Kate listened as her mother ascended the stairs. She walked outside and saw Josh’s car by the gates. She buzzed him in. Just as she was walking down to meet the car her cell rang. Cynthia Ross’s name flashed up on the screen.

‘Sorry,’ she said to Josh as opened the window of the car. ‘I better take this. It’s her.’

‘Okay,’ he said, turning to the cop next to him. ‘I’ll just wait in the car with Peterson.’

‘Thanks.’

Kate lent against the trunk of the car as she answered the phone.

‘I’m so so sorry, I know you won’t - ’

‘Won’t believe what you say? Too right I won’t.’

‘But when I got back to the newsroom one of the other junior reporters had already heard that you were pregnant. I tried to tell them about our agreement, but the news editor said -’

‘What? It was just too much of a juicy titbit to ignore?’

‘No. That the news of your pregnancy could have some bearing on the nature of the crime. And that –‘

‘So you just ignored our agreement?’

‘I tried to explain, but it was a case of –‘

‘Letting another reporter get the story?’

‘Well – yes, and it was considered in the public interest to –‘

‘Bullshit. And who was the source from inside the investigation you conveniently didn’t name?’

‘You know as well as I do that I can’t give away the identity of sources.’

‘You’re full of crap, do you know that?

There was silence on the line. Kate took a deep breath, but anger still boiled inside her. She swallowed hard. Then she deliberately changed the tone of her voice so it would sound gentler, softer.

‘You know, I may have another story for you,’ said Kate.

‘Really?’

Jesus. Did this woman have no shame?

‘Yeah. When that sick fuck out there kills my baby you’ll be the first to know about it. How does that sound?’ She gave full vent to her rage now. ‘Would that make your career? Get you a good splash? Put you on the front page?’

‘I know that you must be feeling –‘

‘You don’t the first thing about it. And if that story you fed me about your mother never loving you was true, which I sincerely doubt, I reckon she was right.’ She was trembling now, consumed by anger. She could feel her face burning. ‘Who could ever love someone as despicable as you? I hope you rot in hell.’

She cut the line, feeling purged of her anger, elated almost, but then she felt immediately ashamed. Her last comments were too harsh. Yes, she hated Ross for what she had done, but she didn’t wish that on her. She almost felt like calling her back to apologise, but she realised that that would be just too ridiculous.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, as Josh got out of the car and walked towards her.

‘What’s to be sorry for?’ he said. ‘Look at you – you’re trembling. Let’s go inside.’ He banged on the side of the car. ‘Peterson, I’ll be back in a few minutes.’ He put his arm around Kate.

‘You don’t think I was too hard on her?’

‘Christ, no. I reckon hell is just the place for her.’

23

He took hold of the scissors and held them up to his face. Such beautiful things. He’d always thought so, ever since he was a child. He remembered his mother holding a pair of scissors up to the light as she sat at her sewing table. There was a roll of blue gingham spread out before her. And then she started to cut the fabric in neat, perfect lines. He adored watching her work, but finally it had been time for him to go to bed. ‘Do I have to, mom?’ he had asked. In the morning he had been amazed to find a new pair of curtains, all finished and ready, hanging above the yard door. Creation was such a wonderful thing, he thought. But destruction had its appeal, too.

The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. It could almost stand as his motto.

He turned the page of the newspaper and ran the tip of the scissors over and around the story. She had such beautiful skin, a sure sign of clean living. He was sure her baby would inherit her goodness too. He traced the scissors around her face before beginning to cut the paper. The sound was satisfying somehow. It was something so definite and complete.

He didn’t make a habit of cutting items from newspapers. He didn’t want to create a mess. And he loathed most of what was supposed to constitute news these days. Yet he had a rule. The stories either had to provide him with a lead – which he might or might not act upon, depending on the circumstances – or they had to have a direct bearing on something he was working on. For instance, he had cut out the two or three paragraph reports about the deaths of Raymond Cutler and Philip Vine. Nobody had made a link between them yet. And he guessed they hadn’t received a huge amount of coverage because, in some respect, the general public assumed the men had deserved their deaths. And they would have been right.

A fucking internet pervert and a drop-out drug-dealer. They were scum. The world was a better place without them. The same with that wife-beating shit, Garrison. Good riddance to bad rubbish, his mother had always said. Now she was in a better place.

He looked at the cutting in his hand. At her photograph again. He delicately tacked the paper onto the corkboard above his desk. She had something of his mother about her. Perhaps it was the silver hair – almost like a halo.

24

Dale Hoban was beat. It was eight in the morning and he needed a drink. A strong one. Ten hours sitting behind the desk watching a bank of monitors, fed from a constant live stream of security cameras, had left him brain dead. A walking zombie. As he got out of his car and walked towards his apartment block in Korea Town, he spotted an LAPD vehicle drive by. At the time he’d thought being a traffic cop was dull – gee, it was nothing compared to work as a security guard at a downtown finance company. Hours staring at nothing but brick walls, locked doors and empty rooms. Sometimes, as he sat there at his desk, his ass aching from doing nothing, he willed for something exciting to happen – the appearance of a suspicious-looking character walking into reception, the return of a former employee hell-bent on revenge by introducing a virus into the computer system, even an illicit coupling in a store cupboard. Jeez, that would be something to spy on.