Gagged & Bound

by Natasha Cooper

‘I was too tired to do anything else.’

  ‘You’re mad. Is George abroad?’

  She shook her head, horrified to feel a dampness in her eyes. She didn’t do tears and particularly not in front of a man like Antony Shelley. Another good swig of wine helped to control them.

  ‘And David?’

  ‘He’s staying with my mother. Oh, shit!’ she added as the phone in her bag bleeped to announce a text message. ‘Sorry. I forgot to turn it off.’

  Antony watched her without speaking for a couple of minutes, then said irritably, ‘You’d better look at it. You can’t think of anything else.’

  David’s name and the old number sat blackly on the small square screen. She didn’t realise she was digging her teeth into her lower lip until she tasted salt and realised she’d cut through the skin. Clicking on, she read: ‘Mor nws soon.’

  The world tilted and she grabbed the edge of the table with her free hand.

  ‘What is it, Trish? You look as if you’re going to faint.’

  His voice came from miles away, just audible through the roaring that filled her ears. Fighting it, fighting the panic and the nausea, she dragged herself back.

  ‘I’ve got to make a call. I’ll be back before you’ve even given the order.’

  She left her jacket and bag on the chair and rushed out into the street, jabbing in the code for her mother’s number. It rang and rang. She was terrified the answering machine would cut in, but she held on.

  ‘Hello?’ Meg’s breathing was fast and heavy. ‘Hello?’

  ‘It’s Trish.’

  ‘What’s happened? You sound awful.’

  ‘Where’s David?’

  ‘In the kitchen.’ Meg’s voice was calming down. ‘Why?’

  ‘What’s happened to him?’

  ‘Nothing. He’s teaching me how to make George’s all-in-one fruit cake. We were at a crucial stage when the phone rang. Trish, whatever’s the matter?’

  Through the dizziness, she heard herself say: ‘Nothing. A nightmare. Can you actually see David?’

  ‘Yes. He’s just stirring in the last of the dried fruit.’

  ‘Don’t let him out of your sight.’

  ‘Trish, stop this. I haven’t let him go anywhere without me, except the loo, since you brought him here. Don’t get so worked up. I’ll phone you a bit later when David and I are not so busy. Shall I use your mobile or chambers’ number?’

  In that moment Trish didn’t think she could bear to hear the tones of her mobile ever again, but she knew she’d have to get over it.

  ‘The mobile. I don’t know exactly where I’ll be.’

  ‘Good. You sound a bit better, too. Be careful.’

  ‘Oh, don’t.’ The words were forced out of her. ‘Sorry. Of course I will. Take care.’

  When she lowered herself into her chair her joints ached as though she’d just run ten miles.

  ‘Now, Trish,’ Antony said, ‘you are going to tell me what has been going on so that I can give you some helpful advice and stop you driving yourself into an early grave.’

  She shook her head. ‘Not now. It’s all too raw. But I will eat.’ She grabbed a brown roll from a silver basket on the table, split it and slapped on a thick pat of butter. Antony raised his eyebrows. She stuffed a torn-off piece of bread into her mouth and began to chew. He waited until she’d managed to swallow it, which took some time.

  ‘Is this a complication of the Bee Bowman business, Trish? If so, I won’t forgive myself for palming her off on you just because I was busy and she looked like trouble.’

  ‘You didn’t, and it isn’t. But I’ve been ignoring her all week. The calls and emails have been stacking up. I must get back to her, too.’ She wanted to let her head fall on the table and howl.

  ‘Here’s the steak. Eat.’

  He had ordered lobster for himself, which meant he would be fully occupied for ages, picking the flesh out of the claws and scraping it from the narrowest of feelers. A formidable range of surgical tools had been laid beside his plate, along with a fingerbowl with a piece of lemon floating in the water. Relieved of his scrutiny, Trish began to eat her steak.

  Gradually she remembered the pleasure she’d learned to take in hot food that tasted good. She chewed carefully, feeling the contrast between the meat and the richly bitter spinach leaves. She knew she wasn’t going to cry, and that she was an intelligent adult who had learned to manage pressure years ago. Antony was right: she needed sleep and nourishment to keep her brain from dreaming up fantasies of horror, and she’d exaggerated all the dangers in a quite ludicrous manner.

  Antony had never been a tidy eater, and the sight of him wrestling with his lobster made her smile. The wine tasted better this time, rich and yet with its own bitter edge. She didn’t know enough to do more than guess at an Italian origin. She wondered why he’d chosen it when he’d been planning to eat lobster. That wasn’t like him. He did know about wine.

  One piece of coral-coloured shell snapped off the rest and went flying across the hard polished floor. He looked up and grinned.

  ‘You look better.’

  ‘I ought to apologise. And thank you for the rescue. God knows what I’d have done if I’d gone trampling on through the current opinion. Did someone summon you?’

  He only smiled.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ she said, half seriously. ‘Who?’

  ‘Your pupil. She’s a bright woman and for some unknown reason of her own seems to care for you. You’ve worried her this week. She showed a lot of sense in coming to me rather than Steve.’

  Trish swallowed her humiliation with some more wine and waited for another demand to explain herself. She owed him something for her rescue, but she couldn’t tell him about Caro or the Slabbs, and George’s démarche was too painful to share with anyone.

  ‘Where have you got to with Bee Bowman?’ he asked gently.

  ‘Not far enough,’ Trish said, watching him refill her wineglass. ‘But before I started on the opinions, I’d been asking questions of all sorts of people, trying to find out why Simon Tick should have launched the claim at all when his solicitors must have warned him he had a pretty hopeless case.’

  Had the threatening messages come from him?

  She discarded the idea. If it had been only the texts, she’d have been more inclined to believe he was their author, but she couldn’t accept that he would have tried to have David drowned or run over on his bike. Oh, God! Who had it been? And what were they going to do next?

  ‘What is it, Trish?’

  ‘Nothing. What d’you mean?’

  ‘You looked as though you were hearing voices,’ he said drily. ‘Answering them too. Your lips were moving. I know you’re knackered, but I hope you’re not sinking into some kind of psychosis.’

  Antony watched Trish flinch. What little colour there was in her thin cheeks disappeared, leaving the skin looking like the pages of an old brief that had lain forgotten on a shelf for years. What had he said? Oh, shit, he thought, remembering the sabbatical she’d taken to deal with a severe depressive episode. How could he have been so crass? She’d been looking so much better, too, with half a bottle of Antinori’s best inside her, as well as London’s tenderest fillet steak.

  Last year she’d saved him from making the biggest possible fool of himself over her, so he owed her big time. This wasn’t going to do much to right the balance. A great believer in the twin maxims of ‘never apologise, never explain’ and ‘if you’re in a hole stop digging’, he produced his wickedest grin and said, ‘I’d better get the bill or that over-bright pupil of yours will start thinking I’ve whisked you off to Valparaiso.’

  ‘Where?’ she said, sounding as dazed as she looked.

  He laughed, or tried to. ‘I’m always forgetting how young you are. Valparaiso was where white slavers were reputed to take drugged virgins to put them to work in the sex trade.’

  Walking back to chambers, Trish became aware of how much she’d drunk. She didn’t think she’d
be able to do any work, even if she absorbed the strongest double espresso Nessa could find. If she hadn’t needed to show Antony that his crack about lunacy hadn’t touched her, she’d have jacked in the rest of the day and gone home to hide under the duvet. But she couldn’t do that; she might be tempted to stay for ever. She knew what that felt like, and she wasn’t going there. Not ever again.

  They had reached the top of King’s Bench Walk before Antony touched her bare hand and said; ‘Don’t take it so hard, Trish. It was only a joke. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who showed fewer signs of psychosis. Or even neurosis.’

  She opened her mouth to respond and couldn’t. Mercifully, he’d gone on ahead of her and merely waved. She waited until he’d turned into the door of 1 Plough Court and had time to get in, chat to Steve, and move on to his own room; then she made herself pick up her aching feet and follow him.

  Nessa greeted her with a cheery smile and an excited question about the restaurant Antony had chosen. That was an easy one to answer, and Trish described the meal she’d just eaten, watching Nessa’s eyes widen in envy.

  ‘I’ll take you there as a celebration when this burst of work is done,’ Trish promised and saw Nessa’s eyes stretch even wider.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I’ve been meaning to give you this, but it’s never seemed the right moment.’

  As Nessa bent down to get something out of the bottom drawer of her desk, Trish faced up to the way she must have been behaving for the past week. Desperate to get all the opinions finished, fighting her own misery and fear, she could see she must have been an intolerable room-mate. Imagined echoes of her own snapping irritation made her blush.

  ‘Here.’ Nessa held out a small padded brown envelope, with a handwritten name and address.

  ‘It didn’t come by DX,’ she said, referring to the document exchange system the whole of legal London used, ‘or I’d have put it on your desk. A woman asked to see you and gave it to me when I told her how long you were likely to be. She said it didn’t matter when you saw it, so long as no one else got a chance to open it. I hope it wasn’t more urgent than it sounded.’

  ‘I’m sure it wasn’t. Look, Nessa, I’m sorry about this week. I realise I must have behaved abominably, and you’ve—’

  ‘Don’t, Trish. It’ll only embarrass me. You were stressed out.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘It’s fine. I could cope.’

  What a woman! Trish thought. I hope she makes it through the end-of-year selection process. She deserves to be a prince of the Bar herself.

  Trish pulled fruitlessly at the thick staples in the envelope and resorted to a presentation paper knife with a sharply pointed end. That levered them out eventually, even though two were flicked straight out of the open window. Trish hoped they hadn’t hit some magnificently important judge in the face. That wouldn’t do much for her reputation.

  The impulse to giggle shocked her back into something like sobriety. But it was reading Gillian Crayley’s letter that finished the job.

  Ms Maguire

  The enclosed tape contains a recording of my brother, Jack Slabb, telling me that my son, Chief Inspector John Crayley, has been working for him throughout his career in the Metropolitan Police. I didn’t know who to send it to and so I’m asking you to forward it to whoever is in charge of the vetting process.

  I tried to entice my brother into confessing responsibility for the deaths of Stephanie Taft and Samantha Lock, but he was too clever for that. Even so, I hope that this recording will be of some use in putting him where he belongs – in gaol.

  Yours sincerely

  Gillian Crayley

  Trish sat with the letter in her hands, staring at the signature, while her mind settled.

  There was no triumph here to sing about or announce with banging drums and trumpets. But there was vindication. If she could hand this letter and the tape to someone official, who would be prepared to use it, then all the risks she’d taken, even the ones with David’s security, had been worth taking.

  Breathing became easier as she let the knowledge ease out all the doubts and miseries from her mind. Now, at last, she could see a time in the future when David might be safe again.

  She had always kept a personal stereo in her desk for listening to taped interviews with clients. She took it out, hoping the batteries still had some juice, and slipped the tape into the machine, plugging in the earpieces.

  When Nessa returned with the coffee, Trish was still listening. As she sipped bitingly strong espresso, she heard Jack Slabb taunting his sister and keeping his responses so ambiguous that they wouldn’t have counted for evidence even if they had not been recorded illegally.

  At the end, for the first time in her life, she had some sympathy with the view that her profession did the devil’s work in keeping known criminals at large to offend again and again.

  Chapter 23

  Friday evening and Saturday 13 and 14 April

  Trish’s phone rang when she was halfway across Blackfriars Bridge, sober now, but determined to have an early night so she could get her mind firing on full throttle for the weekend’s work. She was due to collect David from Beaconsfield on Monday morning and take him straight on to Center Parcs from there. That meant the last two opinions had to be completed by the end of Sunday evening, and she would have to talk to Bee, as well as find a way to sort things out with George.

  The jingle of her phone was getting louder every minute. She pulled it out of her pocket, noticing how the last of the sunset had drawn salmon-coloured streaks in the indigo sky behind the London Eye. When she looked down, she saw Caro’s name on the screen of her phone and put it to her ear.

  ‘Trish? Me. I haven’t got anywhere with our techies. Without a registration for David’s phone, there’s nothing they can do. I’m really sorry. And I don’t think I’m going to be able to persuade my colleagues to do anything about David’s bike. The theory is it’s almost certainly schoolboy malice. If there’s any more trouble, which God forbid, I’ll go back to them.’

  Trish stopped walking and turned to look behind her. There was no one there. Leaning against the flat metal of the balustrade, she said, ‘He texted me again today to say there’d be more news soon. I thought … I thought something …’ She took a huge breath, blew it out again, then said, ‘I had all kinds of melodramatic fantasies, but my mother swears David is fine. I’ve just got to wait.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Caro said again. She sounded defeated, more so, Trish thought, than even the news warranted.

  ‘You haven’t heard about the job, have you?’

  There was a pause. Then Caro said, ‘This afternoon. I didn’t get it. I thought of going straight back to them with everything Stephanie had told me, but how can I? They’d be even more ready to believe it was spite now.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Caro. Did John Crayley get it?’ One day Trish would tell Caro about Gillian’s information but not yet, and never over an insecure mobile phone.

  ‘Presumably They haven’t told me. But I can’t believe he’s been behind what’s happened to David. He wouldn’t use a child like that. Not John.’

  ‘Are you sure? There wasn’t actually much physical damage, and compared with what happened to Stephanie Taft and Sam Lock, bribing someone to cut a bike’s brake cable was nothing.’

  ‘Even if John is linked to the people who killed Sam Lock or Stephanie, I can’t believe he knew what was going to happen to either of them. He’s just not the sort who—’

  ‘Isn’t that what everyone says about the jolly little man at the end of the street who turns out to have bodies buried under his patio?’ Trish said, hating Crayley for his lies and shams, and for what he’d done to his adoptive mother. ‘I’m sorry about the job, Caro. I could see how much it meant to you.’

  ‘At this stage, with everything that’s happened, I’m not sure I mind that much. It seems trivial somehow.’

  ‘What else has happened?’ Horrible pictures raced through Trish�
��s imagination. Had Gillian Crayley’s tall body been found on some waste ground with her head in a plastic bag? ‘I’ve been so busy I’ve hardly even read a paper. Has there been another death?’

  ‘No. But there have been developments in the Sam Lock enquiry. Apparently there may be a connection with Stephanie’s death, and with the Slabbs. It sounds as though that idea of yours could be right after all. Someone brought in a note he claimed would link them once the scientific tests had been done. I haven’t got the details because I’m not on the case, but I should hear something soon. I’ll fill you in as soon as I do.’

  So Brian Walker did his stuff, Trish thought, speeding up. And if John Crayley’s DNA or fingerprints are on the note – if it is a note – they’ll be kept on the files. If I can get Gillian’s tape to the right person and they believe what they hear, they can test Crayley’s prints and DNA and make a match. Then it’ll all unravel for him, and without damaging Caro.

  ‘Trish, there’s someone shouting for me. I must go.’

  ‘Before you do,’ Trish said, ‘could you run a check to see if a man called Derrick Flick has ever had any connection with the Slabbs or John Crayley?’

  ‘Who? Why?’

  ‘He’s David’s school caretaker, and the only person I can think of who had access to his rugby boots, his phone and his bike, as well as the opportunity to damage the bike.’

  ‘I’ll do what I can.’ Caro sounded as though she was getting back some of her usual energy. ‘Must go now. Night.’

  With the phone returned to her pocket, Trish walked on, deliberately slowing down her thoughts so she could put them in order, making a sequential narrative rather than a mass of sparking possibilities. She wanted to test them in an imaginary cross-examination to be sure she wasn’t about to make a crashing fool of herself.

  As soon as she was back in the flat, she picked up the landline to call Antony. All her analysis and agitation had confirmed her view that she had to do what Caro had never been able to face. She had to go direct to someone within MI5 and pass on everything she knew or guessed. Any other course of action would be irresponsible and could only cause more trouble. More people might die.