by Fiona Barton
“And then no names on my list. The woman who rang in said they were squatters or something, so there’s unlikely to be an official trace. We’ll ask around. We’ve got our hands full anyway.”
Joe ran his finger down the page. “There are loads of them. How will we find them?”
“We don’t need to find all of them. Just some. You’ll see. Find one person and they’ll lead you to others. Have a little faith, Joe.”
Kate tidied up her careful notes and Joe photographed the pages with his mobile phone.
THIRTY-FOUR
Kate
THURSDAY, APRIL 5, 2012
Angela looked different somehow when she emerged from the revolving doors. She looked older.
“The tests have all been done. Now we just have to wait,” she told Kate. “I feel completely drained.”
Kate slipped her arm through Angela’s and squeezed it.
“It’s a big thing to do, Angela. You are being very brave. Come on, let’s get you a coffee and you can tell me all about it.”
Joe offered to carry her bag of documents and led the way round the back of Westminster Abbey to the café Kate had picked earlier.
Angela slumped down in her seat and wrapped her hands round her cup to warm them.
“Have I done the right thing, Kate?” she said finally. “I’m not sure I want to know the answer now. I’m scared.”
“It is going to be difficult whatever they find,” Kate said, leaning forwards. “But at least there is a chance the waiting will be over.”
Angela nodded. “Yes, that’s true. I need that to be over. It is killing me. Slowly.”
Joe pushed a pack of biscuits across the table towards her. “Have one of these, Angela,” he said.
He doesn’t know what else to do, Kate thought. Hasn’t done grief before, I suppose.
“Thanks, dear,” Angela said and took one. “I’m sorry I’m being so negative,” she added.
“You’re not, Angela,” Kate said. “What you are feeling is perfectly natural. I don’t know how you’ve kept going over all these years. You are amazing.”
Joe nodded enthusiastically from the other side of the table, and Angela half-smiled.
“Shall I tell you what Joe and I have been doing?” Kate said, moving things along.
“Yes, do,” Angela said and picked up the biscuit from her saucer.
“We’ve been looking at the people who used to live in Howard Street, where the baby was found,” she said.
“From the sixties and seventies,” Joe chimed in.
“Will you have a look at the list of names we’ve got, to see if you recognize any of them, Angela?” Kate said. “You can say no,” she added.
She pushed the list across the table. She had included the name Marian Laidlaw, Nick Irving’s girlfriend. Kate wanted to see if Angela had known her.
Angela seemed happy to be distracted from the gathering gloom. She scanned through the names quickly and then went back through slowly, her mouth working silently as she tried them out.
“No, nobody,” she said, looking up. “I am so sorry.”
“Well, it was worth a try,” Kate said, swallowing her disappointment with a mouthful of coffee.
“Anyway, what else did the detective say?”
Angela talked about the differences in dealing with the police in 1970 and 2012, and Kate drifted back to the names.
“Walker,” she said out loud, stopping Angela dead and making Joe slop his coffee into the saucer.
“Walker?” he said. “What do you mean?”
“Sorry, thinking out loud. I spoke to a Miss Walker in Howard Street the first time I went there. Old lady with a horrible dog. She could be one of the Walkers who used to live at number 61.”
The other two looked at her.
“Drink up,” she told Joe. “We’ll go back. And we can drop you off at the station, Angela. What time train did you plan to catch?”
Angela took hold of her arm. “Please can I come with you? I want to see where the baby was found.”
Kate nodded. “Of course you do. Sorry, I should have thought. I don’t suppose we could do some photographs there, Angela? We’ll need them for the story if the police tests are positive, and we might not have time on the day.”
Angela looked doubtful.
“And it could prompt someone to phone in,” Kate added.
That clinched it and Angela nodded her assent.
Kate put a quick call into the picture desk as they walked back to her car.
• • •
Mick the photographer rang her while she was driving, but she didn’t want to put him on loudspeaker.
His use of the F word was legendary and she suspected Angela was not the sort to be impressed by casual swearing. Let’s not scare anyone off, she thought, handing her phone to Joe to deal with.
“Hello, Mick,” he chirped. “Er, how’s what hanging?”
Kate pulled a “You boys!” grimace in the mirror, hoping to catch Angela’s eye.
“Yes, we’re on our way now. Howard Street. Okay. See you there,” Joe said, muttering “I will” before turning the phone off.
“You will what?” Kate asked.
“Nothing,” Joe said, his telltale cheeks glowing. “Just Mick mucking about.”
• • •
Miss Walker was out and the machines on the building site had been silenced.
“Lunchtime,” Kate said. “Let’s go to the pub and wait for Mick—he won’t be long.”
The bar at the Royal Oak was three deep in damp donkey jackets and a forest of arms was waving at the staff.
“We’ll never get a drink,” Kate said. “Let’s sit down and hope the rush is over quickly.”
Joe laughed. “I bet I can get us one,” he said. Finally, in his element.
“Okay, off you go. What do you want to drink, Angela?”
“An orange juice, please,” she said, tucking her coat under her as she perched on a stool.
“I’ll have a fizzy water—and bring some crisps. You must be starving, Angela,” Kate added.
Joe threw himself into the throng and, five minutes later, emerged with a tray of glasses and three bags of ready salted.
“I’m impressed,” Kate said and Angela laughed with her. “Now, for lesson two in being a reporter . . .”
“Actually,” Joe said, “it was easier than I thought. The pub landlord spotted you and served me first.”
Kate grinned and raised her glass to the man behind the bar. He bowed back at her.
When Mick bowled in, he clocked them and stopped at the bar first, slopping his pint as he set it down on the teetotalers’ table.
“Hi, Kate,” he said. “How’s it going?”
Kate introduced Angela and he shook her hand warmly.
There was a silence while he took a long draft of his beer, then the conversation restarted. Kate kept glancing at the door, behind Angela, to keep an eye out for John Davies, the site manager. They’d need his help to do the photos on the spot where the baby was buried.
John strolled through the door ten minutes later and nodded to Kate when she stood to greet him.
“John,” she called. “Good to see you. Can I get you a drink?”
He nodded. “Wouldn’t say no,” he said. “Saw your story.”
“Yes. Peter’s a lovely bloke,” she said. “How is he doing?”
“Okay, I think. He was happy with what you wrote,” the site manager said and Kate smiled.
“I’m really glad. Look, I wondered if I could ask another favor . . .”
It took two shandies and a packet of peanuts to persuade him, but finally, he agreed. “You can have five minutes before the work begins again,” he said. “And I mean five minutes.”
She squeezed his arm. “’C
ourse. I’ll just get my photographer.”
Mick hated it when she called him “her photographer.”
“I’m not your fucking monkey,” he hissed when she returned to the table. And she smiled apologetically at Joe and Angela in case they’d heard.
“Not in front of the children,” she hissed back as they walked to the door.
• • •
Angela had posed nervously in the churned mud, beside the police tape around the site of the grave. Kate had expected her to cry, but she had just stood there, her hands clutched in front of her, her eyes wide and never still.
Mick talked to her as he took the pictures, calming her and reassuring her that it would all be over soon.
But Kate knew it wouldn’t. There was a long road ahead. She watched the scene, noting the anguish on Angela’s face, her hair blown about, the mud streaks on her tights, the wary glances at the tape that marked the baby’s last resting place. These were the details the readers would want to know about, that would bring them straight to the spot where Kate stood. She wouldn’t be able to write it yet but she had it all in her head.
John Davies appeared from his Portakabin after fifteen minutes and shouted for them to stop. “The machines are starting up. You need to go.”
“Just one more, mate,” Mick called—the traditional cry of the photographer—and fired off more shots of Angela bending to reach through the tape to touch the earth.
“Now, please, mate,” Davies shouted again. Kate went over to Angela and took her by the arm to steady her as they walked across the deep ruts. Joe followed behind with her handbag. Like a funeral cortege.
THIRTY-FIVE
Angela
TUESDAY, APRIL 10, 2012
It’d been a difficult and long weekend, but they had weathered Easter as a family and it was over now. Nick would be back at work today and she could stop tiptoeing around the house. He’d shouted at her on Saturday, as she knew he would, when she finally told him about going to London and having the DNA test.
“What, you sneaked off without telling me?” he’d roared, and she’d hoped the neighbors were out.
“Stop shouting, Nick,” she’d said. “The neighbors will hear. Look, you were so busy and worried about work last week, I didn’t want to add to your stress.”
He’d looked at her, trying to detect the lie, but she’d kept her wifey face on.
“I don’t want you getting all het up again,” he’d said. “I’m saying this for your own good, Angie.”
Normally, she’d have smiled at him and thanked him for being so caring. But she couldn’t.
Everything was churning in her head, the hope and the hurt and the betrayal rising to the surface after so many years.
“I won’t get all het up, Nick. But this is something I have to do. For Alice.”
At the mention of her name, Nick had closed down and disappeared into the garage, emerging only for silent meals.
Angela had cleaned the house to vent her fury, wielding the hoover like a weapon, crashing it into skirting boards and doors, leaving chips of paint in her wake as she thrust her way through the rooms. In her head she was screaming her accusations: You never wanted Alice. She was the price you paid for being unfaithful. That’s what you felt.
I bet you saw that woman again.
She hated herself for thinking it, but her internal rants almost always ended with that. She couldn’t help it. It was always there, waiting to torture her. She’d never said it out loud to Nick. What would she do if he admitted it? Better not to know.
They’d slept back to back on Saturday night, not even saying “good night.” She’d lain awake, trying to quell her thoughts, and had finally drifted into troubled, sheet-twisting sleep. When she’d dredged herself awake, Nick was lying beside her, eyes open, studying the ceiling.
“Hello, love,” she said through force of habit.
He grunted.
“Patrick is bringing the children round this morning so we can give them their Easter eggs. I thought we could take them to the park,” she said, determined to wear him down.
Nick grunted again, still looking at the ceiling.
“What are you thinking, Nick?” she said.
“That this will never be over,” he said, his voice flat. “That it will never go away.”
“It? Do you mean our daughter?” she said, sitting up.
Nick had rolled away from her, but she couldn’t let it go.
“She is our daughter. And I need to know, Nick, if Alice and I can count on you.”
“For God’s sake, Angie, what does that even mean? Whatever the police say it will be bad news—either it isn’t Alice and you will be devastated, or it is and our baby is dead. Look, Angie, it won’t bring her back. We don’t need tests. Our baby is dead and gone. You know that in your heart of hearts, don’t you? We don’t need graves and bones and policemen. It’s too late for that. We need to let it—her—go.”
“You may feel that, but I need to know, Nick. I need to know for certain where she is so that I can find some peace and say good-bye properly. The fact that you don’t want to makes me sad, but it won’t stop me,” Angela said, hugging herself against the growing storm.
“I know you never felt the same as me about Alice,” she went on and felt him stiffen beside her.
“What do you mean?” he said. But she knew he knew. They hadn’t had this row for a long time, but its legacy was as instantly toxic as a nuclear winter.
“I’m not discussing it, Angela. It was forty bloody years ago. It was one night and I’ve said I was sorry. There is nothing else I can say. Making me suffer won’t bring Alice back. It wasn’t my fault. I wasn’t the one who left her on her own.”
Her gasp of pain silenced him. He knew he’d gone too far. Way too far. And he reached for his wife’s hand, unclenching the fingers of her fists.
“God, Angie, why do you do this? Make us say things we’ll regret? You know I don’t blame you. Of course I don’t.”
“I know,” she said. But she didn’t. After all, she had left Alice on her own.
The shouting was over in seconds—it always was, that was their way—but the silence lasted much longer. These rare rows left them both shattered and unable to think about anything else.
It was Angela who got out of bed first, pulled on her dressing gown, and went to make tea.
• • •
By the time Tuesday came, a grumpy peace had been declared—the grandchildren had forced them to put on brave faces. Nick had held her hand when they walked to the swings and slide down the road, and she’d made him his favorite roast dinner on Sunday.
“Bye, love,” he’d said that morning and kissed her on the top of her head.
“I’ll call you later,” she’d said.
She tried to sit still and read her magazine. But she couldn’t move on, getting stuck on the same sentence, the same words, over and over again. She made cups of tea that grew cold in a row beside her. She felt she could hear her heart beating.
She hadn’t told Nick when the DNA results were due—she’d been vague. She needed to deal with them herself first.
They’d said it would normally take two days for the results. The police. But Easter would delay things. There was nothing they could do about bank holidays. But they must ring today.
She checked again to make sure her phone had not switched itself off or gone to silent. The blank screen looked accusingly at her. She rang Kate.
“Hi, just wondered if you’d heard anything,” she heard herself say.
Kate hadn’t, but said she would call and try to get a steer on how things were going.
Angela sat with the phone in her hand.
When it rang, five minutes later, she yelped and cut off the call by fumbling and pressing the wrong button. It rang again immediately.
“Kate? Sorry about that. What did they say?”
“They say they’ll probably—and they wouldn’t promise more than probably, Angela—have a result tomorrow,” Kate said.
Angela gripped the phone tighter. “They said it should take two days, Kate. They’ve had five! Did they say if there were any indications yet?”
“No, they’re keeping everything close to their chests, I’m afraid. Look, I know how horrible this must be but we have to sit tight, Angela.”
Angela knew it made sense, but the idea of sitting tight for another day made her feel physically sick.
“Why don’t you go and do something? Go to the shops or see a friend,” Kate said. “Just make sure you have your phone with you all the time so I can contact you.”
“Yes, maybe. You will ring as soon as you hear, won’t you? Promise me,” Angela said, hating herself for sounding so needy. So desperate.
“Of course,” Kate said.
THIRTY-SIX
Kate
TUESDAY, APRIL 10, 2012
She was scrabbling in her bag—the bottomless pit, as it was known by Steve and every photographer she’d worked with—for a pen that worked when the phone rang a second time.
Bob Sparkes’s name flashed up and she threw her bag to the floor.
“Bob,” she said too loudly.
“Sorry, caught you at a bad time? Shall I call back?”
“No, no,” Kate said. “Sorry, all a bit frantic here. How are you?”
“Okay. I’ve just had a heads-up from DI Sinclair. It’s a match.”
For a split second, she wasn’t sure what she’d heard.
No preamble, no foreplay. Straight to it, she thought.
“Bloody brilliant,” she crowed. “Bloody buggering brilliant!”
“Yeah. That about sums it up,” Sparkes said, his voice quickening despite himself.
“Don’t come the world-weary copper with me, Bob Sparkes,” Kate said. “You are as pleased as I am. Oh my God, wait until I tell Angela. I’ll go down to Winchester and tell her. I’ll take Mick and tell her. Take Mick. We want a photo of the moment she finds out.”