Human Remains

address.’
    ‘What did you do?’
    ‘I checked it out.’
    ‘And?’
    ‘Then I called your lot.’
    ‘You found someone?’
    ‘Yes. Well – I got to the house, had a look through the window, and then rang the police. I’ve just spent the last three hours at the hospital trying to get information out of the mortuary team, but the person I usually speak to happens to be on holiday. So they’re understaffed in there and none of them is that keen to talk to a reporter, of course… so I’m none the wiser.’
    ‘What did you see? When you looked through the window?’
    ‘Not much. I could see what looked like a leg, sticking out from behind a chair. Actually I only realised it was a leg because it had a slipper on it. It was a funny colour. The leg was, I mean. The slipper was… dark red… with a kind of white snowflake pattern…’
    ‘Well,’ I said, ‘you’d make an excellent witness, anyway. I’m sure they’ll be asking you what the slipper looked like.’
    Sam laughed, briefly. ‘I was trying not to look at the leg.’
    The thought of it must have made the corners of my mouth turn up, just a little, because Sam said, ‘You should smile more often.’
     
     
    My face dropped, then. I shouldn’t be smiling at all. What was I thinking? And what did he mean, exactly? It felt as if I was being flirted with, and the not knowing – I could never tell these things – made me uncomfortable.
    He must have seen my reaction, and he fell silent. The windscreen was clearer now, so I turned on the lights and reversed out of the parking space.
    ‘Thank you for the lift,’ he said at last. ‘My car’s in for its MOT. I was going to get a courtesy car but that didn’t happen, and since I was supposed to be in the office all day I didn’t think it would matter. I got a taxi down here.’
    I wasn’t really listening to him. We were at the traffic lights, waiting to turn on to the main road back to town.
    ‘What’s the matter?’
    ‘Hm? Nothing.’
    ‘You seem distracted.’
    ‘I’m just tired. I’ve been at the hospital all night.’
    ‘It sounds serious.’
    ‘Yes, I think it is. I’m just going home to feed the cat and get a change of clothes, then I’ll be coming back.’
    ‘I’m sorry to hear that, Annabel. You know, you really don’t need to bother with the lift, I can always wait for the taxi…’
    ‘No, it’s fine. Don’t worry. It’s nice to have someone to talk to.’
    ‘Having contacts makes such a difference,’ he said. ‘I’ve got some really good mates now through this job, you know – it’s not all about getting the story, it’s about building relationships with people so they trust you. People are suspicious when they find out you’re a journo; if you’re nice to them they think you’re only doing it because you want to print intimate details of their lives. I don’t know what sort of newspaper they think the
Chronicle
is, for heaven’s sake…’
    The town centre was busy, the lunchtime rush. A grey autumn day. The lights on the one-way system seemed to be taking forever to change.
    ‘… but I don’t work like that, I mean, it’s nice if people do tell me things, but they don’t get that the information I need is usually something really specific. Even if they give me a quote, the chances are I’m only ever going to use a few words of it. It’s just a job, after all, like any other job…’
    The traffic moved again and I drove through the town centre and out the other side, heading for the estate where all the roads were named after poets, my mind on other things.
    ‘It all gets easier when you’ve got proper contacts, though – people who know you and trust that you’re not going to make them look like an idiot in print. I just like talking to people, making new friends… you probably noticed…’
    We drove along the main road, the side streets one after the other named after people I’d learned about at school about a hundred years ago. Longfellow Drive. Wordsworth Avenue. Keats Road…
    ‘It’s this next one,’ he said.
    I turned left. We drove along a wide road: semi-detached houses, big bay windows, neat front gardens edged with low brick walls. It was starting to rain.
    ‘Just after this blue car,’ he said. ‘This one.’
    I pulled in. It was a normal-looking house, bigger than mine, with a porch. For a moment I thought it was quite big and maybe journalists earned more than I thought they did, and then I realised he probably