Death in Dark Waters Read Online Free PDF Page A

used to one thing at a time,” he said, laughing.
“You know I’m only a roast beef and Yorkshire pud country lad at heart.”
    â€œOh, I think you washed the last traces of muck off your boots a long time ago. And I’m sure that if you really want to get to grips with heroin on the Heights rather than recreational drugs in the pubs and clubs you’ll find yourself a way. But watch out for Grantley Adams. I can remember taking a very distinct dislike to him. A bullying man, as I recall. Managed to pat me on the head and tweak my hair at the same time without my dad noticing anything at all. Getting back at me for some cheeky remark I’d made; no doubt some socialist heresy I’d picked up at my grandmother’s knee and parroted without really understanding. But very nasty, as I recall.”
    â€œI’ll bear it in mind,” Thackeray said.
    Â 
    The newsroom at the Bradfield Gazette was still quiet soon after eight when Laura got in, with only two reporters on an early shift concentrating on their computer screens. But the early morning peace was soon shattered when the editor, Ted Grant, arrived with the manic gleam in his eyes which Laura knew spelt trouble. Head down, she hoped that it would not involve her brief on the feature pages.
    But she was unlucky. By the time Grant had convened the morning meeting and Laura had taken her place at the untidy table in his office alongside her colleagues, she knew that the excitement which had brought a sharp flush to his cheeks and the first signs of sweat to the shirt which strained to encompass his beer belly, would include her. He had placed Bob Baker, the paper’s crime reporter, on his left-hand side from where he nursed a contented smirk which boded ill, Laura thought, for the rest of those there.
    â€œWe’ll make it a Gazette campaign,” Grant said. “The war on drugs. The threat to our youth. What can Bradfield do to defeat the evil pushers? You know the sort of thing. Run a hotline for people who want to pass on information if the police are too dozy to do it. The Globe’s got it off to a tee, but we can
do our own version. We’ll collate all the news stories, and Laura, you can run a series of features on families that have been affected. Start with this lad who was nearly killed at this club the other night, Grantley Adams’ boy.”
    Laura opened her mouth to object but, glancing round the table, realised that she was the only one there with any reservations about Grant’s plan.
    â€œThere’s been another death up on the Heights too,” she said eventually.
    â€œAye, well we’ll get to that one later,” Grant said. “The little toe-rags up there have got nowt else to do, have they? But this lad in intensive care was a high flyer, apparently. Going to Oxford, wanting to be a lawyer. That’s a better story for us. See if you can get an interview with his mum and dad - for today if you can, but tomorrow if not.”
    â€œRight,” Laura said, knowing that facing Grantley Adams again after all these years was unlikely to be a pleasant experience in the best of circumstances, and she would be a long way from those today.
    â€œYou don’t look too chuffed with that assignment,” said Bob Baker a few minutes later, with an unwanted hand on Laura’s shoulder and an insinuating whisper in her ear, as they made their way back to their desks. “Surely your boyfriend is going to be chasing this one whatever we run with, isn’t he?” Baker, a sleek twenty-five year old with one eye on his career and the other on anyone female who would make eye-contact, was not Laura’s favourite colleague. She suspected that he saw in her a chance to pursue both of his objectives at once, not because she encouraged his advances but because he knew that she had a unique line to the police that he might be able to exploit if she did not concentrate hard enough on