Rory stood in the open doorway, Anna slightly to one side.
‘Mr West?’
‘Aye. Bang on time.’ He ran what he hoped were lascivious eyes over Anya. She forced a smile for him. ‘Do you want to...?’
Rory and Anya stepped into his room. Anya stared at the floor. Rory glanced around, then raised his eyebrows at Pete.
‘Of course,’ said Pete, ‘it’s right here...’
He lifted his jacket from the bed and removed his wallet. He quickly counted out the £200 and handed it over.
Rory folded it into a back pocket and said, ‘You’ve thirty minutes, starting now, no rough stuff, show some respect, you want longer or any extras, you pay the girl, she knows the prices. I’ll be downstairs in the bar. Enjoy yourself.’ He gave Pete a wink, then breezed out of the room.
Pete closed the door after him and stood facing it, listening. Anya started to speak, but he turned and put a finger to his lips. She let out a resigned sigh. Another weirdo.
‘He is gone,’ she said. ‘Like he say. Now...’
She stopped suddenly, because the bathroom door was opening. She took a step away from it, towards the window, suddenly terrified that some other horror was about to befall her, but then, as a familiar figure appeared in the doorway, her face seemed to collapse. ‘Marja!’ she cried. ‘Marja!’
Marja, indeed, stepped into the room. They rushed towards each other, each giving out a little cry, and hugged and kissed, released each other, then embraced again; they spoke excitedly in their mother tongue. Pete gave them their moment. He moved into the bathroom and poured out the rest of his beer. Then he returned to the bed and pulled on his jacket. He took out his phone and called Rob. He said, ‘The eagle has landed.’
‘Brilliant,’ said Rob, and gave Alix the thumbs-up.
It meant that they were now entering the most critical phase of Plan B – getting Anya out of the hotel. There was a back exit, but they could only access it through the hotel kitchen, which was now closed for the night. They would have to go down in the lift, straight out past reception and through the swing doors to a waiting car. That meant that for a brief moment they would be visible from the public bar and therefore of being spotted by Rory.
‘So,’ Pete asked, ‘is everything okay?’
‘Well,’ said Rob, ‘there’s good news and there’s bad news.’
‘Oh shit,’ said Pete.
‘Don’t panic. Good news is we’re already parked right outside, about three steps from the doors. Bad news is that Rory isn’t alone anymore – two fellas have joined him for a drink and they don’t look they’re Jehovah’s Witnesses. So, if he spots you, you may not be chased by a pimp with gammy knees, but two thugs who look like they’re not entirely unfamiliar with the inside of a gym, or a prison, for that matter.’
Pete heard Alix say, ‘Stop scaring him...’
‘I’m not, I... Okay, Pete, it’s fine, chances are they won’t even notice, I can see from here they’re facing away from you, they’re watching some football on the telly, everything will be fine and dandy. You’re good to go. The engine’s running, the back doors are open, we’ll see you in a minute.’
Pete took a deep breath. ‘Okay,’ he said.
And everything nearly went like clockwork. Marja explained what they were doing to Anya. Anya, beaming widely, was all for it. Marja, still battered and bruised from the accident, was moving a little too stiffly and slowly for Pete’s liking. As they travelled down in the lift, Pete said, ‘As soon as the doors open, straight across, don’t look anywhere else, just concentrate on getting outside and into the car.’
As they reached the ground, Anya slid her arm around Marja’s waist to give her more support. Pete moved to their left, so that he could provide some protection if anyone came at them from the bar.
The doors slid open and they stormed out – three abreast and so intent on making the revolving doors that none of them noticed the waiter coming from the right; as they collided, the drink-laden tray he was carrying flew into the air, almost in slow motion – at least that’s how Gerry saw it – before crashing to the ground.
Everyone turned from the bar.
‘Run!’ Pete yelled.
A moment later the revolving door was spinning and then they were out of it and onto the pavement. They did not hear the cry of rage from the bar; nor, as they rushed towards Alix’s car, were they exactly aware that the two thugs, with Rory following behind, were so very close to catching them. The pursuers were in one large compartment of the revolving door and about to explode out onto the pavement when the door stopped its forward progression – because someone else was pushing it the other and completely wrong way, and he was laughing, and he was clearly pissed, and neither party could go forwards or back because they were both pushing so hard. Rory screamed abuse at the drunk and the thugs waved their fists, but it only made Gerry laugh some more. It was only a few seconds before Gerry released his grip and allowed the sudden release of thrust to propel him back into the hotel lobby and the pimp and his thugs outside, but it was long enough; they stood watching helplessly as Alix’s car disappeared around the corner onto High Street. Gerry, satisfied that Plan C had worked perfectly, stepped up to the bar and ordered another pint.
*
Two days later, a cracking paper was out with a front-page story on the girls’ flight and Rory’s arrest, with Alix’s in-depth interview with Marja running across the centre pages. Gerry knew it was a good team effort, and Rob had been right – it did generate a lot of interest from other, bigger, newspapers, and it was carried by all the local radio stations and TV news programmes. None of it translated into cold hard cash, unfortunately. One of the reporters would still have to go. But, on this cold Friday morning, he was no closer to finding out which one. Rob had been avoiding him ever since he came in. Pete, himself a revelation, was beavering away. Alix’s story could have graced any national. Michael and Sean were bickering and bantering; they had the enthusiasm of youth, not to mention the attractions of the minimum wage. Gerry had come to the paper almost by accident, but gradually, gradually, he was coming to love it. What it was doing, what it represented, what it was going to do. He loved the people he worked with every day, Rob and Janine, Pete and Alix, Michael and Sean, he loved the cut and thrust of it, the intrigue, the adventure, even the dull bits were less dull than anything else he’d ever worked at. But he still had to lose a reporter.
‘Mr Gerry, is it?’
Gerry turned to the counter, and saw an Indian man in a smart grey business suit. ‘Close enough,’ he said. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘I would like to buy your newspaper.’
Gerry nodded before lifting one from a stack to the left of the till.
Navar smiled. ‘No, sir, you do not understand. I want to buy your newspaper.’ He lifted his hands and spread them. ‘All of it.’
CHAPTER 7
THE NEXT TO LAST OF THE MOHICANS
There was a burglary on Westmoreland Drive – an opportunistic thief, spotting a downstairs window open, decided to chance his arm, but found more than he bargained for. Probably nobody would have been any the wiser, because he sneaked in and sneaked out, except he felt so badly about it he decided he had to tell someone, but his good breeding wouldn’t allow him to call the cops. So Rob, the only one left in the office that morning, took the call. The burglar didn’t exactly introduce himself as a burglar, instead dressed it up a bit – he was off-his-head drunk, desperately needed to use a toilet, saw her window open and went in. It was the smell that alerted him – he hadn’t even gone into the room, didn’t need to see anything to know that someone had died in there, and quite a while ago too. He wanted to make it very clear that it was nothing to do with him, he was only looking for a place to piss, he wasn’t going to do it on the street, he wasn’t a dog. He hadn’t touched anything, done any damage, stolen anything. Rob asked him for a contact number, and the burglar almost fell for it. Then he told Rob to fuck off and hun
g up.
Rob called the police, and then made sure he was outside the house in time for their arrival. He was on nodding terms with the two constables who turned up. They didn’t object to him going up to the front door, but asked him to wait there. Their faces were already grey, their lips turned down at the corners, their noses bunched up trying to repel what they were so bloody obviously about to discover. There was no mistaking it. Death had a distinctive aroma, a pungency that seeped through walls.
Five minutes later one of them came out and was sick on the well-tended rosebushes.
Charlie Harper, the undertaker, arrived not long after. He was all breezy on the way in, but ten minutes later came out for a breather, a sheen of clammy cold sweat on his brow and a shake to his hand as he struggled to light his cigarette.
Rob hadn’t been at the paper for very long, but he already knew him pretty well because between the death notices and the obituaries there was a lot of interaction. Rob said, ‘I thought you’d be used to it.’
Charlie shook his head. ‘My job is to stop them ever getting to that state. She’s been there at least a month.’
‘Any signs of...?’
‘Foul play? No such luck.’
‘Any idea who she is?’
‘Nobody special, Mr Cullen,’ said Charlie. ‘Just someone everyone else forgot about.’
And on the walk back to the office, Charlie’s words stuck with him. They annoyed him. Nobody special. Someone everyone else forgot about. He repeated them half an hour later at their morning briefing, Alix, Michael, Peter and Sean sprawled out before him, more interested in their coffee and doughnuts, at least until Michael became aware of him glowering in his direction and stopped chewing and said, ‘What?’
‘How would you like your own mother to end up like that?’
Michael shrugged helplessly. His mother was barely forty. His grandparents were in their sixties. He didn’t know anyone who had ever died, had never been to a funeral or seen a dead body.
Rob said, ‘Isn’t there something special about everyone?’
‘Even Peter?’ asked Sean.
They started giggling, but Rob’s dour face sucked the life out of it.
Alix nodded, lips pursed, hoping it would add the modicum of solemnity or gravitas Rob was clearly aspiring to. ‘It’s awful that she lay there for so long,’ she said, ‘but without wishing to speak ill of the dead, maybe nobody found her because... well, she was probably very old, and most people lead very dull lives and it kind of stands to reason that not everyone does have something special about them... otherwise the ones that genuinely are special wouldn’t be considered special because it would be so... common...’
Rob didn’t look impressed. He said, ‘There’s a story here. I don’t just mean about a body lying undiscovered for so long. There’s a story in everyone. I want to know who she was. What she did with her life. The details. The ambitions, the disappointments. She was someone’s daughter, someone’s mother. She had a job or she raised children or she did both. She was absolutely special to someone, and maybe not in a good way. Let’s find out. Let’s write honestly about someone’s life, warts and all.’
‘Maybe it was the warts that killed her,’ said Sean.
Rob just looked at him.
Sean held his hands up. ‘Sorry.’
Rob shook his head. ‘Will you handle it?’ he said to Alix.
‘Me? I’ve a mountain of—’
But a call came in for him and his taking it signalled that the meeting was over. As they returned to their desks Pete said, ‘Do you think he’s feeling guilty because he hasn’t seen his own mother for a while?’
‘Do you know that or are you just bullshitting?’ Alix asked.
‘Bullshitting. I don’t even know if he has one.’
‘Everyone has one,’ said Michael.
‘Except you,’ said Pete. ‘You came out of a test tube along with Dolly the Sheep.’
‘Dolly the...?’
‘Oh youth,’ Pete sighed, ‘wasted on the young.’
‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about either,’ said Alix, though of course she had. She looked at Rob, through the glass of his office, now talking animatedly on the phone. Sometimes Rob had these grand ideas for stories that would probably have seemed fine on the Guardian, where they had the time and the staff to do them properly, but here... it was hard enough handling the workload as things were without having to find time to explore their editor’s philosophical whims. But he was the boss. She would look into it. She was pretty convinced she would end up handing in a traditional news story anyway. There would literally be nothing to report about the old woman. Or almost literally. A dull life and a death that was interesting only because she had lain undiscovered for so long. Alix would get quotes from local politicians saying that it was a sad reflection of today’s society that someone could drop off the radar like this; she would speak to the neighbours, who’d say what a sweet old lady she was, but that she valued her independence and it wasn’t unusual not to see her for several weeks. She might pick up a few mundane biographical snippets. She was a veteran of hundreds of calls to mourning relatives – obituaries were the bread and butter of local papers – so she knew that 99.9 per cent of people lived dull and uninteresting lives. Rob’s determination to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear was doomed to failure. And, anyway, the chances were that by the time she sent the story through he would have forgotten about it because he’d been pretty distracted in the past few days. He was up on his feet now, pacing with his phone. She knew incredibly little about him. Sure, there was the wife and the kids. The job in England and the unexpected return. But he’d started here, he had to have family. Maybe Pete was right – the story wasn’t really about the old woman, it was about Rob and his poor relations with the rest of his family.
Pete said, ‘Navar’s back.’
Alix followed his gaze to Gerry’s office, where another earnest conversation was clearly taking place.
‘Third time this week,’ said Michael.
‘What do you think they’re up to?’ asked Sean.
‘Maybe Gerry’s thinking about getting into the car-wash business,’ said Alix.
‘I’ve been to Navar’s house,’ said Michael, ‘there’s definitely money in soapy bubbles.’
They all nodded.
‘Chances are,’ said Pete, ‘Gerry owes him money, or has squirrelled out of a deal.’
‘Chances are,’ said Alix.
They all nodded. They loved Gerry. But they knew what he was like.
Janine loved him more than they did, and absolutely knew what he was like. He was a deeply flawed individual, but she was devoted to him. She was also devoted to his newspaper. Janine had a simple philosophy that she might have hijacked from the Loyalists: No Surrender was her mantra. The newspaper would not fail on her watch. And, if it did, such failure would never be placed at the feet of the advertising department because she would simply not allow it. She was the advertising department. She took it as a personal affront when people refused to bow to her sales pitches. That was quite a pressure to live with. But she didn’t let it get to her. Of course she didn’t. That morning she was at Alcoholics Anonymous.
There was about a dozen of them, in a church hall on the Groomsport Road. There was tea and coffee and orange juice. A middle-aged man in an expensive-looking suit was on his feet. ‘My name is Frank, and I’m a chocoholic,’ he said, and half of them didn’t know whether to laugh or not because, for all they knew, he really did have that problem. That was the thing, you were very rarely just an alcoholic. Maybe this Frank had Easter eggs hidden all around his house. Maybe he shotgunned Smarties before work. Janine, at least, could see the twinkle in his eye. He said, ‘And besides that, I’m a bit of an alcho as well. It has been six months since my last drink – unless you count the chocolate liqueurs I had at Christmas, sucked them dry before I realized.’ There was at least now some gentle laughter. When Frank was done, Ryan, the group le
ader, thanked him and then asked them to give a warm welcome to their newest member. She stood up and said, ‘My name is Janine...’ She nodded around them. ‘And I could murder a drink, though I would hope to get off with manslaughter...’ This got even fewer laughs, but Frank liked it. He clapped his hands. She got a coffee afterwards, and when she turned from the table, Frank was standing in front of her, beaming. ‘Well done,’ he said, ‘it’s always hard the first time.’
‘The first time?’ said Janine. ‘Every time I fall off the wagon I go to a different group. This is the third this month.’ His mouth dropped open a little, but then she smiled and said she was only raking him, that she had indeed been unbelievably nervous.
She fixed him with a look and he said, ‘What?’
‘Do I know you from somewhere?’
‘Funnily enough,’ said Frank, ‘I was going to say the same about you. I know these groups are supposed to be anonymous, but you can’t help being curious... do you mind me asking what line you’re in?’
‘Advertising,’ said Janine. ‘I work for the local paper. Or overwork for the local paper – I think that’s how I ended up here. You?’
‘I’m in property. Commercial. In fact – the new shopping complex down by St Patrick’s? I do believe your paper had a go at us a few weeks ago.’
‘Ah,’ said Janine. ‘In that case...’ She nodded towards the doors. ‘My taxi’s here.’
But she smiled with it, and he laughed. They gazed at each other.
*
Industrial-strength air freshener had clearly been sprayed, but there was still a long way to go. Sean made a barfing sound as soon as he got out of the car. Alix told him to man-up, show some respect, someone had died and he said, ‘Really? Hard to tell.’ The body had been removed, the undertaker and the police were long gone, but the front door was lying open. Alix rang the bell and then was surprised at who came walking out.
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