The First Time I Saw Your Face (3 page)

Mack had tried to prepare himself for this moment ever since that phone call, and now, seated in the dull-brown chair drinking his dull-brown coffee, he watched the man opposite as you might watch a wild animal, in the hope that you could spot the moment when it was going to spring at your throat.

There he was, his ex-boss and everlasting bastard, Gordon Edward O’Dowd.

Before he had worked for the old slug, Mack had suspected that a lot of things about O’Dowd were constructed to mimic every hard-nosed newspaper man he’d ever seen at the cinema. There was the way he sprawled back with his hands behind his head, his suit looking as if it had been slept in and his tie always askew. There was the brutally cut hair; the Mockney growl. All he needed was an eyeshade and a curl of cigarette smoke to complete the picture.

Mack knew now that none of this was merely affectation.
Gordon O’Dowd was a hard-nosed newspaper man right to the bone, one of the last, great, grubby dinosaurs, and there were journalists walking around with ‘QWERTY’ indented in their foreheads to prove it. Mack was sure his own backside still bore the imprint of one of O’Dowd’s size nine lace-ups.

Out in the wider world, anyone with a cupboard holding a skeleton took a deep breath when O’Dowd’s name was mentioned: ferreting out skeletons was what made O’Dowd happy; that he got paid for it was a bonus.

The important thing was not to show him how much he intimidated you. Which was why Mack, even though his heart had been on double-quick time since walking into the room, was not jumping straight in to ask why he was there and what the hell had Phyllida and bricks through windows got to do with it?

But whatever the reason he’d been summoned, it was huge. He could still smell a big story in the offing.

‘You listening, or am I just blowing hot air out my ass?’ O’Dowd snapped from the sofa.

Mack tried not to let that image burn into his brain and steadied his breathing so that when he spoke his voice sounded untroubled.

‘Yup, listening, but not sure why. What are you playing at? First-class rail fare up from Bath, all this secrecy? You’ve even got your Hobnobs out.’

O’Dowd glanced down at his flies before the realisation dawned that Mack was talking about the plate of biscuits on the low table in front of him.

‘Very funny,’ he said, ‘but let’s leave the small talk. You heard of Cressida Chartwell?’

‘I’ve been in Bath, not on another planet.’

‘Well then, you know about the feeding frenzy stirred up by her move to America? “English Rose, national treasure and hottest actress on the planet leaving us to live amongst the savages” – that kind of thing?’

Mack nodded, his brain now whirling around, wondering what the stellar Cressida Chartwell had to do with him.

‘So,’ O’Dowd continued, ‘what do you think I do when every man in Hollywood with a pulse and a penis starts sniffing around her?’

‘Send her a load of condoms?’

O’Dowd moved his jaw about as if he was chewing something particularly bitter. ‘Thanks, Oscar Wilde. What I do is I play it cool; I don’t go hurtling to the US or hire some cut-throat, paparazzi scrotum. I sit tight. I watch the other papers chucking any name into the mix to see if it sticks. She’s already knocking off her pool boy and the guy who delivers the groceries. Allegedly. Only a matter of time before they rope in the dog-walker.’ O’Dowd smirked. ‘If she had a dog.’

There was a long pause during which Mack felt like a gasping fish on a hook.

‘I get it, you’re just sitting tight,’ he said to fill the silence.

‘Yeah, because with Cressida you have to play slowly, slowly catchee monkey. The long game. Know why? Because for one, she has class.’

O’Dowd reached into the shabby briefcase by his feet and pulled out a thick wedge of magazines, before fanning them out, almost reverentially, on the low table next to the Hobnobs. Cressida stared up, beautiful and serene from the covers, working her ‘brainy totty and serious actress’ image.

‘Look at her. She’s done Shakespeare, Chekhov, Shaw.’

In O’Dowd’s mouth it sounded as if Cressida had been sleeping her way through the world’s great playwrights.

‘For two, our Cressida’s in no rush to hook up with anyone new; she’s just come out of that really bad breakup with Alistaire Montagu … that git who’s been playing that bloke in that Russian thing about those fruit trees.’

‘
The Cherry Orchard
?’

‘Exactly. Him. So I know I’ve got a bit of time to play with. And four—’

‘Three, you’d got to three on your list.’ Mack knew it was risky to correct a man who usually channelled Genghis Khan, but it felt like a small victory before whatever was to come.

‘And for three,’ O’Dowd agreed begrudgingly, ‘Cressida’s bloody bright: we’re going to have to be crafty.’

O’Dowd was staring at the magazine covers again and it was obvious that, like most males in the country, he had a bit of a thing for Cressida Chartwell. Still, that wasn’t going to save her from having her private life pawed over. She was a celeb, ergo, she was fair game.

Letting O’Dowd drift off into whatever obscene daydream he was having, Mack gnawed away at why
O’Dowd was telling him all this rather than someone who still worked for him?

Like Serena.

He leaned forward and poured another cup of coffee, trying to stop Serena Morden escaping into his brain. It didn’t work; there she was: beautiful face, wonderful body, personality of a hired assassin. A light-fingered expert at turning over stones and seeing what crawled out from underneath. For five wonderful months and twenty-three editions of the paper, she’d been Mack’s. Out of his league one minute, in his bed the next. He and Serena had been going places; a tight little hit team. Mack, poor sap, had thought love was involved somewhere.

That had ended the afternoon when he’d found her and O’Dowd trying to swallow each other’s body parts. That they were doing it in Mack’s flat, in his bed, was a nice little touch on O’Dowd’s part, akin to a dog marking out its territory.

He’d backed out of that room like some chastened schoolboy trying to get away from the noises they were making and the realisation that he’d been dumped for someone higher up the food chain. As Serena had said, ‘An editor is an editor.’

Or ‘predator’ in O’Dowd’s case.

Mack felt the old anger spiralling up again, not buried as deep as he’d thought. He was back to wanting to shove bits of people into a shredder.

‘You were saying?’ he asked quickly.

‘I was saying, because I know these things about
Cressida, I decide –’ O’Dowd gave a little ‘Ta-da’ flourish with his hands – ‘to get to her through her Achilles’ heel.’

Mack blinked rapidly, shocked that O’Dowd even knew who Achilles was, let alone that he had a heel.

‘Her Achilles’ heel?’

‘Yup. The lovely Cressida’s cousin, one Jennifer Roseby. Her mum and Cressida’s mum were sisters.’

Was that really O’Dowd’s master plan, to doorstep this cousin and her family? Pretty run-of-the-mill stuff. Mack had done it often enough, sniffing out the weak link who would dish the dirt for a nice, fat cheque and then beating the other papers to a buyout.

A buff-coloured file placed on the sofa cushion next to O’Dowd distracted him from those thoughts.

O’Dowd nudged the file. ‘Now, in case you’re not up to speed down there in Yokel land … Cressida’s father died when she was twelve, blah, blah, usual heartache stuff, and Cressida and her mother used to spend the summer holidays after that with Jennifer’s family. Since Cressida’s mother died, the Rosebys are her only family really. There’s two years between Jennifer and Cressida, but they’ve always been close. Get together whenever they can. Doesn’t make much sense … Jennifer’s a farmer’s daughter, gave up on a drama course and works in a library, still lives at home, while her cousin …’ With one hand, O’Dowd did an impression of something exploding. ‘But that’s women for you. On the phone to each other for hours. Jennifer’s the one person Cressida trusts.’

‘And how would you know that?’

O’Dowd looked particularly feral. ‘Don’t know what you’re getting at. Hacking and bugging, things of the past. Haven’t we all had the backs of our legs slapped soundly? Even if someone was still trying it, making out what these two are on about is a nightmare. More often than not they just start wittering on about people from their past … and our Cress is on the ball – doesn’t use voicemail, often resorts to pay-as-you-go phones. Means we need someone on the ground, if you get my drift.’

Mack had a horrible feeling he did.

‘The other papers have already drawn a blank with the Jennifer link. All they got to show for it was the local police buzzing around them like flies round shit. Jennifer’s brother threatened to feed Clive Butler to the pigs.’

‘Even pigs would draw the line at eating Clive.’

‘Right enough. Besides, Jennifer’s family don’t keep pigs. The Rosebys are into sheep.’ He picked up the file and chucked it at Mack. ‘It’s all in there.’

As if O’Dowd knew that Mack had no intention of opening the file, he reached across and flipped it open. Mack saw the words ‘Lane End Farm, Brindley, Northumberland.’

‘Northumberland?’

‘Yeah, as far north as you can get before the men start wearing skirts. Better take your thermals, my son.’

Mack closed the file again. He needed to nip this conversation in the bud, not get into discussing types of livestock, parts of Britain, thermals.

O’Dowd went careering on; his eyes alight as if scenting his quarry.

‘My old guts are never wrong. When Cressida scores a Yank, Jennifer will be the first to know and we’ll be the second because by then we’ll have become Jen’s very special friend.’

‘You don’t mean “we”, do you?’ Mack said.

‘No, well done. I mean “you”.’

‘Forget it, give it to someone else.’

‘Can’t,’ O’Dowd shot back, ‘you’ve got the perfect qualifications. You know how these things work, but you’ve slipped off the radar, no one remembers your name or your face. And as for some big-shot freelancer? No way. One of those suddenly goes haring off, it’s going to make the rest suspicious about what they’re working on. Whereas you can get yourself up there, and who’s going to miss you? Mack Stone … my little “Mack the Knife”.’

Mack flinched as much at the chummy tone as at his old nickname.

‘Don’t be modest, my son, before you screwed your career up big time, those brown eyes of yours used to really get people to open up. You’ll get this Jennifer to trust you.’

‘No.’

‘Really? Got so much work on you can afford to turn this kind of money down? Heard you spend your time on little bits and pieces for the local rags – “George and Rita Celebrate their Golden Wedding” stuff.’

O’Dowd made it sound as if that were akin to peddling heroin.

‘And you’re in debt; cards maxed out, the lot. Think about it, Mack. You’ll be well paid for this job … I’ve
written the figure down in that file. Plus expenses on top … and if you pull it off, who knows where your career will go – you’ll be back in demand. You’ll have struck pay dirt.’

‘I’ll also be dragged through the courts, might even get put away.’ Mack got to his feet. ‘So stuff it, and stuff all that threatening garbage about Phyllida. If that had been real, you’d have hit me with it straightaway. It was just bait to get me here, wasn’t it? I wish you luck with your shitty little plan. I hope her brother tears your head off just before Cressida’s lawyers rip your liver out, or what’s left of it. I can’t believe after all that
Sunday Screws
stuff you’re still playing this game. Well, I’m not. I don’t grub about in other people’s lives. I’m not a bloody saint, but I’m not going back to that.’

Mack moved to the door and already had hold of the handle when he heard O’Dowd get off the sofa and come up right behind him. He could feel his breath on his neck.

‘You sanctimonious little shit,’ O’Dowd whispered, ‘what – you’re suddenly above all this? You used to lap up all that stuff: the backstage passes, the inside stories.’

Mack forced himself to turn around and look right into O’Dowd’s face, smelling the coffee on his breath.

‘I should never have worked for you or this paper, I—’

There was a moment when Mack thought that O’Dowd was going to headbutt him, but he simply jammed his face right up close to Mack’s.

‘You’re not going to ruin this for me. Cressida Chartwell’s got it all. Box-office gold, real talent, heart-shredder. If we
break this story before the rest, it’ll be worth whatever anyone chucks at us, whatever Cress and her lawyers heap on our heads. I can think about retiring. Get myself somewhere hot.’

‘That’ll be Hell, will it?’ Mack said, his neck aching from the effort of keeping his face from touching O’Dowd’s. ‘I’m going. Get someone else’s nuts in the vice this time.’

It would have been a great parting shot if O’Dowd hadn’t said softly, ‘You heard of Sir Teddy Montgomery, my son?’

That was when Mack knew this was going to be very, very bad indeed. He watched O’Dowd saunter back to the sofa.

‘You should have agreed to this when I was trying to be nice,’ he said, ‘when I thought we should bury the hatchet because of how we’re going to have to work as a team.’ O’Dowd patted the cushion next to him. ‘Now you’re going to have to let Uncle Gordon tell you a scary story.’

Without registering having moved, Mack was sitting next to O’Dowd. The room seemed overheated suddenly, devoid of air. He was in a beige, carpeted, airless trap and Phyllida had put him there.

As O’Dowd himself would say, ‘I’ve found your Achilles’ heel, my son.’

His insides felt as though he were about to be dropped down a well.

O’Dowd was leaning back again, his groin thrust forward as if demonstrating he was the dominant male. ‘Hear old Phyllida has good days and bad days. Real shame.’ There
was a theatrical sigh, ‘Your mum was a belter of a journalist in her day. Hell of a looker too. This Sir-Teddy thing will probably be the final straw.’

Mack was frantically leafing through all he knew about Sir Teddy Montgomery, personal friend of the Windsors and regular visitor to No. 10. Until his death six months before he’d been seen as the archetypal Establishment gentleman. Except that papers found after his death proved that for all of his fifty years in the public eye he’d been passing defence information to the Russians.