the knowledge that somewhere out there in the darkness, someone was waiting for him.

And in the meantime, there was the flat. Pulling a Yellow Pages directory across the desk towards him, he flicked through it until he came to an advertisement in the ‘Security’ section. ‘Detection and clearing of listening devices’, it read. He glanced at his watch. Nearly ten. But there was a mobile telephone number to ring. It was worth a try.

That same Wednesday evening, Kate stepped into the bathroom leading off her office, and closed the door behind her. She was one of only a handful of Lombard executives with a private bathroom. She’d demanded it be written into her contract before she agreed to join the company. Not that she was driven by corporate one-ups-man-ship or ego. The fact was, she needed a shot of insulin three times a day to stay alive, and she preferred having somewhere private to inject herself.

Though the bathroom did also make for a wonderful retreat when things out in the Pit were going mad. It was a quiet place where she could escape for a few moments of tranquillity when things were particularly manic. And on nights when she was heading straight out to dinner – most nights of the week, in fact – it was nice to have a place where she could do her make-up in private, as she was about to do now.

As she unzipped her cosmetics purse and pulled out a bottle of mascara, she supposed she thought of her private bathroom as one of the perks of her job, like her Saab cabriolet, her flat in Chelsea, her wardrobe of designer clothes.

When she’d started out in PR, in her early twenties, building a successful career had been the most important thing in the world to her. Her father, in his day, had been a leading Harley Street physician, and from him she’d inherited the gritty determination to succeed – to prove she was as capable as he in her own field. Financial PR had provided an excellent choice for someone of her skills. Bright, literate as well as numerate, and a strong communicator, she’d known all along that so long as she worked hard, all the rewards were there for the taking.

She’d started out as a humble account assistant at Lowe Bell, then graduated to an account manager job at Brunswick. By the time Mike Cullen approached her with the idea of setting up a new consultancy, she was in her late twenties and a well-established account director. She knew Mike Cullen from various industry bashes – the IPR City branch, PR Week’s annual awards – and she’d always held him in high regard. So when he offered her the chance to join him in a new venture, getting in on the ground floor of an agency that had huge potential, she didn’t have to think too hard about it. Those early days at the agency, she often thought, had been among her happiest, because after the initial bedding-down period, Lombard quickly began acquiring big, blue-chip clients, and Kate found herself working harder than she had known she was capable of as Mike’s vision of a superlative agency quickly turned into a hugely successful reality. By the time she was in her early thirties, Lombard’s success, and her own part in it, was on a grander scale than she would ever have conceived.

Now, in her early forties, however, things looked very different. While Lombard was easily the biggest name in corporate and financial PR, Kate couldn’t help feeling that, somewhere along the line, she’d lost the plot. Somewhere in the past ten years, she’d begun to realise that all she was doing in her job was the same thing, over and over again. ‘Every deal is different,’ was one of her PR mantras. While technically true, the reality was that every deal was just another variation on a small number of well-worn themes. And she was exhausted playing them. There had been just too many cancelled dinner dates and an increasing number of working weekends; too many late-night phone calls with clients in a panic over hostile takeover bids; too much work and not enough play. In particular, no time for a love life.

Her single status had, over the years, been the cause of enormous heartache for, as well as the lack of time for a relationship, it seemed to Kate that with age came increasing discrimination. There had been moments, more and more frequent in the past couple of years, when she had found herself, late at night or on a Sunday afternoon, feeling a sudden, deep loneliness at the realisation that life was passing her by and that she had no one to share it with.

All of which made her value her relationships with close male friends even more; friends like Jim Ritchie, whom she was seeing tonight. Bastion of the Sunday Telegraph City office, Jim was a craggy, charismatic Scotsman. A bon viveur with an aphorism for every occasion, Jim also had an encyclopaedic mind from which he would constantly extract arcane gems, as well as embarrassing reminders. Being around Jim certainly kept you on your toes. Had he been a few years younger, and not married with three children, thought Kate, she would certainly have contemplated a happy union with him, but alas …

Jim’s only vice appeared to be vintage cars – ‘my habit’, as he described it – an obsession absorbing most of his spare time. Over the years he’d assembled quite a collection, and such was his passion for rally driving that one of his colleagues had written up a diary piece about him which had appeared one Sunday, alongside a photograph of Jim in goggles and cap, much to his chagrin – not to mention the amusement of his media contemporaries.

In the last twenty years Kate and Jim had seen whole tides of people come and go in the constant flux of the City media world they both inhabited. So although she was in PR, and he a journalist, their relationship had for many years gone way beyond the usual constraints. In fact, Jim had been a PR man once himself, after his first job as a reporter with the Aberdeen Press and Journal. PR hadn’t suited his temperament, however, and he’d moved to a job with the City office of the Telegraph, which was where he was when Kate first met him. These days, it was their custom to meet for dinner every few months. There was always some client to whom the meal would be billed – ‘journalist briefing’ – and Kate made sure her secretary chose one of London’s better restaurants. With Jim there was to be no stinting – Kate was always guaranteed a delightful evening.

Her face required only touching up. Standing back from the mirror she brushed her dark, shoulder-length hair, checking her appearance as she did so. She was wearing her new Favourbrook jacket for Jim – a sumptuous affair in burgundy brocade, with ornate, antique-gold embroidery – he always noticed things like that. She never wore much jewellery, although she had always loved the ruby solitaire which hung from a gold necklace around her neck – her thirtieth birthday present to herself.

Then it was time for her medication. She checked her blood levels, took out her insulin pen, and gave herself a shot.

The diabetes had been diagnosed when she was in her late teens. She’d fainted a few times at school and begun suffering from dizzy spells; it hadn’t taken much to work out the problem. The treatment, however, had been a lot harder to accept. As a girl she’d been terrified of needles. Having to inject herself was a trauma she’d just had to come to terms with – there had simply been no other way.

All that was long gone, of course. She’d become so used to it, now she could do it in the dark. It was all so much a part of her life that she rarely even thought about her diabetes. As long as she didn’t hugely overindulge in chocolates or desserts, it wasn’t even an issue. It certainly didn’t stop her enjoying herself.

A short while later she was being dropped off at The Ivy by one of the Lombard Jaguars. The restaurant, much loved by ‘the mediahedin’ as Jim called them, and showbiz celebrities, was one of her favourites – so much so that she could nearly always command her preferred table, tucked discreetly near the back, but with an ideal purview for star-spotting. As she stepped into the restaurant she saw that Jim, ever the gentleman, was there before her. In all the years she’d known him, he had never kept her waiting.

‘Kate, lovely to see you,’ he greeted her in his warm, Scottish brogue, as he stood to give her a hug.

Then as she sat opposite, ‘I’ve ordered our usual.’

She glanced to where the wine steward had appeared with a bottle of Dom Perignon. ‘Wonderful.’ She smiled across at him, warmly.

Conversation was, as always, a medley of the latest inside information, gossip about who was doing what in City newsrooms, and high-jinks from the world of PR. The champagne flowed freely, a table of Hollywood luminaries pulled up in a stretch limo – grotesquely out of place in the narrow street outside – and all was set for another night at the top. But soon after ordering, Jim took the conversation in an unexpected direction which she found deeply disturbing. They had been discussing Lombard’s latest client wins, and which ones Kate would be working on, when he remarked, ‘You’ve taken on some new staff, too?’

Kate nodded. ‘We have our first Research and Planning Director. Poached from MIRA.’

Across the table from her, Jim’s brow furrowed. ‘Aye. And some American. Is it Elliott North?’

‘Ah. Yes.’ Elliott North was a subject she didn’t care to embark on. Now she told Jim, ‘I try to keep him away from people I like.’

Jim’s eyes twinkled. ‘Well, my dear, I’m afraid you didn’t succeed in my case.’

She looked over at him, startled.

‘I had him on the phone the other day—’

‘That’s outrageous,’ she exploded, leaning across the table. ‘He knows perfectly well you’re my contact. It’s marked clearly on the media list.’

Jim raised his eyebrows. ‘Well, I get the impression that subtleties of that kind really don’t feature—’

‘He wasn’t rude to you, was he?’ She was horrified.

‘Oh, no. Nothing like that.’ Jim took a sip of his champagne, before his expression turned serious. ‘Something potentially much worse.’

As Kate regarded him with a look of apprehension, he told her, ‘You’ll recall the piece I wrote on Jacob Strauss when he took over as CEO?’

How could she forget it. It had provoked forty minutes of heated debate at a Starwear traffic meeting. Amongst all the press coverage the announcement had generated, The Sunday Telegraph’s was the only one that had provided a less-than-enthusiastic analysis, along with the news piece. It wasn’t that it was particularly negative; just that Jim had questioned the relevance of Jacob Strauss’s prior experience, running small-scale retail operations in America, to his new role as the head of a global organisation. Kate had thought it was fair comment. North had been ferocious in his contention that Jim Ritchie had way overstepped the mark, and should be regarded as Starwear’s media enemy number one. For all Kate’s efforts to explain that universal adulation from the British press was a hopelessly naive expectation, North just hadn’t understood. On the subject of Jacob Strauss, it seemed to Kate, he had gone native. Objectivity just wasn’t there.

Now, Jim was telling her, ‘The moment he came on the phone, he was banging on about the profile. I thought it was quite positive, myself. I’d mentioned all the sporting icon stuff, the hero status in America, and, and, and. But he didn’t see it that way.’

Kate cringed.

‘He told me my comments about Jacob’s previous business experience were completely unwarranted, and that Jacob’s entrepreneurial achievements were widely acclaimed in the States.’

‘So what did you say?’

Jim smiled caustically. ‘I told him it was very convenient for him that his client had been so successful in a country where I didn’t have easy access to business records. That seemed to take the wind out of his sails.’

‘Jim, I’m so sorry.’

‘I don’t know what he expected. Did he think he was going to bluster me into just caving in?’

‘I’m mortified,’ she said with feeling. Not far beneath the surface, she was also furious; absolutely livid with North for trampling across her patch with such brazen disregard. Relationships with senior journalists like Jim were sacrosanct. How dare he abuse that trust?

In Jim’s case, fortunately, North’s barracking hadn’t had the slightest impact. Now he was telling her, ‘You know, I get calls from bleating PRs fairly often. But I would never have expected that kind of conversation with someone from Lombard.’

Kate was shaking her head. ‘I don’t know how he acted in New York, but he’s just not house-trained.’

‘Tell me about it,’ he agreed. Then leaning across the table he lowered his voice, ‘To be frank, I wouldn’t have given the subject a second thought if it hadn’t been for what North said next.’

Could it get any worse?

‘He started rambling about vintage cars, wanting to know how many I had. As you can imagine, by this time I wasn’t in a conversational mood. Then he was going on about Jacob Strauss’s contacts in sports racing. I told him,’ Jim was dry, ‘I didn’t quite see the connection to Formula One racing.’

Kate was following him intently, dreading what she suspected he was about to say.

‘He said that Strauss had connections throughout the motor industry. Deals could be put together to minimise expenses. I couldn’t fathom what he was trying to say, to begin with. Then I worked out he was offering to subsidise my habit.’

Kate closed her eyes, and was shaking her head slowly.

‘He used this phrase a couple of times, oh aye, “an understanding”, he kept saying. After a while I told him, ‘Elliott, if I didn’t know Lombard better, I might think you were trying to bribe me.’

‘I just can’t believe—’

‘He backed off instantly. Some guff about Jacob Strauss having a personal interest in vintage cars.’

There was a long pause while she regarded him across the table, shamefaced. ‘Jim, I really am so sorry,’ she said eventually, ‘I just don’t know what to say.’

‘Oh,’ he was dismissive, ‘it takes a lot more than that to upset me. What I find so amazing is the effrontery of it all. If you can’t bully the journalist into submission, then try a bribe.’

She grimaced. ‘You can rest assured I’m going to do something about it when I get into the office tomorrow,’ she told him, determined.

‘I’ve dealt with American PRs before,’ he continued thoughtfully, ‘they’ve never behaved in such an extraordinary way. What I want to know is, where did he pick all that stuff up?’

Halfway through Thursday morning, Judith was lighting her sixth cigarette of the day in The Herald’s smoking room. She’d been spending a lot of time in here recently. Thinking through things seemed somehow easier with a cigarette. Not that there was anything easy about the way she was feeling right now. The burglary two days earlier had left her charged with a cocktail of emotions that were deeply unsettling. Seeing how easily her flat could be broken into and vandalised made her feel vulnerable – at risk in a way she had never felt before. But the same thing also made her furious. How dare they do this to her? What kind of an idiot did they take her for, if they thought she hadn’t worked out instantly what was going on? The only grim satisfaction she derived from it all was the fact that she’d cheated them of what they were after. They still had no idea at all what she knew about them. Right now, she was only the more determined to crack the story.

The night of the break-in, after the WPC had left, she’d found herself hauling all the bedclothes off her mattress and taking them down to the launderette. Remembering what the WPC had said about the teenage gang and their ‘signature’ – even though they weren’t the ones who’d broken into her place – had made her feel sullied and revolted. She’d returned home from Sanjay’s with an armful of detergents and brushes, and commenced scrubbing every surface of her room. She needed to get rid of the intruders; eliminate all evidence that any strangers had ever been there.

After the scrubbing there was the vacuuming; the clearing out of assorted debris from under her bed; the rearrangement of all the stuff on her dressing table, in her wardrobe, even the furniture in her room. She had to clean it, change it all and make it different. And that was just her bedroom. Moving through to the sitting room, she had found it virtually unchanged from the way she had found it earlier in the evening. Her flatmate Simon had spent the past three hours perched on one corner of an overturned sofa, smoking cocktail sobranjies, and with the phone to his ear, thrilling his friends with descriptions of the chaos, and revelling, in particular, in the ejaculatory details of the local teenage gang. Throwing a brush and pan in his direction, Judith reflected, not for the first time since they’d moved in together, that she’d have to revise her view about a gay man being a girl’s best friend.

By the time the flat was habitable once again, it was nearly eleven p.m. She had quickly packed an overnight bag and gone round to her cousin’s place in Redcliffe Gardens. She and Michelle would often call on each other in times of crisis. Tonight she was in need of a long, hot shower and a bed for the night; Michelle’s sofa was, she decided, preferable to her own bed right now. She needed a night away from it all.

Since then, her every waking moment had been dominated by thoughts about Starwear. And as she stood in The Herald’s smoking room, staring out of the window, unseeing, at the view of the river, she was so wrapped up in her thoughts that she didn’t even notice when the door behind her opened.

‘I thought I might find you in here.’ Alex Carter stepped in, resplendent in red braces and bold pinstripe navy trousers. He had never been in here before – she’d always thought of the smoking room as a Carter-free haven – but as he stepped over towards her, he pulled a cigar from out of his pocket, and began the great ceremony of lighting it up. Carter, she had observed before, spent a very long time playing with cigars – rolling them between his fingertips, squeezing them, moistening them, preparing to light them before, at the last minute, hesitating; he spent very little time actually smoking them.

‘I was going to call you into my office, but it’s just as private here,’ he glanced over his shoulder at the closed door, ‘and we can indulge in our filthy sin.’

Judith chuckled mirthlessly. The morning after her conversation with Chris, she was still feeling a bit shaky – and in no mood for a confrontation with Carter. Watching him discard the Cellophane wrapper of his cigar, and begin fingering and squeezing it, she felt a strong desire to end this suspense.

‘So,’ she asked, as he extracted a cutter from his trouser pocket, ‘what did you want to speak to me about?’

‘Ah, that.’ He glanced at her with a cryptic expression as he inserted the end of the cigar into the cutter and forcefully snapped it shut. ‘Let’s just say that your … behaviour over the past couple of weeks has been noticed.’

‘My behaviour?’ She kept her tone expressionless. She had been out several times on the investigation, although she’d always tried to time her outings when she knew he’d be in a meeting.

‘Oh, I know you probably think I’m too caught up in management meetings to notice these things but I actually keep very close tabs on what every member of my team is doing. I notice things.’

‘Right.’ She took a drag of her cigarette and exhaled. She supposed it could be good news. After all, she’d produced more column inches in the past few weeks than in her whole life as a journalist. And then there was her growing collection of miniskirts. But it wasn’t like Carter to make a fuss of his staff. Frolicking or bollocking – those were his two styles. And he already knew she wasn’t the type to be frolicked with.

Looking up from where he was examining the clean, cut tip of his cigar, Carter asked, ‘Is there anything you’d like to say before I go on?’

Here we go, she thought. The bastard is going to drag it out as long as possible, no doubt deriving sadistic pleasure from making me squirm.

‘Well, I – I suppose after the last time you spoke to me – I mean about things in general, output – I suppose after that I’ve really been trying to … work smarter.’

He raised his eyebrows in a look of cynical enquiry. ‘M-hmmm. And what else did I say to you that time about working smarter?’

Judith couldn’t think of anything. Why did he always make her feel like a silly little girl? ‘I don’t remember,’ she admitted.

‘I do.’ He began tapping the cigar on the side of his gold Ronson lighter. ‘I distinctly remember saying that I wouldn’t have wasted my breath on you if I didn’t think you had what it took.’

‘Oh, yeah.’ She was now feeling decidedly wan.

‘And what you’ve done has proved me right.’ He commenced licking his cigar. There was a gleam in his eye – was he tricking her, she wondered, or was this something positive? ‘A few minutes ago, in my office, I carried out an exercise.’ His speech was interspersed with sucking and saliva noises. ‘I counted the number of articles with your byline in the past week and compared them to a month ago. I also compared them to the output of the other City hacks. Yours is prodigious, Judith. Quite an achievement.’

He was staring at her now as though she ought to get on her knees and unzip his fly in gratitude.

‘I have been trying hard,’ was all she could say.

‘I know you have. After our last conversation you probably thought I was a complete bastard,’ he chortled.

‘Well …’

‘Come on, Judith, there’s no need to play games. If you felt resentful I could understand. But you see, it was all calculated.’ He was reaching his final moment: the cigar, poised between the fingers of his right hand; lighter in his left; the flame; the vigorous sucking; the great cloud of pungent, blue-grey fumes. ‘I know every member of my team,’ he boomed, his voice thick with smoke. ‘I know what you are capable of better than you do yourself. I know when to chide and when to bless.’

‘I suppose you do.’ She had no option but to agree with him.

‘So here you are, one month later and just look at you.’ He gave a grandiose sweep of his cigar. ‘Sassier. More confident. Output increased – a two hundred and fifty per cent improvement.’

‘Thank you.’

He glanced back towards the door before lowering his voice melodramatically. ‘And that’s why I’m awarding you a pay rise.’

It was the last thing she expected. ‘Really, Alex?’ she found herself croaking. She rarely used his Christian name. And when she did, it was almost always with a sarcastic inflection.

‘Not just some meaningless pay rise, either. Twenty-five percent. Immediate.’

‘That really is … wonderful.’

‘And because I’m awarding it to you now,’ he was relishing the moment, ‘your index-linked rise in two months’ time will be based on the new salary.’

‘I don’t know what to say.’ She shook her head.

‘You don’t need to say anything,’ he glowed. ‘I might be a hard man, but I’m also a fair man. I’m giving you a rise because you’ve worked for it.’

‘Well, thank you very much.’ She was stabbing out her cigarette, hands shaky. ‘It … it really means a lot to me. I’ve been feeling skint.’

‘The lot of the journalist, I’m afraid,’ he told her, massaging his Romeo y Julietta again. ‘Those of us committed to the craft have to look beyond money for our reward.’

‘That’s true,’ she agreed with feeling. She was immediately searching her handbag for the B&H Lites.

‘Some of the stuff you’ve been doing recently,’ he said, stepping closer, ‘your passion really comes through.’

‘Oh?’ She watched his hand suspiciously. Surely he didn’t expect a payback?

‘That stuff you wrote on North Sea fishing quotas. You gave a balanced picture, but you also argued your case with great conviction. That’s journalism at its best.’

As she lit another cigarette, waving the match out, she remembered the press conference arranged by Gorlan Smythe. The PR company had handed out comprehensive briefing packs which even carried pre-written articles. She’d jokingly complained to a Gorlan Smythe director that the articles weren’t available on disk. He’d taken her at face value, and had had a disk biked round to The Herald’s City office that very afternoon. It didn’t seem to bother Alex Carter that an almost identical piece had appeared the same day in The Daily Echo.

‘Tell me,’ he was being all sotto voce now, ‘are you cooking up anything special at the moment?’

It didn’t even enter her head to mention Starwear to him. Not yet. ‘Just a few bits and pieces. Interesting lead on ICI.’

‘Oh, yes?’

‘A cost-of-environmental-management type piece.’

He nodded. ‘Sounds promising. Is that it?’

Judith glanced up towards the ceiling. ‘It’s all I can think of.’

He fixed her with a thoughtful expression. ‘It’s just that someone mentioned you were looking at Starwear?’

‘Oh. That.’ She tried to hold her composure. She had already planned what she would say if the subject ever arose, and had come up with a phrase to use: ‘A gentle probing,’ she told him. ‘Went to see one of their directors, Mark Hunter. But I didn’t come up with anything definite. Certainly nothing worth writing up at this stage.’

Carter rolled his cigar for a moment, to and fro. ‘I must have got my facts wrong.’ Irritation had crept into his voice. ‘I got the impression you were quite far advanced?’

‘Oh no. I haven’t even committed anything to paper. I only went in for a briefing.’

He nodded, before taking another drag and exhaling pensively. ‘Well, if anything comes up on that score, you’ll keep me up to speed?’

‘Of course.’

‘I need to know – management purposes – if some major piece is likely to materialise.’

‘I quite understand, Alex. I’ll let you know if … if anything comes up. But I doubt it will.’

He was already making his way to the door. ‘You do that.’

She watched him through the blinds that covered the glass partition between the smoking room and the outer office. As she followed his progress between crammed desks amidst the frenetic activity of the City office, her heart thundered in her head. Now that the moment had gone, she felt the shock of it pass through her. She’d been discreet. Very discreet. But somewhere out there, there’d been a leak. How in God’s name had he found out?