Thursday 19 April
David had been safely delivered to the kids’ club with his new friends, so Trish had two hours free to work. Plugging in her laptop and its modem, she downloaded all her emails and phoned her home landline to collect any messages left on her machine there.
None of it was too bad. Her clerk had reported that the instructing solicitors to whom he had delivered her various opinions were all happy enough. Even the two whose clients had hoped for a different outcome of her deliberations were resigned to what she had advised. There was a cheery email from Antony, saying he trusted she was ignoring chambers and learning how to sleep and eat properly again. And Bee had sent one with confirmation that her publishers’ insurance company’s solicitors would be getting in touch with Trish’s clerk.
Trish looked at the last email and was tempted to share with Bee the scenes that had been building in her imagination of the day Simon Tick and Jeremy had met in Jeremy’s rooms in Christ Church. Would she be able to use them to persuade Tick to withdraw his claim?
Caro was looking at the results of the rapist’s blood tests. He’d been safely remanded into custody, so it didn’t make any
difference that his blood showed a high level of cocaine, probably crack. But it explained the extreme violence of his attack on the victim. It also brought Caro back to her conviction that strangling the illegal drugs trade long before it supplied the little dealers who fed the habits of all the criminals like this one would do more to make life in London safe than a dozen years of ordinary policing. The phone rang and she reached for the receiver without looking.
‘Inspector Lyalt,’ she said.
‘Hi, Caro.’ It was a man’s voice.
‘Who is this?’
‘John Crayley. This isn’t work.’ His voice could have been distorted by the phone, but it sounded odd to her, and urgent. ‘I enjoyed the dinner at your house, and I’m so sorry I haven’t yet written to thank you that I wondered if I could take you out for lunch instead.’
‘How kind. Um. When were you thinking?’
‘Today? I’m not far from you. I thought we could meet at the Stepping Stone in Queenstown Road. Could you get there by twelve thirty?’
‘I don’t see why not,’ she said, far too curious to refuse. ‘I assume congratulations are in order.’
‘What?’
‘For the job. You were top of the shortlist.’
He laughed with a sound that sharpened her curiosity. ‘Nothing like that. No. I didn’t get it. This is instead of a letter. To thank you. I’ll see you there.’
He’d put down the phone before she could answer. Surprised and deeply curious, she cleared part of her work backlog before setting off for the restaurant. John was sitting with his back to a huge plain mirror when she walked in. There were no other customers yet, which was a relief. He waved and told her he’d ordered a bottle of mineral water, but there were lots of delicious wines on the list if she’d like some.
‘I’m working this afternoon,’ she said. ‘And I oughtn’t to be here anyway. I’ve got a stack of paperwork about two feet high. But you sounded …’
Letting the words tail off, she thought she’d never seen the golden boy looking so grey.
‘What?’
‘Bothered,’ she said, with a smile to show she knew how inadequate the word she’d chosen was. He smiled back, which helped to warm up the greyness.
‘I am bothered. Can you tell me why you wanted your friend Trish Maguire to look me over?’
Oh sod it, Caro thought. What has Trish gone and done now?
He put both hands on the table. She saw how clean they were, like a surgeon’s, and wondered what impulse made him wash them quite so carefully.
‘Caro, this could be one of those conversations that gets nowhere because neither of us can bear to risk saying more than the other already knows, so I’ll start. Someone has told you that I’m bent, haven’t they?’
He waited. She admired his courage in raising the subject, but he had to give her a bit more before she talked. He went on waiting, so eventually she nodded.
‘And you hauled in your barrister friend to find a way of digging into my family background for clues?’
‘That wasn’t deliberate. I had no idea you were adopted. But I did want her to have a look at you.’
‘Are you saying you didn’t ask her to find out who my natural father is?’
‘Absolutely.’ Caro saw he didn’t believe her, which puzzled her as much as it irritated her. ‘What’s Trish been doing?’
‘You’re much better at this than I expected, Caro,’ he said with a faint smile. ‘To save your face, I’ll give you a digest of the story. Your friend acquired from my adoptive mother an audio tape of an interview with my natural father, in which she wrung
from him an admission that I have been working for him throughout my career in the Met.’
‘I don’t understand. Who is your father?’ she said, while thinking furiously: why the
hell
hasn’t Trish told me any of this?
John laughed. She’d never heard so much derision from anyone.
‘You don’t have to go on pretending. As you very well know, he’s Jack Slabb.’
Caro felt her hand holding up her jaw. She hadn’t realised she’d moved it until she felt the warmth of skin on skin.
Why am I here? she asked herself. Is this the prelude to a car sweeping me up so that I can be dealt with as Sam Lock was? She could see most of the road reflected in the mirror behind John’s head. A large black Mercedes was nosing along the row of illegally parked cars in the bus lane. Thank God Trish and David were well away from London. But why hadn’t Trish warned her?
‘This is great, Trish,’ David said, tucking into a burger. ‘I really like it here.’
‘Good. Me, too.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes. I needed a rest, and this is perfect – and it’s showing me why you and George like swimming so much.’
‘This isn’t like the kind we do when we’re training,’ he said, before taking another huge mouthful of beef and bread. ‘Not with the flume and the tropical plants and the heat of it all. It can be really cold doing laps till you’ve got your blood up.’
Trish wanted to ask what had really happened the day he was half drowned at the pool in Farringdon, but he had still not mentioned the episode to her and she didn’t want to frighten him out of whatever rationalisation he had achieved.
‘What’s the matter?’ he said when he’d swallowed.
‘Nothing. Why?’
‘You’ve got that look again.’ He looked at his plate and pushed the remaining food to one side. ‘Like when you’re scared.’
‘Scared, David? I’m not scared. Except of seeing you turned into a burger if you never eat something different.’
‘Not any more, I know,’ he said, ignoring her attempt to laugh him out of seriousness. ‘But you have been, and you looked like that then.’ He raised his eyes. They were huge and black in a face growing paler as she watched. ‘I hate it when you’re scared.’
‘David, I …’
‘Not ordinarily, like when you’ve got to go to court and you get all snappy. I know how that works and I don’t mind it. Not now, anyway. It’s when you pretend everything’s all right, but you jump whenever anybody phones or makes a noise on the iron staircase and your eyes get that inside-out look, and you stop eating again. I
hate
it, Trish.’
‘David, I’m really sorry if I’ve frightened you, but I think you must be misreading what happens when I get stressed at work. There’s been a lot on in chambers and I’ve been quite tired recently. It’s made me seem horribly mean, I know. I don’t ever want to snap at you or jump at sudden noises, but all grown-ups do things like that when they have ordinary worries. It’s not like being really frightened.’ She hesitated, then tackled what she assumed was at the root of this, hoping he was old enough to cope. ‘Not like what your mother must have felt.’
David’s eyes slid sideways, breaking the contact between them. Trish knew she’d trodden over a forbidden line. So she might as well have asked her questions.
‘You were watching me like she used to,’ he muttered. ‘Peering at me and following me about. That’s why I like it here. You don’t do it here, and you let me do things on my own.’
He’s still only eleven, Trish told herself, fighting the urge to come clean. You can’t tell him the truth. You’ve done enough
harm already. You have to lie now, and lie convincingly.
‘I wasn’t frightened, David,’ she said in the quiet, certain voice she’d always used to make him feel safe. ‘But I was worried about you, when you kept losing things, like your phone and the rugby boots, and then when you had the accident with your bike.’
‘I
said
I was sorry.’
‘That’s not what I mean. I know you’re sorry. And it doesn’t matter if it was just ordinary losing, but I thought it could be something else. You see, sometimes when people have things on their mind that they can’t bear to talk about, they do what we call acting out, trying to tell the people around them that something is the matter without using any words. I thought maybe you were trying to tell me something, and I was watching you to see if I could work out what it was.’
His eyes were looking straight at hers again, and sharpening with interest.
‘You mean like you not wanting to say to George that you hate it when he asks you how much your new shoes cost?’
Trish half turned her head, as though trying to hear voices that weren’t there. She ought to have been amused – or impressed – but the only thing she felt was shock.
‘How do you know that, David?’
He laughed and looked like a child again. ‘It’s easy. Your face goes stiff, even when you’re smiling at him. And you make jokes, but only after you’ve been quiet for a bit. And then you tease him about how much it costs to have his suits made.’
‘Do you talk to George about things like this?’ she asked, thinking of all the private swimming expeditions the two of them had had.
‘Oh, no. He doesn’t notice them. And he hasn’t a clue that you hate it so much, or he wouldn’t do it. He doesn’t like making you cross, or sad.’
‘This is all very clever, David. What else do you see?’
He shrugged. ‘Lots. George is the same when you won’t tell him where you’re going. He hates that.’
Trish was silent. There was never any real reason to keep any of her destinations secret, but there had been times when George’s questions about her plans had seemed too intrusive to be borne. The thought of David’s watching them both and decoding their unspoken thoughts so easily made her feel as though she’d suddenly lost half her clothes.
‘It makes him worry,’ David said, once again concentrating on his plate. ‘Like it does me.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said again, wanting to explain. ‘It’s a question of privacy. Like you wanting to be allowed to do things on your own. Sometimes, even when you’re a grown-up, you need to be able to do things just for you, without anyone else knowing anything about it. I didn’t realise it worried you both so much. I’ll try not to do it.’
‘When’s George coming to join us?’ David said, clearly signalling the end of intimacy for the moment.
‘Tomorrow evening, unless he has trouble with a client. He’s going to eat supper in London so the worst of the Friday traffic can ease off, then he’ll drive up here. You’ll probably be asleep by the time he comes in, but you’ll see him for breakfast on Saturday morning.’
‘Great.’
‘Now. An ice cream? Or something else off the pudding menu?’
Watching him make his choice, wondering whether you could ever truly know the people you loved and lived with, she thought again about Gillian Crayley’s discovery of John’s treachery. What must she be feeling now?
The bright colours and families eating all around her dimmed as Trish’s eyes lost their focus. In her mind she was seeing the faces of everyone she’d interviewed in her search for someone to help Caro. Why had it been so easy for her to discover John
Crayley’s secrets? If she, with no special facilities or authority, had got to Gillian – and found out who she was – why hadn’t anyone within the police or security services done the same? Any basic vetting would have turned up the information. How could she have been so stupid? John had to have been working for both the Slabbs and the secret authorities all along.
But which loyalty came out on top? And how far would he go to protect it?
John Crayley turned his head to look at whatever had been drawing Caro’s gaze.
‘Have I got a spot on my nose or something?’ he asked, peering at his reflection.
‘No. I was looking past you at the reflection of the street. There’s a huge black car, crawling up and down just outside the restaurant. Is it something to do with you?’
‘Christ, I hope not.’ He had ripped the corner off a piece of thick, soft bread and dipped it in olive oil. Now he put the bread down, found a pen and said, ‘Can you see the registration plate?’
Caro waited until the car was at the furthest end of its range and steadily read out the figures and letters from the reflection. John wrote them down.
‘Doesn’t look familiar,’ he said, before taking his mobile out of his pocket and phoning one of his staff to ask for a computer check on the number. He put his hand over the phone, saying to Caro, ‘This shouldn’t take too long.’
She ate some of the bread herself, then a huge green olive, like the ones Trish always had in the flat. Several more tables were now full. She hoped the food would come soon.
‘Great. Thanks,’ John said at last, soon after the waiter had brought their main courses.
‘Well?’ she said when John had restored the phone to his pocket.
‘I’m told it belongs to a well-known local minicab firm,
who’ve sent it to make a pickup from a building along the street. The driver must be waiting for his passenger. We can keep an eye on it. How’s your chicken?’