A thin bloke in a beard and black-and-white stripy jumper, fidgeted on the threshold, carrying a bunch of black cardboard rectangles under one arm, looking as if he was trying to work up the courage to knock.
Colin rolled his eyes. ‘Oh for...’
Mr Stripy shuffled his feet and peered into the office. ‘Is Mrs Agapova in?’
‘She’sgone missing, you daft wobbler! Have you no’ seen the paper today? We went with it on page one, three, seven and nine!’
Pink flushed above the beardline. ‘I...don’t always have time to—’
‘No’ to mention it’s all over the TV, and the radio,andthe internet!’
The feet shuffled some more. ‘So, she’s not in?’
Colin grimaced at Logan for a moment, then back to Mr Stripy. ‘Just stick your mock-ups on the table, OK? I’ll see she gets them when or if she ever returns...Assuming she’s no’ already deid.’
Mr Stripy looked down at his sheets of card, then at the table, then at Colin, then licked his lips, then nodded, and hurried over to the long table – laying out six front-page mock-ups, side-by-side so they were all visible. Then stood back to admire his handiwork.
Colin thumped a hand down on Mr Stripy’s shoulder, making him jump. ‘Now do us all a favour and sod off, aye?’
The pink flushed darker. ‘I’ve got...lots to be getting on with.’ And away he scurried.
‘Next time, read the sodding paper!’ Colin hissed out a long breath. Shaking his head as the jittery bloke disappeared. ‘Is it like this in the polis? Swear to God they get younger and more clueless with every passing year.’
‘Yup.’ Steel parked her bum on the table. ‘Andwhiniertoo.’
Logan tried the next desk drawer: a worms’ nest of cables and phone chargers. ‘Did she mention getting any hate mail, death threats, things like that?’
‘I mean, what sort of half-arsed “newspaper” can you put out when you fire all the proper journalists?’ Colin worked his way along the filing cabinets, to the bottom left, rattling out the final drawer. ‘Think interns could’ve broken Watergate? Or Partygate? Or all that dodgy shite about right-wingers swimming in Kremlin cash?’ He pulled out a cardboard box – just about big enough to keep Gwyneth Paltrow’s head in – and clumped it down on the desk. ‘There youse go.’
Logan frowned at it. ‘What’s this?’
‘Hate mail.’
Opening the top revealed a massive stash of envelopes andprintouts. Had to be hundreds of them in there. ‘How many months’ worth is this? I only need the stuff sent to Natasha Agapova.’
‘Aye, that’s just since she got here. Apparently there’s another eight boxes back at her place.’
‘Eight...?’
‘Told you: we rattle buggers’ cages. Her more than most.’ Colin plucked a handful of hate mail from the box and sank into one of the visitors’ chairs, leaning back to put his feet up on the desk. ‘Had an editor once, liked to frame the worst ones and stick them on the wall. “Colin,” he says, “Colin, you no’ doing your job right if nae bastard hates you.”’ Turning to the first letter, scrawled in red ink on lined paper. ‘Here we go: all in easy-to-read block capitals. “Dear Stupid Bitch, I hope you die a slow, sucking-chest-wound death and dogs rape your dead body and then eat it and shit it out.Ranger’s Football Clubare the best football club in the world and you’re too stupid to know it.” Not a single bit of punctuation, if you don’t count the...four, five,sixexclamation marks at the end.’
Logan reached in and pulled out a stack of the things. ‘She got all this inthree weeks?’
Mr Rangers-Are-The-Best was placed facedown on the desk and Colin moved on to the next. ‘Ahem: “Fuck you, you fucking...” well, I’m definitely no’ gonnae saythatword with ladies and weans present, “You fuckingbleep, badgers have more right to life than you do. You’re the one spreadingbleepingdiseases, whore.” Blah, blah, et cetera. “Kill yourself.”’ He waggled the letter. ‘See,thismoron didn’t just submit their hate via the website, or email it in, they got a sheet of paper, and a green biro and they scrawled it all out by hand, then found an envelope, paid for a stamp, and stuck it in the postbox.That’sdedication for you.’
Logan stuffed everything back in the box, held it out soColin could do the same, then carried the lot over to the long table. ‘Constable Quirrel: I need these in date order. We’re looking for anything connected with the message on Mrs Agapova’s answering machine: “karma”, “hurricane”, “house of lies”, and, or, “bitch”.’
‘Sarge.’ Tufty tidied away Mr Stripy’s mock-ups and laid the hate mail across the table, shifting individual letters forward and backwards – tongue poking out the side of his mouth.
Steel sniffed. ‘What about all the electronic stuff?’
‘Aye: in the box. We print every nasty wee message out – in case we need to give it to you lot. You know: if something like this happens. So you can do sod-all about it.’
A knock rang out from the open door, only it wasn’t the weedy bloke in the burglar’s top – back for another round of Humiliate Mr Stripy – it was a scruffy-looking woman in hiking gear and a bandana. As if ready to go on an Amazonian hike, or climate protest, at the first toot of a pan pipe.
She had a fat grey laptop clutched in both hands. ‘Yo, Colin: I hear you’re Interim Editor now.’
A frown. ‘Says who?’