Brand New Friend Page 3

  Mark’s expression suggested scepticism, which made Paolo feel annoyed rather than relieved.

  ‘And what about –’ The door clunked shut behind Mark.

  He was going to say, ‘Claire.’

  7

  He had almost forgotten that he only met Mark because of Claire. In fact Claire had been there for many of the key events of his first year at uni, but always at the margins, like a distant relative in a wedding shot. Or perhaps it was the other way round. Despite his easy sociability and Claire’s forceful awkwardness, in those first few months it had felt like wherever he went, Claire had already been.

  He’d first become aware of her in their hall. They were brought together at mealtimes because they’d both ordered vegetarian food. (Though he hadn’t read too much into that, lots of people went veggie in halls because the food was said to be better.) Then he was listening to music in someone’s room and happened across a copy of Leeds Other Paper, the bible then for alternative politics and culture. His friend told him that Claire had left it there. At that time Paolo had barely discovered Leeds Student, the weekly free paper from the Union.

  When he perused the listings of Leeds Other Paper and saw there was a day of local bands at the Astoria, in a part of Leeds called Roundhay, and negotiated two buses to get there, in town and out again, feeling like a polar explorer, he arrived to see that Claire was already there, drunk and on the fringes of a group of people who looked like students, but definitely not like freshers.

  But that was hindsight talking. He hadn’t given her much thought. He’d been too busy. He’d joined a ridiculous number of groups in Freshers’ Week and was trying to whittle them down. He was nursing hangovers and attending occasional lectures. He was widening his taste in music. He was making friends with swathes of people and happily abandoning them a week later when someone more interesting came along. He was negotiating the etiquette of safe sex more frequently than he could have hoped or even imagined.

  One night he’d been at the entrance to the Tartan Bar in the Union, rattling a bucket. It was a benefit gig for Women Against Pit Closures. He was committed to the cause of course, but he had also been told that if he did the collection he’d get in free.

  People mostly walked straight past him, including a woman (he’d just learnt to say woman, not girl) who he’d had a first-term fling with. He thought it had ended amicably but she glared at him as the guy she was with threw a 10p piece in the bucket. Later he saw Claire on her own, loitering with a bottle of Murphy’s stout, looking around like she was waiting for someone. She looked so awkward he felt sorry for her. He sidled up to her and self-deprecatingly showed her his bucket. She screwed up her face at him.

  ‘Don’t wave that at me!’ she said.

  He looked at her, nonplussed.

  ‘Who the fuck wants to get their identity from being someone’s wife?’ she said.

  ‘Well, I take your point, but it’s a stage in the struggle. The strike empowered women in their communities –’

  ‘The strike’s over. We lost.’

  ‘But it raised the consciousness of women who are now working with other campaigns across the labour movement –’

  His voice tailed off. Whatever had been said at the meeting, which had sounded so persuasive, no longer had the same logic in the face of Claire’s scorn.

  ‘And why would anyone fight for the right of their children to go down a coalmine?’

  ‘Well,’ he said. How could he answer? If you were on the left you were for the miners. That was a given. They were the bastion of the labour movement. They had stood together and fought together. The devastation of the mining industry was an ideologically motivated, malicious act to destroy the proud men (and their wives) who had dared to stand against Thatcher.

  That was what he wanted to say. ‘We have to fight the Tories,’ was all he could manage.

  Claire didn’t answer. She just looked at him with a pitying smile. He felt himself blushing, but looked back, mainly to remind himself what she looked like. He could never remember. She wasn’t particularly tall, or short, or thin, or fat. She had a face with all the usual features. Tonight she was wearing an old man’s tweed overcoat with a paisley scarf, as was he. She was just normal.

  Perhaps she knew it too because it appeared she had shaved off one side of her middling-brown hair since he last saw her, but then again, he might have just forgotten.

  ‘Where you off to?’ he asked, just to change the subject.

  ‘The benefit of course.’ She smiled mischievously and he thought that smile might just be a distinguishing feature.

  ‘But you said –’

  She shrugged. ‘I like the music. And I’m meeting someone.’

  ‘I’ll come in with you,’ he said, handing over his bucket to the woman on the door and getting his hand stamped with indelible ink.

  They went to the bar, each clutching their own pound note. He ordered a pint of Tetley. She ordered another Murphy’s.

  ‘You know that draught beer has got fish finings in it?’ she said. ‘And some brewers use gelatine?’

  ‘What’s gelatine?’

  ‘Crushed pigs’ head and testicles.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘It’s okay. I didn’t know myself until I joined the Vegetarian Society. They’re a good crowd, you should come. We’re leafleting McDonald’s on Saturday.’

  ‘I might,’ he said, insincerely. The band were sound-checking, cutting across Strawberry Switchblade’s cover of ‘Jolene’ which was playing through the sound system. They lingered awkwardly at the edge of the dancefloor. He’d seen a few people he knew and he didn’t want to be stuck with Claire for the evening. He was just about to make a move when she spoke.

  ‘I’m from Durham. My dad was a miner. My mum was a housewife. He got his redundancy. He spent the money on a car and a fortnight in the Algarve and the rest down the pub. One year on he’s got a car and no money to go anywhere. I asked if I could go on the French exchange and he said he didn’t want frogs in his house. My mum still does all the housework while he sits there chuntering at the TV. Or sometimes he goes to the club so he can sit and chunter with all his friends. In solidarity.

  ‘Those Labour Club people going on about the miners and the fucking miners’ wives – it’s like they’re describing another world. One I’ve never seen. And they don’t want to hear what I have to say, because it messes with their fantasy. There’s nothing great about the coalfields or the community. It just keeps you down. You’re not allowed to be different, you’re not allowed to think. My greatest ambition was to get out.’

  Paolo nodded emphatically. He was going to tell her he was working class too, but he thought she might not believe him, just because he was southern, and it really pissed him off when that happened.

  Mainly he was thinking he needed to mingle. I mean, he thought, I like Claire. I just don’t like her. Whereas I like that slim woman with the beret and the short, straight skirt and the infinite legs leading to oxblood Doc Marten shoes.

  Maybe he should say he was going to the bar and then not come back. But then Claire shouted and waved.

  ‘Isabel!’ she said, and he sensed the pain and adoration in her voice, even as he understood why the object inspired it.

  Isabel turned and smiled. She had very pale skin and her mouth was a slash of red lipstick. A single blond curl fell from under the beret. It was a warm but vague smile, like she was royalty and couldn’t quite remember who they were. She gestured towards the bar and Claire abandoned him without a word, which wasn’t how it was supposed to work at all.

  8

  Paolo called the office and spoke to Clarissa.

  ‘I need a little time.’

  ‘Of course you do, darling.’

  Clarissa was his manager but they’d been friends for years, since they met on a course for people about to go on foreign posting. He was on his way to Gaza, she to Paris. They’d joked about the unique hazards and challenges she was likely t
o face that he wouldn’t have to worry about. Molten chocolate in her morning pastry, the clasp from a diamond necklace catching in her hair.

  ‘I’m in Leeds.’

  ‘Leeds? Why? Just asking for a friend.’

  ‘I know you were expecting me back, but there’s nothing much happening, is there?’

  ‘Try telling that to the four million Syrians in refugee camps in Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon.’

  ‘Nothing new.’

  She conceded the point with a sigh.

  ‘There’s one more thing.’

  Another sigh.

  ‘There was a murder here last night. At a place called Acorn Community Garden.’ He gave her the details. ‘The police are holding a press conference. Can you get me accredited?’

  ‘Local news will be covering it. You’ll upset them.’

  ‘I’ll make it up to you. I’ll go to Salford in the morning. Whether I’m on air or not. I’ll attend a meeting. I’ll iron the sofa.’

  He had become caught up in the ongoing skirmishes between senior management and politicians. The BBC was simultaneously criticised for not having popular appeal and for not doing enough serious news. The faction that wanted more coverage of world affairs seemed to be temporarily in the ascendant. One of Paolo’s roles was to deliver it, not just to Breakfast but also to programmes on Radio 5 Live.

  Of course he wanted to bring the world to Breakfast. International news was his passion and he believed that if it was done right, people would be interested. But not in a two-minute segment between last night’s goals and the business correspondent gurning live on location as she watched the early shift vacuum-pack ham.

  ‘Okay. But as soon as you rock up at the press conference, people will speculate. You know what will happen then. There will be stories linking him to Middle Eastern terror groups and all sorts.’

  ‘You’ll just have to start counter-rumours, won’t you? It’s part of a new back-to-the-floor exercise. Me at the coal face.’

  ‘There are no coal faces in Yorkshire any more, darling. You’ve been away too long.’

  The local reporter was called Richard Revell. He was one of that seemingly endless line of man-boy presenters who came over from sport to news. Eager puppies, addicted to work, incapable of introspection. All narrative, no analysis. That was what they wanted now. A willingness to stand pointlessly in the rain, reciting the lines that were fed to you from the warm studio to other people in another part of the warm studio, and never question why. He’d be on Breakfast in three years, Strictly in five, Paolo was sure of it.

  Clarissa’s fears were unfounded as Richard clearly felt no need to impress Paolo. ‘I don’t think we’ll learn much,’ he said, as they signed in at Police HQ and pinned on their name badges.

  ‘Do we know anything about the victim?’ asked Paolo.

  ‘It’s just some homeless guy.’

  ‘I suppose homeless guys have families and histories too,’ said Paolo, with just a hint of self-righteousness.

  ‘Maybe, but they don’t make the Six.’

  It said it all that the pinnacle of Richard’s ambition was News at Six with its breezy roundup of consumer features and political photo-ops, rather than News at Ten which still maintained at least a veneer of seriousness.

  ‘So why’s everyone here?’

  Richard clearly thought he was being tested for his competence, because he answered in weary textbook fashion, his voice saying, You know this and I know this but let’s just go through the motions.

  ‘The body was found at the place of work of a man who was yesterday exposed as a former undercover police officer, active in the animal rights movement of the eighties.’ He said ‘eighties’ like it might as well have been prehistoric.

  ‘So many potential angles,’ said Paolo. ‘Why was he exposed now and who by? Is the murder connected to that? Why did he decide he liked his new life better than being a police officer?’

  ‘I’ve just been sent to cover the presser,’ said Richard.

  Who could think this was glamorous, thought Paolo. A room full of journos, bottoms squeezed into sweaty plastic chairs, all asking the same predictable questions. Not even a big crowd – mainly the locals, one or two agencies and a few freelances hoping to turn up scraps they could sell to the papers.

  At the front of the room were a long table and chairs, places set with microphones and mineral water. The inevitable backdrop, a triptych of pop-up stands with images and branding. Diverse, smiling officers on each side, a plain dark board with a carefully positioned logo in the middle, so the focus would be on the speakers. There were TV cameras but he doubted much of this would be used. So much time and expense to so little purpose. But pictures.

  And yet – wasn’t there something about being here? Being the first to know? Being in the game, however absurd its trappings?

  To fill the lull in the conversation he said, ‘What do you know about the Tilde blog?’

  ‘I know that Tilda Green is sat over there.’ He gestured to a woman in her twenties who was sitting alone, her hair a mess of blond curls, speaking into a phone. Paolo thought at first she was talking to someone, but she didn’t pause for a moment so he decided she was dictating.

  ‘Do you know her? To talk to?’

  ‘You want me to ask her out for you?’ asked Richard with a crooked grin. Oh, thought Paolo. Lads’ humour.

  ‘She broke the story about the undercover police officer. The one who’s just had a body found at his place of work.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Richard without noticeable interest. Unless it was written on a press release and pushed under his nose, he didn’t want to know.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll speak to her myself,’ said Paolo.

  There was a flurry of activity at the front of the room. DS Afzal. A stocky middle-aged man who introduced himself as DCI Eliot, the senior investigating officer. A woman in a navy dress who didn’t speak but who he guessed must be the communications officer. Sometimes they did the introductions but it seemed DCI Eliot wanted to stamp his identity on this one.

  Paolo realised that the eyes of DS Afzal were on him. He put his head down and pretended to take notes. Shorthand. How he loved it, still, the rhythm of it, the sense that he was a boy spy writing in a secret code. Richard did the same and they were suddenly united by a common bond.

  The DCI gave a description of the dead man which was so generic as to be meaningless. Age estimated at between fifty-five and seventy-five. No distinguishing marks or tattoos. He described what he was wearing, including the fleece from the Acorn Community Garden.

  ‘We are currently working through missing person reports. If anyone knows of a friend or family member who fits the description and has recently gone missing, please get in touch.’

  He went on to describe the location of Acorn. The time of death was given as between two and four in the afternoon. The death was reported by a dog walker some four hours later but he said the garden, although it was open to its users, was mostly deserted due to the time of year and it being dark by five. It was quite possible that no one saw the body between the time of death and the call being made. However, he appealed for witnesses.

  ‘If you were in the area and saw anything, no matter how small, please come forward. If you wish you can speak to us anonymously. Or you can call us.’

  They gave out the numbers to call and an email address.

  ‘We are pursuing a number of lines of enquiry and in particular are keen to speak to members of the homeless community who are also service users of the garden. We would urge them to come forward. We would emphasise that we are treating them as witnesses and not suspects. We are also visiting homeless shelters and day centres to talk to people there. That’s all we have for now, ladies and gentlemen.’

  A number of journalists, including Richard, raised their hands. The communications officer stood up and called Richard’s ITV counterpart by name.

  Tilda Green had also raised her hand but the people on the podium w
ere looking towards the cameras. Paolo suspected she would have a long wait to be called. Perhaps he could capitalise on her frustration.

  The questions were mostly predictable and bland. Crafted to elicit a soundbite which was duly delivered. Channel 4 had sent one of their trainees who did ask about any possible connection between the murder and the unmasking of Mark and was told it was one line of enquiry. She tried to push them but they were saying nothing.

  ‘What do you take from that?’ he asked Richard.

  Richard shrugged. Paolo looked around. People were packing up. Tilda Green was standing alone. He went over to her.

  ‘Fancy knocking heads with an agent of the MSM?’ he asked. Mainstream media, that all-encompassing term of abuse.

  ‘You lie down with dogs, you get fleas,’ she said, but she was smiling.

  9

  Despite Claire’s entreaties, Paolo never did make it to the Veg Soc McDonald’s demo. He did still speak to her in halls and lent her his Sinister Cleaners twelve-inch which he’d bought in a pilgrimage to Jumbo Records – the independent record shop in the Merrion Centre – so she could tape it on her friend’s stereo. He let her have it, even though he was terrified she’d scratch it, because he wanted to ask about Isabel.

  It seemed Isabel lived in a Lupton flat because it was self-catering. Paolo immediately wished he’d applied to Lupton, although he had no idea how to feed himself. It was in Headingley, which would be cool, while their hall was miles from anywhere, a long bus ride up the Otley Road. Claire also mentioned in passing that she’d joined the city animal rights group because she was sick of the incestuous world of students. She didn’t say whether oxblood Isabel had joined but he thought it couldn’t hurt to keep in with Claire and it might be good to meet some non-students.