‘It’s going to be hard to talk to her sensibly,’ Trish said into the phone, ‘if I’m not allowed to mention Tick and his claim.’
‘But you won’t, will you? She couldn’t take it, Trish. Honestly. You’ll have to think up an excuse for asking questions. Promise?’
‘I’ll try.’
‘Thank you. Oh, and I meant to say that Antony told me about your brother. D’you want to bring him with you? My daughter will be here with her son, so David could stay with them while we go to talk to Jane Marton. My grandson is a bit younger, but he can show David the stream and lend him a fishing rod, so he shouldn’t be too bored.’
‘That’s kind of you.’ Trish tried to concentrate on real life. ‘David has his rowing club till twelve on Saturdays, and I’m not sure what his plans are for the afternoon. May I get back to you?’
‘Of course. But I thought Antony said he was only eleven.’
‘Nearly twelve. He’s in charge these days. We’ve found it works better that way.’
Caro had read up everything she could find about Stephanie Taft’s recent arrests, looking for any hint of a connection with the Slabbs. There was nothing. She wished she had an acceptable reason to use the police computer, but she hadn’t, and it would be too dangerous to leave electronic footprints behind her in an illegal search.
She also wished she could put John in front of Trish to find out what she made of him. Some people had an almost superstitious belief in Trish’s power to see into the minds of suspects and witnesses who were lying to her. Caro knew they were exaggerating, but there was no doubt her friend had unusually clear insight into most people’s psychology.
There were times when Caro, who had her own interest in the psyche, thought Trish might be driven by the conviction that if she could get to the bottom of one more crime she would unravel what – to her – was the greatest mystery of all: why did anyone who had an alternative actively choose to impose suffering on someone else? Her determination to understand this had made her a brilliant people-watcher. She read body language better than anyone Caro knew, and she could often decode the verbal tricks people used to disguise their vulnerabilities. If anyone could see whether there was something sinister behind John Crayley’s charm, it would be Trish.
Caro picked up the phone and pressed in half the digits of his number. Then doubt took over. She dropped the receiver back on its cradle with an audible clunk.
If Crayley was working for the Slabbs, he’d have learned to be on the alert all the time. He would scan any stranger’s face and behaviour for clues to their allegiance. What if he was as acute as Trish and saw a threat in her interest in him? If he was in any way connected with Stephanie’s death, it would be madness to offer him another woman who might represent a threat.
Oh, what the hell, Caro thought, before taking hold of the phone again and calling his number. I’ll ask him to a friendly meal. If he agrees to come, I can lay out the risks for Trish and see what she thinks.
There was no answer. Caro decided against leaving a message, but she would try again.
Trish checked her watch as she ran along the Strand, glad she’d put on flat shoes again today. There were still seven minutes to go before she was due to meet Simon Tick at the top of Duke of York Steps. She should just make it.
When she had phoned his secretary yesterday to ask for the meeting, she’d claimed to be doing research into homelessness for a book she was thinking of writing and wanted to discuss it with an expert. The secretary had gone away to consult him, then come back to say that if Trish cared to join him on his lunchtime walk in St James’s Park, he’d be happy to talk to her. But he wouldn’t hang about if she were late; his day was too carefully structured to waste any part of it.
Trish’s urge to find out what he was like was too strong to be put off by the caveat. So far all she’d been able to discover was that he had failed his eleven-plus and been educated at a secondary modern school in East Yorkshire. The fact that he’d then made it to Hull University was a tribute to his grit, as much as the intelligence that had clearly escaped the notice of the eleven-plus examiners. Having left university in 1969, Tick had gone straight into local government, working first as a research assistant at County Hall. From there, he’d built up a career in housing, which had culminated in the peerage he’d been awarded two years ago.
It still surprised Trish that he had even met the Lady Jemima Fontley, let alone wanted to marry her. Everything about his work suggested he’d always been a committed socialist. Trish would have expected him to loathe everything about the upper classes.
Unless, she thought, his is the punitive kind of socialism driven by a determination to punish the haves rather than an urge to improve the lot of the have-nots. In which case, maybe he’d thought nabbing a rich aristocrat for a wife would assuage his resentment.
There were no other surprises in anything she’d learned, and so far she hadn’t any idea about his character or motives for launching the claim. Only a face-to-face encounter was likely to give her that.
She made it to the meeting place with two minutes to spare, panting, and leaned against the plinth of the Duke of York’s statue to catch her breath. The park was looking ravishing under the clear sky, even though most of the trees were still only in bud. There weren’t many people around, apart from small groups of pinstriped men hurrying from Whitehall to their Pall Mall clubs for lunch.
Straightening up and wiping the back of her hands across her sweaty eyebrows, Trish looked around for her target. His secretary had said he’d be wearing a grey flannel suit and carrying a copy of the Guardian, but Trish had found a good photograph on the internet early this morning so she could be sure of identifying him.
Here he was, running up the wide stone steps straight towards her, strong thighs pumping. He looked even better in the flesh than he had on the screen. Grey-haired, but clear-eyed and obviously fit, he was the model of how a fifty-eight-year-old should be.
‘Trish Maguire?’ he called from four steps below her.
‘That’s me.’ She walked down to join him. ‘It’s good of you to see me.’
‘Pleasure. D’you know the park?’
‘Not well. But it looks wonderful.’
‘I like it. And I always take the same circuit. It’ll be a figure of eight, crossing the bridge twice. OK with you?’
‘Whatever suits you.’
‘Good. Now, my secretary tells me you’re researching a book on the effects of homelessness and substandard housing on the formation of criminal children. Is that right?’
‘Absolutely.’ Trish had once had a book published about crimes against children, which would add credibility to her cover story if he or his secretary ever bothered to check her out.
‘Fine. Ask your questions, and I’ll do my best to answer. No, not that path. We go this way.’
Trish followed him, explaining her genuine belief that children’s physical surroundings could play a large part in their moral landscape.
‘I wouldn’t necessarily dispute that,’ he said, walking briskly enough to make her uncomfortable, in spite of her long legs. ‘Although I think genes and parental behaviour are more important. Are you suggesting that being brought up in a scruffy flat in a tough estate of itself makes children break the law?’
‘Of course not. Lots grow up to be model citizens. But I wanted to ask whether that aspect of housing was ever considered by the policy-makers in your local authority.’
‘Can’t help you there,’ he said, looking sideways to give her another frank and engaging smile. ‘It never came up. To be honest, we didn’t have the resources for luxuries like that.’
He stopped halfway across the bridge and pointed towards the pointed roofs of Whitehall that could be seen above the bare trees.
‘Best view in London,’ he said.
‘There are so many fantastic ones,’ Trish said, thinking of her own favourite sight of the Thames and its buildings from Blackfriars Bridge. ‘But I ad
mit this is pretty good.’
‘And about as far as you could get from the areas where I used to work. All we could aim for was seeing that as many families as possible were housed in weatherproof buildings. That alone was a huge undertaking, and I’m proud of what we achieved.’
This wasn’t getting Trish any useful insights. She knew she’d have to needle him to see what lay beneath the pleasant, well-presented exterior. There had to be something. No man as reasonable and warm as Lord Tick was showing himself to be – and as unlike Trish’s imagined picture – would have launched a libel claim on grounds as flimsy as his.
‘Even if it was in bed-and-breakfast accommodation?’ she said, bringing a derisive edge to her voice.
‘What’s wrong with that?’ His voice had sharpened too. ‘It’s a lot better than the streets, or an illegal caravan site with no sanitation, no facilities and no available schooling.’
‘Possibly, but of all the public housing arrangements available, it’s the one with the worst effect on children.’
He shrugged, showing a carelessness that at last gave Trish a reason to mistrust him. She’d seen what living in bed-and-breakfast hotels could do to families. Even if Tick and his staff had had no option but to use such places, he ought to regret it.
‘Some councils pride themselves on their quick turnaround of properties, so they keep the use of that kind of temporary accommodation to an absolute minimum,’ she said, letting her feelings show. ‘It doesn’t sound as though that ever worried you.’
He didn’t answer, only speeding up until she had to stride to keep up with him.
‘Why didn’t you care?’ she went on, still hoping she could make him angry enough to reveal more of his true self.
‘I thought you had a genuine, scholarly interest in child development,’ he said at last, staring straight ahead. ‘It never occurred to me that a woman of your reputation could be a muckraker.’
‘I am not a muckraker,’ Trish said with the kind of passion usually driven by guilt.
‘No?’ There was no pleasantness or even courtesy left in his expression. He looked at her as though she was a maggot. ‘Why don’t I believe that?’
‘I can’t imagine.’
‘You’re not the first person to think she can use old gossip to bring me down. And I won’t have it. Who are you working for? The Opposition? A newspaper?’
‘Myself.’
How interesting, she thought, looking closely at him and wondering why he was so jumpy. There was more to this than the coincidence of sharing his nickname with Jeremy’s terrorist. Neither of them had anything to do with homelessness. Was the chip on his shoulder so big he assumed everyone was out to get him?
‘I don’t believe you,’ he said, glaring at her.
This couldn’t be paranoia. It was too aggressive. Was he trying to hide something really important? Was his claim against Bee part of a campaign to get himself a reputation for litigiousness in order to scare everyone off publishing some other, more likely, allegation against him?
‘Let me tell you this, Ms Maguire, and you can pass it on to your paymasters, whoever they may be, I am not afraid of using the law to control malicious tittle-tattle.’
So that is it, she thought. Poor Bee: put through all this agony just to stop people criticising you in print.
‘I don’t understand,’ she said aloud, with a faint smile. ‘Are you suggesting that my questions amount to defamation?’
‘Don’t play dumb. I know who you are. “Mind like a razor” is one of the clichés I heard when I asked about you. So, whatever it is you’re doing, you’d better stop it right now. And if I hear – or read – anything that has your fingerprints on it about my career in housing, I’ll be on to the Bar Council right away. I could have you disbarred. Got that?’
‘I still don’t understand why you should think I’m working for a newspaper, but if you don’t want to answer any more questions, I’ll leave you to have your walk in peace. There is absolutely no need to threaten me.’
He left her without another word, pounding along the south side of the lake towards Buckingham Palace. Trish watched him for a while, then walked back towards Duke of York Steps, running through everything he’d said.
‘Muckraker indeed!’ she muttered, disliking him all over again. ‘Report me to the Bar Council! No, you won’t.’
Simon didn’t glance back for a good ten minutes. Then, standing on the bridge again, he looked over his shoulder towards the steps. There was no sign of her. He felt the biggest fool of all time for putting himself and his new status at such risk.
When would he learn not to be flattered into talking to the wrong people? He should have known at once that there was something weird about Maguire’s approach. He’d better find out who was behind her so if there ever were a threat of nasty revelations to come, he’d know how to fend it off.
Why could no one forget? It wasn’t his fault there’d been rotten apples on his staff. Was their dishonesty going to be thrown in his face for ever?
Chapter 7
Saturday 17 March
Bee was driving and pulled up in a lay-by. ‘Come on, Trish. I want to show you something.’
This was Bee’s expedition, so Trish obediently undid her seatbelt and got out of the car. Last night she hadn’t been able to sleep. Eventually, soon after one, she’d taken a pill, which had left her feeling dopey. It wasn’t Lord Tick and his motives that had kept her thoughts churning, or even her outrage at his threats, but Bill Femur’s earlier warning. Every time she’d been on the edge of sliding into sleep, her mind had jerked awake again, bringing back the smell of fire.
In spite of the bad night, her sense of proportion had returned with breakfast. Natural caution warned her to say nothing to Bee about the meeting with Tick. Bee already had enough to worry her. There was no point adding to her fears until Trish knew more about what his aggression meant and how they could use – or defuse – it.
Twenty yards down the road Bee was climbing the steep verge. Trish joined her to lean against the fence and look out over the plump green countryside. Following Bee’s pointing finger, she saw a perfect Queen Anne box in the distance. It looked like an old-fashioned dolls’ house, with its red brick and white paint and steeply pitched slate roof. Even from this distance she could make out the formal garden, which was divided into a series of room-like spaces, with dark-green hedges. Yew or box, probably. Nothing could have been further from the bed-and-breakfast hotels where Tick had been happy to put his council’s homeless families or the Slabb-fired ruins of Trish’s nightmares.
‘That was where the Martons lived,’ Bee said.
No wonder Dick resented their wealth, Trish thought, as she noted its perfect proportions and countrified elegance.
‘I wanted you to see it before we get to Jane’s cottage. It’ll help you understand why I can’t bear to have her put through anything else. She’s paid more than enough already, in every conceivable currency.’
‘Still not as much as the children Jeremy blew up,’ Trish muttered, in spite of her sympathy.
‘I know. But Jane’s misery won’t help them, and she didn’t have anything to do with the bomb. You will be careful about the way you ask your questions, won’t you? I really don’t want her knowing anything about the libel claim, and she’s sharp as a tack so she’ll guess if you give her any clues.’
‘I’ll be careful. Don’t worry.’ Trish could see from the way Bee’s lips were dragged down at the corners and her eyes twitched from one side to the other that no words could soften any of her fears.
It took them another twelve minutes to reach the cottage. That, too, was built of red brick, but it consisted of a single storey with a small paved yard outside. Blackening cushions of moss stuck to the roof, and there were slimy green trails left on the brickwork by leaking pipes and gutters.
Indoors the rooms all opened out of each other, with the bathroom at the furthest end, then the single bedroom, living room and sma
ll kitchen. Everything was as clean as it could be, but there was a smell of damp, as well as new paint. The steady beat of traffic was as intrusive as the chatter of pedestrians walking about a foot away from the windows and yelling into their phones.
Mrs Marton came forwards, smiling politely. She was a surprising sight, as far as possible from the fragile-looking woman Trish had expected. The same height as Trish herself, Jeremy’s mother held herself very straight. Her face was tanned and her voice deep, without the slightest tremor. They shook hands. Trish murmured her thanks for the invitation.
‘Beatrice told me you wanted to talk to me about Jeremy,’ she said, gesturing towards the small, upright sofa. It was plain and modern, which suggested the antiques that must have furnished the Queen Anne house had all been sold. ‘Do sit down. Beatrice, I think it would be pleasant to have some tea. Would you be able to make it while I talk to Miss Maguire? There are some ginger biscuits in the tin.’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Is this really all right?’ Trish said as Bee disappeared into the tiny kitchen. ‘I mean, the last thing I want to do is distress you by asking difficult questions about your son’s work and the men he helped. You’ve had more than enough to cope with—’
‘I can deal with most things, Miss Maguire, except pity. Ask your questions.’
‘Thank you. My interest is in the drug dealing at his shelter. I’ve heard there are only a handful of large dealers in London, who supply all the smaller outlets, and I’m interested in one particular group. Did Jeremy ever mention anyone called Slabb to you?’
This isn’t stupid, Trish told herself. Definitely not the kind of thing Femur was warning me against. This woman could not possibly be in touch with anyone involved in organised crime. And it’s the only way of disguising my questions.
Mrs Marton closed her eyes, as though only by blocking out everything else could she concentrate on her memories. Two women, standing right outside the open window, were shrieking their news to each other. Inside the house, you could hear every word they said. When Mrs Marton opened her eyes again, Trish saw they were steady.
Gagged & Bound Page 9