17
Natalie Beckett scanned through the article that she was about to upload to the newspaper’s ‘live’ folder. It wasn’t her best work, but she wasn’t sure how anybody could be expected to make the results of a primary school Christmas card competition interesting. The photographs showed beaming children holding up luridly painted cards with cotton wool snowmen and the zig zags of carefully cut-out Christmas trees. She shook her head and hit send.
This wasn’t quite how Natalie had imagined a career in journalism. She wanted exclusive interviews and mad dashes from the office to crime scenes around the west of Cumbria. But this wasn’t London – it wasn’t even Carlisle where they had at least a couple of decent murders every few months. It was mainly rural stories with only the most basic level of human interest.
It was a start though. A step on the ladder. Even though the company she’d joined had been bought out by a major international media group there was still scope for her to improve, to make her mark. At least she’d managed to dodge the latest round of redundancies and cuts. All it would take was one good story – one amazing break. Christmas cards weren’t it though.
As part of the recent restructuring, Natalie had been given a role that she regarded as an admin job – except there were no admin jobs anymore because all the admin staff had been ‘let go’ – she was responsible for monitoring the newspaper’s social media feeds in case a member of the public flagged up something interesting. She often spent an hour every morning reading through accounts of squabbles between neighbours, unusual bird sightings on the coast and the odd ‘enlightening’ historical gem from the area – usually sent in by one particularly keen amateur local historian.
She started with Facebook. A picture of some outrageous Christmas lights on a house on the A595, sightings of unusual geese near Allonby, a few images from a school nativity play in which Joseph looked terrified of his pregnant bride and Mary looked smug.
Nothing interesting.
She switched to Twitter and checked Cumbria Constabulary first. A warning about driving in icy conditions was pinned to the top of the feed followed by information about closures of the M6 during the Christmas period. The next tweet was from the previous weekend – nothing much happening, then.
Finally, she looked at the newspaper’s Twitter feed. This one tended to be much quieter than Facebook – perhaps the readership was generally more comfortable with the former as it had no character limits and comments were easy to add and follow. She saw that there were sixteen notifications and two direct messages. The messages were usually from disgruntled readers pointing out spelling errors or other inaccuracies, but they had to be checked, just in case.
The first message made the hairs on Natalie’s arms rise and pull at their cuticles. Was this finally it? A big story?
She didn’t recognise the name of the sender – it looked like a local woman, somebody involved in a parish council who’d contacted the newspaper before – but the message was clear.
Being held hostage at Fellbeck School. Armed men. Don’t know how to contact police. Can you help?
It was a prank. It had to be. Why would a grown woman be held hostage at a secondary school? Natalie navigated to the school’s website and clicked on the staff list. There was no Lois Morton listed. She went back to Twitter and had a closer look at the woman’s profile. It looked genuine but it was almost impossible to know these days. Another tweet had come in.
This is my mum’s account. Please call the police.
That made a bit more sense. A student playing a trick using a parent’s Twitter account. She was tempted to message back, playing along to see how long the kid would keep it up but she had better things to do.
This isn’t a prank. Help. Please.
Whoever it was they were determined to get her attention – it wouldn’t hurt to check it out. She navigated back to the school website and rang the listed phone number, counting eight rings before the answering service kicked in. She tried again, assuming that the line was engaged, with the same result.
‘Odd,’ she said to herself, looking round to see if anyone had overheard. If this was something big, she needed to keep it to herself until she was certain of the facts and then she could pass it on.
She looked around the office, assessing which of the scant group of colleagues might be of most use. ‘Hey,’ she said to Val, the advertising manager. ‘Doesn’t one of your kids go to Fellbeck?’
Val looked up from her computer and ran a hand through her thick grey hair as though making sure of the tidiness of her appearance. ‘Our Raph’s in year eight.’
‘He hasn’t contacted you this morning. Nothing unusual?’
Val shook her head sending the mane of hair into instant disarray. ‘Not heard owt. What’s up?’
‘Probably nothing,’ Natalie said. ‘Just a kid playing a trick.’
‘Do you want me to text Raph? If he’s in a lesson he won’t get back to me until break but I’m happy to help.’
Natalie was tempted to say no. To leave it alone and get on with her assigned tasks for the morning, but there was a niggle of doubt that wouldn’t let her concentrate on anything else. What could it hurt? If Val’s son was in his lesson, then surely there was nothing wrong at the school.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Can you keep it casual though? Ask him what he wants for his tea or something? I don’t want to cause a panic.’
Val frowned at her and seemed like she wanted to ask a question but instead she picked up her phone, still connected to her PC by its charging
