Sam Bourne - The Chosen One

Whatever you call it, let’s hope Stephen Baker-still grieving the loss of his closest aide and long-time buddy, Stuart Goldstein – could see it from his window at the White House. Let’s hope he saw it and drew strength from it. You are not alone, Mr President…

Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, Sunday March 26, 22.03 PST

The words had sent a charge of electricity through her. Pamela was in love with Stephen Baker. Those words and the wistful smile that curled Anne Everett’s lips at the thought of what might have been.

Instantly Maggie had assumed the obvious: that Vic Forbes knew what had happened to Pamela Everett and believed that Baker had somehow been involved in her death. That was why that date – and that date alone – represented Forbes’s blanket. It was his insurance policy, it was the unexploded bomb he threatened to detonate against Baker, the one that would surely have destroyed his rival forever. Except the lithe beauty at the Midnight Lounge had got to him first, leaving him dangling in drag from the rafters of his own house.

But none of that could explain a stranger appearing at the Everetts’ door ready to hand over serious money to protect the reputation of a lad barely out of his teens. Pamela had been a couple of years younger than Baker, Schilling had said, but even that would have made Baker no more than twenty at the time of the fire, twenty-one at most. Why would anyone go to such lengths to protect him?

Anne Everett was watching Maggie’s face, studying her reaction. She had anticipated it even before Maggie had had the chance to form the thought in her head. ‘If you’re thinking it was him, you’re wrong,’ she said firmly. ‘Pamela was in bed with someone at the Meredith Hotel that night, but it wasn’t Stephen.’

Maggie frowned. ‘How can you be so sure?’

Anne Everett got to her feet. ‘Come with me.’

She led Maggie up a narrow staircase, switching on a light at the landing. It was a naked bulb, hanging on a simple wire. So much for the fortune the Everetts had been paid to keep quiet about the death of their daughter.

Anne Everett opened a door that instantly released a cloud of spare-room must. A wave of childhood memory crashed over Maggie, dragging her back to the attic of her granny’s house. She shivered as she looked around the room. Posters of Prince and Jimmy Connors on the wall, a teddy bear on the bed. A shelf of books and VHS tapes – including the Jane Fonda workout – several more packed with CDs.

‘But didn’t you move here after…?’ Maggie said, unable to finish the sentence.

‘Yes, we did. Randall didn’t want me to do this. He said the whole point of coming here was to move on. But…Do you have children, Ashley?’

‘I don’t. No.’

‘Well, I think most mothers would understand.’ She stared at the floor, then at the empty bed. ‘You can’t always move on. Not everyone can do it.’

They stood in silence for a while, then Pamela’s mother crouched on the floor by the bed, lifted the valance and tugged at the drawer that was revealed beneath. Inside was a blanket, neatly folded. She looked up at Maggie. ‘Randall didn’t know about this place. Only me.’

Beneath the blanket was a large, black-bound scrapbook. She pulled it out, then perched on the end of the bed and opened it. She patted the space next to her, encouraging Maggie to sit down. ‘Look,’ she said.

Glued into the scrapbook was a yellowing two-page spread from the Madisonian , the newspaper of James Madison High. At the centre was that same prom picture of Pamela Everett, except this time it was surrounded by snippets of tribute, paid by former classmates. ‘You were an angel, sent down from heaven. Now you are back among the stars.’

She turned the page, to what Maggie recognized as a cutting from the Daily World . ‘Blaze at downtown hotel,’ read the headline.

Gently, Maggie inched the scrapbook closer so that she could read the story. It described a late-night fire at the Meredith Hotel, how a drill had brought all the guests out into the streets in their nightclothes as the ‘inferno gutted several storeys of the hotel, leading ceilings to collapse and walls to fall in.’ It reported ‘uncertainty at the time of writing’ over casualties. Accompanying the story was a large, if poorly printed, black-and-white photograph of the hotel front ablaze.

Maggie looked to the top right of the cutting. March 16. Page five . The missing page.

She could feel her head throbbing. Who had done it? Who had removed it from the microfilm? Was it Forbes, so that he would enjoy a monopoly on the evidence? Or did he know about Mrs Everett and her secret hiding place? Was this yellowing page, stuck into an album stashed away in the faithfully reconstructed bedroom of a long-dead prom queen – indeed, hidden under a blanket – his blanket?

‘This is what I wanted to show you,’ Mrs Everett said quietly. She turned a couple more pages of the scrapbook.

Another complete page from The Daily World .

‘There he is,’ Anne Everett said with that same wistful smile.

Sure enough, there stood a young, eager and handsome Stephen Baker shaking the hand of some older, distinguished man in oversized glasses. Below was an extended caption:

Washington’s senior US Senator, Paul Corbyn, greets the state’s first winner of a Rhodes scholarship since Corbyn himself nearly forty years earlier. The lucky young man is Stephen Baker, graduate of James Madison High School and, this summer, Harvard University. The photograph was taken in Sen Corbyn’s Washington, DC office on March 15.

Anne Everett said nothing as Maggie read it again. Then she looked back at the date at the top of the page: March 18. If only she had checked the archive for that date, she’d have seen it. ‘This photo proves it wasn’t him,’ Maggie said softly.

‘That’s right,’ Mrs Everett agreed, giving a tight little nod. ‘He was on the other side of the country that day. In Washington, DC. Last year, during the election campaign, I often wondered whether someone would knock on my door. Making accusations. That’s why I’m glad I kept this. Everyone had such high hopes for Stephen Baker. Not just in America. All round the world. Hopes for the future. But not me. My hopes are all in the past, Leslie. But I often think how different things would have been if Stephen Baker had taken Pamela out that night – instead of that, that bastard ,’ she spat out the word with the venom of a woman who never swears. ‘Then my Pamela would be alive today. I am sure of it.’

New York, Sunday March 26, 23.01

Late nights suited him. Best time to work: no email, no phone calls, no distractions. Not even a view out of the window; just darkness.

This way his vision could be dominated by the screen on the desk. Amazing what could be done on the computer these days. Pretty much everything.

There was a glass by the side of the keyboard, amber with whisky. But he had barely touched it. The ice had melted long ago, diluting the spirit to a paler, less enticing shade. He liked that it was there, proof that he was absorbed in his work.

Which he was. He hadn’t heard from Maggie for a while, but that only served to motivate him further: she was clearly in a bit of trouble here, and so he was duty bound to do whatever he could to help. Besides, with Maggie it was never just duty.

He moved the mouse across the screen and clicked open the fifty-one-second video that had, at last, caused the penny to drop. It was a crucial piece of footage; he could not quite believe he had not discovered it till now. As soon as Maggie was back in DC, he would show it to her and all would at last be clear. But why wait till then? He reached for his phone and punched in Maggie’s number and it rang and rang and then went to voicemail. Yet again. Sighing, he shoved the phone back into his trouser pocket.