Mac Mountbatten, Editor in Chief of Simple City’s Observed Newspaper, was a man who enjoyed nothing more than to exhibit his power and his profound anger at the world for making him react to it the way it did.
She knew he knew she was there. Even though he was screaming down the telephone in his office, seemingly oblivious to her running to her desk to hide 10ft away, nothing got past him on his patch.
Mac loathed tardiness almost as much as environmentalists and his sixth sense always alerted him to when either sinner were in his presence. It was only a matter of time before she would make the walk of shame through the other reporters to his office. She preyed for the professor to call.
“DARLING!” Agony Aunt Dr Constance Love b-lined across the room, bounding towards Hak’s desk like a hormonal hurricane ready to take out any landmass of dry sanity.
Dr Love (it was a self-appointed PHD) always wore turquoise, and wrapped around her fat arms and neck were more beads and charms than you would find at an average Krishna shrine.
She squeezed between the desks like a fat cat in a rat maze, knocking over jars of pencils with her size 18 hips, swaggering like a whale in a ball gown. Hak usually avoided any kind of conversation with her by running out the door. This time she was trapped. She preyed for the Chief to call her in.
“My deepest, deepest, most heart felt condolences my child! I lit a candle, I said a prayer – but death is a doorway we all must pass through!” She wheeled up an unwelcome chair and moored her titanic body at the edge of Hak’s desk, wheezing at the over assertion.
“I am a fully qualified grievance councillor as well as a Reiki and Tarot master…and that makes me, darling, the only qualified one to understand you.” She droned insincerely. “And I am here to heal your wounds, share your burdens…you can feel free to offload darling. Were there any celebrities at the funeral?”
Hak flared in violent allergic reaction. “You are probably the least qualified person in this WORLD to understand ME! The chair your squidgy fat butt is parked on has probably got more of a chance of getting an insight into me than you. Go away.”
Dr Love shook her head, refusing to take the hint. “Hak, my dear, dear child you are blinded by grief. Stunted like a flower without a wall to cling to. Anger is the last respite of the desperate. I know how it feels to lose a father and I can give you advice and a shoulder to cry on, you could feature in my column this week, my readers would find great inspiration in my advice to your troubles darling.”
She placed a profoundly patronising palm down on Hak’s hand, as if she more than understood, she over-stood, everything.
Hak popped. “For your information I am happy daddy is dead so you can shove your shoulder up a place tears can’t reach! And I swear if you ever, ever call me a stunted wallflower again I will do something that you will really have reason to tell your readers about. Now. Fuck off!”
A few reporters lucky enough to overhear her rage tittered as Dr Love sloped away. Hak’s good feeling was short lived, but worth it.
“SINCLAIR you snivelling waste of my time and space. My office NOW!”
Mac was an over-bearing lunatic with the social graces of a rubbish tip and the permanent complexion of a raw beet, Hak squeezed past him as she entered the office sitting anxiously at his desk.
“BACK TO WORK YOU LOT – THIS RAG WILL NOT WRITE ITSELF!” As he slammed the door behind him the blinds on the window fluttered and flapped, making sound like twelve angry metallic birds caught in a jar.
His office was almost empty apart from three neat filing cabinets and a photograph of him shaking the Prime Minister’s hand on central display on the wall. A golf club was tucked neatly in a corner next to a huge television permanently tuned to the 24hour news channel.
He had no life, no family, and no dependants (apart from scotch). He lived for stories, ink not blood coursed through his veins. Headlines not thoughts raced in his brain. He was made of column inches and not a speck of a moral fibre so much as punctuated his personality.
Hak fixed her eyes to the floor as hard experience had taught her never to provoke Mac more than absolutely necessary, especially when he was looking for a fight. She found it difficult to bite her lip.
“Where the hell have you been? Somewhere nice, I hope Sinclair!”
She did not even know how to begin to explain the course of her morning’s events. So she did not try.
“Anything you care to share with me?” He persisted stalking the ground behind her like an expectant vulture, waiting on news of his first- born.
Hak nervously shuffled to the edge of her seat.
“I’m waiting Sinclair…”
“Mac, they buried my father this morning!”
“Oh do not try that one on me! I know fine and full well how you felt about your father, I am surprised you didn’t invite the cast of River Dance to jig on his frigging dust!”
Mac of course was right, and besides had absolutely no time at all for personal feelings, being as he never had any of his own.
“Are you aware that our elusive serial killer has struck again?” His back was turned on her.
“I found out ten minutes ago.”
“Ten minutes?” He turned on her, his face filled with fury. “They found Julie Stanhope two fucking hours ago! Where have you been?”
“Long story.”
“Long story? Well at least it would be a story, I’ve had nothing from you in weeks! What are you up to?”
“Mac, I told you, I am working on something big.”
“Is that so? Bigger than, say, two detectives in my office this morning, asking me all sorts of questions about you? They were particularly interested in your whereabouts at 1pm this afternoon.”
Hak frowned. “I was at my father’s funeral.”
“Your fathers funeral ended at 12.30.”
“Mac, I was there.” She had no idea where this was going, but she knew she was in for an uncomfortable ride.
“Funny that, because they were there too. Did you meet with Jonathan Saunders the day he was murdered?”
Hak paused. “What has that got to do with anything?”
“Answer-the-question Sinclair!”
“Yes.” She saw no reason to lie. She rarely did.
“Is there a reason why you chose to keep me out of this little secret of yours? Is there a reason why I had to discover this little nugget of information from a couple of jumped up Bobbies?”
“Secret? Where are you going with this?”
Three people had been killed in less than a month in Simple City, more than had been killed in the three previous years. Fear was spreading like a rash in a heat wave, no one knowing or daring to guess who might be next. Every victim of the killer (who became known due to media sensationalism as The Hit Man) was found with their bodies filled with nine bullets. Police had been barking up trees like wild dogs in a forest looking for motivations and links; it was a witch-hunt that made the Salem trials look like a game of hide and seek.
“Chief?”
“Stop being stupid Sinclair! Facts are staring you in the face. It would seem that you were the last person to be seen with Jonathon before his murder. And everybody in town knows how much you and Julie Stanhope hated each other!”
“I hate a lot of people a lot more than I hated her!”
“She was your rival and main competition!”
“Competition? Her? She couldn’t find a story in a library! The only way she got to where she got to was by buying slutty underwear!”
“She scooped you on the Montgomery trial!”
“She was sleeping with the defence for Christ sake!” Hak paused to allow the innuendo to sink in, before the full weight of his queries sunk her.
“Wait a minute, the police think I am the Hit Man?”
The chief glared at her.
“That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard! I have nothing to hide, and my feelings don’t change for the bitch now she is dead, but I did not kill her! Only a complete idiot would think that!”
“And Jonathon? And the first poor bastard they found, Harold Masters?”
Hak could not absorb the shock of the accusation. “Chief Jonathon was a source into the Church of Nine! I met with him countless times and on countless occasions and he survived every one! And I have never set my eyes on Harold Masters in my life. Those who govern the Church know I am getting closer to them! They are setting me up! They want me out of the way.”
“Church of Nine? Don’t tell me we are back to that insane cock-and-bull story, are we?”
“I did not kill those people. You have to believe that.”
Mac stared at her as if she were a spider trapped inside his glass.
“Trust me Sinclair if I thought for one second that you had anything to do with these murders, I’d print the story in the next edition, and probably force you to write it!”
“So your point is?”
“Trust Sinclair! Three weeks ago I asked you what you knew about Jonathon. You lied to me. I do not pay reporters to lie to me!”
“I promised him anonymity!”
“He was fucking murdered Sinclair! Everyone in town has heard of him!”
“I have other contacts. I am not prepared to put them at risk.”
“Other contacts like Harold Masters?”
“I told you Chief, I did not meet him, no one knows who he was.”
“Then how come he had your business card on him?”
“Sylvia gives them away downstairs like candy to kids! Why don’t you accuse her of killing him? She is probably a lot more qualified than me!”
“Sinclair, I do not care if you have to lift every hobo and bar side crawler out of every gutter in this City, I want your story on my desk by the end of the day!”
She folded her arms in defiance. “It’s not enough time.”
“Not enough time? I pay you to make time! I want everything you know on my desk by five!”
“I can tell you all I know now: the killer is Church of Nine. I know it is one of them, and surprise you as this might, but they don’t walk around the street announcing to the world what it is they are up to. But mark my words, I will expose these bastards if it is the last thing I do.”
“Sinclair, get off the cross we need the wood! I thought this vendetta of yours would end once your father was dead!”
“This is not a vendetta. I hate the bastard for many reasons, not just because he was my father.”
“The Church of Nine is a respected charitable organisation established by the McGrew Corporation to help kids living in poverty. They have raised billions to support the cause. We might as well run with the headline I’M NASTY INTERNATIONAL, or SHAVE THE CHILDREN.”
Hak reacted badly. “Jesus, I cannot believe you are being so blind to this! You want to know about Jonathon Saunders? Okay! I’ll tell you about him. He was an accountant for Church of Nine, he worked for them for four years, until he discovered that not one penny of the cash ever made it further than the back of the McGrew’s family pocket. It is the scam of the century, and it goes deeper if you are interested.”
He wasn’t. “So the fact that it is your own family who established the Church of Nine is purely coincidental to this whole crusade of yours? Who are you trying to convince here? You have no fucking evidence, not a shred of proof! The defamation courts would eat us for breakfast if I ran with some of your ridiculous hyper-paranoid conspiracy theories.”
“They are facts, not theories. Jonathon was my proof! That is why he is dead.”
The Chief raged: “I know why you are pissed off! You are bitter! And if I were a struggling journalist living in a City filled with millionaires and I had been cut off from a billionaires legacy because my mother was insane, I would be fairly pissed off and bitter too. But let me make myself absolutely clear, I have no time for your revenge.”
Hak lost control. “If you think I would contrive a story and go against every code I believe in to get my hands on that corrupt bastard’s legacy you are lower than I thought you were.”
She talked fast to prevent the chief from interrupting, flying into full over-reaction. “Talk about pot calling the kettle black! You may talk the talk of a newspaper man, but you walk the walk of all the other corporate arseholes you brown nose up at the golf club.”
She knew she had gone too far this time. There were many things that you could not say about Mac to his face. Top of that list was the suggestion that he could be bought. This did not stop her.
“The only reason you do not want to publish stories about the Church of Nine is because you do not want to upset the balance books of your buddies on the nineteenth hole, God forbid you didn’t make the guest list for the next little fundraiser. I know how deep my Father’s and my Uncle Arthur’s pockets go, don’t think I don’t see a bribed man when I’m looking at one!”
She was fired on the spot. It came as no surprise.
She left his office and cleared her desks baron surface, one Cacti and a pencil holder was her idea of clutter. Then her phone rang.
“What!” she snapped
“Well Miss Hak,” replied Sylvia from the other end of the line. “If that is how you greet people no wonder they never call back. I have a professor on the line for you, would you like me to put him through?”
“The Professor?”
“If you are busy I can get him to call you back.”
She had a feeling she was about to leave her zones of comfortable understanding for the second time in the day.
“Put him through.”
“He’s on line three.” Hak took a deep breath – in.
“Hello – professor?”
“Miss Sinclair, I trust I find you well?”
“Enough.”
“Do you still wish to meet?”
She leant forward into a conspiratorial hunch over the receiver.
“I do.”
“Good. You have something I want.”
“I do?” Hak was thrown.
“Miss Sinclair do you believe in coincidence?”
“Professor, are we going to talk about the Church?”
“Short and to the point. Very well. If you want me to spill all I know about the Church, you must bring me the envelope.”
“Envelope?” Her stomach cramped.
“It is not every day one is visited by a Consort of Destiny Miss Sinclair, I should think it highly unnecessary to be reminded of the event.”
She held her breath. “How do you know about that?” She whispered while privately freaking out.
“I know about a great deal of things Miss Sinclair, this is why you wish to interview me, is it not.”
The words hung in her ears like baubles on an evergreen. Hargreave’s face appeared in her minds eye, and blinked out just as quickly. Something inside snapped into automatic pilot. “So you agree to be interviewed?”
“Do you know the south of the city well?”
“I was born there.”
“Good that is more than satisfactory. Do you have a pen so you can take down my address?”
Hak scribbled down the information on a napkin she pulled from her pocket.
“If you do not have the envelope, or if the envelope is in anyway tampered with, I can tell you nothing. I shall expect you tomorrow. High Noon.”
“Why not now. I could be there in forty minutes.”
“Tomorrow Miss Sinclair. Good luck.” He hung up.
In her limited thirty years experience of breathing oxygen Hak had very little true knowledge of what this world was really about. She really had no intention at all to find out what she was headed to find out.
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