Pray for the Dying

Eighteen

‘Are we all set for tomorrow, Alf?’

‘Yes, but I’ve brought it forward to eleven thirty. The phone’s never stopped ringing all day, and the place is going to be packed out. If you want to do follow-up interviews and get them on the midday news we’ll need to start a bit earlier than noon.’

‘Agreed,’ Aileen said. ‘And the announcement: do they have that ready?’

‘Yes,’ the party CEO replied. ‘I’ve just sent you a draft by email. If you clear it, I can tell the policy staff to go home for the night.’

‘I’ll do that right now.’

‘Thanks. I must go now, Aileen. For some reason the switchboard’s just lit up like a Christmas tree.’

She cradled the phone and turned to Joey Morocco, who was removing silver boxes from a brown paper bag. She smiled. ‘You must do this a lot,’ she remarked. ‘I heard you at the front door; you were on first-name terms with the delivery boy. “Thank you, Wen-Chong.” I take it that means we’re having Chinese.’

‘I see that being married to a detective’s rubbed off on you,’ he said. ‘Sure, first-name terms with him, with Jeev from the Asian up in Gibson Street, with Kemal from the kebab shop and with Jocky.’

‘Jocky? Who the hell’s he?’

‘Pizza. That’s the Italians for you; much more interbred with the indigenous population.’

She looked over his shoulder. ‘What have we got?’

‘Chicken, brack bean sauce,’ he replied, mimicking a Chinese accent, ‘plawn sweet and sowah, clispy duck and pancakes, and lice; flied of course.’

‘Sounds great. I just need five minutes on my laptop and I’ll be ready.’

She wakened her computer from the sleep state in which she had left it earlier in the evening, and searched her email inbox. It was full of messages from friends, anxious, she guessed, for news of her safety, but Old’s was near the top and she found it with ease.

She opened the attachment, which was headed, ‘Draft Statement: Unified Police Force’, scanned it quickly, made a few changes to bring it into her delivery style, then sent it back with a covering note that read, ‘Final version clear for use.’

She had just clicked the ‘send’ button when a tone advised her that another message had hit the inbox, once again from Alf Old. Almost simultaneously, her mobile rang, and the screen showed that he was calling. She made a choice; the phone won.

‘Aileen.’ Even although he had only said her name, the chief executive, famed for his calmness, sounded rattled. ‘I’ve just sent you an email.’

‘I know, it just arrived. I haven’t opened it yet.’

‘Then you’d better do so.’

Not only rattled, she realised; he was angry also.

She opened the message. There was no text, only an attachment, headed ‘P1’, in PDF form. She clicked on it and an image appeared, as quickly as her ageing laptop would allow.

It was a newspaper front page, with the masthead of the Daily News, and beneath it a headline. ‘Road to Morocco: married Labour leader goes to ground.’ Most of it was taken up by a photograph, taken from a distance with a long lens, but the face was all too clearly hers, looking out of Joey Morocco’s bedroom window, with a curtain held across her, but not far enough to cover her right breast, which the newspaper had chosen to cover with a black rectangle.

‘Fuck!’ she screamed.

‘Exactly!’ Old barked. ‘What the hell were you thinking about, Aileen?’

‘It’s not what you think,’ she protested.

‘Then what the hell else is it? Anyway it doesn’t matter what I think, it’s what the readers of the Daily News think, them and the readers of every other paper that the photographer sells it on to, once they’ve had their exclusive. They’ve already given it to BBC, Sky and ITN, for use after ten, to sell even more papers tomorrow morning.’

‘Is it on the streets yet? Can we stop them?’

‘It will be any minute now, and no we can’t. We could go to the Court of Session and ask for an interdict preventing further publication. We might get it, we might not, probably not. Anyway, the damage is done.’

Her anger had risen up to match his. ‘But how did they get it?’ she asked. ‘How did they know I was here?’

‘They didn’t. I spoke to the editor of the Scottish version; he’s a mate and he was good enough to call me, and to send the page across. He said it was taken by a freelance photographer, a paparazzo, who stakes out Joey Morocco’s place periodically, just in case.

‘She saw a car parked across his driveway, with two guys in it who had Special Branch written all over them. . her words. . so she found a vantage point out of their sight and hung around, just in case. She got lucky; saw a face at the window and a bit more, snapped off as many shots as she could, then legged it.

‘It was only when she downloaded the photos on to her laptop in her car that she realised how lucky she was. She got straight on to the News. That’s her best payer, apparently.’

‘Bastards!’ she hissed, then chuckled, taking herself by surprise. ‘It’s the wee black sticker I really hate. It’s suggesting that my tits are too misshapen for a family newspaper: that they might put folk off their breakfast.’

‘Then cheer up,’ Old growled. ‘There’s another one inside, on page three, appropriately enough, with you looking over your shoulder, as if to make it crystal clear that there is somebody else in the room with you. There’s a lot more of you on show there, and they haven’t covered that up.’

‘Who wrote the story?’

‘Marguerite Hatton. She’s on their political staff. They flew her up from London overnight.’

‘That’s the bitch that gave Bob trouble earlier on at his press conference. She’ll rub his nose in it now.’

‘Or he will rub yours.’

‘I couldn’t care less about him. Why do you think I’m at Joey’s?’ As she spoke, she became aware of a figure in the doorway, holding a plate in each hand. ‘I’ve got some apologising to do to him.’

‘Well, do it on the way to the emergency exit. You have to get out of there, for a fucking army’s going to land on his doorstep as soon as the telly news breaks. Get your bodyguards to pull right up to his door, jump in their car and have them get you the hell out of there.’

‘To where, though?’ Joey had moved in behind her and was studying the image on the laptop. ‘It’ll be just as bad at my place.’

‘To Gullane?’ Old suggested. ‘Give yourself time to come up with a cover story? Maybe even do a happy families shot tomorrow.’

‘Not a fucking chance. I tell you, we’re history. Anyway, I’m going to be in Glasgow tomorrow.’

‘Eh?’ he exclaimed. ‘You’re not going ahead with the press conference, are you?’

She gasped. ‘Of course, man. We’ll never have a bigger crowd. I will not back down from this. It’s not going to kill me, any more than that guy did last night, so it can only make me stronger.’

‘Then go to my place. Nobody will think to look there. I’ll call Justine and tell her you’re coming.’