An Explosive Email

"Sarah, you really should stop looking into this story of yours. Those that have been asking around have either mysteriously vanished or suffered from suspicious accidents. It isn't worth the risk to your life. Stop investigating it any further, I don't want anything bad to happen to you. Please. You promised to give me the final say. So, please look no further."

Sarah felt a little shocked listening to the voice mail from her boss Leigh and knew that she had hit something really big this time.

It had been three years since she graduated from university with her communications degree and only had small-scale and localised scandals to her name. As for those big stories she had helped her colleagues with, either through passing on information or access to her contacts, the credit had ended up going to the collective 'team'. However, she did not begrudge the company this, as she knew she had to be put through the grind as did those that came before her.

However, six months ago she had been sent a suspicious email titled "Minister & Mafia". The email only contained a single photo of two men dining at a restaurant and captioned, "Police Minister & Southern Mafia Boss 10/10/15".

Intrigued, Sarah had googled the Police Minister and as the email suggested, found out it was indeed the same person. Although the photo was taken in dim lighting and was only a side-profile of the two men, the Police Minister's distinct hook-shaped mole just below his left eye was clearly visible. However, she could not verify the identity of the other man at the table. Only the back of his head was distinguishable in this shot as he had turned away as if he somehow knew there was someone taking a photo.

Her gut told her there was more to this photo than meets the eye and she called around to her friends and colleagues asking about any information they had on the Southern Mafia Boss. To Sarah, even a simple description of what he looked like would do. She also contacted the Minister's office requesting access to his ministerial diary in order to see where he was on the date of the alleged incident.

Her queries to her colleagues only made her more puzzled, as many remained un-replied and those that chose to, only gave her tiny bits that essentially amounted to nothing and many were even contradictory. Information such as, Caucasian, Asian, young man in his thirties, old man in his sixties and one even told her the boss was a Black woman aged twenty-five.

Slightly frustrated with her colleagues actions, Sarah decided to do her own digging by using the information given by them as a base and then cross-checking with various other more reputable sources in order to reveal the truth and the lies.

Amidst her trawling through the dark web in order to reach some of her more grey-area contacts and informants that she had by chance stumbled upon during her university days, a sudden alert from her email popped up.

Titled, "Re; Request for Minister's Diary", Sarah clicked the email and was brought to a standard form reply that simply amounted to, request denied. Ever more curious, Sarah decided to call the Minister's electoral office number provided in the email reply.

"Hello, you have reached the Member for Ports office, this is Melinda speaking. How may I help you?"

"Hello Melinda, my name is Sarah Longford and I am a journalist from the Eight Network and I was calling about the recent email I sent on requesting access to the Minister's ministerial diary as I would rather not file a freedom of information request."

"Ah, sorry we only process local electorate matters in this office, if you want to ask about the Minister's activities and his responsibilities as a minister then you will need to contact his department. Thank you."

Before, Sarah could reply Melinda had already ended the call. Peeved at the passive aggressive response, Sarah chose to call the Minister's department as per Melinda's suggestion. She truly felt they were being a little elusive and generally not very helpful.

"You have reached the Department of Security, press 1 for all visa request needs, press 2 for passport help and press 0 for other"

Dialling the number she found on the Department's website, Sarah was taken to a machine response and pressed zero, hearing the dialling tone and then the hold music, Sarah knew she was going to be waiting for a long time. Putting her phone on loudspeaker, Sarah resumed her activities on the dark web and just as she ended her text chat with one of her contacts who had agreed to find the information she was looking for, for a fee of course, she heard a new voice from her phone.

"Hello, thank you for waiting on the line. This is Cory speaking, how may I help you today?"

"Hi, I am Sarah Longford from the Eight Network calling about a request I sent about accessing the Minister's diary."

"Oh, you are the one that was asking about that. The Minister had made it clear that access to his diary cannot be given as it contains sensitive information that cannot be freely dispersed to the public for fear it may jeopardise ongoing police investigations or persons that are under public protection. As a result, the Minister has advised us that access to the entire diary is not possible. However, if you provide us with certain dates or times, we can have a look again for you."

"Oh, okay, thanks, well I just wanted to know about his activities on the tenth of October last year."

"Sorry, I meant through a formal email as it would be difficult for me to reply at this time as I do not have access to the Minister nor his diary. So, if you could just send us another email, I am sure we can get back to you in a timely manner. Is there anything else I can help you with today?"

"Uhm, no there isn't anything else. Thank you for your time."

"Thank you, have a good day"

As the the call ended, Sarah sighed loudly and was about to once again send an email to the Minister when she was interrupted by a familiar voice.

"Why the long face, Sarah? Another bad day?"

Sarah yelped cutely in surprise and glared slightly at the handsome man leaning on the door to her office.

"Mark, you know I hate it when people suddenly surprise me like that. For that, you now owe me a drink."

"Hah, you left your door wide open and I heard a distressed sigh from a precious colleague of mine. As a responsible and caring friend, I decided to help this junior of mine, yet here I am at the end of a lecture and now owing the beautiful lady a drink. Woe to me."

Seeing Mark's little smirk and hearing his teasing response to her trying to take advantage of him, Sarah was left speechless. She though her trying to weasel her way into getting him to buy her a drink was shameless, yet this man was cheesily flattering and flirting with her in the same breath.

"You vain man. Stop. We are at work, you can't just go around satisfying your ego by attempting to get into bed with every one of your colleagues. Mind you, I have half a heart in having you reported to HR for harassment."

"Fine, alright, let me buy you that drink. No more grumbling at me. Are you done with your work

yet?"

"Give me five minutes I just need to send this email and then I am good to go."

Hearing her response Mark walked into her office and lay down on the sofa that she had specifically bought so she had something to rest on, for those days where she had to pull an all-nighter.

Seeing him get comfortable as if he had done this many times, Sarah went back to writing the email and quickly sent it. She once again checked to see if any of her other contacts and colleagues had replied to her queries but was slightly disappointed to see nothing.

Turning off her computer she got up and left the office with Mark for some Friday night drinks.