In the back of the Ford Transit van parked outside Number 22 Nelson Street in Harrowby, the air smelled of damp upholstery, commercial greaseproof paper. The warm, slightly metal scent of an electric space heater plugged into the garage extension lead. Outside, the Lancashire rain was falling with that soft, unbroken grey drizzle that muffled the sounds of traffic on the nearby blood road.
Ada Morland sat in the driver’s seat with her navy overalls unzipped to the waist. She showed a clean white cotton vest. She was eating an egg-and-cress sandwich from a plastic lunch tub balanced on the steering wheel, her wool-socked feet resting on the dashboard heater vent. On the passenger seat beside her, the small dark wood audio box Ada had wired to the Courtesy Bridge gave a gentle, rhythmic hum as the sound carrier line steadied.
Through the copper trumpet mounted on the dashboard came Pella Rook’s voice, filtered through forty miles of stone and rain, with the muffled scrape of Eren Tal planing timber in Sister Merrow’s yard.
“Ada? Can you hear me through the horn?”
Ada swallowed her bite of sandwich, reached over, and tapped the brass receiver with her knuckle. “Loud and clear, love. I’m just having my dinner before I have to go over to the retail park and look at a cold radiator in an optician’s shop. What’s the news from the mud? Did Auditor Nenn get his satchel to the council?”
