Prey to All

by Cooper, Natasha

  ‘Oh, for the Lord’s sake! Will you not leave me alone now?’

  See what you’ve done! she said to herself. But it was done now; with the ice sheet cracking all round her, she could only go forward.

  ‘I’m not trying to harass you, Paddy.’ She looked down at the wet slug on the tray. ‘But when you were in hospital, nearly dead, you made me face all sorts of things I’ve been feeling for years without understanding any of them. Then that day, when I thought you actually were dead, I – I need to get it all straight. Won’t you tell me?’

  He sighed. She looked up at him again. He didn’t meet her eyes. Abandoning his tea, he poured an inch of straight whiskey into a glass and sat sipping that.

  ‘Your mother’s a saint, Trish,’ he said at last.

  ‘I know.’ She was glad he’d recognised that, at least, but it didn’t answer her question.

  ‘And I didn’t want to be married to a saint. In fact, I didn’t want to be married at all. But I didn’t know that at the time.’

  Trish could feel her flesh tightening against the cheekbones and something like a steel rod holding her neck braced.

  ‘Not because I didn’t love her – or you. We had great games, you and I, when you were little and still liked noise and mess and stories.’

  Trish nodded. ‘I remember some of them.’

  ‘But I didn’t want to eke out my life ounce by ounce, or be reasonable or tidy or middle aged. There I was – me – commuting to and from Boring Beaconsfield every day, tripping off the train at seven, sitting with your mother over a wholesome supper and a glass of water, for God’s sake, watching some awful soap on the telly with her and going to bed at half past ten.’

  Trish couldn’t help smiling at the picture. His voice warmed in response and he sounded younger: ‘I tried, Trish. I tried hard, because I knew ’twas the life she wanted. But then I started stopping off for a quick one with the boys from work, and then I’d come home a bit the worse for wear and she’d get all hot and bothered if I woke you up to play – or disturbed your homework, once you were a bit older. And by the time we sat down to eat, the food would be burned or spoiled, but she’d never complain about that.’

  ‘No. She doesn’t complain. It’s a point of honour with her.’

  “Twould have been easier if she had. But no, she’d just sit there looking like a holy martyr, who’d never allow herself to raise her voice. Until one day I knew I had to make her angry.’

  He stopped, looking right through Trish. She tried to remember if she had ever seen her mother lose her temper. Only once, she thought, and even then it had been a dysfunctional oven that had aroused her fury. Meg had stood in the kitchen yelling at the oven and kicking it. Even that had shocked Trish at the time. ‘And did you?’ she asked.

  Paddy shook his head. ‘I couldn’t, however hard I tried. So one day, when I was drunk, I hit her.’

  Trish felt her heart jolt, as though someone had thumped her in the chest. Paddy’s face was reddening and he was glaring at her, as though it was she who’d done the unforgivable thing.

  ‘And she still wasn’t angry,’ he said, still full of old resentment. ‘Or maybe she just wouldn’t let it show. Maybe that would have lowered her to my hog-like level. Wasn’t she always a one for trying to make me face up to my responsibilities?’

  ‘So, what did she do?’

  ‘She picked up the chair that had smashed when she fell across it, and put it tidily back against the wall. Then she fetched a cloth to deal with the blood from her split lip and said she’d sleep in the spare room that night. That was all.’

  Trish fought for detachment, using everything she had learned in her excursions into family warfare in the courts. She couldn’t believe that Meg had never even hinted at this past violence, had even encouraged her to get to know the perpetrator. Her father.

  ‘And I suppose that drove you even wilder?’ She was quite proud of the cool steadiness of her voice. Her head seemed to be filled with cotton wool and there was a ringing in her ears. She realised she’d stopped breathing and made herself start again.

  ‘To be sure. But I tried still to be the kind of man she wanted, and the father she wanted for you. I went on trying for another whole year. When I was drunk I didn’t come home. I couldn’t trust meself. But there were times in between when I did come back. And each time she forgave me and was such a perfect saint that I wanted to batter the patience out of her. So I left altogether. ’Twas the only safe thing to do.’

  Anger was boiling just below the surface of Trish’s mind. She held it down as firmly as she could. She’d been manipulated into liking – even loving – a man who could beat up his own wife. She was the daughter of a woman who could put up with that kind of abuse, yet still be prepared to forgive Paddy and visit him in hospital a quarter of a century later. Trish thought of Deb Gibbert’s stories of the battered women she’d met in prison.

  She wanted to be out of her father’s flat, out of his life. And she never wanted to see him again.

  But she sat where she was, telling herself to grow up and stop being so melodramatic. She wasn’t an emotional teenager any longer. Her parents’ battles could never be her concern. Whatever they had done to each other was their business. It was ancient history. If Kate Gibbert could cope, at the age of seventeen, with everything that had confronted her in the last few years, then Trish could smile and be polite about this.

  ‘And do you hit Bella?’ she asked calmly, but not at all politely.

  Paddy poured some more whiskey and drank it down in one noisy swallow. Trish saw he was making a point and recognised exactly why her mother had refused to show anger even as he was hitting her. That should have made it easier, but it didn’t.

  ‘No, Trish, I don’t. That was a part of a life – and a relationship – that’s gone. And ’twas only ever the once that I really hit her.’

  He waited, maybe hoping for absolution. But it wasn’t hers to give, and even if it had been, she wouldn’t have given it. In any case, she didn’t believe he’d lashed out only once. Men who hit their wives don’t stop after one go, however much they may weep and beg to be forgiven and promise reform after each bout.

  ‘I shouldn’t have married your mother and she shouldn’t have married me,’ he said, perhaps still hoping Trish would understand. ‘We loved each other once but that was never enough. We wanted different things from life. But that’s all I’m telling you now. It’s dead and gone and I don’t want to talk about it. D’you understand me now, Trish?’

  ‘Naturally. Thanks for the tea.’ She stood up, swallowing the last of it and bent to put her cup back on the watery tray. ‘I’ll see myself out. Take care of yourself. If that’s not too intrusive a comment.’

  ‘Now, Trish, don’t be childish. I’ll see you again, I hope.’

  ‘Call me if you need me,’ she said, over her shoulder. “Bye.’

  She thought he looked a little forlorn, but that was too bad. He’d asked for it.

  ‘I notice that you haven’t moved in with that fat lover of yours,’ he said casually. ‘Or married him or had babies with him.’

  Trish stopped, her hand on the door.

  ‘You’re a chip off the old block, so y’are.’

  She let herself out, wishing she hadn’t brought the car with her. She needed air and exercise. And she didn’t want to get home too soon to face Meg’s questions. It would be almost impossible to conceal what she was feeling. Meg had a kind of extrasensory perception when it came to her only child’s moods.

  There had been times in the past when she had phoned from hundreds of miles away when Trish was in a particularly frenzied turmoil, asking quietly whether everything was all right. And Trish had never yet managed to conceal an anxiety – even a trivial one – if they were actually talking to each other over the phone.

  It was years since she’d felt this rocky. Paddy’s heart attack had started the process, and the whole Whatlam-Gibbert affair was upsetting in itself. Families! sh
e thought again, shuddering. She didn’t want to probe another single one. She’d had secrets and hurt and parent-child damage up to her throat. Perhaps she ought to switch to the commercial Bar. The rewards were much higher and the Angst must be less.

  Whether she tried to switch her professional life or not, she had to clear her desk and fulfil her obligations to Anna and Deb, so she’d better get on with it.

  She drove back to Southwark, avoiding the potholes, working out what more she could do to help Anna. Half-way home, she thought of a reason to go in to chambers, which would probably help get her back together and would fend off Meg’s phone call for a little longer.

  Dave greeted Trish with a sheaf of messages and the welcome news that the couple whose daughter had leukaemia had been phoned by their local hospital to say the health authority had suddenly decided to fund the treatment they needed after all.

  ‘Thank God,’ Trish said. She’d been worried that by the time the case came to court the damage would have been irreparable. ‘That’s great, Dave.’

  She walked down the dingy corridor to her little room at the back of the building. One day, if she did take up Heather Bonwell’s suggestion of applying for silk and got it, she might see about taking over one of the better rooms.

  There were several voicemails on her phone, including one from Anna: ‘Trish, I’m really apologetic about having taken so long to get the medical information you wanted. But I’ve done it now.’

  Trish sighed. Typical, she thought, Anna takes weeks to do something and once I’ve wound up someone else to produce the information, she disgorges. Still, she might as well listen to the full message.

  ‘Here goes. In most cases of suffocation there wouldn’t be anything to show whether a pillow or a plastic bag had been used.’

  I know that, thought Trish in exasperation. Even Phil Redstone got as far as checking that out.

  ‘There’s nothing in Mrs Whatlam’s medical notes to prove that she couldn’t have held a pillow over her husband’s face, but a practitioner who’d been treating her would be in a better position to assess it. There’s nothing in the notes to suggest Dr Foscutt’s evidence should be doubted, so you should assume she couldn’t have done it. Then my source goes on to say: are we sure the angioneurotic oedema hadn’t extended to the glottis? That can be fatal in itself. Does that help? I hope so. ’Bye for now.’

  Ignoring the other messages and all the work she should have been doing, Trish switched on her laptop and opened the file with the trial transcript, which she had scanned into the computer when Anna had first sent it. She scrolled through until she reached the pathologist’s evidence of his autopsy.

  Sure enough, there were details of the angioneurotic oedema, but no mention of its affecting anything but the victim’s face. Trish searched for ‘glottis’ but nothing came up, presumably because there had been nothing to report.

  Her phone rang and she picked it up, absent-mindedly saying her name.

  ‘Trish?’

  ‘Meg, yes.’ All her questions about Ian Whatlam flew out of her head, and the other, much more difficult ones sat there like sharp-beaked birds, waiting to peck away at the trust there had always been between the two of them. Trish breathed and smiled and hoped her voice would sound normal. ‘How did you know I was here?’

  Meg laughed down the phone. ‘You said these medical details were urgent and you weren’t at the flat. It doesn’t take the world’s finest detective to …’

  ‘Of course. Sorry. Look, I was miles away. D’you mean your tame doctor has already read the notes?’

  ‘Yes. And I thought I’d put you on to him so that he can tell you direct.’

  ‘You’ve got him there? Great!’

  ‘Ms Maguire?’ said a robust young male voice, with a faint Scottish intonation. ‘I’m not going to be able to help you much over the victim’s wife’s ability to suffocate her husband. There’s nothing in the notes to prove anything either way. But if he was in a deep enough sleep not to wake and fight back, it wouldn’t have taken much strength to hold a pillow over his head.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ Trish said.

  ‘On the other hand, it’s hard to see how he couldn’t have woken if he was bagged. The antihistamines he’d taken weren’t the sedating kind. And there are indications of possible defence injuries – the bruise on his hand and another near his neck – which suggest he might have been awake and fighting back. If so, I’d have said it’s unlikely that it could have been someone in his wife’s condition who did it.’

  ‘OK. Now do you think it’s possible that this rash-thing he had could have spread to his glottis – is that right? – and not been detected at either of the autopsies?’

  ‘No. Any pathologist would have seen it straight away and would never have ignored it. But there is one interesting possibility. Have you any information about the food and drink the old man ingested that day and evening? I can’t find it in the notes you sent.’

  ‘No, I don’t think I have,’ Trish said, frowning. ‘Although it must have been recorded in the autopsy, mustn’t it? They always check the stomach contents.’

  ‘Should do. That’s why I’m curious.’

  ‘Do you think the rash-thing could have been an allergy? Shellfish or something? His daughter told me once that his doctor had told her there was no cause.’

  ‘That can be true. But not always. Angioneurotic oedema can be a reaction to penicillin, and various other things. But his doctor’s right: there’s often no allergen or apparent cause at all.’

  Well, that’s something, Trish thought. Good to know that the ghastly Dr Foscutt got one thing right at least. And penicillin wasn’t among Ian Whatlam’s many medicaments.

  ‘But can you find out about the food and drink?’ said Dr Bridge, sounding impatient. ‘It could be important.’

  ‘Why?’ said Trish.

  ‘I’d rather you told me what he’d ingested before I say. I don’t want any suggestion of …’

  ‘Leading the witness?’ Trish said, and heard a breezy laugh.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘If you’re right about whatever this mysterious clue is, would you be prepared to come on the TV programme to talk about it?’

  ‘Could do. It’s an interesting case.’

  ‘Great. I’ll be in touch.’

  ‘Fine. Now your mother wants another word.’

  ‘Trish? Will you phone me later, when you’re through with this case?’

  ‘Sure,’ she said, ignoring the urgency in Meg’s voice. She knew what it meant. ‘And thanks for this. You’ve been ace, as always. ’Bye.’

  For the first time in days Trish felt hopeful. She phoned Anna and left a message, asking for any information she might have missed or not been shown about the dead man’s stomach contents. Then, too impatient to wait, she rang Cordelia Whatlam, who, luckily, had not yet gone abroad.

  ‘Ah, Ms Maguire,’ she said, in a voice that could have cut through a glacier, ‘I owe it to you, do I?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘So I should hope.’

  ‘I wasn’t apologising,’ Trish said steadily. ‘I meant that I didn’t know what you were talking about.’

  ‘Didn’t you send the police here? The ones investigating Malcolm Chaze’s death.’

  ‘Certainly not,’ said Trish, relieved to know that Femur – or perhaps Caroline Lyalt – was taking all aspects of the Deb Gibbert connection seriously. ‘I didn’t know you were in touch.’

  ‘We’d met – when he tried to interest me in this ludicrous campaign to get my sister out of prison. I told you that.’

  Trish blinked, wondering why she’d forgotten, and why Malcolm hadn’t told her he’d seen Cordelia recently.

  ‘The police appear to believe that I could have been so afraid of what your friend’s farcical television programme might reveal that I was prepared to have Malcolm Chaze shot to have the project stopped.’ Cordelia’s breath hissed as she inhaled. ‘And my taxes are used to pay the s
alaries of clowns like that!’

  ‘I thought Malcolm Chaze’s death had something to do with drugs,’ Trish said, not sure how long she could play the innocent, but prepared to try.

  ‘They appear to be running round in circles in a complete fog, accusing anyone who had even the most tangential connection with him. So, if their visit had nothing to do with this call, what is it you want?’

  ‘Partly to thank you for sending me those copies of your sister’s letters.’

  ‘Revealing, aren’t they?’ Cordelia produced a hard little laugh, as though she was regrouping, changing gear almost. ‘As you see, Debbie is considerably more complex than the good, quiet, domesticated, martyrly daughter you thought you knew. As Malcolm Chaze would have discovered, if he hadn’t had the good sense to dump her all those years ago.’

  Cordelia’s bitterness was like the sound of nails shrieking across porcelain.

  ‘Why are you so angry with her?’ Trish asked, in genuine, if irrelevant, curiosity.

  ‘Isn’t my father’s death enough?’

  ‘I don’t think so, but …’

  ‘I don’t have time for this. Why did you ring me?’

  ‘I wanted to know whether you had any idea what your father ate and drank in his last few days.’

  ‘What?’ The gears were obviously changing again. ‘Why?’

  ‘To tell you the truth, I’m not exactly sure. But I have been advised to find out. And there’s nothing in the files I’ve had access to.’

  ‘I can’t tell you, because I wasn’t there.’ The anger and contempt were still hardening Cordelia’s voice. ‘I know what he would have wanted, but whether Debbie would have had the decency to give it to him, I can’t be sure. I rather suspect not. It would have been an easy way to punish him.’

  It took Trish a moment to control herself.

  ‘OK. Tell me what he liked, what you would have given him.’

  ‘Fine. White toast, butter and honey with Twinings English Breakfast tea and semi-skimmed milk for breakfast. A glass of grapefruit juice at mid-morning. He’d read somewhere that it was better not to have citrus fruit or juice first thing.’