by Gill Mather
She managed a weak smile herself.
"Congratulations," she said. "I looked for you in there but I couldn't see you so I thought you'd left." He would know she was lying she thought but sod it. They'd just about got shot of him. So what if she came over as insincere. With any luck she'd never have to set eyes on him again.
"Thank you so much," he said insolently. "I was hoping to have a word with you. Maybe you could give me a lift back to Colchester. I came by train. Then we could discuss what I have in mind."
Oh God, no. To have him in her car when Hugh had advised her not to be alone with him and Triss had said he was a sadist!
"I'm sorry. I'm not going to Colchester," she lied again. “I'm going back later. I have to….er…. go and see someone just now."
"All right then. A lift to the station will do. Should be just about long enough for our chat."
"Actually I'm not even going that way. And I'm in rather a hurry. I'm late already."
She put her hand out towards the car door but Brad stayed stubbornly in the way and his expression changed just fractionally but enough to become menacing. At least she didn’t have her car keys out. She wouldn't put it past him now to take them off her. If he did that, it would take their encounter into the realms of something else, exceeding the boundaries of acceptable behaviour. That is if he wasn’t doing so already. In a way that might be a good thing. It would give her leave to act accordingly and yell for help. We are all so held back by convention when it comes to contact with others, especially people we know. We don’t want to cause embarrassment. Thus crowds stand around and watch someone get mugged, or beaten up, frozen into inactivity, wanting things to get back to normal as soon as possible.
Her eyes scanned the car park. There was no-one else there. Brad saw the small movement and smiled again unpleasantly but he didn’t do anything else.
"Well I'll just have to have my little chat with you here then. Don't worry it won't take long. I might as well get straight to the point since you're not going to be friendly. I need you to do something for me."
What could he possibly mean by that? The trial was over, the case had ended. He had been acquitted. He was free to go. It didn't make any sense to her. She could only hear relatively distant sounds of traffic. There was simply no-one about. She wished that Triss was with her. Even in his current depleted state, he'd be able to do something so that she could get away from this appalling man.
She lowered her eyes and turned her head a little to her left so that she was staring into her car at the rear seat. She didn’t see why she should engage in eye contact with this man. She had no wish to be here, detained apparently by him against her will. She couldn't get into her car and she considered turning round and walking away but she wasn’t sure he wouldn't try to stop her. If he held her back, that would be assault and false imprisonment. He had no right to do that to her. She could sue him. He was no longer their client. She wasn’t obliged to let him walk all over…
But he was speaking again.
"It's not much. I've got this mate, he's….shall we say important to me. He's involved in a difficult divorce. His wife's loaded, family money, but he thinks her money's hidden away somewhere. She won't let him see the kids. All he wants is to find out what she's got on him so as to be forewarned so to speak and if there's any trusts or anything where her money's hidden. Offshore things. You know. Hidden from the tax man and now him. He's entitled to the information but he's not going to get it. Instead she's likely to make him out to be some sort of scummy pervert while she runs off with the cash and the kids and the latest bloke she's having it off with. You must know with your job that blokes often come off worse in divorces whether they deserve it or not."
And does your mate deserve it? she could have asked but she was anxious to get this over and done with as quickly as possible and not be drawn into any exchange with him that might make him feel he was gaining ground.
"I'm sorry about your friend Brad," she said as nicely as she could, "but I don't see what I could do about it."
"Ah well. That's where you're wrong. You see you're ideally placed to find out all the stuff he needs to know. You used to work at PWT didn’t you? That's the firm that's managed his wife's assets and salted her cash away somewhere. And they're now handling her divorce. So, all you've got to do is go back there and work there for a short time. After all you've done it before. You just stay behind a few nights. Find out what my mate needs to know. Copy some stuff and give it to me. Simple as that."
"Sorry Brad but there are no plans for me to go back and work there any time soon."
"Well make some plans," he said in a steely voice. "Use your imagination. That boss of yours isn't interested in you. He'd probably welcome getting you out of the place for a few weeks from what I saw."
Was it so obvious to others, she thought. But then Brad if he did what Triss said he did was probably a major manipulator and astute at reading all the signs. She didn’t ask how he knew all this about her already. He must've been keeping an eye on her. Did she really appear so weak, so vulnerable to pressure, like a sick animal in a pack, there to be picked off so the stronger ones could get away and survive. Why didn’t he approach someone else? He'd had contact with other people at The Chambers. Or he could have pounced on someone actually at PWT. The reason he chose her however was about to be voiced.
"We wouldn't want the authorities to get interested in that boyfriend of yours would we. The one with no ID, no documents."
How the hell did he know that? But she didn’t ask since to do so would be to confirm that he was right.
"Sorry I'm not with you," she said instead.
"Obviously I need to speak plainly or else we're going to be here all night. I've got lots of contacts and I know about that bloke Tristram you're so hooked on. He uses your name and date of birth. No-one has a clue where he comes from. I've only got to tip the wink to mates of mine in various departments and he'd be arrested just like that. He could be held indefinitely. You'd probably never see him again." Brad laughed cheerily at that. "`Course I could get him done over. Or you done over. Or both of you for that matter. But this way's much tidier. You do my little job for my mate. And you and your boyfriend never hear from me again."
"If you know so much," Orielle couldn't resist saying, "then you'll know Triss is terminally ill. He hasn’t long to live."
Brad's face altered. His mouth formed a thin line and he looked at her intently, obviously searching out signs of lying.
"You didn’t know did you! You're not the only one that can read faces you know."
"OK. Then you wouldn't want your boyfriend's last few months to be in some holding facility somewhere while they find out where he comes from would you."
She tried not to let her voice break. She wanted to show no signs of weakness to this vulture. "He has weeks, possibly only days, to live Brad, not months. If you were try anything, we'd pull out all the stops to keep that from happening. And you know I could do it." She sounded far tougher than she felt but she had little doubt that Brad would carry out these threats if he was able and she had to keep Triss with her until the end. To think of him ending his days in a faceless hospital ward in some secure unit somewhere. Though she would never in a million years have done what Brad had asked, and he had nothing much to bargain with given Triss's condition and life expectancy, she wouldn't put it past Brad to inform the authorities anyway out of sheer spite or just to maybe get a kick out of it. Neither of them said anything for a time. No doubt Brad was weighing up his options. Orielle just wanted to get away as far as possible from him.
"How long are you going to keep me here," she said at last.
Brad looked peeved in the extreme. He gave her a cold stare then suddenly removed himself from next to her car.
"Just piss off then," he said and walked away across the car park. If she wasn’t mistaken, he'd looked a little worried in fact. Very likely there were far bigger fish than him in the particular foetid soup
he swam in. Perhaps he'd get it in the neck himself for being unable to deliver on this occasion. Or perhaps he'd have a go at someone else, someone actually working at PWT. She decided to warn Cathy to watch out and not to be anywhere lonely on her own where Brad might prey on her. Cathy was at last in a settled relationship with a young barrister from The Chambers which was nice so she wasn’t often on her own these days. But you never knew, thought Orielle as she locked her car door as soon as she got in, turned the key and drove off with alacrity.
ORIELLE RACED UP the stairs two at a time and found Triss on the bed having a rest but he put his arms out to her and she lay down on the bed next to him.
"You were right about Brad Adams all those months ago," she said. She wanted to cry. If only they could go back to that time when Triss was healthy and wasn’t dying and they'd no idea what was to come. She told Triss what had happened to her. He listened though sometimes these days she felt he wasn’t really taking things in properly. And he was groggy from medication.
"Poor darling," he said stroking her hair. Then he looked over to the bedside table and picked up a note and scrutinised it. "I wrote this down so I wouldn't forget it. The hospital rang today with an appointment for a scan tomorrow afternoon. There was a cancellation. Can you take me?"
"Oh, let me think what's on tomorrow….but of course I'll take you anyway. But are you sure you want to?" It might not be good news and she wasn't sure what the point would be of knowing that he was just getting worse by the hour.
"Yes I must go. We can't have someone like Brad being able to blackmail you any longer than necessary," he said oddly but she let it pass. He quite often said things these days that didn’t make much sense. "Can you help me downstairs. I need to show you something on the internet."
"There's no need Triss. I'll bring the laptop up here and turn on the wifi." They kept it turned off most of the time in case it affected Triss at all.
"Oh. `Course. I didn’t think."
She was back up in a few minutes with cups of tea for them both, having called Hugh on his mobile about being away some of the time tomorrow. Triss now accepted caffeinated beverages as he still put it. There wasn’t much point being precious about a mild stimulant if you weren't going to be here much longer.
"Right," he said settling down with the laptop on a lap tray. "I've opened up a new email account and I've emailed myself some instructions for something that you need to do depending on what happens. It'll take a while for me to go through it with you so we'd better get started."
LATER THEY tried making love. It was still all right, in fact spectacular by most peoples' standards. With anyone else in his condition, she wouldn't have been able to let go at all, but of course Triss wasn’t anyone. He was still able to fill her head with choirs of angels and soft gorgeous clouds of gold, silver and love, send shards and lightning bolts of adrenaline and other hormones through and around her body, and deliver rivers of exquisite pleasure through her veins and into her nerve endings.
Afterwards he said quietly in the dark, "I'm sorry to have brought you such misery and been so difficult in so many ways. I should never have gone away earlier this year. It was ridiculous. I hope I've made you happy some of the time while I've been here. These last few months together have been wonderful haven't they?"
She nodded, already crying softly into his chest and then Triss started to weep into her hair. Something he had never ever done before.
CHAPTER 19
Amanda, still on maternity leave, was at home with baby Gray which she was enjoying while it lasted but today she couldn't help thinking about Orielle and Triss. Their situation affected her more than she could say. It reminded her so much of the time when her first husband Graham had been terminally ill, when he had started to grow weak and thin and was unable to work. But they at least had had plenty of money. Going on holiday for a few weeks to an exotic location was no problem for them. Having a conservatory built quickly so that Graham could sit in the light of the outside and still be warm. Orielle and Triss by contrast lived as lodgers really in a house that wasn't theirs. Now that Triss couldn't work they had only Orielle’s very modest income as a trainee Solicitor. He had hospital appointments Orielle had to take him to and then she insisted on making up the time in the evenings. She started to look exhausted. There were medications she had to pay for for Triss since he had no NHS number or NI number.
Amanda had suggested to Hugh that he gave Orielle a bonus, ostensibly to show his appreciation for her hard work, but really to help tide her over in this difficult time. Proud though she was, Orielle had apparently accepted it gratefully and Hugh said she obviously had a hard time trying not to cry. There was talk of one or other or both of Orielle’s brothers coming down to help with Triss at the end once he became bed bound. Apparently Orielle’s mother, who had only met Triss once, had gone to pieces on hearing about the illness and Orielle didn't want her around which Amanda could fully understand and sympathise with. But in fact Triss was going downhill far faster than the consultant had predicted. It didn't seem as though it would be long now.
Amanda looked up as the back door opened and Hugh came in interrupting her dismal, depressing train of thought. He was home early as he usually was these days and gave Amanda his customary squeeze and then went straight after to look at the baby strapped into his car safety seat on the kitchen table, fast asleep. At two months, Gray was a big baby and when he was awake, he was very alert and responsive. Had he been awake now, his father would have taken him out of his seat for a cuddle and a tickle but instead Hugh sat down and absently watched the local news on the TV.
Hugh’s paternity leave was over and Amanda’s leave would be over soon as well with Gray going to a nursery near the office several days a week. She was looking forward to it.
“Ruddy awful storm this afternoon,” said Hugh. “Did you get it over here?”
“No. Nothing. It’s been sunny all day.”
“Well it didn't last long, but while it did I thought the world was coming to an end. Oh what’s this?”
Amanda turned to the TV and watched the scene outside Colchester District and General Hospital as Hugh turned up the volume. A reporter looked into the camera.
“The man, thought to be in his mid-twenties, was at the hospital for a routine MRI scan when he disappeared. Witnesses have apparently said that he was actually having the scan at the time and was in the scanner when the electricity supply went off for a very brief period and that when the bed of the scanner was ejected, the man was no longer there and his image had disappeared from the monitor. The man hasn’t been named while relatives are being traced and informed. A spokesman for the hospital has said that this was a perfectly routine procedure. The scanner was properly maintained and regularly checked and since the incident has been checked again and found to be operating normally however it has been removed from service for the time being while a full enquiry takes place. The spokesman has said that this was a unique thought to be unprecedented event and that the hospital wishes to reassure the public that there’s no danger to any patients, visitors or staff. It’s believed however that several patients have already checked themselves out of the hospital and that others may be preparing to do so. We’ll keep you posted.
“So it’s back to you in the studio Poppy,” the reporter smiled cheerfully.
Amanda and Hugh looked at each other.
“Was Orielle in the office today?”
“Not this afternoon,” said Hugh. He sighed. “She was taking Tristram for his scan. Oh God!”
“I suppose it’s bound to be him. Isn't it? She’ll be in a terrible state Hugh. She’s got no family to speak of down here. Hugh do you think we should….”
“She has cousins in Colchester. So I suppose there must be an aunt or uncle. And there’s the girl she lives with.”
“Yes I know but….I just feel we’re partly responsible for her too. We know…what her situation was with Tristram.”
Hugh sighed and
got up. “I’ll go round to her house now and if she’s there I’ll see if there’s anything we can do or I can do. I’ll try and be quick. Anyway it might not have been Tristram.” Amanda didn't reply.”
HUGH WAS WRONG about that. When he arrived at the house, there was a police car parked outside and other vehicles and a bevvy of journalists and photographers. On seeing Hugh, they approached him en masse and started hurling questions at him. Was it true that the man who disappeared could perform miracles and move objects? Was it true he came from outer space? People were saying he was the new Messiah. Did Hugh have any comment to make? Was he Hugh Sutherland the well known criminal lawyer? Was it true that the man’s girlfriend worked for Hugh?
Hugh pushed through them. At least they remained on the pavement and he was able to walk down the short front path and get to the front door unimpeded.
A worried looking Georgie let him in. “Thanks for coming. They’ve got hold of all sorts of stories about him. Where from I can't imagine.” She took him into the sitting room where Orielle was seated with uniformed officers and two in plain clothes and he introduced himself. Orielle looked up at him briefly, small and frail and so pale as to be almost ethereal. God, thought Hugh, she looks as if she might disappear herself in a puff of smoke at any moment. The impression was reinforced by the fact that she was bent forward with her arms crossed and wrapped around herself and her knees up as though she was trying to hold herself together.
The suited male officer looked up at Hugh.
“We’ve been trying to establish Mr. Banks’s origins sir. Perhaps you’ve got some idea where Miss Banks’s boyfriend came from.”
