International Directory Inquiries had suggested where to look next in his quest to follow the money. The only Jespersen listed in Nassau was Jespersen Marine with an address on Frog Cay. Danny waited till late afternoon when the newsroom was a cauldron of clattering keys, cigarette smoke and desperate focus on getting stories to the newsdesk early enough to claim a spot in the first edition. Then he called the number, drumming his fingers on his notebook as the unfamiliar foreign ringtone sounded in his ear.
He was on the point of hanging up when the insistent bleep was interrupted by a bass voice with all the gravel of Louis Armstrong. ‘Yeah, this is Jespersen’s. Can I help you?’
He’d been rehearsing his approach, but in the moment, Danny lost his grasp on what he’d planned. ‘You sell boats, right?’
‘That’s why we’re called Jespersen Marine, sir. Buying and selling boats is what we do. You in the market?’ The line was amazingly clear. Danny had never made a transatlantic call before and he’d been expecting something more akin to tuning in to Radio Luxembourg on medium wave on the transistor radio he’d listened to under the bedclothes in his teens.
‘My name’s David Black. I’m calling from Scotland. My boss is in the oil business and he’s thinking about selling his boat.’
‘O-K,’ the man said, stretching the first vowel to three syllables. ‘What kind of boat is it?’
Danny cleared his throat. ‘I don’t have the details. He just asked me to check out a couple of boatyards. It’s a sailboat, a big one, sleeps half a dozen.’
A ripe chuckle came down the line. ‘You’re going to have to give me more information than that before I can tell you whether we’d be interested. You need to send us the boat’s spec, its age, that kind of stuff. And some photographs. Then we can have a proper conversation.’
‘I can arrange all that,’ Danny said. ‘What’s your name? And your address?’ He scribbled the details on his notepad. ‘How do you deliver the sale proceeds back to your clients?’
‘We can do a bank transfer anywhere in the world. Or we can help set up a local account here, if that’s what they want. Makes it easier to reinvest in a new boat. Where is the boat right now?’ Conrad Jespersen asked.
It wasn’t one of the answers Danny had prepared. ‘The Canary Isles,’ he improvised. ‘Lanzarote.’ His armpits felt clammy.
‘Hmm. Gonna take upwards of three weeks to sail her here, so you’ve got time to FedEx that info across to us here and we can call your guy and let him know whether we’re interested. I’m taking a guess that he’s not gonna be on the boat.’ He chuckled again.
Danny made an attempt at a conspiratorial laugh. ‘Not much chance of that, he’s a bit of a fair-weather sailor.’
‘Is he thinking of replacing his boat? Because we are the top dogs round here when it comes to luxury craft. New or classic.’
What to say? ‘He was talking about maybe a catamaran.’
‘We can help there. We’re the best show in town, David. I’ll look forward to getting a package from you. You have a good day, now.’
‘Thanks. You too.’
Danny replaced the receiver and exhaled deeply. The man at the next desk raised his eyebrows and glanced across. ‘Christ, Danny, you sound like a whale coming out the water.’
‘Just a tricky wee call,’ Danny muttered. A tricky wee call he’d negotiated well enough to have worked out how his brother’s clients were getting their money ashore. Or should that be ‘offshore’?
That had been his last newsgathering act of 1978. Now he was starting the working year by trying to get a rough draft of his story down on paper. Sure, there were holes in it. But for Danny, the best way to make sure he asked the right questions was to write what he thought of as ‘the story so far’ before the crucial interview. What he’d learned over the New Year break had made clear the path ahead. As he’d told Allie Burns on the train, his next long weekend would provide him with the perfect opportunity to plug those holes with hard facts.
But that night, he was struggling. The adrenaline buzz of his train journey had dissipated and finding the right way into the story wasn’t easy. Danny had never worked a story as big as this, and he was surprised by his anxiety levels. He had his own tried-and-tested ways of dealing with stress, but tonight, he instinctively knew he needed a different solution. He needed to talk to someone who understood the game. But not someone like McGovern who would try to steal his story out from under him. Or deliberately unsettle him out of jealousy.
Someone like Allie Burns.
She was on the night shift, he recalled. Writing up her dramatic ‘baby on the train’ story. He checked his watch. Just after nine. Gavin Todd would be on his break, leaning on the bar of the Printer’s Pie, a large whisky clenched in his grasping wee fist. At his side would be Allie’s shift partner, accompanying the boss because he was senior to her and therefore entitled to extend his break to match Todd’s. Allie would have to settle for holding the fort till they returned.
Danny picked up the phone and rang the news reporters’ line. As he could have predicted, Allie answered on the second ring. ‘Daily Clarion newsroom, Alison Burns speaking.’ Using her given name because that was the rule. He was Daniel Sullivan on his bylines, she was Alison. Except on the night when she’d annoyed one of the news subeditors, who’d marked up her copy as being by Alister Burns.
‘Hi, Allie, it’s Danny. Have you had your break yet?’
‘Me? No, I’m minding the shop while the big boys fill their boots.’
‘I was wondering if you fancied a curry?’
A pause. ‘Tonight?’
‘Yeah, I’m kind of wrestling with that story I was telling you about. I could do with a friendly ear to bounce it off.’ Another pause. ‘My treat,’ he added.
‘And there was me thinking it was my irresistible wit and charm that you were after.’ She sounded amused rather than offended.
‘Another time. Tonight it’s your brains I want to pick.’
‘You talked me into it. I’ll have fish pakora, lamb bhuna and a paratha. I’ll see you in the canteen at half past ten. They should be back by then.’
‘Deal.’
‘And bring a couple of cans of lager, Danny. It’s thirsty work, listening.’
Allie put down the phone, wondering why Danny Sullivan had chosen her as his sounding board. He probably thought she owed him, since he’d handed her the miracle baby splash when he could have legitimately hogged it himself. She hardly dared let herself think it was because he liked her, or trusted her. Back in her local paper days, she’d been burned more than once by so-called mates.
She’d never forget the time she’d been sent on a training day at the local TV station. They’d been shown round the news operation, beginning in the copytaker’s room. Looking over the shoulder of one of the typists, Allie had been stunned to recognise the sentences appearing before her. Word for word, they were the very ones she’d written the previous afternoon for the next edition of her own paper. ‘That’s my story,’ she’d blurted out.
The copytaker didn’t even pause, nodding towards the copy pad next to him on the desk. Allie picked it up and read the first three paragraphs of her story. But it wasn’t her name at the top of the page. ‘By Andy Barratt,’ she read aloud. Her fellow trainee, a friendly guy who was always interested in her stories, just as she was in his.
‘The thieving shitehawk,’ she growled. Not only had he sold her work out from under her, he’d exposed her to any blame that might accompany the leaking of the story ahead of their own paper using it. And because TV news stories didn’t come with bylines attached, the finger would point straight at her if anyone from her newsroom spotted it.
That day had taught Allie an indelible lesson. Now, she guarded her work carefully and doled out her trust in very small doses. Maybe Danny Sullivan was someone she could depend on. Or maybe he was just trying to ingratiate himself, all the better to betray her down the line.
She was distracted from her fretting by the copy taster, who dropped a sheet of news agency copy in front of her. ‘Can you check this out, see if there’s any arrests in Scotland?’ he asked.
Allie scanned the page. Six men had been arrested in Lancashire and were being held under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. The short piece said they’d travelled to the UK on a ferry. It didn’t specify where from, but it was a code well understood by reporters. Suspects from Ireland, probably Republicans but possibly Unionists.
Allie put a call in to Strathclyde Police control room at Pitt Street in the city centre and asked for the Duty Officer. Five minutes later, she’d learned – not for publication – that the men were a cell of known foot soldiers in the IRA and that there was no indication that there were any others on their way to Scotland, either by sea or by road. She reported her findings to the copy taster, who promptly rammed the story on the spike, killing it. ‘No use to us,’ he muttered, turning back to his basket of incoming agency stories.
Just after ten, the first edition arrived, one of the elderly ‘copy boys’ dropping a bundle on the newsdesk and detouring to hand one directly to Allie. ‘I see you got the splash,’ he said with a grin that revealed the perfect smile of false teeth. ‘Good for you, Allie.’
‘Thanks, Sammy. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time.’
‘That’s a handy knack. Stay lucky, doll,’ he added, moving on to his next drop.
She was skimming through the paper when Todd and her shift partner, Big Kenny Stone, returned from the pub, both flushed from drink and cold. ‘It’s fucking freezing out there,’ Big Kenny complained. He shook his head to dislodge the melting snowflakes that had landed on his thick dark hair. ‘Better wrap up if you’re going to the pub.’
‘I’m heading down to the canteen,’ Allie said, grabbing her shoulder bag.
‘The canteen? You’ll not get anything down there this time of night. It’s just the vending machines.’
‘Danny Sullivan’s bringing me a curry.’
‘Ooh, get you.’ He began to sing the opening bars of ‘Love Is in the Air’. He even sketched a few dance steps, surprisingly agile for such a big man.
Allie shook her head in dismissal, a scornful smile on her face. ‘You’re just jealous because you’re not getting a curry.’
He held his hands up in submission. ‘And that’s all I’m jealous about. You’re welcome to a nice night in with Danny Boy.’
She pulled a face at him and marched off across the room to the stairs. But as she trotted down two floors to the canteen, her mind circled back round to Big Kenny’s song. Did she fancy Danny Sullivan? He wasn’t bad looking, if you preferred the waif to the hunk. Definitely more David Bowie than Burt Reynolds. He was always clean and tidy, which was more than you could say for those of her colleagues who didn’t have put-upon wives or girlfriends to iron their shirts and take their suits to the dry cleaners. He didn’t join in the sexist banter of the newsroom, or wave the semi-naked pin-up Page Three girls under her nose like some of the men did, urging her to compare herself to them.
If she had to go out with someone from work, Danny Sullivan was definitely the best option. And where else was she going to meet a man these days?
Allie liked to think of herself as a feminist. Not a man-hater, obviously. But she’d decided she didn’t need to define herself in terms of a relationship. Still, there were times when she thought wistfully that it might be fun. And maybe Danny Sullivan was someone she could have fun with?