Then She Vanishes(55)
‘No. Sorry. I only saw them together a few times. Adam never came in again. And then not long after that I caught Clive trying to deal drugs and, well, that was the end of that.’ He lifts his shoulders into a half-hearted shrug.
‘And how long ago was all this?’
He frowns, remembering. ‘The drugs thing happened a week or so before he died, so … yes, before that.’
I push my business card towards him, asking him to call me if he remembers anything else. Then Jack and I take our drinks and crisps and go to sit at a quiet table.
Adam knew Clive. Does that mean Heather did too? And, if so, what were they involved in?
We’re walking up Park Street towards the newsroom when I see it. The headline jumps out at me from the stand outside the newsagent’s. TRAGIC SISTER’S EX REVEALS SEASIDE SHOOTER’S VIOLENT PAST. The bloody Daily News. Again.
Jack, who has only just noticed I’ve stopped, retraces his steps to join me. He’s eating a Brie baguette from a paper bag. ‘Shit,’ he says, through a mouthful of food, his eyes scanning the article over my shoulder.
‘I was friends with Heather when this happened. It’s not as bad as it sounds.’
It had been the night we’d gone back to the fair to find Flora. It wasn’t long before she went missing. We’d bumped into Dylan on the Waltzers and he said Flora had already left. But on the way home we found her slumped in the field, absolutely off her head on God knew what. Looking back now she was experiencing a bad trip. She must have taken some kind of hallucinogenic. But in 1994 we were just kids and knew nothing about drugs. We’d managed to help her home and avoid Margot finding out, mainly because Leo had come to the rescue, helping us put Flora to bed. I’d stayed over that night and we’d taken it in turns to watch Flora, to make sure she didn’t choke on vomit or do anything stupid. As far as I’m aware, Margot never had a clue, but when Dylan turned up the next evening to see Flora, Heather went absolutely ballistic, striking him with her riding crop – although I wasn’t there, she told me about it later. And I didn’t blame her.
It was only a few days afterwards that Flora went missing for good.
And all these years later I’m still not convinced that Dylan had had nothing to do with it. He had an alibi in his mum’s boyfriend, apparently, but that doesn’t mean anything. His alibi could have been lying too.
I’ve often wondered if maybe Dylan accidentally gave her a drug overdose, then had help in covering it up; maybe he thought he could convince everyone she’d simply run away. Until it was obvious that she hadn’t: no money had left her account, her passport was still at home and none of her clothes or belongings had been taken. And we all knew that Flora wouldn’t have left her family. She was close to them.
I’ve tried to hunt down Dylan Bird since this all happened but I couldn’t turn up an address for him. ‘How did fucking Harriet Hill find him?’ I spit, stabbing at the paper with my finger. ‘Shit, Ted’s going to go mental. He’s still pissed off that they got the Sheila story.’
Jack swallows his sandwich. ‘Yes, but we’ve got this drugs thing. That’s good. The News don’t have that. And you’ve got the interview with Heather’s uncle later.’
I groan, knowing that won’t be enough for Ted.
‘And they printed the Margot exclusive today. Nobody else has got that either. Jess,’ he places a hand on my shoulder, ‘don’t sweat it.’
‘She must have bloody good contacts. Better than me.’
There’s nothing Jack can say to that. Harriet Hill not only works for a more successful newspaper but it’s a daily and has a wider circulation. She’s been there for years and probably has hundreds of contacts in all the right places. Whereas I – a recently disgraced national news reporter – am still finding my way.
Jack takes my arm and leads me along the street. ‘Come on,’ he says. ‘It won’t be that bad.’
It is that bad. Ted rants at me, Jack, even Ellie the trainee, although she hasn’t done anything apart from sit at the computer typing up press releases.
‘Dylan Bird,’ he yells. ‘Such an obvious one. We should have this story. Not the fucking Daily News.’
I want to tell him we can’t have everything, that we’re doing our best. And what about the reporters at HQ? I don’t see them helping us out with this.
‘You,’ he says, rounding on me. ‘You know the family. You have an in, for Christ’s sake. Use it to your advantage, would you?’
Before I can reply he storms back to his desk behind his partition. If he had a door I know he would have slammed it.
I don’t get the chance to tell him that at least we have a story about Clive’s drug-dealing past.
I spend the rest of the afternoon with my head down, typing up the story about Clive being barred from the pub, although I’ve missed the deadline, which means it won’t go in until Friday’s paper. I want to tell Ted that it’s not my fault the Daily News has one over on us – mainly the fact that they’re daily. Their stories will always hit newsstands first, and their website is plusher and more modern than ours.
Our front-page story today was that Heather had come around from her coma (something the sodding News hasn’t got, although did Ted focus on that? No. He’s too busy worrying about the stories we don’t have). I asked the subs at HQ to keep my by-line off the story. I’m sure Margot will suspect it’s me, but equally it won’t be long before the other papers get hold of it. I kept it brief and to the point so as not to antagonize Margot – or, more particularly, Adam.