Gagged & Bound (5 page)

‘Think about it and phone me when you’ve decided,’ Stephanie said, pulling the hat further down over her ears and putting on the big dark glasses again. Caro watched her move away from the table, then come back, lifting the glasses off her nose.

‘I really loved him,’ she said. ‘I’d do anything for this not to be true. But I know it is. And he’s got to be stopped before more people get killed.’

Bee had the complete set of Jeremy’s diaries delivered to chambers in a canvas book bag. With it came an invitation to tea on Saturday with his mother, which Trish accepted at once. The weight of the book bag surprised her as she carried it back home. By the time she reached the iron staircase, the handles had made great dark-red dents in her fingers. They felt swollen and clumsy. She dropped her keys and heard them clatter down through the slats in the step.

‘Sod it!’ she muttered and rang the bell so David could let her in.

His face split in an immense smile when he saw her.

‘Lost your keys, Trish?’

‘No. Dropped them.’ She pointed down to the dustbins that lived at the bottom of the building.

‘I’ll get them. You go on in.’

Dumping the book bag on her desk, she flexed her sore fingers and wondered why he was looking so happy. When he got back, dangling the keys between his fingers, she asked.

‘I got top marks in history today,’ he said. ‘It’s never happened before.’

‘Fantastic!’ Trish swooped down to kiss him. For once, he let her do it. ‘Was it the Queen Elizabeth the first essay?’

‘Yup.’ He sprinted halfway up the spiral staircase, and turned
to declaim Gloriana’s speech to her troops at Tilbury. ‘“I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too; and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm.”’

Trish gazed upwards, trying to represent all the awestruck troops for him. She loved seeing him preen as any young male should, even if he was using a woman’s words to do it.

‘Hurrah!’ she cried, flinging both arms in the air. ‘Or should it be, huzzah!’

‘I don’t mind.’ His smile took on a shyer aspect. ‘But I was nearly bottom in science. Again.’

‘Doesn’t matter so long as you did your best. Now, cup of tea and a toasted sandwich?’

‘I’ll make them,’ he said, descending the stairs two at a time. ‘Rest your weary bones.’

Smiling at the old-fashioned phrase, wondering where he’d read or heard it, Trish kicked off her shoes and lay along one of the big black sofas that stood at right angles to the double-sided fireplace. With her head propped up on a pile of red and purple cushions, she let her eyes close for a minute or two. All was well.

The flat was barely darker when she woke, so she couldn’t have been asleep for more than a few minutes. She could smell strong tea nearby and melting cheese from further away. Letting her eyes slide sideways, she saw a steaming mug on the floor beside her. David must still be assembling his sandwich in the kitchen. A knock on the front door made her eyebrows twitch.

She found Caro on the doorstep, looking nervous, which was rare enough to be scary.

Trish kissed her and stood back. ‘Come on in.’

Caro headed off towards the sofas, pausing as she rounded the fireplace.

‘I can never get over the size of this place. You are so lucky.’

‘
I
like it,’ Trish said, thinking of all the media pundits who’d started to write that loft-living was on its way out. They
predicted that false ceilings and dividing walls would soon be inserted into all the cavernous, echoing spaces for which people had paid such vast prices at the beginning of the new millennium. George had crowed like the noisiest cockerel when he’d heard that because his house in Fulham was the acme of traditional cosiness.

Trish, who had always felt it was too like a padded cell for comfort, didn’t care what anyone wrote. Her echoing space meant so much to her she would keep it through any economic and fashion recession. It was a pity the winter fuel bills were so vast and that most of the expensive heat floated way out of human reach to hover just under the high ceilings, but she could live with that.

She’d never be able to hang her paintings anywhere smaller. The pride of her collection, an early Nina Murdoch, would look absurd in George’s kind of house, even if there were a wall big enough to contain it. His decoration could take ancestral portraits and gentle landscapes, but not much else.

This isn’t the time for the battle of the styles, she thought. Not with Caro looking like hell.

‘What’s up?’

‘I need your advice, Trish. When will David get home?’

‘He’s in the kitchen, making himself a sandwich. I’ll tell him you’re here in a minute, but first give me the gist of the problem.’

‘I’ve been told that my chief rival for the job I told you about is taking bribes, and I’ve got to decide what to do about it. I know I said I couldn’t talk about the job, but you always have good ideas, and you’re the only person I can trust with this.’

‘It’s going to take time, isn’t it?’ Trish said, touched by the admission. ‘We’d better have tea with David first; then you and I can go upstairs and thrash it out. OK?’

Caro nodded just as David emerged from the kitchen, carrying a large plate.

‘Ham and cheese, with tomato between the layers so it doesn’t make the bread go squishy,’ he said, looking down at his wobbling load, ‘and a bit of pesto for extra taste. Who was it at the door?’

‘Me,’ Caro said.

‘Hey!’ His smile was nearly as big as the one with which he’d announced his triumph. ‘I didn’t know you were coming. Have this and I’ll go and make another one.’

‘It’s OK,’ Caro said. ‘I’m not really hungry.’

 

Upstairs in her bedroom under the eaves, while David was getting on with his prep, Trish listened to a long explanation of the background to the allegation against Caro’s chief rival for the new liaison job.

‘Why are you so angry, Caro?’ she asked at the end.

‘Am I angry?’

‘I think so. You’re certainly showing all the signs.’

‘Like what?’

‘Your jaw’s so tight it’s affecting your voice; the little muscles under your eyes are clenched, which makes it look as though something’s pulling at the eyes themselves from inside your skull, and the edges of your nostrils are dragged down halfway to your mouth.’

‘Charming! I suppose you learn to look for this sort of thing when you’re trying to trick witnesses into telling you their secrets in court.’

‘I’m not sure I like the word “trick”,’ Trish said lightly. ‘You’re furious, and I don’t understand why. Is it because you think this woman is lying to you?’

Caro shook her head. Her neat hair stayed tucked behind her ears, but the gold anchor earrings danced like sycamore seeds in a gale.

‘She’s put me in an impossible position.’

‘How?’

‘If I report the allegation, it’ll look as if I’d stoop to anything to rubbish a rival who might get the job I want, which obviously means I wouldn’t get it. But if I say nothing, I risk the selectors putting a Slabb crony at the heart of the fight against them.’

‘Tricky.’

Caro tugged at a piece of hair. ‘But what’s really bugging me is the idea that the selectors could have set this up and be using it to find out what I’m made of; how I’d handle the conflicts that are bound to arise in this sort of job. In which case, if I don’t say anything, they’ll decide I’m not ruthless enough to do it.’

‘Would they do something like that?’ Trish could feel she was frowning and deliberately loosened her facial muscles.

‘I don’t know,’ Caro said, still fiddling with her hair. ‘I don’t know anything any more.’

‘I’ve never seen you so dithery. What makes you think the selectors could be involved?’

‘Because my source said plenty of people know that both this man and I are on the shortlist, and that’s not possible. I was told I had to keep it secret, so I’m sure he was too. I haven’t talked to anyone. Except you.’

‘I certainly haven’t passed it on,’ Trish said. ‘Are you suggesting these unnamed selectors fed your source a piece of disinformation and asked her to make sure you got it too?’

‘Possibly. If it’s true she’s used the whistleblower’s phoneline at Scotland Yard and talked to senior officers as she claimed, then they have to be aware of what she’s been saying. They could easily have got someone to tell her I’m in the running, in the hope she’d talk to me, so they could watch what I’d do.’

‘Would you want to work with an organisation that could be so manipulative?’

Caro gave the question thought, then said slowly, ‘The job they have to do is important enough to justify anything – almost anything.’ Suddenly she smiled, looking more like herself. ‘I
knew talking to you would clear my brain a bit, Trish. Any minute now, I’ll even see my way. Thank you.’

‘It would obviously help if you could find out whether this man has ever had any links with the Slabbs, innocent or otherwise,’ Trish said without thinking.

‘I’m not stupid.’ Caro laughed. ‘Even at my most panicky I could see that. But there’s no way I could dig into his background without letting everyone know what I’m up to. It would get back to him – and them – in no time. There has to be some other way of dealing with this.’

Trish had more than enough confidence in Caro to know that if there were another way she would find it. She never gave up on anything or anyone she thought was important.

‘Why don’t I know anything about these Slabbs? Who are they?’

‘One of the families who run organised crime in South London. They’ve been under surveillance of all kinds – us, MI5, the Revenue, Customs and Excise – so we know a lot about them. We know a lot about what they do, too, but most of the information comes from phone tapping and, as you know perfectly well, we’re still not allowed to use that as evidence in court. Your wretched colleagues can get almost any evidence thrown out these days.’

Trish was tempted to protest, but this wasn’t the time, and there was no point trotting out the ethics of the criminal Bar all over again. Anyone who took the trouble to think knew that every defendant had to have the right to have his or her case put as well as it could be. No one could be assumed to be guilty until the defence had tested every scrap of evidence and a jury had pronounced its verdict.

‘I can see why you couldn’t ask questions about Crayley and the Slabbs, but there’s no reason why I shouldn’t,’ she said.

Caro moved suddenly in the big spoon-backed chair in the corner. ‘Don’t even think about it. That’s not why I came
tonight. I only wanted to talk it through, to see whether you could spot a loophole anywhere, and to clear my own mind.’

‘I know, but I’m planning to ask a few questions about a Soho drug dealer anyway. I could always be frightfully naive and ask about your Slabbs at the same time. I might pick up something you could use. People tell you the most extraordinary things if you ask direct questions.’

‘No doubt. But it’s not your job to be investigating drug dealers in Soho or anywhere else.’ Caro’s voice was full of the authority that came naturally to her. ‘What are you thinking of, Trish?’

‘I’m only after background for the defamation case I told you about. Jeremy Marton killed himself after your lot found drugs being sold on his premises in Soho.’

‘But you said the libel was to do with the bombing, not his suicide.’

‘I thought I might work backwards, talking to people who knew him and might have been in his confidence. He must have had some friends while he was working with the homeless, and he might have told one of them something about who this Baiborn character is. That’s all I want.’

‘I don’t suppose he’d have talked to anyone about something like that; not for a moment. And you could get yourself in real trouble.’ Caro looked worried enough to disarm Trish’s instinctive dislike of anyone who contradicted or criticised her unfairly. ‘If you must ask questions, you’d be safer going to people who remember the original investigation in 1972.’

‘I would if I had any way of getting to them, or even finding out who they were.’

‘I know I blocked you this morning,’ Caro said, with slight suspicion in her eyes, as though she thought Trish might have been angling for this all along, ‘but I’ve been thinking and maybe I
could
help. D’you remember Bill Femur? He was in charge of the case when you and I first met. He’s retired now,
but he’d have been around in 1972. If he can’t tell you anything, he’ll know who could. D’you want me to put you in touch?’

‘That would be great,’ Trish said, remembering the stolid, intelligent chief inspector with respect.

‘In return, promise me you won’t go wandering about Soho asking dangerous questions about the Slabbs?’

Trish thought for a moment, then nodded. ‘OK. When could you talk to Femur? I want to get on with this while I’ve got time, I mean before my own work takes over again.’

‘I haven’t got his number here, but I’ll phone him as soon as I get home and let you know what happens. Will that do?’

‘Thank you.’ The phone rang. With an apologetic glance at Caro, Trish answered it.

‘Hi. It’s me,’ George said. ‘I should be through in time to get to you by about half past eight. Is that too late?’

‘No. It would be great to see you. I’ll put something in the oven. Bye.’

‘I ought to go,’ Caro said, pushing herself up from the spoon-backed chair. ‘Jess will be wondering what’s happened to me. You won’t tell anyone about this, will you? Not even George?’

‘Don’t worry, Caro. I know how to keep my lips zipped. Give Jess my love.’

 

David was still hard at work when they went downstairs, so they didn’t interrupt him. When Caro had gone, Trish opened a bottle of cold New Zealand Sauvignon and took a glassful to the sofa, deciding to get started on Jeremy’s diaries before she did anything about dinner.

She found no mention of Baiborn until the fifth volume, when Jeremy’s awed descriptions of his heroism in various underground movements within Europe made him sound powerful and charismatic. They also made him sound distinctly foreign, which might have explained his odd codename.