Free This Little Piggy by Bea Davenport

nod. “I’ll call you. Might not be tonight.”
    She stood at the window watching McKenna head for the car, ducking backwards when he turned to look back up at her.
    When Clare called her newsdesk, they told her to go straight to the police station for a news conference.
    “Not sending the chief reporter?” Clare couldn’t resist asking.
    “He’s on the picket lines today.” Dave Bell didn’t respond to Clare’s sarcasm.
    “I’d have thought that was beneath him,” Clare said. “I thought that was for the likes of us lower life forms.”
    Bell sighed. “It is beneath him, at least in his opinion, but Tony was due to go and he’s off sick today.”
    Clare allowed herself a small smirk at the telephone. She hoped the miners’ aim would be good when they started spitting.
    In the police meeting room, Joe looked pleased to see her. “It’s you. That’s a relief, I thought it might be Barber. Every time I see him I want to thump him.”
    Clare sat down beside him and pulled out her notebook. “That’s very loyal of you.”
    “Not really,” Joe said. “I’ve always wanted to thump him, even before he pinched your job. He’s just got that kind of face.”
    “Any idea what this is about?” Clare asked, glancing at the police officers who were taking their seats along a table in front of the small press contingent.
    Joe shrugged. “All Seaton would say on the phone was that it’s not an arrest. They still haven’t got the killer.”
    It turned out the police had discovered that when baby Jamie’s body was found he was missing an item of clothing: a blue-checked sunhat. His mother insisted that he’d been wearing it when he was out in his pram, but no one could find it. The police were also releasing a new photo of Jamie, taken when he was wearing the little hat.
    “It may be that the hat can provide us with the crucial evidence we need to find baby Jamie’s killer,” Seaton announced.
    Clare shot up her hand. “Have the police always known the hat was missing?”
    Seaton took a slow breath. “Mrs Donnelly told us the hat was missing, the day after Jamie’s death. But before we put out any public appeal to find it, we wanted to make sure that in her distress she had not made a mistake.”
    “You didn’t believe her?” Clare pressed.
    “We wanted to be certain about any information we made public, with regards to this highly sensitive case. I’m sure you can understand that, Miss Jackson.” Seaton gave a heavy sigh. “It is possible that the sunhat fell off during the fall and was lost, but to date close examinations in and around the site of Jamie’s death have failed to retrieve the item.
    “So another possibility is that Jamie’s killer has kept the hat as a kind of memento or trophy of the murder. It’s therefore essential that the public keep their eyes open and if they discover such a garment then they must report their find to the police without delay.”
    Joe looked at his copy of the new photo. “He was a cute kid,” he said to Clare, as they got up to go.
    “Yeah.” Clare pushed the picture into her bag without looking at it. “All babies are cute, though, aren’t they?”
    Joe frowned at the back of her head. It wasn’t like Clare to play the hard-nosed reporter. Sometimes, these days, he got the feeling that he was getting on her nerves, and he had no real idea why.
    Clare drove into head office with the photo and found a desk where she could sit to type. She still didn’t let herself look at the picture. Dave Bell came over and perched on the edge of the desk. “How’re you doing, Clare? You still okay out there in the sticks?”
    Clare stuck out her lower lip and shrugged.
    “You’ve done some great stories,” Bell went on. “The baby stuff’s been brilliant. Some of the strike stuff’s been pretty good too.”
    “Thanks.” Clare gave a small sniff.
    “I know you’re sore about the chief reporter’s job. Between you and me, I reckon all you had to do to