Okay, so maybe more than a handful of questions, but there you go, old journalists’ trick. Saying ‘can I just ask you one thing?’ then sneaking in another fifteen questions and hoping no one will notice.
One thing is for certain, the answer is only a stone’s throw away from here and I know myself well enough to know that it’ll consume me until I’ve completely laid the whole thing to rest. Mind racing, head pounding, I slip my raincoat on and have just made it through the security barrier inside the main door of the Post, one hand on the revolving doors all set to make my escape, when suddenly from behind a voice stops me.
‘Eloise? Surely you can’t be leaving this early, can you?’
Shit, shit, shit.
I don’t even need to turn around to know who it is. There’s only one person I know who speaks in that snivelly, nasal twang.
And there he is, right behind me, Seth Coleman. Looking me up and down like he always does, the unblinking, lizardy eyes taking everything in.
‘Course I’m not leaving, Seth,’ I force myself to half-smile. ‘Just stepping out for … emm …’
‘You’re going OUT?’ Seth says, deliberately stressing it that way. ‘As in, OUTSIDE the building? What on earth for?’
Ahem, good question. Can’t say for coffee, we already have Starbucks in here. If I say personal reasons, sure as eggs he’ll start spreading it around that I’m in the throes of a breakdown and am sneaking off to see a psychiatrist on company time.
Think, think, think …
‘Highly confidential,’ I eventually say, trying to sound as brisk as possible. ‘Can’t possibly give you a name. And you know me, I wouldn’t dream of revealing a source, not under waterboarding. But for safety and security reasons, we’ve got to meet on neutral ground.’
OK, now it sounds like I’ve suddenly morphed into Bob Woodward in All The President’s Men, about to meet Deepthroat in some deserted underground car park.
‘I’m afraid I don’t quite understand,’ Seth sniffs, whipping a monogrammed white hanky from his breast pocket and wiping his long, bony nose with a flourish, a mannerism of his that, quite irrationally, drives me up the walls. I mean who in this day and age still uses linen hankies anyway?
‘Couldn’t you simply have assigned this lead to one of the dozens of reporters still in the building, who’d only relish a new story?’ he asks, eyebrows arching skywards. ‘It’s not as though the editor has time to run around chasing up every single lead that lands in here. Surely your skills would be put to far better use elsewhere?’
‘Thanks for your concern,’ I snap back at him, sounding rude and not even bothering to conceal my waspishness. ‘But my source would meet me and only me, in person, and frankly I’m not prepared to discuss the matter any further.’
Nosey, slimy git … Who does he think he is anyway? Telling me how to do my job?
‘Well, I’ll see you back here for our next news conference in half an hour then,’ he throws back at me, still sounding unconvinced, as I turn on my heel and stomp off.
Imagine Seth Coleman going to a sperm bank, I find myself furiously thinking as I belt my raincoat tight around me and stomp down the street. Jesus, and some poor misguided woman unwittingly giving birth to his child?
Doesn’t even bear thinking about.
It’s freezing cold, wild and windy and takes me the guts of about ten minutes to get to Pearce Square, just off busy, bustling Pearce St, only finally clearing itself of rush hour traffic now. The address I have is for number twenty-four, and I find it easily enough. Small, corporation two-up, two-down redbrick, a nothing-special kind of house in an identical terrace of houses just like it, with no ornamentation of any kind to be seen, not a bedding plant or a window box in sight, nothing.
I press the doorbell and wait. And wait. Press again, still nothing. I wait a bit more, then glance anxiously at my watch and decide I’m only wasting my time and might as well get back to work before I’m missed. I’m just about to admit defeat and head back, when an elderly woman in a headscarf battling against the wind and pushing one of those tartan wheelie shopping trolleys that old ladies love so much shuffles by, notices me, then stops dead in her tracks.
‘Are you looking for Michelle, love?’ she asks, sounding genuinely concerned about me, looking as out of place as I do in my little black power suit and briefcase in the middle of a residential corporation estate.
I must look like I’ve come to foreclose on a mortgage.
‘I’m sorry, did you say Michelle?’ I ask. Michelle? Some girlfriend of William’s, maybe?
‘Yes, that’s the owner of number twenty-four. She rents out rooms for a few extra quid, cash only, sure you know yourself.’ Then suddenly, she clamps her hand over her mouth, like she’s only just realised the full import of what she’s said and is now desperately trying to claw the sentence back from out of thin air.
‘Ah here … You’re not by any chance from the Inland Revenue are you?’
‘No, no I’m not …’
‘Because when I said she only takes cash, I didn’t really mean it the way it came out, honest to God I didn’t …’
‘It’s absolutely fine,’ I reassure her and she looks so petrified that I nearly want to smile. ‘I promise you, I don’t work for the tax office, but what I’m actually trying to do is trace someone who used to live here … who might even live here still …’
‘Lot of tenants came through here, love.’
‘Yes but you see, there’s one in particular …’
‘Michelle’s the best person for you to ask then. But you’ll never get her home at this time.’
‘Do you know where I might find her?’
‘Course love, she’ll be in work by now. She always starts early, round this time. You should get her there.’
‘And where’s that exactly?’
‘The Widow Maguire’s pub. Only ten minutes down the road from here. Michelle does a lovely chicken and chips in a basket, you should give it a try if you haven’t had your dinner yet.’
‘Great, thanks so much, you’ve been really helpful.’
‘Not at all love. They’ll be delighted with the extra bit of business.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Oh, health and safety closed them down a few weeks back. Something about mouse droppings in the kitchen. But I’m sure it’s all sorted out by now.’
Lovely.
As if on cue, the heavens start to open and of course I can’t get a cab, so I’m like a bedraggled, drowned rat by the time I find the pub and burst in out of the lashing rain. It’s a Thursday night so the place is fairly busy, though the clientele seems to be predominantly male and with an average age of about seventy-five. A real old-fashioned man’s drinking bar.
Like in a Western, the minute I step through the door, soaking to the skin and clutching a soggy copy of today’s Post as a makeshift umbrella, all eyes turn to me and unless I’m very much mistaken, the whole place gets that bit quieter. Gravelly voices drop to whispers as they all take me in, looking utterly out of place as I must.
Aware that time is ticking and that I need to get back to the office ASAP, I steel myself and approach a bosomy, middle-aged woman with a spiky, gelled-back haircut behind the bar, who’s