A Greater Evil

by Natasha Cooper

  ‘She’s got good judgement. And unlike either of us she’ll have seen all the evidence.’ Meg looked kinder than ever as she added:

  ‘Don’t let him break your heart, Trish.’

  *

  At the end of Boxing Day Caro drove into the car park at the Heathrow Hilton with fifteen minutes to spare. She took her portable tape recorder from the glove box and slipped it into her bag, adjusted the driving mirror so she could check her appearance, and tucked a few stray hairs behind her ear.

  It shouldn’t be too hard, she thought as she walked across the car park, taking care not to slip in the icy puddles. Just a matter of establishing his movements on the day his daughter died and making sure I have contact details in case we need more from him.

  If there hadn’t been the problem of the influential Mrs Mayford and her secret past, Caro could have sent a couple of junior officers to get the information and saved herself the journey.

  A tall, slim man was waiting in one of the few chairs in the reception area. He looked at her over the top of his newspaper, assessed her and then nodded.

  ‘Chief Inspector Lyalt?’ he said in a quiet American accent.

  ‘Yes.’

  He pulled himself out of the chair and came towards her with a devastating smile on his face.

  ‘Shall we talk here or would you rather come up to my room?’

  ‘Here’s fine by me, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Not at all. I’ve only just managed to get rid of Gina, who drove me back from my sister’s in Dorset. She showed signs of wanting to stay – presumably to defend me from interrogation – but I told her I could manage.’

  ‘It may be that or it may be that she was afraid I might … shock you.’

  ‘You couldn’t, Chief Inspector. And that’s why I wanted to be rid of her. I’ve known for thirty-four years Cecilia was my daughter.’

  Talk about shock, Caro thought, angry that Mrs Mayford should have had to fight all the battles of a single mother while this man turned himself into a world expert on international relations. What about personal ones?

  ‘Now I’ve shocked you,’ he said. ‘But it’s not as simple as it looks. At some level Gina must know I know. I’m no mathematician, but I can count. I was already in the States when I heard about the baby from one of my sisters. I wrote and proposed right away, without mentioning Cecilia because I didn’t want Gina to think I was offering to be the sacrificial victim of a shotgun wedding. She said no. So here we are.’

  Why is he telling me this? Caro wondered. Do I need to hear his excuse?

  ‘Does all this mean you did see your daughter that last morning?’ she said aloud, quickly trying to reorganize her mind to avoid hurting him now she knew he knew who Cecilia was. ‘And do you mind if I record this interview?’

  ‘Go right ahead. The one thing I have to hold on to is that I did have an hour with her. If I’d known I’d never see her again, I—’ He broke off, looked away, then fiddled about tidying the newspaper.

  At last he coughed and looked back at Caro, before saying clearly, almost as though he was dictating to his students: ‘You’ll want to know my movements that day, Chief Inspector. I picked up a cheap pay-as-you-go phone when I arrived at Waterloo, as I always do when I come here – it’s more economical than using my US phone account – and texted her BlackBerry to find out if she could see me in her office before I caught the train to York.’

  ‘And did she?’

  ‘She texted right back to suggest we meet by the ice rink at Somerset House. I thought it could be risky with Gina at work on the opposite side of the road, but Cecilia assured me she’d be stuck in court. So I walked over the bridge from Waterloo. Cecilia walked up the Strand from her office. And we had a cup of coffee together.’

  ‘What did you talk about?’

  ‘Nothing much. How she was. What sex the baby was. How she felt about becoming a mother. How I thought we should maybe tell Gina we knew each other.’ He closed his eyes momentarily, then opened them to offer the same dazzling smile. Only now could Caro see the sadness behind the glitter. ‘It was something we nearly always did talk about and we always came to the same conclusion. We’d left it too late. And that was my fault.’

  ‘Hard to pick a moment for something so emotional,’ Caro said, managing to find a little sympathy for him.

  ‘I know. Think of the hurt of being told by your only child that she’s been lying to you all her adult life. But now …’

  ‘And yet they were so close.’

  ‘In everything except this. There are a lot of things I regret, but this …’ Again he hesitated. ‘This situation is one of the worst. And now I can never put it right. When I think of the waste of it all, the time the three of us could have had, I … It’s too much. I can’t deal with it yet.’

  ‘I’m sorry. And I’m sorry to press you, but I need to know everything that happened that morning. When did you part from Cecilia? Can you remember?’

  ‘Sure. My train for York left King’s Cross at twelve o’clock. I walked out of Somerset House at 11.15, as I’d planned all along, and took the Tube, the Piccadilly Line, to King’s Cross. You know, I could have told you all this over the phone.’

  ‘Is there someone in York who could …’

  ‘Establish my alibi? Sure. I was met at the station by the woman who organized the seminar. Here.’ He pulled a pile of old envelopes out of his jacket pocket, tore the back off one and scribbled a name on it, before consulting his diary and adding a couple of phone numbers. He looked up at Caro. ‘You’d better have my phone numbers in the States too. There may be more questions later.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  As he handed over the grubby piece of paper, he said: ‘You won’t tell Gina, will you? You don’t seem malicious.’

  ‘I’m not,’ Caro said. ‘But I have learned that nothing good ever comes from secrets. If I were you, I’d tell her myself and try to make her see that you and your daughter only wanted to protect her all these years. I must go. Thank you for being so frank.’

  ‘Selfish bastard,’ she muttered as she reached the chilly car park again. Protecting Mrs Mayford indeed! Protecting his own chance of a big career in the States, more likely.

  It was convenient for him that there were no living witnesses to the fact he’d always known he was the victim’s father. Still, there was CCTV at Somerset House and it would be better than the system outside Foundling’s studio. It should have logged his departure and it would tell her precisely when he and Cecilia left the place.

  It wasn’t until Caro had bleeped up the locks of her car that she thought of a question she hadn’t asked.

  Back in the hotel, she found no sign of him in the foyer. But the receptionist recognized her and directed her to the bar. There she found Professor Suvarov drinking Stella from the bottle.

  ‘Hi. Thought of something else, Chief Inspector?’

  ‘Did she talk to you about her marriage?’

  ‘Not a lot. It was clearly tough, but I’d say she genuinely loved the guy in spite of that, which is what makes this so … so unbearable.’

  ‘So you think he did it?’

  ‘It’s the obvious answer, isn’t it?’ He sounded sad. ‘I never met Sam, but I know she was afraid of what happened when he was angry. She once saw him smash the phone to pieces in front of their friends merely because a call-centre salesman phoned and interrupted them at dinner. By all accounts, he’s a violent man, who deals with his feelings by hitting out.’

  ‘What about the man who was harassing her at work?’ Caro said. ‘Did she say anything about him?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Then what about Dennis Flack? Did she ever mention him to you?’

  ‘Nope. Who’s he?’

  ‘Her immediate boss at work.’

  ‘Never heard of him. The only thing she said was bothering her, apart from how tough it was dealing with Sam’s problems, was that she’d become spooked by coincidence. But that was only bec
ause I told her the name of the woman organizing the York seminar, and it turned out Cecilia had known her at university. Not in the same league as his violence.’

  ‘Thanks. Sorry to disturb your drink.’

  ‘Not at all,’ he said, sounding more and more English. ‘Can I buy you one?’

  Caro shook her head, thanked him again, and headed back to the car. She tried to make the coincidence mean something but couldn’t. Even Trish would have to admit there was no way a lecturer from York University could have a bearing on Cecilia’s murder, however well they’d known each other as students. All she’d got from Suvarov was more support for her own suspicion of Sam and absolutely none of the evidence she needed to do anything with it.

  The newspaper that flopped onto the doormat on Boxing Day was pitifully thin. The lack of weight mattered not at all to Trish, once she’d seen there was nothing in it about Sam. She embarked on her round of treats for David with more zest than she’d dared contemplate.

  While George drove his mother back to her Suffolk house on Monday, Trish took David to a dry ski slope she knew to practise for their half-term trip to the French Alps. He was in fine form, unhampered by the immense amounts of food he’d consumed over the last few days and apparently no longer fazed by the thought of meeting some of his distant relations, who had treated his mother so badly. But his confidence leached away over the next twenty-four hours and on Wednesday morning his face had a pallor and tension that took Trish back to his first weeks in her flat.

  ‘Got your mobile?’ she said with a breeziness she didn’t feel. ‘I’ll have mine switched on wherever I am, so you can always …’

  ‘I’ll phone if I need to,’ he said, then clamped his lips together. It would have been cruel to make him say any more or probe for exactly which ingredients made up his particular fear. He forced a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. ‘Look after yourself, Trish.’

  ‘You too.’ She looked over his head and met Susie’s sympathetic blue eyes.

  ‘We’ll have a great time, Trish.’ She pushed her chunky gold bangles up her smooth, tanned arm. ‘There are so many things I want to see and places to go. We’ve got Stratford and all the Shakespeare stuff first, then Warwick Castle. We’ll have fun, and we’ll see you in a fortnight.’

  ‘Thanks, Susie,’ Trish said and kissed her.

  Watching them drive off in the hired car left Trish feeling surprisingly deflated. In the mad rush to get everything done before Christmas, she’d looked forward to having time to herself with David away and George already back at work. Now she wondered what she’d expected to do with all the free hours.

  London was still and cold, and apparently empty except for a few gulls shrieking on the river, and the usual scavenging pigeons. A big dog fox sauntered down the road towards her, looking far cockier than he should and sleekly plump from raids on well-filled dustbins. Trish had never seen a fox out in the open like this in broad daylight. They usually confined their excursions to what passed for darkness in the city. He walked so close his pungent smell filled the air between them.

  A mile or so away in Oxford Street, she knew there would be crowds of shoppers, hoping to take advantage of huge reductions in the sales. Some of her friends were probably available too, although the best of them, Caro, had barricaded herself behind her certainty of Sam’s guilt. There was still clearing up to do in the flat and plenty to read. Trish could write her thank-you letters, or even see how Sam was.

  None of it appealed, and the empty spaces of the flat she’d only just left felt threatening in a way she’d never known. Chambers was probably the best place to be. There might be some company to be found there, refugees from too much family, just as she was trying to escape too little. And she could always work. She’d never known a time in the last eighteen years when there’d been nothing to do in preparation for one case or another. In fact this would be the perfect moment to have another crack at the engineering principles behind the erection of revolutionary buildings on slippery London clay.

  Turning east, she walked along the Embankment towards the Temple. It was impossible to forget everything Meg had said or to ignore everything she hadn’t said. Last night, waking in the early hours, Trish had been aware of the answer to a question that had been nagging at the back of her mind: why had the wife-beating man Meg had described gone to the surgery in the first place?

  Somewhere in his subconscious he must have known he was guilty. Unable to bear the knowledge, he’d invented the story of his wife as aggressor. When it had stopped convincing him, he’d taken it to an independent audience, pretending to ask for help. The same hidden intelligence must have known the doctors would uncover the truth. Which had to mean he’d wanted to be found out.

  Had Sam’s description of his own jealousy been the same kind of coded confession?

  ‘Lovely day, innit?’

  The cockney voice made Trish’s head flick up. She was surprised to see the newspaper seller at his usual stand on the corner of Arundel Street. He couldn’t have much custom on a day like this. No wonder he’d wanted to tell her he was there. She smiled and put a hand in her pocket for change, only to see her own face glaring at her from the Daily Mercury. The newspaper man didn’t seem to have recognized her, but she hurried through her purchase of all the papers she hadn’t already read in case he noticed the likeness. He tried to keep her by asking if she’d had a good Christmas, but she said it was too cold to stay and chat. She wished him well and tucked the bundle of newsprint under her arm.

  Chambers was still double-locked and the alarm beeped its warning as soon as she pushed the door open. Once she’d punched in the disabling code, she shook out the Mercury, keeping the rest of the papers jammed between her left elbow and her ribs, and turned on the passage light with her right shoulder.

  The front page had two photographs side by side. One was of Gina Mayford, looking distraught; the other, of Trish, glaring over Sam Foundling’s shoulder. His face showed nothing but shock, while hers was a mask of undiluted rage. She’d rarely seen any picture for which the term harpy was better suited. The headline made her tighten her hands so hard that one fingernail broke right through the page.

  Barrister and Judge at War over Murder Suspect

  But we’re not, she thought, walking into her room and sinking into the chair behind her desk. All I said was that Mrs Mayford was far too professional to let any personal consideration affect her in any way whatsoever. How could they print this?

  She let the other papers drop and read every word of the article below the photograph. There was hardly anything in it about Sam, beyond the fact that his late wife was the daughter of Mrs Justice Mayford and the police had him on their list of suspects. The editor’s legal advisers had clearly filleted the piece to remove any libellous allegations, but the impression given was that the Mercury agreed with the police. Not that there was anything odd in that. The editorial line had always been that the police were perfect and incorruptible and anyone they suspected must be scum.

  Today the paper had also provided a potted history of Trish’s career, including the time when she briefly came under suspicion in a case of child abduction and her later private involvement in a notorious case of a woman unjustly convicted of the murder of her father. Trish’s domestic arrangements were described in the kind of detail that made them seem bizarre.

  Once again she could see evidence of the lawyers’ involvement. David wasn’t mentioned by name, but there was a general reference to her fostering the child of a murder victim. Even worse was a trailer for a feature on ‘The Passion for Justice’ by the paper’s tame psychiatrist. With a hollow feeling in her head, Trish turned the pages until she found it.

  A frantic skimming sweep told her that her name didn’t figure in the article, which allowed her to read it more calmly. The tone was cooler than usual in the Daily Mercury and the sentences considerably longer. She was mildly interested until she came upon the last two paragraphs.

  Ambulance-
chasers are driven by profit, and ghoulish sightseers by an addiction to adrenaline thrill, but there are plenty of people whose altruistic involvement in the aftermath of violent crime is the product of childhood experiences. For some, the motivating factor is a sense of rage at injustice done to them. Their identification with anyone accused of crime is that of a fellow sufferer, determined to punish the parental accuser. For others, it is a sense of guilt, sometimes misplaced.

  Children who believe themselves to be the cause of parental unhappiness, or who witness violence at an age when they’re powerless to intervene, are particularly prey to such feelings.

  ‘How dare he?’ Trish said aloud. Her jaw tightened and her teeth clamped against each other as though someone was trying to force-feed her. She was well used to journalistic conjecture, but this insinuation was too acute to take easily. She needed coffee.

  Ten minutes later she was back at her desk with a covered cardboard cup holding four shots of espresso. She swallowed some. The caffeine hit at once and she let the pumping sensation in her head and heart banish everything else for a while. She could almost feel the drug pushing the walls of her arteries apart, opening them, making them work better and so feed her brain with all the blood it needed. Her thoughts moved faster. She felt more intelligent. More powerful. Then she caught sight of the headline again and took another gulp of coffee. This time she didn’t get the same rush, and she was left with a whole lot of unanswerable questions.

  Why was she of interest to any journalist? She’d assumed it was Sam the pack had been after. But this malice was directed at her, merely hung on his story. Who had known he was to be with her for Christmas?

  She tried to collect her scattered thoughts as she pushed the sleazy paper along the desk with one shaking finger. Gina had known about her Christmas plans, but she wouldn’t have gone to the papers. George knew too, but he had never been leaky. And it couldn’t have been Sam himself. Which left Caro.

  Had she taken advantage of Trish’s attempt to safeguard the shreds of their friendship with that one warning phone call? Had she told the press where her main suspect would be eating his turkey and plum pudding on Christmas Day? Did she think publicity would put so much pressure on Sam that he’d confess?