Woodpecker

Chapter 10 / Ben 2 / 3 x 13 Days Left

"What on earth kind of mess have you got yourself into this time?" Ben is having a couple of pints with an old colleague. After ten months working on the Project Starling story, he had made no progress in discovering what it is or why it might be so politically sensitive. Finally, after a great deal of thought, he had decided to talk it over with someone he trusted. Isabelle Norton to tell the truth was more than just an ex-colleague. She and Ben had known each other since their school days when they had both attended a progressive mixed sex private school in Wiltshire. They had started the school's first newspaper together and both ended up forging successful journalistic careers. She had founded a digital news service five years earlier, dealing in the public and not so public goings on of celebrities major and minor.

Izzy is high energy. A fast talker. Small at five foot five, with dark eternally glossy hair styled with a wave to one side which half covers her right cheek. Stylishly dressed and carefully accessorized she always appears to Ben to be well curated rather than well groomed. Her eyes are a very dark brown, almost black, mahogany in the right light. She is in many ways the exact opposite of Ben who is usually casually dressed in shirt and jumper, didn't always shave, and was prudent in the use of his energies. This is certainly why they had, in the past, always made a good team working together. That there was absolutely no sexual chemistry between them probably helped too. It was obvious to them both and to anyone looking at them sat here in this pub that they were entirely incompatible as a couple. This left a clean crisp space for their friendship and the occasional work project to exist in.

"Before I get into my mess, do tell me how the webpage is going," Ben says. He always jokingly underplays the size and success of her venture, but his contempt for digital media is genuine.

"Not much to tell. You know Ben, tittle tattle, half-truths, and engineered bullshit. I sometimes find myself proofreading stuff and thinking, who wrote this shit? Then I realise it was me. Can you imagine? But it's the stuff that seems to shift units these days. Not like the serious stuff you work on," she says then clarifies, "the seriousness of the content I mean not its ability to shift units."

"Thanks for that. Good to hear. I'm actually struggling a bit with an investigative piece that I wanted to talk to you about."

"I'm honoured Ben. I didn't realize you held me in such high journalistic esteem."

"I don't," Ben says laughing, "but I do trust you."

Ben walks Izzy through everything that has happened since the day he received the brown envelope. He shows her a copy he made of the pink paper memo that first alerted him to the existence of Project Starling. She sits wide eyed as he explains how the original was taken from his flat by an intruder the day he lunched with Douglas Mawson, the Minister for the Environment. She tenderly touches the small scar on the side of his forehead as he describes how, on that night, he had been knocked half unconscious by the same person as he returned home.

"Bloody hell Ben. Poor baby. This all sounds a bit serious even by your standards. How the hell did they get in?"

"Well, that's the thing Izzy," Ben says, becoming animated, "nothing was damaged. The windows were all sealed, the front door lock intact, not even a scratch on the metal around the locking mechanism."

"A professional job then?" She asks, letting the question hang.

"A very professional job. And too much of a coincidence that it happened on the day I had lunch with Mawson. There were only two people in the world who knew that I was following this story. One was a newspaper editor who's bankrolling the investigation, and the other was Mawson."

"But tell me this," Izzy says holding her chin as if in thought. "Why on earth go to all the trouble of stealing a piece of paper that they produced? I mean they must have realized you would have taken a copy."