A Greater Evil (37 page)

‘How d’you know he had gloves?’

‘In the CCTV the man who looks just like him has his gloves on. And when I photographed him by the river, he had to take off his gloves – black leather – to eat his sandwich. Unlike Sam, Guy’s a man who habitually has gloves with him.’

Trish wanted to plead with Caro, threaten her, beg her. She knew she mustn’t. All she could do was sit in silence, while Caro fought the loathing and whatever else had been keeping her so stubborn and so angry all these weeks.

A key sounded in the front door, then Jess’s light footsteps announced her arrival. She took one look at the two of them, then backed away. Caro raised her head. Her eyes looked even bleaker than during their angriest encounters.

‘Leave it with me.’

‘Will you—’

‘Don’t push it, Trish. What is it you’re always saying to me? It’s better that nine guilty men should go free than that a single innocent one be convicted?’ Caro’s eyes widened as she spoke, clearly seeing too late that she’d just made Trish’s argument for her.

‘Don’t push me,’ Sam said into the phone, picturing his agent’s foxy face. ‘I’ve enough pressure at the moment without this. And I don’t work well under pressure.’

‘Of course I know you’re under pressure, Sam. And you know how much I sympathize over … over everything that’s happened. But you told me not to get mawkish or make you talk about Cecilia. So I’m trying to stay businesslike. And I need to remind you there isn’t much time, and you may not get another invitation to submit a piece for the Narcisse. Don’t forget, receiving the invitation is like being put on an ordinary long list in itself.’

‘I know, I know. Only ten sculptors worldwide get to put in an entry and the prize only happens once every five years,’ Sam rattled off like a child with a well-learned but ill-understood poem. ‘I know.’

‘So, how’s it going?’

Sam looked at the head and couldn’t prevent a smile forming. He damped it down, not wanting it to sound in his voice, which might give his agent an excuse to come round, invading his studio and making comments that couldn’t possibly help at this stage.

The head had two sides, like a Janus. One showed the naive boy Sam had fought so long. Hoping, yearning, allowing himself to believe there were good people in the world, his eye looked out with eagerness and his half of the mouth smiled. The other side of the face was the fighter: bitter, without hope, older-looking and yet obviously not older in years.

It scared Sam to see himself so exposed, but there was satisfaction in having got it right. And there was no one left to take advantage of what it betrayed.

‘Sam. Sam.’ The voice in his ear had been shouting at him for a while, he realized.

‘Yes? What?’

‘I asked how the head is going.’

‘Not too bad.’

‘Don’t forget you’ve only got another week. Will you have it done by then?’

Sam looked at his faces. ‘Yes.’

Chapter Twenty Two

‘And so, sir, I think we ought to pull him in and hear what he has to say,’ Caro said, standing in front of the chief superintendent.

‘Why are you doing this to me? You had weeks to find this man and interview him in the ordinary way. Now, you’ve stirred up the press, charged someone else, and handed the files to the CPS. Are you trying to make us look incompetent as well as ridiculous?’ He glared at her like a basilisk, the mythical serpent that could kill with a breath or a glance. ‘Is this the way you expect to make career progress?’

‘Believe me, sir, it’s the last thing I wanted to do. I’ve fought the battle every which way, night after night.’

‘You do look as though you’ve not been sleeping.’ He sounded a little kinder.

‘It has to be better that we look fools at this stage than that we go through the whole performance of a trial with a defendant we’re not convinced is guilty, when there’s another potential one out there, quite possibly destroying evidence while we dilly-dally. And maybe going on to kill the next person who gets in his way.’

‘You’re not seriously trying to persuade yourself he hasn’t already got rid of every single thing that could betray him, are you? If –
if
mind you – he did kill your victim, he’ll have destroyed any evidence the day he did it.’

Caro’s phone rang. She wanted to leave it, but he gestured angrily at it. She picked it up and saw Trish’s name on the screen, shook her head and put it down again.

‘Take it,’ he said. ‘I need time to think.’

‘This is not a good moment,’ Caro said into the phone.

‘Sorry.’

Trish didn’t sound remotely apologetic, Caro thought; more smug.

‘I’ve had a thought. He must have been blood-spattered after the attack. I know Sam keeps spare clothes in the studio, so Guy could’ve stripped off his own clothes and put them in the stove. Did you find any evidence of burned textiles there?’

‘You can’t expect me to answer that.’

‘Which means you did. Why not go to Guy and ask him to provide you with the clothes he can be seen wearing in the Somerset House CCTV?’

‘There are plenty of reasons why he might not still have them.’ Caro kept watch on the chief superintendent.

‘It’s a thought, though, isn’t it? A way into questioning him, making him feel unsafe enough to need to talk. And if you search his flat, you might find some clothes of Sam’s, something he took from the studio. And Sam might be able to tell you what’s missing from his clothes there.’

‘Unlikely. It wasn’t that kind of wardrobe. Thanks for calling.’ That ought to be enough to make Trish realize there was someone in the room with her, who shouldn’t be party to the conversation.

The chief super wheeled round and stood with his back to the window. ‘All right, Caro. I don’t like it, but I can see where you’re coming from. Clear it with the CPS and then go in. But kid gloves. Even more than last time. And don’t give Foundling’s defence team – or Mrs Justice Mayford – any idea of what you’re doing.’

‘And if Guy Bait goes to the press? What then?’

‘It’s a gamble, but from what you’ve said, he sounds unlikely to want publicity. Go for it. You can have Glen Makins and a DC. More later, if you turn up anything that convinces me.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

He was half out of the door before he looked back.

‘Pray you’re right. Otherwise I can’t see any good end to this, Caro. And I’d be sorry to see you brought down before you’ve even begun.’

I will kill Trish if she’s messing me about this time, Caro thought, keeping her face free of every expression beyond mild, confident gratitude.

The chief super nodded and left.

Trish felt George stir beside her. She hadn’t been able to sleep yet, running over and over everything she’d done, in case there’d been any gaps she should have filled. From here there was no going back. She’d risked all sorts of professional trouble, as well as the friendship that meant so much to her. It could still all go horribly wrong. Cecilia’s killer might get away with it. And Sam might never be free of suspicion that it was him.

George’s hand landed on her thigh and he moved his thumb in a gentle, circular motion against her skin.

‘Can’t sleep?’ he said.

‘No.’ She rolled her head to smile at him in the darkness. ‘Mind like a rat in a trap, thrashing about to no good purpose.’

He slid his hand up, past her hipbone, into the dip before her ribs, then over them, letting his fingers bump a little over each bone, so near the surface of her skin. She flattened her body, to give him better access and saw the shadow of him leaning over her against the thicker blackness beyond. She stretched her free arm towards the light.

‘Don’t turn it on,’ he murmured, his lips now moving softly across her breast, their dryness rough against her skin. ‘Let it be all one sensation, not muddled up with what you can see.’

Trish lay back and did her best. But George’s intentions were too obvious. She loved making love with him, but being the passive recipient of sex-as-therapy wasn’t the same.

After a few minutes, she stroked his hair. ‘I’m sorry, George. I’ve lost it.’

‘Pity,’ he said. His erection brushed her thigh as he rolled away from her and she felt mean, ungrateful, but unable to fake anything with him. Suddenly she wondered whether the outpouring of physical affection just after Christmas had been a way of blunting anxiety for him. Maybe this move too had been made out of his need, not hers, in which case she had to do something to help.

‘George, I …’

‘It’s okay. Don’t explain. I hope you sleep. ’Night.’

Gina Mayford switched on her light to look at the clock she’d had since childhood. Its illuminated numbers had long since faded.

‘Four thirty,’ she muttered aloud, and half turned to beat her pillows into submission. The twist made two vertebrae grind together. For a second she thought she’d damaged her spine and lay back in terror, waiting for the pain to recede.

Did Sam do it? she asked herself for the thousandth time. Will I ever know? What happens to my faith in my work if we go through the trial and I still don’t know for sure by the time it’s over?

Don’t be so self-centred. It’s more important to worry about what happens to Felicity. Whether Sam’s around to bring her up or in a cell somewhere, serving a life sentence, she’ll suffer. If he isn’t convicted people will always whisper. How old will she be before someone tells her Sam probably killed her mother?

It had been hard enough growing up with the knowledge that her own mother had died of cruel natural causes soon after she’d given birth, but at least Gina had always had her father: loved, admired, relied on. Trusted. Who would Felicity have?

Half past four. Too late for a sleeping pill. She’d never be able to stay awake on the bench if she took one now, and she had some tricky arguments to disentangle in court. There was no point lying fretting like this, making herself feel worse, so she got up to make a cup of tea and read through the notes she’d made of the evidence she’d heard so far.

An empty lorry crashing over a hole in the road outside the studio woke Sam with its rattling doors. He lay for a moment, wondering why Felicity hadn’t been disturbed, until the familiar mewling began. Sticking his short legs out from under the duvet on the sofa, he shuddered in the cold and hurried to chuck some briquettes in the stove. The flaring light from the open door must have reassured Felicity. When he turned to pick her out of her Moses basket, she smiled at him.

Astonished, he squatted by her side, gazing down. She waved her arms above the shawl and began to drum her legs on the mattress.

‘Hey!’ he said, recognizing a person for the first time.

She smiled again, a broad, gummy, dribbly expression of delighted familiarity. The kicking of her legs became more frenzied. He slid his hands under her body and picked her out, to swing her up to his shoulder.

‘This is going to make night feeds a lot more interesting,’ he told her and heard a friendly sucking sound as she nipped his bare shoulder with her amazingly tough little gums.

No more vehicles passed the building. And there were no sounds except Felicity’s sucking and the soft splutter of the stove. They could have been alone at the end of the world.

Cecilia should’ve been allowed to have this too, he thought.

Felicity looked up from her bottle, distracted by the cold droplet that had fallen onto her cheek. He muttered an apology and wiped her warm skin dry, turning his face so that no more tears fell on her.

Never again, he thought. I’ll never wake to see Ceel smiling at me in the early morning, hair in a tangle, covering her mouth with her hand because she’s terrified of her own early morning breath. I’ll never hang above her, watching as she bunches up just before she comes, then lets everything go and looks up at me with sleepy-eyed smiles.

I’ll never see her rattled and trying not to snap, holding back from the kind of remark she now knows I can’t take. I’ll never hear her words with that tiny slur as she finishes the third glass of wine, or fight my fury as she misdirects me for the fourth time on a long journey. Or watch as she lights up with friends when idle talk over food suddenly lifts into a celebration of everything she most values. Or hold her against my shoulder when all that strength and courage abandons her to tears and tiredness.

His mood shifted with a hateful lurch as his mind produced the last thought: or listen to her rip into me with an idle comment that shows how little she thinks of me.

He had to wipe Felicity’s head again and tried to forget the times when Cecilia had looked at him like an enemy and he’d hated her so much he’d have happily heard of her death in a terrorist attack or a car crash.

Felicity sneezed. Her forehead and nose were glistening with his tears. He had to put her down to wash his own horrible face at the sink and deal with the disgusting snot. Had it been those few wicked times, when he’d let his subconscious hate take over everything he’d wanted to feel, that had led to Cecilia’s murder? Had his occasional fantasies of her death tempted the fates to make it happen?

The baby’s angry cries wrenched him back to the present and his responsibilities and something that was almost sanity. At least, he hoped it was.

Caro had slept much better than she expected, as though finally accepting the possibility that Trish could be right had freed her in some weird way. Wearing her best suit, a Max Mara sale buy that made the most of her long legs and gave her a feeling of authority she needed today, she sat at her desk, waiting for her officers to bring Guy Bait for interview.

She had all the information Trish had supplied summarized in front of her. She had a warrant ready to seize all the computers to which Guy had had access. She’d already spoken to Mrs Woods in Oakleigh and had confirmation of everything Trish had reported of Guy Bait’s childhood. She’d traced the therapeutic establishment he’d attended in Yorkshire and had got them to fax through the final report sent to his parents when he’d been assessed as fit for normal school again.

There was a phone number under the printed address at the top of the report. She rang it and asked to speak to the head.

‘Is there anyone on your staff who would remember Guy Bait?’ she asked when she’d explained who she was and given the woman a chance to check her records.