Prey to All (21 page)

‘Did your father … I mean, did Adam know what your mother had told you?’

Kate sat very still. Her lips didn’t move but her eyes looked as though she was working out a complex problem in her head.

‘No,’ she said.

Caroline didn’t believe her.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Quite positive.’

Caroline looked at Trish, who wouldn’t meet her eyes.

‘All right. I’ll get this typed up and then you can sign it.’ Caroline knew she would have to send someone to interview Adam Gibbert again before Kate got to him. She already had his work address and phone number and had talked to him several times.

Kate was looking ill. Her eyes were dry again, for the moment, but her skin was the colour of uncooked potatoes and a few incipient spots showed up against the greyish pallor.

‘Would you like some tea, while they’re typing it?’ Caroline asked. Kate nodded.

 

As soon as the sergeant had gone, Kate turned to Trish. ‘She thinks I killed him, doesn’t she?’

Trish shook her head, and touched Kate’s shoulder again. It was a ludicrously inadequate attempt at comfort, but she
couldn’t think of anything else to do. ‘No,’ she said, wishing there were words that could deal with Kate’s difficulties. ‘No one in their right mind would think that.’

‘Then it’s Adam. I know she was suspicious of one of us. But he wouldn’t kill anyone. I know he wouldn’t. He couldn’t.’

Trish smiled and hoped it hid her thoughts. Whatever Kate knew or didn’t know about her stepfather, Trish was well aware how violent weak pleasers could become when driven beyond the limits of what they could bear. Kate’s pale beige skin flushed again. She was shaking. Her eyes were still red, but now they were quite dry. ‘I have to get home. How long is she going to be? I have to be back to look after Millie and the boys.’

‘It’s OK, Kate,’ Trish said, dreading the outcome of Caroline’s investigation. She couldn’t think of any solution that wouldn’t add to Kate’s distress. ‘When Adam gave permission for me to be the responsible adult with you when you gave your statement, he said he would arrange to have a friend look after the children. I can take you to the bus when you’ve signed the statement, if you like. Or you can stay up here another day with me. Get some proper rest without all that cooking and childcare.’

‘I need to get home. I need to talk to Dad.’

‘Kate …’ Trish stopped, wishing this could have been one of the occasions when the words fountained out of her brain without conscious control. Unfortunately today she was all too conscious and every word that suggested itself seemed worse than the last.

‘It’s all right,’ Kate said, ‘I’m not going to ask him if he killed my real father.’

Trish watched her fighting for composure and had some idea of the maze Kate must be treading towards the ultimate discovery of who and what her two fathers had been all her
life. ‘I know he didn’t. Just like I know Mum didn’t kill
her
father. But I have to talk to him about this. If he overheard my phone calls, he’ll know I was talking to my real father, and I don’t want him hurt any more. He’s been hurt enough already, Trish.’ Her eyes were welling again. ‘I have to get back.’

‘God, you’re brave!’ Trish couldn’t help the exclamation, but she was glad she’d made it as she saw Kate’s colour returning to normal and a tiny movement parting her lips. She shook her head, but she was – just – smiling again.

Eventually Caroline brought the statement back. Kate grabbed a pen and pulled the paper towards her.

‘No. You must read it before you sign it,’ Trish said, horrified. ‘Kate, you must never – ever – sign something without reading it first.’

‘Particularly not a statement,’ said Caroline, joking to warm up the atmosphere a little.

Even so, Kate looked scared and sat reading the typed sheets, stopping every so often to go back a line or two, as though she couldn’t concentrate with the two older women looking at her. Trish led Caroline to the corner of the room and started a quiet conversation about Caroline’s next planned holiday.

Between sentences, she could hear Kate breathing more easily. After about five minutes, she said, ‘I’ve read it. It’s all OK. I’m signing it now.’

Trish came back to sit beside her and insisted on reading the statement herself. Caroline stood on the far side of the table watching. Trish thought she could read pity and admiration in Caroline’s expression, but that might have been just because she hoped they’d be there.

‘Terrific, Kate,’ Trish said, as she put down the Biro. ‘I take it you’ve finished with us, Sergeant?’

‘Yes. Thank you for coming in, Kate. You’ve helped a lot.
Try not to worry too much, and if anything else occurs to you that you think might help us, will you ring me?’ She handed Kate a slip of paper with all her phone numbers on it, then added, ‘Me, or Trish. She’ll keep us in touch.’

‘Thank you,’ Kate said, gripping the piece of paper as though it was a safe conduct out of the police station.

When she was already half-way out of the interview room, Caroline said, ‘Trish, could we have a word later?’

‘Sure.’ She trusted Caroline Lyalt. And in any case, she had no information to reveal and no client with something to hide. The more questions Caroline asked, the more Trish would learn and the easier it would be to protect Kate.

As soon as they were out in the street, Kate said, ‘She
seemed
kind.’

‘She is,’ Trish said. ‘Now, would you like to come back to the flat, or shall I take you to the bus?’

‘I want to go home.’

‘OK. The bus it is. The sergeant was right, you know, Kate, you shouldn’t let yourself worry too much. You can’t change any of the things that have happened by worrying and it’s hard enough for you already.’

Kate stopped and turned. Her face was desperate. ‘But there is only me, now that Granny’s dead.’

‘Granny?’

‘My mother’s mother. She was kind, too, and she sort of took care of us all when my mother … when the police took her away that first time.
She
didn’t think my mother had done it either.’

‘Did she talk to you about your grandfather’s death?’ asked Trish quickly.

‘Not specifically, no. But I know she didn’t think Mum was guilty. And after she had to go home that time, when they let Mum come out on bail, she wrote to me every day.’

Trish felt like a hound that has caught the scent of a fox.
‘Was that usual? I mean, had she always written to you, or did it start then?’

‘Oh, no, she’d always sent me letters, but only kind of like once every two weeks or so.’

‘Have you kept the letters?’

‘Of course.’ The big dark eyes were welling again.

‘Do you think I could see some of them? Some of the ones she wrote in the months before your grandfather’s death?’

Kate stopped again. It was clear she didn’t like the idea.

‘It might give me ideas about how your grandparents lived, and that could help with the TV film,’ Trish said, carefully not suggesting that the letters might contain clues to the truth.

‘OK,’ Kate said at last. ‘But you will let me have them back, won’t you? They’re important.’

‘Of course. Now, we’d better hurry. I looked up the times of the buses and there’s one that goes in fifteen minutes.’

Trish bought her a ticket and saw her on to the bus. There was a taxi outside the bus station, so she hailed it and was back in her flat twenty minutes later.

Among the messages on the answerphone was one from Meg, tentatively asking for news of Paddy now that he’d been back in his flat for over a week. Conscience-stricken, Trish dialled her mother’s home number. It was her half-day, so she ought to be back from the surgery by now.

‘Trish, how lovely! Thank you for ringing back so soon. How is he? I don’t feel I can go ringing the flat. Or dropping in. It’s not like the hospital.’

‘You were so good to him, Mum. He seems fine. I don’t go in every day any more, or even every other. He’s threatening to go back to work, he feels so well. He swears he’s eating sensibly and getting enough sleep. I don’t see that there’s any more we can do.’

‘No. Probably not. Is Bella around at the moment? Or is she back in the States?’

Trish couldn’t speak. She had no idea her mother knew anything about the woman.

There was a laugh at the other end of the phone. ‘Oh, Trish. You don’t think I mind, do you? He doesn’t mind about Bernard.’

‘Oh, good.’

‘It’s a quarter of a century since he walked out. Of course I don’t mind. I’m only glad she’s around to look after him some of the time. I wish it were full-time.’

‘Why did he leave, Mum?’ Trish hadn’t known she was going to ask the question until she heard the words. It wasn’t one she’d ever put to her mother before.

‘That’s ancient history.’

‘But you were hurt?’

‘Of course I was. And humiliated. But that’s enough of Paddy. How are you, Trish-love? Still working too hard?’

‘Naturally.’ Trish felt better. ‘And getting ever more involved in this film project of Anna Grayling’s, in spite of all my attempts to get out of it. Look, Mum, I wonder if you could help me with something on that?’

‘If I can, I will. What d’you need?’

‘Some medical information. Anna’s being hopeless about getting it for me. D’you think one of your doctors might be prepared to look over some medical notes for me and see what he thinks about the condition of the people involved?’

‘They don’t like interfering in other doctors’ work.’

‘Even if it’s only to give me some advice to help stop Anna humiliating a practising doctor on screen?’

‘Maybe. I’d have to see. Mike Bridge would be the best. He’s a lovely chap, very kind and unflappable.’

‘Any good at geriatrics?’

‘He doesn’t do much. He’s too young to make the older patients feel safe. They prefer greyer hair and a few wrinkles in their GP and don’t see the benefits of recent training. But
Mike’s the sort of doctor who asks or looks it up if he doesn’t know the answer and that’s worth a hell of a lot. Send me the notes, with a list of questions, and I’ll get him to have a look at them for you.’

‘Is your fax machine working?’

‘Is it really that urgent?’

‘Sort of. It would help enormously if he could produce some answers within the next few days.’

‘OK. Fax the questions through. I’ll give him a ring, see if he wants to drop in for a drink on his way home this evening. He occasionally does that.’

‘You, Meg Maguire, are a jewel among mothers. I’ll go and see Paddy and will ring with a report.’

‘I didn’t need a
quid pro quo
, but that would be kind. I like to know he’s all right. Thanks, Trish. We’ll talk later.’

Trish put down the phone and sorted out the medical notes, switching on her computer to type out a list of questions to go with them. She wished her mother was on e-mail, but Meg always said that faxing was bad enough and that if anyone wanted to write to her they could do it in a civilised fashion with an envelope through the post. As Trish sat at her own computer, working on the questions, she realised that they boiled down to two:

1. Could a woman in Mrs Whatlam’s state of health have had the strength and enough balance without her stick to suffocate her husband?

2. Was there anything in Mr Whatlam’s galaxy of illnesses that could possibly have made him stop breathing or produced a cardiac arrest, and yet have left no evidence?

Trish printed off the pathetic list, faxed it with all the sheets of medical notes from the case files, then set off to visit Paddy.

Paddy seemed surprised to see Trish in the middle of the day, but pleased enough to let her in and offer tea.

‘That would be great,’ she said, following him into the kitchen. ‘I’m glad you’re not back at work. Meg wanted me to find out how you are.’

Trish knew she’d made a mistake as soon as the words were out. The air temperature seemed to drop by several degrees. Paddy plugged in the kettle with an audible grunt, as though the force needed was immense. ‘She’ll be sending me another bloody diet sheet next.’

‘Another?’

He gestured to a pile of glossy leaflets beside his fridge.

Trish shuffled through them, impressed all over again at her mother’s good sense and generosity. In the absence of any follow-up from the hospital or a visit from the community nurse, the leaflets should at least give him the crucial information about his condition and its management. ‘But these are great. She must have got them from the surgery. All this healthy diet stuff is just what you need and what that wretched hospital couldn’t be bothered to provide. I—’

‘Will you stop it, Trish? I had a heart-attack. But I’m better. I’m a grown man, for God’s sake, not a baby. Now will the pair of you leave me alone?’

He banged down cups and saucers on a gold-bordered
black metal tray. Trish looked more closely at the picture in the middle of it, to see lettuce leaves and flower petals, and a small, realistic slug.

Paddy tipped the kettle over the open teapot, splashing boiling water over the slug. He shoved the kettle to the back of the worktop with a bang, cracked down the lid of the teapot and picked up the tray.

By then Trish knew better than to offer to carry it for him, so she merely opened the door to let him take it through into the sitting room. He poured the tea, adding a good slug of whiskey to his own cup. Trish didn’t comment and was glad of the restraint when she saw him watching her. She stuck her tongue out.

‘That’s better. Now, Trish, it’s always good to see you, but I don’t want you here if you’re going to behave like my old mother – or spy for your own.’

‘Spy?’ Trish was outraged. ‘Meg wanted to make sure you were all right.’

‘That’s spying,’ Paddy said, definitely. ‘Now, tell me about your work or your fat lover. Anything but good advice on my health.’

‘Why
did
you leave Mum and me?’ She hadn’t meant to ask, but the question was out, and she couldn’t take it back. Listening to the silence, aware that she’d broken a taboo, she felt as though she’d been throwing stones on to a newly formed – and fragile – ice sheet.

‘Oh, for the Lord’s sake! Will you not leave me alone now?’

See what you’ve done! she said to herself. But it was done now; with the ice sheet cracking all round her, she could only go forward.

‘I’m not trying to harass you, Paddy.’ She looked down at the wet slug on the tray. ‘But when you were in hospital, nearly dead, you made me face all sorts of things I’ve been feeling for years without understanding any of them. Then
that day, when I thought you actually
were
dead, I – I need to get it all straight. Won’t you tell me?’

He sighed. She looked up at him again. He didn’t meet her eyes. Abandoning his tea, he poured an inch of straight whiskey into a glass and sat sipping that.

‘Your mother’s a saint, Trish,’ he said at last.

‘I know.’ She was glad he’d recognised that, at least, but it didn’t answer her question.

‘And I didn’t want to be married to a saint. In fact, I didn’t want to be married at all. But I didn’t know that at the time.’

Trish could feel her flesh tightening against the cheekbones and something like a steel rod holding her neck braced.

‘Not because I didn’t love her – or you. We had great games, you and I, when you were little and still liked noise and mess and stories.’

Trish nodded. ‘I remember some of them.’

‘But I didn’t want to eke out my life ounce by ounce, or be reasonable or tidy or middle aged. There I was – me – commuting to and from Boring Beaconsfield every day, tripping off the train at seven, sitting with your mother over a wholesome supper and a glass of water, for God’s sake, watching some awful soap on the telly with her and going to bed at half past ten.’

Trish couldn’t help smiling at the picture. His voice warmed in response and he sounded younger: ‘I tried, Trish. I tried hard, because I knew ’twas the life she wanted. But then I started stopping off for a quick one with the boys from work, and then I’d come home a bit the worse for wear and she’d get all hot and bothered if I woke you up to play – or disturbed your homework, once you were a bit older. And by the time we sat down to eat, the food would be burned or spoiled, but she’d never complain about that.’

‘No. She doesn’t complain. It’s a point of honour with her.’

“Twould have been easier if she had. But no, she’d just sit
there looking like a holy martyr, who’d never allow herself to raise her voice. Until one day I knew I had to make her angry.’

He stopped, looking right through Trish. She tried to remember if she had ever seen her mother lose her temper. Only once, she thought, and even then it had been a dysfunctional oven that had aroused her fury. Meg had stood in the kitchen yelling at the oven and kicking it. Even that had shocked Trish at the time. ‘And did you?’ she asked.

Paddy shook his head. ‘I couldn’t, however hard I tried. So one day, when I was drunk, I hit her.’

Trish felt her heart jolt, as though someone had thumped her in the chest. Paddy’s face was reddening and he was glaring at her, as though it was she who’d done the unforgivable thing.

‘And she still wasn’t angry,’ he said, still full of old resentment. ‘Or maybe she just wouldn’t let it show. Maybe that would have lowered her to my hog-like level. Wasn’t she always a one for trying to make me face up to my responsibilities?’

‘So, what did she do?’

‘She picked up the chair that had smashed when she fell across it, and put it tidily back against the wall. Then she fetched a cloth to deal with the blood from her split lip and said she’d sleep in the spare room that night. That was all.’

Trish fought for detachment, using everything she had learned in her excursions into family warfare in the courts. She couldn’t believe that Meg had never even hinted at this past violence, had even encouraged her to get to know the perpetrator. Her father.

‘And I suppose that drove you even wilder?’ She was quite proud of the cool steadiness of her voice. Her head seemed to be filled with cotton wool and there was a ringing in her ears. She realised she’d stopped breathing and made herself start
again.

‘To be sure. But I tried still to be the kind of man she wanted, and the father she wanted for you. I went on trying for another whole year. When I was drunk I didn’t come home. I couldn’t trust meself. But there were times in between when I did come back. And each time she forgave me and was such a perfect saint that I wanted to batter the patience out of her. So I left altogether. ’Twas the only safe thing to do.’

Anger was boiling just below the surface of Trish’s mind. She held it down as firmly as she could. She’d been manipulated into liking – even loving – a man who could beat up his own wife. She was the daughter of a woman who could put up with that kind of abuse, yet still be prepared to forgive Paddy and visit him in hospital a quarter of a century later. Trish thought of Deb Gibbert’s stories of the battered women she’d met in prison.

She wanted to be out of her father’s flat, out of his life. And she never wanted to see him again.

But she sat where she was, telling herself to grow up and stop being so melodramatic. She wasn’t an emotional teenager any longer. Her parents’ battles could never be her concern. Whatever they had done to each other was their business. It was ancient history. If Kate Gibbert could cope, at the age of seventeen, with everything that had confronted her in the last few years, then Trish could smile and be polite about this.

‘And do you hit Bella?’ she asked calmly, but not at all politely.

Paddy poured some more whiskey and drank it down in one noisy swallow. Trish saw he was making a point and recognised exactly why her mother had refused to show anger even as he was hitting her. That should have made it easier, but it didn’t.

‘No, Trish, I don’t. That was a part of a life – and a
relationship – that’s gone. And ’twas only ever the once that I really hit her.’

He waited, maybe hoping for absolution. But it wasn’t hers to give, and even if it had been, she wouldn’t have given it. In any case, she didn’t believe he’d lashed out only once. Men who hit their wives don’t stop after one go, however much they may weep and beg to be forgiven and promise reform after each bout.

‘I shouldn’t have married your mother and she shouldn’t have married me,’ he said, perhaps still hoping Trish would understand. ‘We loved each other once but that was never enough. We wanted different things from life. But that’s all I’m telling you now. It’s dead and gone and I don’t want to talk about it. D’you understand me now, Trish?’

‘Naturally. Thanks for the tea.’ She stood up, swallowing the last of it and bent to put her cup back on the watery tray. ‘I’ll see myself out. Take care of yourself. If that’s not too intrusive a comment.’

‘Now, Trish, don’t be childish. I’ll see you again, I hope.’

‘Call me if you need me,’ she said, over her shoulder. “Bye.’

She thought he looked a little forlorn, but that was too bad. He’d asked for it.

‘I notice that you haven’t moved in with that fat lover of yours,’ he said casually. ‘Or married him or had babies with him.’

Trish stopped, her hand on the door.

‘You’re a chip off the old block, so y’are.’

She let herself out, wishing she hadn’t brought the car with her. She needed air and exercise. And she didn’t want to get home too soon to face Meg’s questions. It would be almost impossible to conceal what she was feeling. Meg had a kind of extrasensory perception when it came to her only child’s moods.

There had been times in the past when she had phoned
from hundreds of miles away when Trish was in a particularly frenzied turmoil, asking quietly whether everything was all right. And Trish had never yet managed to conceal an anxiety – even a trivial one – if they were actually talking to each other over the phone.

It was years since she’d felt this rocky. Paddy’s heart attack had started the process, and the whole Whatlam-Gibbert affair was upsetting in itself. Families! she thought again, shuddering. She didn’t want to probe another single one. She’d had secrets and hurt and parent-child damage up to her throat. Perhaps she ought to switch to the commercial Bar. The rewards were much higher and the Angst must be less.

Whether she tried to switch her professional life or not, she had to clear her desk and fulfil her obligations to Anna and Deb, so she’d better get on with it.

She drove back to Southwark, avoiding the potholes, working out what more she could do to help Anna. Half-way home, she thought of a reason to go in to chambers, which would probably help get her back together and would fend off Meg’s phone call for a little longer.

Dave greeted Trish with a sheaf of messages and the welcome news that the couple whose daughter had leukaemia had been phoned by their local hospital to say the health authority had suddenly decided to fund the treatment they needed after all.

‘Thank God,’ Trish said. She’d been worried that by the time the case came to court the damage would have been irreparable. ‘That’s great, Dave.’

She walked down the dingy corridor to her little room at the back of the building. One day, if she did take up Heather Bonwell’s suggestion of applying for silk and got it, she might see about taking over one of the better rooms.

There were several voicemails on her phone, including one
from Anna: ‘Trish, I’m really apologetic about having taken so long to get the medical information you wanted. But I’ve done it now.’

Trish sighed. Typical, she thought, Anna takes weeks to do something and once I’ve wound up someone else to produce the information, she disgorges. Still, she might as well listen to the full message.

‘Here goes. In most cases of suffocation there wouldn’t be anything to show whether a pillow or a plastic bag had been used.’

I know that, thought Trish in exasperation. Even Phil Redstone got as far as checking that out.

‘There’s nothing in Mrs Whatlam’s medical notes to prove that she couldn’t have held a pillow over her husband’s face, but a practitioner who’d been treating her would be in a better position to assess it. There’s nothing in the notes to suggest Dr Foscutt’s evidence should be doubted, so you should assume she couldn’t have done it. Then my source goes on to say: are we sure the angioneurotic oedema hadn’t extended to the glottis? That can be fatal in itself. Does that help? I hope so. ’Bye for now.’

Ignoring the other messages and all the work she should have been doing, Trish switched on her laptop and opened the file with the trial transcript, which she had scanned into the computer when Anna had first sent it. She scrolled through until she reached the pathologist’s evidence of his autopsy.

Sure enough, there were details of the angioneurotic oedema, but no mention of its affecting anything but the victim’s face. Trish searched for ‘glottis’ but nothing came up, presumably because there had been nothing to report.

Her phone rang and she picked it up, absent-mindedly saying her name.

‘Trish?’

‘Meg, yes.’ All her questions about Ian Whatlam flew out
of her head, and the other, much more difficult ones sat there like sharp-beaked birds, waiting to peck away at the trust there had always been between the two of them. Trish breathed and smiled and hoped her voice would sound normal. ‘How did you know I was here?’