Gagged & Bound

by Natasha Cooper

  ‘You know, Gillie, I never thought I’d see you again. It’s good we’re meeting up like this. Why don’t we have a drink on it? You got any beer?’

  ‘Sid and I don’t drink. But I could make some coffee. Or tea.’

  ‘Filthy stuff. I could take you out. There must be somewhere in God-forsaken Catford – Catford! – where a man can get a decent pint.’

  ‘I’d rather stay here. I want your word, Jack, that you won’t say anything to spoil John’s chances of this new job.’

  He said nothing, gently swinging his right foot and watching her over his steepled fingers.

  ‘What?’ she said at last. ‘What are you looking at me like that for?’

  ‘I’m wondering what you said to the positive-vetting people. And hoping you haven’t screwed things up yourself.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘Our John has worked very hard to get to this point,’ Jack said. ‘I wasn’t sure at the start that he’d have it in him, but he has. And he’s done bloody well. I hope you haven’t given them any reason to doubt his story of who he is.’

  It took a moment for the significance to hit her; then it did. Her mouth filled with saliva. Swallowing was hard, and there was pain in her belly. She crossed her arms over it and felt her head swim.

  ‘Sit down, for Christ’s sake,’ Jack said, ‘or you’ll be on the floor.’

  Half dazed, she fumbled her way round the back of the armchair and leaned against it.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ she whispered.

  ‘You don’t believe what?’

  ‘That you … that you …’ She put a hand over her mouth and rushed for the toilet.

  Later, running the cold tap at the basin, she washed her face and hands. On her way back to the lounge, she flicked a glance towards Sid’s old music centre. It had once been his pride and joy and he’d tinkered with it all through his free weekends. He didn’t often listen to anything now, but the recording function still worked. Gillian had tested it only this morning and had it ready. To cover the glance, in case Jack had noticed, she walked over to the shelves and took down one of the albums that recorded John’s childhood.

  ‘How long have you known where he worked?’ She opened the album and stroked the big studio portrait she’d had taken when he first went to big school.

  Jack swung his foot even more freely so that the loafer slipped off, to hang precariously from his toes.

  ‘I’ve watched his progress all through, from nursery to the day he made chief inspector. If he was going to be a loser then I didn’t want to know. But when I saw he was a chip off the old block, I could’ve kissed his ugly mug.’

  ‘He’s not ugly.’ The protest was forced out of Gillian. It made Jack smile.

  ‘Manner of speaking, Gillie. You’re right, he gets his looks from Sally, doesn’t he? I see her in him all the time.’

  ‘Does he know you’re his father?’

  ‘Of course he does! Oh, come on, Sis. You’re not telling me you’ve been taken in, are you? He’s been a fully paid-up member of the Slabb family since he was first in uniform.’

  She put a hand over her mouth, terrified she might throw up again. All she wanted to do was crawl upstairs to her bed and bury her face in her pillow. With the tape turning, she knew she mustn’t be such a coward. Whatever John’s betrayal was doing to her, she had to get a full admission out of his father.

  ‘Is that why he was such a good thief-taker so young?’ she said. ‘Were you feeding him information?’

  ‘Of course.’ A familiar smile, creased his face and brought goose bumps up all over her arms. ‘It was a way of killing two birds with one stone: pushed my lad up the rankings and got rid of people who were giving me grief.’

  ‘People like Samantha Lock, you mean?’

  The smile disappeared. His eyes looked at her as they’d done the time he lined up her dolls and set fire to them, one after the other, forcing her to watch until the last one was incinerated. She could still remember the foul smell of burning plastic and the feel of his hands on her arms as he gripped them, pushing her face forwards to the fire.

  ‘Coward,’ he’d whispered first into her right ear, then into her left, with his breath hot on her skin and his hands biting into her flesh. ‘I know you’ve got your eyes shut. Coward. You can’t face anything. Coward. Filthy little coward. Open your piggy little eyes and watch. You’re never going to get any more dolls, so you’d better look at these while you can.’

  He’d smeared ash over her hands and clothes, and rubbed it into her hair, then he’d told their parents how she’d burned the dolls herself. Their father had believed the story on no evidence at all. When she’d protested and told him the truth about what had happened, he’d beaten her for being what he called ‘a nasty little liar’. She’d gone straight from being his favourite to no more than a piece of contemptible muck on the sole of his shoe. She couldn’t remember ever seeing him smile at her again.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Jack said, shocking her back into the present. Now she found it easy to see the cruel boy he’d been behind the mask of age and money.

  ‘I think you do,’ she said, tasting hate again as sharply as she ever had. ‘But so what? I never met Samantha Lock. I don’t care much about her. Stephanie Taft’s a different matter.’

  He raised his well-kept grey eyebrows.

  ‘You know. The woman John loved. Still loves. They lived together till something went wrong eighteen months ago. If you know him as well as you claim, you’d know all about it. Was their break-up your doing?’

  The grin was coming back, creasing his cheeks and lifting the edges of his mouth.

  ‘In a way. She was a lot brighter than this Lulu he’s got now. I didn’t think it was a good idea having a clever, pushy bird in his nest.’ He swung his foot so vigorously that the shoe came right off. The sight of his slim foot in the sleek sock, feeling around on the floor like a long-tongued sea creature, made her shiver. He found the shoe and stuffed his foot into it, stamping down on the heel. ‘So I told him to get rid of her. It was the only time he made a fuss about anything. Took a while till he saw sense.’

  ‘And her death? He suspects you of being behind it, you know.’

  ‘How would you know that? You don’t know anything about him.’

  Gillian stood with the album in one hand and rearranged the pleats over her thighs with the other. ‘He’s been like someone standing on the lip of hell ever since the news of Stephanie’s death broke. I could see it wasn’t just unhappiness over an old girlfriend dying. That doesn’t make you feel as if the flames are licking your feet. He did. Now I know why. He must think you ordered the shooting.’

  She paused to give him a chance to admit it, but he smiled up at her, as bland as a banana smoothie.

  ‘Just like he must be wondering how much more he can take, Jack. And how to get away from you and back into the decent life he was raised for.’

  ‘In your dreams. He’s mine to the marrow of his bones, Sis.’

  ‘I’d like you to go,’ she said, fury swelling inside her, banishing the sickness and the acid saliva.

  That was how it had always felt in the old days, as if she was pregnant with a monstrous anger and about to give birth to it. When the doctor had eventually told her she’d never have a child, she’d been sure it had been because of this: the hate and rage that had grown in her all her life so there was no space for a baby.

  He had his hand on the front door when he said casually, ‘Don’t go doing anything stupid now, Gillie. No going to the cops. Or …’

  ‘Or what? I’ll end up on the nearest common with a stick in my mouth and a bag over my head?’

  ‘I’ll tell John we had this little chat and give him your love, shall I?’ he said with the same bland smile, having made his threat clear enough.

  ‘You can do anything you want.’ She fought the pain exploding all over her body like miniature landmines. ‘But I should warn you tha
t I’ve left a letter and a lot of information with someone you’ll never be able to get to. If anything happens to me, they’ll use it.’

  She barely saw him move, but she felt the flat of his hand cracking against her cheekbone. The force of it made her head snap right over, banging into the wall.

  ‘You stupid, stupid cow. Not that I believe you. That’s the kind of idea you’d get out of one of your everlasting books. But if you ever – ever – write down anything about John or me, that slap’ll feel like a kiss. Now fuck off out of our lives and keep your fucking mouth shut.’

  The door slammed so hard that one of the stained glass panels fell out of its lead casing. Gillian looked at the small smashed pane of ruby-coloured glass and let the pent-up tears burst out of her eyes. It was as if all her life had been broken with the glass, lying like bits of hard dried blood all over the beige carpet.

  Later, with a throat that felt as if a roll of carpet had been pulled up and down it for hours and eyes swollen and burning, Gillian dragged herself to rescue the tape. She ought to listen to it, to make sure it had caught everything, including the blow and the threats, but she couldn’t bear to go through it all again so soon.

  She wished she had someone to send it to, in case Jack did try something. Or John. Tears welled again, making her eyes sting even more. She’d spent the last hour trying not to believe everything she’d heard.

  Sometimes she’d nearly managed it, teetering on the edge of safety, but each time she’d stumbled over Jack’s announcement that his son had protested about pushing Stephanie out of his life. Why that should have been so much more convincing than everything she knew about John, everything she’d taught him and believed that he was, she couldn’t understand. But it made the whole story as inescapable as the sight of those burning dolls had been.

  John had loved Stephanie. She’d always known that. But Jack couldn’t have had any idea. Even if John had told him, he was too cynical and cruel to believe something so benign, which meant he’d never have made up John’s protests. It wouldn’t have been in Jack to imagine such a thing.

  She thought of the photographs she’d taken of her son and stuck so carefully in the albums. The small boy in his white shorts and shirt, with hair still fair and smooth, standing on the front step on his way to a birthday party. The even smaller boy with no clothes on at all, playing with an old enamel jug and a bowlful of water on the grass in the back garden. The beautifully upright, handsome young police constable in his first uniform. The happy man, with one arm around Stephanie and the other holding a kebab, that some friend of theirs had taken at a bar on holiday.

  She could feel his lips on her left cheek too. As a little boy he’d always held her with his bony arms while he planted a wet kiss just below the cheekbone. When he’d grown up the arms had softened and loosened and the kiss had become warmer and drier, until now, each time she saw him, he merely brushed her skin with his lips.

  A sudden impulse made her grab the tape and run upstairs to the top right-hand drawer in the chest between the windows, where she still kept all his old school reports. In her memory, they’d been good – all of them. Had there been anything in any of them, any insignificant clue that he might not have been the child she thought she’d known?

  Thank God Sid was away, crossing Europe with a pantechnicon of Welsh lamb destined for Spain. She wouldn’t have to explain the still-spreading bruise on her face or her swollen eyes, and she had time to go through everything, testing her history with John for the moment he’d turned against her and everything she’d tried to teach him.

  She had time, too, to decide what to do with the tape. One thing she knew for certain: she had to get it out of the house and safely into the hands of someone she could trust to use it. But who?

  Simon was flying. The speech was going brilliantly; there were approving nods from all round the chamber, even from the opposition benches. Camilla was in the gallery, listening to every word. No one had picked up on either the reference to Baiborn in Beatrice Bowman’s book or the old housing-finance scandal in his department. All the press comment so far had been favourable. He knew his lines so well that he barely had to think as they emerged, beautifully modulated, from his mouth. Only the climax now. He geared himself up for it, measuring the pace and tone of his voice so the emphasis fell on exactly the right syllables. There. It was done. He bowed and sat down, waiting a dignified amount of time before glancing up towards the gallery. Camilla beamed down at him.

  At intervals throughout the debate, he looked up again, amazed to see her still there, still watching and listening. When he eventually left the chamber, he found her waiting for him outside. She hugged him tightly, as she’d done in childhood.

  ‘That was brilliant, Daddy. I’m so proud of you.’

  ‘Good.’ He kissed her. ‘Walk back to the flat with me?’

  ‘Sure.’

  The policeman on the door saluted him. They crossed the noisy bustle of Parliament Square and made their way through Victoria to his building. Upstairs, he flung open the windows to let the sweet early evening air into the room.

  ‘Thank you for staying for the whole debate, sweetheart. I’m really touched. Was it hard to get Dan Stamford to give you time off?’

  She looked a little self-conscious. ‘Right now, I think he’d give me a lot more than that. In fact, he asked if he could come with me today, but I wanted this to be just you and me.’

  ‘So you’re definitely in love with him now, are you?’ He tried to sound pleased, but he knew he hadn’t done a very good job.

  ‘You’ll like him, Daddy, when you get to know him properly. Honestly. And he’s longing to meet you.’

  Simon kissed the top of her head. ‘We’ll fix something. Now my speech is out of the way, I’ve got a bit of spare energy for things like chatting to your latest lover.’

  ‘Good. So you’ll be able to make your lawyers get a move on too. What’s happening with the case?’

  ‘Lay off, Camilla. I’ve told you. We’re waiting to see what they offer.’

  ‘They’re taking their time about it, aren’t they? Don’t you care? I can’t understand why you’re not angry.’

  ‘Because the whole thing’s absurd,’ he said. ‘And because no one except you and Dan has even noticed the wretched little book, let alone decided there’s some connection with me. You can forget it, sweetheart. I have.’

  Chapter 22

  Friday 13 April

  By Friday, Trish was exhausted, but she had completed four of the six opinions. She had also leaned on Nessa, asking her to field all phone calls and send holding responses to most of the emails that flooded in every day. Antony had stopped putting his head round her door, and even Robert backed away when he saw her coming. George had accepted her announcement that she’d be working late all week to get her opinions done before she took David to Center Parcs. Neither of them had mentioned the row again. From the way he talked, she couldn’t believe it loomed as large and threatening in George’s mind as it did in hers.

  The only phone call she had not missed was the daily one to her mother. Each day the response to her question had been the same: ‘David’s fine. He’s terrific company, and we’re both happy as larks. Stop worrying, Trish, love.’

  ‘You’re making yourself ill.’

  The familiar voice broke into her concentration and she looked up, feeling a spike of fury drive the ache deeper into her head.

  ‘Antony, I’m too busy to—’

  ‘Stop it, Trish. This is absurd. I know Steve was leaning on you, but if you work at this rate, you’ll start making mistakes. I’m taking you out to lunch now. You’ve no option but to do as you’re told.’

  ‘You are not my boss,’ she said through her teeth. ‘It’s not your business to tell me how to organise my work.’

  He came closer and put both hands on her desk, leaning forwards so their faces were only a foot apart and she couldn’t look away.

  ‘I may not be your boss, but I
am your friend. You need help.’

  ‘Bollocks.’

  ‘Come on, Trish. I haven’t seen you this bad for years. You must stop, eat and breathe properly, or you’ll crack up. Come on.’ He turned and added over his shoulder, ‘Have you got enough to do for a couple of hours, Nessa?’

  ‘Sure,’ she said, without telling him what.

  ‘Good. I’ll bring her back by three thirty.’

  ‘Why aren’t you in court, Antony?’

  ‘The other side caved in. Now, come on, Trish. Don’t ask stupid questions, and get your coat.’

  Trish watched the waiter pour three inches of garnet-coloured wine into an enormous glass.

  ‘I can’t drink all that. It’s hard enough to keep my brain clear as it is.’

  ‘You’ll drink it and – with luck – sleep it off. What time did you leave chambers last night?’

  ‘God knows. Half past one? Two?’

  ‘And the night before?’

  ‘The same.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I had six opinions to write, a nagging clerk, and …’ She picked up the glass and used it stop herself blurting out the rest. He was right: she had to slow down if she was this strongly tempted to pour out the contents of her nightmares to him.

  He was too clever to ask what she’d been going to say. Instead, he opened the enormous menu and said, ‘You’re in such a turmoil you probably won’t be able to choose anything. Shall I decide what we’re eating?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ Only as she said it and noticed an old familiar gleam in his eyes did she realise he’d done it on purpose to jerk her back into her customary self. She opened her own menu, dreading the sight of a vast list of different dishes and found only four listed for each course. ‘I’ll have fillet steak, please, medium rare, and some spinach.’

  ‘When did you last eat a proper meal?’

  ‘Can’t remember. But it doesn’t matter. I had a tin of sardines last night.’

  ‘Cold and eaten straight out of the tin?’