Page 9 of Cover Story

Bel

OK! How will I know who you are?

Grendel 505

I’ll be the only balding fifty-year-old man lurking aroundnotable people’s graves on a weekday afternoon, with a look of nervous anticipation?

Bel

Fair

Grendel 505

In case of any doubt as to identity, I’ll wait by Jerome Caminada’s headstone, which seemsfitting. (Manchester’s Sherlock Holmes of the 1800s, if you haven’t heard of him.)

Bel

I hadn’t heard of Jerome, I’m from York, please forgive me! See you there.

If Grendel 505 was a psychopath, he was of the articulate and persuasive variety.

She was cautiously hopeful, foregrounding caution before hope. If he wasn’t an active danger, Bel was still prepared for Grendel 505 to tell her– in the same tone you might say you didn’t like the colours of the latest public transport livery– that the Government were using air fryers as listening devices.Forthere to be a needle-scratch moment where she realised she was in a garden of the dead with a headbanger.

One of the first rules of journalism was ‘anyone might be lying about anything, and for no reason. Trust nobody until they’ve earned it.’

Bel’s mentor and hero wasn’t anyone she’d worked with, it was her late Aunt Tamara who’d blazed a trail through the tabloids in the fag-smoke-wreathed 1970s and 80s, going from newsroom librarian to reporter and sub-editor. She’d no children of her own and had seen something in Bel, regaling her with inappropriate tales of Fleet Street from a young age.

As per established safety protocol, Bel had forwarded the email chain to Shilpa with‘work! NFS’(not for sharing)and she’d made sure Share My Location and Find My iPhone were active, too. It was daylight, it was a public place, there was a digital paper trail.

‘Why don’t you just tell people you work with where you’re going?’ Shilpa said.

‘Because they’ll nick your story,’ Bel said. ‘I’ve told you this. I don’t discuss sensitive stories with Aaron. I use code words in our Teams meetings that are only understood by me and editor Toby. We all use Signal cos it can’t be hacked. Paranoia reigns. But better paranoid than scooped.’

‘Journalists!’

6

The wrought-iron gated entrance to Southern Cemetery was flanked by pleasingly Gothic turrets, though given the supernatural energy, Bel was relieved she was visiting in light-filled late spring, not the foggy, freezing fading sun of winter. Inside, the Victorian graveyard had tree-lined avenues to make navigation simpler, but the space was still vast– moss-coated monuments and stone angels stretching as far as she could see, canopied by greenery. A recent rainfall had left leaves shining; it was peaceful and quite beautiful.

Bel saw her likely date.

He was standing with hands in pockets next to a tall, narrow headstone, under a distinctive mature yew tree with a trunk twisted into four sections. ‘Grendel 505’ was, as advertised, balding, the remaining grey hair shorn close, wearing fashionable, clear-rimmed glasses and a navy workman’s jacket. He looked like creative, affluent Manchester – knew his way around design software and Pet-Nats.

As she approached, Bel tried to assess how homicidal and unhinged he might be, based on these clues. If he was the fava beans and Chianti, upmarket mind games sort. She’d had cause to wonder about the varnish-thin layer of normalcy that covered lunacy a lot, lately.

‘Hi! Bel Macauley?’ he said. ‘You don’t have any pictures online so forgive confirming I.D.’

‘Hello. Yes I think it’s better in my line of work if you can manage it.’

This was true, and also not the reason she had no pictures online.

‘I can imagine. I’m Ian,’ he said. ‘Shall we walk up the main path?’

‘Sure.’

‘Don’t want to be treading on anyone’s head.’

As they fell in step, Ian said: ‘Sorry for the gnomic correspondence and high drama choice of location but as I said, I couldn’t think of any better way to keep our conversation secret. Even if I don’t look it, I’m a long way off retirement and keen to keep my salary. This is all off the record, isn’t it?’

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