Out of the Dark

by Natasha Cooper

  ‘Trish, will you stop this interrogation? Jeannie was part of my life a long time ago. She’s nothing to do with either of us now. Leave it.’

  Trish’s computer beeped as a new email came through. She said she had to go, and Paddy didn’t protest. She read all her messages, then clicked on to Google, which was her favourite search engine, to look for Jeannie Nest. Nothing useful came up, but that didn’t mean much. If she had never published anything or posted anything on the Net, there’d be no reason for her to be there. But if she were a teacher, someone should have records.

  It didn’t take long to get the phone number of the National Union of Teachers, but they said they had no record of anyone of that name. Lots of teachers were leaving the profession, disillusioned by the bashing they got in the media and from the government. Maybe Jeannie Nest was one of them. Or maybe she’d found a man she wanted more than she’d wanted Paddy, married, and taken her husband’s name.

  Trish looked up the numbers of all the remaining schools in the borough and rang each one, asking to speak to the school secretary. The first two produced nothing, but the third, a pleasant-sounding woman, agreed that she had known Jeannie and her two-year-old son.

  ‘I’m trying to get in touch with her again,’ Trish said. ‘I wondered if you could help.’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘I don’t mean I’m expecting you to hand over her address,’ Trish said stiffly, wondering whether it had been necessary to be quite so rude. ‘After all, I’m a complete stranger. But I did wonder if you’d forward a letter for me.’

  ‘No, of course I can’t. Don’t you understand? None of us has been allowed any contact with her since she had to move away after the case.’

  There was enough bitterness in the announcement to make ‘the case’ sound serious. Trish wondered what kind of scandal had been involved and who had brought the action.

  ‘What was the case about?’

  ‘Who are you?’ asked the school secretary, sounding more suspicious with every word.

  ‘I’m a barrister, but that’s not why I’m trying to find Jeannie. She was a friend of my father’s. He’s had a heart attack. I wanted …’ Trish let her voice dwindle, hoping to generate enough sympathy to make the woman talk.

  ‘Then I’m really sorry I can’t help, but there’s nothing I can do. I don’t know where Jeannie went, or what she’s calling herself now.’

  ‘Then what was the case about? Maybe I can find her that way.’

  ‘It was in all the papers. I don’t see how you can have missed it if your father knew her.’

  ‘It’s a long story,’ Trish said. ‘He and I weren’t speaking then. I’m trying to make amends now. Please tell me what you know.’

  ‘Oh, I see. Well, I suppose it can’t do any harm now. Jeannie was a witness in a murder trial. It was about six years ago now. No one else would testify, even though they must all have seen exactly what she’d seen.’

  A lot clicked into place for Trish then. If Jeannie had been the only witness brave enough to have given evidence in a big murder trial, she could have been taken into the witness-protection scheme and given a new identity and family history. And if that had happened, her young son – two years old at the time – might well look blank at the suggestion that his mother was called Jeannie Nest. But it still didn’t explain why she might have sent him to Trish.

  ‘How awful. What happened? I mean, what did Jeannie see?’

  ‘It was horrific. A thug from the estate where she lived was beating up a man whose wife owed him money.’

  Trish thought of the children on the estate. Some of them had looked nearly ten, so they must have been around when the killing happened; they might even have seen it for themselves. No wonder they’d reacted so violently to a stranger asking questions.

  ‘He was down on the ground while the thug went at him with a baseball bat. Most people were so scared they locked their doors. His wife was screaming. Jeannie was coming home from the childminder’s, with her son David in his buggy, when she saw what was happening. She yelled at the man to stop. He hit her, kind of swatted her out of the way. Luckily the buggy didn’t overturn, but she cracked her head against a wall. There was blood everywhere – you know how scalp wounds bleed. But the man ignored her and went back to his victim.’

  ‘She could’ve been killed,’ Trish said, appalled to think of what had happened only ten minutes’ walk from her own flat. She hadn’t owned it at the time of the murder, but that didn’t seem to make much difference. ‘I’d never have had the guts to go anywhere near them.’

  ‘Jeannie was always exceptional. And she didn’t like letting something go when she felt strongly about it.’

  ‘Even so.’

  ‘I know.’ There was much less suspicion in the woman’s voice now. It was as though Trish’s genuine admiration had made them friends. ‘When she gave evidence, she said that the victim’s clothes were already rags and his head and body pulpy under the beating. So she ran, keeping her own blood off David’s head as well as she could, to the nearest phone to get the police. Later, when everyone else in the place pretended they didn’t know the attacker or the reason for the beating, Jeannie gave evidence against him. She was braver than anyone I’ve ever met.’

  ‘She sounds it. Thank you for telling me,’ Trish said into the phone. ‘I’ll look up the case. You don’t happen to remember the name of the victim or the defendant, do you?’

  ‘Defendant? Oh, you mean the murderer. Hang on a minute. It’ll come to me.’

  Trish’s door opened and Dave looked in, his face so tight with irritation that his glasses were almost bouncing off his nose.

  ‘Don’t worry. I’m afraid I have to go. Thank you so much for your help.’

  ‘Handsome,’ said the woman, which seemed an odd way of acknowledging gratitude. But with Dave looking like that there was no way of staying to chat. Trish put down her receiver and smiled benignly at him.

  ‘Yes, Dave?’

  ‘I’ve been trying to get through to you for hours, Miss.’ Trish grimaced. She hadn’t been ‘Miss’ to him for a long time. ‘I’ve just had Mr Shelley on the phone from Tuscany and I thought I’d better check that you’ll have everything ready for him on Monday morning.’

  ‘Of course I will. I told you that before.’ He was good at hiding his doubts behind the wintry severity of his usual expression, but she could tell he was worried this time. That mattered a lot more to her than the chauvinistic jealousy of other juniors like Robert Anstey. Dave knew too much about all his barristers and their strengths and weaknesses. ‘Is there anything else?’

  ‘Yes. He won’t be needing you while he works on the papers, so I’d like you to take this brief for Maidstone. It’s care proceedings on—’

  ‘Not Monday. I have to talk to Antony and go through the paperwork with him.’

  ‘I know that, Miss. This is for Tuesday – right?’

  ‘Yes, fine.’ ‘Miss’ again, she thought. So he’s really pissed off. And care proceedings. Can I bear to do something like that just now? I’ll have to, if I’m about to be flung off the Nick Gurles case. I’ll need Dave on my side if I’m scrabbling for briefs again.

  It was a long time since she’d felt as though some extra-terrestrial being was using her in his own private game of Snakes and Ladders, but the sensation came back with shivering familiarity. Bird-shaped shadows flapped in her mind. This morning’s euphoria had gone completely.

  ‘Dave,’ she said as she took the pink-taped brief from him and put it beside her laptop.

  ‘Yes, Miss?’

  ‘Oh, stop all this Miss nonsense.’ Even he looked shocked by the sharpness of her voice. She drove herself to smile. ‘Has there been any news – or gossip – about the boy the police were trying to identify?’

  ‘I did hear, Miss, that they’d decided to do some DNA tests, but I don’t know who they’re trying to match him with. However, there have been some runaways among your old clients and their fr
iends, including one of a pair of brothers being fostered by the same people who took in the Brakely lad. You’ll remember the case. That was Maidstone, too. Nearly eighteen months ago, wasn’t it? It upset you at the time.’

  Trish did remember, all too clearly. The boy in that case had been through a torturing time before she’d got him safely away from his mother. Father unknown, she remembered; mother not only a prostitute, but deeply into sado-masochism, and not averse to handing round her six-year-old son to some of her more perverted clients.

  ‘I know.’ Dave’s voice was as nearly soft as she’d ever heard it. ‘That one really got to you, didn’t it? Still, you did the business and he’s safe now. And you’re moving on into nice, clean, big-money commercial work now. So long as you do a good job for Mr Shelley on this case, you’ll be fine.’

  He looked even less confident, so Trish suppressed all her own doubts and concentrated on the matter in hand.

  ‘But if other children are running away from the foster-parents, that doesn’t sound as though they’re the ideal home for him either.’

  ‘A lot better than his own mother, poor little bastard. Next Tuesday’s case won’t be nearly so bad.’

  ‘Is the runaway the right age and colouring for the boy in hospital?’ Trish wasn’t surprised Dave knew so much about the state of the police investigation into the child’s identity. Good clerks knew everything that might adversely affect the reputation of their barristers.

  ‘That’s the impression I got,’ he said. ‘The remaining brother’s a bit simple and couldn’t answer questions, nor identify the only photograph the police showed him – touched up, I understand, to make the face look like it must when it isn’t mashed up. Another poor little sod.’

  ‘Yes.’ Maybe that was the answer, and David was nothing to do with Jeannie Nest or Paddy. It could have been his foster-mother who’d taken the trouble to make him drink apple juice rather than Coke and sent him to Trish.

  ‘Dave? Do you remember a case about six or seven years ago: a very nasty murder in Southwark that turned on evidence given by someone called Jeannie Nest, who’s probably been on the witness-protection programme ever since?’

  He frowned, pushing his spectacles up his nose, before scratching the left side of his cadaverous face.

  ‘Can’t say I do. Not one of yours, was it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But Southwark – that’s near your flat, isn’t it? Are you worried? Someone been stalking you again?’

  ‘No. This is something else. And my place is quite a way from there, only minutes from Tate Modern and well within sight of the London Eye.’ That made it seem much safer. Even so she was glad she’d put on the burglar alarm this morning. It had never been one of her routines, which suddenly seemed as stupid as George had always said it was. But until David had come running out of the dark to upset her entire view of her world, she’d had no idea quite how close she lived to the frontier.

  ‘Don’t worry. Thanks, Dave.’

  Trish swivelled round, reaching for one of the files on Nick Gurles’s case. Dave was nodding approvingly when she brought it back to her desk. When he’d gone, Trish tried to think who was likely to have prosecuted the Southwark murder case. It didn’t take long to narrow the list down to a few silks. One of them was a friend, so she phoned him.

  Like Antony, he was still away sunning himself, but his clerk was surprisingly chatty. His silk hadn’t been the leader on the case, but he knew who had and gave Trish the name, one of the toughest of the women who worked in crime. Trish knew her slightly, but they’d never got on particularly well. Trish asked the clerk if he knew who the junior had been. He or she would probably be an easier source of information.

  ‘Come on, Ms Maguire. If it had been one of mine, I’d know, but it wasn’t, was it?’

  ‘No, of course not. Thank you.’ If Trish wanted more information, she’d have to talk to Selina Mallard QC. The number of her chambers was easily found, and she was there.

  Trish explained herself, and heard Mallard say, ‘Jeannie Nest? Very brave woman. I couldn’t forget her. What d’you want to know?’

  ‘Anything you can tell me.’

  ‘Why? She hasn’t cropped up again, has she? I’m sure she went into the witness-protection scheme.’

  ‘I thought she must have. I was hoping … I mean, I’ve heard such a lot about her, I was hoping to track her down, but if she did that I haven’t any chance.’

  ‘No.’ There was no room for doubt in that firm, contained monosyllable. ‘How’ve you come across her name, if you didn’t know about the case?’

  ‘She lived near where I’ve got a flat, and they still talk about her.’ Trish did not want stories of her search whizzing round the Temple. ‘I gather she insisted on living in the kind of estate where her trickiest pupils came from. Beyond the call of duty, I’d say.’

  ‘Masochistic. And that’s where half the trouble came from. That place was a real hellhole. I’d love to chat, Trish, but I’ve a lot on. Is there anything else?’

  ‘I’d like to look up the case. Can you remember the defendant’s name?’

  ‘Of course. A killing like that isn’t something you forget easily. Ron Handsome.’

  So that was what the school secretary had been trying to say.

  ‘Thanks, Selina. That’s great. I’ll see you around.’

  ‘Sure. Oh, somebody was asking about you the other day. Who? Yes, Heather Bonwell. Are you trying for silk this year? She wants you to.’

  ‘Heather’s lovely. But I don’t think I will. Not yet.’ Not if I’m about to screw up Antony Shelley’s case. ‘Thanks for everything, Selina. Bye.’

  With the defendant’s name, it was easy to track down the case and read what Jeannie Nest had done and why she’d had to accept the protection of a false name and history for herself and her son.

  Lucky that he’d been only two at the time, Trish thought. A bit older than that, but not yet old enough to understand the importance of the new story, witness-protection children were often a danger to themselves and their parents.

  DCI Lakeshaw and his sergeant were waiting for Ron Handsome in an interview room at the prison. They’d looked at the old photographs of the man he had beaten to death on the Mull Estate and compared them with the pix of Jeannie Nest’s body. You couldn’t identify a murderer (or even the man who’d organised a murder) by the state of the victim’s body, but the effect of the two beatings did look quite similar.

  Sue Baker, the sergeant, hadn’t had to see the pathologist slicing up the body itself, and Lakeshaw almost resented her freedom from the sights and smells he’d suffered. Still, she wasn’t a bad officer and it wasn’t her fault he couldn’t get the smell out of his nostrils. He ought to think of something else, otherwise he’d be too angry to question Handsome effectively.

  The door of the interview room opened and a wizened little man shuffled through ahead of the screw. Lakeshaw looked carefully at the screw. You could learn a lot about an inmate from the way the staff treated him. But this officer was neither afraid of the old man nor respectful. He just looked bored as he handed over the prisoner and left them to it.

  The old man coughed, pressing a hand to his chest in a way Lakeshaw recognised from a lot of officers he’d known. Most of them were dead now. Was this tortoise-like thug determined to get his revenge on the woman whose evidence had sent him here before he himself snuffed it? Was that why he’d had her killed now, after all this time? Lakeshaw knew his own face was rocklike from the wary glance Sue Baker shot him. He nodded to her.

  ‘Ron Handsome? My name’s Sergeant Baker,’ she said in her usual brisk way. The old man didn’t smile, but his eyelids flicked upwards and the eyes themselves moved as he stared at her then back at Lakeshaw. He didn’t look dangerous. He looked ill and a lot older than the sixty-nine years his records gave him. But then how many of them did look the part once they’d been caught and sent down? Hardly any, in Lakeshaw’s experience, which was what gave t
he do-gooders and the prison reformers all the ammunition they needed to make the middle-class bleeding hearts moan on about making life in prison more comfortable for men like this one.

  Lakeshaw wanted to jam photographs of Jeannie Nest’s body under the noses of everyone who’d ever complained about police brutality or uncomfortable prisons.

  ‘And this is DCI Lakeshaw,’ Sue Baker was saying.

  He must concentrate. The rage was getting worse all the time now and he couldn’t let it ride him. Already he’d had to leave the preliminary questioning of DC Martin Waylant to his sergeant. He himself wouldn’t have been able to keep his temper for more than a minute if he’d had to listen to the stupid sod making excuses for ignoring a call for help from a woman at risk. What was it he’d told Sue Baker? That it had been a case of crying wolf. The victim had called for help so often when there’d turned out to be no danger at all that it hadn’t seemed worth following up this last report, not when the nick was overstretched and undermanned like it was.

  Baker nudged him. She was talking. He put the thought of Waylant to the back of his mind and listened.

  ‘As you know, Ron, we’ve come to ask you some questions about Jeannie Nest.’

  The old man pulled the plastic chair on his side of the table nearer him and sat down. Lakeshaw thought of American films he’d seen and even real-life items on the news with killers being taken to and from court and thought this sodding man was damn lucky he’d been convicted in England. In the States he’d probably be chained. Do him good, too.

  ‘Why now?’ he asked in a voice as hoarse as coughing could make it without actually silencing him. ‘It’s been years since I had anything to do with her.’

  ‘Are you sure? Who’ve you been talking to about her?’

  ‘No one. Why would I? I hate the fucking slag. Always did, even before she grassed me up.’ He coughed again, pulling a disgusting handkerchief out of his pocket.

  At least he wasn’t spitting on the floor, Lakeshaw thought. Not yet anyway.

  ‘Well, someone’s been beating her up,’ he said, watching Handsome carefully. There was a hint of sly pleasure sliding into the man’s eyes.