‘What did you say? Hurt whom?’
‘Two questions in one sentence,’ she said, sadly. She knew she was losing the thread and losing the audience. She had got this all wrong. The contents of the carpet bag were her responsibility and hers alone. It was unfair to involve anyone else.
One last try.
‘Rick Boyd can’t bear anyone knowing about him. Angel said it would never be enough for him to be acquitted. He would still know that someone knew. Had knowledge they could use. As long as Marianne Shearer was alive and kicking, I felt safe. Because someone else, a powerful someone else, knew all about him. He would never take the risk of harming me, because Marianne Shearer would know. Someone else would know it was him and would know why. Now I’m the only person who knows. Her knowledge was my insurance policy, and heaven help me, I made sure she knew. She had copies of everything in this bag.’
Thomas interrupted.
‘Ms Shearer would never have revealed personal information about a client. That’s entirely against professional ethics.’
‘Rick Boyd wouldn’t know about that, Mr Noble. He was relying on her to subvert the rules, after all. Perhaps he hounded her for what he thought was his. That might be relevant to her death.’
Thomas was trying to follow, not getting the full meaning, but sensing some of it. He had already decided that much as he liked her on first sight, there was absolutely no way he was going to keep that carpet bag, whatever it contained. His dramatic imagination already envisaged a desiccated fingertip and he shuddered. He could hear the door downstairs bang shut as the staff from the other offices left to run home through the rain. The building felt empty. He was not going to stay alone in this room with whatever was in that bag. A dead woman’s knowledge was worse than a dead woman’s skirt. She looked at him wisely, as if guessing his thoughts.
‘Only photographs,’ she said. ‘Snapshots of Boyd’s systematic debasement of my sister. She really didn’t lie during that trial, Mr Noble, whatever Marianne Shearer made her look like. I didn’t lie, either. I’ve never seen the point of it, but then I’ve never had to. I hide things, though, I keep quiet. Easier than lying.’
Thomas was rallying himself to speak, but she held up her hand.
‘I know, I know, and I quite understand. I shouldn’t even have suggested it. I do apologise. I’m not your client, I’ll take the bag home where it belongs. And I know it might not seem like it, but I’m trying to protect more than me. Because Rick Boyd won’t give up. He won’t believe you don’t have what he wants. He’s a perverted con man, so he thinks everyone else is, too.’
Thomas sighed in exasperation, not knowing quite what to think, only that he wanted the bag out of the room as much as he had wanted Peter Friel to take away Marianne’s clothes, even though it might have been a dereliction of duty. He shrugged, to hide a sense of confused shame. Remembered Peter and felt a rush of spite. These two were friends already: he could feel it in his bones. If she wanted to protect anyone, it would be him. Let fucking Peter Friel take charge.
‘If it worries you,’ he said as mildly as he could, ‘perhaps our mutual friend Mr Friel could take charge of it for you. He’s obviously younger and stronger than I.’
‘Ah,’ she said. ‘That’s exactly what I don’t want. He’d be a bit of a red flag to Rick Boyd.’
And I wouldn’t? Thomas thought. Not young enough, not competitive enough? Too bloody old to be involved?
He took off his spectacles and wiped them, another ploy.
‘And, with respect, you are not my client. Marianne Shearer and her heir are my client. I must also answer to the Coroner. I can’t consider anyone else.’
She gathered her whole self for departure, after what was obviously the failure of an errand. Thomas remembered his manners, and then his duties, while helping her into her coat, pausing to wonder from where she had got those artful buttons. Bone, fingers and skin were on his mind, as well as the sensation of the heavy scissors in his hand. He began to gabble, the way he did when he felt guilty, remembering only the duty towards the client that Marianne understood better than anything else.
‘How are your researches progressing with the skirt, Miss Joyce?’
She paused at the door, with the carpet bag in her hand, smiling again. He wanted to go with her, not be left alone in this office with everyone else gone.
‘I think it’s 1930s, and rather valuable. I told Peter there must be more. Best I go home and get the blood out. I’ll send a proper report, I promise.’
‘I’ll pay you for anything you can find. Listen, before you go, do you think this Rick Boyd could have anything directly to do with Marianne’s death?’
She paused, mid flight.
‘Like pushing her off the balcony? Blackmailing her? Hounding her to death? Something like that? No, I don’t think so, although he’s capable. He’d get someone else, if he could. But she did have deadly knowledge, didn’t she?’
He waited until he knew she would be out of the front door and then went to the window, wanting to watch her go and see which direction she took.
She went left, first, towards the tube station at Holborn, walked almost out of sight in that direction, hesitated and then came back slowly. Oh, God, he thought, she’s thought of something else. Maybe he should call her back, but she didn’t return to the door of the office, she paced up and down. Then she disappeared out of sight, coming up the steps towards the door. He waited for the sound of the out of office hours bell that he never answered.
He turned off the light in time to see her cross the road diagonally, into the nearest entrance into the Fields. Her hair gleamed in the lamplight as she padded from the glow of it into relative darkness. He wondered about her route. Then he saw the man come out of the light from behind her and loop a scarf round her neck, like a lover, keeping her warm, pulling her close.
Not so lonely, then, Thomas thought. Already spoken for.
He turned away for a moment, turned back.
She was falling.
No, not like a lover. Not like a close friend.
An enemy.
And over there, somewhere, a man in that coat.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Sticky soil, holly scratching the cold skin of her face. Blood stuck in her throat and swelling inside. Trying to cough, gasping for air, stumbling down into soil with him behind her at first, twisting something round her neck. She could feel rough wool, knitted wool, too heavy, too clumsy, man-smelling. Why? A thick rope, looped round her neck, pulling her backwards, stumbling, losing balance down into the flowerbed. Then the man astride her, face dark with fury, the light through the tree, him holding both ends of the rope thing and pulling. Her neck jerked sideways, no, no, not like this. She was trying to push herself up, hands sinking in wet soil. No breath. Save the effort, let him fall on her, roll away, twist, turn. Then the stench of dog faeces as she pulled her hands out of soil and filth, reaching towards her neck to scrabble at the scarf, she knew it was a scarf now, trying to stop it tightening. The scarf was the enemy; no, he was the enemy. She could feel the soil from her hands on her neck and smell the stink. She heard from a long way off the diesel throb of a taxi, only yards away, prayed for running footsteps and then nothing but her own breath and his words, BITCH, BITCH, BITCH. Her eyes were wide open now. He was pulling at the scarf, half kneeling with one knee on her chest, badly angled for his task. At the sight of her staring eyes, he paused to release one hand and slap her face so hard that her teeth clashed and she grunted, came back to feeling alive. Angry, so angry. The slap unbalanced him: the scarf was too thick and soft to do the work. Hen jabbed her filthy fingers into his eyes, once, twice, three times, then raked her nails down his face and then it was him who screamed. The baby.