This Little Piggy (8 page)

“I’m telling you,” McKenna sat forward. “Yeah, we’re angry at the strike-breakers, but most of our men have got families of their own. Not one of them would hurt a kid. I’d swear to it. On my own life.”

“To be fair, Rob Donnelly doesn’t think so either,” Clare replied. “But his mother-in-law does. And given the sort of stuff the family’s had to put up with since he broke the strike, it’s probably understandable.”

McKenna took a long drink of the coffee.

“Spitting at the family in the street? Putting their window out? You don’t think that might have upset Rob’s kids?” Clare raised her eyebrows at him.

“The union doesn’t condone any of those things,” McKenna said. “Although you have to understand that the men felt badly let down when one of their mates turned into a scab. But even you can see that there’s a big difference between that and committing a murder.”

Clare gave a small shrug. “The good news for you is that the police don’t believe it either. So no one’s pursuing that line of inquiry.”

“Except for you.”

“I’m not pursuing anything. I just report what people tell me, like I said.”

“Sure. We both have a job to do. I thought maybe we could help each other out.”

“How do you mean?” Clare folded her arms.

“I’ll make you my first port of call for any union stories I get. And there are plenty, these days.”

Clare narrowed her eyes. “And what do I have to do?”

“All I’m asking is for fair reporting. Fair. Not one-sided towards the union or the strike. Just not skewed the other way, by default.” McKenna paused and rubbed his nose. “And maybe…”

Clare sat up. “Maybe what?”

“What if you report on the odd positive thing? Like the fundraising we’re doing, like the food kitchens, that sort of thing.”

“I’ve always wanted to cover those things. But you don’t tend to ask the press along.”

“I want to change that. You can understand how people feel about reporters these days. The strikers and their families are sick of getting stitched up. But my view is, we have to work with you, not shut ourselves off.”

“I’d agree with that. Obviously.” Clare hesitated. “And I think I’m pretty fair already.”

“So do I. That’s what I’m trying to say, it’s why I’ve come to talk to you. You’ve got a dirty job, that’s all.”

Clare allowed her mouth to drop open a little. “That’s rich, coming from a miner.”

McKenna laughed. “Okay. But technically I’m not a miner. I was in security, but I quit when the strike started. And now I’m just a full-time union man.”

Clare hesitated. “Look, here’s a thought. Can I do a profile piece on you?”

She expected him to protest, but he didn’t. He just nodded. “Fine. As long as it’s not a hatchet job.”

Clare held up her hands. Then she glanced at her watch. “I’ve got stuff to do. I should’ve done my calls by now and I need to ring the newsdesk. Can we meet later?”

McKenna scribbled down his numbers. “Office and home. A pint after work?”

Clare gave a non-committal nod. “I’ll call you. Might not be tonight.”

She stood at the window watching McKenna head for the car, ducking backwards when he turned to look back up at her.

When Clare called her newsdesk, they told her to go straight to the police station for a news conference.

“Not sending the chief reporter?” Clare couldn’t resist asking.

“He’s on the picket lines today.” Dave Bell didn’t respond to Clare’s sarcasm.

“I’d have thought that was beneath him,” Clare said. “I thought that was for the likes of us lower life forms.”

Bell sighed. “It is beneath him, at least in his opinion, but Tony was due to go and he’s off sick today.”

Clare allowed herself a small smirk at the telephone. She hoped the miners’ aim would be good when they started spitting.

In the police meeting room, Joe looked pleased to see her. “It’s you. That’s a relief, I thought it might be Barber. Every time I see him I want to thump him.”

Clare sat down beside him and pulled out her notebook. “That’s very loyal of you.”

“Not really,” Joe said. “I’ve always wanted to thump him, even before he pinched your job. He’s just got that kind of face.”

“Any idea what this is about?” Clare asked, glancing at the police officers who were taking their seats along a table in front of the small press contingent.

Joe shrugged. “All Seaton would say on the phone was that it’s not an arrest. They still haven’t got the killer.”

It turned out the police had discovered that when baby Jamie’s body was found he was missing an item of clothing: a blue-checked sunhat. His mother insisted that he’d been wearing it when he was out in his pram, but no one could find it. The police were also releasing a new photo of Jamie, taken when he was wearing the little hat.

“It may be that the hat can provide us with the crucial evidence we need to find baby Jamie’s killer,” Seaton announced.

Clare shot up her hand. “Have the police always known the hat was missing?”

Seaton took a slow breath. “Mrs Donnelly told us the hat was missing, the day after Jamie’s death. But before we put out any public appeal to find it, we wanted to make sure that in her distress she had not made a mistake.”

“You didn’t believe her?” Clare pressed.

“We wanted to be certain about any information we made public, with regards to this highly sensitive case. I’m sure you can understand that, Miss Jackson.” Seaton gave a heavy sigh. “It is possible that the sunhat fell off during the fall and was lost, but to date close examinations in and around the site of Jamie’s death have failed to retrieve the item.

“So another possibility is that Jamie’s killer has kept the hat as a kind of memento or trophy of the murder. It’s therefore essential that the public keep their eyes open and if they discover such a garment then they must report their find to the police without delay.”

Joe looked at his copy of the new photo. “He was a cute kid,” he said to Clare, as they got up to go.

“Yeah.” Clare pushed the picture into her bag without looking at it. “All babies are cute, though, aren’t they?”

Joe frowned at the back of her head. It wasn’t like Clare to play the hard-nosed reporter. Sometimes, these days, he got the feeling that he was getting on her nerves, and he had no real idea why.

Clare drove into head office with the photo and found a desk where she could sit to type. She still didn’t let herself look at the picture. Dave Bell came over and perched on the edge of the desk. “How’re you doing, Clare? You still okay out there in the sticks?”

Clare stuck out her lower lip and shrugged.

“You’ve done some great stories,” Bell went on. “The baby stuff’s been brilliant. Some of the strike stuff’s been pretty good too.”

“Thanks.” Clare gave a small sniff.

“I know you’re sore about the chief reporter’s job. Between you and me, I reckon all you had to do to get that job was turn up on the day of the interview. But we never got to the bottom of what happened, did we?”

“I told you.” Clare kept her eyes fixed on the beaten-up old Olivetti that sat on the desk. “I wasn’t well. Some sort of a bug.”

“You said that. But you’re never ill. And I know you, you’d have done the interview anyway, even if you were at death’s door. And ever since you seem to have… I don’t know. Lost some of your spark.”

“That’s probably because you gave that idiot Barber the job and then you sent me out to the news equivalent of the salt mines. Anyone would lose their spark after that.”

“You’re taking it way too hard.”

The office door burst open and Chris Barber strode in, red-faced and panting, making his way straight towards Dave Bell. “That’s it. I’m never going to a picket line again. Have you got any idea what they’re like, those bloody strikers?”

Dave Bell glanced at Clare. She noticed a small glint in his eyes. “Clare knows. She’s done picket duty a few times, haven’t you?”

Clare nodded. “Weren’t they nice to you, Chris?”

“They spat at me. Animals. And you should see the state of my car. It’s been kicked so hard there are dents in it and the paintwork’s ruined. I’m billing the paper for the repairs, Dave.”

“You took your own car?” Clare asked. “What, that red sporty thing? What were you thinking?”

“I can’t drive the company car,” Chris said, wiping sweat from his face. “It’s too small. I’d get a back injury. And I was sitting in my car when a whole mob of them came up and started rocking it back and forward. It was bloody terrifying.”

Clare laughed. “They do that almost every time, Chris. They’ve never actually turned one over. Yet.”

Bell got up and walked away, with Chris Barber following him. “I think I should write about the way the miners behave towards the press. It was a disgrace.”

“I don’t think so,” Bell replied. “No one cares about reporters. They just want us to do our job and report the news. Doesn’t matter if we get beaten up a bit along the way. And it definitely doesn’t matter if a journalist’s flashy sports car gets a scratch or two.”

Clare decided she wouldn’t stay to hear any more of the row. “I’m going to talk baby clothes with the lovely people at Sweetmeadows,” she told Bell.

“I should come with you,” said Barber.

“Because?”

“To get my face known round there. This story’s getting bigger. It was one thing when it looked like a stressed-out mother battering her baby. It’s more important now that there’s a killer on the loose.”

Clare looked at Dave Bell for support.

“It’s something the chief reporter should be covering, and you know it,” Barber added, looking at Bell.

“A chief reporter,” said Clare, swallowing down her anger, “should be bringing in their own exclusive stories. Not piggybacking onto stories that other reporters have been covering, perfectly well.”

Dave Bell rubbed his eyes. “Maybe it would be a good idea if the two of you went out there together anyway. Safer.” He gave Clare an apologetic look. “I’d feel happier.”

“Joe’s usually with me,” Clare argued. “I haven’t had any bother at all, anyway.”

“Not yet. And technically, Joe’s part of a different paper. Even though you two go round in a pair like Cagney and bloody Lacey.”

Clare chewed the inside of her lip, trying to come up with a way to get out of this. “Tomorrow, maybe. But don’t you need to get your car fixed, Chris?”

Barber glanced at his watch. “I suppose I’d better sort that out. We’ll go there tomorrow, right? You can introduce me to some of your contacts.”

“Yeah,” Clare said, turning to go. “Like hell,” she added, under her breath, as she strode out of the office.

She was pleased to spot Joe’s car parked at the edge of the Sweetmeadows estate. He was talking to some young mums who were having a sort of picnic with their toddlers, on blankets spread out on a balding patch of grass. The heat was making the little ones grizzly and the women slow and disinterested. Joe smiled when he saw Clare and wandered towards her, wiping a hand across his brow.

“I swear there’s more than orange juice in those beakers,” he said, out of earshot of the group. “And I don’t just mean the mums’ drinks either.”

“Don’t,” said Clare.

“What’s up?” Joe was rather too good at spotting Clare’s moods before they’d even passed a word between them. It was because they went back a few years: they’d gone to the same journalism school, suffered the same hangovers, passed their proficiency tests at the same time and followed each other through the same group of newspapers.

“Two words.” Clare screwed up her eyes and put a hand up to shield them from the sun.

“Ah. Chris and Barber, by any chance?” Joe elbowed Clare lightly. “I heard he got his nice car messed up this morning. What sort of a prat takes a red sports car out to a miners’ picket line? He deserves everything he gets. What’s the latest?”

Clare told Joe about Barber’s plan to muscle in on the murder story. Joe made a whistling noise through his teeth. “Does he have some sort of death wish?”

“What’s even worse is that Dave Bell is so utterly spineless. He lets Barber flounce around the office like he owns the place. And he won’t stand up for anyone else. So I’m expected to escort that idiot round my patch tomorrow and hand him my contacts book for good measure.”

Joe looked over Clare’s shoulder. “Uh-oh. Here comes your Amy-shaped shadow.”

Clare turned to see Amy skipping towards them, wearing her stained blue school dress. “You’ve finished school early,” Clare commented.

“Got sent home again,” Amy said, cheerfully. “Felt sick.”

“You look the picture of health to me,” said Joe. “Underneath the muck.”

“Yeah.” Amy wasn’t concerned. “It was probably the school dinner. It was a pile of puke.” She pulled out the little notebook from her pocket. “What’s the story today then?”

Clare’s lips twitched. “The police are looking for some of baby Jamie’s clothes.”

“Right.” Amy nodded. “Would it have, like, fingerprints on and stuff?”

“I expect so.”

“So if they find it, would they know who killed Jamie?”

“They might. It would definitely help them.”

“How would it?” Amy put a finger in her mouth and chewed at the skin. “Like, what would they know from it?”

“There might be forensic evidence on it,” Joe began. “That’s when…”

“I know what it is, I’ve seen it on the telly,” said Amy.

“Pardon me,” said Joe.

Clare smirked. “Yes, don’t be so patronising. I think they’d look for traces that would link the killer to Jamie. But it gets harder, the more time has passed. The police should’ve started asking about the hat ages ago.”

“Stupid police.” Amy wiped at her eyes.

“Hey, you okay?” Clare put a hand on Amy’s skinny shoulder. “I’m sorry. I know thinking about Jamie upsets you.”

Amy shrugged. “Hey, look.” She pushed the notebook up at Clare. “I’ve been practising my Teeline.”

“Wow, look at that. Well done.” Clare avoided meeting Joe’s eyes, but she could sense him giving her a look. “Amy’s going to be a reporter, Joe.”

“Good for you, kid. But it’s not as glamorous as it’s made out to be. You might find yourself reporting on horrible stories like this one.”

“I wouldn’t mind.” Amy was gazing at Clare, waiting for her verdict. “It’s still not very fast though,” she added, pointing to the pages of shorthand.