The Body on the Roundabout, page 1
First published in the UK in 2025 by
An imprint of Bonnier Books UK
5th Floor, HYLO, 105 Bunhill Row,
London, EC1Y 8LZ
Copyright © Faith Eckersall, 2025
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
The right of Faith Eckersall to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 9781471419485
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For Ashley, for everything
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Acknowledgements
A Note from the Author
About the Author
About Embla Books
Prologue
Page 6, the Guardian. 14 January 2021
A journalist who was sentenced to a year in prison, after admitting breaches under the Data Protection Act, has seen his sentence suspended on appeal.
Harold Rupert Hedges, 37, of Fulham, London, had admitted to breaking the law while working as a correspondent for the Daily News newspaper but went on to appeal the sentence.
In a statement released after the hearing, Daily News proprietor, Sir James Knox, described Hedges as ‘a disgrace to our industry and our nation’ and said there was ‘no place for this type of reprehensible behaviour’ in his or any other publication.
Chapter 1
The red petrol light had been flashing since the Bournemouth Spur Road. Now the amber oil light had decided to join it. All his ancient Mini Cooper needed next was the battery light to start up, and his dashboard would resemble the full Blackpool Illuminations.
Harry felt as if he’d been on the A31 forever. Thank God he was nearly there.
He indicated right, started driving north on the A350 and, after several miles, found himself approaching a large roundabout, from which assorted foliage bristled, like a giant green and yellow pirate’s beard.
Where was the bloody sign?
Too late he clocked the notice indicating that the centre of Historic Piddlington Minster was the exit he’d just missed. He jammed down his right brogue on the accelerator as he made another attempt to arrive nearly on time at his new place of work.
As he did so, a small, elderly woman on the pavement suddenly brandished what appeared to be a placard on a stick, right in front of the bonnet. Harry yelped and closed his eyes as he swerved away from her.
As he opened them again, he shuddered; the last thing he needed was another brush with the police. The old girl must be off her head.
He immediately juddered to a halt, having managed to place his size-11 foot on the postage-stamp-sized brake pedal – a six-foot-three journalist isn’t ever a good idea in a vintage Cooper. Judging by the car-horn symphony behind him, you’d think he’d stopped in the middle of the M25, not this obscure Dorset backwater.
Harry flipped his blonde fringe out of the way and looked round for the placard-waving pensioner, who had mysteriously disappeared. He beamed nervously into his rear-view mirror at the baleful woman driver of the tractor-sized motor which had nearly shunted him.
Looking like a younger and taller version of Hugh Grant used to be such an advantage in life, he thought. Nowadays, he may as well resemble Donald Trump, for all the good it did him.
He fiddled the sulky gearstick into neutral and gently turned the ignition.
Nothing. Unless you counted the flashing lights. Harry began to feel immensely warm under his tweed jacket, which was far too heavy for early September, but the only one he possessed now. The bailiffs had seized all the others when he stopped paying rent on his flat.
‘Sorry!’ he said, as if every other driver backed up behind him could hear. He tried the starting procedure again. Miraculously, the car sputtered into life. Ramming the gear into first, he successfully exited towards the town centre, trying to ignore the radio which had jolted into life again and was fading in and out of two separate news bulletins, surreally jumbling a story about antiques thefts and the rate of inflation.
According to the guidebook he’d surreptitiously thumbed through at the M3 service station as he fled London – his ancient iPhone had long been out of data – Piddlington Minster could be approached in three ways. He was coming over the stone, humpbacked bridge option, which afforded ‘heart-stopping views’ of the twin-towered minster: a mellow, medieval building, which looked as if it had been lovingly constructed from artisanal loaves, glowing in the sunshine.
If Jasper Grant, his former school chum and newsroom boss at the Daily News was correct – and Harry wouldn’t put it past him to have lied about this, too – following the road should allow him to find his new office quite easily, as he spooled through the town’s one-way system.
Having overshot the correct route, he found himself in what looked to be the town square, clattering past a knot of youths on bikes, a health food store and a statue of Queen Victoria, who was glaring right at him.
* * *
He was looking for the newspaper’s premises. In the old days – twenty years ago, probably – a paper like the Piddlington Gazette would have occupied the best part of a beautiful Georgian building, all symmetrical sash windows, like a doll’s house. It would have had a Downing Street-type door – complete with a spiderweb fanlight and a hand-painted sign, proudly declaring that this was the office of Your Local Newspaper.
But those days were long gone, melted away with publishing it all for free online, a collapse in advertising and the faint but lingering taint caused by various journalistic scandals.
So, while he knew he was looking for a Georgian building with three steps up to the front and a door in ‘Arsenal red’, as Jasper had put it, he also knew that this part of the edifice – ‘the good bit’ – was now occupied by a lifestyle boutique. Jasper had explained that he’d probably have to guide the Cooper through the building’s old coaching entrance at the side and into a courtyard, where he’d find the former outbuilding, which now housed the newspaper. ‘They used to keep pigs there,’ said Jasper. ‘Supposed to be haunted. By a two-headed pig, or so it goes.’
Harry had asked him how he knew that and been answered with a chuckle. ‘Must have done a story on it, back in the day.’
He’d been so desperate to work again that he’d grabbed the opportunity. So long as there’s a parking space, Harry prayed. The parking space was crucial, because it would mean he would have to pay out less money.
And that was vital, for the simple reason that he didn’t really have any. What Had Happened and the resulting court case had seen to that. Paying the barrister had burned through the inheritance left by his mother, Isabella, and he was living on an overdraft the size of Wembley Stadium.
Of course, he could have accepted his father’s kind offer to integrate him into the family’s luxury wastepaper-basket manufacturing business as a means of paying off his gargantuan bills. But that would have meant giving up journalism. Frankly, he’d rather cut off his right hand. Which would be far less painful than doing a proper job, he reckoned. Especially in luxury wastepaper baskets.
After extricating himself from St Basil’s College Sixth Form, he’d joined a regional weekly, working there two weeks until his interview with the notorious Colombian drug baron, El Rato, went global. As someone who enjoyed the happy knack of being in the right place at the right time, and often with exactly the right people, he didn’t see the point of telling anyone that he’d only obtained the world exclusive after freeing the notorious criminal –and, it turned out, clandestine claustrophobe – from a locked toilet during an unscheduled layover at São Paulo airport. Harry had promised not to reveal the sobbing gangster’s embarrassing secret in exchange for the interview everyone w
As he braked, gently this time, not wanting to miss the newspaper’s entrance, his excitement rose at the thought of actually getting into a newsroom again. It would be the first step in his grand plan to rehabilitate himself and earn a few quid to help pay back his father for his assistance with the legal bills. Newspaper work had provided Harry with a fabulous living and helped fill the hideous void of loneliness and pain he’d fallen into after Isabella’s death. His handsome face, velvety brown eyes and ability to make interviewees feel as if he’d spent his entire life waiting to meet them had landed him a string of effortless front-page splashes, not to mention some reasonably successful investigations. From getting Princess Anne to admit she’d sung happy birthday to her horse, to El Rato, he’d sailed along. Until that fateful day, when an envelope of what appeared to be conversation transcriptions had arrived on his desk with a scribbled note about ‘turning them into stories’.
He’d been busy at the time, working until stupid-o’clock each night, so he’d just added the extra work to his pile and cracked on.
When he’d mentioned it to Violett Travers – his long-term reporter colleague with whom he’d enjoyed a brief liaison – she’d shaken her long, glossy dark hair and sympathised.
‘Tell me about it! I’ve been working on them all day too – should we complain to Jasper, do you think?’
Even now, like a comedy thermometer, he felt the heat of shame travelling up his neck and face. Never having had any formal journalism training, he hadn’t realised the transcriptions were of recordings which had been illegally obtained.
Violett had been broken up for him when it all came out: ‘My God, Harry, how has this even happened?’ But then had come the rumours, the police investigation and the reckoning. Jasper had ordered them to his office and put it brutally simply. ‘This is what’s known in the trade as a monumental fuck-up,’ he raged. The bastard politicos were on the rampage and the organisation needed to look willing. He needed someone to admit to the wrongdoing. ‘It’s you or her. I’m going out now, so you can sort it out between you.’
In the end the choice was surprising easy. Firstly, because he knew that unlike him and Jasper, the tear-blotched Violett had been raised in the kind of London postcode where gritty police dramas about violent drug gangs were filmed. She hadn’t gone to a posh school; she’d started working at the newspaper as a cleaner. He knew and understood how hard she’d had to slave for everything she’d achieved.
And secondly, after arriving back in his office and ordering Violett to get a tissue, Jasper told Harry that if he fessed up to it being his idea and went quietly, it would all blow over and he’d get a caution ‘tops’ and his job back. So he said yes.
And very soon found himself the poster boy for everything that was wrong with the British press. Thank God his father was so wealthy that he could afford the kind of barrister who specialised in convincing flinty judges that everything that had happened was simply a frightful mix-up.
It had been, therefore, a frightful shock to find himself sentenced to a year in prison. This had entailed a sizeable chunk of the family fortune being spent on convincing even flintier appeal judges that an eye-watering fine and the public shredding of his character were punishment enough.
* * *
As he swung into the first part of the one-way system, past a row of Georgian and Victorian buildings belonging to solicitors and estate agents, he spotted the Life & Style Store, on the right, with its glossy red door. And there was the passageway at the side. For once in his life, Jasper Grant had told the truth.
As he changed down and manoeuvred the Mini towards the cobbled entrance, Harry grimaced. It had been over two years now, but he still couldn’t smother the horror of being marched away from the newsroom, head bowed so he didn’t have to see the mortified faces of his colleagues, as the Operation Knacker coppers pretended they were arresting Gordon Gekko in Wall Street.
As he drove through the narrow brick archway into a courtyard, he looked up to see a faded wooden sign propped against the flaking, whitewashed wall of the one-storey building at the courtyard’s rear: The Piddlington Gazette.
After parking the Cooper, he turned off the engine, shoved open the door and stepped out. Straight onto a giant dog turd.
A sickening odour zoomed up his nostrils. Oh, great. Just great. His shoes may have cost £300 but that was a long time ago and they now had a hole in the bottom that he couldn’t afford to repair. After much vigorous foot-wiping on a handy clump of dandelions that were sprouting through the neglected cobbles, he knocked on the sad-looking office door, with its three panes of mismatched glass.
Silence.
There was an electric bell attached to the jamb and a security light, but the number of wires sticking out of both made him fear for his personal safety. He tried the push-down handle instead. Surprisingly, it opened.
The room was lit by a lone and flickering fluorescent light, suspended from the apex of the converted stable roof. The remainder of a piece of Christmas tinsel hung from it – an exotic turquoise caterpillar, twisting in the breeze coming from the open door. To Harry’s left was a row of wonky metal shelves bulging with files, curling notebooks and ancient, yellowing newspapers. In front of them was a battered metal desk whose surface was mostly taken up by a huge, archaic-looking computer monitor.
Upon that desk there were also a round circle of wood with a metal spike on it, a model of a submarine, a glass etched with an old-fashioned dolphin and emitting what smelled suspiciously like an alcoholic substance, and a crumpled copy of the Racing Post. To his right, immediately beside the door, was an imposing brown wooden desk with a green leather surface and a dusty flatscreen.
The desk’s top was as lifeless and devoid of personality as the moon itself. As there was no record of any living journalist keeping their workspace this tidy, he assumed that was where his predecessor had sat, before he had, according to Jasper, ‘run off into the night’.
To the right of this desk, under the grimy windows, was yet another. It looked like a skip salvage job, but someone had decided to brighten it up by spraying it bubblegum pink and attaching fairy lights and a hand-painted notice to the front, declaring: Hot Desk!!!! Its top was encrusted with lidless pens, dishevelled reporter’s notebooks, mismatched mugs with unicorn cartoons on them, two half-finished glasses of water, and various ornaments, including a panda, a polar bear, a pig and an inflatable cactus. At the side, a flimsy-looking retro wire-basket tower was so piled up with papers that it tottered like a drunken model on a catwalk.
But it was what lay at the centre of the room that really grabbed his attention. On top of an old duvet, covered with a fleecy Union Jack blanket, was the biggest, floppiest, daftest-looking chocolate Labrador that Harry had ever seen.
‘Hello, boy!’ he said, in what he hoped was a friendly voice. ‘What are you doing here? Where is everyone?’
The dog regarded him with dark, solemn eyes. He bent forward to pat the creature. The dog seemed to like it, so he carried on.
‘What’s your name, then?’
He reached towards its worn leather collar to read the brass identity disc that dangled underneath. And then retreated with a yelp as the beast clamped its entire set of teeth round his right hand.
‘Christ!’ he screeched, yanking it away. The dog growled.
A faint set of red speckles on his hand proved it had drawn blood. Now he’d probably need a tetanus injection. He looked round. Across the room there was another office door with two mismatched glass panels in the upper part, and the lower one badly repaired with hardboard. Must be the kitchen. Or the loo. He stepped towards it. The dog rose majestically and growled again.
Shrinking to the perimeter wall, he proceeded to creep round until he could pull the door open with his foot, then slunk into a dank room containing mildewing back copies of the newspaper on shelves, a toilet cubicle, and a tiny sink, kettle and unwashed mugs.
Harry ran the cold tap. Nothing. He opened it a little more. The tap began to vibrate. He opened it another turn, and it made an explosive noise before water spurted out, making an appalling and inevitable beeline for his crotch.
