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everywhere.
    A few locals and some British tourists also stood around in the ghoulish way that people do when there is a big tragedy playing out. Rosie had walked away from the journalists and was talking to McGuire, who was barking at her down the phone from his home.
    ‘I don’t really give a fuck what these Spanish coppers say, Rosie. The Guarda Civil are like the Taliban. This couple have got to get the message that if they don’t gettheir faces in the papers, then everyone will lose interest in their kid.’
    ‘I know, I know,’ Rosie told him. ‘I was going to do it shortly anyway, but there are two cops on the door at the moment. I was going to stick a letter through.’
    ‘Yeah, yeah. Better idea. But tell them, Rosie, that the paper will give away posters in Monday’s edition for people to pull out and stick on their windows and cars. Tell them if anyone can get them huge publicity, it’s the Post . Our marketing people are already talking to people down on the Costa about putting up Find Amy posters done up like a Post front page all over the towns. That should look the business. We need to boost sales down there anyway.’
    ‘Yeah,’ Rosie said, wishing McGuire didn’t think marketing at a time like this.
    She knew that television was always in a better position to get publicity than the papers, and that they would also be thinking posters. McGuire was right – you had to move quickly on someone else’s misery if you wanted to win points.
    ‘Tell you what, Rosie. Tell them we’ll put up a reward. Ten thousand pounds for information leading to getting Amy back.’
    ‘Has the managing director okayed that, Mick?’
    ‘Fuck the managing director. I’ll make sure it happens. Just do it, sweetheart. Get me something for Monday, something different.’
    ‘OK, Mick, I’ll do the letter now. Talk later.’ She hung up.
    ‘What’s the sketch?’ Matt said as she walked towards their hired car.
    ‘McGuire wants us to offer a reward, put up pull-out posters. The lot. He’s offering ten grand, and I bet he hasn’t even spoken to the management yet.’
    Matt whistled. ‘Great. That’s brilliant. The bean counters will shit themselves. But they’ll go for it.’
    Rosie was in the car writing a letter on hotel notepaper she’d brought with her. She knew she wouldn’t be the only hack looking for a way in. Despite what McGuire had said, Rosie knew in her gut that their only hope for Monday was a picture of the couple together and – if they were really lucky – a few words. If she wanted an exclusive, she would have to look further than the front door of the Lennon villa.
    She was feeling a little rough from last night’s lengthy dinner with Matt. It was one of those nights where the banter bounced off the walls and the wine flowed freely, while frontline stories from past foreign sojourns were rolled out. Rosie drank plenty of wine, but she wasn’t that drunk. If it had ended there it would have been fine, but Rosie took a call from one of her pals on a London paper, and she and Matt went to join him and a few others in a bar in Marbella’s old town until three in the morning. It had been the usual battery of journos, old and young, in various stages of drunkenness. And despite the tragic story they were working on, it turned into a bit of a party, as these things often did. By two in the morning at least two of the hacks were belting out songson the karaoke along with a few of the ex-pat Brits who hung around drinking with the press pack.
    Rosie had bailed out when a knuckle trailer with a thick Glasgow accent, clearly wasted on cocaine, began to noise everyone up, pushing people around and shouting that the press were a bunch of wankers. Given that one of the London reporters was leading the singsong, he might have had a point. The place was busy with the collection of usual suspects you found in any Costa del Sol British bar. If you took a straw poll round the suntanned faces in the room, you