North East Star

North East Star is a local newspaper whose reporting becomes part of the struggle over how the missing-women cases are understood. Its crime coverage notices a genuine pattern in the abductions, but its alarmist framing, speculation about the Briggs twins, and adversarial exchanges with police also raise concerns about fear, public sympathy, and whose disappearance receives attention.

Reporting the cases

The paper’s crime reporter, Warren Wilson, writes about the serial abductions under the name The Phantom. When Eve Strong checks a headline and its byline, she recognizes Wilson and observes that he has been warned before, as have other reporters. The headline casts the killer as a night-time spectre who first takes women from their lives and later ends those lives. Eve objects to the melodramatic treatment, which she believes can make people frightened and on edge. Bill Nicol sees a commercial motive in the coverage: the Phantom label is memorable, likely to attract readers to the paper’s website, and therefore to increase advertising revenue. His complaint is that the paper’s pursuit of sales takes precedence over the community affected by the crimes.

The paper’s next front-page report, published on Thursday 22 February, is more than pure invention. A journalist has independently noticed the pattern also identified by police: after a new woman is abducted, the previous victim is murdered and her body dumped. The article warns that another woman could be taken within the following week and frames the danger through an urgent headline about how much time the current missing woman may have left. It presents the police search for Felicity Wanless as a race against time. The paper thus makes a consequential pattern legible to the public, while turning an uncertain forecast into an immediate, dramatic threat.

The twins and the limits of speculation

The same edition devotes space to the disappearance of Terri Briggs and Berri Briggs. It entertains several explanations: that the twins may have been taken by the same man, that a grooming gang may be involved, or that they left home on their own. The article draws on conversations with friends and neighbours, applies a dismissive label to the girls, and pairs its account with an unflattering photograph of their mother, Linda Briggs, smoking, as well as a photograph of the house, its untidy hedge, and its scrappy front garden. Eve’s reaction is that the article does not present the family sympathetically. The paper’s choices make the twins’ appearance, home, and reputation part of the story before their fate is known.

The press office confirms that North East Star had requested an update on the investigation but had not told police that it had noticed the pattern. In the police station’s press meeting, Gary Baxter faces Warren Wilson directly. Wilson asks whether there is news about Felicity, then about Louise Usher, Cath Caslaw, and Becky Allsopp, and whether police know the Phantom’s identity. Gary declines to disclose information and asks reporters not to publish or broadcast speculation he considers unfounded and far-fetched, because it frightens people. Wilson persists, then dismisses the lack of answers as evidence that police have no clue. The exchange turns the newspaper’s reporting into a visible conflict with the investigation: police are protecting information and resisting conjecture, while the reporter presses for material and publicly underscores what remains unknown.

Publicity, workload, and unequal attention

The coverage has consequences beyond the newspaper’s pages, although the novel does not attribute every public response to North East Star alone. As reports and appeals circulate, police receive sightings of the twins from places as far apart as Corbridge and Cornwall. The hotline’s staff are overwhelmed by calls that include score-settling and mistaken suspicions; the civilian team is working through a backlog, seeking authorization for overtime, and marking potentially promising reports for an initial fast sift. The volume makes a practical problem of the public alarm surrounding the cases: attention can produce information, but it also brings a flood of leads that investigators must assess.

North East Star’s handling of the twins also becomes part of a dispute about which victims the public is encouraged to value. Linda tells Gary that the missing women’s pictures have been prominent in the news and argues that her daughters would receive more attention if they were wealthier and working-class status were not held against them. She imagines that middle-class images, such as photographs with a pony, would attract a different response. Her words do not establish why the newspaper chose its coverage, but they expose how its unflattering presentation can reinforce the sense that the Briggs family is being judged rather than simply helped. Kirsty Summers likewise worries that the article may have weakened public sympathy. She proposes putting Linda before the press so that viewers will see a worried mother rather than only the paper’s unsympathetic framing.

Contesting the paper’s frame

At the press appearance, Linda appeals directly for Terri and Berri to come home, assuring them that she is worried, not angry, and that whatever led them away can be resolved. Her distress breaks through as she speaks. Gary then gives the hotline number and asks anyone with useful information to call. The arrangement uses press access to carry a family appeal as well as a police request, redirecting attention from speculation toward the missing twins themselves.

That effort continues outside the station. Iris brings Linda a box of T-shirts produced through contributions from neighbours and the twins’ friends. The shirts reproduce the twins’ smiling Instagram photograph, identify them as missing, and carry the hotline number. Linda gives shirts to Gary to distribute, while Iris proposes sending one to Warren Wilson so that the paper might show him wearing it on its front page. Her suggestion explicitly challenges the prominence given to the Phantom and his victims: the twins, too, should be treated as important. The scene does not establish that North East Star prints such a photograph. It does show the family and community trying to use publicity on their own terms, turning the newspaper from an apparent source of stigma into a potential channel for recognition and help.