21

Judith hurried towards the British Airways check-in desks at Heathrow Terminal 4. Unlike the remaining passengers in Economy, she didn’t have to wait. Rushing her trolley across the Departures hall, she made her way directly towards the blue, Club Class carpet to the Delhi flight check-in, and handed over her ticket and passport.

Carter’s reaction to her story had been the very last thing she’d expected, and eight hours later, she still wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. Fulsome with praise, he’d told her that Starwear would be the business scoop of the year. The City desk would have its finest hour. He’d promised her a major byline when her article appeared, late this week or early next. Given the scale of her revelations, he said he was sure The Herald’s editor would pluck the story from the business section, and paste it across the front page. And if Judith didn’t get at least one investigative journalist of the year award out of this, he told her, he would eat his deerstalker.

Which was all well and good. It was what he’d then proposed that raised her doubts. Her central allegations, he expounded, concerned a factory she had never visited, three and a half thousand miles away. Firsthand interviews with kids back in London were one thing. But if she had been there and seen things with her own eyes, and got more photographic evidence, the story would be all the more compelling.

The cost of flying her to India for a few days, in the context of such a major exposé was a mere trifle. Though she’d still been surprised when he’d told her to book her ticket and sort out a visa, the latter something she already had. She’d been even more surprised when he’d said to go business class. It was a sign of approval she’d never expected. Or was it? This was where her feelings were ambivalent, as she wondered if Carter was setting her up for something. Getting her out of town to take all the credit for her story himself? Or, much worse, operating in conspiracy with North? She’d considered that possibility once before – and dismissed it as paranoia. Now it kept returning, an unknown, potentially treacherous undercurrent about which she felt decidedly apprehensive. Not, she realised, that there was so much as the flimsiest shred of evidence to support her fears. In the end, she decided she didn’t have much choice but to act on the basis that Carter was genuine, and see this trip through.

Starwear arranged press visits to its Quantum Change plants, and she’d be joining a tour of their Jaipur operations on Thursday afternoon. She had no doubt it would be all happy workers, upward-pointing graphs and impressive diagrams accounting for new efficiencies. But even that would be useful – it would set up a vivid contrast for her other, unofficial factory visit, which she’d already arranged with the help of the Jaipur Abolitionist Group. One of R. J. Patel’s cousins ran a stall in the bazaar just two blocks away from The Royal Jaipur Hotel, where she was due to stay. He knew exactly where Starwear’s real mass-production centre was to be found, and would take her there before the Thursday-morning tour. Of course, security around the child slave plant might be tough to penetrate. There were no guarantees at all that she’d witness anything to arouse suspicions in the limited time she was there. But at the very least, she’d pick up on some local colour to work into her story. And maybe more evidence would be forthcoming.

There had been a lot of arrangements to make in the past eight hours – not only setting up her flight. She’d phoned up Bernie to tell him about the sudden turn of events, and asked him to pass the news on to Chris as a matter of urgency. She could hear the puzzlement in his voice as he took down her message, but Bernie, being Bernie, didn’t press the issue. He was good that way.

The BA lady handed over her boarding pass and pointed in the direction of International Departures. It was the very first flight on which she’d travelled in such exalted circumstances, and she’d have loved to wallow in every indulgence that was going, but time was against her. She’d arrived at Heathrow with no time to spare and the ‘Boarding’ sign for her flight already flashing. Hurried along by the staff at the hand-luggage check, she made her way through the warren of corridors at a half walk, half trot, before finally making it to her flight.

‘Good evening, madam.’ She was ushered through to her Club Class seat by an air steward whose cool poise couldn’t have been more different from the sense of controlled panic she’d felt all day. ‘Would you care for a welcoming glass of champagne ?’

That, more or less, set the tone for what was to follow. Kicking off her shoes, Judith realised she had nothing left to do right now except enjoy the trip. She decided a little alcohol might help her relax into things. Several glasses of champagne were followed by wine over dinner, and then a few tumblers of Bailey’s-on-the-rocks.

By eleven o’clock she was beginning to feel quite sleepy, but decided to watch the in-flight news. It was broadcast live from the BBC in London and was running some of the stories that had been through the newsroom the previous day. She watched the bulletin through half-closed eyes, listening to the familiar round of news items. About halfway through, her attention was suddenly caught by a story just breaking. The Chief Executives of two leading UK sports manufacturers, Sportex and Active Red, were at the centre of a scandal involving allegations of sexual misconduct and business impropriety. Robert Reid and Edward Snyder were shown denying the accusations, while scrambling from cars outside their homes, being pursued by large groups of tabloid reporters and paparazzi.

The news piece wasn’t long, though it had Judith wondering as she swilled the remaining Bailey’s in her crystal tumbler. During the course of her own enquiries she’d checked out Reid and Snyder but hadn’t found anything on them, certainly not in the child slave department. But these new allegations were a bit too much of a coincidence – especially with stories about both Reid and Snyder coming out at the same time. She couldn’t help wanting to know where they had come from. And why.

•••

Chris didn’t get to see the newspapers until eleven thirty on Tuesday, having spent all morning till then at the Indian High Commission. The situation there had been far from satisfactory. Yesterday, after queuing for an age, he’d been told that visa applications took a standard four days. They’d try to process his in two if he came down in person the following morning, but they were making no promises. This morning he’d waited and waited his turn in the queue, but when he finally got to the front, the official told him, categorically, that he must wait until Thursday morning. At this rate, there was no way he’d get out in time for the Jaipur plant tour on Thursday afternoon.

Arriving back at his office, frustrated by this latest turn of events in a day that already felt like a surreal nightmare, he began flicking through the newspapers, and was hardly able to take in what he saw. Every single one of them, broadsheet and tabloid, was full of the stories Kuczynski had dug up about Reid and Snyder. Even from the most cursory glance, it was clear that both men were up to their necks in sleaze. ‘Active Red’s Three-in-a-Bed’ was The Globe’s front-page lead article. According to Shayla Maxwell, Snyder’s ex-secretary who’d charged him with sexual harassment, Snyder had once suggested she bring along a friend for ‘a bit of slap and tickle after hours’. Of course, Snyder and Maxwell had never so much as kissed, nor had Maxwell even proven that sexual harassment had taken place – a point The Globe studiously ignored. Instead, the newspaper had paid Snyder’s former mistress £25,000 to ‘spill the beans’ on their affair of three years earlier. A deluge of voyeuristic detail on where, when and how they’d had sex was laid out for the prurient consumption of over four million readers, including the information that Ed’s mistress had had her pubic hair coloured red and specially shaven in the shape of the Active Red logo for one of his birthdays.

The Dispatch’s front-page piece was headlined ‘Britain’s Biggest Sneakers’ and reported not only on Ed Snyder, but Bob Reid too. Not content with his £450,000 salary from Sportex, The Dispatch told its readers, Reid also had an income estimated to be in the region of £150,000, tax free, from the proceeds of immoral earnings. Without actually calling him a pimp, the paper ran photographs of well-groomed, attractive women entering and leaving his Belgravia flat. One such woman, propositioned by an undercover reporter, had listed her charges, which were published in a separate box – £50 for oral sex, £100 for regular sex, £150 for bondage and domination, with other services negotiable.

In case this character assassination hadn’t quite finished him off, out came the assault conviction made against Reid at Reading Crown Court. Amanda Rider, the former model – whose volatile temperament and vase-wrecking escapade were not mentioned by the paper – had, for a generous financial consideration, no doubt, posed topless on an exercise bike like the one on which she said she and Bob Reid had once had sex.

The broadsheets had also gone to town on the Reid/Snyder stories, providing a fig leaf for the lurid details by explaining that both men were among the most vocal supporters of the Government’s proposed Textiles Act, to be debated in the next few days in the House of Commons. The same stories as those run by the tabloids were pattered out, together with extra, business-related reportage. Bob Reid was a man with a violent temper, said one disgruntled ex-employee, who, if provoked, went completely off the rails. Staff were so terrified of him when he went on factory visits that they used to hide in the cupboards. When Reid snapped back at reporters who phoned him for a reaction to the stories, he only seemed to prove the point.

As for Snyder, morale at Active Red was said to be at an all-time low. The downturn in south-east Asian markets had seen orders collapsing, and Snyder was implementing enforced redundancies. ‘It’s like the end of the coal industry,’ said an embittered Derby worker, who’d lost his second career. ‘These days it’s not a question of “if” Snyder will sack you, it’s a question of “when”.’

But it was the Financial Times story, which included none of the salacious sexual details about Reid and Snyder, that was the most worrying of all. Allegations about the two men, it reported, had first emerged from a confidential analysis of the sportswear market undertaken by a leading public relations company. ‘The analysis, intended for internal consumption, identifies serious allegations of sexual misconduct and errors of judgement.’ Reid and Snyder had both been contacted for their reactions to the report. Both had said the stories were heavily one-sided, and that they were seeking legal counsel. But there were no outright denials – and the protestations of bias only served to underline their apparent guilt all the more. Bob Reid and Ed Snyder had been tried, found guilty and hanged by the national press before they were even aware of what was happening. Whatever else they did in their lives, the damage to their reputations would be serious and irreversible.

Chris surveyed the papers, coldly furious. How could he have been so naive about the real purpose of Project Silo? From the moment North had told him to go digging up dirt he should have realised. Instead, he’d been the innocent all along, unable to understand why the personal lives of Starwear’s competitors should be of the slightest interest. Blind to where it was all heading. No wonder North was packing him off to India the very next day. The stories about Reid and Snyder weren’t one-day wonders. They’d go on and on for the next week at least. The tabloids were already racing about with fat chequebooks, handing out money to whoever had a bad word to say about the two men. The flood of sleaze and allegations would continue. And all at a time to inflict maximum damage to Sportex and Active Red. Members of Parliament, having been lectured repeatedly on the merits of ‘responsible management’ by Nicholas King, would now be made vividly aware of the kind of people pressing for greater competition. When the amendment making an exception of sportswear was put to the House, all the headlines about Reid and Snyder could hardly be ignored.

With the exception of the small number of Financial Times readers, the vast majority of people had no idea where all this information was coming from. They weren’t to know it was a smear campaign deliberately orchestrated to occur at the moment of maximum impact, that it was a confection of half-truths designed to be deliberately misleading. Until today, Reid and Snyder had just been two men running sportswear companies; from now on, whenever their names came up, there would be smirks about their sexual peccadilloes, question marks about their sense of judgement.

So much, thought Chris, for the report of which he’d been so proud – his finest piece of strategic planning to date. It had been hijacked and used by North for a dirty-tricks campaign. Yet another reason why Kate’s death was just too much of a coincidence. She would never have countenanced this kind of activity. Apart from its colossal tastelessness, it could, in the long run, only be bad news for Lombard. Since the mid-nineties the corporate world had had to become more transparent and accountable; an agency that dealt in muck and sleaze was hardly going to prosper.

His immediate impulse was to try to see Mike, but he didn’t even know if Mike was in his office. He had spent yesterday closeted in the penthouse, having cancelled all meetings. According to Rosa, her boss had been utterly distraught. Running to him now with the papers, complaining about Elliott North, somehow didn’t seem right. Besides, he told himself, whatever tales were coming out about Reid and Snyder now would soon be eclipsed by a far bigger story. When Judith’s piece came out in The Herald, journalists would have a far grander story of deceit and malevolence to explore.

Deep in thought, Chris didn’t even hear his telephone ringing – till Lotte put her head round the door. He picked up the receiver.

‘C. T. It’s Bernie.’

‘Oh.’

‘Look, I’ve got a nice little case of claret in,’ he used the code phrase, ‘would you like to come round to sample it tonight?’

Chris paused. ‘I wouldn’t mind sooner.’

‘When were you thinking?’

‘What about right now?’

‘I’ve got Mr Snyder on line two,’ Rosa’s voice came through on Mike Cullen’s intercom, ‘shall I put him through?’

Mike Cullen looked at his watch. Eleven-thirty a.m. He was surprised it had taken so long.

‘Sure,’ he told Rosa. Then, after a pause, ‘Good morning, Ed.’

‘What in the hell is going on over there?’

Mike Cullen raised his right hand to his brow, massaging his eyebrows with forefinger and thumb. ‘It would seem that a report has been deliberately leaked to the national media.’

‘I had TV cameras outside my office yesterday afternoon, the things they were saying were just so ludicrous I thought it was some flash in the pan. So I came to Berlin, as planned, for a meeting. Now my Corporate Comms guy has been on the phone saying there’s crap all over the papers.’

Mike Cullen sighed. ‘On a personal level, it is very regrettable.’

‘Regrettable! I don’t know if I’ll still have a marriage when I get home.’

‘Believe me,’ Cullen spoke with feeling, ‘I’m going to get the bastard responsible.’

‘You’d better. My Comms guy says the whole thing came out of Lombard.’

‘I can understand why he might think that,’ interjected Mike Cullen, ‘but it’s not entirely fair. We did produce a report on the sportswear market, a bona fide marketing strategy. All this … personal detail was in an appendix to the document commissioned by Jacob Strauss’s PR hit man. I suspect he was the guy who leaked it.’

‘The day before the Textiles Act is debated in Parliament?’ Mike Cullen closed his eyes. ‘The intention was pretty clear.’

‘He’s going to completely derail us!’ Snyder’s voice rose. ‘The chances of that sportswear amendment sticking now are at least fifty-fifty!’

‘I agree it’s bad news for Active Red right now,’ Mike Cullen said after a pause, ‘but look at the big picture. What’s bad news for Ed Snyder today is very good news for him tomorrow.’

‘Are you seriously telling me I’m supposed to ignore the national media?’ ‘I am,’ murmured Cullen, ‘on this particular occasion.’

‘Well, excuse me for sounding ungrateful, but I’m just finding this all a bit of a mindfuck.’

There was a pause before Cullen responded. ‘Look, Ed, I can completely understand the way you’re feeling. And believe me, my heart goes out to you,’ he tried his best to be reassuring. ‘1 just want you to be sure of two things. First, this isn’t coming from Lombard, it’s coming from Jacob Strauss. And second, despite all this crap, we still have our understanding.’

There was silence at the other end. ‘In just a couple of days, things will look a lot different.’ It was a long while before Snyder finally said, ‘You’d better be right.’ ‘Oh, I am right,’ Cullen told him. ‘Nothing in the world is more important to me.’

•••

Bernie came downstairs to Reception in shirt sleeves, and swiped Chris through security with a guest card.

‘We can use this for two minutes,’ he led him to a ground-floor meeting room, closing the door behind them and glancing over at where Chris stood, expectant. ‘Judith called late yesterday afternoon. I left a message on your mobile, but you obviously didn’t get it.’

‘Answering service is playing up,’ Chris grunted. ‘What’s up?’

‘She asked me to tell you that Carter’s sent her to India for the rest of the week.’

‘What?’

‘Staying at the Royal Jaipur Gardens Hotel. Something about a press tour and getting first-hand evidence for an article.’

‘Christ Almighty!’

‘What’s going on?’ Bernie was bemused.

‘Wish I knew.’ Chris stared at him for a moment, before shaking his head. ‘Yesterday morning I was given orders to join the same tour. Starwear’s Jaipur plant. Bit of a coincidence, isn’t it? And the guy giving the orders is the same guy who’s been having me followed. The same guy—’ He halted in his tracks. No. He couldn’t tell Bernie about Merlin de Vere. William van Aardt. Kate Taylor.

Bernie was following him intently. ‘So how d’you reckon this chap got Carter to send Judith?’ he asked.

‘That’s what’s bothering me.’

‘Well, he’s got to have Carter in his pocket, hasn’t he?’ Bernie pointed out the obvious.

Chris quickly recalled Judith telling him about the time Carter had wanted to know what she was writing up on Starwear. How, she had wondered, had he got wind of that? He also remembered Judith saying how Carter had demanded a ‘sympathetic portrait’ of Jacob Strauss on his appointment as CEO – and the resulting hagiography produced by one of his lackeys.

The possibility that Carter was taking money from Starwear had, of course, crossed Judith’s mind – but she had dismissed it as preposterous. Paranoia. Surely not even Carter would allow himself to be so compromised? Right now, however, it seemed far from paranoid. As Chris thought rapidly through what had happened, the sequence of events was shockingly self-evident: yesterday morning she had handed in her piece to Carter. Carter had immediately been on the phone to North. North had come up with the scheme to send both of them to India.

‘Why d’you reckon this chap wants you out of the way?’

Chris glanced back at him, fear in his face. A tragic accident, he couldn’t help thinking. Some appalling incident in Jaipur …

‘I’ve got to warn Judith,’ he told Bernie urgently.

His friend gestured to a telephone. ‘Want to try?’

‘Her room’ll be bugged.’ He met his friend’s expression of concern. ‘No. This is something I have to do myself.’

Hurrying back to Lombard, Chris had just one thought on his mind: how to get that visa stamp in his passport so that he could get out to India immediately. He didn’t know anyone in the Foreign Office, let alone the Indian High Commission, nor could he think of anyone who did. Phoning the High Commission from his mobile, he asked yet again about speeding up visa applications – this time on compassionate grounds. A telegram would be needed from a police station or hospital in India, he was told. Which ruled out that option. It was only when his thoughts returned briefly to the news of Kate’s death, that the memory surfaced, sudden and unbidden from the past: Kashmir Development Agency. It had been one of Kate’s clients.

Back at Lombard he made his way immediately to the first floor, where Stewart Watkins, Kate’s second-in-command, was working behind his desk, ashen-faced and still coping with the shock of yesterday’s news. After exchanging condolences, Chris told him, ‘I’ve just been ordered to India to look at a Quantum Change factory. I need an Indian visa – problem is, it takes the High Commission three days and I need one a lot sooner. Do you know anyone at the Kashmir Development Agency who could pull strings?’

‘KDA is a one-man operation,’ Stewart replied, ‘Anant Singh. He’s a player all right, but he’s known round here as the client from hell.’

Chris raised his eyebrows questioningly.

‘Seems to have a lot of time on his hands. He won’t let us so much as phone a journalist without having to be bought lunch to discuss it first.’

Chris glanced at his watch. Twelve forty-five p.m. Looking back at Stewart he asked, ‘May I have his phone number?’

A few minutes later he was in his office, and had dialled KDA. ‘Mr Singh. Chris Treiger here from Lombard. I realise this is extremely late notice, but I was wondering if you might be able to join me for lunch today. I need to discuss an issue of some urgency …’