Betrayal (33 page)

The surgery had been refurbished since my last visit. The waiting area had acquired pale wooden chairs with padded seats, potted plants and framed prints, and, on one wall, an electronic announcement board telling patients when their doctor was ready for them.

There were five people waiting, but after ten minutes the receptionist caught my eye and waved me through.

The passage leading to David’s room was decorated with photographs and posters of racing cars, pictures which he had accumulated in his early twenties when he’d harboured a passion to become an amateur racing driver. Like most of David’s more extravagant ambitions at that time – there had been schemes to fly hot-air balloons and buy into a yacht charter business in the Caribbean – it had fallen victim to the tight financial rein that Pa had kept us on. David had taken this restriction badly, as an unjust denial of his inheritance, yet Pa had always gone out of his way to explain how our trust funds were set up, telling us from a young age that there would be no capital until we were thirty. I could never work out whether David simply hadn’t accepted this or had thought he could get round the old man. Either way he had been regularly, and to his mind unfairly, disappointed.

David came round his desk and gripped me awkwardly by both shoulders. I thought for a moment that he was about to embrace me, something that would have startled us both, but he gave me a small shake instead, a sort of rallying jolt. He stepped back, looking slightly cross with himself. ‘What a bloody awful business,’ he exclaimed finally.

I could only nod.

‘Now how’s Tingwall shaping up?’ he asked, waving me to a seat like a patient. ‘He’s definitely the best lawyer you’ll get locally – I’ve checked up on him again, asked around.’ He pulled up another chair and sat next to me on the patients’ side of the desk. ‘But being the best around here may not be saying too much.’ He rolled a despairing eye at the limitations of the provinces. ‘You
are
considering people in London?’

‘I’m getting advice on that.’

‘Make sure you get the best,’ he urged. ‘And what about a QC? Tingwall’s getting you a QC?’

We had already discussed these things on the phone at least once, maybe twice. Whether David had forgotten or was simply anxious to press his advice home I couldn’t tell.

‘And the medical side?’ he continued systematically, like a chairman working his way through an agenda. ‘That’s under control, is it?’

‘We’re getting a letter from her asthma specialist, saying she’s got to have bail for health reasons.’

‘Anything else you need in that department?’ he asked almost fiercely.

‘That’s what I came about, actually. We need a good psychiatrist. Someone who’s prepared to say Ginny’s not a suicide risk. Otherwise they might block bail.’

David’s expression brightened at the challenge. He tapped his fingertips together while he pondered. ‘There’s a bloke called Jones. Based in Bristol.’

‘He’ll be all right, will he?’

‘Oh, he’ll do the necessary, if that’s what you mean.’ From the confidence of his tone, Jones and he might have been fellow mafiosi who traded favours in the form of foregone conclusions. ‘I’ll speak to him this afternoon.’ He reached for a pad and made a note.

‘Tingwall found a guy called Robertson, but’ – it still disturbed me to say it – ‘he seemed to think that Ginny might be a risk to herself.’ Seeking reassurance, I lifted my brows and turned this into a question.

‘Well, anyone would be a bit desperate in her situation, wouldn’t they?
Christ!
Facing all
that
.’ He grimaced at the thought, and gave a sudden shiver. ‘But if she’s a bit depressed the right drugs will soon sort her out.’

‘You really think so?’ I longed for Ginny to be released, but sometimes the prospect of looking after her on my own worried me.

‘Oh yes. Jones will know what to prescribe.’

A pause, during which we exchanged a quick glance.

‘Nothing else I can do?’ he asked.

I shook my head.

Another pause as David prepared himself to say awkwardly, ‘Look, it’s none of my business, and the last thing I want to do is –
interfere
. . .’ He contorted his face, waiting for objections, before continuing gruffly, ‘But what have they got in the way of evidence, for Christ’s sake? What
can
they have? They must have got something drastically wrong, it’s crazy to think that Ginny—’ He shut his mouth abruptly as if he’d already said enough.

I would never have foreseen David as an open champion of Ginny’s cause, just as I could never have predicted the extent of his concern. I was touched. David had such a long history of detachment, he had always been so wary of gratuitous confidences that he usually steered clear of what he called ‘situations’.

‘They know Sylvie was killed on the boat,’ I told him haltingly. ‘And then they have a fingerprint of Ginny’s, found on board. And some witness who saw her rowing out to the boat, on the Saturday afternoon.’

David frowned. ‘A fingerprint? But what does that mean, for heaven’s sake? Ginny’s been on the boat often enough.’

‘No. No . . . You see, it was in blood. Sylvie’s blood.’

‘Ah.’ He absorbed this grudgingly. ‘
Ah
.’ He stared beyond me in further consideration, then shook his head. ‘But couldn’t there be some other explanation? Couldn’t she have – I don’t know . . .’ He threw a hand in the air. ‘Come into contact with the blood some other way. After the event, or . . .’ He ran out of ideas, just as I did whenever I put myself through the same exercise. Catching sight of my face, seeing with alarm that I was close to the edge of my emotions, he added briskly, ‘The thing is, there’s going to be a way of getting her off, Hugh. There always is. Some fact they haven’t checked, some witness who hasn’t come forward, some deal to be made with the lawyers. That’s why you need the best defence team money can buy. Eh?’

But I wasn’t in any mood to be cheered up. ‘Ginny’s simply not capable of this thing, David. She just couldn’t have done it.’

He shifted in his seat. ‘No.’

I held on to my voice with difficulty. ‘She just couldn’t.’

He nodded grimly.

‘She . . .’ But I couldn’t speak, I was clenching my lips too tightly.

Leaning forward, David moved a tentative hand as if to comfort me before thinking better of it and sweeping his hand up towards his chin.

I pulled in my breath with a gasp. ‘She has no violence in her. None at all. She couldn’t hurt a fly. She just couldn’t . . .’

‘No.’ Swinging to his feet, David fetched water and Kleenex, and, thrusting them at me, waited while I blew my nose and generally pulled myself together.

‘I’m keeping your patients waiting,’ I said at last.

‘Oh, they’re used to it,’ he declared airily. ‘Now what about you? Need anything to make you sleep? Anything to cheer you up?’

‘Oh, I’m all right.’ I rearranged my expression into something a little less morbid.

‘Shall I give you something anyway, just in case?’

I stood up and gave my nose a final blow. ‘David, they don’t make pills for what I need.’

‘You’d be amazed what Prozac can do.’ He lifted a satanic eyebrow.

‘I’d rather not find out just at the moment.’

‘My patients live on the stuff,’ he announced, poker-faced. ‘High doses – keeps ’em nice and quiet.’

As so often, I wasn’t quite sure whether David was spinning one of his darker jokes.

He walked me to the waiting room door then, resuming some of his old manner, gave an evasive almost irritated smile before turning quickly away.

I was unlocking my car when a horn tooted and I looked up to see Mary’s car swooping in through the entrance. Parking untidily, she came striding over.

‘I caught you! David told me you were popping in. I’m so
glad
I caught you!’ She gave me a firm kiss on the cheek and, gripping my arm, surveyed me with fond concern. ‘How are you?’

I pulled a so-so expression.

‘Now you
are
staying tonight, aren’t you?’

‘Wish I could, but . . .’ I gestured difficulties.

‘Oh, come on. Come and stay!’

‘I really can’t.’

She made a face. ‘Why on earth not? Where will you go, for goodness sake?’

‘Oh, Melton. I have to go and see to the place.’

She shook her head at me. ‘Well, come back for a quick coffee then!’

‘Mary, I wish I could, but I have to rush.’

‘But I so want to talk to you!’ She gave a rapid smile to soften the rebuke in her voice. ‘I’ve got important things to tell you.’

‘What sort of important things?’

‘I’ll explain, but come and have a coffee. It’ll be easier over a coffee.’

I couldn’t hide my exasperation as I said: ‘But what’s it about, Mary?’

She sighed at me. ‘Why, the case, of course!’

A flutter of hope. ‘You’ve heard something? What is it?’

‘It’s hard to explain just like that.’

‘Mary, just tell me! Tell me, please!’

She gave me a look of mock anger that wasn’t entirely light-hearted. ‘I can’t see what’s so difficult about coming home for a minute!’ Her good humour had developed a sharp edge to it, and it occurred to me that she too must have been feeling the strain of our family’s instant notoriety. ‘All right! All right!’ she declared suddenly, as though giving in to the whim of a child. ‘Let’s get out of the wind at any rate.’

We got into my car. Mary pushed her hair back from her face and I dimly noticed that she’d done something new and not entirely successful with the style. She had eye makeup on, too, a shade of blue that contrasted strongly with her pink cheeks and dark eyebrows.

‘Right!’ she declared forcefully. ‘
What
I wanted to tell you was that I’ve been doing some research. I went through my old legal tomes – the ones I still have, at any rate –
and
I went and looked through a friend’s legal library which is more up-to-date.
And
I spoke to a friend of a friend in London who’s a real ace on case law and precedent. Now it seems there have been some very significant cases in recent years.’ She spoke fast and emphatically. ‘There was one case where a wife killed her husband’s lover and pleaded manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility and only got
eight
years. Which means she served four. And
that
was a case where there were definite overtones of premeditation – the wife went round to the other woman’s house with a hammer.
Said
she only intended to break the windows,
but
. . .’ She made a knowing face before racing on. ‘
Then
there was another case. A wife discovered her husband in bed with another woman. She rushed down to the kitchen and got a knife and went up and stabbed him. Said it was PMT that drove her to it, temporary insanity. She virtually walked free—’

‘Mary, what are you trying to tell me exactly?’ I interrupted in a calm voice.

I had broken her flow. ‘What I was
trying
to say was that in these types of cases the jury can often overlook the odd bit of premeditation—’

‘I meant, your point. What is your point?’

‘If you’d let me explain—’

‘Mary . . .’ I held up both hands. ‘I’m grateful, but I don’t think I’m quite ready for this.’

She gave a rapid empty smile. ‘
All
I’m trying to tell you is that if there’s diminished responsibility and not too much premeditation then the sentence could be almost nothing! A few years!’

‘I see,’ I said tightly. ‘I see. Well, thank you for going to the trouble.’ Not trusting myself to say any more, I scrambled out of the car and stood looking down at the harbour.

I heard Mary’s door slam. ‘Hugh,’ she cried, coming up behind me. ‘Hugh! I just wanted you to realise that it needn’t be that bad. I mean – a few years! It’s not so much, is it?’

It was suddenly a great deal to me, much more than it had seemed in Tingwall’s office. And I was terribly hurt by Mary’s presumption of Ginny’s guilt, the way she seemed to be offering a few years’ prison as some sort of consolation prize. In my mood of desolation it struck me that beneath David’s show of concern he might also believe that Ginny was guilty. Perhaps everyone thought she was guilty.

But then perhaps I was reacting so strongly because, deep down, against all my wishes, it was what I believed too.

Ginny appeared at last, and, seeing me, cast her eyes down and wove her way slowly between the crowded tables. She was wearing something nice, I noticed, a flowing ankle-length skirt and matching top, and her hair was newly washed and combed so that it gleamed ochre and amber in the light.

We embraced briefly and sat facing each other across the formica table.

I searched her face. ‘How are you?’

‘Oh . . .’ She pondered this. ‘They gave me something. Tranquillisers, I think. They seem to even things out a bit.’

This was more than she had said to me during both of my previous visits put together, and I smiled, ‘You look better.’ This wasn’t true: she looked thinner, her eyes appeared larger in her face and the skin of her cheeks seemed to cling more tightly to the bones. But the empty look that had disturbed me so much on my last visit had faded, and I recognised something of the old Ginny in her eyes.

‘How’s the room? Did they move you?’

She gave the faintest nod. ‘I’m on my own. Not everyone’s on their own.’

‘Well, that’s something!’

‘It has sun.’

‘That’s nice!’ I replied rather too brightly. ‘Health all right? You’ve got enough inhalers? You’ve seen a doctor?’

She was slow to concentrate. ‘More than one,’ she said. ‘Two . . . three. Psychiatrists, mainly.’

‘I’m afraid that you might have to see another,’ I ventured gently. ‘A man called Jones. Did Tingwall tell you? It’s to make sure we get this bail application through.’

She looked uncertain, as though her memory were playing tricks.

‘We need someone to say that you’re fit and well to come home. Tingwall should have told you.’

‘I didn’t know what to say,’ she murmured. ‘He kept asking me how I felt about the future.’

‘Who? Robertson?’

‘What was I meant to say?’ She cast me a baffled look. ‘I didn’t know what to say.’