Tove Alsterdal - The Forgotten Dead - A dark, twisted, unputdownable thriller

‘I need to ask you about the assignment that Patrick’s on,’ I said. ‘About what he’s doing in Paris.’

‘Is he still over there? I thought he was supposed to deliver something soon.’

Evans frowned as he shovelled scrambled eggs onto his fork. It was clear that he would have preferred to eat his breakfast in peace.

‘I can’t get hold of him,’ I said. ‘He hasn’t answered his cell phone in over a week.’

‘It’s not always possible to call home when you’re out in the field,’ said Evans, peering at me over the rims of his glasses.

‘I know that,’ I said. ‘But we’re not exactly talking about the caves of Tora Bora. This is Paris. Europe. They have reception everywhere.’

Evans turned his fork to look at the piece of sausage he’d snared. It glistened with grease.

‘Well, at any rate it looks like a hell of a good story he’s working on over there. He was very insistent that I hold space for it in one of the October issues, front cover and all.’

‘What’s it about?’ I asked. ‘His article, I mean.’

Evans raised his eyebrows. I swallowed hard. It was embarrassing to admit how little I knew about my husband’s work.

‘Patrick is always careful to keep the magazine’s secrets,’ I added. ‘He never talks about his articles in advance.’

I had done my best to remember what he’d said. When he was drunk, on the phone, he’d talked about death and destruction, and about human lives not being worth anything. He’d mentioned cafés he’d been to in Paris, but not who he’d interviewed.

‘Selling human beings,’ said Richard Evans.

‘Selling human beings? You mean like trafficking? Prostitution?’

‘No, not exactly.’ He wiped his hands on a napkin. ‘He’s writing about immigrants who are exploited as labourers. Slave labour, pure and simple. And how the problem is growing as a result of globalization. Poor people who die inside containers when they’re being smuggled across borders, suffocating to death, or drowning in the seas between Africa and Europe, their bodies washing onto the beaches. A few years ago a whole group of Chinese immigrants drowned in England when they were forced to harvest cockles. They were farmers from somewhere, and no one had warned them about the tides. A shitty way to die, if you ask me.’

‘England? So what is Patrick doing in France?’

‘Exactly. There’s no clear angle.’ Having finished his breakfast Evans waved to the waiter behind the counter and then pointed at his plate. ‘When we buy foreign stories, there has to be a fresh perspective, a unique viewpoint. But that’s something Cornwall should know by now. He’s been working for us a long time. How many years is it? Five? Six?’

‘Patrick usually says that journalists who know exactly what they’re after are dangerous,’ I told him. ‘They merely confirm their own prejudices. They don’t see reality because they’ve already decided how they want it to look.’

Evans’s eyes gleamed as he smiled. Like glints of sunlight in ice-cold water.

‘I actually see something of myself in Patrick, back when I was his age. Equally stubborn and obsessed with work. The belief that you’ll always find the truth if you just dig deep enough. Not many people do that any more. These days journalists are running scared. Everybody’s scared. They all want a secure pension. They want to take care of their own.’

He ordered an espresso. I shook my head at the waiter. The smell of scrambled eggs and greasy sausage was already turning my stomach.

‘But why did he go to Europe?’ I asked. ‘All he had to do was go over to Queens to find that sort of thing going on.’

Evans shook his head and gave me a little lecture about why a story about the miseries in Queens wouldn’t sell as well as a report from Paris and Europe. He claimed that adversity is more appealing from a distance.

I felt sweat gathering in my armpits. The café was getting crowded. The lunch rush had started, and it was filling up with businessmen and media people.

‘And the whole point of hiring freelancers is that they’re willing to go places where no one else will go. That’s something all those marketing boys up there don’t understand.’ He pointed his finger at the top floors of the building across the street. ‘The minute I buy a story that’s the least bit controversial, they think I’m going to drag them back to 1968.’

I knew that The Reporter had been forced to shut down in ’68 because management couldn’t agree on how the Vietnam War should be depicted, but that wasn’t what I’d come here to discuss.

‘Are you saying he’s gone undercover?’ I asked.

‘If so, it would have been smart to talk to me about it first, but you never know. Maybe he’ll surprise us.’

Evans sighed heavily and ran his hand through his thick hair. According to Patrick, Evans would have been promoted to editor-in-chief, if only he’d been able to stay on budget. He understood the profession, unlike the marketing yokels who were in charge lately. They were people that Patrick despised as much as he worshipped old journalists like Bernstein, Woodward, and Evans.

‘In the past I could spend hours with the reporters,’ he said. ‘We’d go over the story in advance, try out specific analyses, and toss around various angles to take. But there’s no time for that any more.’

The tiny espresso cup had shrunk to the size of a doll’s cup in his big hand.

‘I was in Vietnam. I’ve seen Song My. I was in Phnom Penh right before the Khmer Rouge came in. Nowadays reporters come out of college thinking that journalism has to do with statistics. But if you really want to get into a story, you need to go out and smell reality.’

I glanced at my watch. It was 11.15 in New York. Almost dinnertime in Paris. I had to get back to the theatre.

‘So if I’m reading you right,’ I said, my voice chilly, ‘you’ve sent Patrick to Europe and paid him an advance, but you know almost nothing about the story he’s working on, and there’s no definite delivery date. Is that usual?’

‘No, no. We haven’t paid him any advance.’

My blood stopped. Time stood still. People passed by in slow motion outside the window, munching on sandwiches. I stared at Evans, but couldn’t think of anything to say.

‘We’re not allowed to pay out advances any more, not to freelancers. It’s a policy set in stone. I can remember when I was going to propose to my first wife, and I called up the editor to ask for an advance so I could buy her a ring. They’ve discontinued everything that once made this job fun.’

He shoved his newspaper in his briefcase and stood up.

‘I’m sure he’ll get in touch soon. Cornwall always delivers.’

I got up too. The whole place seemed to sway. Patrick had lied to me. He’d never done that before. Or had he?

‘What if he doesn’t?’ I said, and then cleared my throat. ‘I mean, hypothetically speaking. What would the magazine do then?’

‘He’s not on any specific assignment, so the magazine has no official responsibility, if that’s what you mean. As a freelancer, he’s in charge of getting his own insurance coverage.’