Find Them Dead

94 Friday 24 May

Meg left the court building, needing to get away and think. It was a fine, warm day, after the torrential rain of yesterday. She negotiated the steps, through a gaggle of press photographers and news crews, and made her way down the steep High Street towards the river. She was deeply dispirited by Cork’s closing speech, which made the evidence against Gready seem even more overwhelming than before. And she was further discouraged by some of the comments she heard from jurors leaving the court.

She decided to keep her powder dry for the moment rather than try to argue against the defence counsel’s impressive rhetoric — at this stage. She needed to wait and see what ammunition Primrose Brown hopefully delivered in her speech this afternoon. She wondered how the judge’s summing-up would be, and what directions he might give to the jury. She’d found him impossible to read.

She wasn’t hungry, but having eaten nothing last night, and just a yoghurt for breakfast, she knew she needed something to keep her strength up. She bought a prawn baguette, a chocolate bar and a Diet Coke and carried them along the towpath until she found an empty bench.

As soon as she had sat down, she checked her phone, in the forlorn hope there might be a WhatsApp from Laura. But there was nothing. She dialled her number yet again. Then Cassie’s. Voicemail. Her nerves were all over the place.

Last night she had buried the unfortunate guinea pig.

Had that bastard been lying again, telling her that Laura and Cassie had been pickpocketed, or was the truth — as she felt more likely — that the two girls had been kidnapped and were now being held captive pending the verdict?

It was terrible fear that had kept her awake throughout the night. And the shock of the dead creature. And guilt. If anything happened to Cassie because of all this, it would be her fault. Why the hell hadn’t she told Laura and Cassie to go to the police or the British Embassy the moment she’d received that very first call? And informed the judge, to hell with the consequences?

But she knew the answer. She had been too scared then and she was too scared now. She knew she should say something to Cassie’s parents, but she was too scared of losing Laura. She felt so utterly helpless and hated that feeling. Hated the knowledge there was nothing she could do until the jury retired, when she would have to use every ounce of ingenuity she had to somehow sway them.

And how was she going to do that when she knew, in her heart, in her soul, that Terence Gready deserved to be behind bars until he was too old to ever again, as the prosecuting counsel had said, resume his evil trade?

She thought back to the nightmare, five years ago, that had seemed as if it would never end. She had tried to put it out of her mind, but at this stage in the trial those thoughts came flooding back. The week in hospital with two busted ribs, a lacerated liver, a broken ankle, a broken finger, a torn wrist and whiplash. Laura in the next bed with a dislocated collarbone, bruised spleen, broken arm and also severe whiplash.

Arranging the death certificates of her husband and son. Attending their funerals in a wheelchair. Endless meetings with lawyers. The inquest in Northampton being adjourned by the Coroner only a few minutes after it had started because the police were bringing charges against the van driver. Months of physiotherapy. Then sitting in the public gallery of Northampton Crown Court, listening to the evidence given against the plumber who had killed her husband and son, and very nearly herself and Laura, too. He’d tried to lie his way out of the fact that he had been texting his girlfriend whilst driving down the M1 motorway and hadn’t noticed their camper van at a tailback for a contraflow system. His defence was that the brakes on his van had failed — something later disproved by the police Collision Investigation Unit.

She had hated that man with every fibre of her body. Just as she hated Terence Gready — and his sinister, creepy accomplice who tormented her over the phone.

Her husband and son dead. Will would have been twenty now if he’d lived. So much he might have gone on to achieve.

The plumber got an eighteen-month suspended sentence, an £800 fine and a five-year driving ban. And she got a life sentence. The sense of injustice had never left her. And now it was on the verge of happening again.

Her mind was all over the place. If — and it was a big if — she somehow succeeded in delivering that ‘not guilty’ verdict, Laura would be safe — so, at least, she had been assured. But at what price to the community at large? How many lives would be destroyed, as Cork had pointed out, by Gready going free?

She took a bite of her baguette and chewed. But if it wasn’t Gready, she rationalized, it would be others. The supply of drugs wouldn’t stop because one man was removed from the chain. Dozens more would step in to fill the breach.

She remembered something she had read, years ago, in a book, the title of which she couldn’t recall. Something to do with icebergs? What had that Financial Investigator’s nickname for Gready been? The Iceberg. And now she remembered — it wasn’t icebergs, it was glaciers. Wars were like glaciers, they would just keep on coming. Wasn’t it the same with drugs? Weren’t drug dealers like glaciers, too? Unstoppable. Relentless.

If Terence Gready went to jail, his shoes would be filled in an instant. But nothing, ever, could replace Laura. If anything happened to her, Meg wasn’t sure she would want to go on living — or even be capable of it.