This Little Piggy (3 page)

Clare got up. “We’re about finished anyway. Thanks, Annie. Take care, Rob.” She left her business card on the mantelpiece and followed Joe out of the door.

They didn’t speak until Joe had driven away from the estate. He parked outside the office and read through his notes, Clare scribbling the quotes and details down in her scrawling shorthand.

“Shame the cops arrived just before we got the photo of the baby,” Joe said, flicking back through the pages of his notebook to check he hadn’t left anything out. Clare smiled and slid a colour snap out of her notebook. Joe grinned. “You’re a good ’un.”

“Reckon we’ll be able to use any of that stuff Rob and Annie said?”

Joe rubbed his nose. “Not if they charge Debbie Donnelly tonight. But we can save it for the backgrounder when she comes to trial.”

“I suppose.” Clare opened the car door. “Coming for a quick pint then?”

“Sure?” Joe asked. “I’m up for it, but didn’t you have an early start this morning? I’d have thought you’d want to get home.”

Clare gave a quick downturn of her lips and shook her head.

“Okay,” said Joe. “Suits me.”

It was too late to drive into the city centre to find the others from head office who would, by now, have left the pub and gone on to somewhere to eat. It meant another night at the Bombay Palace, known as The Bomb, which was so close to the office it almost felt like part of it, but Clare didn’t mind. Anything would do if it staved off the moment when she would have to go home.

Joe didn’t even glance at the laminated menu. “I know this thing off by heart. If they ever put anything new on it, someone would have to notify me in person, because I think the last time I actually read this menu we had a Labour government.”

Clare did read it every time, but always ended up choosing from the same couple of dishes. Lately, the food held little appeal. It was the wine she was really looking forward to. She held up her glass across the table to Joe. “To a front page lead tomorrow.”

Joe raised his beer and nodded. They both took large, silent gulps.

two

Friday 13th July
Clare woke up hot and dry-mouthed. The baby was the first thing that made sense in her just-woken thoughts. All the way through her shower, through trying to pick out make-up and earrings from the dusty clutter on her bathroom shelves, through forcing down two bites of toast, half a mug of tea and the daily dose of paracetamol, she thought about Rob Donnelly, his crumpled face and Annie’s bitter certainties about what had happened. The strange, stray idea that kept coming back to her was: what a waste. What a waste of a little baby. To be thrown away like that, like washing-up water.

She splashed cold water on her eyes, which were red around the lids. She often cried in her sleep, these nights. Then she scraped her hair into a ponytail. It was too hot to have it loose. Thank goodness the perm, a huge mistake, was beginning to loosen up and the ash-blonde curls weren’t quite so tight any more. She sponged make-up lightly over her face. Anything to look a bit healthier. If one more person said she looked tired out, she’d hit them.

Clare opened her front door, squinting at the morning sunshine, digging in her bag for her car key. Damn. She’d left the car at the office so she could have a drink last night. She glanced at her watch. She’d have to pay for a taxi to the police HQ, something she could really do without the week before her wages were due, and blag a lift back with Joe.

She called the newsdesk from home first. “Just checking in,” she said. “I thought I’d go straight to the presser.”

“No need, Clare.” It was the deputy news editor, Sharon Catt, who’d picked up the phone. Clare closed her eyes. Sharon was known among younger reporters as Poison Pen because of her notorious sour temper. In her eighteen months at the paper, Clare had never seen Catt smile. “When you didn’t pick up the office phone I thought you might be off sick again. So I’ve sent the chief reporter.”

Clare swallowed. The phrase ‘chief reporter’ was unnecessarily cruel of Sharon. She could have just said ‘Chris Barber’, but Catt mentioned his title to remind Clare, as if she was likely to forget, that this was a post that she’d applied for herself. On the day of the interview, Clare had been unable to get to work, although she was damned if she was going to explain to her bosses exactly what stopped her.

And she was equally damned if she was going to let this story be swiped away. She took a deep breath. “Okay, Sharon. Let Barber do the easy bit. I’ll go to Sweetmeadows and speak to some of the people from last night. There are some things I want to follow up.”

“I think Chris might want to do that,” Catt started, but Clare spoke over her, a little too loudly.

“I got some great stuff. It was well worth working so late. It’s all on Dave Bell’s desk, ready to go. Two versions: one for if the mum gets charged and one for if she doesn’t. I need to know as soon as things change.”

Catt was silent for a beat.

“No need to thank me. It’s the joy of running my own patch, just like you promised,” Clare added and hung up.

She sat on the bottom of the stairs and gazed at the pile of shoes, bags and unopened letters in her hallway. Dust motes floated like a swarm of tiny insects in the slit of sunlight coming through the glass. One day, soon, she was going to have to sort all this out, but for the moment, the important thing to do was get into work every day, out-splash everyone else and make them sorry they’d appointed the wrong chief reporter.

There was no urgency anymore, so Clare took a bus into the town centre and found her car parked outside a newsagent’s. The paper’s district office was above the shop. It was a tiny room with nothing more than a desk, phone, kettle, typewriter and a teetering pile of back copies of the
Post
.

“Morning, Miss Beautiful.” Jai greeted her the same way every day and Clare couldn’t help raising a small smile. “I came in to sort out the papers this morning and I saw the car. I thought, oh, that naughty Clare. She’s been out drinking wine again.”

“It would be naughtier to get in the car and drive home, though,” Clare said, picking up a carton of milk to take upstairs for her coffee.

“That’s true, very true.” Jai handed her change and leaned across the counter. “Sad news this morning about the little baby, eh? Every one of my customers is saying something about it.”

“I bet they are.” Clare turned to go upstairs, stopping for a second to grasp the rail and take a steadying breath.

“But, you know, Clare, this is a funny job. Sometimes people say things without thinking about them first. They pick up their newspaper, they look at it and they come out with these words. I feel sure they don’t mean what they say. Because they say some shocking things.”

Clare put the milk carton on the stair and turned back to Jai. “Some people are just mean and stupid, Jai. We’re not all racist idiots.”

“It wasn’t that today. It was a terrible comment, though, about the little baby.”

“About the baby? What did they say?”

“Just one person.” Jai shook his head. “Just one person said something nasty. I don’t even want to repeat it, it was so bad.”

Clare folded her arms. “You can’t say that, Jai, and then not tell me what was said. Come on.”

Jai shook his head again. “One man. He said, ‘what goes around comes around.’ And I said, that’s a strange expression to me, you’ll have to explain what you mean. And he said…” Jai stopped and looked down at the counter. “He said to me, ‘people don’t deserve to have children if they don’t look after their brothers and sisters.’”

“This man, did you know him?”

“I’ve seen him before. I think he lives on the estate. You know what I said? I said to him, Mister, no one deserves to have their child taken from them like that. So cruel. No one deserves that.”

“Good for you.” Clare picked up a packet of chewing gum and dug in her purse for more money. “This man. Do you think he was talking about the miners? Do you think he meant that Rob Donnelly was a strike-breaker?”

“I don’t know what he meant. But you know, sometimes people come in here and they spit out these words. And then I get left with them. These angry words just stay here with me, all for the rest of the day.”

Clare squeezed Jai’s hand.

After a quick coffee, she headed out to Sweetmeadows again. The searing July sunshine did nothing to improve her headache or the look of the estate. It made the concrete look dustier, it shone floodlights on the litter and dog dirt. A couple of sorry bouquets were already wilting in the heat, next to the dustbins where baby Jamie’s body was found. But the whole place was quiet. No kids, Clare noticed. It was a school day, of course. And it was only nine-thirty in the morning, so the tenants without kids may not be up and about yet. At the windows that weren’t boarded up, most of the curtains were drawn.

Clare decided to start with Amy’s flat on the top floor of the block. She was in luck. A woman who had to be the girl’s mother was sitting on a canvas chair on the balcony outside her front door. She was wearing a bikini top, with a black pencil skirt. Her feet and legs were bare. She was skinny overall, like her daughter, but a small roll of pale flesh folded over the waistband of her skirt. She was young. Clare reckoned she couldn’t have been more than mid-twenties.

“Are you Amy’s mum?”

“Who’s asking?” The woman folded her arms across her stomach. “I’ve sent her to school, if that’s what you want to know.”

Clare shook her head. She explained who she was. “My colleague Joe and I, we chatted to Amy last night. She kindly let us use your phone. I left some money for the call and a business card?”

Amy’s mother raised her eyes. “I never saw any money. Little bugger.”

“She said you knew the baby who died? And the family?”

“Oh, aye, we did.” The woman leaned back in her chair. “Mind you, you have to watch whatever that one tells you. She’s always making things up.”

“Amy?” Clare laughed. “She’s quite a little character.” She pulled out her pen. “Can I ask a bit about the Donnellys?”

Amy’s mother, whose name was Tina, was a great talker. She told how she’d sometimes baby-sat for all the Donnellys’ kids. What a devoted family they all were, especially Debs and Grandma Annie, who was rarely away from the flat.

“So was Debs depressed? Was Jamie a difficult baby?”

“Jamie? He was no bother. I wouldn’t say Debs was depressed. Worried about money, like everyone else, of course. She’d been used to Rob earning a canny wage, you know, right up until the strike started.”

“Why are they living here?” Clare chewed the end of her pen. “I don’t mean to be rude. But if I had a good wage coming in, I’d move.”

If Tina was offended she didn’t show it. “Right enough. But they were saving up. They were going to buy Tina’s mam’s council house. Four beds and a garden. One of the bairns has a bad chest. Becca, I think. These flats are all full of damp, you know.”

Clare nodded. “So the strike really hit them hard. What did you think about Rob going back to work?”

Tina shrugged. “That was up to him. None of my business. Debs wanted him to go back, I know that. Maybe if it was my man, I’d be telling him the same, but it comes at a hell of a price. Not many round here will even look Rob in the eye.”

“When you heard what had happened to Jamie, what did you think?”

“Shock, just total shock. My Amy was in pieces. She loved him. Scary for all the kids, isn’t it, to think of that happening. She was up in the night, crying her little eyes out.” Tina opened a pack of cigarettes and pulled one out. “Because I’ll tell you something. Debs didn’t do it. No way would she hurt any of her bairns. No way.”

“Some people round here think she would,” Clare said.

“Yeah, the ones who didn’t know her. Or the ones who think that the Donnellys are like the bloody devil, because Rob scabbed on the strike.”

“So if Debs didn’t do it,” Clare began.

“Aye, that means there’s a killer still walking around. Amy didn’t even want to go to school this morning, not that she’s ever very keen, to be honest. She was sweet on that baby. She’s soft with all the little ’uns. But I said to her that’s where you’ll be safest, at the school. It’s terrifying, when you think about it. Any kid could be next.”

“Annie Martin thinks it was revenge because Rob broke the strike. What do you think, Tina?”

“I can’t see that. They’re angry, the strikers. But they wouldn’t go that far.” She thought for a moment, toying with her cigarette. “Mind you. I’m not a miner and I’m not married to one. So I can’t really say.”

A ringing sound came from inside Tina’s flat. “Sorry,” she said, getting up and going indoors to answer the phone. A minute later, she reappeared wearing a T-shirt and plastic sandals. She threw the end of her cigarette onto the ground, stubbing it out with her sole.

“Amy’s been sick,” she said. “I have to go and pick her up from school.” She glanced at Clare. “Just missed the bus, too.”

Clare took the hint and offered Tina a lift. They were on the way out of the estate, Tina leaning out of the car window and smoking again, when Clare noticed Joe’s clapped-out car coming in the opposite direction. He flashed his lights at her and she slowed up.

Joe rolled down his window. “They’ve let Debs Donnelly out.”

“Told you so,” said Tina. “She’d never do that to any of her kiddies.”

“So what are the police saying now?” Clare asked Joe.

“They haven’t got the first clue,” said Joe. “Or that’s how it looked at the press conference. How come they sent that knob Chris Barber instead of you?”

Clare shook her head. “Don’t ask. I’ll be back in twenty minutes and I’ll catch up with you at the office.” She nodded towards Tina. “This is little Amy’s mum, by the way. You know, the one who let us use the phone last night. We’re just going to get her from school.”

Joe nodded back. “Nice kid.”

Tina made an eye-rolling face. “Aye, sometimes. She’s a nice nuisance today.”

Amy gave a huge grin when she climbed into the back seat of Clare’s Mini. She was wearing the school summer dress, a blue and white checked nylon pinafore, greying white socks and what the kids called Jesus sandals.