The Hidden Man. Charles Cumming

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      ‘I’m not sure. He just called on the phone from Heathrow.’

      ‘Right.’

      From her reaction, it was clear that Jenny would not have time to stay. Picking up her bag, she soon made for the stairs and it remained only to pay her. Ben had thirty pounds in his wallet, six five-pound notes, which he pressed into her hand. They were walking towards the front door when he heard the scratch of a key in the lock. The door opened and Alice walked in, talking rapidly into her mobile phone. She did a double-take when she saw Ben standing at the foot of the staircase beside a tall, slightly flushed pretty girl and he raised his eyebrows as a way of saying ‘hello’. Jenny took a step back inside.

      ‘That’s not the point,’ Alice was saying. Her voice was raised to a pitch just below outright aggression. ‘I told her she’d have a chance to read through the piece. To check it. That was a promise I made.’ Jenny found herself standing awkwardly between them, like an actor waiting to go onstage. ‘So if you go ahead and print it, her whole family, who I’ve known since I was six fucking years old, are going to go …’

      Ben smiled uneasily and felt the dread of the phone call’s aftermath, another work crisis the dutiful husband would have to resolve. ‘Thanks, then,’ Jenny whispered to him, moving towards the door. ‘Same time tomorrow?’

      ‘Same time,’ he said.

      ‘About midday?’

      ‘Midday.’

      ‘Your wife’s lovely,’ she mouthed, standing below him on the threshold. ‘Really pretty.’

      Ben merely nodded and watched as Jenny turned towards Ladbroke Grove. Only when she was out of sight did he close the door.

      ‘But that’s exactly what I’m saying, Andy.’ Alice had kicked off her shoes and was now stretched out on the sofa. A great part of her lived for arguments of this kind, for the adrenalin surge of conflict. ‘If the article appears as it is …’ She pulled the phone away from her ear. ‘Fuck, I got cut off.’

      ‘What happened?’

      Ben came over and sat beside her. Her cheek as he kissed it was cold and smelled of moisturizer and cigarettes.

      ‘You remember that piece I wrote about my friend from school, the girl who was arrested for drug smuggling?’ Alice was redialling Andy’s number as she spoke. Ben vaguely remembered the story. ‘It was supposed to be a feature but the news desk got hold of it. Now they’ve gone and made the girl out to be some kind of wild child who should have known better, exactly what I promised Jane we wouldn’t do.’ She stared at the read-out on her mobile phone. ‘Great. And now Andy’s switched his phone off.’

      ‘Her name is Jane?’ The observation was a non sequitur, but Alice didn’t seem to notice.

      ‘She came to me because she knew the press would be on to her sooner or later. She thought she could trust me to tell her side of the story. I’m the only journalist her family knows.’

      ‘And now it’s been taken out of your hands?’

      He was trying to appear interested, trying to say the right things, but he knew that Alice was most probably lying to him. She would have leaked the story to the news desk in the hope of winning their approval. Alice was ambitious to move from features into news; the more scoops she could push their way, the better would be her chances of promotion.

      ‘That’s right. Which explains why Andy isn’t returning my calls.’

      ‘And how did Andy get hold of the story?’

      Her answer here would prove interesting. Would she confess to showing the interview to a news reporter, or claim that it was taken from her desk? Each time there was a crisis of this kind, Alice inevitably found someone else to blame.

      ‘I just mentioned it to a colleague over lunch,’ she said, as if this small detail did not in itself imply a breach of trust. ‘Next thing I know, the news editor is demanding that I hand over the interview so that he can farm it for quotes.’

      Ben noticed that she had stopped trying to reach Andy’s mobile phone.

      ‘So why didn’t you just refuse?’ he asked. ‘Why didn’t you just tell him you’d made a deal with the girl?’

      ‘It doesn’t work like that.’

      Of course it doesn’t. ‘Why not?’ he said.

      ‘Look, if you’re just going to be difficult about this we might as well –’

      ‘Why am I being difficult? I’m just trying to find out –’

      ‘Did you pick up my dry cleaning for the party?’

      The inevitable change of subject.

      ‘Did I what?’

      ‘Did you pick up my dry cleaning for the party?’

      ‘Alice, I’m not your fucking PA. I’ve been busy in the studio all day. If I have time, I’ll get it tomorrow.’

      ‘Great.’ And she was on her feet, sighing. ‘Too busy doing what? To walk five hundred metres to the main road?’

      ‘No. Too busy working.’

       ‘Working?’

      ‘Is that where we’re going with this?’ Ben pointed towards the attic. ‘Painting isn’t work? There’s no such thing as a busy day when you’re an artist?’

      Alice took off her earrings and put them on a table.

      ‘Was that her?’ she asked, trying a different tack. ‘The one at the bottom of the stairs?’

      ‘Jenny? Yes, when you came in. Of course it was.’

      ‘And is she nice?’

       ‘Nice?’

      ‘Do you get on with her?’

      A pause.

      ‘We get on fine, yes. She just lies down and I start painting. It’s not really about “getting on”.’

      ‘What is it about then?’

      ‘So you’re now picking a fight with me about a model?’

      Alice turned her back on him.

      ‘It’s just that I thought you were painting older people nowadays. Isn’t that the idea for the new show?’

      ‘No. Why would you think that? It’s just nudes. Age doesn’t come into it.’

      ‘So you still hire a girl purely on the basis of looks?’

      Ben stood up from the sofa and decided to get away. He would go back upstairs СКАЧАТЬ