by Claire Askew
‘What’s going to happen?’ It was snappy, but he was going too slowly.
‘Grant Lockley,’ he said. ‘He’s running a piece about Abigail – and about Aidan. It’s pretty bad.’
Birch closed her eyes, but under the China Express’s strip-lighting, she could see the inside of her eyelids, swimmy and red. Lockley. Popping up once again to bother at her emotions. She was trying not to have emotions right now. She didn’t want to be thinking about her brother all the time. My baby brother: the thought occurred in a bitter-sounding version of her own voice.
‘Jesus,’ she said. ‘How bad are we talking?’
‘He makes two pretty big claims,’ Rehan replied. ‘First, that Abigail was mixed up with drugs, and second, that Aidan has, at some point, had an affair. And still is . . .’
Birch curled her free hand into a fist.
‘Yeah, that sounds like classic Grant Lockley,’ she said. ‘Hire a PI, dig up shit on people, and spread it as far as you can.’
There was a pause on the other end of the line.
‘Hire a PI?’
Birch glanced over at the takeaway counter, but could see no one.
‘I’ve had some personal experience of this,’ she said, lowering her voice. ‘Lockley had his claws in my family for a while, too.’
She looked down again at the newspaper, its grainy photo of Ryan Summers. She remembered a particular photo of Charlie that Lockley had repeatedly run under his byline: her smiling brother with his arms round his uni halls flatmates. Lockley’s picture editor had cropped it so the two other men were just flanking shoulders and arms. Without the wider context of the rest of the photo, Charlie looked drunk, propped up, unstable. The memory stirred an old anger in Birch that she knew she had to tamp down fast, or it might spread, engulfing everything. She remembered Rehan, breathing quietly at the other end of the phone.
‘But that’s old news,’ she added, a little too quickly. ‘More than ten years ago.’
Rehan was quiet. Birch wondered if he was reading something, or watching TV – somehow distracted.
‘He didn’t use a PI,’ he said, finally. ‘This is all coming from Jack Egan.’
‘The boy who lived?’ Birch knew she shouldn’t be joining in with this not-even-a-funny-joke name that her colleagues had started using, but she was too tired to stop herself.
‘Yeah. It looks like he sold his story to Lockley.’
Birch let out a long sigh. Clearly Lockley had more cash at his disposal these days.
‘Okay, two questions,’ she said. ‘One, have you seen the text of this piece?’
‘Yes,’ Rehan said. ‘He sent it to me so he could get a comment. Called it doing the decent thing, if you can believe it.’
Birch took a moment to count to ten. Do not say something unprofessional over the phone, Helen.
‘Yeah, he’s a real role model for positive values,’ she managed. She remembered Lockley’s catchphrase – I’m just doing my job – and passed a hand across her weary eyes. ‘Second question: have the Hodgekisses seen the piece?’
Another pause: this time it was longer.
‘Aidan has.’
‘You showed it to him?’ Birch was trying to calculate the potential fall-out of all this, but, in her tired and hungry state, was largely failing. ‘Lockley didn’t send it to him direct?’
‘No,’ Rehan said. ‘I showed it to him. I wanted to see if the claims about him were true, so we could decide what to do about them.’
Birch closed her eyes.
‘And they are, aren’t they?’
Rehan’s reply was almost a whisper, but Birch caught it.
‘I’m afraid so.’
For a while, there was silence. Birch imagined Rehan trying to do the same mental arithmetic as her – hopefully, he was doing a little better.
‘I don’t know what to do about Ishbel,’ he said eventually. ‘She’s . . . very fragile.’
Somewhere near Birch’s head, a brown paper bag landed on the counter with a thud. Steam trailed out of it in a graceful arc.
‘Black bean tofu, spring rolls.’ The old woman spoke quietly, and Birch threw her a grateful smile.
‘Okay, Rehan,’ she said into the phone. ‘I’m afraid you’re going to have to tell her, and you’re going to have to do it tonight. I know Grant Lockley, and I know he’ll publish this article with or without a Hodgekiss quote – and it should be without one, I assume you know that.’
‘Yes. Aidan’s already agreed we won’t comment.’
‘Okay. So it’s coming out tomorrow, whether we like it or not. He’s an absolute scumbag for doing this on the same day as Abigail’s cremation, but then – well, he’s an absolute scumbag. He’s timed it that way deliberately for maximum clickbait. And trust me, once the rest of the press get hold of this, it’ll be the bandwagon they all want to leap on. You can’t let Ishbel find out that way. You have to forewarn her as well as you possibly can.’
‘I’ll do my best.’ His voice was small, far-off sounding.
‘I’m so sorry, Rehan.’ Birch stood up, and lifted the warm weight of her takeaway bag by its gummy paper handles. ‘I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop with Lockley, but I was assuming his real bombshell would be about the Summers family.’
On the other end, she thought she heard Rehan sigh.
‘I wouldn’t be surprised,’ he said, ‘if that’s what he’s lined up next. Because . . . there’s something else, though it hasn’t come from Lockley. Something else about Aidan Hodgekiss.’
Birch clicked along the promenade quickly. Fucking Grant Lockley. She decided, for about the thousandth time that fortnight, that she hated journalists – him in particular, of course, but all of them. She’d been watching the news constantly, keeping an eye on the media’s – and by extension, the public’s – perception of her investigation. When such a senseless thing happens, everyone wants to see a bad guy in the dock, wants someone to blame. Order restored, some measure of justice done. But what happens when the bad guy neatly takes himself out of the equation? Grant Lockley, she thought. Grant Lockley happens. He inserts himself into the vacuum, and instigates a trial by Twitter for anyone unlucky enough to be involved. For all she knew, Birch realised, she herself might be next.
Tired and hungry as she was, it was tempting to linger outside her front gate. A haar had been hanging over the city all day: it was pouring off the sea, smudging the white orbs of the streetlights, blurring the edges off everything. At this hour, it was quiet, but two late-night dog-walkers were still out on the sand in the dark, the beams of their torches zipping back and forth in the foggy air. Birch took her takeaway bag in both arms and pressed it to her chest to warm herself against the wet chill of the mist, and the bag’s steam twirled around her. It smelled too good for her to stand there more than a few seconds. She dug her keys from her handbag and slammed into the house.
She didn’t usually sit in the living room – it was still full of unpacked boxes, tat of the old man’s that she’d hauled down from the loft and not yet taken to the charity shop. But the living room was where the TV was, so she cleared a space on the dust-sheeted couch and hunted among the debris until she found the remote. The newsreader had just begun speaking. Birch unwrapped her chopsticks and began to scoop fried rice – which tasted miraculous after a day of police station canteen food and coffee – into her mouth.
‘Tomorrow,’ the newsreader said, ‘Three Rivers shooting victim Abigail Hodgekiss will be laid to rest, at a private cremation service in an undisclosed location in Edinburgh.’
Abigail’s portrait appeared on the screen: the coral sweater, the matchy-matchy lipstick. Birch had seen that photo so many times now, it felt etched on her memory.
‘Abigail’s funeral will be the first of the Three Rivers victims’,’ the newsreader was saying. ‘But it is believed that more will follow in the next few days, as each set of remains is released back to the victim’s loved ones. Police Scotland have issued an apol
ogy for the delay, but questions are already being raised about their investigation into the shooting two weeks ago.’
Birch tried not to cringe.
‘We’re doing the best we can, you bastards,’ she hissed.
‘Plans are under way,’ the newsreader said, ‘for a public memorial service to honour the memory of the thirteen young women who died at the hand of gunman Ryan Summers.’ On cue, the screen cut to Summers’ scowling face.
‘The service,’ the newsreader went on, ‘is likely to be televised, and the First Minister has already confirmed her attendance.’
Birch rolled her eyes. Great. So we’ll have to drop everything and trail around after her all day – and that’ll be wrong, too.
‘We just can’t win, can we?’ Birch asked the TV. But the newsreader had disappeared, and the now-familiar slideshow of victims’ photos was being flicked through once again. Christ only knows what they’ll be saying tomorrow, she thought. Grant Lockley’s face materialised in her mind.
‘Fucking arsehole,’ she said.
After what felt like a long time, the newsreader finally uttered the words, ‘in other news,’ and Birch allowed herself to relax. She flipped the TV off, crunched through her last spring roll, and thought about the other thing Rehan had told her.
‘It’s not much more than a hunch at this point,’ he’d said, ‘but . . . those death threats that were sent to Moira Summers?’
‘They’re still being sent,’ Birch had replied. Once people got their hooks in someone, they really didn’t let up – especially with the press practically cheerleading for them.
‘Okay. Well, I have reason to believe that at least one of those threats might have – and as I say, it’s only a might have right now – been sent by Aidan Hodgekiss.’
Birch had needed to stop walking, and close her eyes for a moment to take stock of this. That would make sense, she told herself, thinking of Marcello’s analysis report. Yes. It would explain a few things.
But it would also be utterly terrible.
‘Rehan.’ Birch had stood rod-straight in the hazy yellow cloud under a streetlight. ‘You’re saying might have . . .’
On the other end of the line, Rehan had cleared his throat.
‘Look, I know,’ he said. ‘I know it seems completely insane. I know it would basically lob a huge grenade into this investigation, and if you think I want this shit to deal with on my first FLO gig then you’d be dead wrong . . .’
Birch had blinked in surprise, but didn’t check his tone. Foreboding was swirling inside her like the fog falling in curtains across the promenade. That frayed edge she could hear in his voice was more convincing right now than any evidence he could have produced. He believed Aidan Hodgekiss had done this thing, and that, really, was what she was asking.
‘It’s okay, Reh,’ she said, and though she’d felt a little silly using the shortened name she’d heard around the station, it did quiet him. ‘You’re not on your own with this.’
No, Helen, she thought, but that doesn’t help much, does it? Shit.
After a moment, Rehan spoke again.
‘I think I’ve built up a pretty good rapport,’ he said. ‘He seems to trust me. He’s letting his guard down a little. And it’s just . . . there’ve just been a couple of things he’s let slip, you know?’
Birch had tried to relax her shoulders at this, tried to exhale. There was a knot in her chest. That’s nothing, she tried to convince herself. A couple of things? This could yet turn out to all be nothing.
‘A couple of things like what?’
On the other end of the line she could hear Rehan shifting, thinking – choosing his words.
‘Okay . . . I’m worried this is going to sound nuts when I say it aloud.’
Birch had gritted her teeth, and remembered Marcello making his cut to the chase comment to her a few days ago. Rehan needed to learn how to just say a thing.
‘Try me,’ she said, keeping her tone even.
‘Well . . . Aidan is keeping strange hours – he’s routinely not there when I go round, and doesn’t answer his phone. Which is fine, I guess . . . but he also has a bad case of Moira Summers mentionitis.’
In spite of herself, Birch had smiled at her colleague, a grown man, using a term she’d only heard teenage girls use up until now.
‘I understand he’s angry,’ he was saying, ‘but he mentions her just a little more often than really seems normal. Whatever normal is under these circumstances. And when I say he’s angry, I mean . . . he seems really angry. He talks about her, and at times there’s real rage. And – yeah, this does sound nuts when I say it aloud, but . . . it’s like he’s conflicted. It’s like he’s trying to swallow how angry he is, but also show me it, at the same time.’
Birch said nothing for a moment. She was nodding again, as though Rehan could see her.
‘I know this isn’t evidence . . .’ Rehan spoke into her silence, his tone defensive, as if he’d assumed her not talking was a sign of disdain. ‘But I just have this awful nagging feeling, you know? Something’s just off with him.’
Birch struggled to mobilise words. In the pause, Rehan said, ‘I’m sorry I don’t have anything more for you right now. But it’s not nothing. It’s not in my head.’
‘No, I know – you’re doing well,’ she’d said to Rehan. Her stomach felt as though a rock had settled in it: that something’s off feeling he described was catching. ‘Just keep at it for now, please. And come back to me when it’s more than just a hunch.’
Birch shivered. It was getting chilly in the living room, and she needed to start thinking about bed. She began to stack the empty takeaway cartons one inside the other. On top of the still-parcel-taped box she’d been using as a coffee table, her phone buzzed. Amy Kato, the lit screen informed her. Birch hesitated, but then whispered a curse, and picked up.
‘Hey, Amy,’ she said. ‘Everything okay?’
‘Hello,’ Amy said, her usual cheeriness apparently undimmed by the late hour. ‘Yes, everything’s fine. I was just looking for you, and you’re nowhere to be seen.’
Birch blinked.
‘You’re still at the station?’
She could practically hear Amy’s mouth fall open.
‘You’re not? Oh God, Helen, I’m sorry. Are you at home? I’m so sorry, I’ll go—’
‘No, don’t. It’s fine. You’re where I ought to be. I just couldn’t hack it any more. I got to the point where I’d read the same interview transcript five times and I still couldn’t remember who was being interviewed. I had to ditch out. You’re a better woman than me.’
Amy laughed.
‘Not really,’ she said. ‘I’ve been in the canteen for the last hour, mainlining coffee and trying to work myself up to . . . well, anything.’
‘Get yourself home,’ Birch said. ‘I’m not sure that coffee should be ingested in large quantities, and I need you alive.’
Something about the joke landed awkwardly, and they were both silent for a moment.
‘I did want to have a quick chat with you, though,’ Amy said. ‘I mean, since you’re on the line. It’ll only take a minute.’
Birch dabbed her napkin at a spot of soy sauce that had dropped onto her thigh.
‘Sure.’
‘I just – I’m a bit worried about Moira. I’m probably being silly, I think, but – I could just do with a bit of reassurance.’
‘It’s okay, Amy. None of us has done this before.’
Amy sighed.
‘I know. I just wonder . . . I felt like she was largely fine while she was here at the station. Someone was almost always with her – me, or you, or Anjan, you know? But now she’s on her own in that house. And the SOCOs really did a number on the place. I had a look around and Ryan’s room is totally trashed. I told her not to go in there for now, but I’m pretty sure it’s the first thing she does every time I walk out that door.’
Birch shrugged, as though Amy was in the room with her, and then felt stupid.<
br />
‘She’s mourning the loss of her only son,’ she said. ‘I think some erratic behaviour is to be expected. You’re doing all the right things.’
‘Okay,’ Amy said. ‘But what I want to know is, is she safe? Am I doing all I can to keep her safe? To protect her? I don’t think I am.’
Now Birch was glad she and Amy weren’t in the same room. In her sleep-deprived state, she felt a powerful urge to give the younger woman a hug.
‘Amy,’ she said. ‘You’re not on your own here. I mean, you’re right to be worried about the scale of the public’s . . . response, for want of a better word, towards Moira. I’ve seen some of those threats, and they’re pretty damn credible.’ Birch’s mind flitted back to Aidan Hodgekiss – the press conference he’d held in the front garden, his grieving-father demeanour just a little . . . what? Practised, almost.
‘But . . .’ She forced herself to tune back in to Amy. ‘That’s why we have scene guards at the door. That’s why she has a panic button. And apart from anything else, there are about fifty paparazzi outside her house right now if the ten o’clock news is to be believed. For all that they’re a nuisance, they’re part of her security team, too. No one’s going to get to her in that house, I promise. She’s in less danger there than she would be in a police safe house, in my humble opinion.’
Amy stifled an exasperated noise, but Birch heard it.
‘But I don’t mean she’s in danger from other people. I’m worried she might be a danger to herself.’
Birch said nothing. She was getting so tired that thoughts were taking a long time to form themselves fully. The words suicide watch moved through her brain, and she wondered how something like that worked with a person who was guilty of nothing, but who was essentially under house arrest.
‘I keep wondering,’ Amy was saying, ‘should I be there? You know, at the house. More – permanently.’
‘If you’re asking to move in with her,’ Birch said, ‘the answer is that’s not your job. To be totally frank, if Moira Summers is planning to try and kill herself, what makes you think that you sleeping in her spare room for a few nights would make any difference?’
