A Greater Evil Read online

  Natasha Cooper

  A

  GREATER EVIL

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty One

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Chapter Twenty Three

  For

  Felix Turner

  Acknowledgements

  A large cast of friends has helped me with information and advice for this novel. Among them are Murray Armes, Suzanne Baboneau, Mary Carter, Kate Cotton, Mark Fidler, Jean Gaffin, Jane Gregory, David Hewson, Ayo Onataade, James Turner, Anna Valdinger, Melissa Weatherill and Anne Wright. I always listen to what they tell me, just as I reserve the right to adapt the facts they offer when the needs of fiction demand it.

  I and the public know

  What all schoolchildren learn

  Those to whom evil is done

  Do evil in return

  W.H. AUDEN, ‘SEPTEMBER 1, 1939’

  Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why has thou made me thus?

  Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?

  BIBLE, ROMANS 9:20

  Chapter One

  The clay was dead between his fingers. Cold and sticky as always, but uncooperative too. It smelled of decay. He wasn’t a fool: he knew it was his mind and not the stuff itself that was the problem. Even so, he felt as though it was fighting him, resisting, withholding the response he’d learned to trust. Nothing worked. Each movement of his hands made it worse and the familiar delicate modelling tools felt as heavy as sledgehammers between his clumsy fingers. What had been a promising start was now a mess.

  If only he could empty his mind of the voices and the fears. Then he could focus and maybe the clay would move between his hands again, helping him reveal the idea he’d had for it. Never since his discovery of the talent he’d been given had it failed him like this. What if he’d lost it for ever, the power that had come out of nowhere fourteen years ago?

  ‘Take your hands away before you ruin it,’ he said aloud, shocking some other, less conscious, part of his brain. His voice, hoarse and a bit cracked, echoed around the big studio, bouncing off the exposed steel beams and the hard concrete floor, easily overcoming the Stones’ punchy, wailing music from the CD player in the corner.

  In the gap between the end of one song and the beginning of the next, he heard the whirring of the potter’s wheel upstairs. Boards creaked just above his head, and there was the sound of exuberant female singing. Marisa Heering was having a good day. All over the big building, potters, painters, silversmiths and weavers were carrying on as usual: productive; successful; safe.

  Sam reached for the damp cloths that kept the half-made head workable and flung them over the hated lump. Rubbing his hands together above the bucket, he felt thin cylinders of clay form against his skin and watched them fall away, like a peculiarly unpleasant species of dark-orange worm. He manipulated his own head from side to side, trying to shrug the pain out of his neck and shoulders. What could it be this time? Not coffee again: his brain was already juddering with caffeine. But there had to be an excuse of some kind to knock off work.

  The CD had a long time to go before it would need changing. Each track of the Stones’ Forty Licks album mocked him with its angry confidence, but he couldn’t silence it without admitting failure. Which would make it worse.

  Maybe the cold could give him a reason to move away. He’d barely noticed it until he’d made himself stop hacking at the head. Now he could feel iciness across the skin of his face, like a dangerously angled razor. The old-fashioned stove in the corner could probably do with more fuel. He shuffled across the room, moving from concrete to boards and catching his foot in the change of level as he always did. He managed not to fall over the tattered Persian rug he’d once loved for its coral and lapis colours but now ignored except when it tripped him. He pulled open the small steel door of the stove.

  Shovelling in smokeless briquettes was something he could still do. And the extra warmth was good. He let his knees buckle and squatted down so the heat from the tiled walls of the stove stroked his face. At least today there hadn’t been a model to witness his incompetence.

  ‘Face it, Sam,’ he said, moving his head this way and that to give both sides an equal share of the heat. Turning the other cheek. He shuddered and tried to pull the real thoughts away from all the self-defensive games his mind played.

  Maybe if he’d had only one fear he could have coped, but with his past and the baby and the woman in prison, all fighting for space in his mind, it was too much.

  ‘Are you mad,’ he muttered in a voice he now heard only in nightmares, ‘talking to yourself all the time, you dreadful child?’

  Even that was enough to force him upright and back to work. The damp cloths looked unspeakable, stained and loathsome. Like something off a slum washing line. He pulled them away, taking care not to catch sight of himself in the mirror. Instead, he stared at the lump that was supposed to become the pinnacle of his career, his entry for the Prix Narcisse, the most desirable sculpture prize in Europe. The ideas he’d had for it had gone. He couldn’t see them any longer, still less feel them in the way he’d have to if the clay was to live between his fingers again. Would it ever come back, the feeling? Or the skill?

  The woman’s latest letter crackled in his pocket as he moved. Why didn’t he just burn them as they came, without letting their words get between him and the life he’d found?

  Because you’re weak, he told himself. You should be able to fight thoughts of them and the baby and stop panicking.

  He watched the stubby capable hands in front of him as though they belonged to someone else and saw them form fists that crashed down on the clay.

  For a second he stared in shock, then exhilaration took him. He deliberately chose to raise both fists above his head this time and gloried in the way they smashed down on the lump. The edges of his hands hurt, but even that helped. His vision blurred. The music he’d chosen with such care this morning faded until he could hear nothing.

  When he came to, the CD had finished. He saw he’d reduced the half-made head to a meaningless heap of mashed orange clay. Staring at the wreckage, feeling the comforting ache in his hands, he felt so much better he shouted out his triumph to the empty studio and heard Marisa Heering pause in her singing upstairs. That would teach her to sound so cheerful.

  Chapter Two

  The aggression in the atmosphere eased as soon as they stopped trying to reach agreement. Trish Maguire felt her whole face relax into a softness that told her how tense she’d been. Such was the lottery of the law no one would know for ages which of the parties here had lost rather than saved millions by refusing to cooperate. She hoped it wouldn’t prove to be her client, Leviathan Insurance plc.

  Hearing the chatter of seventeen sets of briefcase locks clicking was like being let out of prison. She could stop concentrating now and watch the others go on their way while she put her notes in order. Moments later she caught the scent of someone’s aftershave, all musk and limes, and looked round to see one of the toughest men moving past her.

  It was an incongruous smell, for suc
h a bruiser, she thought, but better than the stale tobacco of the old days. When she’d started out on her career as a barrister eighteen years ago, at least half the people at a meeting like this would have been smokers, and the whole room would have been fogged and disgusting. Exotic scents were a definite improvement.

  This one’s owner had already reached the far end of the room, and he didn’t look back, even to say goodbye to the last person still sitting at the big glossy table. She was Cecilia Mayford, the pregnant loss adjuster, who was also working for Leviathan. She and Trish had already agreed to let the others leave first, then have a private post-mortem.

  Their case concerned the great building known as the London Arrow. Only two years old, the Arrow had already become a City landmark, loved by half the inhabitants and loathed by the rest. What most of them did not know was that within weeks of its ceremonial opening, cracks had appeared all over the structure. The horrified owners had wasted no time in making a claim against their insurance policy.

  Leviathan, facing a bill of millions to repair the building and shore it up, had turned to their favourite loss adjusters in the hope that they could find a reason not to pay. When a whole range of geological tests had shown that the ground itself hadn’t shifted in any unexpected way, they’d got it. The insurance policy covered subsidence but not poor design or shoddy construction.

  The trouble was, no one had been able to find fault with the design, materials or construction methods either. The architect’s revolutionary and breathtaking plans had been made practical by the consulting engineers, Forbes & Franks International, who had tested them with all the latest computer-modelling techniques against every possible calamity, from savagely increased wind speeds to both drought and rising groundwater. Since the cracking had begun, every part of the structure and all the materials used by the builders and their subcontractors had been checked and rechecked against the specifications. With no one else to take the blame, the building’s owners had started legal proceedings against Leviathan to force them to pay.

  Still determined to resist, they had briefed Trish to represent them. Her first study of the papers had told her this was the kind of case that could go on for years, involving vast costs for everyone, and possibly never coming to a satisfactory conclusion. Today she’d proposed an unusual settlement, with all the interested parties and their own insurers sharing the costs of saving the Arrow with Leviathan and so getting the whole business over in months rather than years. Her proposal had just been vigorously rejected.

  She watched the pinstriped men lining up to get out of the door and thought of the fake rage so many of them had used to try to get their own way throughout the afternoon. A few looked round to nod a perfunctory farewell to the two women before they made it out of the room. Only Guy Bait, representing the engineers, bothered to come and shake Trish’s hand and say how much he appreciated her efforts to broker a deal. His aftershave had a simpler smell, barely more than faintly astringent soap might leave on clean skin.

  ‘Thank you, Guy.’ She stood up and was surprised to find herself the taller by about two inches. ‘We’ll meet again.’

  ‘I’ll look forward to it,’ he said.

  He’d barely opened his mouth throughout the afternoon, except when asked a direct question. Only now did it look as though a bit more oomph from him might have helped her cause. And his breathy, gentle voice might have taken some of the heat out of the others’ fury. He gave her a sweet smile, before moving on to Cecilia and murmuring similar grateful words.

  She nodded but didn’t speak and avoided the offered handshake by rubbing her temples as though they ached. Her face, pallid with exhaustion and anxiety, had taken on a withdrawn expression that was new to Trish. But then her only pregnancy had ended in a miscarriage at a much earlier stage, so she didn’t know precisely what Cecilia would be feeling now.

  When Guy had gone after the rest and the door had banged behind him, Cecilia let her head flop forwards and blew out a gusty sigh.

  ‘At last! I couldn’t have taken much more, Trish. Thanks for what you tried to do.’

  ‘I’m sorry it didn’t work. And I’m sorry it took so long. You must be worn out.’

  Cecilia rubbed her eyes, then put both hands behind her immaculate black jacket and pushed at her aching spine. Trish watched the bump in fascination as it swelled forwards. How could you lug something that big around and sit through acrimonious meetings like the one they’d just endured and still show such courtesy and patience?

  Trish had always admired her, but today’s performance had added a kind of awed respect she rarely felt for anyone. They hadn’t yet become friends – and probably couldn’t until the case was over – but she hoped one day they’d be able to meet and talk about smaller, more important, things than this claim with its multi-million-pound implications.

  ‘How much longer?’ she asked.

  ‘Technically four more weeks,’ Cecilia said, pinching the bridge of her nose. She was squinting too. The headache must be getting worse. ‘But I’m so vast I can’t believe it’ll be that long. I’m sorry, you know.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘I’d planned it all so carefully.’ She took her fingers away from her face and looked at Trish. ‘I thought we’d manage to get a settlement today, giving me time to clear my desk and hand over my other cases to colleagues well before Christmas, have the baby, then be back from maternity leave in time to deal with any fallout from the Arrow in the summer. Now here I am abandoning you with everything still unresolved.’

  ‘Going for a settlement was probably a bit optimistic. There’s so much at stake.’

  ‘Even so, I hate failing like this.’

  ‘You haven’t failed. You’ve done wonders already,’ Trish said, wanting to make her look less miserable. ‘Your colleagues are good too. We’ll manage to keep going while you’re off having the baby. And you should be back from maternity leave long before we get to court. Now, you look to me as though you should be at home in bed. Shall I ask them to call you a cab?’

  ‘I’d better walk.’ A spasm, perhaps driven by pain, twisted Cecilia’s broad face. ‘They say it helps, so I try. On days when I really can’t face the flog up to Islington, I cheat and hop across the bridge to Sam’s studio so he can drive me back when he’s done for the day.’

  ‘You know I couldn’t believe it,’ Trish said, distracted, ‘when you told me that you’re not only married to my favourite sculptor but also the daughter of the judge I most admire. I was up before her only last month.’

  ‘I know. She told me. She approves of you too,’ Cecilia said, but her eyes changed, as though someone had come between her and the light.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Nothing.’ She shivered. ‘Except I hate coincidences like this.’

  ‘Do you? Why? I like the whole six degrees of separation thing, finding links wherever I look.’ Trish couldn’t prevent a laugh bubbling up.

  ‘What?’ Cecilia said, with an unlikely note of panic in her voice. ‘What’s so funny?’

  ‘Only the words we were all using today,’ Trish said, surprised into an explanation she knew would sound heavy-handed. ‘Practically all of them had at least two meanings: we wanted a settlement for a building that’s subject to settlement; we discussed a listed building that’s listing badly; someone wanted to get cracking with the discussion about the cracks. Links everywhere, you see. I love it.’

  Cecilia’s frightened expression eased a little, but she didn’t smile. ‘I don’t mind that sort. It’s the personal ones I hate, where everyone you meet turns out to be friends with friends of yours, or even with old acquaintances you thought you’d never see again. They tell you stories they’ve heard about you and you realize everything you’ve ever done or said is stuck somewhere in someone’s memory. Like computer data you can never get rid of, however often you hit “delete”.’

  She had managed to get herself upright and balanced at last. The movement must have
freed something in her, for her voice had more of its usual bounce when she added: ‘Talking of coincidence: have you always practised commercial law? Something I heard made me wonder.’

  ‘No,’ Trish said, picking up Cecilia’s briefcase as well as her own and following her out of the room. ‘I used to do family cases but I gave up when the relentless misery got to me. But we shouldn’t hang about chatting. You need to be at home. I’ll phone you on Monday.’

  Making her way across Blackfriars Bridge towards her flat twenty minutes later, Trish wondered whether she’d been irresponsible in letting Cecilia trudge off alone. For such a heavily pregnant woman to fight her way through the dark and cold of a December evening couldn’t be sensible. But she must know her limitations, and she was an intelligent adult. No one had any right to tell her what to do.

  Still uncomfortable, Trish paused halfway over the bridge, to be transfixed by her favourite view made even better by the frosty darkness. The yellow lights along the river seemed to hang in the middle of blurred halos, yet their reflections in the black water of the Thames were as sharp as ever, disturbed only by the wake of a boat chugging its way upstream. The stars were hidden by the glare of artificial lights, but the glittering city was so spectacular in both directions she couldn’t regret them. To the east, Norman Foster’s Gherkin stood like a brilliant sentinel, balanced by the Arrow to the north, looking as delicate as it was dazzling.

  How could it be moving? What fault had there been in the design or manufacture of steel, glass and concrete that no one had yet identified?

  Eventually the cold made Trish’s ears ache and got her moving again. She thought of Cecilia, struggling northwards to Islington, and envied her the baby she was about to have. Not that Trish regretted anything about the way her own infertile life had taken her. With her young half-brother, she and her partner, George, had become a family. Their set-up might be eccentric but it worked, and it made her happy.

  Years ago they’d devised the arrangement by which George kept his antique-filled, pastel-coloured house in Fulham and she lived in her echoing, brick-walled loft in the much edgier borough of Southwark. Each had keys to the other’s place, and they wandered in and out at will.