A Poisoned Mind

by Natasha Cooper

  What everyone needed now was for Rosie Smith to beat her demons, stop drinking, find a way to admire Jay, look after him properly, and free him to let himself use his talents. It didn’t seem likely, so he’d go on needing a safety net.

  Was four years such a long time? Trish asked herself. The boys would be going to university then. Couldn’t she hold her family together – with him in it – for forty-eight more months?

  At the moment she couldn’t think of a good enough reason to say no.

  She rang George to pass on the news, adding that she didn’t know how long her settlement negotiations were likely to take and whether she’d be back in time to cook.

  ‘No problem,’ he said. ‘I haven’t got any meetings this afternoon. I can guarantee to be back to welcome them, and whip up something suitably glutinous for supper. My other phone’s going. See you later.’

  Thank God for George, Trish thought, as she pushed domestic details to the back of her mind once more and collected her notes for the encounter with Angie Fortwell.

  Chapter 20

  Angie’s suit didn’t feel at all tight as she emerged from the train to find Greg waiting for her.

  ‘Did you have some lunch, Ange? I don’t want you fainting in the middle of the meeting.’

  No greeting, she thought, or an enquiry about how I am. He’s just making sure his property is well fuelled and functioning. Sod him.

  ‘Did you, Ange?’

  ‘Yes. Sandwiches. As soon as I caught the train. What about you?’

  He smiled. As his beard moved, she realised she hadn’t needed to ask. All the evidence was there.

  ‘I see you did. Whiskers, Greg,’ she said, parroting Fran’s tactful warning.

  He put up a hand, brushed it against the beard, then examined the result. For a second she thought he was blushing.

  ‘Too many tomatoes,’ he said. ‘They get everywhere.’

  Tomatoes? She didn’t want to engage in this particular conversation, but the evidence looked too purple for that. More like plums.

  ‘Let’s go,’ she said aloud.

  A few minutes later, they were sitting side by side in a half-empty tube. One or two elderly women with shopping bags avoided eye contact with a few aimless-looking young people, but they were nothing like the angry, shuffling crowds of the rush hour, who had made her journeys to court such an ordeal.

  ‘I had a word with Ben Givens,’ Greg said, having got over his embarrassment. ‘You know, the barrister I introduced you to at our party.’

  ‘I remember,’ she said, thinking, and I remember the way you sent him to drag me back from my one moment of freedom. What did you think I was going to do then? Who did you think I was going to talk to? And what possible damage could I have done?

  ‘When I told him about this summons,’ Greg said, totally unaware of her resentment, ‘he was sure the only reason must be that Maguire’s come up against a flaw in her case. He hasn’t worked out what it is yet, but he thinks we should pretend we know. That way we’ll look confident enough to get the maximum out of them.’

  Angie stared at her reflection in the black window opposite, bisected by the dirty cables strung along the tunnel’s wall outside. Her browny-grey hair was tidy but lank and her eyes looked huge and hurt. Like a dying cow’s, she thought without any humour at all.

  Should she mention Adam? Warn Greg about what Maguire must have found? Or would it be better to lie and protest when the information came out, and pretend the idea of Adam’s involvement had never once crossed her mind? Could she do it convincingly? If not, it would be better to confess now.

  ‘Here we are,’ he said. ‘Brace up, Ange. You look as if you expect them to walk over you. You’ve got to be tougher. Else everything we’ve done will be wasted. Come on!’

  She hardened her shoulders and felt pain all down her spine. ‘I’ll do my best.’

  ‘Great.’ He put a big hand on one of her rigid shoulders, but he wasn’t nearly as comfortable with touching as Fran, so it just felt awkward: heavy and unpleasant. She wished Fran could’ve come with them. But Greg hadn’t let her.

  At least the solicitor’s offices weren’t as chillingly formal as the courts. Angie left it to him to tell the receptionist who they were and take the lead on the way into the meeting room.

  The air inside felt cold, but in the stuffy kind of way you’d never get in the country. The walls were icy blue and the oval conference table was a kind of blond Scandinavian wood, polished like a skating rink. The far side of it was full of people. They looked only vaguely familiar and were all staring at her as though she was a freak who might suddenly take off all her clothes or start throwing things.

  Fred Hoffman stood up, and the movement helped make Angie’s brain work. She began to recognise the rest. Today Trish Maguire was wearing an unbelievably well-cut jacket of some silky stuff that looked as if it had been made from fibres spun from a rich red stone like carnelian.

  The word triggered a memory from a novel read long ago: someone saying ‘carnelian heals anger’. If only! Angie knew she was letting her mind ramble only so she wouldn’t have to acknowledge the renewed compassion in Maguire’s face. But it was so hard to miss Angie had to look away.

  Greg met Angie’s gaze and beamed smugly. Presumably he thought he was exuding confidence. His beard and bright red lips revolted her even though he’d picked off all the bits and pieces of food caught in the whiskers. Now her mind was latched on to stories read from the past, she couldn’t help seeing how the combination made him look like the giant in Adam’s favourite collection of nursery rhymes. The one he’d especially liked went ‘Fee, fi, fo, fum, I smell the blood of an English man.’ An early sign of his interest in killing?

  John. Adam. John. Adam. The names were like tennis balls being batted to and fro in her brain while the others were all talking, saying trivial things about how nice to see each other again. Angie felt detached, as though she were floating outside her body. The head that wasn’t where she was even talked, like the others, and said all sorts of polite stuff. Then they all stopped and sat down and everyone looked at Trish Maguire. Angie looked down at her, too, from the place where she was floating above the rest.

  ‘It’s hard to know how to say this,’ Maguire began, smiling from one to the next.

  Angie gripped her hands under the table, which brought her back into herself. Greg’s beam got even wider. She wanted to yell out a warning, but it was much too late now. Instead she stared straight at Maguire, fighting the pity that looked stickier and stickier with every movement.

  ‘As we showed in court,’ Maguire said in the so-ordinary voice that gave no clue to her ruthlessness or power, ‘the explosion at the tank farm can only have happened because something was lodged in the vents, blocking the inflow of air. I have now come to understand that it was done deliberately.’

  Adam. Adam. Adam. He was once our baby. John was there when he was born. John cradled him when he was still covered in my blood, before they’d even weighed and wiped him. Later on, he played with Adam, taught him, comforted him, spooned in the food. Loved him. No wonder Maguire looks so sorry for me. How much exactly does she know?

  ‘By this couple.’ Maguire offered them a photograph of a woman standing beside a man with no head.

  Oh, stop it, Angie, she told herself. Of course he has a head. It’s just out of the picture.

  ‘Who on earth is she?’ said Greg with quite unnecessary aggression.

  Trish pushed the printed version of Peterthewalk’s photograph of Maryan Fleming and the unidentifiable Barry Stuart nearer to Angie, who looked blind and stupid, which she clearly wasn’t.

  ‘Don’t you recognise her, Mrs Fortwell?’

  ‘I—’ She wouldn’t say any more, even though her lips moved.

  There hadn’t been much colour in her thin, lined face when she’d arrived, but what there had been was gone now. Beside her Greg sat, with the suspicion hardening in his eyes, making him look less squishy-minded, al
most as threatening as Ben Givens.

  ‘Of course she wasn’t working alone,’ Trish went on, smiling at them both. ‘There’s the man with her, obviously, and—’

  ‘I’ve never seen her in my life before.’ This time Angie’s voice was more vigorous, almost challenging, the kind of voice you use when you have something to hide.

  ‘Actually,’ Trish said. ‘I think you’ll find you have. She stayed with you, bed-and-breakfasting, three days before the explosion.’

  Angie hunched one shoulder. ‘I can’t be expected to remember all the walkers who come to Low Topps. There’ve been hundreds over the years.’

  ‘I’m sure, but, believe me, she is in your visitors’ book – admittedly under a false name. She’s told me that her boyfriend was paid to sabotage your tanks.’

  ‘They were never our tanks.’ Angie looked as though she was explaining something obvious to a fool. ‘That’s the whole point of all that pre-trial stuff you missed, when we still had Antony Shelley to deal with: they were CWWM’s tanks, on what was technically – and actually – their land. Only leased from us.’

  ‘I’m sorry. The tanks beside your land, I should have said.’ Trish smiled, in spite of her curiosity about Angie’s changing emotions. ‘This woman had been told her boyfriend’s action would shut down the tank farm. That was all. She’s not very bright and she still has no idea it caused the explosion or killed your husband. She believed they were saving a beautiful piece of the north from wicked capitalist exploiters.’

  Angie’s fingers were twisting round and round each other. Her face was the colour of uncooked pastry and she was biting her upper lip as she stared at the photograph of Maryan Fleming. When she relaxed her jaw, Trish could see the mark of a bruise already spreading above her thin lip. At last she looked up. When she spoke, her voice was tighter even than it had been on the first day in court.

  ‘Have you got a photograph of her boyfriend with his head showing?’

  Trish shook her head. ‘This is our only one. He called himself Chris Bowles then, but his real name is Barry Stuart. He sounds quite a bit more intelligent, or at least more aware, than she is, and he’s fled to New Zealand. The police over there are looking for him now.’

  Angie moved but Trish was distracted by Greg, who leaned right across the table, glaring at her, as though he thought he could intimidate her.

  ‘This is a fairy tale. Do you expect anyone to believe it? Have you any evidence they were paid?’

  ‘They got five thousand pounds from one of your old friends from Goforthebrains.com.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Greg said with so much contempt in his voice that Trish wanted to tell him how much she would enjoy his eventual arrest.

  ‘Oh come on, Mr Waverly,’ she said instead. ‘You know as well as I do that Ken Shankley paid them, just as he paid you to infiltrate FADE so you could take advantage of Frances Showring and make her urge Mrs Fortwell to bring the case against CWWM.’

  ‘What?’ Angie said, looking from one of them to the other.

  Trish kept staring at Greg as she went on: ‘And there’s plenty more, isn’t there? There were the people who stole some of CWWM’s most dangerous waste and sent it out on the smallest roads in Essex in a truck with wrecked clutch, brakes and back-door locks.’

  His face tightened into an expression she couldn’t read. Was it surprise that he’d been found out? Or rage? Or genuine disgust at the consequences of his friends’ antics? How much had he known?

  ‘That crash led to a woman’s feet being amputated. And Mrs Fortwell’s husband died,’ Trish added to push him, hoping for some honesty at last. ‘You never factored in the human cost, did you, Mr Waverly? Just as you never got your sums right in the old days of Goforthebrains.com or your organic food business. It’s no wonder you keep failing. Over and over again.’

  Trish heard a sotto-voce protest from Robert, but she ignored it while she watched realisation dawning in Angie’s eyes.

  ‘Greg, you talked about a woman in Essex with her feet cut off,’ Angie said, with horror deepening her voice. ‘You knew about it, didn’t you? And there was something about a child in Scotland, too. What the hell’s going on?’

  He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and scribbled on the back of it. Trish watched Angie read it and scowl.

  ‘Come on. What haven’t you been telling me?’ she said, crunching the bit of paper into a ball.

  ‘Nothing.’ He smiled, but it was a sickly version of his usual beam. ‘Ms Maguire’s talking right over my head.’

  ‘If that’s so,’ Trish said, smiling back, ‘I’ll put it very simply. Your old friends, who are now running GlobWasMan, decided to increase their share of the market in the disposal of hazardous chemical waste. They knew they’d have to get rid of their chief rival, CWWM, and so they’ve been working to bring down the company in every possible way. Making you encourage Mrs Fortwell to mount her claim was only one of their ideas. And to ensure it worked, they paid Benjamin Givens, the barrister, to give you secret legal help, didn’t they?’

  Angie looked as though she were examining a field full of diseased livestock, searching for signs of new damage, or corpses. Eventually she stared straight at Greg.

  ‘This explains a lot.’ Her voice had all the repelling intent of barbed wire.

  ‘No, it doesn’t.’ Greg swung round in his seat so that he was talking to her alone. ‘Ben helped us because he was so ashamed of having taken money to act for a chemical waste company in the past. He wanted to make amends by ensuring you won your case and got compensation for the farm and for John’s death. Which is what Fran and I wanted too. You mustn’t believe this … this evil story.’

  Greg hitched himself even closer to Angie so that his beard was almost touching her ear.

  ‘Ange!’

  She pulled away, actually moving her chair, and Trish knew she’d get everything she wanted now.

  David smelled the toffee sauce George had made to go with the caramel pancakes and ice cream and hoped Trish would be home soon. It was his favourite pudding and he was ravenous.

  He and Jay had had a toasted sandwich each as soon as they got in, but George was being amazingly mean and not letting them have a second one. He wanted them to have enough appetite for the braised steak that was also smelling pretty good, and then for the pancakes. David knew he and Jay could eat four sandwiches each and still have room.

  He sneaked a look at his watch. It was only half past six. Trish might not be back for hours yet. He sighed.

  ‘Concentrate, David. Jay’s way ahead of us both,’ said George, who was keeping the Scrabble score, as usual.

  David looked at the seven tiles in his rack, then back at the board. He could see two places where he could get at least twenty-five points, which was more or less the minimum he allowed himself these days. In the old days, when he’d still been a child, he’d been happy with as little as ten. Now that would be a humiliatingly small score, so it was good he had two opportunities for more than double. But both Jay and George could still block him.

  Jay mouthed ‘Yes!’, then leaned forwards to add ‘que’ to ‘to’ to make ‘toque’, a word George had used the last time they played and which happened to wipe out one of David’s two chances. Then Jay stood up and said he had to go to the toilet.

  Knowing George’s views on what words you were supposed to use and when, David hoped he wasn’t going to correct Jay. It was always a mistake, because it made him angry, but the grown-ups did it a lot of the time without even noticing the effect they were having. Although sometimes they grinned as if they thought they were giving him a present with it. Luckily tonight George didn’t even blink. Instead he looked at the letters Jay had just put down and said:

  ‘You are a nasty little toerag, you know. I had my eye on that triple.’

  Jay laughed, an ordinary cheerful OK kind of laugh, and walked off towards the bathroom attached to David’s bedroom.

  ‘Now, what on earth am I goin
g to do?’ George said, leaning on one elbow. ‘You two are getting too damned good for my liking. I’m not sure how much longer I can go on risking my supremacy like this.’

  ‘It’s the natural order of things, I’m afraid.’ David was quoting something George had said to Trish only a few days ago.

  ‘You may be challenging my supremacy, old boy,’ George said, looking up at him with a warning kind of smile, ‘but I’m damned if I’ll let you get all pompous on me. Well done, by the way, for getting such a great mark for the English essay. I’m really proud of you. So’s Trish.’

  David pushed his right hand through his hair, which was suddenly itching. George hardly ever praised him like this and he didn’t really know what to say. A joke would be best, but he couldn’t think of one. George wasn’t looking at him, so maybe he didn’t have to say anything. If it had been Trish, he would’ve had to; she was a great one for talking about stuff.

  ‘What’s up, David?’ George said after a while.

  ‘Nothing. Why?’

  ‘You’re all strung up and anxious. What’s the problem?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he said, wondering why there wasn’t much noise from his bathroom. Jay usually crashed about wherever he went. And George had at last managed to persuade him to flush the loo each time he used it.

  ‘Incidentally,’ George said, smiling, ‘I ordered a DVD of Olivier’s Henry V for you last Saturday so you could watch it in peace, but it’s taking rather a long time to arrive.’

  David stared down at the busy Scrabble board, thinking about how he liked knowing George was here, ready to help whenever it was needed but not getting in the way when it wasn’t.

  ‘Of course you may not want to bother with it now you’ve written the essay,’ George added.

  ‘No,’ David said, looking up at him. ‘I do want to see it.’

  ‘Great. Now stop distracting me and let me get to grips with this board.’