A Greater Evil (32 page)

Not surprisingly Meg had tidied away all evidence of her presence. The television with its integral DVD player, which was David’s second favourite possession, was neatly squared up on the desk beside his computer. The wide bed, almost a double, which was his all-time best thing, was shrouded in a handwoven blanket with broad stripes of scarlet and kingfisher blue. Over the head of the bed was a poster of his swimming hero, rearing up in mid-stroke, looking like an insect with a gigantic wingspan, his eyes covered in narrow black-edged goggles, his hair in a smooth white cap, and fountains of water drops falling either side of him.

In spite of the insect-look, it was a picture of masculine youth and strength and power: everything in fact that George felt had been taken away from him by Malcolm Jensen’s malice and the spinelessness of all the other Henton, Maltravers partners.

Trish straightened the blanket over David’s pillows so the stripes ran evenly. There was no doubt her family would survive the next six months, and George would probably be fine once he went back to work. But she didn’t want him just to survive. She wanted him strong again and happy, powering his way through life, shaking off malice like these water droplets.

With one more look at the poster, she left David’s room and was halfway back across the acres of bare wooden floor in the living room when she heard him on the iron staircase outside. Longing to fling open the door and grab him, she made herself wait and heard him thank Susie for the holiday and for driving him home.

Go on, she thought. Invite her in.

‘Come in and have a drink,’ he said, as though he’d picked up Trish’s cue. ‘Trish and George will want to see you.’

‘They’ll be busy. Tell Trish I’ll phone her in the morning.’ There was the sound of a smacking kiss. ‘Thanks for coming with us, Davy. It wouldn’t have been half as much fun without you.’

He waited until the sound of her steps had dwindled and a car door banged; then he let himself in.

Trish watched him close the door behind him with a casual kick, then stand looking around his home, pausing occasionally as though to check off particular items. Satisfied, he let his parachute bag drop to the floor. She watched his eyelids close. She had to hold her hands tightly together behind her back to stop herself reaching out to him.

‘Hi,’ she said when the silence had gone on too long. ‘You okay?’

He opened his eyes and sighed. ‘Yeah. It’s best here. I liked the trip, but it’s best here.’

‘Good. George is cooking spaghetti carbonara and caramel pancakes with toffee ice cream and butterscotch sauce to celebrate. It’ll be ready in about fifteen minutes. D’you want a shower?’

‘Why?’ he said, trying to sound cocky and untouchable. ‘Do I smell?’

‘I always like a shower when I get back after something difficult, as you know.’

He stumbled forward, tripping over his trainers, so Trish had to hold out her arms. He seized her and rammed his face into her shoulder. His voice was so muffled she couldn’t make out what he was saying, only feeling his hot breath through her clothes and the vibration of his voice in her bones.

‘What, David?’

He moved his head a few inches from her shoulder. ‘How did you know it was difficult?’

She put one hand on his head and pulled his face back against herself. ‘That kind of trip always is. I’ve missed you.’

He moved further away this time, tilting up his face to look into hers. ‘Really?’

‘Every day.’

‘Great.’ His face lost its intensity and his arms relaxed, soon dropping away from her. ‘Really really?’

She laughed. ‘I
really
did, and judging by his bad temper so did George. Hence the carb, sugar and fat-fest tonight. He knows the menu’s your all-time fave.’

David left her to fling himself down on one of the black sofas. He levered off his trainers, without bothering to untie the laces. One lay where it fell; the other he kicked out of his way. He swung his huge feet up on the sofa to lie full-length, with his hands behind his head. He looked as though he’d grown another inch at least.

‘I’m home,’ he said.

‘You are.’

His eyes closed again, so she could gaze down at him without fear of showing too much.

There was a curious atmosphere in chambers when she arrived at a leisurely half past nine next morning, having taken time to walk to school with David on his first day of the new term. The usual buzz in the clerks’ room stopped as she walked past. Looking down the corridor, she saw one of the other junior barristers scowling before shutting his door on her.

Take your time, she thought, running through every possible disaster as she walked to her own room. Bettina was hanging over a file on her desk, fingers in her ears as though to cut out every noisy distraction. Unnoticed, Trish hung up her coat and went back to the clerks, straightening her jacket as she went.

‘Hit me with it, Steve,’ she said. He looked up to reveal a face like a well-fed wolf’s. But he didn’t speak. ‘What?’

‘There’s a note in your pigeonhole.’

Her gaze flicked across the room to the row of wooden racks, where briefs and letters were left for all the tenants. Hers had the usual mass of paper, as well as a pink-tied brief.

‘What’s that? You know I don’t want to take on more until I’ve got Leviathan under control.’

‘Have a look.’

‘Stop this, Steve. Just tell me.’

‘QPXQ have withdrawn the action against Leviathan, offering to pay all their costs to date. There’s a note for you from Leviathan.’

Trish understood David’s stillness and closed eyes last night. Relief was better savoured like this than with any kind of sigh or cheering. After a moment, she collected the papers from her pigeonhole and said: ‘Tell me about the new brief.’

‘Just a little one to bridge the gap. It’s right up your street. And a really good fee. I know you can do it in no time. There’ll be lots more big stuff once word gets out about how you cracked the Arrow case.’

His phone rang. Without looking away from Trish, he reached for the receiver.

‘Two Plough Court. Yes. Yes. She’s right here. Hold on a moment while I see if she can take the call.’ Eyes popping, he pressed the mute button on the phone. ‘It’s Giles Somers. Wants to pass on the personal thanks of the managing director of QPXQ Holdings. Can you take it?’

‘In my room,’ she said and saw disappointment washing away some of his pleasure. ‘Sorry, Steve.’

In the old days clerks had been able to listen in to their principal’s conversation. Modern technology had, as far as Trish knew, stopped all that. Although now she’d learned a little about what someone might have done to files held in the supposedly secure extranet set up for the Arrow, she’d never trust any kind of privacy again.

‘Bettina,’ she said as she pushed open her door. Her pupil wrenched the fingers from her ears.

‘Yeah?’

‘Could you nip out and get me a large latte? And whatever you’d like for yourself.’

Looking cross, Bettina accepted the heavy handful of two-pound coins Trish held out and stomped out of the door. Only then did Trish pick up her receiver and tell Steve he could put Giles through.

‘Hi. Sorry about the delay.’

‘Too busy receiving accolades and envy, eh, Trish?’

‘Wanting to engineer a bit of privacy. Was Steve right? Are you really phoning to pass on compliments from QPXQ?’

‘Absolutely. With your discovery of the attempt to hide the cock-up in the cable specifications, they know they’ll get a settlement from the engineers and their professional-indemnity insurers and won’t waste any more time or money pursuing Leviathan. I don’t think I’ve ever had a call from the opposition solicitors in a case like this before. It sounded as though their clients’ admiration for what you’ve done will result in something tangible like a good fat brief for you in due course.’

‘The only thing I want is the removal of suspicion that George Henton and I were trafficking in confidential information.’

‘What?’ The word exploded down the phone in a mixture of surprise and irritation.

Trish reminded him of the supposed conflict of interest and added a little about the mess George had been stuck in at Henton, Maltravers, apparently driven by someone at QPXQ, adding: ‘It’s not only that it was so insulting; it was silly too. He wasn’t working on anything to do with the Arrow, and we never talk about our clients anyway. Even if we’d both been on the same case, we’d manage to keep ourselves honest.’

‘Leave it with me.’

‘Thanks, Giles. Of course, George may decide not to break off his sabbatical now, but he should be given the option.’

‘Right. Bye.’

‘Before you go, Giles.’

‘Yes?’

‘Has your computer whizz found out
how
the data were altered in the locked files of the extranet?’

‘It was done at the ASP.’

‘The what?’

Bettina arrived with the coffee. Trish pulled off the lid of her cup and took a swig.

‘Application Service Provider,’ Giles said down the phone. ‘The company that hosts the extranet on its server. We’ve been on to them. At first they were highly resistant to the idea that anything nefarious could have been done. But eventually we managed to persuade them to have a proper look. They’ve found evidence of alterations made on the Arrow extranet just under two years ago. They think it must have been done by a member of staff who left around that time, claiming to have had a big lottery win.’

‘Bribed, you mean?’

‘That’s the inference they’re making now. Since he left they’ve lost all trace of him.’

‘How convenient – for someone.’

‘Precisely, Trish. Obviously the ASP company would like to keep it quiet – the last thing they need is publicity about such a serious security breach – but QPXQ Holdings will be pushing for more. There may well be a criminal investigation in the end.’

‘I hope so. Did you get anywhere with finding out whether someone had opened a back door in Cecilia’s computer? It could easily have been the same person.’

‘We’ve checked her computer and you’re right: someone did open a back door. It was done from a computer at Forbes & Franks International, the engineers. Unfortunately it’s one of a batch of out-of-date laptops awaiting reformatting and resale to any member of staff who wants them. So we’re not much further on.’

‘Can’t they tell who used it?’

‘Nope. Until there’s some kind of biometric version of a password, you’ll only ever be able to track hacking back as far as the computer that was used, not the person who did it.’

‘Sod it!’

‘Indeed,’ he said, sounding amused. ‘But this is huge progress, Trish.’

‘You’re right. Thanks, Giles. Let me know if you hear any more. Bye.’

When she’d put down the phone, Trish thought about phoning Caro to give her the news. Surely with this kind of evidence of criminality it was no longer so unlikely that Cecilia had been killed because of the Arrow case. Then, remembering what Jess had said, Trish realized she’d have to get more than suspicion and logical supposition to make Caro listen to her.

The trouble was, she was no private eye and she had no resources for collecting the kind of evidence a court would accept.

Trying to stop her mind playing around ways and means, she slid the pink tape off the new brief Steve wanted her to take and began to read, glad to see it was another case of building failure. At least her brain-aching work mugging up the structural principles holding up the Arrow wouldn’t be entirely wasted.

‘What do we do with all the Leviathan files?’ Bettina said later, as she threw her empty cardboard cup into the bin.

‘Giles will send someone to collect them. It would be a good idea for you to tidy them all together and make sure everything’s there. Then when I’ve absorbed this, I’ll go through it with you and we can discuss the issues.’

‘But I’ve got a brief of my own,’ she said. ‘I need to ask you …’

‘Give me the morning to absorb this; then I’ll take you out to lunch and we can go through your brief together. Okay?’ Trish said kindly.

Lunch, she thought, realizing there was one way of getting some evidence that might connect Guy Bait and Malcolm Jensen and so help to overturn George’s suspension. She pushed the chair away from her desk and stood up in one easy movement, feeling as though her joints had been elasticated by the possibility of doing something useful for him.

‘I’ll be back in a moment, Bettina.’

Trish was almost past the clerks’ room when Steve called her name.

‘I knew it,’ he said, when she leaned back to look round the door jamb. ‘I’ve already had a call from James Rusham, the senior partner at Henton, Maltravers, to say QPXQ Holdings want to brief you in their upcoming case against Forbes & Franks International, the consulting engineers involved in the Arrow.’

‘Stall them.’ Trish’s voice was urgent. ‘Give me till next week, if you can.’

‘It’ll be a pleasure. Negotiating the brief fee can easily take us several days. It’s almost certainly a pre-emptive strike in any case, to stop you being nabbed by anyone else. Where are you going?’

‘To deal with some personal stuff. I’ll be back soonish.’

Outside, the air was tingling with sunny chill. She was amazed to see fat green spikes of daffodils already fighting their way out of the soil in one of the window boxes as she hurried through the Temple to Fleet Street, where there were still a few public phone boxes. She did not want this call easily traceable to any of her own phones.

Somewhere in her wallet was an old phone card. Miraculously, it still worked and she was through to Forbes & Franks in no time.

‘May I speak to Guy Bait?’

‘Who shall I say is calling?’

‘Maggie Jones,’ Trish said, making up a name at random and injecting an all-purpose London accent to her voice. She hoped this was going to work. ‘I’m a temp’ry seeker
tary
working for Mr Jensen at Henton, Mal-travers.’

‘Guy Bait,’ said a recognizably gentle voice a moment later. ‘What does Malcolm want this time?’

Yee-es! Trish thought and fought to keep the triumph out of her voice, as she said aloud: ‘He’s out this morning, but he left me a note saying he wants to meet you for lunch at the usual place and time today. Can you do that?’