Keep Me Alive (4 page)

‘And you can’t blame them. They don’t know any better.’

There was the faintest quiver at the corner of the judge’s mouth again. He’d noticed Will’s gaffe even if no one else had. Trish could understand why Ferdy Aldham wasn’t trying to choke off the rant, but why was Antony letting it run? She had to wait for three more questions before he got to his feet and with casual but deadly skill put Ferdy in his place.

 

By the time the court rose for the day, Trish was hoarse with the effort of putting her questions to Will in precisely the right form to elicit the answers she needed and choke off any extraneous information he might feel like offering. She longed more than anything to submerge herself in cold water. The airless atmosphere of the room, with its dark panelling and artificial light, the endless repetitive questions, and the need to concentrate on every word spoken made her feel as though her head was filled with popcorn. But there was plenty more to come before she could go home. The whole team would have to walk back to chambers now to analyse everything that had happened during the day, then plan tomorrow’s campaign. After that, she was due to go to friends for dinner.

Her empty flat beckoned seductively, but she’d made the arrangements with Caro Lyalt and her partner more than a week ago. She couldn’t back out now.

Caro Lyalt had never felt so hated. Her suspect’s eyes were like chunks of torn steel, and she knew he wanted to hit her. She didn’t look away for a moment, even though his wife was standing only a few feet from his side. He’d terrified young PC Hartland into submission yesterday. Someone had to show him he could be beaten.

‘There’s not a mark on Kim, Inspector.’ Daniel Crossman’s voice had not yet lost the hectoring bark he must have worked for in his years as an army sergeant. ‘And there’s nothing wrong with her, except homesickness and you lot. All that poking and prying! It’s no wonder she’s frightened. The sooner she’s back here, the better.’

No, it’s not, Caro thought, remembering the last time she’d seen Crossman’s stepdaughter. Six years old, bolt upright, and with so much maturity and suffering in her expression that Caro would have done anything to keep her safe.

It was going to be hard, though. Other members of the Child Protection Unit were already wavering, and Pete Hartland had shown how easily they might give in. As Crossman had said, there was no physical evidence of assault or abuse anywhere on Kim’s small body, but that didn’t mean she was unharmed. To Caro, the child’s refusal to speak had been as eloquent as the flaring of her nostrils and the clenching of the small muscles around her eyes as she’d tried not to cry. Someone had
terrorized Kim Bowlby into silence, and the obvious candidate was this man.

The flat smelled of bleach and silicone polish. Every surface was bare and clean. There were no books, no ornaments, no cushions, and nowhere to hide. The floor was covered with ice-grey vinyl so shiny it looked dangerous. The uncurtained windows looked out only on to a heavily shaded wall. There was no softness anywhere.

‘Not all wounds leave marks, Mr Crossman, you should know that.’ Caro spoke with the detached coolness that was the only thing she’d ever found that would hide her hatred of what men like this did to the people in their power. She put her empty teacup on a small white table.

He marched forwards, hands by his sides, until his nose was only inches from hers. She didn’t flinch, but his fury clawed at her.

‘No one here has done anything to Kim.’ He jabbed his index finger sideways. Caro didn’t let her eyes move. ‘Ask her.’

At last she looked away and tried to decode the expression in his wife’s lined face. There was fear there, certainly, and misery, and a dozen other things. The clearest was resentment. Between them, these two were tormenting Kim. There was no doubt about it. The only questions were exactly how they were doing it and what Caro would have to do to get the evidence she needed to prove it.

‘Why won’t you leave us alone?’ Mrs Crossman said, in a whining voice that set Caro’s teeth on edge. She looked at the woman’s hands, red and flaking from using too much cleaning fluid, and tried to feel sorry for her. ‘You’ve no right to come here like this, upsetting everyone.’

‘I have every right to find out why Kim has run away twice and why she’s been exhibiting so many of the signs of serious abuse. Her safety is my only concern.’

A baby wailed in the next room. Mo Crossman was across
the shiny floor and out of the door before Caro had taken two breaths. She looked straight at Crossman and said with stony deliberation, ‘Apart from the baby’s, that is. We are watching you, Daniel. And we won’t stop until we find out what you’ve been doing.’

He stared at her, not bothering to answer.

 

Caro still hadn’t got him out of her mind when she staggered home with two heavy plastic bags of shopping at the end of the day. It was a relief to find Jess happily sharing a drink with a friend of theirs. Her partner had failed to get yet another possible part in a television series last week and had been very glum since. Tonight it looked as though Cynthia Flag had managed to cheer her up. Caro kissed them both, then invited Cynthia to stay for supper, adding, ‘You’ll like Trish. She has all the right ideas, even though she doesn’t do family law any more. I mean she hasn’t sold out or anything. I’m doing sausages and mash for her and me, but I’m sure Jess would let you share her cheese-and-potato pie. And we can all have the same salad and pudding. Do stay.’

‘I wish I could,’ Cynthia said, looping her slippery dark-gold hair back into the combs she used to keep it up. ‘But I’m on my way to meet someone. In fact, I ought to get going.’

‘Not yet. Stay and talk to Jess while I get started on the cooking.’

‘Why don’t we do that for you?’ Jess said. ‘You look as though you could use a shower.’

Glad to see her in such high spirits, Caro left the kitchen to the two of them. It was good to be able to take time under the hard jets of water and feel the day’s tensions being washed away. She emerged, cool and a bit calmer, to dress in loose linen trousers and a T-shirt. She would have kept her feet bare, except that it was dustbin day tomorrow and she’d have to take the rubbish out later.

Cynthia and Jess were still talking amid the potato peelings and onion skins, while savoury smells wafted out of the oven. When Caro joined them, Jess looked her up and down and said, ‘Couldn’t you have made a bit more effort? Those trousers make you look like the back end of an elephant. Even you must have noticed that pure linen only works when it’s new.’

‘Oh, Jess! What does it matter? They’re comfortable, and Trish won’t mind what I look like.’

‘I mind.’

Caro couldn’t stop herself snapping, which made Jess rush out of the kitchen.

‘You’re a bit hard on her,’ Cynthia said gently, laying a hand on Caro’s shoulder. ‘Couldn’t you cut her some slack while she’s having such a tough time?’

‘She’s not the only one.’

‘Don’t, Caro.’

‘Don’t what?’

‘Talk like an angry police officer. I know you don’t mean to do it, but I don’t think you’ve got any idea how hard it must be for Jess to deal with after she’s spent an almost silent day on her own, worrying about whether she’s ever going to get another job.’

Caro shook her head, not sure whether she was offering an apology or expressing disbelief. Cynthia just smiled. Later, when she’d gone and Jess was taking her turn in the shower, Caro cleared up the kitchen as a penance and distracted herself by thinking about Daniel Crossman.

She had seen far too many men like him to mistake the cold watchfulness in his eyes or miss the violence hidden behind his superficial stillness. He was a control freak; he had an obsession with cleanliness that, to her at least, meant there were things about himself he could not bear to acknowledge; and he ruled his unhappy little household with tyrannical rigidity.

The only problem was that no one knew what else he had
been doing. Unless they found out within the next fourteen days, Kim was going to have to go back and face it all over again. Getting the interim care order had been hard enough. If the chief social worker hadn’t been so much on Caro’s side, Kim would probably have been sent back already.

Caro lifted the heavy plastic rubbish bag and carried it out of the flat. As she turned into the side alley, where the bins were kept, she heard a familiar voice calling her name from the street, and adding, ‘D’you want a hand with that?’

‘It’s fine, thanks, Trish,’ she said, turning to greet her friend. ‘How are you? Not that I need to ask. You look fantastic. But you must be sweltering in that black suit.’

‘It’s cooler than it looks,’ Trish said, flapping the sides of her jacket over the white muslin shirt. ‘Although I envy you your trousers. I wish I’d had time to go home to change. We had a heavy session today.’

‘Poor you.’

‘But you look as though you haven’t had too easy a day either. A tough case?’

‘Awful.’ Caro had learned not to talk to Jess about the children she was fighting to protect, but Trish was different. She wouldn’t mind listening to the whole story and it would be a relief to share some of it. Trish might even have some ideas about how they could persuade Kim to break her silence. Still talking twenty minutes later, they went upstairs to rescue the sausages and to see how Jess was getting on with her cheese-and-potato pie.

 

Three hours later, Trish at last reached her own flat and let herself in with the feeling of a traveller returning from the most arduous trek across unforgiving terrain. She had always found Jess hard to like, but this evening had been worse than usual. Knowing how worried Caro was, Trish thought Jess might have shown some sympathy for her – even a little practical help – but
she’d been mulish in the extreme. It had been Trish who’d got up to carry the dirty plates out to the kitchen and help Caro with the washing up. Jess had stayed in the sitting room, lying on the sofa in her svelte clothes and listening to music turned up so loud it had been painful even in the kitchen. Trish had often wondered why Caro had fallen in love with Jess in the first place, and why she stuck with the relationship when it was obviously so difficult.

The big Southwark flat was quiet, and it smelled wonderful. The smoky scent of dried lavender from a bowl in the middle of the table mixed with the smell of oil paint from the latest abstract Trish had bought, and the beeswax polish her cleaner liked to use. Revelling in the glorious absence of food cooking, she double-locked the door, stretched out one arm to turn off the external light and headed up the spiral staircase to her bedroom under the eaves.

Later, wrapped in a scarlet towel after a long self-indulgent shower, she checked that the radio-alarm beside her bed was set for six o’clock. Tomorrow was going to be an important day with the opening of Furbishers’ defence. She would need all her faculties to pick up the real evidential points Ferdy Aldham made as well as the subliminal messages he was generating.

She opened
The Plague
by Albert Camus, which Antony had recommended and prepared to read herself to sleep. The novel was said to be a seminal work, but so far it had left her unsatisfied. Only some sorts of fiction managed both to drag her deep into its particular world and tell her something new about herself. This had done neither yet, and she found it cold. She thought she might go on with it for a little longer, but if it didn’t perk up soon, she’d bin it, however clever and important it might be.

The book falling on her nose woke her. She took off her glasses and turned out the light.

Later it was a griping spasm that wrenched her out of sleep.
Her whole bed felt full of pain; her mind wouldn’t work. The room was very dark and very hot. Another spasm forced a groan out from between her clenched teeth. She knew she had to get out of bed. Bending over the ache, holding both hands round her body, she ran for the bathroom.

 

Next morning Trish felt as though a ten-ton truck had been driving back and forth over her body all night. When she staggered back into the bathroom in search of another Imodium, she saw her reflection in the mirror over the basin and flinched. Her skin was greyish and made her look old enough to be her own grandmother. Great dark circles under her eyes showed how little sleep she’d had. Her throat felt raw, the pain in her gut was nearly as bad as it had been in the night, but the pills she’d swallowed had been doing their work. She managed to clean her teeth and rinse out her mouth, but she didn’t risk anything more than milkless tea for breakfast.

Antony took one look at her as they met outside chambers and said, ‘What the hell d’you think you’re doing, giving yourself a hangover on a court day?’

Trish shook her head. This was Antony back to his old acerbic self. ‘Don’t! I was up all night. NHS Direct say it sounds like food poisoning, but I think I’m on the mend now.’

‘Sorry,’ he said, as the affection relaxed his face again. ‘I should have known you’d never be so irresponsible. What were you eating? Shellfish? That can be a bugger in this weather.’

‘No. I went to friends. It was only sausages, and pretty well-cooked at that. Overcooked in fact.’

‘Sounds remarkably unsuitable for such a hot evening. Are you up to a day in court?’ She’d never heard his voice so gentle, or seen his eyes so soft.

‘So long as I don’t try to eat anything.’

‘Good. Warn me if you need to go out, won’t you?’

She was touched by the way he made Colin carry all her
paraphernalia as well as the day’s files and gave him strict instructions to take notes for her of every point the defence made. But she was determined to do her job properly.

The first person she saw when she walked into court was Will Applewood; sitting alone on the claimants’ bench. She wished he hadn’t come. There was nothing for him to do except listen to interminable arguments about contract law or evidence from Furbishers’ employees impugning his brains and business sense. His face lit up as it always did when he smiled at her, and she forced herself to smile back.

All day, she had to fight waves of pain, concentrating as hard as she’d ever done. There were one or two scary moments, but she held on, took painkillers and another Imodium at lunchtime instead of food, and kept going.

Antony sent her straight home when the judge rose, telling her that he and Colin would take her stuff back to chambers and he’d see her in the morning.

‘And think about whether you want to sue the people who poisoned you,’ he called after her.

Trish waved him off, but the comment did make her think. Jess, who had eaten quite different food, couldn’t be affected, but if the damage really had been done by the sausages, Caro must be suffering too.

Jess answered the phone, sounding tearful. ‘She’s in hospital,’ she said, as soon as Trish had said who she was.

‘Food poisoning?’

‘How did you know?’

‘Because I had it too,’ Trish said crossly, thinking no one could be that stupid. ‘But nothing like badly enough for a trip to hospital. How is Caro?’

‘I don’t know. Barely conscious.’ Jess gulped. ‘I didn’t know what to do when she started throwing up in the night. I made her mint tea, which nearly always helps, but she couldn’t even keep that down. It got worse and worse and it was hurting her
so much that in the end I called an ambulance. She was furious. But I was so frightened.’