11
Feeling Peckish
April threw caution to the wind and ordered a full English breakfast in her favourite greasy spoon café. She felt ravenous this morning, stuffing whole bacon rashers wrapped in butter-sodden toast and dipped in the yolk of a fried egg into her mouth. Fifteen minutes later the huge chasm that had become her stomach was finally satisfied. She remembered a time when food wasn’t the be all and end all of her life. In her late teens she had hardly eaten at all, much to the constant worry of her poor mother. ‘Oh, Mum, I’m too busy to eat,’ she’d say while getting dolled up for yet another night at the Zanzibar in Hope Street – Glasgow’s premier hotspot at the time.
She gave a wry smile to herself and looked down at the mounds of flesh that now jutted out beyond her ample chest. ‘What a little butterball I’ve become,’ she muttered, once again too loudly.
The waitress Martel was used to the slightly batty old peroxide blonde speaking to herself. It didn’t bother her as April always had a warm, ready smile and never failed to leave a tip. She poured April another cup of tea and placed a small pile of today’s newspapers on the table beside her.
April smiled and said, ‘Thanks, love,’ before flicking through the pages. The Daily Herald’s main rival, the Express, had some dramatic headlines about Selina’s death, but a quick scan through the copy confirmed they had nothing but the basic details – the jewellery queen was dead.
That wasn’t the case in the Daily Herald, with the dramatic pictures of Martin Seth’s body lying unconscious by the family pool.
April was pleased to see that, apart from the intro, most of her copy remained untouched. She didn’t come from the school of writers who felt that every article they wrote was a potential Pulitzer Prize winner and therefore should remain untouched by sub-editors – the plumbers of journalism. The ‘subs’ were the production journalists who actually made the reporters’ articles fit into the spaces on the page. Many reporters had a them-and-us attitude to subs. There were, without doubt, good and bad ones – as there were good and bad reporters. The good subs would only change a reporter’s copy to correct it or enhance it. A bad one would rewrite it for the sake of it, miss out the relevant points, change ages and sometimes even names. It was also not unknown that by the time they had rejigged the article, they had often forgotten who had written it, and occasionally even stuck someone else’s by-line on it. But, as far as April was concerned, subs had bailed her out more often than dropped her in it, catching embarrassing spelling mistakes and, at worse, legals that would have had her before a judge on contempt of court. When she overheard reporters bitching about how a sub had rewritten their copy, April often wondered if they ever thanked them for repairing their spelling mistakes, appalling grammar or the horrendous legal gaffes that had slipped under the radar. Over time the subs knew April could put words together in roughly the right order and let her copy be.
She flicked through the rest of the paper, occasionally commenting on tales that caught her attention, blissfully unaware she was reading out loud. Ten minutes later she gathered her things and left a pound tip on the counter.
Martel said, ‘You know, after you’ve talked us through the morning papers, there’s no need for me to read them afterwards.’
April laughed. ‘I really am a mad old, bat aren’t I?’
Connor was slightly hungover. He sat slumped in his chair with a latte in hand and glanced up at April. She looked remarkably bright and breezy. He glanced at her feet. At least she was wearing the same coloured shoes today. That was a positive sign.
They hadn’t even exchanged good-mornings before the Weasel kicked open the door to the broom cupboard. He didn’t bother with any pleasantries. ‘The editor wants to see you both in his office now.’
This meant official business. You never knew what to expect when summoned by the editor. Even Connor’s favourite boss Danny Brown could make a career-changing decision on your behalf in a five-minute meeting in his office. Occasionally, it would be for a pat on the back – or herogram as they were called – but Connor remembered one piece of sound advice he’d been given by Badger: ‘In this business one day you’re a hero, the next a cunt.’
The pair were shown into Nigel Bent’s office by his PA.
It was obvious Bent was a control freak, with a dash of OCD – everything on his oak-panelled desk was laid out in meticulous straight lines. Even the way he was sitting, with his two index fingers resting on his chin as if deep in thought, was stage-managed for the benefit of Connor and April.
Neither rated this editor, and not just because he’d been parachuted in by the company to replace the popular Danny Brown. There was something cold and dark about Bent. He was the sort of man who craved the title of editor and the power that came with it, rather than the job itself. The staff at the Daily Herald had rarely seen Bent since his appointment a month ago. He’d claimed in an introductory bulk email to staff that ‘his door was always open’, when in fact it was permanently shut.
Connor sensed that underneath the calm exterior, the sharp suits and the gelled strands of hair that did little to conceal Bent’s baldness, there lurked a real bad bastard.
‘Ah, April, Connor, good hit yesterday,’ he said, sounding just a little too rehearsed. ‘A very good hit.’
Maybe they’d been summoned for a herogram after all, but Bent was more of an email editor – why say something face to face when you can fire off a few emotionless words on a computer? There must be something else. And there was.
‘But today I need to know if anyone knows why Selina was in that car park. Maybe ask your cop contacts, Connor? And, April, I want you to go back up to the Seths and see if Martin knew anything about her last movements. But go easy on Martin. He’ll be raw and sensitive right now.’
Especially after April sat on his chest, Connor thought to himself.
Back in the broom cupboard April and Connor were silent. April was the first to speak. ‘Go easy on him? The entire country thinks Martin did it and I’m told to go easy on him. Did you get the impression Bent’s worried about something?’
‘Yup, he was way too friendly,’ said Connor. ‘The Weasel could have told us to hit the cops and the doorstep. Bent’s after something or at least needs to know something. Let’s find out what he really wants to know. Might be a good stick to beat him over the head with.’