Prey to All (19 page)

Her only other pause on the way to the conversation she didn’t much want to have was at the most private of the available phones.

‘Jess?’ she said, as soon as they were connected. ‘Sorry about dinner, but I’ve got to work.’

‘OK,’ said Jess. ‘Nothing’ll spoil. It’s all cold. I’ll have mine when I get hungry and bung yours in the fridge for when you’re free. Don’t kill yourself, will you, Angel? Remember, I have a stake in you.’

Caroline sometimes wished Jess wasn’t an actor. It was hard to tell whether she was hurt. Or angry.

‘Me, too. See you later,’ she said, and followed her guv’nor out into the sweaty dusk. The chosen pub had a garden, but it would probably be full to overflowing at this time of day.

 

Trish put down the phone with added respect for the young sergeant. Almost at once it rang again.

‘Dave here. I’ve had Sprindler’s on the line. They’re in a state because one of their clients, Deborah Gibbert, needs help and is begging to see you. It’s legal aid, and not your area, but apparently you’ve already been down to see her in an informal way. Can that be true?’

It was a loaded question. Trish knew how jealously Dave guarded his right to allocate his employers’ time. ‘It’s part of the TV work I’m doing for Anna Grayling,’ she said, quickly adding, ‘nothing to do with chambers. Why should she need a brief in prison?’

‘Apparently,’ Dave said, his voice leaking acid suspicion and disapproval like a corroded car battery, ‘her cell-mate has died of a drugs overdose.’

‘Oh, shit. Mandy. But she was getting better. What happened?

‘The girl took a huge dose of heroin, which caused her to fall into a coma. She came out of that, but mysteriously did not recover. Now she’s died of liver failure. The PM established that it had been caused by an overdose of paracetamol …’

‘Why didn’t they test for that at the beginning?’

‘I don’t know, do I?’ Dave sounded martyred as well as irritable.

‘They could have saved her if they had. But presumably one overdosed prostitute-junkie serving a life sentence doesn’t merit full toxicological testing. Bastards.’

There was a heavy sigh from Dave.

‘Sorry,’ Trish said, sounding anything but apologetic. ‘You were saying?’

‘While it’s possible that the heroin could have been cut with paracetamol, they think Deborah Gibbert could have given paracetamol to the young woman when she was high and not noticing what anyone was doing to her.’

‘How would Deb have got that much?’

‘She’s been given a lot recently for headaches. They think she could have been hoarding instead of taking it. You know how they do that, those women in prison: hold the tablets in their mouths as long as someone’s looking, then spit them out into a container.’

‘Yes,’ said Trish sadly. ‘But where would she hoard them? Hadn’t they had any cell searches?’

‘Naturally. But nothing too rigorous until after the heroin-coma. She was something of a trusty, I gather. They’ve torn the place apart now, of course, but they’ve found nothing.’

Trish’s heart sank. She knew what prison officers could do to a cell when they were frustrated in a search for drugs. She could understand their anger, but it tipped some of them over into the kind of vindictiveness that sickened her. There was no point in asking Dave what they’d done and how much Deb had lost in the way of torn photographs or broken possessions, so she concentrated on the facts of the cell-mate’s death.

‘But there’s no evidence of Deb’s involvement?’

‘No. But she has a record for doping and killing people after all.’

Trish thought for a few moments. ‘Look, Dave, I can’t get involved now, if I’m to go on with this TV lark, and it’s not my field. She needs a solicitor after all, not counsel at this stage. Tell Sprindler’s to send someone down with a holding brief to make sure Deb doesn’t incriminate herself now and we’ll try to work out something better in the morning.’

‘You won’t, Ms Maguire. You’re due in court at ten.’

‘Yes, Dave,’ she said meekly. As soon as she’d got him off the line, she phoned Anna to warn her of the latest twist in Deb’s story, phoned George to say she’d be back late in Southwark, and phoned her father to make sure he was all right and didn’t need her that evening. Sure of them all, she got back to work for tomorrow’s case. Not since her first year at the Bar had she ever gone into court underprepared. The memory of one humiliating fiasco would live with her always.

 

It wasn’t till she left chambers a couple of hours later that she realised how hot it still was. The dank, dark old buildings of the Temple didn’t overheat until much later in the summer. No direct sunlight reached her room, only a little grey light from a dingy brick-lined well. Outside, the sun had sunk behind the buildings, but there was still plenty of heat left to rise from the pavements and hover against her face. She contemplated walking home, then saw a taxi with its light on.
It was weakness that tempted her to hail it, but she was tired enough to give in.

George greeted her with a long, tall spritzer, almost pushed her into a recumbent position on her favourite sofa. She kicked off her shoes and wondered if she had the energy to wriggle out of her tights, too. But she didn’t. He said something about finishing off the dinner as Trish let her head slide back against the purple cushion and felt its softness cradling the ache at the back of her skull. His voice burbled on, telling her the news of his day and who he’d spoken to, and how his current cases were going.

She was listening, probably she could even have reproduced some of his news if she’d been challenged, but it was wonderfully peaceful to let it flow over her without having to concentrate. Her eyes closed. George’s voice had much the same effect as the pumping machines in the intensive care unit: rhythmic, safe, strong, comforting. He was in charge; she could let go.

She came to not much more than an hour later to see him grinning at her over the top of the
Evening Standard.

‘Hi, there.’

‘Hi, yourself,’ she said, blinking but not moving anything else. Then she ran her tongue over her dry lips. ‘Ugh.’

‘I took your drink away when it looked as though you might soak your front. Are you hungry?’

She thought about it, blinked, then nodded. ‘Um. Maybe.’

‘Good. Because there’s a nice pair of artichokes ready with a new sauce. And it’s quarter past ten. If you don’t eat now, you’ll never do it. And you haven’t any weight to spare.’

Trish was on her feet by then, bending over him to kiss him in gratitude for the tolerance and the cookery and the fact that he was there.

 

Caroline was so weary she was almost crawling by the time
she reached her own sanctuary. Jess was in bed and asleep, but she’d left a pretty plate of cheese-and-asparagus quiche and salad in the fridge with a note on it, saying, ‘Eat me.’

Caroline ripped off the clingfilm and ate with her fingers, stuffing in the food to get it down fast enough to deal with her hunger. Then she had a quick shower and slid into bed, her gut already aching with indigestion.

Jess half woke and stretched out a hand. When it met Caroline’s shoulder, Jess smiled in her sleep and moved a little closer. Caroline lay in the warm dark, with her legs stuck out at the side of the duvet and tried to calm down enough to sleep.

All the figures in the case danced on the inside of her eyelids like a nursery frieze. But each one carried the weight of her need to help Bill Femur. He’d been mashed up by the powers-that-be over the last case; he’d been pulverised by Sue’s departure; and Caroline thought he could be on the edge of a major breakdown.

Somehow she had to keep Steve Owler corralled; or at least out of the way so that he couldn’t see how near the edge the boss had got. And, of course, she had to find a lead to Malcolm Chaze’s killer – or at least the person who’d paid the killer. She didn’t like the idea of people supplying death by mail order, but it was the orderer who deserved the biggest punishment, not the supplier. Like it was the drug-dealers they ought to go after, not the consumers. And the punters, not the prostitutes. At least that’s what she thought.

Forms filled her vision. She was trying to work out the answer to one of the questions, peering at the box that needed a tick. Or was it a cross? She couldn’t see properly.

She flopped over, sticking her legs further out of the duvet. Catching sight of the clock, she realised she must have been asleep for hours.

 

Deborah Gibbert woke again and wondered how many
officers had flicked open the spyhole to watch her as she slept. She felt their gloating like a layer of grease all over her, and she hated them. The resentful dread she’d felt for her father was like a drift of chiffon compared to this all-covering goo. If she’d understood what it was like to hate when she’d been interrogated after his death, she’d have been able to convince the whole bloody world she wasn’t guilty.

Her back was agony from the disgusting, pavement-like mattress underneath her. The cell stank in the unmoving air. Stress always went for her tummy and she’d been up and down with the runs as though she’d eaten a dodgy Egyptian meatball like the one that had ruined a long-awaited trip up the Nile with Adam the year before Millie was born.

She thought of bloody Cordelia the last time she’d seen her outside court. Cordelia would probably be sitting in her shady courtyard sipping some pink champagne and eating caviare.

She had to get out of here. With Mandy dead and the screws all convinced she’d been murdered, life wasn’t going to be endurable. If the film didn’t work, she could always …

But Kate needed her. She couldn’t put her head in a plastic bag while Kate was still so vulnerable.

Deb had tried to phone her back after their row, but something had been wrong with the line and she hadn’t got through. There were only a couple of units left on her phonecard after the call to Sprindler’s.

She tried to turn over, but the mattress was even worse agony on her front. It squashed her breasts flat and pushed her back out of line. Her breasts were nearly as sore as when she’d first tried to feed Kate. Oh, Kate.

Her hard little head, covered in silky black hair, had pressed against Deb’s chest and her urgent gums had bitten hard into the already sore nipples. It had been agony, but worth it. There was no one in Deb’s whole life she’d ever loved as much as Kate.

No wonder bloody Cordelia was jealous. She’d always been jealous of everything. Jealous of their mother’s preference, jealous of Malcolm, jealous of the babies, jealous even of Adam, whom she’d professed to despise.

That had always been her favourite tactic. If Deb had something Cordelia couldn’t have, she’d affect contempt, to make it seem worthless. And for years Deb had been a sucker for that and believed she and everything she liked and everyone she cared about was crap. God, she was a fool. And Cordelia was a bitch!

Standing in the dock, listening to Cordelia’s hate, had been like standing under a river of tar that stuck to everything it touched, ruining it. Deb’s only consolation now was that their mother hadn’t been alive to hear any of it. She’d always done her best to protect Deb, but it had probably only made Cordelia’s hate worse.

An eye was looking through the door again, a gloating, pleased eye that promised more humiliation, more fear to come.

 

Adam heard Kate crying and looked at his clock. It was four in the morning. He knew he ought to get up to ask what was wrong. He lay there, listening to the sobs, half stifled in a pillow, trying to work out whether she’d meant to wake him. If she hadn’t, going into her room would be an intrusion.

He hoped she wasn’t going to wake the younger ones. He’d had an awful time with Marcus, who’d been struggling with his maths prep and hadn’t been able to bear to ask for help. Adam had tried unobtrusively to offer advice, and been blitzed with a stream of contempt from his son. It shouldn’t have hurt, that sort of thing, but it had. Marcus’s last fling had been the worst bit: ‘If you’d looked after Mummy properly, she’d be here now. It’s your fault.’

At that point, Louis had looked up from his books, his big
blue eyes flooded with tears. Between the two of them, trying to soothe Louis’s fears and Marcus’s inexpressible anxieties, reassure them both in their different languages that one day Deb would be back with them, Adam had almost lost it. He’d been tempted to yell at them that he had needs, too, that he couldn’t always be calm and kind and strong. Luckily he’d just managed to hold on, but he wouldn’t if he had to deal with Kate as well. She might need him, but he hadn’t got anything left to give her.

He strained to hear what was going on and was rewarded with silence. She must have got over it then, whatever it was. Perhaps it was a boyfriend or a spat at school. Adam turned over and tried to ignore the space on the other side of the bed. One day he might sleep well again. One day.

Trish’s head was buzzing from a difficult conference. Her day in court had gone well, but the two clients who’d come to see her in chambers afterwards had been in such anguish that she couldn’t now think of anything else. They wanted the court to force their local health authority to pay for experimental treatment for their daughter, whose leukaemia had just been pronounced incurable.

Tonight it seemed to Trish as though she would never get away from miserable families. If they were not tormenting each other, they were bludgeoned by fate or else by impersonal agencies, whose priorities could never match theirs. For the health authorities, there would always be at least fifty equally deserving cases to be balanced against each other.

She remembered the way Anna had involved her in Deb Gibbert’s case in the beginning. ‘Families being what always get you going,’ Anna had said. Or something like that. But didn’t they worry everyone? The hurt, the quite unnecessary hurt that washed about in the unhappy ones, seemed more important than anything else sometimes. Everything else came from it, after all; certainly most of the crime she’d ever come across.

This was the kind of evening when Trish needed George, but he was off on another frolic of his own, so she’d have to get herself back together again – and get her own supper. Do
me good, she thought, if I’ve got the energy to eat anything anyway.

She’d probably end up washing off the sweaty grime under the shower and taking a huge glass of wine to bed, to fall asleep watching a light-hearted video. She knew she shouldn’t have been quite so tired, but she’d been working on her papers most nights until well after midnight, and she was still angry with Anna.

Trish reached her iron staircase and put her hand on the banister. Suddenly the fifty steps up to her eyrie seemed like Everest. She hauled up one foot and put it on the bottom step. The metal reverberated under her heavy tread. She hadn’t been this knackered for years. So much for the summer meaning less work.

‘Hello?’ said a young, vaguely familiar voice, which sounded very scared.

Trish looked upwards towards her front door. A figure was uncoiling itself in the dusk. Kate Gibbert.

‘I say, are you all right?’ Kate asked, staring down in the dark.

‘A bit tired.’ Trish gathered her forces and achieved a smile. ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t here when you came, Kate. How are you?’

‘Fine. I’m really sorry to hang about, but I had to talk to you. And this is the only address I had. I tried to phone your mobile, but it wasn’t taking calls. And I … I haven’t any money to go anywhere else.’

‘How long have you been here?’ Trish had forgotten how tired she was and had almost reached the top of the steps.

‘Since five thirty. I sort of thought you’d be out of work by then. I didn’t realise.’

‘You’ve been here for five hours? Kate, my dear child, I’m so sorry. Come on in.’

Trish flicked on the lights and rushed to find wine and biscuits to put into Kate before she even tried to think what
real food there might be to cook. With a tin of Roka cheese biscuits under her arm and the bottle in one hand, two glasses and a corkscrew in the other, she came back to see that Kate was in tears.

Trish put down her load and offered a hug. Kate tried to relax into it, but they couldn’t get it right. Trish withdrew, wishing George was with her. He’d be just the man to deal with this. Trying to think what he would have done, Trish persuaded Kate to sit down. She found a box of Kleenex and dumped it on the black sofa, poured the wine and thrust a brimming glass at her guest.

‘Oh, thanks. I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t worry about it. You’ve been having an awful time, I know.’ Trish sipped some of her own wine, letting it trickle slowly over the back of her tongue and down her dry throat. ‘In any case, anyone would be in a state having had to sit out there on their own for so long, not knowing if I was ever coming. What did you want me for?’

‘I needed to talk. I couldn’t … I can’t tell my father.’

‘What?’

‘It hurts him if I talk about my – my real father.’ Kate looked shyly over the top of her wine-glass. ‘I don’t know if you knew, but my real father was the man who’s just been shot.’

‘Malcolm Chaze. Yes, in fact, I did know. I recognised the likeness.’ Trish smiled. ‘It’s not hard to spot when you know what to look for. I’m so sorry he’s dead. It must make an already difficult life hard to bear at times.’

Kate put down her glass and rubbed a screwed-up Kleenex over both eyes, sniffing.

‘It seems so unfair. You see, I’d only just met him. And it was … He was amazing. Dad, my ordinary father, told me the truth when Mum went to prison, but I didn’t think I’d need him … you know, Malcolm.’ She smiled shyly. ‘Then,
one weekend, after I’d heard he was going to work with Anna Grayling to get Mum out, I somehow thought I’d better meet him. I just wanted to talk. That was all.’

‘I know you went to his house.’

Kate looked astonished, her mouth opening and shutting like a hungry carp’s as she tried to ask a question. All the shyness had gone and her eyes were angry.

‘We’ve all been asking a lot of questions of a lot of people since he was shot,’ Trish said gently. ‘We’ve had to. I heard that you’d been round to Pimlico.’

‘Sorry. I didn’t think.’

‘I never had a chance to talk to him about you. Did you like him? Was he kind to you?’

Kate nodded, her eyes leaking again. She gulped some wine to try to get control but only made herself choke. ‘He was wonderful. He said he’d often wanted to find me, get to know me, but didn’t think it would be fair to unsettle me. He didn’t know if I knew about him, you see. He said he’d been watching me from a distance.’ Kate’s face was full of the kind of shaky pride Trish had felt when Paddy had first come round in front of her in the intensive care unit. ‘He said he’d found it hard to wait, but he hadn’t wanted to throw me off my stroke till after my exams next year.’

So he charmed you, too. ‘And did you ever see him again?’

Kate shook her head. But her eyes warned Trish there was more to come.

‘Or talk to him?’

‘Once or twice.’

‘When?’

‘Once was the night it happened.’ Kate raised her head. Her long straight hair flicked itself across her face as she moved, and she pushed it away impatiently. ‘The A-level English group came up to London to the National Theatre that night. It was the last week of term.’

Her voice rose towards the end of the sentence, as though to make sure Trish knew what she was talking about. Trish nodded.

Kate was chewing her lip and looking as though someone was poking a hot wire into the soles of her feet. ‘And I phoned him,’ she said. ‘In the interval. There was a phone near the loos, you see. I thought he might tell me how his campaign for Mum was going.’

‘That seems fair,’ Trish said encouragingly when Kate brushed a finger over her eyes. She shook her head again.

‘It was only an excuse. I was being selfish. I wanted to talk to him for me. Not her.’

‘Did you get through to him?’

‘Yes.’ Kate was staring straight ahead. The wires still seemed to be being driven up into her feet. Then she shook herself all over and produced a brave smile that didn’t convince Trish for a moment. ‘We talked for ages, nearly all through the interval, and he was … well, lovely, really. He promised he would get Mum out if it was the last thing he did. He said you were being brilliant.’

‘Was that exactly what he said?’ Trish asked, wondering who else he’d told. Kate nodded, apparently too full of her story to see the significance. ‘I don’t mean about me, but about your mother?’

‘And he said that when that had happened, he and Mum and I would get together and work out how to make up for everything that had gone wrong in the past. Then his doorbell rang. I heard it even down the phone. He said there was a motorbike messenger there. He could see down to the front steps from his study window. He had to go.’

Kate stared at Trish, blank dread in her eyes. ‘That must have been when he was shot.’

Trish felt wholly inadequate. She could advise on all sorts of legal and family problems, but she had never yet had to
console a girl of this age for such a horror. ‘Have you talked to the police about this?’ she asked, carefully avoiding any hint of doubt or censure.

‘No.’ Kate sniffed and rubbed the back of her hand under her nostrils. She remembered the Kleenex and cleaned first her hand and then her face.

‘I think maybe you should,’ Trish said, as calmly as though she were advising a brisk walk in good weather. ‘They need to know everything that happened that night. It’s a bit late now, but we could talk to them tomorrow. Look, why don’t I make you up a bed in the spare room? You can get some sleep and we’ll call them first thing in the morning. Now, does your father – I mean Adam, does he know you’re here?’

‘No. I left a note saying I was going out.’ Kate looked up. ‘The little ones are OK, honestly. A friend of mine’s sleeping over, so even if Dad was late they couldn’t have been alone.’

‘That’s fine. But he’s probably worried. I’ll give him a ring now. You drink your wine. It’ll help you sleep later. Are you hungry?’

‘Not really. But, please?’

‘Yes?’

‘If he says he wants to talk to me, I – It’s so hard. I don’t want to have to explain. Not now.’

‘Don’t worry. I’ll say everything that has to be said. You concentrate on getting some rest. I’ll be back in a minute with some sheets.’

Trish phoned Adam from her bedroom. As she’d expected, he was jittery with anxiety, talking faster than usual and sounding aggressively demanding. Trish explained her plan for the morning, adding that she’d see Kate into the hands of the police herself, and make sure she got safely to the bus or train that would bring her home.

‘I see.’ Those two words had come out slowly, leaden. Trish
detected understanding and distress in them, but couldn’t be sure whether she was imagining the menace. ‘Thank you. D’you know what triggered this flight?’

‘No. I haven’t wanted to ask too many questions. She’s in quite a bad way, but I think she’ll be better after she’s slept. If there’s no improvement tomorrow, I’ll take her to my doctor before we talk to the police. He’s very good. Now I must go. I’ll phone again as soon as there’s any news.’

‘I need to talk to her. Now.’

‘I think, Adam, that it really would be better not. She’s very tired, and very emotional. And she feels so guilty for upsetting you. Could you let her off, just for tonight?’

There was a brooding pause.

‘So be it,’ he said at last. ‘Give her my love, if you think that wouldn’t upset her too much.’

Trish briefly closed her eyes, but she didn’t protest at the sarcasm.

‘And tell her I’m not angry with her.’

That was better, she thought. That sounded almost sincere.

‘Sure. I’ll phone you tomorrow, Adam. Good night.’

With her arms full of bedclothes, Trish made her way down the spiral staircase into the great open living room. Kate was lying back against the sofa cushions. Her eyes were pink and swollen. There was still a lot of wine in her glass.

‘I don’t really like wine, much,’ she said, noticing the direction of Trish’s gaze. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘That’s fine. Don’t worry about it. It couldn’t matter less, and I should have asked anyway. I’ve got Diet Coke, if that would be any better. Or mineral water. Let me make up the bed and then I’ll fetch whichever you’d prefer.’

‘I can do the bed. I’m used to it.’

‘We’ll do it together.’ Trish led the way to the spare room. A few minutes later, as they were bending down at either side of the bed, tucking in the bottom sheet, she said, ‘Did your
real father talk at all about the time when he and your mother were together?’

It wasn’t fair to press Kate when she was in such a turmoil, but there might never be another opportunity.

‘Yes, a little. He said he’d come to understand that she was the real love of his life, but at the time when they were having their … when they were together, he was in so much of a muddle about himself that he hadn’t realised that.’ Kate looked up, hooking her long straight hair over her shoulder. ‘And he said that she never told him about me. Not till much later. He didn’t know why not.’

Trish wished she’d been able to talk to Deb herself about all this before she heard Malcolm Chaze’s version filtered through whatever censorship he’d applied for Kate’s benefit.

‘So, I asked her.’ Kate was looking older than usual and her voice had taken on a bitterness Trish hadn’t heard from her before.

‘When?’

‘When she phoned me on Friday.’ Kate’s eyes flooded, and she was a child again. ‘Last Friday. We were talking about his death. Dad sends her phonecards every week, you see, and she always phones me on Fridays before school.’

Kate dropped the sheet and stood up, staring at Trish. ‘She told me my real father had lied to me. She said she’d told him about me as soon as she’d had the pregnancy test and he’d said she had to have an abortion.’

Trish finished the hospital corner she was tucking under the mattress to give herself time to think. She wasn’t sure if she was angrier with Malcolm Chaze or Deb.

‘And when she said she couldn’t ever kill her baby, he said in that case it was her responsibility. He didn’t want to have anything to do with it or her. That’s what she told me he’d said. He called me “it”.’

‘Kate, he didn’t know you.’ Trish could see she wasn’t
helping. She tried again. ‘It wasn’t you he was talking about, just a responsibility he hadn’t expected and didn’t know how to cope with. Try not to take it too personally. Your mother wouldn’t want you to think like that.’

‘But she does. She wants me to be angry with him. She said it was important I didn’t go turning him into a hero. That Dad had looked after me and loved me, and that she and I owed him everything. That my real father had been selfish and mixed-up, and although she’d once loved him, she couldn’t let me believe in his lies now.’