by A D FOX
‘Good morning, you lovely people! Great to have you here with me for my very first breakfast show on BBC Radio Wessex! It’s just gone six-thirty and we’ve got a lot to pack in over the next couple of hours, including news, sport, weather, traffic updates and Wiltshire’s own top psychic and spoon bender Davy Gatward On The Couch, but first, here’s a little Neil Diamond to start your day…’
Josh Carnegy triggered Sweet Caroline and took down his mic fader. He sucked in a deep, deep breath and reached for his mug of coffee.
‘You doing alright in there?’ Gemma buzzed in his headphones.
He nodded and put a thumb up, grinning to her through the glass window to tele-in. She beamed back at him and put both her own thumbs up before keying the button to add ‘You’ve got this, Josh.’
He knew she and James were totally behind him. They would protect him from any callers intent on dragging up the events of the last couple of weeks. Although his presence at the location of the police arrests had got out, nothing further had yet surfaced about exactly what had happened that night. The British judicial system was a godsend; he literally couldn’t talk about any of it until he was testifying in court. Not publicly, anyway. So any caller being put through was getting a firm warning from the production team that they must not ask about Dave Perry, Sheila Bartley or Finley Warner.
‘Josh will be in contempt of court if he responds in any way,’ he’d heard Gemma say on the phone, two or three times already this morning. ‘Anyone who brings up the case with him will get cut off immediately, OK?’
Of course, once it did come to court it was all going to come out and there would be no escaping the morbid fascination. He just hoped his fledgling career would survive it and not be defined by it. He also hoped Finley would survive it and not be defined by it. He guessed he would find out soon enough how his number one fan was coping. He smiled at the Tupperware tub of macaroons next to his coffee mug. The note stuck to it read: Congratulations and good luck! You’ll be the best breakfast show presenter EVER. F
Despite his high adrenaline, he reckoned he could get maybe half a macaroon down before the end of the track.
‘Good morning, you lovely people! Great to have you here with me for my very first breakfast show on BBC Radio Wessex! It’s just gone six-thirty and we’ve got a lot to pack in over the next couple of hours, including news, sport, weather, traffic updates and Wiltshire’s own top psychic and spoon bender Davy Gatward On The Couch, but first, here’s a little Neil Diamond to start your day…’
Lucas crushed a peppermint teabag in a mug of boiled water. He was longing for a coffee but his nights weren’t too great and maybe that was down to the high dose painkillers not mixing well with caffeine.
Yeah, right.
He was missing things. He was missing sleep. He was missing Sid. He was missing bits of memory, thanks to that bloody Rohypnol… and he was missing Kate. A couple of texts weren’t much after everything they’d been through. He could have used a support group, even if Kate was the only other member.
He took his mug of mint tea and a hunk of granary bread and butter and sat down at the kitchen table. He ate breakfast, wondering if was better to just leave Sid in the Salisbury nick evidence locker.
He was about to turn up the volume on Josh’s first show when his mobile rang; number withheld. He steeled himself and picked up the call.
‘Lucas?’
He recognised the voice but was puzzled by the informality. ‘Chief Superintendent?’
‘I’m off duty. You can call me… Kapoor,’ was the response - only semi-detached from formality after all.
‘Oh - well - OK then.’
‘I’m sorry. I’ve just realised how early it is. Did I wake you?’
‘No. No, I was up. What can I do for you?’
‘I wanted to thank you,’ came the reply. Lucas began to see patterns drifting around the visualisation of his ally and adversary. He sensed Kapoor was reclining. And connected to a machine.
‘I acted upon your advice to get my kidney function checked,’ went on Kapoor. ‘It turns out I have been hosting a small tumour on my left lower lobe for the past year.’
‘Oh,’ said Lucas. ‘That’s… not good.’
‘It could be worse,’ said Kapoor. ‘I don’t think I would have known about it for some time. I was tired, but I had put that down to the stresses and strains of the last few months. I had no idea there was an underlying problem. The nephrologist says that in another two or three months it might have been a much more serious situation. As it is, the tumour has been removed and has, I am told, not spread. I am very lucky.’
‘That is good news.’ Lucas breathed out, nodding his head to nobody. He never intentionally dowsed people’s state of health. It was way too much of a minefield to get involved with. He only ever mentioned anything if Sid picked something up in passing and then got quite insistent. He was very glad his little glass helper had pushed him past his annoyance with Kapoor. It would have been easy to let that one pass.
‘The chain that cut off Robert Larkhill’s air supply is still being held for evidence,’ Kapoor went on. ‘I can’t return that to you. But you should receive the pendulum. The pathologist agreed with me that it was not relevant to our enquiry. I asked for it to be sterilised before they posted it to you.’
‘Thank you,’ Lucas said. ‘I appreciate it.’
‘Extraordinary,’ said Kapoor. ‘Just… extraordinary. Lucas… would you be happy to be on our register of consultants?’
Lucas took a deep breath. ‘Let me think about that,’ he said.
‘Of course - quite right. Well… no doubt we will meet again soon. In the meantime, please don’t speak to DS Sparrow.’
Chance, thought Lucas, would be a fine thing.
After the call he turned the radio back up. Josh sounded great - much brighter and sharper and wholly less annoying than his murdered predecessor, whom Lucas had occasionally heard when seeking traffic and travel updates before a journey. There weren’t many upsides to recent events at BBC Radio Wessex but this was one of them.
His mind kept drifting from the broadcast, even so. His patchy memory was unnerving him. There was something about that time in the shed with Kate, when he thought they were going to die. Something he’d said to her. Or thought he’d said. Did he say it? Did he actually make his full confession… out loud? And did she hear it if he did?
Finley’s smile was every bit as wide as it ever had been when Josh met him in the BBC canteen, sitting with a mug of tea, wearing his guest ID on a lanyard and drumming his fingers on the table.
Something was different about him, though. Not surprising, considering what had happened to him. Josh still felt appalled and guilty about it. He sat down with the half-empty tub of macaroons and his half-drunk coffee and smiled back. ‘Those macaroons were the best I’ve ever tasted,’ he said. ‘And I’m not just saying that because my former boss tried to murder you.’
Finley’s smile deepened to a grin and Josh realised suddenly what it was. Nothing about the young man had really changed; it was just that he was seeing Finley differently. There was warmth in that smile. No creepiness or fanaticism; just warmth.
‘You know I don’t actually bake them, don’t you?’ said Finley.
‘Shit. Are you telling me you’ve been ripping off Mr Kipling all these years?’
Finley laughed. ‘No! My mum makes them. She’s a brilliant baker. She’s won prizes at the WI.’
Josh shook his head in wonder. ‘How are you doing?’ he said.
Finley’s smile faded a little. ‘OK, I guess. A bit… nervous sometimes.’
‘You getting nightmares?’
‘Yeah. Are you?’
‘Yup. I suppose it’ll take a while to settle down.’
‘You saved my life,’ said Finley. ‘I will never be able to thank you enough.’
‘And you saved the other two,’ said Josh. ‘Don’t forget that. If you hadn’t said what you said I would have just
driven us away. I wouldn’t have crashed into that shed. And you wouldn’t have been there to smash that psycho bitch Donna over the head with a crate and stop her killing DS Sparrow.’
‘Yeah, well… DS Sparrow saved me too,’ said Finley, with a shrug. ‘And that Lucas Henry guy. If they hadn’t shown up it would have been game over well before you got there. You’d have just found me all crisped up on the radio car. You’d have read that fake suicide note and you’d have thought I killed Dave and Sheila.’
‘That was some seriously fucked up night out we had,’ said Josh. ‘But we got through it. We were a total team.’
Finley was grinning again now. ‘Yeah. We were, weren’t we?’
‘There’s this new person in charge here,’ said Josh. ‘Her name’s Jocelyn Pearson. English Regions rushed her down here the morning after our wild night out. She’s the acting station manager but I think she’ll probably get the job permanently when everything’s settled down.’
‘Yes, she was at BBC Radio Oxford for five years as manager and worked as a senior broadcast journalist for BBC Radio Leeds for three years before that,’ said Finley.
Josh laughed, shaking his head.
‘I read Ariel,’ explained Finley. ‘Moira prints off the on-line articles for me.’
‘Of course you do,’ said Josh. Only Finley could charm a staffer into handing over print outs of the BBC’s internal newspaper. ‘Anyway, there are some trainee opportunities going, for the technical side of broadcasting,’ he said. ‘Not here - up at Berkshire. She says she thinks you should go for it.’ He slid a card across the table. ‘This is the card of the chief engineer up there. He’s expecting you to call. What do you think?’
Finley looked transfixed. ‘You mean…. I could actually work in radio? At the BBC? Me?’
‘Why not you? You already know loads about the network and the radio cars and the broadcasting tech. What’s stopping you?’
Finley sat up straight, turning the card over in his fingers. ‘Nothing,’ he said, his eyes aflame. ‘Nothing at all…’
38
‘You know, don’t you? You know the truth about him?’
Kate rolled over on the sofa, where she’d dropped into a mid-morning doze in front of Homes Under the Hammer.
Mabel sat on the tractor in the shed, staring down at her with that long-suffering expression she had always worn when Mum made her take an annoying little sister off to hang out with her and her teenage mates.
Kate was lying on the ground with a hole in her shoulder and Lucas was still taped up to the wooden pole, muttering something she couldn’t quite hear. ‘I… I don’t know,’ she burbled up at Mabel. ‘What truth?’
‘Listen!’ said Zoe, her cold, blue hand reaching out from underneath the broken shed wall.
‘‘I want to say… I’m sorry,’ said Lucas, swinging Sid on his chain. ‘About what happened. It was me-’
‘You see?’ said Mabel. ‘Do you see?’
Kate jolted awake, her mobile buzzing. A text had arrived. From Lucas.
I know we’re not allowed to talk, so this is a one off, it read. Just want to say I’m thinking about you.
Kate felt slightly sick.
She thumbed back: I’m thinking about you, too.
Acknowledgments
Grateful thanks go, as ever, to my top editing team Beverly Sanford and Nicola Sparkes, and police procedural guru Sarah Bodell, who between them save me from making a total idiot of myself. There’s every chance I’m still making a partial idiot of myself, but it could be so much worse.
Also huge appreciation to Mia Costello, Rebecca Parker and Malcolm Baird at BBC Radio Solent, who updated me on the workings of a busy regional station - because it’s been a few years now since I was let loose on the faders.
And ongoing warm hugs to Simon Tilley, for championing my Henry & Sparrow odyssey, sorting out all the clever stuff and offering tea.
Also by A D FOX
HENRY & SPARROW book 1:
THE DYING DOLLS
and click here for a free copy
of the Henry & Sparrow prequel novella
UNDERTOW
About the Author
AD Fox is an award winning author who lives in Hampshire, England, with a significant other, boomerang offspring and a large, highly porous labradoodle.
With a background in newspaper and broadcast journalism, AD would like to point out that nobody she ever worked with in BBC local radio was anything like Dave Perry. Dead Air is all fiction. Apart from the radio car. That radio car always was a beast!
Younger readers will know the AD alter ego as Ali Sparkes, author of more than fifty titles for children and young adults including the Blue Peter Award winning Frozen In Time, the bestselling Shapeshifter series and Car-Jacked, finalist in the national UK Children’s Book of the Year awards.
For more on AD Fox visit www.adfoxfiction.com and for updates about further Henry & Sparrow crime novels and other thrillers, along with bonus material, blogs and maybe even some quizzes because she’s weird that way… joyfully CLICK HERE.