A Greater Evil

by Natasha Cooper

‘We want you, Sam,’ she repeated, almost crying herself.

  Chapter Seven

  Sam double-locked the doors behind Trish Maguire, hating himself for showing such weakness. And for not being able to thank her for what she’d said. He hoped she’d understand. In the old days he’d have been sure she would; now he didn’t know.

  He could still feel the shock of seeing she hadn’t cared a toss about him, after all those years when he’d held her liking between himself and the world as the one thing that made him acceptable. She’d just been doing her job, as she would have done it for anyone, even the other dishonest little shits he’d met in his years in care.

  He thought of the therapist a friend at art school had recommended. She hadn’t been a bad woman, just way out of her depth with him. You’ve got to forgive yourself, she’d kept on telling him. At first he’d said it wasn’t himself he had to forgive; it was all the bastards who’d done their best to kill him or turn him into a raving loony. But she’d gone on insisting he had to find a way to let himself off.

  Memories of her nagging voice echoed in his mind and he revisited the fury that had made him pick up the chair he’d been sitting on and smash it down on the floor. He could still see the pieces. And the fear in the therapist’s expression, quickly masked by a cold professional smile.

  Amazingly she said she’d be prepared to give him another chance, but he couldn’t go back. Not after letting her see him as he really was. He’d hated her for a long time.

  His head was aching again, as though his brain was swelling and swelling until it was squeezed tight against his skull. He put his hands to the sides of his forehead, rubbing at his temples with the soft circular motion Cecilia had used once when she’d tried to massage the pain away.

  He caught sight of the disastrous attempt to rebuild the clay head he’d been making for the Prix Narcisse and went to twitch off the damp cloth that covered it. His own eyes glared up at him with a kind of maniacal hatred. The lips were twisted in bitter resentment, or pain. He didn’t know whether it was better or worse than the first attempt he’d smashed into pulp. He only knew he hated it for the truth it showed him.

  You have to learn to forgive yourself, he thought.

  ‘How?’ he shouted aloud.

  Trish rounded the corner of her street and looked up towards the front door of her flat. It was open and there seemed to be something thick and round lying in the doorway. A log? Worse? She was pulling her glasses out of her pocket and sprinting towards the iron staircase that led up to the door, when she heard David’s voice, higher than usual and excited.

  ‘That’s great. She won’t be long. But I can sign it if you don’t want to wait.’

  Closer now, and with her glasses on her nose, she saw it was indeed a log: the end of the Christmas tree. She’d forgotten it was due today. Calmer, she climbed the rest of the steps, signed the delivery note and looked into David’s glittering black eyes.

  ‘Somehow I hadn’t realized a two-metre tree would be quite so big,’ she said. ‘I wonder if George is coming this evening.’

  ‘He phoned just now to say he wasn’t. But I’m sure we can manage to put it up ourselves. And if not, we can always get Mr Smith from downstairs. I’m sure he’ll help. We must get it up tonight, Trish. Please.’

  ‘Let me catch my breath first.’ She unwound the red scarf from her neck. ‘Did they send a pot too? They were supposed to.’

  ‘It’s here. I made them bring it in first. And it’s got kind of spoke things to make the tree stand up in it.’

  ‘Then we may be all right. But perhaps we ought to eat first.’

  ‘Noooooo! If we put it up first, I can start decorating while you cook.’

  Trish had never seen or heard him as excited as this. She could not spoil it. Together they set about erecting the vast tree. Soon she too became infected with the Christmas mood, breathing in the scent of pine needles that sent her straight back to her own childhood.

  ‘I had an email from the cousins today,’ David said, breathless as they finished attaching the spokes to the trunk and slid the pot over them, latching them on. ‘They want it to snow while they’re here. D’you think it will, Trish? It is getting colder.’

  ‘I know, but the forecast isn’t hopeful for Christmas itself. Even so, it’ll be frosty and far colder than they’ve ever felt in Sydney, and it may well snow while you’re on holiday with them.’

  ‘Yeah.’ David’s voice was less excited now, and Trish understood how nervous he was of joining his relations on their ‘rellie route’ around the country. Susie was his dead mother’s sister, and he’d liked her and her husband and sons when he’d stayed with them in Sydney, but this trip would introduce him to other relations, English ones, who’d never shown the slightest interest in knowing him, even while his mother was still alive.

  Trish dropped a casual hand on his head. ‘I’ll miss you horribly while you’re with them, but I thought we – you and I and George – could have a private celebration the night you get back. How would that be?’

  He glanced up at her with a sideways look, half suspicious, half grateful, which made her add: ‘David, there’s no reason why you have to go with Susie and Phil and the boys if you don’t want to. We can easily sort out things for you to do here in London for the rest of the holidays if you’d rather stay with me.’

  His expression firmed up as she watched and he shook his head. ‘I want to go. I think. But can I come back if I hate it?’

  ‘Of course. And you know, even if it doesn’t snow, the cousins will understand Christmas food in a way they never could on the beach in the middle of summer. Have you decided what presents you’re going to give them yet?’

  ‘George said he’d take me shopping at the weekend. So we’ll find something then.’ He looked happier but so self-conscious that Trish deduced an intention to buy a present for her too. She wanted to tell him not to spend too much of his carefully hoarded pocket money on her but couldn’t think of a way of doing it that wouldn’t sound patronizing.

  ‘And have you thought of what you want?’ she said instead. He grinned and said what he’d been thinking was that she’d never ask. He had a list on his computer, all ready to be printed out for her when they’d finished with the tree.

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Let’s see if this works. You stay with the pot and steady it, while I walk the thing upright.’

  She had needles in her hair, up her nose and pricking her skin by the time pot and tree were firmly vertical, and several of the branches were bent out of shape. Her heart was banging uncomfortably hard under her ribs.

  ‘We did it,’ she said, pushing a bit of twig off her lips with her tongue.

  ‘You look wild,’ David said with admiration. ‘Shall I get you a drink?’

  ‘It’s okay. I’ll have one while I’m cooking. You go and print off your wish list and I’ll see what I think of it.’

  He flashed a wicked grin at her and clomped away to his room, looking his true self and age again.

  Much later, lying under the duvet and thinking it was a pity George wasn’t there too, Trish phoned him.

  ‘Hi,’ he said. ‘Good evening?’

  ‘Fine. David’s in good form, and we got the tree up. Now that he’s hung his decorations, it’s the gaudiest thing you’ve ever seen. I had a fancy for some chaste white-and-silver arrangement, but I thought he should have his red and gold and purple baubles if he wanted.’

  ‘Quite right. Adults shouldn’t get precious about Christmas decorations. I’m sorry I wasn’t there to help.’

  ‘Tough day?’

  ‘Ish. Nothing we can talk about. How about you?’

  It wasn’t hard to work out that he’d been having trouble with QPXQ Holdings and his partners. Trish longed to know what was happening, but knew she couldn’t ask. Unguarded moments of imaginative freedom still produced pictures of him being sacked. And others of him hating her because she was still working, earning, succeeding.

  ‘
Trish? Are you still there?’

  ‘Yes.’ She made herself forget the grim future and told him a bit about Caro and Sam Foundling and how she’d been moved to invite him to share their Christmas lunch. When George didn’t comment, Trish felt her neck muscles tensing all over again.

  ‘You’re not taking that Chinese proverb a bit too seriously, are you?’ he asked, but he didn’t sound angry.

  ‘Which proverb?’

  ‘The one about how saving someone’s life means you’re responsible for them for the rest of yours.’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of it like that,’ she said, relaxing into the absurdly luxurious goose-down pillows George had imported into her flat. ‘Maybe that is why I made my suggestion. I hadn’t planned to; it just came popping out.’

  ‘I think you did the right thing. Are you going to ask the judge too? She must have been expecting to spend Christmas with them.’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s such a good idea,’ Trish said, remembering Gina’s fear of revealing her hatred of Sam.

  ‘Sleep on it and see how you feel in the morning.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘I must say I wish I were there to sleep on it with you,’ George said, his voice deepening into theatrical sexiness. ‘Last night was …’

  ‘What?’ Trish said, laughing.

  ‘I don’t think I should pander to your vanity by spelling it out.’

  ‘Oh, go on.’

  He laughed too. ‘You know what I think. Roll on the weekend. Good night, my love.’

  Trish eased her long body against the cool linen sheet and wished he’d had his way.

  Caro was still in the office, fighting a sore throat as she waited for one of her officers to bring the schedule of Professor Andrew Suvarov’s movements during his European trip. Whatever Trish assumed, she was still doing everything possible to find other suspects.

  It was deeply unlikely that Suvarov would have sneaked to London to kill his illegitimate daughter after thirty-four years of knowing nothing about her, but it was important to eliminate him officially.

  They still hadn’t learned any more about the mysterious harasser. Mrs Mayford had known nothing about him, and the only specific suggestion so far was that it could have been Cecilia’s head of department, Dennis Flack.

  ‘They used to have one of those office flirtations,’ one witness had said, according to the reports in front of Caro. ‘But I don’t think it ever went further than that. They’d go for drinks after work and she used to have him to a lot of her dinner parties before she met Sam Foundling. She dropped Dennis then, and he resented it. I don’t think they’d ever made love or anything, but he hated the idea of her husband, although I don’t think he knew him well at all.’

  ‘Hi,’ said DC Grahame, slipping quietly into her office. ‘Here’s the list of dates you wanted.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Caro put out a hand to take it and quickly scanned the list: Vienna, Barcelona, Paris, York. ‘Why York?’

  ‘There’s a university there,’ Grahame said, sounding surprised. ‘Suvarov’s been giving lectures in universities.’

  ‘I know.’ Caro didn’t laugh at him for his literalness. ‘But it isn’t term time. There won’t be any students in any of them.’

  ‘Don’t they have courses and things at this time of year for people who never went to uni?’

  ‘Probably.’ She smiled at her fellow degree-less officer. ‘Can you find out if he flew from Paris? There must be an airport somewhere near York.’

  ‘He didn’t fly. I checked. He came in on an early Eurostar on Monday morning, reaching Waterloo at 9.51, and then took the twelve o’clock train from King’s Cross to York, arriving just under two hours later.’

  ‘Do we know what he did during those two hours in London?’ Caro asked, pleased he’d taken the next obvious step and not waited to be told what to do.

  ‘He could’ve just hung about the stations. Foreigners always get there much too early for trains and things. It’s not such a long time.’

  Someone will have to talk to him, Caro thought. ‘Okay. Thanks. You can go home now. We won’t get any further tonight.’

  She drafted an email to Andrew Suvarov, reread it, then deleted it from her screen. No excuse for wanting to know what he’d been doing was going to sound credible. She picked up the phone and dialled the private number Mrs Justice Mayford had given her.

  ‘What’s the news?’ she said, as soon as Caro had given her name. ‘The family liaison officer was being tactfully silent this afternoon.’

  ‘I’m afraid there isn’t anything yet, but I have discovered that Professor Suvarov was in London that morning.’

  ‘It’s a coincidence. No more than that,’ said the judge, although she sounded shaken. ‘What possible reason would Andrew have to attack her? I’ve told you, he doesn’t know she’s anything to do with him. Please don’t let him distract you from the real …’

  ‘The real suspect? Don’t worry, Mrs Mayford. We’re doing everything we can in that area. Results will soon be back from the lab and we’ll know whether there’s anything on the hammer that can identify the person who, who last used it to, to—’

  ‘To batter in my daughter’s head,’ said the judge. ‘You don’t have to worry about my susceptibilities, Chief Inspector; they’ve taken such a beating they’re desensitized. Why did you ring? To ask permission to tell Andrew about Cecilia? I really don’t—’

  ‘No,’ Caro said quickly. ‘I think we should keep that in reserve. I just wondered if you knew of anyone he might have come to London to see, so that we can establish what his movements were without having to talk to him directly.’

  There was a pause, filled only by the suggestion of a sniffle. But Mrs Mayford’s voice sounded as strong as ever when she said she’d have a think and call back.

  On Friday morning Trish found a note from Sally Elliott, the trainee clerk, on her desk.

  ‘You wanted to know about Maria-Teresa Jackson. She’s on remand in Holloway, charged with her common-law husband, Melvin Briggs, of killing their two-year-old son last year.’

  Two-year-old? Trish thought. How on earth could Sam Foundling’s mother also have a two-year-old child?

  She unlocked the drawer of her desk and took out the stout envelope of letters he’d left with her. Picking among them, reading a phrase here and there, she found nothing to give any indication of the writer’s age. She rang through to the clerks’ room.

  ‘Did you happen to ask how old the woman is?’ she said.

  ‘No, but I can find out. They may ask why we want to know. In fact they probably will. It’s such, um, such an odd request.’

  ‘Make something up if you can,’ Trish said, well aware that the real curiosity was Sally’s. ‘I’m only trying to discover whether she’s the same woman as one who cropped up in an old case of mine.’ She waited, rereading the letters, until Sally rang back to say that Maria-Teresa Jackson was forty-six and had given birth to the i: child at the age of forty-four.

  Perfectly possible, Trish thought. It would mean she’d have been seventeen when Sam Foundling was born. Also possible.

  ‘And,’ Sally said, ‘this time I asked who her solicitors are so you can go straight to them if you need more.’

  ‘Great. Thanks. Have you got a phone number?’

  Trish didn’t recognize the name of either the individual solicitor or the firm, but she hadn’t done any criminal cases for years and might well not know all the small legal aid partnerships that took the bulk of criminal defence cases. Contrary to the Assistant Commissioner’s diatribe in the paper, few of them earned much, certainly nothing that could be described as ‘obscene’. He must have been muddling them with the big commercial barristers.

  Trish put down the phone, wanting to plan her approach with care. It wouldn’t do to betray Sam, so she’d need a good excuse for asking questions about the woman who might be his mother.

  She tried one story after another. None seemed remotely convincing. Maybe it w
ould be better to approach the whole subject from the other end. She reached for the phone and rang the number of Sam’s studio. When he answered his voice was scratchy, as though he’d been crying – or shouting – for a long time.

  ‘Sam,’ she said at once, ‘it’s me, Trish Maguire. I now know a bit more about the woman who’s been writing to you from prison, which I can pass on to you, but I was wondering whether you’d like me to talk to her. I wouldn’t be able to assess whether she is who she claims to be, but I might be able to get an idea of her real motives for writing and maybe …’

  ‘It’d be great,’ he said, sniffing. ‘Are you allowed to do something like that?’

  ‘I could if I wrote to her – just as a friend of yours, not a lawyer – and asked if she’d be prepared to talk to me on your behalf. There are no restrictions on the number of visits prisoners on remand can have and you don’t need a Visiting Order, as you would with a convicted prisoner. Would you like me to have a go?’

  ‘Yes.’ He didn’t add anything to the bare syllable, but something in the way he said it gave Trish the feeling that she had, at last, done something to make up for her failure to recognize him.

  She pulled a plain piece of writing paper out of her desk and composed her letter, making it as plain and easy to understand as possible:

  Dear Ms Jackson,

  Sam Foundling has your letters. He has asked me to come and see you to talk about your plans. Please let me know if you would like to see me. My address is at the top of the letter.

  As she wrote the last sentence, Trish knew she couldn’t tell an unknown, probably criminal, woman where she lived. Instead she wrote the address of chambers at the top of the sheet and hoped the woman would assume that ‘Plough Court’ was a block of flats rather than a nest of barristers in the heart of legal London.

  Her phone rang and she reached for it without looking, still rereading the letter to make sure nothing in it could frighten the woman.

  ‘It’s me,’ Caro said. ‘I need to ask you something. Please answer.’

  ‘If I can.’

  ‘Did you notice anything about Sam Foundling’s hands when he came to see you the day his wife was killed?’