Kate relaxed. A reader. Home and dry.
The two women chatted about the work going on just outside the window, raising their voices when a lorry thundered past, revving hard to get up the incline.
Kate nodded her sympathy and gently led Miss Walker round to the subject of the building site grave.
“I heard the workmen found a body where they’re working,” she said.
The older woman closed her eyes. “Yes, a baby. What an awful thing.”
“Awful,” Kate echoed and shook her head in sync with Miss Walker. “Poor man who found it. He won’t get over that for a while,” Kate said.
“No,” Miss Walker agreed.
“It makes me wonder about the mother,” Kate went on. “Who she was, I mean.”
She’d put her notebook down beside her, signaling to Miss Walker that they were “just talking.”
The woman was not as old as she’d first thought. About sixty, she guessed, but she looked worn down by life. There was something of the fairground about her. Bright colors distracting from a tired face. Kate noted the ginger patina of home-dyed hair and the makeup pooling in the creases of her eyelids.
“Do you have children?” she asked.
“No,” Miss Walker said. “No kids. Just Shorty and me. We keep each other company.”
She stroked her pet in silence, the dog shivering with pleasure.
“He’s a lovely dog,” Kate lied. She loathed dogs. She’d had too many confrontations on doorsteps with ravening beasts, snapping and lunging against their collars as their owners restrained them. They always said the same thing: “Don’t worry. They won’t bite.” But the look in the animals’ eyes said they would if they got the chance. This one was eyeing her up but she tried to ignore it.
“Well, they don’t know when it was buried, do they?” Miss Walker said. “Could be hundreds of years old, I’ve heard. We might never know.”
Kate hmmed and nodded, head on one side. Not what she wanted to hear.
“When did you hear about it? You’re only over the road—you must notice everything,” she said.
“I’m not some old busybody,” Miss Walker replied, her voice rising. “I don’t poke my nose in where it’s not wanted.”
“’Course not,” Kate soothed. “But it must have been hard to miss the police cars and things. I know I’d have been dying to know what was going on if it happened across from my house.”
The older woman was suitably mollified. “Well, I saw the police come, and later, one of the workmen, John, who runs the site, told me what they’d found. He was very upset. Terrible to find something like that. A horrible shock,” Miss Walker said. “I made him a sweet tea.”
“That was nice of you,” Kate said. “Perhaps your friend John will know more about when the baby was buried. Maybe the police said something?”
“I couldn’t say. John saw it, the baby, I mean. He said it was just tiny bones. Nothing else left. Terrible thing.”
Kate picked up her notebook while Miss Walker went to make a cup of tea and wrote down the name of the workman and the quote about the tiny bones.
Twenty minutes and a tea with two sugars later, she was walking down to the site office, a first-floor Portakabin in a stack, with a panoramic view over the mayhem.
A stocky man in jeans cut her off at the door. “Can I help you?”
“Hi, are you John? I’ve just been talking to Miss Walker down the road and she suggested I come to see you.”
The foreman’s face softened slightly. “She’s a lovely woman. She used to be a model or something, you know. Long time ago, now, obviously. She walks past with her dog every day and has a chat. Sometimes she brings me a cake or something else nice. Must be a bit lonely for her with pretty much everyone else gone.”
Kate nodded. “Must be,” she said. “Hard to be old these days, when everything is changing around you.”
The chitchat had gone on long enough and Kate thought the foreman might make his excuses and leave.
“Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t introduce myself. I’m Kate Waters.” And stuck out her hand to shake his. Difficult for people to be rude if they’ve shaken your hand.
“John Davies,” he said back, automatically. “What can I do for you?”
“I’m a reporter, doing a piece on the body found on your building site,” Kate went on and the foreman started to turn away.
“It must have been a terrible shock for you. You poor thing,” she added quickly.
He turned back.
“It was. Sorry to be rude but we’ve had the police coming and going on the site. Taping off their crime scene, stopping us working. The men are all spooked and we’re falling behind schedule.”
“Must be a nightmare,” Kate said.
“It is,” Davies agreed. “Look, I shouldn’t be talking to the press. The boss would have my balls if he knew.”
Kate smiled at him. “I’ve got a boss like that. Come on, I’ll buy you a pint in the pub up the road—it’s lunchtime and it’s just for a bit of background. I don’t have to quote you.”
Davies looked doubtful.
“I just want to get to the bottom of who the baby is. Awful for a child to be buried without a name. Like some Victorian pauper.”
“Okay. But just one drink,” he said and padlocked the site gates behind him.
“Brilliant,” Kate said, turning on a full-beam smile.
He walked awkwardly beside her past Miss Walker’s and Kate waved to her new friend, standing watching at the kitchen window.
SIX
Kate
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 21, 2012
The pub was already full of site workers, the sharp smell of wet cement mixing with last night’s beer slops, and she fought her way to the bar with a ten-pound note already waving in her hand.
“White wine spritzer,” she ordered. “What are you drinking, John?”
“Pint of bitter shandy, please.”
The man behind the bar, his eyes hidden behind heavy rimmed spectacles, pushed the full glasses forwards and gave Kate a handful of change without a word.
“He should get a refund from the charm school he went to,” she said, plonking the drinks down on a ring-stained table.
“He’s all right,” John Davies said gruffly, taking the first long gulp of his pint. “His pub is next to go if the second phase is approved. Must be hard serving us, the forces of destruction.”
“Yeah, must be. How long has the work been going on?”
“Months. Feels like years.”
Kate sipped her drink. The bastard had used lemonade instead of soda and its sweetness was setting her teeth on edge.
“It sounds like hard work all round.”
“And last week didn’t help. Awful thing.” Davies put down his glass and looked into its depths.
“It must’ve been. Was it you who found the body?”
“No, one of the laborers. Poor lad. He’s only nineteen. Been off ever since.”
“What happened?”
Davies emptied his glass.
“I’ll get you another,” Kate said.
When she returned, he was peeling the design off his beer mat, in a world of his own.
“Peter was clearing rubble behind where the houses were so the machines could get in there,” Davies said without looking up. “He was trying to move one of those old concrete urn things that they plant flowers in. He said he disturbed the ground shifting it back and forth. And he saw this little bone.
“It was so small, he thought it was part of an animal and went to pick it up to see. But there was more. When he realized what it might be, he screamed. I thought he’d cut his leg off or something. Never heard a scream like it.”
“He must have been so shocked. You all must,” Kate murmured encouragingly.
Her companion nodded wearily. “He’s very religious, Peter. Eastern European, you know. Always going on about spirits and things. Anyway, I went and looked. It was so small. Looked like a bird. It’d been wrapped in something and there were bits of paper and plastic stuck to it. I called the police and they came out.”
“Where was this?” Kate asked.