Gagged & Bound (17 page)

‘Not very convenient on a working afternoon.’

Caro smiled sadly. ‘Everyone involved charges more than double for Saturday funerals and cremations, so Fridays are a lot more common, even for one like this. I’ll meet you there if you can make it. Don’t worry if you can’t.’

 

David was surging through the pool, feeling the satisfying thrust of his legs and the wet whoosh as the water streamed past his ears. Through his goggles, he could see he was only about three big strokes from the end, and he was nerving himself to do a proper diving turn. He didn’t like them, because he nearly always got water up his nose and the chlorine gave him a burning feel all down his throat, but he knew he wouldn’t shave those few vital seconds off his time if he didn’t learn how to turn properly.

George had shown him, and George could do it perfectly. Julian couldn’t, but then Julian was like a dodo when it came to swimming. He liked jumping in, which wasn’t allowed in grown-up pools like this one, and he messed about happily in the shallow end, but he didn’t have this need to drive sleekly through the water, turning himself into another Thorpedo. The great Australian swimmer was his hero. It was good Julian had come tonight, though, because he was fun, and he’d like the pizza George had promised them after.

Bang. David’s hands hit the end. He’d been talking to himself too much again and losing the plot. In a split second it would’ve been his head crunching against the side of the pool. He’d have to decide about the turn, NOW. He headed downwards. Water pushed its way up under the goggles, into his ears and up his
nose. He was choking. He couldn’t do it. He had to get out. He had to cough. He had to breathe.

Knowing he’d failed again, he pushed his body back towards the surface, hating himself. Nothing happened. Kicking his legs, fighting to get out, he felt as if his head was being held down in the water and there was a rope round his neck, squeezing it. His eyeballs were pushing hard against his shut lids and his chest was burning. With his head going all hot and swoopy, he knew he had to keep his mouth shut or he’d drown. But there wasn’t any space in his head. It was going to burst if he didn’t get some air.

His arms flailed about above the surface. They were cold. The air was so near. Why couldn’t he get his head out beside his arms? He could hear everybody shouting and laughing, and the water was rocking and roaring in his ears as the others kicked their legs. Why wouldn’t any of them help?

He opened his mouth to shout, and water rushed in. Someone had told him drowning was peaceful. It wasn’t. It was like a fight. Everything hurt. He kicked and kicked. Then his legs hit something soft.

The pressure on his head disappeared and he shot up out of the water, gasping, only to sink back under the surface again. His hands scrabbled at the edge of the pool and someone pushed them off. He was right under again and too tired to fight any more.

Suddenly a strong hand was under his arm, pushing up into the armpit, hurting him. He wanted to tell them to leave him alone. The hand left his armpit, then a whole arm was round his chest, pushing him up. He could feel something very hard against his back, scraping it, and he could dimly hear George’s voice, foggy through the water:

‘What the hell are you playing at, David? David! David!’

He felt a hand under his chin, waggling his face to and fro. George was shouting his name again. Other people were
shouting. He could hear Julian, too. He was crying. David opened his eyes and saw them all. Other hands came at him from above and hauled him out on the side, lying him on his back. He fought to get up, needing to cough, and to see what had been holding him down under the water.

‘OK, OK,’ George said to someone else. ‘Leave him alone. He doesn’t need artificial respiration, just space to breathe. Why didn’t you see what was happening?’

‘I was helping the young lady over there,’ said an Australian voice. David knew it must be Artie, the lifeguard. He liked him; they often talked about Sydney, where David’s cousins lived and where Artie had once had a job. ‘As soon as I saw Dave in trouble, I came to help.’

‘Is he all right? George, is he all right?’ That was Julian, sounding much more girly than usual.

‘It’s OK, Julian,’ David said, making a huge effort to sound ordinary and smile. He saw Julian’s answering smile and knew he’d done his best. He propped himself up to cough up some water, then flopped back on the side of the pool, letting the lids close over his hurting eyes. All he wanted now was to sleep, but George was asking questions. He wanted to know what had happened and why.

In the end, David had to tell him the truth. ‘I don’t know. I was trying to do a racing turn, and I got it wrong. I couldn’t come up again. I was drowning.’

George squatted at his side, water glistening on his skin. He looked like a big pink sea-lion.

‘It wasn’t that bad, old chap. You must have got your head somehow jammed against the side of the pool under water and become disorientated. It can happen, like in an avalanche, when your brain can’t work out which way is up. Must have been very nasty. But you’re OK now.’ He rubbed David’s hair.

‘I don’t think it was the side, I think it was that man,’ Julian
said. His voice was still all shaky.

‘Which man?’

‘The one with black trunks and big goggles. You must have seen him. He had a scar on his chin, a bit like the one our caretaker at school’s got. He was swimming in the next lane, keeping pace with David nearly all the time, doing crawl. But he’s gone now.’

‘Get into the changing room and find out who he is,’ George commanded, and Artie the Australian lifeguard went. David wondered why he’d looked at George in that scared but angry kind of way. He coughed again and a whole lot of phleghmy water came up out of his mouth. Gross.

‘Nothing,’ Artie said, coming back. ‘There’s no one there at all.’

‘OK, thanks.’ George waved him off. David knew it was because he thought Julian had been making it up about the man in black trunks.

‘Don’t let’s tell Trish,’ he said.

George looked him for a long time before he said, ‘She wouldn’t be cross with you, David.’

He shook some of the water out of his eyes. They were still hurting.

‘You’re not afraid of her, are you?’ George said, looking stern.

‘Of course not. But I don’t want to talk about it any more, and she’d ask questions.’

‘That’s true. OK. It’s fine to keep it between the two of us, if that’s what you’d like.’

David nodded. ‘It is. Don’t tell her anything.
Please.’

George looked at him as if he was as weird and ugly as Gollum, but in the end he nodded again. David began to breathe properly. So long as Trish didn’t know what was going on at school, he could cope. But he couldn’t deal with her being afraid, and she would be if she knew.

 

 

Simon had taken the mobile into the bathroom with him. Whenever he settled down to a really good soak these days, he was interrupted by Camilla, wanting to know whether he’d heard anything from Beatrice Bowman’s lawyers or her publisher. He was sure she was being egged on by the ghastly Dan Samford, trying to whip up a public row in order to draw attention to his film on terrorism. Last night Simon had got as near to losing his rag with her as he’d ever done. So when the phone rang, he answered it carefully, making his voice soft and furry for her.

‘Baiborn?’ came the drawling response. ‘That you?’ The voice had a kind of inherited authority its owner neither noticed nor would have questioned if he had. ‘Perry here. How are you, old chap?’

‘Fine,’ he said through his teeth.

‘Glad to hear it. Young Camilla didn’t seem to think so. She rang me in a bit of a stew just now, wanting me to sort you out. She thought I should see if I couldn’t persuade you to use the family solicitors for this spot of bother you’ve got.’

Simon sighed. ‘I haven’t got any spot of bother. I’m in control. It would be a lot more use to me if you could persuade her to chill out, Perry. My solicitors are entirely capable of protecting my interests. As I keep telling Camilla, we’re at a stage when it’s simply a question of waiting. Do try to get her to see that and stay off my back.’

‘I’ll do my best, but she’s a persuasive little minx when she wants to be, and she seems to think that without the rest of us stiffening your sinews, you’ll just lie down under this outrageous calumny.’

Why did the whole Fontley family have to be such drama queens? Simon wondered. Outrageous calumny indeed. It was like the title for some nineteenth-century sensation novel.

‘You must know there’s no risk of that, Perry. I may not have
ancestral acres and cousins at the top of every influential organisation in the country, but I do know how to protect myself. I always have.’

‘Have it your own way, old boy. But don’t forget the acres and the influence will always be at the disposal of Camilla’s father.’

Insulted all over again, as though his only worth to any of them was the siring of Jemima’s children, Simon clicked the phone off and slid back under the hot water. He reminded himself that Perry, for all his acres, had lost his seat in the House of Lords.

Standing beside Caro in the beautiful plain church, with a row of uniformed police officers in front of her, Trish waited. It was a long time since she’d been to a full funeral service, with the coffin brought into the church in procession behind the priest. The organ breathed loudly, then let out a fountain of glorious music. Everyone stood, with a loud rustling of service sheets and clothes. A piercing soprano voice burst into ‘I know that my redeemer liveth’ from Handel’s
Messiah.

The coffin was carried in on the shoulders of six big uniformed police officers and laid on trestles in front of the altar. As the singing died away, the men bowed to the altar and walked quietly round the outside of the pews to their seats.

There were no flowers in the church and no candles on the altar. The priest, wearing a broad black stole over his white surplice, turned to face the congregation and said in a voice too thin and high for his role:

Trish felt Caro wince at her side and couldn’t resist a quick glance at the prayer book she had been given on her way into the church. The words were there, unmistakable, and apparently taken from Psalm 39. How extraordinary! Caro was standing rigidly beside her and there was a susurrus of whispered voices all around, as though they weren’t the only ones to have reacted to the psalm. On it went:

Poor Stephanie, Trish thought. Was that why she was shot?

Soon the powerful words took over Trish’s attention, so she forgot her mission to look for anyone who might have been in Stephanie’s confidence, until the congregation stood for the first hymn. ‘The day Thou gavest, Lord, is ended’ had a dirge-like tune Trish didn’t know, so she felt released and able to look around her. Standing at the outer edge of a pew about halfway down the church, she had as good a view as any.

People who must have belonged to Stephanie’s family were in the first few pews on either side of the aisle, then came half a dozen distinguished-looking senior officers, followed by a bunch of younger ones, also in uniform, then about thirty other
people, all dressed in civilian clothes. They, too, could have been police officers, or they could have been politicians with an interest in law and order, or journalists, come to write up the funeral of another heroine slain in the course of duty. Or even sightseers. There was no sign of either John Crayley or Lulu.

After a while, as the organ wheezed into silence again at the end of the hymn, Trish decided that, apart from the family, there were only four people who showed signs of personal distress as opposed to official regret or professional curiosity: three women and one slightly built man. They would be the ones to approach for information about who might have been nourishing Stephanie’s outrage. As they kneeled for prayers, Trish whispered as much to Caro, who nodded, but whispered back, ‘There’s nothing we can do if they leave quickly. We can’t go charging out before the coffin or the family.’

‘I’ll slip out round the side,’ Trish said. Seeing the withdrawal in Caro’s eyes, she added, still quietly but much more firmly, ‘It’ll do Stephanie much more good if we find out who might have known her well, than if we abide by conventional good manners. You stay here while you have to. I’ll leave just before the end of the service.’

The funeral continued its sonorous way, sobering and yet curiously uplifting. Trish gave herself up to it until the moment when the bearers moved purposefully back up the nave towards the coffin. Then she coughed, put a handkerchief over her mouth and hurried, as quietly as possible, down the outer aisle to reach the front door just as the men were hoisting the coffin onto their shoulders.

Outside, she took an unobtrusive position just beyond the churchyard gates, well away from the television cameras, their attendant journalists and the three gleaming black cars drawn up behind the hearse at the roadside. Clearly Trish was not
going to be the only person wanting to talk to Stephanie’s friends and relations. There would have been more journalists if public interest hadn’t been diverted to the killing of Samantha Lock.

A police heroine was exciting, but a ravishing twenty-year-old model, who might have become a household name if she’d had the chance to take up her part in the nation’s favourite soap opera, was better. So far there had been no press suggestion of any connection between the deaths of Stephanie Taft and Samantha Lock.

Trish wondered whether that existed only in her own mind. To her, it seemed so obvious she couldn’t understand why Caro was sceptical. Sam Lock had been killed in a way that advertised her status as an informer. No one within the police had admitted to getting any information from her. Stephanie had claimed to have been given a piece of physical evidence to prove John Crayley’s involvement with the Slabbs and she had refused to release it to Caro without ferocious vows of secrecy because it could compromise her source.

A solemn piece of music rolled out of the church. Trish thought it might have been ‘The Dead March’ from Saul, but she wasn’t sure. The bearers, sweating slightly and red in the face, climbed down the three shallow steps out of the church and speeded up a little as they headed for the hearse. She watched them swing round, then bend at the knees to load the coffin into the car.

After them came a couple, who could have been Stephanie’s parents. Maybe the idea that Stephanie could have been born a Slabb was too wild to be true. Both these mourners were dry-eyed, but their mouths were tight with control, and the woman shook continuously. They got into the first of the cars waiting behind the hearse. More relatives followed, then the slight man Trish had noticed as one of the few people who had shown distress inside the church. He emerged,
apparently part of a surprisingly cheerful-sounding group, but peeled away and left the church at a fast walk without looking back.

Trish headed off after him, catching up only as he was crossing the main road to a clutch of bus stops.

‘Hi!’ she said. ‘Please stop for a minute.’

He looked back, then hurried on. She too glanced over her shoulder, but there was no one else following them.

‘Please,’ she said, a little breathless. ‘I saw you at the funeral. I only wanted to talk to you about Stephanie. You knew her, didn’t you?’

Sighing, the man stopped and turned. ‘Who are you?’

Trish introduced herself. ‘I have no identification on me, but you can look me up, or I can give you the phone number of my chambers.’

‘What do you want to say about Steph?’

‘Tell me first why you were rushing away.’

‘Because I’ve got to get back to work,’ he said in a voice scratchy with irritation. ‘I couldn’t have missed her funeral, but my boss wasn’t happy. I have to go.’

‘What d’you do that’s so urgent on a Friday afternoon?’

‘I’m a legal exec. Now let me go.’

‘Which firm?’

‘Oh, for God’s sake.’ He shoved his hand into his inside pocket and brought out a card, which he thrust at her, before swinging round and hailing a taxi.

Trish nodded and watched him leave. She could have handled the encounter much more subtly, but at least she had his card. Brian Walker it said, above an address in Lincoln’s Inn. If it were genuine, she’d be able to get hold of him without trouble.

Caro would be wondering what had happened to her. Trish phoned to explain, but was diverted to Caro’s voicemail. With luck that might mean she was talking to someone helpful. Of
course, it could simply be that she’d forgotten to switch the phone on again after the service.

‘Forgotten,’ Trish said aloud. ‘What have I forgotten? Oh, sod it! David’s rugby boots.’ She looked at her watch. There might just be time to get to the only sports shop she knew before they closed.