Conflict of Interest

She shrugged, ‘Anyway, what are you going to do?’

It was a question he never got to answer because, in that same moment, they both became aware of footsteps in the distance behind them – careful, self-conscious footsteps that made them both suspicious. Judith glanced over at him with a look of recrimination.

‘Do we run?’ she whispered urgently.

‘Too late. If it’s anyone, we’ve already been seen. I reckon we turn around. That way we’ll know.’

‘But—’

He was already turning. She had no choice but to follow suit. Then they were looking back up the dim-lit corridor to where, ahead of them, a figure had paused, motionless in the shadows. As they made their way towards him, he seemed frozen for a few seconds, before turning suddenly fugitive, racing up the cobbled pavement towards the distant lights of Fulham Road.

When Judith turned to face Chris, her eyes were filled with anger.

20

Kate pressed the ‘Send’ button at the top of her e-mail and made sure her message with its attachment had gone, before pushing back her chair from her desk, picking up a half-empty glass of champagne, and taking a swig. It had been a real roller-coaster of a day, beginning with the agency announcement at eight-thirty that morning, and non-stop activity ever since. There’d been wall-to-wall meetings, then, late in the afternoon, panic in New York, with one of her clients’ American subsidiaries needing her urgent help with an American Stock Exchange release. She’d had no time to bask in the glory of her new title, or to think about how the new job would affect her life. At nine-fifteen p.m., she glanced across her paper-strewn desk, towards the opened magnum of Bollinger; just as well she hadn’t planned to go out to celebrate, she couldn’t help observing, wryly.

Before she left for the day, she wanted to make sure New York had received the information she sent them. ‘Never assume,’ was her personal mantra. She’d call them in five minutes. In the meantime, she needed her evening shot. Stepping into her bathroom, she closed the door behind her. Force of habit. Outside her office, the Pit was deserted. No one had been around for the past half hour except for a security guard on patrol.

In a few, easy motions, she had filled a syringe, given herself the needle, and disposed of the used equipment. Going back into her office, she walked over to her meeting table, and opened her Filofax, even though she already knew what she had planned for this weekend; in marked contrast to her crowded schedule from Monday till Friday, Saturday and Sunday were empty. The prospect wasn’t completely depressing – nor was it one she wasn’t used to. She’d make a plan. Tomorrow morning she’d call a girlfriend and they’d meet for lunch, maybe take in a movie. And whatever else she did, she was most definitely going shopping, to reward herself as the new Deputy Chief Executive Officer of the UK’s largest and most powerful PR agency, with something wonderful from Burlington Arcade, perhaps, or Mappin & Webb. She could certainly afford it on her new package. Just because she didn’t have a man in her life didn’t mean she couldn’t still enjoy self-indulgent treats.

She was just stepping away from the table when the wave hit her. A sudden dizziness which made her crumple, and almost lose balance. It was followed within seconds by another, heady surge. She hadn’t had an insulin rush in years – but she knew, in an instant, what it was – the crazy giddiness and disorientation; the feeling of being almost

physically struck down; and, within seconds, the rising nausea. She had to get to her bathroom. What was happening to her? she wondered, bewildered. Why now?

The bathroom door seemed a long way away. She knew she couldn’t walk there. Somehow she managed to fumble on to her desk chair, and lurch across the floor towards the door, throwing herself forward in her seat, desperate to get to the point where she could reach out for the door handle; lift herself up. She managed to grab it, and haul herself up into the bathroom before another, blinding wave of dizziness, threw her to the floor. Please, God, stop this! Give me time! Oh, God! Just one, single minute! Clawing for the toilet bowl, she managed to prop herself up so that the rim of the bowl was cool on her forehead. She was conscious of nothing but pain. Her head felt as though it would explode. She wanted to throw up, but when she retched, nothing came up. She hadn’t eaten for hours.

She knew what she had to do. She kept sugar tablets in the medicine cabinet. Insulin was rushing through her system, plundering all her sugar reserves. She needed to replace them. Immediately. She waited on the floor of the bathroom, trying to summon the strength to stand up, to open the cabinet, to reach for those tablets. When finally she did,staggering to her feet with all the energy she could muster, she swung open the cabinet door and reached out her shaking hand to where she kept the tablets. But they were gone. Oh, Jesus, where had she put them? She hadn’t needed them for ages. They just used to sit there. She’d stopped even noticing them. Had she moved them? Had the cleaners been in?

Her lips were trembling now and her eyelids twitching. Her whole face felt as though it was crawling with insects. She could barely control her hands. They were like claws, shuddering, and being jabbed with the torment of a thousand needles. Somehow, though, she managed to grab hold of the vials she used to inject herself. Standard 100-unit insulin. It said so, there on the labels. But as she fumbled with the vials, they flipped over so that she was looking at their glass bases. The number 1,000, was printed on the bottom of each one. It must be her vision. She held them right up to her face. How many zeros were there? It had to be two! She’d been on 100 units for the past twenty years! But she looked and looked until there could be no mistaking. They were 1,000-unit vials. Someone had switched the labels.

Her whole body was shaking now, and she felt herself sliding down against the wall. She’d had ten times her dosage. There was no sugar replacement. She’d go into a coma in just a few minutes if she didn’t get help. The pain in her head was excruciating now – the whole world seemed to be spinning at a thousand miles an hour, and it was all she could do to get on all fours, to start crawling across the carpet back to her desk.

She was way past the point of worrying if she vomited on the carpet. She couldn’t think about anything. Just get to the phone! She felt her muscles shuddering in uncontrolled spasms as she scraped across the floor. Her face was wet with silent tears of agony. Please God, let this be over!

She couldn’t get up to the desk, of course. So she tugged the cord of the telephone. It crashed to the floor. Fumbling with the receiver, she pressed for an outside line. But it was dead. No dialling tone. Oh, Jesus! Something must have happened when it fell! She tried again. Same result. This wasn’t working. She couldn’t get out.

What about security? She pressed the red button. Thank Christ it was ringing!

Ringing and ringing. She lay there, her whole body shaking violently, as though with fever, willing for an answer. Willing, please God, make him pick it up. Make him get back to his desk. She knew he went on patrols throughout the night; patrolling through all five floors of the building. He might be in the middle of one of his patrols. Or just starting. He might be another twenty minutes. She couldn’t last that long.

Sobbing, she kept the phone clutched to her head and floundered towards her office door. Maybe he’d be on the first floor. Or she could get to one of the phones in the Pit. Fuck Elliott North! She wasn’t going to let him do this to her. He wouldn’t get away with it. She was going out there to get help. She’d survive this. She was going to live!

It was only instinct that kept her going, with every muscle, every sinew, racked with pain, and her mind a swirling cauldron of dizziness and torment. Using up the last of her rapidly depleting energy, she shuddered and fumbled her way across the carpet. She had to get there! She had to live! When, finally, she made it to her office door, she threw herself up to wrench the handle. But she failed to open it, and only collapsed back on the floor, in a bruised, weeping heap.

Only sheer desperation drove her to make the second attempt, thrusting upwards and reaching out. She seized the handle and tugged it down and towards her with every last strength of which she was capable. But once again, she failed and fell, broken and sobbing. Just before the last wave of agony exploded her from consciousness, she was struck by the knowledge that she’d been locked inside her own office.

Judith spent the whole of that weekend writing up the article. She was still in her dressing gown when she sat down behind her computer on Saturday morning, a mug of coffee at the ready and a lit cigarette in the ashtray. She began typing. The start of articles was always the hardest, but she already knew how she was going to open this one: a description of one day in the wretched existence of a child slave in India. Having described that, she would establish the facts to prove that this was only one of dozens of similar stories of child slaves used to manufacture Starwear products, to be sold in the high streets and shopping malls of Britain, Europe and America.

Once started, she found it hard to stop. It was a stream-of-consciousness exercise, and the whole story flowed out with an effortlessness she’d seldom experienced before. All the weeks of thinking and planning seemed to click into place, and her fingers rattled over the keyboard at high speed as she included all the different dimensions to the story. Slave labour was the main focus, but she also highlighted the financial irregularities; how Starwear had misled its shareholders about the source of its income and profits; Jacob Strauss’s previous business disasters – versus the way he’d projected himself as the ‘entrepreneurial genius’. And then there was the cover-up, the deaths of William van Aardt and Merlin de Vere. Completely absorbed in her work, the next time she glanced at her watch it was three forty-five p.m.

Blobbing out, exhausted, in front of the TV, she had an early night, before continuing her work the next day, finishing the story, editing it, polishing it and saving it on to disk.

On Monday morning, she didn’t bother dressing in a miniskirt or Wonderbra. Sensible black trousers and a white blouse would do. She was at work early, planning to catch Alex Carter the moment he appeared. But it wasn’t until nine-thirty that he arrived, bleary-eyed and in a foul mood after getting caught on the M25 on his way back from a weekend in the country. So much for her big moment, she thought. The grand delivery of her investigative triumph.

He grunted when she knocked on his office door.

‘Remember how you asked me about Starwear last week?’ She walked over to his desk with her ten-page printout.