Gagged & Bound

by Natasha Cooper

  It took them several weeks to see a correlation between the strange collection of symptoms and a drug given to the children whenever they suffered a flare-up of a painful and disfiguring skin infection endemic to the area. Jeremy wrote up careful notes of his interviews with twenty of the affected children and their parents, as well as recording everything the doctor told him of the generosity of the pharmaceutical company that provided the drug at less than cost price.

  Suspicious, and deeply concerned for all the village’s children, Jeremy returned to England at the end of his two-year stint, determined to find out more. It didn’t take much research in medical journals to find out that the forerunner of this particular drug had been abandoned because of its rare tendency to induce auto-immune disease in people who took it, turning the body’s natural repair system against its own healthy organs and tissue. By this stage, no one in the UK or America was being treated with the drug, and he was outraged to think that the African children might be being used in the place of experimental animals to test a modified version.

  Once he was sure of his facts, Jeremy wrote to every major newspaper, but none of his letters was published. He wrote to the pharmaceutical company itself and got back a bland letter, telling him there was nothing to worry about and that everything the company did complied with the law.

  He spent most of his first two terms at Oxford trying to make someone take an interest in his campaign. Friends and enemies began to jeer whenever he raised the subject in the pub or lab. He lost his confidence and hardly ever went out any more. Eventually his tutor, while expressing sympathy and admiration for his humanitarian instincts, reminded him that he was at university to work and get his degree. This kind of protest should be the province of journalists, not undergraduates.

  Feeling more sympathy for Jeremy than ever, Trish turned to the next chapter:

  It was at the start of Jeremy’s third term at Oxford that the man who operated under the codename Baiborn came into his life. The leader of a group of radical activist students, he followed the familiar terrorist practice of keeping its separate cells well away from each other so that none could lead – inadvertently or with malice – to any of the others. No real names were ever used and no one knew details of any operation in which he – or she – was not directly involved.

  Jeremy had originally planned only to chain himself to the front door of the pharmaceutical company’s headquarters, but Baiborn said no one would care; any man who did that would be dismissed as a ‘harmless loony’. Baiborn said only a bomb would do.

  In the end Jeremy agreed, but he still insisted that no one should be hurt. He didn’t mind a hole being blown in a wall or two, but he wasn’t prepared to take risks with people’s lives. While Baiborn organised the making of the bomb itself, Jeremy watched the comings and goings at the headquarters building. He decided the safest time to do anything would be between ten and eleven in the morning. Everyone who worked there was well inside by ten and no one left for lunch before twelve at the earliest. Deliveries were all made at the back of the building, from a separate slip road.

  When Baiborn asked why they couldn’t do it at night, Jeremy explained that there were randomly patrolling guard dogs and he couldn’t risk any harm coming to one of them. Baiborn laughed and told him there was no place for sentimentality in their world, but Jeremy wasn’t prepared to risk an animal’s life any more than a human being’s.

  Even when he’d found what he thought was a safe time, he didn’t risk putting the bomb in the building itself, afraid the blast would break windows into dagger-like shards of glass that could do terrible damage to skin, eyes and flesh. Instead he planted it beneath the enormous logo at the entry to the car park. He believed the destruction of the company’s arrogant sign and the likely creation of a big crater in the road, which should stop anyone going in or out of the car park for an hour or two, would be enough to fulfil his purpose.

  Having hidden the bomb and set the timer, Jeremy went back to Oxford, to wait alone in his room in Christ Church, listening to the news on the radio. It was an appalling mischance that sent a busload of primary-school children, on their way to an educational tour of the building, into the car park at precisely the moment the timer was set to explode.

  As soon as he heard the report of what happened to the children, Jeremy knew that he, Baiborn and the actual bomb-maker had to give themselves up. Having written a passionate apology to his parents and tidied his rooms, Jeremy asked for a crash meeting with Baiborn.

  Trish was curious about how that had been done, but there was no indication in the text. All there was to end the chapter was a direct quotation from Jeremy’s diary:

  Why did I assume Baiborn cared about the African children? It doesn’t even bother him that we killed twenty English ones today, and maimed yet more. How could I have been such a fool? He despises me. When I said we had to give ourselves up, he just laughed. Then when he saw I meant it, he went very cold. He said I could throw my life away if I wanted, but that if I gave the police any information about him or any of the others, he’d have my parents killed. It was so casually said it didn’t seem real. But I know it is. So I’ve got to do this on my own. I don’t know if I’ll be able to persuade the police it was only me, but I’ve got to. Oh, God, I’m so frightened.

  More and more sympathetic, Trish flicked through the rest of the book. It continued with a bare description of his years in prison, then there was a much longer section, again filled out with diary extracts, devoted to the shelter he’d organised for homeless men. He’d written so touchingly about the tragic, exasperating stories of how they’d ended up on the streets that she found herself wishing she’d known him.

  As a coda, Beatrice had simply given the suicide letter he’d sent his mother, apologising for abandoning her yet again but saying that all he could give her now was relief from the trouble he kept causing her.

  Trish thought the quotations from the earliest diaries showed a boy of exceptional vulnerability, who became steely – almost heroic – after the disaster. He resisted all attempts, both by the police and by his defence team, to persuade him to admit anyone else was involved or to provide any useful names.

  When his lawyers tried to persuade him to change his plea to not guilty, or at least let them argue that he’d been tricked into placing the bomb by someone else, he said again and again that he had acted alone. He took full responsibility for everything that had happened and was prepared to pay the price. He claimed he couldn’t remember where he’d obtained the explosives. No one could shake him, even though no one could believe him either. Trish could imagine the lawyers’ and investigators’ frustration. She wondered who they’d been and made a note to remind herself to ask.

  One diary extract kept drawing her back. Jeremy had written it before any plans were made to bomb the pharmaceutical company’s headquarters.

  Baiborn says it’s not enough to care. You have to do something, risk something. His group includes a bomb-making cell. They could provide an explosion big enough to make people notice. Maybe he’s right. After all, the suffragettes had to smash windows before anyone would listen to them. Maybe I have been pathetically idealistic to believe words could ever make any difference.

  The soft but relentless ticking of the big clock on the wall told Trish she ought to go home, but she couldn’t resist stopping off in the chambers library to look up Lord Tick of Southsea in Who’s Who, to find out what kind of man he might be. There wasn’t much in the disappointingly brief paragraph. All she found was that his marriage to the Lady Jemima Fontley had been dissolved in 1995, that they’d had a son and daughter, and that his entire career had been in local government, specialising in housing and homelessness. There was nothing about his education, just as there was no mention of his nickname, so Trish took another few minutes to make an Internet search for it. Nothing came up, except a question asking if she meant some word with a quite different spelling.

  She beat George and David back
to the flat by half an hour, more than enough time to take a shepherd’s pie out of the freezer, defrost it in the microwave, then give it a good blast in the real oven to brown the cheese on top. They burst into the flat, stinking of chlorine and very pleased with themselves, just as she was dressing a salad to go with it.

  David grabbed a raw carrot from the fridge and started to gnaw. He’d grown at least two inches in the last year, and she thought he was definitely going to have her height. His face was like hers already, with the pointed chin that seemed so incongruous beneath the aquiline nose, and his hair and eyes were just as dark. Tonight they looked almost black against the pale skin.

  ‘Hadn’t you better rinse out your trunks?’ she said, fighting her impulse to do everything for him, as though that could make up for his terrible past.

  He sighed heavily, then grinned. ‘Nag, nag, nag. OK, Trish. If I must. George, shall I do yours while I’m at it so she doesn’t start having a go at you, too?’

  George laughed. ‘Great. Thanks.’

  When David had gone, trailing the two swimming bags behind him like some primitive agricultural machine, rucking up the rugs on the way, George put his arms round Trish as she stood at the stove.

  ‘Mmmm. You feel lovely,’ he said, pulling her back against him. She waited for an extravagant compliment. ‘All dry and fragrant with cheese and onion.’

  She twisted her head to kiss his chlorinated chin. ‘With all those expensive facilities at the club, I can’t think why the pair of you don’t have proper showers and dry your hair, instead of dripping back here all clammy and chemical.’

  ‘Only wimps use hairdryers, and David and I are real men,’ George said, flexing his pectorals so she could feel the movement against her back. ‘You should know that by now. What’s for supper?’

  ‘Caveman!’

  She thought she’d wait until after they’d eaten to ask him whether he’d ever heard anything useful about Jeremy Marton or Lord Tick of Southsea.

  ‘I can understand your sympathy for Beatrice Bowman,’ he said much later, when David had gone to bed and they were sharing one of the sofas beside the great empty fireplace. ‘But there’s nothing you can do for her that a defamation specialist couldn’t do better. Bloody Antony Shelley should never have tried to involve you.’

  Trish leaned against him, resting her head against his chest and listening to his heart thudding, slow and steady beneath her ear.

  ‘He hasn’t asked me to do anything more than hold her hand and tell her not to worry. It’s only me who’d like it to be more than that. Since I’ve read the book, I’ve had hundreds of questions bumping about in my brain. I’ll never settle to anything else if I don’t get some answers.’

  George kissed the top of her head. ‘It’s not your problem. This sounds to me like the kind of thing that could mop up huge amounts of time and energy for no good purpose. Why can’t you just control your curiosity?’

  ‘Oh, because …’ she said, making it clear she wasn’t going to answer.

  George’s arm tightened around her and he laughed. ‘OK, so it’s none of my business what you do, but I know you, and I’m perfectly certain that every idea you have and every question you do ask will suck you deeper into her problems until you’re treating them as if they were your own. They’re not. But there’s no point my wasting my breath telling you. You’ll do whatever you want. In any case, I’d better go. It’s late.’

  ‘Sure?’ she said, hoping he wasn’t embarking on a tactical retreat. ‘You wouldn’t like to stay so we can have breakfast together?’

  ‘Let’s keep it for the weekend, when we’ll have time to enjoy it. You and David manage the pre-school rush better without me getting in the way.’

  Trish kissed him, then levered herself up off the deep sofa to escort him to the front door. His thick brown hair had dried into the wildest shape, sticking up above his broad forehead and making him look quite different from the smooth City solicitor she had first encountered.

  ‘Will I see you tomorrow evening?’ she said.

  ‘Depends how the day goes. The youngest of the partners has a nightmare deal on at the moment, and I may get sucked in to help her.’

  ‘You’re not, by any chance, starting to treat her problems as your own, are you, my only love?’ Trish said, laughing.

  He grabbed her in a mock wrestling hold and squeezed hard.

  ‘OK, OK. I surrender.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ George said. ‘I’ll phone tomorrow when I know how my day’s shaping up. Sleep well, my darling.’

  After breakfast next morning Trish listened to David crashing down the iron staircase to street level, making as much noise as someone twice his height and weight. The days of trying to be inconspicuous so that no one would notice him had obviously gone for good.

  Pride in him led her to imagine what Jane Marton must have felt when she was faced with her nineteen-year-old son’s confession that he had bombed a busload of children. What could it be like to give birth and watch your son grow, teaching him everything you wished you’d known as a child, trying to give him everything you’d ever wanted, and then learning that he was responsible for something like that?

  Concentrating on the Martons as she cleared the breakfast table, Trish caught her shoe in one of the studs in the emerald-coloured rubber floor in the kitchen. She really ought to get it replaced. Ideal when she’d bought the flat, it had started to look old-fashioned. But she still loved the rest. The longer she stayed here the more the place suited her, with its high ceilings, big arched windows, and the vast brick walls that made the ideal background for her growing collection of paintings. It was perfectly positioned for David’s school, too, as well as for her chambers. George had got over his fear that David’s presence would split them up and seemed positively to enjoy being here with them both before retreating to his own private space.

  Their arrangement was eccentric, but it worked. And, as George said whenever she raised the subject, ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’

  He was often right about all sorts of things. She remembered what he’d said about the dangers of getting sucked into Beatrice Bowman’s problems. Hearing the echo of his voice in her mind, asking why she wanted to be involved, Trish faced the answer she’d refused to give him last night.

  In her early years at the Bar, she had specialised in child-protection cases and known what she was doing was worth while. Then the accumulating misery of her clients’ lives had overwhelmed her, and with Antony’s help she’d switched to commercial law. Not only was it less excoriating, it was also much more profitable, so the move had left her feeling as though she’d bought her own comfort at the expense of some of the most vulnerable children in the world.

  She could just imagine George’s reaction if she’d tried to explain. ‘Bollocks’ was the likeliest choice of word, she thought with a faint smile. His distant, upper-class childhood had left him with plenty of problems, but a need to justify himself had never been one of them. Her experience had been quite different. Like many children of divorce, she had grown up with guilt, as though her parents’ split had been her fault. Rationally she knew it hadn’t, but she still hadn’t found a way to stop seeing everyone else’s unhappiness as her responsibility.

  Reaching for the phone on the kitchen worktop, she tapped in the number for Caro Lyalt’s direct line. One of her best friends, Caro was an inspector in the Metropolitan Police, now based at a station in Clapham.

  ‘Hi, Trish,’ Caro said as soon as she’d picked up the phone. ‘That was a fantastic lunch last weekend. I’ve only just needed to eat again. How are you?’

  ‘Not too bad at all.’

  Caro laughed. ‘I love the way you always exaggerate. Now, what can I do for you?’

  ‘You’re probably far too busy, but I wondered if I could entice you out for a quick coffee this morning.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Now-ish? Half an hour, I mean? I’m only doing paperwork at the momen
t, so I can take my time, but …’

  ‘Perfect. I have to be near the Café Rigoletto this morning in any case. Let’s meet there. D’you remember it? About halfway between us.’

  ‘Of course. See you there. Thirty minutes. Bye.’

  When Trish arrived at the café, Caro was already there, chatting to the owner behind the counter. As tall as Trish, she was less spindly, but her solidity came from muscle rather than fat. She had short blonde hair, kept very smooth and neatly tucked behind her ears, big hazel eyes, and a well-shaped face with not a hint of slackness anywhere. Her jaw was square and her beautiful mouth firmly controlled. She looked what she was: determined, rational, strong and loyal. Seeing Trish, she beckoned and introduced her to the café’s owner.

  Unlike the chain coffee shops with their depressing uniformity, this was a family business, which had existed on the site for three generations. The coffee was good, and the dense Italian cakes even better. Trish ordered a caffè latte and a slab-like chocolate concoction full of nuts. Caro raised her eyebrows and chose a double espresso and an austere-looking hard almond biscuit to dip into it.

  ‘It’s not fair that you stay so thin,’ she said, looking Trish up and down. ‘You must have the most extraordinary metabolism. Now, how can I help? It didn’t sound as if it was David worrying you for once.’

  ‘It’s not. He’s doing fine these days. Why d’you think I need help?’

  ‘Because you never call me at work except when you do. Neither of us has much time to spare, so don’t let’s waste it on guessing games.’ Caro sounded friendly, but the message was clear.