Out of the Dark (17 page)

‘No wonder you’re so good in court,’ she said, laughing to protect herself. The pale-blue eyes sharpened like needles as his face settled back into its familiar sardonic lines.

‘Now we’ve got that out of the way,’ he said, reassuringly caustic once more, ‘let’s have it. What’s the real problem? If it’s not the police interest in your old cases, and it’s not the document, what’s up?’

‘I …’ Would it be worse to explain that she was afraid her father was about to be arrested for murder or to admit to the miscarriage and what Antony would undoubtedly see as the irresponsibility of getting pregnant just before a big case? He had some very entrenched views about women who assumed a right to more privileges than their male colleagues simply because they were the ones who gave birth.

‘When I left for Tuscany, you were tough, witty, in control, and apparently serene. Now you’re all over the place. Jumpy as hell. Your eyes are twice their normal size, you’re as pale as a piece of celery, and you look nearly as awful as you did when you had to take that sabbatical in ninety-six. You’re not going to crack up on me, are you, Trish?’

‘I had a miscarriage,’ she said lightly, banishing as many memories as she could. ‘They tend to leave one looking washed-out and a bit quivery. It’s been nearly two weeks now though, so I should be over the worst. But it was unexpectedly flattening.’

‘Ah.’ His face cleared. ‘That explains it. Although my doubts about your judgment obviously weren’t so far off-beam. What on earth were you thinking of? And why on earth didn’t you tell me on Monday?’

‘It was a mistake.’ She heard her voice crack and tried to divert him by asking what Henry Buxford had been like as a pupil master.

‘Never mind that now. I hope this pregnancy wasn’t a Freudian kind of mistake, to give you an excuse to get out of a case you’re afraid you can’t handle.’

‘Certainly not.’ Robert Anstey’s taunting face filled her mind and gave her all the determination she could possibly want. ‘I find the case absolutely fascinating and I’m looking forward to sitting behind you for however long it takes.’

‘Good. That sounds more like you. So, tell me how you’re going to feel about defending Nick Gurles now that you’ve convinced yourself he did deliberately misrepresent his fund?’

‘You sound like all those people at dinner parties,’ Trish said, putting on a simpering little voice to parrot the all-too familiar question: ‘“How on
earth
can you bring yourself to defend someone you know is guilty?” Whatever I may think about him, I’ll give him my best shot. Of course I will. I always do. Everyone, whatever they’re like, deserves to have their case put as well as it can be. You must know that I don’t have any problems with that.’

The waiter brought their food, giving her a chance to organise her ideas while he fiddled about laying the plates in front of them and refilling their glasses.

What she’d said was true enough, even though there were some clients she had always gone out of her way to avoid, cab-rank rule or no cab-rank rule. Parents who’d neglected or killed their children and expected counsel to use the cut-throat defence to get them off were high on her list of clients she’d do anything to avoid.

‘The junior on this case has got to be impregnable,’ Antony said as soon as the waiter had gone. ‘Convince me that can still be true of you.’

‘Impregnable. Hm. A Freudian choice of words, maybe, Antony?’ Trish said to punish him. His eyes brightened.

‘That’s the first sign of normality I’ve seen in you since I got back. It’s encouraging, but I’ll need more if we’re to go on with the case together.’

She watched him as he carefully removed the spine of his Dover sole, spreading the Colbert butter all over the big, white plate. Thoughts spread through her mind with similar profligacy. Jeannie Nest had risked her life to stand up for what she knew was right, and ultimately lost it. Trish would be risking only reputation and fees. Were career advantage and money enough of a reason to fall so very far short of the standard Jeannie had set?

How much money could you possibly want? Trish asked herself.

She was already earning five or six times what most teachers like Jeannie were paid, and she didn’t even have a child to keep. But it was nothing like the fortune that funded Antony’s life and possessions.

On Monday night he’d given her a vision of what she might one day have, if she turned herself into another version of him. Could it be worth it? She had no evidence to suggest that she could ever rival his brains or achieve his mastery of the court – or his own emotions – but she could get a lot nearer if she were prepared to make a few sacrifices. And even if money like that couldn’t guarantee safety, it would help provide a certain amount of insulation from the rougher side of life.

In retrospect his invitation to dinner in Holland Park looked a little like Lucifer’s showing off the Cities of the Plain. This was temptation in all its naked glorious awfulness. She opened her mouth to announce her resistance, but he wouldn’t let her.

‘Not yet, Trish. Not here. Despite the welcome hints of returning normality, I don’t think you’re yet in a fit state to decide something as important as this. I want you to think about it seriously, decide where you want your practice to go and what you want out of life, and then commit yourself, one way or the other.’

‘There isn’t time for that sort of luxury. If I were to stand down, which I’m not saying I am, you’d need someone else to start now. Otherwise he’d never get up to speed.’

Antony looked up from his surgery on the fish. The entire backbone, undamaged and springy, rosily flushed along the spine itself, hung from the tines of his fork, dripping butter on to the neat fillets below. A faint, satisfied smile lifted one side of his mouth. She was curious to see how thin his lips were. She’d never noticed that before.

‘In the circumstances, I’ll risk it. We both want you on the case, so long as you’re prepared to give it your all. I have confidence that you’ll see your way to the right decision, once you’ve considered all the options.’

‘We? Both?’

‘Me and Henry Buxford.’

‘So, Monday night
was
a test,’ she said with a drop of acid in her voice, noticing how he’d put the personal pronoun first – and used the wrong one.

‘No, not intentionally. It was supposed to be a pre-case celebration, but once Henry and I knew there might be a problem, he wanted to meet you. To see what you were made of.’

‘And what was his verdict?’ she asked, aware now of all kinds of probing in the cheery questions he’d asked under cover of the stories he’d told about his own early career at the Bar.

Antony’s half smile turned into something harder. ‘That you’d be better on the team than off, but that if you were going to cause trouble we needed to know now – in time
to get someone else as good as you could be, if you chose. Think about it very carefully, Trish.’

She felt the familiar tug between her eyebrows as she took in everything he was threatening with such careful understatement. She picked up her glass, hoping the taste of the wine might clear her thoughts. It didn’t.

‘Your liver’s getting cold. Eat up.’

He ate in silence – very fast – and it was only once the plates had been cleared and he’d ordered coffee that Trish said, ‘Why did you pick me for the case in the first place?’

‘Why d’you think?’ he asked with some of the old malicious amusement making him look a lot more familiar.

‘Someone suggested it must have been my experience with abused children,’ she said hopefully. ‘Which would allow us to suggest we were bullied by the DOB directors into doing things we’d otherwise have resisted.’

‘Nice thought. And we might even use it.’

‘But that wasn’t why, was it?’

‘No.’ His smile looked positively evil for a second before it relaxed into ordinary mockery. ‘You’re an excellent advocate and, as we’ve seen, meticulous in case preparation.’

‘So are all the others in chambers, or they wouldn’t still be here,’ she said and heard the famous Shelley laugh, which could make the strongest squirm.

‘Yes. But they don’t all have your talent for bringing everything down to the personal. After the last two cases with Bill, I’ve decided that’s what I need. I tend to dryness, as does he, and even the brightest of judges can switch off without a bit of light relief. We won’t overdo it, of course, or turn it into an episode of
The Archers,
but a bit of the personal might just swing this one for us. We’ll see, anyway.’

It might not have been flattering, but it made sense of a sort. And in a world that increasingly seemed mad as well
as terrifying, there was comfort in that. For as long as it took them to drink their coffee and get the bill, Trish even believed it. But once they were walking back to chambers and she caught several quizzical glances from people who knew them both, she was back to wondering what his real motives were. Did he
want
to lose the case? Had Henry Buxford perhaps got some reason to want Nick Gurles to go down? Was there something more about Nick that Trish hadn’t yet discovered? Was Henry Buxford hoping Gurles would give him an excuse for … ?

Have you gone completely mad? she asked herself in silent fury. It’s a ludicrous idea.

Caro sat with her hands clenched in her lap, waiting in barely controlled impatience. She had about a million things to do in her own nick, but here she was helping Lakeshaw again – and wishing that she had never picked up the phone to his incident room in the first place.

‘Just exactly how well do you know this Trish Maguire, Sergeant?’

Caro’s mind crackled in response to his mood. Tendons in his short neck were quivering like overwound springs. She tried to slow down her own reactions – and voice – to stop the two of them exploding against each other and to make sure she didn’t say anything ambiguous. Trish had enough to deal with as it was.

‘Before last week, I’d have believed we weren’t much more than acquaintances,’ Caro said carefully. ‘We’d encountered each other on a couple of cases, and my partner and I have occasionally seen her socially. Drinks, the odd meal. You know how it goes.’

‘What happened last week?’

‘We talked to each other like friends, sir. Real friends. I don’t think you can ever go back after that.’ She caught his expression and added firmly, ‘Don’t get me wrong, sir. Friendship doesn’t mean I’d protect her from anything I thought she’d done. But it means that I know enough about her to trust her. And it was after that meeting that I phoned your incident room.’

‘Good. How much did she tell you about her father’s background?’ He shoved the words out of his mouth, as though they tasted disgusting.

Caro shook her head. ‘Nothing.’

‘Concentrate. This is important.’

‘I am concentrating and I’m sure she said nothing.’ Caro made her voice even slower and forced herself to forget all the other problems waiting on her desk – and at home. ‘She’s talked a bit about him before – how he left her and her mother when she was seven or eight, I can’t remember exactly, how he started trying to get in touch with her about nine years ago once she started doing well at the Bar, and how she resisted for ages. She was surprised, I think, to discover she liked him and could recognise aspects of herself in him.’

‘Poor woman.’

‘Sir?’

‘Never mind. Get on with it. What did she tell you about his violence?’

Caro felt as though someone had hit her under the chin. Her head jerked up and she was gripped by the sudden paroxysm of nausea that comes from constriction of the jugular.

‘Violence, sir? What violence?’

‘Jeannie Nest had to take out an injunction against him, nine years ago. He slammed her against the wall, knocked her out. She was concussed for days. That stopped him contacting her then, but …’

The nausea was getting worse. Caro hoped she wasn’t going to throw up. This news could destroy Trish. ‘Why did he do it, sir?’

‘That we don’t know. He’s not saying anything and obviously Jeannie Nest can’t. But it could have been the pregnancy. Maybe she refused to have an abortion, or asked him for money. Whatever it was, he lost his temper and lashed out.’

‘But that was nine years ago. You’ve no reason to believe he’d do the same today?’

‘We have our reasons. Sergeant Lyalt, I think you ought to look at some of the photographs of the body.’

‘It’s all right, sir. I’ve seen enough scenes of crime in my time to know what it’ll look like. But what evidence have you to make you suspect Paddy Maguire now?’

‘I doubt you’ve seen many like this body.’ Lakeshaw spread a sheaf of glossy colour prints in front of her, fanning them out like the bloody duck breasts Jess always ordered in their favourite restaurant. In a dry unemotional voice that somehow still expressed satisfaction, Lakeshaw went on: ‘He strangled her first – with a ligature, so we’ve got only fibres as evidence – then beat her dead body with a chair until it broke. After that he used one of its legs. As you’ll see here, and here, the blows have not only ripped her clothes to shreds, but also flayed the skin off her.’

Caro pushed away all consideration of Trish, her friend, and flicked the switch that gave her the impermeable membrane she used to keep herself sane in the face of all the brutality she saw every day.

‘These suggest that the perpetrator must have been covered in blood, even though the wounds were inflicted post-mortem.’ That sounded very cool, she thought. Good. ‘They also seem very similar to those I’ve read about in the case in which she testified against Ron Handsome. His victim was beaten in almost exactly the same way. Why aren’t you concentrating on him and his family?’

‘We did. It was the obvious answer, particularly as his son Gareth has an even stronger history of violence than Paddy Maguire. Unfortunately Gareth Handsome has an alibi, too. He was making a nuisance of himself in the local pub on Tuesday night until he passed out, drunk, and had to be carted home by some friends and the bouncer, who’s known him for years. Coupled with the fact that he’s thick as pigshit and couldn’t have found out Jeannie
Nest’s new name and address to save his life, that makes him an unlikely suspect.’

‘But I thought you still hadn’t pinpointed the time of death to Tuesday night.’

‘True. The pathologist thought it was the likeliest time but is now looking into other possibilities.’

‘OK. But why is Gareth Handsome your only suspect from the original case?’

‘He’s not. The old man, Ron, who’s still serving his sentence, has contact with plenty of old mates who still live in the area. Several of them are capable of this sort of thing. They’re all being interviewed, but so far none of them look half as promising as Paddy Maguire.’

‘But why?’

‘Then there’s Ron Handsome’s grandson,’ Lakeshaw went on as though she hadn’t interrupted. She realised he wasn’t going to tell her anything about Trish’s father, so she tried to concentrate on what he was prepared to say. ‘The grandson would’ve been a possibility, except that he was out cabbing for most of Tuesday night and there are dockets at the cab office and records of all his takings. He had a full shift. No, at the moment, unless the pathologist revises his likely time of death, Maguire’s our best prospect.’

‘I assume you’ve searched his flat.’ Surely he’d answer a question as easy as that, she thought.

‘And his car, and his lock-up garage,’ Lakeshaw said impatiently. ‘Of course we have. But there wasn’t anything there. Or at his girlfriend’s place. But we haven’t searched his daughter’s. Yet. She keeps leaving messages on my phone, which suggests she’s worried, and I want her to sweat a little longer. I need to know more about her, too. How honest is she – in your estimation?’

‘She’s a barrister.’ Caro didn’t add that Trish kept leaving messages for her, too.

‘That’s what I mean,’ said Lakeshaw bitterly.

‘She would never cover up a murder.’

‘Even for her father?’

‘Especially for her father. Sir, believe me, she doesn’t trust him. She may have forgiven him for abandoning her, but she’s still obsessed about it. Most of the time she struggles to feel any warmth towards him at all. She wants to, but she’s still suspicious of him. You couldn’t accuse her of being an accessory without looking stupid.’

‘OK, don’t get so excited. You know her; I don’t. I’m only asking.’

‘Will you warn her about her father’s past?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘But if he did this, I mean, if there’s even the slightest chance that he could be this violent …’ Caro pushed away the photographs. ‘Trish could be in real danger if he suspects she’s helping us.’

‘I’m glad you used the word “us”. I was beginning to think you’d gone over to the other side. Once we’ve collected the evidence against him, you can talk to her. Not till then. Sue, where the hell are those reports?’ he bellowed through the open door.

Caro watched as a woman about five years older than she was, and two stone heavier, put a pile of witness statement forms on his desk.

‘Sergeant Baker, this is Sergeant Lyalt. Will you tell her everything you now know of Paddy Maguire, so that she understands just what we’re dealing with here. I don’t think she’s quite got the picture yet.’

 

Lil had got soaking wet going down to the shop to buy more cigarettes, and she was very puffed as well as worried. Mikey hadn’t spent any time with her for days. She’d sometimes heard him coming in late at night or leaving before she was up, and once she’d heard him mutter, ‘I’ll kill the fucking bitch.’

Lil would have given a lot to know which bitch he
was talking about. And she’d have given even more to have proof that he was just saying it, like all the other people who said things like ‘I could’ve killed him’ without meaning a word of it. So far she was still managing to believe he was a good boy, but there were times when it was hard.

She reminded herself that he’d been leaving her lots of little notes to ask if she wanted any shopping done. Once she’d scribbled a reply on the note, asking for more milk and another Battenburg, and it had been waiting for her in the kitchen next morning. She’d felt better as soon as she saw it, but she still wanted to know where he was all the time he was out of the flat and who it was who was pissing him off so badly.

She had to make her own tea again today. Just as she was sitting down to it, someone started banging on her door. She couldn’t think who’d do that instead of ringing the bell and looked very carefully through the spy hole. There didn’t seem to be anyone there, but the banging went on. It sounded as though it came from about the level of her own waist. Bending down, she looked through the letter box and saw an angelic little girl’s face peering back at her. The child revealed gappy red gums as she smiled.

Lil stood up to unchain the door and open it.

‘You’re Mikey’s nan, aren’t you?’ said the grinning child, scratching her bum.

‘That’s right. But he’s not here.’

The child’s face fell. She raised the grubby hand to scratch her head. Nits, thought Lil, keeping well away. It had always been she who’d had to comb Mikey’s head in the old days because his slag of a mother couldn’t be bothered, and she never wanted to have to do that again.

‘Can I come in then an’ tell
you
?’

‘Tell me what?’ Lil asked, letting her in. The child pranced ahead of her towards the sun that came blinding
into the lounge, where Lil had everything ready to record the week’s takings after her tea.

‘What’s these?’ asked the child, leaning over the big account book. ‘It looks like sums.’

‘It is,’ said Lil, approving of her curiosity even though she didn’t intend to encourage it.

‘I like sums.’

‘You go to school, do you?’ That made a change on this estate.

‘Of course. Mikey said.’

‘What did he say?’ Lil asked quickly. It was the first she’d known of her grandson having any real contact with the kids on the estate. This grimy scrap couldn’t be the ‘she’ Mikey wanted to kill, could she?

‘That school’s the only way to get out of here. If you find a teacher who likes you she’ll change your life. It was on the way to school today I saw the lady Mikey wanted again.’

Lil breathed deeply to slow down her heart and all the ideas banging at her brain. ‘Mikey told you he wanted a lady?’

The scruffy blonde head nodded. ‘The lady who came asking for Jeannie Nest. We threw stones at her when she wouldn’t give us money.’

‘What did Mikey say to you then?’

‘He chose me,’ the child said proudly, ‘out of all the others, an’ he said he wanted to know if she ever came back. Well, she didn’t come back, but I see her sometimes on the way to school. It’s always at the big white place near the old factory. The one with the black stairs – you know. Near the railway.’

‘Yes,’ Lil said, thinking about the streets she hardly ever saw these days. ‘Yes, I know the one. Does she live there?’

‘I dunno. But it’s always there I see her, on the stairs, an’ she’s got a key.’

‘Well, I’ll tell Mikey.’ Lil smiled at the little girl. ‘What else does he tell you?’

The child screwed up her forehead and her nose, trying to think and looking like an evil little pixie.

‘He says you shouldn’t never wish for something ’cos you never know when you’re going to get it.’

Lil couldn’t help smiling at that piece of nonsense. She felt a lot better for hearing it, too. ‘D’you know what he means?’

‘No, but he often says it. Like he says I got to go to school.’

At least it sounded as though most of the advice was wholesome, if muddled. Lil bent towards the child, hoping to get to know her better, find out more. ‘Would you like some cake?’

‘Nah. I just want my pound.’ She held out her scratching hand, with the fingers already bent to grab a coin.

‘What pound?’

‘Mikey gives me a pound when I see the lady,’ the child wailed. ‘Always.’

‘But he’s not here. I’ll tell him when he comes back and he can find you,’ Lil said, not prepared to hand over money to settle debts that might never have been incurred. This one wasn’t big, but principles were principles.

The child ran at her and kicked her leg, hard, screaming, ‘I want my money! I want my money! Mikey said I could have my money.’

Lil took her by the shoulders and drove her to the front door. There she turned her captive round, keeping her own sore shins well out of kicking range.

‘Oh, my God! If you do that again, I’ll make sure you never get any money. But if you behave and don’t make any more noise now, I’ll get Mikey to find you and give you whatever he’s promised as soon as he’s back. Understand?’

‘I hate you, you slaggy old witch,’ cried the girl as she
pulled herself out of Lil’s hands, spat and ran down the walkway.

Lil watched her go, wiping the spit off her trousers and thinking she’d be glad if she never saw the filthy little creature again. Mikey would have to deal with her. Lil went back in to write him a note in case she was already in bed again when he came back.

But she heard his step outside before she’d finished the note and soon felt his hand on her back and his cool breath on her neck as he bent to kiss her head.