Sitting cross-legged on the futon with her laptop resting on a cushion, Leanne closed her eyes and listened to the gentle lap of water hitting the sides of the boat. She was entering her third week of enforced leave and was getting nowhere fast. She hadn’t been ashore for days, and spent most of her time surfing the internet. Today’s session had drawn another blank, and there wasn’t a YouTube video, witness account, or committee report left that she hadn’t dissected and devoured.
When she slammed her laptop shut, a chorus of quacks rose up nearby. The resident family of ducks had wrongly assumed that the noise heralded an appearance on deck, but the container of oats and seeds that Lois had kept to feed her feathered friends was empty, and had been for some time.
Rearranging her work environment without getting up, Leanne shoved her laptop between a cereal bowl plastered with the dried-up remnants of breakfast, and a buttery plate from last night’s supper. From beneath some clean, or possibly dirty laundry, she retrieved a file that had grown at the same rate as her frustration. It contained a typed transcript of the exchange between Claudia and Amelia on the night of the anniversary, and the notes that Leanne had put together from all her other interviews, including the most recent ones.
Leanne had managed to track down the paramedic, but she had nothing new to add. Apparently, her speech had been vetted by Justin, and everything else would remain confidential. Reading between the lines, there was nothing more anyway.
Rex Russell, meanwhile, was happy to talk to Leanne, but it had reached the point where, if someone wanted to suggest that Amelia’s rescuer had been walking around in a Donald Duck outfit, he would happily agree. As leads went, it was a dead end.
Leafing through her accumulated evidence, she picked up a child’s drawing of a torch. It was the sketch Amelia had promised her, but it lacked any real detail, even for a ten-year-old. The schoolgirl could remember the light, but distinctly less about the item that had produced it, and her depiction was based almost entirely on its shape and touch as she clenched it in her fist. It wasn’t much, but it was all Leanne had.
Two things struck her about the torch. Firstly, there was no doubt that it was small enough for Amelia to hold in her palm, so it couldn’t be the kind used by ushers, and Leanne had already spoken to an ex member of staff to confirm this. The second thing was that there were at least two keys also attached to the key ring, according to Amelia’s drawing. If they were house keys, it would explain why the woman who rescued Amelia had made sure to get the key ring back, and it would also indicate that it was an item in daily use. It wasn’t something half-forgotten at the bottom of a designer handbag. It didn’t sound like it should be forgotten at all.
After staring at Amelia’s drawing until her eyes stung, Leanne closed the file. One notable omission from her investigation was a follow-up response from Claudia. She was ignoring Leanne’s calls and, although Leanne had considered camping outside the Rothwells’ security gates, she was unsure what would be gained from it. The opportunity to catch Claudia out had been missed. Leanne should have delayed the reunion until she had set her trap properly, but deep down she hadn’t wanted to believe that Claudia had fooled her. She had fallen for the reluctant hero act, along with everyone else.
At least Claudia knew now that not everything she said was being believed, but was it too late to prove she was a fraud?
With a groan, Leanne let the file slide off her lap and onto the mound of scrunched-up clothes. Averting her eyes from the mess, the clutter, and the unfinished painting on the back of the cabin doors, she uncurled her legs and stood up. The circulation was returning to her tingling toes when she heard a tap on the window behind her. She turned to see a pair of legs standing on the jetty. The man wore brown brogues and green corduroy trousers, which immediately excluded Joe. She wondered if it might be a fellow boater, but there was only one person in her life who dressed like a seventies schoolteacher.
‘Shit,’ she muttered. ‘Oh, shit.’
Leanne scooped up the discarded clothes and shoved them under the futon, which was already crammed with stacks of paperwork and other rubbish she kept out of sight. She heard the awning being unzipped and, a moment later, the boat rocked as it adjusted to the weight of a heavyset man. Mal was on board, waiting by the hatch to gain entry. Or at least she hoped he was waiting. The cabin doors weren’t locked.
‘I won’t be a minute!’ she shouted as she picked up her bowl, two plates, and a selection of mugs that had been growing mould. She stacked them on the draining board on top of other dirty dishes before covering the mountain of shame with a tea towel.
Leanne cast a glance around the boat. Hopefully her editor wouldn’t ask to use the bathroom, which was full of rubbish bags she had been planning to take to the marina’s disposal point at some point today, possibly. It was mostly empty pizza boxes and wine bottles. She grabbed a can of air freshener and sprayed generously before attending to her guest. It was only as she was opening the doors that she realised she was still in her pyjamas, and stained ones at that. She raked her fingers through her unwashed hair.
‘How did you get into the marina?’
‘Morning to you too,’ Mal said as he climbed down the short set of steps into the boat. Balanced in one hand were two coffee cups with the Raven Brook logo stamped on the front. ‘These are courtesy of Dianne.’
Leanne took a proffered cup, but kept her scowl. ‘I’m surprised she let you through.’
Mal patted the pocket of his waterproof jacket. ‘Press pass. I told her you were expecting me.’
‘I wasn’t. You never come here,’ she said. She remained standing. ‘Why are you here, Mal?’
Her editor unzipped his jacket. ‘Phew, it’s warm in here. That log burner kicks out some heat.’
Mal looked at the aforementioned log burner as if it were the most fascinating piece of archaic technology he had ever seen. It gave Leanne the chance to catch up with her thoughts. Mal never made house calls, which meant it had to be bad news and, even though that was something the Courier thrived upon, this was going to be personal. She briefly considered if he was about to turn her sabbatical into a permanent arrangement, but Leanne’s anniversary articles had paid dividends for the paper. That couldn’t be it. She shuddered despite the heat that enthralled Mal. The fire.
‘It’s the public inquiry, isn’t it? You’ve seen the findings.’
The lines around Mal’s eyes deepened, then softened. ‘Why don’t we sit down?’
‘Tell me,’ she said, but in that moment, she knew. Not trusting herself to hold hot liquid, she placed her coffee cup on a shelf. ‘Phillipa’s got away with it, hasn’t she? I told you they’d cover it up! I knew it! I fucking knew it!’
Mal set down his cup too. He went to put an arm on Leanne’s shoulder, but she shrugged him off. Her cheeks burned, her eyes blazed, and any tears that threatened were eviscerated by her anger. She would not cry.
‘The report is embargoed until tomorrow, but yes, I’ve seen it,’ Mal said. ‘Leanne, it’s not a whitewash. There is the possibility of legal action against some, but—’
‘But not Phillipa.’
‘There will be lessons learnt.’
‘Lessons?’ she mocked. ‘How does that help any of the families who lost the people they love?’
‘There’s no evidence that the restoration work was below standard. All the building regulations were met, the correct materials were used, in fact there’s some praise for the levels of fire retardancy that delayed the spread of the fire on the lower levels. It was an electrical fault in a control panel. The initial fire burnt out quickly, but sparks had travelled into the roof space where it was contained long enough to spread without being detected. By the time the alarm sounded, it was already out of control.’
Leanne had turned away with her hands over her ears, but Mal carried on.
‘It was a freak combination of failures that, on their own, would have caused minimal damage, but combined together, it was … Well, we know what it was.’
‘It was the end of the world,’ she said, her voice failing her.
‘The control panel was made in Lithuania, and the manufacturers have issued a recall. There may be a case for corporate manslaughter if it can be proven that they knew the fault existed before the fire, and that’s something that will be actively pursued. Justice might not look like we imagined, but it will come.’
‘And what happens to Phillipa?’ Leanne asked, twisting around to face him. ‘Does she get a slap on the wrist?’
‘Not even that.’
‘But she opened the theatre before the restoration was complete.’
‘The completion works in the function rooms were purely cosmetic and were only being carried out when the theatre wasn’t in use. All the health and safety measures were in place, every box was ticked.’
‘We can all tick boxes, Mal. It doesn’t mean a job’s been carried out competently,’ she said. ‘And what about the bad wiring? It must have contributed to the fire.’
‘There was no bad wiring. The building contractor has been exonerated. Declan Gallagher has been exonerated.’
‘But the alarms didn’t go off—’
‘The smoke was in the roof, above the sensors. Again, that’s something the investigators have picked up in their recommendations. And there’s some criticism too of the response from the fire brigade.’
‘Of course there is,’ Leanne sneered. ‘Let’s blame the men and women who risked their lives that day. Let’s point the finger at them so we’re not looking at the politicians who cut the budgets and decided that what Sedgefield needed was some swanky bistro with a fireman’s pole rather than an actual fire station.’ She stopped to suck air into her lungs in one gulp. ‘And let’s not upset the people who cared more about the aesthetics of the town than the well-being of its citizens.’
‘Leanne,’ Mal said, far too gently.
‘Stop!’ she replied, backing away. ‘Don’t be nice to me.’
‘Let’s sit down.’
Tremors rocked Leanne’s body. ‘People died,’ she reminded him. ‘Innocent people who would have been terrified at the end. They knew they were trapped. They couldn’t breathe, and they knew they were going to die. What must that have felt like, Mal?’ The answer came not with words, but with the tightening of her chest and a constriction in her throat. ‘Do you think maybe, just maybe, they thought about us in their last moments? Did they wonder how we’d carry on? At the very least, they would have expected us to make the bastards pay for what they did!’
‘They would have thought about their loved ones,’ Mal agreed. He took a step closer. ‘Lois would have thought about her best friend, and how she was going to cope without her.’
‘Don’t,’ Leanne begged, her words coming out as a gasp.
‘She would want you to search for the truth, whatever that looked like,’ Mal said. ‘I don’t think she’d want revenge for its own sake, but then again, I never knew her. You did. What would she want, Leanne?’
Leanne’s eyes darted around the home she had once shared with her best friend. She had bought the boat, but it was Lois who had made it their home. And even though Lois was planning to move in with Joe, she had considered Leanne in her plans. She had promised faithfully that she wouldn’t leave until everything was shipshape. She wasn’t going to suddenly disappear.
Leanne’s heart clenched. She was dead. Lois was dead, and if it wasn’t Phillipa’s fault, who could she blame? Joe? Herself? Unable to go there, Leanne let out a cry that became muffled as Mal pulled her into a bear hug.
‘What would Lois want?’ he repeated.
Leanne’s legs wobbled from the sheer energy it took not to let the tears flow. Now was not the time. She dropped onto the futon and Mal sat down next to her. She took a breath and puffed out her cheeks as she released the air slowly, bringing her heart rate down so it wasn’t thumping so hard against her ribcage. ‘She’d want me to stop torturing myself. She’d expect me to find a happy ending,’ she said, glancing at the unfinished painting of the slippery, golden fish that her friend would never complete.
‘Happy endings are for fairy tales.’
‘That was Lois,’ Leanne said, attempting a smile.
Mal stretched the muscles in his neck. She could imagine he’d been dreading this conversation, but Leanne appreciated his efforts to come and tell her personally.
‘I’m going to send you the report,’ he said. ‘Read it with an open mind. You won’t be the only one who’s going to find it difficult, and our job is to guide our readers towards acceptance.’
‘You want me to write it up?’
The only article Leanne wanted to publish had been written months ago. It hadn’t been what Mal had wanted then, and he certainly wouldn’t accept it now, but that didn’t matter to Leanne. Despite the new narrative, Phillipa Montgomery was culpable of something, even if it was only conceit and snobbery. She had run away to her little chateau in the Dordogne or wherever it was, and her behaviour reeked of guilt. Leanne had seen it in her eyes on the night of the anniversary. It was like looking in a mirror.
‘I’ve asked Frankie to put something together,’ Mal said, interrupting her thoughts. ‘I know you’re still on leave, but this might be the time to write that final article on the Empress fire. You can connect with our readers in a way that no one else at the Courier can. This is your town, Leanne. Lois was your friend. You’re looking for resolution just like everyone else in Sedgefield.’
‘I won’t do it. No, definitely not.’
‘Grief has a way of eating you from the inside if you let it,’ Mal warned. ‘One day, you wake up and you see someone you don’t recognise.’ His gaze had a glassy quality as if he were looking directly into the past. ‘I don’t want that to happen to you.’
Leanne hadn’t known Mal when he lost his wife, Jill, six years ago, but she had seen photos of him before his beer gut and frayed edges. According to Frankie, the couple had been saving up for a retirement cottage in the Lake District. He had never talked about retirement in all the time that Leanne had been at the Courier.
‘I accept what you’re saying,’ she replied, ‘but I’m not there yet, and I won’t be the only one in Sedgefield who feels like that. Some wounds won’t heal while there are questions to be answered.’
‘It could be years before families get their day in court, and the defendants aren’t going to be the ones you’d imagined taking the stand. It’s time to stop this witch-hunt.’
Shuffling back against the futon to create distance from the advice her editor was giving, Leanne’s hand touched the file she had been working on earlier. She explored it with her fingers as if feeling for the pulse of a dead animal. What would Claudia make of the findings? Would she act as the town’s spokesperson, while Leanne was left choking on her words?
‘Even if I could accept the findings, I can’t close my eyes to every injustice. If anything, it makes me more determined to seek them out,’ she said, searching for a new course for her anger to surge towards. ‘You said the other week that you didn’t care if Claudia had saved Amelia or not, but are you sure you can live with that? Because I can’t.’
‘I spoke out of turn. I do care, of course I do, but my main concern at this moment in time is you.’
‘Then let me do this. I need to know for sure that the person we’ve been applauding is a hero and not some glory-seeker. These people can’t hide behind their good causes and expect us not to notice when they’re taking us for idiots. Claudia didn’t save Amelia, and I’m going to prove it, with or without your blessing.’
‘I don’t know. This can’t be good for you.’
‘No, Mal. Stuck here with nothing to do but stew is no good for me.’
‘You were supposed to go home to your family and recharge your batteries.’
‘Oh, they’re recharged,’ warned Leanne with a glint in her eye. ‘And if you’re not interested in this story then you’d better hope that I don’t find my proof, because it could be a national paper grabbing the headline, not the Courier.’
Mal closed his eyes and tipped back his head.
‘I’m doing this for Lois,’ she said. ‘Heroes might exist, but they’re few and far between. We can’t all be saved, and we shouldn’t be worshipping false gods.’
Straightening up, Mal reached for his coffee. ‘I think I need something stronger,’ he said after taking a sip. He sighed. His body deflated. ‘If I say yes, it doesn’t mean it’s going to be top priority, and you have to promise that when it comes to nothing, you’ll draw a line under it and move on.’
‘Agreed,’ she said without hesitation. It wouldn’t come to nothing. The truth was waiting to be uncovered.