Gagged & Bound (22 page)

He shot her a very clear-eyed look, loaded with disbelief and disapproval. She reviewed the plans she’d already made for the holidays. After Saturday, which they were to spend with Bee
Bowman, David would be going to stay with her mother in Beaconsfield for the first week. Trish was to collect him from there on Monday, then drive him up to Center Parcs, where George would join them the following Friday.

Unfortunately Julian’s mother couldn’t help, so Trish phoned George. He was still in the office when she rang. She gave a highly edited explanation of what had happened, promising more later, then added, ‘So I don’t want him coming home from school alone, and because it’s the last day of term, they finish at half past two. I may have to be in court. Is there any chance you could fetch him and hang on to him until I’m free?’

‘If I can’t get there in time, I’ll make sure someone else does and brings him back here. Then we’ll both come on to Southwark in time for supper. OK?’

‘Fantastic. George, you’re—’

‘I haven’t time now. See you tomorrow. Bye.’

Much later when David was in bed, with half an aspirin to muffle the effect of his wounds, Trish fetched a spare disposable camera from her car and took a whole range of photographs of the broken bicycle and helmet. Putting the camera in one of the lockable drawers of her desk, she reviewed her actions over the past three weeks and tried to forgive herself. She could feel a lot of old self-hatred oozing up around her confidence, like acid sludge seeping around the edge of an inadequate bung.

A text-message bleep made her stumble across the room to get the phone out of her pocket.

‘C whre qstns get U. B crful,’ said the black pixels on the little screen, under David’s name.

Her hand tightened round the phone as though her subconscious wanted to crush it to powder.

‘No more questions,’ she said aloud, thinking of everyone she’d turned to for information in the last three weeks. William Femur’s warning echoed in her head.

Could this be the Slabbs? she asked herself. Wouldn’t David
and I both be dead by now, or at least in hospital with several shattered bones if it were? But if not them, then who? The real Baiborn? Lord Tick? Or someone else?

She’d talked to so many people, in so many different worlds, that it would be impossible to work out which of them could have decided she was so dangerous she had to be stopped with threats to the safety of the brother she loved.

For a moment she thought of going to the local police for help. Then she knew she couldn’t. It was easy to imagine some desk sergeant’s face as she tried to explain what she’d been doing and why. She wouldn’t even be able to tell the whole story because that would betray Caro and Stephanie Taft’s legacy too. And without real information there was nothing any police officer could do.

Only Caro could help her now. Trish tried all her numbers again, but still there was no response. The phone bleeped. Another text. Sweat broke out in her palms again. She wiped them on her trousers and reached for the phone. Looking out of the corner of her eye, she saw another message under David’s name.

‘He wnt gt up n walk nxt tme.’

The landline rang. She swore, dropped the mobile, picked up the receiver and said her name, hating the way her scared voice came out high and tinny.

‘Hi, I said I’d phone today,’ said a vaguely familiar male voice. ‘Charles Poitiers here. Is this a good moment?’

Trish felt her stomach muscles sag and deliberately stiffened them again as she tried to put all the guilt and fear out of her mind. ‘How kind of you to ring back so soon.’

‘I’m intrigued by Jeremy Marton’s story cropping up again. Are you a relation?’

‘No, although I’m in touch with his mother, and I’m helping his biographer with some research.’

‘Right. Well, OK, then. What do you want to know about
him? I’ve been retrieving memories ever since I heard you wanted to ask questions.’

‘I mostly want to know who his friends were.’

‘There I can’t help you, I’m afraid. Not much anyway. Even though we shared rooms in Christ Church in our first year. At the beginning I mainly saw men I’d been at school with. Jeremy was so obsessed with his African scandal that most of us kept our distance. He was left with the slightly erkish drones from his chess club …’

‘Erkish?’ Trish repeated. She knew orcs and oiks, but she’d never encountered erks before. Why wouldn’t her brain work properly?

‘I suppose one would call them nerds now. We called them erks. My sister might have been able to tell you more. She had rather a soft spot for him.’

‘Would she talk to me? Could you let me have a number for her?’

‘She died last year.’

‘I’m sorry. She must’ve been far too young. Was it … was it an accident of some kind?’

‘Cervical cancer,’ said Charles Poitiers. ‘No one had noticed the abnormalities in her smear tests for years and years. She knew something was wrong, but the doctors all pooh-poohed her fears. When they eventually diagnosed the cancer, it had metastasised all over her body. It was far too late to do anything.’

‘She must have had a terrible time,’ Trish said, his sister’s tragedy pushing away some of her own preoccupations. It wasn’t an unfamiliar story, and it made her furious whenever she heard it. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘Thanks. The rage still gets to me, even a year on. She occasionally talked about Jeremy, but I’m afraid I don’t remember much. They never went out or anything.’

‘Pity.’

‘It was mostly that she was grateful to him for helping her out of an embarrassing hole one weekend.’

‘Really? What happened?’

‘Boyfriend trouble. She always had troops of adorers did Gussie – she was that kind of girl; deb of her year; had her picture in
Tatler
every month – and they were mostly fine. But there was one real shocker. God knows what she saw in him, except a way of exasperating my mama, who could be a tad tyrannical at times. Gussie brought him to Oxford one weekend, intending to pick me up so that the three of us could go on to lunch with some friends of hers. They had a house near Oxford. Not quite Blenheim, but not far off.’

He paused, as though he expected her to say something, but she couldn’t think of a suitable comment.

‘At the last minute the boyfriend dug his toes in and refused to go,’ he went on. ‘He was a Trot of some kind, of course, but that wasn’t why. I think they’d had a row in the car and he just wanted to make her life tough. He seemed to expect her to jack in the lunch and take him back to London for beans on toast.’

‘How did Jeremy help?’

‘He overheard the tail end of the row, which was still spluttering as they got to our rooms. And he may have seen Gussie crying, which was rare enough to make anyone jump. Anyway, he volunteered to feed the boyfriend and look after him till Gussie was ready to pick him up on her way back to London. I couldn’t imagine how it would work out, but she had remarkable faith in Jeremy. He was a kind chap.’

‘How long did you leave them together?’

‘Hours. I was fretting about what we’d find when we got back to Oxford, but Jeremy and the boyfriend were sitting either side of a chessboard, happy as Larry, and apparently full of baked beans and beer. Gussie was so relieved she flung herself into Jeremy’s arms and gave him a real smacker of a kiss,
in spite of the boyfriend’s glowers. Jeremy blushed like a raspberry. It was very sweet.’

‘What a good story! What was the boyfriend’s name?’

‘There you have me. I can see him now, spots and Adam’s apple and all, but I can’t remember what he was called. I must be in denial.’

‘He didn’t have a weird nickname, did he?’

‘Like what?’

‘Baboon, something like that?’

‘Don’t think so. And I’m sure I’d have remembered something so odd. Sorry.’

‘Never mind. You’ve been terribly helpful. If you come up with anything else about him, could you bear to ring me?’

‘Sure.’

As Trish put down the phone, she felt like someone playing blind-man’s buff, with unseen but gleeful spectators shouting ‘getting warm; getting warm’.

Smells of damp and rot gushed out of the barn as soon as Bee opened its great double doors. Trish recoiled, but Bee was obviously used to it.

‘Heaven knows if we’ll be able to find all the early 1970s issues of
Tatler
and
Queen
,’ she said, ‘but we can try if you really think it’s worth it. I never imagined my mother’s mad squirelling would ever come in useful.’

‘I’m sure it’s worth it. If Gussie Poitiers really was photographed as often as her brother suggested, it is just possible that this so-called unsuitable boyfriend of hers will be in one of the pictures.’

‘And you really think he could be Baiborn?’

‘It’s a possibility. He’s the only contact of Jeremy’s I’ve heard about who might have been missed by the police and by Jeremy’s few friends. It has to be worth trying to find out more, so let’s get stuck in. I’m not sure how long your husband’s patience with David will last.’

‘Hours. I promise you. He’ll be happy with his rods and the river till the cows come home. David’s more likely to want to give up first.’

There wasn’t a lot of light in the barn. The sun that streamed through the open doors fell squarely on the section straight ahead, but the ends of the twenty-foot space were in heavy
shadow. Even so, Trish could see that the walls were stacked with bundles up to head height, and the space between filled with rows of carefully shrouded furniture.

‘There’s a lot of family stuff here,’ Bee said, embarrassed. Neither of my parents ever threw anything away and I haven’t had the time or the brutality to do it since they died. My mother’s magazines are all over there.’

She led the way down a kind of aisle between the stacks of furniture. Trish followed, placing her feet with care to avoid knocking into anything. She saw at least four old sit-up-and-beg bicycles, as well as tables, bookcases, old school trunks, rows of sagging sofas and piles of mattresses.

‘Here we are. It’s probably too much to hope that they’re in date order. We’d better start from opposite ends and just work our way through. I hope the dust won’t make you wheeze.’

‘I shouldn’t have thought so,’ Trish said, looking at the stacks of newspapers and magazines. They had been bundled into heaps about a foot thick, tied with rough green gardening twine. ‘Have you got any scissors?’

‘No. Damn. I should have thought of that. I’ll go and get a couple of pairs.’ Bee looked up at the high roof. ‘And I’d better get us torches too, or we’ll have a hell of a time making out the dates of these things. I’ll be back soon.’

 

Two hours later, when Bee said she really ought to go and do something about lunch, Trish felt as though her back might snap at any moment. She had dust in her eyes, two fingernails had broken, and her knees cracked with every movement. Her head was full of irrational fury with whoever had laboriously carried these newspapers and magazines from the house, instead of burning or recycling them like any ordinary human being. If they were so keen to keep them, why on earth hadn’t they bothered to stack them up in date order? There was no arrangement of any kind. The 1980s were muddled with the
1950s, and interspersed with random bundles from at least three other decades.

‘It could take weeks to find the right ones.’

‘God forbid!’ Bee said. ‘But I must go. With the MS, Silas needs to have his meals at regular times. D’you want to come and have a restorative drink while I cook?’

‘No, but thank you. I’d rather get on.’ She wanted to apologise for her unexpressed rage, but Bee had already gone and an enormous sneeze meant Trish couldn’t have said anything anyway. She turned back to her task, kneeling down to peer at the dates on the thin spines of the ancient magazines.

At last she found some from the early 1970s and carefully dismantled the stack so she could get at them without causing an avalanche. A shower of dead woodlice fell out as she pulled the stack away from the wall. The corners of the magazines had been nibbled by mice. Trish shook each one vigorously before she opened it. The corpse of a large stag beetle fell out and a live worm wriggled over her hand.

Tempted though she was to start leafing through the magazines in search of Gussie Poitiers, she thought she’d better disinter all the others of the right date before she lost heart. It was only when the ache in her knees threatened to explode that she gave in and whipped the plastic dustsheet off one of the sofas so she could sit down.

She had a pile of about twenty magazines, covering the months leading up to Jeremy Marton’s disastrous foray into urban terrorism. Her hands were filthy, but there seemed no point even wiping them when the magazines themselves were coated in dust, dead insects and mouse droppings. It seemed odd to find the inner pages still glossily pristine, and even odder to stare down at the endless square photographs of young men and women – children almost – in evening dress.

The women’s faces shone under hair put up into stiff, bulky arrangements, and their dresses seemed more like upholstery
than anything else. There were none of the spaghetti straps and thigh-high slits familiar from modern fashion pages or Oscar nights. Most of the floor-length dresses had sleeves and several had high, frilled necks. Even the Victorians had allowed themselves a lower cut for the evening.

Dragging her gaze away from the parade of constricted modesty, Trish read the captions beneath the photographs, tracking through the Hon. this and the Lady that until she eventually found the Hon. Augusta Poitiers, sitting between two lordlings in dinner jackets, with cigarettes in their hands. Gussie was laughing and leaning back in her chair, allowing her untortured hair to fall straight behind her like a sheet of water. She looked fun, and glamorous too.

The young lords were of no interest to Trish in her search for the Trotskyite boyfriend Charles had described, but she was glad to have found his sister at last. Reading on and on, Trish saw her many more times, often with one particular young aristocrat, a marquis, whose casually handsome face suggested he could not possibly have been designated unsuitable by anyone, whatever his character might have been.

Trish wondered what the grown-up Gussie’s life had been like before she’d been killed by ever-reproducing cancer cells. Had she kept the laughing zest she showed in all these pictures? Or had she grown staid and bored? Trish reached for another lapful of magazines, only to feel two slithering down over her aching knees. She bent to pick them off the floor.

‘Trish!’ David’s shout was urgent enough to make her dislodge all the rest as she leapt to her feet. ‘Trish!’

She tripped as she started to run towards the door to rescue him and crashed down, full length, with her head crunching against a set of fire irons.

‘Trish!’

Struggling to her feet, her forehead throbbing, she fought her way through the clutter towards the light.

‘Trish!’

He reached the doors just as she did. She grabbed him, searching his face for signs of damage. He looked puzzled, then slowly fear grew in his black eyes and the colour drained out of his skin. The raw scar on his forehead looked very red against its pallor.

‘What’s happened?
Trish?
Who’s hurt you?’

She made her hands soften on his shoulders and tried to breathe normally. ‘No one. I’m just dirty.’

‘But you’re bleeding. There’s blood all over your face. Who did it to you?’ He looked even more scared now. She could see his thin chest rising and falling under his fleece.

‘I tripped and fell. Don’t worry about it. Why were you shouting?’

‘Bee sent me to get you. It’s lunch time. Does it hurt?’

Trish leaned against the splintering wood of the doorpost and let her head sink down. She put a hand to her face, to brush away whatever was crawling down it and felt stickiness. She opened her eyes and saw her fingers were covered with blood.

‘I must look like something out of
The Lord of the Rings,
’ she said, forcing a smile. David’s face relaxed a little. ‘An orc probably.’

‘Not that bad.’ He even laughed, a high spluttering sound that told her how scared she’d made him. ‘But you’d better come and wash. Silas is getting very impatient for his lunch.’

‘Of course,’ she said, coming back to herself and all her responsibilities. They set off side by side, leaving the barn doors open. ‘Did you have a good morning’s fishing?’

‘It was great. We caught six trout.
Six.’

‘That’s fantastic.’

‘And Silas says I’ve got a really light touch with a fly. I hardly ever caught the hook in the trees after the first few casts. He says we can take three of the fish home and have them for supper.’

‘That’s kind of him. Will you go on ahead and tell them I’ve
just got to clean my face and hands? They mustn’t wait any longer for me. I’ll catch up.’

‘OK.’ He walked a few paces, then turned back. ‘Are you really really all right?’

‘I promise, David. Don’t worry.’

He ran then, straight towards the full-length bow windows of the dining room and the garden door beyond. Following more slowly, limping and feeling every one of her aching bones, Trish made her way to the downstairs cloakroom and grimaced as she caught sight of her reflection. The mirror was half-hidden by mounds of coats and waxed jackets, but there was enough to show her a face quite as bloody and dirty as David’s had been when he fell off his bicycle. No wonder he’d looked so frightened.

Cold water and scrunched-up bundles of loo paper soon dealt with the worst of the blood and the dust. Then she filled the basin with warm water and soaped her hands and face before running her fingers through her hair to restore some sort of order. She still looked like a sorry apology for her usual neatness, but she couldn’t hold the others up any longer.

They lunched on sausages, mash and frozen peas and were back in the barn by two o’clock.

‘How are you really feeling?’ Bee asked when they were alone again. ‘I’d never have encouraged you on this treasure hunt if I’d known how much damage it would do to you.’

Trish laughed, in spite of all her aches and the still-oozing wound at the edge of her hairline. ‘I just hope my hard head hasn’t bent your fire irons.’

She bent down to gather up the scattered magazines by the sofa she’d uncovered and divided them between herself and Bee.

‘It’s awful in here,’ Bee said, taking her share. ‘Why don’t we take them back to the house?’

‘Because they’re filthy, and there really aren’t that many left to check.’

Bee took the other end of the sofa and began to turn the hard glossy pages, exclaiming every so often when she spotted someone she knew. Trish, who didn’t know any of the figures in the photographs, concentrated on the captions that included Gussie and even searched for her name in the editorial below. The light was already beginning to fade when Bee shouted, ‘Eureka!’

‘Really? Amazing! What’s his name?’

Bee turned towards Trish, her eyes popping. ‘Simon Tick. Look! Here they are at a wedding together. It must be him.’

Trish stared down at the photograph. There was Gussie in an enormous feathered hat, about thirty years too old for her, and a silk dress and coat. Standing beside her was a thin, angular man Trish would never have recognised as the good-looking, angry politician who’d threatened her, or the confident performer on
Newsnight.
A monkish pudding-bowl haircut, prominent Adam’s apple, spots and a raw-looking bony face made him quite unlike all the other young men in the photographs around. Added to the physical differences and his obvious lack of ease was his suit. The rest were all wearing morning coats, but Gussie’s escort was dressed in an ordinary suit, rather shiny and badly cut, with shoulders far too wide for his own. The caption beneath read: ‘The Hon. Augusta Poitiers and Mr Simon Tick.’

‘Could he be Jeremy’s Baiborn, after all?’ Bee said, as her eyes widened.

‘Seems likely, doesn’t it?’ said Trish, who had been hoping for exactly this ever since she’d heard Charles Poitiers describe his sister’s difficult boyfriend.

‘But why on earth would he take the risk of threatening to sue me? Without his Letters of Claim, we would never have connected him with the source of Jeremy Marton’s bomb. No one would.’

‘When we know that,’ Trish said, feeling more cheerful than
she had for some time, ‘we’ll know how to persuade him to withdraw the claim.’

 

Back in London, Trish left David telling George all about his fishing brilliance while she went upstairs to phone Charles Poitiers from her bedroom.

‘I’ve been looking through some old
Tatlers
,’ she said when they’d been through all the necessary how-are-you stages of any phone conversation, ‘and I’ve found one of your sister at what looks like a very grand wedding in 1972.’

‘That sounds more than likely.’

‘She’s standing beside a man I think could be the one you described. If I scanned the photograph and emailed you a jpeg file could you let me know if I’m right?’

‘I’ll do my best. I must say I’m intrigued by all this,’ he said, before giving her his email address.

Trish took it down without explaining her interest in his sister’s one-time unsuitable boyfriend.

Downstairs George and David were happily gutting the trout, a bloody, slippery, smelly business Trish would have avoided even if she didn’t have other things to do. She left them to it and scanned in the small black-and-white photograph and emailed it, without its caption, to Charles Poitiers.

She sat on at her computer, working steadily through the rest of her inbox while she waited for his response or the announcement that the trout were ready for eating. There wasn’t anything interesting, until she reached a three-line message from Benedict Wallsford, the journalist. It was so ambiguous that he must have deliberately disguised its meaning for any casual reader, but it had to refer to the missing Slabb daughter.