Keep Me Alive (2 page)

Blood was everywhere, pouring into his mouth and choking him. His red-edged teeth scrabbled over his split lips, and his hands smeared the blood over his eyes and up into his hair as he clutched his head to guard it from the rhythmically pounding boots. He groaned. He was gasping as he begged for the agony to stop.

‘Bastard,’ Bob hissed. ‘I knew something was wrong tonight. Bastard. Shut up.’

‘For Christ’s sake, Bob, stop it.’

At the suggestion of a rescue, the man looked up. Bob’s boot landed right in his face. It cracked like an egg. He screamed and rolled himself into a defensive ball, with his ruined face pressed against his knees, but not before Tim had seen the damage to his nose, his eyes, his teeth.

Gagging, Tim put out his right hand, wanting to touch Bob and remind him that he was human. But he couldn’t force himself to make contact. Bob’s left boot crashed into the man’s spine. And again. Just beside the kidneys.

‘Stop it!’ Tim said, brave enough at last to make a grab at Bob’s arm. ‘You’ll kill him. Bob! Stop it!’

But Bob was out of reach of any words. His hands were clenched into fists, although he wasn’t using them. All he needed were his booted feet. One after the other, they thudded into the man’s body. Bob’s face was set with concentration now; all the hatred gone. His eyes were back to normal. He looked like a man with a job and the determination to get on with it until there was nothing left to do.

Soon, the thuds gave way to crunching sounds as bigger bones cracked under the assault. Yet more blood poured out over Bob’s boots and on to the hard-baked ground. It didn’t soak in; it pooled, red and glossy, on the dusty surface. At last the kicking stopped.

In the silence, Tim’s ears were ringing. He could barely breathe and didn’t think his mind would ever work again. Bob
looked down at the battered, bloody thing that had once been a man, then up at Tim, as though measuring him, deciding whether he needed kicking into silence too.

Tim knew he had only one chance to save his own life. Forcing himself to forget the man on the ground, fighting the nausea that threatened to choke him, the ringing in his ears and the fierce wish that he’d never met either of the appalling Flesker brothers or fallen in with their plans, he said, ‘We’ll have to bury him. I’ll get the shovels.’

‘No,’ Bob said at once, then softened it by adding, ‘but I’m glad you’re on side. They always find buried bodies in the end. And if it’s on your land they’ll start asking you questions. You’ll never stand up to interrogation. We all know that.’

‘What then?’ Tim didn’t risk challenging the insult. ‘There aren’t any quarries round here to drop him in.’

‘We’ll take him to the meat works.’

‘That’s disgusting.’ The words were out before Tim could stop them, and he could feel his whole body tense. He clenched his hands behind his back, and dug his top teeth into his lip to stop himself whimpering.

‘Don’t be stupid.’ Bob laughed, which gave Tim the confidence to let his lip go. ‘We’ll put him under one of the lorries going to Smithfield in the morning. Eighteen wheels and God-knows how many tons of refrigerated container driving over him will make enough marks to hide everything we’ve done. Safer than trying to hide the body.’

‘But what about the blood? It hasn’t started to soak in yet, the ground’s so dry. Even when it does, the evidence will last for months in the soil. Years maybe. Scientists can find tiny traces anywhere these days.’

‘Can’t you stop whining for a minute? Get Boney over here and he’ll soon lick it up. There’s no one going to bother to test soil samples unless they’ve seen some blood.’

Tim couldn’t speak, but he managed to shake his head. There
was no way he was going to let his spaniel anywhere near this killing ground if he could help it.

‘You called him after Napoleon, didn’t you, so why d’you always treat him like a poodle? You’re happy enough to see him eat anything he kills. What’s the difference?’

‘How are you going to get the body to the meat works?’ Tim asked, because that was safer than saying nothing or trying to explain. ‘Ron’s got the van, and we can’t put it in my car. It would leave evidence. That’d be far more dangerous than burying him on my own land.’

‘You’ve been watching too much telly. We’ll use his car. He must have one round here somewhere.’ Bob uncoiled the battered body, straightening the legs and torso so that he could feel in the trouser pockets. It looked like a man again, in spite of all the damage Bob had done. Tim couldn’t face it. Then he heard a chink and risked a quick glance. Bob was withdrawing a bloody hand from one pocket, and there was a bunch of keys dangling from his fingers.

‘See. Now we’ve just got to find the car. The lock bleeper’ll help. And we’ve got to find out why he was here. What was it he put in his front pocket? Get it out, will you, while I …’

Tim shook his head. He’d never be able to make himself touch the body. Bob looked at him, his hands twitching. Tim knew how near the danger was, but he still couldn’t move. He felt himself swaying as the blood drained from his brain. Bob muttered a filthy insult, then jammed his hand into the big pocket of the dead man’s parka. The seams ripped apart like Velcro.

‘A camera! A sodding video camera!’

‘Who the hell is he?’

Trish Maguire was waiting for her head of chambers on Monday morning, and looking over her gown to make sure there were no tears. There had been more than one moment last week when the fabric had snagged on a sharp edge and had to be pulled free. She’d been too busy to do anything about it at the time and didn’t want to look like a scruff this morning as they walked side by side into the Royal Courts of Justice. Hearing the unmistakable sound of his step in the passage outside, she let the gown slip out of her hands to make a puddle of black cloth on her desk.

When he’d first taken an interest in her career a few years ago and used her as his junior on some big cases, she’d been flattered but scared of his notoriously demanding standards and excoriating tongue. Then she’d got to know him better and found her fear overtaken by disapproval of tactics that could seem perilously close to bullying. Only now, when she’d apparently passed some invisible test, had he begun to reveal a much lighter side to his character. She was enjoying it.

‘Hi,’ she said, smiling as he came into her room. ‘Good weekend, Antony?’

‘Tetchy. How was yours?’

‘Not bad. It felt a bit weird, seeing the family go off to Australia without me, but I’m OK. Raring to go.’

‘Good. I want you to take the re-examination of Will Applewood today. Are you up for it?’

She nodded, hiding her pleasure, then said, ‘But are you sure? He’s the most important of all the claimants,
and
the most wobbly.’

‘Exactly.’ Antony Shelley laid his hand on her black tin wig box. The ends of his long fingers just curled over the edge of the lid. ‘And I spook him, which makes him mumble and look shifty whenever I ask him anything. You must have noticed.’

‘Of course. But I didn’t think twice. Most people are frightened of you.’

‘Not you, though, Trish.’

‘What makes you think that?’ she asked, suppressing the words ‘not any more’.

The smile that lifted his eyebrows into triangles and tweaked the corners of his lips was full of all the cynical self-awareness she was coming to expect from him.

‘Because I never fancy frightened women, and I fancy you something rotten.’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ she said, laughing at him. ‘I’ve heard enough gossip about your taste in luscious blondes to know that I could never be your type.’

‘Luckily Applewood’s got the hots for you, too,’ he said, getting back to what mattered. ‘No surprise of course, but convenient.’

Trish had never heard Antony talk so frivolously about a case, but everything about this one was turning out to be extraordinary.

Lots of people had told her she was mad to take it on when they’d heard it was to be run on a no-win no-fee basis. Antony, who’d been earning well over a million pounds a year for ages, could easily take the hit if he had to, but she needed the money. Even so, she hadn’t hesitated for a minute when he’d invited her to be his junior.

Their clients were a group of small food producers, who were claiming damages for breach of contract against Furbishers Foods, one of the biggest and most ruthless of the supermarket chains. Trish had always hated corporate bullies quite as much as any other kind, and Furbishers had come to symbolize every single one of them for her. Antony had teased her for her passionate loathing from the start, while refusing to answer any questions about his own motives for accepting the brief.

‘Applewood’s subconscious will push him to make himself attractive,’ he went on. ‘Even though you’ll be the target, it’ll have a good effect on the judge.’

Trish felt her skin prickle with energy. ‘Machiavelli had nothing on you, did he?’

Antony’s face changed into the expression she privately called his ‘wicked seducer look’. It had always made her laugh so much that she couldn’t imagine anyone succumbing to it. But then he probably used different tactics when he wanted a result.

‘I keep telling you it’s mad to waste the way people feel about each other,’ he said, moving towards her. At just over six feet, he was three inches taller than she, so she had to look up to meet his eyes. She could smell the faint cologne-ish scent of the soap he always used. ‘When will you admit I’m right?’

‘Never,’
she said, stepping back and slapping her arm across her chest like a Victorian hero refusing to surrender the colours, even though all his comrades lay slaughtered at his feet.

Antony’s eyes warmed with amusement, which did much more for her than their earlier seductive glint. They were a curious greenish-blue that could look turquoise in the sun or dull grey in the artificial light of a windowless court, and they were the one remarkable feature in a face far more ordinary than the mind it concealed.

No one outside the law would have had a clue who he was; within the tight, competitive world they inhabited, he was instantly recognizable. But there weren’t many people who
would have dared to accost him, which was one reason why Trish liked flirting with him so much.

‘We’ll be late if we don’t get going,’ he said, watching her as though he couldn’t quite decide what she was thinking. Then he pushed one hand through his thick blond hair, shrugging himself back into professional seriousness, adding: ‘Oh, and don’t raise any objections during the cross-examination. I’ll deal with anything that needs to be said. OK?’

Trish nodded as she swung her bag over her shoulder, enjoying the soft bump as it bounced off her spine. She followed him, clattering down the stone stairs. To cap everything else, the air outside was hot and yet without any of the usual late-July mugginess. Even the dust smelled of spice rather than dirt.

There were few other people to be seen as they walked up through the Temple, matching each other stride for stride. Trish hardly noticed the beautiful buildings with their fountains and gardens because she knew them so well. But she did register the emptiness of the place. Most of the courts had closed for the summer. She and Antony were still at work only because their case had overrun its expected length when their opponents had launched a long procedural argument. It had failed, but it had messed up the timetable. The judge, who was on vacation duty anyway, had elected to carry on until the case was over.

This wasn’t unprecedented, but it was rare, as well as inconvenient for everyone involved. The Lord Chancellor’s department had been agitating for years about the slowness of the judicial process and kept urging everyone involved to speed it up. Mr Justice Jeremy Husking had chosen this way. Once he had spoken, no one had any option but to obey.

Antony had packed his wife and teenage children off to their Tuscan palazzo without him, and Trish had had to cancel her share of a long-awaited trip to Sydney with her partner, George, and her ten-year-old half-brother, David. The thought of how
they’d get on without her to mediate between them had been keeping her awake at night.

David had arrived in Trish’s life two years ago, on the night his mother was murdered. She had been so frightened of a man who had been stalking her that she’d sent her only child halfway across London for sanctuary with his unknown half-sister. Until then Trish had known nothing of his existence either, but once it had become clear who he was and that no one else could look after him, she’d taken him in and done her best to give him the security he needed. He’d spent the first eighteen months with her apologizing every two minutes, as though afraid she’d throw him into the street if he offended her. That had stopped now, and he’d even begun to answer back. She’d been glad enough to see it, but it did mean his fights with George had got worse.

Still, for a whole month she wouldn’t have to deal with either of them. She could swan around her big art-filled flat, doing precisely what she wanted, eating or not eating as she chose, without ever worrying about anyone else’s feelings. She’d hate to be on her own like this for long, but the novelty was adding an unexpected sparkle to her life.

There was a bounce in her step as she and Antony emerged through the shade of Temple Lane into the dazzle of Fleet Street. The twisting road was narrow here at its junction with the Strand, and choked with traffic. Puzzled tourists clogged the pavements, cars hooted and everyone in sight seemed to be shouting. The pounding clangour of a pneumatic drill ripped through the rest.

Sodding roadworks, she thought, as she stepped round a row of orange and white traffic cones and tried not to breathe in the dust thrown up by the drill. Even without it, the air would have been worse out here. The heat haze that shimmered on the cars and around the muscular dragon on top of Temple Bar was already acrid with exhaust fumes.

Her pupil had gone on ahead with all the bundles of paperwork the team would need in court today, which was a relief. Tugging a trolley full of files and cases through this lot would have been a nightmare.

Breathing as shallowly as possible, she and Antony made their way to the stony coolness of the Royal Courts of Justice. For once there were no television cameras to record the arrival of celebrities. Theirs was the only case being heard.

Trish shoved her bag on the X-ray machine’s rollers for the usual security checks and walked unchallenged through the metal detector.

‘There’s Applewood,’ Antony said as their eyes adjusted to the gloom indoors. ‘Get on over to him and sort him out before you go to the robing room. He looks far too twitchy. I’ll keep out of your way so you can make him feel truly loved.’

Trish felt his hand flat on her back, pushing her forwards through the small rabble of lawyers, claimants, defendants and ushers. She didn’t need the encouragement, but she enjoyed the moment of physical contact. Looking back over her shoulder, she could see that he knew. She flashed him a wicked smile and faced forwards again.

Will had seen her and was beckoning. He’d shaved carefully this morning, in preparation for his long-awaited stint in the witness box, and his springy hair was as smooth as the dark City suit he’d put on. When she’d first met him, he’d been wearing tweed, apparently chosen to look as much like a muddy field as possible, and well-polished brown brogues. Today his cheekbones were a lot sharper than they’d been then, and there were big grey smudges under his eyes.

‘You didn’t have a good night, did you?’ Trish said, putting all her pent-up sympathy into her smile.

‘Not exactly.’ He laughed, and the cheerless sound made her scalp tighten. ‘When I wasn’t rehearsing my answers to
Antony’s questions, I was telling myself we
can
still win, even after the way they savaged us last week.’

‘It’s good to have confidence in the outcome of the case,’ Trish said, picking her words with care, ‘but all you need to think about now is giving your evidence as clearly and accurately as you can. So long as you do that, you’ll be fine.’

Will grinned. His teeth were clenched, and the muscles around his mouth quivered. Trish laid her left hand gently on his forearm. She could feel his tendons, hard as steel hawsers.

The case would never have come to court if it hadn’t been for him. When Furbishers’ machinations had driven his business into liquidation, he’d collected twenty-nine other victims and taken their case to solicitor after solicitor until he’d found one prepared to take them on without any guaranteed payment.

Trish had always liked Will’s passion for the employees who’d lost their jobs as much as she admired the strength of his conviction that justice would be available to them all if he could only find the right words to explain exactly what Furbishers had done. Unfortunately the right ones rarely came to him. He’d try mouthfuls of new ones to tell her all over again, in quite different but still furious sentences, which threatened to tip him over into hysterical rage. Neither habit was likely to impress the court.

At their first meeting Trish had summed up five minutes’ worth of his muddled ranting in two crisp sentences. His relief had been all the reward she’d wanted for the headache-inducing concentration needed to pick out what he had actually been saying from the maelstrom of outrage and irrelevance he had produced. Antony’s half-mocking approval had been an unexpected extra and had set the tone for all their work on the case since.

In the old days, Will had had a small business on the Hampshire-Sussex Border, making traditional meat products for the upper end of the delicatessen and mail-order trade. He
had never intended to expand; the company had made him a good living, and provided ten jobs in a rural area of high unemployment. Everything had gone well until he’d had the first, highly flattering letter from Furbishers.

‘It was a fantastic moment,’ he’d said at that first meeting in chambers, ‘even though I’d never had any ambitions to trade on such a huge scale.’

In order to fulfil Furbishers’ requirements, he’d bought more machines, taken on more staff and committed himself to ordering vastly increased supplies of raw materials, financing it all with a bank loan guaranteed against his house and all the business assets. Then, three months after he’d started to make his deliveries to Furbishers, they’d at last sent through the written contracts with an infinitely lower price per unit than he’d agreed.

Having committed himself to the expansion, Will had struggled to make the deal work, and stuck with it for far too long, losing money every day. Eventually the bank had called in the loan. He’d lost everything.

Some of the more comprehensible parts of his original diatribe came back to Trish, full of the emotion that had made him gobble and gag on the words. ‘I did everything I was supposed to do and half-killed myself to get Furbishers what they said they wanted, then they screwed me royally and didn’t give a shit.

‘People like that
have
to take responsibility for the damage they do to the suckers they trick into believing in them. What they did to me would have made it impossible for anyone to fulfil their contract.