A Poisoned Mind (7 page)

‘If you were my pupil, I’d take you behind the nearest bike sheds and give you the thrashing of your life. What did you think you were doing just then?’

Trish giggled. Robert’s exaggeration was too absurd to take seriously. She couldn’t even remind him that he ought to have a bit more faith in her experience – and at least fake some respect for his leader. Still laughing, she straightened up and found herself only inches from Angie Fortwell, whose weather-beaten face looked even more accusing than it had done in the newspaper.

‘It’s just a game to you, isn’t it?’ A film of tears looked like an extra lens plastered over each eyeball. ‘You think it’s
funny.
’

Trish sobered at once.

‘How can you?’ Angie stopped to take a deep breath. ‘If you had any idea of the kind of man my husband was—’ A few tears fell. She had to breathe in again, across a sobbing exhalation, and nearly choked. She clutched her hands around her stomach as though to hold in unbearable pain.

The scruffy man with her tugged at her elbow, trying to make her stand up straight. At last Angie swallowed hard and stopped hugging her stomach.

‘You shouldn’t be
able
to laugh,’ she said. ‘There are people involved here,
real
people in
real
pain. It’s not so funny when you think of it like that, is it?’

‘You and I can’t discuss the progress of the case.’ Trish tried to ignore all the sympathy that was making her feel so queasy.

Angie coughed with a harsh sound that must have rasped her already tight throat.

‘You’re trying to suggest he killed himself. But he didn’t.’
Her voice was rising. ‘He’d never have done that. He was murdered by your clients. And you’re an evil bi—’

The man grabbed her, turning her and pulling her against him. He had one hand on the back of her head, holding it hard against his shoulder. Trish thought he was more interested in keeping Angie quiet than in providing comfort.

You shouldn’t mistrust someone just because he had an uncontrolled beard and inappropriate clothes, or even because he’d snapped at a woman
in
extremis
and wouldn’t let her speak. But there was something about him that set Trish’s teeth on edge.

She left them to it.

‘Not bad,’ Robert murmured into her ear as they pushed their way through the crowd of angry spectators. ‘At least you didn’t join in. But you’re dicing with danger, you know. Getting an illegitimate guesstimate of the deceased’s mental state was never part of Antony’s plan. And it doesn’t fit with the skeleton argument, so you’re likely to piss off the judge. And—’

‘Robert.’ Trish paused until he’d wheeled round to look at her. ‘Remember the climbing analogy?’

‘Of course.’

‘If you don’t shut up, I will cut the rope and let you drop into the crevasse and die. This is my case now and we do it my way. OK?’

Watching his face made her think the lunch hour they were about to share might be a little tense.

 

The first lesson after lunch was chemistry. David dreaded it. In the old days all science lessons were just boring and difficult. Now it was different. He’d been given Jay as his partner in experiments instead of Sam, who’d been moved
up into the A stream this term, so he had to spend the whole double period watching to make sure Jay didn’t do anything dangerous.

At first, he and Sam had barely noticed the new boy, except for laughing privately about his awful spots and the short kind of round haircut with the weird fringe. Then Mr Watson, the science teacher, had asked David if he’d help look after Jay while he found his feet. David probably would have said yes anyway, because you didn’t say no to Mr Watson unless you had a seriously good reason. But it was the way Mr Watson looked at Jay that made David really want to help.

Trish used to do it to him when he first came to live with her. She’d looked scared all the time, as if he might do something awful, but sugary and sympathetic too, which made for a really creepy mixture. And she’d watched everything he did in a way grown-ups didn’t usually unless they were doctors. Peering at him, checking everything he did and didn’t say, or do, or eat, or read, till he had nothing left of his own at all. He’d wanted to shout and scream and throw things. But of course he couldn’t.

Jay could, though. In most places David felt like cheering him on. But it was different in the labs. The stuff there was dangerous. Even thinking about what a spray of acid could do to someone’s face made him feel ill.

‘Come on, Dave.’ Jay whacked him on the back. ‘Cheer up. Watson can’t lay a finger on you even if you haven’t done your homework. An’ if he shouts too much you can just tip over the Bunsen burner and set his trousers on fire, innit.’

David shuddered, pretending he was pretending. Jay gave him a look as clear as anything Trish ever did.

‘It’s a joke, mate,’ he said. ‘You’re meant to laugh.’

‘Hee hee.’

 

Angie spent the first part of the afternoon demolishing Trish’s attempt to establish the fact of John’s depression, and she did it with unexpected neatness and apparently no emotion whatsoever. Trish was relieved she’d got herself together so quickly but more than a little surprised.

At last the doctor was allowed to go and Angie’s next witness was called: an estate agent specialising in the sale and purchase of farms like hers.

Trish listened to his account of why it would now be impossible to sell the farm, and asked her questions to establish that few such properties were selling in this particular area of the north-east of England. It was all textbook stuff and it took no particular skill. Even Hal, the pupil, would have managed all right, and Robert could have done it standing on his head. She reminded herself to hold on to her patience the next time he criticised her handling of the case.

He was still sulking as they left court, and the short walk back to chambers with the documents was conducted more or less in silence. Hal looked uncomfortable so Trish suggested Robert should let him go home as soon as he’d seen to the stowing of the files in her room.

‘What about me? D’you need me straight away?’ Robert said. ‘Or have I time to nip over to the hospital to see Antony? I can’t think what Liz is doing leaving him at the mercy of the NHS instead of moving him somewhere more civilised.’

‘You get great care in the NHS,’ Trish said mildly.

‘That’s as may be, but there’s better company in any
private hospital. Knowing him, he’ll be dead bored and in dire need of decent conversation.’

‘Fine,’ she said, not having the energy to waste on his snobbery. ‘See you later. Give him my love, won’t you?’

As soon as Robert had gone, Trish felt released into a much bigger space. Now she could follow her own ideas wherever they took her, without being pulled up or questioned by anyone.

What she wanted first was more information about Angie’s bossy bearded friend. Somewhere there should be reports provided by the firm of enquiry agents retained by CWWM. They’d spent several weeks following all the members of FADE, in an attempt to find something that could be used to discredit the organisation.

Here was the file. There were far too many individual reports to read in detail. Trish went straight to the conclusion:

‘We are satisfied they’re harmless do-gooders, acting out of genuinely held beliefs about protection of the environment. All the volunteers who have been researching aspects of the case have other, legitimate, jobs or are legally living on benefit.’

Antony’s scribble in the margin made her smile: ‘Tiresome, isn’t it?’

Trish should have known he’d have considered every possible way of getting his clients off the hook. Still, she wasn’t giving up yet and scuffled in the mountains of paper to find the photographs and individual biographies that had been supplied with the report.

There were about thirty pictures. Most had been snatched in streets, banks, shops, pubs and libraries. Angie Fortwell appeared in one or two, but Trish recognised Greg Waverly in all of them.

She’d met a few environmental protesters with friends over the years, and none of them had struck her as being like him. They’d all been either products of well-organised pressure groups, who’d understood spin and presentation and would never have appeared in court in a ravelled jersey and grubby jeans, or else savagely angry individuals whose private demons would have been too urgent to keep them involved in tedious complex litigation.

She turned to the biographical notes and skimmed through Waverly’s. They showed he’d been living on benefits after an organic food-supply business had failed. His bankruptcy had been discharged two years ago, and he’d moved in with Frances Showring eight months after that, when he’d also become a paid-up member of FADE. There’d been rumours that he’d set up the food business with profits made in the dotcom boom but the investigators hadn’t gone that far back. All they’d been asked to establish was whether he had any hidden assets now. None had been found. The collapse of his company had wiped him out financially.

Was he so humiliated by his failure that he’d looked for a way of publicly beating a much more successful company?

CWWM was active right across the world and had delivered record profits for its shareholders in almost every one of the last twenty years. What could be better for a despised bankrupt than triumphing over them in the Royal Courts of Justice, while still looking as though he lived under a hedge?

 

A voice disturbed Trish an hour later, saying: ‘What on earth are you doing
now
?’

She looked up to find her eyes blurred with all the close peering she’d been doing. Blinking to focus better, she saw Robert in the doorway.

‘Sorry,’ she said, as she rubbed her sore head. ‘I didn’t hear you come in. How was Antony?’

‘Shocked by the way you’re going with the case.’

‘I didn’t mean that. I meant how was
he
? In pain? Weak? Confused?’

‘I told you: shocked.’ Robert pulled off his coat and flung it over one of the chairs that stood near the wall under the regimented bookshelves. ‘And what’s all this chaos? What are you looking for now?’

Trish pushed the hair out of her face, reminded herself yet again of how Robert must be feeling about her elevation and bit down on everything she wanted to say to him. After a moment’s hard effort, she smiled.

‘I was looking at the FADE biographies when I stumbled on something else. ’

‘Oh, yes?’ said Robert in a voice that meant: what are you going to waste my time with now?

‘I think the other side are hiding something.’

‘What on earth d’you mean?’ No one could have sounded wearier at that moment than Robert. He dropped into a chair and began to unlace his shoes. ‘You don’t mind, do you? I’ve got a blister on my heel. Sodding new shoes. Handmade, too, and bloody expensive.’

Trish’s eyebrows met as she frowned. A moment later, she ducked down behind her desk to pull open the bottom drawer, where she kept spare tights, needle and thread and a rudimentary first-aid kit.

‘Here’s some plaster. And scissors.’

He looked up from the nasty red mess above his wrinkled sock. At last his face eased out of the snootiness she’d always hated. ‘Thanks, Mummy.’

Trish felt her jaw muscles relax. ‘I’ve even got an antiseptic wipe, if you’d like it.’

‘I think I can manage without.’ He applied the dressing, pulled his sock up and his trouser leg down. ‘I’m myself again.
What
d’you think Angie Fortwell’s hiding.’

‘Not sure yet. But think of the change in her over lunch. Remember how she was by the door of the court … crying, hurt, angry and hating us.’

‘Hating you, certainly. OK, I’ll give you that.’

‘Then this afternoon, as she unpicked what I’d got the doctor to say, point by point, she could have been a pro. It was all so … cool. Effective. Quite different. I think she – or more likely the unsavoury Greg – must have reported to someone by phone, who told them what to do.’

‘Aren’t you being a bit snobbish here, Trish?’

She had to laugh. Robert of all people to accuse her of that!

‘I mean it, Trish. Angie Fortwell’s an intelligent woman, even if she has spent the last couple of decades tilling the earth. She must be more than capable of reading a few student law books and working out what she’s got to do to spike your guns.’

‘Maybe.’ Trish checked her memory again and was determined to push Robert to see things her way. ‘But look at these.’

She slid three of the photographs towards him and pointed to a tall man standing on the edge of the crowd in one. He was dressed in a long dark overcoat that looked smoothly expensive, and a hat, and he was turned away
from the camera. Almost nothing could be seen of his face or head except a suggestion of full greying hair between the hat brim and the coat collar. His shoulders and back were straight. Everything about him was different from the comfortably slouching FADE supporters in their jeans and beanies and sweatshirts.

‘There’s the same figure somewhere in each of these shots,’ Trish said. ‘But the investigators haven’t identified him once.’

‘What makes you think he’s anything to do with FADE?’ Robert was back into his preferred mode of patrician disdain. ‘Or that it’s even the same person in each photograph?’

‘I’ve been measuring him against the others, and I think it’s him each time. Given that these three photographs were taken on quite different dates and in quite different places, that’s too much of a coincidence. So I want you to phone the solicitors first thing tomorrow to get the investigators to find out who he is.’

‘Trish, for God’s sake.’ Robert sighed in exasperation and she wondered how his many girlfriends had put up with him since his marriage collapsed. ‘Even if it were possible at this juncture, what would it tell us?’