This Little Piggy by Bea Davenport Read Free Book Online Page A

incidents up here. No big trouble like they have down in Yorkshire or Nottingham. Let’s keep it that way, eh?”
    “Okay.” Clare cast around for a way of keeping the peace. “Did your dad work round here?”
    “He worked at a few of the local pits. Sweetmeadows was the last place he worked before he retired. I went to school with more than half of the men on that picket line today. The last thing I want is any aggro.”
    “What does your dad think about the strike, then?”
    Seaton paused. “He’s not around to say. He died about a year after he retired. Lungs.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    At the end of the day Clare lingered in the office, putting off the point when she would have to go back to her own flat, her fingers clacking listlessly at the typewriter keys. She tried to write up Amy’s story in a way that seemed credible.
    Police are running out of leads into the horrific murder of little Jamie Donnelly. But they dismissed rumours that the baby was killed out of revenge after dad Rob broke the bitter miners’ strike and went back to work at Sweetmeadows Colliery.
    One witness, who the Post has decided not to name, claims to have seen a man lift baby Jamie out of his cot and throw him over the balcony at Jasmine Walk. Another man picked the baby up and ran away towards the bins where Jamie’s body was later found, the witness claims.
    The young witness was too afraid to speak out immediately but later told the police what they saw. Chief Inspector Bob Seaton said the claims had been looked into but that they were not pursuing them any further.
    Meanwhile, police also dismissed as ‘unlikely’ the fears by the Donnelly family that the tragedy was carried out by supporters of the four-month-old miners’ strike. Rob Donnelly’s mother-in-law, Annie Martin, told how the family had been subjected to name-calling and spitting in the street, as well as two broken windows at their home. Chief Inspector Seaton said that although the police were pursuing all possible lines of enquiry, he did not believe that supporters of the dispute would resort to such a violent act.
    Clare yawned and rubbed her eyes. It was late but still light and breathlessly warm. She should go back to the flat, of course. She should tidy up, she should open some post. But she knew it would be all she could manage to pick her way through the mess and fall into bed. She kept promising herself that any day now, she’d wake up and feel different, that she would somehow find the energy to sort everything out. But over six weeks on, she still wasn’t feeling any better.
    Tuesday 17th July
The miners’ union office was in a prefabricated hut across the road from the colliery and attached to the workers’ social club. Clare could hear the loud, gruff voices coming from inside and she took a deep breath before turning the door handle. It was always an intimidatingly male environment, off-putting even before the strike got under way and the miners’ feelings towards the local reporters changed for the worse. Clare was hoping that George Armstrong, the long-time union official, would still be civil to her, in spite of the Post ’s editorial stance on the strike, which had been openly hostile from Day One.
    But when Clare pushed open the door to the smoke-fugged room, she wasn’t prepared for the way the voices stopped dead, the way everyone looked at her like she was an apparition of Margaret Thatcher herself. She swallowed, tasting the smoke and male sweat in the air.
    “Er, hi, I’m from the Post .” She was well aware that most of them knew that already. “I just wanted a quick word with Mr Armstrong?”
    One of the men swore. George Armstrong held up a hand, but another man stood up and leaned towards him.
    “You couldn’t wait, could you?” He stabbed a finger towards Armstrong’s face. “You told the papers before you even told your comrades. That says it all.”
    Clare looked at the little group of men, baffled, as Armstrong shook