Keep Me Alive (12 page)

‘Will! That’s absurd.’

He pushed back his chair. Hearing the screech of its legs against her polished wooden floor, Trish winced.

‘I thought
you’d
believe me. Christ! You were there too. You must have seen the aggression in him. You even said you were scared by it.’

‘I know, but—’

‘Don’t worry. I’m sorry to have bothered you. Goodnight.’

‘Will, don’t be like that. Sit down again. Have some more to drink.’

‘No. It’s late. And you’ve got to be in court tomorrow.’ He was already at her front door, tugging at the latch.

She followed him and put her hand on top of his on the lock. ‘Will … You’re right: it is late, and I’m not surprised you’re upset about your friend’s death, but—’

He slid his hand out from under hers.

‘I’m not upset, as you call it.’ His dark eyes were steady now. ‘I’m fucking angry. Goodnight.’

He was halfway down the iron steps, making much more noise than he had to, when she called after him, ‘Will!’

He turned. The moonlight fell across his face, accentuating his cheekbones. Surely they were even sharper than they’d been last week. Was he starving himself now?

‘I can understand the anger, too, Will, but that’s no reason to make wild leaps of logic into dangerous fantasies like this.’

‘What makes you think it’s a fantasy? I was looking for Jamie because I hoped he’d be able to tell me something about the meat used in the sausages that poisoned you. Now it looks as though he could have – if someone hadn’t killed him first.’

He ran on down the stairs, taking two at a time and never missing his footing. That was an exit even Jess would have
admired, Trish thought as she shut the door and locked it. She went up the spiral staircase to shower and try to get back the pleasure of her dinner with Antony.

It didn’t work. All through the night, memories of the hate in the slaughterman’s eyes kept dragging her up out of the sleep she needed. If anything could have persuaded her that Will wasn’t wallowing in paranoia, it would have been the thought of those eyes, and that knife hovering inches from Will’s stomach. But if the coroner had come to a verdict of suicide, he must have had good reason.

It was after two o’clock. Trish turned over and tried to forget about the abattoir and everyone connected with it. But she’d never slept well on her front, so she turned again, pushing the hot duvet to one side. After a while she drifted into sleep, but it didn’t last. She woke with a jerk and saw that the clock’s hands had barely moved. This time the eyes she could see in her mind were not Bob Flesker’s, but Kim’s.

She had looked terrified, as though she knew that the slightest mistake or noise could set off some appalling punishment. Trish
had
to persuade her to talk. No child could live in that much fear without permanent damage.

 

Next morning’s session in court was so dull it took all Trish’s determination to stay awake and concentrate on the evidence of Furbishers’ delicatessen buyer, Arthur Chancer, instead of thinking about Kim and how best to set about interviewing her that afternoon.

Trish wasn’t the only one to find it hard to avoid dropping off. It was another boiling day and the air-conditioning didn’t make much difference. More than one of the ushers were nodding.

Chancer produced very little of interest in his answers as he explained the company’s policy when looking for new suppliers, trying out their products and negotiating prices with
them. He was insistent that the supermarket had always offered new suppliers a very limited contract before making a longer-term deal with them. He claimed that he had always made it clear, and that it wasn’t his fault if some of the naive over-excited producers like Will Applewood had misunderstood him.

‘Thirty
of them?’ Antony asked, in tones of a man invited to believe that not only is the moon made of green cheese but that the earth consists of gingerbread. ‘Do you not think it is asking too much to expect his lordship to believe in so many coincidences?’

Chancer turned an appealing smile on the judge. ‘In my experience, my lord, there’s nothing like need and excitement to deafen any small trader when he’s faced with big new opportunities.’

‘It is true, is it not, that in several cases you have followed a quite different line when negotiating with suppliers?’

‘Occasionally, yes.’

As Chancer launched into a long explanation of the way he carried out his job, Colin began to slide down the bench beside Trish. She poked him to make sure he wasn’t falling asleep, and he pulled himself upright. She had actually drifted off in court once during her pupillage and she’d hate anyone she liked to suffer the humiliation she’d felt then.

Antony’s taut shoulders showed that he was listening to every word and taking in every nuance, as usual. It was partly his ferocious attention to detail that had made him so successful. Trish nudged Colin again and pointed to the notes he had been writing. He blushed and picked up his pen.

She hoped Antony wasn’t going to stop her leaving for her interview with Kim Bowlby at the end of the session. He hadn’t made any objections last night, but it would be pretty eccentric for the junior on a case as big as this to abandon her leader halfway through the day’s work.

When the judge rose, Antony turned sideways on his bench,
smiling at her over the pristine gathers at the back of his gown.

‘If you’re going to talk to this child, you’d better run.’

She almost reached out to touch his cheek and saw from the affection in his eyes that he knew it.

 

Kim was already sitting at the table when Trish rushed into the interview room, wishing she were fitter. The foster mother was at her seat in the corner, ready to intervene if Trish’s questions alarmed her charge, and Andrew would be in the observation room.

‘Hello, Kim.’ Trish worked to calm her breathing. ‘I’m sorry I’m late.’

The greyish eyelids lifted to reveal the child’s eyes. For once there was an expression in them: surprise. Maybe she had no experience of adults apologizing to her.

‘How are you?’

‘Very well, thank you.’

‘Good. Tell me about your baby,’ Trish said, launching straight into what she was sure had to be the crux of the tension between Kim and her stepfather.

‘I haven’t got a baby.’

‘No. I meant the one at home, in the flat. Your brother.’

‘That’s my mother’s baby.’

‘When was he born?’

‘After Easter.’

‘That must have made quite a change in your life.’

‘Yes,’ Kim whispered after a pause to make sure it was safe to answer.

‘Do you like babies?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘Do you play with your brother?’

‘He doesn’t play. He sleeps.’ Her eyelids closed for a second, then lifted to reveal the old blankness.

The baby has to be the key, Trish thought, even though she knew from the file that the Child Protection Team had failed to find any signs of abuse on his small body either. Kim had only started falling asleep at school after he’d been born. It would have been too much of a coincidence if there were no link. Maybe it was just that his crying had kept her awake all night, so that she’d snatched what sleep she could during the day.

‘What about feeding? Who gives him his milk?’

A tiny smile produced a relaxation of all the muscles just under Kim’s skin.

‘He has a bottle now, so sometimes I sit with him and I hold the bottle.’

‘How does that make you feel?’

‘I like it.’

‘And what about your mum: how does she feel when you help?’

Kim whispered that her mother liked it too. She looked less certain now. The questions went on, with Trish striving to keep out of her mind the answers she hoped to hear. Any hint in her wording, her manner or her voice might trigger Kim’s need to provide what the adult in charge of her wanted.

Once again she sat quite still throughout the session, even when Trish suggested that she might like to play, or paint again. At last, Trish said, ‘Is there anything you want to ask me?’

Kim’s eyes flickered. For a moment Trish thought she might speak, but she didn’t even open her lips. In the past, even the most traumatized children had given Trish the feeling they were desperate to talk, but had no idea how to start without setting off a trail of catastrophe they couldn’t control. Only Kim had ever held on as tightly as this.

‘Do you remember Caro?’ Trish asked, hoping for more of a reaction. ‘Inspector Lyalt?’

The smooth head nodded.

‘She’s in hospital. I’m going to see her tomorrow after work. Do you want me to give her any sort of message?’

There was a long pause before Kim whispered that she hoped Caro would get better soon. Then she waited passively in her chair until her foster mother came to her side and Trish gave her permission to move.

Andrew burst into the room as soon as they had gone. ‘Trish, I know you haven’t time to stop now, but what was all that about the brother?’

‘It’s clear that Kim has been threatened. I’m not sure how or with what, or even why, but I think the baby has to be involved in it somewhere. She’s such a responsible child that I think it could be she’s not talking because she feels she’s got to protect
him.’

‘I’ve told you: there’s not a mark on him either.’

‘There are plenty of things that don’t leave marks, as you very well know,’ Trish said sadly. ‘I once heard of a nanny in the days before North Sea gas, who used to dope noisy children in her charge by holding them over the cooker with all the gas taps full on. That didn’t leave marks. A pillow over the face wouldn’t either. You don’t get petechial haemorrhages much short of death. And there must be plenty else Crossman could be doing that wouldn’t scar their bodies: threatening them with violence he’s never actually carried out – knife cuts, or burns, or ropes, anything. Fear can be almost as effective a punishment as actual bodily harm; you must know that.’

‘God! It’s so frustrating.’

‘I know, but we will get there, Andrew. Look, I’ve got to run now. I’ll phone you.’

 

Tim Hayleigh stooped to pick up a stick to throw for Boney and saw that the earth was still discoloured with blood. He’d come this way because he’d hoped it would have faded by now and wanted to be sure.

If only it would rain! Nothing else would drive this evidence right out of sight. In spite of the coroner’s verdict, he still couldn’t believe that no one had come looking for it yet. Had no one cared enough for the journalist Bob had murdered to try to find out what had happened to him?

The thought of the dead man still haunted Tim. He would find himself massaging his cheekbones, as if it had been himself cringing and squealing under Bob’s boots. He tried not to think about what would happen to
his
mangled body if Bob left it lying somewhere in the countryside. No one would come looking for him. It would be weeks before he’d be missed.

He’d hardly seen any of his cousins since his parents died. He’d never been able to persuade a woman to stay with him once she’d seen the state of the farmhouse and found out how hard he had to work, so love affairs were a thing of the past, too. Sometimes he felt as though his only friends were Ron and Bob. That seemed like the saddest failure of the lot.

Boney brought the stick and dropped it so that he could start nosing around the contaminated patch of ground. Tim shuddered and flung the stick again, running after it himself when Boney didn’t move.

‘Come on, boy. Come on, Boney.’ He slapped his thigh.
‘Come on.’

But Boney was far too interested in where he was digging to obey. Tim promised himself that he wouldn’t bring Boney back here to the edge of the wood ever again. Not even when the bloodstain had faded into nothing.

He ran on, tripped and went sprawling over the ground. He heard something crack as he fell and felt a sharp pain in his kneecap. For a moment he thought it must have shattered, but it was only the branch he’d thrown, splintering under his weight as the journalist’s bones had done under Bob’s boots.

Oh, God! Would he ever forget what Bob had done? Or the way he’d hung back, too terrified to intervene?

Tim laid his face on the tough dry grass and tried to empty his mind of everything that had happened that night.

The beer in the pub nearest the abattoir was good: yeasty and barely fizzy, not like the gassy continental lagers Will was always being offered in London. He was halfway down his first pint and tucking into home-made bread and nutty Cheddar.

The whole place was honest, he thought, even better than the pub he’d been to with Trish. Its small windows meant that the interior was nicely shaded from the blinding sun. There were even some men whose boots looked as though they sometimes had muck on them. It shouldn’t be too long before it was possible to get into conversation and find out all the gossip there was on Smarden Meats and Jamie’s so-called suicide.

Will chewed a mouthful of cheese. It had just the right degree of sharpness and the texture was good, too: dry but not crumbly. He realized he was thinking like a food producer once more, testing everything he ate against his own taste and his own products. That had to be a good sign, as if his sanity might be returning at last. But would he ever get to do it for real again?

‘Sorry, mate,’ a man said, as he collapsed on to the hard wooden bench next to Will.

He looked up, wondering what the apology could be for. Damp soaking through the knee of his trousers told him, just as the man pointed to a spreading stain on the cloth.

‘That’s OK.’ Will smiled and dug a handkerchief out of his
pocket to mop the unabsorbed spillage. ‘It happens. I was miles away.’

The other man didn’t answer.

‘You from round here?’ Will asked and watched him nod. ‘D’you farm?’

‘Not any more.’ The man took a long pull at his beer.

‘Like me. When did you sell up?’

‘Wasn’t me that sold. I was a tenant. Gave up nearly a year ago.’ The man looked at Will, considering him. Whatever he saw seemed to reassure him. ‘There didn’t seem much point going on when everything that went to market cost more than it made. We were pouring money down the drain as fast as over-quota milk. Luckily we’d had a chance to buy the house in the good years. Some of it still belongs to the building society, but enough is ours to make life possible.’

‘So what d’you do now?’

‘Bed and breakfast. My wife always did it, and we’re just about making do. Thank God the mortgage rate’s as low as it is. When I think what we’ve paid in interest over the years, I could …’ He drowned what he’d been going to say in beer. When he raised his face from the tankard again, there was a faint foam moustache above his lips. ‘What about you?’

Will sketched his reasons for selling the farm he’d inherited. As he spoke, he edited his loathing of the years of servitude to his father, and what it had made him do. He thought of the day when Trish had poured out her fury about people who lied to her. What would she do if she ever found out that he hadn’t always told her the truth? How could he make her understand?

After everything that had happened, he could see that the awfulness of the life hadn’t all been his father’s fault; it had been imposed on him, too, and his father, and his father’s father, which made everything worse.

Familiar guilt made his body squeeze in on itself. He tried to ease it by remembering all the reasons he’d had to hate his
father. One particular episode still burned in his memory. He’d been working for his mock ‘O’ level exams, so it must have been after his fifteenth birthday, more than twenty years ago.

 

The noise of his father coming into his room woke him, but he wasn’t going to show it. He always slept on his back so he hardly had to move his head to see the illuminated figures on the alarm clock by his bed. Half-past five. His stillness didn’t save him. Nor his schoolwork. A callused hand dragged back the duvet.

‘Come on, son. Stop faking. There are cows out there that need milking.’

Will could feel his own hands even without moving them, chapped and swollen from yesterday and the day before that. It wasn’t the actual milking he hated; even at this time of the morning in the raw darkness and with his head hollow with the endless need for sleep and his eyes smarting, he didn’t mind dealing with the cows. Sometimes he felt sorry for them, rounded up and hustled into the milking parlour, their huge, heavy udders clamped into the machines. Occasionally he’d give the poor beasts an extra stroke and think he could see gratitude in their big brown eyes. It was the cleaning up afterwards that he hated. The smell of cow dung clung to his hair and every crevice of his body, in spite of all the scrubbing that only added to the soreness of his skin. He could still smell it now, just as he could see the greeny-brown slime in his mind’s eye, swirling away from the jet of the power hose. It was no wonder Suze’s friends turned their backs on him.

‘Let me sleep, Dad. I’ve got exams today.’

‘Don’t give me that.’ He felt his father’s calluses against his forehead as he grabbed a clump of Will’s hair and tugged. ‘Wake up! The cows need milking. On your feet, boy.’

‘Susannah doesn’t have to help around the place.’ He shut his eyes so that he wouldn’t have to see his father’s expression. He
knew he’d have to get up, but he didn’t see why he should make it easy for the old bastard. ‘So why should I?’

The hand wound tighter in his hair and pulled. Will let his head follow to lessen the tug. In a minute he was on his feet just like the old bastard wanted. His toes curled up from the hard coldness of the floor and his lanky body shivered. He reached for his work trousers and the rough heavy jersey he’d put on over his pyjamas.

‘She’s younger than you and she helps her mother. Who d’you think would have a hot breakfast for you when you get in from milking if it wasn’t for them? Hurry up. I haven’t time to waste on this performance every day. Come
on
, Will. If you left your cock alone when you went to bed, you wouldn’t be this wiped out. Come on.’

 

‘Then I lost my food business, too,’ he said at the end of his story, having cut out all the really painful bits, like the beating he’d had from his father when they heard he’d failed his exams. He still felt the injustice of that, even after all these years. ‘But it looks as though I’m going to get enough damages to start up again. I thought I might try this part of the country. I couldn’t bear to go back to the Hampshire border. Anyway, it’s too expensive now. What’s it like round here?’

The bed-and-breakfast man shrugged. Levering himself to his feet, he asked if he could get Will another drink to make up for the stain on his trousers.

‘Thanks. It was a pint of Special.’

‘Ron!’ the other man called as he shoved himself off the bench, which rocked again. ‘Two pints of Special.’ He ambled over to the bar, exchanging laconic courtesies with some of the other drinkers on the way, and handed the barman some money.

They drank in companionable silence for a while. The taste of the beer was still right, bigger and meatier than anything Will
had had in months. It was good, too, to be back in the company of men like these. He wiped his mouth as he put down his tankard, and asked again about conditions here in Kent.

‘It’s not so bad,’ said the other man with a bitter edge to his voice, ‘if you’re a City commuter with a bonus and a fast car. Tough though if you belong here and have no chance of earning a decent living, with a wife who thinks you’re a useless lump, and a houseful of strangers who treat you like a moron. Thank God for this place. I’d go mad without it.’

‘But some people are still farming,’ Will protested. ‘The land’s well kept round here. There’s money being spent on it, too. They can’t all be merchant bankers building up Petits Trianons for the weekend.’

‘Petty Whats?’ asked a third man, putting a pint down on the table in front of Will’s new friend. ‘How are you, Gus?’

‘Got balled out by Jeanie this morning for leaving skin on the breakfast hot milk. It’s no life for a man, running round after a bunch of townees.’

‘At least you’ve got money coming in. Think of poor Tim: no wife, so no bed and breakfast. Not even egg money.’ The newcomer leaned across the table, hand outstretched, saying: ‘Jack Morgan. How are you?’

‘Will Applewood. Good to see you. Who’s Tim?’

‘Ex sheep farmer on the edge of the Marsh. He switched to cherries a few years ago,’ said Gus. ‘Tim’s OK. He may not do B and B, but he brings in a bit extra taking aerial photographs for surveyors during his off-season. Sometimes the bankers pay him to take pictures for their Christmas cards. He said the other day that he just about earns enough from it to make the plane pay for itself. So his one hobby is free. Good thinking.’

‘So long as petrol prices don’t go up. That would screw his sums,’ Jack said. ‘Like the price of cherries must be doing these days. No one wants proper Kentish white-heart cherries like
Tim’s. They’re after those great glossy black ones that look good, but taste of sod all. Dunno how much longer he can go on, even with the photography. He probably should’ve kept to sheep. Now that lambs are being held back from slaughter to restock the foot-and-mouth-hit farms, you can get a decent price again. So he’s missed out all ways round.’

‘Maybe he’d be open to offers for some of the buildings then,’ Will said, fighting to forget his sympathy for these men and complete what he’d come here to do.

He’d decided to be a property buyer because that let you ask anything you wanted, even the most unbelievably offensive questions.

‘Where can I find him?’ he asked.

‘Don’t even try. His place isn’t much more than eight miles from here. But I don’t want him thinking I said he’d be likely to sell up. He’s on a short fuse these days. Anything sets him off. I’d likely get an earful, if nothing worse.’

‘Does he drink in here? Maybe I’ll run into him. It could be easier that way.’

‘Doesn’t drink anywhere except at home, as far as I know. No spare cash.’

‘Oh. OK.’ Will caught the barman looking at him and quickly raised his voice. ‘Then is there anyone you know of who is trying to sell?’ He tried to look like someone with the millions necessary to buy any substantial piece of land in the area. All he could see were his fraying cuffs. He could feel the slope of his heels, too, where he’d worn away the rubber with his long walks on London’s pavements. At least his hands were like a rich man’s now, soft from lack of work.

As he listened to the discussion of which struggling local farmers might want to sell, Will mentally rehearsed the other questions he’d come to ask, the ones about Smarden Meats and the men who worked there.

 

*

 

‘Yesterday, Mr Chancer, you told my learned friend that you cannot be held responsible for some naive suppliers misunderstanding the type of contract you were offering them.’ Ferdy Aldham paused, as though to make sure everyone was awake.

Several people moved their heads and one or two rubbed their eyes. Colin turned to smile at Trish, as though to assure her that he’d never succumb to heat and boredom again.

‘That’s right,’ Chancer said in his slightly nasal voice.

‘What exactly did you say to them to make it clear?’

‘I can’t tell you exactly because I didn’t keep any record. But in every case, I explained that we’d be taking their products at the price agreed for three months and then, when we were sure there was a market for them and our contracts people had looked at everything, we’d be offering them a long-term deal.’

‘And how did they react to that?’

‘Well, my lord,’ Chancer said, turning his head to address the judge, ‘they mostly just grabbed the offer with both hands. There was only one of them who didn’t.’

‘And who was that?’ Ferdy asked, looking so satisfied that Trish began to worry.

‘Mr Applewood. When I ran through the details with him, he said he wasn’t in the business of doing trial runs, and that I’d had samples of all his products already and that if I couldn’t tell which ones would sell, then I shouldn’t be doing the job I was.’

Trish kept an expression of mild interest on her face and willed Colin not to show any of the dismay he must feel. Thank God Will wasn’t in court this morning. He’d have been jumping up and down by now.

‘And have you any evidence to support this statement?’ Ferdy asked.

‘Yes,’ Chancer said. ‘It’s in the letter I wrote him after our meeting, the one about the timing of his deliveries.’

‘That is document 5063, my lord,’ Ferdy said, riffling through his own bundle to place one plump finger on the page.

Trish looked down at the relevant passage. Chancer had written:

‘As to your dislike of our need to assure ourselves of the quality and marketability of your product, I have to say that if there is anything in our terms you consider too onerous, now is the moment say so, before either of us is committed.’

Surely there wasn’t enough in this ambiguous sentence to sway the judge in Furbishers’ favour. It was no wonder they hadn’t picked it up as they prepared the case; in itself it was far too vague to prove Chancer’s assertion. If only he hadn’t claimed to have spelled everything out to Will in a face to face meeting!

She said as much after the judge had risen for the lunch adjournment. Colin had gone ahead to buy the sandwiches, so she and Antony were alone with Will’s solicitor, Neil Stanton.

‘I don’t know,’ Antony said, pulling off his wig and scratching his scalp. ‘On its own the letter wouldn’t cause us much of a problem, but old Husking might believe Chancer’s oral testimony and take this as confirmation of it. You know Applewood better than either of us, Neil,’ he added to the solicitor. ‘Could he have lied about what Chancer said to him at the meeting?’

‘I wouldn’t have thought so, but I can’t be sure.’ He bit his lip. ‘That’s not helpful, Antony, I know. But it’s the best I can do. He’s probably not above the odd fib. Are any of us? But he’s so full of righteous outrage about what Furbishers did that I’d find it hard to believe.’

‘Good. Now, we’d better get on with lunch.’