Snowdrop glares at her phone. “Signal’s about to go …,”
Rowan trudges on, the slope starting to get steeper. He likes it here, boots kicking up mud and grit on the edge of the quiet, tyre rutted path that leads through the tangle of woodland and up towards the Falls. He can hear the distant growl of the tumbling water.
“Bit quiet of late,” says Snowdrop, over the sound of their feet crunching over damp stone. “Only a few posts since the summer. Usual silly Facebook stuff like Mum puts on. What does your thumb-shape’ say about you? And celebrations of ‘friendship anniversaries’. She’s got over 600 ‘friends’ She used to be quite busy on it but seems to have lost interest. She’s got photos and videos and lists of favourite books and films and stuff …,”
“What does she like?” asks Rowan, intrigued. “Books, I mean.”
“Oh all sorts,” says Snowdrop. “Weird mix. Everything from Harry Potter through to crime fiction, a biography of some comedian I don’t know, and a load of enlightenment stuff, the stuff Mum pretends to read. Warrior Goddess; Grow a New Body; Inside the Divine Pattern, or something…,”
“I’ll read it properly when we’re back,” says Rowan. “Is there a picture? Recent?”
Snowdrop fiddles with the phone and holds it up for inspection, displaying a screen-grabbed image of Violet Rayner (nee Sheehan). She’s grinning for the camera; a big mess of frizzy hair piled up on top of her head and wooden earring dangling down below the level of her slightly rounded chin. She’s a few years older than him but he thinks she looks younger. She’s got healthy skin and the whites of her eyes are bright as a new moon. Her dark eyebrows have been accentuated with pencil and brush but she wears no other make-up. There’s something about her that suggests a fizzing kid of energy; a gleam in her eye that says she’s enjoyed the kind of evenings out that don’t finish until breakfast.
“Single,” says Snowdrop, as if reading his mind. “I’ve got family, friends, workplace, past events. She’s barely got anything set to ‘private’ but I’ve sent her a friend request from your account.”
Rowan shoots her a look. “My own account?” he asks, feeling the pressure of the climb in his calves. “That’s not always the best move …,”
“You have other accounts?”
Rowan smiles, glancing ahead as the track slips back into the cold wet strip of forest. The light is swallowed up as if the sun has been swallowed whole. He focuses on his steps and throws a look at Snowdrop. If his wounds didn’t hurt so damn much he would be tempted to offer her a hand though he couldn’t say for sure whether it would be her benefit or his.
“I’ve got three accounts,” says Rowan, quickening his pace. “I’m me, I’m a grandmother called Caron, and I’m a 26-year-old mother-of-one from Canning Town.” He puts on a London accent. “I work in childcare, don’t I, but I hope to become a professional make-up artist. I’m quite acid-tongued when I want to be. I’ve got one of those Live, Laugh, Love pictures on my bedroom wall and I’m a fiend for my prosecco.”
Snowdrop laughs, grinning up at him. “Do you really? Do you really use different names? Pretend to be other people? Is that not a bit, well, wrong …,”
“Wrong?”
“Well, it’s lying. Pretending. I mean, people might tell you stuff and then be upset they’d been fooled…,”
“I didn’t invent social media, Snowdrop,” says Rowan, tartly. “That came along on its own and hit my industry so hard that it’s never got back up again. Don’t forget, when I started in this game mobile phones were still a novelty and the internet looked like a fad. I found my first stories by getting to know people, by earning people’s trust, by putting in the hard yards to prove myself. Christ, if I wanted to speak to somebody I didn’t know I’d have to sit with an open phone book in my lap, trying to find the right Mrs Smith of Workington. I wrote on a computer that didn’t have a back-space delete function! I had to write letters to people to make arrangements for interviews. And faxes! You won’t even know what that is, I bet. If the whole world has changed its mind about privacy, who am I to argue. People stick their whole lives out there to be vetted and filtered and judged. That’s like leaving your diary open on the bed, isn’t it? We’re information-gatherers, Snowdrop. That’s what the job is.”
Snowdrop says nothing for a while, mulling over some moral conundrum. “It’s for the greater good though, isn’t it?” she asks. “Breaking stories, uncovering corruption, bringing down wrong-uns …,”
“Sometimes,” mumbles Rowan, petulant. “Sometimes we do good, yeah. But do you know why journalists want to go after the big story? It’s to show off. It’s for that wonderful word ‘exclusive’. It’s to say ‘I knew this before you’.”
“That’s quite a bleak outlook,” says Snowdrop, a touch disconsolately. “But I know you mean them and not you.”
Rowan is saved from replying. His phone buzzes in his pocket and he manages to retrieve it without swearing too much. A call has gone straight to his voicemail service: another curse of the intermittent reception in this part of the world. He listens to the message from Harriet Kay, who runs the press office for Cumbria Constabulary. Her accent is local, her attitude too.
“Rowan, this is Harriet from the police press office. I’m not sure you’ll remember but we chatted a few years back when you were up here covering the murders on the coast? I’m just ringing because I got a message from the cold case review team. Apparently you’re keen to speak with DI Sumaira Brennan about an old investigation. We’re keen to do things through the proper channels so if you could make all such requests through me, that would be a big help. I’m here for a little while if you want to call back…,”
Rowan hangs up, a little disappointed that Sumaira had shunted him back to the press office without even returning his call. He quickly comes to the conclusion that she hadn’t got his message and that some jobsworth colleague had taken it upon himself to keep her from getting back in touch. He prefers that version of the truth and decides to stick with it.
“Oh goodness, that’s rank!”
Snowdrop isn’t wrong in her exclamation. Rowan wrinkles his nose, the smell of red diesel and soggy hay climbing into his nostrils. He looks up, noticing a little watery light bleeds back onto the path. They’re nearing the last stretch of trees. He detects movement high up in the corner of his vision. Squints at what might be a hovering bird, static just above the treeline.
Pickle’s place emerges from the mist; the hazy suggestion of white stone and black roof delineating into the outline of a squat, sturdy dwelling made up huge whitewashed boulders. A great sail of black tarpaulin is flapping against one of the holes in the slate roof: a raven’s wing slapping fatly against the exposed timber.