DEAD AIR (Henry & Sparrow Book 2)

by A D FOX

‘No - we’re good,’ said the DC. ‘You always have it with you?’

  ‘Yeah, everyone does, if they’re on air or making packages. You’ve got to have it on you, if you’re using the mics. We live in a post-pandemical world!’

  The interview with Jones, the producer, was no more enlightening and Kate released them both a few minutes later, with instructions to keep what they knew to themselves for now. For all the difference it would make.

  ‘Oh hang on,’ said Jones, as he and Tierney made for the staff exit to one side of the revolving door. He turned and tipped the contents of the tin into the bin under the reception desk, leaving the empty tin by Moira’s switchboard. ‘Listener’s cake,’ he explained, grinning guiltily. ‘A fan brought it in. Home made. Most of them, you just don’t chance it.’

  ‘Especially if it’s Finley’s,’ added Tierney, raising an eyebrow.

  ‘Because..?” asked Kate.

  ‘Well… let’s just say we think he puts a lot of himself into these things,’ said Tierney.

  8

  A corpse sighting, a brush with Kate Sparrow and four glasses of red wine were not a recipe for a restful evening. Lucas slipped into a doze on the new sofa and found himself in the troubling company of Mabel and Zoe.

  They were, as always, just the way he remembered them. Lithe and graceful, Mabel dancing across the heath in her cut-off jeans and crop top, Zoe in her shorts and a knotted check shirt. Laughing, teasing, daring him. For that last sweet summer when they were all fifteen, the sun always seemed to be shining and the grasshoppers singing. Even inside his dream, though, he knew it was all going to go wrong. At any moment. Like it always did.

  They were lying in the grass on the edge of the quarry and Mabel was swinging Sid between her fingers, over the drop, the chain wrapped around her pink-painted nails. She was singing that old sixties hit: ‘In the summer time… when the feelin’ is high…’

  ‘There’s a time to go, there’s a reason to die,’ Zoe finished, from underneath her pile of rocks. Because they had all seamlessly arrived in the bottom of the quarry, Zoe buried, but apparently alive. Sid was back in Lucas’s teenage hands now and had changed from a blue glass stopper to a small, bloodied chunk of bone. Skull bone. Lucas knew it was a perfect fit for the hole at the back of Zoe's broken head.

  The police were coming. Lucas could sense them just behind him on the cliff above and he was willing Sid to stop being a shattered piece of Zoe’s skull. It just looked so bad. So incriminating.

  ‘You shouldn’t have done it,’ said Mabel, so close the tip of her tongue touched his earlobe. But when he looked around she was nowhere to be seen.

  Lucas groaned in his half-awake-half-asleep state and wished he’d never come back to the UK. These dreams hadn’t plagued him for years… until he’d come back to settle his aunt’s estate and take the bungalow. In fact, not even then, despite being so close to the plain and the heath and the quarry of that long-lost summer. No - it was only after Kate Sparrow had strolled into his life to ask him to dowse for a missing woman that the bad dreams had started up again. Dreams of The Quarry Girls, as the press had dubbed them at the time; one found bludgeoned to death, the other vanished and presumed also murdered. Mabel’s body was never found.

  Yup. It was Kate Sparrow’s fault. He turned over on the sofa, rubbing his face and sinking back down to that otherworldly state where dreams tango weirdly with the waking world. DS Sparrow couldn’t claim to be innocent either, could she? When she had come to the bungalow and demanded he dowse for her, she must have been well aware of what she might be triggering. If he’d known about her connection to Mabel and Zoe at the time he might never have got involved, but she had deliberately withheld that from him.

  Someone was pulling the wool over someone’s eyes and sometimes he wasn’t even sure which was which or who was who anymore. Little wonder Kate was avoiding him. Little wonder his common sense was screaming at him to avoid her. His thoughts were unravelling as he slid back into the dream state, watching Mabel and Zoe walking across the heath again and trying to yell after them: ‘STOP! Don’t go there! I’m sorry! I couldn’t help it!’ But the words wouldn’t come out because his mouth was full of foamy stuff and tape was across his face.

  His mobile burred violently on the surface of the wooden crate beside the sofa, jolting him from his unhappy slumber. He snatched it up, his eyes foggy, without looking at the caller ID.

  ‘I know it was you,’ said Kate Sparrow.

  ‘What? What?’ he burbled.

  ‘Lucas, just tell me.’

  He rubbed his face. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said. He glanced across at the clock and saw it was just after 10pm.

  ‘The message on the CrimeStoppers tape,’ she said.

  He let out a long breath. ‘Look… I was asleep. I’m a bit foggy,’ he said.

  ‘We traced the call to a phone box in Steepleford,’ she went on. ‘Then we checked ANPR in the area and identified your motorbike in the vicinity around the time of the call. Then we checked the cell network data and - who knew? - your mobile number pinged up right by that phone box.

  ‘Shit,’ muttered Lucas, remembering that quick online search for the CrimeStoppers number. Idiot. Rookie error. He should have had his mobile switched off the moment he’d decided to follow his dowsing instinct.

  ‘What the hell, Lucas? I mean… what, the bloody hell?’

  ‘Alright, alright,’ he said. ‘Yes. It was me.’

  ‘So why didn't you call me?’ she demanded.

  ‘Why do you think? I don’t want to get caught up in this!’

  ‘But you are caught up in it,’ she said.

  ‘No… no I’m NOT. I’m just a passer-by. That’s all.’

  ‘How could you be passing by out in the middle of bloody nowhere?’ she said. She let out a short sigh. ‘How did you come to find the body?’

  ‘I was at the station - you saw me there,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘I heard you too, while we were driving in. Thanks for the shout out,’ she added, drily.

  ‘I’m sorry - I shouldn’t have mentioned you. Anyway…’ He took a breath. ‘I was in reception when the presenter - Louella, her name is - started talking to the receptionist about this guy not showing up for work.’

  ‘So you offered to wave Sid around again - this time for more than just her phone?’ said Kate, snippily.

  ‘Well, no, I didn’t. I didn’t even want to dowse for her bloody phone, as you might have picked up if you were listening.’ There was a beat of silence which suggested she had been listening and she had picked that up. ‘And I wasn’t remotely interested in any more missing person searches, thanks very much. I was just going home.’

  ‘Yes… you looked pretty keen to be gone,’ she remarked.

  ‘Look, you’re the one who’s been avoiding me,’ he pointed out.

  ‘I’ve been busy,’ she said.

  ‘Right. Fine. So have I.’

  ‘So - what happened next? Did the nasty presenter piss you off so much you fancied bumping off the next radio jock you met?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Sid led me to him.’

  ‘I’m not sure those two sentences really work together,’ she observed.

  ‘I left my bag behind in the studio,’ he went on, trying to keep his voice even and calm. ‘I went back to get it and, while I was waiting for someone to bring it to me, I picked up this Dave Perry’s postcard, with his autograph on it.’

  ‘So… something he’d touched,’ said Kate, sounding suddenly less accusatory.

  ‘Yes. And I guess I just got something from it, because I should have gone straight home but instead I kept going, following the patterns.’

  ‘Are you telling me Sid took you straight to the murder scene?’

  He paused; breathed in and out. ‘It’s happened before,’ he said, at length.

  There was another pause, the static between them almost palpable. Was she remembering the time, a few we
eks ago, when he’d arrived at the murder scene in time to stop someone killing her? Or was she remembering the time, sixteen years ago, when he’d arrived too late to find her sister?

  ‘I think we need to talk,’ she said.

  ‘Yes… yes, we probably do. But do you really want to involve me in your investigation right now?’ he asked. ‘I mean… it just makes the whole thing more complicated, doesn’t it? You know and I know why I was there - and why I got the hell away from there and left an anonymous tip off. As soon as it goes on record, it’s the whole Lucas Henry merry-go-round all over again. You don’t need that. And I certainly bloody don’t.’

  She sighed and he knew she got his point. ‘I nearly lost my job last time I kept you under wraps,’ she said.

  ‘Yup. Well… it was your call then and it’s your call now. Do what you have to do,’ he said. She didn’t answer and he gently hung up.

  9

  ‘I just miss him,’ said Daphne from Wilton. ‘I miss him so much.’

  ‘I’m sure you do,’ said Josh, making shadow play rabbits with his hands as he watched his reflection in the darkened glass of the picture window into Centre Studio. A few months ago the lights would have been on and there would have been a late night producer in tele-in, visible through the other window, grinning across in sympathy and maybe making nob gags into his ear.

  ‘He was always so lovely to me,’ Daphne burbled on. ‘He used to sing to me over breakfast and he used to rub his head on my chin. Of course, he used to leave a terrible mess on the carpet too, whenever I let him go.’

  ‘Worth all the cleaning up, though, I’m sure,’ said Josh. ‘I’m sure Joey’s looking down from that great budgie cage in the sky and singing to you still. Daphne… I’ve got to move on, sweetheart - I’ve got the news coming up!’

  ‘Yes, of course, Josh,’ sniffed Daphne from Wilton. ‘It’s lovely to talk to you. You know, I’m always telling my friends I go to bed with you…’ she giggled.

  ‘..and wake up with Dave Perry?’ he finished for her. More giggling. He potted the call before she could ask for a Carpenters track. If he played Top Of The World one more time he was going to start head-butting the desk until his spilled brains clogged up the faders. It wasn't that he didn’t appreciate Daphne - he really did. When he’d arrived five years ago, a newbie, in the overnight slot, he’d been thrilled at the audience reaction. The late night listeners had really taken to him. They were a disparate bunch - lots of pensioners, of course, widowed, lonely and struggling to sleep, mostly women. But also a good number of cabbies and lorry drivers working the small hours. Phoning in to answer his quiz questions or request a track or just to share an opinion about the state of the world seemed like a religion to some of them; the same names in the same locations coming up again and again.

  He got plenty of late-night interaction and thanks to the caller ID software on the phone-in system, which he was now required to operate himself during the three minutes a golden oldie track allowed him, he could dodge away from the repeat callers from time to time; make sure they didn’t get to dominate. Some of them were great - really funny and bright and witty. Cabbies, in particular, were excellent at writing acceptably rude limericks and texting them in while waiting for a fare. Other listeners had different reasons for tuning in through the night; they came up with achingly sad stories about their lives and he had to be careful not to let that kind of thing dominate his output; you could only depress your audience so much. A dead budgie was the worst of it tonight and he hoped it would stay that way.

  ‘And now… at just coming up to midnight… it’s time for the news,’ he said, cross-fading to the news ident, closing his mic and wheeling the chair back for a stretch and slurp of Coke. Somewhere in Manchester a late-night news presenter was now reading out the headlines for regional stations all over the country, saving each of them the expense - and the company - of someone else in the building with the overnight jock.

  Josh did not like being the only one here. Until six months ago it had been him and Lewis, his producer, but then Lewis had been moved to drivetime and Josh had been told that cuts across the corporation (blame the government) meant an overnight producer was a luxury that BBC Radio Wessex could no longer afford. So now he was the only person in the building at night. There wasn’t even a security guard to talk to - just a load of CCTV cameras which routed to some security hub somewhere in Wiltshire. Fat lot of good that was if an axe murderer showed up at the back door, hacking his way in.

  To be fair, he hadn’t started thinking this way until last Friday when Finley fucking Warner had shown up at ten past one, lurking at the back gate in his BBC Radio Wessex fleece and suddenly leaping out from the shadows, waving a bloody jumper. Josh had nearly wet himself with the scare. The guy was bloody obsessed. It wasn’t enough to phone in on every show, turn up at every OB, and continually drop in with questionable home bakes… now he was branching out into knitwear.

  ‘Jeeezuz!’ he had squawked, hands to his throat as the tall iron security gate clunked shut and locked behind him. ‘Finley! What the hell?’

  ‘I got you this!’ Finley had said, joyfully. ‘You said you like jumpers!’

  Josh had agreed that, yes, he did like jumpers, and it was really kind, but that it was best if Finley dropped his very thoughtful gifts into reception during business hours. ‘Or… just don’t, Finley,’ he’d said. ‘Honestly… I don’t need this stuff. I’m just happy that you like the show, OK?’

  ‘But I made it myself,’ said Finley, his face shadowed under the hood of his quilted anorak and his voice cracking.

  ‘You knitted.. this?’ Josh queried, holding the thick burgundy woolly up to the white glare of the streetlamp.

  ‘No… I put that on the front.’

  Which was when Josh had noticed the image of Finley and himself posing together at an OB during the summer, screen-printed onto a cotton panel and stitched onto the burgundy jumper (M&S if he wasn't mistaken).

  It had taken him five minutes to get rid of Finley and then, when he’d walked on home he had the distinct impression the guy was still following him. He couldn’t see him but he just felt it. It was creepy. He didn't want fans knowing where he lived. People said Finley was harmless but Josh wasn’t so sure. There was something seriously odd about him. What kind of grown man got so fixated on a radio station that he convinced himself that every presenter was his best friend? Even when they were blunt with him. He’d heard that Dave Perry had recently told Finley to go and get himself a life. Dave, of course, had always prided himself on his plain speaking; code for being a rude bastard.

  Not for the first time, Josh felt that sour burn of bitterness. He felt like John Tracy, stuck up on Thunderbird 5, doing his duty in the endless dark of space while the rest of the Tracy boys got all the action and the glory by day, back on Earth. He had proved himself long enough on the nightshift. It was about time he got his shot at breakfast. Dave had ruled that roost for fifteen bloody years and it really was time for fresh blood.

  ‘Just a short stint on overnight,’ Chris Kinson - the manager back then - had said. ‘Earn your stripes. Then I can see breakfast for you in the not too distant.’

  That was five years ago and he was still hanging on a promise. The new manager, Rob Larkhill, had also hinted that breakfast might be his next move. But months later… still nothing. Josh felt he’d earned enough stripes to make a set of deckchairs. The problem was, he’d done it too well. The oldies loved him. They had taken him to their collective hearts and although he sort of loved them too, he knew they were collectively stifling his career in their cardigan-wrapped, Ovaltine-steamed, Vick-smeared embrace. ‘I go to bed with Josh Carnegy…’

  He’d spoken to Rob again just last week and got nothing but flannel… hang in there, Josh… your time will come…

  But when? Because Dave Perry just wouldn’t go.

  The smug fucker just… wouldn’t… go.

  And on a station where presenters had a half-life
of forty years, what could make him?

  ‘’…two-nil after a penalty shoot out. And that’s all from me for now; I’ll be back in an hour.’

  Josh pulled himself out of his reverie to opt Wessex back in and go to the first track of the night. Hey, who knew? Cracklin’ Rosie!

  ‘Another hit from the fabulous Neil Diamond.’ The presenter was making a good effort at sounding genuine but Kate suspected he was way too young to be a Neil Diamond fan. Probably more Radiohead or even Fall Out Boy.

  She reached out and switched off the radio. She wasn't going to get any serious intel from listening to Josh Carnegy and his harem of octogenarians, clucking the night away. She’d be better off getting some sleep… but sleep just wouldn’t come. It wasn’t just Dave Perry on the mast, hanging in her mind’s eye like the persistent after-image of a camera flash. It was bloody Lucas bloody Henry. Once again she was finding herself in an impossible position with Lucas Henry.

  The last time she’d kept information from Kapoor about Lucas, the super had made it abundantly clear that he wouldn’t overlook it the next time. Right now, she was the only one who knew the identity of the anonymous caller to the CrimeStoppers line. Although anonymity was its selling point, the police at no point promised they wouldn’t try to locate the caller, if it was important enough. And this was important enough. Of course, if Sharon or Ben had picked up the intel on his registration and his mobile number, she wouldn’t be in this position - someone else could have made the call.

  But no, it had to be her. And now she was in turmoil once again, just when she needed to get to sleep. She was going to have to put Lucas back in the frame, like it or not, because she couldn’t pretend she hadn’t done the work and found the caller. The evidence was right there in the station’s computer system. She’d speak to Kapoor first thing and hope she wasn’t in hot water for not bringing it to him sooner.

  It wasn’t only this which chased away sleep, though, was it? Where Lucas Henry was concerned there were altogether too many layers of conflict; personal, professional…psychological. Sexual, whispered an unhelpful voice, low in the mix. She pulled the pillow over her head, shuddering with shame. How could she? How could she find him attractive? Lucas Henry may have saved her life… and probably the life of at least one victim of a serial killer… but that didn’t wipe away the stain of what he might have done sixteen years ago.