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  Jess grinned.

  ‘Want some company?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ve already volunteered,’ the other person standing by the vending machine said. He was in his early forties, his hair straight and black and hanging limply as far as his collar. He peered at her from behind a pair of expensive spectacles that made his watery blue eyes appear huge.

  ‘What about you, Clive,’ Jess asked. ‘What are you up to?’

  ‘A couple of film festivals in Europe,’ Clive Garston told her. ‘I’m interviewing some directors too.’

  ‘It seems like everyone but me is jetting off somewhere,’ Jess said shrugging her shoulders and feeding coins into the vending machine. She selected the button marked hot chocolate and waited while the plastic cup dropped into view.

  ‘I’m sure you’ve got plenty of interesting stuff to do here,’ the woman said reassuringly. She sipped her coffee and watched as Jess also selected a couple of bars of chocolate from the machine and unwrapped the first one as soon as it fell.

  ‘You make me sick,’ Carrie Morgan said watching as Jess munched the chocolate. ‘You eat like a bloody horse and you never put any weight on. I’d only have to look at that chocolate and my thighs would expand to the size of zeppelins.’

  ‘A second on the lips a lifetime on the hips,’ Garston said. ‘That’s what they say isn’t it?’

  Jess grinned and looked at Carrie.

  ‘You’re not exactly in need of a gastric band yet,’ she said smiling and admiring the older woman’s immaculate figure.

  ‘I probably will be by the time I get back from New York,’ Carrie said. ‘It’s all lunches, dinners and shows.’

  ‘Oh you poor cow,’ Jess snorted. ‘Excuse me while I get my violin out.’

  ‘Isn’t it nice to see someone who suffers for their profession,’ Garston added sarcastically.

  ‘Oh fuck you,’ Carrie said. ‘All you’ll be doing for two weeks is sitting in bloody cinemas watching films. A film critic is hardly in a position to criticise a fashion correspondent when it comes to hard work.’

  ‘I do a bit more than just sit and watch films,’ Garston said, flatly. ‘I’m working on a book too.’

  ‘Isn’t everyone?’ Jess added, smiling and the two women laughed. Jess reached for her hot chocolate when the cup was full, sipping at the thick brown liquid, blowing on the surface when she realised how hot it was.

  ‘What are you working on, Jess?’ Carrie asked.

  ‘A piece about Andrei Voronov and the Crystal Tower,’ Jess informed her.

  ‘Good luck,’ Garston grunted.

  ‘Well it’s not so much about Voronov; it’s more to do with the amount of accidents that have happened there since they started building the place,’ Jess said. ‘It’s like a war zone the casualties are so high. There was another accident yesterday. A guy was killed.’

  ‘You’ll never get near Voronov,’ Garston said. ‘He makes Howard Hughes look like a party animal.’

  ‘I know,’ Jess said. ‘Not exactly welcoming to members of the press is he?’

  ‘He was married to a Russian model before he moved to London wasn’t he?’ Carrie offered, smiling.

  Jess nodded. ‘He’s got a couple of grown up kids from one of his earlier marriages. They both work for him. He married some French actress about three months ago. The ceremony was held on one of his yachts.’

  ‘He never goes to premieres or the usual round of social gatherings. He doesn’t want to be seen and he’s pretty secretive about his family,’ Garston went on. ‘No one knows much about him.’

  ‘Alex Hadley seems to know a fair bit,’ Jess offered.

  Carrie looked fixedly at her for a moment.

  ‘How do you know?’ she enquired.

  ‘I bumped into him the other night,’ Jess explained. ‘We went for a drink.’

  ‘Where?’ Garston grunted. ‘The nearest Salvation Army H.Q?’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Jess snapped.

  ‘Well come on, Jess, Hadley’s nothing now is he?’ Garston said. ‘How long’s he been out of the business? Two years? Longer?’

  ‘He still works freelance,’ Jess said.

  ‘What do you say to Alex Hadley if you see him in McDonalds?’ Garston chuckled. ‘Cheeseburger and small fries please.’ He laughed.

  Jess regarded him angrily, her eyes narrowing.

  ‘He was a good journalist,’ she said. ‘He still is.’

  ‘If he’s that good he’d be working for a paper, wouldn’t he?’ Garston countered.

  Jess held his gaze but said nothing.

  ‘How is he?’ Carrie enquired.

  Jess continued to glare at Garston for a moment longer then she turned to face the older woman.

  ‘He’s ok,’ she said, curtly. ‘Considering.’

  ‘Considering he’s out of work you mean?’ Garston interjected.

  ‘Oh fuck you, Clive,’ Jess snapped. ‘What happened to Alex could happen to any of us.’

  ‘Bullshit,’ Garston sneered. ‘He was an arrogant bastard. He wouldn’t change, he couldn’t adapt so he went under. Survival of the fittest and all that.’

  ‘And you love it, don’t you?’ Jess countered. ‘You never liked him.’

  ‘The feeling was mutual, I think,’ Carrie added. ‘He did think you were a dickhead. He told me that.’

  ‘Well, I’m the one with a job and he’s not, so who’s the biggest dickhead now?’ Garston said, defiantly.

  ‘Oh fuck you, it isn’t a competition,’ Jess snapped, turning away.

  ‘It’s always a competition, Jess,’ he called after her. ‘Life’s a competition and Hadley lost.’

  Jess raised her middle finger in the direction of the older man.

  ‘I’ll tell Alex you send your regards when I speak to him,’ she said, turning the corner so she was out of sight of her colleagues. ‘I’m sure he’ll be overjoyed you still think so highly of him.’

  Carrie looked at Garston and shook her head.

  ‘You couldn’t just let it go, could you?’ she said, flatly.

  ‘Fuck him,’ Garston sneered. ‘And fuck her too.’

  ‘In your dreams, Clive,’ Carrie said and she too walked away.

  Garston watched her go.

  TWENTY-THREE

  The room smelled of coffee and expensive aftershave.

  The six men seated around the long rectangular wooden table in the centre of the red carpeted room were all in their forties and upwards and they moved with the pace of men who didn’t need to hurry.

  Every now and then the relative silence inside the room would be broken by a cough or the clinking of porcelain as one of them sipped at his coffee. Even the soft turning of sheets of paper was audible in the high ceilinged room with it oak panelled walls. Every little sound seemed magnified by the acoustics in the room, heightened by the vaulted ceiling.

  There were several framed photos on the walls, competing for space with a number of portraits all displayed in gilt frames that caught the light and reflected it back into the room. The eyes of those in the paintings and photographs regarded the occupants of the room blankly as they carried on the business that had been perpetrated within for hundreds of years before and which would continue for many more to come.

  The man seated at the head of the table was the oldest occupant of the room and it was he who looked up from the file he’d been reading and around at his colleagues. He coughed theatrically then tapped the long wooden table three times.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ he said. ‘If we might come to order now.’

  Brian Dunham was fifty-three. A large, slightly overweight man who wore a dark grey suit and a tie fastened a little too tightly around his neck. It made it appear that he was being slowly garrotted and he pulled occasionally at the knot of the tie with his long fingers. He had bushy eyebrows and a shock of blonde hair that appeared as though it must have been dyed but anyone who knew him would reveal that he had possessed that same blonde mop all his life. He
had tried cutting it short on a number of occasions but, as time had gone on, he’d decided that it had become something of a trademark for him and he’d grown fond of it. Even though at this precise moment in time it badly needed trimming. There had been a photo of him in a National Newspaper recently and he had looked positively scruffy he had been told. He swept one hand through it and looked again at the other men seated around the table.

  ‘We have before us an application for planning permission as you know,’ Dunham began. ‘Filed by and on behalf of the offices of Andrei Voronov. As with selected other applications for planning, this has been passed to us for consideration by Westminster council.’

  ‘Why couldn’t the council just make a decision in its own right?’ the man sitting to Dunham’s right wanted to know.

  ‘Because, as you know, some decisions are, how should I put it, beyond their remit,’ Dunham went on. ‘We were felt better disposed to make a decision in this case.’

  ‘How much of London does Voronov want to own?’ one of the other men grunted. ‘This is a much more expansive project than even the Crystal Tower was.’ Adrian Murray was a tall, thin faced man with a forehead so smooth it looked as if he’d been forcibly injected with Botox on a regular basis.

  ‘Expansive or expensive,’ one of the other men chuckled and some laughs echoed around the table.

  ‘I agree,’ Murray added. ‘There’s a huge amount of work to be done. And in the area of London proposed it would cause serious disruption for God alone knows how long.’

  ‘On the other hand it would create a huge amount of jobs, a project of this size,’ a third man offered.

  ‘And that has nothing to do with the fact that you own a building business?’ Dunham grunted. His remark was greeted by laughs from around the table.

  ‘He’d probably use his own labour,’ the third man snorted.

  ‘He didn’t on construction of the Crystal Tower,’ Dunham said.

  ‘I don’t think the Crystal Tower was anywhere near as big a project as this one he’s proposing now,’ Murray said, thoughtfully.

  Dunham sat in silence for a moment and the other eyes in the room turned on him as if waiting for his response.

  ‘And how far over deadline has the Crystal Tower gone?’ one of the men offered. ‘Three months? More?’

  Dunham nodded.

  ‘I still think we should consider the long-term benefits to be gained by granting permission for this project to go ahead,’ the third man said.

  ‘Long-term benefits for whom? Voronov?’ Dunham snorted. ‘If I remember rightly there was considerable opposition to the Crystal Tower.’

  ‘There was from local residents and I think we can expect the same kind of opposition if permission is granted for this project,’ Murray interjected.

  ‘I agree,’ Dunham muttered.

  ‘There’s always opposition to whatever project is proposed,’ one of the other men reminded them. ‘Especially one such as this when it involves such extensive work in this area of London. If he wanted to build twenty blocks of flats in Hackney none of us would object would we?’

  ‘But he doesn’t want to build flats in Hackney does he?’ Dunham said. ‘He wants to build a hotel on the banks of the Thames.’

  ‘What are your objections, Brian?’ Murray asked.

  ‘It isn’t down to me personally,’ Dunham remarked. ‘This has nothing to do with any of us on a personal level.’

  ‘Other than the fact that we are Londoners,’ the man went on.

  ‘Does Chiswick count?’ another asked and there were more chuckles.

  ‘We are representatives of the city of London,’ Dunham reminded them. ‘All decisions made by this office should be for the good of the city and its inhabitants, not the personal advancement of one man. Especially not a man like Voronov.’

  ‘A foreigner, you mean?’ one of the other men said dismissively.

  ‘He’s a Jew, isn’t he?’ one of the other men offered.

  ‘His nationality has nothing to do with it,’ Dunham snapped. He paused and sucked in a thoughtful breath. ‘But there is something … disagreeable about Voronov, I’ll admit that.’

  ‘So are we deciding the future of this project on its viability or on the personality of the man who wants to push it through?’ the man closest to Dunham wanted to know. ‘If planning permission was decided on personality then nothing would ever be built in this city.’

  Dunham smiled and looked around the table at his companions.

  ‘My initial instinct is that this project should be denied planning permission,’ he said, flatly. ‘For the reasons we’ve discussed today and also at previous meetings.’ He sat forward, rested his elbows on the long wooden table and steepled his fingers.

  ‘Voronov will have the right of appeal, won’t he?’ Adrian Murray enquired. ‘He can appeal against this decision through the Council if he wishes.’

  ‘Of course,’ Dunham went on. ‘I’m sure he’ll find ways of trying to counter our negativity.’ He smiled.

  ‘Like he did with the Crystal Tower?’ the man nearest Dunham murmured.

  ‘Well, Voronov seems to think that everyone and everything has a price,’ Dunham mused. ‘Perhaps we should put that theory to the test.’ He glanced down at the file of papers in front of him then picked up his pen and scribbled one word on the top sheet:

  DENIED.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  ‘We could have met at your place.’

  Jess sipped at her red wine and looked across the table at Alex Hadley.

  ‘I told you when you rang it wasn’t convenient,’ he told her without looking at her. ‘Besides, there isn’t room to swing a fucking cat there.’

  They sat in silence for a moment then Jess pushed her phone across the table towards Hadley who picked it up and scrolled through the shots.

  ‘Who’s the dead guy?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m not sure of his name but it’s not his name that interests me,’ she said, moving her chair around so she could also see the screen of the phone. She pointed to one of the pictures, outlining something on it. ‘There’s no blood.’

  Hadley frowned and inspected the picture more closely.

  ‘Not in that one or any of the others,’ Jess went on.

  ‘That’s not possible,’ Hadley said, quietly.

  ‘Then where is it?’

  Hadley stroked his chin.

  ‘I need to get back inside the Crystal Tower,’ she told him.

  ‘And how are you going to do that?’

  ‘I was hoping you might have some ideas. That’s why I called you.’

  Hadley looked carefully at the photos once again then handed the phone back to Jess.

  ‘Break in,’ he said, flatly.

  Jess looked at him in silence for a moment.

  ‘How the hell else are you going to do it?’ Hadley enquired. ‘You had a run in with one of Voronov’s security men last time, didn’t you? They know what you look like now. They’re not going to let you within a mile of that place.’

  ‘If they’ve got nothing to hide then it shouldn’t be a problem,’ Jess smiled.

  Hadley looked at her and shook his head.

  ‘Are you going to help me?’ she asked.

  ‘Help you do what?’

  ‘Find out what’s going on?’

  ‘A series of unfortunate accidents is what’s been going on, Jess, nothing more.’

  ‘There’s a story there, Alex, I’m telling you. I can’t believe you’re so resistant to it. If you help me we could write it together.’

  ‘Is this a bit of charity work for you then? Help Hadley get some fucking work?’

  ‘Don’t be stupid. I asked for your help because I needed it. I respect what you are.’

  ‘What I was, Jess.’

  They regarded each other silently for a moment, Hadley finally dropping his gaze to the table top as if he’d spotted something of great importance there next to the gouges in the wood and the rings left by the gla
sses.

  ‘I was talking to a friend of yours the other day,’ Jess told him, finally.

  Hadley raised his eyebrows quizzically.

  ‘Clive Garston,’ she told him.

  ‘Cunt,’ Hadley said, shaking his head. ‘What the fuck was he going on about?’

  ‘Like you really care?’

  ‘Just asking.’

  ‘He was talking about you. Well, he mentioned you.’ She shrugged and smiled.

  Hadley sipped his drink.

  ‘Why were you talking about me?’ he asked.

  ‘I just mentioned that I’d seen you,’ Jess informed him.

  ‘You didn’t tell him anything else did you? He doesn’t know about me, about my … situation?’

  Jess shook her head.

  ‘So what if he does, Alex?’ she said, defiantly. ‘Fuck him.’

  ‘I don’t want him or anyone else to know,’ Hadley snapped. ‘It’s fucking humiliating.’ He looked down into the bottom of his glass.

  ‘You’re a better journalist then he’ll ever be.’

  ‘I was better. Not any more.’

  ‘For fuck’s sake, Alex,’ Jess snapped. ‘Stop this will you?’

  ‘Stop feeling sorry for myself? Is that what you were going to say?’ he countered. ‘I’m not feeling sorry for myself, Jess I’m just trying to face the fucking situation I’m in. I’m finished as a journalist. I have been for over a year now. I’m nearly fucking broke and in about a month I’ll be homeless unless some work comes in and that doesn’t look very likely.’ He looked at her angrily. ‘This is nothing to do with self-pity. This is all about reality.’

  ‘Then help me with this story,’ she retorted. ‘Help me, Alex and help yourself too.’

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Brian Dunham was about to step into the waiting lift when he heard his name being called from further back down the corridor behind him.

  He turned to see Adrian Murray approaching at something slightly quicker than a walk and guessed from the speed of his companion’s pace that it must be reasonably important. Murray rarely, if ever, moved faster than walking pace and even then that speed seemed to be something of an effort. Dunham turned, nodding politely to the two other occupants of the lift. The two women nodded back and one of them pressed the ‘Door close’ button inside and the two doors slid shut.