Dead Silent (47 page)
Authors: Neil White
Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #General, #Thrillers, #Suspense
I knew what the problem was though: it had become too dangerous too often. Criminals are bad people, it comes with the job description, but reporters don’t come with the protection that police or lawyers enjoy, because we are not players in the game. We’re on the sidelines, observing, annoying, interfering. I had gotten sick of the risk, had been hurt a couple of times.
I laughed at myself. I knew what Harry English was doing. He was trying to tweak my curiosity, knowing that it’s what drives me, why I became a reporter, because I wanted to know what was happening out there, the stories going on behind the suburban curtains.
Night Wire? What was different about him? Police bloggers were nothing new, they have been around for as long as the internet, jaded and weary cops having an anonymous rant at the system.
But Night Wire
was
different, because he screamed that little bit louder, was strident and angry, more than some weary beat bobby moaning about paperwork and protocols.
The blog was tolerated at first, like most of them, just a chance for the rank and file to vent some steam, but there
was something about Night Wire that struck a chord. The police liked him, of course, because he was their voice, and some posted messages of support, but then it started to ripple outwards, into the general public, and that’s when the force got twitchy. His supporters jammed the site, and the police hierarchy in Lancashire got a little angrier whenever he posted a new blog, their attempts at community relations hampered by the loose words of Night Wire. There were posters around the station, Laura had told me that, warning disciplinary action for anyone proved to be blogging police secrets, but that didn’t seem to stop him.
I smiled and almost gave him a mock salute, and then I realised that I had to think of something else to do, because I was thinking of logging on, just to read the latest.
Born above a shoe shop in the mid-1960s, Neil spent most of his childhood in Wakefield in West Yorkshire as his father pursued a career in the shoe trade. This took Neil to Bridlington in his teens, where he failed all his exams and discovered that doing nothing soon turns into long-term unemployment. Re-inventing himself, Neil returned to education in his 20s, qualified as a solicitor when he was 30, and now spends his days in the courtroom and his evenings writing crime fiction.
To find out more about Neil go to www.neilwhite.net and visit www.BookArmy.co.uk for exclusive updates.
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This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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A Paperback Original 2010
Copyright © Neil White 2010
Neil White asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
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EPub Edition © 2010 ISBN: 978-0-00-737172-3
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