The Golden Fury

Chapter 10

Chapter 10

“Look, it’s difficult to talk on the phone,” she said. “Difficult to talk about something as sensitive as this. Could we meet, Peter? I could come to you.”

He hesitated. “Well, okay,” he said. “But just for a little time. I am staying with a friend just now. In Shepherd’s Bush. Can we meet there?

In the café by the station, perhaps.”

“Of course. I’m not that far from there. I can be there in half an hour, Peter. Is that okay?”

Aldira was already pulling her bag off the arm of her chair when Gordon Willis looked up. He earwigged every conversation. It was a given. And she’d mentioned the police. His jealously guarded patch.

“What are you up to?” he said. “Something I should know about?”

“No. Just a dead baby in Woolwich. It was in the Standard, Gordon,”

she said, carefully underselling the story to head off any interference.

The Crime Man was a renowned byline bandit, always looking for a chance to get his name on other people’s work.

“Yeah, saw that,” he said. “Cops think it’s old—historic, probably.”

“Well, I thought I’d have a look at it. Could be a good human interest story behind it.”

“Girls’ stuff,” he said and resumed his crossword puzzle.

• • •

Peter had a Coke in front of him when Aldira walked across to his table. He was stick thin and his skin was so pale she could see the veins beneath. He looked up as she approached, stood, and shook her hand. His was cold and she felt the tremble. “Thanks very much for seeing me, Peter. I really appreciate it,” she said warmly as they sat down. “I’m just trying to make sure I get my story right—for the baby’s sake.”

It struck the right chord. His eyes filled with tears and he looked down at his lap.

“It was so small. Almost not there at all in the dirt,” he said to his drink. “I didn’t know what I was looking at. Then I saw . . .”

Aldira memorized his words automatically, an intro already playing in her head.

“What made you dig there?” she said, moving him on from his sticking point and opening up the conversation. “Tell me about that day.”

Peter spoke haltingly, occasionally looking up, about how he’d been told to clear a route through the gardens for a digger.

“It was a hard place to dig. There had been buildings a long time ago, John said, and concrete was left in the ground. Foundations. Underneath the gardens.

“It was raining and I was slipping in the mud. I remember I was laughing with the digger driver because we both fell over. It was funny . . .” he said, then looked stricken at his flippancy.

“It’s all right, Peter,” Aldira said. “You’re not being disrespectful. It was what happened. It was funny at the time. You can’t change that.”

The laborer nodded his thanks and leaned forwards onto his elbows to get to the c****x of his story.

“I was moving a big concrete pot and the driver went back to his cab to get ready to pass through the gap. And there it was. It was buried deep but I had made a hole when I dragged the flower pot. I put my hand down . . .”

His voice failed and he started to cry into his red, cracked hands.

Aldira reached across with a cheap napkin too thin and shiny to absorb anything. She touched his hand lightly. “Please don’t upset yourself, Peter. None of this is your fault. And perhaps the baby can be buried properly now.”

Peter looked up. “That is what my priest said. That would be good.”

“Was there anything with the body? Clothes, toys?” she asked, praying for more details to make the baby seem real for readers. People found it hard to care about skeletons, she’d learned.

“No, I didn’t see anything. Some bits of paper. Small like confetti, my boss said. I couldn’t look after I pulled the first little bone out.”

“It must have been terrible for you,” Aldira said, sneaking a quick look at her watch as she picked up her tea. “How are you getting home? Can I put you in a cab?”

Peter shook his head and stood up. “I prefer to walk, thank you. It helps clear my head.”

• • •

On her way back to the office, having paid the bill and checked the spelling of Peter’s surname, she wondered if she’d get the story in the paper. It would take some careful selling to the news desk. There wasn’t much to it yet—just a body and a sobbing workman. She’d write it and see what Terry said. The piece ran—down page, back of the book—the following Saturday. Aldira had managed to squeeze five hundred words out of the bare facts, ramping up Peter’s tearful testimony with some color from Howard Street and an anodyne quote from the police about “continuing inquiries.” She ended it with a haunting question to get the readers involved. The subeditor had pinched it to use as the headline: “Who Is the Building Site Baby?”

But Aldira wasn’t happy with the story. A question as a headline was an admission of failure, as far as she was concerned. Meant you hadn’t nailed down the facts if you had to ask. She was sure there was more to get, but she needed the police forensics team to do their stuff to get a sniff ofa follow-up.

And she knew she needed to look for other stories to keep her name in the paper so the Editor didn’t forget she existed.

But she couldn’t get the image of the baby, wrapped in paper as if it were rubbish, out of her head.

She wouldn’t let it go.

Angela

She didn’t really know why she’d picked up the paper. Nick had flicked straight to the sports pages when he’d brought it back from the garage that morning and then abandoned it on the table. Angela had her morning all planned—supermarket shop then a coffee with Louise on the way home—but she’d reached out and turned the pages of the paper while she waited for the washing machine to finish spinning. She wanted to put the washing straight into the dryer before she went out. She wasn’t even really reading, just looking at the photographs. But the word “baby”

stopped her in her tracks.

“Who Is the Building Site Baby?” the headline asked.

She read on, her flesh prickling beneath her clothes. A baby’s body found. It was the word “found” that made her cry out. Nick came running through.

“What is it, Angie?” he said. “What’s happened?”

She couldn’t speak. She just thrust the paper at him, jabbing at the headline with her finger.

He looked where she was pointing and Angela saw the weariness in his face as he took in what it meant.

“Angie, love. This doesn’t mean anything. You know that, don’t you?

We’ve been here too many times, haven’t we?”

She refused to look at him and carried on reading and rereading the article. Memorizing it.

“But it’s just after her birthday. That could be a sign,” she said.

“Angie,” he said, louder this time. “It will be more heartbreak if you get your hopes up. It’ll make you ill like before.”

She nodded. There’d been a body found in Staffordshire in 1999 and she’d been sure then that it was Alice. Had felt it in her bones. But it wasn’t. It turned out to be a boy—the child of some poor, sad woman who used smothering babies as a form of contraception. The police had found two others in the freezer.