indicated. ‘Where now?’
‘Keep going, I’ll let you know when the next turn-off is coming,’ Ashley said. Gina couldn’t help but note her posture. She was leaning toward the windshield like she was gonna jump out of the window and fly to her destination any second now.
‘Is this normal, then?’ Gina asked.
‘What’s that?’ Ashley said, eyes flicking from her phone to the road, squinting ahead to the next turn.
‘Listening in on police frequency for stories?’ Gina clarified. ‘That scanner thing, do all journos have one?’
‘It’s not standard issue, no. I bought it on eBay. Just in case.’
‘In case of what?’
‘Look, I… I’m going where the story is, alright? That’s what we do. You just point the camera where I say, and we’ll be fine.’
Gina didn’t like the sound of that. ‘Why wouldn’t we be fine?’
‘We will be fine, that’s what I’m saying. It’s right at the lights.’
Gina took the turn. But she wasn’t at all sure she should. None of this seemed right. She wondered what Bernie would say. Gina wasn’t much for narcing, but she had this feeling that at the end of this day, she was going to end up in Bernie’s office, her and Ashley like naughty schoolgirls called up to the head’s office for an uncomfortable conversation about professional protocol. Gina wasn’t really worried about her own arse, though. After all, she hadn’t had this job this morning, so she wouldn’t really lose much if she got sacked. By that logic, if she went along with Ashley’s instructions, what was the worst that could possibly happen?
The answer to that question came some hours later, and it was worse than an arse smacking from the boss. Quite a bit worse.
Five
Ashley couldn’t believe it. Things like this never happened.
When she’d bought the scanner, she’d never really believed she’d ever get to use it. It was pure fantasy, something she’d seen in movies. A spunky young journalist hungry for a story, chasing it down by hook or by crook. But real life? Real life was the crowded train to work, a lukewarm latte, a supermarket sandwich, talking to dull civil servants, sitting in a drafty van. It wasn’t big, exciting crime.
Until today.
When Gina had told her there had been three sirens, she’d gotten this tingly feeling. She’d had it before, when she knew she was onto something, like the school break-in. But this tingle put that one to shame. It started at the nape of her neck and travelled all the way to her coccyx, shooting down her like lightening.
She knew that this feeling was telling her something. And even though yesterday she’d gotten into trouble for letting her instincts guide her, today she wasn’t doubting herself. She didn’t care if Gina saw her scanner and dobbed her in. She didn’t care if Bernie lost his marbles and put her on probation, maybe even fired her. All of that seemed like background to the tingle.
Then, things got even more exciting. When she tuned into the police frequency, she heard the police officers on the line saying a lot of codes that she didn’t know. She’d have been completely in the dark if the male officer hadn’t stopped talking in code. ‘Oh, shit, Debby! Get everyone down here, now!’ the man yelled. Ashley was electrified.
After she’d managed to wrangle Gina and her crap back into the van, she was pleased to find she wasn’t asking too many questions. Or rather, she was asking nowhere near the amount that Ashley would have asked if the situation was reversed. That was good because she didn’t have the bandwidth to deal with someone telling her that she shouldn’t be doing this. She already knew that, anyway. It didn’t matter to Ashley, not if she was right. Not if she was on her way to something big, something no one knew about yet, certainly not the nationals. Ashley was going to scoop them all, and when she did, oh when she did…
When they arrived at Jimmy’s Pizza - a big, tacky place with a gargantuan neon sign on its roof, the jewel of a cheap-looking precinct full of old, mostly closed down eateries off a B road - there were indeed three police cars sat in the car park. The police officers were all sat quietly inside of them, which was a bit of a disappointing start. Ashley had sort of hoped for a scene, something kicking off. But maybe it would soon?
‘Right,’ Ashley said, turning to Gina. ‘I’m gonna go and chat up the