A Poisoned Mind Page 9

  As she walked, she tried to find some of the old earthy humour that had kept her going through many bad times. When that failed she fought for the sense of Greg and Fran as her friends, as the only people other than Polly who were keeping her from drowning in loneliness and rage.

  But it was hard. Even as she’d been leaving court, Greg hadn’t been able to let her alone. ‘Have you got your phone, Ange? What if you get lost, Ange? Better come home with us, Ange. We can eat and then all go for a walk together, if you want exercise; you’re not used to London streets; it’s not safe; wait, Ange.’ And the overall unspoken message beating through everything else: you’re our property now. You’re answerable to us; you have to stay within our reach.

  She’d wanted to stop feeling excluded for most of her life, but she’d had no idea how inclusion would suffocate her. The only way to get out of his grip had been to accept his mobile phone. She’d stuffed it in the pocket of her suit jacket, saying, ‘And don’t you phone me unless you want me to jack in the whole case and go home.’

  Already regretting the outburst, she’d strode away and heard Fran’s blessedly sensible voice: ‘Leave her alone, Greg. She’ll be fine. She just needs some space. What are we going to eat tonight?’

  I don’t care because I’m not having another bloody vegetable stew, Angie thought, looking around for a burger bar, where she could indulge herself with the kind of food Greg would most detest. I really will need a spike driven through my abdomen if this sodding flatulence gets any worse.

  A large wet drop hit her right eye and she wiped her finger across it, expecting to see bird shit. But it was only rain; heavy though. Within minutes her whole scalp was wet and rain trickled through her hair and down her neck. She turned up her face to the cold fresh wetness of it, hoping to feel as though the worst of her ingratitude could be washed away.

  Walking on, she trod on a loose paving stone and felt a spray of sticky fluid up the back of her calf. Looking down, she saw it was dirty as well as wet and her pleasure in the rain dwindled. A flash, followed by a gut-churning crack of thunder took her back to the night of John’s death and she knew she had to get to shelter fast.

  The thickness of the rainfall made it hard to see more than a few feet ahead of her, and the reflected headlights from the oncoming cars didn’t help, but eventually she identified a swinging pub sign on her side of the road. That would do. Whatever it was like, it would be better than staying out in this deluge.

  She pushed open the door to find herself in the kind of place she thought no longer existed in a city. A long bar of scarred wood took up half the room. The rest was filled with a row of equally battered tables with benches behind and small, unpadded stools in front. There were no gaming machines, no posters, and very little decoration.

  ‘Yes, miss?’ said the elderly man behind the bar.

  ‘Could I have—?’ Angie broke off, looking at the equally ancient bottles ranged on shelves behind his white head. ‘Oh, maybe, some ginger wine.’

  ‘To warm you up. Good idea on a night like this.’ He grinned, revealing several gaps in his teeth. ‘Drop of whisky in it?’

  ‘Why not? Have you got anything to eat?’

  ‘Ham sandwich any good to you? My wife can make you one.’

  ‘Perfect. Thanks.’ She took her drink to a table in the far corner and looked around.

  Her few fellow-drinkers were all men and all well past sixty. One must have come in just after her because he was wet, too, and hadn’t got a drink yet. The other five looked as though they’d been here for hours; two sat together but they weren’t talking, and the others were solitary: all reading their papers or making notes. Reckoning up the odds? Or doing the latest puzzles? She couldn’t decide. And it didn’t exactly matter.

  The whisky mac tasted surprisingly good, the sweetness of the ginger nicely spiked with spirit. She had no idea where she was and felt an extraordinary liberation. If she didn’t know, then no one else did, so none of them could get at her.

  Something buzzed at her side. For a second she thought there must be a live wire somewhere within the plastered wall, or maybe the bench. Moments later, she realised the vibration had to be coming from Greg’s phone in her pocket.

  She pulled it out, hating him all over again. Why couldn’t he leave her alone?

  At last, she remembered he could only get to her if she answered, so she put the phone back in her pocket. When the buzzing stopped she let her head flop forwards as she tried to mop the worst of the rain from the back of her neck with an old tissue she’d found under the phone in her pocket.

  It buzzed again. Again she ignored it. But he wouldn’t stop calling, and once the other drinkers started to stare at her every time the insistent noise started up again, she knew she’d have to do something.

  The phone wasn’t like her own brick-heavy old-fashioned one and she couldn’t work out how to turn it off. None of the obvious buttons worked and the noise just went on, getting louder. At last she found the right button and stopped the buzzing dead.

  ‘Ham sandwich?’ called a woman from the internal doorway at the back of the pub. ‘Who ordered a ham sandwich?’

  Angie raised her hand and the woman, who was dressed in the kind of flowered apron that buttoned at the back and hadn’t been seen anywhere else since the early 1960s, put down a large plate with a doorstep sandwich. It had been cut into quarters and was flanked by damp-looking lettuce and slices of beetroot that were already leaking purple juice into the bottom slice of bread. Angie paid, smiled her thanks and rescued the sandwich from the beetroot juice.

  The ham tasted like real meat and the bread not at all bad. She’d expected limp, steam-baked slices. Chewing hard through the dense crust, she realised that most of what had made her feel so weak had been hunger. Another mouthful of whisky mac and she’d be fine.

  The depth of the bread meant she couldn’t eat too fast and there was still nearly a third of the sandwich to go when the pub doors opened and another man came in. Were there no women up here in the wilds of north London?

  The man removed his damp raincoat and shook the drips off it, turning to look around as he did so. She recognised Ben Givens from the party and lowered her head, hoping he wouldn’t clock her.

  He walked straight to the bar to order a pint. While it was being pulled, he turned casually and leaned back against the bar, surveying the other drinkers. When the barman put the full tankard on the bar, Ben pointed to Angie and, with a quite exaggerated leer, said: ‘And give me another of whatever the lady’s drinking.’

  The barman looked across at Angie, as though asking permission. Not at all sure what was going on, she shrugged, then nodded because it seemed easier than risking a scene. Moments later Ben brought both drinks to her table.

  ‘Mind if I join you?’ he said in a voice she didn’t quite recognise.

  ‘If you want.’

  He hooked a stool forward with his right foot and sat down, leaning his elbows on the table, which meant he could more or less cover his mouth without being obvious.

  ‘You’re a long way from home,’ he said. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘I just needed time on my own. d’you want a sandwich? This is quite good.’

  He shook his head. ‘I’ll be eating later. What happened in court? Did Maguire rough you up?’

  ‘She’s vile, you know. It gets worse every day. She’s obsessed with proving John did it deliberately – bunged up the filters to make the tanks explode, as a way of committing suicide.’

  Ben laughed openly, but the sound didn’t convince her; nor did the apparent ease with which he leaned back on his stool.

  ‘I doubt it. She’s never been a fool, and only a fool would run a defence like that. She’s trying to distract you while she’s going after something else. Tell me exactly what happened, what she asked your witness and what he replied.’

  ‘Why the hell should I?’ Angie’s aggression shocked her as much as it surprised Ben. H
e patted her knobbly hand in an avuncular kind of way and she wrenched it away.

  ‘Is he annoying you, Miss?’ said the barman, coming out from behind his bar with a cloth in his hand.

  For a second she was tempted to say yes, then dreaded the fallout that might follow and the inevitable fight with Greg. She shook her head. The barman’s creased face hardened and gave her a look that more or less told her she deserved anything that was coming to her if she let herself be pushed around by a stranger.

  ‘Why?’ she said again, loudly enough to make everyone else see that she could take care of herself. All the old men in the pub looked up. She could tell most of them disapproved of the noise.

  ‘So I can give you some relevant sympathy,’ Ben said much more quietly, lifting his glass and smiling at her over the top of it. ‘I rather thought you needed it.’

  ‘I don’t need anything, except for this bloody case to be over. I wish I’d never started it, and quite frankly I’ve been wondering what I could do to persuade CWWM to settle. Almost anything would be better than letting the judge ruin me with costs and damages when Maguire wins for them.’

  Ben put down his drink and spent some time examining his nails as though deciding what to say. Then he looked up with an expression that scared her.

  ‘It’s too late to back out now.’ There wasn’t a single scrap of sympathy left in his voice. ‘You’ve come too far and taken too much from Fran and Greg.’

  ‘Is that why you’re here? To keep me on the straight and narrow? Were you following me?’ She saw from his slight withdrawal that he must have been, and added with far more aggression than she usually allowed herself, ‘How dare you? What’s your interest in my case?’

  ‘Friendship,’ he said quickly. ‘I told you: I admire what FADE do for absolutely no reward. You stand to get a lot of money if you win, but Fran and Greg? Even if the decision goes the right way, all they’ll get is the satisfaction of seeing a polluter punished and a beautiful part of England restored to health.’

  Angie wouldn’t have thought anyone could make her feel worse until now.

  ‘Come on,’ he said a little more kindly. ‘Finish that sandwich and I’ll take you back to them.’

  He hustled her out of the pub and unlocked the doors of a top-of-the-range BMW. As she slid into the passenger seat, the rich woody scent of the leather made her think of the car John had had when they’d first met.

  They’d hardly ever had time to do any of the usual things a couple on the edge of a relationship would do: no candlelit dinners, no romantic weekends wandering through beautiful beechwoods before coming home to eat gourmet food and quaff champagne. But there had been journeys in his car. Most of their closest moments had been spent sitting side by side, on their way to client meetings, talking their way into love. They’d known all about each other before they’d made love the first time, and neither of them had ever had to pretend to be more successful or glamorous than they were.

  Turning her head to the side as though she wanted to look out of the window, she wiped her eyes with the cuff of her coat sleeve.

  ‘Angie, I’m … Bugger!’ A phone rang with a proper old-fashioned ring, not the sneaky buzz of the one Greg had lent her. ‘That’ll be Greg. Could you answer and let him know I’ve found the lost sheep and am bringing her home? The phone’s there in the box by the gear lever.’

  Hating him, Angie let it ring.

  Chapter 8

  ‘Message from Mr Shelley.’

  Trish looked up from her desk on Friday morning to see Steve peering round her door. His expression was cheerful enough to keep her from worrying.

  ‘He said your note got lost yesterday, but one of the cleaners just gave it to him, and he wants me to tell you—’ He fished in his pocket. ‘I thought I’d better write it down to get it right. He says: “Tell her I didn’t summon her for a wigging. Just wanted to see her. I promise not to be asleep next time she’s got a minute to come over. But she’d better phone the ward first so they can keep me awake. Chin chin.”’

  The absurdity of ‘chin chin’ as a farewell made her smile, but it was the meat of the message that gave her the real lift. ‘Thanks, Steve.’

  ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘Not too badly. They finished their case yesterday. Now it’s our turn. So I need to keep focused.’

  ‘Right you are. Good luck.’

  ‘Aren’t you supposed to say “break a leg” or something?’ she said as she went back to her papers and reached for another yellow Post-it to mark a particular piece of evidence.

  ‘“Superstition is the religion of feeble minds.”’

  ‘I never knew your hero was interested in superstition,’ she said, still concentrating on her work. ‘Or religion.’

  ‘Hero? What hero?’

  ‘Churchill. I can’t remember ever hearing you quote anything about superstition before.’

  ‘I’ve moved on, see.’ Steve sounded strange enough to make her glance up again and meet his shifty gaze. He smirked. ‘Or rather back. It’s Burke now. He said even more useful things than Mr Churchill.’

  ‘Lucky old you.’ Trish’s mind was already back with her evidence, and she didn’t even notice Steve walk out of her room.

  Robert had calmed down as he’d watched the last couple of days’ cross-examination and, although he still wanted a turn on his feet, he’d stopped giving her warning notes whenever he thought she was straying. He’d even made a few jokes of his own about checking the climbing ropes and ensuring she had enough carabiners and pitons in her kit.

  The door crashed open and he erupted into the room, waving a clutch of paper.

  ‘What on earth has happened?’

  ‘I’ve got to hand it to you, Trish: you’ve got a splendidly devious mind.’

  ‘Aha! The mystery man. Have they found him?’

  ‘Absolutely.’ He dropped into the better of the two visitors’ chairs and shoved the piece of paper across her desk.

  A short printed report was clipped to a selection of black and white prints of the interior of the most depressing kind of unreconstructed pub. The first showed Angie Fortwell, looking as though she was halfway through an operation without anaesthetic, ignoring the wine glass between her hands. A man was sitting opposite her with his back to the camera.

  Trish shuffled through the prints until she came to one that showed him full-face emerging from the pub.

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘Don’t you recognise him?’

  ‘I’m not sure. It is him, though, isn’t it? The bulk and the shoulders are right. And I think I’ve seen that Burberry in one of the original shots.’ She reached down to the bottom drawer of her desk, where she had the first set of surveillance photographs. ‘Yes. It is. Look: here and here. Who is he?’

  ‘Benjamin Givens.’

  ‘Givens? Why do I know that name? Givens? You mean the barrister?’

  ‘That’s it. You’re a clever baggage, you know, when you put your mind to it. I’ve been looking through all the investigators’ reports and I think you’re right that he did deliberately evade the watchers. Which means you may also be right about his involvement with FADE.’

  ‘When were these taken?’

  ‘Wednesday night. You wanted the dogs put back on Angie and her confreres. They were picked up outside the RCJ on Wednesday evening. And the people following her found this. They made the identification yesterday.’

  ‘I wonder what was so important that he came out of hiding,’ Trish said, half to herself.

  ‘No time to argue about it now. We’ll be late if we don’t get moving. I’ve sent Hal on ahead with the documents. Have you had enough coffee?’

  ‘What? Oh, lord yes. Plenty. Let’s go.’

  But she found it hard to put down the photograph and even harder to stop her mind crunching through the possibilities thrown up by the identification of Ben Givens. Was he really giving pro-bono help because he cared about the protection of the environment? Or was som
eone paying him?

  Probably not. Accepting secret payments for legal advice could get him disbarred if anyone found out. But if he wasn’t being paid, why the secrecy?

  David was standing outside the head’s office, waiting to be called in. He hadn’t done anything wrong, so he was cross. Everyone could see him here, and they’d all think he was in trouble. It wasn’t fair. And he had work to do. At last his form teacher came out of the head’s room and jerked his head back.

  ‘You can go in, David.’

  He slouched forwards to show what he thought about it all and found himself looking around Mr Black’s room like a tourist. He’d never been in it before and was surprised to see how like Trish’s chambers it was. There were the same white-painted bookshelves all along one wall and a desk just as big as hers, but not as messy.

  ‘Now, David,’ said the head, stroking his heavy chin and looking out from under his hairy eyebrows, ‘what’s all this I’ve been hearing about Jay and your trainers?’

  ‘Nothing. Why?’

  ‘It’s not nothing. Jay has been seen wearing a pair of trainers, box fresh and just like your new ones. You have been seen wearing the old worn-out ones. It doesn’t take a genius to make the connection.’ He waited a moment or two but David didn’t volunteer anything. ‘I don’t want to go running to your sister without having the full story.’

  ‘I give them to him.’

  ‘Gave, David; gave, as you very well know. Why did you give them to him?’

  ‘He hasn’t got any. And his family hasn’t got any money to buy them for him.’

  ‘That’s true, but it’s not enough of an explanation. Why now?’

  David shrugged and said he didn’t know. The pattern on the carpet was interesting, all geometric with lozenges and octagons. He started to count the different shapes in the way he’d learned when he was young and people were telling him things he didn’t want to hear.

  ‘David, pay attention!’

  He went on counting.

  ‘You’re not in any trouble. I just need to be sure that Jay hasn’t been putting pressure on you to give him expensive things that belong to you.’