Out of the Dark (10 page)

A few of the red and purple cushions needed plumping up, and she switched on some of the lamps to make the light softer. It felt strange then to sit quietly on one of the big black sofas and have time to stare around the flat as though with a stranger’s eyes. Looking at the Nina Murdoch painting of a road rushing away into the vanishing point under a starkly rendered angular bridge, Trish let herself admit that she was lonely.

Odd that it had taken her so long to understand how much of a space George filled in her life. Odd, too, that she’d insisted on keeping parts of it free of him, especially now that she knew he was not the invulnerable threat he’d occasionally seemed. But even as she contemplated moving into his Fulham house with its valuable antiques, or maybe a bigger version they might buy together, she knew she couldn’t do it. Whatever the reason, she needed these lonely, echoing spaces for protection.

Footsteps on the iron staircase outside stopped her worrying about her own selfishness. She resisted the temptation to rush over and open the door, waiting until Caro knocked. But she soon saw that she wasn’t the only one in need. Caro, who was never demonstrative, flung her arms round Trish.

Her body felt suprisingly soft for someone who looked so muscular, but her arms were hard as they clung for a second. Trish wondered what Jess was up to, but she knew better than to ask.

‘It’s great to see you, Trish.’ Caro advanced into the room with a jaunty stride that only made her depression more obvious. ‘You do have a terrific flat. I couldn’t believe it, you know, when you first told me you lived here, a rich
brief like you! All I knew about Southwark then was the crime figures. Silly me.’

It wasn’t like Caro to chatter either. Maybe it was the streets outside, with their weird loitering figures that had spooked her. Trish patted her on the back and asked if she’d like tea, coffee, wine, brandy or a mixture.

‘Wine, please,’ she said, sounding more normal. ‘You don’t look so good either. What’s up?’

‘Apart from suddenly being made aware that everyone else thinks I live in the middle of some kind of war zone, you mean?’ Trish tried to make a joke of it, but the humour didn’t come through.

Caro looked surprised. ‘Is that why you’re so jittery?’

‘Not entirely. I …’

‘Come on, Trish. Are you ill?’

Caro sounded so affectionate and so sensible that Trish found herself talking about the miscarriage and how difficult it was going to be to tell George. Caro’s arm was round her shoulders again by the end of the story, but this time it felt like the kindness of a strong friend, not the clinging of a needy supplicant.

‘You’ve got to tell him. And you’re right that you can’t do it in an email. Wait till he’s back.’ Caro let her arm drop to her side and swivelled on the sofa so she could examine Trish’s face. ‘And quite frankly, I don’t think he’ll be surprised. He’ll see that something’s wrong the minute he gets here. You look like a ghost.’

‘That’s encouraging! Now it’s your turn. How are you?’ Trish hadn’t touched her wine. She felt as though she’d had more than enough already.

‘I’m fine. It’s just that there isn’t enough time for both life and work, and I’ve got far too much work anyway, but then that’s nothing new. I can’t stay long, so tell me what else is bothering you. I can’t believe it was the miscarriage that made you ring me.’

‘No.’ Trish walked towards the window overlooking the
street. Staring down at the spot where David had been almost killed, she told Caro what had happened there on Sunday night.

‘So what’s worrying you? That the driver should’ve been prosecuted? I can’t do anything about that.’ Hints of the kind of impatience that must have made Caro’s junior officers shiver had a different effect on Trish. She controlled her own irritation and spoke as reasonably as she always did when reminding judges of the aspects of the law they seemed to have forgotten.

‘No, of course not. I hope they’re not going to prosecute her. She wasn’t speeding and the child ran out of the dark in front of her. Neither of them had a chance. No, it’s the child I’m worried about. Look, Caro, I’ve probably invented the whole thing because of the state of my post-pregnancy hormones, but listen.’ She explained that David had had her name and address sewn into his clothes. ‘And that night, the police in Casualty and the medical staff obviously thought he was something to do with me. Since then I’ve not been able to ignore the likeness, either.’

‘Have you ever … ?’

‘No. I’ve never been pregnant until this time. I’ve been lucky.’

‘Or careful,’ said Caro with a smile. ‘You’re one of the most sensible women I know. Have you any idea who this boy could be?’

Trish stared down at the street, where she could just see faint black outlines of the old skidmarks.

‘My father’s always been erratic,’ she said at last. ‘And although he was in a relationship with a woman who couldn’t have had a child at the time David must have been conceived, he was also seeing a prostitute. She lived on an estate not far from here. It occurred to me that David might be her son – and his.’

‘It sounds feasible. What have you done about it?’

Trish noticed the warmth of Caro’s smile and voice and
wondered whether she was being interrogated. She’d once heard Caro explain her favourite technique: ‘Make friends with them. Make them like you and feel safe with you. Be patient and kind. You get much more out of people by making them think you like them than by terrifying them or using aggressive body language to suggest you’re going to beat them up.’

‘I asked the boy if the woman who sent him to me was called Jeannie Nest, but it was clear he’d never heard the name before.’

Caro’s face didn’t change, but there was something about her that set Trish’s antennae quivering.

‘What do
you
know about Jeannie Nest, Caro? Have you ever arrested her?’

‘I don’t think so.’ She crossed her legs. ‘Honestly, Trish. I can’t remember if I’ve ever had anything to do with her myself, but her name has cropped up recently. Are you
sure
she knew your father?’

‘Yes, he … used her services nine – ten – years ago. But Caro, how did her name crop up again?’

‘Oh, just in a report on something else. Don’t worry about it.’ Caro’s casual voice was not convincing. Trish was about to press her when she hurriedly added, ‘Does your father still see her?’

‘Apparently not.’

‘Good. And you say you think the boy in hospital could be hers?’

‘Caro, what is this? You’ve got your official face on. And voice. What is going on? Where
did
you see her name?’

‘You’re talking about a lost, unclaimed, eight- or nine-year-old boy who was nearly killed in a road accident, refusing to say who he is and with some connection with a woman who—’

‘Who?’

‘Who you say worked as a prostitute. Is it any surprise that I’m thinking like a police officer?’ Caro’s expression
gave no clues, but its hardness made it clear she wasn’t going to reveal anything else she might know. ‘Tell me more about the boy.’

Trish gave up trying to make her talk. Instead, she did her best for David, suppressing all mention of her urgent need to stroke his hair and the other manifestations of frustrated mothering. Even so her breasts ached as she talked and she crossed her arms across her body to hold herself together.

‘Why haven’t you asked your father about the boy?’ Caro asked at the end. She picked up her wineglass and drained it.

‘Somehow I couldn’t. We’re still not on those terms, even after everything we went through when he was ill. In any case, it would be pretty embarrassing for any woman,’ Trish said, seeing that Caro was getting ready to go, ‘to ask her father if he’s been irresponsible enough to spray illegitimate babies around London, don’t you think?’

‘I wouldn’t know. I never met mine.’ Caro stood up, kissed Trish again and left the flat with her usual lack of fuss, saying, ‘I’ll see if I can find anything out for you.’

‘Thanks, Caro.’

 

There were no lights on in the flat when Caro got home, and the front door was still deadlocked. More disappointed than surprised, she let herself in, trying to decide what to do about Trish’s story of Jeannie Nest.

The name probably wouldn’t have meant anything if it hadn’t been for a bit of nick gossip about a DC Martin Waylant, which Caro had overheard in the canteen earlier in the day. A couple of visiting Drugs Squad officers had been talking to one of her constables about how the woman who’d just been found beaten to death in Hoxton had had the hots for this Waylant bloke. She’d spent her whole time making up stories of stalkers to get
him to come round to her flat so that she could get into his knickers, the poor pillock.

‘Lucky him,’ Caro’s constable had said, laughing. ‘Why’d he turn it down if it was on a plate like that?’

‘It would’ve been like screwing your granny,’ one of the visitors had said. ‘All droopy tits and an arse crawling down the back of her legs.’

Caro had wondered whether to intervene. If it had got much worse, she would have, but she’d fought enough hard battles with canteen-misogynists to know there was no point wading in unless you had to.

‘She wasn’t that old. Can’t have been much more than forty,’ the other Drugs Squad officer had said. ‘You know who she was, don’t you, Paul?’

‘No. Who?’

‘Jeannie Nest. You know, the woman who gave evidence in the Handsome trial. Maybe you’re too young to remember, but she was a bit of a heroine to anyone who was around at the time.’

‘How d’you know that?’

‘Waylant told me once when he was plastered. At the end of his tether, poor bugger. She was persecuting him by then, and he wanted to be rid of her, but he still thought she was owed for what she’d done for the law. He didn’t know what to do. Crying into his beer, he was.’

‘Well, he’s found out now, hasn’t he?’ A new speaker had joined in. Caro hadn’t recognised the voice. ‘D’you think he’ll go down for it?’

‘That’s sick,’ the first had said then.

‘Bollocks. It’s common sense. Sounds as if she’d turned into a stalker herself. Have you talked to the incident room about this?’

‘Don’t be more stupid than you can help, Smith. You’ve obviously never met the guy. He’s soft as butter. Gave up playing rugger last year after that bloke got his neck broken in the scrum. It wasn’t Waylant’s fault; wasn’t anyone’s
fault. Just one of those things. But he’d been there in the scrum, right opposite the guy, so he felt responsible. Couldn’t bear to risk it happening to anyone else and gave up. It was quite a sacrifice. Rugger had been his life.’

Caro had had her back to them, but it hadn’t stopped her listening.

‘They’re always the worst, though, aren’t they?’ one of the unfamiliar voices had said, sounding quite serious. ‘The soft ones. When they finally snap, they don’t know how to stop, so they’re more vicious than all the rest put together. I bet it
was
him who knocked her off. Didn’t you say the body had been beaten to a pulp, blood and tissue all over the place? You have to phone it in.’

‘Look – let’s drop it, shall we? They’ll know all about it by now. It’s none of our business.’

Standing in her dark living room now, Caro wondered whether she could legitimately ignore what she’d overheard, given that she’d had no formal reports of any of it. She’d never met the unfortunate Waylant and she had no idea whether the gossip about him and the dead woman was accurate. She had even less idea whether the victim really had been called Jeannie Nest in another life, or whether she did have any connection with Trish’s story. What Caro did know was that if she did pass that on to the incident room, Trish would suffer.

In her normal state Trish was as tough as she was clever, but even when she wasn’t white and jittery with the after-effects of a miscarriage, she was seriously screwed up about her father. Getting him involved in the investigation that must be opening up around the dead woman would lead to a lot of hassle Trish could definitely do without.

On the other hand, thought Caro, if there were any real suggestion of this Waylant being suspected of the murder, she would have to pass on Trish’s story. No responsible officer could withhold any information that might prevent a colleague coming under unjust suspicion for a crime like
that. Caro had no time for the corrupt or the violent, but she’d fight to the death to protect a decent police officer. Increasingly these days, it seemed to be the honest blokes who were taking the rap for the filthy few. If DC Waylant were one of the good ones he’d deserve all her help.

Even at the risk of sacrificing a friend? she asked herself, slipping back into indecision like a hopeless squaddie who couldn’t get himself over the wall in an assault-course.

Then the phone rang, releasing her for the moment.

‘Hello?’

‘I want to order a takeaway,’ said a drunken voice. ‘Chicken tikka masala, and some poppadums, and—’

‘You’ve got the wrong number,’ Caro said, glad it hadn’t been a summons to attend yet another brutalised victim. She raised her finger from the talk button and waited for the ringing tone.

The pause had let her complete her own private assault course easily enough. She set about getting herself put through to the incident room.

Trish woke to the sound of running footsteps. She couldn’t work out whether they were real or part of the dream in which she’d been trying to catch something that mattered. Each time she was nearly there, she’d trip just as her hand reached it, or lose her grip and drop it. She didn’t know what it was, a person, an animal, or something inanimate, but its importance was as clear to her as the danger it carried.

Her fear eased as she woke properly. She rubbed her fingers over her face and through her short dark hair, licking her lips to stop them feeling so dry. There was something about the sound of running that seemed nearly as important as the elusive thing of her dream. But she couldn’t remember what it was.

She got out of bed to look down into the street. The postman was ambling towards her building, pushing his trolley and as usual shrugging his shoulders to the beat of whatever he was listening to on his Walkman. Trish looked in the other direction and saw the source of the running sound disappearing round the corner at the end of the street. Just an early-morning jogger.

Thirsty, she shambled off to the kitchen to make some tea, pulling the long T-shirt further down her thighs as she passed the windows, in case, as George often said, there might be a balloonist outside trying to look in. Her flat was so high that no other building had windows on the same
level, but she could never escape the feeling that someone might see her through the glass.

God, how she missed George! It didn’t seem fair that he got to dream of them making love and she had to sweat through creepy nightmares.

Today’s T-shirt had blazoned across the front
Boys throw stones at frogs in sportlBut the frogs do not die in
sport
, which had always struck her as a message that ought to be implanted in the brain of everyone who’d ever been put in charge of a child.

As the domed cordless kettle roared towards boiling point she couldn’t help thinking of the absurdity of her flight from chambers on Wednesday. Even though she’d discovered a document that completely screwed up the case she and Antony had planned to make in court, there were still dozens of other pieces of evidence that needed to be cross-referenced. Her brain really was turning to mush in the post-miscarriage flood of hormones, and she couldn’t afford that.

Freed from something she didn’t want to think about, she made her tea and took it back to bed. She piled up the pillows and got back in. Using her raised knees under the duvet as a desk, she wrote herself a list of everything she had to do today, both for work and for David.

Top of the list was ‘Phone Paddy’. Caro was entirely right, she thought. It had been madness to go asking total strangers whether they’d ever had a child with him.

He wasn’t likely to leave for work for another hour, but she didn’t want to ring too early, so she put that on one side and listed everything she still had to check and sort on Nick Gurles’s case. She still hadn’t done anything about moving her money, she remembered, and added that to her list, too. It would be hell to work this hard and this painfully until old age, only to discover that all her savings had been swallowed up by hopeless financial advice.

The Internet bank accounts were paying most of the good interest rates at the moment, but she was even less inclined to trust their security against hackers than to believe in the attractive-sounding products of their terrestrial rivals.

It’ll be a stocking under the mattress at this rate, she told herself, wondering whether she might have another go at Nick Gurles, using the excuse that she wanted to ask his advice about what she should do with her own money. Grossly unprofessional, she decided. That’ll have to wait until after the case.

But she knew she ought to write to her existing financial adviser and tell him she wanted everything liquidated. That would take some time and when it was done, she could decide what to do with the proceeds.

The to-do list was satisfactorily long and made her feel nearly as efficient as if she’d actually accomplished something. She got up to dress, feeling more secure than she had on any morning since she’d lost the baby. The power shower had its usual invigorating effect and she emerged dripping but once more reasonably glad to be alive. She even gave herself time for a bowl of yoghurt and banana for breakfast and remembered to take zinc and Vitamin B.

The streets between her building and Blackfriars Bridge Road seemed unthreatening once more. There were even a few decent cars lined up along the pavements. Not the Porsches and Alfas – they’d be sharing the locked spaces under the railway arches with her soft-top Audi – but a few relatively modern BMWs and even a top-of-the-range Japanese sports car. Years ago someone had pointed out to her that you could always judge the safety of a particular area by the cars that were parked on the street. Clearly things were looking up in this bit of Southwark.

Reflected sunlight glistened on the river as she crossed
the bridge, and it lit all the best buildings in the piled skyline to her right, making the gold cross on the top of St Paul’s shine. Life would go on, and whatever it did to Trish she could cope. She’d learned that after she’d almost cracked up a few years ago and had had to take a sabbatical. She shouldn’t have forgotten it.

Someone was running behind her, panting. She moved out of the way, trying again to remember why running feet seemed so important. A man in a pinstriped suit, with a rolled-up copy of the
Financial Times
in his hand was thundering along the pavement. He gasped a thank-you to Trish as he passed. She wondered what he was late for, and why he was wearing the suit. Even in the stuffiest parts of the City these days hardly anyone wore those any more, or so Nick Gurles had told her.

Watching the man waving his pink newspaper at a taxi, Trish thought she could remember hearing running footsteps on the night David had been half-killed outside her flat. Had there been someone else in the street before it happened – someone who did not want to be questioned about his or her presence? Had someone pushed David under the wheels? This morning, even that thought couldn’t spook her. If there had been somone there, running along the road just before the accident, it was much more likely that he’d been in too much of a hurry to stop and get involved in what had happened.

As soon as she reached her desk, Trish added to the bottom of her list a note to ask David how he’d come to fall under the car. That would settle it one way or the other. She couldn’t think why she hadn’t asked sooner. Then she picked up the phone to talk to her father.

‘Trish, I do not have to answer to you for the way I’ve lived my life,’ he said at once. She hadn’t realised he had ‘caller identification’ on his phone and wondered why he bothered. Who was he trying to avoid?

‘I’m not asking you to,’ she said. ‘Are you frantic at the moment, or have you time to talk?’

‘It depends what you want to talk about. I am not going to have a conversation about Jeannie Nest.’

‘First I wanted to thank you for dinner on Monday. It was great. And I really liked Bella.’

‘That was mutual, thank God,’ he said, with a hint of his usual amusement softening the antagonism. ‘She said you’d stopped being such a stuck-up judge. Which made me even crosser with your cheeky phone message.’

‘It wasn’t meant cheekily. It’s too important for that.’ She couldn’t think of any way of dressing up the question that wouldn’t be offensive, and so she asked straight out: ‘Paddy, I need to know if you ever had another child – after me, I mean.’

‘Not that I know of,’ he said, sounding so Irish that Trish was instantly suspicious.

‘Not even around eight or nine years ago?’

‘Trish, will you stop it now! Is this why you wanted to know who I was seeing then?’

‘Yes. I’m—’

‘Now look here, this is too much,’ he said, not sounding at all Irish any more. He was obviously furious. ‘Have you been asking Sylvia if I made her pregnant? Is that how you heard about Jeannie?’

‘Yes, but—’

‘When will you learn to keep your long nose out of my life?’ He sounded really angry.

‘Sylvia Bantell didn’t mind in the least. In fact, she was very chatty. She said you used to talk about me.’

‘So?’

‘Even then, before we’d met again?’

‘Trish, will you stop this now? It’s horrible.’

‘OK. Then just explain why you didn’t tell me about Jeannie Nest. Was it because you had a child with her? Or was it because she was a prostitute?’

‘She was no such thing. Don’t be ridiculous. She was a teacher, for God’s sake! Who told you she was a prostitute?’

‘Sylvia.’ This was clearly not the moment to talk about the private detective.

‘That’s just jealousy and spite. Jeannie was a teacher, and a damn good one. Very beautiful, too. And certainly not pregnant by me.’

‘How can you be sure?’

‘She’d have had the Child Support Agency on to me like a shot if she had been. Wasn’t she all for women’s rights now?’ The Irish was worryingly back in his voice.

‘I went to her flat,’ Trish said, ‘and I couldn’t imagine you there.’

‘Sure and ’twas a terrible dump, but she’d some romantic-socialist idea that she’d only learn to understand the kids she taught if she lived like they did, saw them coming and going in their home life. So you don’t have to be so embarrassed. Whatever else I did, Trish, I never paid for sex.’ He laughed. ‘I never had to. And you can tell all your grand friends that, if you’re worried about what they’re thinking of your miscreant father.’

‘Oh, shut up, Paddy.’

‘That’s better. I was beginning to think there was something wrong wit’ you, Trish.’

He’d be calling her a colleen next, which was always the worst sign. ‘What happened to her?’

‘Jeannie? I’ve no idea.’

‘You just dropped her, you mean? Were you bored, or had you found someone else?’

‘Neither, so there’s no need to sound so scornful. She refused to leave that sink estate to live with me, or soften any of her high-minded rules to fit in with my life. After I was mugged there one night between her flat and my car, I told her I wasn’t going back. They nearly broke me arm, Trish, to get the money from my wallet. ’Twas the last
straw, and all Jeannie would say was, “Fine, if that’s the way you want it.” And wasn’t I so angry at her not caring about me arm and me wallet, and her prissy virtue and all, that I never spoke to her again?’

‘And you’ve felt guilty about it ever since.’

There was a pause before he said drily, ‘Are you asking me or telling me?’

‘Neither of us needs to ask the other things like that, Paddy. I know guilt when I hear it. See it, too.’

There was a pause before he said quietly, sounding much more straightforward, ‘If it’s any help, Trish, it was more than just a fling, what I had with Jeannie. Sylvia, she was just fun. I’d never had a woman with a voice like hers or a house like hers. I’d never been anyone’s rough trade before, and I enjoyed every minute of it.’

‘I can imagine.’

‘And she was a game old trout, too, but I didn’t ever love her, and when she kicked me out I never looked back. But Jeannie? Well, she was different. Losing her hurt.’ His voice was as English as Trish had ever heard it.

But you walked away from her even so, didn’t you? Just as you abandoned my mother and me, she thought. Good women worry you. Like George sometimes worries me. Is it your past that stops me trusting myself enough to live with him?

But she couldn’t think about that now. She looked sternly at the phone and said, ‘How old was Jeannie when you had your affair?’

‘Trish, will you stop this interrogation? Jeannie was part of my life a long time ago. She’s nothing to do with either of us now. Leave it.’

Trish’s computer beeped as a new email came through. She said she had to go, and Paddy didn’t protest. She read all her messages, then clicked on to Google, which was her favourite search engine, to look for Jeannie Nest. Nothing useful came up, but that didn’t mean much. If she had never
published anything or posted anything on the Net, there’d be no reason for her to be there. But if she were a teacher, someone should have records.

It didn’t take long to get the phone number of the National Union of Teachers, but they said they had no record of anyone of that name. Lots of teachers were leaving the profession, disillusioned by the bashing they got in the media and from the government. Maybe Jeannie Nest was one of them. Or maybe she’d found a man she wanted more than she’d wanted Paddy, married, and taken her husband’s name.

Trish looked up the numbers of all the remaining schools in the borough and rang each one, asking to speak to the school secretary. The first two produced nothing, but the third, a pleasant-sounding woman, agreed that she had known Jeannie and her two-year-old son.

‘I’m trying to get in touch with her again,’ Trish said. ‘I wondered if you could help.’

‘Of course not.’

‘I don’t mean I’m expecting you to hand over her address,’ Trish said stiffly, wondering whether it had been necessary to be quite so rude. ‘After all, I’m a complete stranger. But I did wonder if you’d forward a letter for me.’

‘No, of course I can’t. Don’t you understand? None of us has been allowed any contact with her since she had to move away after the case.’

There was enough bitterness in the announcement to make ‘the case’ sound serious. Trish wondered what kind of scandal had been involved and who had brought the action.

‘What was the case about?’

‘Who
are
you?’ asked the school secretary, sounding more suspicious with every word.

‘I’m a barrister, but that’s not why I’m trying to find Jeannie. She was a friend of my father’s. He’s had a heart
attack. I wanted …’ Trish let her voice dwindle, hoping to generate enough sympathy to make the woman talk.