Garry finished the espresso and put the cup on the table. ‘Ever the good mood.’

Jessica ignored him. ‘Let’s hear it then.’

Garry pocketed his phone and leant forward, reaching into a bag on the floor and taking out a copy of the Morning Herald. He flicked through the pages then laid it flat on the table, which wobbled as he put pressure on it. ‘This is from two days back,’ he explained, pointing to a square box towards the bottom of the page. Jessica leant in to read.

‘REST IN PEACE OLIVER GORDON BELOVED SON AND FRIEND’

The notice concluded with a date and ‘taken too young’.

‘How often do you run these?’ Jessica asked.

‘Twice a week.’

‘How does it work?’

‘It used to be something you would pay for but that stopped a few years ago because there were so many places people would put notices for free on the Internet. The bosses figured they would rather have people buying the paper to read the notices and make some money than make more or less nothing because people weren’t paying for the spots and the pages were relatively empty.’

‘How popular are the pages? I’ve never looked at one.’

There was an awkward smile on Garry’s face. ‘It’s not really for people like you. You’ve not got kids. For people who have children, this is something they’ll keep plus, because they’re often involved in other activities with other new parents, they all look out for each other’s too. You’re only going to put a marriage notice in if you want it to be seen by others, which doesn’t sound like you at all, and then you have the death notices. Although you do get the odd younger person, it’s the page that is most read by the older folk because they aren’t generally looking for these things on the Internet. They check for names of people they might know who have passed away.’

It sounded pretty morbid to Jessica. ‘These are the most popular pages?’

Garry shook his head. ‘Actually, that’s the crossword.’

‘Seriously?’

‘God forbid you ever get a clue wrong. Once we printed the wrong grid and we were taking calls for three days about it. People were going crazy, phoning up and saying, “I’m never buying your rag again” and so on. We got this letter handwritten in green ink saying they were going to fire-bomb the building.’

‘Over a crossword?’

Garry laughed, seeing the senselessness in his description. ‘I know.’

‘So if people only ever buy the paper for the crossword and the births, deaths and marriages bit, why even bother with all the news?’

Jessica was trying to wind him up but he answered seriously. ‘Half our managers think the same thing. I wouldn’t mind but, if we get a detail in a story wrong, no one bothers us.’

Trying to bring him back around to the subject, Jessica pointed to the death notice. ‘Do people email these in?’

‘They can but this was phoned in.’

‘Have you got any way of checking who calls you?’

‘Not directly. You’d have to check with the phone company. I can get you the details.’

‘Do you usually take the name of the person who has placed the notice?’

‘Initially but the paper doesn’t keep the information long-term because we don’t take any payments and have no real need. We used to have vast filing cabinets full of it all but it was getting ridiculous, then some management guy had this big thing about data protection and so on, so we shred it. I had a look for a name before I called you but there’s nothing on the spike. We have these recycling people that come around, so I guess it went out with that.’

Jessica nodded in reluctant acceptance. ‘So you’ve just got this new guy who took the call?’

‘Yes, Ian. I’ll take you up to meet him.’

Garry shuffled nervously in his seat, so Jessica spoke the words for him. ‘He’s Sebastian’s replacement.’

‘Yes.’

Sebastian was a journalist who had become too involved with his stories, creating incidents to report on and then getting carried away.

Jessica thought Garry was going to apologise so she stood before he had the opportunity, reaching into her pocket and dropping a few pound coins onto the saucer next to the espresso cup. ‘I’ll get this but I’m taking that paper. Let’s go.’

The offices of the Morning Herald were only a few hundred metres away from the cafe. Garry used a security pass to swipe them through the front door and they headed for the lifts. They were in one of the tallest buildings in the city and, while Jessica knew that was where the paper was based, she had never visited before.

‘Impressive,’ she said, examining the various company names on the walls before the lift doors opened with a hum.

‘We’re only on one of the floors. It used to be two but they crammed us all into one to save on rent. You won’t think it’s that impressive when we get up there.’

Garry wasn’t wrong about that. As modern as the building seemed, the floor he worked on looked as if a paper-bomb had gone off on it. Entire rainforests had been sacrificed, simply so the office could be covered by an apparently endless onslaught of rubbish. As soon as she stepped out of the door, her eyes were assaulted by the clutter. Boxes of white printer paper were stacked immediately on her right, next to a whirring photocopier. On her left, there was a wall filled with framed newspapers. At one point they would have been neat and lavish, but the frames were hanging at awkward angles and two of them were cracked. Ahead of her was a mass of desks, each with a computer and seemingly another stack or two of paper. Jessica wasn’t tidy herself but this was taking things to a new level.

They walked side by side, Jessica following Garry’s lead as he weaved through a bank of desks towards the far side of the room. ‘Why is it so messy?’ she asked.

‘No idea. It’s always been like this.’

Although it wasn’t overwhelming, there was a hum of noise; a mixture of fingers tapping at keyboards and journalists chatting either to each other or on the phone.

They soon reached a glass-walled office with ‘Garry Ashford, News Editor’ written on the door. In other circumstances, that might have been impressive but the impact was dampened by the fact it had been printed on a sheet of A4 paper and Blu-Tacked to the glass. Garry held the door open for her and then closed it once they were both inside.

‘It’s not that funny,’ he said as Jessica made no attempt to stifle her giggles.

‘That is the shittiest sign I have ever seen.’

‘Someone’s coming to do it properly,’ Garry insisted.

‘Still can’t spell your own name, either.’

Garry walked around the desk and sat as Jessica took the chair across from him. From what she could tell, Garry’s office was one of the few clutter-free spaces on the floor. The walls were a faded yellow and clearly hadn’t been decorated in a while but his desk was clear except for a computer. The only other piece of furniture was a filing cabinet in the corner.

‘I don’t even use that,’ Garry said, indicating the cabinet as he noticed Jessica looking at it.

‘How come you get your own office?’

‘Dunno really. The news editor has always had one, so I ended up inheriting it when I got the job. I spend most of my time on the floor anyway.’

‘Where’s this Ian guy?’

‘I’ll get him but, if you’re going to shout, just remember these glass walls aren’t that thick.’

‘Why would I be shouting at him?’

‘You’ve not met him yet . . .’

‘Why are you so convinced I won’t like him?’

Garry grinned knowingly. ‘Let’s just say I don’t think he’s your type. His dad is on the board of directors, which is why we had to hire him. He’s not as bad as I thought he might be but . . . well, you’ll see.’ He stood and walked back towards the door.

Jessica might not have met him but she knew exactly what Garry was warning her about when he returned a few minutes later with a man who looked as if he had somehow been created solely to annoy her. Ian walked with a swagger that he had neither the looks nor natural charisma to pull off. As he offered his hand for Jessica to shake, he eyed her up and down, before offering a posh-sounding: ‘I didn’t realise police officers could be so attractive.’