The Child(27)
Was it guilt she was holding in? Kate wondered and wrote down the name of the officer in the case. She’d see if he was still around.
Kate raced ahead, scanning headlines for the outcome of the questioning, but it wasn’t mentioned again. Mrs. Irving hadn’t been charged with anything as far as she could see, and the stories about Alice got smaller as 1970 came to an end. The last few cuttings were anniversary stories—“Whatever Happened to Baby Alice?,” etc.—or she featured as a name in roundups of missing children written as backgrounders to new abduction cases.
Kate noted that Angela wasn’t quoted in the later anniversary stories. The reports said she and her husband had moved abroad. She, too, had disappeared, then.
The online electoral register had more than a dozen current listings for Angela and Nicholas Irvings. They were scattered all over the country, but there were none in Basingstoke.
Kate was looking at her notes when Joe announced he’d established that Angela Alice Irving was not dead and found her marriage to Nick and the births of their two other children, Patrick and Louise. One married and both living in Hampshire.
Kate smiled. They were on the trail of where Angela was now. And she had an Angela Alice and Nicholas Irving listed in Winchester.
She rang Bob Sparkes immediately.
“Hi, think I’m going to be heading down your way on the Building Site Baby case. The baby Alice you mentioned is called Alice Irving and her mum, Angela, is living in Winchester.”
“Is she now?” Sparkes said.
He sounded pleased. Not a man to go overboard, but he added: “Good work, Kate. Will be interesting to hear what she says. What about the other cases? The girl in the car and the one in the pram?”
“Found them, but I think they are too old. Definitely not newborns.”
“Right, well. Is there anything more from the Met about their investigation?”
“No, nothing. There’s a big anti-terror operation going on at the moment. I’m keeping out of their hair. I’m also looking for the officer who led the original hunt for Alice—DI Len Rigby. You don’t happen to know if he’s still alive, do you?”
“I’ll have a look and call you back if I find him. He’ll be long retired by now.”
“Yes, bit of a long shot.”
“Well, let me know when you’re coming down,” he said.
She grinned to herself. “Sure. I’m going to give Mrs. Irving a call now.”
TWENTY
Angela
MONDAY, APRIL 2, 2012
She’d had a feeling that morning that something would happen. A buzz in her head. Nick was quiet, checking an order for the plumbing wholesaler while he ate his cornflakes, but she felt surrounded by noise. She hardly heard him say good-bye when he left.
She’d sat with the number for Kate Waters in front of her while she finished her coffee and promised herself she’d make the call at lunchtime.
But the phone rang just before midday.
“Hello, I’m sorry to bother you but I’m trying to contact Angela Irving,” a woman said. Nice voice, she thought. Polite. Warm.
“That’s me,” she said. “How can I help?”
“Oh, I’m so glad to have found you, Mrs. Irving. I’m Kate Waters from the Daily Post. I wondered if I could talk to you about a story I’ve been working on . . .”
Angela said: “I hoped you’d call.”
There was a sliver of silence as Kate Waters found herself second-guessed.
“Oh?” she said quickly. “Did you see the story I wrote last week, then, Mrs. Irving?”
“Yes,” Angela said. “Do you think the baby is Alice?”
“Do you?” the reporter said.
“I don’t know. I hope . . .” And Angela burst into tears.
Kate Waters waited for her to gather herself, murmuring down the phone that she hadn’t meant to upset her, that she understood how emotional this must be, even after all these years.
When Angela finally spoke again, she just said, “You’d better come round, then. Have you got my address?”
Kate Waters said she’d be there in a couple of hours and the two women said good-bye.
Angela sat in the same place until she heard the knock on the door. Her head was full of Alice. Of the day she went. Of the days that followed.
She hadn’t been able to go back to nursing afterwards. Couldn’t be in a hospital. The smell of the wards, the starched aprons, the laced-up shoes, took her straight back to her loss. Instead she fought the overwhelming grief at home, privately. They both did. Their son, Patrick, had gone to stay with his grandma and the house echoed with his absence.
She and Nick would be sitting, watching television, or reading a paper, or listening to the radio, and something would come on. A silly song she’d liked when she was pregnant, the mention of the name Alice, or the word “baby,” or “pregnancy,” or “hospital”—or anything, really, and she’d cry. Nick would hold her hand and talk her through it. Tell her it wasn’t her fault. She’d been in a hospital. She should have been safe.
But she hadn’t been.
TWENTY-ONE
Kate
MONDAY, APRIL 2, 2012