Gagged & Bound

by Natasha Cooper

  Maybe this does matter more, she thought, than being part of any strategy to defeat people like the Slabbs. She caught the social worker’s eye, read sympathy and urgency in it, and bent her mind to thinking up the right questions.

  They didn’t help. The rapist clung to his certainties about his victim’s panting desire for him, and his solicitor interrupted each time he appeared to be about to say anything useful. The boy’s paper jumpsuit whispered around his thin body and his ragged nails made a repellent raw scraping noise every time he scratched his scalp.

  Eventually Caro gave up, terminating the interview and seeing him taken back to his cell. The physical evidence was overwhelming. Even with the law in its current state, they ought to get a conviction for this one. But she was too experienced to risk giving the victim any assurances.

  Trish spent most of the adjournment answering Nessa’s questions and felt so fired up by her enthusiasm that she went back into court to fight for her clients with even more zest than usual. No one had expected them to reach the end of the proceedings today, but it was a fast-track case and had to finish tomorrow. As Trish asked the last question of her main witness, she saw the judge looking at his watch and stole a glance at her own. It was already quarter past four. She nodded to him to show she was almost done and saw his face relax. He turned courteously to the witness to listen to her response.

  And then it was over for the day. They all rose, the judge retreated, and the handful of people in court were free to go. Trish felt her mobile vibrating in her pocket. She pulled it out and saw the number of David’s new phone on the screen. Thrusting her papers into Nessa’s hands she hurried out of court. Even though the judge had gone, ingrained discipline meant she would never use her phone in court.

  ‘David?’ she said the moment she was outside in the hall.

  ‘Can you come, Trish?’ His voice was faint and urgent at the same time, constrained, too, as though something was gripping his throat. There were traffic noises and other voices in the background.

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I’ve crashed the bike. I’m on the bridge. There are people wanting to take me to hospital. But I need you.’

  ‘I’m on my way. Hang on. And give your phone to the nearest grown-up.’

  She turned to Nessa, saying, ‘I’ve got to go. Take the stuff back to chambers. I’ll see you in the morning.’

  As she ran across the Strand, with the phone clamped to her ear, an efficient-sounding male voice said, ‘Hello? I gather you’re David’s sister.’

  ‘That’s right. I’m on my way. How badly is he hurt?’

  ‘I think it’s shock more than actual damage, but he’s bleeding a lot from a cut on the scalp, and he’s bumped and bruised. Brave lad, though. He was on his feet when I got here and planning to walk home, but the bike defeated him because the front wheel’s buckled. How long will you be?’

  ‘Eight minutes.’ Trish was already panting, but she was nearly halfway down through the Temple. Once she was out on to the Embankment, she might even be able to see them. ‘You’ll see me in a minute: a mad figure in a barrister’s gown, waving a wig.’

  ‘It’s me again,’ he said, when she answered her phone again a few minutes later. ‘I see you. I’ll give the phone back to David now. But I’ll wait with him till you get here.’

  Her heart couldn’t beat any faster or her lungs ache more, but she forced herself on, whooping for breath. Seeing the little group round David from the end of the bridge was like being in a nightmare. Hard as she pushed herself, she seemed to make no progress, and the slope of the bridge felt like an alp.

  When she did reach them, she fell to her knees on the pavement beside David. He was sitting on the ground with his back against the side of the bridge. Someone had rolled up a jacket and put it behind his bleeding head. Someone else had folded a clean handkerchief and told him to hold it against the cut. His face was as white as it had been the night she’d first seen him, lying under the bonnet of the car that had run him down. Once again it was marked with grey streaks, mixed in with clotting blood.

  ‘I’m sorry about the bike,’ he said and closed his eyes.

  Trish knew what that meant: now she was here, he could let go and leave her to sort everything out. Her breathing was getting back into its normal rhythm, although her throat and lungs still hurt. She glanced up to thank the adults for their help. One of them, a pinched-looking brown-haired woman, told her she was irresponsible to allow such a young child to bicycle along a busy road, but the only man there, presumably the one who’d spoken on the phone, said, ‘Nonsense. Children shouldn’t be coddled. Would you like me to call an ambulance? David didn’t want anything done till you’d got here.’

  ‘I don’t think we need one,’ she said. Ambulances had been part of his nightmares for years. ‘David, how do your legs feel?’

  ‘They’re OK,’ he said, his eyes still shut against the world. ‘One of my knees is bleeding and it’s a bit sore, but I can walk.’

  ‘Great. Then let’s get you up and see.’ She caught sight of the disapproving woman’s expression. ‘There’s no need to look like that. I’m not going to make him walk all the way home. We’ll get a cab.’

  ‘And the bicycle? If you leave it here someone will trip over it.’

  Focusing on the bicycle, Trish felt herself sway. The front wheel was bent in half, almost at right angles. That hadn’t happened without a serious impact. Was David more seriously hurt than he’d let on? And where was his helmet? He’d promised never to leave it off.

  Then she saw it a few feet away. She got up to fetch it and saw that one side of the nylon strap had pulled right away from the lining of the helmet. Why hadn’t either of them noticed the stitching was so weakened?

  ‘Did anyone see the accident?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the man. ‘There was a lot of traffic, much too close to all the cyclists. It was David’s bad luck that he hit a particularly large drain cover at a moment when there was no space to swing round it.’

  ‘Did it catch your wheel?’

  ‘Yes. I tried to slow down, so I wouldn’t hit it so hard, but the brakes didn’t work and I got sort of rammed into the kerb. I’m sorry, Trish.’

  She brushed his hand, knowing he’d hate any more obvious emotion to be displayed in public.

  ‘That head wound needs stitches.’ Inevitably it was the pinched woman who’d spoken.

  David clutched Trish’s hand. She knew he hated needles even more than ambulances.

  ‘We’ll know more when I’ve had a chance to clean it. Please don’t worry about us. If it needs stitches, I’ll get them put in. Thank you for your help. It was very good of you to stop. Oh, there’s a free taxi. Could you hail it for me before it goes past? Please!’

  The Dettol turned the water cloudy and the smell whisked Trish back to her own childhood. David braced himself.

  ‘Don’t worry too much,’ Trish said, ‘it shouldn’t do more than sting. There aren’t all that many nerves on the scalp.’

  She dabbed gently at the outer edges of the wound with the soaked cotton wool, cleaning the surrounding area and the parted hair until she could see the cut itself.

  ‘It’s not too bad,’ she said, reaching for another swab. ‘Only about half an inch long and maybe a millimetre deep.’ She felt David relaxing under her hands. ‘I don’t think we need put you through any stitching ordeal.’

  ‘That’s OK then.’ His voice was still high and quivery.

  When she was sure the scalp wound was clean, she turned her attention to all the other scrapes. The nastiest was the one on his left knee, which had fibres from his trousers embedded in it. Tweezers, more Dettol, and eventually a large, comfortingly tight piece of plaster dealt with that. David’s eyes were wet by the time she’d finished, but he made no complaint. Hers weren’t much better; she hoped he hadn’t noticed.

  ‘Well done, David. Now, you lie on the sofa, and I’ll just go and have a look at the bike. Then I’ll make y
ou some hot chocolate.’

  ‘It’ll be even more expensive to mend than the phone and the boots I lost.’ His eyes were wide and very dark, as they always were when he was scared.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said automatically, even as her mind flinched from the implications of what he’d said. She thought of the anonymous text message she’d had from his old phone. You’re asking too many questions. Had it been the first shot in a campaign to force her to keep quiet?

  Pictures of what David had been through since babyhood flashed through her mind, the ones she hadn’t seen even more vivid than the ones she had. Quivering with the effort of holding them in, she went down the iron staircase to where they’d left the twisted bike. She was no expert, but it wasn’t hard to see that one of the brake cables had been cut.

  Leaning against the railings, she thought she might be sick. Saliva gathered in her mouth and sweat slicked her face at the thought of what she’d done. For the moment he was safe, but anything could happen now.

  She sat heavily on the bottom step, her fingers still tangled up with the severed brake cable. The football boots could have been stolen in an ordinary, if nasty, bit of school bullying, but deliberately cut brake cables and helmet straps, even without the text message, spelled more serious trouble. Probably adult.

  The pinched woman on the bridge was right: she’d been appallingly irresponsible. Somehow she would have to rearrange their lives so that David was never alone, without letting him guess how much danger he was in, until she’d discovered who was threatening him and found a way to stop it. In the meantime, term finished tomorrow, which was lucky.

  ‘Trish?’ His voice only just reached her. She ran up the stairs, fighting her impulse to hide him in a hospital somewhere no one could get at him.

  Whatever else she did, she had to make sure she didn’t frighten him. Fixing a smile on her face, she carefully locked the front door behind her and went to squat beside the sofa on which he lay, wrapped in an old tartan rug she’d had as a child.

  ‘The wheel’s badly bent,’ she said breezily, ‘but we can probably get a new one fitted. I’ll talk to the bike shop next week.’

  ‘What about getting to school tomorrow?’

  ‘You may not feel up to that. If you do, we’ll just have to revert to the old system of walking,’ she said, silently making plans for the rest of the day. She might be held up in court by the judge’s determination to get the case finished before the weekend. ‘I’ll have plenty of time to go with you in the morning, because court doesn’t start till ten. I think I’ll phone Julian’s mum and see if you could go back with him. I’ll come and pick you up from there.’

  ‘Why?’

  Trish was reassured by the burst of indignation that propelled the single word. He sounded a lot more like himself.

  ‘I can walk on my own. I’m not a baby.’

  ‘You’ve had a bang on the head. Even people as old as me are made to have someone with them for at least twenty-four hours after something like that. You know – just in case they keel over.’

  He shot her a very clear-eyed look, loaded with disbelief and disapproval. She reviewed the plans she’d already made for the holidays. After Saturday, which they were to spend with Bee Bowman, David would be going to stay with her mother in Beaconsfield for the first week. Trish was to collect him from there on Monday, then drive him up to Center Parcs, where George would join them the following Friday.

  Unfortunately Julian’s mother couldn’t help, so Trish phoned George. He was still in the office when she rang. She gave a highly edited explanation of what had happened, promising more later, then added, ‘So I don’t want him coming home from school alone, and because it’s the last day of term, they finish at half past two. I may have to be in court. Is there any chance you could fetch him and hang on to him until I’m free?’

  ‘If I can’t get there in time, I’ll make sure someone else does and brings him back here. Then we’ll both come on to Southwark in time for supper. OK?’

  ‘Fantastic. George, you’re—’

  ‘I haven’t time now. See you tomorrow. Bye.’

  Much later when David was in bed, with half an aspirin to muffle the effect of his wounds, Trish fetched a spare disposable camera from her car and took a whole range of photographs of the broken bicycle and helmet. Putting the camera in one of the lockable drawers of her desk, she reviewed her actions over the past three weeks and tried to forgive herself. She could feel a lot of old self-hatred oozing up around her confidence, like acid sludge seeping around the edge of an inadequate bung.

  A text-message bleep made her stumble across the room to get the phone out of her pocket.

  ‘C whre qstns get U. B crful,’ said the black pixels on the little screen, under David’s name.

  Her hand tightened round the phone as though her subconscious wanted to crush it to powder.

  ‘No more questions,’ she said aloud, thinking of everyone she’d turned to for information in the last three weeks. William Femur’s warning echoed in her head.

  Could this be the Slabbs? she asked herself. Wouldn’t David and I both be dead by now, or at least in hospital with several shattered bones if it were? But if not them, then who? The real Baiborn? Lord Tick? Or someone else?

  She’d talked to so many people, in so many different worlds, that it would be impossible to work out which of them could have decided she was so dangerous she had to be stopped with threats to the safety of the brother she loved.

  For a moment she thought of going to the local police for help. Then she knew she couldn’t. It was easy to imagine some desk sergeant’s face as she tried to explain what she’d been doing and why. She wouldn’t even be able to tell the whole story because that would betray Caro and Stephanie Taft’s legacy too. And without real information there was nothing any police officer could do.

  Only Caro could help her now. Trish tried all her numbers again, but still there was no response. The phone bleeped. Another text. Sweat broke out in her palms again. She wiped them on her trousers and reached for the phone. Looking out of the corner of her eye, she saw another message under David’s name.

  ‘He wnt gt up n walk nxt tme.’

  The landline rang. She swore, dropped the mobile, picked up the receiver and said her name, hating the way her scared voice came out high and tinny.

  ‘Hi, I said I’d phone today,’ said a vaguely familiar male voice. ‘Charles Poitiers here. Is this a good moment?’

  Trish felt her stomach muscles sag and deliberately stiffened them again as she tried to put all the guilt and fear out of her mind. ‘How kind of you to ring back so soon.’

  ‘I’m intrigued by Jeremy Marton’s story cropping up again. Are you a relation?’

  ‘No, although I’m in touch with his mother, and I’m helping his biographer with some research.’

  ‘Right. Well, OK, then. What do you want to know about him? I’ve been retrieving memories ever since I heard you wanted to ask questions.’

  ‘I mostly want to know who his friends were.’

  ‘There I can’t help you, I’m afraid. Not much anyway. Even though we shared rooms in Christ Church in our first year. At the beginning I mainly saw men I’d been at school with. Jeremy was so obsessed with his African scandal that most of us kept our distance. He was left with the slightly erkish drones from his chess club …’

  ‘Erkish?’ Trish repeated. She knew orcs and oiks, but she’d never encountered erks before. Why wouldn’t her brain work properly?

  ‘I suppose one would call them nerds now. We called them erks. My sister might have been able to tell you more. She had rather a soft spot for him.’

  ‘Would she talk to me? Could you let me have a number for her?’

  ‘She died last year.’

  ‘I’m sorry. She must’ve been far too young. Was it … was it an accident of some kind?’

  ‘Cervical cancer,’ said Charles Poitiers. ‘No one had noticed the abnormalities in her smear tests
for years and years. She knew something was wrong, but the doctors all pooh-poohed her fears. When they eventually diagnosed the cancer, it had metastasised all over her body. It was far too late to do anything.’

  ‘She must have had a terrible time,’ Trish said, his sister’s tragedy pushing away some of her own preoccupations. It wasn’t an unfamiliar story, and it made her furious whenever she heard it. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Thanks. The rage still gets to me, even a year on. She occasionally talked about Jeremy, but I’m afraid I don’t remember much. They never went out or anything.’

  ‘Pity.’

  ‘It was mostly that she was grateful to him for helping her out of an embarrassing hole one weekend.’

  ‘Really? What happened?’

  ‘Boyfriend trouble. She always had troops of adorers did Gussie – she was that kind of girl; deb of her year; had her picture in Tatler every month – and they were mostly fine. But there was one real shocker. God knows what she saw in him, except a way of exasperating my mama, who could be a tad tyrannical at times. Gussie brought him to Oxford one weekend, intending to pick me up so that the three of us could go on to lunch with some friends of hers. They had a house near Oxford. Not quite Blenheim, but not far off.’

  He paused, as though he expected her to say something, but she couldn’t think of a suitable comment.

  ‘At the last minute the boyfriend dug his toes in and refused to go,’ he went on. ‘He was a Trot of some kind, of course, but that wasn’t why. I think they’d had a row in the car and he just wanted to make her life tough. He seemed to expect her to jack in the lunch and take him back to London for beans on toast.’

  ‘How did Jeremy help?’

  ‘He overheard the tail end of the row, which was still spluttering as they got to our rooms. And he may have seen Gussie crying, which was rare enough to make anyone jump. Anyway, he volunteered to feed the boyfriend and look after him till Gussie was ready to pick him up on her way back to London. I couldn’t imagine how it would work out, but she had remarkable faith in Jeremy. He was a kind chap.’