The Shining Girls. Lauren Beukes

over the files and envelopes spiraling around her. ‘Denny’s Waitress Found Dead’, ‘Girl Witnesses Mother’s Stabbing’, ‘Gang Link to Co-Ed Killing’, ‘Grisly Find in Harbor’ …

      ‘Little morbid, don’t you think?’ He frowns. ‘Not exactly your beat. Unless they’re playing baseball very differently to how I remember.’

      Kirby doesn’t flinch. ‘It’s linked to a piece on how sport is a useful outlet for youths in the projects who might otherwise turn to drugs and gangsterism.’

      ‘Uh-huh,’ Harrison says. ‘And some of Dan’s old stuff too, I see.’ He taps the story on ‘Cop Shooting Cover-up’.

      That does make her squirm a little. Dan probably wasn’t counting on her digging up the details on the story of how he made his name mud with the cops. Turns out the police don’t like it when you report on one of their own who accidentally discharges his weapon into a hooker’s face while coked up to the eyeballs. Chet said the officer got early retirement. Dan got his tires slashed every time he parked at the precinct. Kirby is happy to discover she’s not the only one with the ability to alienate the whole of the Chicago PD.

      ‘It wasn’t this that finished him, you know.’ Harrison sits down on the table next to her, his previous injunction forgotten. ‘Or even the torture story.’

      ‘Chet didn’t give me anything on that.’

      ‘That’s because he never filed it. Got three months into investigating it in 1988. Heavy stuff. Murder suspects making pitch-perfect confessions, only they’re coming out of this one particular Violent Crimes interrogation room with electric-shock burns on their genitals. Reportedly. Which, by the way, is the most important word in a journalist’s vocabulary.’

      ‘I’ll remember that.’

      ‘There’s a long tradition of roughing up suspects a little. The cops are under pressure to get results. And they’re scumbags anyway, is the attitude. Must be guilty of something. It seems like the Department is going to turn a blind eye. But Dan keeps at it, trying to get more than “reportedly”. And hey, what do you know? He’s making inroads, got a good cop willing to talk about it, on the record and everything. And then his phone starts ringing late at night. First it’s silence. Which most people would understand. But Dan’s stubborn. He needs to be told to back off. When that doesn’t work, they move to death threats. Not him, though, his wife.’

      ‘I didn’t know he was married.’

      ‘Well, he’s not any more. It had nothing to do with the phone calls. Reportedly. Dan doesn’t want to let it go, but it’s not only him they’ve been threatening. One of the suspects who says he was burned and beaten changes his mind. He was high, he says now. Dan’s cop buddy doesn’t just have a wife, he’s got kids too and he can’t handle the thought of something happening to them. All the doors are slamming in Dan’s face and we can’t run a story without credible sources. He doesn’t want to drop it, but there’s no other choice. Then his wife leaves him anyway and he has that heart thing. Stress. Disappointment. I tried to reassign him after he came out of hospital, but he wanted to stay on the corpse count. Funnily, enough, I think you were the last straw.’