Sam
Thirty-eight days. Monday.
Ruth Kavanagh's office on the fourth floor in Leeds has air conditioning that runs a quarter-tone flat. You wouldn't notice. I noticed in the first ten seconds and then spent the meeting trying not to hum along to correct it.
"Super launch," Ruth said. She had the overnight figures on her screen, turned so I could see them, which she does when they're good and doesn't when they're not. Eleven thousand two hundred, up from Wren's nine thousand four hundred. Against thirty thousand, with thirty-eight days left. "Super. The texts! The piano thing. Lovely. Who did the piano thing?"
"I did."
"Darling. Of course you did." She turned the screen back. "Shut the door."
I'd shut it when I came in. I got up and checked anyway. I scrubbed back through the last thirty seconds for a warning I'd missed. There wasn't one, except the door.
"I want you to know," Ruth said, "that I think you're doing a lovely job. And I want you to know something else, and then I want you to forget I told you, and I want you to keep doing the lovely job. Can you do that?"
"I don't know yet."
"Super." She smiled. "Manchester want the overnights."
The air conditioning went on running a quarter-tone flat.
"Which overnights?"
"Midnight to six, all seven nights. From April. Some lovely national thing, a man with a soothing voice. Scarholme Sound would go dark at midnight on the first of April, and stay dark till six, and nobody pays for a single engineer. I'm minded to say yes."
"Minded."
"Minded, darling. Nothing's signed. That's why it's a secret and not a press release."
"And the forty-two days. The thirty thousand."
"Is a number," Ruth said. "It's the number that would make me think twice. And either way you've got six weeks to make me a podcast. Find Her, the series, eight episodes, the hunt, the old man, the city. That's the thing I can sell. If yours is good, we sell yours. If yours isn't, that boy downstairs has three years of the old man recorded off air, and we buy his."
"Brannigan."
"He's in reception. He's been in reception since ten. He's brought his own sandwiches."
"How does he know about March?"
"I may have mentioned it. A boy works harder when he can see the finish."
I said, "Wren doesn't know."
"No, darling. Nobody knows. That's the other thing." She folded her hands. "Your Hector. Thirty-seven years. If this goes ahead, his terms are very enhanced. They're also conditional on an orderly transition, which means nobody hears until the switch. If it gets out before then, they're void, and he goes on the statutory, which is about the price of a nice sofa." She tilted her head. "You've seen him. He's not here for the company."
I thought of Hector on talkback saying, I'm sat right here, Maureen. I've got my tea.
"My overnights paper," I said. "The automation. Cutting him to two nights."
"Is a lovely reason. Keep it going. People understand cuts. People don't ask questions about cuts. They just hate you a bit." She stood up, which means the meeting's over. "Monday's check-in, done. Super. Go home, Sam."
"Home's Reading."
"Go to Scarholme, then," she said. "It's lovely there. It's next to the sea."
Ollie Brannigan was in reception, on the low sofa, with a lanyard that said VISITOR and a Tupperware box with a sandwich in it, cut into four.
He stood up when he saw me. He's twenty-nine and looks nineteen, in a big coat and a beanie, with the kind of good microphone in his bag that you buy instead of a holiday.
"Sam? Okay, so, hi. Ollie. Nightjar. I was on with Wren last night?"
"I heard."
"That was, like, a bit, though. You know that. The grief tourism thing. It's good radio. It's a bit." He put his hand out. I shook it. It was a bit damp. "Okay, so, I'll be quick. I've got every single call. Three years, every Thursday. Off air, clean, with timestamps. And I want to do this with you. Not against you. Like, a partnership?"
"What do you want, Ollie?"
He didn't even pretend. I'll give him that.
"I want Northshore to buy Nightjar. And I want her slot. When she's done." He said it as if it were obvious, the way you'd tell someone which bus to get. "She's been doing it ten years, she's brilliant, she's, like, a legend. But somebody's got to be on at one. And the hunt. I want the hunt as my series. I've been on it three years. She's been on it four days."
"The hunt's ours."
"It's not anybody's, though? Is it? It's not hers to keep. The whole city's cried at this for three years." He smiled, a nice open smile, the smile of a boy who'd never once been told no by anybody who meant it. "I'm just asking you to think about it."
"No," I said.
"You haven't thought about it."
"I thought about it while you were talking. I'm quick. No."
He sat back down and picked up a quarter of sandwich. "Okay," he said, up at the end, like a question. "I'll see you on the radio, then."
On the A-one going north I rang the Harbour Trust.
I'd been meaning to since Saturday. The city calls him the Lighthouse Man because he says "the light" and "up top" and talks about the foghorn, and Scarholme has exactly one lighthouse, at the end of the North Pier, and the Trust runs it. Somebody there would know who goes out at night. Somebody would have a name.
A woman answered on the eighth ring. She sounded as if she'd been in the middle of a scone.
"Harbour Trust, Pauline speaking, how can I help?"
"Hello. My name's Sam Ketley, I'm from Scarholme Sound. I'm trying to find out about the lighthouse. Who works there. At night."
"Oh, nobody, love," Pauline said, delighted. "It's automatic. Has been for donkey's years. Little computer in a box. Keepers are all gone. Records went to the county, years back, I couldn't tell you where. We just do the museum, and that's shut till Easter. Winter rota. There's me on Mondays and a man called Derek on Thursdays, but Derek's mostly in Tenerife."
"Is there anyone who goes out there regularly? At night. On the pier."
"Oh, there's always somebody. Fishermen. Anglers, I should say, they don't like fishermen. Courting couples, in the summer. There's a fella with a metal detector, but he's daytime. You could try the anglers." She paused. "Is this about the man on the radio?"
"Yes."
"Oh, I love him," Pauline said. "I don't listen. My daughter tells me."
I thanked her. She told me to drive safe. I drove on in the dark with the lorries, and made a list in my head. Anglers. A regular. A living man with a warm coat and a pocketful of change.
That was the plan. It was a good plan. I had a lot of those.
The lift at Scarholme Sound is a goods lift. It was meant for carpet. It has a metal cage door you pull across by hand and a sign saying MAXIMUM FOUR PERSONS OR ONE ROLL, and it takes forty seconds to go one floor, and it makes a noise the whole way like a filing cabinet falling down a hill very slowly.
Wren got in after me at twenty to twelve with a foil-wrapped plate.
"From my mam," she said, and pushed it at me. "Don't ask. It's chicken. It's been in my fridge a day. If you die, that's on her."
"Your mother made me dinner."
"My mother made a dinner. You're where it's ending up."
She pulled the cage across. The lift thought about it, and went.
I had it ready. I'd had it since the A-one. Wren, there's something. Three words, and then the rest would come, because the rest always comes once you've started. She'd hate me. Fine. She hated me already. I'd be the man who'd sat on it for a day instead of the man who'd sat on it for six weeks. That was better. That was clearly better.
"Wren," I said.
"Hector's put his name down for the summer do," she said, at the same time. "The boat trip. First time in ten years. There was a sheet on the board and he's put his name on it. In pen." She was looking at the cage door going past the bare brick. "I think it's because of Friday. I think he thinks we've got a chance."
The lift made its noise.
"What were you going to say?" she said.
"The plate's still warm."
"It's not. That's your hand. You run hot." She looked at me sideways. "Like my levels."
The lift arrived. She pulled the cage back. I carried the plate down the corridor like something I'd been asked to identify.
Find Her, night two, was the claimants.
I'd expected sightings. I'd planned for sightings. Hector had a sheet with columns. What I hadn't planned for was that by a quarter past twelve on a Tuesday morning eleven different people in Scarholme would ring a radio station to say, calmly, that they were the woman.
"It's me," said Kevin, from Seaton, on line two.
"Kevin," Wren said, warm, patient, the Surgery voice. "You're a man, Kevin."
"I know that. But I walk the dog at half one. I've got a red cagoule. From a distance, Wren, at night, a cagoule's a coat. And I'm slight."
"Has he ever said anything to you, Kevin? When you're walking the dog?"
"He wouldn't, would he? He's shy. That's the whole point of him." Kevin's voice had the total, restful certainty of a man who has never once been wrong in his own kitchen. "He worries I'm cold, Wren. I think that's nice. Nobody's ever worried I'm cold."
Through the glass, Hector wrote on his sheet, very slowly, KEVIN. CAGOULE.
Then a woman called Debbie, who had four children and was up at all hours with the youngest and was therefore, she said, obviously her. Then a woman in Saltby who was sure it was her because she'd dreamed it. Then Debbie again, from a different phone, to add that the youngest was teething.
During the record after Debbie, Wren pulled her cans down round her neck and looked at me across the desk.
"Where were you today?"
"Leeds."
"What's in Leeds?"
"Air conditioning," I said. "Some of it in tune."
"You've got a face on." She tipped her head. "You've got a face like you've been told off by a head teacher and you're going to be good now. Were you told off?"
"I was told I was doing a lovely job."
"By Ruth."
"By Ruth."
"Then you're in trouble," Wren said, and pulled her cans back up.
At one fifty, line one, Hector put his hand up flat against the glass. Wren's face did a thing I hadn't seen it do yet. It braced, and it brightened, at the same time, like somebody stepping into the sea in May. Hector said on talkback, "Vi."
"Vi from the Headland," Wren said. "Hello, Vi. Have you rung to say you're the woman?"
"I have rung," Vi said, on air, "to say I've been listening to this for an hour and fifty minutes and I've had more sense out of my kettle."
I listened to her room. I can't help it. A landline, an old one, with a curly lead: you hear the curl in it when she shifts. A clock, a loud one, on a mantelpiece, close. Nothing else. No telly. No one else breathing. She was sitting very upright. You can hear that too.
"That's not very kind, Vi," Wren said.
"It isn't meant to be kind. It's meant to be true. A man in a cagoule. A woman with a dream. Debbie twice." A pause, exactly one second, which on Vi seemed to be punctuation. "She's not coming, pet. They never do."
"You don't know that."
"I've lived seventy-nine years in this town. I know that."
"Debbie says she's out at all hours with the bairn."
"Then Debbie should be in bed with the bairn," Vi said, "and not on the radio. Four children, and ringing the wireless. Never had bairns, pet, never regretted it on a Tuesday."
And the line clicked, and she was gone, and the clock with her.
I wrote down, Vi. Clock. Landline. Alone. I write down rooms.
Wren left two seconds. Then she reached for her fader and took herself down a notch, and when she spoke it was quieter, and closer, and the room changed shape around it.
"Vi's right about one thing," she said. "Not everybody who rings is her. Most of you aren't. That's all right. But I'll tell you something, Scarholme, and then I'll play you a record. I've been told this show's got six weeks. You've probably heard that too, because Ollie Brannigan's got a big mouth and a good microphone. I've had the man from Leeds in my booth for four days now, and I'll tell you what I've told him. They'll have to take this microphone off me. Hector's staying. The old man's staying. I'm staying. I've given up on a lot of things in my life. I'll fight for this one."
The phones lit. All six.
She looked across the desk at me while they lit. Not angry. Daring me.
I sat with my hands flat on my knees, with Ruth's maybe in my pocket, and Hector's sofa, and I smiled back at her, because she was magnificent.
At twenty to four, in the room I'm renting above a launderette on Station Road, with the dryers downstairs going round in their sleep, I typed it.
There's something you should know about April. I should have said in the lift. I should have said
I read it twice. I could hear exactly how she'd say it back to me.
I held the button down until it was gone.