Playing James Read online

  “Hello!” She gives me an exuberant kiss on the cheek. “How are you?”

  “Fine, how are you? Feeling OK now? Did Alastair get back on Sunday?”

  She nods. I have only met Alastair a couple of times, which is a little strange in itself, but he is working so much he doesn’t see Lizzie very often, let alone me. He is good-looking in a studious kind of way and wears a pair of those very trendy wire glasses.

  “Have I said how sorry I am about that?”

  I grin. “Yes. I believe you have mentioned it. But I’ll let you say it one more time if you want to. I like the way it rolls off your tongue.”

  “Sorry.”

  I take the wine off her and lead the way into the lounge. She flops down on one of the sofas while I go through to the kitchen for glasses and the corkscrew.

  She shouts through, “How was your first day?”

  I reappear and start to open the wine. “OK, apart from the fact that the first person I met down at the police station was that police officer from the hospital.”

  “The really nasty one?”

  “Yep!”

  “Did he recognize you?”

  “Immediately, but the new head of PR was nice so at least the day wasn’t terrible.”

  I splosh the wine into the glasses and Lizzie and I happily take a slurp.

  “So, did you see Alastair at work?” I ask.

  Lizzie works with computers. Hmmm, yes, very bright. But then she says she doesn’t understand them either, she just bandies a few well-heeled words like “bytes” and “hard drive” around and no one seems to notice she is more at home in French Connection than a computer software company. Alastair was senior to her when she started there. She ignored him for months, presuming he was just the usual spoddy geek who ends up working in a computer company. But then they started to work together on a project and she said there was something about him that made her start to fancy him. And not just fancy him but really fancy him.

  “Oh, boring. Alastair didn’t speak to me once all day, he was in a stuffy old distributor meeting for most of it. God, what a difference from the start of our relationship! Do you remember it, Hol? He used to drag me into stationery cupboards. Now he only just manages to drag himself away from work.”

  I do remember it well. I practically lived it with her. They finally got it together one night when they were working late. I personally breathed a huge sigh of relief as the tension had been unbearable (lots of hot steamy looks over the photocopier) and I wasn’t sure whether it was going to be like one of those novels where nothing turns out quite how you want it. For example, The English Patient. Couldn’t she have survived the plane crash and just been camped out in the cave waiting for him when he got back? Like an Arab version of a Girl Guide, with her yashmak out on the line and humming “Kum Ba Yah”? Anyway, I digress. Things between Lizzie and Alastair have definitely not stayed as they started out.

  Lizzie continues. “So I went into town at lunchtime to console myself and guess who I met?”

  “Who?”

  “Bloody Teresa! And wouldn’t you believe it—she took one look at my shopping bags and proceeded to tell me about how Jesus Christ gave the shirt off his back for his neighbor and would I do the same thing.”

  “No!”

  “And I know it’s blasphemous but I told her obviously JC didn’t have Jigsaw in his time and I was sure he would understand that my new little crossover top was very hard to come by and I wouldn’t like to part with it. I know it was awful of me but I simply couldn’t resist it.”

  I laugh at this which is probably blasphemous by default, but then, according to Teresa, Lizzie and I blew our chances with Him a long time ago. About the same time we discovered boys and alcohol.

  At school, Teresa was the most pious teenager you could ever meet. She never wore makeup or discussed clothes or wolf-whistled at boys. She read the Bible in break times and ran the local Christian Youth Group. She always dressed perfectly. Absolutely pristine. Even now she is the perfect M&S woman, complete with a little gold crucifix. Her hair is a dark, glossy chestnut, softly wavy and cut into a bob. She is actually a very pretty girl, but absolutely ruins any effect she could have with her very sour, squashed lemon facial expression. I don’t think her holiness is a result of some entirely natural I-just-love-the-world-and-everyone-in-it viewpoint because, believe me, she is an absolute grade A bitch. There is some other, more complicated psyche at work which I can’t even begin to fathom. Once, at school, she spread this really vicious rumor that I had been caught shagging my amour-du-jour, Matt, on a snooker table! Considering my only up-close-and-personal incidents with Matt at this stage in our relationship had usually taken place in a bus shelter with at least three layers of clothing between us, this was indeed a spectacular accusation. Especially since at that age I didn’t have enough confidence to play snooker on a snooker table, let alone shag on one. Not very Christian of Teresa in my opinion.

  Lizzie sploshes some more wine into our glasses and curls her feet up under her.

  “So, what terrible fate has befallen Buntam lately?”

  four

  At work the next morning, I receive a message to call Robin urgently. I am connected to her extension by another charming member of the Bristol Constabulary.

  She answers.

  “Robin, it’s Holly Colshannon from the Bristol Gazette . We met yesterday.”

  “Holly! I was just about to call you! Stop the press! Have I got news for you!”

  “Have you?” I blink in surprise.

  She is jabbering madly like a demented typewriter. “It just came to me! It is a PR opportunity to die for! I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before! This is the one, Holly! It took a hell of a lot to persuade them, but they have actually agreed to do it. It’s only for six weeks though.”

  “Who are they? What have they agreed?”

  Robin leaves a dramatic pause and then says, really slowly, “I. Have. Got. You. Assigned. To. A. Detective!”

  She breathes heavily down the phone, presumably waiting for the applause to come. The problem is Miss Thickie here doesn’t quite understand. I frown to myself.

  “To a detective? How do you mean?”

  “Hol-ly,” she says impatiently. “Instead of using the usual channels—you know, I write up the PR releases, hand them over and then you report on them for the paper, usual stuff, blah, blah—you can actually go out with a detective and then write up the experiences yourself!”

  “Like a sort of diary?”

  “Yes, yes, a sort of diary. You can accompany the detective all day and tell your readers firsthand how it feels. Everywhere he goes, you go. A fly-on-the-wall documentary.”

  It’s brilliant. Simply brilliant. And I, Holly Colshannon, get to do it. It’s my big break and it’s all I can do not to get up and dance a jig around my desk.

  “Robin! You’re wonderful!” I breathe down the receiver. Steve from accounts gives me a strange look as he passes my desk.

  “Darling, I know. There are obviously some rules which will accompany it though.”

  “Why me? Why not the guy from the Journal or a freelance?”

  “Well, you are from the region’s largest paper. Besides which, we women should stick together.”

  Hurray for the sisterhood! I bombard her with questions.

  “When can I start?”

  “Immediately.” I blink. This is quick, even by our standards.

  “Do I need to meet the Chief?”

  “Of course!”

  “When?”

  “This afternoon.”

  “Can I write about everything I see?”

  “Yes, except confidential case details, certain parts of police procedure and the identities of anyone involved in a case. We will need you and the Gazette to sign various confidentiality agreements and indemnities.”

  “What do the police get out of it?”

  “The best PR boost this region has ever seen. You have to write favor
ably, another part of the agreement.”

  The big question then occurs to me. “Who am I going to be assigned to?”

  “You remember the man in the canteen yesterday?”

  “Green Eyes? The boy next door?”

  “Yep! Him! You’re assigned to him!”

  My little cloud of euphoria bursts with a small PHUT! because, although I do not know Green Eyes, my one brush with him tells me that he won’t like this. Not one little bit. But I don’t want to appear ungrateful to Robin and presumably this could still be given to someone else if I object too strongly. On the other hand, being on the receiving end of his sarcastic comments for over a month isn’t looking too attractive. I say in a small voice, “Why him?”

  “Well, he’s getting married next month. You’ve got six weeks and an immediate start. We thought it would give some sort of finite timescale to the diary since this is experimental. Also, it’s likely that he won’t be assigned to any dangerous cases from now on so nothing bad can happen to him before his big day. The Chief thought we could keep an eye on you both at the same time. So you see, he is the obvious choice.” Yeah, right. Obvious.

  After lunch I have to go to the police department as that is when the Chief is breaking the news to Green Eyes. That is Robin’s turn of phrase, by the way, and not mine. “Breaking the news.” That’s what you do with news people don’t want to hear. Hmm, doesn’t bode well for a good reception by Green Eyes. He has a name, too. It’s Detective Sergeant James Sabine.

  I barge into Joe’s office. He is, surprise, suprise, on the phone and frowns heavily at this breach of etiquette. I need to tell him that he has to call the Chief immediately to discuss the finer points of the agreement. He puts down the phone and before he can even say, “Here’s your P45” or “How’s Buntam?” I jump in with both feet, negating the need for such piffling chitchat.

  Joe is thrilled. In his excitable state, he mixes his metaphors more than ever, telling me gleefully that “This will knock the Journal’s crime page into a hen cap.” He gets on the phone straightaway to the Chief. After about twenty minutes of discussion and a promise from Joe to send a signed copy of the faxed agreement back with me this afternoon, he whisks me out for a celebratory lunch (merrily chortling about the Journal’s reaction all the way) on a nearby canal barge called The Glass Boat. Truth be told, the slight swaying motion of this restaurant always makes me feel sick, but it is a favorite in the office so I unfortunately come here a lot. This time, however, I firmly keep any thoughts of vomit out of my mind and order the second most expensive thing on the menu, not caring if Joe thinks I’m a lunch tart. While we wait, I manically munch on a bread stick, eyes focused firmly on the shoreline over Joe’s shoulder like a hypnotized hamster. Joe doesn’t seem to notice though.

  “This is good stuff, Holly. Really good stuff. How did you persuade them to let you do it, by the way?”

  At this point I manage to drag my eyes back to his and give a modest shrug of the shoulders. Well, he doesn’t need to know, does he? And besides, if he did know it was Robin’s idea and not mine, he might be tempted to try and put someone with more experience in my place. “Contacts, contacts,” I murmur airily.

  “So much for the Journal’s guy on the inside!” Joe claps his hands together. “This is really going to upset them! Just think how it will look for us! Exclusivity and a person from our paper actually with the police while they work! You know, Holly, I really didn’t think you could turn this around. I thought we’d never get ahead of the Journal on this score. They’ve been edging up the ratings ever since their new crime correspondent started!”

  “Well, we should be the first ones on the story now!”

  “The Chief tells me a detective normally has quite a few cases on his hands at once, so only pick a couple out and make sure they’re ones that look likely to be solved within the six-week period, OK?”

  “OK,” I mumble, looking doubtful. How the hell am I supposed to know whether a case can be solved or not?

  “We’ll print your diary every day. The first episode won’t start until next week, which will give you a chance to get used to everything and write a really good introduction in the meantime. And we’ll need a title. A really catchy title. How about ‘The Real Dick Tracy’s Diary’? Yes, yes, I think I like that. ‘The Real Dick Tracy’s Diary.’ It has a kind of ring to it. We’ll trail it for the rest of this week. File the introduction by Thursday, first installment by Friday.”

  The Real Dick Tracy’s Diary.

  Detective Sergeant James Sabine isn’t going to like this. Not one little bit.

  It’s just past two o’clock by the time I get back to the police station. The same place in the car park is free and I maneuver Tristan into it. The very same desk sergeant as yesterday is on duty and I give him a cheery wave and a resounding “Hello!” on my way up to the PR department. He looks at me and glares. Making progress, definitely making progress there. I get to the PR office in double-quick time and for some reason my heart is running overtime. I have no idea what I am so nervous about.

  Robin looks as though she has been waiting for me; her eyes are shining and there is an unmistakable air of fidgety excitement. She is wearing a different but equally stunning outfit from yesterday and her hair is now loose, which calls for a frantic amount of head-tossing. Without saying a word she grabs my arm, takes me down the hallway and then into a set of open-plan offices that I have never seen before. It is an eruption of activity. There are people zooming all over the place. Files are piled high on every desk, people are yelling into phones. The air buzzes with animation. No one is in uniform which is rather unexpected in a police station. They are all dressed in shirts and ties and there is a surprising lack of women around. The odd one stands out like a nun in a nightclub. At the end of the room there is a small square of partitioning with frosted glass windows. Presumably the Chief’s office. As a stranger (and a woman) I invite a few curious stares as we cross the room to it. Robin knocks on the door, and in the brief moment that we wait to enter she whispers, “The Chief wanted to know all about you so I’m afraid I had to fill in some gaps.” Before I can ask her exactly which gaps, we are bidden to come in. Green Eyes, or James as I had better now call him, is pacing up and down. Call it my developed sense of intuition but I think the news has been broken to him. He stops pacing as soon as we come in and glares at us. Even the sassy Robin seems to shrink a little under his Medusa-like scowl.

  The Chief stands up from behind his desk with a jovial smile as we enter. He is obviously a PR man at heart. He reminds me of a benevolent bank manager (not that I have met many of those in my time, it’s just how I think they ought to look). He is a large man with a mustache and a spreading waistline. He says heartily: “Aah! Here they are now!”

  He walks round from his side of the desk and pumps my hand.

  “You must be Holly!”

  “Er, yes. Nice to meet you.”

  “We’re so pleased to have you on board! Robin tells us she knows you from the London circuit and I have been hearing all about your journalistic adventures! She says you’re used to ground-breaking assignments! Say, you must tell me sometime about being undercover in Beirut. That sounds quite something!”

  “Hmm. Yes. I must,” I say in a voice that doesn’t actually sound like mine at all. I haven’t been to Brighton, let alone Beirut. I manage to shoot a look at Robin, who smiles brazenly at me with a warning look in her eye. I have a feeling she usually gets what she wants.

  “This is Detective Sergeant James Sabine. James, meet your new shadow!”

  James grimaces. “We have met,” he says through gritted teeth, but nevertheless he steps toward me and, with pursed lips that I presume are supposed to pass for a smile and without meeting my eyes, shakes my proffered hand. Hell, he damn near throttles it. I try not to wince.

  “Holly, I have arranged for a desk to be cleared for you up here so that you can write your stories while James writes up his paperwork,” the Chief
continues. “That’s something you’ll have to learn about! The huge amount of paperwork these officers have to deal with! But I expect you found out all about patience on the Arctic expedition!”

  The closest I have been to an Arctic Expedition is getting an Arctic Roll out of the freezer. An expedition of sorts, I suppose.

  “I’m sure I’ll have a lot to learn!” I say in a conciliatory manner, anything to get us off the subject of expeditions and anything else from my fictional career.

  “Do you have the signed agreement from your editor?”

  I fish into my bag for the faxed wad of papers that the Gazette ’s lawyer had been poring over at lunchtime. Joe’s hasty signature is at the bottom of the last page and I bend over the desk to add my own next to his. As I do so, I feel James Sabine’s eyes boring into my back. I shift uncomfortably. As I straighten up and hand over the agreement, the Chief says, “Good! Why don’t you two go and grab a coffee in the canteen and get to know each another a bit better? I need to finalize a few things with Robin here.” And with this, my new buddy and I are thrust out of the office.

  James Sabine sets off down the corridor at breakneck speed. I walk behind with an uncomfortable view of his tense, broad back clad in a tweed jacket. He strides along while I perform some sort of comical half-run in an effort to keep up. His legs seem to be twice as long as mine.

  I arrive back at the canteen—my second visit in twenty-four hours. The inmates eye me suspiciously. James doesn’t say a single word to me as we order our coffees; he won’t even look at me. He gets his cup first and whooshes off to one of the tables and so I trot behind with mine. I timidly sit down opposite him, feeling like a little girl anxiously seeking for approval from a parent. He speaks without looking up.

  “Well, you must be pleased with yourself. Managing to persuade Robin and the Chief this is a good idea.”

  I gulp. Golly, do we have to get straight into the boxing ring without gloves on? Can’t we limber up a little first, with a few verbal stretching exercises? A bit of “the weather’s been rather inclement lately”?