Dark Market

Chapter Nineteen

WEDNESDAY

Chapter Nineteen

Next morning Savage hit the net. In death Jessica Price's hollow mask had inspired nothing.

In life her hair, not too long, not too short, framed a youthful thirty-something face and the spark of strong opinions in her eyes. A famous news anchor in the waiting. Her columns were mainly op-eds on everything from oil, arms, and investments, to profile pieces of the great and the good.

She wrote for several papers and magazines, even the odd woman's mag, a hair and beauty piece here, a make-over there. But her bread and butter was her financial writing and that's where she was making a name for herself. Her main focus market news and where things might go next. The kind of banter you picked up from being on the circuit, talking to enough people in the game, being fed the odd scoop from PRs, low-level whistle-blowers or lobbyists – always with their own agenda. So why had she been in the Middle East?

He clicked through to her section on the Universal News site. Top story was her obituary. The talented journalist and the tragedy. Not all puff. Apparently the insurgents did it. Whoever they were.

There were some quotes from her family, 'She had always wanted to make a difference,' her mother said. 'Change things from the inside,' said her best friend. Nice sentiments. Naïve, Savage knew. The cub-reporter's dream, if they didn't want to work the celebrity circuit or the PR rehash.

He'd seen those movies where the investigative reporter uncovers the conspiracy, saves the world and gets the girl. Reality meant death for her.

Savage checked the byline of her obituary. Peter Morel, the famed floppy-haired environment reporter and author was a regular news pundit and able to change public opinion. According to his website he'd been named one of the fifty most influential people in Europe.

Had Morel influenced Jessica? If so, how? And why? Savage read through some of the articles on his site. He damned every greedy money grabber out there.

Rightly so, Savage thought. Here was one man who seemed able to find more corruption in government and political circles than anyone else Savage had read. His latest post was a reprint of an article in the previous day's Guardian.

Silence of the Powerful. At What Cost?

What happens when two power bases clash? Death? Murder? Assassination? The spate of recent killings and accidents points toward some deadly virus in political and business circles. Like a sleeping disease that won't let old dogs lie. The death of the deputy pm and yesterday's foiled attempt on the foreign secretary have come at a time when the new chancellor is intent on blocks and tariffs on specific types of laissez-faire trading monopolies after the banking collapse. The results of which have been described as unpopular and disastrous for the economy by business leaders. But isn't every new change that affects the purse strings of the powerful described thus?

It went on for quite a while, until:

But it's not the only untimely death. Jessica Price, a journalist and friend, was working on a story that may have had implications for this process. And she wound up dead in the Middle East at the hands of a terror organisation. What, this journalist would like to know, is really going on here? And will the chancellor still have the courage to see through these sweeping changes at this week's London Summit for Reconstruction in Westminster?

Morel wasn't the only one who'd like to know what was really going on.

Savage mulled it over while he ran a full scan on the company system for anything to do with Six Degrees. He glared at the screen and waited.