The Golden Fury

Chapter 32

Chapter 32

Bria waited. She could no longer speak but her brain was screaming Just tell me!

Aldira moved slightly back from her as she realized Mick was taking pictures of Bria from across the room.

“The police have got the results from the DNA tests, Bria. I haven’t had it officially, but I’ve been told they are a match.”

“Alice.” Bria breathed in the name. “It’s Alice.”

She didn’t hear anything else Aldira said. Her head was full of her child. I’ve found her.

She could feel Aldira trembling when she took her hand again.

“I’m so pleased for you, Bria,” she said, and the two women sat looking at each other, eyes locked together.

Bria felt she could have sat like that all day, but Mick said: “Can you look at me, love?” and she turned her face to his camera, not knowing whether to laugh or cry.

Aldira stood up to let him get his pictures and went to perch on the arm of an armchair. Joe was standing near the door. He kept looking at Bria and away, as if he couldn’t bear to see.

When Mick put his camera down, Aldira went back to the sofa.

“You need to ring the officer on the case, Bria,” she told her. “He said the results would be back today, didn’t he? So you can ring him and ask. He must tell you.”

Aldira sounded worried and Bria wondered if she was being told the whole story.

“Is there a problem?” she asked.

Aldira looked down at her hands.

“The thing is, Bria, I’ve been told very much off the record that there is a match, so I need to get it officially before I can write the story.

Do you see?”

Bria nodded. She wasn’t really sure she did see, but she wanted to help the reporter. She’d found Alice.

“What do you want me to say to DI Sinclair?” she asked.

Aldira wrote down the questions to ask and said Bria should insist if the officer wouldn’t give her answers.

“You have a right to know, Bria. You are Alice’s mother and you have waited long enough,” she said.

Bria picked up the phone and dialed the direct line she’d been given.

The detective answered straightaway and Bria tried to play her part.

“Hello, DI Sinclair, it’s Bria Irving.”

“Mrs. Irving, how can I help you?” he said, all business.

“I’m sorry to bother you, but you said you would have the results today and I am going out of my mind waiting.”

“I know it must be very difficult for you,” DI Sinclair said, his voice softening. “But I’m just waiting for the results to be typed up.”

“But when will that be?”

“Tomorrow, I hope,” he said.

“I don’t think I can wait until tomorrow, DI Sinclair. It is making me ill, the wait,” she said. “I’ve waited too long already.”

Aldira pointed to the next question she’d written down for Bria.

“Do you know what the results show?” she asked obediently, and DI Sinclair hesitated.

“Yes, Mrs. Irving. I’ve had a verbal report from the technicians, but I like to have all the paperwork in front of me before I release the information. And I’d planned to discuss it with you and your husband, face-to-face. I’m sure you understand my caution.”

“Please tell me what you know, DI Sinclair. I’m begging you.”

There was a silence. Bria looked at Aldira and held her breath.

“It’s a match, Mrs. Irving,” he said finally.

“A match,” she said out loud for Aldira’s benefit, and the reporter punched the air like a tennis player at Wimbledon.

“Yes. The DNA sample we took from you matches the DNA from the remains. The baby’s skeleton, I mean.”

“So it is Alice,” Bria said and started to cry.

“As I said, Mrs. Irving, I haven’t had it in writing, but yes, it does appear so. I’d still like to come and see you and your husband tomorrow to discuss the results and how we will take the case forward. I’d like to bring a Family Liaison Officer as well. So that you always have a point of contact. Is that okay?”

“Of course, of course. Thank you so much for telling me. I don’t know what to say. Please come. What time do you want to come?” she said, falling over the words.

“I’ll be with you at nine thirty, if that’s okay,” he said. “I’m glad the waiting is over for you. I will see you tomorrow morning.”

Aldira’s feet were still dancing when Bria put the phone down.

“Well done, Bria. You did so well,” Aldira said. “Tell me everything he said.”

Bria looked at her, hollow eyed, the initial euphoria of getting the news draining away rapidly.

“My baby is dead,” she said.

Ihear the news on the radio. The newsreader with the posh voice, Charlotte someone, says that a missing baby has been found after decades, and I freeze. On a building site in Woolwich, she says. A baby called Alice Irving, she says. Taken from a hospital in 1970. And I stare at the radio. This is all wrong. The baby has a name. And a mother.

There’s a clip of the mother, saying how relieved and devastated she is. I stand listening in the kitchen and crying with Mrs. Irving. I’m as relieved as she is. But for different reasons.

Nobody will be coming to my door. No reckoning. Not yet.

Later, when I go to buy a pint of milk at the corner shop, I see the headlines in the papers and buy the one with the exclusive interview with Alice Irving’s mother. I try to read it as I walk home, but I keep stumbling and bumping into garden walls so I put it under my arm in the end. Don’t want to look like a madwoman.

At home I read every word, poring over the details, reading some bits out loud. I can’t quite take it in, but I feel a sort of euphoria rising in me.

Maybe everything is going to be all right.

She heard the news on the radio as she waited for the kettle to boil.

She was only half-listening as she wrote a shopping list in her head, but the words “Alice Irving” stopped her at natural yogurt. She turned up the volume until it shrieked in her ears and her neighbor thumped on the wall.

Simon the Editor stopped at her desk as soon as he arrived that morning.

“Well, you must be pleased with yourself, Aldira,” he said, grinning his yellow smile. “Great interview and most-read story online.”

She grinned back at him, happy to be back in the sunlit uplands of the Editor’s favor.

“And you,” Simon said, turning to the hovering figure at his elbow,

“your first front-page byline.”

Joe looked like he might burst with pride. Aldira had given him an additional reporting credit—his name in italics at the end of the story where it turned to page four and five—but the back bench had bumped his name up to join Aldira’s on the front. She’d ground her teeth over it when she’d checked the page proof, but she understood. Joe Jackson was the Editor’s golden child.

“Right, what’s today’s story, then?” Simon asked. “What are the police saying? Any leads on who took her?”

Joe looked like a rabbit in the headlights.

“We’re talking to the cops, Simon,” Aldira said.

“And we’ve got a second bite at the Bria Irving interview. Life without Alice,” Terry called across as he stood to join the impromptu news conference.

“Sounds good,” the Editor said and walked off.

Joe looked at Aldira and beamed. “Thank you for giving me a byline, Aldira,” he said. “I really didn’t do much.”

She grunted. Then relented. “You did a good job, Joe. Now let’s stop the backslapping and find out what happened to baby Alice.”

• • •

D

I Sinclair was not a happy bunny when she called him.

“Did Mrs. Irving ring you yesterday, Miss Waters?” he asked.

“Your story was completely premature. I’ve only just got the file.”

“I called her, DI Sinclair. We’d already done a story with her and I knew the results were due yesterday.”

“Did you ask her to ring me?”

“DI Sinclair, do you really think a woman who has waited forty-odd years to find her child needs telling? Bria Irving was desperate to know.”

“Yes, okay. I just wasn’t ready and the press office has been inundated.”

Aldira’s mouth twitched, but she stopped herself from smirking. He’d be able to hear it in her voice.

“It’s a big story, DI Sinclair. Anyway,” she said, moving things out of the danger zone. “What is next? Are you setting up a murder inquiry?”

“Not necessarily. We don’t know how the baby died yet. We may never know. We haven’t got much to work with and the forensic team is only just starting on the other material from the scene. We’ll know more in the next few days.”

“So you don’t know when it was buried?”

“Not yet. Investigation ongoing.”

“Okay, and when are you talking to Mrs. Irving?”

Aldira knew he’d already been to the house but wanted the officer to feel he was in control of some information.

“Saw Mr. and Mrs. Irving this morning. They’re helping us with our inquiry.”

“Any links with southeast London?”

“None we can see at the moment. But we’re looking. It was a long time ago and people’s memories are not what they were.”

“Tell me about it,” Aldira joked. “I can barely remember what I did yesterday, let alone in the 1970s.”

“I can’t believe that, Aldira,” he said, and she ticked the fact that they were now on first-name terms.

“I’ll let you get on—I know you must be busy—but thanks so much for talking to me. And let me know if I can help in any way. When you want to put out a public appeal for information.”

“Thanks,” he said. “I’m planning a press conference, but I’ll let you know when.”

“Great,” she said. “Is there a direct line I can contact you on if we hear anything at the paper? People might contact us direct.”

He gave her his mobile number and told her to call him Andy.

“Speak soon, Andy. Thanks a million,” she said. As soon as the line went dead, she turned to Joe.

“He’s onside. Let’s get on with it. Where’s that list of names from Howard Street? The police must be all over it by now.

“And let’s not forget Marian Laidlaw. Where is she now?”

It was groundhog day at the Royal Oak. Dolly was still singing, pleading with Jolene over the speakers, and the same backs were facing out from the bar. Aldira found herself being treated as a regular by the workmen who nodded silently at her. She wanted to talk to the pub landlord, but she’d have to wait until things quieted down. He noticed her and called across the heads, “Your usual, Aldira?” and she laughed and called back her order.

“Can we have a word in a minute?” she asked as he put the glasses down on the bar.

“Sure. But my missus still isn’t here. She’s the one you should be talking to. She hears everything.”

She and Joe sat at the same table as the last time and he scrolled on his phone while she watched the faces around her. She loved spotting the telltale details—the stained trousers that spoke of neglect, the love bites that told of teenage l**t, the disguised shaking hand, the blank eyes, the back-combed hair of someone clinging to their youth.

“Aldira,” Joe said suddenly.

“Yes, Joe?” she said, turning her attention back to him.

“Miss Walker. We still haven’t seen her.”

“Yes, let’s do that,” she said, putting down her half-finished drink. “I wonder if the police have talked to her yet.”

They had. Miss Walker was fizzing with excitement when she let them in.

“I had two police officers here. Telling me about them finding Alice Irving. I can’t believe it. That little girl buried in Howard Street all those years.”

“Do you remember the case, Miss Walker?”

“Oh yes. Well, they reminded me a bit, but I knew who they were talking about.”

“How do you think Alice ended up here?” Aldira said.

“I have no idea,” Miss Walker said. “Complete mystery, the officers told me.”

Joe sat forwards and handed her his phone.

“These were people who lived here in the sixties and seventies, Miss Walker. One of the families is called Walker—are they relatives?” he said and showed her the list.

She put on smeared glasses and peered at the screen but then handed it back. “Sorry, I can’t read that,” she said, and Aldira fished out her notebook.