A Poisoned Mind

by Natasha Cooper

  Trish flipped her phone shut, longing to abandon everything to do with CWWM so she could rush to the school and find out where Jay was and whether he’d half-killed his mother. She knew exactly how David would be feeling now and she had to help.

  The phone in her pocket buzzed again. She looked at the clock above her head. There were only six minutes before she had to be in court. But if there was news she had to know what it was.

  ‘Hello?’ she said into the phone, just as someone knocked into her. She realised she’d come to a standstill and glanced round to apologise to the impatient stranger, who flounced onwards without a word.

  ‘Hi,’ said a South London voice down the phone. ‘It’s Shelby Deedes here, Jay’s social worker. I wanted to talk. We still haven’t found him, and I’ve looked in all the likeliest places. But there’s one bit of good news: his mother isn’t doing as badly as they thought at first. She’s in Dowting’s Hospital, in the orthopaedic ward because of her broken bones. Serious but stable is how they’re calling it at the moment.’

  Trish tried to blank out the worst of the pictures that had been in her mind since she’d first heard the news.

  ‘Thanks, Shelby. I’d like to talk to you about it all later, but I have to go into court now. May I phone round about five o’clock in case there’s anything new?’

  ‘Sure. Leave a message if I can’t answer, and I’ll get back to you.’

  There was no sign of Adam in the public benches. Angie moved to her own place at the front, glancing at the lawyers’ empty bench beside her. Should she ask Trish Maguire whether CWWM would still be prepared to settle? She’d hate doing it, but it would keep Adam safe. How on earth could she ever justify it to Fran and Greg?

  ‘You OK?’ Greg whispered as she sat down beside him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re pale and shaking, Ange. What’s happened?’

  She dredged up a memory of how to smile. ‘Indigestion. I was talking so much, I ate too fast.’

  He laughed and patted her. ‘Well, try not to throw up this afternoon. We’re so nearly there, Ange. Stick with it. Another few days and it’ll all be over. You’ve done brilliantly. I always knew you would.’

  She thought of the night when she’d escaped to the pub and Ben Givens had rounded her up like a stray. He’d lectured her then about how much she owed Fran and Greg. He’d been right. There was no honourable way out.

  Chapter 12

  Robert was a couple of yards ahead when Trish phoned Shelby. The journey back to chambers could take as much as eight minutes if you walked slowly, and you could get through a lot of questions in that time.

  ‘Hi,’ she said as soon as Shelby answered. ‘Can you tell me exactly what happened to Jay’s mother?’

  ‘She’d picked up her benefit just as the Post Office was closing. I can’t think why she left it so late because normally she’d have been there first thing. On her way back to the estate she loaded up with a dozen cans of White Star at the offie.’

  ‘White Star?’

  There was a laugh down the phone. ‘You do live a sheltered life, don’t you? It’s cider; the strongest there is. One can equals four units of alcohol. So ten cans is more than any woman should drink in two weeks. Rosie Smith was well into her fourth, sitting in a warm corner by the central heating vents at the foot of the first tower block inside Westgate.’

  Trish had no difficulty picturing the scene or feeling the humiliation of drinking in the open. She said as much.

  ‘Rosie’s long past feeling humiliated,’ Shelby said. ‘She drinks outside because she knows Darren will always take any alcohol he sees and make her watch as he pours it down the drain.’

  ‘Where was he when she was attacked?’

  ‘Well alibi’d by Kimberley, and—’

  ‘She’d lie for him, though, wouldn’t she?’ Trish said. ‘Don’t you think he’s a much more likely suspect than Jay?’

  ‘I know you’re prejudiced against him.’ Shelby’s voice was as cold and sharp as an ice pick, ‘But you must accept the truth: he didn’t do it. Kimberley’s not his only alibi. One of the neighbours – a woman of thirty-two, so old enough to know better than to lie about something like this – dropped in to borrow a cup of sugar and stayed to chat.’

  ‘Is she reliable?’ Trish was slowing down as she neared Plough Court, still wanting to know a lot more. Did anyone really borrow a cup of sugar? Wasn’t that just a soap-opera way of getting characters to introduce each other to the audience?

  ‘There’s no reason not to believe her,’ Shelby said. ‘She’s OK. And Darren’s never been violent to his mum. Ever. In spite of all the provocation. Like I said, you don’t know him.’

  Nor do you, Trish thought, wanting to make her take Darren’s violence seriously.

  If only Shelby had seen Jay on the day he’d come to the flat with blood pouring from the wounds on his face! But she hadn’t. By the time Jeremy Black had persuaded her to pick him up from school, the damage had begun to scab over and didn’t look nearly so bad.

  ‘Did you look to see whether there were any marks on Darren’s knuckles?’ Trish said into the phone.

  ‘The attack wasn’t done with hands.’ Shelby’s voice was different now, not quite placatory but kinder. ‘She was kicked, all over her head and body. If whoever did it had been wearing boots, or even hard shoes, she’d be dead; but it looks as though he was in trainers. The police haven’t found any in the flat with any signs of blood. But Kimberley noticed that a pair of Jay’s are missing. I’ve got to go.’

  ‘Me too,’ Trish said. ‘If you get any news of Jay, will you tell me?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Trish flipped her phone shut as she caught sight of Robert, re-emerged from chambers and beckoning furiously.

  ‘Come on. Hurry up. Hal’s got some news for you.’

  ‘What?’ Trish said as she reached him, stowing her phone in her pocket.

  ‘He’s been on the track of Chris and Sally Bowles from the Northumbrian walkers’ blogs, checking out the address they gave in the Fortwells’ visitors’ book. There’s no such place. Which suggests they could’ve been using fake names, too.’

  ‘So it is them,’ Trish said, already running upstairs. When she reached Robert’s room, Hal looked up from his computer. His freckly face was more eager than she’d ever seen it.

  ‘Did he tell you, Trish?’

  ‘He did. Terrific news. Now we’ve got to track them down and find out exactly what they did while they were at the Fortwells’ farm seventy-two hours before the tanks went up in smoke. It would be an incredible coincidence to find such a shifty couple there at exactly the right time if they weren’t involved.’

  ‘What I thought we could do,’ Hal said with his fingers still on the keyboard, ‘is get in touch with all the bloggers we can, that’s all the ones who also signed people’s visitors’ books and left either email or snailmail addresses, and find out what they can remember of these two and perhaps provide us with physical descriptions. Lots have put pix on their blogs, but there aren’t any captioned “Chris and Sal” unfortunately.’

  ‘Good thought,’ Trish said, even more pleased with him.

  ‘Don’t forget,’ Robert said from behind them both, ‘you’re my pupil and, unlike Trish, I’ve got four big cases in the pipeline. I need you to work on them.’

  Some of the brightness in Hal’s eyes dimmed, as did Trish’s growing affection for Robert.

  ‘I won’t go anywhere; I’ll only email, and that won’t take long,’ Hal said. ‘I’ll do it in my own time.’

  ‘Anything you can do by email would be great,’ she said with a nod to Robert, ‘but don’t compromise the rest of your work. I’ll talk to Hoffman and see if he can persuade the client to have investigators put back on the case.’ She paused in the doorway and looked back.

  ‘Thank you, Hal. You’ve been terrific. We will get to the bottom of it now.’

  His eyes sparkled.

  In her own roo
m, she looked round at the heaps of papers and books all over her desk. In the old days before she’d taken silk, she would have had a pupil too and he – or she – could have tidied up this mess. Ignoring it, she phoned Hoffman’s number and told him she needed him to talk to their client again.

  ‘Can’t at the moment. He’s on his way to Kazakhstan.’

  ‘Why? More trouble?’

  ‘Yes. CWWM have a thoroughly satisfactory tank farm there that’s been doing good business ever since independence, and they’ve been trying to expand into most of the neighbouring states. One new site across the border is halfway to development but the local authorities have just rescinded their planning permission.’

  ‘Can they do that when it’s already being built?’

  Trish wished she could believe Greg Waverly capable of organising something like this. Even though she was now certain his shambolic persona was an invention, she couldn’t see him managing large-scale bribery of local politicians thousands of miles away.

  ‘Not by any normal standards, no,’ Fred said down the phone. ‘But life is still pretty Wild West in some of the old Soviet states. It’s particularly irritating for Bates because CWWM went through a ghastly time sorting out what sweeteners they could legally provide from this end and, in effect, paying through the nose for the planning permission they did get.’

  ‘When will he be back?’

  ‘Who knows? He’s always been remarkably hands-on. Likes to do all the trickiest stuff himself. He told me he was going on an open ticket because he had no idea how long it would take. He’s got his development director with him. They’ll be checking in with head office at intervals, so I could get a message to him if your request is urgent.’

  ‘It’ll keep. Thanks.’

  The phone rang again. Picking it up, she gave her name and Antony replied, sounding faint and quivery:

  ‘Trish … I need to see you.’

  ‘I have to get home. David needs help.’

  ‘Is his life in danger?’

  ‘Of course not,’ she said sharply, far more sharply than she usually spoke to anyone, let alone a hospital patient. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to be so arsy. What’s the problem, Antony?’

  ‘I need you, Trish. Please come.’ Still his voice had the unnatural shakiness. He put down the phone before she could ask any more.

  She took a taxi to save time and ran into his bay in the big ward, dreading what she might find.

  ‘You look better,’ he said in his normal voice, not looking at all fragile.

  He was smiling up at her from his hospital pillows, more relaxed than at any time since they’d eaten their partridge together in Covent Garden. He had better colour in his face, too.

  ‘Like you,’ she said, full of suspicion. ‘So what was all that desperation about?’

  ‘I’ve been slowly dying of boredom for days. I was desperate, Trish.’

  Words roiled in her brain. She understood exactly what George had meant when he’d talked about accepting what other people did to him while silently fantasising about violence. At some level, a private voice told her, she could cheerfully have taken Antony by his cage, pulled him to the floor, and banged his head until he screamed for mercy.

  The rest of the bay was quiet, with all the other patients either dozing or reading under their dim lights. She was the only visitor tonight. There didn’t seem to be any nurses anywhere in the ward. How they could they leave so many vulnerable patients unprotected like this? Anyone could do anything to them and get away without being seen.

  ‘Trish? What’s up?’

  She used all the self-discipline she’d learned over the years and managed not to snap out a brisk description of the real anxiety David must be facing at this moment. Instead she turned to the alcohol-gel dispenser and rubbed the stuff all over her hands to zap any lurking bacteria.

  ‘I’m sorry you’re stuck in here, bored and probably in pain,’ she said at last, ‘but I’ve got a tough case to defend and a serious situation to deal with at home. I do not have the time or energy to play games with you.’

  ‘Trish, I—’

  ‘I thought something terrible had happened, even that you were dying. I … Oh, fuck it!’

  ‘Trish, I’m sorry.’ Antony held out a hand, which she ignored. ‘What’s happening at home? George? Or David?’

  ‘David. I told you on the phone.’

  ‘I didn’t realise it was that important,’ he said, sounding almost ashamed. ‘But now I’ve got you here can’t you forgive me and sit down for a while? Waiting an extra ten minutes couldn’t do David much harm.’

  He was right, and she loathed behaving like a hysterical virago, so she did sit and tried to smile as she laboured to make conversation.

  ‘Have they said when they’ll let you out of that contraption, Antony?’

  ‘Not too long now. They’re pleased with my progress. The possibility of clots has more or less died down to nothing and my bones are knitting.’

  ‘You’ve been lucky.’

  ‘You’re telling me. The cases I see brought in here every day make me shudder. There’s a woman in the bay at the end who was kicked practically to death yesterday.’

  Jay’s mother, Trish thought instantly, remembering what Shelby had said about Rosie Smith being sent to the orthopaedic ward here. Maybe this wasn’t such a wasted detour.

  ‘D’you know anything about her?’

  ‘Not a lot. The police were round this morning, enlivening things considerably. We were all agog,’ Antony said, cheering up at the sight of her interest.

  ‘Has she had any visitors?’

  ‘A scrawny young man in a hooded top and a much younger girl came today. But I don’t suppose they got much joy. She’s a drunk as well as having head injuries, and isn’t making sense yet. They don’t think she’ll be able to identify her attacker.’

  ‘You know a lot about her for someone who’s never bothered much about what other people think or feel,’ Trish said, smiling more naturally.

  ‘Boredom can make a man interested in almost anything,’ he said. ‘I’ve reverted to a kind of pre-literate, country-bumpkin curiosity in anything out of the ordinary. I even chat to the chaplain when he comes round. Did you bring me anything today?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Grapes, drink, chocolates, anything. I’ve gone all childish as well as pre-literate. I need treats and tribute to keep me happy.’

  ‘I’ll bring you a nice cuddly toy next time I come,’ she said and heard his most sardonic laugh. He really was mending in every possible way.

  ‘But in default of that, a progress report on the case wouldn’t come amiss.’

  She gave him a quick account of the latest developments and her growing conviction that there had been sabotage at the Fortwells’ farm, and that Greg Waverly had to be involved in it somewhere.

  ‘I thought everyone had told you to ignore third-party intervention, and concentrate on mitigating the damages our client faces.’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘Trish, it matters that you do what we agreed.’ Now he was serious and in charge again. ‘No one’s expecting you to beat Angie Fortwell, but the way you conduct this case will have far-reaching effects on your reputation.’

  ‘Doesn’t nailing the saboteurs matter more? What if they go on to do it again? What if more people die because no one could be bothered to find out what really happened when John Fortwell was killed?’

  He laughed. ‘You’re beginning to sound like the nightmare pupil I used to go out of my way to avoid when you first came to 1 Plough Court.’

  ‘Nightmare?’ she repeated, momentarily distracted from the benzene tanks as well as Jay and his mother, and David.

  ‘You were white-faced and gangly, with a terrible haircut and ghastly clothes; and so chippy you couldn’t hear the few compliments that came your way.’ He laughed again. ‘Wherever you went, you exuded hate and fury. No one could get near you.’

  She tried to marry
his vision of the past with her own: wearing charity-shop clothes because they were all she could afford, doing her best in court while often sick with terror, determined to fight for her first few clients and build a career for herself that would earn enough in brief fees to leave a little change after she’d paid her basic living expenses. For a long time making money had seemed to be the only way she’d ever find any kind of safety.

  ‘It was touch and go around the time of your sabbatical,’ Antony said, no longer looking at her. ‘You know, whether you were going to be invited to look for other chambers. But we could all see by the time you came back that you’d sorted something out with yourself. So you got to stay.’

  ‘I’ll be back,’ she said, not looking in his direction. She needed time to absorb the implications of what he was telling her. ‘There’s something I have to do.’

  Leaving his bedside, she found her way to the bay in which the new arrival lay asleep.

  The clipboard at the foot of her bed confirmed the patient was Rosie Smith and gave a date of birth that would make her thirty-six. Even asleep, she looked more like fifty. Maybe it was her injuries, but Trish didn’t think so. The wrinkled bagginess of her skin had a long-term look about it.

  The cheapest kind of garage-forecourt flowers sprawled in too big a vase on her locker, but there were no cards or books. A familiar squeak made Trish turn to face a curious nurse, the first she’d seen this evening.

  ‘Are you family?’ she said in an Australian accent.

  ‘No. I heard about her from the man I was visiting at the other end of the ward, and—’

  ‘Sightseeing?’ The nurse, whose name tag announced her as Sheila Jackson, inserted her uniformed body between Trish and the bed. ‘I think you should leave. Now.’

  No stranger had spoken so dismissively to Trish for a long time, but she was so glad to see evidence of some patient-protection that she walked meekly away to say goodbye to Antony.

  ‘You will come back, won’t you?’ he said. ‘When you’ve sorted David and he doesn’t need you so much?’

  ‘You know I will.’

  She walked out of the hospital and headed for the Jubilee Walkway beside the river, registering the full glory of the Thames’s north bank. Extravagantly lit buildings of every period were shining above their reflections in the black water of the Thames, but she couldn’t stop to gaze at them tonight. David was waiting.