A Greater Evil (26 page)

‘So why haven’t we heard this before?’

‘Because she went on holiday the next day and missed our house-to-house enquiries. She’s been back for weeks, though, so I don’t know why she waited to come forward till now.’

‘Bring her in and give me the notes of your interview.’

Caro retreated to her own office, sat in her high-backed chair and let her head rest against it. She was breathing more deeply than she had for a long time, and her fingers relaxed out of the claw shape they’d been in for days. Now she’d get somewhere.

‘Trish?’ Sam Foundling’s voice was rough and demanding over the phone. Trish levered herself up from the sofa, where she’d been lying half asleep with a mug of tea on the floor beside her.

‘Sam, what’s happened?’

‘Can you help me with the baby?’

‘What d’you need?’

‘Someone to look after her. Can I bring her round?’

Trish looked wildly about the echoing spaces of her flat. ‘What about your mother-in-law?’

‘I can’t go to her. It’s not safe. Please, Trish.’

‘How long will you be away?’

‘I don’t know. The sodding police are here. I’m being arrested.’

Trish felt as though the floor had tilted suddenly, throwing her off balance. She grabbed the back of the sofa and hung on, trying to find something to say that might comfort him without sounding idiotic.

‘So I need someone to look after the baby,’ he said into the silence. ‘Will you help?’

‘Yes.’

‘Great,’ he said, sounding like any impatient angry man. ‘We’ll drop her off on the way to the fucking incident room.’

Trish heard the rumble of male voices and knew the arresting officers must be standing very close to him.

‘Don’t forget to bring nappies and bottles,’ she said quickly. ‘And formula if you’ve got some. I haven’t anything here to feed a baby.’

‘It’s all ready. Be with you in ten, Trish.’

Why had Caro done this? Hadn’t she listened to a single thing? Or was this punishment at one remove for the way Trish had told her to look at Dennis and Guy? How was Sam going to cope with the assault on his fragile personality of a pair of aggressive – or manipulative – detectives trying to make him confess?

Only minutes later, Trish heard at least two pairs of feet on the iron staircase and pulled open the front door. Sam stepped across the threshold, holding the straps of a pale-blue carrycot in one strong hand. From the other dangled a scarlet nappy bag of the kind that unrolls into a changing mat. A uniformed police officer behind him was holding a rucksack. He offered it to Trish and she nearly dropped it, not having expected such a weight.

‘I don’t know how long they’ll keep me,’ Sam said, gently lowering the carrycot onto the nearest black sofa. ‘So I’ve brought all her bottles and the sterilizer and the biggest tin of formula I could find. You’ve got nappies for three days and if you need more, I’ll obviously reimburse you. There’s a big pot of nappy-rash cream. I can’t think of anything else. She sleeps most of the time and is …’ He gritted his teeth, then produced something that sounded like a cough but could have been meant to be laughter. ‘She’s the easiest baby I’ve ever had to deal with.’

Trish laid her hand on his arm, knowing this was the only baby he’d ever dealt with. How much longer would he be allowed to keep her? He stared at Trish with an intensity she found unbearable. Looking down at the baby was the only way of escaping his gaze.

‘Don’t go handing her over to Gina now, will you?’ he said, the effort to sound casual making his voice even scratchier. ‘I don’t want to risk a messy legal fight to get her back. If this nonsense goes on for more than a day or two I’ll have to think again, but if I come out of it I have to know I’ll be able to pick her up straight away. Can I rely on you to keep her with you until we’ve talked? Whatever happens?’

‘Yes.’ Trish forced herself to look back at him, hating her own impotence. ‘You can trust me, Sam.’

There was a long pause. The police officer said they had to go. Sam looked straight at her. ‘I know. She’s called Felicity.’

Trish nodded. Memories of what had been done to him when he was barely older than this baby, and of what had happened once he’d been handed over to the care of foster parents, made it easy to see why he couldn’t bear to let her out of his reach. Even to someone as honourable as his mother-in-law.

‘I didn’t do it,’ he said.

Trish wanted to repeat the words he’d just used, but she couldn’t. She didn’t know whether he had killed his wife or not. She could only hope, so she nodded and smiled. Felicity cried, with a sound like a mewing kitten. Sam’s face clenched. The copper took his elbow and tugged.

‘We’ve got to go,’ he said urgently. Sam didn’t move.

‘I’ll look after her,’ Trish said, trying to make it easier for him. ‘Do you need me to phone your solicitor?’

‘I’ll be allowed to do that at the station, I assume,’ he said, glancing at the policeman.

‘Of course, but we have to go now.’ The officer nodded to Trish and it struck her that he’d shown real humanity allowing this visit. There were plenty of men who’d have taken the baby with Sam and handed her over to the duty social worker, in which case she would have ended up with Gina. Trish hoped he wouldn’t get into trouble for it. Or had he got permission from Caro? It would be good to think this morning’s intervention had had that much effect at least, but it didn’t seem likely.

Trish saw them out, then came back to sort through the equipment Sam had brought. Felicity seemed minute and terrifyingly breakable; the responsibility of looking after her, mountainous. As was the trust Sam had put in Trish.

The phone rang, making her jump.

‘Trish?’ said the familiar voice of her accountant, sounding much more aggressive than usual. She tried to focus her mind on him, but the baby’s expression kept changing. Her face crumpled as though she was about to wail, but no sound emerged.

‘May I remind you,’ he went on, ‘that we’re now well into January and you promised me the figures for your tax return by the New Year at the very latest.’

‘Shit!’ Trish looked away from the sleeping face of the baby, towards the towers of paper on her desk. ‘I’m sorry. There’s a lot going on and I’ve been distracted. It’s almost all ready.’

‘Almost isn’t enough. Have you any idea how many of my clients leave it this long? Why d’you think I’m still in the office, when I should be eating a delicious dinner at home? Send me the figures tomorrow and I’ll do my damnedest to get them processed in time to avoid you having to pay a fine. Okay?’

Felicity opened her mouth and another small cry escaped. Her eyes opened too. So far she didn’t look too worried. But that cry was followed by another, then another.

‘All right,’ Trish said, more meekly than she’d spoken to anyone for years. The tax authorities had always spooked her and for ages her accountant had done the same. Only recently had she allowed herself to believe he was both competent and aware of precisely what the Inland Revenue required of them both. He’d already sent her a list of paperwork for this year’s tax return. It was lying somewhere on her desk. ‘I’ll get down to it as soon as I’ve fed and changed the baby.’

‘Baby? What—’ he was asking when she put down the phone to answer Felicity’s increasingly frenzied mewing.

Trish was clumsy as she performed the unaccustomed tasks, but eventually Felicity was changed, fed and back in her carrycot, and apparently content. Breathing almost as heavily as George during his daily run, Trish turned her attention to the pile of financial papers that had been gathering dust in a brushed-aluminium tray at the back of her desk. Once she’d got going, the whole process would be logical, not remotely difficult, possibly even pleasurable in the way washing-up could be. But it was hard to start.

The first stage would be to dig out her copy of last year’s accounts and tax return to have a model to remind her of what she was supposed to be doing.

Don’t be pathetic, she told herself in silence to avoid worrying Felicity. It’s not difficult. And it’ll stop you imagining what’s happening to Sam. You can’t do anything to help him now, so you might as well get on with it.

Once the files containing her private financial documents were sorted in front of her, she laid the chambers accounts beside them, then tugged open the drawer that held her bank statements. Beneath that was the one where she kept her old chequebook stubs. There had been fewer of those for the past five years or so, since she’d taken to using credit cards or phone banking to pay her bills, but she’d never thrown any away. The old inability to trust anyone, including herself, meant that for ages she’d had a nightmare fantasy of some Revenue inspector demanding documentary proof of a figure she’d entered in a tax return twenty years ago.

Trying to mock herself out of the silliness, she took out an old set of cheque stubs and saw the ink on the counterfoils had almost faded. She could just make out the date – 6.9.83 – and saw she’d spent twenty pounds on something at Miss Selfridge.

Who on earth is ever going to need to know that? she asked herself. And what would the revolting
Daily Mercury's
tame psychologist make of my keeping it?

Child of a broken home, she decided, desperate for security of any kind and unable to believe she’ll ever find it.

I wonder, she thought, switching from her own neurotic habits into contemplating Cecilia’s. Who was it who said the truth of the past lay not in accounts of what had happened but in account books?

Unable to talk to Sam, she grabbed the phone without thinking too hard about what she was going to do and called Gina Mayford again.

‘Cecilia’s financial records, Trish?’ she said a few moments later, sounding puzzled and a bit affronted. ‘What do you want those for?’

‘It’s just an idea I had. I know you want to know the truth, so I’ve been trying to think of any alternative suspects. Something struck me, which could be absurd, but might answer a lot of questions – if I could check.
Did
she keep all her bank records?’

‘I’ve no idea.’ Gina’s deep voice was slow, as though she was having to force herself to talk. ‘But what’s the point anyway, now they’ve arrested Sam?’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘I thought you knew. I was told he’d brought the baby to you on the way to the police station.’ Gina’s voice was rising now: urgent, almost panicking. ‘Haven’t you got her, Trish?’

‘She’s here. And fine. I was only questioning the idea that his arrest means the police have got it right. Have they said why they’ve taken him in?’

‘All I heard was “new evidence”. That’s what the family liaison officer told me. No details. Now we need to make arrangements. You shouldn’t be burdened with Sam’s babysitting. I assumed that’s why you were phoning.’

‘I’m happy to do it. Until we know what’s going to happen to him, it’s more sensible if I—’

‘I’m afraid we already know what’s going to happen, Trish. You must be realistic. And the baby’s place is with me.’

‘Gina …’ Trish hesitated. ‘I just can’t help thinking of all those cases in which the police were sure they had the right man, only to find years later that the killer was someone else entirely.’

There was a chilly pause, before the judge said: ‘No one could deny that has happened. Occasionally. Very well, I won’t interfere for the next forty-eight hours, but please tell me if you need help with my granddaughter.’

‘I will. Thank you.’

‘Fine. Then what is it you expect to find among Cecilia’s financial papers?’

‘Something to tell us more about her university friends,’ Trish said, making it as general as she could. ‘
Did
she keep her papers?’

‘It’s possible. She was immensely methodical. If she did they’ll be at her house.’ There was a pause that Trish worked to stop herself from filling. ‘I have keys. Would you like to have a look? It’s not a police scene because the crime didn’t happen there. And I’m one of her executors. I can let you in, if you really think it’ll help. D’you want to go round now? We could meet there.’

‘You are kind.’ Trish heard Felicity moving in her carrycot, snuffling. ‘But I can’t do it yet. I … I have some urgent work I have to finish here. It could take me all evening. Might I perhaps collect the keys from your clerk tomorrow?’

Another pause, which again Trish had no impulse to shorten. Then came Mrs Mayford’s voice, colder still: ‘I suppose that would be feasible. What time?’

‘Eleven o’clock,’ she said and was given reluctant assent.

Trish’s next call was to her mother, begging her to come to London tomorrow to take care of Felicity, to avoid any possibility of being made to leave the baby with someone on Mrs Mayford’s staff.

Court should start sitting at ten, Trish thought, glad the Christmas vacation had ended a week earlier than usual. So Gina will be well occupied and untouchable from then till at least half-past twelve. I don’t want her there while I dig up evidence that could explain so much, including her daughter’s terror of coincidence, even if it doesn’t identify her murderer.

‘Of course I will,’ Meg said at the end of Trish’s explanation. ‘How’s it going so far?’

‘Fine, but I’ve only had her for about forty minutes.’

‘Good. I hope the night’s all right. Just remember, if she starts crying: confidence and a slow, quiet, sure voice from you will help. As well as firm hands. Not tight, but firm.’

‘You sound almost scared.’ Trish tried to laugh.

‘Infants this small can be a nightmare in a strange place with strange smells and sounds and handling. She hasn’t had an easy start, which may make her more jumpy, and she’s a bit young for Calpol. If it gets bad, Trish, phone me, whatever the time. Promise?’

Does she think I’m completely incompetent? Trish wondered.

‘Okay,’ she said into the phone. ‘In any case, I’ll see you tomorrow. About ten o’clock?’

‘Sure. Unless you’d like me to come over now and spend the night.’

‘I think I’ll manage,’ Trish said.

By three o’clock in the morning, Trish wished she’d accepted the offer, but she was determined not to call for help. There was no anger in her, just a feeling of hopelessness. She couldn’t understand what the problem was that made Felicity cry with this terrifying intensity. There were moments when Trish thought her breathing was about to stop as the noise pumped out, louder with each second, and her tiny crumpled face grew redder and redder.