‘Paddy, I have to know why the police suspect you. It isn’t just that you once had an affair with her, I know that. There has to be more. But they won’t tell me what it is.’
‘I should hope not.’
‘Please let me come in and talk.’
‘Trish, it’s ancient history. And I don’t want to discuss it.’
‘Not any more, it isn’t. She’s been murdered, and they think I was only asking questions about her because—’
‘You don’t have to tell me that,’ he said. ‘I’ve had them round here, saying it to my face, over and over again. But I thought you said you were certain I couldn’t have had anything to do with it.’
‘Yes, I did.’ She had to hang on to that. The alternative was unthinkable – even though she couldn’t always stop herself thinking about it. ‘I mean I am. But I’ve heard something I have to ask you about.’
He didn’t give her any help, just stood between the door and the jamb, barring her way in.
‘Paddy, you told me once that you hit my mother. Did you ever … were you ever violent with Jeannie Nest?’ He still said nothing, but Trish thought she read guilt in his face. ‘Oh, God! Tell me it wasn’t serious.’
‘Of course it wasn’t, but I told you, Jeannie was all for women’s rights and all that crap, and she took out an injunction to stop me coming anywhere near her, but it was nearly nine years ago.’
‘She
what
?’ No wonder Lakeshaw had added him to the list of suspects, even if it had been years. ‘What on
earth
did you do to her?’ Trish heard the lift whining behind her and quickly said, ‘Look, let me come in. We can’t talk about this out here.’
‘I’ve got Bella in the flat.’
‘Does she know about the police and what they think?’
‘Of course she does, and isn’t she hopping mad about them?’
‘And about me?’
‘How would I know?’
‘Then let me come in, Paddy.’
‘No. I’m not going to talk about it any more.’
‘Who is it?’ called Bella’s voice.
‘Only Trish,’ he shouted over his shoulder. ‘But she’s not staying. I’ll be back in a jiffy.’
‘All right,’ Trish hissed. ‘So tell me out here. What did you do to Jeannie Nest to make her go to a lawyer?’
Paddy Maguire sighed and rubbed the sweat off his ruddy face with the back of one wrist. There were long black hairs poking out of his shirt cuff.
‘We had a row when I said I couldn’t bear her living in that slum and that I wanted her to come away and share my flat – the one I used to have in Battersea. And she wouldn’t. She got all sanctimonious and blathered some prissy nonsense about her pupils. She got right under my skin, so I took her by the shoulders and shook her.’
‘That’s all?’
‘Well, the wall was nearer than I’d thought, so she hit her head.’
Trish felt her muscles sag and she breathed more easily. She was about to ask how bad the injury had been, but Paddy was talking.
‘It was a mistake, Trish, an accident. The shaking? Yes, I plead guilty to that. I always did. But the head injury was accidental.’
Trish almost pitied him. Almost. ‘How serious was it? Was she knocked out?’
‘For a few minutes. And when she came round, didn’t I cart her off to casualty to get her checked out? She was fine. They did all the scans, and there was no problem
except a small concussion. But she said she never wanted to see me again. And when I went round the next day with flowers, to make sure she was all right, she said she’d set the lawyers on me, and so she did. That’s how it was, and why I didn’t give you her name in the first place. Now will you go and leave me to make my peace with Bella?’
She counts for more than I do, does she? Trish thought. Well, I suppose that’s fair. She’s the one at risk here, not me.
‘Sure. But next time tell me what’s going on. You made me think all sorts of stuff with all this shilly-shallying. One thing more: did you see her again after the conference?’
‘No, I did not.’
‘And did you ever work out which of the unfamiliar names of the delegates might have belonged to her?’
He took a step back. Trish thought once more of shoving her foot between the door and the architrave.
‘I didn’t even think about it,’ he said very quietly, then just as quietly he shut the door in Trish’s face.
Questions were screaming through her mind. Why didn’t you think to look? Is this another lie? Have you been trying to track her down? Is it too much of a coincidence that she was attending that particular conference? Why would she have gone anywhere near it when it was to include a seminar led by Paddy Maguire?
Trish put her finger on the bell again.
‘I told you to bugger off, Trish.’
‘Just one more question: were you named on the programme for the course, the one when you saw her?’
‘Sure I was.’
‘So if it was Jeannie, she must have wanted to get in touch with you. When was it, exactly?’
‘I told you – a couple of months ago.’
Had Jeannie been trying to decide whether Paddy had reformed enough to know he had a son?
‘Have the DNA results come through yet?’
‘Not that I know of.’ Once more he shut the door.
Down in the street, Trish’s mobile started tinkling like one of the carillons that had so surprised her during a weekend she’d spent with George in Amsterdam. She pressed the button and heard Lakeshaw’s voice, sounding almost tentative.
‘Ms Maguire? I wonder if you can help us.’
‘That rather depends on what you want.’ She didn’t feel like helping anyone just then.
‘The boy won’t talk to us, and we know there’s more to come. Will you see what you can do?’
‘Why should I, after all the obstructions you’ve put in my way and everything you’ve done to my father?’
‘Because you care. Or so you told me.’
When she didn’t say anything, he tried a different inducement. ‘And because getting the truth from David may be the only way we’re ever going to be able to charge anyone. If you refuse to help us, I can only suppose it’s because you’re afraid his information will incriminate your father.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. You’re right, though – I do care. I’ll come now, if you’ll tell me exactly why you had to move him.’
‘I can’t go into that. But there was a perceived risk, on which we had to act.’
‘You mean someone was asking questions? Who?’
‘I’ve told you, I can’t go into it.’
‘You’ll have to tell me where he is, if you want me there.’
‘If you’ll meet me at Kensington High Street tube station, I’ll take you there. Where are you now?’
Trish wasn’t going to admit that she’d been at her father’s flat, so she simply said that she could be at Kensington High Street tube within ten minutes and agreed to meet Lakeshaw there, outside the station, by the newspaper stand.
The small private nursing home at the far end of Hornton Sreet was done up like a country cottage, with white-painted furniture and cheerful chintz curtains. Trish thought it seemed far too expensive for any witness-protection budget, but maybe they’d picked it as the least likely place for anyone to look for David. He was in a private room watching television, with a uniformed PC sitting outside. When the boy looked at Trish, his eyes were so dull, and his face so immobile, that she was afraid they must have sedated him.
She dragged a chair across the pink carpet. The legs bounced and scraped as they caught in the dense pile. This time she didn’t try to take his hand.
‘They’ve only just let me come back, David. They were afraid for you and wanted to check me out to make sure I was safe.’ His face didn’t change. ‘This looks much more comfortable than the other hospital, and you’ve got your own telly.’
Now there’s a subtle remark, Trish, she told herself with all the derision she usually kept for ineffectually deceitful witnesses. No wonder he won’t respond. ‘I’ve brought you some apple juice.’
‘They give me lots,’ he said, pointing his chin at the bleached-pine chest of drawers between the windows. A neat pyramid of untouched individual juice-cartons was stacked there.
‘Oh, good. David.’ She let her voice lose all its cheery brightness. ‘Mr Lakeshaw has said that you won’t tell them anything. I understand that your mother told you that you mustn’t let anyone know who you are and who she was, but everything’s changed now. No one else can hurt her ever again. And the police can only help to make you safe if they have all the facts. Please try to help.’
He rolled his head on the pillow in the familiar way, and she saw tired tolerance in his black eyes. One more
adult playing games with me, was the message she read in them. One more adult I can’t trust.
To her horror, she felt a tear in her left eye and brushed it away. But that only produced another, then more. David’s dull eyes sharpened a little. Trish fumbled for a handkerchief. There was a box of Kleenex beside the apple juice. She pulled out a handful and wiped her eyes with her back to him.
‘Sorry,’ she said, coming back to sit beside him.
‘Did
you
know her?’ he asked, wary but possibly less angry.
‘No, but I wish I had. I’ve been talking to one or two people who knew her, and they all say wonderful things about her. But that wasn’t why I was crying.’ All her experience told her that he was at the age when direct, truthful explanation was the only acceptable kind. ‘I … I lost my father – in a different way – when I was only a little younger than you. And I can remember so well what it felt like and how for years afterwards I didn’t want to know anyone else or trust anyone else ever again. And that made me understand a little how you must be feeling. So I cried.’
‘Did he die?’
‘No. He just went away. For a long time I thought it was because he hated me. Or I’d been too bad to bear.’
David blinked. Just once. But it was enough. Although they’d told him his mother was dead, the child must still believe at some level that she’d sent him away because he hadn’t been good enough.
Trish knew then that, whatever happened in the police investigation, whatever was proved about his parentage, she would feel a responsibility towards him for the rest of her life.
‘It was the eyes that scared her,’ David said suddenly.
‘Eyes? What eyes?’
‘She said it was a cat, but they were too high up. And
if it had been on the wall, they’d have been too low. I saw them. And they were people’s eyes; they didn’t have fur and whiskers round them.’
‘What else did you see, David?’
‘It was dark.’
‘Were they men’s eyes or women’s?’
‘A man’s.’
‘What did you do when you saw them?’
‘She was cross.’
‘Was she? Why?’
‘I asked who the man was. She said there wasn’t any man, just another cat like Mrs Tiggywinkle that had made her jump. And I said it was a man, that I’d seen him. And she told me to stop making up stories. And she shouted at me.’
‘What did she shout?’
‘For once in my life will I do what I’m told, and go straight off to Trish Maguire, like she’d always told me.’ His lips trembled. ‘She was cross. And she didn’t come, and she said she would. She
promised
.’
‘David, she couldn’t come because she was dead.’
‘I know!’ he shouted. ‘I’m not stupid!’
Trish smiled steadily at him. ‘And I think she was frightened when she was shouting at you. That makes people seem cross sometimes. I think she was frightened of the man whose eyes you saw. That’s why she sent you to me, to make sure that you were safe, whatever happened. And that’s why I – and the police – want to help find him so that you can go on being safe.’
She waited for him to talk, but nothing came.
‘He could have been the man who rang her up before. Can you remember any more about his voice on the phone? Did it have any kind of accent?’
He shook his head.
‘Can you remember anything else at all?’
‘No. Only that he was cross, like her.’
Trish got to her feet.
‘I’ve tried,’ he said, grabbing her hand. ‘But I can’t. I can’t. Don’t go.’
‘It’s all right, David.
I
’m not cross, and I’m not going away. I just have to talk to Mr Lakeshaw for a minute.’ She could see his face through the wired glass panel in the door. He nodded to her. ‘Then I’m coming back. All right?’
Reluctantly, David let go her hand. She went out to tell Lakeshaw the little she’d learned, before returning to the child’s bedside. He was flicking through the television channels, pausing for a while on Discovery, then restlessly moving on. Trish sat, waiting for him to stop or to ask her for something. At last he put down the zapper.
‘Did you watch much telly at home?’ she asked.
‘No. My mum only let me have forty minutes a day.’ His bottom lip trembled again, and a trail of mucus slid out of his nose as his eyes filled with tears.
‘And what about at Joe’s house?’
‘Yeah, sometimes.’ David sniffed. ‘His mum didn’t mind how much we saw.’
‘Would you like to see Joe?’
His face brightened so much that Trish felt a qualm. But even Lakeshaw couldn’t refuse to let the child’s best friend visit him for ever. ‘And what about your relations?’
‘I haven’t got any.’
‘You must have. Everyone has cousins, uncles, aunts.’
‘I asked my mum once and she said they were all awful, they’d be boring, and we were better off without them.’
Were they afraid of retaliation from the Handsomes? Or had they disapproved of Jeannie’s way of life and her apparently fatherless son?
‘What did you do at Christmas-time?’
‘Mum and I used to go to Joe’s house for Christmas lunch sometimes. And sometimes to Frankie’s.’
‘Who’s Frankie?’
‘She’s a friend of Mum’s. She lives with Richard. They work with Mum at the teacher-training.’