Cover Story - 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?’

His eyes darted towards her.

‘One hundred per cent,’ Bel said. ‘You have my word, and I have no way of taking notes.’

‘I’ll be honest, I’m not sure I should be here. Not here here. I mean, risking my livelihood and my employability in the city I’ve made my home for the last thirty years.’

He smiled a thin smile, and Bel couldn’t tell how much of his pale complexion was Celtic genetics, and how much fear.

‘I get it,’ Bel said. ‘I promise, by speaking to me you’re uncommitted to anything. We can talk the issues through and decide to do nothing. I won’t turn you over. Whatever we do decide, it’ll be a joint decision.’

This last line might be a slightly cosmetic version of the truth, but she understood the need for reassurance when your wellbeing was in the hands of a stranger.

‘You’re the Investigations Editor, so I’m thinking knotty, complicated stuff is of interest?’ Ian said.

‘Correct.’

‘OK. You know the general reputation of, and legend that is, Manchester’s “big personality” Mayor, Glenn Bailey?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘What’s your image of him?’

‘Ehm … very popular. Youthful and attractive, especially for a politician – you get those political crush jokes. An ex-caner turned nighttime czar, then Mayor. Has done loads of good things for infertility awareness as he couldn’t have kids, and about sobriety as a reformed caner teetotaller. Bit of a folk hero feel. A folk hero in a designer plaid shirt, with a takeaway flat white from an indy coffee roaster permanently gripped in left hand. Because caffeine is his one remaining vice.’

The Mayor’s love of coffee, a man who still needed a stimulant, had become a tabloid joke. A running meme Photoshopped one into his free hand on his wedding day, shaking hands with the King, during minute’s silences.

‘That’s roughly what I thought you’d say. He’s my employer, I work in comms. Har har, right?’

Bel smiled.

‘I’ve been around Glenn for ten years, one way or another, worked on his Mayoral bid. And yes, he’s immensely charismatic: energetic and tireless in his love and advocacy for the city, expansive in his vision. He did a lot of solid work with the gay community and, as a gay man of my vintage, I was impressed.’

Ian took a breath.

‘He’s also a malignant narcissist whose addiction is seducing much younger women, preferably those who work for him. Caffeine is one of two vices.’ Ian exhaled. ‘You’re not going to quote me, right? It’s between us and the departed, here? He treats me like a consigliere. I feel like Mafia going to the FBI.’

‘It stays here.’

Bel’s heart rate sped up. She’d once heard a newsroom whisper that the Mayor played away, but she’d not given it much credence. GB, as he was colloquially known, had an image of being such a contentedly settled ex-raver, she suspected it was a wishful counter take by envious men. The same way every women’s pin-up A-lister was supposedly in the closet.

‘I’ve known it’s been going on for years. Men my age don’t tend to be inner circle on the office sex life gossip, but women would leave, suddenly. Certain organisations would be cagey about working with us again. Over time it turned out Glenn’s whole ageist, insistent emphasis on hiring twenty-somethings, “not old Dereks and Lindas, stuck in their ways” revealed itself to have a different purpose. There’s a particular way he can use his status, with the less experienced.’

‘I know what you mean,’ Bel said.

‘Anyway, I got my twenty-four-year-old niece, Erin, a month-long placement at our office at the start of the year. I naively and arrogantly thought that, with me on site, I could protect her from any untoward attention. I thought I had. Recently she confided she was briefly involved with Glenn and completely shattered by it. They’d swapped numbers and it only began after she left, so I had no idea. I wish I’d warned her he was a piece of shit, but somehow, I thought that was better unsaid.’

‘I’m really sorry,’ Bel said. Ian’s voice had thickened and the guilt was palpable.

‘I’m not proud of the fact I was overlooking it when it wasn’t my blood, but none of the women had confided in me, you know? It didn’t feel like my business, however uncomfortable the rumours made me.’

Ian threw her a look and Bel opened her mouth to say I am not an exemplar either and then went with:

‘Don’t worry, I understand. What exactly happened with Erin?’

A light sweat had developed under her clothes, as she pushed her hands into the pockets on her dress.

‘His standard MO. I think. Says he’s seen something special in her, wants to help her career. Gives her loads of great contacts and encouragement. Then when she feels obliged to him, he gives her the spiel he’s been monogamous for decades but she’s turned everything on its head, blah blah. Commences an intense love bombing. Then follows a brutal ghosting, once it’s consummated …’

Ian took a breath.

‘You can imagine it was agonising to go into this with her uncle, but there was an even darker element, too. This part is what finally shocked me into action and emailing you, really.’

Bel was aware she was electrified and sympathetic, also, should be keeping every sceptical journalistic defence up.

‘Erin said when she finally got hold of Glenn – to ask him why he’d dropped contact with her so dramatically, not with any expectations – he made it very clear he’d got what he wanted and they were done. And that he could weather anything she threw at him, but he had the ability to destroy her. He said she’d be discredited as some “slutty young girl trying to use him for her fifteen minutes”. Especially as he’d leak photos of her, which she didn’t realise he had.’

‘Nudes?’

‘Yes. She’d sent them on WhatsApp as a disappearing message for safety – you know, where they immediately vanish? He said he’d screenshotted them. She’s not sure if it’s true, but if he’s unpleasant enough to bluff it, he’s unpleasant enough to do it. He said they’d find their way online and no one would ever be able to prove where they came from.’

‘He threatened her with revenge porn ?’ Bel said, so shocked she briefly halted in her tracks, amid the eerie tranquillity and tweeting birds. She tried to piece it together with the stoic, middle-aged man who’d smiled out of Sunday supplement articles about better SEN care in local authority schools.

‘Yep. He made it clear his ability to humiliate and expose Erin if she went public was considerable. I’d wondered how he took risks and always got away with it, I assumed he stayed friends with his conquests. Which he might well do, but, clearly, he’s prepared for it to become hostile. Erin was so upset and shocked, she said she was physically shaking. Remember, this is someone who told her he’d never been unfaithful before. When the pennies dropped it was like a Blackpool one-arm bandit.’

Bel nodded, face taut. She knew that sensation.

Ian paused. ‘The thing is, if he hadn’t been my superior, if he hadn’t been the Mayor, Erin would’ve treated a forty-five-year-old man making those initial advances to her with extreme caution. He quite purposely used his position of trust to get past her defences. This is about a power imbalance used to ruthless effect.’

Bel’s eyes settled on a lichen-covered heavenly messenger nearby, the statue posed with hand to face, as if deep in thought.

It wasn’t a kiss-and-tell, Bel agreed. It was a story that shone a light on something larger, the kind she was always looking for. Bel’s skin was goosebump chilly. She had The Shiver.