“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.”
Kate tidied up her careful notes and Joe photographed the pages with his mobile phone.
THIRTY-FOUR
Kate
THURSDAY, APRIL 5, 2012
Angela 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 Kate. “I feel completely drained.”
Kate slipped her arm through Angela’s and squeezed it.
“It’s a big thing to do, Angela. 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 Kate had picked earlier.
Angela slumped down in her seat and wrapped her hands round her cup to warm them.
“Have I done the right thing, Kate?” 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,” Kate said, leaning forwards. “But at least there is a chance the waiting will be over.”
Angela 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, Angela,” he said.
He doesn’t know what else to do, Kate thought. Hasn’t done grief before, I suppose.
“Thanks, dear,” Angela said and took one. “I’m sorry I’m being so negative,” she added.
“You’re not, Angela,” Kate 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 Angela half-smiled.
“Shall I tell you what Joe and I have been doing?” Kate said, moving things along.
“Yes, do,” Angela 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, Angela?” Kate 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. Kate wanted to see if Angela had known her.
Angela 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 said, looking up. “I am so sorry.”
“Well, it was worth a try,” Kate said, swallowing her disappointment with a mouthful of coffee.
“Anyway, what else did the detective say?”
Angela talked about the differences in dealing with the police in 1970 and 2012, and Kate drifted back to the names.
“Walker,” she said out loud, stopping Angela 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, Angela. What time train did you plan to catch?”
Angela took hold of her arm. “Please can I come with you? I want to see where the baby was found.”
Kate nodded. “Of course you do. Sorry, I should have thought. I don’t suppose we could do some photographs there, Angela? We’ll need them for the story if the police tests are positive, and we might not have time on the day.”
Angela looked doubtful.
“And it could prompt someone to phone in,” Kate added.
That clinched it and Angela nodded her assent.
Kate put a quick call into the picture desk as they walked back to her car.
? ? ?
Mick 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 Angela 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?”
Kate pulled a “You boys!” grimace in the mirror, hoping to catch Angela’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?” Kate 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,” Kate 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,” Kate 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, Angela?”
“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, Angela,” Kate 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,” Kate said and Angela 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.”
Kate 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, Kate,” he said. “How’s it going?”
Kate introduced Angela and he shook her hand warmly.
There was a silence while he took a long draft of his beer, then the conversation restarted. Kate kept glancing at the door, behind Angela, 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 Kate 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 Kate 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.”