Out of the Dark (9 page)

‘They took the list of your clients, as I told you, but I haven’t heard anything since. Why would I? It’s nothing to do with us. You’ll be coming in tomorrow, I take it?’

‘Probably,’ Trish said brightly. ‘But you can always get me on my mobile. Bye, Dave.’

There were all sorts of things she should be doing, things there was never time for in the normal maelstrom of her work: seeing the dentist, getting all the clothes that needed mending to the nearest dry cleaners that had a repair service, even persuading the freeholders to organise a building firm prepared to come out to scrape down, fill and repaint her window frames, several of which were showing distinct signs of rot. But none of it held any attraction whatsoever. Still, she had to do something.

Restless but bored, and worried, she moved around her big flat, flying back to the phone when it started to ring. But it was only a nervous-sounding young man in a call centre, wanting to sell her double glazing. She let out some of her frustration on explaining to him why no one with any sense would ever buy double glazing or indeed anything else over the phone and why it was an unconscionable outrage for call centres to disturb total strangers with idiotic interruptions like this in the middle of the working day. The call-centre script obviously didn’t include answers to that kind of outburst, so the young man put down the phone without another word, while Trish was still in mid-diatribe.

Feeling guilty – it wasn’t his fault, after all, and at least he was working for his living – she made herself collect all the clothes with broken zips, dropped hems, and missing buttons, bundled them up and took them to the cleaners.

She managed to find enough errands to keep her out of the flat until nearly seven o’clock. Her mobile rang at intervals, but none of the calls was important. And all
her friends were busy when she rang them. Anna Grayling had time for a five-minute chat, then said she had to go, reminding Trish that they could catch up with everything else when they met at the National Film Theatre next Wednesday.

Eventually there was nothing for it but to go home. At the top of the iron staircase, she realised she could have stayed out longer by going to see a film that evening, too. She hesitated, with the front door open, looking back across the lower roofs all round her. Two men were standing below, pointing up at her. She was too far away to see their faces, but she wasn’t going anywhere near them. Turning quickly, she abandoned the idea of the cinema and went inside, double-locking the door.

The red light on the answering machine was flashing. She pressed the play button to hear Caroline Lyalt’s voice, saying:

‘Trish, I know it’s been days, and I’m sorry. Things have been going bananas here, but I’ll be at home on Thursday evening from six-thirty if you still want to talk then.’

 

Lil Handsome was searching the
Evening Standard,
as she’d done every night since her son had come bursting into her flat with blood on his trousers. There should have been something in one of the papers by now. There was one tiny paragraph about a woman’s body being found in a flat in West London, but it read like a suicide report, so it didn’t count. She lit another fag, the fifth of the day, hoping it would help her think. Her memory was still sharp as a tack, so it wasn’t hard to go through everything Gary had said that night. She’d been in bed, woken out of a rare deep sleep by crashing and cursing outside.

At first she thought her old man had got out, so she didn’t bother to look at the clock, just grabbed her dressing gown and tied it tightly under her bust. When she opened the bedroom door and saw that the intruder was only Gal,
she was glad, even though it was shocking to find he had a key to her place. His dad must’ve given it to him. She wondered how often he came here when she was out. And what he did then.

‘You been on the piss?’ she said crossly to hide her fear. ‘What’re you doing here? And what’s that on your trousers?’

He looked down, wiping the palms of his hands down the marks.

‘Nothing much, Ma. Gi’s some of Dad’s clothes, will you?’

‘Looks like blood to me,’ she said, casual-like. She’d seen plenty of blood in her time and knew what it looked like at all stages of drying and on all surfaces. This looked newish, not sticky any more, but still red not brown. ‘You bin fighting?’

‘Only a tom, Ma. She come at me out of the dark, like a wildcat.’

She wondered what he’d been reading – or who he’d been talking to. Like a wildcat! Didn’t sound like her younger son at all.

‘Where was this then, Gary?’

‘Wanstead. I’d bin to the pub and come out with me mates. They went off to get their motor; I was going for the van and she come at me like I said. I didn’t mean to hurt her. I just give her one and she fell in the gutter. I got the mess on me trousers when I bent down to make sure she was OK. She was breathing fine, so I phoned 999 and waited till the ambulance come. Then I legged it back here. Gi’s some of Dad’s clothes, Ma. I’ll make a cuppa while you’re getting them. Mikey here?’

‘I haven’t heard him come in, so he’s probably still out cabbing.’ Lil was glad of that. She didn’t want them quarrelling, not with Gary in this mood anyway. As it was, she barred the way to the kettle, saying, ‘I’ll make the tea.’

She wasn’t letting him near any boiling water, not if she could help it. She kept her eyes on him all the time she could, except when she was filling the kettle. He’d never hit her yet, but he was so like his dad, she wouldn’t be surprised if it happened. She knew well enough that he’d hit plenty of other women, and that he liked doing it.

Could he be telling the truth about the tom? It didn’t seem very likely. He was much too wired for one thing, and phoning an ambulance didn’t sound like him. Whoever the woman had been, he’d obviously hurt her bad. Lil hoped it really was a stray prostitute, who wouldn’t be able to finger him. She didn’t want the police around, asking questions. Not now. Not ever again.

The tea made, she emptied the spare boiling water into the sink, so there wouldn’t be anything for Gal to throw at her like his father had done. Her hand was stroking her jaw, like it always did when she thought of Ron, even now he was doing life. The hospital had set the jaw straight, but still it ached, even after all these years.

‘Come on, Ma. What’re you waiting for?’ Gal said, taking a step towards her.

She shied; she couldn’t help it. It was hard to think of this great hulking brute as the same slippery, bloody little creature that had emerged from between her legs, screaming and rigid forty-five years ago, with the cord like a fat blue-grey worm snaking out between them. She held out a mug of tea, like a shield, giving him the glare that had always made him mind her in the past.

It worked again. He looked at his useless great feet and shuffled a bit. He took the tea. She’d put a lot of milk in it so that even if he threw it, it wouldn’t do much harm.

‘What’re you going to do with the clothes if I give them to you?’

‘Change?’ he said, making it sound like he was asking her a question. She thought of Mikey’s brains, and her own, and asked God for patience.

‘And then?’

‘Go home.’

‘You can’t. Not if you hurt this girl as bad as it sounds. Remember last time? You ought to get out of the way for a bit.’ Lil looked him up and down and thought of the pesetas she had left after her last holiday. She should’ve taken them back to the travel agent, but she’d never got round to it. ‘Spain. That’s where you should go.’

‘Spain? Ma, you gotta be joking. I hate all that foreign muck.’

‘There’s lots of ex-cons living there, so you’ll feel right at home, and you can get all the English food you can eat, and cheap booze too. You’ll be fine. You got your passport, haven’t you?’

‘Yeah. But not here.’

No, she thought. Of course not. Nothing so useful. Post Offices used to sell some kind of European travel permit. Could you still get those? Maybe not. Better safe than sorry.

‘Go home in the van, park it unobtrusive-like. Get your passport. Don’t pack nothing. You don’t want the neighbours seeing you carting a case out of there. I’ll pack you some of your dad’s things, and get you a pair of trousers for now. You can leave them ones with me and I’ll burn them for you.’

‘I’ll need money.’

‘I’ll give you some.’ She might have known he’d ask for that. It was all he’d ever wanted from her. ‘Then you can take the van to Dover and get a ferry, like you do for the beer and fags. After that it’s a straight drive down through France to Spain. It’s not hard. You’ll be OK. Go on, go and get your passport. You can come back after a week or two. Take a holiday. Enjoy yourself and keep out of the way till the Old Bill loses interest.’

He shrugged, but she could see he did remember the last time he’d beaten up a working girl, and the nights
he’d spent in the police cells and all the interrogations till they’d let him go because they didn’t have the evidence. That girl hadn’t died in the end, but she’d been too scared to identify him in the line-up. Lil wasn’t so sure about this one. This one sounded bad.

 

The young constable felt as though he was swallowing pints of hot saliva, desperate to stop the nausea. He’d never seen a body that looked like a brown-and-purple shopping bag before. There was blood everywhere, splattered in patterns over the floor and up the white cupboards under the bookshelves. He’d never seen so many books before either, except in a library.

Groping for his radio, he tried to think about the books instead of the body. His fingers slipped and he couldn’t work out how to switch the thing on. Then he remembered the woman who’d let him in and who he’d made wait outside. She was a friend of the householder, worried because she hadn’t seen her since lunch on Sunday and she should’ve been at work. They hadn’t taken her seriously at the station, which was why they’d sent PC Feather to investigate.

The radio cracked into life so his fingers must have known how to work it even though his mind had forgotten. He muttered into it. They couldn’t hear him, so he had to shout and Mrs Mason, the friend, came bursting into the room, looked at the body and collapsed. He stared at her, crumpled into a heap like an old Indian cushion in the middle of her friend’s blood.

‘Wait there, Feather,’ said the radio. ‘Don’t touch anything. Don’t let anyone in. Got that? Feather? Feather?’

Chief Inspector Lakeshaw nodded to the pathologist. He slid a scalpel into the dead woman’s skin to make the Y-incision that would reveal the flesh of her face and then her internal organs. Lakeshaw dreaded the coils and colours he’d see as soon as the flaps of skin and flesh were parted, and the smell. He should have been used to it all by now, but he wasn’t. Every time, he was shocked by the tubes and lumps, brownish-red, purple, grey and orange, still wet, and quivery as soon as anyone touched them. There was something about the way pathologists’ dead-looking white-latexed fingers held the plump mobile lumps of dead offal that …

Flashes distracted him. The photographer pumped his camera like a machine gun. As the sickening reek rose from the opened cadaver, Lakeshaw was glad of the mask and the drops of lavender water his wife had given him. The smell of bodies, even ones like this that weren’t seriously decomposed, was vile. He sometimes thought he’d die with it in his nostrils, however long he lasted after he’d retired.

The saw glittered in the bleak white lights of the morgue as Dr Hardy began to split the ribcage. In a way this performance was hardly necessary. He’d already established that the woman had been strangled with something like a scarf. A few fibres had been collected and would be examined later. It had surprised Lakeshaw, who’d assumed that she’d died from the beating.

Her face looked like a pile of mashed black- and redcurrants, showing crusted maroon breaks in the skin where the blows had got through. One cheekbone was completely smashed and her jaw hung out of alignment. There were broken teeth too. Bruises spread all over her, right down to her slim ankles. They’d all been meticulously measured and photographed for later analysis.

They looked bad enough to have killed anyone, but Hardy was sure the beating had happened after death. There’d been plenty of blood, though. All that stuff about dead bodies not bleeding was so much cock. Lakeshaw thought he might get photographs of this one and the scene for use in some of the elementary training courses.

The spurts of this dead woman’s blood had reached at least two feet away from her body as it lay in the centre of the living room. So Lakeshaw had officers out now, doing house-to-house to find witnesses to a blood-spattered fugitive. And there were others out emptying all the skips and dustbins in the neighbourhood in case the bloke, whoever he was, had been bright enough to get rid of his saturated gear there.

 

Nick Gurles, who’d been checking the time all through the morning, got up and swung his jacket from the back of his chair. Something caught his eye as he looked down, and he saw there was a mark on his tie. He couldn’t see it properly, even by squinting, and didn’t want to make whatever it was worse by careless scraping. There were mirrors in the bog.

He washed his hands carefully, scraping a minute gob of dirt from under one thumbnail, then dried them, making sure there wasn’t the slightest hint of dampness to mark the silk, before picking the ball of fluff off his tie. Some of his colleagues kept spare ties, even spare shirts, in the office, but that had always seemed far too girly. One last check in the mirror and he was ready.
He went back to his desk and awaited the Chairman’s summons.

They were not going to eat in the directors’ dining room, which probably meant that some of the other members of the board disapproved of Gunschwig’s decision to underwrite his legal costs. Still, Sir Henry Buxford had all the power needed to keep them quiet.

Nick had always known that if he lost the case he’d be out of a job. That was bad enough, but the nightmare panic he hoped he was still managing to hide was that, if he lost, the civil proceedings might be followed by a criminal charge.

It wasn’t likely to happen. He thought criminal trials were usually followed by civil actions, not the other way round. But that didn’t stop the nightmares. When they were at their worst, he’d try to distract himself with memories of a story he’d heard once of a bloke arriving at Ford. Reeling from his experiences in the first tough dispersal prison he’d been sent to, this chap had got to Ford and been greeted by an old schoolfriend, delighted to have a replacement for his recently released bridge partner.

But that was just whistling in the dark. The idea of prison – even an open prison – was terrifying. Three times now Nick had woken in the night, screaming. Luckily his girlfriend was away, so there was no one to know how scared he was.

The summons came at last in the form of a phone call from the Chairman’s secretary. Nick was to meet him in the lobby.

They didn’t say much until they were sitting either side of a table in Brooks’s, well away from the City and any eavesdropping journalists. In his own club, with the familiar menu and wine list in front of him, the Chairman looked perfectly at home.

‘Well, Nick, how are you feeling?’

‘Pretty good, actually, sir.’

‘That’s the stuff. Case preparation going all right?’

‘Yes, I think it is.’

‘How d’you get on with Antony’s junior, this girl, Trish Maguire? I wasn’t at all sure about his choice there, but he thinks the world of her.’

Nick took a gulp of the claret in his glass, wondering whether the old man was trying to loosen him up to make him feel better or get him drunk enough to let out anything he might have wanted to keep secret. Neither of them drank at lunchtime in normal circumstances. Very few bankers did.

‘I find her quite aggressive.’

‘How, exactly?’

Nick had another go at the claret. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t first growth, which he’d have liked and thought he deserved. ‘It’s partly how she looks, of course, rather like an eagle: short tufty black hair, ferocious black eyes and a huge great nose jutting out below them. She’ll look magnificent as a judge, but it’s a bit intimidating on a thirty-something girl. And she’s bloody offensive in some of her questions.’

‘That’s her job. She’s giving you a chance to rehearse before the other side get at you. The DOB directors’ counsel will be trying to show that any blame lies with you, so you’ll be put through the wringer.’

‘I know, but it’s not just that. I get the feeling that she disapproves of all of us – you know, the whole financial-services industry.’

‘That’s probably true. She’s a pretty left-wing, angsty kind of girl, I gather. Antony and I discussed it right at the start and I know he thinks it could be a positive advantage. She’ll be able to draw a lot of fire. What’s more, her great speciality is the passion with which she acts for anyone she sees as a victim of bullying.’

Nick achieved a laugh. ‘I’m not sure I want to look like a wimpish victim in court.’

‘Vanity can be useful, Nick, but it can also make you do damn silly things. Listen to Antony on this one. I’ve more respect for him than for any man alive. I trust his judgment, as you should. But, apart from Maguire’s aggression, how else do you see her?’

‘I thought you knew her, sir.’

The Chairman shook his immaculate grey head. ‘I shall be meeting her at the Shelleys’ next week. That’ll give me a chance to find out what she’s made of.’ He looked friendly suddenly. ‘I thought you could give me some pointers, help me ask the right questions.’

‘She’s clever, no doubt about that. Not attractive really, though she’s quite slim and not badly dressed in fact. Too intense for me, though, and doesn’t bother much with jewellery or make-up.’

‘Gay?’

‘Not according to the gossip. I’ve asked around about her and I hear that she’s in the middle of a longstanding affair with the senior partner at Henton, Maltravers. He’s said to be pining to marry her. God knows why she won’t. He must be worth a good bit by now. On the other hand, she doesn’t flirt and that always bothers me.’

‘Why?’

Nick laughed. ‘Oh, you know, I always mistrust a woman who don’t respond when I …’

‘Chat her up?’ The Chairman laughed with him and refilled his glass, just as the white-jacketed waiter brought their pate. Nick noticed that Sir Henry had barely touched his own wine.

‘Yes.’

‘I know what you mean, but you were dealing with her in her professional guise, so maybe she was just being grown up. Tuck in. Anything else I ought to know? Anything you’ve thought of that we didn’t discuss originally?’

So that
is
what this lunch is all about, thought Nick. He’s wondering whether to go on backing me. What’s he heard?

‘There’s nothing I didn’t tell you and Antony Shelley at that first conference we had.’

‘Good. I’m glad to hear it.’ The Chairman did drink then, but it was the merest sip. He rolled the wine around his mouth. ‘Not bad, but not something one would want to risk losing self-control over. How’s the pate?’

‘Very good. Thank you.’

‘We’ll support you all the way, you know, but if the case goes pear-shaped, it will be hard to keep you on at Grunschwig’s without upsetting the clients.’

That’s a nice, helpful, confidence-boosting thing to tell me now, thought Nick. But he’d known it all along and said so.

‘Good man. Eat up. Sleeping all right? You don’t want to start getting twitchy and neurotic between now and the opening of the case.’

‘Good lord, no. I’ve never slept better in my life.’

The Chairman raised his glass in a silent toast. ‘I knew you’d hack it. You’ve handled yourself well. Stick with it, Nick, and we’ll all be all right.’

Nick knew now what he was being told: it’s not only your job on the line, and your whole future in the City. It’s also my reputation, so don’t screw up by drinking, insomnia, or saying anything careless in court. And if you do screw up, don’t expect any mercy from me.

On the surface the man was all charm and kindly support, but beneath it he was as ruthless as any Mafia don. He might not have traitors and enemies killed, but he’d obliterate them professionally without a qualm. Nick knew he’d need his sleeping pills tonight. And he wasn’t sure he could face the tournedos he’d ordered now. All that blood.

 

Trish picked up the phone to ring Caro Lyalt soon after seven, as instructed in the message she’d left on the machine. But then it seemed unfair to interrupt her and
her partner, Jess, until they’d at least had a chance to eat together. To take up the time, Trish grilled herself a piece of salmon and ate it with pre-washed baby spinach from a supermarket bag and a slice of olive bread.

She hated the way the spinach dried out her mouth, and squeaked between her teeth, but the hospital had told her she needed iron. George had always thought so. Nothing she’d ever said could convince him that her natural colour was so pale. She shivered as she thought of David’s white face and dark eyes and black hair.

It wasn’t only those things that linked them. The more she saw of him, the more she recognised the slant of his eyebrows, and the shape of the cheekbones, as well as the way his face tapered around the obstinate mouth to the same pointed chin.

‘Oh, stop it,’ she said aloud, through a mouthful of half-chewed spinach leaves. ‘You’re probably trying to turn him into your half-brother to compensate for the miscarriage.’

She opened a bottle of red wine – more iron, lots of flavenoids and all sorts of health-giving properties, and a lot more palatable than raw spinach – and poured herself a glassful. George would have recommended white with fish, but she preferred red and what did it matter anyway? She bit back that thought at once, aware how close she was to the place where nothing mattered at all.

She’d been there before and was determined never to go back. It was a place of permanently sleety winter, inhabited only by large black birds that flapped around her aching head, reeling off lists of her faults and the damage she’d done to other people ever since the day she was born.

Ignoring their shadows, she made herself finish her ration of healthy food, washed up, poured herself another glass of wine and sat down at the laptop to send another email to George.

When she’d finished writing a perky account of nothing
much and clicked on ‘send’, it was nearly half past nine. She decided to give Caro and Jess a few more minutes together, and opened George’s latest email, to read that he’d been dreaming about her.

Trish felt her skin prickle at the scene he’d set for her. She knew she’d been right to urge him to fulfil his widowed mother’s dream of seeing San Francisco while she was still fit enough to enjoy it, but Trish wanted him back now. At last she reached for the phone.

‘Hi, Caro, it’s Trish,’ she said, recognising her friend’s voice. It sounded strained. ‘Am I interrupting?’

‘No. I’m on my own tonight and there’s sod all on TV. Ironic, isn’t it? The one night I get to slump and there’s nothing to watch. What can I do for you, Trish?’

‘It’s quite a long story. If you’re at a loose end, why not come round? Have a drink and we can talk.’

‘What, now?’

‘Is it too late?’

‘Of course not. And I’d love it, Trish. Give me ten minutes and I’ll be with you.’

Trish flung open two of the windows to get rid of the heavy smell of the fish. She couldn’t help noticing the rotting window sills again and felt her head tighten at the prospect of the effort it would take to make the freeholder have them repaired. She ground coffee, fetched a bottle of brandy and glasses and a box of Belgian chocolates someone must have brought when they came to dinner. She hadn’t opened the box and turned it over to check the sell-by date. There were two months to go.
She pulled off the gold string and parted the waxed paper inside the lid. The chocolates looked perfectly edible; there were none of the white spots she’d seen on the contents of other long-forgotten boxes.