A Poisoned Mind (28 page)

‘She had no idea what she was turning down, had she? The great Antony Shelley, offering pro-bono help to a woman who—’ She broke off.

‘There’s no polite way to describe her, according to what I’ve heard. Never mind her now. Tell me what you’ve been up to.’

Trish went back to work, glad to hear his qualified approval of her unorthodox search for the people who’d paid Maryan Fleming’s boyfriend to sabotage the tanks. Minutes later, a hoarse screaming voice ripped through the air behind her:

‘Get out of my sight, you filthy little stinking waste-of-space.’

Trish couldn’t help looking round, although there was nothing to see.

‘It’s only the drunk,’ Antony said. ‘At it again. I thought the cops had gone.’

‘Hang on a minute,’ Trish said.

Her heels slipped on the polished vinyl floor as she hurried to the far end of the ward. There, in the last bay, she saw Jay, clinging to the bars at the bottom of his mother’s bed. His chin was quivering with the intensity of his silence and his back was stretched even tighter than Carl Bianchini’s had been. Through his thin T-shirt, his spine looked like a piece of high-tensile steel wire. There was aggression in every aspect of his figure. But it was his mother who was pouring out the invective.

‘Can I help?’ Trish asked, cutting through the diatribe with a quietness that made the other woman strain to hear her.

‘Fuck off, you interfering middle-class cunt.’

‘You OK, Jay?’ Trish said, turning towards him without responding to the insult.

‘She wants me to go and buy her some cans of White
Star and I said I won’t and that’s why she’s like this.’

Trish saw the improvised bouquet on the floor, spilling out of its carefully folded newspaper holder.

‘Fucking little waste-of-space, coming here bringing me weeds and sticks. Get out of my sight and don’t come back. I never want to see you again. If it wasn’t for you I wouldn’t never of needed to drink.’

Longing to put an arm around his shoulders, Trish couldn’t think how to help. Shelby’s optimism for the family’s chances seemed wildly unrealistic.

‘Go on. The pair of you. Fuck off.’ The woman’s voice was a scream now. Nurses were converging on them from all over the ward, and the patient in the next bed was cringing against her pillow as though she expected a physical battering at any moment.

‘Come on, Jay,’ Trish said, still not getting within touching distance.

His hands were white around the bedstead, as though the clenching had driven all the blood back up into his wrists, which was hardly possible. He drew in a huge breath and Trish waited for some gross outburst. In the end he just let it out in a shuddering sigh, unclamped his hands, and whirled away. She caught up with him near the nurses’ station.

‘Withdrawal makes everyone aggressive,’ she said, trying to make it less hard for him. ‘Your mother didn’t mean any of that.’

He stopped and kicked the laminated panel beneath the desk. Then he looked at Trish. There was no contempt now, or rage; just weariness.

‘Yeah, she did. It’s what she thinks; what she always says. She’s scared of Darren and she likes Kimberley. But she hates me.’ He looked away again. ‘Fucking bitch.’

‘Don’t, Jay. It won’t help. Look, I don’t want to be tiresome, but shouldn’t you be in school now?’

The look he gave her could have scorched paper.

Don Bates, the managing director of CWWM, arrived in his solicitors’ meeting room straight off an overnight plane. Even so, his vigour was undimmed. Only the slightest clenching in the corners of his eyes and a barely distinguishable yellow tinge to his skin told Trish he was even tired.

One of Fred Hoffman’s trainees was standing by a tray, pouring coffee and handing milk and sugar. There were biscuits too. Fred took one and chewed noisily, but the others ignored them.

‘So, Ms Maguire. Fred tells me you’ve got some news,’ said Bates, just as the trainee took herself out of the room.

Fred retreated to the far end of the long table, where he settled into an armchair and watched the other two.

‘The adjournment of the case has given me some time to step back, think, and do a little research,’ Trish said, seeing the light catch in his eyes as he looked from Bates to her and back again. ‘I’ve discovered who sabotaged the tanks, and who—’

‘Hold it.’ Bates’s bark made even Fred look quite scared. ‘Didn’t I tell you not to go there?’

Trish smiled with a slow confident widening of her lips.
She was tough enough to stand up to Bates, but she didn’t want to challenge him so obviously he’d have to rev himself up into a real rage.

‘“Don’t waste time” was what you said. Having an unexpected slug of uncommitted hours because of the adjournment, I knew I wouldn’t be. Look, I think you’ve been the victim – worldwide – of a systematic campaign by a small waste company called GlobWasMan.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘They’re about to list on AIM, and—’

‘We all know that.’

‘With the intention, I suspect,’ she went on with a doggedness she hoped would eventually get through to him, ‘of raising enough money to mount a takeover of CWWM.’

She paused to allow him to make another protest if he wanted, but he seemed speechless with disbelief. Fred leaned across the table to reach for more biscuits, almost flattening himself like a snooker player. No wonder his suits always looked so crumpled.

‘Obviously the amount they’d need would be much less if they could reduce your share price,’ Trish said. ‘And the easiest way to do that would be to make your operations look dangerously careless.’

‘Where did you get this … this fantasy? I don’t mean to be rude, Ms Maguire, but really! Those clowns at GlobWasMan are a bunch of overgrown schoolboys, who have no interest in me or my company.’

She thought about the Pathfinder prospectus and the manifesto printed at the beginning of it, which she’d now reread several times. If she couldn’t persuade Don Bates any other way, she’d take him through it line by line, pointing out all the claims to unprecedented safety measures
and being way ahead of any of their competitors in the preservation of the environment.

‘How do you know what they want?’

‘I know all about them. Listen,’ Bates said, jabbing a finger at her. ‘They got their first taste of money in the dotcom boom. There were four of them then and they sold themselves to a bunch of naive investors, who believed anyone young enough and slick enough could make a killing out of the Internet. Then they bailed out just in time to keep their own profits and laugh at the losers as the company disappeared like an ice cube in a heatwave.’

‘Shows a certain amount of acumen when you think of everyone who lost their shirts at the time,’ Trish said and saw the ghost of agreement in Fred’s expression. She wondered who the fourth dotcommer was, and why he – or she – had not joined GlobWasMan.

‘Pathetic lemmings,’ Bates said as though he could never make a misjudgement like that.

‘You seem to know a lot about them,’ she added with a disarming smile. ‘Were you one of their original backers?’

‘God no! I stick to what I understand. It’s the only secure basis for investment. One of them applied for a job with us after they sold out. I heard all about it at his interview.’

‘I thought you said they made a killing,’ Fred said from the far end of the table. ‘Why was he applying for jobs?’

‘They hadn’t made nearly as much as they pretended, and they knew they’d have to go on working. A couple of them set up as freelance techies, but there wasn’t a lot of call for that around the time of the crash. Most companies were fighting shy of the Internet just then. But we needed someone to design our new systems. When we advertised Ken applied.’

‘Ken Shankley?’ Trish said.

‘That’s right. He didn’t do a bad job and while he was with us he saw how profitable the business could be. When we turned down the idea of taking over GlobWasMan, because its sites were in such a poor state and too small really for us to bother with, he thought he’d have a crack at it himself, raising the money from the few other people who’d bailed out of the Internet boom in time.’

‘Did he ask you for help?’

‘Nope. Cocky little sod that he was, he thought he could do it all himself. I warned him though.’ Bates laughed. ‘“Watch the hubris,” I said. “Take a bit more advice this time and you may build up a useful little business that will last.” Did he listen? Did he hell!’

Ah, Trish thought. So here’s the personal element. Ken Shankley wasn’t just grabbing a commercial opportunity when he decided to wreck your share price; he saw a chance to humble you too. Irresistible, I should think.

‘To give the boy his due, after a year or two he eventually saw the point of my warning,’ Bates said. ‘He got in some experts, chemists, lawyers and so on, and he’s built up a reasonable company now. But it’s still tiny. And your ideas of world domination are completely bonkers. He’s going to sell out and move on to the next growth area as soon as he can.’

‘I’m not so sure. And there are—’

‘Listen to me, Ms Maguire. And listen well. I know what I’m talking about here, and it’s a world that’s entirely new to you, however good you may be in court. Ken and his friends are planning to do exactly what they did with Goforthebrains.com. They’ve spent tens of thousands on their glossy Pathfinder in order to snare another bunch of
overhopeful investors. I’ve seen it, and it sticks out a mile. Watch. And learn.’

No,
you
watch, she thought, as always loathing this kind of contemptuous dismissal. She might have come to the dangerous-waste business late, but human motives and behaviour were her core subjects, and they didn’t change with the place in which you found them.

‘You should know these overgrown schoolboys of yours paid
£
5K to a couple who did not provide the service for which they were ostensibly charging, and who were within five minutes’ walk of the Fortwells’ tanks exactly seventy-two hours before the explosion. Which is the time specified by our expert for the blocking of the vents. d’you really think that’s a coincidence?’

‘If they’d put something in there, Fortwell would’ve seen it and picked it out.’ Bates looked as though he was fighting to keep his irritation under control. ‘It’s what we paid him for, and he was a conscientious bugger.’

‘He may have been once. But, as we’ve shown in court, he’d been slapdash and dilatory in many different situations in the months leading up to his death.’

Trish waited for some acknowledgement but it didn’t come. Fred was staring at the table so that he didn’t have to react. She told herself not to let them get to her and bared her teeth at Bates in what she hoped would be a reasonably convincing smile.

‘OK, so forget the tanks for the moment. Was it by any chance
your
drums of waste that were involved in the crash in Suffolk, when a woman had to have both feet amputated?’

His face told her all she needed to know, but he surprised her by saying:

‘Are you going to hit me with the girl on the Scottish beach next?’

‘I don’t know anything about a Scottish beach,’ Trish said. ‘What happened there?’

He shrugged. ‘Another inexplicable accident with some of our worst waste. I must say, in the context of these spillages, it would be convenient if you were right about those clowns at GlobWasMan. How d’you expect to prove it?’

‘I doubt if there’s enough hard evidence left anywhere for real proof. But more than enough of the circumstantial sort to persuade Angie Fortwell to withdraw her claim. May I try?’

‘Fred? What do you think?’

‘Makes sense to me, Don. Whether Trish is right about GlobWasMan or not, she can present a convincing argument. And Angie was looking as though she hated being in court the last time I saw her. She might jump at an offer to settle now.’

Bates stood up and marched to the far end of the room, helped himself to another cup of coffee, which he then dumped on the table and ignored. Obviously a man who preferred to make decisions on his feet, Trish decided. Even the slight signs of tiredness had gone from his eyes and skin. He looked powerful and ready to take on the world.

‘OK. Let’s do it.’

‘Would you want to be there at the settlement meeting?’ Fred asked, which made Trish frown all over again.

She couldn’t think of anything less helpful than having a client like this in a delicate negotiation with someone as emotional and unpractised as Angie Fortwell.

‘No. Better she and I don’t meet.’ Bates looked at Trish from under his eyelashes, almost like a flirting girl, which
disconcerted her. ‘I might not be able to keep my temper after the grief she’s given me. And I don’t suppose you’ll be able to get my costs back.’

‘Probably not. She hasn’t any money. But at least you won’t be stung for damages.’

‘True.’ Bates picked up his heavy overcoat, swung it around his shoulders and said he had a lunch to go to. He didn’t wait to shake hands. But he stopped at the doorway and turned his head back to look at Fred.

‘What do we do then? If there is anything in this story, the police should be told and get those clowns closed down before they do any more harm.’

‘We can lay information, yes.’ Fred made another note.

‘Get it done fast, then,’ Bates said and left without another word.

Trish and Fred were left to slump in their chairs and agree that he was just about the most exhausting man either of them had ever met. Fred then said he would phone her clerk as soon as he’d been able to set up the meeting with Angie, and Trish walked the short distance back to the Temple.

She was so absorbed in trying to decide whether Don Bates’s humiliation of Ken Shankley was enough to explain what he’d been trying to do or whether there were yet more layers of conspiracy to find that she almost walked into Steve, who was hanging about in the corridor.

‘What’s happened? You look like hell,’ she said, stepping back and registering the greyish tinge of his skin and the way it seemed to hang more loosely than usual under his narrow chin.

‘It’s Mr Shelley. He’s had an embolism.’

‘What?
But I saw him only yesterday.’ Trish felt as
though someone had hit her in the face. ‘He was fine. Ready to go home. Is he—?’

‘He’s going to be all right, they think. But it’s set him back, probably by weeks. I don’t know when we’ll see him here in chambers again.’

 

Angie emptied the last bucket of water down the scullery sink. It was clean enough to show her that she had, at last, scoured all the dirt from all the floors in Polly’s house. She’d scrub the sink itself now. Once that was done, there was nothing but making the beds and, given they had duvets instead of blankets, it would take little more than five minutes.

She hadn’t expected to want more. Loathing housework and cooking as she had in the bad years at Low Topps, it seemed perverse to go looking for extra tasks now. But she didn’t want time to think.

Some days she was sure she ought to go down to Brighton and face Adam and ask outright whether he was responsible for killing his father and mutilating the woman in Essex whom Greg had mentioned. And the child in Scotland.

Then there were other days when all she wanted to do was hide from Adam for ever. If she knew for certain he was guilty, she wouldn’t be able to ignore it. If she told anyone else, the police would get involved and she’d find herself back in court, giving evidence against her own son. She could just imagine the awful Trish Maguire haranguing her as she stood in the witness box.

‘Are you really trying to persuade His Lordship that your son did not intend to cause fatal harm to you and your husband, and the land itself, when he blocked the vents of
your chemical tanks? Can you deny that if he knew enough to do it, he knew what effect it would have? Have you not testified to his post-graduate degrees in chemistry? Are you trying to suggest he didn’t know precisely what effect the benzene would have on your land and streams?’

She saw Maguire’s beaky face in her nightmares now and when she woke in the mornings. There were times when she felt as though the woman was sucking truth out of her even at this distance of hundreds of miles. She tried to keep Adam right out of her mind to avoid doing anything that might make anyone else suspect. But she was sure Polly knew.

Polly still wouldn’t talk, but ever since the first evening when she’d told Angie that Adam had stayed here, there’d been odd looks and even more wordless sympathy than simple widowhood and a failing claim for damages should arouse.

The terrors and regrets had built up in Angie’s mind until she felt as though she had to let them out somehow if they weren’t to burst her skull apart.

‘Are you ill, pet?’ Polly’s voice shocked her and she turned so fast she sprayed scouring powder all over the draining board.

‘No. No. I’m fine. You surprised me; that’s all. Sorry. I’ll clear this up. And I’m late with lunch. I don’t know what I was thinking. I—’

‘Shhh.’ Polly’s voice was as soft as it could be with a dead ewe’s lamb. ‘Shhh now. It doesn’t matter about lunch. But you were keening. What is it that’s troubling you so?’

Angie put her hand over her face and then cursed as she felt the biting sharpness of the scouring powder in her eyes. That helped, distracting them both, as she first washed
her hands, then rinsed out her eyes with cold, fresh water. Any tears she might have been shedding got mixed up with the water, so they didn’t count.