A Poisoned Mind (29 page)

‘Come and sit down.’

‘I can’t, Polly. Bill will be here any minute now, needing food. I hadn’t realised it was so late.’

‘We can have cheese and apples. Come and sit down and stop being so silly.’

Angie backed away from Polly’s criticism. Her whole face felt cold.

‘Good,’ said Polly, apparently not noticing the withdrawal. ‘Now, tell me what this is about. You’ve not been sleeping and you’re not happy. I need to know what the problem is.’

‘It’s John,’ she said, looking away and hoping that would be enough to stop the questions. In the old days it would have been. ‘I can’t stop thinking about him.’

‘I know what mourning is like and it’s not this. This is anger. Fear too. What’s eating you, Angie? At first I thought it was the damage to Low Topps, or the cancer-risk, or the pollution, but it’s none of those. I think it’s a person. Are you trying to run away from someone by hiding up here with us?’

‘Polly, I can’t—’ She put her head in her hands.

‘Don’t you trust me, child?’

I haven’t been a child for nearly forty years, she thought as a way of fending off the sad question, and you can’t be much more than twelve or fifteen years older than me, in spite of your wild white hair. When we first came to live up here,
I
was the one with all the knowledge and the drive to find out how you could get at all the European money you needed. You wouldn’t have called me ‘child’ then. And you
couldn’t have managed if it hadn’t been for the grants we organised for you.

‘Angie!’ This time there was urgency in Polly’s voice, as well as sadness.

‘It isn’t you,’ she said, remembering her gratitude and her need, and hating the way the ever-threatening rage could make her resent even Polly. ‘I’d trust you with my life. But I can’t talk about this. I have to—’

The phone rang, a harshly unfamiliar sound in this quiet place. Polly would never leave it to ring unanswered. To her, such a summons meant either someone wanting to spend much-needed money by booking in for bed and breakfast, or that there was an urgent problem to which only she could provide a solution. She pushed herself up from the table and walked with obvious pain to the phone on the dresser.

Angie began to lay the table as quietly as she could. It wasn’t possible to avoid listening to Polly’s anxious voice.

‘Yes. Yes, she’s here. Would you like to speak to her?’

Bracing herself, Angie put down the plates she was holding. ‘Is it Adam?’

Polly shook her head and held out the receiver. ‘A man called Greg.’

Angie took it from her, and tried to think herself back into London and the case as it had been before Adam.

‘Greg? What’s the news?’

‘They want to settle, Ange. I’ve had Hoffman, the solicitor, on the phone this morning. He wants to arrange a meeting with Maguire and you and me to discuss a settlement.’

‘But we’ve already told them we won’t,’ she said, sounding as dazed as she felt.

‘I know. Which must mean they’ve found some information or a witness or something that tells them they can’t win, so they’re ready to offer more than last time. Ange, you’ve had your chance to tell the judge and the world what they did, so you’ve done the main thing you wanted. Why not let them pay you off now? We can make sure it’s a proper sum, and we can refuse any confidentiality agreements because they’re obviously desperate to make an end of it now. That way we can make an enormous public splash with the way they’ve caved in and admitted their part in killing John.’ He broke off, realising that she hadn’t said anything for some time. ‘Ange! Ange, are you still there?’

‘Yes, I’m here. Are you sure it isn’t that they’ve found something that proves
we
can’t win?’

‘Don’t you think they’d wallow in that and string us along until they could make fools of us in court?’

‘Would they?’ She felt more uncertain than ever.

‘Of course. You must see it makes sense, Ange.’

‘What would I have to do?’

‘Come south again. They want to meet as soon as possible and have suggested either Thursday at 4 p.m. or Friday at 9 a.m. You can make one or other, can’t you?’

‘I don’t know. I suppose … Hang on a minute.’ She put her hand over the receiver and looked at Polly: ‘There aren’t any walkers coming before the weekend, are there?’

‘No. Not even at the weekend. The next lot are due on Monday.’

‘So, would you mind if I went to London again for a meeting on Thursday?’

‘If it helps you, Angie, you must go as soon as you want.’

‘OK. I’ll come.’

‘Great. Take an early train on Thursday so we can swot up all the facts we need to really rub their noses in it. Fran’ll be pleased. She’s been missing you.’

Angie put down the phone, trying to remember how much money she had left. ‘Polly, may I ring to book a taxi for the train?’

‘I’ll take you. Now, there’s Bill coming. Lunch. Go and get the cheese from the larder.’

Trish couldn’t find any website for Goforthebrains.com. The Internet wasn’t that out-of-date. But her search did turn up a reference to the company in an old financial report illustrated with photographs of some of the main players in the dotcom boom. There were the few real winners, whose businesses had survived and prospered, and there were the rest, including the Goforthebrains.com four. Unfortunately the caption didn’t give their names, only that of the company.

She sent an email to Fred asking him to get hold of their details.

Too impatient to do nothing while she waited, she stared at the photograph of the last member of the team, the one who didn’t appear in the Pathfinder prospectus for GlobWasMan. He had very short hair, which did nothing to improve a long face with a lantern jaw, oddly set eyes and an ugly nose. He certainly had not transmogrified into Ben Givens. But he could have grown a wild and woolly beard and be Greg Waverly.

The photograph was only eight years old but a young man could change a lot in that time. Trish copied it and moved it to a temporary file on her desktop. Then she
scanned in one of the photographs of Greg from the report submitted by Fred Hoffman’s enquiry agents.

With the two pictures side by side, she still couldn’t be certain they were of the same man, although the setting of the eyes looked similar, as did the large noses with their bulbous nostrils. But the wild hair and woolly beard in the more recent photograph were a dreadful distraction. Trish struggled with the photo-editing software that had come bundled with the computer when she bought it. In the end, she had to send for Hal, who was young enough to find computers as easy to understand as his own body.

He had the beard and most of the hair off Greg’s face in no time, then he hovered the cursor over the younger face and dragged it over the older.

‘That’s it,’ Trish said with satisfaction making her feel wrapped in success. ‘They
are
the same man.’

‘So d’you think he’s been working for GlobWasMan all along?’

‘Actually I don’t. The failed organic food business Fred’s investigators found must have been genuine. Bankruptcy’s a matter of public record. But once Greg had gone bust the clowns at GlobWasMan must have realised he’d be open to offers to infiltrate FADE for money.’

‘They’re great ones for that, aren’t they?’ said Hal, scratching his head. ‘D’you think they’re all in it? All three of the others, I mean?’

‘Haven’t a clue,’ Trish said. She pointed to the photograph of Ken Shankley. ‘But I’d put my money on him as the leader of the plot. He’s the one who threatened poor Carl Bianchini, and he headed up the dotcom company as well as Glob Was Man. Fancies himself, too, if you read the blurb in the Pathfinder. I think he’s the type who doesn’t see
why he shouldn’t have anything he wants and will think more and more creatively until he gets it. And screw anyone who gets in his way.’

The phone in Trish’s pocket bleeped. A text was coming through. She pulled out the phone and saw that David wanted to talk to her before the end of his lunch break.

‘I must deal with this, Hal. Thanks. I couldn’t have done it without you.’

He blushed a little and found it hard to get out of her room, first backing and then turning round, and at last giving a cross between a salute and a wave from the doorway.

‘Hi,’ she said when David answered her call. ‘I got your text. What’s happened?’

‘Jay got an A+.’ His voice was shrill with triumph. Trish lurched between delight in his enjoyment of someone else’s success and gloom at the discovery that Jay was still so important to him.

‘That’s absolutely brilliant,’ she said trying to sound as generous herself. ‘I’m really pleased. What did he get it for?’

‘Henry
V
. We had essays to do on the responsibilities of the king and what it must have felt like. And he got an A+.’ There was a strange sound down the phone, a grunt or a laugh; perhaps even a sigh. ‘He must’ve stayed in the cinema on Friday after all, whatever that manager said to George. Maybe he hid when they were searching.’

‘He must have. It’s a pity you had to miss the film. How did you do with the essay?’

This time the sound was unmistakably a laugh. ‘Oh, I got an A+ too. It was only me and Jay out of the whole year. So we can celebrate tonight. Will you be home in time to see him?’

‘That’s fantastic. Well done,’ she said, trying to keep her voice enthusiastic.

‘Will
you be home in time?’

‘I’ll try.’

‘Great. Got to go. See you later.’

She put the phone back in her pocket, as pleasure in his excitement fought with her reluctance to have Jay as a fixture in the flat any longer. There had been many times when she’d been brought up short by David’s guts in tackling what had happened to him, so she shouldn’t have been surprised at the way he was hanging on to the friendship. She felt even more ashamed of her own self-protective instincts, but she couldn’t shift them.

What everyone needed now was for Rosie Smith to beat her demons, stop drinking, find a way to admire Jay, look after him properly, and free him to let himself use his talents. It didn’t seem likely, so he’d go on needing a safety net.

Was four years such a long time? Trish asked herself. The boys would be going to university then. Couldn’t she hold her family together – with him in it – for forty-eight more months?

At the moment she couldn’t think of a good enough reason to say no.

She rang George to pass on the news, adding that she didn’t know how long her settlement negotiations were likely to take and whether she’d be back in time to cook.

‘No problem,’ he said. ‘I haven’t got any meetings this afternoon. I can guarantee to be back to welcome them,
and
whip up something suitably glutinous for supper. My other phone’s going. See you later.’

Thank God for George, Trish thought, as she pushed domestic details to the back of her mind once more and collected her notes for the encounter with Angie Fortwell.

Angie’s suit didn’t feel at all tight as she emerged from the train to find Greg waiting for her.

‘Did you have some lunch, Ange? I don’t want you fainting in the middle of the meeting.’

No greeting, she thought, or an enquiry about how I am. He’s just making sure his property is well fuelled and functioning. Sod him.

‘Did you, Ange?’

‘Yes. Sandwiches. As soon as I caught the train. What about you?’

He smiled. As his beard moved, she realised she hadn’t needed to ask. All the evidence was there.

‘I see you did. Whiskers, Greg,’ she said, parroting Fran’s tactful warning.

He put up a hand, brushed it against the beard, then examined the result. For a second she thought he was blushing.

‘Too many tomatoes,’ he said. ‘They get everywhere.’

Tomatoes? She didn’t want to engage in this particular conversation, but the evidence looked too purple for that. More like plums.

‘Let’s go,’ she said aloud.

A few minutes later, they were sitting side by side in a half-empty tube. One or two elderly women with shopping bags avoided eye contact with a few aimless-looking young people, but they were nothing like the angry, shuffling crowds of the rush hour, who had made her journeys to court such an ordeal.

‘I had a word with Ben Givens,’ Greg said, having got over his embarrassment. ‘You know, the barrister I introduced you to at our party.’

‘I remember,’ she said, thinking, and I remember the way you sent him to drag me back from my one moment of freedom. What did you think I was going to do then? Who did you think I was going to talk to? And what possible damage could I have done?

‘When I told him about this summons,’ Greg said, totally unaware of her resentment, ‘he was sure the only reason must be that Maguire’s come up against a flaw in her case. He hasn’t worked out what it is yet, but he thinks we should pretend we know. That way we’ll look confident enough to get the maximum out of them.’

Angie stared at her reflection in the black window opposite, bisected by the dirty cables strung along the tunnel’s wall outside. Her browny-grey hair was tidy but lank and her eyes looked huge and hurt. Like a dying cow’s, she thought without any humour at all.

Should she mention Adam? Warn Greg about what Maguire must have found? Or would it be better to lie and protest when the information came out, and pretend the idea of Adam’s involvement had never once crossed her mind? Could she do it convincingly? If not, it would be better to confess now.

‘Here we are,’ he said. ‘Brace up, Ange. You look as if you
expect them to walk over you. You’ve got to be tougher. Else everything we’ve done will be wasted. Come on!’

She hardened her shoulders and felt pain all down her spine. ‘I’ll do my best.’

‘Great.’ He put a big hand on one of her rigid shoulders, but he wasn’t nearly as comfortable with touching as Fran, so it just felt awkward: heavy and unpleasant. She wished Fran could’ve come with them. But Greg hadn’t let her.

At least the solicitor’s offices weren’t as chillingly formal as the courts. Angie left it to him to tell the receptionist who they were and take the lead on the way into the meeting room.

The air inside felt cold, but in the stuffy kind of way you’d never get in the country. The walls were icy blue and the oval conference table was a kind of blond Scandinavian wood, polished like a skating rink. The far side of it was full of people. They looked only vaguely familiar and were all staring at her as though she was a freak who might suddenly take off all her clothes or start throwing things.

Fred Hoffman stood up, and the movement helped make Angie’s brain work. She began to recognise the rest. Today Trish Maguire was wearing an unbelievably well-cut jacket of some silky stuff that looked as if it had been made from fibres spun from a rich red stone like carnelian.

The word triggered a memory from a novel read long ago: someone saying ‘carnelian heals anger’. If only! Angie knew she was letting her mind ramble only so she wouldn’t have to acknowledge the renewed compassion in Maguire’s face. But it was so hard to miss Angie had to look away.

Greg met Angie’s gaze and beamed smugly. Presumably he thought he was exuding confidence. His beard and bright red lips revolted her even though he’d picked off all the bits
and pieces of food caught in the whiskers. Now her mind was latched on to stories read from the past, she couldn’t help seeing how the combination made him look like the giant in Adam’s favourite collection of nursery rhymes. The one he’d especially liked went ‘Fee, fi, fo, fum, I smell the blood of an English man.’ An early sign of his interest in killing?

John. Adam. John. Adam. The names were like tennis balls being batted to and fro in her brain while the others were all talking, saying trivial things about how nice to see each other again. Angie felt detached, as though she were floating outside her body. The head that wasn’t where she was even talked, like the others, and said all sorts of polite stuff. Then they all stopped and sat down and everyone looked at Trish Maguire. Angie looked down at her, too, from the place where she was floating above the rest.

‘It’s hard to know how to say this,’ Maguire began, smiling from one to the next.

Angie gripped her hands under the table, which brought her back into herself. Greg’s beam got even wider. She wanted to yell out a warning, but it was much too late now. Instead she stared straight at Maguire, fighting the pity that looked stickier and stickier with every movement.

‘As we showed in court,’ Maguire said in the so-ordinary voice that gave no clue to her ruthlessness or power, ‘the explosion at the tank farm can only have happened because something was lodged in the vents, blocking the inflow of air. I have now come to understand that it was done deliberately.’

Adam. Adam. Adam. He was once our baby. John was there when he was born. John cradled him when he was still covered in my blood, before they’d even weighed and wiped
him. Later on, he played with Adam, taught him, comforted him, spooned in the food. Loved him. No wonder Maguire looks so sorry for me. How much exactly does she know?

‘By this couple.’ Maguire offered them a photograph of a woman standing beside a man with no head.

Oh, stop it, Angie, she told herself. Of course he has a head. It’s just out of the picture.

‘Who on earth is she?’ said Greg with quite unnecessary aggression.

 

Trish pushed the printed version of Peterthewalk’s photograph of Maryan Fleming and the unidentifiable Barry Stuart nearer to Angie, who looked blind and stupid, which she clearly wasn’t.

‘Don’t you recognise her, Mrs Fortwell?’

‘I—’ She wouldn’t say any more, even though her lips moved.

There hadn’t been much colour in her thin, lined face when she’d arrived, but what there had been was gone now. Beside her Greg sat, with the suspicion hardening in his eyes, making him look less squishy-minded, almost as threatening as Ben Givens.

‘Of course she wasn’t working alone,’ Trish went on, smiling at them both. ‘There’s the man with her, obviously, and—’

‘I’ve never seen her in my life before.’ This time Angie’s voice was more vigorous, almost challenging, the kind of voice you use when you have something to hide.

‘Actually,’ Trish said. ‘I think you’ll find you have. She stayed with you, bed-and-breakfasting, three days before the explosion.’

Angie hunched one shoulder. ‘I can’t be expected to
remember all the walkers who come to Low Topps. There’ve been hundreds over the years.’

‘I’m sure, but, believe me, she is in your visitors’ book – admittedly under a false name. She’s told me that her boyfriend was paid to sabotage your tanks.’

‘They were never
our
tanks.’ Angie looked as though she was explaining something obvious to a fool. ‘That’s the whole point of all that pre-trial stuff you missed, when we still had Antony Shelley to deal with: they were CWWM’s tanks, on what was technically – and actually – their land. Only leased from us.’

‘I’m sorry. The tanks beside your land, I should have said.’ Trish smiled, in spite of her curiosity about Angie’s changing emotions. ‘This woman had been told her boyfriend’s action would shut down the tank farm. That was all. She’s not very bright and she still has no idea it caused the explosion or killed your husband. She believed they were saving a beautiful piece of the north from wicked capitalist exploiters.’

Angie’s fingers were twisting round and round each other. Her face was the colour of uncooked pastry and she was biting her upper lip as she stared at the photograph of Maryan Fleming. When she relaxed her jaw, Trish could see the mark of a bruise already spreading above her thin lip. At last she looked up. When she spoke, her voice was tighter even than it had been on the first day in court.

‘Have you got a photograph of her boyfriend with his head showing?’

Trish shook her head. ‘This is our only one. He called himself Chris Bowles then, but his real name is Barry Stuart. He sounds quite a bit more intelligent, or at least more
aware, than she is, and he’s fled to New Zealand. The police over there are looking for him now.’

Angie moved but Trish was distracted by Greg, who leaned right across the table, glaring at her, as though he thought he could intimidate her.

‘This is a fairy tale. Do you expect anyone to believe it? Have you any evidence they were paid?’

‘They got five thousand pounds from one of your old friends from Goforthebrains.com.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Greg said with so much contempt in his voice that Trish wanted to tell him how much she would enjoy his eventual arrest.

‘Oh come on, Mr Waverly,’ she said instead. ‘You know as well as I do that Ken Shankley paid them, just as he paid you to infiltrate FADE so you could take advantage of Frances Showring and make her urge Mrs Fortwell to bring the case against CWWM.’

‘What?’ Angie said, looking from one of them to the other.

Trish kept staring at Greg as she went on: ‘And there’s plenty more, isn’t there? There were the people who stole some of CWWM’s most dangerous waste and sent it out on the smallest roads in Essex in a truck with wrecked clutch, brakes and back-door locks.’

His face tightened into an expression she couldn’t read. Was it surprise that he’d been found out? Or rage? Or genuine disgust at the consequences of his friends’ antics? How much had he known?

‘That crash led to a woman’s feet being amputated. And Mrs Fortwell’s husband died,’ Trish added to push him, hoping for some honesty at last. ‘You never factored in the human cost, did you, Mr Waverly? Just as you never got
your sums right in the old days of Goforthebrains.com or your organic food business. It’s no wonder you keep failing. Over and over again.’

Trish heard a sotto-voce protest from Robert, but she ignored it while she watched realisation dawning in Angie’s eyes.

‘Greg, you talked about a woman in Essex with her feet cut off,’ Angie said, with horror deepening her voice. ‘You knew about it, didn’t you? And there was something about a child in Scotland, too. What the hell’s going on?’

He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and scribbled on the back of it. Trish watched Angie read it and scowl.

‘Come on.
What
haven’t you been telling me?’ she said, crunching the bit of paper into a ball.

‘Nothing.’ He smiled, but it was a sickly version of his usual beam. ‘Ms Maguire’s talking right over my head.’

‘If that’s so,’ Trish said, smiling back, ‘I’ll put it very simply. Your old friends, who are now running GlobWasMan, decided to increase their share of the market in the disposal of hazardous chemical waste. They knew they’d have to get rid of their chief rival, CWWM, and so they’ve been working to bring down the company in every possible way. Making you encourage Mrs Fortwell to mount her claim was only one of their ideas. And to ensure it worked, they paid Benjamin Givens, the barrister, to give you secret legal help, didn’t they?’

Angie looked as though she were examining a field full of diseased livestock, searching for signs of new damage, or corpses. Eventually she stared straight at Greg.

‘This explains a lot.’ Her voice had all the repelling intent of barbed wire.

‘No, it doesn’t.’ Greg swung round in his seat so that he
was talking to her alone. ‘Ben helped us because he was so ashamed of having taken money to act for a chemical waste company in the past. He wanted to make amends by ensuring you won your case and got compensation for the farm and for John’s death. Which is what Fran and I wanted too. You mustn’t believe this … this evil story.’

Greg hitched himself even closer to Angie so that his beard was almost touching her ear.

‘Ange!’

She pulled away, actually moving her chair, and Trish knew she’d get everything she wanted now.

 

David smelled the toffee sauce George had made to go with the caramel pancakes and ice cream and hoped Trish would be home soon. It was his favourite pudding and he was ravenous.

He and Jay had had a toasted sandwich each as soon as they got in, but George was being amazingly mean and not letting them have a second one. He wanted them to have enough appetite for the braised steak that was also smelling pretty good, and then for the pancakes. David knew he and Jay could eat four sandwiches each and still have room.

He sneaked a look at his watch. It was only half past six. Trish might not be back for hours yet. He sighed.

‘Concentrate, David. Jay’s way ahead of us both,’ said George, who was keeping the Scrabble score, as usual.

David looked at the seven tiles in his rack, then back at the board. He could see two places where he could get at least twenty-five points, which was more or less the minimum he allowed himself these days. In the old days, when he’d still been a child, he’d been happy with as little as ten. Now that
would be a humiliatingly small score, so it was good he had two opportunities for more than double. But both Jay and George could still block him.