A Greater Evil Read online

  ‘I hope so. Did you get anywhere with finding out whether someone had opened a back door in Cecilia’s computer? It could easily have been the same person.’

  ‘We’ve checked her computer and you’re right: someone did open a back door. It was done from a computer at Forbes & Franks International, the engineers. Unfortunately it’s one of a batch of out-of-date laptops awaiting reformatting and resale to any member of staff who wants them. So we’re not much further on.’

  ‘Can’t they tell who used it?’

  ‘Nope. Until there’s some kind of biometric version of a password, you’ll only ever be able to track hacking back as far as the computer that was used, not the person who did it.’

  ‘Sod it!’

  ‘Indeed,’ he said, sounding amused. ‘But this is huge progress, Trish.’

  ‘You’re right. Thanks, Giles. Let me know if you hear any more. Bye.’

  When she’d put down the phone, Trish thought about phoning Caro to give her the news. Surely with this kind of evidence of criminality it was no longer so unlikely that Cecilia had been killed because of the Arrow case. Then, remembering what Jess had said, Trish realized she’d have to get more than suspicion and logical supposition to make Caro listen to her.

  The trouble was, she was no private eye and she had no resources for collecting the kind of evidence a court would accept.

  Trying to stop her mind playing around ways and means, she slid the pink tape off the new brief Steve wanted her to take and began to read, glad to see it was another case of building failure. At least her brain-aching work mugging up the structural principles holding up the Arrow wouldn’t be entirely wasted.

  ‘What do we do with all the Leviathan files?’ Bettina said later, as she threw her empty cardboard cup into the bin.

  ‘Giles will send someone to collect them. It would be a good idea for you to tidy them all together and make sure everything’s there. Then when I’ve absorbed this, I’ll go through it with you and we can discuss the issues.’

  ‘But I’ve got a brief of my own,’ she said. ‘I need to ask you …’

  ‘Give me the morning to absorb this; then I’ll take you out to lunch and we can go through your brief together. Okay?’ Trish said kindly.

  Lunch, she thought, realizing there was one way of getting some evidence that might connect Guy Bait and Malcolm Jensen and so help to overturn George’s suspension. She pushed the chair away from her desk and stood up in one easy movement, feeling as though her joints had been elasticated by the possibility of doing something useful for him.

  ‘I’ll be back in a moment, Bettina.’

  Trish was almost past the clerks’ room when Steve called her name.

  ‘I knew it,’ he said, when she leaned back to look round the door jamb. ‘I’ve already had a call from James Rusham, the senior partner at Henton, Maltravers, to say QPXQ Holdings want to brief you in their upcoming case against Forbes & Franks International, the consulting engineers involved in the Arrow.’

  ‘Stall them.’ Trish’s voice was urgent. ‘Give me till next week, if you can.’

  ‘It’ll be a pleasure. Negotiating the brief fee can easily take us several days. It’s almost certainly a pre-emptive strike in any case, to stop you being nabbed by anyone else. Where are you going?’

  ‘To deal with some personal stuff. I’ll be back soonish.’

  Outside, the air was tingling with sunny chill. She was amazed to see fat green spikes of daffodils already fighting their way out of the soil in one of the window boxes as she hurried through the Temple to Fleet Street, where there were still a few public phone boxes. She did not want this call easily traceable to any of her own phones.

  Somewhere in her wallet was an old phone card. Miraculously, it still worked and she was through to Forbes & Franks in no time.

  ‘May I speak to Guy Bait?’

  ‘Who shall I say is calling?’

  ‘Maggie Jones,’ Trish said, making up a name at random and injecting an all-purpose London accent to her voice. She hoped this was going to work. ‘I’m a temp’ry seekertary working for Mr Jensen at Henton, Mal-travers.’

  ‘Guy Bait,’ said a recognizably gentle voice a moment later. ‘What does Malcolm want this time?’

  Yee-es! Trish thought and fought to keep the triumph out of her voice, as she said aloud: ‘He’s out this morning, but he left me a note saying he wants to meet you for lunch at the usual place and time today. Can you do that?’

  ‘I suppose so. All right.’

  ‘Where shall I book then? And what time? He didn’t say, but he’s always really cross if I don’t get him the right table.’

  For the first time, Trish heard Guy laugh: a great gale of cheerful amusement.

  ‘No need this time. We bring sandwiches and sit on a windswept bench overlooking the Globe Theatre.’

  ‘That sounds like a long way.’ Trish made her voice rise on the last word. ‘He’s got a meeting at two. Will he be back in time?’

  ‘It’s not so far: this side of the Thames,’ he said. ‘Okay. If he phones in to check, tell him I’ll be there at 12.30.’

  ‘Thank you very much, Mr Bait.’

  Pressing the button for a follow-on call, Trish repeated the pantomime with Malcolm Jensen and secured his promise to be at the bench by 12.30. She went more slowly back to chambers, thinking up excuses to offer Bettina for making their own lunch late. Back in her room, she searched the bottom drawer of her desk for the digital camera she’d bought in an access of enthusiasm a couple of years earlier and used no more than about four times.

  The weather was still ideal when she set off half an hour later, with enough sun to make any kind of photography easy and wearing dark glasses natural. It was also cold enough to justify the felt hat she bought in a souvenir shop. Decorated with a cockade made from the union flag, its ugly shape made her shudder but no one who knew her would dream she’d wear anything like it. With luck, it would make her look like a naive sightseer.

  It wasn’t easy to find a bench that could be described as overlooking the Globe Theatre, but she identified it eventually, unoccupied except for a tatty-looking supermarket carrier bag. There was a convenient niche between two neighbouring buildings, where she could be sheltered from the wind. She settled down to wait, gazing across the river.

  Brisk-sounding steps disturbed her. Their owner must have metal edges to the heels of his shoes. She turned idly to see Malcolm Jensen, looking pissed-off in his velvet-collared overcoat and well-polished black brogues. A sharp gust of wind blew his hair across his forehead and he shoved it back with an audible curse. He flung himself down on the bench and ripped the cover off a plastic packet of sandwiches. Picnicking like this seemed unlikely for a man so concerned with his appearance. As he gobbled, Trish worried for the effect on his digestion as well as his image. He’d finished both halves of the sandwich before Guy Bait hurried towards him.

  ‘Sorry,’ he called. ‘As you can imagine, all hell’s broken loose today.’

  ‘I don’t know what you expect me to do about it,’ Malcolm Jensen said, standing up to brush the crumbs off his lap. Neither of them paid Trish any attention. There were always tourists here, on their way to the Millennium Bridge and Tate Modern.

  With the two men standing facing each other, Trish couldn’t get a clear shot of them as a pair. Would they discover the scam before she could get one? Just in case, she took a picture from behind Jensen, which showed Guy Bait clearly. Twiddling the zoom, she saw his face bloom to twice the size. There was unmistakable fear in his expression. She took four more shots.

  The wind flung itself around the small paved square again, picking up grit and throwing it in their faces. Both men sat down. Jensen smoothed his hair again. Trish turned her back on them and the wind, to lean against the parapet and photograph the Globe and the Millennium Bridge before wheeling round again and taking several shots above their heads. When neither man so much as glanced in her direction, she lowered the camera an
d took a series of ten photographs of the two of them obviously talking to each other. One must come out. Surely this would help persuade everyone that there had been something nefarious in Malcolm’s campaign against George.

  Time to go, she thought, before these two start asking each other for the reason for this morning’s summons.

  Leaving as much space as possible between herself and their bench, she walked towards the road. It would have been good to know what they were talking about, but not worth the risk of getting near enough for either of them to recognize her. All she caught through the rattling of the wind was her own name, spat out in tones of absolute contempt.

  She stopped, took some more photographs from behind them both, and was back in chambers by half past one.

  Lunch over and Bettina’s problems easily solved, Trish used her mobile to call James Rusham.

  ‘Now we’re not in any kind of professional relationship,’ she began, ‘I’d like to meet for a drink. Could you get to the Cork & Bottle by six?’

  ‘We are in a professional relationship, Trish,’ he said with a rich chuckle. ‘We’re about to make you the best-paid barrister in London.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ she said, thinking of Antony Shelley’s gigantic fees. Even when she became a QC – if it ever happened – she’d be unlikely to catch up. ‘In any case, “about to” isn’t the same thing as being.’

  ‘Don’t be such a Jesuit.’

  ‘Can you meet me? It’s important.’

  ‘All right. Why the Cork & Bottle? I haven’t been there in twenty years.’

  ‘It’s convenient. I like it. And our colleagues don’t use it. See you there.’

  Only a few days, she thought. Can I get everything I need before Steve accepts the brief from Henton, Maltravers?

  She checked the photographs she’d taken this morning. All but one were clear as clear and showed everything she wanted. Gazing down at the full-length, full-frontal picture of Guy Bait, she thought of another way she could use it, one that might help Sam too. Printing it and a few of the others took no time.

  Computers really have made life easier now, she thought, remembering childhood waits of a week or more for her photographs to be developed at the chemist. She put the photographs in her bag, along with one of the newsletters put out by Cecilia’s company, which showed photographs of all the senior loss adjusters.

  ‘I’m off again, Bettina. If I don’t get through everything in time to come back today, I’ll see you on Monday. Happy with your brief now?’

  She nodded, then remembered to thank Trish for lunch and for the advice.

  Trish grabbed her own brief and took it to Steve: ‘This looks fine, and I will have time for it. Even if we do come to an agreement with Henton, Maltravers and QPXQ, that won’t come to court for months.’

  ‘If ever,’ Steve said smugly. ‘Now you’ve found the cause of the Arrow’s cracking, the engineers will have to settle.’

  ‘You’d have thought so, wouldn’t you? But litigants do the oddest things. I’m off. See you tomorrow.’

  ‘Where—’

  She didn’t wait to answer. He signalled his pleasure in her latest triumph by refraining from the usual Churchillian quotation. Sometimes she thought his stock must be running low, but so far he’d always managed to find a new one for each time she annoyed him.

  The walk to Somerset House took twelve minutes precisely. Today only a few skaters were making a mess of the courtyard’s elegant proportions. Children were back at school and everyone else must be either trying to work or still fighting post-Christmas depression under their duvets. The striped tent containing the snack bar was virtually empty too, except for the staff and a lone man reading a paper with a steaming cup in front of him.

  Trish asked for hot chocolate and handed over some money. The woman behind the till barely looked at her as she accepted the coins, which was disappointing. Taking the cardboard cup to a table near the transparent side of the tent, Trish sat down and waited. Soon enough a young blonde woman with a cloth made her way along the row of tables, mopping spillages and scattered sugar, picking up rubbish and straightening the salt and pepper pots.

  When she reached Trish’s table, she smiled and walked on to the next. Trish lifted her cup, saying: ‘It’s fine. Do mine, too.’

  ‘Is okay,’ the waitress said in a heavily accented voice. Trish, who wouldn’t have been able to recognize anything but French, German or Spanish, assumed this one was from somewhere in Eastern Europe. That would square with the high cheekbones and wheat-blonde hair.

  ‘Have you been working here long?’ Trish asked, making each syllable as clear as she could without sounding absurd.

  ‘Since the skating opens, before Christmas.’

  ‘Ah. Good. I’m looking for a man who said he often comes here. I met him at a Christmas party and he promised to phone me.’ Trish shuffled through the prints she’d made.

  The waitress’s smile, at once sympathetic and relieved, was encouraging.

  ‘Could you have a look to see if you recognize him?’

  A shrug was followed by another smile, then a hand was held out. Trish put the full-frontal photograph of Guy Bait into it and sipped her chocolate.

  ‘I don’t know … Maybe … One minute.’

  Before Trish could protest, the woman had dumped her cloth on the table, flung her handful of rubbish into a bin by the exit and skipped out of the tent, still holding the print. The older woman behind the till called out, ‘Hey! Where you going?’ But the younger one didn’t stop. The man reading his paper by the entrance looked up in surprise. Trish was relieved to see he was a total stranger. It would be inconvenient to have someone who might recognize her as a witness to this frolic.

  She waited. She’d finished her chocolate and wished she’d brought a paper so that she too could have an excuse for loitering. Then the blonde woman reappeared, clumping up the temporary steps in her heavy black boots and accompanied by someone who could have been her twin.

  ‘Litka is working in skating hire now. Before Christmas she was here also. We think he did come. But not often. We have not seen him like today or yesterday.’

  ‘She means we haven’t seen him recently,’ Litka said, in a much less heavily accented voice.

  ‘Have you any idea when you saw him?’ Trish asked without much hope.

  Both women looked blank.

  ‘Was he with anyone?’ Trish hoped she’d put the right, half-angry yearning expression on her face to confirm her story of a lonely woman in search of a man who’d shown a few signs of fancying her.

  Litka nodded. Her expression was full of sympathy. ‘A woman. She was very pregnant and very angry.’

  It was hard to keep the satisfaction from showing, but Trish tried to look rueful. ‘It must have been his wife.’

  She took out the newsletter and flicked through to find a photograph of Cecilia. ‘Was it this woman?’

  ‘I think. Yes.’

  ‘Did you hear what she was saying?’

  ‘It was more him.’ Litka looked at her friend for confirmation and received a vigorous nod. ‘He said: “You’re pregnant with my baby but you’re prepared to ruin my life.” ’

  Shit. Trish almost said it aloud. Then she asked Litka to repeat the quotation.

  ‘Are you sure that’s what he said?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Was it “You are pregnant” or “You were pregnant”?’ This time she didn’t enunciate so carefully.

  ‘Say again, please.’

  Trish produced the alternatives once more. Then again, more clearly.

  ‘I don’t know. It could be either.’

  ‘Fine. Thank you. And you have no idea when this was?’

  ‘Before Christmas. Some time before.’ The two looked at each other again, talking in their own language. ‘We think maybe soon after the skating opened. We were still learning what we have to do.’

  Another burst of staccato talk, then Litka added: ‘The pregnant woman had b
een first with the man who talked to us. Older, taller.’

  ‘Talked to you? What do you mean?’

  ‘In our language. Czech. This is why we remember. It does not happen often.’

  ‘I can imagine. What did he talk about?’

  Litka glowed in the warmth of her memories. ‘Just where we’re from, how we like London, and can they have more coffee.’

  ‘Fantastic. Thank you both very much. Was the shorter man with the two of them?’

  ‘No, no. He was waiting until the older man went. She went out with him and the shorter man looked worried, but she leave her coat on her chair, so he wait near it. Then she came back and he sit at her table.’

  ‘Did she seem surprised?’ Trish asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Litka checked her memory against her friend’s, but the answer was the same.

  ‘And did you see whether he had gloves with him?’ Trish said,

  thinking of Gina’s reference to fingerprints.

  They shrugged. Again Litka spoke for them both. ‘Many people have gloves in winter. I did not look to see.’

  Still, they had produced a lot more than Trish had expected. She thanked them both, found two ten-pound notes and handed them over, discreetly folded. She no longer had any real suspicion of Dennis Flack, but just to be certain she reopened the loss adjusters’ newsletter and showed them his photograph.

  ‘Did you ever see him here with the woman?’

  The two of them peered, exchanged glances and comments in Czech, then Litka said: ‘We think maybe, but we are not sure. He is quite like this other one, but older. But we are sure we have seen this other one that day.’

  ‘That’s great. Thanks. When does the skating finish? Will you still be able to work here in Somerset House after that?’ Trish said.

  ‘No. At the end of the month we have to find other work.’

  ‘Okay. So maybe I won’t see you again. But thank you.’

  As soon as Litka had returned to her post in the skate-hire tent and her friend had picked up the dirty cloth again, with a quick apology Trish took her mobile from her pocket and rang the Royal Courts of Justice, checking her watch as she did it.