‘Maybe.’ But if he had been able to approach her like that, thought Trish, he wouldn’t have been the man he was, so the point was academic.
‘As it is, he has shown considerable courage and has never offended again. Indeed, he positively keeps his distance from women. This unfair dismissal is giving him exactly the kind of stress that could throw him right back. It was truly unfair, Ms Maguire, and I am determined to have it rescinded. You do see, do you not, why he needs your help?’
‘Yes, I do.’ Trish thought of Kara’s letter. She, too, had seen Collons’s disadvantages principally in terms of the help he needed. Clearly both Kara and James Bletchley were better people than she was herself. ‘As a matter of interest, why didn’t you tell me all this before I met him?’
‘I felt it would not be fair. I thought it better that you should have the opportunity to form your own judgement of him.’
‘I see. Well, I’d have preferred to know it all first. We’ll have to work out a way round it, if it comes up.’
When Trish had put down her phone, she realised that the tadpole of suspicion had turned into a full-grown frog. She knew all about the way some sex offenders progress from voyeurism and minor crimes, such as the theft of knickers from a washing line, to harassment, assault, rape, and ultimately murder.
If Collons were one of them, and if he had once believed that a woman who had merely smiled at him on the tube had wanted a relationship with him, how much more might he have misinterpreted Kara’s kindness?
Had he gone to her cottage the night she died in the belief that she wanted to make love with him? If so, she would have rejected him. Trish had no doubts whatever on that score, just as she was certain that Kara would have done it gently. But could anyone have done it gently enough? If Collons had moved up the ladder of serious offences, any rejection could have triggered real violence. Well aware that most rapists were motivated by power rather than desire, Trish also knew of cases in which an inability to relate normally to women did impel men to try to take what they couldn’t ask for.
Something was nagging at her memory, something the two young police officers had said when they came to her chambers the morning after Kara’s death. Then she remembered: they had told her that Kara had been assaulted ‘with an implement of some kind’.
Trish’s mental pictures became increasingly vivid as she thought of Collons in the grubby pub near Waterloo, his face glowing like a peony after her unintended suggestion that he might have failed to satisfy Kara.
What if he had tried to have sex with her against her will, been unable to sustain an erection, grabbed something he could use to punish her for his failure and then in an excess of humiliation and fury killed her?
But why, if he were the killer, would he have risked arousing suspicion by forcing himself on Trish and banging on and on about how she must investigate Kara’s death?
A knock on the door made her blink. Debby’s anxious face appeared round the jamb. Trish forced herself to concentrate on the present. ‘Yes, Debby? What is it?’
‘It’s this opinion I’m typing for Mr Hogwell. I can’t work out what he’s getting at and I can’t read his writing.’
‘Debby, why come to me?’ Trish, who had done all her own typing for years, found some of the other barristers’refusal to learn to use a laptop quite infuriating. She saw Debby flinch at her impatience and made herself smile as she explained, ‘It‘s not my writing you can’t read, is it? Or my opinion you’re typing. Why should I be able to answer your questions?’
‘No, I know it isn’t,’ Debby said, twisting her long curly hair around her index finger and looking about ten years younger than she could possibly have been. ‘But Mr Hogwell gets so angry when I ask questions, and looks at me as though I’m stupid. I thought you’d know, you see, what he was getting at here, so I wouldn’t have to ask him. Sometimes he tells Dave to make me concentrate better if I’ve asked too many questions, and you know what Dave can be like when he’s angry. I’m really sorry if I’m disturbing you.’
‘That’s OK.’ Trish could not remember ever being as young and frightened as Debby. ‘Bring it here.’
The problem was easily solved and Debby went off more happily. Trish’s difficulties were less tractable. Her own advice to Collons was ringing in her ears. If he had information – or even simply suspicions – about Kara’s death then he should go to the police.
But it wasn’t so easy for her. This time it wasn’t the code of conduct that held her back. Collons hadn’t told her that he’d had anything to do with Kara’s death so there was no question of contravening the rules about client privilege. But there were other considerations.
Trish knew from her own experience how it felt to be the target of unjust police suspicions and she would not wish that on anyone, particularly not on someone with a personality as fragile as Collons’s, and a past like his. The stress of being taken in for questioning again, having his flat searched, even just living under suspicion, might be more than he could take.
If he had killed Kara, then he deserved pretty much anything that happened to him, but if he was innocent, he had to be protected, as Kara herself had asked.
Trish pulled forward a sheet of rough paper, trying to remember all the things Collons had told her or hinted he might tell her. As she wrote them down, the frog started leaping around in her mind again and she wondered how much he had understood of the client-privilege rules. If he hadn’t been aware that they covered only things a client had actually told his counsel, then he might have thought the very fact that she was his barrister would neutralise her.
He had always known that she was a friend of Kara’s; perhaps he had been afraid that Kara might have told her something about him that would incriminate him if it were passed to the police. If so, his determination to persuade her to take him on as a client could have been an attempt to make sure that she would not be able to tell them anything.
Or perhaps he had simply been trying to establish himself in her eyes as someone who desperately wanted to know what had happened to Kara so that she would ignore whatever information he was afraid she might have.
Oh, come on! Trish said to herself. You’re overcomplicating this. If Collons knows anything about client privilege, he must know it applies only to things he’s actually told me. And he hasn’t said anything damning about himself in connection with Kara or her death. It’s really only his appearance that seems so prejudicial.
But it was not only that, as she had to admit a moment later. There was also his past, his paranoia, and his peculiar reaction to her unfortunate double entendre.
She decided to talk to George about it. He was absolutely trustworthy and totally discreet, and he had a clear, logical mind. She knew she could tell him anything without worrying that it might leak out, and simply putting her suspicions into words might help her decide what to do about them.
Having got that far, Trish deliberately put Collons out of her mind and reached for the papers for the next day’s case, in which her client was suing her husband for a share in the profits of the business they had set up together.
By seven thirty, she had had enough. On her way out, she was surprised to see a light still on in the clerks’room. Hoping that Debby was not crying over her word-processor, Trish looked round the open door. Dave was there alone, writing something in the soft yellow light from his cherished desk lamp. The brass seemed even shinier than usual.
‘Why are you still here, Dave?’ Trish said, thinking a little maliciously that perhaps he was suffering from domestic difficulties. ‘Everything OK?’
‘Naturally. The wife and I are meeting friends up West tonight. No point going back to Croydon first.’
‘No, I suppose not. Look, Dave, I’m glad you’re here. I was wondering if you could do me a favour.’
‘Were you, Ms Maguire?’
‘Yes,’ she said, ignoring his provocative smirk. ‘I wondered if you could ask around for any gossip there is about James Ble
tchley.’
‘Blair Collons’s solicitor?’ Dave was immediately serious. ‘Why? Is there a problem?’
‘No. But I’ve heard a few odd things about him, and about a client of his called Drakeshill. Martin Drakeshill. I just wondered whether, if there were anything iffy about either of them, you could let me know. It’s not likely to affect our brief, but I always like to know if I should be watching out for elephant traps.’
Dave’s harsh face softened as it did on the rare occasions when one of the juniors impressed him. ‘It’s stood us in good stead, that caution of yours, Ms Maguire. Yes, all right, I’ll put the word out among the clerks.’
‘But without saying who wants it or why?’
‘Naturally.’ Dave stroked his Churchillian desk lamp and puffed out his narrow chest. ‘You can rely on me.’
Trish left him and pulled up her coat collar as the cold hit her. Even so, she paused half-way across Blackfriars Bridge as usual, to look back over the muddle of Puddle Dock and the Mermaid Theatre to the dome of St Paul’s sitting magnificently solid above them. It would have been lovely if the light had been white and the sky inky blue and splattered with stars, but that night it was nothing but a murky pale-orange blur.
She was just turning off the Blackfriars Bridge Road into her own small side road when it struck her that she had automatically believed James Bletchley’s story about Collons’s past without so much as asking for evidence. She should have known better.
Chapter Eleven
Bill Femur was staring red-eyed at the mess of pizza boxes, sandwich wrappers, butt ends, and half-eaten remnants of his officers’latest working meal. He wished he could call it a day, but there was still far too much to do.
The team was working reasonably well, and Caroline Lyalt was doing her usual good job of welding the separate parts together, but there were a few glitches yet to be sorted. Still, it could have been a lot worse.
At times he thought they were beginning to get somewhere; at others, like now, he felt thwarted and thick, which always bugged him. Particularly when there was a scrote out there who enjoyed terrifying and mutilating women before he killed them. The lab reports had made it clear that Kara’s killer had played with her for some time before he had finally strangled her, maybe even as long as an hour.
What that hour must have been like for her was something Femur wasn’t going to let himself think about. It wouldn’t get him the result any quicker, and that was all that mattered. Whether it was the original rapist or a copycat, they had to get him soon. More than anything else at the moment, Femur dreaded hearing that there’d been another body found.
He rubbed his sore eyes and tried to think what he might have missed. He was almost sure that S and the killer were the same man – otherwise why was S being so sodding elusive? – but as yet he’d no idea whatsoever who S could be.
Between them, the team had spoken to every single person in Kara’s home and work address books whose first or last names began with S. None had admitted to any of the appointments listed in the diary or seeing her on the evening she died. No letters from any S had been found in her cottage, and none of the messages on her answering-machine tape were any use either.
‘Could it be a nickname, sir?’ said a muffled young voice from the shadows at the far end of the room.
Femur stopped digging his fingers into his eyes and looked up. Young Owler, who, to do him credit, was a bloody good worker, was eating yet another cheese-and-pickle sandwich as he tapped at his keyboard. The boy had an inexhaustible capacity for food, and yet he was as thin as knitting needle.
‘Could be, of course,’ said Femur. He put his hands in his pockets so that he couldn’t do any more damage to his eyes. ‘Or it could be a place. Like the hotel.’
‘You thinking of a love nest of some kind, Guv?’
Femur turned to see Tony Blacker standing in the doorway, taking off his old mac to shake the wet off it. He’d been following up the leads provided by the house-to-house officers and looked as though he hadn’t got anywhere useful. He’d been in a bad mood ever since he’d interviewed Jed Thomplon and learned that even though he hadn’t a good word to say for Kara he had an unbreakable alibi for her murder. Thomplon had been driving back from a long weekend in Scotland with his latest girlfriend for most of the night.
The story might not have been enough to get him off the hook, except that the girl, the restaurant where they’d stopped for dinner off the motorway, and the credit-card receipt for the petrol he’d bought at the Leicester service station on the Ml all confirmed his story. Blacker had checked it extra carefully because he’d taken a strong dislike to Dr Thomplon and would have loved to have him in an interview room for a few hours, putting him through the hoops. But no dice.
‘Right, Tony. How’d it go?’ Femur asked, ignoring his question.
‘Not well, Guv. The neighbour is sure it was a man she used to see hanging about in Huggate’s garden. He was probably in his thirties or forties. Or maybe older. But, then, maybe younger now she comes to think of it. Brown hair, or maybe black, but as it was raining she can’t be sure. Quite a big man, she thinks, although he wasn’t much taller than the weeping cherry in the front garden.’
‘Which is?’
‘Five six, according to my tape, Guv.’
‘Right. A real giant, then.’
‘Exactly. Not her fault, though, poor old duck,’ Blacker said, with more tolerance than Femur had expected. ‘She hasn’t got good eyesight, it was always in the dark when she saw him; and she didn’t like the look of him, so she didn’t stay any longer than she had to when she was putting the rubbish out or whatever else took her out of doors after dark.’
‘Did she ever report him?’
Blacker raised his eyes and his shoulders. ‘Three times, apparently, and the nice man she spoke to at the police station said she wasn’t to worry too much as the man wasn’t breaking in anywhere or shouting or making a nuisance of himself, but a patrol car would come and have a look as soon possible. So nice he was, the man on the phone, so nice and so reassuring.’
‘Right.’ Femur produced a smile at Blacker’s faithful impersonation of a worried witness, trying to be helpful and failing. ‘And did they ever send a car?’
‘Yes. Once. After the first call. But there wasn’t anyone there and no sign that there ever had been. They even rang Huggate’s bell and asked if she’d been bothered by loiterers and she looked gobsmacked, said she’d never had any trouble at all. So whenever the poor old duck rang again, they just soothed her and ignored her. Dotty old ladies seeing men in the dark … You know how it is, Guv.’
‘Right. But you’d have thought someone would’ve remembered after she was killed and told us. God! They are a bunch of dozy buggers, aren’t they? D’you think your dotty old woman would be any good at identifying the man if we ever pick anyone up?’
‘We could try, but I doubt it. She couldn’t stick by any description she gave for more than two seconds, always contradicting herself or adding something and then taking it back.’
Tony Blacker blew out his frustration in a gusty breath and shook his head. His hair was dark with rain and he looked as tired as Femur. He started to pick savagely at his left ear.
So, it’s like that for him too, is it? thought Femur. What is it about Kara Huggate that’s got under our skins? I’ve never had it this bad before.
‘What was it you were saying about a love nest, Guv?’ Blacker asked, eyeing the remains of the sandwiches.
Femur shrugged. ‘Kara’s phone bill shows she twice made calls to a hotel at Gatwick on days when she was supposed to be meeting S.’
Owler reached for the other half of his sandwich. Femur watched him, thinking that he couldn’t possibly still be hungry. Perhaps he found eating eased the frustration. Or perhaps he didn’t even notice what he was doing and just put any food he saw into his mouth.
‘Aha! Any idea who she was calling?’
‘Nope. The calls went throu
gh the switchboard at the hotel and none of the operators can remember her voice – Jenkins has played them all tapes of her speaking – so we’ve no idea which room she wanted. But why should they remember? Operators like them get thousands of calls a day.’
‘No, but the very fact that it’s an airport hotel gives us a clue, doesn’t it, Guv?’ Tony Blacker began to look excited. ‘S must be a foreigner, staying over at the airport. So if he flew out straight after he killed her …’
Femur raised his eyebrows.
‘I know, Guv,’ Blacker said, putting up both hands in surrender. ‘I know you’ll have thought of it too.’
‘Right. But I don’t think he is a foreigner. For one thing there are no foreign numbers in her address book, apart from a US law firm, an Australian publisher and a gîte in the Dordogne, and they’re not going to give us anything useful.’
‘So what do you think then?’
‘That S is a married man, who wanted to meet her in the most anonymous place he could think of. And what could be more anonymous than a big airport hotel?’
‘And if he’s married, that’s why he’s being so hard to find and didn’t leave any evidence of himself in her cottage or on her answering-machine.’
‘Right. I think she must’ve kept his number somewhere else …’
‘Or learned it by heart?’
‘Maybe. And called him from the office, where the system isn’t sophisticated enough to show which extension called which number. There are no calls on her home phone bill that were to him – as far as we’ve been able to establish so far. Anyway, Jenkins is back at the hotel now, questioning the night staff about any guests who arrived late or dishevelled or behaved in any suspicious way on the night of the murder. There had to be a lot of blood on him, whoever he was. Kara’s drains show no sign that he washed there, so he must’ve done it somewhere else. But it could’ve been anywhere. I can’t say I’ll be surprised if he didn’t go back the hotel looking like an abattoir slaughterman. Why would he?’
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