Trish grabbed her pen to scrawl in the middle of her doodles, ‘Why would anyone bother?’
At the beginning of her career at the Bar, she’d done a six-month pupillage with one of the criminal specialists in chambers. He’d become a judge years ago and she rarely saw him now. But he’d taught her that wherever there was money to be made legitimately, there was more to be made by criminals.
Even so, could transporting slabs of meat like this ever pay enough to justify the risk? She wished she knew more about the economics of the legitimate trade. It would be something to ask Will this evening. She added to her short list of questions.
‘That’s why no one’s suspected them so far,’ she read in the notes she’d made of his long explanation last night. ‘Usually stolen or uncertified meat is flogged off very cheap in markets in little out-of-the-way towns, or sold at the back door of scruffy restaurants and takeaways. But if you make your stuff expensive enough and offer it through glamorous shops, people are much less likely to doubt it.’
But why does the meat have to go anywhere near France? If it’s having faked documentation anyway, why not just take it from the abattoir to Ivyleaf Packaging? And if it has to go to France, why isn’t it sold on there?
Maybe money wasn’t Flesker’s only motive, she thought, remembering Colin’s account of the episode that had closed the family slaughterhouse. It had been EU regulations that had started their difficulties and a French vet who had compounded them. Maybe Flesker was taking revenge on the authorities by flying dodgy British meat to France and bringing it back under their noses to sell at a huge premium. But could even the combination of some cash and the satisfaction gained from revenge make this kind of exercise worthwhile?
She couldn’t make sense of any of it, so she took herself off for a mind-clearing shower. As the water beat down on her head, she ran through her summing up of Will’s story, still looking for the profit. Surely the pilot and his mates would earn enough from whatever they were doing only if the plane brought something back from France, after they’d delivered the meat. She thought of the email that had accompanied the video. ‘I’ll send you the rest later,’ Jamie Maxden had promised.
Both she and Will had assumed that ‘the rest’ would be more shots of the men, their burdens and the plane. Or possibly something happening at Smarden Meats itself. What if it had been a record of the return journey with a revelation of its cargo? Her teeth clamped around her lip and frustration made her bite.
The chicken wasn’t only cooked to death now; it was in danger of incineration. Trish turned down the oven. Where on earth was Will? She checked her watch for the fifth time, trying not to feel irritated. She told him to come at eight and he’d agreed. It was well after half past nine now. No wonder his sister had been so angry when her husband had been late home the other night. To have something cooked at an agreed time and then watch it spoil while you were left hanging, not able to eat yourself, or do anything else, because you didn’t know when you were going to be called upon to serve up the food! Exasperating. And insulting. The message that came over loud and clear was ‘your time is worth far less than mine’.
The phone rang. If this were Will, she thought, in a pub or caught up with a mate, she would be tempted to tell him to go straight home and then eat whatever remained edible beneath the charcoal on the chicken carcass by herself.
‘Trish?’ Antony’s voice was neither languorously seductive nor sharply irritated. He sounded concerned and brisk. She hoped he wasn’t going to say anything about Liz’s visit. ‘Sorry to interrupt your dinner.’
‘No problem. What’s up?’
‘Will Applewood has got himself in trouble.’
‘Oh, shit! What’s he done?’
‘No one’s quite sure. He’s in hospital in Kent after a fight. It’s bad. There’s a young woman dead, and another man with severe injuries. The fight took place in the woman’s bedroom. No one yet knows which man was the aggressor, but Will got off more lightly, so it looks like him.’
Antony waited, as though for a comment, but Trish had nothing to say through the swirling mixture of anxiety and rage that was choking her.
‘The other bloke isn’t conscious yet,’ he went on after a moment. ‘They’re both in hospital, under police guard. In due course one of them will almost certainly be charged with the woman’s murder.’
There was no expletive fierce enough to deal with this. Trish waited for more.
‘The last thing we need in the middle of the case is one of our clients getting himself charged with something like this, so I’ve got Petra to agree to act for Applewood.’
Petra Knighton was a legend in legal circles. At more than sixty, she was still known to be one of the toughest solicitors working in crime. She was almost equally dreaded and admired. There was a famous, possibly apocryphal, story of an ill-prepared barrister actually fainting when he saw her swinging towards him outside court one morning.
‘She knows it’ll have to be Legal Aid, and she’s ready to go down to the hospital now to take instructions. Are you still there, Trish?’
‘Yes. So Will’s conscious, is he?’ It was funny how you could talk even when your head was boiling and your throat clenched as though someone had his hands round it.
‘Apparently. But before Petra talks to him, I thought you might brief her. I get the feeling you know rather more about Applewood and his recent activities than L’ There was a pause, as though Antony was waiting for a confession. ‘You do, don’t you, Trish?’
‘Some. OK, I’ll see her. When do you want us to meet?’
‘Right away. She’s here now and could be with you in ten minutes. OK?’
The grip on Trish’s throat was easing as her mind began to work again. ‘Antony, how do you know about this?’
‘Applewood asked the police to inform chambers, rather than his family, or you, interestingly. I happened to be here and took the call.’
Yes, thought Trish, I can see why you might want to take refuge in chambers today. But it’s rough on Liz.
‘I see,’ she said aloud. ‘OK. Yes, do send Petra round.’
Petra Knighton had short straight white hair cut very blunt, round brown eyes, and a complexion any twenty-year-old would envy. She was shorter than Trish, but just as slight, and she was wearing casually elegant dark-grey silk trousers and a loose collarless jacket the colour and texture of old-fashioned string. Her narrow feet were bare inside flat taupe-leather loafers.
‘So let me get this right,’ she said, putting down her whisky. ‘This over-emotional, virtually destitute man, whose professional and economic life is hanging in the balance until the end of the action against Furbishers Foods, took time off court to track down the source of some sausages that made you and a friend of yours ill?’
‘That’s right.’ Trish was drinking yet more coffee. She needed a clear head to deal with her own confusion as much as the questions. ‘After he’d given all his evidence. I mean, obviously I didn’t see him outside court while he was doing that.’
Petra just looked at her with chilly disapproval.
‘Anyway, the hunt for the infected sausages was how it all started,’ Trish said. ‘Then he latched on to something bigger; more dramatic, anyway.’
She described the video and the news that Jamie Maxden had apparently committed suicide under the wheels of a pantechnicon parked outside the abattoir she had visited with Will.
‘It was his death that first upped the stakes,’ she said. ‘Will couldn’t accept that the man he’d known would ever have committed suicide. Then we recognized in the video one of the men we’d seen when we toured the abattoir itself. He’d seemed short fused then, and potentially violent. I have since discovered that he has done time for assault.’
Trish realized she hadn’t been entirely honest and admitted a moment later that it had been she who had recognized Bob Flesker, not Will.
‘Before you go on,’ Petra said, making a note on her pale-blue lined pad, ‘w
hy did you go to this abattoir?’
Why do I feel as though I’m being interviewed in a police station? Trish wondered. What has Antony said to this woman to make her treat me like a suspect?
‘There’s a whole chain of reasons,’ she said, before recapping them all.
‘That’s all very well,’ Petra said, not making any notes, ‘but why did you go, rather than just Applewood?’
Trish explained about Will’s lack of confidence and her urge to help in any way she could. Hoping she didn’t sound like a complete pushover, and wondering all over again how much he had not told her, she added a comment about her dislike of trotting around the country with one of her clients before the end of the case.
‘That figures,’ Petra said. ‘Then what?’
Trish had never been briefed by Petra’s firm, so she had no idea whether this hectoring attitude was typical. The one thing she could be sure of was that Petra was the best available. Antony only ever dealt with the best.
‘Then he borrowed two hundred quid off me. I didn’t know why he wanted it until he phoned me from France last night. He rang to tell me what he’d seen there, in case something happened to him.’
Trish looked at the solicitor, knowing she would think this casual loan to a man in Will’s state quite irresponsible. It probably had been. But Trish couldn’t grovel for absolution or comfort now. It wasn’t dignified, and in any case there wasn’t time for self-indulgence with Will under police guard in hospital. Instead, she described what he’d told her of his adventures at the French farm.
‘Oh, yes, the only other thing was that right at the beginning he sent another sample of the doubtful sausages to some food-testing lab and the results came back negative. All they found were faint traces of a growth-promoting drug and bleach. I didn’t understand the significance of the bleach at the time, but it excited Will.’
Petra nodded, pushed her rimless spectacles further up her small nose, and wrote a few notes. Laying down the pad and balancing her fountain pen on top, she said, ‘And so is it your analysis that today’s episode is part of his quixotic quest into the origins of the infected sausages, or some other, private, fight?’
Trish shrugged, not out of carelessness but because she had no answer.
‘I wish I knew. At first I thought he was a vulnerable man, so open that he told me everything. That’s clearly not true. I have no idea who this woman could be or what he was doing in her bedroom.’ Trish shut her eyes and pressed her fingers into the lids. ‘I wouldn’t have thought him capable of killing anyone. But how do I know?’
‘Indeed.’
Trish opened her eyes again. Petra’s expression hadn’t changed. ‘I’m sorry I can’t be more help.’
‘Yes, it’s a pity. As this stands, I don’t think it’s a story to share with the plods.’
‘Probably not,’ Trish said, fighting for her proper professional detachment. ‘I can’t see some hard-pressed DI wanting to delve into a closed suicide case and a possible international trade in contaminated meat at this juncture.’
Petra produced a small dry cough of laughter. ‘I don’t care about that. All I want to avoid is some over-dramatic DI deciding that you gave my client money and sent him charging down to Kent on a mission to wipe out the makers of the sausages you thought might kill your best friend. A story like that would screw up the case you’re doing with Antony. It wouldn’t help your reputation much either. And if that’s tarnished, Antony’s going to look a fool for putting so much faith in you.’
Trish was beyond comment.
‘The police have got plenty to work on without that,’ Petra went on. ‘A sexy young woman wearing nothing but a negligee is found lying dead, while two strong young men tried to beat each other to death over her corpse. But it helps me to have the background. At least I’ll know what I’m dealing with if Applewood starts to launch into any of this meat farrago.’
‘Don’t you think there’s anything in his story?’
Petra stretched her face into a dolorous mask. ‘Happily I don’t have to decide. It could be true. I’d have thought it more likely to be a fantasy made up to impress you. That’s the kind of thing a certain type of young man does.’
‘Not often when he’s dealing with counsel.’ Trish thought her dry delivery would have made even Antony proud. She was glad to see that Petra did not really suspect her of sending Will off on his mission.
‘Be that as it may,’ Petra said, unimpressed, ‘the only facts you have are that you visited an abattoir, in which there works a man who looks like one of the figures in a grainy film William Applewood sent you by email. He told you the film had been made by another man, who apparently committed suicide outside that same abattoir, but you have no proof of who shot the film. And Applewood provided the video only after news reports of the death were published in the local papers. It wouldn’t be hard to make up the whole thing, would it? Particularly not when your own illness must have made you receptive to food-based scare stories.’ She looked at Trish over slipping spectacles, then pushed them up her short nose again. ‘As you’d have seen in an instant if this were your case and you were not emotionally involved with one of the participants.’
‘May I get you some more whisky?’ Trish asked coldly. She was not emotionally involved with Will. Nor could he have been trying to impress her. ‘I did check the story about Jamie Maxden being found under the wheels of a meat lorry. It was true.’
‘Of course it was. But Applewood had plenty of time to read it and work his fantasies around it before he offered them to you, hadn’t he?’
‘I’ll be interested to hear whether you feel the same once you’ve met and talked to him,’ Trish said. ‘I’m sure he’s more trustworthy than you think.’
To herself she added silently: at least, I hope he is.
‘Let’s hope you’re right,’ Petra said. ‘Even if you are, this will definitely run better as a straightforward account of a summer afternoon’s dalliance interrupted by a jealous rival.’ Once more the glasses had slipped. The eyes that looked out over the top of them seemed colder than ever. ‘The question is: which man was the rival?’
‘I know,’ said Trish, as she recovered from a sudden sinking sensation in her gut. ‘Now, would you like more whisky?’
‘Thank you, no. I have to drive into Kent.’ Petra drained the glass Trish had given her when she arrived and stood up, fitting the fountain pen neatly into the inside pocket of her jacket. ‘For what it’s worth, I shan’t pass this story on to Antony, and I’d advise you to keep it quiet too.’
Trish stood, waiting by the front door.
‘He has a very high opinion of you,’ said Petra, in a voice that suggested she did not share it.
A moment later she was out of the front door, leaving Trish to wrestle her way out of the outrage and fear that had dropped over her like a gladiator’s net. When Petra was halfway down the iron staircase, Trish remembered Will’s running down them himself. She called the older woman’s name. Petra paused, then turned her head.
‘You will let me know how it goes, won’t you?’ Trish said.
‘Emotionally involved.’ Petra beckoned. ‘I knew it.’
Trish put the door on the latch and walked down ten steps to join her.
‘You have to face it.’ Petra’s eyes were no longer quite so cold. There even seemed to be some pity in them. She put a hand on Trish’s shoulder. ‘Applewood could be a killer.’
Chapter 18
On Sunday morning Trish wasn’t even tempted to lounge around having breakfast in bed. Feeling like death, she was up by eight and had to force herself to wait until ten before phoning Jamie Maxden’s sister.
When the phone was answered, Trish introduced herself, then tried to make her questions seem legitimate by saying, ‘I hadn’t realized your brother was dead. I didn’t see anything in the papers.’
‘I don’t know why not. I put an expensive notice in The Times with details of the service at the crematorium.’ Mrs Bla
ke’s voice was jagged with grievance. ‘Although I can’t think why I bothered. There was only me there and the one editor left with any moral courage.’
That was a phrase Trish hadn’t heard for a long time. She could sympathize with the bitterness in it.
‘I’m sorry to rake over such painful ground, but …’ she left a pause for the other woman to fill with polite reassurance. None came. ‘But I wanted to ask whether you ever had any doubts about the inquest’s verdict.’
‘Why?’
There was music in the background, something disciplined and austere: Bach, probably, Trish thought.
‘Because suicide seems so unlike Jamie,’ she said, needing to be sure Will had been wrong about this.
‘No. I meant why are you asking questions about it? What’s your interest here?’
‘Oh, I see.’ For once Trish thought about lying, then decided only a version of the truth would get her what she needed. ‘A friend of mine has been looking into a meat scandal he wanted Jamie to write up, and I need to be sure there isn’t some kind of connection.’
‘You can forget that.’ Mrs Blake’s voice hadn’t softened.
‘Why?’
‘Because there’s no doubt Jamie killed himself, and set the scene to ram home to all of us why he was doing it. That was typical. He always wanted everyone to know how much he suffered.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Think about it. What happens in a slaughterhouse? Animals are driven to their death, just as Jamie felt he’d been driven to his.’
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