The Golden Fury

Chapter 30

Chapter 30

“Are you all right, Aldira?” Joe said. “You look a bit red.”

“I’m fine. Bit hot in here, that’s all,” she said tetchily.

“Oh right,” Joe said.

She knew what he was thinking. Menopause. And for menopause, read old, irrational, past it, a woman. She bridled, furious that he was judging her professionalism on her estrogen levels. He probably couldn’t even spell “estrogen.” But the lecture would have to wait. She had work to do. She forced a smile and thought cold thoughts to make the flush recede. She’d read about it in a well-woman leaflet once. Nonsense but anything was worth a go.

She pushed the 1960s towards him. “You do this lot. Write down the names and dates of everyone who lived in the terrace. And at number 81

—the d**g den. Then we’ll look for where they are now when we get back to the office.”

She pulled the 1970s towards her.

After ten minutes, they had a list. It was shorter than Aldira had thought—the folks of Howard Street had been long-term residents in the sixties and the transition from family homes to rented bedsits and flats had taken a few years after that.

“How many have you got?” she asked.

Joe counted them slowly. “Twelve,” he said. “Nobody moved in or out. Married couples, I think, with adult children, maybe.”

“Great,” she said. “Any names we know? Laidlaw for instance?”

“No. One of the families was the Smiths, at number 65.”

“Damn,” she said, too loudly, alarming the man reading the Times at the next table.

“Sorry,” she mouthed.

“Any more unusual names?” she asked Joe. “‘Smith’ is a nightmare.”

“Speering, Baker, and Walker,” he reeled off.

“Right,” she said, checking her notes. “I’ve got two of the same families in the early seventies. But everything was changing. Look, six different names for number 63 by 1974—and they are all singletons.

People moved on every couple of years.”

“The people at 81 don’t look very interesting,” Joe said. “It’s the same couple throughout the sixties.”

“And then no names on my list. The woman who rang in said they were squatters or something, so there’s unlikely to be an official trace.

We’ll ask around. We’ve got our hands full anyway.”

Joe ran his finger down the page. “There are loads of them. How will we find them?”

“We don’t need to find all of them. Just some. You’ll see. Find one person and they’ll lead you to others. Have a little faith, Joe.”

Aldira tidied up her careful notes and Joe photographed the pages with his mobile phone.

Bria looked different somehow when she emerged from the revolving doors. She looked older.

“The tests have all been done. Now we just have to wait,” she told Aldira. “I feel completely drained.”

Aldira slipped her arm through Bria’s and squeezed it.

“It’s a big thing to do, Bria. You are being very brave. Come on, let’s get you a coffee and you can tell me all about it.”

Joe offered to carry her bag of documents and led the way round the back of Westminster Abbey to the café Aldira had picked earlier.

Bria slumped down in her seat and wrapped her hands round her cup to warm them.

“Have I done the right thing, Aldira?” she said finally. “I’m not sure I want to know the answer now. I’m scared.”

“It is going to be difficult whatever they find,” Aldira said, leaning forwards. “But at least there is a chance the waiting will be over.”

Bria nodded. “Yes, that’s true. I need that to be over. It is killing me. Slowly.”

Joe pushed a pack of biscuits across the table towards her. “Have one of these, Bria,” he said.

He doesn’t know what else to do, Aldira thought. Hasn’t done grief before, I suppose.

“Thanks, dear,” Bria said and took one. “I’m sorry I’m being so negative,” she added.

“You’re not, Bria,” Aldira said. “What you are feeling is perfectly natural. I don’t know how you’ve kept going over all these years. You are amazing.”

Joe nodded enthusiastically from the other side of the table, and Bria half-smiled.

“Shall I tell you what Joe and I have been doing?” Aldira said, moving things along.

“Yes, do,” Bria said and picked up the biscuit from her saucer.

“We’ve been looking at the people who used to live in Howard Street, where the baby was found,” she said.

“From the sixties and seventies,” Joe chimed in.

“Will you have a look at the list of names we’ve got, to see if you recognize any of them, Bria?” Aldira said. “You can say no,” she added.

She pushed the list across the table. She had included the name Marian Laidlaw, Nick Irving’s girlfriend. Aldira wanted to see if Bria had known her.

Bria seemed happy to be distracted from the gathering gloom. She scanned through the names quickly and then went back through slowly, her mouth working silently as she tried them out.

“No, nobody,” she saidlooking up. “I am so sorry.”

“Well, it was worth a try,” Aldira said, swallowing her disappointment with a mouthful of coffee.

“Anyway, what else did the detective say?”

Bria talked about the differences in dealing with the police in 1970

and 2012, and Aldira drifted back to the names.

“Walker,” she said out loud, stopping Bria dead and making Joe slop his coffee into the saucer.

“Walker?” he said. “What do you mean?”

“Sorry, thinking out loud. I spoke to a Miss Walker in Howard Street the first time I went there. Old lady with a horrible dog. She could be one of the Walkers who used to live at number 61.”

The other two looked at her.

“Drink up,” she told Joe. “We’ll go back. And we can drop you off at the station, Bria. What time train did you plan to catch?”

Bria took hold of her arm. “Please can I come with you? I want to see where the baby was found.”

Aldira nodded. “Of course you do. Sorry, I should have thought. I don’t suppose we could do some photographs there, Bria? We’ll need them for the story if the police tests are positive, and we might not have time on the day.”

Bria looked doubtful.

“And it could prompt someone to phone in,” Aldira added.

That clinched it and Bria nodded her assent.

Aldira put a quick call into the picture desk as they walked back to her car.

• • •

M

ick the photographer rang her while she was driving, but she didn’t want to put him on loudspeaker.

His use of the F word was legendary and she suspected Bria was not the sort to be impressed by casual swearing. Let’s not scare anyone off, she thought, handing her phone to Joe to deal with.

“Hello, Mick,” he chirped. “Er, how’s what hanging?”

Aldira pulled a “You boys!” grimace in the mirror, hoping to catch Bria’s eye.

“Yes, we’re on our way now. Howard Street. Okay. See you there,”

Joe said, muttering “I will” before turning the phone off.

“You will what?” Aldira asked.

“Nothing,” Joe said, his telltale cheeks glowing. “Just Mick mucking about.”

• • •

Miss Walker was out and the machines on the building site had been silenced. “Lunchtime,” Aldira said. “Let’s go to the pub and wait for Mick—he won’t be long.”

The bar at the Royal Oak was three deep in damp donkey jackets and a forest of arms was waving at the staff.

“We’ll never get a drink,” Aldira said. “Let’s sit down and hope the rush is over quickly.”

Joe laughed. “I bet I can get us one,” he said. Finally, in his element.

“Okay, off you go. What do you want to drink, Bria?”

“An orange juice, please,” she said, tucking her coat under her as she perched on a stool.

“I’ll have a fizzy water—and bring some crisps. You must be starving, Bria,” Aldira added.

Joe threw himself into the throng and, five minutes later, emerged with a tray of glasses and three bags of ready salted.

“I’m impressed,” Aldira said and Bria laughed with her. “Now, for lesson two in being a reporter . . .”

“Actually,” Joe said, “it was easier than I thought. The pub landlord spotted you and served me first.”

Aldira grinned and raised her glass to the man behind the bar. He bowed back at her.

When Mick bowled in, he clocked them and stopped at the bar first, slopping his pint as he set it down on the teetotalers’ table.

“Hi, Aldira,” he said. “How’s it going?”

Aldira introduced Bria and he shook her hand warmly.

There was a silence while he took a long draft of his beer, then the conversation restarted. Aldira kept glancing at the door, behind Bria, to keep an eye out for John Davies, the site manager. They’d need his help to do the photos on the spot where the baby was buried.

John strolled through the door ten minutes later and nodded to Aldira when she stood to greet him.

“John,” she called. “Good to see you. Can I get you a drink?”

He nodded. “Wouldn’t say no,” he said. “Saw your story.”

“Yes. Peter’s a lovely bloke,” she said. “How is he doing?”

“Okay, I think. He was happy with what you wrote,” the site manager said and Aldira smiled.

“I’m really glad. Look, I wondered if I could ask another favor . . .”

It took two shandies and a packet of peanuts to persuade him, but finally, he agreed. “You can have five minutes before the work begins again,” he said. “And I mean five minutes.”

She squeezed his arm. “’Course. I’ll just get my photographer.”

Mick hated it when she called him “her photographer.”

“I’m not your f*****g monkey,” he hissed when she returned to the table. And she smiled apologetically at Joe and Bria in case they’d heard.

“Not in front of the children,” she hissed back as they walked to the door.

• • •

Bria had posed nervously in the churned mud, beside the police tape around the site of the grave. Aldira had expected her to cry, but she had just stood there, her hands clutched in front of her, her eyes wide and never still. Mick talked to her as he took the pictures, calming her and reassuring her that it would all be over soon.

But Aldira knew it wouldn’t. There was a long road ahead. She watched the scene, noting the anguish on Bria’s face, her hair blown about, the mud streaks on her tights, the wary glances at the tape that marked the baby’s last resting place. These were the details the readers would want to know about, that would bring them straight to the spot where Aldira stood. She wouldn’t be able to write it yet but she had it all in her head.

John Davies appeared from his Portakabin after fifteen minutes and shouted for them to stop. The machines are starting up. You need to go.”

“Just one more, mate,” Mick called—the traditional cry of the photographer—and fired off more shots of Bria bending to reach through the tape to touch the earth.

“Now, please, mate,” Davies shouted again. Aldira went over to Bria and took her by the arm to steady her as they walked across the deep ruts. Joe followed behind with her handbag. Like a funeral cortege.

It’d been a difficult and long weekend, but they had weathered Easter as a family and it was over now. Nick would be back at work today and she could stop tiptoeing around the house. He’d shouted at her on Saturday, as she knew he would, when she finally told him about going to London and having the DNA test.

“What, you sneaked off without telling me?” he’d roared, and she’d hoped the neighbors were out.

“Stop shouting, Nick,” she’d said. “The neighbors will hear. Look, you were so busy and worried about work last week, I didn’t want to add to your stress.”

He’d looked at her, trying to detect the lie, but she’d kept her wifey face on.

“I don’t want you getting all het up again,” he’d said. “I’m saying this for your own good, Angie.”

Normally, she’d have smiled at him and thanked him for being so caring. But she couldn’t.

Everything was churning in her head, the hope and the hurt and the betrayal rising to the surface after so many years.

“I won’t get all het up, Nick. But this is something I have to do. For Alice.”

At the mention of her name, Nick had closed down and disappeared into the garage, emerging only for silent meals.

Bria had cleaned the house to vent her fury, wielding the hoover like a weapon, crashing it into skirting boards and doors, leaving chips of paint in her wake as she thrust her way through the rooms. In her head she was screaming her accusations: You never wanted Alice. She was the price you paid for being unfaithful. That’s what you felt.

I bet you saw that woman again.

She hated herself for thinking it, but her internal rants almost always ended with that. She couldn’t help it. It was always there, waiting to t*****e her. She’d never said it out loud to Nick. What would she do if he admitted it? Better not to know.

They’d slept back to back on Saturday night, not even saying “good night.” She’d lain awake, trying to quell her thoughts, and had finally drifted into troubled, sheet-twisting sleep. When she’d dredged herself awake, Nick was lying beside her, eyes open, studying the ceiling.

“Hello, love,” she said through force of habit.

He grunted.

“Patrick is bringing the children round this morning so we can give them their Easter eggs. I thought we could take them to the park,” she said, determined to wear him down.

Nick grunted again, still looking at the ceiling.

“What are you thinking, Nick?” she said.

“That this will never be over,” he said, his voice flat. “That it will never go away.”

“It? Do you mean our daughter?” she said, sitting up.

Nick had rolled away from her, but she couldn’t let it go.

“She is our daughter. And I need to know, Nick, if Alice and I can count on you.”

“For God’s sake, Angie, what does that even mean? Whatever the police say it will be bad news—either it isn’t Alice and you will be devastated, or it is and our baby is dead. Look, Angie, it won’t bring her back. We don’t need tests. Our baby is dead and gone. You know that in your heart of hearts, don’t you? We don’t need graves and bones and policemen. It’s too late for that. We need to let it—her—go.”