Prey to All

by Cooper, Natasha

  ‘Right. We’ll look into it. Which school was it?’

  ‘St John’s, Henley. He got a scholarship.’ Now she was sounding impatient. ‘You shouldn’t have to ask me that; it’s a matter of public record. Surely your people aren’t too incompetent to have looked up Who’s Who?’

  She had gone.

  ‘Right. That was a pretty good waste of time. Steve, you’d better make a start upstairs. I’ll get back and put someone on to his schooldays in case there’s anything in this heroin business.’

  ‘Is there any point going through her papers, Guv? If she’d wanted to make a big payment, she’d have flogged a piece of jewellery, or that watch, and paid cash. A woman like that isn’t going to leave a paper trail for us to follow.’

  Christ! thought Femur. Bollocked by a suspect, then by my own constable. I must be losing it. ‘I know, Steve,’ he said, more patiently than he felt. ‘We won’t find anything, but we have to go through the motions. More to the point, it’ll give you a chance to cross-question the secretary, who’ll know a lot more about Chaze than his wife, and about their dealings with each other.’

  ‘Sergeant Lyalt’s already had DC Pepper …’

  ‘I know she has. But you’re a good-looking lad, you may get more out of her than Pepper or Lyalt could. Get on with it, will you?’

  ‘Sure, Guv.’ Owler still hesitated, looking sympathetic and anxious, which was unlike him. Femur shook his head. He knew what was coming and he didn’t want to hear it. ‘And, Guv, you look like shit. You ought to have some food, or sleep or something.’

  ‘Sod off and get on with it,’ Femur said. Odd that Owler still had to learn that sympathising with your senior officer was worse than telling him how to do his job. It would do the lad good to plough through files of domestic accounts.

  For himself, Femur would get back to the incident room and tell Caroline that her intuition about the drugs could have been half right, even though she’d been giving Chaze credit for too much unselfishness. It sounded like it had been his own trauma that had driven him, not a girlfriend’s.

  Trish was in the corridor of the Royal Courts of Justice, waiting for her case to be called and reading Malcolm Chaze’s powerful plea for justice for Deborah Gibbert. At the foot of the last column was a tiny, italic statement: ‘Anna Grayling’s film about Deborah Gibbert, Torn from the Family, is to be shown on television later in the year.’

  There was no suggestion from the loitering ushers that the case was about to begin, so Trish signalled to her instructing solicitor that she was going to make a phone call. He nodded, quite unworried. She took her mobile round the corner into the main hall and rang Anna.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said cheerfully, a moment later. She sounded not only unlike the woman who’d wept down the phone but almost from a different species. ‘It would have been mad to let this fantastic opportunity drop. I mean, Trish, don’t misunderstand me. I—’

  ‘If you’re in a hole, Anna, stop digging.’

  ‘OK. But face it, from the point of view of our campaign for Deb, it would have been seriously stupid not to take advantage of the publicity. And the weight of this message from a dead man is going to help her. That’s all I was trying to do.’

  ‘Maybe. But what’s this about “the film is to be shown?” Have they made a commitment this morning?’

  ‘Well, not exactly. But I’ve just been speaking to them and it’s virtually certain now that—’

  ‘Anna! Stop it. Let me get this right. You are using Malcolm’s murder to bounce one of the television companies into buying your film. Yes?’

  ‘Well, yes. And it looks as though it’s working. But, Trish, I’m fighting for my future here. And Deb’s freedom.’

  ‘Just so I know. Now, how are your medical researchers doing?’

  There was a pause. ‘Well, Trish, the thing is, you see … actually …’

  Trish felt the old lava-flow of anger beginning to stir. ‘You mean you haven’t got anyone talking to a geriatrician yet?’

  ‘It’s more than that actually. I can’t … I haven’t the funds yet to … Until I get a commitment, I can’t get the bank to let me have any … I’m sorry, Trish.’

  ‘There are no researchers. Is this what you’re telling me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh, shit, Anna. Why didn’t you tell me?’ Trish thought of the hours she’d expended on the project, the lists of questions she’d typed and e-mailed to Anna. All to no purpose. What a waste of time! No wonder she hadn’t got all the case papers she’d wanted. ‘Who’s been producing the few scraps you have sent me?’

  ‘Me, actually; in between finding studios, trying to persuade camera crews, grips—’

  ‘I don’t need the full list again,’ Trish said, holding on to her irritation. ‘I know you’ve got difficulties, too. Fine. But I don’t have time to do everything. I’ve got a demanding job and a convalescent father. Get me the medical information now or I’m off the case. Understood?’

  ‘You sound very cross.’

  ‘And you sound like a child. Anna, why couldn’t you have been honest with me? I’ve put in hours on this thing. If it had been a case, you’d be paying me tens of thousands of pounds.’ The lava tide was surging so powerfully that Trish knew she had to break off the conversation. Anna was desperate; it wouldn’t help to swear at her now.

  ‘I don’t know why you’re sounding so holy. You haven’t even talked to Cordelia yet, and she has to be the key.’

  Trish counted three. ‘You’re right, Anna. But I’ve go to go now. ’Bye.’

  She snapped her phone shut and stuffed it in the pocket of her black suit under the flapping gown. Her jaw felt as though it would never relax, and she suspected her face was white. All the blood seemed to drain away from her head when she was as angry as this. She hoped she’d get at least ten minutes before she had to go into court. Starting out in this state would not augur well for her client.

  Luckily the ushers were still loitering happily where she’d last seen them, and everyone else was reading their papers. Trish sat down again on the hard bench and went back to Malcolm’s article.

  He had set out the little real evidence the prosecution had had, then followed it with everything he knew of Deb, along with testimonials from all sorts of people who’d known her. The article ended with a passionate denunciation of the injustice that had locked her up for life and risked the ruination of her children’s lives. It was a powerful piece.

  A hand tapped her on the shoulder. She looked up quickly.

  ‘We’re on, Trish. You OK?’

  ‘Sure. Why d’you ask?’

  ‘You look shaky.’

  She smiled and saw the solicitor breathe more easily. ‘I’m just in a rage about something else. Don’t worry.’ She stood up, shook out her gown, and slotted into her professional persona. This was something she could do. She knew the brief backwards. She’d see her client right.

  Five hours later, she was back in the flat, lying on her sofa with a long glass of mineral water, wondering if she’d ever be cool again. The case had gone reasonably well, but something had been wrong with the air-conditioning and the court had been unbearably stuffy. Even though her suit was made of thin linen, the gown had meant she was wearing two layers of black cloth. In this weather, that alone, even without the constricting Lycra tights, would have been an ordeal.

  She tried to believe it was the heat that made it impossible to suppress some very uncharitable thoughts about her old friend Anna. Cashing in on murder was a thoroughly nasty business. So was lying to your friends, and exploiting them.

  ‘Oh, forget it,’ Trish said aloud, weary and dissatisfied with herself. She picked up the newspaper again.

  There was a huge glamorous photograph of Malcolm Chaze in the middle of the page beside a much smaller one of Deb, looking dowdy and a most unlikely girlfriend for a man like him. There was something about his face that made Trish curious.

  As she looked at it more carefully,
she kept seeing another face superimposed on it: younger and infinitely less assured, but very similar. She shook her head. The idea was absurd. And yet, if you took thirty-odd years off Malcolm Chaze’s face, made it female, added a lot of long hair and removed the fringe, wasn’t it a dead ringer for Kate Gibbert’s?

  They had the same shaped forehead and fine dark hair; the same pointed chin; and the same appealing smile.

  The dates fitted, too. Trish wondered whether it had ever occurred to Adam Gibbert that Deb might already have been pregnant by someone else when they got engaged. He could hardly have missed the likeness between Kate and Deb’s old lover, even if it had taken Trish far too long to notice it, and he was neither vain nor stupid enough to ignore the obvious reason.

  Malcolm’s campaign to get himself on the front pages and the television news hadn’t taken effect until fairly recently. Had Adam belatedly woken up to the fact that ‘his’ beautiful, helpful daughter, the one person who made his impossible life bearable, belonged to someone else?

  Trish had seen at once that Adam was a man on the edge, hanging on by his fingernails. It wouldn’t have taken much more to kick him over.

  She sat down again with the paper between her damp hands, looking at the dead man’s face. She didn’t know how to get a hitman herself, but it couldn’t be hard to find out. And Adam might not have needed one. Much the easiest way for him to get rid of Malcolm Chaze would have been to dress up in leathers and a helmet and do the job himself. He’d have had to get a gun, of course, but from what Trish had read in the papers that wasn’t particularly difficult.

  Tempted to phone Femur and ask if he’d thought to question Adam, Trish knew she couldn’t. She’d already infuriated the police by pointing out one connection with Deb Gibbert; Femur hadn’t listened then. Why should he pay any more attention now?

  She thought of writing to Deb to ask for confirmation, but there didn’t seem any point. Now that she’d seen the likeness, she couldn’t think why she hadn’t noticed before, and she had no doubt at all about Kate’s true parentage. She wished she’d known before she had talked to Deb in the first place, but the things she wanted to ask couldn’t be put in a letter. If she went to the prison again, she’d ask them then.

  George was due at a Law Society dinner that evening, so she wouldn’t see him. She picked up the phone to find out how Paddy was and whether he needed anything.

  He didn’t, but he said he’d like to see her. Trish thought wistfully about a cool shower and a peaceful early night, but got straight into her car to drive along the south side of the river to his Battersea flat.

  Chapter 16

  Cordelia Whatlam’s double-fronted mews house dripped pink geranium petals from terracotta planters on every window-sill. Trish picked her way towards it across painfully knobbly cobbles, avoiding the glossy, expensive cars that took up every possible parking space.

  She should have been in chambers still. As it was, she’d been up at five to go through all the papers that were piled on her desk. She’d dealt with a lot and left a huge long note for Dave before she’d left to fulfil her promise to Anna. It stuck in her craw, but she was going to do what she’d agreed, even if Anna had messed her about.

  Even so, she’d hoped she wasn’t turning into a woman like Deb herself. What was it Anna had said in the beginning? Something like: ‘Deb tries to do everything for everyone, runs herself ragged, short-changes the lot of them and is foul to the very people she most wants to help.’

  Well, if this visit didn’t produce any useful information and Anna didn’t turn up anything on the medical evidence, it would be time to cut loose. If Anna’s business folded and she lost her home, that would be tough, but Trish hadn’t caused the problem and she would have given the solution her best shot. If she failed, she failed. She couldn’t be responsible for everyone. And, she told herself, surprised at the metaphors her brain was spouting, this might be the Last Chance Saloon, but she wasn’t in a Western. But it meant she was smiling when the glossy black door in front of her opened.

  A slender, dark-haired woman stood there, with her eyebrows raised and a polite smile on her neat, pink lips. Trish had been expecting someone menacing, or at least predatory, but this woman looked almost fragile and very much as Deb would if she shed four stone and dressed at Armani.

  ‘Ms Whatlam?’

  ‘Yes.’ Cordelia Whatlam’s voice was less than welcoming. Her sleek hair was cut short and tucked behind her ears. Neat globular gold earrings hung from them, looking like little melons. She was wearing beige linen trousers under a loose black shirt-like jacket. She looked cool, in every sense of the word. ‘You must be Trish Maguire. You’d better come in.’

  Polite but hostile, Trish thought. Very hostile. Oh, well, it wasn’t that surprising, was it? ‘Thank you,’ she said, stepping across the threshold.

  Cordelia led the way through the shady house to a small, flower-splashed courtyard. A highly decorated pottery fountain was playing in the middle, catching the light in each droplet and making what was only a tiny backyard look positively exotic.

  ‘This is gorgeous, and so unexpected.’ You creep, Trish added to herself. Careful you don’t overdo it.

  But it seemed that Cordelia Whatlam wasn’t going to be distracted. Standing beside her fountain, with the same small, polite smile on her face, she said quietly, ‘May I ask why you of all people are involved in this farce?

  Me of all people? thought Trish. She doesn’t know anything about me. The hostility was shocking. Trish took a moment to compose her response.

  ‘How would you feel if someone came to tell you they were trying to get Charles Chompton out of prison and asked your help to do it?’

  Trish stiffened. She might have got most of her fears under control, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there.

  ‘You must have known I’d check you out before I let you into my house.’

  ‘Yes,’ Trish said carefully. ‘That would be only sensible.’

  ‘So, how would you feel if I were digging around for legal tricks that would free the man who raped and killed your friend and nearly did the same to you? Hm?’

  ‘Frankly, I’d hate it.’ Trish remembered she’d used exactly the same phrase to Phil Redstone and wondered whether he and Cordelia were in touch. He’d have been a good source for this information about her past. The thought of the pair of them cooking up a nasty plot like this to stop her fighting for Deb was unpleasant in the extreme.

  ‘This is a little different.’ She was determined not to show any weakness. ‘Deb is your sister. Don’t you have any feelings for her at all?’

  ‘Not many that would help you. I suppose you’d better sit down. I’m prepared to listen to what you have to say, but I can’t give you long.’ Cordelia looked at her watch, a gold Panther that glittered in the sun and showed off her faintly tanned skin. It was so smooth it looked like the shell of a big, old-fashioned brown boiled egg.

  ‘I hope someone has told you that Debbie was always a fantasist,’ she said casually. ‘As a child she’d tell herself stories so vivid that she’d get muddled between what was real and what was not.’

  ‘A lot of children do that.’

  ‘Most of them grow out of it. Debbie hasn’t. Think of that ridiculous story about my father’s false teeth.’

  ‘I must say I did find that one convincing. And it’s certainly a lot more convincing than some stories that other juries have believed.’

  Cordelia raised her eyebrows, but she did not otherwise question Trish’s capabilities or experience.

  ‘So you yourself never doubted that she’d deliberately murdered him?’

  Cordelia didn’t bother to answer. The scorn in her face was enough, and she knew it.

  ‘Not even at three in the morning when you can’t sleep? Have you never, ever, wondered whether perhaps your mother’s confession was real?’

  ‘Never. Not even in my darkest moments.’ Cordelia shivered artistically, even though there was no w
ind to move the hot air over their skin. ‘And there have been plenty of them.’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘My mother was incapable of killing my father. Physically incapable, emotionally incapable, and in any case barred by her faith. She took her religion with total seriousness, however much it cost her. Is that something you can understand, Ms Maguire?’

  There was so much aggression in the last question that Trish decided to answer. ‘I was brought up a Protestant myself, and in any case lapsed a long time ago, but I have enough respect for people who haven’t to take their beliefs seriously.’

  ‘Lucky you.’ Cordelia leaned back against the squidgy cushions in her chair. ‘You must accept that the confession was made to protect Debbie. You see, even my mother, who adored her, knew she’d done it.’

  ‘How can you be sure?’

  ‘Because she told me, just before she died.’

  ‘Does anyone else know that?’

  ‘No. She begged me never to tell anyone. She lay in that hospital bed, looking like death, and all she could think about was protecting Debbie.’

  ‘And telling you the truth about her own confession,’ Trish said, thinking, The poor woman, trying to do right by her two warring daughters, dying in the knowledge that they hated each other.

  ‘Did she ask you to look after Deb?’ she asked gently, and watched Cordelia’s face pale under the makeup. She didn’t speak.

  ‘Is that why you were prepared to talk to me today?’ Trish tried but failed to ignore the difference between Cordelia, sitting so elegantly in her glorious miniature garden, and Deb, miserable and stubbornly fighting her fear in the smelly, noisy prison visiting room.

  ‘We were close once. When we were children. I always fought her battles, defended her against anyone who was … oh, impatient with her slowness, or bullied her. That was my role.’

  Trish thought there ought to have been a speech bubble coming out between Cordelia’s smooth lips, saying, ‘Wasn’t I generous?’