Chapter Fifteen
When Edward Temmis looked at his phone, he wondered how he had seen only the text messages. There were a dozen emails, all sent in the last two hours, and fifteen missed calls.
He rang Aspinall first.
‘Where … the hell … have you been?’
‘I was in the north, away with a—’ Edward did not want to spell it out. Aspinall might not react well to the name Wendy Wrigley.
‘With a what? A polar bear, a prostitute, an orchestra? Were you underground with a team of coal miners? A pot-holing club? Is that why your phone didn’t work? You are walking on thin ice, sir!’
‘I had to look at something in North Devon. It doesn’t matter.’
‘But—’
‘I know, I know.’ Edward heard a note of desperation in his voice. A please-don’t-sack-me note he had never deployed before.
‘This pizza thing has kicked off big-time. Are you back in Sidmouth?’
‘Walking along the … well, not the promenade, it’s closed. Walking The Backs, to the radio station.’
‘Jesus. Who are you? What are you? You make a … a shifty promise to those old dears, you say we’ll pay them scam damages when we can’t …
and now your show isn’t even present when a bonkers story breaks on your doorstep.
I’m aghast!’ He seemed to be doing deep breaths to calm himself.
‘Come in now, if you like. But we definitely need you later. I know it’s the weekend, but I want you to do your show tonight. ’
A sliver of hesitation. He had wanted to see Kim. ‘Of course.’
‘Melody has some info from the police.’
‘Did someone die? I thought just the biker. I thought everyone inside got out okay? My friend Stevie Mason was—’
Aspinall exploded. ‘If you hadn’t been MIA, we might know what was going on!’ He sounded as if he was trying to get control of himself. ‘I know you have police contacts—’
‘Not really, I—’
‘You have more of them than any of the flibbertigibbets.’ Aspinall’s word for the under-thirties, the new generation who were supposed to be in the wings ready to take over when the ashes of older careers were finally scattered across the sea, usually made Edward smile.
Edward’s only contact with the police was Callintree.
He could try the officer, but he needed to use the connection sparingly.
They barely knew each other. And – goddammit – he wanted to ring Callintree about the forest area he had just visited with Wendy Wrigley, because before he told Wendy what he thought he had discovered there, he must at least check they had been at the right location. The police would have photos.
He told Aspinall firmly, ‘Okay, I can call him.’ Wendy would have to wait a little.
‘Let me make this clear. We have a story on our patch that’s big enough for them to close off the seaside. You are the news guy on the station. If you can’t lead this, I’ll bring in Tessa K and we’ll put you on weather.’
‘I’m on it, I’m on it.’
‘When is your contract up?’
There it was – the most definite threat a presenter could ever hear, not even disguised.
‘I think next February.’
‘Okay. This is how maths works. I want some better figures on your show to bring in more ads to raise the money you promised all those scam victims. Can you make sense of that?’
‘Perfect sense.’
‘So ask your cop why they aren’t just clearing up the mess in Toppings.
They removed the body, very sad and all that, and then you’d expect men in white suits to crawl through the place for an hour and reopen the promenade.
Instead they’ve locked down half the seafront like we’re in Covid or something. ’
‘The plates on the bike were false.’ As soon as Edward said it, he wished he hadn’t.
‘How do you know that?’
‘Can’t say.’
‘But why don’t we know that – why haven’t you put that out?’
‘I was told to keep it under my hat.’
‘What?’ screamed Aspinall. ‘No one has the right to hide this stuff from our audience. I run a radio station, not a railway station! This is the biggest story in Sidmouth since the fatberg and I need you on it, not disappearing upcountry with things under your hat.’
The Sidmouth fatberg had been international news.
A lump of congealed fat, wet wipes and assorted non-flushables had got caught in the sewers, increasing in volume until it was the size of six double-decker buses.
The sewage operative who found the fatberg was treated like David Attenborough.
A team of engineers had to suck it out using what was described as a reverse hosing system.
It was considered to be such an embarrassment to the town, the mayor had made a public statement saying, without foundation, that the engineers had evidence that much of the waste had originated in Exmouth.
‘I’m sure it’s not as big as that,’ said Edward.
‘It’s a very sad motorbike crash where only the rider died.
People who live on corners on fast roads are constantly finding someone in a Fiat Panda arriving next to them on the sofa while they’re watching TV.
We do that story a lot. In Honiton there’s—’
‘Look, I’m not arguing about this. The key point is that – apart from it being bloody funny – you can go from being the presenter with the tiny cog to a really big-swinging-whatever if you sit on this story and ride it like a fucking racehorse.’
Edward was literally struck dumb. How coarse was this man? If he used any of this language with Melody or any number of the Gen Z crowd, he would be bundled into the elevator with a one-way ticket to the ground floor. But still, the words had the intended effect.
‘I’m on my way in.’
‘I don’t want a Tessa K stealing your lunch and dinner,’ said Aspinall, just to drive it home.
Tessa K was on breakfast now, but she had done a long spell sitting in for Edward while he took compassionate leave after Matty’s death.
She had been a little too good. He certainly did not want ‘a Tessa K’ moving in on his patch …
Moving in on his story.
Yes, he decided. The Pizza Parlour Crash would be his story.
‘I will ring … the person at the police who I get along with.’
‘Good man. And come in for a special Saturday edition of your show tonight. Did I mention that?’
‘You—’
‘I’m kidding.’ He laughed cruelly. ‘Come in or be fired.’
On opposite sides of town, Kim and Stevie both saw they had been added to a three-person WhatsApp group called CROSSBOW. The first message came from Edward, who had set himself as admin.
Meet at the back of RTR and I’ll bring you up. We can chat in canteen, need to ask about Wrigley. Can’t leave office at mo. The security guard at rear (Backs) is expecting you. Trevor.
The first to get there was Kim. She waited at the rear door, not wanting to ring the reception bell until Stevie had arrived too.
After ten minutes, wondering if she should just go in on her own, Kim saw a bright red Ford Cortina stop in the road with thick smoke pouring from its exhaust. At first she thought the vehicle had broken down – the model was forty years old, at least, with gleaming chrome wheel hubs – but then the driver got out and she recognized Stevie’s fiancé Roddy.
He did not so much walk as stalk to the nearside of the car. Roddy waved his arms at another driver, as if about to jump on the man’s bonnet and pummel the windscreen. Now he was at the passenger side door of the Cortina, he grabbed the handle and threw it open.
The car was a hundred yards away, but Kim made out Stevie in the passenger seat, the view partly blocked by Roddy’s frame.
She could not quite see what was happening, but it looked as if Roddy had grabbed Stevie’s hair and was pulling her out of the car with a handful of it in his hand.
Kim said ‘No!’ quietly, almost in a whisper.
But then Stevie was out of the car and out of his grip, straightening up, and Kim waved, and Stevie saw her. As she waved back, Roddy turned to her.
Roddy was wearing sunglasses as he had been the first time they met, aviator shades.
His tracksuit was blue today and Kim saw him grin in the distance.
She thought she must have imagined the moment of violence, but as Stevie walked towards her, Kim allowed a look of concern to pass her face.
She mouthed ‘Are you okay?’ to her friend, who behaved as if she had not seen or understood.
Then she saw that Roddy was still there, watching like a hawk, and an inner voice told Kim not to show any sign of concern. So, as Stevie reached her, she smiled.
‘Nice to see Roddy. He’s looking out for you.’
Stevie turned, smiled and waved.
‘It’s lovely, isn’t it?’
Roddy shouted something – a word.
‘What was that?’ Kim asked.
‘He shouted “Next Saturday”, our wedding day.’
Stevie was unreadable. There was a chance for Kim to say something as Roddy stomped back to the driver’s side of the badly parked car, but the moment was gone as soon as it arrived.
They went into the radio station and took the lift to the canteen. In the lift Stevie said only three words: ‘Wendy bloody Wrigley.’
The fifth floor of RTR-92 had the best view of the sea.
The studios were on the fourth; the fifth had been sublet as shared space with the hotel next door.
The hotel called the space their restaurant.
The radio staff called it their canteen.
Friction was avoided through regular reminders of the restrictions – no staff meetings, don’t use a table to work at for hours, don’t do interviews, don’t bring your own Thermos.
Edward had been waiting for Kim and Stevie for nearly an hour.