White Riot by Martyn Waites Page B

women and knife-waving killers.
    So, coffee and notepad beside her, she had sat at the kitchen table and opened Trevor Whitman’s book. With some trepidation, looking for mention of her mother and father. Relieved to find none, she got down to work.
    Prioritizing, she decided to leave off playing
Where Are They Now?
with the Hollow Men until later and concentrate on finding anyone who had a grudge against Whitman.
    That was the plan. However, she had become sidetracked. Whitman’s story, his life, had drawn her in. With strong, clear and compelling writing, he told of a working-class kid from Byker in Newcastle who was the first in his family to go to university.
    He wrote of the sacrifice and the hardship. His father had worked in a factory manufacturing asbestos, a job that eventually killed him. His mother had pursued the company for compensation, like so many others in the country had successfully done, on the grounds of wilful negligence, and got nowhere. Shark-like lawyers had circled, eating up the funds, disappearing and leaving only bills in their wake when the claim failed. Whitman believed this had contributed to his mother’s early death.
    Angry and disillusioned, yet impassioned for social justice, he had been given a scholarship to attend Newcastle University. He chose politics and law. She imagined the young Whitman, hurt, alone and angry, surrounded by people from more affluent backgrounds, the offspring of those responsible for his parents’ death even, there by dint of hard work, not favour, nursing and nurturing a huge chip on his shoulder. It took no imagination at all to see how he became caught up in radical politics.
    She had put the book down, tried to concentrate on the work at hand. Picked it up again. Found what she waslooking for, followed it up with an early-morning visit to the city library to scour old newspapers.
    George Baty.
    The policeman in the pub firebombing. He had been twenty-three when he died in 1972. Married with a baby son, six months old. A wedding photo accompanied the article, a young couple smiling out from the ancient blur of old newsprint. A radical group called the Hollow Men were blamed for the atrocity. Attention was focused on Trevor Whitman. There was a photo of him too. Long-haired, bearded, fist raised; obviously taken at a demonstration where he was angrily denouncing something. The difference in photos was effective but hardly subtle.
    She read on. Despite the efforts of police, they were unable to secure a conviction. There was veiled talk of them being too heavy-handed in their attempt to bring him to justice, too keen to get a confession. Considering how brutal Seventies policing was, she thought, that must have been something.
    The case dragged on, then eventually disappeared. Other things took its place. The Birmingham pub bombings. The three-day week. The first miners’ strike. There was a piece about six months afterwards, an interview with Trevor Whitman in which he put his side of the story. Talked up his innocence, mentioned the threatening phone calls. Alluded to George Baty’s brother, Colin. It was clear from his words how unsettling they had been. The police had been reluctant to investigate thoroughly.
    George Baty’s widow, Marilyn, had remarried, cutting all her ties with the Baty family. She would now be in her fifties, the son in his thirties. And so far untraceable. Peta wrote it all down.
    An internet search brought up information about Colin Baty. At the time of his brother’s death he had been a low-level street thug working manual jobs for the council, gettingdrunk, taking out whatever anger he had on whoever was at hand. But his brother’s death obviously made him reassess his life. He changed, became driven. Stopped fighting, reined in the drinking, retrained. Set up in business. Telecoms. Became a local Labour councillor. Married with two children. Both girls, both at university.
    Colin Baty had been on TV recently, in the papers.