Same Time Next Week

Chapter 41

There was a woman, around mid-thirties, smartly dressed, already waiting for Sky when she got into work. She was standing there, looking at the bears, turning them over in her hands and admiring the craftmanship.

‘Hi,’ she said, her accent unmistakeably from Lancashire. ‘These are lovely. You never get too old to own a teddy bear, do you?’

‘That’s what I’m counting on,’ Sky replied, getting out the bear she was working on from the drawer under her bench. ‘Please take your time, I’m not a high-pressure salesperson.’

‘Did you make them all?’

‘Every one,’ said Sky.

‘Ah, so I presume then you’re Sky, are you – as in Sky Bears?’

‘That’s me,’ said Sky, sniffing a sale, which would be good.

‘Sky… Urbaniak.’

A cloud drifted across the face of the sunny interchange.

‘Yes,’ she answered cautiously. She’d used the name Urban since her father died. If anyone mentioned her old name, it aroused her suspicions instantly.

‘Is there somewhere we can talk?’ said the woman.

Sky was on her guard now. ‘What about?’

‘I’m Diana Nelson, I’m a freelance reporter and I’m on your side. You met Wayne Craven, didn’t you? He was friends with your family, wasn’t he? You need to get hold of a copy of today’s Lancashire Bugle , because you’ll find out they’ve stitched up your father and I can counterbalance that if you’ll give me your story. I’m going to write a piece anyway, so you’d have nothing to lose in giving me your side of things.’

‘I have nothing to say,’ said Sky. ‘People tried that line on my father and they twisted everything. You’re partly the reason why he—’

‘Oy,’ said Woodentop, striding down the shop towards them. ‘You all right, Sky?’

Bon cut off the call he was on in his office and threw open the door after hearing raised voices.

‘What’s going on?’

Diana Nelson was holding up her hands. ‘I just want to talk to this young lady.’

‘I don’t think that young lady wants to talk to you though, does she?’ said Woodentop.

‘You should leave,’ said Bon.

Nelson wasn’t shifting.

‘With respect—’

‘You had no respect for my father,’ said Sky. ‘My dad had nothing to do with any of it.’

‘Know that for a fact, do you?’ threw back Nelson. The smiley veneer had slid fast off her face.

‘Yes, I do.’

‘He didn’t have great alibis though, a poorly wife and a kid.’

‘Get out,’ said Sky, grinding out the words through gritted teeth. She wanted to throw something at this woman but the bear in her hand wouldn’t have made much impact.

Bon moved in front of Sky, blocking Nelson’s view of her.

‘Sky, don’t say anything else,’ he whispered to her. ‘Go in my office, out of the way. Go on. Give her nothing.’

‘Oh come on, don’t be stupid,’ Nelson appealed to Sky’s back as she disappeared into Bon’s office. ‘You’re missing a great opportunity to put the record straight. You owe it to your father. We can pay you two thousand pounds.’

‘Enough now,’ said Bon to her.

‘There’s a TV programme in the making about it. I’m just saying if she talks to me she can drive the narrative and—’

‘I think you should fuck off, love,’ said Woodentop and if Bon hadn’t held an arm out to stop his advance, he’d have physically thrown the reporter out and that would have spelt trouble for him.

Diana Nelson shook her head from side to side. ‘She’ll regret this,’ she said.

‘No, she won’t,’ said Bon, herding her towards the exit.

‘Okay, I’m going, I’m going.’ Nelson arrived at the door, still holding her hands aloft as if she expected if she didn’t she’d get shot in the back.

‘Bloody bastards,’ said Woodentop when she was out of the way. ‘And here we are again with it all. Poor Eddie. They won’t let him lie in peace. I wish I could solve the bloody mystery for them. It’s haunted me for all these years an’ all.’

‘Because you were Eddie’s friend?’ asked Bon.

‘I was. But it’s not that, Bon. It was my lad who lost the DNA samples that might have caught Craven and the other one sooner.’

Sky was sitting on the sofa in the office, shaking, her arms protectively across her chest, trying to still her racing heart. She didn’t want to have an attack now, not in front of Bon. She didn’t want him to know about her health problems. Sympathy for her was not what she wanted to see in his eyes.

‘I’ll make you a drink,’ he said.

‘Thank you, but I’m fine.’

He sat down on the chair by his desk and waited for her to talk. He could almost hear her thoughts flapping like frightened birds in her head.

‘Do you know what she was on about?’ she said eventually.

‘Yes, bokkie, I do.’

‘I wish they’d leave us alone. He was the gentlest man you could ever meet. Wayne Craven loved my dad because he was the only person in his life who never let him down. That’s why he smiled when the police read out that list of suspects’ names to him on his deathbed, people they thought Wayne had reason to protect. He wasn’t signalling he was “the one”, he was just remembering his friend. The policeman who read out the list always said it was obvious to him why Wayne reacted to Dad’s name, he told me that off the record. But others preferred to believe it was a pointer and worth further investigation. The gossip machine went into overdrive when the police started bringing people in for questioning, and they took my dad in more times than anyone else: a huge, powerful man when they were looking for a huge, powerful man who “didn’t talk because he might have given himself away with an obvious accent”. They painted my dad into that description, but they still couldn’t pin anything on him because it wasn’t him. Even when Wayne died and the policeman retired and did a story in the newspapers, they twisted what he said about being there at Wayne’s side reading out the list of names. They printed that he’d nodded – nodded – when he’d mentioned Dad’s name. He contacted me to apologise and said he’d talk to the paper. They ran a tiny retraction that no one saw.

‘My dad even wrote to Wayne in prison to try and persuade him to give up the other person; we managed to keep that out of the press because they’d only have made out as if it was some sort of sick game, some hiding in plain sight ploy.’

Her voice failed her. Bon wanted to put his arms around her so much and hold her.

Instead he said, ‘Do you want to go home?’

But she didn’t. She wanted to be here with her friends, because here she felt safe among this crew who might not have known the absolute truth, but they sure as hell knew the lies.