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husband.’
    ‘Full story or no story,’ I replied. ‘You’ve told me that Claude Gilbert wants to come out of hiding. But what if he chokes and disappears, or if it turns out that I’m being conned, that this person isn’t Claude Gilbert? You’re my back-up story, and I’m not going into this without one.’
    Susie put her bag back onto her knees and gripped the handles as she thought about it, then she slowly nodded her agreement.
    ‘Good,’ I said. ‘We’ll talk in more detail now.’
    ‘And then what?’
    ‘By the sound of it, we do whatever Claude wants us to do.’
    Susie was about to say something when she looked towards the stairs. As I looked around, I saw that Laura had come into the room. Bobby stood behind her, uncertain.
    Susie gave Laura a nervous smile. ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry for coming so early.’
    Laura smiled back. ‘It’s okay. Are you here with a story?’
    Susie leant forward and was about to say something when she caught my small shake of the head, a warning not to say anything. She looked troubled for a moment, but then she sat back and remained silent.
    Laura glanced at me curiously as Bobby ran across the room, pulling on his school coat and grabbing his bag.
    ‘I’m taking him to school, Jack. I won’t be long.’
    I waved as they went, and when we were alone in the house once more, Susie looked at me and asked, ‘Do you keep secrets from her?’
    ‘Don’t you think I should keep this secret, for your benefit?’
    Susie thought about that, and then she nodded her agreement.
    My motive wasn’t to protect Susie though. It was to protect Laura, because she is a police officer, a damn good one, honourable and honest. If she heard the story, she would see it as her duty to pass it on. And what if Susie was lying? It would make Laura look stupid.
    But, as I looked at Susie and took in the determination in her eyes, I was starting to believe her, and I felt a tremble of excitement at the prospect of the story.

Chapter Four
    Susie refused my offer of a lift back to Blackley, and so I took her into Turners Fold to catch her bus. As I watched her clatter along the pavement in her heels, a freshly-lit cigarette glowing in her fingers, walking into what counted as rush hour around here—pensioners shuffling to the post office and young mothers meandering home after the school run—I could tell that the big meet-up was going to be on her and Claude Gilbert’s terms. I wasn’t happy about that, but sometimes you’ve just got to roll with the early blows, because in the end the story will come out on
my
terms.
    Once Susie was out of sight, I dialled the number of an old friend, Tony Davies. He had been my mentor when I was a young reporter on
The Valley Post
, at the start of my career before the bright London lights pulled me in, and was now seeing out his days writing features for the weekend edition.
    ‘I need help on something,’ I said when he answered. ‘But I need to keep this quiet. Can you come to me? I’m outside. It won’t take long.’
    ‘Are you still in that red Stag?’
    I looked at the dashboard. A 1973 Triumph Stag in Calypso Red. Nothing special in the history of cars, but it had once been my father’s pride and joy, the sports car for the working man. ‘For now,’ I said.
    Tony’s phone went dead. I watched the people go by and waited for him to appear.
    Turners Fold isn’t large, just a collection of terraced streets and old mill buildings, some derelict, some converted into business units, disused chimneys pointing out of the valley. The town is cut in half by a canal and criss-crossed by metal bridges, and the predominant colour of the town is grey, built from millstone grit blocks, the modern shop fronts squeezed into buildings designed for Victorian England, when the town had hummed to the sound of cotton and was smothered in smoke, the air clean only when the mills shut down for a week in summer and the railway took everyone to the