“And Joanna didn’t do that?” asked Kate.
“The big story was that Noah Huntley took bribes for government contracts whilst he was an MP. It’s a good story. It appealed to a broad range of readers, and it created waves, but when Joanna didn’t get the glory for the story when the national newspapers picked it up, she lost sight of her journalistic instincts. Instead of going out there to find another great story, of which there were many, she chose to grub around in the dirt and go after Noah Huntley and his gay affairs. She was like a dog with a bone, looking up all these young guys who he’d screwed. She wanted one of them to wear a wire! Remember, this was a regional newspaper. Joanna didn’t have the balls to quit and try her luck in London—she just hung around and got bitter and vindictive.”
“Had you ever met Noah Huntley?” asked Kate.
“Yes. I’d spent time with him on the campaign trail for the 2001 general election. He won his seat by a huge majority. Both him and his wife, Helen, were fun to be around. Noah is a bit of a charming fool, but a lovable one. People think she’s this long-suffering doormat, but no one has ever bothered to look beyond her standing next to him in official photos. They met at Cambridge. He’s gay, she’s a lesbian. The deal was that they would marry for security and companionship. He became the more high-profile partner in the couple, so his love of cock, if you excuse my bluntness, was good gossip, but I wouldn’t have spent so much time chasing that story.”
“We spoke to your editor a few days ago, and he said that he’d told Joanna to drop the whole rent-boy angle of the original story?” said Kate.
“Yes. You can’t just ‘out’ people for sport. There was no proof that Noah used his parliamentary expenses account to solicit said cock.”
“He wrote a check to one of the rent boys,” said Tristan.
“Yes, but he could have been paying for freelance research or secretarial admin work. Unlikely, yes, but so many MPs hire secretaries and researchers. That check wouldn’t have stood up in court if the young lad involved had refused to be interviewed.”
“Did you know that Joanna met with Noah Huntley two weeks before she went missing?” asked Kate.
“No. I didn’t know that.”
“Were you working in the office on the day that Joanna went missing?”
“I worked in the morning. I left around lunchtime.”
“Did you notice anything odd about Joanna that day?”
“Define odd.”
“Was she stressed about anything? Acting out of character?”
Rita sat back and thought for a moment.
“God, it was so long ago. I do remember her being nice to me . . .” She chuckled. “Things had been rather frosty between us, but she bought me a coffee; she seemed upbeat, excited even. She’d just got a load of photos back from Boots. You remember that, when we used to get our photos processed?”
“Holiday photos?” asked Kate, sharing a glance with Tristan.
“No, I don’t think so. She asked me for an expense claim form. I remember because it was the last thing she ever said to me,” said Rita.
“What happened next?” asked Kate.
“Nothing. I stayed for another ten minutes or so, and I left to meet my boyfriend for lunch.”
“Was it a lot of photos?” asked Kate.
“I know she had a stack of those envelopes they used to give you back for your processed photos. It wasn’t unusual back then for journalists to work with photos, films, et cetera. We were still a few years away from going digital.”
“Can you remember how many of these photo envelopes she had?” asked Kate.
“It was a long time ago. It was a pile of, I don’t know, fifteen, twenty?”
“If Joanna wanted to use a hard-copy photo in a news story, would she scan it herself?” asked Tristan.
“No. It would have been sent down to the copy room via the picture desk,” said Rita.
“Did you work on laptops or desktop computers at the West Country News?” asked Kate.
“I had a laptop. Most of us had laptops, so we could work at home.”
“Did people leave their laptops at work?”
“No. Joanna never left her laptop at work. She would have taken it with her. She was ferociously competitive. She was a good journalist in the sense that she was out of the office as much as she was in.”
“Did the police come and talk to the staff at the West Country News?” asked Kate.
“Yes. We all gave them what little information we had. It was shocking,” said Rita, her face clouding over. “I’ve been honest what I thought about Joanna, but it was a difficult time, when one of your own becomes the story. I wrote most of the copy on the first days of Joanna going missing.”