His and Hers

This is a stressful job at the best of times, and in the worst of times we all take comfort where we can. Most news is bad news. There are things I have seen because of my job that have changed me, as well as my view of the world and the people in it. Things I can never unsee. We are a species capable of horrific acts, and incapable of learning from the lessons our own history tries to teach us.

When you witness the horror and inhumanity of human beings close up, every single day, it permanently changes your perspective. Sometimes you just need to look the other way, and that’s all our affair was: a shared need to remember what it is like to feel something. It is not unusual for people in my line of work – half the newsroom seems to have slept with each other – and I sometimes struggle to keep up with the latest staff configurations.

Richard pulls on his coat, and I see a glimpse of a toned stomach as his arms reach for his sleeves. Then he drops his cigarette, extinguishing what is left of it with the sole of his large boot.

‘Coming?’ he asks.

He leaves the tripod behind and we walk towards the woods, no need for sticks in the mud here. I do my best to avoid all the puddles, not wanting to ruin my shoes. We don’t get far. Aside from a couple of snappers, we are the only press to have arrived, but it’s soon made clear that none of us are welcome.

‘Please stay behind the police tape,’ says a petite young woman.

Her clothes are too neat, her vowels are too pronounced, and she reminds me of a disillusioned class prefect. She waves her badge – a little self-consciously, I note – when we don’t respond, as though used to being mistaken for a schoolgirl and having to show ID. I manage to read the name ‘Patel’ but nothing else before she puts it back in her pocket. I smile, but she doesn’t.

‘We’ll be setting up a wider cordon soon. For now, can I please ask that you stay back down in the car park. This is a crime scene.’

The woman has clearly had a charisma bypass.

I can see the lights that have been set up behind her, along with a small army of people dressed in forensics suits, a few of them crouched down over something on the forest floor in the distance. They’ve already put up a tent around the body, and I know from experience that we won’t get another chance to get this close again. Richard and I exchange a silent glance, along with an unspoken conversation. He hits record on the camera and swings it up onto his shoulder.

‘Of course,’ I say, and accompany my off-white lie with a wide smile.

I do whatever I need to do to get the job done. Upsetting the police is never ideal, but sometimes unavoidable. I don’t like to burn bridges, but there tends to be another one – further upstream in this case, I suspect.

‘We’ll just get a couple of quick shots and then get out of your way,’ I say.

‘You’ll get out of the way now, and go back to the car park like she asked you.’

I take in the sight of the man who has come to stand beside the female detective. He looks like he hasn’t slept in a while, appears to have gotten dressed in the dark, and is wearing a Harry Potter-style scarf around his neck. A modern-day Columbo, minus the charm. Richard keeps filming and I stay exactly where I am. This is a familiar dance and we all know the moves – it’s the same steps for any breaking news: get the shot, get the story.

‘This footpath is a public right of way. We are perfectly entitled to film here,’ I say.

It’s the best line I can come up with, a stalling tactic to allow Richard to zoom in and get a few more close-ups of the scene.

The male detective takes a step forward and covers the lens with his hand.

‘Watch it, mate,’ Richard says, taking a step back. He points the camera at the ground.

‘I’m not your mate. Fuck off back to the car park or I’ll have you arrested.’

The male detective glares at me before turning back towards the tent.

‘We’re just doing our jobs, no need to be an arsehole,’ says Richard over his shoulder as we retreat.

‘Did you get the shot?’ I ask.

‘Of course. But I don’t like people touching my camera. We should make a complaint. Get that guy’s name.’

‘No need, already got it. His name is DCI Jack Harper.’

Richard stares at me.

‘How do you know that?’

I think for a second before answering.

‘We’ve met before.’

It’s the truth, just not the whole of it.

Him

Tuesday 08:45

Seeing Anna winds me, not that I plan on telling anyone the truth about that. I replay the encounter in my mind, until it becomes an irritating rerun I could quote line-for-line, and take my frustration out on everyone around me. I wish I had handled it better, but I’m already having the mother of bad days, and she shouldn’t be here. There is a brand-new shirt inside my wardrobe that I could have worn today, had I known I was going to see her. It’s been hanging there for months, but still has the creases from the packet it came in. I don’t know what I’m saving it for – it isn’t as though I ever go anywhere since I moved down here – and now she’s seen me looking like this, with crumpled clothes and a jacket older than some of my colleagues. I pretend not to care, but I do.

The place is swarming with satellite trucks, cameramen, and reporters. I have no idea how the press got hold of the details so soon, including her. It makes no sense. Even if they knew about a body being found, there are several entrances to these woods, which stretch for miles across the valley and surrounding hills – half of which I don’t even know – and there are more than a handful of car parks. So I don’t understand how they knew to come to this one. And Anna was pretty much the first to arrive.

I spot her talking to Priya away from the rest of the press, and resist the urge to march over and interrupt. She’s always known how to make friends out of enemies. I just hope DS Patel isn’t naïve enough to trust a journalist, or say something she shouldn’t, on or off the record. She hands Anna something. The two women smile and I have to strain to see what it is: blue plastic shoe covers. Anna leans on a tree trunk as she pulls them over her high heels. She looks over in my direction and waves, so I pretend not to see and turn away. She must have asked to borrow a pair from the forensics team, so as not to get her pretty reporting shoes dirty in the mud. Unbelievable.

‘I think I know who she is,’ says Priya, appearing by my side and interrupting my internal monologue.

At least, I hope it was internal.

I am aware that I’ve started to actually talk to myself out loud recently. I’ve caught people staring at me in the street when it happens. It mostly seems to occur when I’m overly tired or stressed, and as a middle-aged detective, living with a perpetually unhappy woman and a two-year-old child, I’m pretty much always both. I try to remember if anyone on the team smokes – perhaps I could just ponce one, calm myself down.

Priya is staring at me as though waiting for some kind of response, and I have to rewind my mind to remember what she said.

‘She’s a TV news presenter, that’s probably why you recognise her.’

My words are in too much of a hurry to leave my mouth and trip over themselves. I sound even more ill-tempered than I feel. Priya – who rides my mood swings as though they are her favourite thing in the playground – won’t let the conversation slide.

‘I meant the victim, boss. Not Anna Andrews.’ Hearing someone say her name out loud winds me a second time. I’ve no idea what face I am pulling, but Priya seems to feel the need to defend herself from it. ‘I do watch the news,’ she says, doing that strange thing again, where she sticks out her chin.

‘Good to know.’

‘In terms of the victim, I don’t know her name, yet, but I have seen her around town. Haven’t you?’

Seen her, smelled her, fucked her…

Thankfully Priya doesn’t pause long enough for me to answer.

‘She’s hard to miss, don’t you think? Or was, with the blonde hair and fancy clothes. I’m sure I’ve seen her walking along the high street with a yoga mat. Listening to the rest of the local team, it sounds like she was from here, born and raised in Blackdown. They seem to think she still lived here too, but that she worked in London. For a homeless charity. Nobody seems to remember her name.’

Rachel.

She didn’t just work for a homeless charity, she ran it, but I don’t correct Priya, or tell her that I already know almost everything there is to know about the victim. Yoga was something else that Rachel turned to after her husband turned to someone else. She became a bit obsessed with it, going four or five times a week, not that I minded. That particular hobby had benefits for us both. Apart from meeting me in car parks or the occasional hotel – we never visited each other’s homes or met in public – she didn’t seem to do a lot of socialising unless it was for work. She posted pictures of herself on Instagram with alarming regularity – which I enjoyed looking at when I was alone and thinking of her – but for someone with thousands of so-called friends online, she had surprisingly few in real life.

Maybe because she was always too busy working.

Or perhaps because other people were jealous of her perceived success.

Then again, it might have been because below the beautiful exterior, she had an ugly streak. One that I chose to ignore but couldn’t fail to see.

We’ve established a wide cordon around this particular pocket of the woods now, but it’s as though we’ve put up fly tape, the way the press insists on buzzing around, trying to get a better view. I’ve been told by higher-up-the-food-chain that I should give a statement on camera, and have received a torrent of phone calls and emails – from people I’ve never heard of at HQ – wanting me to approve a line of copy for a police social media account. I don’t do social media, except to spy on women I’m sleeping with, but lately it feels as though the powers that be think it is more important than the job. The next of kin haven’t even been informed yet, but apparently, I’m the one who needs to work on my priorities. My stomach rumbles so loudly I’m sure the whole team hears it. They all seem to be staring at me.

‘Almond?’ asks Priya, waving what looks like a packet of bird seed in my direction.

‘No. Thank you. What I want is a bacon sandwich or a—’

‘Cigarette?’

She produces a packet from her pocket, which is unexpected. Priya is one of those fancy vegetarians – a vegan – and I’ve never seen her pollute her body with anything more dangerous than a single slab of dark chocolate. She’s holding my old favourite brand of smokes in her small hand, and it’s like catching a nun reading an Ann Summers catalogue.

‘Why do you have those?’ I ask.

She shrugs. ‘Emergencies.’

I dislike her a little less than I used to and take one.

I snap it in half – an old habit of mine that makes me think this little stick of cancer will only be half as bad for me – then I let her light it. She’s so small I have to bend down, and I choose to ignore the way her hands tremble as she holds a match in one, and shelters it from the wind with the other. I’ve met former smokers who say that the smell of cigarettes now makes them feel sick. I am not like them. The first cigarette to touch my lips for two years is nothing less than ecstasy. The temporary high causes my face to accidently smile.

‘Better?’ Priya asks.

I notice that she didn’t have one.

‘Yes. Much. Organise that presser. Let’s give the hacks what they want, and hope they all sod off afterwards.’

She smiles too, as though it is contagious.

‘Yes, boss.’

‘I’m not your… never mind.’

Twenty minutes later, minus my Harry Potter scarf, I’m standing in the car park in front of ten or more cameras. I haven’t had to do anything like this for a while, not since I left London. I feel out of practice, as well as out of shape, and unconsciously suck my stomach in before I start to speak. I try to silently reassure my anxious ego that nobody I know will see this. But I’m not as good at lying to myself as I am at lying to others, and the thought brings little comfort. I remember the crumpled clothes I’m wearing; I knew I should have at least shaved this morning.

I clear my throat and am about to speak when I see her, pushing her way to the front. The other journalists look disgruntled until they turn and recognise her face. Then they step aside and let her through, as though reporter royalty has arrived. I’ve experienced enough on-camera pressers and statements in my time to know that most on-screen talent gets treated the same as everybody else. But Anna exudes confidence, even though I know the person on the inside doesn’t match the version she presents to the rest of the world.

Everyone else here seems to be dressed in muted shades of black or brown or grey – as though they deliberately colour-coordinated their clothes with the murder scene – but not her. Anna is wearing a bright red coat and dress, and I wonder if they are new; I don’t recognise them. I avoid looking in her direction, it’s distracting. Nobody here would ever guess that we know each other, and it is in both our interests to keep it that way.

I wait until I have their full attention and the rabble is silent once more, then I deliver my pre-prepared and pre-approved statement. Detectives are no longer permitted to speak for themselves. At least, I’m not. Not after the last time.

‘Early this morning, police received a report of a body being found in Blackdown Woods just outside the village. Officers attended and the body of a woman was discovered not far from the main car park. The woman has not yet been formally identified, and the death is currently unexplained. The area is cordoned off while investigations continue. There will be no further statements from this location, and I will not be answering any questions at this time.’

I would also like to take this opportunity to remind you that this is a crime scene, not an episode of whatever bullshit detective box set you’re watching on Netflix.

I don’t say the last line. At least I hope I didn’t. I start to turn away – we are deliberately not sharing very much with the press or public at this stage – but then I hear her. I’ve always loved listening to the way different people speak, it can tell you so much about them. I don’t just mean accents, I mean everything: the tone, the volume, the speed, as well as the language. The words they choose to use, and how and when and why they say them. The silences between the sentences, which can be just as loud. A person’s voice is like a wave – some just wash right over you, while others have the power to knock you down and drag you into an ocean of self-doubt. The sound of her speaking makes me feel like I’m drowning.

Anna clearly didn’t hear the part about no questions. Or, knowing her, just chose to ignore it.

‘Is it true that the victim was a local woman?’

I don’t even turn to face her.

‘No comment.’

‘You said that the death was currently being treated as unexplained, but can you confirm that this is a murder investigation?’

I’m aware that the cameras are still rolling, but start to walk away. Anna is not a woman who likes to be ignored. When she doesn’t get an answer to her last question, she asks another.

‘Is it true that the victim was found with a foreign object inside their mouth?’

Only now do I stop. I slowly turn to face her, a hundred questions colliding inside my mind as I take in the green eyes that appear to be smiling. The only two people who know about something being found inside the victim’s mouth are DS Patel and me. I deliberately haven’t told anyone else yet – it’s the sort of thing that will leak before I want it to – and Priya is as tight-lipped as a clam. Which leaves me with yet another question I can’t answer: How did Anna know?

Her

Tuesday 09:00

I ignore the stares from the other journalists and hurry back to my car. I’ve forgotten what it is like to stand in the cold for hours on end, and I regret not wearing more layers. Still, at least I look good. Better than Jack Harper at any rate. As soon as I’m inside the Mini, I turn on the engine and crank up the heating to try to warm myself. I want to make a phone call without the whole world listening in, so have asked Richard to grab a few extra shots.

It’s strange to imagine the One O’Clock News team all sitting in the newsroom without me, everything carrying on as normal, as though I were never there. I think I can persuade The Thin Controller to let me get on air with what I’ve already got. Then at least this won’t have been a complete waste of time. Best to go straight to the top for an answer, I think; today’s programme editor suffers from chronic indecision.

Finally, after listening to the phone ring for longer than it ever should when calling a network newsroom, someone answers.

‘One O’Clock News,’ she purrs.

The sound of Cat Jones’ velvety voice causes mine to malfunction.

I picture her sitting in what, only yesterday, was my chair. Answering my phone. Working with my team. I close my eyes and can see her red hair and white smile. The mental image doesn’t make me feel sick, it makes me feel thirsty. My fingers come to the rescue, and automatically start to search inside my bag for a miniature whisky. I open it, twisting the screw cap with my one free hand – I’ve had practice – and down the bottle.

‘Hello?’ says the voice on the other end, in a tone resembling the polite pre-empt people use before hanging up when nobody answers. My reply gets stuck in my throat, as though my mouth has forgotten how to form words.

‘It’s Anna,’ I manage, relieved that I can still remember my own name.

‘Anna…?’

‘Andrews.’

‘Oh, God, I’m so sorry. I didn’t recognise your voice. Did you want to speak to—’

‘Yes. Please.’

‘Of course. Let me put you on hold and see if I can grab his attention.’

I hear a click before the familiar BBC News countdown music starts to play. I’ve always rather liked it, but right now it’s deeply irritating. I glance outside the window at the rest of the press still standing around. Some of the faces are familiar and everyone seemed genuinely happy to see me, which was nice. I remember that a few of them shook my hand, and reach inside my handbag again, this time in search of an antibacterial wipe for my fingers. I’m about to hang up – tired of being kept on hold – when the sound of shouting in the newsroom replaces the music.

‘Can someone else try answering the goddamn phones when they wing? It weally isn’t difficult, and probably won’t cause wepetitive stwain injury as none of you do it vewy often. Yes, who is it?’ The Thin Controller snaps in my ear.

Despite the job title and bluster, he is a man who is rarely in control of anything. Including his speech impediment. I have often suspected that the newsroom is allergic to his imagined authority, and the chorus of phones still ringing unanswered in the background reinforces the theory.

‘It’s Anna,’ I say.

‘Anna…?’

I resist the urge to scream; forgetting me is clearly contagious.

‘Andrews,’ I reply.

‘Anna! Apologies, it’s chaos here this morning. How can I help?’

It’s a good question. Yesterday I was presenting the programme, now it feels like I’m cold calling to beg to be on it for a minute or two.

‘I’m at this murder scene in Blackdown—’

‘Is it a murder? Hang on…’ His voice changes again, and I realise he is speaking to someone else. ‘I said no to a pwe-pubescent political weporter I’ve never heard of on the PM stowy, it’s the bloody lead. Well, tell the Westminster editor to pull her head out of Downing Street’s arse for five minutes… I don’t care what they are doing for other outlets, I want a gwown-up correspondent on my bulletin, so get me one. You were saying?’

It takes a moment to realise he is speaking to me again. I’m too busy imagining him in a physical, rather than verbal, fight with the five-foot-two Westminster editor. She would end him.

‘The murder you sent me to…’ I persevere.

‘I just thought you’d wather be there than here, given what happened this morning. I did glance at the wires after the police statement. But everything I wead just said it was an unexplained death…’

‘That’s all the police are saying at the moment, but I know there’s more to it than that.’

‘How do you know?’

It’s a difficult question to answer.

‘I just do,’ I say, and my reply sounds as weak as I feel.

‘Well, call me back when you’ve got something on the wecord, and I’ll see if we can squeeze you in.’

Squeeze me in?

‘It’s going to be a big story,’ I say, not ready to give up yet. ‘It would be good to get it on-air before anyone else does.’

‘I’m sowy, Anna. Trump’s latest tweet is causing a meltdown, and it’s already a weally busy news day. Sounds to me like this body in the woods might just be a local news story, and I don’t have woom. Call if that changes, OK? Got to go.’

‘It’s not a—’

I don’t bother to finish my sentence, because he has already hung up. I disappear inside my own darkest thoughts for a while. It’s like Halloween every day in this business – grown adults wearing scary masks, pretending to be something they’re not.

Someone knocks on my window and I jump. I look up, expecting to see Richard standing outside my car, but it’s Jack, and he’s wearing his best disgruntled detective face. He looks just as angry with me as he did the last time we saw each other. I step out to join him, and smile when Jack looks over his shoulder to check if anyone is watching us. He always was slightly paranoid. He’s standing so close that I can smell the stale smoke on his breath. I’m surprised because I thought he had given it up.

‘What the fuck are you doing?’ he asks.

‘My job. It’s nice to see you too.’

‘Since when does the BBC send a presenter to a story like this?’ I regularly tell myself that I don’t care what this man thinks of me, but I still don’t want to tell him that I no longer present the programme. I don’t want to tell anyone.

‘It’s complicated,’ I say.

‘Things always are with you. What do you know and why did you ask that last question after the presser?’

‘Why didn’t you answer it?’

‘Don’t play games with me, Anna. I’m not in the mood.’

‘You never were a morning person.’

‘I’m serious. Why did you ask that?’

‘Is it true then? Was there something inside the victim’s mouth?’

‘Tell me what you think you know.’

‘You know I can’t do that. I always protect my sources.’

He takes a step closer; a little too close.

‘If you do anything to jeopardise this investigation, I will treat you the same way as I would anyone else. This is a murder scene, not Downing Street or some red-carpet film premiere.’

‘So, it is murder.’

His cheeks turn red when he realises his own mistake.

‘A woman we both know has died, show some respect,’ he whispers.

‘A woman we both know?’

He stares at me as though he thought maybe I already knew. ‘Who?’ I ask.

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Who?’ I ask again.

‘I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to cover this story.’

‘Why? You just said it was someone we both knew, so maybe you shouldn’t be investigating it.’

‘I’ve got to go.’

‘Sure. Run away like you always do.’