Chapter Twenty Six

Twenty-four hours later, Sorcha was standing in her kitchen trying to figure out how to fill the evening. It wasn’t a problem she was used to. Normally she was working, or out, or too tired to do anything except let her brain rot slowly in front of the TV. Recently, she’d spent a lot of time sleeping, too. But the day had gone better than she had expected it to, and she had even managed to see a physiotherapist late afternoon. Her trainee had suggested it, and she decided to act on the suggestion before she had time to think better of it. She figured the “are you really a moron?” conversation could wait for another time, when she felt more sure of herself.

The appointment had left her feeling oddly saner, but that didn’t actually help fill the time. She thought of calling Pippa, but she was feeling serene, and Pip would think she was trying to wind her up. She needed to speak to Jane, even if she wasn’t quite sure what to say, but she couldn’t sensibly do that until much later when she would be back from work.

Sitting in the dining room, staring at the papers which had come from Marty’s flat, was close a last resort. She had looked over all of the loose papers again, but was inclined to give up on the ones which related directly to Keith. If Jake couldn’t make much sense of them, there was no chance that she was going to be able to. That left the map, the photo of the woman, and the article about the youth centre. Only the youth centre article really gave her anything to go on, and it looked as if it had probably just ended up filed in the wrong place.

About three quarters of an hour of googling later, she knew that the article had almost certainly been published about a month after the Brits at which Jake and Keith had been reunited. She couldn’t find an online version, which wasn’t a huge surprise given that there was an advert on the back of it for a double glazing company in Wigan which probably meant that it was from a local paper, but there were two or three references to the centre being in financial difficulties at around that time. She also knew that it was still open: it had a web-page to which things had been added in the previous few weeks.

Which left her in another quandary, and fighting the urge to have a drink. The web-page had a phone number on it, and the bits of her which liked watching pop stars sleeping were sorely tempted to phone it. And neither staring at London from the balcony, nor part of a seemingly endless round of University Challenge could quite shift the thought.

In the end, she picked up the phone and started dialling the number while she was still in the middle of deciding what to do about it. She got two digits from the end when she realised that she should have withheld her number, and had to start again. It had all been a lot easier back in Miss Marple’s day.

It was only when the very hesitant individual who answered the phone had gone to find the manager that it occurred to her that Miss Marple also usually got her cover story straight before starting to nose around. Announcing that she was a lawyer from London might elicit some kind of reaction, but it was unlikely to be the one that she wanted. Not knowing who she was intending to say she was would have been a very good excuse to hang up; but while she was trying to decide whether to hang up, a much more measured voice came onto the line. Sorcha fell over her own train of thought in trying to think of something to say.

“Oh Hi. My name’s, erm, Caroline McInlay.” Caroline McInlay was a girl with copper-coloured hair who had sat two rows in front of her in a Maths group when she was eight: why the hell had she chosen a Caroline? And erming while you’re trying to make your name up wasn’t good at all. “I’m a journalist, doing some research into how smaller, local charities go about raising funds. I wondered whether you could spare me a few minutes?”

Sorcha had recovered enough from her stunningly wobbly start not to hang up and run away just yet. She said that she was freelance, working on the early stages of something on the impact of the Lottery on the charitable sector. She was glad that she had thought of the freelance bit: it made her harder to check out and meant she had little to promise. She was surprised, and slightly alarmed, at how easily something plausible popped into her head and out of her mouth. It was ultimately no different to telling staff that you were having yet another tedious discussion about office leases, when in reality it was a discussion about whether to fire them. Or fighting tooth and nail for a contract point which you had ultimately been told to concede. It was an interesting reflection on her professional life, but if she didn’t concentrate, she was going to give herself away.

“So how did you come across us, dear? We’re very small, very local. Not the kind of thing which many people are that interested in, to be honest.”

“That was what actually why I called. I get the sense that there used to be a lot more local, charitable projects like yours, but a lot of them are actually being put out of business by the professionalism of a lot of the fundraising which goes on these days. Our researchers..,” Shit. Did freelance journalists actually work with researchers? Or were they actually the researchers themselves? Shit, shit, shit. Just stop thinking about it and plough on, “… our researchers came up with a number of local projects like yours, which were reported as having had funding problems in the past year or two, and I’m trying to find out more about some of them.”

The voice at the other end of the line, which had been reasonably open and responsive thus far, suddenly went quiet. Sorcha wasn’t sure that it was suspicion – if she had been, she would have hung up – but something that she had just said had clearly hit some kind of nerve. She was going to have to ask a more direct question.

“I gather that a year or so back you thought that you were going to have to close because you couldn’t afford the rent on your premises – is that right?”

The voice was guarded.

“Yes, yes it is.”

“But I’m guessing from your website that you’re still there, and managing to pay the rent. How are you managing to make ends meet?”
Sorcha had no idea whether this was a useful way to try to take the conversation, but about the only link she could imagine with Marty was one involving money. That was probably another unfortunate comment on her professional life, but she wasn’t going to think about that either.

“Well, you know, we had a number of fundraising events, and some people were very generous…” The voice trailed off, in a way which wasn’t particularly convincing, before pulling itself together and making some kind of decision, “… Actually, love, if you really want to know we had a mystery donor. Money just started appearing in our bank account every month. Not quite what you’re looking for, I would think, but it kept us afloat.”

Sorcha forced herself to stay calm, and not wonder too much about how many of the Charities Commission’s rules they were breaching. It helped that the woman at the other end of the phone seemed to have decided to trust her.

“Wow! But that’s actually very interesting, as it shows that traditional fundraising methods just weren’t enough to cover your costs. Roughly how much did your donor give you?”

“It was £5,000 each month. Not a huge amount, I know, but it really did make all the difference.”

“I can see that it would,” it was less than a third of what she took home in a month, excluding the final profit distribution at the end of the year, but that wasn’t the point. “But from what you’re saying, I’m sensing that it’s stopped?”

“Yes. Yes, it stopped a few months ago.” The voice at the other end of the line sounded less robust, “I’d saved some of it, of course, but unless it starts again in the next month or two we’re definitely going to have to close this time.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry Pet. I was really hoping that you were going to be one of the success stories.” Sorcha desperately wanted to ask for as much information as their bank could give about how those payments were made, but had to check herself, “Do you think that the payments are likely to start again?”

There was a sigh at the other end of the line, which made it crackle a bit.

“Oh love, you are going to think that I’m such a silly old fool. You see, just before the payments started a lady came and asked us about our bank details, and said she wanted to make a donation. One of the kids as was here back then said he reckoned he’d seen her before and she was Marty King’s mum. Anyhow, he was a right trouble maker, and I didn’t think much to it. But when poor Marty was taken again, well a month or so later the payments just stopped. So I just keep hoping they find him in time.”

Large chunks of what she was hearing didn’t make sense in the context of the things that she knew about Marty, and bits of her wanted to dance around the room in celebration, but Sorcha needed to keep on digging for any more information she could get.

“So do you know that the payments came from Marty King? Was that included in the information shown on your bank statements?”

“Oh no, love. I reckon he’d want to be anonymous, don’t you? He does a lot of good around here, but it’s done very low-key. The payments came from a company. Greencoat Investments, I think it was called. Never been able to find out anything about it, but I reckon he could easily have a company which would make donations and things for him.”

That made even less sense, but it was the information that Sorcha had been wanting.

“That’s interesting. And the payments stopped just before he disappeared?”

“No, not before – it was a little while after. One payment came through just a couple of days afterwards, and then the June one came through as normal, like. But since then, nothing.”

Sorcha was unsure how to wind up the conversation, until two thoughts occurred to her more or less simultaneously.

“You know, Pet, I wish I could do something to help you, but what we’re doing isn’t likely to be out until the new year – we’re at the planning stages at the moment. I get the impression that’s going to be too late for you. But one of the guys I share an office with..” this wasn’t the time to start wondering whether freelance journalists had offices: she was nearly there, “… he’s been looking into some of the stories around Marty King, and I gather the police are very interested in his finances at the moment. I reckon they’d like to hear from you, just so they get a picture of the kind of impact his disappearance has had. If you hang on a moment, I’ll go and find the number of the detective in charge of the UK end of the investigation for you – I think it’s somewhere on his desk.”

Sorcha retrieved the card from her handbag, which was on the kitchen worktop, and gave her the number. She couldn’t tell whether she was likely to make the call, but at least she might. It wouldn’t put her technically in the clear, but it would ease her conscience. Her parting shot was slightly more risqué.

“You know, Pet, I do think it might be worth you contacting the local papers again, though. And maybe try approaching the other BackBeat boys for donations: that lot don’t look short of a bob or two.”

As she hung up, Sorcha felt a huge adrenaline rush which made it impossible to sit still. She dashed around the flat like an idiot, but the energy soon drained from her: it was a whole lot less fun than it should have been, partly because she couldn’t figure out how the bits fitted together, but mostly because there was no one she could tell.