A Poisoned Mind
Page 26
‘I thought, if it was all right with you, I might make a sandwich and go over to Low Topps. I need to see—’
‘How the caretaker shepherd’s been managing? Of course you do. d’you want to take the Land Rover? I don’t think Bill will need it today, but we’d better check first.’
Angie looked away. ‘I thought I might walk actually.’ She waited for Polly’s protest about the unnecessary time it would take and the amount of work that still needed doing in the house.
When she didn’t speak, Angie had to face her again. What she saw in Polly’s expression almost made her gasp: all the compassion there’d been in Trish Maguire’s before she turned into a vengeful harpy.
‘In Adam’s footsteps?’ Polly said. ‘It won’t help, you know, pet.’
Angie grabbed hold of the chair in front of her. She felt as though the floor was unsafe. How much did Polly suspect? Adam had been staying here only days before the explosion that killed his father. It wouldn’t take a genius to make the connection. Or did she actually know something?
Had Adam confessed and sworn her to secrecy about this, too, perhaps making her believe all he’d wanted was to blow up the tanks and that killing his father had been a terrible accident? Polly had never been one to talk if talk wasn’t necessary. She could well have decided that reporting Adam to the police wouldn’t bring John back to life and would double Angie’s grief.
Was this why Polly was looking at her with so much pity?
‘They’re unknowable, our children,’ she said now with a gentleness that made Angie’s eyes water. ‘They think we need protecting from knowledge that wouldn’t hurt a fly; and yet they can do and say things so cruel it feels as if they’ve ripped the skin from our backs. By all means walk to Low Topps, pet, but don’t expect it to help you see into Adam’s mind. It won’t.’
Angie only nodded. She couldn’t say anything. Polly nodded as though she had.
‘If you’re too tired to walk back, phone me. One of us will come and pick you up in the Land Rover.’
‘Thank you. You’re—’ Hearing Bill’s footsteps, Angie left the kitchen by the internal door to avoid any more explanations. Only when the sound of his chair legs scraping along the stone floor told her he was safely at the table did she get her boots and set off.
It was the perfect day for a walk: bright and cold. With her hands in the softly lined pockets of her old Barbour and a scarf around her neck, just covering her mouth, she strode out. Some of the aches eased at once. Using muscles for walking was quite different from stretching and compressing them as you scrubbed and swept. Low Topps was six miles away; it shouldn’t take too long. And walking might help clear her mind of some unbearable thoughts.
Two and a half hours later, she stood on the last hill above her farm. The retired shepherd she was paying to keep an eye on the animals had obviously done as he’d promised. They were dotted about the fields, as they’d always been, peacefully eating. They were no more now than grass-cutting machines and living subjects of experiments in the adverse effects of benzene-poisoning, but they had to be kept from straying and mixing with other flocks; flocks that had yet to be contaminated.
The little lough looked perfect inside the ugly five-foot chain-link fence the health-and-safety people had erected. There was hardly any wind today, so the surface of the water was like polished silver again in the middle of the soft green land. But the fish had died and so had some of the wild duck. No animal could drink from it without risk.
Off to the right was the jagged wreck of the tanks, surrounded by the dead cypress trees, the broken concrete walls, and the blackened earth all around. Angie thought the whole site looked like a broken tooth in a rotting gum. Orange, diamond-shaped HazChem signs were posted along the temporary fences here too.
Had Adam stood like this, when everything was still clean and alive, to hatch his plan? Or was the story Polly had offered actually true: had he come to make peace and failed to find enough courage?
Maguire and her witnesses had been so convincing in the evidence they’d given that Angie now knew all this devastation had to have been caused by a blockage in the breathing vent of one of the tanks. But she still clung to the hope that it could have been an accident, that something might have been blown into the vent by a freak wind.
She sank down until she was squatting, all her body weight resting on her calves and heels.
The trouble was she couldn’t remember any freak winds around that time. And she still found it hard to believe that John could have ignored a visible blockage for seventy-two hours. The only explanation for his leaving something in the vent would be if it had been stuffed so far inside he couldn’t actually see it. And the only way that could have happened was by human agency.
You could walk down from here to the tanks in a straight line and never be seen from the house. If John had been checking the tank enclosure when saboteurs approached, he would have seen them. But if he’d had been at his normal job, his real job of sheep-farming, the intruders could have spent hours uninterrupted while they fiddled about with the tanks.
Of course, whoever they were, they would have had to break into the locked enclosure. Or maybe climb the concrete walls.
Angie tried to forget that Adam had always been an agile tree climber. When she couldn’t, she told herself the smooth concrete walls of the enclosure would have presented real problems to anyone without a ladder.
So maybe he’d brought bolt cutters with him, or a crowbar and smashed his way in.
Had it been a broken padlock and swinging gate that had attracted John’s attention in the end, so that he’d gone to investigate just at the moment when the overheated charcoal burst into flame and triggered the explosion? Or had he felt the heat from outside the enclosure and rushed to find out what was wrong?
No one would ever know because the fire had destroyed the gate.
Angie wasn’t crying now. Sympathy from a woman like Polly might make her do that. This kind of horror was far too much for tears.
Her heart jolted – once, twice – as though offering her the chance to stop it completely.
Trish and George cooked the lamb on Sunday, after a tense twenty-four hours she never wanted to repeat.
When George phoned the cinema manager on Friday to find out what had happened with Jay, the man was furious. His staff had found no evidence of any fire-raising, or any sign of a 14-year-old boy on his own in either of the two sections of the cinema. He told George to warn his ‘son’ that if he ever played a trick like that again the police would be called and he would be barred from the place.
None of them slept well. On Saturday Trish sent the others off for their usual training hour in the swimming pool and later felt passionately grateful for David’s interest in chess and Scrabble, and for George’s tolerance of both. They played one or other game for most of the day. There was no sign of Jay, no phone call and no response to any of David’s texts. At eight on Sunday morning David bounced into her room to ask if his old friend Sam could come for a traditional Sunday lunch and life began again.
George was carving the roast lamb now. As Trish spooned redcurrant jelly on to her plate, she watched David shedding all the emotional armour he’d had to acquire for dealing with Jay. At one moment she thought: yes, you’re the boy I knew before this term started; I’ve missed you.
After lunch, she waved the two boys off on some private expedition of their own, without the slightest anxiety about what they might do. She and George cleared up together, neither talking much. It was as though there were too many things to say and too little action they could take until they knew more about what had happened to Jay. Trish had phoned Shelby to warn her about the cinema episode, but she’d had to leave a message and there’d been no return call yet.
‘Has it crossed your mind, Trish,’ George said as he scoured the last crusty lumps from the roasting tin, ‘that David might have invented the fire-raising as an excuse for dumping Jay?’
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�No.’ She reached for a cloth to wipe the worktop.
‘He’s been getting more and more difficult, and it wouldn’t be surprising if David—’
‘But this isn’t his style, George. He’s never lied about anything except being “fine” when he obviously isn’t.’ Trish put down the cloth and stood with her back against the worktop.
George swilled detergent foam off the roasting tin and leaned over to kiss her cheek.
‘Don’t look so worried,’ he said. ‘One way or another we’ll get it sorted.’
‘I hope you’re right.’
‘So why don’t we allow ourselves to revel in having the flat to ourselves for once?’ He balanced the roasting tin on the rack and dried his hands.
She felt the tension in her face crack, letting all the muscles soften. ‘Good idea.’
‘Are you working this afternoon, or do you feel like a—’ He broke off, to push a few stray strands of her hair off her face. ‘A healthful snooze?’
She kissed him, glad of the opportunity to bury her fears. ‘A healthful snooze sounds wonderful.’
He put an arm around her waist and swung her out of the kitchen. They climbed the spiral staircase to her bedroom, dredging up silly jokes and catch phrases from their earliest days together and trying to forget all their responsibilities until the light went and David came home. They managed well enough, but Trish couldn’t quite stop listening for the knock on the door that would signal Jay’s return to their lives.
She phoned Carl Bianchini again as soon as she reached chambers on Monday morning to tell him she’d met Maryan Fleming and wanted to know whether he’d been on any of the corporate-bonding sessions at the climbing school when he worked with GlobWasMan.
‘My other phone’s ringing,’ he said. ‘I have to go.’
She waited, while ideas trickled through her mind like sand in an hourglass. To her surprise he hadn’t cut the connection. She could hear the traffic beyond the trees on the Embankment and Steve’s voice as he ranted at someone at the far end of the corridor. On the open phone line, she heard only soft breathing, until at last it was overtaken by a question.
‘Have you really got a troubled teenage protégé called Jay Smith?’
‘Absolutely,’ she said, encouraged. The harshness, the long silence and now this suspicious question told her he had some secrets. But if he didn’t want to hand them over, why was he hanging on? Could he possibly be afraid of eavesdroppers?
‘And there’s lots more I want to ask you about him,’ she added quickly. ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t be doing it on the phone. Would you prefer it if we met somewhere face to face again?’
Another long pause.
‘That might be a good idea,’ he said at last. ‘But I’m not sure … Yes, I know: I have to be near Trafalgar Square this afternoon. I could meet you by Landseer’s lions at one-thirty.’
Bizarre, she thought, but why not?
‘I’ll be there.’ She clicked off the phone as Steve put his head round her door to tell her the new brief would be in her pigeonhole within the week and that Sarah Fortescue had phoned him to open negotiations for a very large banking case. Trish leaned back in her chair, stretching all her limbs in relief.
Three hours later, she left chambers to walk up to the Strand and on to Trafalgar Square, enjoying the crispness of the air on her cheeks as much as the sunlight dancing over the pinnacles of the buildings and the shiny bodywork of the expensive cars.
There was no sign of Carl Bianchini anywhere near Landseer’s lions, so she sat on the white stone parapet of one of the fountains, closed her eyes and tipped up her face to the sun. There was still some warmth in it. She felt as though her skin was becoming more elastic under its care and her mind let go of all kinds of minor stresses.
As she allowed herself to relax, a mental guard she’d raised began to drop too. The sensation of comfort dribbled away.
For the first time she thought of the link between children like Jay – clever, worthwhile but unhappy, frustrated and therefore explosively dangerous children – and the kind of toxic waste stored by companies like CWWM and GlobWasMan. Twenty-first-century society created both in frightening quantities and there weren’t nearly enough facilities to keep them safe.
She closed her eyes again, groping for her old defences and for the few blissful moments of relaxation she’d felt under the sun’s warmth.
‘Trish? Anyone in there? Trish.’ The familiar quiet voice made her open her eyes again, but all she could see was a dark figure against a dazzle of light.
‘Carl,’ she said, blinking and moving so she could get a better view. Today he was wearing a suit again, but his hair was as dry and untidy as ever and he looked even more worried. ‘Thank you for coming.’
‘I had to be near here anyway.’ He lowered himself to the stone parapet beside her, but he didn’t say anything else.
After a while, Trish said: ‘Why are you so quiet? I thought you were going to come clean at last.’
‘Come clean?’ He sounded outraged. ‘About what?’
‘About how you got embroiled with Greg Waverly and Ben Givens in their campaign against the chemical-waste industry.’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’
‘And why the three of you picked the benzene tanks at Low Topps Farm for Maryan Fleming and Barry Stuart to blow up.’
‘You’re mad,’ Binachini said. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. And I’ve never wanted to blow anything up.’
He forced himself to his feet and walked hurriedly away from the fountain, only to stop, turn on his heel and come back. He opened his mouth, then shut it again and took off his spectacles and tucked them in his breast pocket so he could rub his eyes. They looked so red he’d clearly been at them before. At last he sat down again, with his hands clamped to the white stone either side of him. His muscles were so tight, Trish almost expected to hear them humming.
‘If you didn’t come to tell me the truth, well away from listening ears, why did you agree to meet?’ she said more kindly.
‘I had to stop you blabbing those names over the phone. Haven’t you any idea what you’re risking?’
‘No. Tell me.’
‘Who the hell are you? And who are you working for? I know you do have a protégé called Jay Smith because I did some checking after we spoke this morning. But why d’you think I might give you information about Fleming and Stuart?’ He waited for a nanosecond, then added unconvincingly: ‘Whoever they are.’
‘Carl, why are you so hostile?’ Trish said.
‘Can you really not know?’ He stared at her with a kind of dread that told her how much of his aggression was driven by fear; not just wariness but real physical gut-churning fear. ‘Are you fiddling with this completely blind?’
‘I must be,’ she said, briefly touching one of his rigid hands. He whipped it away.
‘Because I haven’t a clue about what’s making you so scared,’ she went on. ‘Haven’t you been working with Ben Givens and Greg Waverly?’
He raised one hand to cover his eyes. She waited.
‘This is lunacy,’ he said at last. ‘I’ve had no contact with Givens since the libel case. And I have never heard of Greg Waverly.’
‘But you must have heard of Maryan Fleming and Barry Stuart,’ Trish said. ‘Because they organised the corporate-bonding weekends for GlobWasMan at their climbing school in Swanage.’
‘Oh, Christ!’ he muttered.
‘Carl, you have to explain. Otherwise I’m going to do unintended damage as I trample around. If you don’t know about the connection between Givens and Greg Waverly, what’s the significance of Fleming and Stuart in your life?’
‘All I can say is that I came across those two names in the accounts at GlobWasMan.’
‘So what? They should be there. As I said, they provided corporate-bonding weekends.’
‘Except they didn’t,’ he said. Now he sounded exhausted, as though he’d run out of defences.
The wind got up suddenly and blew the fountain’s spray towards them. Trish could feel it on the back of her head. Carl straightened up, took a pristine handkerchief from his pocket and took off his spectacles to wipe the lenses. Once they were dry again, he spent another minute or so fastidiously wiping his face and then his hands.
‘The dates didn’t work,’ he said at last. ‘Not for the most recent weekend anyway, and probably not for some of the earlier ones either. No one was available to go. Never would have been. So the money was paid out for some other reason, just disguised as payment for another directors’ climbing weekend.’
Trish felt as though she were watching a film of shattering glass run backwards so that the mess of flying debris was miraculously sucked back together again to show the full, unbroken pane.
She knew what the payment must have been for. And she thought she knew who had been threatening Barry when he’d asked for more money. And what he’d meant when he’d told Maryan she could take her chance with Ken Shankley if she didn’t flee to New Zealand.
‘What did you think the money was for?’ Trish tried to sound mildly interested and not at all suspicious.
He was biting his lips so hard she expected to see blood at any minute.
‘It wasn’t the only odd payment.’ You’d have thought the words hurt his mouth from the way they twisted up his face. ‘Once I’d found it, I started to look for more. You see I shouldn’t ever have known anything about it because I didn’t deal with the nitty-gritty of the accounts; I only saw this entry because there was a struggling temp in the department one day and I was the only person around in the office to answer her question about which code to give the invoice. I had to make a search to find out and that’s when I started to see the anomalies in the books.’