It was a blustery Friday morning and the clubhouse café was relatively quiet; perfect conditions for two journalists who had sensitive matters to discuss. The air was thick with the smell of crispy bacon and fried mushrooms, but Leanne and Frankie had settled for coffee and Danish pastries so they could eat with their fingers as they worked.
Frankie was Leanne’s senior by ten years and had joined the Courier straight from university. She had a round, open face, and deep brown eyes that gave an intensity to her stare. She was good with people, much better than Leanne.
‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ Frankie asked. She had arrived with a bundle of files, one for each of the Empress Theatre fatalities.
‘We don’t need to go through every single file.’ Leanne broke off a sliver of Danish pastry as if she had an appetite. She struggled to swallow it. ‘Amelia’s rescuer was definitely female, so we can discount all the men.’
Leanne watched as Frankie sorted through the Manila folders and separated them into two piles. There was a name written on the front of each, and Declan Gallagher’s name was uppermost on the discarded stack.
Frankie smoothed her dark hair, which was pulled tight against her scalp. ‘Ready?’
‘How many are left?’
‘Seven, including two teens. Should we discount them too?’
‘To be honest, I’m not sure. I’ve managed to speak to the man who carried Amelia out, but he wasn’t much help at all,’ Leanne said, recalling the phone call she had made after her interview with the Parkers.
Once Leanne had realised Rex Russell could give no better a description than Amelia, she had wanted to cut their conversation short, but Rex had insisted on explaining himself. He said he may have seen Amelia earlier, he really couldn’t be sure, but he was very clear in his recollections of what happened after the ceiling had collapsed. He described hearing the cries for help from those caught in the crush, and how those cries had diminished very quickly, how the brutal pressure of bodies would have stolen the oxygen from the victims’ lungs long before the smoke could get them. He acknowledged that he and his family were lucky, but he regretted not persuading more people to follow him after he spotted an alternative escape route through a side exit. He had been on his way out when he had heard another cry for help.
‘He was pretty traumatised to be fair,’ Leanne added. ‘When he had seen a woman coming towards him with a little girl’s limp body in her arms, he had assumed the worst. As far as he was concerned, he was being handed a dead child and was too shocked to register much about the woman. He said her face was covered in dust and her hands in blood, but he couldn’t even describe her ethnicity. The only useful piece of information he could offer was that she was around five foot seven or eight.’ She stared at the files. ‘That might discount the younger ones.’
‘I do have some physical descriptions, so let’s check as we go along,’ Frankie said, pulling the first file towards her.
Leanne wasn’t sure what she had expected, but the contents of Frankie’s files were sparse. It felt wrong that a dozen or so pieces of paper should represent the sum total of a person’s life. The front sheet listed some basic facts, such as the victim’s age, along with contact details for the family.
The first file was for Hilary Clarke, and underneath the top sheet was a photocopied photograph. It was a professional headshot of Hilary, and one that had been used regularly across the media since the fire. There were other images too, and Leanne sifted through them while Frankie checked her notes.
‘Hilary’s body was found upstairs in the circle. One of her students, a young lad called Jack, says she pushed him out of the way as the ceiling collapsed. She might be a hero, but she’s not Amelia’s.’
Leanne stared at a photo that would have been taken half a century ago. It was an iconic shot of a ballet dancer onstage, long limbs extended with apparent ease. ‘She was stunning.’
‘And absolutely adored by her students,’ Frankie added. ‘She didn’t have children of her own, but she was godparent to dozens.’
Frankie paused long enough to acknowledge the life lost, before closing the file.
The next victim was the youngest, and Leanne wasn’t sure if they were quick to discount her because she was clearly too short, or because neither of them could bear to look at the photos. There was a collection of Instagram pouts and raucous laughter shots of the sixteen-year-old with her friends. She had been a crush victim, and Frankie had spoken at length to her parents. She summed up their conversation in one word.
‘Harrowing.’
The third file was discounted almost as quickly; a woman in her thirties who had suffered catastrophic injuries as a result of the ceiling collapse. She had been seated in the stalls, so she would have been closer to Amelia than Hilary, but there were witnesses who were able to account for her movements right up until her death. The witnesses were her two children, who had been protected by their mother from the falling debris. They had suffered only minor scratches, but major trauma that would last a lifetime.
‘Do you need a break?’ asked Frankie, resting her hand over the name on the next file.
Leanne knew what was coming. She gritted her teeth and shook her head. ‘No, I’m OK.’
‘We know it wasn’t Lois,’ Frankie said, not needing to open the file. Lois Granger’s boyfriend had been with her the whole time, and had watched her die.
‘Next,’ Leanne said miserably.
The fifth file wasn’t so easy to discount. Angela Morris was a teacher at a local primary school. She had gone to the theatre with the girls from work to cheer on some of their students. She was an asthmatic and, after becoming separated from her friends, she had been overcome by smoke and dust, and her body was recovered from inside the theatre.
‘If it was Angela, her difficulty in breathing might explain why she couldn’t carry Amelia out by herself,’ Leanne said.
They created a separate pile just for Angela before tackling the penultimate file. Seeing the face of another teenager was too much for Leanne.
‘This is so wrong,’ she said, her voice becoming a hiss. ‘These people had lives to live, whether it could be counted in years or decades. They should be flesh and blood, not bits of paper.’
‘You’ll get no argument from me,’ Frankie said, closing the girl’s file with the same reverence she had given to the others. The youngster was another crush victim, which meant she too had been trapped following the collapse.
‘Nearly there,’ Leanne said, watching Frankie pull the last file towards her. They should be thankful that there weren’t more. Amelia’s details could so easily have been amongst Frankie’s files. Mal was right. They had to find this woman.
‘Lena Kowalski,’ said Frankie, turning a page. ‘She became separated from her fiancé quite early on. He was inconsolable when I spoke to him. Apparently they’d had an argument about which exit to use, and Lena chose one of the side exits. It’s not clear yet if she was hit by debris from the first ceiling collapse or later on. There were at least two other cave-ins, one that sealed off the last serviceable stairwell to the upper floor, and another directly over the stalls.’
Leanne checked the top sheet of information. ‘She was Polish?’
‘Living in the UK for five years.’
‘So she would have an accent,’ Leanne said, touching the file with the tip of her finger. ‘Amelia said her hero had a nice voice. I did ask if she had an accent, but she couldn’t say.’
‘Any voice must sound nice if you’re trapped in a burning building and someone wants to rescue you.’
‘True, but it certainly doesn’t eliminate her as a possibility.’ Leanne sat back and sipped her coffee as Frankie added the last folder to the new pile. ‘So we have to two potential candidates.’
‘Or it could be someone else entirely. There are lots of reasons why a person would choose not to come forward,’ added Frankie. ‘Not everyone wants to bare their soul to the press. I haven’t spoken to a single survivor who wasn’t traumatised in some way. They each have their own story, and pulling Amelia from the rubble might be only one small part of her rescuer’s. Who knows what else happened to her?’
‘But I promised Amelia I’d help find her hero. What do I do if I can’t get beyond a shortlist?’ asked Leanne despairingly. ‘I’m not sure there’s anything I can write that will add to the attempts Kathryn Parker has made already.’
‘Want my advice?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘Don’t include any speculation about who you think this woman might be, because that will only lead potential witnesses. Ask the public to fill in the gaps of Amelia’s memory and, to add a bit of jeopardy, be upfront and suggest that the truth may never be uncovered. No one wants an act of bravery to go unrecognised. If, by some miracle, you can identify her, this could be quite the story, Leanne. We all love a reluctant hero. We like to think it could have been us.’
‘Except life isn’t a neat movie script,’ countered Leanne with a spray of spittle. The swell of anger had taken her by surprise. ‘Not everyone can be a hero, and not everyone gets to be saved by one either. Who was there for Angela Morris when she collapsed? Who was ready to push Lena Kowalski out of the way of falling rubble? Lois’s so-called boyfriend was three feet away when the life was crushed out of her, for Christ’s sake.’ She paused, her jaw twitching as she clenched her teeth. ‘There were six hundred people in the theatre that night, and not all of them were thinking selfless thoughts. People shoved Amelia’s mum out of the way hard enough to break bones, all while she was screaming for her daughter.’
Frankie didn’t interrupt until she was satisfied that Leanne’s rage was spent. ‘Do you want me to write Amelia’s story?’
‘No, I’ll do it,’ Leanne said a little too sharply. ‘Sorry, Frankie. Thanks for the offer, but I’m already in Mal’s bad books.’
‘He’s worried about you, that’s all. He doesn’t want you to lose your way.’
Leanne glanced out of the window and across the marina. Boats were bobbing up and down in the water, moving, but getting nowhere. ‘Has he spoken to you about me?’
‘He showed me the piece you wrote about Phillipa Montgomery.’
‘Do you think it was too much?’
‘Possibly too soon,’ Frankie conceded.
‘I asked Claudia Rothwell about her, but she claims they weren’t close.’
Frankie shrugged. ‘It’s probably true. I can’t recall ever hearing Claudia’s name associated with Phillipa, in fact I’d never heard of Claudia before the fire. Had you?’
‘No,’ Leanne said, recalling Claudia’s nervousness. She didn’t come across as an attention seeker, or at least not a successful one. ‘Claudia did mention Bryony Sutherland though. She thinks she’s still in contact with Phillipa. I recognise the name, but that’s about it.’
‘Her family built up a pottery business that specialises in tableware. Bryony’s fortune was literally handed to her on a plate,’ Frankie replied. ‘She always struck me as one of Phillipa’s loyal foot soldiers, so I imagine they would have stayed in touch.’
‘Did you ever interview her about the fire?’
‘She’s been a consistent no comment.’ Frankie raised an eyebrow. ‘Why? Have you tried?’
‘Not yet, but I will. I don’t see why any of them should get away with it.’
‘No one’s saying they will, Leanne, but you need to be prepared for things not to go as you might wish. I agree wholeheartedly that the renovation was a vanity project, but I’m not sure I’d go as far as to say there was negligence, not yet. The fire investigators have given nothing away so far.’ She paused and wrinkled her nose. ‘Well, almost nothing.’
When Frankie flicked a glance at the discarded files, and one file in particular, Leanne sat upright. ‘What have you heard? Is it about Declan?’ she asked, pulling his file towards her. Frankie didn’t object when she opened it.
‘Don’t get too excited, and do not let Mal know I’ve mentioned this to you,’ she warned. ‘You might have been right to question what Declan was doing there. You’re not the only one wondering why the coroner couldn’t give the same assurance he gave to other families before suspending the inquests. According to my source, Declan’s injuries were unlike any of the other victims’.’
‘They think he was murdered?’ Leanne asked. She had to admit, she had fantasised about killing him herself had he lived, and wouldn’t be surprised if someone had beaten her to it. If you couldn’t blame an electrician for an electrical fault that killed eleven innocent people, who could you blame?
Frankie gave her a withering look. ‘Didn’t I just say, don’t get too excited? The comment made to me was that the investigators were concentrating on where he was found and where he had been. Read into that what you will.’
Leanne’s mind made leaps and bounds. ‘So my theory holds, he could have sneaked into the offices. It was an enclosed space, and if the fire had reached there, he could have suffered burns. Or maybe he did some burning of his own to destroy evidence.’
‘And that would be why they haven’t released any of the forensic evidence until the public inquiry has concluded its investigations – so people don’t start coming up with their own theories.’
‘He’s guilty as hell, whatever he was up to,’ Leanne said, removing the cover sheet to reveal the employee photo that had been provided by Ronson Construction. It was a head and shoulder shot and, despite the harsh lighting, the thirty-seven-year-old electrician from Donegal was handsome, with deceptively kind eyes. What was he thinking in his last moments? Did he realise people were dying, some of them no more than children? Did he care?
‘We’re not going to get any answers until mid-November,’ Frankie said. ‘That’s the latest timescale for when we’ll receive the official verdict.’
It was only the beginning of October and they had the anniversary to get through first, but Leanne couldn’t wait that long. It wasn’t fair on the families and friends of the victims. It wasn’t fair, full stop. She flicked back to the cover page. There were contact details in both Northern Ireland and Sedgefield. ‘Have you spoken to his family?’
‘I had an interesting chat with his ex-wife. Apparently he was quite a character, but that was as close as she got to saying something nice about him.’
‘I’m not going to like him, am I?’
‘You mean you did before?’ Frankie asked, not needing an answer. She had read Leanne’s draft article after all. ‘Declan had a troubled childhood from what I can gather. His dad left home when he was young, never to be seen again, and it seems the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. When Declan’s wife accused him of having an affair, rather than deal with it to save his marriage, he walked out on her and their three kids, all under the age of ten. That’s why he ended up in Sedgefield.’
‘He was running away,’ Leanne concluded.
‘In the sporadic conversations he’d had with his ex, which I imagine weren’t particularly pleasant, Declan kept promising he’d move back to be closer to the children. He was waiting for the work on the theatre to be signed off, but she says he didn’t sound too upset about the delays in completion.’
‘He didn’t want to go back, not even for his kids,’ Leanne said with disgust. ‘I bet he didn’t see the similarity between his life choices and his dad’s.’
‘That type never do.’
‘And what about Karin?’ Leanne tapped a finger against her name in the contacts section. ‘What’s she said about him?’
‘I haven’t spoken to her directly, but I did receive a rather ambiguous statement via her flatmate who was with her that night. The line is that Karin will never get over what happened and that she grieves for all the victims.’
‘Is that it?’
‘Yep.’
‘She didn’t mention Declan explicitly?’
Frankie reached towards Declan’s file and turned a few pages. She stopped at a sheet that was blank except for an email heading from someone called Beth McCulloch with two sentences printed below it. Frankie had repeated the statement given on behalf of Karin Gallagher almost verbatim.
‘Don’t you find that odd?’ asked Leanne. ‘She must be aware of the rumours implicating Declan, but chooses not to stand up and defend him. That says it all.’ She closed the file before adding, ‘Is Mal insisting you write a piece about him too? Do we have to see his face amongst the real victims?’
‘Let’s just say I plan to write something short and simple that we can hide at the back of the paper.’ Seeing the reaction being played out on Leanne’s face, Frankie continued quickly, ‘In the absence of any evidence to confirm or disprove that he was in some way responsible for the tragedy, we have to remain unbiased. Whatever Declan’s past misdemeanours, it’s not for us to say if his loss deserves to be mourned or not.’
‘Not yet.’
‘I promise you, I’m writing what I think is a fair account at this moment in time,’ said Frankie. ‘But if and when wrongdoing is proven, I’ll be more than happy to help you browbeat Mal into publishing your article.’
‘You don’t want to write something yourself?’
‘No, this one’s yours,’ Frankie promised. Her features softened. ‘But in the meantime, we need to concentrate on celebrating the lives of the good people of this town.’
Leanne cast an eye around the café, as if one glance could distinguish the good from the bad, the selfless from the selfish. There were only a few customers left, and she recognised every face as a fellow boat owner or a regular from the town. How many would put their lives on the line for each other?
The café manager, Dianne, was cleaning tables, and caught Leanne staring at her. She came over.
‘Can I get you ladies a fresh brew?’
Frankie was already gathering up her files. ‘Thanks, but I’ve got places to be, people to see.’
‘I’m OK for now, Di,’ said Leanne.
Dianne pursed her lips and the feathering of wrinkles around her mouth deepened. She twisted the spray bottle in her hand and, although she turned as if to leave, her feet remained planted. ‘There was someone looking for you the other day,’ she said, her casual tone a contrast to her awkward pose. ‘Did he track you down?’
‘No,’ Leanne replied. She didn’t need to ask for details. She knew who was stalking her.
‘He wanted to go through our door,’ Dianne said, tipping her head towards what was the only entry point to the marina other than the rusted security gate. The door was strictly for use by boat owners and authorised personnel. ‘I told him he’d have to phone you to let him in.’
‘I’ve blocked his number,’ Leanne said. ‘And if he does come back, please tell him we have nothing to say to each other.’
‘I understand, love, you’ve been through enough. And I’ll remind everyone to keep the security tight. Leave it with me.’
‘Thanks, Di.’
When Dianne had gone back to work, Frankie stopped packing up. ‘Was that Joe you were talking about by any chance?’
‘He’s tried before.’
‘I interviewed him about Lois,’ Frankie admitted. ‘He asked after you. Do you not think—’
Leanne didn’t give Frankie the chance to finish that thought. ‘I don’t want to see him.’ When Frankie didn’t move, she added, ‘I thought you were leaving?’
‘I am, but you know where I am if you need some company.’
‘Thanks, but right now, I have a deadline to meet,’ Leanne said, checking her watch. She had only hours left to submit Amelia’s story. The public appeal to find a hero would be launched in twenty-four hours, alongside the feature on Claudia and her charity work; two feel-good stories that didn’t rest easy with Leanne.
‘Are you sure you don’t want me to write this one?’ asked Frankie.
‘No, I can do it,’ Leanne said. She stood to give her friend and colleague a hug, urging her to go before her resolve weakened.
After Frankie had left, Leanne sipped the dregs of her coffee and pulled a face as she swallowed the cold, bitter liquid. She needed to return to the boat and get to work, but first she wrote down the Sedgefield address she had memorised from Declan’s folder.