Detained (18 page)

He turned his lifted hands into closed fists in front of his face and spun about. He got in several quick punches but copped a solid kick to the ribs. One man was down, holding his jaw, blood streaming from his nose. That evened things up considerably. But still no Bo.

Will shifted till he had the temple doors at his back, no more surprises. Whatever they were going to throw, he’d see it coming. He’d managed to catch them out by attacking first but he’d spent the advantage, now it was a matter of trying to defend himself from serious injury.

When he saw the van pull up, saw two more men get out, he had time to think Hong Kong might not have been such a bad idea before they had him on his knees. He felt the rib flex, heard the crack, lost his breath, no pain yet, but it would come; one eye was bloodied shut but he still saw the black hood before they bagged his head.

He had another decision to make. They hadn’t beaten him badly enough to lose consciousness, but there was nothing stopping them, and they’d been smart enough not to talk. He had no idea where they were going to take him, or what they wanted, but remaining conscious was the only asset he had left. He went limp, sagging forward till his forehead rested on the concrete, and he stayed that way, concentrating on keeping his breathing slow and shallow until they lifted him at knees and underarms and threw him on the floor in the back of the van.

They bound his wrists and ankles. They drove; his captors talking too softly to make out more than a word or two over the drone of the engine, but they were speaking a dialect he didn’t know. The pain came, and with it the sense of suffocation. He suspected his nose was broken again. He could only breathe through his mouth. He lay on his side and calculated the odds of surviving this. He was conscious. He wasn’t hurt too much. This was a highly organised attack, not a random mugging. They had to know who he was, and he’d be worth more alive than dead.

Sometime later the van stopped moving. He went limp again and let them carry him. He heard traffic. He smelled the rot of garbage. He felt sunshine briefly before the warmth disappeared, and he was taken inside and dumped on a narrow bed. They removed the hood, but left his hands and feet bound. No one spoke, and he kept his eyes shut till he heard feet retreat and a door close. He was in a room with no windows, one door and only the bed with a stained foam mattress and a single plastic garden chair as furnishing.

It was impossible to get comfortable. His hands were numb. He couldn’t move his fingers. He was worried sick about Bo. It seemed unlikely he’d simply driven off on an errand now. They might not realise he’d pay whatever price they named and more to make sure Bo was safe. Assuming it was money they wanted. Neither of them would be missed for days. Pete would be pissed he didn’t call in, but it wouldn’t be out of character, so it wouldn’t tip him off. He’d be more pissed when he realised no legal manoeuvre was going to fix this problem.

Will had known fear like this before. The fear that comes from being overpowered and losing control, having your options close out. But the last time he’d felt fear like this, like a claw tearing at his guts, he’d been a kid and Norman Vessy had beaten him till he saw stars and couldn’t stand up, and then started in on Pete. Pete who was two years younger, weaker, and too scared to fight back or defend himself against his own father. Will had huddled on the floor bleeding while Pete’s father knocked him unconscious.

He’d had very few options then, but he’d sworn Norman Vessy would never hurt either of them again, and he hadn’t lived to. He had very few options now, but doing nothing wasn’t one of them. There was nothing he could do other than yell the place down.

He started yelling.

“Fine words and an insinuating appearance are seldom associated with true virtue.” — Confucius

It was clear from Mark’s body language, and from Gerry’s inability to meet her eyes, something was very wrong.

Mark was standing, moving about, and since she mostly saw him sitting it was a shock to recall how tall he was. He’d be able to go eye to eye with Spiderman. He closed the door. “Take a seat, Darce.”

She sat beside Gerry, uncharacteristically quiet, unnervingly still.

“Parker Corp is suing over the photos,” said Mark.

She sighed audibly. That was bad, but not out of the ordinary or unexpected. The legal team had said it was borderline when Mark decided to run it. And when she’d finally spoken to her father, days after the story broke, when Will Parker’s infamy was well cemented in the public conscience, and his threatening image had become an internet meme, Brian told her it was a gimme the lawyers would salivate over the fallout from the Avalon deal going sour.

“They’re suing the paper, the publisher and all three of us personally.”

Darcy almost swallowed her tongue. She’d never been sued before. And unless you were a brand name investigative reporter, whose job was to stir up trouble, it didn’t look good on your unofficial rap sheet.

And she hadn’t broken with Peter Parker’s demands. Yes, she’d crashed the function. Yes, she’d created the circumstances that showed Will in such a bad light, but she hadn’t admitted to meeting him separately, and she hadn’t used anything she knew about him or, by extension, Peter. She’d kept her end of the deal, and they were still going to screw her.

Now she wished she’d sent the dress back instead of smuggling it home. Better, taken the scissors to it and cut it to pieces. She could do still that. Take it out of her wardrobe and slice it to ribbons, post it back to Will in distressed clumps, a proof-of-death of the relationship they’d privately shared.

Beside her Gerry lit a cigarette. The surprise was Mark didn’t tell him to put it out.

Gerry coughed, the sound curling wetly in his throat. “We’re restructuring the business finance team. We’re making your role redundant.”

She looked at Mark, still standing. There was no denial in his expression. She looked at Gerry. He was a lousy boss, a bully and a bore, but she’d known him for five years and he’d never faulted her work, because she’d always made him look good. He’d only just fought to have her reassigned to his pages from the science desk. And now he was restructuring.

“You’re sacking me because Parker is suing.”

“No, Darce. Gerry is restructuring,” said Mark. No trace of the iffiness of this in his eyes.

“That’s because it’s illegal to sack me,” she said. Screw Gerry, he’d do anything to save his own hide, but Mark? She’d always respected Mark, as a writer, an editor and a human being.

“I don’t deserve this.”

Neither man made a sound.
Cowards
.

“When is this restructure?”

“Gerry blew out a stream of smoke. “Effective immediately.”

Darcy looked from Gerry to Mark. She felt her anger as a cold shock, as a block of ice settling on her shoulders, crushing her. “I gave this paper a world-breaking story on Will Parker, and you guys can’t find a way to keep me employed.”

Gerry stubbed his cigarette out on his cheap rubber soled shoe, particles of fiery ash rained down on Mark’s carpet. “You just blew the big story and sold us a legally questionable replacement for it.”

Deep inside Darcy’s chest, a scream built, conceived from outrage, nurtured by unfairness, and bred on a wave of indignity, but it jammed up behind her teeth, stillborn. Screaming wouldn’t change anything. Having a tantrum would prove her femaleness, her weakness, her inability to take this like a man.

She understood what they’d done. Set her up as the fall guy. Called her judgement into question and trashed her reputation. They’d offer her ignominious dismissal up to Parker as a sacrifice, and hope it acted as a bargaining chip to soften the blow for the rest of them.

The scream changed form. It bubbled up inside her and burst forth as laughter. Darcy laughed so hard she had to bend forward to try to contain her inexplicable mirth.

Will Parker had struck again. It wasn’t enough he had to detain her, ambush, compromise, and betray her personally and professionally, now he’d gotten her sacked.

Will Parker, her once big break, her headline story, was now her career demise. She hated him with a pain that might never be soothed away. Now she regretted every single moment she’d spent feeling sorry for the destruction she’d wrought on his reputation and his takeover deal. Now she was chilled that she’d been touched he’d reached out to her through the dress. She hoped he choked on crystal beads, was poisoned by pearls and his every ambition turned to threads.

She stood. It was over. The evening’s deadline could go hang itself. Gerry hauled himself up too, gripping the edge of Mark’s desk to ease upright. He went for the door, leaving a cloud of smoke tang in his wake. He held it open for her, stepping back, an old-fashioned courtesy he’d never shown before. It occurred to her to wait him out, to deny him this last gentlemanly act, this oddly sexist upper hand. But she wanted out of the room too much, so she’d have to sweep though with the hauteur of a wronged heroine instead.

“Darce, wait. Gerry, we’ll talk later.”

Gerry eased out the door and pulled it closed behind him. She turned back to Mark. He was sitting now and gestured to the chair she’d vacated. “There was always more to this, wasn’t there?”

She sat, but on the edge of the seat, a bird on a perch, ready to hop away, prepared to fly. “I’m not sure why I’d tell you if there was, Mark.”

He grunted. “I’m sorry it had to go down like this. You didn’t leave us much choice.”

Mark’s height had surprised her; his decision not to support her was a cutting blow. He’d always championed her, always treated her with rough respect. Darcy didn’t like what he’d done to her, but he’d done it to help the paper, and as much as it hurt, it wasn’t personal, but now it felt like he was going to make it that way.

“You had plenty of choices.”

He inclined his head. “Perhaps, but you haven’t been honest with us.” He pinned her with a stare that had once made her knees turn watery on a semi-regular basis, and had the same effect again now. “I’ve never understood why Parker would cancel an interview they’d requested. It wasn’t because you weren’t Gerry. They had that option when I told their PR woman about you. And it wasn’t because Parker was suddenly unavailable, because there he was in living colour on your camera the same night. Yes, you’ve been fed to the dogs, but you’re not innocent in this. I don’t know what you did, but there is a lot more to this than you’re saying.”

Darcy ducked her chin. She knew her face was red. She felt like a cadet all over again, back when Mark was business pages editor, and as close to God as she was ever likely to worship. This was a man who made and broke careers. With Will Parker’s help he’d just broken hers. But she trusted he’d give her a fair reference, trusted he’d pick up the phone and let her know about jobs on the go, even employ her again at some point when all the heat died down.

Losing Mark’s good opinion was a worse blow than losing her job. But what could she possibly say to him that wouldn’t slam the lid on his regard for her forever?

“I always respected you as a journalist, Darce, and as a decent person. To see you go after Will bloody Parker like you did, well, it didn’t sit so good with me. To set him up was one thing, a legitimate tactic. But to set him up so he looked so bad, that was ethically reprehensible, and you were the only one of us in a position to know it. I always thought more of you than that. I gave you plenty of opportunity to back down. We could’ve used the photos to renegotiate an interview, we could’ve done this another way. So yeah, we screwed you over. I made the decision to fuck you over. But Darce, you handed me the gun and you loaded it with bullets.”

“Mark, I...” There was a start to that sentence, but no middle or ending. She had no idea what to say, and an irrational need to let the tightness behind her eyes relax into tears. But Mark hadn’t made her cry since she once mistakenly attributed a criminal record to a retired businessman and forced the paper to issue a retraction, and she was never going to give Will Parker the satisfaction of breaking her.

“It’s done, Darce. I’m fucking disappointed with you.”

“Mark, I...”

“You need to give me a coupla months before you contact me, all right. I’m no good to you this mad.”

She had no words. She gave him a nod, the weight of her own head almost too much to lift. She stood. Mark was around his desk and opened the door for her. As she moved past him she felt the warmth of his hand on her shoulder. A pat, a quick squeeze, and that silent expression of care almost undid her.

The newsroom was thankfully quiet when she made it back to her desk. Mark was going to trust her to exit without a fuss; to do so without an escort off the premises. She packed her coffee mug and mini plunger, her contact book and her latest notepad in her bag, along with the happy snaps of a girlfriend’s wedding, a day at the beach with friends and her old staffie, Gonzo, pulled from the pin-wall of the workstation. She trashed the draft copy open on her screen and logged off.

There were people she wanted to say goodbye to but not now, not a sideways look away from bursting into tears. She’d call later. There’d be drinks and war stories at the pub to commiserate. There’d be more sharp pins stuck in a fictional Gerry voodoo doll and real musing about why Mark put up with him.

She looked over at Col’s desk. He’d not been in all day and his screen was dark. He was traditionally the first to shout drinks, the first to pass on job tips. But Col knew more about her complicity than even Mark suspected, and she was glad she could avoid him for the moment.

She hefted her shoulder bag. Looked around the room for the last time and went for the lifts. At the downstairs reception she slid her building access pass across to the security guard. Not one of the men she usually exchanged coming and going smiles with. He didn’t acknowledge her. She was officially a non-person.

At the bus stop, on the bus, and walking the short distance to her tiny terrace, Darcy tried not to rehash the day’s fallout, to see the smugness in Gerry’s fat face, the anger and disillusionment in Mark’s watchful eyes.