Page 66 of Glasshouses

“Although you look like a pirate.”

“I’m going to take that as a compliment.” He bit into another pierogi as the microwave pinged. “Did you eat one of the pieces of cheesecake?”

I tried to look innocent. “Absolutely not.”

“Really?”

“Absolutely.”

“Repeating yourself doesn’t mean it’s true. Mama Taz texted me to say she’d sent three pieces and there are only two in there. She’s already shouted at Matty and accused him, so come clean else your plumber might send the waste pipe into your bath.” He went and got the second container from the microwave.

I eventually confessed, visiting the corner shop to get us both some beers, spending the rest of the evening talking about anything except how he’d gotten those files, and why.

Chapter Nineteen

Millthorpe was only a couple of miles from Roselea as the crow flew, but getting between the two wasn’t the same path as a crow would take. I’d driven to the church in Thornley End, parking my car in the pub car park, changing into my trail shoes and hoping my phone didn’t lose signal as it was my only navigation tool.

I’d woken up early, aware that there was a guest in my house, albeit one who hadn’t requested an invitation. Taz had slept on the sofa as I hadn’t bothered to buy a spare bed yet, and it seemed weirdly overfamiliar to catch sight of him sprawled out, a quilt wrapped around his waist and his hair a bird’s nest.

I made coffee and ate a bowl of cereal, delivering a mug to the man on the sofa, wondering really how he’d got there, then I headed out to the other side of Greater Manchester, the route now familiar, the grey stone still feeling cold. The sunshine of the previous days had faded into a pale grey sky that promised rain, and I was halfway towards Millthorpe when the first drops hit my skin. It made me speed up, the aches and tiredness of the last few days thrown off into the cool breeze.

The Holding’s quarters were a farmhouse in the midst of fields also belonging to the property, which was registered to The Holding as an entity in itself. We were still waiting on the accounts, but my gut was telling me something wasn’t right. It was also telling me I was running alongside The Holding’s fields, rows and rows of well-tended crops were to my left, the odd scarecrow that looked like it had been made by children standing guard. Another half a mile and I saw a woman in the fields, close enough to the fencing to speak to. I slowed down, noticing her jeans and T-shirt, sunglasses perched on top of her head.

“Morning,” I said, hoping she didn’t think I was some oddity.

“It was, but I think it’s going to rain. I hope you don’t have far to go.” She was around sixty or so, slim and active looking.

“Just a couple of miles. Do you own these fields? They look amazing – like loads of allotments.” I felt more rain hit me when I stopped.

“I kind of own them. It’s a co-operative; we try to do all home grown and home-made. It’s good fun and no one ever goes hungry.” She picked up her trowel from the ground. “Although it’s less fun when it’s raining.”

“What’s the co-operative called?”

“The Holding. We’re not online – yet. We’re setting up a website and hoping to get more people involved. Look, this rain’s getting heavier. Do you want to come inside and shelter?” She looked concerned.

I was tempted for a number of reasons, mainly because I was getting wetter than I’d intended and I also wanted to nosy in. But given what I’d seen in Taz’s file, I needed to come here officially.

“I’ll just run a bit faster. It’s been lovely to speak to you.” I was tempted to ask for her name.

“You too. Mind how you go.”

I did, almost, choosing paths that were better sheltered, the ground slippery with the wet after so much dry weather. I sped up as the route turned closer to The Holding’s headquarters and I saw five or six people walking up the private road towards it, a Sunday meeting. Maybe Amanda would be discussed and Micky Mulligan, maybe they’d be making plans for funerals or what they’d do with the proceeds of the houses they’d receive in the wills. Or maybe that would all be down to Andrew Smith.

We were back to the start, not just of the recent fire, but seventeen years ago and The Holding, and a fourteen-year-old girl who’d hated her parents and wanted to live somewhere else.

I was drenched by the time I got back to the car, the rain making up for being away for several days. Ste and his team would be glad, I knew, because the moors were like tinder kegs, fires starting just because, or because some idiot had decided to light one. Rain dampened everything, it changed the city and thickened Mancunian blood.

I’d done enough running to know to keep towels in my boot, pulling a bath sheet out of a bag and ignoring its musty odour and drying off. The return journey back through Tameside and then on the M-Sixty was a lot different than earlier, the world having woken up.

I used the bathroom at the top of the house to shower, the room still kitted out like a boarding school in the last century, the shower curtain in desperate need of replacing. It was a project for another year, if I was realistic, and in a week or so, the room where Taz and his brother were banging around would be done and I’d feel like I was in a five star hotel, only responsible for cleaning it myself.

The city centre, or town as most Mancunians called it, had a different vibe on a Sunday. The city was hungover, the after effects from the night before evidenced with the remnants of kebabs and half-drunk bottles of cheap alcohol discarded in shop doorways, the odd pile of vomit from where someone had drunk too many shots on top of spirits and beer. The rain had stopped, or maybe town hadn’t experienced it, nothing to wash away the debris of drunken dreams.

I parked in my usual area, half glad I had a reason not to be in the house, my brain not in a space where it could focus on the logistics of plumbing. Colin’s café was open, as always, Colin visible as he delivered food to one of the many full tables. It shouldn’t survive, given the number of trendy eateries that had sprung up in the Northern Quarter and NOMA, but its chipped Formica clearly had a hidden charm.

I didn’t go in, it was too busy and I was keen to get to the office and go through the evidence taken from the shed. Theories were firing around my head; I just needed to find something concrete to steer which direction I went in.

I grabbed a couple of coffees from a street vendor, giving one to Edie as I passed her in one of her favourite doorways. There were days when she wasn’t around, and I’d worry until I next saw her that she’d become a nameless statistic, one of thousands of people each year who went missing and were never found, or sometimes even noticed.