The newsagent is almost out of papers, unusually for this time of day. There’s only a couple of Mail on Sundays and a Tribune left. He can’t see why: the front-page headline on one is something to do with immigrants and house prices, and the other, faintly more left-wing, has led on a minor Tory spanking scandal. He snatches up the Tribune just before another customer. Is dying to know what Kirsty Lindsay has to say for herself this week.
He takes a sausage roll and a small bottle of Sunny Delight from the chiller cabinet. Then he lingers for a full five minutes over the chocolate bars and eventually chooses a Snickers. There’s twenty per cent extra free on the Snickers bar, and it will fill more time as he waits for his wash to be done.
He has to wait while one of those tedious local-shop transactions wends its way to a close. A stout woman is counting up the change to pay for a two-litre bottle of full-fat Coke while Mrs Todiwallah waits impassively behind the counter.
‘Have you heard who it is yet?’ asks the stout woman. Finds a fiver in the corner of her purse. ‘Ooh. And a pack of Amber Leaf and some menthol filters while you’re there.’
‘No,’ says Mrs Todiwallah, turning to the shelves and picking up the tobacco. ‘There is a difference between a newsagent’s and a news agency, you know. We sell newspapers. They gather news.’
‘And the filters?’ says the stout woman. Mrs T bends creakily down in her plus-size shalwar kameez and collects the box. This, thinks Martin, is why people shop in supermarkets. You don’t have to do chit-chat in supermarkets. You just buy your stuff and get out.
‘No.’ She straightens up slowly, slaps the goods down on the counter. ‘There’s been nothing on the radio. Just that a man’s being questioned and will be charged maybe later today.’
‘And no one’s been in that knows anything?’
‘I daresay,’ says Mrs Todiwallah, ‘they’d go to the newspapers before they came to the corner shop if they did. I don’t pay for news, you see. I just sell it.’
Martin wonders vaguely what they’re talking about. He’s not the sort to intrude into someone else’s conversation. He shifts from foot to foot, wishing that, if they insist on gossiping, the shopkeeper would carry on serving while she did it.
‘Well, it’s good news anyway,’ says the stout woman.
‘Yes, indeed it is,’ says Mrs T. ‘That’s five pounds twenty-three, please.’
The stout woman starts counting out her change again, penny by penny.
Martin glances down at his paper and sees, tucked down on the bottom right, a small headline that might explain what they’re talking about: HOLS RESORT MURDERS BREAKTHROUGH. Breaking news, 3 a.m., says the text below: Whitmouth police arrest Seaside Strangler suspect. More details: page 2.
He burns to open it and read it right now, but waits patiently to pay and get out. He has plenty of time. The printed word won’t change if it takes him five minutes longer to start reading it. Nonetheless he finds himself hurrying along Canal Street, eager to fill himself in.
He sits on a bench, unwraps his sausage roll and takes a bite. Opens the page and sees, to his disappointment, that the details are very sketchy indeed. Police arrested a man suspected of the Seaside Strangler murders at 1 a.m., says the report, written by someone called Staff Reporter.
Officers were called to the scene of a disturbance on waste ground off Whitmouth’s main road, and arrested a man being held by passers-by. A young woman was taken to a nearby hospital and treated for cuts, bruises and shock. The man, after treatment in the same hospital, was taken to Whitmouth Police Station and charged with assault, GBH and threatening behaviour, and is expected to be remanded in the next 48 hours. No names have been released.
Is that it?
I must get down the station. See what I can find out. That’s why all those people were there. He’s actually being held inside, whoever he is.
He reads the piece again, takes another bite of roll and washes it down with a gulp of drink. At the bottom, in bold, a teaser catches his eye: My night of terror in Whitmouth’s sleazy back streets, page 27.
Yes, he thinks, there she is. He leafs through showbiz stories to find the page, and feels a rush of blood to his cheeks. Here she is again, smirking in the postage-stamp picture beside the headline; there’s a picture of the back of some other woman’s head, looking down an alleyway, clutching her handbag, as illustration. It’s not even Whitmouth – or not any Whitmouth he’s seen; it looks like one of those bin-lanes you find up north. He starts to read, feels the flush spread across his cheeks as he sees himself – his unflattering portrait – spill out before his eyes.
Women have died in Whitmouth. And on Monday night, I almost became one of them.
Chapter Thirty-two
‘Nice piece yesterday,’ says Stan.
Kirsty blushes. ‘Thanks,’ she replies. ‘I’m in deep shit now, of course.’
‘Yeah,’ says Stan. ‘Thoughtless bastard, getting himself arrested after Features went to bed. He could’ve bloody waited till today so it wasn’t so obvious. Still. They can’t be that pissed off. You wouldn’t be here otherwise.’
‘Don’t you believe it. I’m only here because the daily and the Sunday don’t cross over. I don’t suppose I’ll ever write for the Sunday again. And Dave Park doesn’t work Mondays. I’ll be right back on the phew-what-a-scorcher circuit after today.’
Stan shoves the strap of his man-bag back up his shoulder. ‘Hardly your fault, K. And apart from the fingering-an-innocent-bystander issue, it was a good piece. Good drama.’
‘Yeah.’ She shrugs miserably. ‘And now I look like a hysterical dick.’
Stan laughs. They shuffle up as Nick from the Mirror pushes through the crowd to stand beside them.
‘Kirsty Lindsay,’ he says. ‘I’d’ve worn my anorak if I’d known.’
‘Fuck off,’ she grunts. To be fair to my peers, she thinks, we’re just as gleeful about each other’s misfortunes as we are about the civilians’.
‘Don’t sweat it,’ says Stan. ‘We’ve all cocked up in our time. Jesus. Remind me to tell you about how I libelled the chief of the Humberside Police one day. Lost a bit of sleep over that, I’ll tell you. You just need to put a dozen pieces between yourself and this, and they’ll forget all about it.’
‘I hope so,’ says Kirsty. ‘Because I’m screwed otherwise.’
Nick pats her shoulder. ‘It was a good piece, if it’s any consolation. Made my hair stand on end, that’s the main thing. And you can always work the was-he-working-alone angle for a bit, till they’ve all forgotten.’
‘Thanks, Nick.’
‘Don’t be too grateful,’ he says, ‘I don’t want you stalking me’ – and she punches him on the upper arm.
‘So what’s the scoop, anyway?’ he asks.
They’re outside the police station. Nobody really knows why, as it’s obvious that no one will be coming out to talk to them for a good while. But the pubs won’t open till noon, so they might as well be here as anywhere else.
‘Bugger-all, at the moment,’ says Stan. ‘Now he’s been charged for Saturday night’s shenanigans, they can stay quiet for as long as they want, basically. I reckon it’s going to be speculation and hearsay till tomorrow now.’
A BBC outside-broadcast van pulls up on the other side of the road. ‘Uh-oh,’ says Stan. ‘Here come the Royals.’
‘Don’t let the bastards through,’ says Nick. ‘If they can’t be arsed to show up on time, they can stand at the back.’
‘Don’t tell them anything,’ says Stan.
‘They never ask me anyway,’ says Kirsty. ‘So c’mon, Stan. What rumour and speculation have you been privy to?’ Stan knows everybody. And anybody he doesn’t know knows someone he does. If anyone’s going to be up on the rumour and speculation, it’s going to be him.