A Poisoned Mind

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Authors: Natasha Cooper

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A Poisoned Mind
Trish Maguire [9]
Natasha Cooper
UK (2008)

In spite of the barristers' rule that any suitably qualified member of
the Bar who is free to take an offered case must do so, QC Trish
Maguire can't quite understand how her head of chambers, Anthony
Shelley, can accept a case defending the corrupt Clean World Waste
Management company. So, when the brilliant and cynical Anthony is nearly
killed in an accident, Trish is faced with a painful dilemma: Does she
take over the company's defense, or threaten her hard-won career by
refusing to appear in court against Angie Fortwell, the impoverished
widow of a hard-working farmer? 

As Trish delves deeper into the case,
she grows more and more troubled by a nagging thought: Was the explosion
that killed Angie's husband really an accident, or the result of
sabotage?

With all this going on at work, the last thing Trish
needs is the possibility of explosions at home. Yet she can't simply
walk away from Jay, the clever but damaged fourteen-year-old boy who has
attached himself to her family...especially when his mother is found
beaten and close to death.  

For
the Carters
with love
As always many friends and experts have helped me as I wrote this novel. They include Suzanne Baboneau, Mary Carter, Emma Dunford, Jane Gregory, Gerald and Alison Johnson, Gavin Parfitt and Libby Vernon.
Angie Fortwell looked out at the most beautiful view in the British Isles and hated it. The land that sloped gently away from the grey stone farm buildings was hers, hers and John’s, and she had once loved it more than anywhere else on earth.
Old oaks, toughened by centuries of battering rain and wind, led down towards the little lough, where the wild duck slept. Sometimes a flat silver sheet, the water was yeasty tonight as the wind lashed its surface. But the wool of the sheep lying nearer the house was too tightly curled to move. They looked like lumps of whitish fat dotted about under the trees. Over everything, the moon cast a spooky bluish glaze.
A hardness in the junction between the shivering trees and the sky suggested yet another frost. Who’d have thought it could be so cold in April, even in Northumberland? Indoors, the Aga helped, but only if you were actually leaning against it. Otherwise the high ceiling sucked all the warm air away, and chill from the stone-flagged floor reached right up through your shoes and socks.
Still, tonight Angie’s hands were warm from the washing-up. She let them rest in the water, seeing even through the
suds the calluses and cuts every farmer had. John’s hands were the same; and she was pretty sure his heart had broken as long ago as hers. But they never talked about that sort of thing these days, just as they no longer looked for an escape from the disaster they’d made of their lives. In a weird way the piling-on of problems had formed a kind of glue between them, and the words they’d recited in the London church all those years ago had come true. For richer, for poorer; in sickness and in health; forsaking all other …
She said them aloud now, feeling warmth from the repetition as well as from the greasy water. The comfort spread through her until it almost touched the forbidden icy spaces in her mind. Soon he’d be back and they could eat their mutton stew and talk – or not – as the mood took them because there were no walkers booked in tonight.
Even though it was still early in the season, they’d had three separate couples already this week, including one pair who were obviously spying for the Inland Revenue.
They weren’t the first investigators Angie had had nosing around, so she’d guessed what they were after as soon as they’d insisted on paying cash and been reluctant to sign her visitors’ book. She’d taken enormous pleasure in making them wait while she’d slowly filled out the duplicate invoice form in front of them and insisted they record their full details in the visitors’ book. How many times would she have to show the tax-gatherers she was keeping honest records of her pathetic little business? And how much of her hard-earned money were they wasting with these spiteful little traps?
That pair had been gone a couple of days and the last of the others had left this morning, so tonight she and John could have the house to themselves.
Where was he?
She pulled her left hand reluctantly from the hot water to look at her watch. Waterproof and expensive, it was a relic of her old life. Eight o’clock. He was never out this late, except during lambing, and that was over for this year. Maybe one of the sheep had got stuck somewhere inaccessible. Yes, that might be it. A cast sheep. No need to worry about that. And he had Schlep, the old collie, with him. He’d be all right with Schlep.
Or he could be in one of the buildings, working to repair a creaky machine, scraping off the rust one more time in the hope of finding sound metal underneath. But if so, he should have stopped by now. Fit though he was, he’d be fifty-six next month, and he’d been driving himself into the ground for twenty-five years. He needed rest.
Leaning forwards over the sink to peer through the window into the ghostly light, she longed to see his shambling figure, with the old leather-patched coat he always wore swinging around his lean body, Schlep at his side, coming home.
‘Sod it!’ she shouted, as she felt wet creeping up her front. Her untucked flannel shirt had somehow got itself into the sink and soaked up some of the water.
Pulling it out, she mangled it between her hands, watching the drips fall back into the sink. The Aga would dry it out in no time and there was a clean one of John’s on the pulleys above it. She let the ropes run between her hands so she could reach the clean clothes, enjoying the slight burn, and soon had her own shirt unbuttoned.
An almighty crash ripped through the air, like a bomb or something. For an instant she stood there, with her hands on the buttons of her open shirt, trying to understand.
Another explosion. She looked towards the window over the sink and saw the blue light had yellowed, warmed up. It was flickering, too.
Without thinking, she hauled the pulleys back up out of the way, dragged the heavy stewpan off the hotplate and banged down the lid. Her stockinged feet were inside her gumboots a moment later and she was running towards the yellow sparking light. Only the cold on her tight midriff and the slapping sensation told her the wet shirt was still undone. Running, tripping over her boots, she fumbled for the buttons and their holes.
Her throat was burning and her nose filled with a vile, acrid smell. Now she knew what had happened, but not yet how bad it was.
A third crash bit into her eardrums before she was anywhere near the cypress-ringed enclave where the tanks were, but the spurting fountains of sparks that shot up above it were clearly visible, like some multimillionaire’s firework display. She could hardly breathe and her heart felt as though a giant had it between his hands and was squeezing, twisting the life out of it just as she’d wrung the water out of her shirt.
Down now, over the edge of the dip where the tanks were, she stopped in front of a vision of hell, both hands over her mouth and nose in a hopeless pretence of keeping out the fumes. Whatever had made the tanks explode had set fire to the great Lawson cypresses they’d planted to disguise the hideous concrete enclosure. As she stood, paralysed, she saw the flames leaping from tree to tree and let her gaze follow. There was a pylon far too close to the furthest. Its dangerous cables festooned over the tip
of the tree, almost touching the topmost fronds. Any minute now the fire would reach them too.
John. She forced herself to look away from the cables, searching through the shifting flames. The noise was like a hurricane mixed with the roaring of a cageful of aggressive animals. A gust of wind pushed the flames aside for a second and in the blazing, trembling, terrifying light she saw the two lumps on the ground. Bodies. John and Schlep. It had to be them. The flames came down again and they were hidden.
Even now she couldn’t make herself move. Nothing could save them. But she had to get help. She couldn’t deal with the fire and the poisons on her own. And someone had to shut down the electricity before the pylon and its cables burst into flames with the rest. A new huge gout of fire rolled towards her. She couldn’t see through it and at last turned, lumbering back over the edge of the dip. Why hadn’t she picked up her phone as she left the house? How could she have been so stupid as to put on these heavy great boots?
The toe of one caught in a tussock and she sprawled, face in the prickling mud, eyes spurting tears triggered by the chemicals. Her chest felt as though she was being pressed to death. Fighting the urge to give in, she kicked off her boots as she lay, then forced herself up. A drop fell on her face, then another. Thank God! Rain. That should help put out the fire. Ramming her arm across her face, she ran for the house, and the phone, and help.
‘The face of courage,’ said the caption under a photograph that made Trish Maguire’s teeth ache with sympathy.
Angela Fortwell’s spare features were stripped of everything most middle-aged women used to disguise reality. There was no make-up or floppy fringe to soften the harshness of her cheekbones or the lines on her forehead, and no fake colour in the hair itself. She’d kept her own washed-out browny grey, and the ragged ends looked as though she’d cut them with sheep shears. Her eyes, deep set and very dark, looked out of the newspaper with an expression that said
‘J’accuse’
more clearly than any headline.
Trish let herself reread the interview, skimming back through the woman’s description of how she and her husband had decided over twenty-six years ago to abandon their City jobs for the satisfactions of sheep farming on the fringes of the Northumberland National Park. Some phrases stuck out: ‘We wanted our children to breathe clean air and eat honest food. We couldn’t have them growing up with all the scary greed we’d found in London.’
How cruel that such a wholesome ambition should have been punished with one disillusion after another, Trish thought.
Having successfully produced a son they called Adam while they were still in London, the Fortwells had never produced another child. The one they had grew up to resent them for what they’d given up. He’d departed at the age of eighteen and cut off all contact. The last line of the interview read: ‘He didn’t even write or phone when his father was killed. He could be dead, too, for all I know.’
And this was the woman Trish’s head of chambers was about to trounce in court. The ache sharpened as she jammed her teeth even more tightly together.
In spite of the barristers’ cab-rank rule, which stated that any suitably qualified member of the Bar who was free to take an offered case must do so, Trish wondered how Antony Shelley could bring himself to accept this one. Brilliant and cynical as he was, he’d trot out all the familiar answers if she ever put the question, so she wouldn’t bother.
Instead, she contemplated the only task she had this morning and the various ways she might spin it out. She had taken silk earlier in the year, becoming a senior barrister with the grand title of Queen’s Counsel, and her practice had suffered in the usual way.
Once you were a silk, you were much more expensive than you’d been as a junior, and you had to have a junior of your own on every case, adding even more to the costs for the client. Few of them would willingly take a risk on an untried QC, but until you’d done a few big cases, you couldn’t prove yourself capable.
Trish was used to self-control these days, and to organising her thoughts to stop them destroying her peace. Counting her pleasures usually helped so she set about it now. The most childish was provided by the jealousy of her old rival in chambers, Robert Anstey, who was still a junior.
When the position of QC had been reinstated after a short interval and a great deal of protest, both of them had applied. Only she had succeeded and Robert still couldn’t understand how anyone could possibly prefer her to him. After all, he was endowed with everything she lacked: masculinity, a comfortable upbringing amid rich legal connections, a posh voice, public-school education, and three glorious privileged years at Oxford.
She should also have found pleasure in her rare freedom, but that was harder to appreciate. For the first time in years she had unoccupied hours during the day. Once she would have been too busy ever to sit idly like this without having to pay later. Now she could put her feet on her desk and read the newspaper, look forward to a long lunch with Antony, and still know she’d be home in time to organise tea for David, the 14-year-old half-brother who lived with her, and probably for his alarming new schoolfriend too.
The thought of the friend made her swing her feet back to the floor and open her laptop, to look again at the draft of a letter she’d been writing to their head teacher. Several false starts had made her bless the laptop for saving her from all the screwed-up balls of rough paper she would once have chucked in the bin. Eventually she felt she’d achieved the right tone of stern reproof, without descending to insult – or not much insult – but she wanted to be quite sure before she printed and sent it off.
Dear Jeremy,
 
David has been bringing Jay Smith home for tea most days since the start of term, and we have now come to know each other well enough for him to tell me his place at Blackfriars is only temporary. It was
clear he wouldn’t be happy answering questions, so I may have some details wrong, but the impression he gave me is that one of the teachers at his old school was so frustrated by his combination of brains and refusal to work that he negotiated for Jay to be given a single term at Blackfriars to see how rich boys are educated, in the hope that it would make him focus on what he was throwing away. If this is true, I am shocked.
From the little Jay’s said, I know he has a difficult background, and it’s not hard to deduce from his attitude and the few anecdotes he’s shared that he must often have been in trouble. He is clearly bright, has a great deal of charm, and has never put a foot wrong while I’ve been around. But I think the stress of knowing he will soon be sent back to what sounds like the worst of sink schools is undoing any good his time at Blackfriars might have achieved.
I seriously dislike the thought of any child being subjected to the torture of Tantalus, and that’s more or less what you’re doing to Jay. I believe that, having taken him on, you have a duty to keep him until he has had a chance to take his A levels. I feel so strongly about this that I am willing to share the cost. If you and the governors agree to keep him, I will pay half his fees for the next four years.
Yours ever, Trish Maguire
Even though her earnings had dropped after her recent promotion, she’d been stashing away more than enough over the past few years to cover all Jay’s fees and never miss the money, but she was so angry with the way the school had behaved she was determined to make them pay a fair share.
Aware that rage often made her pompous, she went through the letter again and decided the torture of Tantalus was over the top.
What she actually wanted to say was: you’ve chosen to bring into the school a boy with so many problems he’s like an unlit Molotov cocktail. Anything you do to make him angry will be like putting a match to it. If it were not for the fact that my beloved brother likes him and has more or less adopted him, I would leave you to deal with the inevitable disaster yourself. As it is, I can’t.
She rewrote the letter in the simplest style, avoiding the torture of Tantalus and all hints of criticism, decided it would do and faxed it to the school. She was just checking her email in-box when Antony put his head round her door to summon her to lunch. This was his last working day of freedom before he had to go to court to defend Clean World Waste Management, whose exploding chemical tanks had killed Angela Fortwell’s husband, and he wanted to make the most of it.
Trish nodded to him, clicked out of the email window, and reached behind her for the new jacket slung across the back of her chair. Its rich chestnut-coloured silk tweed did much more for her pale skin than the black and white she had to wear in court. Over the years, she’d learned to seize any opportunity to sport something brighter, however clearly it might advertise her brief-less status.
‘Weird how that bull’s-turd colour suits you,’ Antony said as they emerged from chambers into the late autumn sun.
Ignoring him, she turned her face up to the warmth. This was one of those special London days, when the air tasted clean, the sun shone in a bright blue sky, and the trees still
held on to some of their newly reddened leaves. The ones that had already fallen were neatly swept into piles awaiting collection.
Trish loved their smell. The spiciness might be the product of rot, but it always made her think of childhood firework parties, and roasting apples with the sugar slowly turning to caramel.
‘If George were here,’ Antony went on as they strolled towards his favourite restaurant, ‘he’d be reciting Keats’s “Ode to Autumn”. “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness” and all that.’
Trish shot a quick sideways glance at him. Whenever she’d seen him with her partner the two men had got on perfectly well, which was hardly surprising given that George was a successful London solicitor and they had a lot of friends in common, but Antony rarely passed up any opportunity to tease her about George’s more stolid qualities.
‘His taste’s a bit less obvious than that,’ she said, trying not to sound defensive. ‘And it’s not his fault anyway. It’s the kind of British-Empire family he comes from. They brought him up to use poetry for all the feelings proper chaps aren’t meant to have.
Other Men’s Flowers
and all that.’
Antony laughed. ‘You always rise to the bait, Trish, even now after – what? Ten years?’
‘Not quite. But getting on that way.’
‘How’s it going?’
‘Great,’ she said, without explanation.
She’d passed through several stages with George, none of which she would choose to describe to anyone else and some of which had been pretty rough. Now they’d both
regained their sense of humour, and they lived in a state of emotional comfort that still seemed extraordinary. They knew who they were and why they had come together in the first place. Trish also knew that, whatever happened, she could trust George. She hoped the same was true for him.
‘What are you thinking about?’ Antony asked, pushing open the door of the restaurant so that she could precede him.
‘The menu,’ she said and knew from his familiar snort that he didn’t believe her for a second.
 
Angie was standing in the kitchen of Fran and Greg’s first-floor flat in Kentish Town, gaping at the heaps of files they’d filled as they’d worked to prepare her case against the people responsible for John’s death.
‘What’s the matter, love?’ Fran said, tossing a swathe of silky red-blonde hair over her ample shoulder. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’
Angie shook her head and rubbed a hand over her eyes, feeling the edge of an ancient callus snag on her eyelid. Next to Fran’s magnificence, she felt dried-up and old.
‘I just don’t know what I’ve done to deserve all this,’ she said, waving at the files before she remembered her ugly hands. She stuffed them in her pockets. ‘Without you two, I’d be stuck up there on the farm, writing my useless letters to people who couldn’t care less about John or the farm or me, and wondering whether I’d starve before the cancer got me.’
The temperature in the heart of the fireball had been high enough to destroy the carcinogenic benzene there, but plenty had been left on the fringes of the explosion to leach into the ground and poison the watercourses. And the rain
that had seemed like a godsend at the time had actually made everything far worse, diluting the fire crew’s foam and spreading the pollution far and wide.
Fran leaned over to give her a kiss. ‘And without you, I’d still be handing out our leaflets in shopping centres, knowing hardly anyone would bother to read them or understand why companies like CWWM have to be stopped before they destroy the whole world with their filthy chemicals.’
‘She’s right, you know,’ Greg said, pushing a stoneware mug towards Angie. ‘If you hadn’t been brave enough to risk everything by being a litigant in person, we’d never have got them into court.’
Angie nodded her thanks for the tea and he beamed before returning to the cooker to stir his pan of bean stew. Steam billowed out, scented with onions and herbs, which made her realise how hungry she was.
Enough to enjoy another compost heap of vegetables? she asked herself with a disloyal spurt of silent laughter.
‘What’s so funny?’ Fran asked, sounding hurt enough to need an answer.
‘I was just thinking how much John would have liked you.’ These days Angie could usually say his name aloud without crying or feeling as though someone had her guts on a hook and was slowly pulling them out of her, but it had taken a long time. ‘And yet how hard he’d have had to work to stop himself quarrelling with you.’
‘Quarrelling? Why? He sounds like such a good man.’
‘He was, and he’d have loved your generosity, and the way you care so much.’ Angie enjoyed Fran’s smile and hoped it would last. ‘But he would have had difficulties with some of your principles.’
Greg stopped stirring and turned to look over his shoulder again. His brown eyes were oddly set, with one apparently higher than the other, which often made it hard to read his expression.
‘Like what?’ he said.
‘He claimed that if everyone went back to eating meat we’d get our farm in profit again
and
save the planet.’
‘I don’t understand.’ Greg’s eyes looked as vulnerable as a new lamb’s and his voice was puzzled. Angie wished she didn’t have to spell it out.
‘Well, one of the chief causes of global warning is methane. And you know how a diet of beans—’
Fran managed to laugh, but Greg didn’t. Angie wondered if he was about to explain that cows produce more methane than any other living creature.
‘Was money so very tight?’ he said after a short tricky silence.
‘It gave us nightmares for years.’ Angie had lost all desire to laugh. ‘That’s why John cancelled all the insurance policies, which is why I
have
to win this case if I’m ever to get enough money to make the farm habitable again.’
‘You will win,’ Fran said, stroking Angie’s bony wrist. ‘And you’ll get justice for John. When it’s over no one will ever again be able to say his death was an accident.’
‘I hope to God you’re right.’
In the first terrible aftermath of the fire, Angie had assumed the police would charge the directors of CWWM with murder, or manslaughter at the very least. When she’d heard nothing from them, she’d written to everyone with any kind of power, from the local Chief Constable to the head of the Crown Prosecution Service, her MP and the Prime Minister, begging them to help. No one had
done anything except tell her to wait until after the official investigation.

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