A Greater Evil (5 page)

‘Thank you,’ said the cool-sounding officer at the other end of the phone line. Before Trish could ask her question again, he’d cut the connection.

She drummed her fingers on the edge of her desk, running through the likely reasons for the call. Then she shrugged. There was no point speculating. She tried to focus once more on the engineering principles behind the erection of innovative buildings on a surface as mobile as a mass grave dug in the treacherous London clay.

This too was hard. She’d have found it much easier to concentrate if she’d had some people with recognizable emotions to deal with, instead of mathematical formulae, lists of computer data, and screensful of spidery drawings, which were as hard to understand as the hard-copy versions rolled into the cardboard tubes that were stacked in her cupboard. Even the trivial question from the police about Sam’s visit was more interesting. She put her hand on the phone, thinking she might call him with a witty enquiry about what he’d been up to, then thought it would be better to wait until she knew more.

The calculator should have been hot by the time she’d rechecked every sum in the first tranche of files. She still thought of them as sums, even though many were complex equations, which made her long for a sharper brain or a maths A level in her past. The phone rang again.

‘Trish Maguire,’ she said, in case the call had come direct rather than through the switchboard in the clerks’ room.

‘It’s Mrs Justice Mayford,’ said Sally Elliott, her usually sharp voice sounding awed. ‘Can I put her through?’

‘Of course.’ Trish waited a moment, then heard the judge’s deep, beautiful voice saying her name in a questioning tone.

‘Yes, it’s me. What can I do for you, Mrs Mayford?’

‘Trish, I … Cecilia talked to me after your last meeting with her … and …’

And? Trish thought, but she didn’t say it, waiting until the notoriously tough woman at the other end of the line had dealt with her strange hesitancy.

‘I wondered … I need to talk to someone, and I think you might be the best person. I’m sitting this week, but I’d rather not do it here or come to your chambers. Is there any possibility we could meet somewhere else, in the early evening?’

‘Sure. Where and when?’

‘I don’t want … I need … Sorry.’ The judge gulped. ‘What about having a drink by the ice rink in Somerset House? Six o’clock? There are always lots of people at this time of year. We’d just be two more women in the crowd.’

‘Fine. Great. Six o’clock. I’ll recognize you,’ Trish said. ‘May I just ask …’

‘I’d rather you didn’t. Not now. I’ve got this afternoon’s session in court to get through. I’ll see you later. Thank you.’

Trish quickly scanned the diary in front of her as she put down the phone. It was a relief to see there were no other post-work engagements today. David was expecting her home by six, but he wouldn’t mind if she were late. He was well used to that, and it would mean he could leave his trainers all over the flat and play his vile music at ear-splitting volume for longer than usual. Even so, she left a message on his voicemail to warn him, then carried on sitting at her desk wondering what on earth Mrs Mayford could want. She hoped it wasn’t anything about Sam and the woman in prison. He hadn’t actually asked her to keep the letters secret, but it was clear he didn’t want them made public.

Mrs Mayford ought to understand that too well even to try to pump Trish for information about him. But what else could she want? She was way above Trish in the legal hierarchy and their only connection was through Sam and Cecilia.

This wasn’t the time to address any of the other questions scratching at the edges of Trish’s consciousness, but they were there, as they must have been for hundreds of members of legal London for the past thirty-four years. Who was Cecilia’s father? Why had Gina Mayford never named him? How had she managed to bring up an illegitimate child in a world as archaic and prejudiced against women as the Bar had been in the early 1970s? And how had she managed to pay her bills?

Looking back to her own early years in chambers, fifteen years after Gina’s, Trish remembered panicking about whether she would ever earn enough to pay her rent, let alone save for a future mortgage deposit. And the hours she’d worked! There’d been times when she had been so tired she’d felt like climbing the stone stairs at chambers on her hands and knees. To have gone through all that while also caring for a baby – with its endless need to be fed and clothed and cleaned and changed, waking you up at all hours of the night when you were aching for sleep – must have been like running a marathon every day.

What guts Gina Mayford must have to have survived, let alone reached the heights of judicial eminence. Apart from the House of Lords, only the Court of Appeal remained for her to conquer, and of the thirty-five judges who sat there just three were women. So why would she want to talk to a junior barrister?

Trish phoned Cecilia’s office, rehearsing a vague question she might use to get Cecilia talking. She didn’t want to drop Mrs Mayford in it if her dilemma were secret.

‘Hello?’ said a tentative voice after Trish had asked the switchboard for Cecilia’s office. ‘Is that Ms Maguire?’

‘Yes. May I speak to Cecilia?’

‘No. I mean … Someone should’ve told you. But we’ve all been so shocked. She … She was taken to hospital yesterday. I know we’ll have to do something about the case, and they’re working on it here already, but just at the moment …’ She sniffed, then sobbed and fought to speak again. ‘We can’t think of anything except her.’

‘I’m sure. Thank you for telling me. Is it some complication of the pregnancy? Pre-eclampsia or something?’

‘I don’t know what I’m allowed to say.’ The sound of weeping was loud now and uncontrolled. ‘She was beaten up yesterday. They gave her an emergency Caesarian. Then she died. In the night. The police are here now and we’ve all got to be interviewed.’

The line buzzed as the voice was abruptly cut off. Trish replaced her own receiver, her mind throwing up random thoughts like rocks in a burst of magma. It would be typical of the kind of coincidence that had so upset Cecilia to find Caro in charge of this investigation. How like Gina Mayford to stick to her commitments in court on the day of her only daughter’s death. No wonder the police wanted to know where Sam had been yesterday. Many cases of domestic violence start during a couple’s first pregnancy. He’d had bruises on his hands. Many abused children turn abuser in their turn. Maybe he …

‘No,’ Trish said aloud. ‘I don’t believe it.’

It was hard to hold on to the certainty when she was sitting in front of Gina Mayford, with cardboard cups of hot chocolate between them, peering out through the yellowing, scarred plastic sides of the marquee at the edge of the temporary ice rink. The ice itself was filled with skaters, ugly in shapeless clothes and graceless as they fell or clung to each other and fumbled their way across the ice. The smells of coffee and chocolate inside the tent had been entirely overtaken by damp wool and the stale exhalations of a hundred pairs of lungs.

Trish turned her back on the rink. Gina looked ill, with dark crescents under her eyes and no colour in her cheeks. Her greying hair had been cut in a short plain bob, presumably for ease of cramming it under her wig, and it was thinning on top. Her hands moved constantly, turning her cup around, fiddling with the unused packets of sugar, smoothing her rough hair, or scratching at the inside of her right forearm. Exposed by the way she’d pushed up her jacket sleeve, it had long red weals all the way from wrist to elbow.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Trish said again, trying to submerge her own feelings in sympathy for the infinitely worse ones this woman was suffering. ‘Cecilia was wonderful. Her death is the cruellest thing.’

Gina swallowed, looking away for a moment to get her face under control. Light from flaming torches around the ice flickered over her averted cheek.

‘She liked you too. She told me so when she phoned on Friday evening,’ she said, blinking to control her tears. ‘She sounded so happy and strong I couldn’t believe it. When I was pregnant with her, I was permanently tired. And frightened.’

‘You were much younger, though, weren’t you?’

‘Twenty-one, just out of university and determined to let nothing get in the way of becoming a barrister. Not even my child. And now she’s …’

‘I wish I could help,’ Trish said into the agonized silence, ‘but I don’t see how.’

‘It’s Sam.’ Gina stared at the undrunk chocolate, which had cooled in her cup. ‘I don’t know how to be with him.’

‘I can imagine. He must need so much—’

Gina held up one hand to cut off the sympathetic comment. ‘The police are sure he killed her.’

Trish felt as though a cold wave was washing over her, forcing salt water up her nose and burning in her throat. The news was no more than she expected, but she hated it.

‘It’s true he claims he was with you when it happened,’ Gina went on, sounding now as implacable as any of the old hanging judges, ‘but the police have CCTV evidence that puts him in the studio within the likely time of the assault. And there’s a phone message she left for him there that makes them … They’re sure he did it. And all the statistics back them up: most murders are domestic.’

‘I don’t believe it.’ Trish saw anger in the judge’s expression and quickly added: ‘Not about the statistics. I know all about them. But about Sam. He’s an exceptional man. He
couldn’t
have done it.’

‘I wish I shared your faith,’ Gina said, sounding detached now, almost distant. ‘I’ve been afraid for her since the moment she introduced us. She kept telling me she loved him, but he treated her appallingly.’

‘How? Did he hit her?’

‘Most of the aggression was emotional. She hated talking about it, always tried to pretend it wasn’t happening, but I could see. And sometimes she had to escape. She’d come to me then, even though she wouldn’t talk. I’ll never forget the sight of her face once when …’ Gina shuddered, her own face unbearable to watch. ‘When I let myself think of what she suffered, I
hate
him.’

‘No one could blame you for that. But until there’s proof he killed her, wouldn’t it be possible to—’ Trish stopped, aware Gina wasn’t listening to anything but her own internal voices.

‘But whatever he did, she went on loving him. Every time I protested about the way he was behaving, she’d tell me how much he needed her. He was terrified of being abandoned again. I expect she’d still be telling me to support him now, if …’

‘I think you’re right.’

Gina rubbed a hand across her flaky lips. ‘So what I need to know is this: is it better to be with him and risk letting him see how much I loathe the sight of him, or keep away and make him feel rejected?’ She stared at Trish with wide, hurt-looking eyes.

‘Why are you asking me? I’m flattered, but I don’t understand.’

‘Because you acted for him when he was a child.’

‘How did you know that?’

‘I looked up the court records when they got engaged. I had to know what we were dealing with. So you see: you’ve been Sam’s voice before; Cecilia trusted you; and I don’t know who else to ask but you.
Can
you help me?’

To give herself time, Trish took a swig of her drink and grimaced at its tepid sweetness.

‘Have you talked to him yet?’ she said, putting down the cup.

‘Not much. He was at the hospital yesterday evening when I got there. Sitting by the bed, holding her hand and crying. He looked desperate. But they do, don’t they, brutal husbands, when the paroxysm has passed?’

‘What about the police? Has he been interviewed?’ Keep this practical, Trish thought, and we’ve a chance of getting through it to something that may help. She knew if she let her feelings go, she’d help Gina build her daughter’s tragedy into something even more terrible than it was.

‘They haven’t arrested him, but I advised him to give a voluntary statement and answer all their questions. With a solicitor, of course. I’m not trying to make him incriminate himself. That’s how I know he claims to have been in your chambers when it happened.’ Gina gulped some chocolate. ‘But he won’t say
why
he was with you, so it looks like an excuse to let him come charging into the studio again and pretend to be her rescuer.’

‘You don’t have to worry about that,’ Trish said quickly. ‘There was a real reason. I can’t tell you if he won’t, but you needn’t doubt his motives for coming to talk to me.’

Although, she added silently to herself, the woman in prison must have been a source of appalling pressure. Enough to make him crack?

Sam looked at the slopped tea on the table in front of him and thought of the blood splashed all over the bits of white marble that had once formed a study of Ceel’s face.

He raised his head to face the two police officers and said again, ‘I visited the barrister Trish Maguire, who represented me seventeen years ago, to talk about a private matter. When I reached my studio after that encounter, I found the front door swinging on its hinges and heard sounds of groaning. I ran inside to find my wife thrashing about on the floor. There was blood everywhere, but no sign of the intruder. I grabbed the phone, fell on my knees beside her, rang for an ambulance, and tried to see how badly she was hurt. You know the rest.’

This was the fourth or fifth time he’d said it. Each time they asked different questions about his feelings for Cecilia, his movements yesterday morning, how a dangerous stranger could have got access to the studio without leaving any signs of a break-in, and a dozen other questions. At first he’d answered each one with the information he considered relevant, then, losing patience, he’d resorted to this straightforward repetition of what he’d already given them.

His feelings for Cecilia were none of their business. The hole torn in his life was nothing to do with them. The fact that his only true portrait of her was the smashed white-marble one with the blood all over it was private. He tried to think how best he’d clean and mend it when they’d finished fingering everything in his studio for evidence.

Trish barely looked at the river or the lights as she plodded home when Gina had eventually finished with her. She hoped David would be in one of his more cooperative moods and that she wouldn’t find herself in the middle of a domestic fight. What she needed now was quiet and a huge dose of the warmth and wordless support George was so good at giving her.