Keep Me Alive (30 page)

‘Why?’

‘Because one of those bloody vets condemned them.’

‘You mean they were infected?’

‘Only marginally. Probably not even that. There was plenty of meat on them that was edible. We – Bob – rescued them from burning. There are a lot of hungry people in the world, you know.’

‘Not many in Kent or Normandy,’ Trish said before she remembered the men on the street barbecuing their pigeon. ‘How did Bob hide the fact that he’d nicked them? Aren’t the vets supposed to oversee the disposal?’

Tim shrugged. ‘All I know is that he once said he had to pay pet food people to turn a blind eye. Maybe that’s what happened. I don’t know.’

‘How could there be so many carcasses? Such a reliable supply?’

‘I don’t know that either. Maybe Bob got some from other slaughterhouses. Maybe he sometimes nicked ones that hadn’t been condemned. There’s no point interrogating me.’ His voice was rising with every word. ‘I don’t
know
any more.’

‘OK. Then what happened to the meat after you’d flown it to France?’

‘I don’t know that either.’

‘Come on! You can’t expect me to believe that.’

He looked the picture of puzzled innocence. ‘It’s true. I was like a kind of taxi. They came to me about eighteen months ago – the Flesker brothers – they told me they had this regular source of meat they had to get out of the country without anyone noticing. They’d heard I had a plane and they wanted to hire it and me once a week. I thought about it for a bit, then said yes. OK, so it was illegal. But I needed the money, and it didn’t
seem too serious – a bit of nicked meat. I flew the packages across to Normandy, and the people over there took it off me. That was the end of my role.’

Trish looked at him as if he were a witness under cross-examination. ‘Apart from the people you brought back with you.’

His mouth opened. ‘People? I didn’t bring back any people.’

‘Oh, come on, Tim. You can’t expect me to believe it was worth anyone’s while to go to all that trouble for a one-way cargo of iffy meat. That’s the kind of thing being sold from the backs of vans and in little markets all over the country.’

‘I didn’t bring back any
people
,’ he said with the kind of emphasis that told her a lot.

‘So what was it you brought back? Come on, Tim. I know there was something.’

He chewed his bottom lip. His eyes begged her to let him off, and Boney yelped as Tim’s hands tightened in the golden fur.

‘It was boxes. Heavy boxes. At first I didn’t know what was in them. Then one night we dropped one when we were unloading, and I saw … well, they were guns. Not proper guns: shotguns or rifles. They were street guns.’

So, this was ‘the rest’ that Jamie Maxden had intended to film.

‘And what happened when you got them back?’

‘Ron took them away in his van.’

‘Ron, not Bob?’

‘That’s right.’

‘OK, Tim. Write it all down,’ Trish said, certain now that Ron had been the boss, ‘and take it to the police.’

‘But I’ll … they’ll … I was there when …’

‘When Bob killed Jamie Maxden?’ she suggested.

Tim hung his head over Boney’s.

‘Yes. And it was he who thought of the veggie leaflets and the
placard. They’d been left behind after the last protest at the meat works. I don’t know why he kept them.’

‘The sooner you confess what you have been doing, the less trouble you’re likely to be in.’ Trish salved her conscience with difficulty. But he was not her client and Will, still technically under suspicion for Mandy’s murder, was. He was the only one whose interests she had any kind of duty to protect. ‘If you make the police come to you, you’ll have a much tougher time. Go to them freely, give them the evidence they need of what Bob and Ron have been doing – and making you do – and you’ll stand a reasonable chance. They’ll provide you with a lawyer.’

‘Oh, Christ! Will you help me?’

‘I’ll help you draft your statement,’ she said, fighting every instinct that urged her to do much more for him. ‘And if you’ve got a fax machine, or a photocopier, I can take a copy for safety.’

It took an hour to elicit the facts he had and help him organize them all into a coherent narrative. Trish read it, then looked up.

‘You’ve missed a bit out.’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘The bit about Jamie Maxden’s laptop, which was your main contribution, wasn’t it? I can’t believe Bob typed those emails to the suicide websites, and Ron wasn’t there. So it had to be you.’

The blood ebbed away from his face, leaving it grey.

‘They say prison isn’t much worse than a minor public school,’ he said at last. ‘And at least I won’t have to worry about paying the bills there.’

Trish had no comfort to offer him. He looked round the room and sighed. ‘Will you come with me to the police? Help me talk to them? Please.’

‘I can’t. I can’t be involved in any of this.’

‘But you are involved, aren’t you? Somehow.’ His face narrowed, as though two huge hands had pressed against his cheeks and squeezed. ‘Who
are
you?’

Trish was already on her feet and half way to the door. She looked back. ‘I’m just a friend of a friend of Jamie Maxden, who Bob kicked to death while you watched and did nothing to save him.’

‘Oh, Christ! You’ve got to help me.’

‘I can’t. Go to the police, Tim; they’re the only people who can do anything for you now.’ She thought of Nick Wellbeck, who would love to hear this story and would probably pay well for it. Looking around, she could see how much money Hayleigh needed.

‘I can’t go to them.’

‘You have to.’

‘No, I mean, I can’t go to the police; I haven’t any petrol in the car.’

‘You could always phone them. If you say you’ve got information to give them about Mandy’s murder, they’ll probably send someone to talk to you.’

She waited while he made the call, and heard him explain that he’d seen Bob Flesker kick Jamie Maxden to death. It was clear from his answers that the officer at the other end was highly sceptical. But eventually Tim said, ‘No, I can’t come in. My car’s not working. All right, yes, I’ll be here if you send someone.’ He put down the phone.

‘There is one other thing you could do,’ Trish said, ‘to help yourself. It might earn you some money too.’

He looked puzzled, as though the idea of anyone paying him anything was impossible.

‘There’s a newspaper editor, who would love to know what happened to Jamie Maxden. I expect he’d pay quite well for any information you can give him.’

Tim hid his face in Boney’s fur again. When he looked up, his eyes were calmer.

‘Thank you. I can’t tell you how—’

‘Don’t worry about it. Just forget that I was ever here.
He’s called Nick Wellbeck and this is his number. Now, I must go.’

 

She used the hands-free to call Will from the car, as she was negotiating her way back through the twisting, featureless, lightless lanes. He wasn’t in, but Susannah answered and told her that Will was round at the doctor’s.

‘Is he OK? I mean is there anything else wrong?’

‘Splitting headaches. He’s never had them before and they’ve only come on since he was let out of hospital. I bullied him to go to the doctor.’

Her voice went up at the end of the sentence, as though she was asking for something.

‘Quite right, too,’ Trish said, hoping that was what she’d wanted. ‘Will you tell him when he comes in that I’ve found the airfield and I’ve got the whole story behind Jamie’s video. I can meet him somewhere, or tell him over the phone or whatever he wants.’

‘I’ll tell him. I don’t understand, but I’ll tell him: you’ve got the airfield and the story. Is that right?’

‘Pretty much. Thank you.’

‘D’you know when you’ll get the verdict in Will’s case?’

‘Should be Friday.’

‘Oh, God! I don’t know how he’s going to be able to sleep till then. Or me, either.’

There was nothing Trish could do about that, so she said goodbye, and switched off the phone to concentrate on driving.

The lit-up motorway beyond acres of dark fields was a welcome sign that she was at least going in the right direction, but it took her another half hour to get on to it. After that, it was simply a question of keeping herself awake and concentrating until the motorway ended in the muddle of the south London suburbs.

Not much to her surprise, Will was waiting for her again, this
time sitting down on the iron steps with his plastered leg stuck right out in front of him.

‘You didn’t tell Susannah where you were when you phoned,’ he said, levering himself up with his back against the wall, like a mountaineer in a chimney. ‘I was beginning to wonder if it was Scotland.’

Trish bleeped the car’s locks and ran up the stairs to help Will upright and plant a kiss on his cheek. He put his good arm around her shoulders and looked down into her face.

‘How very nice, Trish!’

She couldn’t tell him it was an apology for all her terrors, so she just smiled. He bent his head and kissed her full on the lips. She waited a second, then patted his cheek and pulled away.

‘Come on in,’ she said cheerfully. ‘I’ve got so much to tell you.’

 

There were eggs in the fridge and butter and some old Parmesan, so Trish made an omelette, while Will balanced against the kitchen worktop to open a bottle of soft, woody Rioja. As she cooked, she told him what had happened that day and what she’d found out.

He listened without asking any questions, holding out each plate in turn when the omelette was ready. When he’d eaten his share, he wiped a piece of bread around the plate and looked up as he swallowed it.

‘So at least I don’t have to blame myself for
Jamie
’s death.’

‘Of course you don’t, Will. What on earth do you mean?’

He looked at the last scant smears of egg and molten cheese on his plate. ‘I thought I would. Like I have to with Mandy. If I’d never gone anywhere near her, she would never have been killed. It’s my fault, Trish. I’ve done it again. It keeps happening. I get angry and people die.’ He grabbed his glass between both hands. ‘If the case doesn’t go our way …’

‘I still think it might.’

‘Don’t try to comfort me. This is important, Trish. If we don’t get the right verdict, keep away from me. I’m not safe to have around when I’m angry.’ There was the sound of a car hooting in the street. ‘That’ll be my cab. I ordered it so there’d be no risk of you having to drive me home. Rupert said I could put it on his account.’

Trish had plenty more to ask him, but it was all so difficult that she wasn’t sorry when he’d gone. She took her time washing up the plates and pans and swabbing down the kitchen surfaces, trying not to take any of her fears too seriously.

 

Next morning, she phoned Petra Knighton and described what she’d done.

‘I thought you’d agreed to stay out of this, Trish.’ The solicitor’s voice was arctic.

‘Yes. But once I realized the police might never get enough evidence to clear Will, I knew I had to try. I know how many murders they fail to solve. Shall I fax you the statement made by the pilot?’

‘I suppose you’d better. But, you know, you’ve been underestimating the police.’

‘How?’

‘Their bloodstain analysis has proved it could not have been Applewood who killed the girl, so it is likely they’ve already accepted his story.’

‘Thank God for that.’

‘Yes. But I would advise you to acquire a little more faith in temporal authority next time. Goodbye.’

Snubbed and feeling like a fool, but still glad she’d intervened, Trish phoned Nick Wellbeck.

‘What have you got for me?’ he asked as soon as she’d given her name. That didn’t sound as though Tim Hayleigh had been in touch with him, so she thought she’d better tread warily.

‘It’ll be sub judice any minute now,’ she said, ‘but it seems
that Jamie Maxden was on the trail of a small private gang of meat and gun smugglers based in Kent. It
was
a real story. One of the perpetrators – who may have killed Jamie – is in police custody at the moment.’

‘And?’

‘And nothing.’

‘Is that all you’re going to tell me?’ he said in a voice so tough she was glad she was not one of his employees.

‘It’s all I
can
tell you.’

‘And what is it you want for your information? How much?’

‘Nothing but confirmation that the farmer in the story Jamie sold you six years ago was called Applewood, Peter Applewood.’

‘If you know, why are you asking?’

She put down the phone. The source Jamie had protected at so much cost to himself had to be Will. It explained so much about Will, and his motives and his misery. And it made far more sense of the fight in Susannah’s bedroom than her version. Would it help Will to have it brought out into the open now? Or would it make him even more ashamed of himself? More desperate?

This was Kim all over again. Did it really help people to push emotional stuff under an imaginary carpet and pretend it didn’t exist? Or was it better to bring it out into the open so they could see it wasn’t as terrible as they’d once thought? That would only work if the thing that frightened them wasn’t as bad in reality. What would happen if it were worse?

An impulse came into her head to phone her father. At first she couldn’t understand it and put it off by making a pot of coffee. That displacement activity didn’t last long and she was soon dialling his mobile number.

‘Paddy Maguire.’

‘Paddy? It’s Trish.’

There was a pause. Then he said, ‘And how are you, then?’

‘Fine,’ she said, then corrected herself. ‘No, actually I’m not. I’m eaten up with guilt about what happened after David’s mother was killed.’

‘So you should be. But it’s two years now. I’ve nearly got over it, and if I can, so can you.’