‘That’s what?’ asked Boyle, ‘Girl Number Five?’
Tom nodded. ‘Yeah,’ he agreed, ‘Girl Number Five.’
‘How did it go?’ Malcolm asked her in front of everyone.
Helen tried hard to contain her fury but her voice was trembling with rage and everyone in the news room turned to look at her when they heard it. ‘The next time you send one of us out on a death knock because you’ve had a tip-off from your mate in the police, make sure they’ve told the bloody parents first!’
‘Oh God,’ Malcolm flushed, ‘I thought they had,’ and he realised that all of his reporters were staring at him now.
‘No,’ she informed him, ‘they hadn’t!’
Helen had found out to her cost just how quick the police had been to tell the local newspaper editor about young Lee Wallace’s unfortunate demise and how slow they had been to inform the lad’s own mother, who had no idea why a Messenger reporter was knocking on her door that morning asking for quotes. Helen had made a swift and apologetic exit, mumbling about it all being a mistake.
‘Oh bollocks,’ Malcolm added, looking as uncomfortable as she had ever seen him.
‘And when they do finally inform her,’ she added, ‘don’t send me back there!’
‘No,’ he assured her quickly, ‘I won’t.’
Malcolm retreated into his office then and stayed there for the rest of the day.
CHAPTER NINE
Bradshaw watched as Vincent shuffled into the room nervously carrying a large tray of steaming mugs, his face a picture of concentration. When the big man finally set the tray down in front of his colleagues, not one of them thanked him or even acknowledged his efforts. That seemed to be Vincent Addison’s role these days: the office tea boy, tolerated but not respected. He could carry on drawing his salary as a detective constable just so long as he wasn’t trusted with any actual police work. It was a sad state of affairs but these days Bradshaw even envied him that status.
‘You trying to poison me?’ Skelton’s face twisted into a grimace.
‘What?’ answered Vincent.
‘There’s about three sugars in this,’ the detective constable pulled a face, ‘and I don’t even take sugar.’
‘Oh sorry,’ Vincent seemed genuinely concerned, rather than angered by Skelton’s tone, ‘I must have mixed up yours and David’s.’
‘You really are a waste of oxygen, Vince,’ a couple of his fellow officers chuckled at that, enjoying the spectacle of the bigger but weaker man being tormented by Skelton, ‘you can’t even get the bloody tea right.’ Skelton was playing to the gallery now, ‘What is the point of you, eh?’ and when the older man was stuck for an answer, he repeated, ‘Eh?’
‘Oi,’ said Bradshaw.
Skelton rounded on Bradshaw, ‘Oi? What do you mean oi?’
Bradshaw had spoken without really thinking and didn’t know what to say next. In the end he settled on, ‘Why can’t you just leave him alone?’
‘You again?’ said Skelton. ‘Fuck me, every time I turn around there you are, ruining my day.’ Bradshaw could see the other men smirking at that. ‘What’s it to you anyway? He’s a big boy. Let him fight his own battles.’ Vincent meanwhile had shuffled off with the empty tray.
‘Just leave him alone. You have a go at him every bloody day.’
‘Oh right, well, since you put it like that, maybe I’ll start having a go at you every day instead.’
Bradshaw realised none of his fellow officers was going to come to his aide. ‘Water off a duck’s back,’ he mumbled half-heartedly.
‘What?’ Skelton was on his feet now, using the mumbled reply as an excuse to stand over Bradshaw to intimidate him. ‘What did you just say?’
‘I said, it’s water off a duck’s back.’
‘Really? We’ll see, eh? Just mind your own business next time Sherlock.’ They’d given Bradshaw that nickname years ago, when they heard he had qualifications. Now it had stuck and he hated it. It was another reminder of his failure. ‘Else I’ll have to knock some sense into you.’ Skelton was staring straight at him now, defying him to get out of his chair and take a swing but Bradshaw knew that would end badly. Win or lose, he knew he’d be blamed for starting it.
Instead Bradshaw just stared straight ahead. Skelton regarded him with distaste then said, ‘Yeah, thought not,’ before sitting back down with a smirk on his face.
But Bradshaw couldn’t let it go. ‘You’re a disgrace,’ he said.
‘I’m a disgrace?’ replied Skelton. ‘At least I never put anybody in a wheelchair.’
The room went very quiet then. Everyone else decided to mind their own business. Bradshaw suddenly realised that Peacock had been watching it all from the doorway, but the DI acted like he’d just arrived. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘you haven’t got time for tea, get yourselves back out there.’
Bradshaw was the last to file out of the door. Peacock stopped him and waited till the others were out of earshot. ‘Choose your battles more carefully, son. You ain’t got many friends left round here and Vincent hasn’t got any. They’ve been trying to get rid of him for ages. He’s a liability and you won’t win anyone over by sticking up for him.’
‘Thanks for the advice, boss,’ Bradshaw said in a neutral monotone.
Peacock looked exasperated but he let it go.
The underground was eerily empty at this hour. Tom Carney chose not to re-read the ‘Grady and the Tramp’ story. He didn’t want to be reminded that if the Doc’s prediction was correct, Timothy Grady’s highly paid lawyers were about to bring his career as a reporter to a swift, inglorious end.
Tom had never seriously considered any other line of work. Journalism was the only thing he had ever wanted to do or been any good at. It had taken six long years on the Durham Messenger before he’d finally landed his big break at The Paper. Six years of non-stories about summer fêtes and beauty queens, planning rows and non-league football matches, mind-numbing council meetings and a daily diet of self-important press releases from local businesses or their egocentric MP. After six months writing real news for a national tabloid, he could never go back to his local paper – and they wouldn’t take him either, not the way he left. Christ, what would he do if he ended up taking a share of the blame for this catastrophe? It didn’t bear thinking about.
Though it annoyed Tom to admit it, the Doc was right. ‘It doesn’t really matter whether Grady is guilty of spending his spare hours throwing money at hookers, three at a time,’ his editor assured him, ‘it doesn’t even matter whether the average man in the street considers him to be guilty. The only thing that does matter is how far down the garden path a bunch of highly remunerated advocates can lead a jury of simpletons. The Paper might just survive a seven-figure pay-out but we certainly won’t!’ All those years Tom had waited for a shot at the title then, when he finally got one, he’d screwed up and it looked likely to destroy him. It couldn’t be more humiliating.
In an effort to take his anxious mind away from his troubles, Tom picked up the paper and flicked through it until he reached the pages that dealt with the missing girl from the north east. Five young girls, aged between ten and fifteen, had vanished from small towns and villages across the county and four bodies had already been found. Now everybody was expecting a fifth. It was hard to hold out much hope for victim number five.
The latest location surprised Tom. Great Middleton was so small, had seemed so even when he was a child, living there with his mother, father and sister, several lifetimes ago, before everything went to rat-shit. His father moved them to a town ten miles down the road afterwards. Nobody could face staying there any more, because Great Middleton was full of ghosts.
There was an out-of-date picture of Michelle in the paper, aged about twelve; a school photograph of a girl with long dark hair tied in two tight, neat plaits, either side of a pale, freckled face. Michelle wore a forced smile for the photographer with an obvious self-consciousness about the metal teeth braces that filled her m
outh. She was dressed in a white shirt and a black and yellow tie with her secondary school crest on it.
Tom noted how careful his fellow journalist had been about reporting Michelle’s fate but you could easily read between the lines. The police had dropped enough hints about fears for her safety for all of the journos to link the vanished girl with the other missing children. Most likely the poor lass would be found in a ditch a few miles from her home. The nation would be collectively appalled at the story and for a moment, everyone would feel for the girl and her family. How could you ever get over something like that, they would ask themselves, tutting over their cornflakes, before turning their attention to the more mundane matter of getting ready for work that morning. It would be the family who would have to live with her disappearance for the rest of their lives, long after everyone else had forgotten the girl’s name. Of course, there was always the hope of a miracle; but Tom had been in journalism long enough to know that they were in very short supply.
Tom returned home and watched Timothy Grady on the TV news as the politician emerged from his London home to fight his way through the media scrum outside. There was no mistaking his absolute fury as he stomped down the steps of his Kensington townhouse. The man from the BBC thrust a microphone through the crowd of paparazzi, jabbing it at Grady. ‘These allegations are absurd and deeply defamatory,’ Grady barked at the nation, ‘but I shall have my day in court. The mighty cannons of the British justice system shall blast apart the flimsy foundations of these baseless, slanderous lies, consigning them where they belong,’ there was a dramatic pause from the Defence Secretary, ‘in the gutter!’
Grady tried to force his way to his waiting car but a newspaper reporter demanded an answer. The reporter’s voice could not be heard but Grady’s tetchy reply was audible to all, ‘I might very well have met Miss Sparkle. She is apparently a constituent!’ he blustered, before adding, ‘No, I will not be resigning, no, no, no! There’s no question!’
The former golden boy of the Conservative party finally succeeded in forcing his way through the throng and into a waiting state car, a black Jaguar Sovereign, his face like thunder, cheeks redder than one of his ministerial boxes.
‘Twat,’ said Tom as he watched the politician speed away.
He walked into the kitchen and flicked on the kettle, then thought better of it and turned it off again. He walked back into the living room and leaned against the door frame just as the BBC news began to cover the other story of interest to him.
Tom watched as the same photograph of a smiling Michelle Summers in school uniform appeared, the newsreader regurgitating the well-worn, pat phrases that were always employed when the police feared the worst. ‘Concern was growing last night following the disappearance of a fifteen-year-old girl from County Durham. Michelle Summers has not been seen since leaving her local youth club in the village of Great Middleton, at around ten p.m. on Thursday evening.’ There then followed a brief physical description of the girl. ‘Police have appealed for anyone who may have seen Michelle to come forward.’
Tom made an instinctive decision then that spurred him into action. He went up to the tiny spare room he rented from Terry-the-sub. Tom dreaded the thought of staying in this cramped room, waiting for the paper’s lawsuit and his future to be resolved, while not being allowed anywhere near the office. He knew the legal case could drag on for months and he had to face facts. He was more than likely finished at The Paper and perhaps even as a journalist altogether. Maybe he could freelance for a while but he wouldn’t be allowed to do that under his own name. Anything he wrote could have no by-line and The Paper could never find out but the tabloid world was a small one and if he was seen popping into the office of a rival newspaper, the Doc would go loopy and he would be out for good.
He reached under the bed and grabbed his sports bag, dusty from months of lying there undisturbed. He dropped it on the bed then removed the entire contents from each of his drawers and threw them into the holdall; socks, T shirts, underwear and pairs of jeans. Next he went to the bathroom and scooped up his razor, deodorant, brush and toothbrush and dropped them into a washbag that followed the clothes into the holdall.
Tom grabbed his notebook and pen, quickly scribbled a note on it and tore off the page then he wrote a cheque for the rent. He threw on his leather jacket and filled the pockets with his notepad, pens, camera, wallet and keys then finally picked up the bulky cell phone they’d given him when he joined The Paper and stuffed that in a side pocket. He looked around the room and noted that he’d managed to remove every trace of his existence in less than five minutes, a realisation that was both gloomy and liberating at the same time. Tom went downstairs, placed the rent cheque and note on the mantelpiece then headed for the door.
There were bits that appeared to be falling off the body of the black Mark Two Ford Escort and other sections that seemed to be held to it only by a stubborn coating of rust but Tom still had a deep affection for the decrepit old heap. He prayed it would start. Journalists on The Paper prided themselves on taking taxis everywhere, claiming back fistfuls of receipts every month, even when it was easier to go by tube, and his car had barely been used lately.
It took four goes and each rasping, scraping turn of the key sounded like the Escort’s final death rattle, but the ignition finally fired and the car suddenly spluttered into life, like an elderly colonel woken abruptly from his afternoon nap. He told himself it was a sunny morning in London and he was being paid to take a holiday. That was the glass-half-full approach he forced himself to adopt.
Tom Carney was heading home.
CHAPTER TEN
The TV reporter surveyed the massed throng of newspaper photographers in the village hall. ‘Bloody paps,’ he muttered under his breath but it was loud enough for Helen to hear.
‘Hurry up,’ he instructed a harassed-looking cameraman who was hurriedly assembling a tripod. Another photographer brushed past the two men in a hurry, barging the TV reporter in the process, ‘vultures, the lot of them,’ he mumbled. Helen watched him issuing instructions to the cameraman ending with a ‘quickly … quickly … quicker …’ as a senior police officer emerged in uniform, followed by a plain clothes detective then finally, Michelle Summers’ mother and stepfather. ‘You’d better be ready …’ the TV reporter warned the cameraman as he continued to line up his shot.
The senior officer sat down in front of a microphone and, before he spoke, the TV reporter had just enough time to give a final instruction to his cameraman. ‘And remember, if the mother starts to cry, zoom in on her face, nice and slow.’
The TV reporter turned then and noticed Helen surveying him with a look of distaste. ‘What?’ he asked. Helen opened her mouth to say something in reply but before she could speak she was drowned out by the first words from the uniformed policeman.
‘I am Detective Superintendent Trelawe,’ he told them importantly, ‘and this is Detective Chief Inspector Kane. With me are Michelle Summers’ mother Fiona and her stepfather Darren. We will begin this press conference with an appeal from Fiona.’
Michelle’s mother stared nervously out at the ranks of photographers and journalists then down at the table, which contained a half dozen microphones set up by radio stations to capture her words. She had a piece of paper in her hands and she stared at it but did not start to read. Michelle’s stepfather, a bulky man with an impassive face, put a hand on her shoulder for support or perhaps to prompt her, and she managed to begin, her voice quivering with emotion.
‘Michelle, if you are listening to this,’ she read, ‘whatever’s happened, it doesn’t matter, we can sort it out, love. Just come home; please, darling, get in touch with us or just call the police to tell them where you are and they’ll come and get you.’ And she started to cry then. Later, Helen Norton would watch the TV coverage of that same press conference and notice that, as directed, the cameraman would choose that moment to begin a slow zoom into a close-up of the poor woman’s face. Unable to conti
nue, Fiona was helped to her feet by her husband, who led her from the room.
When the distraught mother had gone, Detective Superintendent Trelawe gave the journalists the simple facts, including Michelle’s last known movements before she disappeared and a physical description of the girl, right down to the St Christopher medallion she wore round her neck on a silver chain. Then they took the first question. There was a flurry of hands and the detective superintendent pointed to a male reporter in the first row.
‘Do you believe that Michelle Summers is Girl Number Five?’
‘We can’t be sure of that at this stage of our investigation,’ answered Trelawe, ‘but there are certain similarities between the previous cases and this one.’
‘So you do believe it?’ the reporter persisted.
‘It is one of several lines of enquiry we are currently pursuing.’ Trelawe quickly pointed to another journalist, hoping for a different line of questioning.
‘Is Michelle the latest victim of The Reaper?’ asked a reporter with a London accent.
‘I think I just answered that question. That is a line of enquiry but we cannot categorically state …’
‘Michelle Summers is an underage girl who has been snatched from a public place without anybody seeing or hearing a thing and she has not been seen since,’ added the reporter, ‘that sounds identical.’
‘The detective superintendent was quite clear,’ interrupted DCI Kane, ‘we are rightly keeping an open mind and pursuing a number of different lines of enquiry, as you would expect us to. We would urge any member of the public with relevant information to contact us on one of the incident room hotlines.’
This just made Kane the focus of reporter’s questions. ‘Detective Chief Inspector, how are you going to catch this man and how can you prevent him from striking again?’ another voice called from the back of the room.
No Name Lane (Howard Linskey) Page 5