Prey to All

by Cooper, Natasha

  ‘And then she kicked me in the teeth. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate her now. I can’t forgive her, but I don’t hate her any more.’

  Trish nodded and waited for more. Cordelia recovered her cool and sat in passive elegance, giving nothing more away.

  ‘What went wrong between you?’ Trish asked, as the silence became too oppressive for her. ‘It wasn’t just your father’s death, was it? It sounds as though it started before that.’

  ‘Of course it did. It started when she set out to wreck my relationship with him.’ Cordelia’s voice had a hiss in it. ‘She never took the trouble to understand him and she hated the fact that I could.’

  ‘That doesn’t seem fair, but it does sound as though he made life hard for her.’

  ‘It didn’t have to be like that,’ Cordelia burst out, sounding and looking a lot less smooth. ‘That’s what she wouldn’t face. She could have had just as good a relationship with him if she’d tried a bit harder. But she just couldn’t be bothered. She preferred to put her energies into trying to poison my relationship with him – and with my mother. And when she saw she couldn’t do that, she killed him.’

  ‘She must have been very unhappy,’ Trish said, feeling as though she’d been dumped in the middle of a minefield without a map.

  ‘I can’t bear it when people use that as an excuse.’ Cordelia’s voice was rock steady and her eyes had hardened to match. ‘So dog-in-the-manger: “I can’t be happy, so I’m going to make damn sure no one else is.”’

  ‘Perhaps …’ Trish was thinking as she spoke ‘ … it has more to do with having to struggle so hard to deal with their own misery that they just can’t take on anyone else’s. Or maybe even see it.’

  ‘No. It’s lack of empathy. Debbie had absolutely none. She couldn’t believe anyone else might suffer. It never occurred to her that my father and I might not be trying to do her down, might be unhappy because of what she was doing to us.’

  ‘She knew about your father’s pain.’ Trish couldn’t help the quick protest. ‘That was what sent her to the doctor and caused all the trouble with him.’

  Cordelia’s eyes flashed. ‘She wasn’t sympathetic. She was angry because it made him difficult to deal with.’ The scorn in her voice ripped into Trish. ‘I’d seen her yelling at him when he was in so much pain that he could hardly breathe, let alone eat or sleep. She had a temper like you’ve never seen.’

  ‘D’you think—?’

  Cordelia had too much to say to wait for the question. The words were bursting out of her now: ‘For Christ’s sake! Half his medical problems were caused by the agitation Deb aroused in him. They were always worse when she was there.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘A lot of his ailments – the ulcer, the angioneurotic oedema, the anxiety – were stress-related,’ Cordelia said more quietly, ‘and, by God, Deb knew how to generate stress.’ Once again she shivered, huddling her body into her arms as though she was cold. She couldn’t have been. In spite of the shade and the fountain, the little courtyard was like an oven. ‘Have you seen her?’ she demanded abruptly.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How is she?’

  Trish tried to decode the intention behind the question. ‘How do you expect?’

  Something attracted Cordelia’s attention in the flower-bed beside her chair. She was looking down at it, her face turned almost completely away from her visitor. She picked a small spider off one of the plants, winding its fragile silk thread around her finger and tugging. Then she squashed the minute creature between her finger and thumb and scraped the resulting mess from her skin with a lemon-balm leaf. The sweetly spicy citrus smell was so strong that it reached Trish, who was sitting at least four feet away.

  ‘You know, my only consolation is that I managed to phone just before she did it. He didn’t die entirely uncomforted, but …’

  Trish saw that there was a line of liquid hovering on the edge of Cordelia’s lower lids. It dried in a moment.

  ‘I have to go out now,’ she said, getting to her feet. ‘If you’ve got any more questions, the best thing would be to write to me. OK?’ She led the way towards her front door. Trish had to follow. ‘You know,’ Cordelia said, pausing with her hand on the latch, ‘I can’t forgive her, but we are sisters. One day I might be able to see her again. But not yet.’

  Trish didn’t answer. She couldn’t imagine Deb’s reacting well to a request for a visiting order from Cordelia.

  ‘So she still hates me?’

  ‘I can’t imagine it’s easy to forgive people whose evidence puts you in prison for life, can you?’

  ‘It’s a lot harder to forgive someone who’s killed your father.’ Barbed wire couldn’t have been sharper than Cordelia’s voice. ‘Deb will get out one day, even though she hasn’t got Malcolm to fight for her any more. I’ll never have my father back.’

  Back in Southwark, Trish wandered about the enormous space of her warehouse flat, trying to shed the feelings Cordelia had aroused in her and fit herself back into her own serenely happy life. Her family hadn’t been perfect by any means, but compared with Deb’s, it wasn’t a bad substitute.

  The phone rang. It was Anna, of course, unrepentant and nagging for yet another update. Trish gave her a quick resume of the last meeting, adding, ‘So, even if Cordelia agreed, I don’t think it would be a good idea to get her on the screen. She’s utterly convinced Deb did it. And I think she might have the same effect on the audience as she did on the jury.’ I wonder, Trish thought, if an ability to tell yourself stories so vivid you have to believe in them is a family trait?

  ‘D’you think she could have killed her father, planted evidence to incriminate Deb, and then had Malcolm Chaze shot because she was afraid he’d turn up the truth?’

  ‘Does it seem likely to you, Anna?’ Trish didn’t have the patience to take idiotic suggestions seriously.

  ‘She could have driven down there that night after her visitor left,’ Anna said, with dignity. ‘I’ve been checking her out ever since she refused to see me. I thought if I could get her to agree to be interviewed on camera, I could get the presenter to point that out and see how she behaved. At the very least it would make her angry and that would have to help Deb.’

  ‘You could shoot yourself in the foot,’ Trish said, recognising the biting anxiety behind Anna’s determined strength. ‘I think you’d do better to see if Adam has any photographs of Deb and Cordelia in childhood. You know, the sort of thing most families have – the two girls fighting over a toy, or hugging each other, something like that. You could get a montage going for the beginning of the film, showing the little darlings as happy sisters, then as angry ones, then – if any – as violent ones. You could have a voiceover quoting some of Cordelia’s evidence, then another with what the Blakemores have said about Deb’s kindness.’

  ‘It could make a good intro. Yes. You might have a second career here, Trish.’

  I’d rather keep my own, thanks, she thought. At least I don’t have a bank telling me what I can and can’t do. ‘And I need those medical details, Anna. Like yesterday.’

  ‘They’re coming. They’re coming. They won’t be long now,’ Anna said, in a rush. ‘I’m calling in almost the last of my favours. There’s the bell. Got to go. Sorry. Goodbye.’

  Half an hour later, Trish was standing in her kitchen, stirring a complicated sauce for the steak she was planning to grill for George, and rereading everything that had been said at the trial itself about old Mr Whatlam’s medical condition. The two activities did not sit well together and she was beginning to feel sick. She wished she knew more about old age and its ills and the best way of dealing with them.

  Deb’s diatribe about the hopelessness of Dr Foscutt’s treatment of her parents had definitely been sincere, but Trish couldn’t work out from the details of the examination and cross-examination propped up against the Magimix whether it had been justified or not.

  There did seem to have been an inordin
ate number of things wrong with the old man: gout, migraine, prostate, depression, the ulcer and the angioneurotic oedema that had been so bad during Deb’s visit, as well as an infinity of scrapes and bruises. He didn’t heal well, it seemed, and he’d been forever banging himself or breaking his wrist or his fingers.

  There was the sound of heavy feet clumping up the iron staircase outside the flat. George, she thought in satisfaction. She could have let him in, but she liked hearing him unlock the door with the keys she’d given him as soon as she’d realised he cared as much as she did. Such a little thing, but it added up with a whole raft of others into a safety of familiar pleasures.

  But the bell rang. So, not George, she thought, as she turned off the heat altogether and went to the door.

  There was a spyhole, which she hardly ever bothered with, but tonight she did look through it. Standing in front of her was an enormously tall man in motorcycle leathers with a helmet on his head. He had a thin brown package in his hands on top of a clipboard. He was wearing black leather gloves.

  Trish was sweating and her heart was walloping at her ribs, much faster than usual, but her mind was still working. Thank God. She told herself grimly to be proud of it. She looked as carefully as she could with her restricted field of vision, but she could see no gun. The messenger’s leathers looked far too tight to be concealing anything. And his bike with its capacious panniers was way down in the street. So perhaps the package was going to be a bomb. Or perhaps, she told herself, he’s a bike messenger. He rang again, then thumped his gloved fist on the heavy door.

  As her vision cleared, she saw that the package was only an A4 brown envelope, not particularly thick. She put the door on the chain and opened it.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Maguire? Package.’

  She looked at it through the narrow gap, staring at the flap. There didn’t seem to be any wires. The envelope was addressed in neat handwriting she didn’t know. ‘Who’s it from?’ she asked, and was irritated to hear her voice high and trembling.

  His voice boomed out from his all-embracing helmet, ‘Pick-up address was 14 Fratchet Mews, Holland Park.’

  Cordelia Whatlam’s house. He thrust his clipboard through the gap, asking for a signature and her name in caps at the side. She scrawled her name, took the envelope and quickly banged the door shut.

  She could hear his feet hitting each step of the iron staircase and checked through the kitchen window. He kicked the struts holding up his bike and roared off out of her sight. She felt all over the envelope, running her fingers up and down each part. There were no wires. A paperclip or two, and paper, but that was all.

  Oh, stop being paranoid, she told herself, and ripped open the flap. Nothing blew up. All she found was a sheaf of handwritten letters with a typed note paperclipped to the top one:

  Ms Maguire, you seemed so sure of my sister’s innocence that I thought you might be interested in these letters. Deb wrote most of them during her time on bail; but there are a couple from the prison. I could see she’s charmed you. She can be very charming. These will show you the kind of woman she is.

  I’m sorry I was unhelpful, but, as I told first Anna Grayling and then Malcolm, I know the jury reached the right verdict and I am not prepared to have anything to do with the film. I saw you today because I’ve been told you’re sensible and informed. I thought you might be able to knock this nonsense on the head once and for all.

  I hope I was right. We’re not likely to meet again, but, as I say, if there is anything you have to ask me, please do it in writing. You may have to wait for an answer because I’m off to the Far East on a buying trip next week and I won’t be around for some time.

  Yours, Cordelia Whatlam

  Trish thought she’d had enough of them all for the day. George would soon be home and she’d promised him a good dinner. She put Cordelia’s envelope on her desk with the trial transcript, unchained the door, and went back to her pots and pans.

  She was still at the hob, dealing with the last stages of the sauce, when she heard George letting himself in. His arms came round her as she stirred her pan and she leaned back, turning up her face. He did his best to kiss her.

  ‘If I were a contortionist or a giraffe, I’d do this better,’ he said.

  Trish laughed and turned within the circle of his arms so that she could kiss him properly. She wasn’t wearing much, having already had her shower, and the thought of food suddenly seemed comparatively uninteresting.

  ‘Are you very hungry?’ she murmured. He stroked her left eyebrow, then her nose, and at last her lips, with one large finger. He tasted salty.

  ‘No,’ he said slowly, pulling out the sound. He kissed her again and slid his hands up under her T-shirt. ‘I don’t know that I am.’

  Trish only just remembered to turn off the heat under the sauce.

  Chapter 17

  ‘I think the boss is losing it, Sarge.’

  Caroline Lyalt looked up from her list of Malcolm Chaze’s past girlfriends – a lot longer than it should have been in her opinion – and considered DC Owler. He was wearing tight black jeans and a round-necked black T-shirt under a loose grey linen jacket. His pretty face under the short hair looked worried rather than gleeful, so she decided not to ignore the comment.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He savaged Chaze’s widow yesterday on no evidence except that she wasn’t as distraught as he thought she should be, and he’s had me and three others ransacking her papers and cross-examining her husband’s secretary about her ever since. He has no reason to suspect her. It’s a waste of time and money.’

  ‘You know as well as I do, Steve, that most murders are domestic.’ God, you can sound sententious, she told herself.

  ‘Not when they’re contract killings, like this one. We should be looking in his past for—’

  ‘She’s a sophisticated woman with a lot of money and she’s in a ruthless business. It’s a legitimate line of inquiry, Steve.’

  ‘Maybe, but not to this extent. I think the boss is—’

  ‘Losing it. You said.’ Caroline thought of the way Femur had changed as Jess fed and petted him in their big kitchen. ‘But he’s not. And if you’re looking for the moment to jump ship and hitch a better ride, don’t. You owe that man.’

  ‘Christ, Sarge, I know that. But he’s crashing the budgets for nothing. Just because he hates women, I mean, women who …’

  Caroline looked at him and knew what he was thinking and why he was scowling. If he’d been less sure of himself, he’d have been blushing. Well, she wasn’t going to help him. If he wanted to go on working at AMIP he had to get used to the fact that she was gay.

  ‘He rescued you from a minor, thoroughly dirty local nick,’ she said coldly, ‘where you’d have eked out your days on burglary and mugging, and he got you into AMIP. You ought to remember where your loyalties lie.’

  ‘Why d’you dislike me so much?’ he asked suddenly, hooking a chair towards him with one foot and sitting down with his arms crossed along the back.

  ‘I don’t.’ She smiled at him, carefully keeping her gaze fixed on his hairline so she didn’t have to meet his eyes. ‘But I don’t trust you.’

  In the days when she was still a constable and had to pretend not to notice that the boss’s favourite sergeant didn’t like her – or the way the boss would sometimes consult her and not the sergeant – she used to tell herself that when it was her turn to feel someone treading on her tail she’d behave better. She hoped she was, but there was no way she was shutting her eyes to disloyalty like this.

  ‘Sarge …’

  ‘I can see you watching him these days, waiting for the moment when he’s not useful to you any more.’

  Owler didn’t comment. He moved, though, as if he was uncomfortable.

  ‘I know you don’t want to be tied to a has-been,’ Caroline went on. ‘No one does, and you’re an ambitious little thing. I’ve always known that.’

  His alluring face twisted again. He
’d registered the insult all right. Good. She’d meant him to.

  She thought of what she’d recognised in the kitchen last night: that Femur was lonely and deeply troubled about something in a way she’d never seen before. But she wasn’t going to ask questions. When he was ready to talk, he’d talk. Until then she’d support him as well as she could. One or two of her fans in the Job had taken her out for a drink recently and warned her to move on, not to let herself get tainted by that case and her association with Femur. But she owed him. He’d given her a leg up in the Force and he’d given her a kind of stability, too. In the days when life with Jess had been hard, he’d always been there, unobtrusively, noticing when she was pissed off or miserable and sorting her out.

  If he really was cracking up, she’d shield him until the case was done, then take him back for another of Jess’s suppers and show him that it was time to go before he buggered up what was left of his reputation. Jess would help. He’d come to like her, too, and he was easier with the pair of them than any other straight man of his generation she’d come across so far.

  Caroline saw Owler looking at her in gratification and realised she must be smiling. Dream on, sunshine, she said in her head. Aloud, she asked him what he’d found among Laura Chaze’s papers.

  ‘Fuck all, Sarge. Like I knew we would.’

  ‘Did you get anything from the secretary?’

  ‘Only confirmation of the marital rows. She was hacked off by his affairs. He thought she ought to put up with them, like his mates’ wives did. And she was well pissed off by his campaign to get Deborah Gibbert out of prison.’

  Caroline felt like sighing. Trish Maguire’s dark intense face floated into her mind, saying, ‘I told you so.’

  ‘Tell me more,’ she said.

  Owler repeated everything Malcolm Chaze’s secretary had said about the last row her boss had had with his wife. Caroline didn’t think there was much there.

  ‘Anything else?’