‘Yeah. We could be campaigning hacks together. I’m not sure about Fast and Loose this time, though. More like Sick and Twisted.’
‘Is it really so sick and twisted to sacrifice yourself for the one you lo–, ah, want to be with?’
Tom’s lips twitched. He bent, painfully, to kiss my lips.
‘So you lo– want to be with me, do you?’ he said. ‘Well, I lo– want to be with you too. You’ll have to stop throwing yourself in the path of sociopathic perverts though.’
‘That’s fine by me. And you’ll have to stop having sex with all your exes.’
‘Done.’
We lay in bed some hours later, basking in the aftermath of some unusually slow and tender vanilla sex – of necessity, given his physical and my emotional condition, but also beautifully appropriate – listening to November rain beat against the window. It was four o’clock on a Monday morning, and I’d have to be at work in five hours. How could such mundanity still exist in my strange world?
‘So, did he?’ said Tom, yawning.
‘Did who? Did what?’
‘Keane. Spill any beans. I know you didn’t get to the pillow-talk stage, but did you get anything interesting out of him?’
‘Oh. No, not really. I think I could’ve, though. Puffed-up prats like him always want to bang on and on about how they rule the universe. I mean, he pretty much admitted to taking bribes and handing out jobs for the boys, but he didn’t go into detail.’
‘He admitted it?’
‘Yeah. No shame at all.’
‘God, it hurts to think I’m leaving this town in his hands.’
‘Are you really leaving?’
‘I’ll never work in this town again,’ he said in a hard-boiled drawl. ‘What else can I do?’
My sigh was heartfelt.
‘Oh, God!’ I said, suddenly remembering another of Keane’s potentially interesting revelations. ‘There was something he told me – something that really startled me.’
‘Oh?’
‘Ed’s into all this stuff.’
‘Haydon?’
‘Yes, him. The reason he’s so pally with Keane is that he knows all his dirty little sex secrets. Apparently he sees Maria, on a professional basis.’
‘You are fucking kidding me. Haydon likes to get on his knees and lick the shiny boots of leather?’ Tom tried to sit up, but his ribs wouldn’t let him, and he lay back down, his face alight.
‘So I hear.’
‘This is…this is…wow. I mean…’ He steepled his hands and put his fingers to his mouth in rapt contemplation. ‘Wow,’ he said again.
‘Does that change much?’ I asked.
‘Well, potentially. I mean, nothing personal against old Haydon, but his position as editor of the Clarion will be untenable if the parent company hears about this. I can’t believe they haven’t asked the right questions already. I’ve written to them about the cover-up over Keane, but if they take any notice at all, it’ll probably be too late. But if they knew why he was doing it…’
‘There’s no proof,’ I pointed out. ‘Only what Keane said to me.’
‘Maria’s the key to this,’ he said excitedly. ‘If I could get her to talk…’
‘She knows you’re a journalist,’ I said, deflating him.