“Simple, my friend. Day one, a brutal and macabre killing. Who would do such a thing, hmm? The standard, ‘Why did he have to die?’ story.”
“You mean user-key one.”
Jinnah ignored this slight. It was a standing joke around the cop shop. Jinnah only wrote three kinds of articles and did so with such a consistent formula that they were referred to as “User-key” stories. User-key one, “Why did he/she have to die?” Usually guaranteed the front page. And this was definitely front page material.
“Day two,” Jinnah continued. “Find the boy’s parents. His sweetheart. His high school teacher. Great TV clips. Did his parents know he was working for you, by the way?”
“Nice try, Hakeem,” said Graham. “No comment.”
“Day three: in the absence of any suspects, hmm? Where were the police while a body was being placed in plain view on one of Vancouver’s busiest street corner? One that has a history of drug deals and drug busts. You had to file an affidavit to get the warrant, right?”
“Of course,” said Graham. “But the informant’s names are severed from the document.”
“Won’t take long for someone to guess,” said Jinnah sadly. “Might even take less time if that bastard in traffic gets wind of it and leaks it to one of his pet reporters.”
Graham gave a little, disapproving cough. There was a certain corporal in the traffic section that made it his business to make his life misery. Graham suspected even Jinnah had likely been fed one or two tips by the son of a bitch over the years.
“Three days to catch the perp with dick all to go on. Not bloody likely, Hakeem.”
“Then what, Sergeant Graham, sir, do you propose?”
Graham eyed Jinnah warily. He was, he knew, playing with fire. But he had little option. Jinnah’s assessment of the media’s moods and appetites had been too brutally realistic and had corresponded too closely with his own suspicions.
“Look, if I can feed you stuff, exclusive, so the pack is busy chasing you, it’ll take ’em longer to start asking awkward questions, right?”
There was a pleading note in Graham’s voice that Jinnah didn’t like. It was usually his job to whine about getting an exclusive. He genuinely felt sorry for Craig. But it did not do to accept such a generous offer without a bit of unseemly haggling first. Pride would not allow it.
“I don’t know, Craig,” said Jinnah, pulling out a pack of cigarettes. “A petty detail here, a petty detail there. That’s your usual idea of an exclusive.”
“I’m not talking about giving you what kind of clothes the kid was wearing when we found him,” said Graham irritably. “I mean good stuff. Juicy stuff.”
Jinnah took out his gold lighter and flicked its beautifully crafted wheel. He inhaled deeply. “Front page stuff?” he asked, the words entombed in a shroud of blue smoke.
Graham coughed and waved a hand in front of his face. “Look, Aikens already has the body. Go see him in an hour, give or take. I’ll tell him to give you a full briefing for once.”
Jinnah’s heart soared. A full briefing with Rex “Dr. Death” Aikens could keep him on the front page for a week, easily. Jinnah stuck out his hand. “You got a deal, buddy.”
They shook on it. On the walk back to the crime scene, Jinnah was already writing his story out loud, bouncing it off Graham. “It’s a murder with a message: Beware.”
“Yeah,” muttered Graham. “But who’s the message for?”
“Too bad he wasn’t found in a strip club.”
“What the hell difference does that make?”
“Craig, Craig — it’s one of the greatest headlines in journalism yore. ‘Headless Body Found in Topless Club.’ Great, hmm?”
“Charming.”
“I was thinking of something like: ‘Under the spreading oak tree, the village junkie stands — but not on his head.’”
“Real sensitive. His parents will love you.”
“They always end up loving Jinnah in the end, my friend….”
They almost made it back safely behind the tape, but just as they were a few metres shy, a TV reporter and her cameraman leaped out from behind a tree and barred their path.
“Sergeant Graham! Have you any suspects yet?”
Oh shit, thought Jinnah. Caitlin Bishop.
“I have no comment.”
Graham tried to brush past Caitlin, but she had positioned herself squarely between him and the tape. Jinnah felt a pang of conscience. He had taught Caitlin that trick. It seemed another lifetime ago that Caitlin had been a shy, mousy intern at the Tribune, being mentored by the great Jinnah-ji. She had talent and promise — ah, such promise! Jinnah sighed. Then she had thrown it all away for a job in television news. It only pained Jinnah slightly that she now made almost exactly twice as much as he did.
“Was he a dealer or a junkie?” Caitlin asked as Jinnah smiled politely at his former protegé.
“No comment.”
“Is this in any way linked to last month’s major bust down here?”
To Graham’s credit, he didn’t miss a beat. His “No comment” was in exactly the same tone as his previous utterances — which was something Jinnah hated. Unlike so many other cops, Graham never gave that dramatic pause that said “yes, but I can’t say so,” unless he wanted to.
“May I say I find that hard to believe?”
Part of Jinnah admitted that he would have made exactly the same comment. But the rest of him knew this woman was endangering his exclusive. He was about to say something when, fortunately, Graham was rescued by Constable Bains.
“Sergeant, we need you over here.”
Bains, one of Vancouver’s few Indo-Canadian policemen and built like a brick ashram, had lumbered up behind Caitlin and was politely but firmly leaning against her, prompting her to take a step back. Graham saw the crack of light and dove to safety without answering the last question.
Caitlin pouted for a second then turned her perfectly capped teeth on Jinnah. “Jinnah!” she said in a voice that was a pale imitation of Hakeem’s saccharin tones. “What were you and Craig talking about all by yourselves?”
Jinnah was not fooled by Caitlin’s studied coquetry for a moment. “He offered to buy me a one-way bus ticket out of town. Then released me on my own recognizance.”
“Very funny. Spill. What do you know?”
“TV has been very bad for your patience level. You know, you used to be so much more polite when you worked in print.”
Before Caitlin could reply, Jinnah turned and
