This Little Piggy (13 page)

Amy gave a long, outward sigh. “Not ’specially.”

“You don’t have a best friend or anything?”

Amy shook her head. “Sometimes they let me play. Sometimes they don’t. They say I’m dirty and that I smell.”

“That’s horrible. Take no notice, Amy. You don’t smell.” Clare hoped her lie sounded believable.

“I sometimes play with the littlies instead. They’re not so mean.” The girl shrugged.

Clare nodded. She knew what it was like to be the weird kid who didn’t quite fit in. She knew how much those tiny daily humiliations – not to be allowed to join a group, not to have the right clothes, shoes or hair – could hurt.

“What else are you doing today?”

“Mmm, something about the miners’ strike.”

“Oh, yeah.” Amy didn’t look interested. “I’m dead sick of all that.”

“Amy. You haven’t been left on your own today, have you?”

“No, me mam’s up in bed.”

Clare glanced at her watch. It was getting on for four in the afternoon. “Is she poorly?”

“Nah.” Amy laughed. “She’s with a fella.”

“Oh.” Clare wondered how often the little girl found herself wandering the balconies and streets while Tina entertained a boyfriend. Amy’s tone of voice didn’t suggest today was out of the ordinary. “Do you like your mum’s boyfriend then? What’s he called?”

“Don’t ask me, I don’t know anything about this new one. ’Cept he snores.”

Clare smiled. She pulled a sheet of paper from her notebook and wrote on it, while every professional part of her brain screamed at her not to do it. “Look, Amy. This is my home number. If you’re ever on your own at night again, or… or you’re ever feeling scared and your mum’s not around, I want you to give me a call. Promise?”

Amy nodded and stuffed the paper into her pocket. “Promise.”

“Okay. Good. Listen, I need to go, but I’ll see you tomorrow at this demo.” Clare opened the car door and turned back to Amy. “Sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah, see you.”

Clare watched Amy cartwheel her way across the deserted courtyard. It was eerie, the way she was the only kid playing outside here on such a warm summer’s Saturday afternoon. But whoever did commit the murder, whoever found it in themselves to pick up a sleeping child and throw them over a balcony to smash their little skull on the concrete below, was still out there, somewhere.

Clare drove into town and battled the Saturday shoppers in her local DIY store. Almost without thinking, she found herself at the counter with a trolley-load of disinfectant and carpet cleaner, tins of emulsion paint and a set of rollers. She winced at the total bill. But it was time, although she could not find a rational reason as to why, to tackle that spare room.

Her resolve felt less solid when she arrived back at the flat. So she made herself a mug of tea and sat in the hallway, looking at the closed door to the little box room. Somehow, she was going to have to find the courage to go in there and look at the place again, otherwise the paint tins and cleaners were just going to add to the clutter that had built up in every other part of the flat for the last month and a half. It took almost an hour, some of it spent sitting on the floor with her head between her knees and taking deep breaths, before Clare found the energy to change out of her work clothes and into an old T-shirt and jeans. Then she put her hand onto the spare room door handle and, ignoring the sweat on her palms and the tremor in her fingers, she pushed the handle down and leaned against the door with her shoulder. It opened and Clare stepped inside.

In the airless room, that stain on the carpet was still there. A matt, dark, accusing colour, it looked even more difficult to shift than it had before. Clare crouched down and touched it, lightly. It was stiff and crusted. Clare filled a plastic bucket with the cleaner and added a large splash of the disinfectant, in the faint hope that it would help bleach the mark away. She put on the gloves, gagging at the mixture of smells: rubber and whatever chemicals made up the disinfectant. It was so strong it made her eyes smart and as she knelt down and tried to mop at the stain, tears ran fast down her face. She didn’t bother trying to stop them. Clare dabbed at the mark gently at first, but it made almost no impact on the crusted fibres of the carpet. She started rubbing harder, blinking and sniffing continually, feeling almost as though she was dissolving into a heap of tears and snot. The stain wouldn’t budge. Clare scrubbed more and more vigorously, making involuntary groaning and panting noises that eventually turned into sobs. There was no way that cleaning fluid was going to shift the stain. It needed something industrial strength. Or, more likely, a new carpet altogether.

And then there was the rest of the room. Without focusing on it, Clare turned and went back to her living room, ripped off the rubber gloves and dropped them on the table with a slap. She picked up the Yellow Pages and looked for the numbers of local charities. She picked on the first one she recognised and called the number. There was no one there, but there was an answer machine.

“Hi,” she said, awkwardly. She hated speaking into recording machines. “I’ve got some stuff to donate, but I can’t transport it. Could you pick it up? It’s…” she stopped, swallowed. “It’s a baby’s cot. Brand new, not used. And there’s baby bedding and clothes. And a Moses basket. And some other bits and pieces. It’s all really nice, still in its wrapping.” She left her number and address. “I’d like it collected as soon as possible, if you can do it. Thanks.”

There. That was a start, at least. She could get rid of all that stuff, give the spare room walls a couple of coats of paint and turn that little room into somewhere that… what? What was she doing it for? Clare didn’t want to acknowledge the half-formed idea that was playing in a corner of her mind, the notion that another child could occupy the space meant for a half-wanted, half-unwanted baby.

She had a long hot shower, although even her strongest scented soap didn’t seem to entirely lift the smell of the rubber gloves around her fingers and arms.

In all that time, though, Finn still hadn’t called. Clare tried ringing the station and asking for Seaton, but he wasn’t on shift and she didn’t know who else she could persuade to leak any information.

She sat for a few more minutes, staring at the phone, willing it to ring. This could go on all night, she thought. I’ll send myself mad. So she dialled Nicki’s number. “Hey. It’s Clare. I wanted to say sorry for being a pain in the neck the other night. Any chance I could buy you all a drink later on?”

She was relieved to hear that Nicki and the others were happy to spend an evening propping up the bars with large glasses of white wine, soda and ice. Afterwards, maybe a club and its most lethal selection of cocktails. Which would mean not getting back home until the small hours of the morning, having drunk enough to make sure she would collapse into bed and sleep for at least a few hours.

Sunday 22nd July
On weekday nights, if she hadn’t been out drinking, she would almost always wake in the grey early hours, and she was used to the fact that she would not, after that, get properly back to sleep. Once or twice, she’d fallen heavily asleep just before the alarm went off, but most of the time, Clare resigned herself to lying awake, her limbs aching with the unmet need to get comfortable and stay still, her eyes sore from staring into the half-dark. This morning, after the drinking and clubbing, Clare fell into her bed at around three-thirty, and managed around four hours of hot, fuggy-headed sleep before the sound of traffic and birdsong penetrated enough to wake her up properly. She tried gulping the tepid water from the glass beside her bed and lying back down with the pillow over her head, but after a few minutes she gave up and rolled out onto the floor.

The smell of yesterday’s disinfectant was the first thing that hit her as she opened her bedroom door and she ran into the bathroom and leaned over the basin, retching dryly. It was going to be a long day. She switched on Radio 1 and Amy’s uninhibited singing and dancing came to mind. If she had just a fraction of that child’s energy, Clare thought, she could sort out this flat in no time. Maybe she could just tackle that pile of newspapers and stuff lying in the hallway. That would be a start. Clare dressed in old clothes again and bent a little over the pile of papers that came up to her thighs. She picked the first one up and looked at it. Free-sheet. That could go. She started a pile of things to be thrown out and after a short time, staggered to the bins outside with the old papers and managed to stuff them in, although it meant she couldn’t put the bin lid back down.

Back inside, though, the newly-created pile of unopened post was harder to face. On the very top was a brown envelope with a red-bordered bill inside it. Clare decided she’d had enough cleaning for the day and took a shower and a walk. She bought the Sunday papers, aware that this would just start the pile all over again. She also bought some bread. Alone in the house, these days, she rarely bothered eating. It was something she often only remembered to do when she was out with other people. So today, the two slices of toast she managed at around four o’clock in the afternoon were real progress.

Clare liked putting on her work clothes: smart skirts and white shirts. They were part of a costume, making her appear so very normal, as if she was functioning properly. No one would be able to look at her and guess there was anything wrong, although they would if they set foot inside the flat. She was becoming something of an expert at keeping people out. It occurred to her, as she listened to the start of the Top 40 countdown on the radio, that Amy and Tina usually kept people on their doorstep too. She pictured Amy listening to the same programme and wondered which were her favourite songs.

At six, she was outside the police station, where a large group of women from the Sweetmeadows estate were already gathering. Most had their children with them. Some carried homemade placards with pictures of Jamie, or hand-written messages:
Who Killed Baby Jamie?
And
Get Off the Picket Lines and Find Jamie’s Killer.
And
When Can Our Kids Sleep Safe?
Some of the women held candles to light when it got darker. Clare knew that was a bigger deal than it looked: some of the strikers’ families were lighting their home with candles, the electricity having been cut off. They would be using up their supplies.

Clare waved at the duty photographer, Stewie, who she’d called yesterday. He followed her, the squeak-and-whirr sound of his camera behind her at every point. Clare started by having a quick word with Annie Martin. She reckoned there were around fifty mothers and kids there.

“This is a good turn-out,” Clare said. “Are you pleased?”

“I knew it would be.” Annie looked around at the crowd. “When it comes to something like this, the people on Sweetmeadows support each other. In spite of what everyone says about us.”

Clare wrote down some quotes from a few other mums: “I daren’t let the bairn out of my sight.” “Everyone’s terrified. The place will never be the same again, not till that bastard’s found and locked up.” And most often: “The police are doing nowt. Too busy clocking up their overtime on the picket lines to do their proper jobs.”

The crowd had been there around half an hour when Chief Inspector Seaton came out and spoke to them. He looked hot and even redder in the face than usual. “I understand your concern. Of course I do. But let me promise you, we are doing everything we can to find the killer of little Jamie. Demonstrations like this won’t help. I have to ask you now to leave and go back to your homes. Let the police do their job.”

“Are you any further forward?” Annie Martin shouted out. “We’ve been told nothing for days. My family is in shreds.” A couple of women stepped towards her and put their arms around her shoulders and back, pulling her close to them.

“This investigation is proving very difficult,” Seaton went on. “What I would ask you all is to think very hard. Does anyone know anything they should tell the police? This baby died in broad daylight. But no one claims to have seen anything. If you did, or if you know someone who’s been acting strangely since the murder, it’s your duty to come forward and tell the police.”

Clare cringed: bad call, Seaton, she thought. Sure enough, his comment was followed by a low muttering from the little crowd. “So it’s our fault. He’s saying we’re hiding the killer.”

“Do your bloody job and stop blaming everyone else,” shouted one woman and there was a hail of shouts in agreement.

Seaton held up a hand and raised his voice. “You’ve made your point, now take the children home, please. This is no scene for them to see.”

Annie stepped forward. “And it’s no place for them at home when the police are doing nothing to find our Jamie’s murderer.”

The women started marching forward, raising their voices, brandishing their placards. And it seemed that from nowhere, a whole posse of uniformed officers ran out of the station doors and towards the crowd, blocking the women from getting too close to the chief inspector. Clare stepped back, her mouth slightly open, as some of the women started grappling with the police. Kids were kicking the officers in the shins and women were pulling at the police officers’ faces, swatting them with their placards. There was a low roar and – again, as if from nowhere – a group of men from the estate hurled themselves around a corner and into what was becoming an affray. More police buzzed out of the station, the noise and shouting got louder, along with the sounds of children screaming, women yelling and Stewie’s camera clicking incessantly in her ear.

Some of the men and women ended up being dragged inside the police station. Clare saw others moving away, carrying crying toddlers in their arms, or nursing cuts and bruises. Annie Martin climbed up on to a low wall, and yelled at everyone. “Stop it! It wasn’t meant to be like this! Stop it, everyone! Go home! Go on, home!”

That had an effect. The men and women who weren’t being arrested started walking away, tugging bewildered kids along with them.

Clare turned to stare at Stewie. “What the hell just happened there?”