The local paper paid me for each story rather than a salary, so if the crime scene went quiet, or if the police started another new initiative to keep people away from courts, then I didn't get paid. I worked my own hours, though, and it still left me to peddle the better stories to the nationals, but I used to do so much more.
But I knew that Laura was right. The stories were steady work and provided a stable home. Laura was doing the same, working regular hours, no shifts, so that we were home each evening, and there was nothing for the judge to criticise when the trial for Bobby's custody started.
I looked around the courtroom, empty apart from the prosecutor at the front, sorting out his pile of files, ready for the morning slog. The defence would arrive soon, wanting their papers for the overnight clients.
‘Anything decent for me?’ I asked.
The prosecutor looked up. ‘Uh-huh?’
He was one of the old guard; when the mood was right he was effective, but most days his job was just a plough through Blackley's grime.
‘Anything to report?’ I asked. ‘I'm not here because I like your suit.’
He smiled at that, just a glimmer. ‘Just the usual,’ he said. ‘We've got a drink-driving teacher, crashed his car leaving school, if that's any good.’
I raised my eyebrows. Another reputation ruined, but his shame was his problem. My mortgage was mine.
‘Don't get too excited, though,’ said the prosecutor. ‘Mick Boreman's defending. There'll be no guilty plea today.’
‘Too middle class to be guilty?’ I queried.
‘Something like that.’
I exhaled and sat back. I couldn't write the story properly until he was convicted. It was good for a paragraph reporting his name and profession, but not much else.
I thought about Mr and Mrs Goode as I waited for court to start. Was I right to turn down their request? Looking for Sarah would be a break from the mundane, and it might be a good feature to have written up and ready just in case she was caught and convicted. But then I thought about the bills that dropped onto the mat most mornings, how we needed the steady production line of small tales from the courtroom just to keep ahead of those, and if Geoff went all the way with his custody case then Laura's lawyers would soak up the rest, and quite a bit more.
The tapping of my pen got faster.
The family future was nearly resolved though. Anything I wrote now would be published later, long after the custody case had finished, and if the court was going to be quiet then it might be worth looking into Sarah's case, just to see if there was something to grab the headline. I could write the feature at night, after Laura had gone to bed.
I felt some guilt creep up on me as I thought of Laura, but I dismissed it, perhaps too quickly. I was a reporter; selling stories was what I did.
I put my notepad back in my pocket and rushed out of the courtroom.
Sarah Goode panted as she looked around the room. Stone walls all the way round, with a door at one end, cell-like, just twenty-foot square with no windows, no view out, a dirt floor scratching her feet.
She looked up to the ceiling and then winced, shielding her eyes. The lights there were like car headlights, bright halogen on full beam, searing into her retinas.
She tried to stretch her legs, but they hurt, all cramped up. She knew she had to keep moving, had to get her muscles working again. She limped to the walls and thumped them, but the sound came back as a dead thud. They were solid, sound-proof, old Pennine stone.
Sarah felt her way round the length of the room, using the wall as support, looking for a weak spot, maybe a loose stone, until she got to the door, wooden and old, the edges uneven and dry. It was bolted on the other side; she had heard it slide back whenever he came into the room. She knew it was a man from his hacking coughs and his deep throaty laugh when he taunted her, when he had kept her in the box.
She looked over to the corner of the room. The box was still there, one end open, from where she had crawled not long before. She turned away from it swiftly and looked up at the lights again, shielding her eyes. Would they stay on all the time? She leapt at them, tried to break one just to reduce the glare, but they were too high. She hurt herself instead when she landed, the dirt cutting into the soles of her feet.
Sarah sat down and put her face in her hands, gripped her hair with her fingers. Why was she there? What had she done? Why her?
She started to pull at her hair, wanting to scream, but then she looked up, startled. She could hear the buzz of speakers. Sarah shielded her eyes to see past the lights, and then she saw them, dark shapes behind the brightness. She sat still, waiting for whatever was going to come out of them. Then the sound came out at high volume, so loud that she had to cover her ears. It was the sound of a heartbeat, fast and anxious, a relentless thump-thump, the noise pulsing around the walls.
Sarah clamped her hands tighter over her ears and screamed, tried to drown it out, but the sound still made it through, making her own heart race to keep up.
She looked back to the box. Maybe it would be quieter in there.
She turned away. She couldn't go back in there, she knew that. Her life had once been normal, but those days in the box meant that it would never be the same again.
Laura McGanity swung her bag onto her desk and sat down with a slump. She leaned back and closed her eyes for a few seconds.
‘I'm not sure I can cope with another day of this,’ she said, almost to herself.
Pete Dawson grinned at her. ‘Turning on tape machines and filling out forms not exciting enough for you?’ he said.
Laura looked at him, took in his crew cut, and the scar over his eye that was a remnant of his last jaunt with the Support Unit in the Saturday night van.
‘Don't be offended, Pete, but you don't look the agony aunt type,’ she said.
Pete laughed. He had been Laura's sidekick for most of her time in Blackley. He was an old-style detective, a head-cracker who had not yet accepted the committee style of police politics, and Laura liked him for that. Pete had learned one thing in his police career: criminals are ruthless and devious, and don't feel much remorse for those they hurt on the way. So Pete liked to let them know what he thought. Sometimes it was just a quiet word on a dark street, although it came with a snarl. Mostly it was just about being relentless, so that the criminals knew that if he became an enemy it was time to change their turf.
‘This was your choice,’ he said. ‘Regular hours.’
She rubbed her eyes. ‘It's not just that, though.’
‘If you want to have a moan,’ he said, ‘you've got around ten minutes, because
