A car rolled by outside, its headlights making the blinds glow yellow. Mirren froze as it passed. ‘OK, add Kelsey’s payment and let’s get out of here. I’m getting nervous now.’
‘Uh…’ Adrian gaped at the screen. ‘Look at this… a series of payments made by Ferdinand to his own personal bank account. A hundred pounds… seven hundred. Christ, there’s one for six grand! There’s even more here, look!’
‘That doesn’t look like petty cash or expenses payments to me,’ said Mirren.
‘No.No it does not. Look, there’s payments coming in from Eagle Media, our parent company. They’re marked, “Staff bonuses”.’
‘And?’
‘They go back seven, no eight, years. I haven’toncehad a bonus in all that time. Crafty sod’s been keeping quiet and transferring them to himself.’
‘He’s stealing money from the paper?’
Adrian reached for the phone and dialled. ‘And he’s got away with it by cutting staff down to the bare minimum recently so no one would cotton on to him, by keeping the last of our freelancers hanging on and hungry, and by generally looking as incompetent and disorganised as possible. No wonder we’re going under. And if that empty safe means what I think it means, Mr Ferdinand’s already done a disappearing act with some other source of the paper’s money.’ He snapped his attention to the phone. ‘Stratford police station? It’s Adrian Armadale at theExaminer. I’m reporting the long-term embezzlement of funds by my editor, Clive Ferdinand.’
Epilogue
‘The wheel is come full circle’
(King Lear)
‘I’m not brilliant with heights.’ Kelsey clambered slowly up the ladder, her cameras hanging on their straps around her neck.
‘Get up there, the parade will be starting in a minute,’ Mirren said, slapping her bottom.
Adrian joined Mirren on the street. ‘Good view from up there, Kelse?’
‘S’good thanks,’ she shouted down nervously as she turned and sat on the little platform on top. ‘Bit wobbly. I thought you were supposed to be holding the ladder steady, Mirr?’
‘I can hardly take notes if I’m holding a ladder,’ Mirren called back, but Adrian was already supporting the legs and making a thumbs-up at Kelsey and squinting against the April sunshine.
The day of the grand theatrical procession had arrived. The theatre companies had been preparing their costumes and floats for weeks. In less than twenty minutes every theatre company in town was going to set off from the station where a grand old steam train was busy whistling and puffing, recreating the old days between the wars when acting companies arrived by steam and the leading ladies and men in their furs and elegant outfits would be whisked through town in carriages, waving to the people who would make up their audiences that season.
This, however, was to be a walking parade through the centre of town, where the streets were criss-crossed with coloured bunting and theatre flags. The procession would stop when the players reached the theatres on riverside and the actors would walk in through their stage doors to await their last calls as the spectators poured into the auditoria to take their seats, ready for the very first performances of Stratford’s high season.
The streets were already thronging with visitors and locals. Some of the smaller shops had closed so staff could watch the never-before-seen spectacle. Even the gallery barge was closed up so Miranda, Kelsey’s smart and efficient new gallery assistant – and a budding young photographer herself – could join the crowds.
Kelsey had pitched her wooden scaffold at the corner of the High Street where the parade would turn down to the riverside and she had a two hundred yard view of the open street, long since cleared of parked cars and cordoned off to traffic by the police.
On their way here, Adrian and Mirren had recognised the two arresting officers who had come to meet them at theExamineroffices on Valentine’s night before heading to Mr Ferdinand’s house in the old town where they had found him frantically trying to hide the fifty-three thousand pounds in cash he’d embezzled over the years from the paper. It had been the talk of the town at the time, especially since Adrian and Mirren had thwarted Ferdinand’s Wagstaff exposé, replacing his salacious front page story with the tale of Ferdinand’s arrest for misappropriation of newspaper funds.
The court case found he’d been siphoning money away from the paper’s parent company for years, paying himself an inflated salary and yearly bonus as well as stealing his staff’s bonuses too, but things had settled down again now that the paper was under the careful steerage of its new editor.
‘How are you pitching this story, Adrian?’ Kelsey shouted down.
‘You’ll need to ask theExaminer’s new senior staff reporter that,’ he called back.
Mirren delightedly tapped her pencil on the notepad. ‘I’m thinking a simple who’s who of the acting companies taking part, illustrated beautifully with your photographs, of course.’
‘Don’t forget all the special guests and acting alumni in the procession as well.’ Adrian nudged her arm.
‘I hadn’t forgotten, boss.’ She smiled at him before kissing him softly on the lips.
Kelsey grinned down at them from her perch. Her friend had grown in confidence and happiness these last few months, especially now she’d had her mum come to stay and Jeanie’s first meeting with Adrian had gone well. They’d even gone to the theatre together. Things were far from perfect and Jeanie Imrie had a long road of her own to walk, living with her addiction and her new sobriety, but they spoke on the phone every few days and she was going to join Mirren, Adrian and Blythe on their Spanish holiday at Valladolid this August.
Mirren had blossomed under these new conditions, helped all the more by her new job writing features pages and special reports at theExamineras well as freelancing too. Her last article had gone viral in a matter of hours: a scathing examination of institutional sexism and a culture of plagiarism in the newspaper industry in general and at theEdinburgh Broadsheetin particular.
Mr Angus and Jamesey Wallace were currently enjoying gardening leave while the independent investigators considered the plentiful and damning evidence supplied by a surprisingly large number of the paper’s staff.
