This Little Piggy (24 page)

“It wouldn’t have anything to with me, except that I’ve been minding Amy for the last two nights. I couldn’t just leave her on her own.”

Tina threw her half-smoked cigarette onto the ground at Clare’s feet and stamped it out. “You need to get your own life, pet.”

Clare held up her hands. “Probably. But Amy’s really great. I’m… I’m fond of her. Is there no one who can look after her when you go out? To make sure she’s safe?”

Clare was surprised to see the start of tears in Tina’s eyes. “What am I supposed to do, eh? She’s not easy, that girl. If I bring a man back there’s always trouble.”

“What sort of trouble?”

Tina blinked rapidly to force back the tears. “None of your business. What am I supposed to do, live like a nun? I’m half-mad looking at these walls anyway. I need to get out.”

“I’m sure. I’m not judging. I know it sounds that way, but I don’t mean it to.”

“I don’t want her to end up in care. It happened to me, you know. When I was about Amy’s age. I bloody hated it. So I don’t want that for her. But…” Tina’s voice went quiet. She flexed her fingers as if they were missing something, then reached for another cigarette. “But I don’t always think I can manage. She’s hard work. You’ll have found that for yourself.”

Clare decided not to contradict Tina. She was also aware of a movement in the flat behind Tina and guessed Amy was listening in. “It won’t come to that, will it? But stay with her tonight. There might be more trouble and she gets scared, that’s all.”

Clare turned at the sound of a loud whistle. She looked over the balcony to see Joe waving at her. “I need to go. It’ll be okay to come and see Amy again, won’t it?”

Tina nodded.

“She might have over-eaten, a bit. Sorry,” Clare added. Tina didn’t reply and Clare heard the door slam as she ran down the steps to meet Joe.

“You took your time,” Joe grumbled. “But at least you haven’t got a little street urchin hanging off your arm.”

“She’s hardly a street urchin.”

“She’s like an extra from
Oliver Twist
, if you ask me.” Joe waved his notebook. “Anyway, I talked to Annie Martin. The police only told them yesterday that the cause of Debs’ death is being treated as suspicious. And that was only because the family has been pressing them to release the body. They still have two funerals to arrange and no sign of anything being sorted out. They’re furious, as you can imagine.”

“That’s awful. Share your notes?”

In Clare’s office, Joe worked at getting one of the thickly-painted windows to open as he read quotes from a notebook propped on the sill. Eventually he swore and slapped his dusty hands against his trousers. “It’s stuck fast, sorry. We’ll have to swelter. Annie Martin calls the police a waste of space. At least, that’s the printable bit of what she really said.”

Clare nodded. “You can’t blame her. Did they have any thoughts about who would want Debs dead?”

“I have to say Annie was rambling a bit. She’s still blaming herself. If she hadn’t gone out to that protest, she’d have been in the flat when whoever killed Debs turned up. But no, they have no idea who might’ve done it. Problem is, neither have the police.”

“Was Rob there?”

“No. His sister and parents are looking after the kids between them at the moment. Rob’s staying with them. Annie says he can hardly face coming back to the estate these days.”

Clare loaded her typewriter. “Let’s get this written up then.”

By eight o’clock that evening, Clare was on her sofa, half-watching a film on TV and eating Chinese takeaway out of its box. Occasionally she stared round at her newly-tidied flat and enjoyed the thought of Catt’s face when Joe handed her another sheaf of copy written by her least favourite reporter. Aggravating Catt could become a new mission in life.

There was a knock at the door and Clare opened it to find Finn, holding up a bottle of wine and some beer. “I heard you’ve been working hard, again,” he said. “Thought you might want to unwind a bit.”

Clare held the door open for him. “You can save me from Sunday night telly.”

“Not a sports fan then? Not even for the Olympics? I thought all you women were quite happy to watch Daley Thompson.”

Clare made an eye-rolling face and flicked the TV off. She poured the drinks into glasses. “You’ve heard about all this trouble at Sweetmeadows then?”

Finn stretched himself across Clare’s sofa. “Can’t say I’m surprised. You should take care going out there though, especially on your own. I’m surprised the paper lets you do that.”

“I usually don’t tell the newsdesk what I’m doing until after I’ve done it,” Clare grinned. “That way they can’t stop me.” She sipped at the wine. “Anyway, how do you know I was out there on my own?”

“I have my spies. Well, actually, I was having a chat to a fireman who was out there last night. He spotted you.”

Clare nodded. “They tried to talk me out of going onto the estate. It feels like being back in Victorian times, the way you blokes go on.”

“To be fair,” Finn said, “they were talking everyone out of going there. Not just women. I heard the place was like the wild west.”

“I was fine.”

“You mean, you were lucky.”

Clare shrugged. To change the subject, she went over to the record player and held up a couple of albums for Finn to choose from. They settled back on the sofa and Finn picked at the remaining carton of takeaway food.

“We had a great day collecting money for the strike fund,” Finn told her. “We should have had the miners’ gala today but it’s been called off because of the strike. So we went out with buckets instead. You’d be amazed what people were giving us.”

“You wouldn’t think anyone had any money at the moment,” Clare said. “Never mind the strikers. Highest ever unemployment rate since the Depression, wasn’t it, just the other month?”

“That’s right. In fact people were queuing up to give us money – actual fivers. And some of the lads are down in London today. They’ve got pots of cash down there. It’s fantastic. We’re bound to win, you know, with support like this.”

“And women like your mum. I don’t think even Thatcher would last five minutes in a room with her.”

Finn laughed. “She’s a force to be reckoned with, I’ll give you that.” He smiled. “She likes you, though.”

“That’s a relief.”

“Yes. Because so do I.” Finn leaned forward and in the fraction of a second that Clare had to wonder how to respond, the phone rang, the sound making both of them jump.

“Leave it,” Finn suggested, as Clare wriggled off the sofa and went to answer it. She picked up the receiver and listened. There was noise on the other end of the line but no one was speaking.

“Hello?” Clare said, twice. But the faint background noise went on. “Sounds a bit like someone’s dialled and then left the phone off the hook. There’s no one there but I can hear something in the background. A bit like a TV or something.”

She put the phone down. Finn held open his arms. “Come back here.”

Clare gave an apologetic smile. “Hang on,” she said and went to lift the needle off the album, which had come to the end of one side and was making repetitive soft bumping and clicking sounds.

“I’ll just…” she nodded her head towards the bathroom and scuttled towards it. Once inside, she examined her face in the mirror. It looked flushed. That would be the wine, she thought. She ran the cold tap and mopped her face with a cloth. It was time to make a decision.

She sat down on the sofa again, then leaned in closer to Finn. He placed a hand under her chin, tilted her face towards him and kissed her. The gentleness of it took her by surprise. She put her own hand up to pull his face closer, make the kisses deeper. A rush of heat went through her body and it felt like the first stirrings of real life, as if she was just coming out of some sort of cold, heavy paralysis. Finn stood up and pulled her lightly to her feet, and she led him by the hand into her bedroom.

Later in the night, as Finn lay asleep, the unfamiliar sound of a man’s heavy breathing kept Clare wide awake. She slid out of bed and crept to the kitchen, where she poured herself a glass of water and added some ice. Something made her look at the telephone, and pick up the receiver again. She listened. The line still hadn’t cleared and she could still hear the TV or radio noise rumbling in the background. She could also hear something else. It was the sound of a child, crying. More than crying, it was deep sobbing. Clare felt as if the receiver was glued to her ear. She couldn’t move, even though the sound was almost too distressing to bear. “Hello? Are you there? Can you speak to me? Are you all right?”

But no one came to the phone to speak.

Monday 30th July
Two Tribes on the radio alarm woke Clare up, earlier than she’d have liked. She smacked the snooze button just to stop the noise for a moment and sat up, her head feeling heavy and sore. She’d sat on the carpet, cradling the phone, until the early hours, until her limbs were numb, wracking her brains for anything she could do to help. But she couldn’t think of anything. And when, eventually, the crying seemed to stop, Clare clicked the phone back into place and stumbled into bed for a disturbed night, hearing a child crying in her dreams.

Finn sat up, leaned over and kissed her tangled hair. “You didn’t sleep so well.”

“There was an alien in my bed.”

Finn tried to pull her back under the sheets, but she twisted away, groaning, wishing she could sink back onto his body and lay her head on his chest, just above his heartbeat. She’d forgotten how good it felt to be so close to someone else. “I’d stay if I could. I have to go to work. I’m not idling around on strike like some people here.”

Finn sat up with a sigh. “When can I see you again?”

Clare resisted the urge to say, just stay here, don’t get dressed, wait for me to come back. “We’ll see,” she said, instead, enjoying his look of mock-anguish.

As she got ready for work, Clare knew she had to find time to call on Amy today. She had no way of knowing for certain it was Amy who dialled her number last night and whether that was Amy she could hear, or just some completely coincidental mis-dial. But she needed to put her mind at rest.

She called the newsdesk from the court. “I’m going to the inquest for Deborah Donnelly, which is going to say that the police are now saying it might be a suspicious death. It may not all go ahead, though.”

“Okay. You cover the inquest and I’ll send Chris out to talk to the family,” said Catt.

“No need. I did that yesterday.”

“Of course you did. Silly me, for imagining you might let anyone else get a look in.”

“No need to thank me. Joe’s dropping the copy off round about now.”

Catt sniffed. “And here he is right at my shoulder. Did you synchronise your watches?”

Clare gave a false laugh. “I’ll call you when the hearing’s finished.”

Inside the court, Clare gave a brief nod to a drawn-looking Annie Martin, who looked as if she was being held up in a standing position by the women who flanked her on either side. In only a couple of weeks, she’d lost a grandson and a daughter. Clare, who recognised that what she’d been through was nothing in comparison, felt like she was only just learning to function properly again. She couldn’t understand how Annie even got out of bed in the mornings.

Joe ran up to the press bench and threw himself on a seat next to Clare, who grinned at him. “You gave Catt my copy then.”

“I did,” Joe said, quietly. “I’d like to say she said thank you. But she was too busy doodling a bloodied knife on her notepad.”

“Can’t think who she’d like to use that on, can you?”

“You’re full of the joys this morning, aren’t you?” Joe narrowed his eyes. “What’s happened?”

“Nothing.” Clare smiled again before the coroner walked into the room and they both stood up.

When the coroner heard the inquest was to be delayed again, he told Rob Donnelly and Annie Martin that his sympathies went out to them and that he hoped the police were doing all they could to bring matters to a swift conclusion.

“That’s as good as telling them to pull their fingers out,” Joe said, afterwards. “It’s about as close as that old duffer will ever get to criticising the police.”

“They’re just bumbling around and getting nowhere fast. No wonder Seaton’s got even more grey hairs than he had three weeks ago.”

Clare dictated her copy from the payphone in the court canteen. When she’d finished, the copytaker asked her to wait on the line. Then she heard Dave Bell’s voice. “Good work again, Clare. Are you about to head off on another story?”

“Not immediately. Have you got something for me to do?” Clare paused. “I thought this was one of your days off rota, anyway?”

“Obviously not. Unlike you, this is not where I choose to spend my days off. Anyway, can you just pop into head office? I need to have a word.”

“Sure. Right now?”

“Now, yes.”

“Should I be worried?”

“No, of course not. Just get your arse over here when you’re told.”

Clare laughed. She was delighted to have Dave back on the desk. Although it was odd that when she arrived, he put on his jacket and beckoned her out of the newsroom.

“Let’s get out of here for a bit. We can chat without anyone listening in and I could do with some air.”

Clare found her stomach twisting with nerves as she followed him to the nearest cafe. Any little chats, whether they were for praise or a complete bawling out, always happened in the full glare of the newsroom. Something was up. The few minutes of small talk about Dave’s recent holiday were almost unbearable as Clare waited to hear what this was all about.

“Anyway, glad you had a good time. Expect you’re pleased to see the back of those kids now, eh? And I’ll be glad to speak to you instead of Poison, er, Sharon in the mornings. So… what’s this in aid of?”

Dave stared into his coffee for a long moment. “Clare. You’ve been doing some amazing stuff. I’ve been looking through and you’ve virtually filled the paper single-handed. We thought that you might like a little… a little bonus.”

“Wow. Money?”

“Yes, I’ve talked to Blackmore and I’ve negotiated quite a generous chunk of… let’s call it merit money.”