A Poisoned Mind (21 page)

Trish started to speak, but he didn’t give her time.

‘You can’t sit there thinking about it with nothing on all day. You’re due in court. Get on with it before the wicked witch turns you to stone.’

She gave him the laugh he deserved for trying to cheer her up and ran to wash her hair.

Callie MacDonald woke early on her sixth birthday. She never liked staying in bed if she didn’t have to, and today she had her dad’s words from last night ringing in her head: ‘You never know what the tide will bring a wee girl on her birthday. If she’s good.’

She dressed as quietly as she knew how and heaved the heavy great storm lantern off its ledge in the front porch, switching it on as she unlocked the door.

Outside it was still dark, but the stars had gone, so it wouldn’t be long till morning. She knew the way down to the beach as well as she knew her own bedroom, and the storm lantern gave enough light to show up any holes in the path.

Some days Callie didn’t even hear the wind and the sea because they were always there, but now they sounded extra loud, pulling her on to see what the tide had brought her for her birthday.

Her feet crunched on the pebbles and the wind felt very cold, sliding up under her sleeves and down her neck. But it was worth it.

She waved the hard white beam of light all around, but she couldn’t see anything. For a minute she thought her dad
had lied. Then she knew. She was too early. The tide hadn’t turned yet. She hunkered down to wait, shivering.

At last the sound of the waves changed and the feel of the air. Soon it would come, her surprise from the sea. She turned on the lamp again, her strong thin fingers managing the heavy switch easily.

There
was
something, dead ahead and coming up the beach, pausing with each wave that stopped as if it were teasing her, then coming on again. Only ten minutes later it was high up on the shingle, a big rusty tin, nearly as big as she was. There was some old writing on it, where the rust hadn’t gone. The letters were so faded and worn they were hard to read, but she could see a big C and M. It must be hers, with the birthday present hidden inside.

She tried to open the screw top. But she couldn’t. Even though her fingers were really strong, she couldn’t do it. There’d be sharp stones, though, all over the beach, which might help her get inside the tin. She spent a long time looking for the best: one like a triangle with a sharp point; and another bigger and rounder to use like a hammer.

Bashing the pointy one down on the tin, she made a few dunts, but no more than that. She needed help, but she didn’t want to leave her birthday present for anyone else to steal. Tugging it further up the beach was too hard. Even when she stood with her back to it and her feet pressing into the pebbles, she couldn’t push it.

So she tried again and again, banging with the big stone to push the point down into the rustiest, bentest bit of the tin.

At last the pointed stone made a tiny hole. She bent down to see if she could peer inside, but the smell was awful. It made her choke. And something was bubbling out of the
wee hole. She’d got some on her nose. Her skin felt all burning like the time she’d put her finger in the toffee while it was boiling in the pan.

MacDonalds don’t cry, so she tried not to. But it was awful hard. She tried to wipe the stuff off her nose and her hand started to hurt too. And the smell was worse and worse. She was coughing so much she didn’t hear anyone come, but she felt his hand, grabbing the back of her jersey.

‘Hold your breath,’ said her dad as he ran towards the sea with her dangling from his hand.

A minute later, he was holding her face down in the freezing water, sloshing it over her head and her hands.

‘What did you think you were doing, lass? Messing about with filth like that?’

‘It was my present,’ she said, gasping as soon as he lifted her up. ‘You said it would come with the tide.’

‘Oh, Callie! You could’ve … We must get your poor wee face to the doctor, before—’

‘Before what?’

He laughed, but he didn’t sound at all like he usually did when he was happy. ‘Before he goes off on his rounds, lass.’

 

Angie hung over the lavatory, waiting for the next paroxysm. Through the pain and the whirling in her eyes and the iron band across her gut and the disgusting sensations in her nose and throat, she thought: I hate being sick.

A damp cloth was pressed to her forehead and a strong hand stroked her back.

‘You’ll be OK, love,’ Fran said. ‘This can’t last much longer. There isn’t anything else to bring up.’

Saliva filled Angie’s mouth and she knew she was for it again.

‘Go,’ she said, just before the worst happened.

Fran stayed, holding her head, through the whole horrible episode.

‘I think that’s it,’ Angie said when she could speak again. She wiped her mouth on a bunch of loo paper and reached for the handle on the cistern to flush away the evidence. ‘Sorry.’

‘Come back to bed and lie down.’

‘I can’t. There isn’t time. We’ll be late as it is.’

‘You can’t go to court like this. Up you come.’ She helped Angie to stand. ‘You’ve no colour in your face and you’re as floppy as cooked spaghetti. You need to rest. It must have been something you ate.’

‘It can’t be. You two are safe. We had exactly the same food yesterday.’

‘Then it could be an infection – or a migraine. I used to get them and I was always sick. Better afterwards in fact. Does your head hurt?’

Angie tried to nod, then wished she hadn’t because it felt as though her brain might burst out through her skull. She put a hand out to touch the wall to remind her how to balance.

‘I have to go to court.’

‘No, you don’t. We’ll get an adjournment. It’s no problem. People get ill all the time. There are ways of dealing with it, even in that shithole in the Strand.’ Fran laughed, with a gurgling sound that was too soft to jar against Angie’s headache. ‘Come on. Back into bed. I’ll make you some mint tea, which should settle your stomach. And if you’re no better this evening, the doctor said he’d come out to have a look at you.’

‘I didn’t know you’d phoned. What—?’

‘It seemed like a good idea. He said so long as your temperature doesn’t get much higher or you develop a rash, we don’t have to worry about anything like meningitis. But he wants you lying down and me close at hand in case you suddenly feel worse. So we’ll send Greg to court with a message for the judge – that’s better than just phoning – and I’ll look after you here.’

Angie felt too ill to say anything more. She closed her eyes and tried to find some comfort in the coolness of the pillow beneath her neck. Fran said something else about mint tea and left.

It isn’t a migraine, or meningitis, Angie thought once she was alone and it was safe to let the idea form: it’s Adam and the tanks. I can’t stand up in court, waiting for someone to mention his name and pretend I’ve never …

 

On her way to chambers, Trish felt as though she had a hangover. It was years since she’d drunk too much, but the burning eyeballs, queasy stomach and aching head that were the result of lack of sleep seemed horribly familiar. The squeak of the door into chambers made her wince and the cheery sounds of the clerks’ room were nearly as bad.

She closed her own door and leaned against it, enjoying the quiet, the familiarity, the privateness of her space. There was a push against her back as someone tried to open the door, then knocked. Moving away, she called out, ‘Come in. It’s not locked.’

Hal pushed his way in, making far more noise than necessary, yelling: ‘I’ve got them. I’ve got them, Trish. Come and look.’

‘Got who?’ she said, staring at his broad, freckly face.

‘Chris and Sally Bowles.’

‘Whom, Trish. Whom.’ Robert’s voice sounded from outside in the corridor. He put his head round the door. ‘Didn’t they teach you anything at your bog-standard comprehensive?’

‘If you can forget your public-school superiority for a second,’ she said as she got to her feet, ‘you can come and join the party. Hal thinks he’s found our saboteurs. How did you do it, Hal?’

‘Peterthewalk. I emailed to ask if he had any pix of the people in his blog and he sent me these. Look!’ He pointed to his computer, which showed a pretty young woman in a cagoule standing against a blurry green landscape. There was a man beside her, but he was so much taller than she that the picture had cut him off at the neck.

‘Did he give you anything else?’ Trish said, peering at the screen, greedy for facts. ‘Like real names or a working address?’

‘No because he thinks they’re really called Chris and Sally Bowles. I Googled those, incidentally, but there’s nothing except the link to the blog.’ He was beginning to sound less triumphant. ‘I thought the pix might help on their own.’

‘I’m sure they will,’ Trish said with automatic reassurance. But she wanted a lot more.

‘Unlikely.’ Robert’s drawl was so full of self-satisfaction that she wanted to hit him. She sent a sympathetic smile to Hal, who looked like a deflated beach ball.

‘Why?’ she said, turning back to see Robert pointing halfway down the screen.

‘These two are climbers, not walkers,’ he said. ‘Your blogger’s stringing you along. I doubt if this was even taken in Northumberland. The Cairngorms, maybe. But nowhere flatter.’

‘How could you possibly know?’ Trish couldn’t bear Hal’s disappointment. ‘The background’s far too vague to tell you where it was shot.’

Robert’s finger rested on what looked like a smallish cloth lump hanging from the woman’s belt.

‘That’s a chalk bag. Walkers don’t have them.’ He was extravagantly pleased with himself. ‘This photograph was taken on a climbing trip.’

‘What’s a chalk bag?’ Hal had found his voice again, but it sounded petulant and quite unlike him.

‘When one’s scared,’ Robert said kindly, ‘as one often is on a climb, one’s palms sweat. So, one keeps hold of the rock with one hand and stuffs the other into one’s chalk bag and takes a handful of the stuff. Chalk makes one’s grip on the rock safer, you see.’

Trish did see. But she wasn’t giving up.

‘I can understand that a rambler who’d never climbed wouldn’t have a chalk bag. But don’t you think a climber might simply have forgotten the one clipped to her belt when she went walking?’

She scoured her mind for some technical terms to make Robert stop sneering at her as though she was the worst kind of ignoramus.

‘After all, she hasn’t any carabiners or pitons, has she? And I can’t see a single rope.’

‘So?’ His sneer had taken on a mulish air. He’d never liked being challenged by anyone but least of all her. ‘The rest of the kit could be on the ground, out of the camera’s range.’

‘Suppose you’re right and she is a mountaineer, you could find out what her real name is, couldn’t you?’

‘I doubt it, Trish. I’ve already told you I don’t climb any more.’

‘Couldn’t you phone a friend?’

‘Great idea,’ Hal said, then quailed at the look Robert sent him.

‘But almost certainly not worth it. I’m still not convinced these two have anything to do with any sabotage, even if there actually was any.’ Robert paused for a moment, then added, as though from a distant throne: ‘No climber would consider blowing up—’

‘Does mountaineering of itself ensure honesty?’ Trish heard a suppressed laugh from Hal.

‘Actually, I should have thought with all the self-discipline and courage it needs, it would.’ Robert’s tone suggested he was serious. ‘But it’s more to do with care for the natural envir—’

The phone on his desk rang, and he abandoned his explanation. Trish asked Hal if she could see Peterthewalk’s email.

‘Yes?’ Robert said into the phone. ‘Ah, Steve.’ There was a pause. ‘What a bore! OK. Thanks. Yes, I’ll tell her.’

Trish was standing behind Hal, reading the email over his shoulder.

‘Angie Fortwell’s ill,’ Robert said, making her look up. ‘Too ill to come to court, so we’re adjourned.’

‘Oh, sod it!’ she said. ‘When we’re so nearly there. How long for?’

‘Months, unfortunately. The RCJ have told Steve they’ll be slotting in an urgent fast-track case because Angie’s doctor can’t say how quickly she’ll be well again, and they won’t have time in the lists to give us any more days until the end of next term.’

Trish wanted to swear again. It always took ages to get yourself back into a tricky case after a long gap. You had to
reread most of the documents and distil everything that had happened into a form of words that would remind the judge not only of the evidence but also the personalities and likely honesty of everyone involved.

Antony would be on his feet again by the end of next term, so he might even take the case back. Trish felt herself bristling at the very idea. Having come this far, she wanted to be in at the end.

‘And Steve wants to talk to you, so you’d better hurry up,’ Robert added, with another patronising expression twisting his perfect features.

When she’d first encountered him in chambers, she’d thought he looked like a romantic hero from some slushy 1940s film. Now she thought he was much more like one of John Buchan’s villains, whose good looks and perfect grooming signal their wicked intentions from their first appearance on the page. The stories were George’s comfort books, and Trish had learned from them that a great and honest man should always be a little shabby or at least rumpled.

Refreshed by the thought, she went back to her own room to phone her clerk and hear him say he had the sniff of another brief for her and she wasn’t to leave before he’d confirmed it.

‘Thanks, Steve,’ she said.

When she’d finished with him, she rang George’s mobile to leave a message telling him about the adjournment and asking how his session with Jay and the police had gone. At least she’d have time now to sort out her family and perhaps help Jay with his.

I could even look for Sally and Chris Bowles, she thought as she put the receiver back on its cradle, and find out
exactly what they were doing within yards of the Fortwells’ tanks at the crucial time, and whether Greg Waverly had any hand in paying them to do it.