No Kiss For The Devil

7

The power base for Copnor Business Publications was a small, first-floor office in Covent Garden, sandwiched between an outdoor activities shop and a theatrical agency. A plate on the wall in the foyer listed a variety of specialist business and trade periodicals. Riley had never heard of most of them. But the list was headed in bold print by a couple of business journals she knew by reputation, and which she suspected kept all the others afloat. The name of the man she had come to see was at the bottom in small type: David Johnson — Editor.

She debated turning round and going to Palmer’s office in Uxbridge. It was the natural place for him to go, and she knew he’d be there, if not now, then soon. It was where he rested, recuperated and sometimes allowed time to drift by when he had nothing more pressing to do.

She shook off the thought. Palmer was a big boy. Anyway, he needed the space, just as she would in similar circumstances. She had told him everything she knew; now it was best to leave him alone to absorb the news and come to terms with it in his own way.

She walked up the stairs and through an open door. A young woman with a shock of red hair and green-framed glasses was just taking off her coat, head craned to one side to study a pile of printed sheets spilling out of a fax machine. She managed to hang up her coat and scoop up the fax pages at the same time, while adroitly switching on her PC and simultaneously dropping a wad of mail on her desk from under one arm. A white plastic prism with the name Emerald in green print sat on the front of the desk, facing the door.

She glanced up as Riley entered, and pointed a lime-coloured fingernail towards a doorway to an adjacent room. ‘Miss Gavin? David said you were coming. He’s in there. Tea or coffee?’ Her tone and smile were relaxed and unfazed, and Riley had the impression that even if this young woman’s day got any harder, she would probably look no different to the way she did right now.

‘I’d love a coffee,’ she said gratefully. Donald’s idea of coffee was weak and warm, and she needed a stiff belt of caffeine to get her brain in gear. ‘Sweet and strong, please.’ Her head was already tight with tension, and she’d most likely have the mother and father of all headaches by mid-morning. But getting through the next few hours wasn’t going to be accomplished on wishful thinking and a couple of cold Smoothies.

‘No probs,’ said Emerald lightly.

Riley stepped through the open doorway into David Johnson’s office. The carpet was worn to a thread and stained, but the computers and monitors in the office were state-of-the-art and humming with activity.

Elsewhere, the place had the appearance of a glory hole, with shelves weighed down by papers, box files and reference books, and the untidy disorder of a serial slob oblivious to the apparent chaos around him. Riley was willing to bet the man could lay a finger on whatever he needed at the drop of a hat.

Johnson was a thin, balding man with a harried air and frameless spectacles cantered to one side as if they’d been put on in a hurry and never adjusted. His tie looked new but was already showing signs of strain, and his dark shirt had the rumpled bachelor’s look of just-in-time ironing.

‘I’m not sure what I can tell you,’ he said distractedly without introduction. He waved Riley to a chair by his desk. ‘Donald told me what you’d seen… a horrible business — I can’t believe it.’ He shook his head from side to side, as if the movement might dislodge the distasteful intrusion of death and danger that had been placed there by the news of Helen Bellamy’s murder.

Riley wasn’t sure what to say. The only deaths to enter this man’s world on a regular basis were probably those of companies dying through mismanagement, or senior executives expiring over one too many corporate lunches.

‘We wondered,’ she began, then remembered that Pell would be annoyed if she went round talking about Helen’s death before the details were released by the police. ‘We weren’t supposed to tell anyone about this. Can you keep it under your hat for now?’

He nodded warily. ‘Of course.’

‘What had Helen been working on recently?’

Johnson looked startled, his eyes jumping behind his spectacles. ‘What — you think someone she interviewed might have-?’ He stopped as if he found the idea too hideous to contemplate. ‘Christ, I don’t know. I mean, she did a couple of assignments for me, but they were all above-board. That was a few weeks back.’

‘Were they companies or individuals?’

‘Umm… a couple of companies, actually.’ He paused as Emerald entered with two mugs of coffee and retreated again, dropping a handful of opened and sorted post on his desk as she went, some with yellow stickers attached for urgent attention. ‘One was the London branch of a US financial services company under investigation by the Securities Exchange Commission in New York — but that was fairly unexciting stuff. There were no threats or anything because the US directors coughed up to minor fraud in exchange for a deal. Their case probably wasn’t helped much by Helen’s digging, but it was hardly the sort of thing that would have led to murder. They weren’t exactly Mafia figures.’

‘And the other one?’

Johnson closed his eyes in concentration and scratched his head, dislodging a flake or two of dried scalp. ‘Similar type of thing, if I recall. That one was across the channel — Brussels this time. Something to do with a scam on EU funding. Helen did her usual thing, digging into the background until she found someone willing to talk.’ He gave a wry smile. ‘There’s always someone willing to talk.’

‘Sounds like she was good at her job.’

Johnson nodded, his face relaxing. ‘She was. I wish I’d been able to push more stuff her way, but we don’t often get to cover hard news. Our core business usually circulates around general commercial stuff: corporate developments, mergers and acquisitions, that sort of thing. It’s all pretty low on excitement, really, in comparison. But Helen, she was like a terrier, in spite of her looks.’ He looked mildly abashed. ‘Sorry — don’t mean to be sexist or anything, but you know what she looked like. She was successful because the people she went after never saw her coming.’

Riley nodded. She knew what he meant: Helen Bellamy, a wolf in elegant sheep’s clothing. ‘So she did all right, then?’

‘I suppose. She certainly seemed to be in regular work. She probably had the same problems everyone else does — taking on stories that never paid in proportion to the time and effort put in. But she seemed to manage.’

‘And no problems related to any of her past assignments, as far as you know?’

‘Spit-backs from previous jobs?’ Johnson shook his head. ‘None that she mentioned. As for what we gave her, like I said, it wasn’t exactly hard-core embezzlement or multinational fraud, where people disappear under a motorway piling.’ He paused and looked warily at Riley.

‘What?’

‘Well, to be honest, I got the impression the last time we spoke that she was waiting to land something a bit more heavyweight. She was a bit distracted, which wasn’t like her. I thought she was a bit frustrated with the run-of-the-mill and wanted something more. It was odd, really, because her work was absolutely thorough and on the nail. Totally professional. In fact, she got a lot of praise for it. I reckon she was in line for some major assignments eventually, if only… ’ He shrugged and looked saddened. ‘Sorry.’

‘When did you last speak to her?’

‘A couple of weeks ago. I needed to check some detail about a story she’d done.’

‘You don’t know what this potential job was, though?’

‘No. She never said. I think it was still hanging at the time. It was more a feeling I had, that’s all.’

There was something in Johnson’s face; something he wasn’t saying.

‘What was your impression?’

Eventually, he sighed. ‘She once said she wanted to do the kind of work that you do.’

Riley felt a stab of surprise. ‘Me? She said that?’

Johnson nodded with a weak smile, as if he’d betrayed a confidence. ‘She said she’d met you and admired your work. I think she felt she could have been doing better for herself.’

‘She once asked me if I knew anything about oligarchs.’ The voice floated through from the outer office, inserting itself between them. Riley and Johnson turned to stare at Emerald, who was busy filing a nail, her head bent in concentration.

‘Oligarchs?’ Riley glanced at Johnson, wondering if the girl was in the habit of joining in on conversations with visitors. He shrugged, evidently used to it.

‘Yeah. Rich Russians. Billionares, trillionaires, whatever they are. Like the bloke who bought Chelsea. She asked if we’d ever covered any of them in the mags. I said no.’

‘Are you sure?’ Riley couldn’t think why, but she felt it might be important. It was quite a shift, from mundane business matters to Russians with bottomless bank accounts.

Johnson shifted in his chair. ‘Em’s right. It’s not something we’ve ever done.’ He frowned, focussing on the possibilities. ‘I’m not sure why, exactly — they certainly have their fingers in enough pies. And with what’s brewing up under Putin at the moment, and his growing antagonism towards the west, maybe a short series would have been good.’ He realised what he was saying and looked guilty.’ Sorry. Bad timing.’

Riley let the thought go. She didn’t need the conversation to drift off into the realms of publishing fantasy. ‘Do you know if Helen had any family?’

Johnson shook his head. ‘No. Well, I don’t know — if she did, she didn’t talk about them. She came in when she had to, did what was needed and that was it. Like I said, professional.’

‘What about that last cheque?’ It was Emerald again.

‘What about it?’ Johnson asked.

‘She rang and asked for it to go to a different address. Somewhere down in Hampshire. I’ve got a note here somewhere.’ She dropped the emery board and attacked her keyboard with a blur of fingers.

Johnson looked at Riley and flushed. ‘Sorry… I didn’t know anything about this.’

‘Here it is.’ There was a buzz of a printer and the girl came through with a sheet of paper. It was a simple payment slip for syndication fees, payable to Helen Bellamy. The address was: Mrs C. Demelzer, Long Cottage, Cotton Hill, Nr Basingstoke, Hants.

‘She rang last week,’ Emerald continued, ‘and asked me to hold any outstanding payments. She said if she didn’t come in to collect them by Friday, to make a cheque out to the woman at this address. I sent it off yesterday. You approved it.’ She stared at Johnson as if daring him to argue.

He blinked back. ‘Really?’

Emerald smiled conspiratorially at Riley, eyes twinkling behind her green specs. ‘Well, not really, but you would have in the end. I mean, why should we worry where the money goes — it’s her tax bill, isn’t it? And she was always really sweet to me. She said I had style.’ She gave David Johnson an arch look and turned away.

Riley bit her lip to stop herself smiling. She wanted to jump up and hug the girl. She held up the piece of paper. ‘Was this normal? To have payments made out to someone else?’

‘Not really.’ Johnson seemed mildly perturbed by the news, and that someone outside the company was now privy to it. ‘But we have a whole list of freelance contributors, so one-off payments are fairly common. If she’d asked it as a favour, I suppose Em’s right — I’d have approved it.’ He nodded at the piece of paper. ‘Maybe she owed this person money.’

‘Maybe. Can I take this? It might be important.’

‘Help yourself.’ Johnson prodded at his glasses and stood up, his eyes straying towards his monitor. ‘Anything to help. I mean, Em’s right… Helen was a really sweet woman. Such a waste.’

Back out on the street, Riley took a deep breath of air. Somewhere along the line, a young woman with a background in business reporting and a growing reputation had expressed a desire to do something else: the kind of work on which Riley herself had built a career. But was that all she had done — simply longed for a change? A shift away from what might have become mundane and ‘safe’? Or had she gone further than that, stepping out of her comfort zone into the world Riley knew, and in doing so, looked at something — or someone — just a little too closely for comfort?