Unforgotten (9 page)

Lizzie murmured automatically, ‘Or seemed to be.’

‘Or
seemed
to be. Though having your victim’s blood all over your jacket is a bit hard to argue away, whichever way you look at it.’ Hugh drew the cork and came back to the table. ‘The thing is, witness protection is incredibly expensive, Lizzie. I mean, megabucks. So the police aren’t going to use it unless they’re going for a major result, the conviction of a big villain. They’re not going to use it to help the defence get someone off, someone who’s, well . . .’

‘Guilty?’

‘In their eyes, absolutely.’

Lizzie had gone quiet, staring down into her wine glass.

‘What?’ he prompted her.

‘Nothing.’

‘No, tell me.’

Her eyes glittered with a strange light. ‘You think the campaign is hopeless, don’t you?’

He was startled as much by the question as by her tone, which was taut, almost accusatory. ‘I’ve never said that.’

‘You don’t have to,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s obvious.’

Hugh stared at her. ‘That’s not fair, Lizzie. I don’t have any views on the campaign. Apart from anything else I’ve never met Denzel. I don’t know the full story.’ He made a gesture of bewilderment, as much at the fact that they were having a disagreement as anything else. ‘Really . . . I wouldn’t dream of having an opinion.’ What baffled him wasn’t that she had guessed at his doubts but that she should accuse him now, and so bluntly, as if he’d been openly disloyal. ‘I was only playing devil’s advocate, looking at it from the police’s point of view, that’s all.’

Absorbing this with a small nod, Lizzie picked up her glass and cradled it in both hands.

Hugh felt the tightness above his heart he always felt when their harmony was disrupted. On the few times they argued, it was usually about trivial things, like the route to a friend’s house or their memories of some half-forgotten event, and then they tended to argue wildly and inventively, transforming the dispute into an elaborate joke. More serious discussions were conducted according to tacit rules of engagement that required attentiveness and consideration, any emotion directed firmly at the subject, not at each other. Yet here they were, disagreeing for no apparent reason, and worse still, disagreeing unhappily.

Because he couldn’t bear to let the situation go on for a moment longer, he came clean. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘so I’ve had a few doubts about Denzel’s innocence. But only because he seemed to change his story every five minutes. But they were never
firm
doubts. I mean, nothing I’d ever try to defend, and certainly not to you, because you know all about it and I know damn all. And I trust your judgement, Lizzie. If you believe in him then that’s all I need to know.’

The sense of injury lingered in her eyes. ‘I wouldn’t have minded so much if you hadn’t been speaking in your sceptical lawyer tone,’ she said. ‘No – in your
expert
sceptical lawyer tone.’

He grimaced contritely.

‘It was just the last thing I needed.’

‘Of course it was.’ He reached across and squeezed her hand.

The tension began to slip from her face. ‘It’s been a long day, that’s all.’

‘And there I was, talking complete bloody rubbish.’

‘I know you didn’t mean to . . .’

‘And the way I said it . . . sorry.’

‘Trouble was, it reminded me of what Denzel’s up against.’ She gave a painful smile. ‘For a while there you almost sounded like the enemy.’

‘The
enemy
, Lizzie!’ As the word resounded in Hugh’s mind, he had a fleeting image of Tom leaving court earlier, talking about orienteering with people as the enemy.

‘Listen,’ he said, ‘why don’t you go and ask Denzel’s solicitor all about witness protection? He’ll know far better than me. Get him to look into it.’

She turned the idea over in her mind, and seemed to warm to it. ‘Yes . . . Yes.’ Then, with a small shiver, as if to shake herself free of the subject, she began to clear the plates.

When they had loaded the dishwasher, he looped his arm round her shoulders and squeezed her to him. ‘I hate it when we have a misunderstanding.’

Her arm came up round his waist. ‘Me too.’

‘I get this pain in my chest.’

‘Ouch,’ she murmured sympathetically.

‘I feel I can’t breathe.’

‘Poor you. Is it gone now?’

‘Almost totally.’ He kissed the top of Lizzie’s head. ‘How lucky we are.’

‘Yes.’

Their good fortune was something they touched on all the time, a thanksgiving in good times, a refuge in bad, and a return to safe ground on the few occasions like this when they managed to upset each other. Sometimes they listed their blessings one by one – the children, their health, the house – sometimes they talked about the outlook over the garden, the view to the hills, the magnificence of the trees, all ways of saying the same thing. Tonight, though, they simply stood side by side, heads touching, for half a minute longer before kissing lightly and separating to do their chores. While Lizzie scooped up the large shoulder bag she used for work and took it to her desk in a corner of the living room, Hugh went upstairs to prepare for the morning. He had to be out of the house by six with his clothes packed for a couple of nights in London. First, Ray, his law partner from pre-merger days, with his unshake-able enthusiasm for networking, had talked him into going to a
Law Society dinner. Then, somehow or other, he’d agreed to meet his old friend Mike Gabbay not for the quick drink he’d suggested but for dinner and to stay the night with Mike and his wife Rachel in Belsize Park.

As he was gazing at the open bag wondering what he had missed, Lizzie came in and reeled off, ‘Cufflinks? Bow tie? Evening shirt? Shoes?’

‘I wish I wasn’t going.’

‘You’ll enjoy yourself once you’re there.’

‘I’ll probably end up drinking too much.’

‘Well, try to keep off the port. You know it always gives you a terrible hangover.’

They were in bed by midnight. Before turning off the light they lay face to face, hands linked, legs intertwined, and smiled at each other, taking reassurance that no harm had been done by the unexpected discord at dinner, confirming that their equilibrium was safely restored. After a moment Lizzie’s eyelids drooped and, kissing her softly, Hugh reached for the light. She turned away onto her side and drew her knees up. Fitting himself around the familiar shape of her back, Hugh dropped his arm over her waist and, finding her hand, held it close up by her neck. Her breathing steadied quickly, she was asleep within seconds. He would have been close behind, his thoughts were drifting fast, when a worry nudged him back towards wakefulness, something to do with Tom Deacon. At first he assumed it was the hurdle of Price’s evidence tomorrow, then the fact that Tom was drinking again, but when he finally fell asleep it was to dream of two small boys leaning into the wind on a rain-swept mountain.

Normally Hugh tried to avoid racking up unnecessary expenses on his clients’ accounts, but wedged into a standard-class airline-style seat over the wheels of a bumpy carriage, attempting to balance papers and coffee on the minute drop-down table, he wished that for once in his working life he’d splashed out on first class and paid the difference from his own pocket. He had to steady the jolting coffee with one hand, leaf through the bundle of documents with the other until he managed to locate Price’s statement. He read it as he had read it many times before in the hope of getting some key to Price and the world of soldiering that had formed such an important part of Tom’s life. According to Price, he and Tom had become close mates during the four years they had been in the same unit, drinking and carousing together, standing each other an occasional loan, confiding their hopes and fears. Price described the Tom Deacon he’d first known as outgoing, sociable, a bit of a joker, his personality unaffected by service in the Gulf War. But three years later, after their return from Bosnia, Tom had become moody and short-tempered, the result, Price claimed in the crucial passage, of being unable to cope with the horrors he’d witnessed there. To counter this claim Hugh had entered in evidence Tom’s army record, which also noted a deterioration in Tom’s attitude at this time but cited problems at home and his frustration at not being able to obtain a rapid discharge as the underlying reasons. According to Tom, the Army had got it at least half right, he’d certainly been keen to get out, but from disillusionment with soldiering rather than problems at home,
while Price’s version of events was such a blatant fabrication that he could only be driven by malice. But if Price was lying, the question was why.

In his normal work Hugh had little reason to investigate people’s backgrounds and he’d had to go to a family-law partner for the name of a reliable detective agency. The report that came back three weeks later rather shocked him, not for what it revealed about Price, but for the extraordinary detail it provided on what he’d always believed to be confidential matters, such as Price’s army and medical records and his two youthful convictions for joyriding. But if Hugh felt uneasy about how such information might have been obtained Desmond seemed unconcerned, or at least discreet enough not to comment, and devoured the report with interest. So far as Hugh could make out, Desmond’s plan was to suggest that Price was a loner incapable of making close friendships, a bit of a fantasist who, craving centre stage, had not only exaggerated his friendship with Tom but was using this opportunity to settle an old score, maybe over the girl Tom talked about, maybe over some other grievance that neither would admit to. Why else, Desmond had posed rhetorically, would Price choose to give evidence against his former comrade? Why else would he break the bond of trust wrought in the fires of war?

While Hugh had no doubt this was the right approach, its success would depend on how strongly Price performed in the witness box. If he had learnt anything during this hearing, it was how very differently people reacted under pressure. Perhaps it was the deceptively benign atmosphere of the civil court, with its air of courtesy and consideration, the absence of a jury or any obvious drama, and the leisurely pace dictated by the judge’s need to take notes, but for some reason the intricate traps laid in cross-examination seemed to take many witnesses by surprise. Of the ten character witnesses who’d given evidence for Tom four had faltered under pressure, two quite badly. In Price’s case, of course, the hope was that he would not simply falter but thoroughly discredit himself.

A refreshment trolley came by but the girl had sold out of bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwiches, so Hugh settled for a ham baguette which proceeded to shed shards of iceberg lettuce over the next bundle of documents he managed to wrest from his briefcase and balance on the minute table. This bundle contained the large amount of background information that Desmond might want to call on at short notice, though in practice he rarely did so. Facts, figures, statements, correspondence, notes of meetings and conversations: the detritus of four years’ preparation, the thousand and one ways of gobbling up huge amounts of time and fees in trying to cover every possible angle: the law in all its obsessive, bloated detail.

It was only as the train neared London that Hugh remembered the envelope Annaliese had dropped off yesterday which he’d scooped up from the hall table and stuffed into his briefcase as he rushed out of the house early that morning. Opening it, he drew out two letters concerning another case and read them diligently but with fleeting interest. Only as he slid them back into the envelope did he realise there was another, unopened letter at the bottom. The envelope was small and flimsy, the sort sold in corner shops to fit the cheapest writing paper. It was addressed to Hugh in a mixture of scrappy letters and random capitals, his name spelt
Gwinn
without the
y
or
e
. The firm’s name was also misspelt and the address lacked a postcode. Above his name was written
Confidential
underlined three times. The thin sheet inside was folded into quarters. It began
Dear Mr Gwinn
. . . His eye flew to the end but there was no signature, just as there was no address at the top. Returning to the body of the letter he skimmed the lines rapidly.

Realisation came fitfully, in small darts of disbelief. His first instinct was to reject the whole poisonous thing, to deny the idea in any shape or form. It was just someone with a grudge, trying to stir things up for Tom. Yet even as he began to read it again, a quiet dread spread through his stomach.

To let you know that Tom Deacon went to the family court and got the psyciatrist to say he’s OK to get custody of his kids, as per being recovered from the traumatic stress disorder and being sober. Court case was 2 weeks ago – Exeter. Next hearing January. Linda doesn’t want to give up the kids but its all going badly for her, she’s pregnant and the new man gives her a hard time. But its not right that she gets to lose the boys, not when Tom Deacons lying about the drink and thretening her if she doesn’t keep quiet about it. She thinks she’ll get the kids back later, but she wont. What she needs is some of this money he’s getting from the court. People forget it was her daughter that got killed too. If he’s going to get rich then its only right that Linda gets her share. She doesn’t know I’m writing this but somebody had to, it’s not right the way things are.

As fresh bursts of understanding came over Hugh, his throat seized, he saw the speeding countryside through a sudden mist, he whispered savagely,
You stupid bloody fool! You stupid fucking idiot!
He had an urge to grab Tom by the collar and shake him furiously, demanding to know what the hell he thought he was doing by screwing everything up.

The mist subsided as suddenly as it had come, he drew a steadying breath and began the reckoning, trying to calculate what if anything might be salvaged from the wreckage. He looked at the envelope again, then the letter, but there were no clues as to who had written it. The postmark was illegible, the writing semi-literate. The author hardly mattered though, because he had little doubt that the contents of this nasty little note were accurate; they chimed too well with Tom’s view of what was due to him and the sudden confidence he had shown in getting custody of his children.