Keep Me Alive (10 page)

Her pity for her brother was infinite; and her gratitude for the way he’d divided the proceeds of the land sale, immense. Their father had left everything to their mother, except for the farm itself and the stock, which had gone to Will. Hating farming as he always had, he’d sold the land straight away and split the money equally between the three of them. Their mother’s share was funding most of her nursing home fees, and Susannah had bought this house outright just before the property-price explosion of the late nineties, so she was well in profit. Unlike poor Will, who’d blown all his on the failed pate business.

But that didn’t make his presence in the house any easier. She didn’t know why Rupert was making such a fuss: he was out all day.

In the first months after the collapse of Will’s business and the forced sale of his house, he’d been buoyed up by his need to bring a legal case against Furbishers. The phone bill had quadrupled as he’d searched for fellow sufferers, but the bill would have been cheap at twice the price for the way the campaign had kept him busy. Then had come his battle to find a solicitor to represent them all, and then, best of all, the preparation of the case itself. The conferences with important lawyers in the Temple had positively excited him. Now that he had nothing to do except go over and over everything he’d said in the witness box and castigate himself for not saying it better, his distress filled the whole house.

‘I’ll probably look in later,’ he said. ‘But there’s a mate I’ve got to phone first.’

She ruffled his hair, fighting for the affection she wanted to feel, and said, ‘Well, for heaven’s sake use the house phone this time and don’t go wasting your own money on the mobile. A few calls here or there won’t make any difference to our bill.’

 

Will kept the smile on his face and felt his fillings grate against each other. When she’d gone, he smoothed his hair down again, then cleared the table and stacked the crockery carefully in the dishwasher. Susannah had her own weird rules for what should go where. It had taken him an age to learn them, but she kicked up such a fuss if they were broken that it seemed worth the effort of getting it right.

Something sticky on his fingers made him look down and he saw a piece of wet, chewed toast rejected by one of the children, which must have stuck to the edge of his plate. He ran the hot tap over his hands. He wouldn’t have minded raw meat or mud, but this saliva-soaked reject from a pampered infant’s mouth felt disgusting. Even cow dung would have been preferable, and that was saying something. This small domestic life was burying him alive.

Drying his hands, he looked at the phone. He’d have given anything to use his own mobile, but it was a pay-as-you go one and he’d run out of credit. With the old-fashioned receiver clamped against his ear, he rang the number of the lab to which he’d sent the Ivyleaf sausages for testing.

‘Will, I was going to phone this morning,’ said Mark Jones, the director. Will’s heart sank. ‘There’s nothing much to tell you, I’m afraid. Certainly no trace of E. coli in any of the samples we’ve tested.’

‘What? There must be.’

‘Nope. But that doesn’t mean much. The batch your friend ate could have been contaminated locally. It’s not hard to do, after all. Happens all the time. There’s been no news of a major outbreak – I checked — so that seems the likeliest answer.’

Will could feel his shoulders slump. ‘I was so sure …’ His voice died. What was the point? He’d made enough of a fool of himself already, failing to get anything useful out of anyone at the abattoir. How was he going to tell Trish?

‘Listen, old boy,’ Mark said with enough kindness to do a lot more damage to Will’s fillings, ‘you’ve got to get over this obsession with other people’s meat products. I can see where you’re coming from, believe me, but it’s—’

‘This has nothing to do with the past,’ Will said. At that moment he even believed it. ‘One woman is in Intensive Care, another has been through a bad time after eating sausages with the same label as the ones you’re testing.’

‘But I’ve just told you—’

‘I know. But there’s more. Listen, will you? No one will tell me where the sausages are made. Why? What’s the point of keeping that secret, unless there’s something to hide?’

‘Are you absolutely sure they’re not just trying to stop you running another hare? I mean, everyone in the business must know what happened the last time you were sure you’d uncovered a food scandal.’ Mark’s voice wasn’t aggressive, just matter-of-fact. ‘Or the time before.’

‘Didn’t you find
anything
in the samples?’ Will was begging now, and he hated that too.

‘Only the ingredients properly mentioned on the label, and the faintest trace of clenbuterol.’

‘Ah! I knew there had to be something. Angel Dust, by God. I didn’t know anyone was still using it in this country.’

‘It’s not that significant, Will,’ said the scientist with even more pity in his voice. ‘It was only a trace. All it means is that some of the meat in the sausage mix came from animals fed an illegal muscle-promoting drug. It’s irrelevant to your friend in hospital; it’s a beta-agonist, not a food-poisoning bacterium.’

‘I know. But it adds weight to the suspicion that the sausages
come from an iffy source. What else did you find? Come on: I can tell from your voice that there’s more.’

‘Nothing but a trace of bleach,’ he said casually, ‘which probably came from some piece of equipment that hadn’t been properly rinsed.’

‘Bleach?’

‘Now don’t get excited, Will.’

‘But you know as well as I do what that could mean. Remember all those poultry cases?’

‘You’re grasping at straws, Will.’ Mark sounded head-masterly now. ‘Just because there have been a few cases in which people with pet-food licences have cleaned up unfit poultry meat with bleach and sold it on for human consumption doesn’t mean every hint of chlorine in a food product is sinister.’

‘No. But it makes you think, doesn’t it? Combined with the secrecy and the clenbuterol, anyway.’

‘Will, you’ve got to watch the paranoia,’ Mark said, still kindly. ‘You really have. And I’ve got to get back to work. Listen, old boy, I wish I’d never agreed to run these tests for you, but since I did that gives me the right to say: drop it. You’ll only land yourself in even deeper shit. And with your case due to end soon, you have a real chance to start again. Don’t screw that up by charging off on another mad crusade.’

‘Thanks for the advice,’ Will said coldly, knowing he couldn’t take it. Then he let his mind and voice warm up again. ‘And for the tests. It was good of you to run them so fast. You’d better send me a bill.’ He had no idea how he’d pay it.

‘Have this one on the house. See you.’

Will needed to think. He felt as though the washing-up and the babysitting and the being polite to Susannah and Rupert had dried out all kinds of important bits of his brain. He made himself some instant coffee, piling the granules into the cup until it was strong enough, then drank, wincing at the bitterness.

He was going to need help with this. As he’d said to Trish, the obvious person to give him a hand was Jamie Maxden, whose suspicions of the bottom end of the meat industry had always been as great as his own. But so far Jamie hadn’t answered any of the messages Will had left on the answering machine.

Was Jamie still pissed off? He probably had the right to be, even though Will thought they’d made peace long ago. They’d agreed then that they ought to keep their distance for a while, and it had never seemed quite the right moment to re-establish contact. But if Jamie had wanted to, he could always have taken the first step and phoned. In fact, Will rather wished he had. A bit of sympathy would have been welcome as the world came crashing down around his ears.

‘No, it wouldn’t,’ he said aloud, much more honestly. Maybe Jamie had understood that and stayed away in case it looked as if he were crowing.

Of course, he could be away on a job and unable to access messages left on the machine in his flat. Will knew he must have the number of Jamie’s mobile somewhere. He charged back to the top of the house to ransack the boxes of papers under his bed, where he kept his old diaries.

This time he didn’t mind using Susannah’s phone so much. He dialled Jamie’s mobile. But he only got a recorded voice telling him the number he’d called was no longer in use.

Had Jamie binned his old phone in favour of something newer and slicker and smaller in the years since they’d last been in touch? For a moment, Will felt helpless. Then he told himself there had to be other ways of tracking down any journalist.

Susannah must have some phone books somewhere, but he had no idea where. He started searching, pulling open cupboard doors he’d never touched in all the months he’d lived here and looking behind and under tables all over the house, even in her bedroom. She’d got a lot tidier since she married Rupert.

Eventually he found a stack of directories in the cupboard
under the stairs with the Dyson. Two minutes later he was phoning the
Daily Mercury’s
main switchboard and asking to speak to Jamie Maxden.

‘There’s no one of that name listed,’ the receptionist said after a short pause. ‘Can anyone else help?’

‘But he writes for you. He must be there.’

‘He isn’t. I’ve looked. Maybe he’s freelance.’

‘Maybe he is. Who would know?’

‘I can put you through to Features. They might help.’

‘No. Features won’t be any good. Put me through to News. He’s an investigative journalist. You must have heard of him.’

‘No. Sorry.’

Don’t you ever read your own newspaper? Will wanted to shout at her in exasperation. But it wasn’t her fault he was on such a short fuse these days, so he kept quiet.

‘News desk,’ said a bored male voice, which sounded too young to belong to anyone in work.

‘I’m trying to contact Jamie Maxden.’

‘Who?’

Will repeated the name with as much patience as he could muster. ‘He’s a journalist. He writes for you.’

‘Not for us he doesn’t.’

‘But I’ve seen his name at the top of articles.’

‘A byline? Not on this paper. You could try the press agencies. Oh, hang on; here’s my boss. He’s been here since the Dark Ages; he might know more.’

The phone went silent. Will couldn’t believe he’d been cut off. Then he realized he’d only been put on hold.

 

Trish saw Will the minute she emerged from court. He looked awful, but he didn’t move, not even to beckon her. He just stood, leaning against one of the pillars as though he hadn’t enough strength left to hold himself upright.

‘I’ll catch you up, Antony,’ she said and thrust her red bag at
Colin, who was already manoeuvring the trolley full of documents. She crossed the floor, hugely relieved after all that Andrew had texted her at lunchtime to say that she wouldn’t be able to see Kim today. When she’d read his message, she’d gone straight outside the building to phone him and remind him of the urgency. He’d tried to pacify her, which had made her frustration worse. Now, with Antony wanting to discuss the day’s proceedings and Will looking needier than ever, it was just as well she wasn’t having to rush away.

‘Thank you, Trish,’ he said, swallowing. ‘I knew you’d come over here. I need help.’

‘I know. I can see that much. Will, I promise I’ll do whatever I can, but first I’ve got to go back to chambers to thrash out what we’re going to do tomorrow.’ He looked even worse, so she reminded him that it was his case she and Antony were killing themselves to win.

‘I know. Sorry.’ Will looked at the floor. His big shoulders were slumped. ‘And I can’t tell you any of it here, but I
have
to talk to you.’

‘OK. Look, I’ll phone you the minute I’m free. Where will you be this evening?’

His eyes looked harder suddenly. But she was too busy and too preoccupied to work out what it might mean. Then his eyelids dropped and there was only skin to be seen, with a few tiny capillaries pulsating under it.

‘At my sister’s. I’m not going out much these days.’

‘Give me the number and I’ll phone as soon as I can.’ She waited, barely controlling her urge to tell him to hurry, while he found an old envelope in his pocket, scribbled the phone number on a corner and tore it off. ‘Thanks. Don’t let it get to you, whatever it is. Bye, Will.’

She was panting when she caught up with Antony and his small party. They were already at the door of Plough Court.

‘Such eagerness,’ Antony said, putting a hand on her hot
forehead. Colin looked surprised, then hurried on ahead with the solicitor.

‘It’s dead flattering, Trish. But don’t give yourself a heart attack. I’m going to need you on top form tonight.’

‘I hope “tonight” is an exaggeration, you old slave driver,’ she said. ‘I’ve got things to do. And there wasn’t anything particularly startling in today’s evidence.’

‘Pedant! This afternoon, then. But talking of tonight, Trish,’ he said, putting on his wicked seducer’s look, ‘we could …’

‘No we couldn’t,’ she said firmly. Then she laughed. ‘Oh, Antony, if you knew what a turn-off that leer is!’

‘Leer?’
he said in outrage. ‘I don’t leer.’

‘Sure of that, are you?’

‘Monster! Oh, all right; if you won’t play, I suppose we’d better go and work.’

He was laughing too, as he led the way up to his room. Naturally it was the best in chambers, with a spectacular view and ravishing old mahogany furniture.

 

Caro knew that Jess was sitting by her bed, wanting something, but she couldn’t provide it. She tried, through the pain and the weakness that kept her sewn to the mattress, but all she could do was force up her eyelids and mumble something. Instantly Jess was there, holding a cool, damp cloth to her forehead.

‘It’s all right, Caro. I’m here. They’re doing everything they can, and soon the antibiotics will work. D’you want me to call a nurse?’