Private Lives

37



Helen Pierce stared at the calendar in front of her, wondering if she could turn back time or somehow change the frustrating facts written down there in black and white. It had been deeply irritating to discover that Stateside had gone to press over a week after the registration of the Balon4Mayor domain name, but much worse, it was potentially fatal to her case. She seriously doubted that anyone at the magazine had really had a clue that Jonathon Balon had registered the web name or even had political ambitions when they had gone to press, otherwise they would already have used it as a big stick with which to beat him. After all, the article had been a hachet job, and ‘Property Developer With Criminal Connections Wants To Run London’ would have been ten times more sensational. The annoying thing was that none of that mattered. The fact remained that Balon4Mayor.com pre-dated the magazine’s print date, and legally that was enough for the magazine to argue that the story was in the public interest.

She sat back and closed her eyes, going over the trial once more in her head. Stateside had called dozens of witnesses in the course of the week, most of whom had been humdrum: the writer of the piece, a selection of the people he had interviewed, most of them just there to nod and say ‘yes, that’s what I told him’ – it was all par for the course in a trial like this. The only witness Helen had been worried about had been Spencer Reed, the magazine’s flamboyant editor. Spencer was one of the most famous editors in the world, and he had an ego and swagger to match. In the past decade she’d represented a handful of clients in defamation actions against Stateside, and Spencer had always been an impressive witness: passionate, defiant, deeply protective of his magazine. But this time, he’d been different. He was still outwardly confident and eloquent, but you could tell he was just going through the motions. I wonder . . . thought Helen, walking across the office to the tall bookcase covering the wall opposite her. On the bottom shelf, neatly filed in boxes, were dozen of copies of the magazine. They had both the UK and the US edition delivered, as any given month there would be a few subtle differences between the two. Different advertising, occasionally a different cover.

She carried the magazines back to her glass desk and sorted them into two stacks, one American, the other British, then set about methodically going through each one, armed with a packet of pink Post-it notes.

Forty minutes later, the job was done. Helen stood back and smiled at her handiwork, then picked up the phone and called Anna.

Her associate was there in less than a minute, standing at the door like a schoolgirl summoned to see the head teacher. It was a Sunday, so Anna was wearing her weekend clothes – jeans, ballet pumps and a white T-shirt, but even so, she still had that clean-cut head-girl efficiency about her. Helen knew that Anna felt personally responsible for the Sam Charles debacle, and that was good; she had no time for ‘clockers’, people who just treated the law like a job they could clock on and off from. Like her, Anna lived and breathed her work, plus she was smart, sharp and hungry, and she had something to prove to her boss. Helen would never dream of saying as much, but for all those reasons, Anna was the member of her team she trusted the most.

‘Do you know what I have always found strange?’ she said, gesturing towards the piles of magazines. ‘The fact that the Jonathon Balon story appeared in both the US and the UK issue.’

‘I thought all features appeared in both issues,’ replied Anna.

‘Not quite. Only about ninety per cent of the editorial is the same. The UK issue usually has one major story pertinent to the British market, a couple of party pages and a handful of diary items to give a regional flavour, which are generated by their London bureau.’

‘So the fact that the Balon story is in both issues means it was generated by the main editorial office in New York?’

Helen nodded. ‘Which is the odd thing. Why run a five-thousand-word feature on a London-based property developer?’

‘Because he’s a billionaire and because he’s politically ambitious?’

‘They didn’t know that when this piece was commissioned, I’m pretty sure of that.’

‘Do you think that’s enough reason to get the public interest argument thrown out?’ asked Anna.

‘Possibly,’ said Helen, ‘but possibly isn’t good enough any more.’

Helen had no intention of taking any more chances with this case. She had been confident of a win, but they had been caught out by the defence: that couldn’t happen again.

‘See the pink notes sticking out of the sides?’ she said. ‘I’ve marked all the British-focused features that appear in both editions. They’re British stories, yes, but stories with a real international impact. Stories that would interest you whether you lived in Manhattan or Manchester.’

Anna stepped closer, then looked at Helen in surprise. ‘There aren’t many.’

‘There are just three,’ smiled Helen. ‘And there are eight years’ worth of magazines there.’

‘So it’s unusual for Stateside to commission a story like the Balon profile, something with such a uniquely British flavour?’

‘Unusual?’ Helen corrected. ‘Almost unheard of.’

She could see that Anna was interested now, thinking through the angles, looking for a solution: that was exactly why she had called her.

‘Find out everything about the senior members of staff on the magazine,’ said Helen. ‘Start with Spencer. I want to find a connection, however small, to Jonathon Balon.’

Anna looked at her, the penny dropping.

‘You think this is an intentional hatchet job?’ she said. ‘Something personal?’

‘Did you notice the way Spencer was glaring at Jonathon in court?’ said Helen, nodding. ‘I thought it was because he was annoyed that Jonathon had brought the libel action, but what if it’s something else? Spencer is famous for using his magazine to voice his anti-Republican standpoint; why wouldn’t he go a step further and use it to trash an individual he didn’t like?’

Anna’s eyes opened wider.

‘And a story printed with malice would stop Stateside from using the Reynolds defence in a libel case, because even if it’s in the public interest, it has to be balanced and fairly reported.’

Helen nodded gleefully.

‘Go and find out what this is really about.’ She smiled. ‘Then we’ll give them a hatchet job of their own.’