Chapter 51
‘Don’t get me wrong – it’s nice to see you useless buggers doing some work for a change – but shouldn’t you be out knocking heads together and asking questions, like?
’ Colin Miller twisted a key in the lock, then pushed the door open, revealing a large office with a sacrificial-altar-sized desk that played host to a huge leather office chair and a dour portrait of an overweight man in rolled-up shirtsleeves, waistcoat, and clichéd cigar.
Two, much shorter, far less comfortable chairs sat in front of the desk, so any visitor would be at an automatic disadvantage.
A line of CCTV monitors offered grainy windows onto the Bullpen, Advertising, and Picture Desk, along with four different views of heavy machinery in the print room.
Rows of framed front pages filled the space between the windows – blinds down, casting the room into fusty gloom – while a bank of filing cabinets sat across from a triple-length table with downlighters above it.
Colin yanked on a cord, sending the nearest blind crashing upwards. A beam of light slashed into the room. Making the dust motes glow.
Logan stopped in the middle of the room, doing a slow three-sixty. ‘Your new boss: how long’s she been here?’
Another blind thundered up. ‘Three weeks. Three long, shitey weeks.’
‘She make any enemies in that time?’
Steel scuffed in, followed by Tufty – the melodramatic wee spud holding his tummy as it popped and gurgled an empty song.
‘Other than all the poor twats she fired?’ Colin clattered the last blind open, brushing dust off his gloves. ‘Oh, aye. This isnae the Parish Gazette – we rattle buggers’ cages here.’
Logan commandeered the throne behind the desk and snapped on a pair of blue nitriles. ‘We’re going to need a list.’ Testing the first drawer – unlocked, but full of pens and assorted stationery. ‘She doesn’t show for work, two days running, and no one thinks to go check on her?’
‘What, cos we all love her so much? Natasha Agapova makes friends like Jeffrey Dahmer makes pies.’
Tufty sidled over, leaning in close, keeping his voice low: ‘Don’t look now, but there’s a very nervous-looking burglar waiting outside.’
He wasn’t wrong.
A thin bloke in a beard and black-and-white stripy jumper, fidgeted on the threshold, carrying a bunch of black cardboard rectangles under one arm, looking as if he was trying to work up the courage to knock.
Colin rolled his eyes. ‘Oh for . . .’
Mr Stripy shuffled his feet and peered into the office. ‘Is Mrs Agapova in?’
‘She’s gone missing, you daft wobbler! Have you no’ seen the paper today? We went with it on page one, three, seven and nine!’
Pink flushed above the beardline. ‘I . . . don’t always have time to—’
‘No’ to mention it’s all over the TV, and the radio, and the internet!’
The feet shuffled some more. ‘So, she’s not in?’
Colin grimaced at Logan for a moment, then back to Mr Stripy. ‘Just stick your mock-ups on the table, OK? I’ll see she gets them when or if she ever returns . . . Assuming she’s no’ already deid.’
Mr Stripy looked down at his sheets of card, then at the table, then at Colin, then licked his lips, then nodded, and hurried over to the long table – laying out six front-page mock-ups, side-by-side so they were all visible. Then stood back to admire his handiwork.
Colin thumped a hand down on Mr Stripy’s shoulder, making him jump. ‘Now do us all a favour and sod off, aye?’
The pink flushed darker. ‘I’ve got . . . lots to be getting on with.’ And away he scurried.
‘Next time, read the sodding paper!’ Colin hissed out a long breath. Shaking his head as the jittery bloke disappeared. ‘Is it like this in the polis? Swear to God they get younger and more clueless with every passing year.’
‘Yup.’ Steel parked her bum on the table. ‘And whinier too.’
Logan tried the next desk drawer: a worms’ nest of cables and phone chargers. ‘Did she mention getting any hate mail, death threats, things like that?’
‘I mean, what sort of half-arsed “newspaper” can you put out when you fire all the proper journalists?’ Colin worked his way along the filing cabinets, to the bottom left, rattling out the final drawer.
‘Think interns could’ve broken Watergate?
Or Partygate? Or all that dodgy shite about right-wingers swimming in Kremlin cash?
’ He pulled out a cardboard box – just about big enough to keep Gwyneth Paltrow’s head in – and clumped it down on the desk. ‘There youse go.’
Logan frowned at it. ‘What’s this?’
‘Hate mail.’
Opening the top revealed a massive stash of envelopes and printouts. Had to be hundreds of them in there. ‘How many months’ worth is this? I only need the stuff sent to Natasha Agapova.’
‘Aye, that’s just since she got here. Apparently there’s another eight boxes back at her place.’
‘Eight . . .?’
‘Told you: we rattle buggers’ cages. Her more than most.’ Colin plucked a handful of hate mail from the box and sank into one of the visitors’ chairs, leaning back to put his feet up on the desk.
‘Had an editor once, liked to frame the worst ones and stick them on the wall. “Colin,” he says, “Colin, you no’ doing your job right if nae bastard hates you.”’ Turning to the first letter, scrawled in red ink on lined paper.
‘Here we go: all in easy-to-read block capitals. “Dear Stupid Bitch, I hope you die a slow, sucking-chest-wound death and dogs rape your dead body and then eat it and shit it out. Ranger’s Football Club are the best football club in the world and you’re too stupid to know it.
” Not a single bit of punctuation, if you don’t count the .
. . four, five, six exclamation marks at the end. ’
Logan reached in and pulled out a stack of the things. ‘She got all this in three weeks?’
Mr Rangers-Are-The-Best was placed facedown on the desk and Colin moved on to the next.
‘Ahem: “Fuck you, you fucking . . .” well, I’m definitely no’ gonnae say that word with ladies and weans present, “You fucking bleep, badgers have more right to life than you do. You’re the one spreading bleeping diseases, whore.
” Blah, blah, et cetera. “Kill yourself.”’ He waggled the letter.
‘See, this moron didn’t just submit their hate via the website, or email it in, they got a sheet of paper, and a green biro and they scrawled it all out by hand, then found an envelope, paid for a stamp, and stuck it in the postbox. That’s dedication for you.’
Logan stuffed everything back in the box, held it out so Colin could do the same, then carried the lot over to the long table.
‘Constable Quirrel: I need these in date order. We’re looking for anything connected with the message on Mrs Agapova’s answering machine: “karma”, “hurricane”, “house of lies”, and, or, “bitch”. ’
‘Sarge.’ Tufty tidied away Mr Stripy’s mock-ups and laid the hate mail across the table, shifting individual letters forward and backwards – tongue poking out the side of his mouth.
Steel sniffed. ‘What about all the electronic stuff?’
‘Aye: in the box. We print every nasty wee message out – in case we need to give it to you lot. You know: if something like this happens. So you can do sod-all about it.’
A knock rang out from the open door, only it wasn’t the weedy bloke in the burglar’s top – back for another round of Humiliate Mr Stripy – it was a scruffy-looking woman in hiking gear and a bandana. As if ready to go on an Amazonian hike, or climate protest, at the first toot of a pan pipe.
She had a fat grey laptop clutched in both hands. ‘Yo, Colin: I hear you’re Interim Editor now.’
A frown. ‘Says who?’
‘Louis.’ She held her laptop out. ‘You wanna OK the spread for tomorrow’s lifestyle section or not?’
Colin put his head on one side, scrunched his lips into a lump, then nodded. ‘What the hell.’ Patting the desk as he plonked his short arse in the leather throne. ‘Henry, these are the cops. Cops, Henry.’
She gave them a wave, then put the laptop down and opened it, bringing up a photo gallery.
Swiping through shots of people at the beach and kids playing in the park; some office workers in bikini tops at lunchtime, lounging beneath the trees; more kids eating candyfloss and gazing in wonder at the circus lights.
Colin reached for the screen with a leather-gloved finger, but nothing happened.
‘Sodding hell . . .’ He pulled the glove off, curling the stumps into a truncated fist, out of sight, and tried again.
This time, the images wheeched past beneath his fingertip.
‘OK: this one, this, this, not that, or that, this, nope, nope, nope, that one’s OK, and .
. .’ He drifted to a halt, then looked up at Logan – looming over the pair of them. ‘You after something?’
‘Go back a couple.’
Henry took control of the screen again. ‘Hold on . . .’ Swipe, swipe. ‘This one?’
‘Hmmm.’ Colin frowned at the photograph. ‘Aye: I like the general composition, but shoulda gone up a couple of f-stops for a longer exposure and got a bittie motion in the dodgems.’
‘Can always fix it in post.’
‘Shouldn’t have to, but.’ He reached out to swipe past the image again, but Logan grabbed Colin’s hand before he could.
‘Get off!’ Snatching his naked fingers away.
Steel sauntered over. ‘What?’
‘Ooh,’ Henry pointed, ‘like the hair! Very swish.’
‘This old thing?’ Steel had a wee preen.
‘No touching.’ Colin forced his hand back into its black-leather prison.
‘Sorry.’ Logan leaned in.
The photo showed a pair of grown-ups on the dodgems, each with a toddler strapped-in next to them, as they wheeched around the ring. Everyone smiling; having a wholesome family day out at the circus.
Behind them, the big top’s outer wall was in perfect focus: red, white, and blue stripes.
‘When was this taken?’
‘Last night.’ Henry stuck her thumbs in her belt loops. ‘Went with Brent and the kids. Westburn Park?’
Thought so.