“Haha! No!” Chris laughed. “Of course she doesn’t!”
“Thanks, but I’m fine,” Sinead said.
“She’s fine!” Chris echoed. “She doesn’t need us getting in the road. Especially when, you know, I’m back in at five tomorrow morning. Which is…” He looked at his watch, but it was late, and his brain was having none of it. “…just a few hours from now.”
“Yes, it’s all good. You’ve been a big help. Thanks,” Sinead told them. “But, I’ve got it from here. Honestly. I’m almost done myself, then I’m going to head to the B&B.” She glanced over to the corner, where Taggart lay on his back with his legs in the air, fast asleep. “They do take dogs, yeah?”
“Yeah, course,” Chris said, keen to get going. “If they say anything, just tell them he’s a police dog, and that we said it’s fine.”
Sinead gave him a thumbs up, then got up and followed the constables to the front door.
“And you’re sure you’re alright?” asked Suzi. “You know how to lock up?”
“Do I use the big key you told me about three times already?”
Suzi smiled. “Yeah. That’s the one. You’ve got this!”
“We know she’s got it,” Chris said, practically dragging the other constable out of the station. “What we need to get is some sleep!”
Sinead waved them both off, then closed the door behind them. She returned to the room with the stacks of newsletters all laid out on the floor, and Taggart’s tail gave a happy little flick, despite the fact he still appeared to be asleep.
She found herself yawning, and took a moment to click on the kettle that stood on a cluttered tabletop in the corner. Her hand hovered over a half-empty coffee jar, contemplating her choices. The jolt of caffeine would buy her another hour or so, though she’d probably pay for it by not sleeping when she got to bed.
Besides, for all she knew, she was already taking the piss a bit by bringing Taggart back to the B&B. Best not push her luck further by rocking up at the house after midnight.
She took a teabag from an open carton, dropped it into her mug, then wandered back to the piles of paper while she waited for the kettle to boil.
The stack that Suzi had been working through was closest. She stopped beside it, squatted down, and looked over the topmost sheet. It was from five years back, and much of it was dedicated to the proposed new hospital up the road in Fort William, which was apparently going to be a front for either a cloning lab or a series of gas chambers, depending on which paragraph you paid most attention to.
An article on page two listed all the people in the mainstream media who were under the direct hypnotic control of the UK Royal Family. The list included a few big-name news presenters and political correspondents, but also—more surprisingly—former Really Wild Show presenter, Michaela Strachan.
Apparently, for reasons best known to themselves, the royals had stuffed Michaela Strachan with explosives which, upon their command, would detonate, killing her and everyone within a fifty-feet radius.
Quite what Michaela Strachan had done to deserve such a fate wasn’t clear, but there it was in black and white.
Well, blue and white. The ink used for this edition was a couple of steps down from navy on the colour spectrum, unlike most of the others.
Not all the others, though. She’d seen other editions with blue print, too. Three or four of them.
The water in the kettle roiled and rolled as the temperature climbed. Sinead took the blue-printed sheet and set it in a pile by itself, then went through the rest of Suzi’s bundle until she found a second issue printed with the same colour of ink.
By the time the water reached boiling point and the kettle’s switch clicked off, Sinead had gathered ten issues of the newsletter, all of them printed in blue. They stretched right back to the beginning, so some were written by hand, while others had been typed. They were all photocopies of an original document, though, so getting them done in colour would’ve been more expensive than the standard black on white.
Which meant it was a deliberate choice. There was some purpose to it. A meaning.
But what?
She laid the sheets out side by side on the floor. Spread out like that, the evolution of the publication was plain to see. The leftmost edition was written in messy but well-intentioned block capitals on a sheet of lined paper, with the title and date written at the top slightly larger than the rest of the text.
The next issue wasn’t much different, just double-sided. Two further along to the right, Bernie had clearly discovered desktop publishing software, although he hadn’t actually invested any time in learning to use it other than to create a logo of sorts. ‘The Beacon’ stood at the top of the page in an ornately cursive script. He’d drawn a picture of a lighthouse next to it, and some lines that were intended to suggest it was illuminating the title.