Gagged & Bound (15 page)

‘Exactly. Glad to see your mind’s speeding up at last. Tick was approached first by a social worker, who realised something was wrong when she tried to investigate reports of a child wailing night after night in a flat that was officially being redecorated for the next family on the waiting list. Then a caretaker on another estate tried to warn him. Then someone within the council offices got to hear about their suspicions and tried to make Tick investigate properly.’

‘What happened?’

‘Tick got on a very high horse, and said he wasn’t going to destroy the morale of his department with internal investigations designed to make them all look dishonest at worst or inefficient at best. He was known to have some extraordinarily doctrinaire views about never criticising or making people feel like failures. He’d come under the sway of one of those batty educational reformers who caused such trouble in the sixties. His view was that even real dishonesty – provided it wasn’t too blatant – was a cheap price to pay for showing faith in staff doing a very tough job for very poor wages.’

‘It’s a point of view,’ Trish said, holding in the burst of rage that made her want to scream and throw things.

This was yet another example of ‘everyone’s knowing’ some important story and never publicising it or seeing that the offenders were punished. Maybe George was right and her rage was personal and self-indulgent. She certainly
did
hate these
widely known secrets that made her feel like an outsider all over again.

But there was more to this fury than any emotion of her own. As she’d told Tick in the park, bed-and-breakfast accommodation put an appalling strain on families and had lasting effects on children. Some never recovered.

‘It’s interesting,’ she said at last, when she’d found enough self-control to sound cool again, ‘even though it doesn’t have any bearing on the people involved in the bombing of X8 Pharmaceuticals.’

‘True. But it’s a sign that Tick may not be entirely straight. More to the point, there are said to be those who are outraged that a whole lot of ferocious gagging orders meant he got away with it with his public standing unaffected.’

‘So they should be outraged. It’s monstrous.’

‘Indeed.’ Antony’s smile suggested he knew all about her struggle to hold in her feelings. ‘The scandal turned out to be even bigger than the social worker and the caretaker believed.’

Now we’re getting somewhere, she thought. This isn’t digging for sleaze; this is a legitimate enquiry into the motives of someone bent on destroying a vulnerable woman, who is almost a client, and definitely a friend now.

‘Why?’ she asked aloud. ‘Was he on the take, himself?’

‘Nothing was ever proved,’ Antony said, making her excitement shrivel. ‘Even this government wouldn’t have given him his peerage if it had been. But Bee Bowman might well find someone willing to pass on all kinds of useful gossip if she dug about a bit. I thought you’d like to let her know.’

‘I will. Thanks.’

‘And, Trish, it would be better if it were
she
asking that sort of question, not you. It’s hardly suitable for a member of the Bar to go round muckraking.’

That horrible word again, she thought.

Her determination to beat Simon Tick rose another notch. It wasn’t only Bee he was threatening; it was her own self-respect. She’d fought too hard for that to let it go lightly. He had to be persuaded to withdraw his claim, even if that did involve some shit shovelling.

‘How is Bee?’ Antony went on, swinging his legs off the desk and reaching for a pile of papers.

‘Stressed,’ Trish said, using the mildest word available.

‘To breaking point?’

‘Not quite. Not yet, anyway, but if this business drags on much longer she could be. She told me about her sister’s death and her husband’s illness. No wonder she waits for the next disaster to happen.’

‘There was her mother too,’ he said idly.

‘What? What happened to her mother?’

‘Didn’t she tell you? Ah. Still trying to protect the old besom, I suppose, even though she’s been dead for years. But you ought to know. Not long after the crash, she retreated into a mad fantasy world, leaving Bee to pick up the pieces and look after the family. Bee was still only in her teens, and it screwed up her education.’

‘What kind of fantasy world?’

‘The old girl convinced herself she was an aristocrat, slumming it with her despised husband and children. She forced him to sell his machine-tool factory in Coventry and buy that house Bee now struggles to keep up. For the rest of her life, she sat in her chair in the drawing room, ploughing through
Queen
and
Tatler,
and later
Hello –
any magazine with photographs of the rich and famous – and pretending to be one of them.’

‘Weird!’

‘You’re telling me. That barn of theirs in the garden is stuffed to the roof with decades’ worth of her mags. Presumably Bee can’t face the effort of lugging them out and burning them.’

‘Antony, why didn’t you tell me all this before you dumped her on me?’

‘I don’t know.’ He managed to look a little ashamed of himself. But only a little. ‘Perhaps I wanted you to like her before you realised how bizarre she can be. Was I unfair?’

‘Yes, you were,’ she said. ‘As if I haven’t got enough to worry about.’

‘You’ll sort her out. You always do. Now, I must get on. I’ve a lot to do.’

What about me? she thought. Fighting her outrage, she was about to turn into her own room when she saw Steve, the head clerk, signalling from the end of the passage.

‘This was delivered by hand about five minutes ago,’ he said, offering her a stiffened brown envelope of the kind that usually contains photographs. The words ‘Strictly Private and Confidential. Addressee Only’ were written on it in thick black marker pen. ‘The man who brought it wanted to wait until he could put it into your hands himself. I explained to him that in this world of sin and woe we are accustomed to dealing with highly confidential paperwork and that he need have no qualms whatsoever about entrusting this packet to me.’

‘Thanks, Steve.’ She didn’t smile at his mangled Churchillian quotation. ‘I’ll deal with it.’

He looked disappointed at her dull response, then a vulpine smile creased his thin features. ‘Ah, here’s Mr Anstey, just back from court. I hear from the solicitors that he’s doing spectacular work on Maltravers v. Atkins. You should look in while you’re not too busy and watch him. You might learn a thing or two.’

‘Thanks, Steve.’ Trish managed to smile. Robert Anstey always enjoyed trailing his supposed superiority in front of her. ‘I learned all that Robert can teach me long since.’

‘Sure about that, are you, Trish?’ said the man himself from just behind her.

She turned to see him with his gown bunched over his arm and a triumphant smile on his face.

‘Absolutely certain, dear boy. Not that there ever was much you could do that I couldn’t.’ She patted his cheek in as patronising fashion as she could manage, then said in her own voice and idiom, ‘See, I’m a good student.’

He laughed, for which Trish gave him another tick of approval in her mental inventory. These days she even quite liked him. Most of the time anyway. In fact, his privileged past often came in useful when she needed information about the world in which he had grown up.

Now she came to think of it, he might be able to tell her something useful about Jeremy Marton’s background. Robert was too young to have known Jeremy himself, but he probably had godfathers or uncles who had. Trish wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of a public request for help now, but she’d have a go later.

Back in her room, Nessa had replaced the garage case papers on Trish’s desk and was ploughing through the preliminary documents she was cross-referencing for Clotwell v. Markham. Trish ripped open the envelope to see a red plastic computer disk, a bundle of press cuttings, and a note.

‘Shit,’ she said aloud, then quickly added, ‘Sorry, Nessa. I was just surprised by something.’

She leafed through the small pile of cuttings, most of which showed pictures of groups of people at things like race meetings, boxing matches or the opening of a new club. There were no records of private parties, only public occasions to which anyone with money could get access. The captions beneath the photographs all included at least one person called Slabb, along with celebrated names from the worlds of sport, politics and show business.

The Slabb women were all glamorously dressed – in clothes that tended towards the tight and sparkly – and distinctly beautiful. The men were less noticeable. Trish looked with interest at one picture of Jack Slabb at a boxing match, seeing from the date at the bottom of the page that it was only four years old.

A glossy 8 × 10 print slipped out from between the cuttings. It showed a ravishingly beautiful short-haired black woman, who was vaguely familiar. Trish turned it over to see the name Samantha Lock printed on the back, above the logo of a well-known model agency. Puzzled, thinking that Benedict must have included the photograph by mistake, Trish went back to the cuttings.

The last one explained the glossy print. The newspaper photograph, which was dated only two months ago, showed the same woman. This time, looking less dramatic but equally beautiful, she stood beside a man captioned as Johnnie Slabb. He was the right age to be Jack’s son or nephew and looked like him, in a longer, thinner kind of way. In the accompanying text, Trish read that Sam Lock, who had been a middle-ranked model for most of her life since starring in a couple of nappy
commercials as a baby, was now heading for the big time; she was up for a part in a long-running soap opera.

Still looking down at the model’s face, Trish reached for her phone to call Caro.

Back home, Trish found David in a panic because he’d lost his rugby boots and he was supposed to be playing tomorrow to practise for the match on Saturday.

‘How come you didn’t know before?’ she said, in a voice kept deliberately calm to avoid adding to his frenzy, but she was worried. First the phone, now this. Was the head teacher wrong about what was going on in his year? Was he the subject of a deliberate hate campaign? Or was this just pre-pubescent carelessness?

‘I stuffed everything in my bag after last week’s game, Trish, and I forgot to give you the shirt and shorts to wash. So I was going to do that now, and when I got them out of my bag, I felt it was too light. The boots weren’t there.’

‘They must be somewhere in your room. Let’s go and look. There are usually enough piles of stuff to hide ten pairs of giants’ boots.’

‘I’ve already looked,’ he shouted. ‘I tell you, they’re not there. I won’t be able to play, and Mr Jackson’ll be angry because of the match.’ His voice dropped and his eyes slid sideways. ‘And I’m frightened of him.’

‘We can get you more by Saturday, if they are really lost,’ Trish said, storing the important information about Mr Jackson to deal with when this particular panic had been sorted. ‘But are
you sure you didn’t leave them in your locker? They could have been very muddy after the last game.’

‘I
always
put them in my bag, even when they’re muddy. You know I do. You shouted at me once because you couldn’t get the mud out of the shirt seams.’

Stricken with the knowledge that a tiny moment’s irritation could loom so large in David’s memory, Trish tried to hug him. He evaded her grasp. She was left with her arms outstretched, feeling a fool.

‘I’ll write a note for you to give to Mr Jackson,’ she said, ‘which will stop him shouting at you. And we’ll buy you some more boots on Thursday or Friday. You mustn’t worry so much, David.’

He kicked the rug. Still staring down at it, looking as though he hated it, he said, ‘Boots cost a lot. Like my phone did.’

‘I know. Don’t worry too much about that either.’ She thought of the head’s assurance that there was no bullying, and knew she’d have to phone again. ‘David, is there anyone at school who might have taken them – deliberately I mean?’

He shook his head.

‘You would tell me, wouldn’t you, if you were worried about something?’

He kicked the kilim again. ‘I did. I’m worried about what Mr Jackson is going to say when I can’t play because I haven’t got any boots.’

‘I know. And I’ll sort that. Trust me, David.’

A faint smile lightened the gloom in his eyes, and hints of the confidence she loved showed in his emerging smile and in the squaring of his shoulders.

‘Trish?’

‘Yes, what is it?’

‘Mr Thompson says that even though the Slabbs were once powerful criminals in South London, they don’t exist any more, and so you’re not to worry about them.’

She squatted on her heels so that she could look up into David’s face, searching it for signs of what was going on in his mind.

‘What do you know about the Slabbs?’

‘Nothing.’ His dark eyes looked straight into hers, which was reassuring. ‘But I heard you asking George about them. Mr Thompson knows everything, so I asked him when he was doing break duty last week.’

‘He’s the history teacher, isn’t he?’ Trish said, trying to think of a way of telling David why he mustn’t repeat anything she and George said in private, without frightening him. She wondered whether he was offering her this bit of information to make up for his carelessness with the boots and phone.

‘He says the Slabbs are nothing to worry about these days. Twenty years ago might have been different. But not now.’

Trish smiled. ‘He sounds like a really sensible bloke.’

David’s face lightened a little more, but he said he didn’t want a toasted sandwich for tea. Trish knew what that meant: they both dealt with anxiety by not eating.

‘OK,’ she said lightly, determined not to make a fuss. ‘We’re having chicken for supper, so I’d better go and make a start on that. Have you finished your prep?’

His soft black hair flew around his face as he shook his head, staring at the floor again. She knew he hadn’t even started it. She let one hand rest on the top of his head for a moment.

‘In that case, I’ll get out of your way and get supper going. It should be ready by the time you’re finished.’

Heavy footsteps on the iron staircase outside made them both look at each other in surprise. The sound of a key in the lock turned it to astonishment. George had rarely appeared before eight o’clock in the evening. But it was him.

‘Hi, guys!’ he said, dropping his briefcase by the door and unwinding the blue checked scarf David had given him for his birthday.

‘How come you’re here so early?’ Trish asked.

‘The deal came through today. We won.’

‘Hey, fantastic!’ David said. Trish saw a real smile making him look happier than he had all evening.

‘It’s only chicken for supper,’ she said. ‘I’d have got something much more glamorous if I’d known we were in for a celebration.’

‘Chicken will be fine.’ George kissed her. ‘So long as you let me make the gravy.’

‘What’s wrong with my gravy?’

George looked at David, then they chanted in unison, ‘What isn’t wrong with it?’

‘Chauvinist swine,’ Trish said, enchanted to see David’s pleasure. Maybe there wasn’t anything too bad going on at school after all. ‘OK, I’ll hand over the kitchen to the pair of you at gravy time. But David hasn’t finished his homework yet, so we mustn’t distract him.’

George raised his eyebrows and gestured towards the spiral staircase. Trish nodded. ‘You go on up and I’ll bring the bottle when I’ve dealt with the oven.’

He had taken off his shoes by the time she got to her bedroom, and was lying comfortably on his side on the bed. Trish put the opened bottle on the chest of drawers beside the glasses, and walked round the bed to kiss him properly.

‘You look a lot more human,’ she said. ‘It must have been a stinker of a deal.’

‘It was. I’m not surprised Katey couldn’t cope. But winning has given her a lot of oomph, so she’ll do better next time.’ He watched Trish return to the chest of drawers to pour the wine. ‘It’s also reminded me why I liked client work so much, even when the clients are difficult. I’ve missed concentrating on it.’

‘I know you have. But the kudos of being senior partner …’

‘Isn’t worth the boredom. I’ve been thinking that I might step down at the end of this financial year and go back to real work.

Trish thought of his exhaustion on Friday and wondered if that was wise. To have been senior partner in your early forties, then step back and watch a younger colleague take the leading role could be hard. But George would have thought of all that and would hate to be nannied with her warnings, so she decided to say nothing.

‘It’s partly David,’ he said, as though he understood her doubts.

‘That’s too cryptic for me.’ She brought his glass and put it on the table at his side of the bed. ‘What does it mean?’

‘Rushing about with him has reminded me that I’d forgotten how to play.’ He looked at her with an expression that seemed to mix teasing with wistfulness. ‘You and I have got awfully grown-up these last few years, Trish.’

‘I suppose we have. It seemed an important thing to do,’ she said slowly, looking back over her struggles to make herself secure in every possible way. She tried to work out what he was really telling her. ‘But does half-killing yourself on deals like this last one constitute playing?’

‘In a way.’ He pushed his fingers through his hair, which made him look years younger. ‘I suppose it’s because David’s reopened bits of me I sealed up years and years ago. I’m not really as old as I seem. Humour me, Trish.’

‘You’re not feeling ill, are you?’

‘Certainly not. Have a drink. This is jolly good vino.’

The old-fashioned slang told her that his confidences were at an end – for the moment anyway.

 

Later, they sat companionably either side of the big open fireplace, reading the newspapers and desultorily chatting whenever anything occurred to them.

‘Can we watch
Newsnight
?’ George said at half past ten. ‘There may be something on my deal.’

Trish turned on the television, only to realise they’d missed
the introduction and so had no idea whether his clients would feature or not. It didn’t worry her much; she was always happy to listen to politicians and businessmen being made to squirm as they explained their actions.

One item centred on the government’s new housing bill. Trish was delighted to be told that Lord Tick would be putting the government’s point of view, while someone called Serena Markley would be speaking on behalf of one of the big charities. The camera panned first to one side, then the other, showing the two speakers.

Tick looked as sleek and smiling as a dolphin. His voice was richer than it had been when they’d met in the park, and he used it well. At one moment she felt as though he was talking directly to her, sharing her emotional response to the injustices of the world.

Any jury would love him, she told herself. And with Bee so nervous and weepy, he could wipe the floor with her in court. We can’t let it get that far.

‘That’s all very well,’ Serena Markley said on screen, her acerbic tone making Lord Tick seem even smoother but less genuine, ‘but words cost nothing, and they protect no one. There is less public housing built now than at any time since the war. Waiting lists are getting longer, and people are suffering.’

‘Of course people are suffering. But that’s mostly the result of the right-to-buy legislation. It will take decades to rebuild what was squandered then.’ He looked more than pleased with his response. Was he imagining the party whips’ congratulations on his performance?

‘It’s good to know how much you care for the disadvantaged,’ he went on. ‘I shall look forward to your support as I work to minimise suffering caused by poor housing all over the country.’

A familiar humming noise issued from between George’s closed lips. Trish saw he’d fallen asleep again. She pulled at his shoulder.

‘Wake up and come to bed, George. You will stay tonight, won’t you? You’re far too tired to go back to Fulham.’

‘Must just wait in case there’s a bit about the deal.’

‘You won’t even notice if there is; you’ll be asleep.’

‘I always wake up when a familiar name is mentioned. You go on up; I’ll follow. Ah, here were are.’ He sat up, instantly alert, looking at the screen. ‘Off with you, Trish.’

She left him, to shower under water as hot as she could bear, thinking about Simon Tick and what Antony had told her, and how she might uncover more of the man behind the image.

 

Sam came round in the dark. For a second she thought she’d dreamed it all, then she moved and felt pain screaming down her back and arms again. Something warm and wet oozed over her hand as the plastic ties they’d used on her wrists cut deeper into her flesh. She’d told them everything as soon as they asked, so why hadn’t they let her go?

Barely breathing, she listened to the silence all round her. When she was sure there was no one else anywhere near her, she had one more go at trying to get free, pushing against the pain that clawed at her every time she moved. All that happened was the plastic ties cut even deeper into the wounds in her wrists and ankles. More blood seeped over her skin. How could you hurt this much and still be alive?

She used her sore, swollen tongue to stroke the bits of her mouth that were hurting the most. It didn’t help. Just like it hadn’t helped to tell them how she and DC Taft had met. They’d hit her every time she said anything and every time she refused to speak.

‘You think you can make us believe that Johnnie gossiped to you
in a pub
so loud an off-duty copper heard? Don’t make me laugh.’ That’s what one of them had said. ‘Don’t make me laugh.’ Over and over again, while the other one was hitting her in the face.

‘You won’t be able to work again if you go on making us do this. Bruises heal up. But it’ll get worse, you know, if you don’t tell the truth. No more modelling. No telly.’

‘I
am
telling the truth.’ She’d screamed it then, and that had made them hit her all the harder. So she’d told the whole story all over again, right from the beginning, as if they were all in it together.

‘So Johnnie’s bullying me in this pub, see, because I said I wouldn’t take no more messages for him. He says I’m in too deep now to stop working for him. And I say he can’t make me. And he looks at me like you’re doing and just says, “Wanna bet?”

‘I think I’m going to throw up, so I run for the toilet. I’ve just stopped heaving when this woman walks in and asks if she can help. I don’t know she’s part of the filth then, do I? Only that she’s kind. And safe.’

‘When did she tell you she was DC Stephanie Taft?’ shouted one of the men while the other one hit her across the mouth again.

‘Soon.’

‘When?’

‘I don’t know. I can’t remember.’ Crack. His hand landed across her cheekbone and her head jerked back so hard she hit the back of it on the chair.

‘She said she could help me. That working with her was the only way I’d ever get out from under Johnnie and the others. Then she wanted evidence.’

‘Slag.’

She tensed for the fist in her mouth. When she could speak again, she hurried on, ‘At first I said I couldn’t get her anything. But she said it was the only way of getting free. So I went back to Johnnie and asked him to forgive me for what I’d said. He slapped me about a bit, then he said he’d see how well I behaved before he decided if he’d take me back.