He thought of the guns that had been sold, along with everything else. They’d been his father’s and his grandfather’s before that. They weren’t Purdeys or anything smart, just workaday, undecorated twelve-bore shotguns, carefully maintained and used to rid the land of vermin.
‘Quite,’ Will said aloud in Antony Shelley’s snootiest voice.
A bunch of ducks waddling towards a pond beside the car park stopped and stared at him. He did the rest of it in silence: You’ve fucked up big time, over and over again, but you don’t have to make it worse. You are not vermin, whatever you’ve done. Don’t give in. Don’t. Trish is right: you may yet win the case, then there’ll be damages. You can start something else. In the meantime you can do something useful by finding out more about the E. coli sausages. She’ll be grateful if you do. She would have done it herself if she’d had time; she said so. And if you find out why Jamie died, you might stop feeling so guilty about the rest of it.
The hugeness of his debts made him feel helpless. It was all he could do to put the key in the ignition. But he knew by now that the feebleness would only feed on itself until even the effort of breathing would be painful. It wouldn’t take any real energy to drive to Ivyleaf Packaging. He reached behind him for the map Susannah kept on the back seat to check the directions the barman had given him.
His muscles were so tight that he wrenched his shoulder as he turned. It seemed incredible that he’d once been able to heave hay bales around with one hand and push cows out of the way with no more than a nudge. He’d even let himself off the thirty press-ups he’d once done every morning. He ought to start again. Being fit stopped you feeling like a complete blob.
At last he forced himself to turn on the engine and get the car moving. It purred expensively. All the way to the packaging plant, he tried on one story after another to justify the questions he wanted to ask. In the end he decided to be a man in search of a bargain. The story built up as he drove. There would be a vast barbecue to celebrate something, a wedding perhaps. Yes, a sister’s wedding barbecue, for which he would need huge quantities of impeccable sausages. He would present himself as a man obsessed with hygiene because of everything he’d read about food poisoning in barbecued meat and equally obsessed with value for money.
‘You’re just like every other consumer,’ said the young receptionist from Ivyleaf much later in the afternoon, as Will gave her a lift home to her house in the next village, ‘you want top-quality food for rock-bottom prices. It’s no wonder supermarkets have to put the squeeze on producers.’
‘I am not like all the rest,’ Will said, suppressing his instinct to pour out his own story and get at the sympathy he could sense lying behind her bubbly laugh and kind eyes.
‘No?’ she said, rearranging her frilled cotton skirt across her neat round little knees. Bare as they were, they showed faint white lines of childhood scars like cobwebs spun through the smooth tan. It was hard to keep his eyes on the road.
‘No,’ he said firmly. There was a tractor ahead, cranking slowly up the hill. Clods of dried grass and mud fell from the deep tread of the tyres. Overtaking it would fix his mind on something other than her naked knees. ‘Because I don’t want to add to their profits. I’d much rather pay you a bit more than the wholesale price you’d get from them. That is, if I could be sure of what I was getting. I mean, if you could let me know exactly what it is I’d be buying.’
‘I can’t tell you any more about the sausages because I’m not on the buying side. All I know is that most of our meat is French. So maybe they are too.’
‘Aha,’ said Will, as he plastered a sickly smile on his face, ‘that must be why they taste so bloody good.’
‘We’re here,’ she said, touching his leg with a hand as neat and brown as her round knees. He noticed that she bit her nails. ‘It’s that little pink house with the blue door. You are kind to bring me home. There’s no one else here right now. D’you want to come in and have a cup of tea?’
It had been so long since anyone had been prepared to have sex with him, let alone invited it, that it took Will much too long to understand her reluctance to put on the kettle once they were inside the tidy little house.
As he followed her up the narrow wooden staircase, he wished he’d said no. How could he risk it? The last few ghastly times with Fiona had made him feel as though someone had cut right through his spinal cord.
Much later, he found out that her name was Mandy, which seemed perfect. She knew nothing about his past, or his failures, or what anyone else thought of him. She’d taken him as he was and given him back the certainty that there were still some things he could do well.
Lying with the evening sun painting gold bars across her cosy body, she looked fantastic. She turned and snuggled her face against his arm.
‘You’re lovely, you know, Will.’
He felt like a world beater.
Chapter 10
Andrew Stane was coming out of the hospital at a run. Trish put out her hand to get his attention.
‘Sorry, Trish.’ He was panting. ‘There’s an emergency. I’ve got to go.’
‘Kim? Is she worse?’
‘No. The doctor says she should be fine tomorrow, so I’ve asked Mrs Critch to bring her back to the unit at five o’clock then. Can you be there?’
‘Yes.’
Andrew was already past her. ‘Good. Don’t forget it could be your only chance to get anything out of her.’
‘Why d’you think I asked you to get an extension?’
‘That’s not looking hopeful, so you’d better assume we can’t. Which means you’ll have no time left for niceties like making friends or feeling your way. You’ll have to plan your questions carefully.’
‘That would be easier if I knew more about the stepfather,’ Trish said, willing Andrew to slow down. ‘There’s almost nothing in the files.’
‘He was in the army.’
‘I know.’ She was holding on to her patience as though it was something slippery and alive, like an eel. ‘So, there must be people there who know a fair amount about him. Have you talked to anyone in his old regiment?’
‘Nope.’ He was moving backwards and forwards, as though someone had him on the end of a rubber band and was tugging him away all the time.
‘Well, try to get someone; but do it informally. The official line is likely to be that he was a frightfully good chap – brave and all that. Men who knew him, served with him, will have the real story. The best would probably be a junior officer. Not so likely to be frightened of talking as a squaddie and with less invested in his own dignity than a general.’
‘You don’t ask much, do you? Trish, I’ve told you: I have to go.’
This time she didn’t try to hold him back.
There was a crowd outside the four lifts near the entrance and a lot of impatient shuffling. Everyone was standing looking at the illuminated numbers on the fascia above the lifts, muttering. Trish decided to take the stairs. The Intensive Care unit was only on the fifth floor.
Jess was already sitting at Caro’s bedside. Still panting from her rushed climb, Trish was about to turn away when she saw Jess beckoning at her through the glass. Surprised, she went in and said quietly. ‘I thought they only allowed one visitor at a time in here.’
‘Caro needs to ask you something,’ Jess said.
Trish saw that Jess was holding one of Caro’s hands as she lay, eyes closed, against the heaped pillows.
‘Trish is here now,’ Jess said, using her other hand to stroke Caro’s forehead.
Caro’s eyelids rose and her lips widened a little, as though the effort of producing a full smile was far too much.
‘You’re helping Andrew with Kim, aren’t you?’ she said, breathing carefully. She licked her dry lips.
‘Yes. Trying, anyway. There’s not much time left.’
‘So you know all about them now. You’ve got to stop Pete Hartland.’ Her eyelids fluttered down.
‘Caro, hold on,’
Trish said urgently. ‘Who is Hartland?’
Caro’s eyebrows twitched. The eyes themselves looked frightened as well as puzzled. ‘Constable in the unit. He thinks Dan Crossman – you know, Kim’s stepfather – poisoned me and wants to punish him. You must stop it. Tell him you were ill too.’
‘Ah, yes.’ Now Trish understood. Unfortunately that didn’t mean she knew what to do about Hartland. ‘Who’s his boss?’
‘Me.’
Trish looked at Jess, whose shrug showed how little help she could offer.
‘Then who should I talk to?’
‘Pete.’ Caro turned her head on the pillow, reaching towards Jess, as though only she had what Caro needed now.
‘OK,’ Trish said. ‘I’ll do my best. But I’ll need the number.’
Jess grabbed a pen from the bedside table and pulled an old envelope from the wastepaper basket. Deep furrows appeared in Caro’s face as she concentrated. She swore.
‘Don’t force it, darling,’ Jess said with the utmost gentleness. ‘Let it come. It will. You’ll remember, if you just trust yourself.’
Caro sank back against the pillows, smiling at Jess. After a moment she nodded and dictated the number to Jess, who tore off part of the envelope and handed it to Trish.
‘Don’t worry too much, Caro. I’m glad you’re getting …’ Trish could see that Caro wasn’t listening. Her eyes were still open, but they were fixed on Jess. On her feet now, she was hanging over Caro, stroking her hair, murmuring something too private for anyone else to hear.
Trish had no part in this scene. She walked quietly backwards. For an instant Jess looked up. There was no satisfaction in her clear gaze, only depths of generosity and gratitude. Then Jess gave all her attention back to Caro, leaving Trish to retire, shaken at the sight of a love she’d never believed Jess capable of giving anyone. What else had she misunderstood?
Outside the hospital, she saw Cynthia Flag parking a battered Renault. She waved. Cynthia locked the door and walked across the hot, squidgy tarmac, reknotting her ravishing hair. There were tiny bubbles of sweat on her upper lip and in her cleavage. They did nothing to destroy her allure.
‘Have you seen Caro?’ she asked when she’d reached Trish.
‘Yes. She seems to be making progress. And Jess is with her. They looked as if everything is … fine.’
Cynthia smiled. ‘I think it is now. But they’ve been through a lot to get here.’
‘What—’ Trish stopped herself. However close a friend Cynthia might be to Jess, she was still a stranger. Trish had no business discussing Caro’s relationship with her. In any case, still reeling from the love she’d witnessed, she wouldn’t know how to explain herself. Her old dislike of Jess was beginning to look horribly like jealousy, which shocked her.
‘I think,’ Cynthia said, producing a luxurious smile, ‘that they were both putting so much energy into holding each other up that that’s precisely what they did.’
‘That sounds clever,’ Trish said, still fighting herself, ‘but I don’t understand what it means.’
‘No? Never mind.’ She laid a long smooth hand on Trish’s. ‘Good to run into you.’
Dismissed and remembering that she’d paid for only twenty minutes’ parking time, Trish hurried to her car.
Back in the flat, she took out the piece of paper on which Jess had scribbled the number of Pete Hartland’s phone. A truculent voice answered her call.
‘Hi,’ she said. ‘My name’s Trish Maguire. You don’t know me, but I’m helping the social worker with Kim Bowlby, and Caro Lyalt asked me to phone you.’
‘Yeah? How is she?’
‘Better. Much better. But she’s really worried, Pete.’
‘She’s not the only one. Kim’s going to have to go back to that bastard if they don’t get anywhere with her by the weekend, and this time he’ll kill her. I know he will.’
‘Hang on a minute. And calm down.’
‘You don’t know him.’
‘That’s true.’ Trish worked for the confidence and quietness that were the only weapons she had in this battle. ‘I’ve never met him. But I’ve seen Kim’s fear. And so—’
‘Then you ought to realize what he’s like. He’s a devil. He’s got to be stopped. If—’
‘Pete, listen to me a moment. Stop talking and listen.’ She paused and heard nothing but heavy breathing from him. Good. ‘Caro is worried about you. She thinks you might try to do something to him.’
‘She’s right. If I could think of something that would save Kim, I’d do it like a shot.’
‘Good. Me, too. But the only way to make sure she’s safe for ever, is to work within and through the proper channels. If you start—’
‘What the fuck are you accusing me of?’
No wonder Caro was worried, Trish thought, with this much aggression so near the surface of Pete Hartland’s psyche.
‘Nothing. I’m just passing on a message from Caro. She wants you to hold back and wait. Don’t contact Dan Crossman. Whatever you do, you—’
She stopped talking because it was a waste of effort: Hartland had cut the connection. And she hadn’t even had the chance to tell him that Crossman hadn’t poisoned Caro. She dialled his number again and was diverted to his voicemail.
‘Pete, you didn’t give me a chance to get to the meat of what Caro wanted me to tell you, which is that I also had food poisoning. Not as badly as she has it, but definitely caused by the same food. We’d eaten together that night. She could not possibly have been poisoned by Daniel Crossman. You have to accept this as fact.’ Trish paused for a moment, then added that if he wanted to know any more, he’d better ring her. Hoping he wouldn’t, she nevertheless left her number.
‘Have you really got to go?’ Mandy asked, watching Will pull on his trousers.
‘I really have. It’s my sister’s car and she needs it to take the children somewhere in the morning.’ He leaned over to kiss her. ‘But …’
‘You’ll come again, won’t you?’ He nodded. How could he resist her? ‘Great. And you can email me, which is better than phoning when I’m at work. It’s easy. I’m “Mandy at Ivyleaf dot com”. You won’t forget that, will you?’
Her hands were sliding up inside the sleeves of his shirt. He should have done up the cuffs before he’d leaned over her again. Now he wasn’t sure he’d be able to leave her. She twisted against the bright whiteness of her sheet, rubbing her back against it and inviting him back into bed. She was the most gorgeous creature he’d ever seen. Her hands reached up to his armpits.
‘Come back, Will. It won’t be light for hours.’
‘I can’t. She’ll worry. I have to get back to London. I’ll email you as soon as I get there.’
She pulled on a thin flowery dressing gown and pattered downstairs, barefooted, to let him out of the front door. So many women looked awful after making love, tangled and frowsty, that he wanted to say something about her minty neatness, but he couldn’t think how to put it, so he just kissed her again and left. She stood on her doorstep, waving him off with her free hand, while the other clutched the sides of her dressing gown together just under her amazing breasts. He wondered what her neighbours would think.
Driving back towards London in a daze of pleasure, he tried to work out where his laptop might be. It hadn’t been sold with all the rest. He couldn’t quite think why not, unless it had been considered to be his personal property and not part of the business. He hadn’t touched it for months.
Would his email account still operate? He’d had one of the free ones for his own affairs, and he had a feeling that the server dropped you if you didn’t use it for ninety days. He couldn’t remember when he’d last logged on.
As soon as he got back to the house, he ran as quietly as possible up the stairs to his little attic room and started foraging in the boxes he’d never bothered to unpack.
‘Will, what on earth’s the matter?’
He looked up to see Susannah glaring at him.
‘Nothing. Sorry. Was I making a noise?’
‘It’s four in the morning, for Christ’s sake.’ Her hand was shaking as she pushed her hair out of her red face. He’d never seen her lose her temper, but the warning signs were obvious. He took a step backwards, but it didn’t help. She shouted, ‘Have you gone mad?’
‘No. Go back to bed. I just had to find something. Ah. Great. Sorry, Suze.’
He hardly ever called her that these days and saw the effect of the nickname breaking through her anger. She shrugged and tossed her head, looking just like their mother and making him feel about four years old. Then she told him more kindly not to tear himself up and to get some sleep, for God’s sake.
When she had gone, he waited until he heard the door of her big bedroom close. There was a faint rumble of voices. He must have woken Rupert, too. There’d be hell to pay for that. Any City mogul like his brother-in-law needed what little sleep his deal-making permitted.
Giving them ten more minutes for luck, Will took off his shoes and crept downstairs to the kitchen, where there was a spare phone socket.
He set up his laptop on the kitchen table, ran the modem cable along the floor to the socket, then booted up the machine. Two minutes later the familiar screen welcomed him into the cyberworld that had once been his second home. He clicked on Outlook Express, typed a brief affectionate message to Mandy, and then clicked on ‘Send and Receive’.
His eyes widened as he saw that there were over two hundred emails to download. Watching the numbers clicking through, he thought guiltily about Rupert’s phone bill. But at least he was doing this at night when the cheap rate must operate.
One hundred and ninety-six emails had come through and something seemed to have seized up inside the machine. Nothing moved. He clicked again on ‘Send and Receive’ to remind it of what it was supposed to be doing. Then he saw the little incoming arrow icon still pulsating.
With the pace of an arthritic sloth, email number one hundred and ninety-seven eased its way into his inbox. Nearly five minutes later, it was done. It was from someone called JAY, all in capitals, and had a huge attachment. The subject line simply read: ‘Important message’. Whoever JAY were, they’d probably sent it to him by mistake, unless it was a taster for a porn site, inciting him to give his credit-card details for more. They’d be lucky. He hadn’t had a credit card since Furbishers had ruined him.
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