Mhairi McFarlane 3-Book Collection: You Had Me at Hello, Here’s Looking at You and It’s Not Me, It’s You. Mhairi McFarlane

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       4

      In some workplaces, everyone has clusters of framed family portraits on their desk, a tumbler of those novelty gonk pens with tufts of fluff at the end and a mug with their name on. From time to time they cry in the loos and confide in each other and any personal news is round the office in the morning before the kettle’s gone on for a second time. Words like ‘fibroids’ or ‘Tramadol’ or ‘caught him trying on one of my dresses’ are passed about in the spirit of full disclosure.

      Mine isn’t one of those workplaces. Manchester Crown Court is full of people moving briskly and efficiently about the place, swishing robes and trading critical information in low voices. The mood is decidedly masculine – it doesn’t encourage confidences that are nothing to do with the business in hand. Therefore I’ve masked physical evidence of my emotional turmoil with an extra layer of make-up, and am squaring my shoulders and heading into battle, congratulating myself on my varnish-thin sheen of competent poise.

      I’m getting myself one of the Crown Court vending machine’s famous dung-flavoured instant coffees, served in a plastic cup so thin the liquid burns your fingertips, when I hear: ‘Big weekend was it, Woodford? You look cream crackered!’

      Ahhhh, Gretton. Might’ve known he’d burst my bubble.

      Pete Gretton is a freelancer, a ‘stringer’ for the agencies as they’re known, with no loyalties. He scours the lists looking for the most unpleasant or ridiculous cases and sells the lowest common denominator to the highest bidder, often following me around and ruining any hope of an exclusive. Misdeed and misery are his bread and butter. To be fair, that’s true of every salaried person in the building, but most of us have the decency not to revel in it. Gretton, however, has never met a grisly multiple homicide he didn’t like.

      I turn and give him an appropriately weary look.

      ‘Good morning to you too, Pete,’ I say, tersely.

      He’s very blinky, as if daylight is a shock to him, somehow always reminding me of a ghostly, pink-gilled fish my dad once found lurking in the black sludge at the bottom of the garden pond. Gretton’s evolved to fit the environment of court buildings, subsisting purely on coffee, fags and cellophane-wrapped pasties, with no need for sunshine’s Vitamin D.

      ‘Only joking, sweetheart. You’re still the most beautiful woman in the building.’

      After a conversation with Gretton you invariably want to scrub yourself with a stiff bristled brush under scalding water.

      ‘What was it?’ he continues. ‘Too much of the old vino collapso? That fella of yours tiring you out?’ He adds a stomach-turning wink.

      I take a gulp of coffee with the fresh roasted aroma of farming and agriculture.

      ‘I split up with my fiancé last month.’

      His beady, rheumy little eyes lock on mine, waiting for a punchline. When none is forthcoming, he offers:

      ‘Oh dear … sorry to hear it.’

      ‘Thanks.’

      I don’t know if Gretton has a private life in any conventional sense, or if he sprouts a tail and corkscrews into an open manhole in a cloud of bright green special effects at five thirty p.m. This topic of conversation is certainly uncharted territory between us. The extent of our personal knowledge about each other is a) I have a fiancé, now past tense, and b) he’s originally from Carlisle. And that’s the way we both like it.

      He shuffles his feet.

      ‘Heard anything about the airport heroin smuggling in 9 that kicks off today? Word is they hid it in colostomy bags.’

      I shake my head.

      ‘For once they really could claim it was the good shit!’

      He honks at this, broken engagement already forgotten.

      ‘I was going to stick with the honour killing in 1,’ I say, unsmiling. ‘Tell you what, you do the drugs, I’ll do the murder and we’ll compare notes at half time.’

      Pete eyes me suspiciously, wondering what devious tactic this ‘mutually beneficial diplomacy’ might be.

      ‘Yeah, alright.’

      Although I can get ground down by the bleak subject matter, I enjoy my job. I like being somewhere with clearly defined rules and roles. Whatever the grey areas in the evidence, the process is black and white. I’ve learned to read the language of the courtroom, predict the lulls and the flurries of action, interpret the Masonic whispers between counsel. I’ve built up a rapport with certain barristers, got expert at reading the faces of juries and quick at slipping out before any angry members of the public gallery can follow me and tell me they don’t want a story putting in the bloody paper.

      As I swill the remains of the foul coffee, bin the cup and head towards Court 1, I hear a timid female voice behind me.

      ‘Excuse me? Are you Rachel Woodford?’

      I turn to see a small girl with a halo of straw-coloured, frizzy hair, a slightly beaky nose and an anxious expression. In school uniform she could pass for twelve.

      ‘I’m the new reporter who’s shadowing you today,’ she says.

      ‘Ah, right.’ I rack my brains for her name, recall a conversation about her with news desk which now seems a geological era ago.

      ‘Zoe Clarke,’ she supplies.

      ‘Zoe, of course, sorry, I’m a bit brain-fugged this morning. I’m doing the murder trial today, want to join?’

      ‘Yes, thanks!’ She smiles as sunnily as if I had offered her a walking weekend in the Lakes.

      ‘Let’s go and watch people in wigs argue with each other then,’ I say. I point at the retreating Gretton. ‘And beware the sweaty man who comes in friendship and leaves with your story.’

      Zoe laughs. She’ll learn.