Gagged & Bound

by Natasha Cooper

  ‘It’s lucky it’s begun to drizzle,’ Stephanie said as she dropped into the chair opposite Caro’s and took off her sunglasses to reveal an unexpectedly sensitive face, with round blue eyes that showed neither anger nor resentment. Her full lips curled into a smile that made her even prettier. ‘The hat doesn’t look so weird in the rain, even though the glasses do. But I can’t risk it without them.’

  ‘Is the matter really as delicate as all that?’ Caro said, pushing the menu across the table.

  ‘I think so. I’m being watched, you see. Not all the time, but often enough to make it necessary to protect you from being seen with a recognisable me.’

  ‘This sounds serious,’ Caro said, wondering whether paranoia had taken over from Stephanie’s natural suspicions. ‘I’d better get the drinks before we start. What would you like?’

  ‘Something cold. Water. Diet Coke. Anything, thanks.’

  ‘OK. You wait here.’ Caro walked up to the bar and asked for two glasses and a litre bottle of mineral water. Having had no lunch, she looked hungrily at the bulging sandwiches ranged behind the perspex counter, but they might have been there all day and she couldn’t take the risk. After a potentially fatal battle with food poisoning last year, she’d become more than wary of lurking microbes.

  ‘Let’s get down to it,’ Caro said as she brought the drinks back to the table. ‘Who’s watching you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Stephanie’s eyes lit with a spark of amusement that surprised Caro. Nothing she had heard or seen from Stephanie in the past had given so much as a hint that she had a sense of humour. ‘I’ve made more than enough enemies in the last decade for it to be almost anyone.’ The amusement faded. ‘But I have to work on the basis that it could be someone dangerous.’

  ‘How can I help?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have tried to involve you, but I’ve heard that you’re up for this liaison job with MI5.’

  ‘Liaison?’ Caro said, like a parrot, as she tried to keep her face blank. How had the news leaked so soon? This couldn’t be Trish’s fault. She didn’t know Stephanie and in any case it was far too soon for anything she’d said to have got round.

  ‘You don’t have to pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about,’ Stephanie said. ‘There are enough people who wanted the job and haven’t made it this far for gossip to have got out. You are still in the running, aren’t you?’

  ‘I couldn’t possibly comment.’

  Weariness dragged at Stephanie’s lips, thinning them and making her look much older. ‘I’m not doing this for fun, you know. I’ve been told the final decision is going to be between you and John Crayley, that the other two women on the list are only make-weights.’

  ‘Then you know a lot more than I do.’ Caro had to suppress an inappropriate bubble of satisfaction. ‘What’s this about, Stephanie?’

  ‘John. Of all the jobs in all the world, this is the last he should have.’

  Caro suppressed a sigh. She assumed she was about to hear a typical Taft story of harassment and discrimination.

  ‘There’s no point telling me,’ she said crisply. ‘Even if you were right, there’s nothing I could do about it.’

  ‘You have to.’ Stephanie wiped the back of her hand across her mouth, as though trying to get rid of an unpleasant taste. ‘There’s no one else who can. He’s on the take.’

  ‘What?’

  Stephanie lowered her voice so it was hard to hear against the hiss and clatter all around them. ‘The Slabbs have been paying him for years, both for information on upcoming operations and for making inconvenient evidence go away before any of them come up in court.’

  Dizzy with shock, Caro saw a huge elephant trap opening up ahead of her. Every officer in the Metropolitan Police knew about the Slabbs, a long-established family based in South London, who were involved in precisely the kind of organised crime she most hated.

  ‘How do you know they’ve been paying him?’ she asked, hoping she sounded cool.

  ‘I can’t tell you that.’

  ‘Oh, come on. You must know I couldn’t do anything without hard evidence – or at the very least a signed statement from someone involved.’

  ‘Don’t you know what they do to informers?’ Stephanie’s pupils dilated, as though she was watching a horror film.

  ‘Of course I know. But there hasn’t been a bag-and-gag killing for years. The assumption is they’ve given up that kind of violence.’

  ‘It doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen again if they found someone had talked to us.’ Stephanie pushed away her water glass to make space for her elbows. Propping her chin on her clasped hands, she looked into Caro’s face. ‘Think about it. The process starts when they wire your hands behind your back, then they put a stick in your mouth like a horse’s bit; then—’

  ‘I know what they do.’ It was a long time since Caro had had nightmares about any of the cruelties she encountered, but she did not want to be reminded of any more details of the Slabbs’ notorious method of punishment killing.

  ‘Then you ought to know better than to expect someone to take on that kind of risk,’ Stephanie said, looking disappointed, as though she thought Caro should have a much more dramatic reaction. ‘Imagine what it would be like to have the stick forced between your teeth and know that the bag—’

  ‘Stop it, Stephanie.’

  ‘Don’t you ever think about how it would feel if you were the victim? I’ve heard it would take at least four minutes to die like that. You’d be unable to scream, unable to breathe, with the wire cutting into the sides of your face and the stick between your teeth.’

  ‘I don’t think about it. Nor should you. None of us could do the job properly if we thought too much about how victims suffer.’

  Stephanie picked up her glass and took a mouthful of icy water. Caro saw she was shaking.

  ‘Maybe that’s why you’re an inspector on her way to the top and I’m still a humble constable,’ she said, making a visible effort to control herself. ‘I think about it all the time. And the idea that John of all people …’ Her voice broke and she shook her head.

  ‘There’s nothing humble about you,’ Caro said, wanting to offer comfort, but still not sure where this was going. ‘Nor should there be. You do good work, and you take risks to fight for people who can’t fight for themselves. I’ve always admired that.’

  ‘Then please help me with this. It’s got to be done – whatever it costs.’

  Caro drank some water too, hoping the sharpness of the bubbles against her tongue or the coldness edging down her throat would make her brain work faster. They didn’t.

  ‘Stephanie, why have you brought this to me? It’s precisely the kind of information the whistle-blower’s phoneline was set up for at Scotland Yard. Why haven’t you used that?’

  ‘I’ve tried it four times. Nothing’s happened. I’ve been to all the senior officers I know well enough to trust. And I’ve written to CIB3. No one’s taken any action. You’re my last hope.’

  Caro relaxed. CIB3 was the corruption part of the Complaints Investigation Bureau. If they had received Stephanie’s warning and taken no action that meant no action needed to be taken. There had been rumours that after 9/11, when anti-terrorist work had had to be beefed up, CIB3 had been downgraded, but Caro didn’t believe them. Corruption in the Metropolitan Police had caused such problems since the Second World War that no commissioner was ever going to risk its going unchecked again.

  ‘I know John Crayley is popular and successful,’ she said, ‘but he’s not untouchable. If you’ve reported your suspicions and no action has been taken, that must be because they’ve investigated him and found he’s clean. So whoever’s watching you can have nothing to do with this. You can forget your fears.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ Stephanie looked like someone contemplating a leap off a cliff. At last she looked straight at Caro. ‘They don’t believe me because he dumped me for my best friend eighteen months ago. They think I’m trying to
get revenge.’

  Caro felt as though she could hear alarm bells ringing all round her. ‘That must have been very hard for you. I hadn’t realised you were ever together. I’m sorry.’

  Stephanie blew her nose, then stuffed the tissue in her pocket.

  ‘I’ve never been good at relationships. I get too angry about too much, and blokes don’t like it. But John was different. We’d lasted three years. The best of my life. He … he was so kind. And he never fought dirty. I mean, in the beginning if we disagreed about something, we’d talk it through. He didn’t shout at me, or run away from a row, or try to win by blaming me for something. I loved him. I felt safe with him.’ She raised her eyes, and Caro thought she’d never seen such naked need in anyone. ‘I’d have done anything for him, until …’

  ‘Until the day came when you had to suspect him of being in league with the Slabbs?’ Caro suggested when the silence had gone on too long.

  ‘There was no actual day. At first I was just a bit surprised when he wasn’t where he said he’d been. Then I got worried when he started to hide things.’

  Caro tried to look beyond the obvious reason for both. Stephanie wasn’t stupid and she must have seen it too.

  ‘We’d always been open with each other, so I tackled him. I asked who he was seeing, and whether he was in love with her.’ Stephanie swallowed. ‘He told me not to be stupid, sounding really angry. It was so unlike him that I was even more worried. I started to think maybe he had some ghastly disease and was trying to keep it from me. So I didn’t ask any more. I just watched.’

  ‘And saw what?’

  ‘More and more times when he lied about where he’d been, and odd phone calls, and a whole lot of little things that showed he had some other kind of life. He was paying for all sorts of things in cash, and I couldn’t understand why. Or how he had so much money. I mean, we kept our finances separate, but I knew roughly what he earned.’

  This sounds serious, Caro thought.

  ‘It took ages before I realised it wasn’t either another woman or a terrible disease, that it had to be something to do with the job. Even then I didn’t let myself believe the truth.’

  Stephanie took out her tissue again and sat shredding the edge. ‘I mean the whole idea was preposterous. John Crayley, of all people. The best copper and best mate any of us had ever known.’ She drank some more, looking as though the water tasted vile.

  ‘Did you confront him with these new suspicions, too?’

  ‘In the end. And he just laughed. This time he didn’t even seem angry. He said I ought to see a shrink because I was clearly paranoid, then he asked if I was drinking too much, then he wondered if it was my hormones.’

  ‘What a sod!’ Caro couldn’t restrain a comment on the all-too familiar insult.

  ‘After that he started to get very patient and treated me as if I was ill. I was so angry I watched him even more closely. One day he said I was getting on his nerves and he needed space. Then only about a week later, Lulu came round to tell me he’d moved in with her.’

  Caro waited a moment, then said, ‘Are you sure their relationship wasn’t at the root of everything he’d been doing?’

  ‘Yes.’ The single word was as uncompromising as anything Stephanie had ever said. It reminded Caro that she was a tough political operator as well as a woman betrayed by the one man she’d ever loved. ‘I’ve come to wonder since then whether it was a way of making sure I’d never be believed if I talked.’

  Stephanie’s eyes filled with tears, which she dashed away as if she despised them. Caro wanted to offer comfort, but there wasn’t anything she could say.

  ‘Lulu started babbling about how neither of them had meant to hurt me,’ Stephanie went on, ‘but they were so in love they couldn’t resist. Then she quoted some of the things he’d said to her – you know, to show me how much he loved her.’ More tears overflowed. ‘He’d said them to me first. Every one of them. Obviously none of them had meant anything. He’d never …’ She shrugged, unable to say it.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Caro said again, thinking: I’m not surprised you haven’t had much luck getting anyone to listen to you. And if that’s what John Crayley set out to achieve, he’s the cruellest manipulator I’ve ever heard of, and the most brilliant conman. Could it be true?

  Stephanie dried her tears as Caro watched, and her voice was much harder when she said, ‘But that’s not as important as what he’s doing. If he’s taking money from the Slabbs, he’s the kind of bent copper I hate more than anything.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘I know. That’s another reason why I came to you. I was sure you’d listen. You will help, won’t you?’

  ‘I’ll do whatever I can,’ Caro said with enough deliberation to make Stephanie pause. ‘But we must be realistic. There are reasons why people might not listen to me either. The only way to get past that is to give them incontrovertible evidence.’

  ‘That might be possible,’ Stephanie said very quietly.

  ‘How?’

  ‘There is a piece of physical evidence that ties him in with them.’

  ‘Where? What?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that until you’ve promised you’ll use whatever I give you and take it all the way, never letting anyone know where you got it, and never giving up. Ever. Whatever happens. Whatever threats they make to you or anyone you love. That’s the deal. And it’s not negotiable.’

  Caro felt frustration churning inside her, along with the respect Stephanie deserved. They made an uncomfortable mixture. She couldn’t take this kind of risk without warning her partner, Jess, but that would be a risk too. Jess would never deliberately betray a secret, but she was such a talker she could sometimes let things slip out by mistake. Caro could see Stephanie was irritated by her silence, but she wasn’t going to rush into any decision as important as this.

  ‘Think about it and phone me when you’ve decided,’ Stephanie said, pulling the hat further down over her ears and putting on the big dark glasses again. Caro watched her move away from the table, then come back, lifting the glasses off her nose.

  ‘I really loved him,’ she said. ‘I’d do anything for this not to be true. But I know it is. And he’s got to be stopped before more people get killed.’

  Chapter 4

  Wednesday 14 March

  Bee had the complete set of Jeremy’s diaries delivered to chambers in a canvas book bag. With it came an invitation to tea on Saturday with his mother, which Trish accepted at once. The weight of the book bag surprised her as she carried it back home. By the time she reached the iron staircase, the handles had made great dark-red dents in her fingers. They felt swollen and clumsy. She dropped her keys and heard them clatter down through the slats in the step.

  ‘Sod it!’ she muttered and rang the bell so David could let her in.

  His face split in an immense smile when he saw her.

  ‘Lost your keys, Trish?’

  ‘No. Dropped them.’ She pointed down to the dustbins that lived at the bottom of the building.

  ‘I’ll get them. You go on in.’

  Dumping the book bag on her desk, she flexed her sore fingers and wondered why he was looking so happy. When he got back, dangling the keys between his fingers, she asked.

  ‘I got top marks in history today,’ he said. ‘It’s never happened before.’

  ‘Fantastic!’ Trish swooped down to kiss him. For once, he let her do it. ‘Was it the Queen Elizabeth the first essay?’

  ‘Yup.’ He sprinted halfway up the spiral staircase, and turned to declaim Gloriana’s speech to her troops at Tilbury. ‘“I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too; and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm.”’

  Trish gazed upwards, trying to represent all the awestruck troops for him. She loved seeing him preen as any young male should, even if he was using a woman’s words to do it.

  ‘Hurrah!’ she cried, flin
ging both arms in the air. ‘Or should it be, huzzah!’

  ‘I don’t mind.’ His smile took on a shyer aspect. ‘But I was nearly bottom in science. Again.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter so long as you did your best. Now, cup of tea and a toasted sandwich?’

  ‘I’ll make them,’ he said, descending the stairs two at a time. ‘Rest your weary bones.’

  Smiling at the old-fashioned phrase, wondering where he’d read or heard it, Trish kicked off her shoes and lay along one of the big black sofas that stood at right angles to the double-sided fireplace. With her head propped up on a pile of red and purple cushions, she let her eyes close for a minute or two. All was well.

  The flat was barely darker when she woke, so she couldn’t have been asleep for more than a few minutes. She could smell strong tea nearby and melting cheese from further away. Letting her eyes slide sideways, she saw a steaming mug on the floor beside her. David must still be assembling his sandwich in the kitchen. A knock on the front door made her eyebrows twitch.

  She found Caro on the doorstep, looking nervous, which was rare enough to be scary.

  Trish kissed her and stood back. ‘Come on in.’

  Caro headed off towards the sofas, pausing as she rounded the fireplace.

  ‘I can never get over the size of this place. You are so lucky.’

  ‘I like it,’ Trish said, thinking of all the media pundits who’d started to write that loft-living was on its way out. They predicted that false ceilings and dividing walls would soon be inserted into all the cavernous, echoing spaces for which people had paid such vast prices at the beginning of the new millennium. George had crowed like the noisiest cockerel when he’d heard that because his house in Fulham was the acme of traditional cosiness.

  Trish, who had always felt it was too like a padded cell for comfort, didn’t care what anyone wrote. Her echoing space meant so much to her she would keep it through any economic and fashion recession. It was a pity the winter fuel bills were so vast and that most of the expensive heat floated way out of human reach to hover just under the high ceilings, but she could live with that.