A Greater Evil Page 17

  George emerged from the bathroom, untying the cord around his frayed dark-blue wool dressing gown, which he’d had for thirty years.

  We’re not extravagant in everything, she thought and felt a bit better.

  ‘You look very serious,’ he said, as he dropped the dressing gown on the end of the bed and inserted himself in beside her. ‘Ouf, it’s cold. Come here.’

  Her body had warmed up enough to feel the shock of his cold legs and feet. It took some time before they were both comfortably the same temperature. Big Ben’s gong-like chimes echoed from a neighbour’s radio and there were cheers from out in the street, then breaking glass and a lot of raucous laughter.

  ‘Hmmm,’ Trish said against George’s shoulder. ‘Who’d have thought that Slummy Southwark would be so much quieter and better behaved than Fancy Fulham?’

  ‘You don’t know what they’re doing in Southwark tonight, so stop throwing aspersions on my streets. And concentrate.’ He trailed his now-warm fingers down the length of her spine.

  That first evening set the pattern. They idled about in dressing gowns until lunchtime, filling the days with food and drink, and sex and Scrabble. It was a quite different game between two adults, without David to be placated or educated. The spats they had about whether a word was acceptable or not added just enough spice to stop them breaking their resolve to avoid talking about their professional conflict and what George’s partners might decide at the forthcoming meeting. Trish couldn’t keep it right out of her mind and she was pretty sure it still took up quite a lot of George’s, but they never mentioned it.

  Even so, by Sunday evening Trish felt as though someone had combed out most of the tangles in her spirit, and George had lost the tightness in his jaw that had begun to worry her. He smiled more often and could hardly keep his hands off her. She couldn’t remember this ease of touching between them, even in the early days of quite irresistible lust.

  On Monday they decided they needed a little bracing before the re-entry to work next day and set off in Trish’s car for Richmond Park. There was so little traffic they were there in less than quarter of an hour, and it was easy to find space in the first car park they tried. Pulling on gum boots and Barbours, winding scarves around their necks, they were behaving, said George, like any traditional couple from the country. All it needed to complete the picture was a dog.

  They set off towards the ponds and Trish listened in admiration to George’s ease in naming all the species of waterfowl skittering along the surface of the water or zooming across the low white-and-grey sky. That was probably the kind of knowledge you picked up without even noticing when you were brought up deep in the country, part of a family who’d lived in the same place for generations.

  A noisy group with a clutch of children trying out new bicycles and roller blades soon sent them away, to tramp around the Isabella plantation. It was duller now in its winter barrenness than it would be when the red, pink and orange azaleas were in flower and looking like thickened sunlight pouring along the banks of the curling stream. Even so, it was pretty and empty of every other human being, which was what Trish and George wanted. They stopped in the shadow of a big beech to watch a thrush systematically smashing a snail on a flat stone until she could get at the meat within the shell.

  George turned and backed Trish against the smooth trunk of the tree and kissed her cold bright face.

  ‘If anyone had told me when I was young that the love of my life would be a skinny, black-haired barrister with a mind like a razor and an independence so impenetrable she’d never let me look after her in even the littlest ways, I’d have …’ He paused.

  ‘What would you have done?’ Trish was trying not to laugh at the least romantic, but most heartfelt, compliment she’d ever had.

  ‘I’d have sent him to a shrink.’

  She did laugh then and asked what kind of woman he’d expected to love.

  ‘Oh, blonde, you know. And little, and a bit round. Slim but a bit round. And blue eyes. Grander than me, coming into money one day from a grandfather or a godfather or something. And no ambition beyond beating her mother at her own game.’

  ‘So what went wrong?’ she asked, not sure if he was serious. ‘With the life you led, you must have met dozens of women like that.’

  George leaned back, keeping his arms locked around her waist. ‘I suppose I did. Luckily – for them as well as me – my subconscious must have known that sweet passivity wasn’t my thing.’

  ‘Sweet passivity sounds like a plant,’ she said, laughing again as she looked over his shoulder at the woodland undergrowth all around them. ‘Low-growing, evergreen ground cover with tiny little scented white flowers in June.’

  ‘Positively inviting trampling. Give me soaring spikes any day. What about you? What were your girlish dreams made of?’

  ‘I’m not a romantic like you,’ she said. ‘All I wanted was to prove to my bossy stepfather that I could make it at the Bar in spite of everything he thought about my intellectual and social shortcomings.’

  ‘No dreams of love at all?’

  ‘A few, I suppose.’ She had to smile at the memories he was stirring up. ‘But they were all wound up with the rest. My fantasy bloke was definitely a star of the Bar: much, much cleverer than me, but dazzled by my amazing insights and staggeringly brilliant advocacy. I’m not sure I ever really got past the approval bit into any actual love.’

  George tightened his arms, kissed her again, then let her go. ‘I’m well and truly dazzled, so I qualify there, if nowhere else.’

  ‘You qualify,’ she said. ‘In every way that matters.’

  They walked on, with Trish thinking about the generosity of a man bruised and worried about his career who could still reveal himself so clearly. She let her shoulder touch his as they strode across the scrubby remnants of bracken towards the car park and hoped she would be able to contain her rage at what his young partner was trying to do to him at work when she came face to face with him at the Twelfth Night party.

  Chambers was much fuller after the bank holiday, but the atmosphere hadn’t yet tightened into the mixture of aggression and cynical humour that would set in once the courts started sitting again. All Trish had had in answer to her email to Giles Somers had been an automatic response to say that he would be out of the office until 10 January. Hoping one of his juniors might have read his emails and decided to help in advance of his return, Trish checked her email for the tenth time at the end of Thursday afternoon, just before leaving to dress for her two important parties. Still nothing.

  Back in the flat, she set about her preparations with as much care as she took when robing for court. Dressing well was part of the job. And she had the perfect clothes to do it in, including an apparently plain dark-red Jean Muir jacket, which moved in ways she’d never known clothes do. She put it over black silk trousers and camisole, knowing it would show off the triple-row choker of baroque pearls George had given her for Christmas. She was reasonably satisfied as she stood in front of the long mirror in her bedroom.

  Never beautiful, she thought she looked better now than she’d done in her twenties. Part of it was that she could afford more expensive clothes, and the dark-red collarless jacket warmed her pale skin and dark hair; and part was simply that she was more confident and met the rest of the world as an equal, instead of an angry outsider. Tonight she looked as different as possible from the mad harridan of the Daily Mercury's photographs, or the violence-obsessed neurotic of the editorial.

  A quick spritz of a new fruity Jo Malone scent round her neck and on her wrists and she was ready. She collected her heavy overcoat, made sure she had enough money and left the flat to find a taxi.

  ‘You look fabulous, Trish.’ James Rusham, the new senior partner of George’s firm, was standing with his back to a lusciously decorated Christmas tree in the biggest meeting room at Henton, Maltravers. He bent to kiss her cheek and his boyishly shaggy fair hair tickled her skin. ‘I’ve never understood why Geor
ge should have had the luck to find a woman like you.’

  ‘Perhaps you don’t appreciate him as you should,’ Trish said with what she hoped was a flirtatious smile. She’d love to have told him precisely what she thought of his weakness in the face of Malcolm Jensen’s plotting, but that would have been counter-productive. She glanced around the crowded noisy room, recognizing some of the clients and most of the older solicitors. ‘How are you liking being senior partner and in charge of this lot, James?’

  He reached towards a passing waiter to grab a glass of champagne for her.

  ‘To tell you the truth, Trish, I’m no longer surprised George decided to jack it in. I don’t mind the strategic responsibility or the ambassadorial stuff, or even the extra financial headaches. What I can’t bear is the moaning.’

  The stress he’d put on the last word was enough to make anyone laugh, so Trish had no difficulty joining in. He offered her an urchin’s smile in return. It went well with the absurd hair, but it had none of the gravitas most senior partners tried to show.

  ‘It’s true,’ he said, pinning a more serious expression on his big face. ‘Until I was the target, I’d never realized what the effect of one person’s perfectly legitimate complaint is when it’s multiplied by fifty or more. You start to feel as miscreants in the stocks must have felt in the Middle Ages, stuck with your head and hands stuffed through a board while the populace threw rotten veg at you.’

  Which explains why George was often so tetchy during those years, Trish thought, as she sipped her champagne. She let her eyes gleam as she looked up at his successor.

  ‘He says you’re doing a wonderful job, James. Look, with all the formal hostly stuff you’ve got tonight, I’m sure I shouldn’t monopolize you, but do tell me: which one is Katey Wilkins?’

  ‘Why?’

  Trish put the flirtatious smile back in place. ‘Because last year she kept phoning up, wanting George at weekends and in the late evenings. I’m curious to know what she looks like.’

  ‘Jealous, dear?’

  ‘I’ll tell you when I’ve seen her. Just point her out.’

  James jerked his ample chin in the direction of a stocky, freckled redhead, standing beside a man of such pristine smoothness that Trish automatically mistrusted him. ‘She’s that one. Talking to Malcolm Jensen. Shall I introduce you?’

  ‘That would be really kind.’ Trish was intrigued to see that Jensen showed every physical aspect she most disliked, from the sleekness of his dark hair to the width of the pinstripes in his suit and the ostentatiously heavy gold cufflinks. She’d prefer George’s wild hair and crumples every time. Or even James’s mixture of schoolboy and baby elephant.

  Don’t prejudge, she told herself as she stood demurely at his side. As soon as James had performed the introductions, he tramped off in the direction of the boardroom table, which had been pushed to one end of the room to serve as the bar.

  ‘So, you’re the famous Trish Maguire,’ said Jensen.

  ‘Famous? For what?’ Trish looked away from his smugness to smile at Katey and was surprised to see a blank expression on her plump face.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Jensen asked, looking disconcerted.

  ‘Never having thought of myself as famous, I merely wondered what had led you to pick that adjective.’

  ‘We all know you live with George,’ Katey said, rushing in to save Jensen’s possible embarrassment. ‘I think that’s all Malcolm meant.’

  ‘Really?’ Trish looked from one to the other, like a spectator at a tennis match. ‘I like to know what people say about me, however difficult it may be to take. Honesty all round makes life so much easier than whisperings and plottings in the corridors, don’t you think, Malcolm?’

  For a second, he looked positively murderous. Trish wondered if she’d gone too far. George had wanted her at the party to smooth his way and show all his clients and colleagues that her presence in his life was no danger to anyone. The last thing he’d expected was to have her throwing down a challenge to his biggest enemy. Still, she didn’t think it would do Jensen any harm to know she wouldn’t be a walkover.

  ‘Very well,’ he said, his jaw so tight she could see the muscles quivering beneath his skin, ‘you’re as famous in certain circles for your emotionalism as for the way you allow personal likes and dislikes to distract you from the work you’re paid to do.’

  ‘Wow!’ Trish said, reeling at the insult and determined not to show it. ‘Emotionalism? How interesting. Who could have given you that idea? Specifically?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. You wanted to hear what I knew of your reputation. I have told you. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must talk to a client I see arriving.’

  Trish inclined her head like a Victorian dowager and resisted the temptation to watch his progress across the room – or trip him up as he went. She felt as though he’d stripped her of not only her clothes but also most of her skin. It would be typical of all the coincidences piling up since she’d first met Cecilia if Malcolm Jensen were the man invited to assess her skills for the next directory of British barristers.

  ‘How are you enjoying partnership, Katey?’ she said, making an effort to concentrate on the plain, inexpressive face in front of her. ‘You’ve done well to achieve it so young.’

  ‘Thank you. Like everything, it has its ups and downs.’

  ‘D’you get much help from the oldies? Or do they fight to guard their territory?’

  ‘Some are better at helping us up the ladder than others,’ she said, taking a step backwards.

  Trish didn’t understand until Katey made a forty-five-degree turn, which took her into the shade of a large ficus growing in a huge coiled pot, which had been incongruously decorated with swags of tinsel. Trish followed her and waited, out of sight and earshot of the rest of the crowd.

  ‘George was sweet to me last year. Please don’t think I’m not grateful – or let him think it. I couldn’t have managed without him. But I’m only thirty-two. I should have fifteen, twenty years ahead of me here. I need to look to my own future. I can’t afford to let gratitude blind me to the alliances I have to make. Sorry. I’ve got to go.’

  ‘Hold on.’ Trish managed not to grab her arm, but only just. Luckily Katey paused and looked back. ‘Why does Malcolm hate him?’

  Katey shrugged. ‘Maybe because George is so much more successful, more … what’s the word? Secure in himself, I suppose. Maybe he humiliated Malcolm in a meeting once, or with a client. I don’t know. I can’t …’

  ‘Okay. Just one more thing: is Malcolm’s wife here?’

  ‘I doubt it. She usually has to work at the paper later than this. I have to go.’

  This time Trish did swing round to watch her cross the room. Jensen was laughing sycophantically at something a tough-faced woman in a black Armani suit had said and Katey was threading her way through the crowd in the direction of the bar. When she’d refilled her glass, she took a sip, before surveying the room. A moment or two later and she was heading for a knot of men by the door. She had to hover on the edge of the group for a while and Trish was impressed to see she neither pushed her way in nor cringed, watching and waiting until there was a gap in the talk she could fill. She obviously knew exactly what she was doing.

  Poor George, Trish thought, remembering the efforts he’d put into saving Katey’s career last year.

  All his partners were deep in conversation and looked unlikely to welcome interruptions. He too was concentrating hard as he talked to someone who had his back to her.

  She moved towards them and brushed past George, murmuring: ‘I ought to be on my way to Holland Park. I’ll see you there later, if you can make it, but don’t worry if you can’t. Okay?’

  He nodded, but his expression was worried. Trish looked more carefully at the man opposite him and recognized the finance Director of QPXQ Holdings. She made herself smile, wondering how to deal with the situation. If QPXQ were as angry as George believed that she was actin
g for their worst enemies on the Arrow case, this man could be hard to placate.

  ‘I—’ she began, but was interrupted as he leaned forward to kiss her cheek.

  ‘How are you?’ he said far more cheerfully than she could have expected. ‘George was just telling me how much he enjoyed spending Christmas in Southwark. You must be some kind of genius to have got him to like anywhere as edgy as the Borough.’

  Reassured, but puzzled, Trish laughed and stayed for a few minutes of polite chat about how he’d spent Christmas and what he thought the new year would bring the economy. George looked a lot happier by the end, so she was able to leave without feeling she’d abandoned him. Either his partners had exaggerated QPXQ’s reaction to the conflict of interest, or the Finance Director had unparalleled diplomatic skills.

  A taxi was depositing a couple on the pavement as she emerged from the building and she took it over, giving the address of Antony’s big white house. As the cabbie set off, she repaired her make-up and combed her hair, hating Malcolm Jensen even more than she’d expected.

  Emotionalism, she thought, forgetting QPXQ completely. Letting my likes and dislikes distract me from the work I’m paid to do. How dare he? And where did he get it? Or did he make it up there and then to rile me?

  Checking her face in the flapjack mirror, she saw how memories of the small battle had added a glitter to her dark eyes. No bad thing for the next campaign.

  Antony’s double-fronted house was set back from the road, protected by austere black railings and fronted with a deep terrace of black-and-white hexagonal tiles. The great bay windows on both sides of the door were lit. No curtains or shutters hid the party from curious onlookers in the street. Both rooms were still decorated with Christmas swags of fir and dark-green ivy leaves studded with gold and crystal baubles, and white-jacketed waiters carried silver trays of filled champagne flutes through the crowd. The lavish picture was as far as possible from the standard neighbourhood Christmas party. From out here the Shelleys’ collection of devastating paintings was barely visible, but Trish knew them to be of the same museum quality as the furniture and the antique carpets that filled the great rooms.