A Poisoned Mind

by Natasha Cooper

  ‘These two are climbers, not walkers,’ he said. ‘Your blogger’s stringing you along. I doubt if this was even taken in Northumberland. The Cairngorms, maybe. But nowhere flatter.’

  ‘How could you possibly know?’ Trish couldn’t bear Hal’s disappointment. ‘The background’s far too vague to tell you where it was shot.’

  Robert’s finger rested on what looked like a smallish cloth lump hanging from the woman’s belt.

  ‘That’s a chalk bag. Walkers don’t have them.’ He was extravagantly pleased with himself. ‘This photograph was taken on a climbing trip.’

  ‘What’s a chalk bag?’ Hal had found his voice again, but it sounded petulant and quite unlike him.

  ‘When one’s scared,’ Robert said kindly, ‘as one often is on a climb, one’s palms sweat. So, one keeps hold of the rock with one hand and stuffs the other into one’s chalk bag and takes a handful of the stuff. Chalk makes one’s grip on the rock safer, you see.’

  Trish did see. But she wasn’t giving up.

  ‘I can understand that a rambler who’d never climbed wouldn’t have a chalk bag. But don’t you think a climber might simply have forgotten the one clipped to her belt when she went walking?’

  She scoured her mind for some technical terms to make Robert stop sneering at her as though she was the worst kind of ignoramus.

  ‘After all, she hasn’t any carabiners or pitons, has she? And I can’t see a single rope.’

  ‘So?’ His sneer had taken on a mulish air. He’d never liked being challenged by anyone but least of all her. ‘The rest of the kit could be on the ground, out of the camera’s range.’

  ‘Suppose you’re right and she is a mountaineer, you could find out what her real name is, couldn’t you?’

  ‘I doubt it, Trish. I’ve already told you I don’t climb any more.’

  ‘Couldn’t you phone a friend?’

  ‘Great idea,’ Hal said, then quailed at the look Robert sent him.

  ‘But almost certainly not worth it. I’m still not convinced these two have anything to do with any sabotage, even if there actually was any.’ Robert paused for a moment, then added, as though from a distant throne: ‘No climber would consider blowing up—’

  ‘Does mountaineering of itself ensure honesty?’ Trish heard a suppressed laugh from Hal.

  ‘Actually, I should have thought with all the self-discipline and courage it needs, it would.’ Robert’s tone suggested he was serious. ‘But it’s more to do with care for the natural envir—’

  The phone on his desk rang, and he abandoned his explanation. Trish asked Hal if she could see Peterthewalk’s email.

  ‘Yes?’ Robert said into the phone. ‘Ah, Steve.’ There was a pause. ‘What a bore! OK. Thanks. Yes, I’ll tell her.’

  Trish was standing behind Hal, reading the email over his shoulder.

  ‘Angie Fortwell’s ill,’ Robert said, making her look up. ‘Too ill to come to court, so we’re adjourned.’

  ‘Oh, sod it!’ she said. ‘When we’re so nearly there. How long for?’

  ‘Months, unfortunately. The RCJ have told Steve they’ll be slotting in an urgent fast-track case because Angie’s doctor can’t say how quickly she’ll be well again, and they won’t have time in the lists to give us any more days until the end of next term.’

  Trish wanted to swear again. It always took ages to get yourself back into a tricky case after a long gap. You had to reread most of the documents and distil everything that had happened into a form of words that would remind the judge not only of the evidence but also the personalities and likely honesty of everyone involved.

  Antony would be on his feet again by the end of next term, so he might even take the case back. Trish felt herself bristling at the very idea. Having come this far, she wanted to be in at the end.

  ‘And Steve wants to talk to you, so you’d better hurry up,’ Robert added, with another patronising expression twisting his perfect features.

  When she’d first encountered him in chambers, she’d thought he looked like a romantic hero from some slushy 1940s film. Now she thought he was much more like one of John Buchan’s villains, whose good looks and perfect grooming signal their wicked intentions from their first appearance on the page. The stories were George’s comfort books, and Trish had learned from them that a great and honest man should always be a little shabby or at least rumpled.

  Refreshed by the thought, she went back to her own room to phone her clerk and hear him say he had the sniff of another brief for her and she wasn’t to leave before he’d confirmed it.

  ‘Thanks, Steve,’ she said.

  When she’d finished with him, she rang George’s mobile to leave a message telling him about the adjournment and asking how his session with Jay and the police had gone. At least she’d have time now to sort out her family and perhaps help Jay with his.

  I could even look for Sally and Chris Bowles, she thought as she put the receiver back on its cradle, and find out exactly what they were doing within yards of the Fortwells’ tanks at the crucial time, and whether Greg Waverly had any hand in paying them to do it.

  That would teach sodding Robert.

  The phone rang.

  ‘Trish Maguire.’

  ‘Hi, it’s me,’ George said. ‘Thanks for your message. It went OK with the police. Jay was clear enough about where he was yesterday and last night, and convincing enough in his ignorance of the attack on his mother. And they’ve checked with Pizza Express and we didn’t leave until after they think the attack happened.’

  ‘Thank God for that.’

  ‘But he wouldn’t tell them why he fled at the sight of the uniformed cops on his doorstep.’ George hesitated, then sounded worried as he added: ‘I didn’t think it was my place to do it if he didn’t want to.’

  ‘You’re probably right,’ Trish said when she’d had a moment to think through the consequences. ‘You never know where that kind of announcement can take an over-excitable cop with targets to meet.’

  ‘Anyway, Jay’s back in school now. There’s no question of any kind of charge, and the police are still doing some local house-to-house, so they may get an eyewitness. Which should confirm his innocence.’

  ‘Fingers crossed.’

  ‘In the meantime, I’ve got an enormous favour to ask, Trish.’

  ‘Go ahead. I owe you plenty after the last couple of weeks.’

  ‘It’s my mother. She’s just phoned about some plumber, who’s cocked up the work he was doing but won’t reduce his bill and has told her he’ll be round at half past twelve to collect a cheque. Or else.’

  ‘Oh, poor woman.’ Trish had had plenty of experience with emergency plumbers, making leaks worse and leaving a terrible mess behind them.

  ‘I know.’ George sounded surprisingly impatient. ‘I tried to phone him to remonstrate, but he’s not answering. So I told her to make him ring me the minute he arrives. She got quite hysterical and said any right-thinking son would drive down to be with her and sort it out himself. But I can’t possibly go today. She slammed the phone down on me and hangs up now every time she hears my voice.’

  ‘I can understand. That kind of thing is scary enough for anyone, but when you’re in your late seventies … d’you want me to go down there and sort him out for her?’

  ‘Good God no. It’s ninety miles each way. I just hoped you’d ring her for me and get her to see reason.’

  ‘I can certainly try.’

  ‘You’re a star, Trish. Thanks. You’ll do it far better than I could. She listens to you.’

  Trish laughed. ‘Only because she and I have no history. I’ll email to let you know how I get on.’

  ‘Great. See you later.’

  Having fetched herself a double espresso, Trish came back to her desk and picked up the phone.

  She had always got on reasonably well with Selina Henton, but they’d never become intimate. Accustomed to her own mother’s bottomless wells of warmth and emotional openness, Trish
had found Selina’s chilly stiff-upper-lippery offputting. Maybe this would be an opportunity to get to know her better.

  ‘Hello?’ Selina said with extreme caution when she picked up Trish’s call. ‘Who is that?’

  ‘It’s me. Trish. I was phoning to see if I could help with your plumber.’

  ‘You are kind. George has just told me to pull myself together and stop being so silly. But you have no idea what the plumber’s like. He—’ Selina’s voice hesitated. There was even a suspicion of a sob before she added in a rush, ‘he’s started threatening me now, Trish. And he’s huge and young, and I’m alone here, and I’m … I’m—’ She couldn’t bring herself to say it.

  ‘You’re frightened.’ Trish didn’t make it a question. There was no need.

  She looked out towards the Embankment. She couldn’t actually see the road from here, but the traffic sounds were relatively light for once.

  ‘Look, why don’t I come and sort him out for you?’

  ‘Oh, Trish, I couldn’t ask you—’

  ‘You’re not, and I’ve got an unexpectedly free day. It shouldn’t take me too long. Hang on, Selina, and if he gets to you before I do, just tell him I’m on my way. OK?’

  ‘I don’t know what to say, except thank you. I’ll see you in a couple of hours or so.’

  Trish sent a quick explanatory email to George, collected her belongings and set off across the bridge to the lock-up where she kept her Audi. There were many times when she’d thought it absurd to pay so much to keep a car she rarely drove. But today wasn’t one of them. Selina lived near the Suffolk coast, which might be only ninety miles from London but took much longer than any other journey of the same length.

  As Trish bleeped up the locks of her soft-topped Audi, she tried to decide whether to head out of London through the City or Docklands.

  Whichever way you chose, it was always wrong and you’d be clogged in jams. Then, inevitably, you’d meet someone who told you how amazingly little traffic there’d been on the other route.

  Still, it felt surprisingly good to be behind the wheel again, picking her way through the tangled streets of the City. At least here in the car she was in charge. She switched on the radio and smiled as Mozart’s clarinet concerto swelled into the empty spaces all around her.

  Today the gods of road management were generous, and she was through the City, out of the suburbs and speeding on to the motorway in record time, which meant she arrived at Selina’s house in a reasonable mood.

  The place looked as good as ever in the autumn sunshine: a long, low farmhouse of red brick, which had mellowed over the four centuries since it had been built. Set in a comfortably contoured landscape of green hills and old trees, it had a grace about it that came, Trish had always thought, from the honesty of its construction and lack of showiness. There had been no design involved; it had simply been built of the available materials to shelter people who worked the land and felled the trees and nurtured their animals.

  The garden wasn’t quite as manicured as it had been when Trish had first seen it, as though Selina’s energy for hard physical work had waned since her husband’s death, but its lines were as elegant as ever. And there were enough evergreens and shrubs with interestingly coloured or patterned bark to stop it looking bleak now most of the flowers were over.

  Trish locked the car and made her way round to the back, where the kitchen door was always left open. In spite of everything she and George had said over the years, his mother insisted that life in the country was still safe and she wasn’t going to yield to their scaremongering with bolts and alarms.

  ‘Selina?’ Trish called. ‘Are you there?’

  She emerged from the drawing room, as immaculate as ever, with her white hair drawn back in a velvet scrunchie and her tall figure dressed in the familar straight tweed skirt and cashmere twin set.

  ‘It’s sweet of you to come,’ Selina said, offering a softly powdered cheek for Trish to kiss. ‘But George shouldn’t take advantage of you. Just because he thinks his work is so much more important than anything else; even yours.’

  ‘It’s all a question of whose clients’ needs are more urgent on any one day,’ Trish said without aggression.

  There was no point trying to make Selina understand George’s standing in his profession. To her, he would always be the small boy in grey-flannel shorts with scabby knees and bottle-bottom glasses.

  ‘D’you want to show me what the plumber did before he gets here?’ Trish went on. ‘Where are the leaks?’

  The problem wasn’t complicated and the plumber himself turned out to be reasonably amenable, so Trish had the whole thing settled within half an hour.

  ‘I just don’t like being taken for a silly old fool,’ Selina said when he’d gone. ‘I was sure he was cheating me.’

  ‘He told me he’s worked for you for a long time. And apparently he comes out at all hours when you need him. I’d have thought that alone would have told you it was safe to trust him.’

  Selina snorted. The sound was extraordinary coming from a woman who had always presented such a dignified front to the world.

  ‘Now,’ she said, smiling again and straightening her back, ‘you’ve had no lunch, Trish. You can’t possibly drive back without anything. I have some smoked salmon in the fridge and a nice brown loaf. Come along and sit down.’

  Watching Selina manoeuvre her arthritic fingers around the knives and food, Trish lost the last of her impatience. This woman had managed the transformation from pampered wife of a powerful man to woman-on-her-own with real courage.

  It couldn’t be easy to find yourself widowed in your seventies when you’d gone straight from your father’s house to your husband’s. You’d have to learn to deal with solitude as well as all the practicalities of house maintenance, tax and bills you’d never tackled, just at the time when your body was starting to punish you with slowness and pain, and your mind with a whole new set of fears and forgetfulness. Her own have-it-all-generation might complain about being permanently exhausted, but they’d had too much experience ever to face a challenge like Selina’s.

  ‘There,’ she said, laying out her prettiest plates and putting a white dish of smoked salmon in front of Trish. ‘Help yourself. And give me your news. How are you?’

  ‘I’m fine, although we’ve been having a rather dramatic time recently with David’s latest school friend. He’s a magnet for trouble, and his family is so fractured and hopeless they can’t help. Poor George even had to go to the police with him today.’

  ‘No wonder there wasn’t any time left to come here and help me. Why is he taking so much trouble for a criminal youth?’

  ‘They get on surprisingly well. In fact,’ Trish said, seizing the opportunity, ‘George confides in Jay. It wasn’t until I heard them talking one day that I knew Henry even existed, let alone how badly—’

  ‘Please stop there, Trish. I really don’t want to know what George told some unsavoury child about his brother.’ Selina’s voice was icy and her face looked as though she’d had far too much Botox.

  ‘I don’t understand. What—?’

  ‘It was all over a long time ago, but it was extraordinarily painful at the time, and I don’t wish to think about it.’

  ‘It’s not over for George.’ Trish ate a corner of brown bread, then looked up at the other woman, whose eyes were like grey pebbles in her rigid face. ‘I want to help him, and I can’t unless I know what happened. What did Henry do to him?’

  ‘Henry?’ Selina’s protest was unnaturally loud, almost raucous. ‘Henry wasn’t the problem. That was George, who insisted on trumpeting his every success and rubbing his brother’s nose in his less satisfactory academic record.’

  Trish frowned, trying to understand, but Selina was still talking.

  ‘We should have sent them to different schools to give Henry a free run, but my husband wanted them both to go where he had been, so there we were.’ She blinked and Trish saw astonishing tears hovering on
the edge of her eyelids.

  ‘Was Henry your favourite?’ she asked more gently than she felt. How could any mother have so misunderstood what she saw?

  ‘I love and loved both my sons equally.’ Selina had quickly dried her eyes, and her back was even more upright than usual. ‘Henry just needed more help and protection. Life has always been so easy for George.’

  That’s all you know, Trish thought, as Selina smoothed back her impeccable silver hair, looking as beautiful as ever. Beautiful and as emotionally blind as the day her younger son first battled with his brother’s jealousy.

  ‘Could you maybe give me a phone number for Henry?’ Trish said. ‘I’d like to try to broker some kind of peace, let George—’

  ‘Please don’t interfere. I know you mean well, but it’s been beyond mending for decades. Leave it alone.’

  Later, driving back to London, Trish wondered whether to talk to George about different ways of looking at his past.

  ‘Hating anyone is such a waste of time,’ she said aloud, checking her mirror before overtaking an enormous car transporter. ‘And energy.’

  Safely past the transporter, she turned on the radio and found herself listening to the local BBC news.

  ’Mrs Eleanor Lawrence, who was injured when her four-wheel drive crashed into a lorry carrying caustic sludge to a waste-treatment plant, has now had both feet amputated above the ankle. The hospital say she is in a stable condition and they believe they have stopped the damage spreading through her body.

  ‘The driver and the company that own the lorry are cooperating fully with the police and accident investigators. They have expressed their sincere regret for Mrs Lawrence’s injuries and relief that all three children who were travelling with her remain in good health. But they say their driver saw her in his rear-view mirror using her mobile phone, which was not hands-free, and turning to talk to her children moments before she crashed into the back of his lorry. Her husband, on the other hand, says that his wife was so worried by the lorry driver’s erratic behaviour she was phoning to alert his company and get help.’