Precious Thing Read Online Free PDF Page B

‘Do you have a guest with you?’
    I remembered Jake’s conversation. ‘He’s trying to get DCI Gunn,’ I said, wondering what I could ask him, more than he’d already told us.
    ‘OK, we’ll just go with the flow then. You’ll be talking to Charlie Gregson in the studio. With you in ten seconds.’
    I didn’t want to talk to any presenter in the studio but I definitely didn’t want to talk to Charlie Gregson, a bitter, out-of-favour has-been whose long questions were all about making himself look good and catching the correspondent out. But I didn’t have a choice. The next thing Charlie’s voice was in my ear.
    ‘Police in Sussex say they are seriously concerned for the safety of a twenty-eight-year-old artist who has been missing for three days. Detectives say it’s possible she may have been abducted. Well, let’s cross live now to our correspondent Rachel Walsh who is in Brighton with the very latest. Rachel what have police been saying this morning?’
    The moment that followed was filled with dead, leaden air. How long did it last? Short enough to be taken for a satellite delay? Maybe. I don’t know. I was too busy sifting and sieving one reality from another inside my head, working out what I was allowed to say. My version of events where you had flu and didn’t make it out was to be stored away. I was to talk about the alternative one where you disappeared after leaving Cantina Latina. The official version.
    Only then did the words come and I said your name as if I had never met you before. For those few minutes on air, Clara, you and I became strangers.
    I told whoever was watching why police were concerned, that it was out of character. I trotted out all the journalistic clichés. When my sentence came to an end, I waited, hoping there would be no follow-up question. But there was. You were being used to fill air time, Clara.
    ‘And Rachel, what about witnesses? It was a Friday night when she disappeared; police must obviously be hoping someone would have seen her leaving the bar?’
    I opened my mouth once more. Click-clack.
    At that moment I became aware of a presence by my side and turned to see DCI Gunn and Jake, standing next to him just out of shot.
My lifeline
. He could do the talking now; I just had to think of the questions.
    ‘Well DCI Gunn has just joined us, so let me put that to him.’ I stepped out of shot to allow the cameraman to focus on DCI Gunn. I repeated Charlie’s question. Today was no day for professional pride.
    DCI Gunn nodded as I spoke. ‘That’s absolutely right, Rachel,’ he said and I cringed at his first-name too-chummy-for-TV address. ‘There would have been lots of people leaving bars and clubs in that area on Friday night who may have come across a woman fitting Miss O’Connor’s description and we would like to hear from them. We also understand she may have been with a male that evening and we would say to that individual please come forward so we can eliminate you from our inquiries.’ I listened to him talk in that robotic police-speak and wondered who the hell had told him you were with a man. How did he know that?
    I asked him a few more questions from my stock list gathered over the years of crime reporting: were they looking at CCTV (yes); what state of mind did they think you were in? (no reason to believe you were depressed) and then I heard the director say, ‘One last question Rachel, then wrap up.’
    So I asked: ‘Why is it you think she may have been abducted?’
    I watched DCI Gunn’s expression change and his voice grow quieter. ‘We have reason to believe Miss O’Connor was worried for her safety.’
    Questions screamed through my head.
    ‘Time,’ shouted the director so loud it made me jump, ‘hand back now.’
    And so I did.
    Who was out to get you, Clara? The bogeyman? Were you scared of shadows and shapes that came out at night? Domestic violence victims or witnesses in murder trials, I can see why they might be ‘worried