This Little Piggy (18 page)

Clare flicked through the heavy card pages. Amy had cut out and kept every story with Clare’s name on it since the day after the baby’s death and had gummed them into the scrapbook.

“Wow. This is what I should be doing, only I never get round to it. I should pay you to be my secretary, Amy.”

Amy giggled. “See, though? Loads of by-lines.”

Clare was turning another heavily-glued page when the sound of smashing glass outside made both of them jump. They went to the window and peered out. In the square, a small group of teenagers was sitting on a low wall.

“It’s them again,” Amy said, keeping well back behind the shabby curtain. Clare counted five, two girls and three boys, none of them any older than seventeen at the most. They were all drinking from bottles of cheap booze. A couple of small motorcycles were parked up next to them. Clare watched as one lad drained his bottle and threw it against the wall of the flats, where it smashed, spattering shards of glass across the ground. Clare thought of how often she’d seen Amy wandering around in bare feet.

Even from four floors up, Clare could feel the group’s boredom. She began to get a sense of what Amy meant when she said it was as if something was about to happen. It was coming from the desperation of the teenagers, which was so thick she felt she could reach out and squeeze it. It gave off a feeling that even something bad, something very bad, would be better than nothing.

They got back on their scooters, sped around the square, out of the estate and back again, none of them wearing a helmet. The girls perched behind the boy drivers, squealing and shrieking as they revved up the bikes. Someone came out of a doorway and shouted at them to ‘shut the fuck up’, but they just laughed and pumped the engines harder.

Clare turned away from the window to see Amy crouched on the sofa, her head buried in her knees. “You okay?”

Amy gave a loud sniff and looked up, red-eyed. “I hate them. They scare me.”

Clare sat back down on the sofa next to her. “I can’t believe someone as tough as you could be scared by those idiots down there.” They sat listening to the roar of the bikes until it faded again.

“Did you see the one with the cap on?” Amy wasn’t looking at Clare, but still staring at her own grubby knees. Clare nodded, waiting.

Amy wiped at her eyes. “I think I’ve seen him before.”

“You mean…”

Amy nodded, misery on her face. “It’s the same cap. And I think the same trainers, with red laces.”

“You never mentioned trainers with red laces before.”

“I know. I forgot. I only remembered when I saw him again.”

“You said he was a man.”

Amy looked up. “He is a man.”

“Right.” Clare frowned. “I’d have called him, I don’t know, a lad. Or a boy. Or something that said he was younger.” But she supposed that to a ten-year-old, perhaps the teenagers did seem much older – grown-up, even.

Amy shrugged and said nothing.

“So were they both young men? Like those ones down there?”

Amy pouted. “I can’t really remember. I didn’t get that good a look. It all happened really quick.”

Clare chewed her lip for a moment. “Is that why you’re so scared? Because you think it’s the same guys who threw baby Jamie over the balcony?”

Amy nodded and her eyes filled up with tears again. Clare didn’t know whether she should put an arm around the child or not. Probably not. “So when you saw it happen – when you saw someone take Jamie out of his pram and drop him over the ledge – did you think you’d seen those men before?”

Amy pouted. “I wasn’t sure. It was only when I saw them again, just now, that I realised.” She paused, thinking. “Those girls might’ve been there too.”

Clare bit back the irritation she felt over Finn’s arrest, which had in part been down to Amy’s original story, and sighed. “But you never mentioned any girls.”

“That’s ’cause I’m not sure. I don’t like thinking about that day any more.”

“I know, Amy. It must be awful. But you need to try to remember everything you can. Every little detail’s important. Even the shoelaces. And you mustn’t say things unless you’re sure about them. If you keep adding bits on, or changing your mind, people think you’re making it up.”

“They think that anyway, don’t they? Anyway, I can’t remember everything at once. I can’t help that.”

“Okay. I know. I’m sorry. It must be hard.” Clare remembered reading that people can blot out traumatic incidents from their minds, and that the memories can come back in tiny pieces, like fragments of broken china, sometimes never quite fitting back together. She took a furtive look at her watch. It was getting on for eleven o’clock and she had a bad feeling that Tina and Mickey weren’t in any hurry to come home. But she couldn’t leave Amy on her own, not when the kid was so scared by the gang down in the square.

Amy crouched on the sofa, her eyes fixed on Clare, waiting for her to somehow sort things out. Clare sighed and looked out of the window again. Her car was parked near the entrance to the estate and she wasn’t too happy with the way the bikes kept flying past it at high speeds. “Amy, I’m going to have to go home and get to bed, I’ve got work tomorrow. But I don’t want to leave you here all on your own.”

For once, Amy didn’t say anything. She wiped her eyes and gave a tiny shrug, to indicate that it was okay. Clare knew she liked to pretend she was hard-edged, but tonight it wasn’t working.

“Look. You can stay here if you like, if you promise you won’t go out or let anyone else in the flat. But if you want, if you’re really scared, you can come back to mine and stay in my spare room. Just for tonight, okay? We’ll leave your mum a note and my phone number, so she doesn’t get worried.”

Amy’s watery eyes lit up. “I can go to your flat? For the night? Honest?”

Clare nodded. “Only if you want to. I don’t want to get you in trouble with your mum.”

Amy jumped up. “Let’s just go, then.”

Clare suspected the last thing Amy wanted was for her mum to come home, right at that point, and spoil the little adventure. “Get a nightie and your toothbrush. And something to wear tomorrow.”

Amy ran into her room and came out with a bundle of not particularly clean clothes. Clare looked around for a carrier bag and shoved them inside. “Okay, we’re going to my car. When we get outside, we just walk past those kids, we don’t look at them in the face or say anything to them, got it?”

Amy nodded. “Got it.”

Amy did as she was told, keeping her gaze directed at the ground until they got inside Clare’s car. As soon as the engine started, though, her face brightened and she chatted all the way back to Clare’s flat, her mood apparently fixed in an instant. They had tea and toast, and then Clare insisted that Amy get some sleep. “You might not feel tired, but I’m worn out, and I’ve got a day’s work to do tomorrow.” She opened the door to the spare room.

Amy looked around. The paint still smelled fresh, just faintly. “Whose room is this?”

“No one’s, really, it’s just a spare room. It’s a two bedroomed flat, that’s all.”

“So it’s like, just a room that anyone can stay in?”

“That’s right.”

“It’s really nice. I love the Garfield posters.”

“I thought you might. Only, seriously, I need to get to bed. Go on, off you go.”

Clare closed the door behind her and fell into her own bed. Part of her hoped that Tina would call to check on Amy, but part of her knew that she wouldn’t.

Thursday 26th July
Clare got out of bed at six-thirty to find Amy already up and watching TV. “Your milk’s gone sour,” she said.

“I know. I was going to nip to the shop to get some more before you got up, but you beat me. Sorry.”

“It’s fine, I don’t mind.”

“Did you sleep?”

“Yes.” Amy gave her a strange look. “What else would I have done?”

Clare laughed. “Nothing, I just meant… it doesn’t matter. Let me get dressed and we’ll go and find some breakfast.”

Somehow, Amy persuaded Clare to take her to a cafe usually used by lorry drivers. Clare, who almost never ate breakfast, found herself with an unfamiliar rumble in her stomach as she ordered Amy a bacon sandwich. She watched, the heat and steam making her eyes water, as Amy opened the greasy slices of bread and used the tube of ketchup to squirt out a heart-shape on top of the glistening bacon slice, then picked up the brown sauce and added an arrow going through it.

“Who’s the love heart for, then?”

Amy’s cheeks flushed. “George Michael.”

“No one at school? No boyfriends?”

Amy made a gagging face. “I don’t like
real
boys.”

“Very sensible. I don’t think I do either, very much.”

“Aren’t you in
luuurrve
with Joe, then?”

“No. Don’t be silly.”

Amy polished off the sandwich and followed it with a doughnut. She licked her fingers and used them to pick up every last remaining grain of sugar from her plate.

“I really don’t know where you put it all,” Clare said. It was strange how much she enjoyed watching Amy eat. “Anyway, when you’ve finished hoovering up all that sugar, I’d better get you home.”

Amy pouted but then said, “Yeah, I suppose, because if me mam didn’t come home last night, I’ll have to feed Max.”

It was obvious to Clare that Amy was more than used to her mum staying out all night. It was a routine.

After dropping Amy back at the estate, Clare put in a few calls. Then she drove round to see Chief Inspector Seaton.

“Why do I always think there’s trouble on the way whenever I see you these days, Miss Jackson?”

Clare smiled. “I really couldn’t say.” Were those extra lines on his face? The stress of the baby murder was definitely getting to him.

“Come on, then. What have you stirred up from Sweetmeadows this time? I take it that’s what this is about.”

“You’re not going to like it. But just hear me out, please. That little girl…”

Seaton groaned. “Hasn’t she wasted enough of our time already? That tale about the men came to nothing.”

“Wait. I’m doing a story today about a gang of kids that’s causing a load of trouble on the estate. Four or five teenage lads and girls, buzzing around on scooters, making a racket, drinking, vandalising the place.”

Seaton arranged his pens and pencils into neat lines on his desk. “Vandalising Sweetmeadows? Can anyone tell?”

“Yes, because they’re smashing things up and they’re an accident waiting to happen.”

“Has anyone reported it to us?”

“No.”

“Because?”

Clare paused, so Seaton answered his own question. “Because it’s Sweetmeadows and no one there talks to the police.”

“Because they don’t think anything will get done.”

“It bloody well won’t get done if no one reports it. The police are many things but we’re not telepathic.”

Clare looked at him, with her pen hovering above her page.

“My apologies. I shouldn’t have raised my voice and I shouldn’t have sworn in front of a lady.”

“I’m no lady, I’m a reporter.”

Seaton gave a little snort.

“Just thought I’d get that one in before you did.” Clare clicked her pen in and out. “Anyway, I wanted to check that the police weren’t aware of it. And if there is anything you can give me by way of a response.”

“You can tell the good folks of Sweetmeadows that we’ll be looking into it.”

“Right. Thanks. Now the thing is, remember when that little girl said she thought she saw two men carry out baby Jamie’s murder?”

“Ah, we’re back to Amy Hedley. A complete stranger to the truth.”

“You said that. But the thing is, I was with her last night when we were watching these kids running around the estate and she got very upset. She thought she recognised one of them.”

“How do you mean, recognised?”

“Amy told me she saw two men around the estate on the afternoon that Jamie died, remember? She saw one of them pick the baby out of his pram and the other one was down on the ground, waiting. She told me a while ago that one of them was wearing a baseball cap.”

“You do realise it would be quicker for me to bring in everyone round there who doesn’t wear a baseball cap? It hardly narrows the field.”

“So last night she thought it was the same guy. And she said he had the same trainers on, with red laces.”

Seaton sat up a little. “She didn’t mention that before. She told us something about Support the Strike stickers, but we looked into that and got nowhere.”

“No. And what Amy calls a man, I’d call a young lad. But she says she only remembered the trainers with red laces when she saw them again, last night.”

“Red laces?” Seaton thought for a moment. “Okay. That might lead us somewhere quicker than a baseball cap. Unless it turns out that all the low-lifes are wearing them right now. I’m no expert on street fashion. But I’ll send an officer round to speak to Amy Hedley and we’ll follow that up. Thank you.”

Clare clicked her pen in and out again, then stopped when she caught Seaton looking at it with obvious irritation. “You will… I mean, your officers will be nice to her, won’t they? She’s just a kid. Kids don’t think straight, the way we want them to, do they? And she was really scared last night.”

“We will be nice, as you put it, yes.”

“You know where she lives?”

“As I’ve said before, her mother is well known to the boys in the station. We’ll have no trouble finding her, thank you.” He picked up some papers on his desk and shook them, unnecessarily, into a neater pile. Clare took the hint and got up to leave.

Back at the office, Joe called. “Not doing your daily visit to Sweetmeadows then?”

“I’ve already got something else to write up.”

“Something else? Do you remember when you used to have slow news days? Before you became editor of the Sweetmeadows Chronicle, that is.”

“Yes, I suppose, it’s been a stream of stories, hasn’t it? I’m not complaining.”

“I know someone who is.”

“Tell me it’s Chris Barber again?”

“It is. I’m warning you – he’s still seriously trying to push you out of here.”

“Yeah, yeah. Surely they can’t budge me when I’m turning stories round as fast as this?”

“Since when were newspapers a meritocracy? It’s about who shouts the loudest and whose face fits, you know that. Just keep watching your back, Clare.”