FALLEN IDOLS

Tom was upstairs with two other detectives, going through drawers and cupboards, looking for any hint of a secret life. Laura had been left downstairs with the grieving fiancée.

There weren’t too many signs of grief. Anger was the first emotion Laura had detected, as if a major business deal had been lost. She had dressed all in black for the flight back, but it was designer T-shirt and jeans, a Mets cap and shades shielding her face. For the last thirty minutes she had been on the other side of a glass door talking into a phone. Laura guessed that she was working out how to use all the angles.

Maybe when she was on her own, she would begin to think about the man she had lost, but Laura wasn’t sure about that. It seemed like their life together had been more about what they were rather than who they were.

Laura sighed. She was being too harsh on her, she knew that. Laura didn’t know what it was like to live with the press writing up her every move. And let’s not forget the obsessives, those fans who want more than a smile or an autograph. Being good-looking and famous had a pretty high death rate.

Then Laura noticed activity in the press camp. They were talking into phones, getting their cameras ready. She went out of the room and looked up the stairs. She could hear Tom on the phone, talking quietly.

When he started to come down the stairs towards her, she couldn’t tell if the look in his eyes was anger or relief.

‘There’s been another shooting,’ he said. ‘In Manchester. Johnny Nixon.’

Laura was shocked. ‘Definitely connected?’

‘Shot in the street from a distance.’

They would lose it now, Laura knew. It would go to a much bigger task force.

Then she realised why Tom looked relieved.

As she went back into the room, she saw Dumas’s fiancée still on the phone. She would have to share the limelight now. Laura sensed that would be the biggest blow of all.

THIRTEEN (#u1d220fda-349c-55ef-a6a0-695b99a8a5f9)

I kept on walking, away from the triangle to the buildings just behind, to the Valley Post premises. It had been stone-built for the Wesleyan Society but then taken over by the Weavers Union, with church windows and steps that ran to the first floor, so that the ground floor seemed more like a basement. Wooden beams ran along the ceiling, and the ground floor still had the original York stone flags, thick and grey. It used to be in most of the houses, but if it wasn’t ripped out to modernise in the sixties, it was stolen by thieves whenever a house stood empty. The windows had their blinds down on one side. I remembered how the sun caused reflections on the computer screens as it came over to the west in late afternoon.

As I walked into the building, a buzzer went off, set to alert them that someone wanted to place an advert or buy a photograph. After a few seconds, a woman in her early thirties came to the small hatch, and it took a couple of seconds for my face to register.

‘Hey, Jack Garrett,’ she said eventually, ‘what you doing here? Come to pinch our big stories?’

She was joking, but I sensed it held barbed traces, maybe that I thought I was too big for the Fold. Maybe I did.

‘Hi Traci.’ She spelled it with an ‘i’. ‘How’s life treating you?’

She tilted her head in a flirt. ‘Oh, you know, same as ever. Come to work. Pay for childcare.’ She leant forward. ‘There’s been nothing nice to look at since you left.’

‘Maybe you scared them off. Is Tony around?’

She smiled and lifted up the gate on the corner. ‘Yeah, where he always is. Come through.’

I went through into the office and had another look at where my career had started. It was open plan, with clusters of desks splitting a big team into lots of smaller ones, the space broken only by large black iron pillars. I glanced over towards my old desk. It didn’t look like it had changed much. A few photographs had appeared on the desk, a young child and a dog, but other than that it was as if I had never left. I looked at the desk behind it, and I saw my old mentor, Tony Davies, tapping away on his keyboard. I recognised his head, huddled as it always was in front of the screen, the light from the monitor reflecting back off his baldness.

I nodded Traci away and then walked over to him. He was intent on finishing whatever he was doing, not looking up. It was only when I began to say hello to people as I went, and someone shouted, ‘Hey, big shot,’ that he looked up. As soon as he saw me, he grinned, that strange lopsided grin, a rugby match costing him his two front teeth many years ago, replaced with false ones, but his smile always looked like he still felt the impact.

He stood up and walked around his desk. I thought he was going to hug me, but he didn’t. He just stuck his hand out towards me, and when I shook he squeezed hard until my knuckles crackled.

‘Jack Garrett, good to see you.’ His deep voice sounded rich in the newsroom, as warm as ever.

I grinned back. ‘How you doing, Tony?’ I looked down at his jumper. Reindeers in spring. ‘Your dress sense hasn’t improved.’

He let go of my hand and tugged at his jumper. Maybe he was too old now to care, but he had worn bad jumpers for as long as I’d known him. ‘Hey, I like it. And how the hell are you? Sit down.’ He gestured towards my old desk.

I sat down in the old swivel chair, the smell and feel all too familiar, taking away my time in London as if I’d never left.

‘What are you doing here?’ he asked.

‘Working. I’m doing a feature on David Watts, because of these football shootings, trying to get the hometown angle. You know, simple northern lad in the big bad city.’

Tony nodded, whistling. ‘I can see the angle, but a feature. You must be doing something right.’

I shook my head. ‘I just liked the idea of coming home.’

‘Well, forget about coming back here because your job’s gone.’

‘It’s been over two years. Even I know that broken hearts mend. Who have they got?’

Tony looked past me and towards the other side of the room.

I looked round and saw someone coming towards me carrying two cups of coffee, a woman, I would guess in her early twenties, eyes concentrating downwards, making sure the coffee didn’t spill. Her hair was long and dark, falling in straight lines like a waterfall, running over her shoulders and down her back. Her skin was tanned, and even from a few feet away I could see eyelashes that curled upwards in long black flicks. When she got near the desk, she looked up and saw me, and I saw deep brown eyes twinkle with surprise.

‘Sorry, I’m in your seat,’ I said, getting up to give her the seat back.

‘Alice, this is Jack Garrett. He worked here before you started.’

Alice placed the cups down and smiled. ‘I know.’

That made me curious. I moved out of the way to let her take her seat, and I noticed how tall she was. I’m six feet tall, but Alice wasn’t much underneath that.

She must have seen me looking quizzical, so she said, ‘You went out with my sister.’

I shrugged. ‘That narrows it down, but not enough.’

‘I’m Alice McDermid.’

My eyes flashed wide and surprised. ‘You’re Megan’s sister?’

Alice grinned now, nodding. I looked her up and down, disbelieving. The last time I’d seen Alice, she was a gangly, clumsy girl not yet in her teens, and I was going out with her older sister.

‘It’s the Funfest again next month,’ she said quietly, her eyes dancing with mischief.

I blushed. I could feel it, my cheeks getting hot.

My first time was with Megan. We’d spent weeks talking about how special it was going to be, but in the end it had happened as an uncomfortable rush in the long grass at the Funfest, the annual Turners Fold fair. The day always ended with a folk festival, and while the town was dancing nearby, we slipped away into the grass at the edge, just where the lights from the stalls and rides wilted into darkness.

‘Fiddles and waltzers aren’t my thing any more,’ I stammered, trying to dismiss her. ‘How is Megan?’

‘She’s got two kids,’ she said, nodding at the photograph on the desk, ‘and a husband who works in insurance. Other than that, she hasn’t changed.’ She looked amused again. ‘And neither have you.’