The Forgotten Dead: A dark, twisted, unputdownable thriller

Evans put down his paper. Though his gaze was piercing, his eyes were the faded blue of washed-out jeans.

‘Oh, right. Aren’t you from somewhere in Hungary? It seems to me Patrick mentioned that.’

‘I’m from the Lower East Side,’ I said and boldly sat down on the chair across from him. That was my standard reply whenever anyone wondered where I was really from. ‘We met once, at the celebration for the magazine’s fifteenth anniversary.’

‘Sure, of course.’ He managed a half-smile. ‘That’s also when Cornwall was nominated for the Pulitzer.’

‘But he didn’t get it,’ I said, waving to the waiter, who came rushing over to wipe off the table. I ordered a glass of orange juice.

I had stood beside Patrick on that evening, squeezed into a beautiful emerald-green sheath dress that I’d borrowed from a costume supplier. I had clutched his hand as the mingling stopped and everyone turned to look at the TV screens. In Patrick’s line of work there was no higher honour than the Pulitzer Prize. His series of articles about the Prince George police district in Maryland had aroused tremendous attention, and being nominated for the prize was the biggest thing that had ever happened to him. But in the end, his name was not the one announced. Instead, the prize for the best investigative reporting went to a couple of journalists from The New York Times, for uncovering insider trading on Wall Street. Patrick got good and drunk. The following year he’d spent four months, two of them without pay, reporting on who the losers were in the new economy. It was a blistering account that was given extensive coverage in The Reporter and had stirred vigorous debate. It was also cited by numerous politicians. But Patrick was not nominated again, and his self-esteem had suffered ever since.

‘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.’

I felt someone shove me in the back as two students took over the table where we’d been sitting. Talking loudly, they put down their books and latte cups.

‘That’s all part of being freelance. Right?’ said Evans. ‘If you want to be free, with nobody telling you when to get up in the morning or send you out on routine jobs. I really miss those days.’