. The bar was busy already with the midmorning coffee crowd, and there was no telling when Cordwainer might drop by for a look at the books.
“Not really,” she said, her voice low and tense. “What about the nature reserve? Could we meet there? In the car park? Talk while we walk or something?”
“Okay. Nature reserve it is. Can you get there in half an hour?”
“Yes, I can. Yes. Thanks.”
“Oh—what’s your name? How will I know you?”
“My name’s Michelle. I’ll be wearing a floral patterned wrap dress and carrying a red handbag.”
She felt pleasingly like a resistance member setting forth on an espionage mission and she smiled to herself on replacing the receiver in its cradle. The man had sounded eager and interested. At long last, some power of her own lay in her hands.
The nature reserve was rarely busy. It lay on the western coastal fringes of Goldsands, past the broad swathe of caravan parks, beyond the point where the beaches turned to unpopular shingle. A rare and particular type of reedbed meant that it hosted some unusual wildlife, mainly species of birds, but also water rodents and a wide variety of insects.
Michelle crunched across the gravel car park and leaned on the fence that separated the swampy reedbeds from the walkways, looking out across the huge green-brown expanse. Only a few birdwatchers with binoculars kept her company here, lurking in the specially built hides that could be found dotting the walkways.
“If they knew about this,” she murmured to herself, picturing the reeds ripped up and concreted over, the intense stillness replaced with flashing lights and booming loudspeakers. “I’m doing the right thing. I am.”
She heard a car pull up and park with a gravelly flourish and knew straightaway that it must be the journalist. She turned towards the source of the noise and smiled to see a well-dressed young man in an open-necked shirt and linen trousers, slinging a satchel over his shoulder and peering around the car park.
He trotted up to her, shouting, “Michelle?”
“You must be Jeremy.”
“Sorry to keep you waiting. Traffic’s dreadful today. Have you been here long?”
“No, just a few minutes.”
They looked at each other, on the brink of turning the mood from one of casual pleasantry to something darker, neither one wanting to take that first step. It would be so much easier just to take this man for a walk around the reserve, pretend that we are holidaymakers on a jolly. Why does this difficult stuff have to be done?
“So, um,” opened Jeremy, with a look that seemed to apologise for having to spoil the atmosphere, “how do you know Charles Cordwainer?”
She held out a hand. “Shall we walk? Have you been here before?”
“I’m ashamed to say I haven’t,” Jeremy said, offering his arm and heading towards the walkway with his informant. “I’ve lived here most of my life. Terrible, isn’t it?”
“I suppose a lot of people who live here could say the same thing,” she mused. “And yet it’s such a beautiful, peaceful place. It deserves to be more widely visited.”
“Yes, it does.”
Michelle sensed that Jeremy was trying to think of a polite way to steer the conversation back to Cordwainer. She took pity on him.
“That’s why I don’t want Cordwainer to raze it to the ground.”
“To…what?”
“Oh yes, that’s his plan. He hasn’t put it before the council yet, but he will, as soon as his corrupt officials manage to get its status of Special Scientific Interest revoked. And the council will grant permission, because so many of them are in his pocket, and this place will become Goldsands’ very own supercasino complex, complete with showbars and tacky hotels and, well, you name it. I don’t think the ducks will be too happy. And neither am I.”
“But…are you sure? I know he had the casino license approved, but I had no idea he had a location in mind. Here? How do you know this?”
Michelle stopped and leaned over a paling, watching a family of moorhens fuss and quack amid the reeds.
“I’ve heard it from his own lips. I’ve heard him in discussion with Councillor Trewin, with the chief of the county police, with the senior member of a firm of local solicitors, to name but a few. He’s been talking about it for months.”
“So you work for him?”
Michelle sighed. “In a way.”