A Poisoned Mind Read Online Free

pissed off.’
    ‘That’s like kicking a girl when she’s down, you know. I’ve been wondering how I could have taken such a risk, whether I’ll ever rebuild my practice.’
    ‘Of course you will. Don’t be a clot. Good: here’s the grub, at last.’
    The waiter put down their plates. On each was a plump partridge, sitting on its little cushion of cabbage, belly pork and chipolata. Thin aromatic gravy was offered in a silver sauceboat. This was exactly the kind of grand,
old-fashioned, British food Antony enjoyed. Trish, who’d grown up on baked beans and mince, ate it only in his company.
    She began to dismember the small bird, asking him as she did it why he didn’t believe he could win the case for CWWM. He outlined his reasons with his usual incisiveness, making her wonder whether she would ever find this kind of satisfaction from working with anyone else.
     
    By the time he’d paid the enormous bill and their coats had been retrieved from the waiters’ cupboard, Trish felt like going home to sleep. It wasn’t so much her small share of the wine as the quantity of food that made her feel flattened. The shock of cold air helped a bit as they emerged on to the pavement, and the brilliant sunshine made her blink herself back into full awareness.
    ‘Shall we get a cab?’ he said.
    ‘I ought to walk. Otherwise I’ll never shift the calories.’
    ‘Women! OK.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘But it’ll have to be briskish; I need to sort out a few things and get home by four. We’re away this weekend.’
    Her legs were almost as long as his and she had no trouble keeping up. They walked through Covent Garden, dodging all the street entertainers, shoppers and dawdling tourists, and made their way through the Aldwych to the Strand.
    ‘Hey, Trish!’ came a confident female voice just as they were stepping on to the zebra crossing that would take them down into the Temple. She turned, recognised an old friend and stopped to talk.
    ‘Great to see you, Anna. How’ve you been? And what are you doing here? Not another legal film?’
    ‘Absolutely. And this is a real corker with huge implications. It’s an environmental case. We—’
    The air was suddenly filled with the stench of burning rubber. A simultaneous mechanical shriek was chased by a human scream, tinkling glass, and then a silence more sinister than all the rest. Only a few seconds could have passed, but Trish felt as though her whole life was unreeling at one thousandth of its normal speed. She turned away from Anna to face the crossing again.
    A motorbike lay with its front wheel still spinning as a stocky figure in leathers and huge beetle-like helmet limped forward. Thrown a little way from the bike lay a figure wearing Antony’s clothes, with blood spurting from his leg in a bright scarlet arc. The blood was the only thing about his crumpled body that moved. Trish watched the small crowd pressing towards him. A young black man detached himself and bent over the body.
    ‘Don’t touch him,’ she yelled, her ever-ready imagination drawing pictures of broken vertebrae pulled out of alignment, torturing pain and lifelong paralysis.
    She was on her knees beside Antony an instant later, ancient, half-remembered instructions from school first-aid lessons stuttering in her brain.
    ‘We’ve got to stop the bleeding,’ said the young man, who’d been leaning over him. ‘It’s all I was going to do.’
    ‘Great. You’re right. Can you hold his leg, just above where it’s coming from? Both thumbs hard down on the leg without pulling at the joint? Oh, have you got a scarf or something? Belt? Tie?’
    ‘No.’
    She couldn’t waste any time waiting for the rest of the gawpers to come to their senses, so she ripped off her coat.
Too thick to tear or twist. The silk tweed of the jacket was no better. But her shirt would do. Thin striped poplin, it would make a bandage. Not absorbent, but better than nothing. Half the buttons sprang off as she