Keep Me Alive

by Natasha Cooper

  ‘Sure.’ He walked beside her in silence as Ferdy’s giggles echoed after them. Once they were striding down between the plane trees towards Plough Court, he asked if he’d been missing something.

  ‘Only some idiotic, sub-primary-school joke of Ferdy’s, that isn’t at all funny.’

  ‘No. Right.’ Colin’s face split into a cheerful smile. ‘It’s so damn hard to decode all the legalese, let alone the in-jokes, that I usually feel particularly dim when I’m around you and Antony.’

  ‘No need,’ Trish said. They reached the door to chambers and swept in past the cream-coloured board with all the tenants’ names in black. ‘You’re shaping up a treat, Colin. You’ll be there soon enough; don’t worry about it.’

  ‘Unless I piss Antony off and he votes against me when the time comes for you all to decide which pupils get tenancies,’ he said. ‘That’s why I watch him all the time to work out what he’s thinking. By the way, have you seen how he loathes Ferdy Aldham? Far more than you do.’

  ‘Does he?’ Trish wasn’t very interested. ‘Look, I want to check my emails, Colin, in case your mate has responded. Then once we’ve had our drink, I ought to visit a friend in hospital. Will you be OK for a few minutes?’

  ‘Sure,’ he said, but he didn’t leave her room. She looked up, puzzled, from the laptop. This time his smile was more tentative, almost pleading.

  ‘I just thought it might be useful for you to know that I asked someone whether there was any history between them, and he said they’ve hated each other since Bar school, when Ferdy got the top marks and Antony only came second. Then Antony got pupillage first, started winning cases first and took silk first. Even so, it’s not thought to be enough to make up for the exam rage.’

  Trish stared at him, fitting the news into the jigsaw in her mind. Might this at last explain why Antony had accepted the brief? And why he hadn’t challenged Ferdy when he was leading Will to make a fool of himself in the witness box?

  ‘Where did you get this choice titbit, Colin?’

  He flushed. ‘My godfather was there with them. I asked him.’

  Trish looked at him with new respect. It would have taken more confidence than she’d had at his age to avoid dropping names that might be useful, particularly in a world like theirs, where so much old-boy stuff still went on. She couldn’t remember ever having heard Colin mention that he had a godfather at the Bar, and she was certain it hadn’t come up at any of his interviews before he was offered a pupillage at Plough Court.

  ‘Who is he?’ she asked and was even more impressed when he just shook his head.

  ‘There’s an email here with all the answers from your friend because he says he can’t meet us tonight,’ she said. ‘Why don’t we go and have a quick drink anyway?’

  ‘I’d love it.’ He was blushing. ‘But what about your hospital visit?’

  ‘There’ll be time for both. Dump that lot and let’s go.’

  She came back to chambers to read the email properly after she’d despatched Colin to his basement flat in Tooting. His friend had done an admirably thorough job. He’d found out that Jamie Maxden’s next of kin was a sister, Clare Blake, with whom he’d had no contact for years. She lived in Twickenham. Colin’s friend had even provided a phone number.

  In answering the rest of her questions, he’d also offered the interesting fact that the police had found a suicide note in Maxden’s car. Apart from the note, they’d found nothing except his mobile phone and his laptop computer, which had slid under the passenger seat as he drove. The police had obviously checked that and found copies of letters and emails to editors all over the country, begging for work. Some of them went back years and they’d have shown evidence of suicidal depression even without the note. The lack of luggage had been thought to confirm that he hadn’t been planning to live out the night. The last three emails he’d sent on the night he’d died had been despatched to suicide websites on the Internet.

  He’d had £33.67 in his pockets, along with two credit cards and his driving licence, which was how they’d identified him, but nothing else. He had enormous debts and the mortgage company was about to throw him out of his flat. The inquest verdict was no surprise to anyone.

  ‘You might be interested to know,’ the email ended, ‘that Maxden’s sister arranged to have the body cremated.’

  As soon as she had printed out the email, Trish raced to the hospital.

  There was no sign of Jess in the Intensive Care unit, but Caro was looking more alert. There was even a trace of colour in her cheeks. At the sight of Trish treading carefully across the polished floor, Caro stretched out her hand. There was still a drip trailing from it.

  ‘Thank you, Trish,’ she said. ‘Andrew told me what you’ve done for Kim. What a triumph!’

  ‘It all seems to be coming right, doesn’t it? You look better, too. That must mean they’ve found the right antibiotic at last.’

  ‘They have, and my temperature’s coming down. My kidneys aren’t quite sorted yet, which is why I’m still up here.’ Caro’s light voice was at odds with her face, which was as blank as a mask before she forced the smile back. Even then it didn’t touch her eyes.

  Trish knew that Caro had to be facing the possibility that her kidneys would never recover fully. She was far too well informed not to know what that meant: a lifetime of dialysis until her veins were so damaged by needles that even that ceased to be possible. Then a transplant would be the only way of saving her life, and there was a terrible shortage of kidneys, now that road accidents were rarer and victims cared for more efficiently.

  Roll on the day when transgenic pigs can be bred to provide organs for transplant, Trish thought. At least until stem-cell research gets to the point where they can be grown in a lab rather than in another body. Anything would be better than the destruction of a life like Caro’s.

  Her frightened brown eyes warned Trish not to say anything sympathetic, so she smiled instead, and asked whether Caro had had many visitors.

  ‘Jess.’ Her face softened. ‘She comes every day with clean pyjamas and tiny amounts of pristine food I can eat.’

  ‘Meat?’ Trish couldn’t stop the question, in spite of her new appreciation of Jess.

  ‘Of course. She’d never impose her own diet on me. And Cynthia comes sometimes, and Pete Hartland.’

  ‘Has he accepted that Crossman didn’t poison you? I couldn’t make him talk to me for long enough to find out whether I’d convinced him.’

  ‘I think he does believe it now. Luckily. He could have caused a lot of trouble. By the way, is your friend still trying to track down the source of the E. coli? Jess told me he’d found the deli where I bought the sausages. She’s dead grateful for all the work he’s putting in.’

  Trish remembered the antipathy that had burgeoned between the two of them and said lightly, ‘Even though she didn’t like him?’

  Caro laughed, which was all the acknowledgement Trish needed.

  ‘His charms are a little unusual,’ she added, ‘but once you get to know him you realize they’re real. There isn’t much I can tell you. He’s borrowed some money off me and gone to ground.’

  ‘Why does that worry you?’ Caro sounded so much stronger, and so like her usual self, that for a moment Trish was tempted to ask for the advice she needed. But until she knew for certain what Will was doing, she couldn’t risk bringing the police anywhere near him.

  ‘No reason,’ she said and hoped she sounded confident. ‘I was just thinking about the sausages and wondering whether anyone else suffered from them. Have you heard of any other cases?’

  ‘No. And each time I ask, the nurses tell me not to worry, love. If there’d been a big outbreak, the authorities would have made enquiries, but there hasn’t. So you just lie back and relax. We’re looking after you.’ Caro said this in a deliberately syrupy voice. Reverting to her own astringent tones she added, ‘It’s enough to send my temperature back to the top of the scale without any infection whatsoever.
If your friend does find anything out, you will bring him to see me, won’t you?’

  ‘Of course,’ Trish said, then added in silence to herself: if it’s safe.

  On her way out of the unit later, Trish felt a tap on her shoulder. She turned, expecting to see one of the nurses. In fact it was a man almost as young as Andrew Stane’s captain, but much less sturdy. She looked enquiringly at him.

  ‘Are you Inspector Lyalt’s friend who was ill, too?’ he asked. ‘The one who’s been talking to Kim?’

  ‘Yes, Trish Maguire.’

  ‘I work with her. My name’s Pete Hartland. You phoned me. Can I talk to you? Outside, I mean. I don’t want to disturb her.’

  ‘Sure.’

  Beyond the swing doors to the ward there was a dingy cream-painted corridor with a bench about halfway along. Trish led the way there and sat down.

  ‘How can I help?’

  ‘When are you going to see Kim again?’

  ‘I’m not. I did the last interview yesterday, and she said enough to enable the social workers to extend the care order. They’re going to take it from here. Haven’t they told you?’

  Hartland leaped up from the bench, then came back, looming over her. Trish blinked and leaned back.

  ‘Yeah, but it’s not enough, is it?’ The words burst out of him. ‘We can’t do him for cruelty on what you’ve got. OK, Kim may be taken safely into care. But nothing will happen to Dan Crossman. He’ll be glad to be rid of her. It’ll look like winning to him, and he’s got to be made to see he didn’t win. Otherwise he’ll do the same sort of thing again and again.’

  Trish watched him pacing about like an animal in too small a cage. Anyone who had ever seen Kim would have been driven to help her, but this passion seemed excessive.

  ‘What’s your particular interest in him?’ she asked.

  ‘He doesn’t remind me of my dad, if that’s what you’re thinking.’ He spat out the words. ‘I wasn’t abused by anyone else either. I had a great family life.’

  ‘It never occurred to me to suggest otherwise. Has someone else said you were?’ she said, remembering Andrew Stane’s idea that Caro could have been projecting some emotional damage of her own on to Kim. What had happened to this man to make him so keen on punishing Dan Crossman?

  Pete’s shoulders lifted up round his ears. ‘Of course. These days you can’t show any interest in little children without being called a paedophile yourself, or a victim of abuse. I hate the bastards who mess about with little children, just like I hate the other ones who beat up old ladies for their electric money. There’s no difference. And I hate seeing the bastards that hurt them get away with it just because they’ve got clever lawyers.’

  ‘I’m a lawyer.’

  ‘I know.’ At last he smiled and showed her a glimpse of the eager boy Caro liked so much. ‘But you’ve never defended bastards like that. I checked.’

  ‘Did you indeed? Still, I don’t see what I can do to help you.’

  The smile wavered, then returned. He came back to sit beside her on the bench, laying both his hands palm upwards on his right knee. ‘The people I checked with say you can tell what’s going on in someone’s head just by looking at them.’ He waited for a comment.

  ‘Then they’re flattering me, whoever they are. It’s not true.’

  If it were, she thought, I’d know what Will’s doing now, and why. And why he hates Grant-Furbisher so much. Could that be projection too?

  No, she told herself, wondering why she’d never seen the obvious truth before. It’s not projection in Will’s case. It’s substitution. He must see Grant-Furbisher as doing to him what his father did. Both of them made him feel like an irresponsible, greedy failure. He can’t dump enough hatred on his father now that he’s dead, so Grant-Furbisher’s getting a double dose.

  ‘It must be true,’ Pete said, looking so disappointed that Trish tried to comfort him.

  ‘Sometimes experience gives me a clue about what’s behind the mask someone’s wearing, but that’s all it is. A clue. And I’ve done all I can with Kim.’

  ‘It’s not her I’m thinking of. I want you to see Crossman. I want you to find out what he’s been doing, because it’s not just making Kim stand naked on a box. I know that much.’

  ‘Oh, Pete,’ she said, touching his supplicant’s hands with one of her own. ‘I can’t do that.’

  ‘You could. Not officially or anything. But I know the pub where he drinks. The Black Eagle, near Vauxhall Station. Even though it’s mainly ex-army men that go there, it’s a public place, and it’s only a short walk from here. I could take you, just going for a drink see, and you could have a look at him. Watch what he does and how he interacts with people, and see if you can see anything.’

  ‘It doesn’t work like that.’

  Disappointment smeared itself across his face again. ‘Please. I know there’s more been going on. Just come and have a pint with me there and look at him. You could do that, couldn’t you? For Kim. And for Inspector Lyalt? Before she was taken ill she was just as keen as me to get him sent down for what he’s been doing. She’d want you to come with me.’

  Trish didn’t think Caro would want anything of the sort, but on the other hand she thought she might do it. She’d never seen Crossman and she was curious about him.

  Chapter 14

  The smell was terrible. But it was not the smell of any muck heap Will had ever known. There was a rank sweetness to it and an acrid edge as well. This was putrefying flesh just as he’d expected once he’d tied together Jamie Maxden’s film and Mandy’s stories of a secret source for meat coming into Ivyleaf Packaging from abroad.

  It wouldn’t be dark for ages, and Will didn’t want to risk encountering anyone who worked here. Scouting around, giving the buildings a wide berth, he saw a kind of coppice to the east of the farm. He made his way there, stepping sideways as a watchdog caught his scent down in the farm and started barking its head off.

  Surprised that any animal could smell anything above the stink of rotting meat, Will dropped his head and sprinted for the copse, keeping as low to the ground as possible. He could vaguely hear men’s voices, but not what they said. There was an interrogatory shout, then a mumble. He thought they must be speaking English because the intonation was so familiar, but he wouldn’t have sworn to it.

  The copse wasn’t big, but it would give him enough shelter. His combat trousers and sweatshirt, both dull olive green, would blend nicely with the local scenery. The worst problem was going to be boredom. He didn’t smoke and, anyway, it would have revealed his hiding place. He hadn’t brought a book because books bored him even more than doing nothing. He would just have to lie up here and dream of being back in Mandy’s bed, or handing over to Trish all the information she could possibly need to make her believe what he now knew was going on.

  He could just imagine her, standing there with her eagle’s nose and her sparky black eyes, a little wary and disdainful at first, as she so often was, then melting into astonishment at his achievement, and admiration, and …

  Will told himself to stop being such a fool. His idiotic imagination had suddenly rolled Trish up with Mandy. However much he admired Trish, relied on her good opinion and her professional skills, he didn’t fancy her. She wasn’t his type at all. Far too long and thin, and much too clever. Although there was something about the way her lips could curve when she smiled, and the way her black eyes turned soft instead of glittering when she was trying to comfort people. Still, she would never curl round him like an affectionate hedgehog, protecting both of them with her own vulnerable back, or giggle as he made love to her and tell him that he was the best she’d ever had and she was going to give him the best time he’d ever had. Women like Trish didn’t do that sort of thing.

  The hours dragged themselves out in a mixture of memory and fear. The bumps in the ground grew harder and harder. As the sun dropped over the horizon, Will began to feel cold. Why on earth hadn’t he had the wit to bring something th
icker than a sweatshirt?

  The day eventually gave way to grey dusk, then real darkness. Tonight the moon was only the faintest sickle and wouldn’t betray anyone, but there were still the dogs with their supersensitive noses. Will inched forwards towards the edge of the trees, trying to work out which way the newly gusty wind was blowing so that he could check whether it would carry his scent down to the farm buildings or away from them.

  Before he could get very far, he caught the sound of an engine on the wind. It became louder and louder, but it wasn’t until it was almost on top of him that he let himself believe it was the aeroplane. Other sounds, of men running, panting like the ones in the video, and dogs snuffling and pulling against their chains, sent Will squirming back into the coppice.

  Lights sprang up like flowers in the grass ahead of him. Unlike flowers, they were in two straight lines with another joining them together at the top. An unmistakable runway. Will couldn’t believe his luck. Jamie had said in his email that the flights happened once a week, and today was exactly ten weeks since he had sent it, but there’d been nothing except Will’s own investigations to suggest that the flights from Kent landed up here, just outside Sainte Marie-le-Vair. And he had cocked up far too often to have much faith in his own deductive powers. Or anything else.

  Then it hit him, like an ice pick between the eyes. He hadn’t got it right. Unlike Jamie, he did not have any means of recording what was happening. There would be no evidence of this flight, nothing to persuade anyone, except his own words, and he’d seen how highly those were valued.

  Why the hell hadn’t he asked Trish to come with him? A barrister of her standing would have been able to support him and make people listen to him, even without actual evidence. No one would push her away, as the authorities had done whenever he’d tried to alert them to the food scandals he knew lay behind supermarket profits all over England. No one would tell a lawyer like Trish that she was an over-emotional fantasist and had no judgement and brought all her troubles on herself.