The Touch of Innocents Read Free

blood does she want?’
    The young producer was reassuring; it had been a difficult time for her, she had wanted to get away, clear her head; she was under a lot of domestic pressure, personal things to sort out. For just a couple of days. Yes, he knew it had been more than a couple of days, more than a week now, but he could handle everything, it was all under control. No need to panic.
    Grubb, a short and fleshy man of uncertain middle European descent with razor burns on his dark cheeks and a chin that sagged like a feeding bag, demurred. He thought it was an excellent time to panic. When the piece he needed from London came over the following day fronted by the producer rather than their top foreign correspondent, there would be no hiding place, only retribution.
    He decided to get his retribution in first. He glanced across at the managing editor’s door, which was ajar. The feeding bag shook, his voice rose to a shout.
    ‘I don’t put up with this sort of crap. Damn it all, I pay you to give me results, not excuses, and you don’t go letting her out of your sight without she gives you some means of contact. Jesus H. Christ, there’s a major Government reshuffle in Britain and you tell me she’s off changing nappies. What am I running here, a newsroom or a nursery? If you can’t find her in the next couple of hours you’re gonna have to do the piece yourself – you better make it good, boy, right on the button, d’you hear? Heavy-duty stuff, something that’ll sandbag those bastards over on the networks while they’re still checking their zippers and fiddling their expense sheets. My show’s the best in the business, and that’s how it’s gonna stay!’
    Grubb glanced around furtively. His raised voice had attracted the attention of the entire newsroom and out of the corner of his eye he could see the managing editor standing at the door of his office, brow wrinkled and mouthing obscenities as he investigated the commotion. It was time for the full effect; he stood up, the full five and a half feet of him, to deliver his coup de grace .
    ‘And then you find her, pronto. Dig her out fromunder whichever stone or stud she’s hiding, and you tell her from me that she’s got her lily-white tits caught in a wringer this time.’
    He slammed the phone down, not needing to act the role of outraged editor, before looking around the newsroom to wave away their rapt attention. He could handle this one. And if he couldn’t he’d made sure that everyone, and particularly the managing editor, knew it wasn’t his fault.
    On the other side of the Atlantic the producer of WCN’s European bureau smiled to himself. He was twenty-eight and about to get his first break on screen. If he did well, really well, they might continue to let him fill in, avoid the unnecessary expense of flying over another foreign correspondent, at last recognize his true talents rather than condemning him to the mindless fetching and carrying of coffee cups and arranging satellite feeds for others. This was his big chance and he had no intention of letting it escape. Perhaps he ought to be contacting someone to report a missing person, making enquiries; on the other hand he had a job to do, a flight to book and not a hell of a lot of time. From their Paris base in a matter of hours she could have disappeared to any of a dozen countries; who was to know which? And he needed a haircut.
    Already in his mind he was writing the intro to the piece he would deliver to camera from in front of the great black door at Ten Downing Street.
    He didn’t mind if she never turned up.
    Nobody had noticed the problem with the spleen. The buffeting caused by the pressure of the seat belts just below the ribs had caused the smallest tear in the soft surface tissue, no more than half an inch,and it had been oozing blood ever since. Not enough blood to cause a major physiological problem, indeed, scarcely enough to register any change on the monitors, just a slow,