Chapter Four

Laura leaned against her car and peeled off her forensic suit. The hood had made a mess of her hair, and so she used the car wing mirror to tease it back to life and then wiped the perspiration from her eyes.

The body had been taken away, rolled onto plastic sheeting and then wrapped up in a bag, and was now heading to the lab. Now it was time for the fingertip search of the undergrowth, and she could see the cluster of police in blue boiler suits waiting to crawl their way through the small patch of woodland. Joe was looking back towards where the body had been found, his hood pulled from his head. Carson was in his car, talking into his phone.

‘What is it, Joe?’ Laura said, reaching into her car for her suit jacket.

He didn’t answer at first, his gaze trained on where the stream headed under the estate. Then he turned round, chewing his lip.

‘Something about this isn’t right,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’ Laura said.

‘The location. It doesn’t make any sense. Why here?’

Laura looked around and saw the housing estate that backed onto the crime scene, a line of wooden panel fences forming the boundary on both sides.

‘The seclusion?’ she guessed. ‘Only overlooked by the backs of the houses.’

‘But it isn’t secluded,’ Joe said. ‘One scream from her and all of those lights are going to flicker on, and what escape route is there? There is only one way to the street, because the other way is down that path, into the woods, but he couldn’t get a car down there. So if he drove to the location, he would have to leave his car on the street, and so he would be blocked in and easy to catch.’

‘Perhaps she was just walking past?’ Laura said. ‘You know, the wrong place at the wrong time, and he was hiding in there, waiting to pull someone in.’

Joe shook his head. ‘Same thing applies. Too many houses. What if she fights back? If she runs or screams, there is a whole community to wake. And you saw how the body was concealed, just left on the ground and covered in leaves and bark. She was always going to be discovered.’ He sighed. ‘It just doesn’t feel right.’

‘You’re giving the killer too much credit,’ Laura said. ‘How many people do we catch because they do dumb things?’ She checked her hair in the wing mirror again, and then pulled away when the sun glinted off some grey strands, her fortieth birthday getting too close. ‘So what do you think?’

Joe looked around and chewed on his lip. ‘I just don’t know,’ he said.

They both turned as they heard a noise behind them, and they saw it was Carson, grunting as he climbed out of his car.

‘We’ve got a possible name for her,’ Carson said. ‘Jane Roberts.’

‘Don’t know it,’ Laura said.

‘No, me neither,’ Carson responded. ‘But I know her father. Don Roberts.’

Laura shrugged, the name didn’t mean anything to her, but she saw the look of surprise on Joe’s face.

‘The Don Roberts?’ Joe said.

Carson nodded. ‘It was called in two days ago, when she didn’t return home at the weekend.’

‘Why would he leave it so long?’ Laura asked.

Joe turned to her. ‘Because it involves calling us,’ he said. ‘Don Roberts will not want us snooping around his life. He’s a drug dealer, but high up the chain. You won’t see him hanging around phone boxes with dirt under his nails, and you won’t find any drugs in his house, but he avoids us, because if we had the chance to scour his phone records and computers, we might find something we weren’t supposed to see.’

‘And he put that before his daughter?’ Laura said, incredulous.

‘Don Roberts is business first,’ Carson said. ‘What if he had invited us in and then it turned out that she’d taken off for a wild weekend with her friends? No, he wouldn’t do that, but I can tell you one thing: we’ve got trouble now.’

‘What do you mean?’ Laura said.

‘Because this is one of two things: turf war or bad luck. We need to look into the last murder again, see if there is any link with drugs, and if it is, we can expect the revenge killings.’

‘And if it isn’t a turf war?’ Laura asked.

Carson almost smiled at that. ‘The killer just has to hope that we catch him first, because if Roberts gets to him, he will die, but it won’t be quick and it won’t be pleasant.’

I skipped down the court stairs towards David Hoyle, who was straightening his tie and his hair, using the glass panel in a door as a mirror, a freshly-lit cigarette in his mouth.

‘I’m too good for this place,’ he said to his reflection, and then turned round and blew smoke towards me. ‘Mr Journo, you’re looking twitchy.’

‘Has your client gone?’ I said.

He took another long pull on his cigarette. ‘Now, what do you want with that poor man?’ he said, wagging a finger at me.

‘There isn’t much going on, and so I have to chase what I can,’ I said.

‘Didn’t you have bigger ambition than that when you first started out?’ he said. ‘Dreams of travel, interviewing presidents, uncovering conspiracies?’

‘What do you mean?’

He grinned, smoke seeping out between his teeth. ‘This?’ he said, and he pointed up the stairs. ‘Was this your plan when you left reporting school, or wherever you people graduate from, trying to shame people for stepping on the wrong side of the line sometimes?’

‘It’s not like that,’ I said, bristling defensively.

‘So what is it like?’

‘It’s the freedom of the press,’ I said. ‘It’s about letting the wider community know what is going on around them, where the threats lie. Over the years, it paints the town’s history.’

Hoyle raised his eyebrows.

‘And you planned this too?’ I said. ‘Did you always dream of giving speeches to a bench of bored greengrocers in a backwater Lancashire town? What about the big city, uncovering rough justice?’

‘I can change lives,’ he said, stepping closer. ‘You just tell other people about the things I do, a gossip, tales over the garden fence, pandering to everyone’s instinct, revelling in someone else’s downfall. God help us if the world is ever as bad as the papers make out.’

‘I can’t believe I’m having a debate about morals with a lawyer,’ I said.

He checked his watch and then winked at me. ‘You’re not,’ he said, as he flicked his cigarette onto the pavement outside. ‘You’ve been delayed. My client should be in his car by now, and well away from your camera lens.’

I sighed. Doesn’t Hoyle ever stop playing the game?

‘You need to stop wasting your time in there,’ he said, pointing back up the court steps. ‘Go after Night Wire.’ When I looked confused, he added, ‘I heard you mention him when you were on the phone before.’

‘Okay,’ I said, wearily. ‘Let’s do it your way. Why should I go after Night Wire?’

‘Because he lets out too much,’ he said. ‘I know a lot of the rank and file love him, I’ve heard them talk about the blogs. I suppose he speaks their language, with his bile, his prejudices, but he’s breaking the rules.’

‘Why does that bother you,’ I said.

‘Why do you say that, because I’m a defence lawyer?’ he said. ‘Being a lawyer is about working within the rules.’

‘No, being a lawyer is about trying to weasel your way around the rules,’ I said.

He smiled at that. ‘Still all about rules though,’ he said. ‘Night Wire is ignoring them, and he’s skewing the game.’ He patted me on the shoulder. ‘Next time, ask my client the questions, not me, because I’ll just protect my client every time,’ and then he set off walking away from the court, a brown leather bag thrown over his shoulder.

I leant against the doorframe and watched him go. Night Wire again. I had two people telling me to go after better stories. And I knew they were right. I did need to kickstart my life again, instead of trying to get by on inquests and court stories.

My life as a reporter seemed like past tense though. I hadn’t written anything worth reading for nearly a year now, and I softened the blow by pretending that I had taken some time out to write a book. But it felt like a lie. I had written some scenes, a searing satire on modern living, or so I thought, but I spent most days surfing the internet and rewriting scenes that didn’t say much to start off with. I couldn’t do it, I realised that now. Every time I went to the keyboard, my fingers hovered over the letters and waited for the stream of consciousness to transfer to the screen, but they didn’t, and so I spent another aimless day wondering where the rest of my life was going to take me.

I knew what the problem was though: it had become too dangerous too often. Criminals are bad people, it comes with the job description, but reporters don’t come with the protection that police or lawyers enjoy, because we are not players in the game. We’re on the sidelines, observing, annoying, interfering. I had gotten sick of the risk, had been hurt a couple of times.

I laughed at myself. I knew what Harry English was doing. He was trying to tweak my curiosity, knowing that it’s what drives me, why I became a reporter, because I wanted to know what was happening out there, the stories going on behind the suburban curtains.

Night Wire? What was different about him? Police bloggers were nothing new, they have been around for as long as the internet, jaded and weary cops having an anonymous rant at the system.

But Night Wire was different, because he screamed that little bit louder, was strident and angry, more than some weary beat bobby moaning about paperwork and protocols.

The blog was tolerated at first, like most of them, just a chance for the rank and file to vent some steam, but there was something about Night Wire that struck a chord. The police liked him, of course, because he was their voice, and some posted messages of support, but then it started to ripple outwards, into the general public, and that’s when the force got twitchy. His supporters jammed the site, and the police hierarchy in Lancashire got a little angrier whenever he posted a new blog, their attempts at community relations hampered by the loose words of Night Wire. There were posters around the station, Laura had told me that, warning disciplinary action for anyone proved to be blogging police secrets, but that didn’t seem to stop him.

I smiled and almost gave him a mock salute, and then I realised that I had to think of something else to do, because I was thinking of logging on, just to read the latest.