Out of the Dark Read online

  In Frankie’s patent sincerity, Trish began to see a different story, and one that might make sense. Breathing more easily than she had for days, and therefore feeling less stiff with every moment, she checked it through for gaps and flaws. As far as she could tell, it held up.

  In this version, Jeannie Nest would have obeyed all the rules of the witness-protection programme, and kept to herself everything about the Handsomes and the danger they might be to her and her son. But, needing a story to satisfy this woman, who’d seen her fear and wouldn’t stop asking questions about it, Jeannie had used Paddy as a decoy. That way, she’d have been able to tell one kind of truth, talk frankly about an assailant and how frightened she’d been, and get back all the warmth and support she must have longed for, without ever risking the real secret.

  ‘Did she say anything to you about what happened this time to make her so much more scared than usual?’ Trish asked. ‘I mean, she’d never sent David to me before. There had to be something new – different – to make her do it.’

  Frankie bit her lip, then bent down to put her mug on the floor beside her chair.

  ‘She only admitted any of it that once. I tried to find out more, but she got almost hysterical and said the questions made her migraines worse. I knew it wasn’t the questions doing the damage but her own fear.’ Frankie’s eyes were full of misery. ‘I had to tell her so, but it made her very angry. I explained that the migraines were a psychosomatic manifestation of her anxiety and until she faced it and worked out a rational way of dealing with it, and one which did not involve the ludicrous risk of teaching David the way to your place weekend after weekend, the migraines would go on getting worse. They were bad enough as it was, with projectile vomiting and days of blinding headaches. Something had to change, but she wouldn’t even try.’

  ‘So you quarrelled,’ Trish suggested as her mind span off into a whole new story with new lead characters and a new dénouement.

  ‘No. There wasn’t an actual falling-out, but she never confided in me again.’

  ‘And yet it was you who found her, wasn’t it?’

  As a deep shudder ran through Frankie’s body and she retched, Trish tried to speak gently. ‘Why did you go looking if you were no longer such close friends?’

  Frankie found a tissue to wipe her mouth and then her eyes. ‘She hadn’t appeared in college for three days, and she always rang if she was ill or had a migraine. This time there’d been nothing. I kept trying her phone, and all I got was the answering machine. By Wednesday morning, I was sure something was wrong. The police wouldn’t believe me, but I made such a fuss they sent a constable with me to break into the flat on Thursday, and we found …’ The scarf was back against Frankie’s lips.

  ‘And it was then, was it, that you told them about Jeannie’s terror of my father?’ Trish’s whole world looked different as she awaited confirmation of the source of Lakeshaw’s suspicions.

  She couldn’t believe he’d been so credulous. This woman had had no reason to reject the story she’d been given, but Lakeshaw should have known better. He’d had access to all the facts about Jeannie’s real identity and therefore the true reason for her fears. It was monstrous that he’d come after Paddy.

  ‘I think so,’ Frankie said, squinting at Trish. ‘But I can’t remember exactly. I had so many interviews with Sergeant Baker, and …’

  ‘Who? Haven’t you been seeing DCI Lakeshaw?’

  ‘No. She was only a sergeant, and her name was Baker.’

  Trish realised she’d been so hung up on Lakeshaw’s pursuit of her father that she’d forgotten there must be several lines of enquiry and probably dozens of officers working on the case. She’d touched only the edge of it.

  ‘But it doesn’t matter,’ Frankie went on. ‘I mean, the police knew all about it all along. She always told Martin Waylant every time she was scared, all about the people who followed her and the silent phone calls and the rest of it.’

  Trish drank some tea at last. It was tepid now, and had far too much milk in it for her taste. But she didn’t care.

  ‘Was Martin Waylant her boyfriend? David said there was one called Martin.’

  ‘He was the nearest thing she had to that. You see, your father ruined every chance she might have had of a proper adult relationship with a man of her own age. Martin wasn’t much more than a boy when it started, and he’s a police officer. That made her feel safe for a while, which was good for David.’

  ‘Why? Wasn’t she a good mother the rest of the time?’

  Frankie looked away, fiddling with the scarf again. ‘Mostly. But when the migraines were bad, she could be so snappy that she’d terrify him. And sometimes, I’d see him trying to get through to her, to wake the old fun and affection, and she’d just shut him out. It was fear that made her do it … understandable fear, but it damaged him.’ Her voice strengthened as she looked directly at Trish’s face again. ‘That’s your father’s fault, too.’

  ‘And yet David cries for her in hospital.’

  ‘You must know how that works,’ Frankie said, impatience making her spiky again, ‘after all your experience. He had no one else, so he had to make his mother into a good person, in his mind at least.’

  ‘What do you know about my experience?’ Trish asked.

  ‘She told me all about you, when I was trying to stop her taking David to your flat. She’d kept a scrapbook full of cuttings of your cases, which she showed me then. It was her way of proving to herself, I think, that you weren’t like your father. She really admired the work you were doing – and the fact that you lived there in Southwark in amongst all that crime and poverty.’

  Trish thought of her huge, art-filled loft and blushed. Then she thought about the scrapbook and wondered how long Jeannie’s murderer had spent in the flat and whether he’d found it, too. Had it been he who’d been following her today and broken into her car?

  Fear was very odd, she thought, struggling for detachment. It made your mouth taste of metal and your brain feel mushy.

  ‘You will look after David now, won’t you?’ Frankie said. ‘She was so sure she could trust you. I couldn’t bear it if …’

  Trish wasn’t going to make any promises she might not be able to keep, even to a stranger she would probably never see again.

  ‘I’ve taken up enough of your time,’ she said, standing up and ignoring the disappointment on the small cat-like face. ‘Thank you.’

  As she left the building, she rang Paddy on her mobile. He was hiding behind his office voicemail and his home answering machine, but Bella answered her own mobile.

  ‘Hi, it’s Trish.’

  ‘Ah. Yes. What can I do for you?’ Bella said, as coldly as if she was speaking to a stranger.

  ‘I’ve been trying to get in touch with Paddy, and I can’t find him.’

  ‘Can’t you leave him alone? Haven’t you caused enough trouble already?’

  That hurt. ‘Bella, don’t. As it happens, it wasn’t me who put the police on to him. I’ve just found out who it was, and now I know why they suspected him. It’s all a mistake. That’s what I wanted to tell him. It’s only coincidence that I was also asking questions about the woman they think he killed.’

  ‘I’ve never believed in coincidence, and there have been far too many in this case.’

  Trish thought about passing on everything she’d learned today and explaining how the only real coincidence in the whole miserable business was that she had bought a converted warehouse flat so near the grim estate where her father had once had a girlfriend. Sylvia Bantell might be sure Jeannie had been moonlighting as a prostitute, but on this one Trish was inclined to believe her father. Still, until she had filled in the last missing parts of the story – such as who really had murdered Jeannie – there was not much point trying to explain anything.

  ‘D’you know where he is? I mean, they haven’t arrested him yet, have they?’

  ‘“Yet”? What d’you mean, “yet”, Trish? No, they haven’
t – because he didn’t do it. But he’s staying out of everyone’s way just now. He’s had enough.’

  ‘Has he told you about David?’

  There was a gasp. Then Bella said, ‘Yes, but how did you know? Have the police broken their promise of confidentiality already?’

  ‘What do you mean? Has the DNA test come through?’

  ‘I thought that’s why you were phoning,’ Bella said, sounding as though she was in the middle of a fog. ‘The results came yesterday. David is his. Which is why he’s keeping out of the way. He doesn’t know how to deal with it himself yet, and the last thing he wants to do is answer questions from anyone else. If the news does leak, he wishes to be well out of reach.’

  ‘What’s he going to do about the boy – his son?’

  ‘Trish, be reasonable. What can he do? He’s a man in his sixties, not in good health, with a triple bypass. He can’t start looking after a strange child just because once, years ago, a woman he was seeing got careless. Even if …’ The fog had closed in on her, cutting her off from Trish, who thought, Even if what? Even if he doesn’t go to prison for life?

  Pretending she hadn’t thought it, and Bella had never even hinted at it, Trish asked mildly whether her father was intending David to be brought up in care.

  ‘Presumably,’ Bella said. Then her asperity loosened into a plea that sounded as though she was begging for something quite different from the words she used. ‘But Trish, it wouldn’t be all that different from the life this boy must have lived in both Southwark and Hoxton. And he’ll be safe. He won’t have this terrible threat hanging over him. He’ll be fine. You must harden your buttery heart sometimes.’

  ‘He’s not just “this boy”, you know.’ Trish thought of David’s fingers, white with stress as they clutched her wrist, and of the moment when he’d melted into relief when she first gave him her name. Her father might be able to see that child go into care; she couldn’t.

  ‘Maybe not, but Paddy can’t be expected to look after him. That woman caused him no end of trouble at the time, and he’s been in hell these past two weeks since she died. Hell. Trish, you have no idea how offensive the police have been as they’ve dug through his past and cross-examined us both about the way he treats women.’

  Then they must have something else, Trish thought. Lakeshaw is elusive, rude and unreasonable, but he wouldn’t have wasted so much expensive police time on the unsubstantiated word of Frankie Mason. Would he?

  ‘Look, Bella, I thought he had an alibi. Didn’t you say over the phone last week that you’d told Lakeshaw he was with you all of Tuesday night?’

  ‘Yes, of course I did. And he was.’ There was an energy in Bella’s voice now that didn’t ring true, and some odd stresses, like a singer who just manages to hit top A but has to strain for it, spoiling the sound, turning it into a scream.

  ‘Then have they changed their minds about the time of death? Or were you … ?’ Lying seemed too offensive a word. ‘Fibbing?’

  ‘No. I thought it was true. Hoped it was.’ Bella’s voice was taut now and the anguish was all too audible. ‘But I’d been sleeping so badly the last few nights before then that I took a pill that night. I probably wouldn’t have known if a herd of elephants had charged through the room.’

  ‘You mean, he might have gone out that night?’ Trish felt cold down her back again. And this time it was spreading through her entire body.

  ‘Something’s convinced Lakeshaw that he did. He keeps coming round badgering Paddy to admit that he got up and left the house in the middle of the night.’

  ‘What evidence has he got?’ Trish heard her voice snap like a trap.

  ‘He won’t say, but it’s clear there’s something. I’ve tried to ask Paddy if he went out just for a few minutes for some innocent reason. But it just makes him furious with me, so I can’t go on. I’m sure if he did go out, there’s a simple explanation. But he won’t give it. You know how stubborn he is, and he’s sworn all along that he was in bed with me. I’m so worried, Trish. If there is some evidence that he went out, all this denial makes him look … makes it look as though it could have been him who killed that poor woman. I know he couldn’t have, but oh, Trish, why won’t he say what he was doing?’

  Trish slammed her fist backwards into the car door. Her hand hurt so much that she stood back to look at the damage. There was only a faint red mark on the skin, which explained the throbbing, but there was an oval depression, about nine inches long and four high, in the side of the car.

  She wished she could concentrate on the dead woman, or David, or even Paddy himself, but all she could think of now was the question thudding through her brain: is he going to take my career away from me just as he took my childhood?

  So far she’d managed to avoid saying anything to anyone in chambers about the murder or Lakeshaw’s suspicions of her father, but if it came to an arrest she’d have to warn Antony. And there was no way he’d want her as his junior on a big commercial case if her father were charged with murder. The publicity would be unavoidable – and damaging.

  ‘Trish? Are you still there?’

  ‘Sorry, Bella. I’ve got to go.’ As Trish shoved her phone back in her bag, she realised that her subconscious had made the decision on her future, just as she’d hoped.

  In a world where nothing was certain, where emotion could drive people to fierce cruelty, women could be beaten up and killed, and children could be abandoned by their own parents, a successful career was the only safety worth having. If she wanted the kind of unassailable security Antony Shelley had, she’d have to do the kind of work he did and in the way he did it.

  She phoned his direct line in chambers, willing cool confidence into her voice. When he answered, she told him of her decision and asked to be allowed to go on working with him on Nick Gurles’s case.

  ‘Good,’ Antony said without any particular emphasis. ‘I’m glad. And Henry Buxford will be, too. He was impressed with you. Now, Nick Gurles and Peter Loyle are coming in for a con. tomorrow afternoon. I want you there, and I’d like you to come in at twelve so that we can go through all the evidence first.’

  ‘Of course, I’ll be there. Thank you, Antony.’

  ‘See you tomorrow.’

  Chapter 18

  Mikey Handsome was having a lie-in. He’d been late last night, partly on purpose to give his grandmother plenty of time to check all her hideyholes for evidence that he hadn’t touched her money, and partly because one of the girls’ punters tried to get away without paying and had to be sorted out. And after that, Celeste, as she called herself now, needed reassuring. Mikey didn’t much like going where all the punters had been before him, but sometimes it was necessary. And there were condoms, after all.

  When she’d made him his coffee and they were drinking it together, she said, all coy but breathless, too, ‘I thought you’d have had a go at me, Mikey.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘When that old bloke wouldn’t pay, I thought you’d say it was my fault and, well, you know …’

  ‘Beat you black and blue with a coathanger?’ he suggested and heard from her frightened giggle that was exactly what she’d thought.

  ‘Have I ever laid a finger on you or Barbie? Have I?’

  She shook her head, looking even more scared. So she should. He was angry now. Now it mattered more than ever that everyone should know – and admit – that he wasn’t like the rest of the family, that he, like his grandmother, had too many brains to indulge in stupid violence.

  ‘Come on, Celeste. Have I ever fucking-well threatened to lay a finger on either of you, let alone actually done it?’

  ‘No, Mikey,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t. Please.’

  ‘OK. So don’t fucking-well accuse me of it, right?’

  ‘No, Mikey.’

  ‘Makes me angry, that kind of thing.’ He shot his cuffs and settled his shoulders. ‘I don’t expect aggro from you when I come here, Celeste. I want peace and quiet. And I don’t like it. So don�
��t do it again.’

  ‘No, Mikey.’ She looked like she was about to cry and she was pushing herself back against the wall, tightening her silly, feathery robe round her. He’d never liked it, but she said the punters did.

  ‘And get that thing washed. It’s filthy. Beginning to smell, too. Remember what I told you?’

  ‘Keep clean, keep honest, and don’t tell no lies. I ain’t forgotten, Mikey. I’ve never told you no lies. I promise.’

  ‘Great. Where’s the takings then?’

  She scrambled off the bed, letting him see too much doughy, dimpled thigh. She ought to lose weight as well as get cleaned up, but he couldn’t be bothered with the hassle of making her do it. If she started losing customers, which she soon would, he could let her go and find a replacement. But if everything went as well as it should and his nan gave him his due, he might not have to go on with all this for much longer.

  It was no wonder he’d needed a lie-in with all that aggro. Now, sitting up in bed, wondering whether to get himself some breakfast here, or go out and have it cooked for him in the café, he tried to assess how much longer he’d have to wait for the business. His grandmother must know by now that he wasn’t going to beat her up. He knew she’d been afraid of that at the beginning, and for a long while after he’d come back, but he’d done everything he could to reassure her, and it had worked – until this last mess over his stupid uncle.

  He didn’t mind that his nan had been scared at first; it showed how sensible she was. But she must know it was safe to trust him by now. And she must know he’d sussed all her hiding places long ago. After all, he wasn’t stupid, and the flat was no bigger than a dog’s bowl, not like Trish Maguire’s.

  He’d monitored the hiding places ever since he’d first found them, knowing exactly when she’d taken money out, how much she gave his uncle (the stupid waster), how much she took for herself, and how big a float she liked to have in the flat. What he didn’t know was what she did with the cash when she did take it, but that was OK. He could’ve found out if he’d wanted to. She’d worked hard for it; and it was hers. Or it had been. Now it was time for him to take control before his grandfather got out and wrecked his life again – or forced her into handing everything over to his uncle.