Gagged & Bound (8 page)

‘I don’t know if that’s true or not.’ The way he looked at her made her feel as though she were in a police interview room, facing a hostile team alone. ‘In case it is, let me give you a piece of advice. It is not a good idea to go talking about the Slabbs to people whose affiliations and loyalties you don’t know.’

Trish’s guts lurched, in spite of her determination to push on until she’d heard everything Femur could tell her. ‘You mean, Dick might be in their pay?’

‘I’ve no idea. And I don’t want to know. I’m too fond of my house and my life to go stirring up the Slabbs by asking questions about them or anyone who might or might not be working for them. Understood?’

‘No, I don’t understand. What do you mean about your house? I thought the Slabbs’ great threat was this bag-and-gagging thing.’

Femur’s diamond-shaped eyes turned into slits. ‘That’s what they once did to inside informers. For anyone else, they’ve always used whatever’s to hand. Shooting’s most likely these days. But there are other ways. D’you remember a house fire in Fulham last year, in which nearly a dozen people burned to death?’

‘Vaguely.’

‘There was a party, and one of the guests – guests, mind you, not the host – had been asking too many questions about why an operation against the Slabbs had gone pear-shaped. They had a firework put through the letter box, with an extra load of accelerant to turn it into a bomb. A few party-goers got out through the windows, but only a few, and all the children upstairs died in their beds.’

Sour fluid rose in Trish’s throat. She forced it back down. No wonder Caro had been so worried about finding someone safe enough to trust with Stephanie’s suspicions.

‘I do remember the papers saying that no arrests were ever made,’ she said. ‘How do you know it was the Slabbs behind the fire?’

‘Everyone knows.’

‘Any evidence?’

‘Only circumstantial, but it was a typical piece of Slabb theatre. They like to make a point every so often by taking out someone known to be gunning for them. They use maximum drama to get the story out to the maximum number of people who could threaten them.’

That sounds horribly like Stephanie’s death, Trish thought. Last night the television news had led with the shooting. This morning’s paper had been full of it too, with a leading article about the increase in gun crime and plenty of genuine outrage that a gentle-looking, pretty woman had died in her fight to keep London’s streets free and safe for others. Everyone with any interest in the underworld or its policing would have seen those photographs and read those articles. Were Caro’s worst fears justified: had Stephanie’s death been organised by the Slabbs?

‘And they don’t care who dies in the process. So my advice is to shut up about them.’ Femur glared at her. ‘Even if you’re prepared to take stupid risks for yourself, I don’t want you putting Caro on the line. She’s one of the best.’

 

Driving home to Southwark so she could leave the car in its own parking space, before going on to her meeting with Lord Tick, Trish tried to believe that Femur had been exaggerating the extent of the Slabbs’ reach and urge for vengeance.

She’d once walked down a street in which firefighters were clearing up after a disaster and had never forgotten it. It wasn’t the charcoal smell that had worried her, or the disgusting stench of water-soaked wood, ash and brick, it was the barbecued meat. She could smell it in her nostrils now.

Long experience told her the only way to control such memories was to concentrate hard on something else that mattered. The first thing that came into her mind was the question of where Jeremy could have hidden his diaries so effectively that Dick and the investigating team had had no idea of their existence.

She phoned Bee Bowman to ask whether she had any information.

‘What’s the matter?’ Bee said at once. ‘You sound peculiar.’

‘Atmospherics. I’m in the car. Do you know where he hid the diaries?’

‘No. I’m sorry.’

‘Could you ask his mother?’

An immense lorry pulled away from the kerb without signalling. For a moment, all Trish’s attention was needed to brake without skidding into the cyclist oozing up on her left-hand side in the ten inches between her car and the pavement. She hung back, hating the suicidal cyclist, but for once grateful for the lorry’s exhaust that poured through her car’s ventilators. Even though it made her cough, it drove out the other, remembered, smells.

‘I don’t want her knowing anything about the case.’

‘Why on earth not?’

‘Because she’d think she had to pay all the costs for me, and she can’t. She has even fewer resources than I. She’s so poor even her gas bill terrifies her. I couldn’t let her worry about this too. She’s been through far too much already.’

‘OK,’ Trish said, trying to remember what Dick had told her before Femur tried to scare her into scuttling away from him and everything he knew. ‘Someone was telling me that the family have a huge, grand house.’

‘Not any more. They sold that after the bomb and moved to a much more modest one on the edge of the village. After her husband died, Jane stayed on there until Jeremy came out of
prison and needed more money. It’s almost impossible to get a job if you’re middle-aged and have been in prison for more than twenty years, so she sold up all over again.’

‘Where does she live now?’ Make yourself concentrate on Jeremy, Trish told herself, ask questions, keep the conversation going.

‘Still in the same village but in a tiny one-storey cottage on the main road,’ Bee said. ‘You’ll see it tomorrow. Permanent traffic noise meant no one wanted it, so it’s cheap to rent. She gave Jeremy everything she had and he poured most of it into the shelter.’

It might not have been the Slabbs, Trish told herself as she tried to concentrate on what Bee was telling her. Lots of nasty yobs put lit fireworks through people’s front doors.

‘She absolutely makes the best of what’s been a ghastly life since the bomb. You’ll like her.’

‘It’s going to be hard to talk to her sensibly,’ Trish said into the phone, ‘if I’m not allowed to mention Tick and his claim.’

‘But you won’t, will you? She couldn’t take it, Trish. Honestly. You’ll have to think up an excuse for asking questions. Promise?’

‘I’ll try.’

‘Thank you. Oh, and I meant to say that Antony told me about your brother. D’you want to bring him with you? My daughter will be here with her son, so David could stay with them while we go to talk to Jane Marton. My grandson is a bit younger, but he can show David the stream and lend him a fishing rod, so he shouldn’t be too bored.’

‘That’s kind of you.’ Trish tried to concentrate on real life. ‘David has his rowing club till twelve on Saturdays, and I’m not sure what his plans are for the afternoon. May I get back to you?’

‘Of course. But I thought Antony said he was only eleven.’

‘Nearly twelve. He’s in charge these days. We’ve found it works better that way.’

 

Caro had read up everything she could find about Stephanie Taft’s recent arrests, looking for any hint of a connection with the Slabbs. There was nothing. She wished she had an acceptable reason to use the police computer, but she hadn’t, and it would be too dangerous to leave electronic footprints behind her in an illegal search.

She also wished she could put John in front of Trish to find out what she made of him. Some people had an almost superstitious belief in Trish’s power to see into the minds of suspects and witnesses who were lying to her. Caro knew they were exaggerating, but there was no doubt her friend had unusually clear insight into most people’s psychology.

There were times when Caro, who had her own interest in the psyche, thought Trish might be driven by the conviction that if she could get to the bottom of one more crime she would unravel what – to her – was the greatest mystery of all: why did anyone who had an alternative actively choose to impose suffering on someone else? Her determination to understand this had made her a brilliant people-watcher. She read body language better than anyone Caro knew, and she could often decode the verbal tricks people used to disguise their vulnerabilities. If anyone could see whether there was something sinister behind John Crayley’s charm, it would be Trish.

Caro picked up the phone and pressed in half the digits of his number. Then doubt took over. She dropped the receiver back on its cradle with an audible clunk.

If Crayley was working for the Slabbs, he’d have learned to be on the alert all the time. He would scan any stranger’s face and behaviour for clues to their allegiance. What if he was as acute as Trish and saw a threat in her interest in him? If he was in any way connected with Stephanie’s death, it would be
madness to offer him another woman who might represent a threat.

Oh, what the hell, Caro thought, before taking hold of the phone again and calling his number. I’ll ask him to a friendly meal. If he agrees to come, I can lay out the risks for Trish and see what she thinks.

There was no answer. Caro decided against leaving a message, but she would try again.

 

Trish checked her watch as she ran along the Strand, glad she’d put on flat shoes again today. There were still seven minutes to go before she was due to meet Simon Tick at the top of Duke of York Steps. She should just make it.

When she had phoned his secretary yesterday to ask for the meeting, she’d claimed to be doing research into homelessness for a book she was thinking of writing and wanted to discuss it with an expert. The secretary had gone away to consult him, then come back to say that if Trish cared to join him on his lunchtime walk in St James’s Park, he’d be happy to talk to her. But he wouldn’t hang about if she were late; his day was too carefully structured to waste any part of it.

Trish’s urge to find out what he was like was too strong to be put off by the caveat. So far all she’d been able to discover was that he had failed his eleven-plus and been educated at a secondary modern school in East Yorkshire. The fact that he’d then made it to Hull University was a tribute to his grit, as much as the intelligence that had clearly escaped the notice of the eleven-plus examiners. Having left university in 1969, Tick had gone straight into local government, working first as a research assistant at County Hall. From there, he’d built up a career in housing, which had culminated in the peerage he’d been awarded two years ago.

It still surprised Trish that he had even met the Lady Jemima Fontley, let alone wanted to marry her. Everything about his
work suggested he’d always been a committed socialist. Trish would have expected him to loathe everything about the upper classes.

Unless, she thought, his is the punitive kind of socialism driven by a determination to punish the haves rather than an urge to improve the lot of the have-nots. In which case, maybe he’d thought nabbing a rich aristocrat for a wife would assuage his resentment.

There were no other surprises in anything she’d learned, and so far she hadn’t any idea about his character or motives for launching the claim. Only a face-to-face encounter was likely to give her that.

She made it to the meeting place with two minutes to spare, panting, and leaned against the plinth of the Duke of York’s statue to catch her breath. The park was looking ravishing under the clear sky, even though most of the trees were still only in bud. There weren’t many people around, apart from small groups of pinstriped men hurrying from Whitehall to their Pall Mall clubs for lunch.

Straightening up and wiping the back of her hands across her sweaty eyebrows, Trish looked around for her target. His secretary had said he’d be wearing a grey flannel suit and carrying a copy of the
Guardian
, but Trish had found a good photograph on the internet early this morning so she could be sure of identifying him.

Here he was, running up the wide stone steps straight towards her, strong thighs pumping. He looked even better in the flesh than he had on the screen. Grey-haired, but clear-eyed and obviously fit, he was the model of how a fifty-eight-year-old should be.

‘Trish Maguire?’ he called from four steps below her.

‘That’s me.’ She walked down to join him. ‘It’s good of you to see me.’

‘Pleasure. D’you know the park?’

‘Not well. But it looks wonderful.’

‘I like it. And I always take the same circuit. It’ll be a figure of eight, crossing the bridge twice. OK with you?’

‘Whatever suits you.’

‘Good. Now, my secretary tells me you’re researching a book on the effects of homelessness and substandard housing on the formation of criminal children. Is that right?’

‘Absolutely.’ Trish had once had a book published about crimes against children, which would add credibility to her cover story if he or his secretary ever bothered to check her out.

‘Fine. Ask your questions, and I’ll do my best to answer. No, not that path. We go this way.’

Trish followed him, explaining her genuine belief that children’s physical surroundings could play a large part in their moral landscape.

‘I wouldn’t necessarily dispute that,’ he said, walking briskly enough to make her uncomfortable, in spite of her long legs. ‘Although I think genes and parental behaviour are more important. Are you suggesting that being brought up in a scruffy flat in a tough estate of itself makes children break the law?’

‘Of course not. Lots grow up to be model citizens. But I wanted to ask whether that aspect of housing was ever considered by the policy-makers in your local authority.’

‘Can’t help you there,’ he said, looking sideways to give her another frank and engaging smile. ‘It never came up. To be honest, we didn’t have the resources for luxuries like that.’

He stopped halfway across the bridge and pointed towards the pointed roofs of Whitehall that could be seen above the bare trees.

‘Best view in London,’ he said.