Guv shrugged and nodded: ‘Well, I can’t deny you earned your stripes with this sort of thing. You did an amazing job last summer covering the Underwood story.’
The Underwood story. A missing boy, a stalled police investigation going nowhere, and Anna Vaughan right there in the middle of it, finding little Josh Underwood alive, revealing his father as the abductor, and deeply embarrassing CID by obliging an investigative journalist to do their job for them. It had all made great copy for After-Dark and boosted Anna’s reputation as a reporter who really got things done – but it had also soured relations between her and the police. Those relations were not destined to become any more cordial, not after she publicly confronted them with the insider information she had received from her anonymous whistleblower inside the police.
‘You know I’m the right person for this story, Guv,’ Anna insisted.
‘This Steiner business is a far cry from the Underwood case,’ the Guv warned her. ‘It’s far more violent, far more dangerous.’
‘All the more reason to find that missing girl as soon as possible. I know I can do it, Guv. I know I can get a result.’
The Guv eyed her keenly for a moment, then said: ‘You’re a first-rate hack, no doubt about it. And you pulled a blinder with the Underwood story. But nobody gets it right all the time. There are no guarantees, God knows not in this business, Anna.’
‘I know that, Guv.’
‘And you’ve rattled CID’s cage once already this year. You won’t find a warm welcome there if you go waltzing in shouting the odds about them yet again.’
‘I’m not looking for a warm welcome, I’m looking for Sharon Steiner and the man who took her. That’s all that matters.’
‘Possibly,’ the Guv said, almost to herself. Then she lit up a cigarette – no law could be passed that was ever going to stop her from bloody smoking in her own bloody office – she drew deeply on it, exhaled thoughtfully, and said: ‘Well – you’d better jump to it, then.’
But just as Anna was striding out the door, the Guv called to her: ‘But don’t get cocky, Anna. Remember Miles. Remember what happened to him.’
Anna paused, thought for a moment, then replied: ‘I remember Miles, Guv. And I take your point. I’ll be careful.’
And with that, she strode away, heading down the interminable staircase that always reeked of cabbage, making for the filthy streets of Soho far below.
As she drove through the congested London traffic making her way to the police press conference, the Guv’s words kept playing through her mind:
‘Remember Miles. Remember what happened to him.’
Miles Carter.
She could picture him very clearly, the way he had been five years ago when she’d first started at After-Dark. With his rumpled jacket and chaotic mop of dark hair and his big, wide, beaming face that kept creasing up into an irrepressible grin, she had instantly warmed to the older and more experienced journalist. And he had warmed to her, too, taking her under his wing. Through a combination of encouragement, criticism, teasing and lavish praise, Miles had given her as comprehensive a crash course into journalism as she could have hoped for. Anna had even started to suspect that their working relationship might blossom into something more personal. There had certainly been a hint of chemistry between them.
And then it all changed. Suddenly. Abruptly. Horribly.
About six months after Anna had started working at After-Dark, Miles had embarked upon an extensive investigation into cold cases stashed away in the CID murder files. He said very little to Anna about the details of his research, but from time to time he confided in her about the grimness of his work, the sadness that weighed down on him when he contemplated just how many innocent lives had been snuffed out over the years and without the killers responsible being brought to justice.
‘I’ve started to feel I owe these victims something,’ he said once to Anna. ‘It doesn’t feel like investigative journalism any more, it feels more like a moral obligation. Where CID have thrown in the towel, I feel it’s my job to pick it up again, to reopen the cases, to see that these victims receive at least some sort of justice.’
He began making contact with dark and shadowy people deep in the underworld, people who could furnish him with clues and leads with which to track down old killers.
And then – something happened. Something between Miles and a man he had gone to meet. Miles disappeared. It was as if he had vanished from the face of the earth. No trace of him. No word from him.
And then, two weeks later, the police had come to the After-Dark offices to say that they’d found him. Miles had been discovered roaming the streets of the suburbs, half-starved, dishevelled, mistreated, and barely coherent. During the slow period of his convalescence, he would tell nobody where he had been or what had happened to him. He declined to give a statement to the police. He refused to reveal anything to the Guv. He would not even divulge anything to Anna, though she would spend hours at his bedside in the hospital and then later visit him at the rambling Hampstead townhouse he had inherited from his mother and where he lived alone.
Physically, Miles recovered. But, psychologically, he remained fragile, too much so to return to work at After-Dark. Anna would visit him and was always shocked at how vulnerable he continued to appear, how anxious he was at the most innocuous sounds in the street outside, how reluctant he was for her to leave him alone again when it was time for her to go.
From time to time she would ask him gently, ‘Miles – what happened to you?’
Only once did he ever break his silence about the matter. Looking at her intensely, forcing a sad smile, he had said, ‘I got too close.’
‘Too close to what, Miles?’
‘I got too close,’ he had repeated softly. ‘And I learnt my lesson.’
And that was all he ever said about his nightmare.
It had been a salutary lesson to all the team working at After-Dark. They all of them diced with danger in the course of their investigations. Any one of them could end up like poor Miles Carter – broken, traumatised, or worse. If Anna got too close to the Santa killer, and if she was careless, and if she took one wrong step and put herself in excessive danger, then …
Pushing her fears out of her mind as best she could, she pulled into the car park of the police station where CID was holding its press conference. Parking up, she took a moment to check her reflection in the rear-view mirror, examining her oval face, her keen eyes, her strong nose with its slight Roman arch, the generous mouth, the blonde hair scraped back and held in a messy bundle behind her head.
‘You won’t end up like Miles,’ she told her reflection. She spoke firmly, with conviction. But all the same, there was still a hint of fear in those reflected eyes looking back at her.
Anna headed into the police station and was directed to a cramped, drab room which was to house the press conference. There were no seats provided, so she jostled her way through the press scrum, getting as near to the podium as she could manage, fighting to keep her ground until the conference began.
Waiting for things to start, she examined the police handout
