it something to do with the woman who was here this morning?’ she said.
‘I don’t reveal my sources, you know that,’ I replied.
‘I don’t need to pass my sergeant’s exam to work out that she’s connected,’ she said. ‘But is it anything that will get you into trouble?’
I raised my glass and smiled. ‘I’ll tell you when I find out more. There is one thing I have to do though.’
‘Which is what?’
‘Go to London,’ I said.
‘And what will you do when you get there?’
Laura looked at me strangely when I said, ‘Hopefully, make us rich.’
Frankie stared through his binoculars from behind a stone wall, his knees in long grass.
He had ridden into Turners Fold and asked questions about the reporter in the old red sports car. He got lucky, because the third person he asked knew where Jack Garrett lived.
It had been a long time since he had been in Turners Fold. It had once been on his cycle route, the long pull out of Blackley, and then a fast green run into Turners Fold, freewheeling along a road bordered by straggly grass verges and drystone walls until he hit the fringes of the town, as the country views turned into small-town huddles. He used to like sitting by the canal and eating ice cream as the barges drifted past, and the people on board always waved back at him as he sat by the bridge, dipping his feet into the water as he rested his legs.
But that had been a long time ago, when his mother had been alive. She would run him a bath for when he got back, sweaty and tired, always hungry, and he would tell her what he had seen. He missed that more than anything. It was all part of her being around, more than just someone to clean for him or make his meals. He’d had someone to share his secrets with, the things he could see from his window, who wouldn’t laugh at him for thinking like he did.
It was an easier ride now. His Vespa purred up the hills, and so he was able to take in the views as he got higher and the air became fresher.
Frankie had seen the car before he reached the house, the red Triumph parked on a small patch of pink gravel at the front of a grey cottage, its stones large and worn, the old slates on the roof jagged and uneven. He had pulled into a small track by a farm gate and then switched off the scooter’s engine and clambered over the gate, binoculars in his hand. He had walked along the wall until he could get a good view of the house, to see who else was there before he spoke to the reporter.
He knelt down so that the lenses just peeked over the wall. He saw the reporter, a glass of wine in his hand, but then Frankie was jolted when he saw who else was there.
He ducked down quickly. She was a police officer—he could tell that from the stiff trousers and the white shirt—and that scared him. He didn’t want the police at his house.
But she had looked pretty, and so he got to his knees and looked again towards the house.
He liked the way she smiled as she leant over the reporter and then gave a giggle. She was just back from work and it had been a warm day. She would be taking a shower soon. He scanned the house with his binoculars, looking for the bathroom, and then he found it. There was frosted glass in the window, but the top pane was partly open and he could see the clear glass of a shower cubicle.
His hand scrambled around in his bag as he nudged the notepads and yesterday’s newspapers aside, until he found his camera. It felt hot in his hand. He closed his eyes for a moment and apologised. To his mother. To the policewoman at the cottage. And to himself. He knew he shouldn’t, that it was wrong to look at naked women, his mother had told him that. But he wanted to see her. As long as she didn’t know he was there, where was the harm in that?
He watched as she went inside and then, as the light went on in the bathroom, he trained his camera on the window, waiting.
Mike Dobson drove slowly around the Mill Bank area of Blackley, an eye on his mirror for the police. The streets ran through mainly open spaces now, from which rows of terraces had long since been cleared, ready for the urban regeneration that had never happened. The grass grew long and wild, nature reclaiming the land, fluttering through those piles of bricks and grit that hadn’t been taken away by the diggers, security fences stretching along their edges, protecting the tyre-fitters and builders’ merchants with jagged silver spikes.
There were still some rows of houses, but the windows were mostly blocked by steel shutters, awaiting the attention of the bulldozers. Water trickled onto the street from one, the pipes ripped away by scrappers, and the walls hosted the garish scrawls of graffiti artists.
The streets were busy with women though, the balmy weather making it easier to work, but the roads were quiet, traffic still too light. Mike’s car bounced into the potholes as he crawled along and the women peered into his car, smiling, their teeth browned by drug use and decay.
But he didn’t want them. He was looking for someone else.
He did a couple of circuits before he saw her, standing on a corner, well away from the other girls. He felt a small tremor of anticipation. It had been a couple of months now, but whenever he went looking she was the one he sought out. She was different from the rest—nicely spoken, almost polite, a couple of wrong turns in her life bringing her to this point—but it was her looks that drew him. Her hair was long and dark and she had an easy smile, but it wasn’t just that. She looked like Nancy and, whenever Mike saw her, it was like Nancy was back, from the way she tossed her hair as she walked, to the provocative rise of her eyebrows when she smiled.
He slowed down as he reached her. She bent down to peer into his car and he leant across the passenger seat, puffing slightly as his stomach strained against the seatbelt.
‘Looking for business?’ she drawled, as she pulled her hair back over her ears. Nancy used to do that.
‘Don’t you remember me?’ he said.
She shook her head.
‘That’s okay,’ he said, and then opened the car door. ‘Get in.’
She climbed in and put her bag on her knees. It was gaping open and Mike could see the packet of cigarettes squeezed in next to the baby wipes, her tools for the evening.
As he set off towards his usual place, the site of an old factory, now reduced to a concrete patch and dark shadows by the redbrick viaduct that overshadowed the town, he said, ‘I just thought you might remember me, that’s all.’
‘Why would I?’
‘Because I treated you nicely,’ he said.
She paused for a few seconds, and then she asked, ‘How many times?’
‘With you?’ He blushed. ‘Not many.’
She didn’t respond to that, and he guessed that she wasn’t interested in idle talk. As the car crunched slowly to a halt, just the dark walls ahead of him, she asked, ‘What do you want?’
‘Something
