Mother of Pearl by Mary Morrissy

wail.
    â€˜Steady on there, Stannie, what’s all this about?’
    â€˜If you as much as lay a finger on her, I’ll throttle you, understand?’
    Stanley stepped belligerently out on to the street. Charlie took a step back and raised his hands but not in time to fence off Stanley’s first blow which landed squarely on his chin. He staggered backwards and Stanley landed a fist in his lungs (Charlie’s weak spot). He fell, winded, the street reeling around him. His last sight before the door was shut on him with a resounding thud was the child peering around the doorframe, sobbing with fright. He saw the birthmark and before the darkness claimed him, two words imprinted themselves in front of his eyes, written in the black, block capitals of a screaming headline. BABY SPAIN .
    It had been the talk of the country. How many kitchens had Charlie Piper sat in, his samples spread out on the table, talking to housewives about the Baby Spain case? The baby who had simply disappeared. Into thin air. The papers had been full of it for weeks. How, asked enraged editors, was it possible for a complete stranger to walk into a hospital and make off with a child? For months Baby Spain had been the property of every gossip and crank. She had been spotted being taken on a ferry to the Mainland; she had been sold to an American couple who were childless; she had been kidnapped by an evangelist church which was desperate for recruits. Daily there had been a siege at the baby’s home. Charlie remembered the father. Shady character, he had, thought, feckless-looking. Charlie knew the type. He had met their wives in a hundred parlours across the countryside. At Christmas and for the baby’s birthday, the reporters went back to Mr Spain, Charlie recalled, and he repeated his pleas to whoever would listen: Please give us back our baby. But the years went by and everyone forgot about Baby Spain, including Charlie Piper. He presumed she was dead; she had been a sickly child. Someday a shallow grave would be found in a ditch or behind a hen house. The country was full of such secrets. If there had even been a picture of her, Charlie thought, her memory might have survived longer.
    But she had only been a few weeks old. Her only distinguishing feature was that birthmark, like a tiny strawberry, they had said, on her chin.
    He rang his friend in the Castle. Mullarney was a drinking companion, an unkempt man, his jackets like boleros on his vast torso, his shirt tails always trailing outside his pants. Moon-faced and silver-haired he was like a superannuated fat boy. But he had a good heart. Once or twice when Charlie had got into scrapes – after-hours drinking and the like – he had rung Mullarney who had put a word in for him. In return, he had kept his eyes and ears open. It was, Charlie considered, a professional relationship between two men of the world.
    â€˜Mullarney,’ a voice barked in his ear.
    â€˜Con,’ Charlie started, ‘Piper here, Charlie.’
    â€˜Charlie, old son, how’s she cutting?’
    â€˜Grand, grand.’
    â€˜Are you about?’
    Charlie could hear Mullarney shifting the phone to his good ear.
    â€˜No, I’m north side.’
    â€˜Ah, pity,’ Mullarney said.
    â€˜Listen, Con, there’s something I want to talk to you about …’ He hesitated, the strange excitement of the past few hours since his flash of insight on Jericho Street, turning now to a kind of dread. ‘Confidentially,’ he added to cover himself.
    â€˜Shoot …just hope it isn’t the licensing laws again. I’m beginning to wear out my welcome in that department.’
    â€˜No, nothing like that,’ Charlie said.
    He was very nervous now. The consequences of his dangerous knowledge were only beginning to dawn on him. He was breaking one of the unspoken rules of Granitefield, grassing on a fellow inmate. And thinking of Granitefield he remembered with a