The Turning Tide (15 page)

‘I guess.’ Diana frowned. Plenty of celebs had made their careers on less, but still . . . They had seemed smarter than that to her. Then again, most lottery winners never went public about their wins at all, so maybe publicity seeking was on the cards all along.

A runner came into the room and put a cup of tea and plate of biscuits by Jonathan’s elbow. She had a coffee as well for Diana. Diana noted that the producer neither acknowledged nor thanked the girl. Diana recalled that she might have been named Kerry. Or possibly Kirsty. Even after several months of the girl working there, they had never been introduced. She would have asked Jonathan but he made a point of not knowing the name of anyone less important than him. Which, in his mind, amounted to very nearly everyone.

‘Do we know who the party’s
MEP
candidates are going to be? Anyone credible? Or is it a load of brigadiers in fake family tartans and frothing racists?’

‘No candidates announced as yet, it’s an announcement of an announcement,’ he said.

An announcement of an announcement? What was that when it was at home? She looked over the press release. ‘Sounds a bit suspect,’ Diana said. ‘Are you sure this isn’t a practical joke?’

‘Looks legit enough.’ Jonathan sniffed his tea and slammed the mug on the desk. ‘This is stewed. You squeezed the bag, didn’t you? What, are you trying to poison me?’ he snarled at the runner. She flinched and mumbled an apology. He turned back to Diana, a false smile on his face. ‘Anyway, they’re over in Molesey so easy for us to get out there, or do a phone link. Then we can get a call-in after, get people to talk about how they would spend lottery money if they had it, or something.’

‘Fine, we’ll do that,’ Diana nodded. ‘So . . . any plans for the weekend?’ she asked.

Jonathan’s head shot up. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

Diana smiled innocently. ‘Just making conversation, Jonathan. You know, talking to people. It’s kind of what you pay me to do.’

He pursed his lips. ‘Usual things,’ he said.

‘Ah.’ She’d noticed he was careful not to reveal anything about his private life. Now that she thought about it, Diana didn’t even know where he lived. Not that she fancied hanging out. It just seemed odd, somehow. You usually knew personal things about the people you worked with even if you didn’t like them or see them socially. But Jonathan gave every impression of not even existing outside of the station. There was a rumour going round that he had a new squeeze, but from what she could tell, he was the same as he always was: a sour, middle-aged hack with a chip on his shoulder the size of Essex.

Diana turned back to her own notes. ‘What about that missing geologist?’

‘The Schofield case?’ Jonathan said. ‘Has there been anything new on that?’

‘No, but it’s a month now since he disappeared. I thought we could get the family down the line for a fresh appeal, ask if anyone saw anything. . .’

‘Forget it,’ Jonathan said. ‘The guy’s probably dead. And the story definitely is.’

Diana frowned. Most news stories didn’t affect her either way, but for some reason this one had stuck in her head. Mild mannered geologist Damian Schofield disappears, a few days later police find an unconvincing suicide note at the house saying he was going to Scotland to end it all in the hills he loved. His wife said it wasn’t even his handwriting. No leads, no sightings, no body.

Police seemed convinced it was a suicide, end of story. And in any other circumstances it would be news that came and went. An eminent professor’s tragic death, one family’s tragedy, and that was all.

Diana had a feeling there was more to the story than anyone was saying. Schofield had been scheduled to appear before a Select Committee on energy policy a week after he disappeared. The details of his testimony had not been released widely but rumour had it he was going to imply, if not outright state, that the official numbers on oil and fracking in Scotland had been misrepresented. Or possibly, as some conspiracy theory websites speculated, he was going to say they were altogether wrong. If that was the case, could that have been a reason for him to disappear? For him to commit suicide? Or worse – for someone to kill him, as some Internet sites suggested had happened? Already a few blogs were referring to him as the new Dr David Kelly. Maybe the committee timing was only coincidence. And maybe, Diana thought, it wasn’t.

If it had been a suicide, why wasn’t he on any camera footage, why was there no train ticket to Scotland if he was going there, why were his hiking boots still in the cupboard according to his wife, why were there no witnesses? Sure, people went missing all the time. The story might have happened exactly the way the police assumed it had. It was equally possible it happened some other way. Maybe he had disappeared on purpose, or had a tragic accident. But something about the story didn’t make sense to her, didn’t add up.

She thought about the image the family released after he had disappeared. The grainy old photo of a man in a corduroy jacket standing on a mountain path. It reminded her of a holiday by Loch Lomond with her father when she was small. Somewhere there was a family missing him, a daughter who might never know what became of her father, a wife who could only sit and wait. What must it be like to know someone for decades then, without warning, they’re gone? This was about more than one man – it was a story about grief. Diana would have killed to nab the first solo interview with his wife but the family had stuck to communicating anything they wanted to say through lawyers and press releases.

‘I hear you,’ Diana said. ‘But someone must know something. A neighbour, maybe? Did anyone ever interview his co-workers?’

The runner was still there, hopping from foot to foot, holding the mug of rejected tea. ‘Um, can I like, go make a new one?’ she asked. Jonathan waved his hand in the air and she darted out the door.

Diana watched the girl bolt like a frightened kitten. Jonathan had that effect on people. It never seemed to occur to him that the high turnover in station staff was probably as much a result of his general attitude as the pressure of the work itself. Only being on the public side of the microphone earned her any leeway with him, she knew. And it was an advantage she didn’t mind pressing when she could. ‘Come on, let’s be on the right side of the story for once,’ she said. ‘It beats regurgitating tabloid pap twelve hours after everyone’s already sick to death of it.’

‘That case is police business, not ours,’ Jonathan said. ‘When the body turns up we’ll be there. Till then no one cares.’

‘Whatever happened to, “if it bleeds, it leads”?’ Diana said.

Jonathan puffed out his cheeks. ‘We got nothing new here, D. Come on.’

‘Or what about, “if they’re dead, we’re live”?’ Diana said.

He scoffed. ‘Live where? At the family’s house? Don’t you think they’ve been through enough already?’

‘I suppose,’ Diana said. She had seen it many times before, but it never failed to surprise her. It all seemed to happen so quickly. How the news could go from full saturation over someone’s disappearance, to . . . nothing, no interest. Overnight.

‘Christ, D,’ Jonathan said. ‘You’re still cutting your teeth. These kinds of stories can be highly emotive. Remember the
News of the World
fiasco? You can’t chase every mystery down the rabbit hole. We’re living in a post-Leveson world, let’s not forget that. Get it wrong and we’re the baddies.’ he said. ‘My hunch – my experience – says leave it. We’ll be first out when they find him. I promise.’

Diana didn’t agree, but she knew Jonathan wouldn’t budge. How was raising a largely forgotten unsolved mystery that might benefit from having its profile raised the same thing as phone hacking? But that seemed to be the stock answer to anything he didn’t want to do: Leveson. Libel. Meanwhile they were getting their arses toasted in the ratings. Her show did well enough, but the drop-off in numbers for the presenters on after her was shocking, and she had a feeling she could only hold on to her success for so long before listeners would start going elsewhere. ‘Got it.’

Jonathan stood up. ‘So it’s cabinet and headlines before the break, traffic and weather, live to Molesey for Scotland donation and call-in. We’re on in ten. Throw that coffee down your neck and get in the tank,’ he said.

: 13 :

Erykah slipped out the French doors in a coat and wellie boots. She wanted a walk along the towpath before anyone turned up at the house. She needed time to think, away from Rab and his sullen looks, away from her phone and the radio and the television news.

The clouds that had brought sleet overnight were just starting to lift. The river was swollen with rain from an earlier snow, and even at the ebb of the tide patterns and eddies swirled on the surface like ripples in satin.

Even without the alarm set for early morning outings, Erykah’s eyes still snapped open at half five every morning, her legs still kicked the blankets away with pent-up energy. In the bath just that morning she had looked down at her hands and seen the peeling skin on her palms starting to soften and come away from the callouses that had been a constant feature for so long.

What was she going to do?

Since her anniversary, every day had been worse than the last. If she tried to stop and put the events of the last ten days in order in her mind, she simply couldn’t. It was like being back at Grayson’s trial. Something was happening, and while she had no control over it, she couldn’t simply opt out of being involved, either.

She needed something to hold on to. Not her husband – Rab had proved himself more of an anchor than a lifejacket. In less than an hour, the money she thought they had won would be gone too. She had lost her precious anonymity, the security of blending in to Molesey life, just another middle class wife, thanks to the papers. The club was gone. And Nicole . . .

A clutch of women from the boat club jogged in the opposite direction, warming up before their water outing, their trainers crunching the gravel. Probably one of their last before they went away on training camp, she guessed. Erykah raised one hand in greeting. The group brushed past without a word or a look – save for Nicole, at the back, whose green eyes met hers for a painful fraction of a second before she turned her head and ran on.

The syncopated rhythm of their feet on the path grew fainter and disappeared. So that was it, then. She searched her feelings and found a distinct lack of surprise. Hadn’t she only ever been passing for one of them anyway? Accepted into the fold conditional on her husband’s job, or her usefulness in a boat? Now she was just another topic of conversation to them, gossip fodder until something better came along. A familiar tension rose up in her neck. The way these people regarded anyone who was not the same as them. The way they talked about London, like it was a sack full of rubbish to be held at arm’s length, not the city they profited from and were connected to.

At some point over the years she had stopped counting the number of times women in Molesey would catch themselves in the middle of a conversation about politics, about what was in the papers, and reassure her that of course, when they talked about immigrants or inner-city people or black people or whatever else, they didn’t mean
her
. And then, still later, at some other point, they stopped apologising altogether.

‘Fuck it,’ she said. Maybe what she should be doing instead is making the most of the situation. Use them before they use you. She had been the only one holding things together when the press first came to their house, Rab had been a wreck. She had managed to deal with Seminole Billy and Buster and – apart from Rab’s broken finger – without getting them into any more trouble. Maybe she could come out on top.

Erykah turned on the path and rounded back towards the house. The reporters and photographers were right on time. There were also about twice as many as she had expected and the crowd spilled over the edges of the garden and into the street. ‘Arse,’ she murmured. She felt a chill that had only something to do with the cold weather.

The last time the media had come to the house was to get the obligatory shots of the celebrating couple. This time she sensed a hungrier, meaner edge to the crowd. Erykah went in through the back door and upstairs to change her clothes.

Sitting at her own dressing table, slowly applying makeup, all she could think about was Grayson’s trial and what the press had been like back then. For weeks they had hounded her. What better to decorate stories about a drug-related slaying with than photos of the accused’s photogenic girlfriend? Almost overnight she had watched as her status in the papers went from ‘key witness in a murder trial’ to ‘spoiled, haughty gangster princess’. As a witness she was gagged during the trial itself, unable to defend herself or even explain. Meanwhile her every movement was dissected for the delight of the tabloids, every fleeting expression or gesture presumed to have some sinister significance.

While the court found her a credible witness to the events of that night, the damage from the media was already done – such as her mother’s addictions triumphantly announced on the cover of a Sunday paper. The exclusive four-page interview inside was presented as the key to Erykah’s personality that, in the absence of her being able to speak for herself, they had already crafted as ‘aloof’ and ‘detached’. Erykah read the interview with horror, cringing at the shot of Rainbow holding a baby photo of Erykah, begging her daughter to get help.

So cheap. So manipulative. So very popular with the paper-buying public.

By the end of the trial there was only one person Erykah felt she could still trust, and he was going to prison. The spare details of her life had been padded out by hacks fluent in boilerplate phrases and tinned motivations, written on spec to fit tabloid pre-decided agendas.
Gangster’s Girl Rikki Protects Her Man
.
Leggy Rikki B Flashes Her Pins In Designer Frock
.
Good Girl Gone Bad
. Whatever or whoever she had thought herself to be was lost in the noise of public disapproval. Nobody wanted the truth because that would be boring.

Then one day the cameras were gone. No more reporters knocking on the neighbours’ doors, no more suspicious-sounding clicks on the line any time she used the phone. Fresh scandals obsessed the news cycle and the vultures went elsewhere.

To her surprise, it felt like another loss. Without the constant stress of avoiding reporters or feeling battered by whatever new claim they were making, now there was nothing to distract from the wasteland of what was left. Her first love behind bars, her mother below contempt. No degree, no job. Her life in tatters and the feeling that she might be the only person left in the world who did not think she was evil.

Erykah unravelled the braid she had plaited to protect her hair from the rain, and gently pulled a wide comb through the curls.
We can pack up and leave. Go for a year, for the rest of our lives.
Wasn’t that what Rab had said only a few days ago? But then she remembered what he had done and why this was happening at all. She had no choice but to go through with the plan as agreed with Billy and Buster. And maybe, just maybe, she could try to turn it to her advantage this time.

Deep breath. Hold it. Exhale. Her heart rate began to drop and the tingling pressure crawling up her neck started to ease off. Erykah went downstairs to face the music.

A beat-up Mercedes was parked halfway up the street, past the notice of any curious members of the press. There was no sign of Buster this time – too many people with cameras hanging about the place. Just Seminole Billy. He nodded at Erykah as she wove through the crowd to where cameramen were setting up lights. He stood on the edge of the garden, legs planted apart, arms folded across his chest. He was wearing those black cowboy boots again, the ones with the gleaming metal toes.

A young woman pulled Erykah to one side. She introduced herself as Heather Matthews, general secretary of the SLU. Erykah smiled and shook her hand. She felt an instant flash of dislike for the woman, though she couldn’t put a finger on why. Maybe it was the air of confidence that seemed to come so naturally – a product of public schools, no doubt. Or was it that she had the flippy blonde hair and jolly-hockey-sticks attitude of the sort of woman her husband idolised? ‘I wanted to say before everyone arrives, Mrs Macdonald, how very grateful we are that you and your husband agreed to do this,’ she said. ‘Not only the donation, but agreeing to have the press conference here as well. It’s not every day we get a helping hand from a lottery in the Isle of Man!’

‘Channel Islands, I heard,’ Erykah said.

‘Whatever.’ Heather waved her hand and beamed an orthodontically perfect smile. ‘The details don’t matter now. What matters is this will be priceless promotion for the SLU campaign.’

‘Yes, of course,’ Erykah said. Details wouldn’t matter to someone like Heather, would they? The soft cooing and butter-wouldn’t-melt countenance of girls like her was surely a product of the fact that she was probably doing this for a lark, had taken a prominent internship to ease her way into politics or business or whatever birthright job had been hers from the cradle. But she could put aside her judgment of Heather for the moment; with luck she wouldn’t see her again. ‘With my husband having Scottish roots this is an issue we feel so passionately about. As I’m sure you can imagine,’ she said.

‘Your husband is going to join us, isn’t he?’

‘Absolutely.’ Rab’s face peered out from behind the curtain. Erykah looked over the crowd and her eyes met Billy’s. An almost imperceptible nod.

‘How do I look?’ Erykah asked Heather, and adjusted the front of her jacket, a grey-and-purple flecked Harris tweed. Just enough cleavage, not too much, and a hint of a cream-coloured silk blouse peeking out. A loop of purple-and-white satin pinned to one lapel – the Scotland Liberal Unionist campaign’s official ribbon.

‘Good,’ Heather said without looking. She clutched a clipboard and a stack of glossy leaflets advertising the party’s policies. On the front, the SLU insignia: a purple-and-white saltire rippling in the breeze, barely different from a clip art logo. Erykah thought it looked amateurish. But maybe that was the angle they were going for – appealing to people sick of slick career statesmen and politics as usual in Westminster. ‘And don’t worry, it won’t just be you and Mr Macdonald today,’ she said, dropping her voice. ‘We have a celebrity joining us.’

Erykah smiled. ‘Oh?’ This was unexpected.

‘In fact,’ Heather said as a black private hire car pulled up to the kerb, ‘it looks like our headliner is here. I didn’t want to say, because his train down from Scotland was running behind, and I was worried he wouldn’t make it at all.’

A man with a green kilt and luxurious moustache emerged and stepped through the crowd. He took a last drag of his half-smoked cigarette, crushed it out on the bark of a tree, and turned to wave at the people shouting his name. Heather grabbed his arm and guided him to the group in the middle of the garden. ‘Erykah, this is Major Whitney Abbott. He will be accepting your donation on behalf of Scotland Liberal Unionists. He’s also agreed to be our Edinburgh candidate for the European Parliament in the next election.’

‘I know who Major Abbott is.’ Erykah smiled at the barrel-chested officer. ‘I’m a huge fan,’ she purred. ‘Your book about the Falklands War was so inspiring. I couldn’t wait to snuggle up with it every bedtime.’

Major Whitney Abbott smiled and shook her hand. ‘Always a pleasure to meet a fan,’ he said.

‘You know, I have the book, I wonder if you wouldn’t mind . . .’ Erykah said.

The Major smiled as she darted inside. He exchanged glances with Heather. ‘Autograph,’ he said. ‘They always want one.’

The crowd was growing restless. Heather tried to hand out some of the flyers, but most waved her off and asked about the website instead. ‘It’s still under construction,’ she objected, but they were already on their phones browsing the address.

Erykah returned with the Major’s memoirs and also a copy of one of his father’s books of collected columns. He clenched his jaw but signed them both anyway. ‘Where are you from?’ he asked as he wrote.

‘London,’ she said. ‘Born and grew up in Streatham, we moved here after we married.’

‘No, I mean,’ the Major said, ‘where are your people from?’

Erykah’s smile stiffened. She knew what he was asking. Racist old fuck. ‘London,’ she said sternly.

‘Let’s check the social media coverage,’ Heather interrupted, tapping at a smartphone. ‘Scotland Liberal Unionist Party is trending. We’re number three nationwide!’ She looked at the Major as if to say,
I told you so
.

Erykah leaned over for a closer look. No mention of the details yet, but that would come. Heather had advised her and Rab to keep the exact amount of the donation a secret so it would have more impact on the day.

But what impact would there be now? With the money about to leave their hands and someone else’s star dazzling the media, the most Erykah could expect from this was an expedited divorce. She kept smiling, but her teeth clenched in anger. All Rab had managed to do was buy enough time to get himself out of hot water. She had already lost the few things that made her life bearable because of this. Her past being served up for the papers all over again hadn’t occurred to him as a potential risk, because it hadn’t mattered to him.

Because he didn’t care.

The Major cleared his throat. Rab skulked out of the house and joined the small group. He looked grey and unwell. Erykah foisted her handbag on him and he winced as the strap snagged on his broken fingers, still taped together. Erykah hissed, ‘Smile.’ He smiled.

‘Ladies, gentlemen!’ the Major bellowed. ‘And journalists.’ A titter of polite laughter rippled through the audience. ‘Welcome. And thank you for coming today. I know you all have vital dirt digging – I mean news gathering – to get back to, so I’ll keep this brief.’

‘Smooth, isn’t he,’ Rab scowled. Erykah jabbed her elbow in her husband’s side.

‘Today is an extraordinary day for the Scotland Liberal Unionists,’ the Major continued. ‘We all know Britain’s military, not to mention its business, is far stronger together than split apart. It turned out the electorate agreed. With the bedrock of our rich tradition as both a family of nations and a nation of families upheld, it is now time to look to the future. A future where the SLU will be leading the way.’