EIGHTEEN

Kate

FRIDAY, MARCH 30, 2012

The Cheshire Cheese was a labyrinth of wood-paneled hidey-holes and snugs in Fleet Street. It had been the haunt of journalists—the scene of punch-ups, celebrations, and wakes—until the papers scattered to the four corners of the capital in the 1990s. Now, the Cheese sold itself as a colorful relic of those days. The new owners peddled anecdotes of historic scoops and back-slapping camaraderie to the tourists and city workers who had moved in. As if journalism belonged to another age.

But it still smelled the same, Kate thought, as she shook the never-ending rain off her umbrella and threaded her way through the standing drinkers to the private room upstairs. Stale beer and crisp breath.

The noise grew as she climbed the last stairs and burst over her when she walked into the party. The Crime Man was center stage, handing pints over the heads of his former colleagues, red faced, shouting, and sweating already.

She looked round quickly, a reporter’s scan. Who’s here? Who’s interesting? Who do I want to avoid?

Her eyes lit on the coppers in the corners. It was a real gathering of the clans. She could see the Met press office almost in its entirety—even Colin Stubbs on a late pass—and what looked like detectives from every big story the Post had covered.

“Bob,” she shouted above the din, working her way through the crowd. He hadn’t heard her.

Detective Inspector Bob Sparkes was deep in conversation with another officer. She hadn’t seen him since the Bella Elliott case. They’d spoken on the phone a few times but Kate hadn’t been on his patch in Hampshire since.

He suddenly caught sight of her and smiled. Kate felt a bit goose-bumpy. Ridiculous. How old are you? she told herself crossly. She suddenly wasn’t sure how to greet him. Handshake or kiss on the cheek?

DI Sparkes clearly had no such dilemma. The detective stuck out his hand immediately and she shook it warmly.

“Hello, Bob,” she said. “Great to see you.”

“Lovely to see you, too, Kate,” he said, still smiling. “Must be over a year.”

“More like two years,” she corrected him. She hadn’t let go of his hand yet. She gave it a final squeeze.

“This is Kate Waters, the reporter I was telling you about,” DI Sparkes said to a younger colleague. “Kate, this is Detective Sergeant Chris Butler.”

“Oh, I’ve heard all about you,” the young DS said. “The boss is your number one fan.”

Kate and Bob reddened and the DS grinned. Both started to talk at the same time, stumbling over each other’s words and then stopped. It was Bob who steered the conversation into calmer waters.

“What are you up to then, Kate? What have you got your teeth into now?”

She signaled her gratitude with her eyes and plowed on, grabbing at the details of the baby story for cover. She’d actually been working on a story about an MP’s expenses claim for the last couple of days—“An Editor’s Must,” Terry had said—but the baby had popped straight into her head. It seemed to be playing in the back of her mind like an annoying tune. Her earworm.

She started to change the subject to the MP’s sordid claims for “entertaining constituents,” but Bob stopped her, going back to the baby, asking about the progress of the forensics and the history of the area. The young DS began to glaze over and Kate could see he was looking for a getaway. Bob clocked it, too.

“Why don’t you get Kate a drink, Chris? She’s going to die of thirst, standing here with us.”

DS Butler nodded, took her order, and was sucked into the crowd.

They looked at each other. “It’s so noisy, Kate, I can hardly hear you. Old age . . .” Sparkes said. “Chris won’t be back for ages once Gordon gets hold of him. Let’s go downstairs and have a quiet drink.”

She followed him out, noting the gray hairs and growing bald patch on his retreating head. He was still sexy, though.

They sat at a small, sticky table, he with a Diet Coke, she with a warm white wine.

“So, this baby. Do they have any idea who it might be?” he said, immediately picking up the thread of their discussion.

Still not up for small talk, then, she thought, abandoning any idea of a cozy tête-à-tête.

“Not as far as I know, Bob. It’s not a recent burial, they say. Maybe historic, even, but tests are still going on. It was newborn and I’ve heard, unofficially, that the copper on the case thinks it was probably a desperate single mother back in the dim and distant past when illegitimacy mattered. I don’t think he’s that interested, really. They’re all up to their ears in the Olympics, the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, and terrorism threats.”

Sparkes nodded. “’Course they are.”

“I’ve written about the discovery of the body—it was in the paper last Saturday,” Kate added. “So small, you probably wouldn’t have seen it. Anyway, I’m not sure how much further I can take it as a story. If it’s a domestic, it’ll have limited news value as far as my lot are concerned. Might make a page lead, but I’m not sure it’s worth too much running around.”

She waited for a response. She felt she had wittered on long enough. Didn’t want to bore the man.

“What about you? What are you up to?” she said when the silence grew.

Bob put down his glass and smiled at her. “Sorry, Kate. Just thinking. I’m doing some policy revision for the force at the moment. Apparently, that’s also police work. Anyway, have the Met looked at missing persons? They must have.”

“I expect so, but it’s hard when they don’t know what era to start with. Why?”

“It’s not a long list, wherever they start looking. Abducting babies is an unusual crime anyway, but the number not found is tiny.”

Kate nodded. She was trying to think of any cases where a missing baby hadn’t been found and reunited with its parents within weeks, if not days. She remembered the disappearance of a baby who was reported stolen from a car. But all the other headline cases had ended happily.

“I can think of three cases,” Bob said. “Baby taken from backseat of a car in London.”

“Just thinking about that one,” Kate said. “Must be twenty years ago.”

“Yes, and then one taken from a pram outside the a co-op somewhere just after—possibly a copycat crime—and a newborn taken from a maternity hospital in Hampshire in the seventies, Alice she was called. Never seen again.”

“Don’t know either of those. Were you involved in the Hampshire case?” Kate said.

Sparkes laughed. “Hardly, Kate. I’m not that old. I was about thirteen at the time.”

“Sorry,” she said and laughed with him. “Hadn’t done the maths . . .”

“I remember the case because one of my aunties had a baby around then,” Sparkes said. “And she called my cousin Alice. So she and my mum talked of little else for a while. It was a big story—not twenty-four/seven like it would be now, but it made an impression and I’ve never forgotten her name.”

“Another of your lost children, Bob?” Kate said. She knew the list from their previous entanglement: Bella Elliott, of course; Laura Simpson, taken by her pedophile uncle; Baby W, shaken to death by his stepfather; Ricky Voules, drowned in a park. Bob Sparkes carried them all with him—those he’d rescued and those he felt he’d failed during his career. And little Alice was tucked away there, too, apparently.

“Have a look at your cuttings files on missing children, Kate, if you’re interested. I might have a quick look at the files our end,” he said, and she knew he would. Sparkes was the sort of detective who could never let anything go.

“May be nothing but . . .” His thought was interrupted by DS Butler putting his head round a pillar.

“Speeches, boss. Hurry up or you’ll miss them,” the young officer said, his face flushed and excited.

“Coming,” Sparkes said. “He doesn’t get out of Southampton much,” he muttered to Kate and they grinned at each other.

“Bring your wine—we ought to get back up there,” he said, but she knew he was all about the Building Site Baby. And now, so was she.