A Poisoned Mind

by Natasha Cooper

  This cannot be coincidence, Trish thought. Someone is sabotaging the safe disposal of toxic waste. And not caring who gets hurt in the process. This is John Fortwell all over again. Whether it’s Greg Waverly or not, whoever’s doing it has got to be stopped.

  Chapter 14

  Back in London in mid afternoon, aching with sympathy for the unknown woman who’d been so excruciatingly injured, Trish returned her car to its expensive but secure space under the old railway arches and took the familiar route across the bridge to chambers.

  Apart from the now leafless trees, the only natural thing she could see was the Thames, mud-brown and moving sluggishly between the great masonry bulwarks of Bazalgette’s embankments. She breathed in dust and exhaust fumes and wondered why she felt so much happier with them than the clean Suffolk air and its ravishing landscape.

  Only a few people strolled along the pavements as she crossed the road and walked through the grey stone arch into the Temple. She heard her name called and looked to her right to see Sarah Fortescue, a solicitor who had often briefed her while she was still a junior. Sarah was waving from one of the benches in the garden.

  Trish waved back and was about to carry on to chambers when she remembered her need for new work. Then she noticed the man sitting on the bench beside Sarah and walked quickly across the crisp grass.

  Sarah stood up, smiling, and Trish leaned forwards, presenting first her right cheek, then her left, for the kind of professionals’ kissing ritual that was as stylised as any dominance display in the animal kingdom.

  ‘How are you?’ Sarah said. ‘It’s been ages.’

  ‘I know. There’s always so much stuff going on that none of us has enough time for anything except work. How’s everything with you?’

  ‘Absolutely fine.’ Sarah turned suddenly, as though belatedly remembering her companion.

  Ben Givens rose to his feet slowly enough to look reluctant. Trish had recognised him at once and she could see her knew her too, but there wasn’t even the faintest hint of a polite smile on his square face. She noticed the scars of ancient acne on his broad cheeks.

  ‘Trish, d’you know Ben Givens?’ Sarah said. ‘Ben, this is Trish Maguire.’

  ‘I know your name, of course, but I’m not sure we’ve ever met,’ she said, holding out her hand and pretending she didn’t hate every single thing about him.

  ‘No, I don’t think we have.’ He shook her hand briefly, dropping it as soon as he decently could.

  She didn’t mind that. His palm had been clammy, which seemed odd in such an apparently confident man. She thought of Robert’s explanation of the chalk bag and the fear that made climbers’ hands sweat.

  ‘Although your name came up somewhere recently,’ she added, putting her hand up to her forehead as though its pressure on her skull could help her think. ‘Only I can’t remember in what context.’

  ‘Never mind,’ Sarah said briskly, looking from one to the other. ‘You’ll remember in due course. One always does.’

  ‘Usually in the middle of the night,’ Trish agreed, laughing.

  ‘And you’re bound to run into each other. In a world as small as ours, I’m surprised this is your first meeting.’

  Ben Givens hadn’t said anything, apart from the graceless greeting. Trish heard some angry dogs scrapping on the far side of the hedge, followed by a human shriek and some sharp protest. It didn’t stop the dogs. She decided to see what would happen if she goaded him.

  ‘But then my mind’s all over the place at the moment,’ she said. ‘I was just driving back from Suffolk and listening to the local news: some poor unfortunate woman has had both feet amputated after they were covered with toxic gunk when she crashed into the back of a chemical-waste lorry and its contents burst out.’

  She was watching Givens carefully. He looked as though he might be sick. Good.

  ‘You’d never believe anyone could be so vilely irresponsible, would you?’ she went on, pushing and pushing, and wondering whether his hands would feel even wetter now. ‘Crippling someone because they couldn’t be bothered to provide properly secure containers for their dangerous chemicals. It’s despicable.’

  Sarah was murmuring some generic kind of sympathetic outrage. But Givens turned his back on Trish.

  ‘Sarah, I must go,’ he said with a rasp in his voice. ‘There’s a call I’m expecting in chambers. My clerk’ll never forgive me if I’m late. Good to see you.’

  ‘Of course,’ Trish said clearly, ‘the toxic spill might not have been the company’s fault. It could have been the result of some kind of sabotage.’

  Givens stopped and turned back to look at her again. For a second he didn’t even breathe. Only his eyes moved, blazing out of a face that still looked yellow with nausea. Had she gone too far?

  ‘I’d be careful flinging around irresponsible accusations like that, if I were you,’ he said.

  ‘Of course!’ Trish smiled as though someone had given her a magnificent present. ‘You do defamation, don’t you? Now I remember. Someone was telling me only the other day about that completely astounding sum you won for GlobWasMan. Well done, you.’

  His lips clamped together and whitened as the blood was forced out of them. The expression in his hot-looking eyes offered a tougher warning than anything he could have said. After a moment he stalked away.

  Sarah looked after him with astonishment; Trish, with acute interest.

  ‘What’s up with him?’ she asked. ‘Was it something I said?’

  ‘I’ve no idea, Trish. We were just settling in to an important post-mortem about a con with a big client. There was no talk of phone calls then. Weird. I’m sorry about that.’

  ‘Not to worry. What about some coffee? I could do with it after my journey.’ Trish mentally crossed her fingers. Clearly Sarah knew Givens quite well. She could be very useful.

  ‘I’d better not. There’s a mountain of work waiting for me. If I can’t have my post-mortem, I’d better get on with it.’ Sarah smiled again, a lot more naturally than Givens had. ‘But I’ll be in touch with you – and with your clerk, of course.’

  ‘I look forward to it. See you then.’

  Trish’s shoes clacked against the stone stairs of 1 Plough Court. Steve nodded as she walked past the open door of the clerks’ room, but he didn’t call her in to tell her any more about the new brief.

  One of the other silks, who was checking his pigeon hole, turned to ask whether she’d seen Antony recently. She passed on the news of his physical recovery and encouraging signs of intense boredom.

  In her own room, she dumped her bag on the windowsill and stood looking out at the black branches of the plane trees. They made intricate patterns against the grey-white sky, changing with each new gust of wind. Winter was definitely on its way. Her mind wove in and out of ideas that were almost as intricate and quite as changeable.

  At last she abandoned the view. Until there was some reaction from Givens – or Greg Waverly – there was no more she could do. The morning’s newspaper was lying on her desk, with the business section still unread. But she ought to send George a reassuring email about Selina and the plumber first.

  Pushing away her laptop when the message had gone through, Trish scoured the financial news, trying to be interested in petroleum futures and fluctuations in the short-term money markets. An interview with a psychopathic-sounding tycoon was more alluring, but the diary beckoned. The style was nearly always witty in a mildly malicious way, and the stories usually showed more human interest than everything in the rest of the section put together.

  Today the diary paragraphs were duller than sometimes, but her eye was caught by a reference to GlobWasMan. She wasn’t surprised. You could go months, years even, never noticing a name or an idea, then have it brought to your attention once and subsequently find yourself tripping over references to it wherever you went.

  Family reasons is a wonderful catch-all excuse for anyone moving out of one job and into another, much less prominen
t one. It covers sacking, redundancy, and losing the will to live with boredom. In the case of Carl Bianchini, Company Secretary of GlobWasMan, it appears to be real. Our sympathies to his wife in her illness but also to his erstwhile colleagues, who must be struggling without him as they go for an IPO on AIM at last.

  This was certainly an odd time for such a crucial figure to leave any company. Even if the company secretary’s wife was ill, surely he could have hung on for a month or so until the shares had been sold in the Alternative Investment Market. Anyone who owned a slice of the business would reap a big profit then. Even if this bloke didn’t, he could expect a pretty big bonus. Why would anyone willingly forgo that kind of money?

  Or was this sabotage, too, but of a financial rather than a physical kind?

  Somewhere Trish had the GlobWasMan Pathfinder prospectus Fred Hoffman had suggested she read. So far she hadn’t even opened it. Shuffling through her papers, she eventually found the thick brown envelope tucked under a heap of old briefs in one of the drawers.

  She was impressed by the lavishness of the glossy brochure. GlobWasMan – or their backers – must have spent a fortune in their attempt to persuade institutions and individuals to buy the shares they were offering. The manifesto at the front began:

  With increasing regulation in all developed countries, the disposal of hazardous waste will become more and more difficult, but the need can only grow.

  GlobWasMan has unrivalled expertise in all areas of medical and chemical waste, heavy metals, hi-tech equipment and white goods. We have a better safety record than any of our competitors. We are also in negotiation for sites and planning permission all over the world to allow for the planned expansion. Profits will be in the region of …

  Blah, blah, blah, Trish thought, uninterested in any of the sums. The overconfident tone would have put her off investing, even if she hadn’t renounced equities after listening to too much hopeless advice in the past.

  There was no mention of last year’s successful libel case anywhere in the prospectus, of course, and no reference to Givens. Turning the pages for something about the decamping Carl Bianchini, she found a double-page spread devoted to photographs and biographical details of all the directors and officers.

  The chairman, Ken Shankley, the managing director, Leo Cray, and the finance director, Jed Shaw, were still only in their late twenties, which surprised her. They’d worked together before, setting up one of the fountain of small Internet companies that had sprung up just after the millennium. Unlike most of their rivals, these three, only a year or two out of university, had sold their business just in time and emerged with a fortune, some of which they had invested in buying the tiny chemical-waste company they’d now built into a considerable force.

  Bianchini looked quite a bit older, and it didn’t sound as though he had been part of their inner circle or had any stake in the original company. Interestingly, though, he was also described as the head of the legal department, which meant he must have worked with Givens over the libel trial.

  Had they cooked up this plot as soon as the jury’s record-breaking verdict was announced? Or had Givens waited until the initial public offering was launched before trying to suborn Bianchini and so wreck it?

  Most heads of legal departments had trained as solicitors. If Bianchini were one of them, he shouldn’t be too hard to find. A few keystrokes on her laptop brought up the Law Society’s website, but there was no reference to him. Surprised and rather annoyed, Trish checked with the latest legal directory in her bookshelves, and there he was.

  When she telephoned the Law Society for an explanation, she was told he had voluntarily taken himself off the roll and they had no other information to give out.

  ‘That must have been pretty quick,’ Trish said. ‘When did it happen? And why?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said the voice at the other end of the phone. ‘We have details of solicitors who’ve been struck off, but not the ones who choose to go.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Trish said.

  Her next call was to Fred Hoffman, who sounded preoccupied but as friendly as usual.

  ‘Pity about Angie’s illness screwing up our timetable, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘What can I do for you, Trish?’

  ‘I’m going against all the client’s orders and pursuing sabotage, now there’s time to spare. You see, I don’t think he’s the only victim. Someone’s going after GlobWasMan, too, and trying to scupper their IPO. If we find out more, we may be able to get some proof of what they’ve been doing to our client.’

  ‘Trish!’ Fred’s voice was vigorous with protest. But she was not giving up now.

  ‘It has to be worthwhile, Fred. Come on. Do you know anything about a onetime solicitor called Carl Bianchini who worked for GlobWasMan?’

  ‘Can’t say I do.’

  ‘Could you ask around? See if anyone knows him?’

  ‘Should I be encouraging you in speculation directly contrary to the client’s wishes? Indeed contrary to his orders?’

  She thought she heard a hint of the familiar good nature somewhere in his growly voice and decided to trust it.

  ‘I take it that’s a rhetorical question. Do your best for me, Fred.’

  ‘Don’t I always? Got to go. Good bye.’

  She hadn’t paid much attention to any of Don Bates’s disasters except the explosion at the Fortwells’ farm, but he had talked about environmental protesters in the States.

  Could they be linked to Greg Waverly and Givens? Even though corruption of planning officials in one of the old Soviet states wasn’t likely to be within their scope, environmental protest in America might well be. FADE looked too homespun to have transatlantic reach, but maybe that was just the way Greg wanted them to be seen. After all, Trish had never been convinced by his unkempt beard and grubby jeans, his sandals and shuffly manner.

  She was reaching for the phone as her mind suggested the ever more devastating forms of eco-terrorism they might try next. She flicked through her address book with the other hand as she looked for Anna Grayling, the friend whose intervention had stopped her joining Antony on the crossing the day he was knocked down.

  Her call was answered after only one ring and she had to listen to the usual quick-fire sputter of news. As soon as Anna’s rattling voice stopped for a second, Trish said:

  ‘Didn’t you tell me you were working on an environmental film, Anna?’

  ‘Of course. Why?’

  ‘Great. You’re just the woman I need then. Have you ever come across this organisation FADE that’s backing the litigant in person in my current case?’

  ‘I’ve heard of them.’ There wasn’t much colour in Anna’s voice, certainly no discernible excitement or reserve. ‘Why?’

  ‘I just wondered how the rest of the environmental community sees them.’

  ‘As a joke.’ Anna’s noisy voice softened in a warm laugh. ‘They’re a tinpot amateur group. There was a flurry of interest a while back when they first got involved with your opponent, but it’s died down now.’

  ‘You don’t happen to know how they’re funded, do you?’

  ‘Haven’t a clue. With these little mushroomy groups that spring up and then disappear, it’s usually a one-off legacy or conscience-salving donation from a rich individual.’

  ‘Like Ben Givens?’ Trish suggested hopefully.

  ‘Who? Never heard of him. But if he’s got money for environmental good causes put him in touch with me. We’re running short of funding for the film.’

  ‘He’s a barrister. You’ll find him in the phone book.’

  ‘Great. I’ll get on to him asap. Got to go now. See you soon, Trish. Oh, how’s your friend? He didn’t—’

  ‘Die? No, he didn’t.’ Trish hadn’t meant to sound sharp, so she added: ‘Thanks for asking. Bye now.’

  Her mobile bleeped as a text came through. She read it and smiled at George’s eccentric style. He’d learned some techniques from David, then made them all his own:

 
Tx a billn, dling ma + plumb = hell 4 me u trans4m my lfe cul8er tk gd

  Angie looked down at her big mug of Fair Trade tea because she couldn’t bear to face Fran and Greg.

  ‘I’ve got to go home. You’ve both been far too kind to me already, way beyond what was needed for the case. Now we’re not going to be able to finish it for months, I can’t hang around, battening on you, getting in your way.’

  ‘You could never be in the way,’ Fran said, the warmth in her voice making Angie feel even more guilty.

  ‘You are kind. And I’m sorry. But I have to go. It doesn’t mean I’m not grateful for—’

  ‘Don’t worry, Ange. We won’t let you off the leash for long,’ Greg said in a voice that was colder and harder than anything except the stone floor of the Low Topps kitchen.

  ‘Greg!’ Fran sounded shocked.

  He smiled through the beard and quickly changed his tone, warming up his voice and softening the edges of the words. ‘And we will need you. Not just for your own case. You’re part of our lives now.’

  Angie rubbed both hands over her face, hating the dryness of her skin and trying not to feel so suffocated that she did something stupid. She longed for the clean emptiness of the north and for Polly’s undemanding company, which never drove her into losing her wicked temper.

  ‘He’s right. We’ll be starting a new campaign soon,’ Fran said. ‘You could help us with that.’

  ‘You could indeed.’ Greg’s smile was turning into a grimace that pulled his whole face out of shape and made the beard wobble.

  How Angie hated it now! She had to get away. But she’d better show interest. ‘What campaign?’

  ‘There’s been a horrible spill of some of CWWM’s chemical waste after a traffic accident on a country road in Essex. A woman’s had to have her feet cut off because they were so badly damaged by the caustic sludge.’

  Angie’s heart jolted. She put both hands to her chest, as though that could ward off any suggestion that she owed this new victim something. She didn’t have any strength or emotion to spare for anyone else.