Keep Me Alive Read online

  ‘Why won’t you leave us alone?’ Mrs Crossman said, in a whining voice that set Caro’s teeth on edge. She looked at the woman’s hands, red and flaking from using too much cleaning fluid, and tried to feel sorry for her. ‘You’ve no right to come here like this, upsetting everyone.’

  ‘I have every right to find out why Kim has run away twice and why she’s been exhibiting so many of the signs of serious abuse. Her safety is my only concern.’

  A baby wailed in the next room. Mo Crossman was across the shiny floor and out of the door before Caro had taken two breaths. She looked straight at Crossman and said with stony deliberation, ‘Apart from the baby’s, that is. We are watching you, Daniel. And we won’t stop until we find out what you’ve been doing.’

  He stared at her, not bothering to answer.

  Caro still hadn’t got him out of her mind when she staggered home with two heavy plastic bags of shopping at the end of the day. It was a relief to find Jess happily sharing a drink with a friend of theirs. Her partner had failed to get yet another possible part in a television series last week and had been very glum since. Tonight it looked as though Cynthia Flag had managed to cheer her up. Caro kissed them both, then invited Cynthia to stay for supper, adding, ‘You’ll like Trish. She has all the right ideas, even though she doesn’t do family law any more. I mean she hasn’t sold out or anything. I’m doing sausages and mash for her and me, but I’m sure Jess would let you share her cheese-and-potato pie. And we can all have the same salad and pudding. Do stay.’

  ‘I wish I could,’ Cynthia said, looping her slippery dark-gold hair back into the combs she used to keep it up. ‘But I’m on my way to meet someone. In fact, I ought to get going.’

  ‘Not yet. Stay and talk to Jess while I get started on the cooking.’

  ‘Why don’t we do that for you?’ Jess said. ‘You look as though you could use a shower.’

  Glad to see her in such high spirits, Caro left the kitchen to the two of them. It was good to be able to take time under the hard jets of water and feel the day’s tensions being washed away. She emerged, cool and a bit calmer, to dress in loose linen trousers and a T-shirt. She would have kept her feet bare, except that it was dustbin day tomorrow and she’d have to take the rubbish out later.

  Cynthia and Jess were still talking amid the potato peelings and onion skins, while savoury smells wafted out of the oven. When Caro joined them, Jess looked her up and down and said, ‘Couldn’t you have made a bit more effort? Those trousers make you look like the back end of an elephant. Even you must have noticed that pure linen only works when it’s new.’

  ‘Oh, Jess! What does it matter? They’re comfortable, and Trish won’t mind what I look like.’

  ‘I mind.’

  Caro couldn’t stop herself snapping, which made Jess rush out of the kitchen.

  ‘You’re a bit hard on her,’ Cynthia said gently, laying a hand on Caro’s shoulder. ‘Couldn’t you cut her some slack while she’s having such a tough time?’

  ‘She’s not the only one.’

  ‘Don’t, Caro.’

  ‘Don’t what?’

  ‘Talk like an angry police officer. I know you don’t mean to do it, but I don’t think you’ve got any idea how hard it must be for Jess to deal with after she’s spent an almost silent day on her own, worrying about whether she’s ever going to get another job.’

  Caro shook her head, not sure whether she was offering an apology or expressing disbelief. Cynthia just smiled. Later, when she’d gone and Jess was taking her turn in the shower, Caro cleared up the kitchen as a penance and distracted herself by thinking about Daniel Crossman.

  She had seen far too many men like him to mistake the cold watchfulness in his eyes or miss the violence hidden behind his superficial stillness. He was a control freak; he had an obsession with cleanliness that, to her at least, meant there were things about himself he could not bear to acknowledge; and he ruled his unhappy little household with tyrannical rigidity.

  The only problem was that no one knew what else he had been doing. Unless they found out within the next fourteen days, Kim was going to have to go back and face it all over again. Getting the interim care order had been hard enough. If the chief social worker hadn’t been so much on Caro’s side, Kim would probably have been sent back already.

  Caro lifted the heavy plastic rubbish bag and carried it out of the flat. As she turned into the side alley, where the bins were kept, she heard a familiar voice calling her name from the street, and adding, ‘D’you want a hand with that?’

  ‘It’s fine, thanks, Trish,’ she said, turning to greet her friend. ‘How are you? Not that I need to ask. You look fantastic. But you must be sweltering in that black suit.’

  ‘It’s cooler than it looks,’ Trish said, flapping the sides of her jacket over the white muslin shirt. ‘Although I envy you your trousers. I wish I’d had time to go home to change. We had a heavy session today.’

  ‘Poor you.’

  ‘But you look as though you haven’t had too easy a day either. A tough case?’

  ‘Awful.’ Caro had learned not to talk to Jess about the children she was fighting to protect, but Trish was different. She wouldn’t mind listening to the whole story and it would be a relief to share some of it. Trish might even have some ideas about how they could persuade Kim to break her silence. Still talking twenty minutes later, they went upstairs to rescue the sausages and to see how Jess was getting on with her cheese-and-potato pie.

  Three hours later, Trish at last reached her own flat and let herself in with the feeling of a traveller returning from the most arduous trek across unforgiving terrain. She had always found Jess hard to like, but this evening had been worse than usual. Knowing how worried Caro was, Trish thought Jess might have shown some sympathy for her – even a little practical help – but she’d been mulish in the extreme. It had been Trish who’d got up to carry the dirty plates out to the kitchen and help Caro with the washing up. Jess had stayed in the sitting room, lying on the sofa in her svelte clothes and listening to music turned up so loud it had been painful even in the kitchen. Trish had often wondered why Caro had fallen in love with Jess in the first place, and why she stuck with the relationship when it was obviously so difficult.

  The big Southwark flat was quiet, and it smelled wonderful. The smoky scent of dried lavender from a bowl in the middle of the table mixed with the smell of oil paint from the latest abstract Trish had bought, and the beeswax polish her cleaner liked to use. Revelling in the glorious absence of food cooking, she double-locked the door, stretched out one arm to turn off the external light and headed up the spiral staircase to her bedroom under the eaves.

  Later, wrapped in a scarlet towel after a long self-indulgent shower, she checked that the radio-alarm beside her bed was set for six o’clock. Tomorrow was going to be an important day with the opening of Furbishers’ defence. She would need all her faculties to pick up the real evidential points Ferdy Aldham made as well as the subliminal messages he was generating.

  She opened The Plague by Albert Camus, which Antony had recommended and prepared to read herself to sleep. The novel was said to be a seminal work, but so far it had left her unsatisfied. Only some sorts of fiction managed both to drag her deep into its particular world and tell her something new about herself. This had done neither yet, and she found it cold. She thought she might go on with it for a little longer, but if it didn’t perk up soon, she’d bin it, however clever and important it might be.

  The book falling on her nose woke her. She took off her glasses and turned out the light.

  Later it was a griping spasm that wrenched her out of sleep. Her whole bed felt full of pain; her mind wouldn’t work. The room was very dark and very hot. Another spasm forced a groan out from between her clenched teeth. She knew she had to get out of bed. Bending over the ache, holding both hands round her body, she ran for the bathroom.

  Next morning Trish felt as though a ten-ton truck had been driv
ing back and forth over her body all night. When she staggered back into the bathroom in search of another Imodium, she saw her reflection in the mirror over the basin and flinched. Her skin was greyish and made her look old enough to be her own grandmother. Great dark circles under her eyes showed how little sleep she’d had. Her throat felt raw, the pain in her gut was nearly as bad as it had been in the night, but the pills she’d swallowed had been doing their work. She managed to clean her teeth and rinse out her mouth, but she didn’t risk anything more than milkless tea for breakfast.

  Antony took one look at her as they met outside chambers and said, ‘What the hell d’you think you’re doing, giving yourself a hangover on a court day?’

  Trish shook her head. This was Antony back to his old acerbic self. ‘Don’t! I was up all night. NHS Direct say it sounds like food poisoning, but I think I’m on the mend now.’

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, as the affection relaxed his face again. ‘I should have known you’d never be so irresponsible. What were you eating? Shellfish? That can be a bugger in this weather.’

  ‘No. I went to friends. It was only sausages, and pretty well-cooked at that. Overcooked in fact.’

  ‘Sounds remarkably unsuitable for such a hot evening. Are you up to a day in court?’ She’d never heard his voice so gentle, or seen his eyes so soft.

  ‘So long as I don’t try to eat anything.’

  ‘Good. Warn me if you need to go out, won’t you?’

  She was touched by the way he made Colin carry all her paraphernalia as well as the day’s files and gave him strict instructions to take notes for her of every point the defence made. But she was determined to do her job properly.

  The first person she saw when she walked into court was Will Applewood; sitting alone on the claimants’ bench. She wished he hadn’t come. There was nothing for him to do except listen to interminable arguments about contract law or evidence from Furbishers’ employees impugning his brains and business sense. His face lit up as it always did when he smiled at her, and she forced herself to smile back.

  All day, she had to fight waves of pain, concentrating as hard as she’d ever done. There were one or two scary moments, but she held on, took painkillers and another Imodium at lunchtime instead of food, and kept going.

  Antony sent her straight home when the judge rose, telling her that he and Colin would take her stuff back to chambers and he’d see her in the morning.

  ‘And think about whether you want to sue the people who poisoned you,’ he called after her.

  Trish waved him off, but the comment did make her think. Jess, who had eaten quite different food, couldn’t be affected, but if the damage really had been done by the sausages, Caro must be suffering too.

  Jess answered the phone, sounding tearful. ‘She’s in hospital,’ she said, as soon as Trish had said who she was.

  ‘Food poisoning?’

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Because I had it too,’ Trish said crossly, thinking no one could be that stupid. ‘But nothing like badly enough for a trip to hospital. How is Caro?’

  ‘I don’t know. Barely conscious.’ Jess gulped. ‘I didn’t know what to do when she started throwing up in the night. I made her mint tea, which nearly always helps, but she couldn’t even keep that down. It got worse and worse and it was hurting her so much that in the end I called an ambulance. She was furious. But I was so frightened.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ Trish said, in her most professionally soothing voice, although she disliked Jess’s familiar habit of exaggerating everything.

  ‘And I’ve been sitting with her in casualty all day long, trying to help. They took her up to a ward about an hour ago and said there wasn’t anything more I could do. So I came back here.’

  ‘It sounds as though she’s really ill,’ Trish said, with more than a twinge of guilt.

  ‘Of course she is. She could die,’ Jess wailed. ‘And they won’t even let me stay with her.’

  ‘It can’t be that bad. Which hospital is she in?’

  ‘Dowting’s. It’s the nearest. But they say they won’t have any news until tomorrow at the earliest. And by then she may be …’

  ‘They’ll look after her, Jess. She’ll be all right. But what about you? Do you need anything?’

  Jess sniffed, then said, ‘I’m fine, but I stuck to veg. I’ve been telling her for weeks that meat is poison, but she didn’t believe me, you see. Oh, Trish, what’s going to happen?’

  How the hell do I know? Trish thought, while she murmured the kind of soothing reassurances she knew Caro would have wanted her to offer.

  Bob had refused to go to Ron’s pub, which had seemed like a bad omen. Now he was sitting opposite Tim in one just outside Stubb’s Cross, where no one knew either of them. They’d got pints of the local bitter in front of them. Bob had barely started on his, but Tim had drained the lot. He’d hoped it would give him enough courage to embark on an explanation of why he wouldn’t fly again until he could be sure no one was going to ask questions about the man Bob had kicked to death.

  ‘Got any idea how long I’ll have to wait till you feel safe again?’ Bob said at last, in a voice so casual that Tim was deceived.

  He started to say that he wouldn’t know till it happened, when he saw Bob’s eyes bulging, as they always did when he was about to let his temper rip. Tim grabbed his tankard as though to drink, but there was nothing left in it. Feeling like a fool as well as a coward, he said, ‘Don’t you think it would be mad to take such a risk?’ He hated the way his voice quivered. He coughed, but it didn’t help. ‘It’ll probably only be a month or two. Till we’re sure no one’s going to come looking for us. By then there’ll be much less evidence anyway. So we should be all right even if they did come nosing around. You must see that, Bob.’

  Waiting for the usual explosion, Tim found himself staring at the scars on Bob’s hands. As he watched, they curled into fists, then slowly relaxed again until they lay flat against his powerful thighs. They looked as if they belonged to a man fighting every instinct to hit out. When Bob finally spoke, his voice was tight with suppressed fury.

  ‘We can’t stop now. It’s taken too long to set this up and get it working to throw it away. I’m paying all the pet-food people to keep quiet. If I stop their money, they’re going to be tempted to grass you up, and I can’t afford to bung them without the profits from your flights. You wouldn’t want them knowing how you killed that man, now would you?’

  Tim’s mouth opened, but he couldn’t produce any sound. All he’d done that night had been to watch as Bob had kicked the snooper to death. Tim would have called the police straight off, if he hadn’t been terrified for his own life. No one could pin any of the blame on him. He considered pointing that out, then saw Bob’s face and thought better of it.

  ‘I suppose if you won’t fly, you won’t,’ Bob said, as though he hadn’t noticed Tim’s shock. ‘But I’ll have to look around for someone else who will. There’s bound to be someone.’

  Tim forgot everything in the glorious sensation that enveloped him. It was as though someone had lifted him off his uncomfortable chair and wrapped him in the softest duvet. Bob could get another pilot. It was so simple. Why the hell hadn’t he thought of it for himself? Trying to hide his relief, he produced a noncommittal shrug.

  ‘I couldn’t quarrel with that.’

  ‘Good.’ Bob got up and leaned over him, holding him down with one heavy, scarred hand on his shoulder. His grip was tight enough to hurt. ‘But that doesn’t mean you’re off the hook. If I ever hear so much as a whisper that you might’ve talked to anyone, I’ll be round your place to make sure you never talk again. Got that?’

  Tim nodded. He knew it was true. Bob let him go at last and shoved his way out of the little pub. When Tim could move again, he cranked himself to his feet and got another pint from the bar. He needed it to take the taste of fear out of his mouth and give him the illusion of control over his life.

  When he got home a
gain, he fed Boney, made himself a pot of tea and settled down to do his accounts. He’d been putting them off for weeks, but even they weren’t as scary as Bob.

  An hour later, sweating, Tim reset the calculator and added up each column all over again. The totals came out the same. He couldn’t believe it. All his relief drained away. He’d been right up against the overdraft limit for months, but he hadn’t realized he had only six pounds fifty left. He’d started to grow cherries on some of his land years ago, when he’d first understood how the price of lamb was collapsing, and the fruit had made just enough difference to keep the farm going. But this year’s harvest had netted the smallest profit he’d ever made. Bills were flooding in every day. Without the money Bob paid him for the weekly flights to France, he’d never be able to settle any of them. He’d always had a legitimate sideline, taking aerial photographs for local landowners and estate agents, but that was never going to plug this kind of gap. No legal business could.

  Could he make himself crawl back to Bob now? Having had that one fantastic glimpse of freedom, it would be like slamming the door in his own face. And Bob would make him pay for his weakness.

  Caro was in a general admission ward, full of mainly elderly patients who had been brought in after falls at home or in the street. Some were unconscious, but several beds had two or three nurses shouting supposedly soothing explanations at the confused and frightened occupant.

  Trish found Caro eventually in the furthest bay from the door. She was asleep, which seemed astonishing in the middle of this cacophony. Her complexion looked even worse than Trish’s had in the night, and already her cheeks were sunken. Her nose jutted up under the skin like a spike. A drip was attached to her right arm. Trish leaned towards it to read the name of the drug they were pumping into Caro.