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- Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Sprache: Englisch
Lawyer-turned-writer Nic Gabriel is stunned when womanising Dylan Rees, his host at a champagne reception at the Houses of Parliament, is knifed by an ex-girlfriend and bleeds to death in front of him. It's not just the horrific murder, but the fact that the ex, Ella, had apparently committed suicide over five years ago. Before the party Dylan had made cryptic mention of strange and sudden deaths and now, with his friend's death, Nic is determined to discover his meaning. His research takes him to Creed, the country's leading human rights law firm, where Nic meets Roxanne, a young lawyer starting out in her dream job with a secret to hide...
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Seitenzahl: 427
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014
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Take My Breath Away
MARTIN EDWARDS
Suppose, finally, we succeed in explaining our entire instinctive life as the development and ramification of one basic form of the will – namely, of the will to power… the world viewed from inside… it would be ‘will to power’ and nothing else.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, from Beyond Good andEvil, s.36, Walter Kaufmann transl.
Contents
Chapter One
The dead woman smiled. So far, so good.
As she walked into the room, the party was in full swing. Glitzy laughter and listen-to-me voices. No one gave her a second glance, except for Nic Gabriel.
‘It can’t be Ella,’ he told himself. ‘This isn’t happening.’
He whipped off his Ray-Bans, but she was still there. Skirting the crowd of young lawyers, taking care not to brush against them. Perhaps she feared they might sue if she nudged their elbows and made them spill their champagne. Nic was standing on the terrace at Westminster, watching through open French windows. A breeze from the Thames chilled his neck. The moment she’d appeared in the doorway, he’d recognised her.
Ella Vinton. But a stone in a Sussex graveyard bore her name. She’d been left to rest in peace.
A waiter bearing an ornate salver offered him another glass. He should have said no, he’d already drunk too much on an empty stomach, but he took it anyway. He barely noticed the flinty taste as his eyes followed the woman. Threads of hair flapped over her eyes as she glanced this way and that, like any nervous latecomer, on the look-out for a familiar face. A thought jumped into his mind.
I know the man you’re searching for. The man who invited me here, the man you killed yourself for five years ago.
His skin was tingling, he was witness to something he couldn’t understand. A mystery, a pleasant torture. How could a suicide be recalled to life? Five minutes earlier, he’d been yawning, sedated by booze and gossip about golden hellos and gourmet food. Wishing he had never let Dylan Rees tempt him into coming here with a weird tale about addiction to murder. Now he’d seen a wraith with a split skirt and purple fingernails. Talk about drop-dead gorgeous.
Ella? Surreal. He knew it was time to sober up and start thinking straight, but a function room in their Lordships’ House was no place for getting to grips with reality. People said things had changed, that the dust of tradition had been vacuumed away. Since being ushered through the gate into Black Rod’s garden, he hadn’t caught a glimpse of ermine. The corridor leading here stank of new paint. Even inside the air wasn’t fresh. The reek of Chanel and silver polish was suffocating.
In one corner, a Steinway tinkled: a floppy-haired Hugh Grant clone picking out ‘The Tender Trap’. The young advocates talked louder with each gulp of Bollinger. Nic gazed through the glass at the flushed faces. Destinies mapped out, the kids were doomed to succeed. They would flatter judges, woo juries and worsen the statistics for professional alcoholism. Obituaries would extol their observational powers and attention to detail, but none of them noticed the revenant gatecrashing their party.
Ella Vinton. But it was impossible. Ella had bought a chain and padlock from a hardware shop in Wembley and tied her left wrist to the outer rail of the main line to Euston. She’d tossed the bag containing the key out of reach to preclude second thoughts and waited for the West Coast express. For once the train had not been late. The driver had seen her kneeling on the line, waving him on with her free hand, as if impatient to be done with everything. He’d braked at once, but had no chance of stopping in time. Her head and limbs were sliced from her body, bits of her flesh and bone tossed along track and verge, like a scattering of pulped grapes.
Ella had been an acquaintance rather than a friend. Nic remembered her by that habitual half-smile, half-frown, which seemed to anticipate betrayal. Not that Dylan blamed himself for her death. When he spoke of it, he implied a million-to-one accident. A twist of fate, an act of God.
She edged through the crowd, a pale skinny woman with scarlet lips and a tangle of russet hair crying out for a comb, toting a cavernous leather bag on her shoulder. She kept looking around, but even if Nic caught her eye, it would make no difference. Dylan was the one she wanted.
Nic squeezed the stem of the empty glass into his palm. His throat was dry. Pissed or simply daydreaming? He’d always had too much imagination to make it as a lawyer.
A hoax, it had to be, a sick joke. A spooky Ellagram dreamed up by someone wanting to give Dylan a fright. Nic glanced over his shoulder. Dylan stood further along the terrace, outside Ella’s range of vision. Leaning against a tub of red begonias, thumbs hooked in the pockets of a spotless white jacket. His violet bow-tie distracted the eye from his splayed nose, smashed years ago by a mistress’s husband and badly reset. He was holding forth to a handful of the youngsters. The piano had fallen silent and his voice drowned the shouts from the protesters blocking traffic on Westminster Bridge. He was doing what he did best, telling his audience things they wanted to hear.
‘You’re the chosen few,’ he insisted. His lilt became pronounced when he talked to strangers. He thought of it as a marketing tool. Now he was declaiming in the manner of a primitive preacher, reminding the elect of their superiority over the damned. ‘The country’s most promising young trial lawyers. So it’s time for me to let you into a secret. Litigation is better than sex.’ A sly smile crept across his battered features. ‘You’ll find out once you lose your courtroom virginity. Believe me, you’ll always remember your first case.’
A couple of the girls giggled; one young fogey had an absent-minded expression on his squashed features. Nic guessed he was thinking wishfully, dreaming that there might be truth even in Dylan’s rhetoric. Perhaps lawyers really did make marvellous lovers.
Down the terrace, another cocktail party for the great and the good was in full swing. Fragments of Vivaldi, performed by an unseen string quartet, drifted through the air. Nic saw a handful of new aristocrats; Pimm’s-drinking thirtysomethings with ponytails and neck tattoos, heard their chortling as they talked about parties at Number Ten and private finance initiatives. People with no time for pomp and circumstance, for doffing caps or hierarchy. The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate, all that didn’t wash any more. These people were meritocrats, modern, streetwise and brilliant at networking. The old coteries were dead; long live the new.
On the bridge, police were loud-hailing orders to the demonstrators, but no one paid attention. Back inside the Cholmondeley Room, the peer hosting the party wore a Mustique tan and Calvin Klein loafers. He was bragging to a girl in a backless gown about how he had claimed a ten day fact-finding tour of Caribbean beach life on expenses.
Nic glanced back indoors. The room was slightly out of kilter. If only he hadn’t gulped down that last drink. Ella had drawn nearer. A strange light of triumph shone in her eyes and he guessed she had caught sight of Dylan. Her gait had become as unsteady as a marionette’s. Nic had seen the black skirt before. The outfit was a favourite and she’d worn it the last time they had met for dinner, in that organic food place off Marylebone High Street. Probably the last time Dylan, a red meat man, had ever touched anything remotely akin to green cuisine.
According to Dylan, there had been little enough left of Ella to identify after the train had done its worst. Nic peered at the white unmarked flesh of the woman’s neck and cheeks. She was studying Dylan with the concentration Nic remembered. He’d always been struck by the single-minded way she focused on her lover. As if trying to hypnotise him into belonging to her alone.
‘I’m a partner in an agency called Valentines.’ Dylan winked at a blonde girl who had been lapping up his rodomontade. ‘Apposite, in a way. Because there’s a touch of romance in what I do. Even though Saint Valentine was decapitated. Didn’t you know that was the poor devil’s fate? You learn something every day. People call me a headhunter, but it’s not a tag I care for. No, I’ll take you into my confidence. I’m a matchmaker. I marry up people like you to the job of your dreams. So that you consummate the perfect union.’
Nic saw Ella flinch at the words. Dylan still hadn’t seen her. He always got carried away when talking about sex. Ella closed her eyes. It must be her. Yet it could not be.
This was all Dylan’s fault. Dylan, who had seduced him with all that talk about dead lawyers. Dylan the yarn-spinner, the myth-maker, the Celtic bard in an Armani suit. Of course he’d known that Nic could never resist a story about strange and sudden deaths.
The rich man who burned in Paradise. The giant who chopped himself in half.
There was a connection, Dylan had insisted on the phone, and not just because the dead men were lawyers in the same firm. Forget about suicide or accident. Think murder for pleasure.
‘As for the boy who died of shock,’ Dylan said dreamily, ‘the real culprit wasn’t the guilty creature who killed him. Trust me.’
‘Now you’re definitely asking too much,’ Nic muttered into his mobile. ‘What are you on?’
‘Hey, you’re the man who made his name with a tall story. You love to prove the truth’s the opposite of what everyone else believes. Who else ever said that Crippen was innocent? Come on, you stubborn bastard, suppose you show up, what’s the worst that can happen? You get raw material for that second book. It’s about time.’
Nic couldn’t help laughing. Dylan always played games, even when he wasn’t as high as a kite. He loved to tantalise, he always knew just which buttons to press.
Nic shook his head, trying in vain to banish the fuzziness from the champagne. His brain was out of gear. Ella had opened her eyes again and reached the door giving on to the terrace. A few yards away, Dylan paced up and down as he talked. He was restless, forever itching for action. He kept glancing down at the freckled cleavage of the girl who had taken his fancy. Behind him were screens displaying the Valentines name and heart-shaped logo, together with the agency’s slogan. We’d love to help you change your life.
‘Let’s pursue the analogy a little further,’ Dylan said. He’d lowered his voice in a pastiche of an intimate whisper. He might have been confiding a trade secret, or swearing eternal devotion. ‘The candidates the top firms need are those who are prepared to go all the way. The ones who aren’t interested in giving up, opting for the quiet life. No pleasure in fudging a deal, settling your case at the door of the court. Think coitus interruptus, eh? Such an anti-climax. No, the litigators who command the big money in the market place have one thing in common. They finish what they started. And they never, ever let go.’
His listeners sniggered. They were too smart to fall for a headhunter’s bullshit. All the same, they realised there was a grain of truth in what he said. They were stars in the firmament of trainee lawyers. They had slaved to reach this stage in their careers, putting in long hours of overtime trawling through calfskin-bound law reports and dusty statute books while their friends screwed around. They were ready to prove themselves as warriors. Hardened in battle, trusted by their paymasters, feared by all who crossed their path.
Ella was standing in the doorway, on the threshold of the terrace, tension stretching the flesh tight over her cheekbones. Nic tried to focus on her, wanting to read her mind. She must be an actress, a lookalike hired from an agency by someone who wanted to give Dylan a shock. Her hand was deep in the shoulder bag. She had moved to within touching distance of Dylan. Absorbed in his peroration, he was still unaware of her scrutiny.
‘They never let go,’ Dylan savoured the phrase. ‘They never…’
The words hung in the air as at last his gaze strayed to Ella. His eyes widened, his body seemed at once to become rigid and old. It was as if a single glimpse of her pallid cheeks had snapped his spinal cord and he’d been paralysed by his unrighteous past.
‘Remember me, Dylan?’ she asked. Her voice was clear, melodious, less scratchy than Nic recalled.
In that instant Nic realised what she meant to do, guessed the truth even as she withdrew her hand from the bag. She was clasping the black haft of a butcher’s knife.
‘No!’ he shouted.
He had to save Dylan. Had to. His legs felt as if shackled in irons, but he forced his way through the crowd, bundling a girl to the floor. An angry boyfriend jabbed him in the ribs, but he kept on going. Someone yelled, a roar of incoherent horror.
The blade shone in a ray of light as the sun emerged from behind a cloud. Dylan was motionless, his face creased in bewilderment. As if he realised something, but could not fathom the explanation for it. He spoke in a hoarse whisper.
Nic could hardly make out the words. They sounded like:
Why not jazz?
Ella frowned and said, ‘I’ve been waiting for this for so long.’
She brought the knife down even as she spoke. Even as Nic sprang, arms flailing as he tried to catch hold of her. He found himself clutching air as she evaded his grasp. Tears stung his eyes as his head crashed against the ground. He had a dazed idea that he was drowning, surrounded by a blur of bodies swimming wildly for the shore. Girls screamed, young men yelped in disbelief. Nic’s ears filled with Dylan’s cry of pain as the serrated steel ripped through his throat.
She looked at Nic and he wondered if he was about to die. There wasn’t a hint of recognition on her face. He felt consciousness floating away. She frowned, as though puzzling over a mathematical conundrum. Solution found, she gripped the knife in both hands and plunged it into her heart.
Chapter Two
Roxanne Wake danced through the revolving doors and out on to the Strand. Traffic was shuffling to a standstill, but for once she didn’t care about breathing in the fumes. She shimmied between the cars and lorries; limbs loose, energy boundless as a child’s. A motorbike courier almost struck her as she crossed the far carriageway, but she skipped out of reach of his pounding wheels and her heart didn’t even miss a beat. Nothing could go wrong, not today of all days. The day she had begun a new life.
People in the pavement throng jostled past, didn’t give her a second glance. It was wonderful not to be noticed. Finally she could say that she’d escaped from the past. She was free.
The last seven years might never have happened. Her first morning in the new job was over and she had survived. No, forget it, that was lawyers’ under-statement. Truth was, it had gone like a dream. The law meant so much to her, but she had never worked for a firm of solicitors before today. Let alone an outfit like Creed.
Yet as the Human Resources manager took her on a whistle-stop tour of the office to meet her new colleagues, she was made to feel as if amongst friends. She couldn’t remember all the names, let alone match them to the blur of faces. Creed boasted a welfare counsellor, a client care czar and a team of knowledge dissemination executives. There was an office reading group, led by a Brixton poet celebrated for being tough on rhyme, tough on the causes of rhyme. She’d seen the staff gym, the jacuzzi and the wholefood restaurant, she’d shaken hands with the in-house masseuse and the part-time sculptor-in-residence, she’d been invited to dress down every Friday. No one asked a single awkward question. She’d not picked up the slightest hint that anyone doubted who she was.
She could hug herself. Everything was going to plan. Her secret was safe.
Okay, so there had been one moment of alarm. It had come during her meeting with Fergus McHugh, the firm’s director of Public Relations. Cool yet charming, he’d asked for a few crisp words for a news release about her appointment. Conjuring up a quote proved easy enough. She’d discovered an unsuspected flair for the superlative-laden soundbite.
‘“I’m thrilled to have joined Creed. Everyone recognises this is the country’s leading human rights law firm. I’ve always admired senior partner Will Janus and his passionate commitment to civil liberties.” Will that do?’
‘Perfect.’ Fergus McHugh’s smile dazzled like the streaks of blond in his hair. ‘Couldn’t have scripted it better myself. All we need now is a head and shoulders snap to send out in the Press pack.’
Shit. She should have foreseen this. She swallowed hard. Absurdly, she had the sense that Fergus could read her thoughts, found in them a source of cruel amusement. But that was just paranoia. Luck was on her side – it had to be, on this day. The photographer was delayed by gridlock caused by a demonstration heading for Whitehall and in the end Fergus ran out of time. He confessed that he and Will Janus were overdue for lunch with the Home Secretary.
Roxanne uttered a silent prayer of thanks. Her new name meant nothing to anyone, but there was just a chance, a remote chance, that a photograph might stir memories that she needed to stay buried. Seven years was a long time. She looked so different now. Interviewing witnesses at the advice centre in Hengist Street had taught her that most people could be relied upon to forget what they’d seen last week, let alone a picture in the papers from long ago. But there was still a risk. Never mind, she told herself. You’ve got away with it.
On her way into work that morning she had bought herself something to eat in the middle of the day, but she was in the mood for something special. Creed’s restaurant was said to be excellent, Egon Ronay was a fan, but she wasn’t ready to share lunchtimes with her new colleagues. She needed to get out for half an hour. At last she had something to celebrate, if only with herself. It wasn’t every day that you started afresh. She hurried up Southampton Street to Covent Garden. Thorntons had a shop there and she treated herself to a thick bar of fudge.
She had this love-hate thing with chocolate. During her darkest days, she could never keep it down. Things were so different now. Food wasn’t a problem any more. She inhaled the sweet perfume of the shop, hardly bearing to postpone the moment when she unwrapped her prize. Her skin was in goosebumps just anticipating the taste. Since she’d started working at Hengist Street, she had put on half a stone, but these days she was relaxed about that. It was good to sin, every now and then.
Creed’s offices filled the seven storeys of Avalon Buildings, a skinny block squeezed in between Savoy Court and Carting House. Reception was a large and airy space, fringed by a jungle of potted plants. Interior designers had eschewed minimalism in favour of comfort and touches of luxury. The armchairs for visiting clients were soft and deep and the aroma of Kenyan coffee wafted from a filter machine in the corner. A feng shui expert had positioned the fountain to perfection. It gushed soothingly as Roxanne walked in from the street. GQ and Granta were laid out on a wrought iron coffee table with a mosaic tiled top picking out the firm’s logo. Glossy brochures describing the firm’s specialities were scattered around, each boasting a foreword by a celebrity client. Large abstract paintings hung on the wall, random doodles of blue, brown and green. Celine Dion crooned from concealed speakers, promising that her heart would go on. Visiting a lawyer had become a lifestyle experience.
Not, Roxanne told herself, that this was a solicitors’ firm like any other. Creed prided themselves on that. All the literature, the advertising, had this common theme. Lawyers who are different. The firm had earned a reputation as a scourge of both private and public sector employers who treated staff unethically. The partners didn’t handle divorce, property work or criminal law. Their specialism was civil rights in the workplace and clients included trade unions, whistleblowers and a lobby full of equal opportunities campaigners. Advocates from Creed had acted in landmark cases transforming the balance of power at work.
‘Creed has three priorities,’ Will Janus had once famously said. ‘Litigation, litigation and litigation.’
It was a jest, a snippet of self-parody, a reminder of what a self-deprecating, regular guy he was. Professional traditions had passed their sell-by date. Will often evangelised about the need to fight the forces of legalism. He wanted to make justice available for the many, not the few. Creed didn’t so much employ staff as have profit-sharing executive stakeholders. Will preached solving disputes by e-mediation and spreading the gospel via Creedlaw.com. His firm led the way in providing joined-up legal services. Yet everyone knew that, if there had to be an old-fashioned bare-knuckle fight in the courts, there was no better advocate to have on your side than Will Janus. He’d been a winner all his life.
The catwalk blondes behind the reception desk had scarily perfect smiles. Roxanne did not miss the charm-laden efficiency with which they greeted her by name, even though she’d forgotten to clip her identity tag back on to her lapel. One more thing she would have to learn. So much to do, so many habits that had to become second nature. Even if she had not changed her appearance and name, even if the short CV she had sent to Ben Yarrow had not economised so savagely on the truth, she would have been an impostor. At least she had a chance to become a new woman. Remembering her badge was only the start. She must be Roxanne Wake, every single second that she was here.
She’d been given a room of her own, even though she was an unqualified lawyer with no track record to speak of and she’d half expected to be herded into a noisy open plan office along with a clutch of colleagues. Lucky. These days she liked being alone. The room was crammed with gleaming computer equipment, installed that morning by geeks bearing gifts from the information technology department. Potted plants with shiny green leaves warded off bad chi, otherwise the decor was limited to a virgin year planner on one wall, an internal telephone list tacked to another. When she’d settled in, she would give her surroundings a little more personality. Better be careful, though, about the personality she chose. No family photographs, no loveable drawings of stick people crayoned by infant relatives. Think Roxanne Wake, she instructed herself. Think Roxanne Wake.
She closed her eyes and experimented in her mind with colour and knick-knacks. Better play safe and put up a couple of theatre posters and a Monet print. Nothing distinctive, nothing that invited comment or gave chatterboxes with time on their hands an opportunity to ask tricky questions. It was so easy to let something slip. At Hengist Street she had succeeded in keeping herself to herself. Everyone was so busy that few opportunities arose for friendships to build. Roxanne needed it to be the same at Creed.
‘Everything all right?’
Even before he spoke, she knew that Ben Yarrow, head of the Ethical Employment department, had opened the door. His aftershave was unmistakable. Eurotrash by Wal-Mart, or some such. It smelled as if he soaked in it. He wore a wedding ring and she wondered why his wife hadn’t urged him to douse himself less liberally or at least with better taste. As for his dress sense… but perhaps Ben wasn’t accustomed to taking advice. He spent too much of his life giving it.
She opened her eyes and switched on a smile. Not simply because Ben was one of Creed’s senior partners, and her ultimate boss. What mattered was that he was the man who had picked her out, given her the chance to change her life. She owed him.
‘People have been very kind,’ she said.
He fiddled with the ends of his blood-red tie. ‘I have something for you. Joel Anthony is working on a new discrimination case, writing up the statements. You can help him interview the witnesses.’
‘What sort of discrimination?’
‘Specifically, sexual harassment. Alleged sexual harassment.’
His puckish face creased into a grin. He was a small man, balding, with a ginger beard. In her mind she reinvented him as a troll, lurking under a bridge and plotting mayhem. She bit her lip, not wanting to give a hint of what was passing through her mind. She doubted whether his talents encompassed a capacity to laugh at himself.
‘Who are we representing?’
Ben chuckled. ‘We’re on the side of the angels, Roxanne. That’s the first thing you need to learn here. Our clients are always the victims of circumstance. Even blue chip companies bleed. It will make a change for you, not having the chance to embark on a crusade on behalf of a wronged applicant. Oh, one more thing I have to tell you. As it happens, the allegations concern a director colleague of Ali Khan. Remember him?’
How could she forget? A few weeks earlier, Ben and Roxanne had fought against each other at a tribunal hearing in Woburn Place. Roxanne’s client, Tara Glass, had worked in the finance department of Thrust Media. Thrust was owned by the legendary entrepreneur Ali Khan. After ten days Tara was sacked, the stated reason her bad attitude. She kept coming in late and spending half her time on the phone to her boyfriend. Tara said the truth was that she’d threatened to blow the gaff on Ali Khan for bribing people of influence and putting his personal bills through the company’s accounts. The company offered big bucks to settle, but she wanted her day in court. What’s the claim worth? she had asked. Unlimited compensation, Roxanne told her, if the case was proved.
At first Ben’s cross-examination was gentle, almost sympathetic. Maybe he wasn’t so fearsome after all, Roxanne thought, or perhaps he was simply smart enough to recognise when he was on a loser. Then suddenly, the questions started coming like machine-gun fire. Why hadn’t Tara walked out the moment her conscience was troubled by the frauds? Why wait until she was sacked before speaking out?
‘Or perhaps the brown envelopes you talk about never existed,’ he suggested, casting a sly glance at the tribunal members.
‘I saw them,’ Tara insisted. ‘I had to wrestle with my conscience every day I was in that office.’
‘Your conscience, yes.’ Ben shook his head. ‘So, Ms Glass, you believe in always telling the truth, do you?’
‘Of course I do.’ She leaned forward in the witness box, meeting his gaze. ‘Passionately. I wouldn’t be here otherwise, would I?’
‘Sure about that?’ He paused. ‘Would you care to turn to page fifteen in the bundle, Ms Glass?’
Sitting in silence in the stuffy tribunal room, Roxanne felt her heart begin to pound. Where is this going?
All at once, as she leafed through the pack of documents in front of her, Tara’s hands began to shake. As if she could see an abyss opening up, but could not help plunging towards it.
She whispered something inaudible.
‘Speak up,’ the tribunal chairman insisted.
‘I have the page,’ Tara said with difficulty.
Ben smirked. ‘It’s your job application form, isn’t it? See the box where you said you had no previous convictions? Were you telling the truth when you filled that in?’
Tara’s cheeks were ashen. ‘All that stuff was a long time ago.’
Ben’s eyebrows shot up. ‘A little less than five years?’
‘I was a student then.’
‘Who earned part-time cash selling her body to businessmen in a hotel near Russell Square?’
‘I was broke! Up to my eyeballs in debt. You have no idea.’
‘And the incident eighteen months ago, when you were caught smoking heroin in your boyfriend’s flat? Too relaxed to recall that when you signed the drugs-free declaration?’
‘You bastard!’ Tara choked back a sob. ‘This has nothing to do with my case!’
‘Ms Glass,’ the chairman said in a warning tone. ‘Mr Yarrow is merely doing his job.’
Roxanne felt an emptiness in her stomach. The case was haemorrhaging in front of her eyes. She’d been so fired up with the injustice of what they had done to Tara, so determined to make the company pay. Meanwhile Ben Yarrow had been doing what Ali Khan paid him handsomely to do. Digging deep.
‘Easy, isn’t it,’ Ben said coldly, ‘making loadsamoney out of rich businessmen? But you graduated in more ways than one, didn’t you? You moved from working for those sad punters in Bloomsbury to taking a post with Ali Khan’s company. A colourful figure, isn’t he? Ideal for your purposes, I suggest.’
‘I had no purposes!’
Ben’s face darkened. Roxanne thought he looked like something small and nasty out of PeerGynt. ‘You had the prospect of a quick buck if you claimed your boss couldn’t keep his fingers out of the till, smeared him as corrupt and dishonest. Very useful for someone with an expensive habit to feed.’
‘He did those things! It’s true, everything I said is true.’
Ben shook his head. ‘We’ve already established your difficulties with the truth, Ms Glass.’
Tara Glass ran out of the courtroom in tears. All her fight was gone. Roxanne caught up with her in the corridor. She didn’t have the heart to ask why Tara had never mentioned the heroin. Tara said she was withdrawing her claim. She wished she’d never been born, she sobbed, as she fled from the building.
Roxanne’s instinct was to hate Ben Yarrow for the ease with which he’d destroyed the woman. She still felt sure that Tara had been telling the truth about the brown envelopes. Yet a still small voice of calm told her he was only doing his job. On the way out, she had to share the lift with him. To her surprise, he didn’t gloat the way most company lawyers did after a crushing victory. When he asked if she’d ever contemplated working in private practice, she found herself feeling oddly flattered. Disappointed, too, that having raised the subject, he said goodbye without making any attempt to take it further.
A month later, he’d called out of the blue and asked if she was interested in joining Creed. At first she’d played for time, said she needed to think it over. She didn’t regard herself as street-wise, but she knew enough about career moves to realise it was a mistake to sound too eager. Inside, she’d always known that she would say yes. Creed was a firm which had its heart in the right place and Ben Yarrow was offering her the opportunity to make the new start of which she’d dreamed. The biggest gamble of her life, but a risk she had to take.
The department needed an extra pair of hands at a busy time. The firm had more work than it could handle and employment lawyers with advocacy experience were in short supply. She’d won most of the cases she’d handled at Hengist Street. A two-in-three success rate was worth shouting about, given the number of no-hopers with which she’d been lumbered. He interviewed her along with his junior partner, Joel Anthony. An old-fashioned question and answer session. No psychometric tests, thank God. She didn’t want anyone exploring the secrets of her personality. When they offered her the job, Roxanne’s only qualm was that perhaps she should have come out up front and told them everything. She was so much more of a phoney than poor Tara Glass. But did it matter? She’d earned the offer on merit, on the strength of her own performance before Tara’s case fell apart. She might be a novice joining the ranks of a renowned human rights practice, but that proved that the firm’s commitment to its equal opportunities recruitment policy was more than skin deep. Besides, it was too late to tell them who she really was.
‘You needn’t worry,’ she said. ‘I went on a crusade for Tara Glass but that doesn’t mean I won’t fight to win for Ali Khan’s companies. That’s what lawyers ought to do, isn’t it? Put their personal feelings to one side and do their best for their clients?’
‘You’re an idealist,’ Ben said with a smile. He lifted a hand as Roxanne started to say something. ‘No, no, it’s a compliment. Really. This firm was built on ideals. Don’t forget, Ali Khan wasn’t always the celebrity he is today. Will Janus’s greatest success as a young immigration lawyer was when he acted for Ali, the first time he wanted a visa to stay on in the UK.’
‘I remember the passport application case. It was a cause celebre.’
‘You know, Roxanne, that’s the trouble with this country.’ Ben sat down on the edge of her desk. Invading her space, ever so slightly. ‘So many people hate success. Then there’s the racism. Ali is a powerful man these days – and he was born in Karachi. No wonder he’s unpopular in some quarters, especially with the jingoistic Press. With our help, he won each battle and finally the war. He got his British citizenship. But he didn’t always have money, he had to claw his way up. He’s suffered discrimination all his life. And I tell you this. If there’s any truth in these sexual harassment allegations, you can help Joel make sure the culprit is hung out to dry.’
‘I’m touched by your faith in me.’
‘Don’t be. I picked you out, remember? It may seem like a gamble, but I’ve never been averse to the occasional punt at long odds. I’m not afraid of backing my own judgement.’
It struck her that he and Joel Anthony had taken an extraordinary risk in recruiting her. Nine out of ten of the other lawyers she’d met in Avalon Buildings were seasoned solicitors. Yet Ben had offered her a twelve month contract and a fat pay cheque after watching her lose a case for a client who had expected to win. She’d heard about the recruitment crisis in her field of law, but hadn’t guessed it might make her such a sought-after commodity. It was a fresh experience to be so wanted. A single reference from Ibrahim, her boss at the agency, had sufficed; Ben hadn’t even asked for copies of her exam certificates. She supposed he often advised his clients on the importance of adhering to punctilious recruitment procedures. Handwriting analysis, competency tests, questions about her attendance record. Yet the laxity wasn’t surprising. Lawyers never acted themselves in the way they advised others to behave.
‘What’s this?’ The voice belonged to a woman who was peeping around the door. Roxanne had an immediate impression of red hair in a bob, pale powdered cheeks and vivid scarlet lipstick. ‘Dumping a sure-fire loser on the new kid on the block, Ben?’
Far from appearing to be offended, Ben chortled. ‘Practising the noble art of delegation, as it happens. Management in action. Roxanne, have you met my ill-mannered personal assistant? This is Chloe Beck.’
Chloe Beck trotted into the room, high heels going click-clack, click-clack. She was tall and skinny and her black skirt barely existed. Roxanne saw Ben’s eyes feasting on Chloe’s legs, but the girl took no notice. As if she expected nothing less.
She studied Roxanne through Calvin Klein spectacles before putting out a ringless hand with long cool fingers. ‘Hello, Roxanne. I missed you on your whistle-stop tour of the office. I work for Ben and Joel Anthony.’
‘And from now on, for you as well, Roxanne,’ Ben Yarrow said. ‘I’m sure you’ll make good use of our voice recognition system when you start dictating letters and stuff. The technology is cutting edge. But we all need secretarial support from time to time and Chloe will be glad to help.’
Chloe gave Ben a sidelong glance. ‘The computer wizards haven’t managed to phase me out altogether yet. You’ve come from an advice centre, then, Roxanne? I gather you were at Hengist Street.’
Unaccountably, Roxanne felt a chill of unease. Or perhaps it wasn’t so unaccountable. ‘You’re very well informed.’
‘The grapevine here is marvellous,’ Chloe said. She was weighing Roxanne up, as if trying to decipher a code.
‘Chloe is the grapevine,’ Ben said. He was smiling at his PA with every appearance of amiability, yet Roxanne sensed a tension between the two of them.
‘Don’t listen to him, Roxanne. Everyone says I’m nosey, but I’m simply interested in people. Joel Anthony keeps encouraging me to qualify. He says I’d make a good lawyer, simply because I’m so fascinated by other human beings. Never mind all the technology we have here. A litigation department’s business is all about people and the way they behave. Finding out what goes on in their minds.’ Chloe gave a teasing giggle. ‘Uncovering their darkest secrets.’
Roxanne lived in Leytonstone. Not exactly Hampstead, but the station was on the Central Line and on arriving in London, she’d at least managed to find a flat within her price range. Now she was on Creed’s payroll, she could pick and choose. But really, she thought, as her train slowed down and she picked up her briefcase ready to get off, Leytonstone was good enough for her. If the past seven years had taught her nothing else, she had learned that, over time, it was possible to become accustomed to anything.
She lived on the first floor of a converted shop. Once upon a time it had been a butcher’s, but that was okay as long as she didn’t try to picture the carcasses hanging from hooks in the cold store below the ground floor. The woman who lived downstairs was a veggie, but she didn’t seem bothered by the building’s history. She was undertaking happiness research at the London School of Economics. Roxanne wondered what had prompted her to live in Leytonstone. Presumably trying to get away from the day job.
Roxanne put on a leotard and slipped a yoga tape into the video recorder. She needed to make amends for that shameful lunch of fudge, but she hadn’t wanted to brave the aerobics classes that took place each evening in Creed’s gym. Time for a little calm surrender in the privacy of her own home. The zest she’d felt in her lunch break was a distant memory. Her head had begun to throb and her limbs were aching, but she couldn’t lay all the blame on the crush of commuters on the Tube. She had left Avalon Buildings on the stroke of eight: hardly a late finish by the standards of ambitious city solicitors. Yet she felt exhausted and not just because Ben Yarrow was a hard taskmaster. At Hengist Street, she’d dipped a toe in the waters of legal practice, but she could have given it up at any time. By joining Creed, she’d made a commitment to becoming a top flight lawyer.
‘Change your shape and you can change your life,’ cooed the woman on the tape. She was a blonde in her forties, sickeningly supple.
Roxanne hadn’t under-estimated the demands of the work. There were no restrictive practices in the employment tribunal: a wet-behind-the-ears paralegal might find herself doing battle with eminent barristers and street-wise solicitor advocates. That didn’t frighten her; she’d always nourished the belief that, with experience, she might be a match for even the wiliest opponent. But her new colleagues might become curious about the stranger in their midst. She must find a way of preserving her privacy without raising eyebrows.
‘Inhale, lift those arms. Stretch up and keep your eyes on the ceiling, still with a full lung. Exhale…’
Was Chloe a threat? As Roxanne kept her eyes on the ceiling, she told herself not to imagine dangers where none existed: Chloe simply liked to talk.
‘Shall we try the Warrior Posture?’ Anyone would think this was a litigator’s training film, compulsory continuing professional education. ‘Bend your front leg and aim your thigh flat. Keep that back leg straight! Can’t you feel the gorgeous, gorgeous movement? Inhale now and up you come.’
Roxanne stretched, feeling her joints creak.
‘You did really well,’ the woman said.
‘Patronising bitch,’ Roxanne hissed as she breathed out.
Already the exercises were working. She was starting to relax, the anxieties of the day fading from her mind.
Everything was going to be fine.
Chapter Three
‘He’s sleeping, sergeant,’ the doctor said softly.
It wasn’t true. Nic seldom slept, anyway. He had closed his eyes because seeing wasn’t believing and he needed to get his brain into gear if he was ever to make sense of Ella’s resurrection.
The policeman grunted. ‘You said he was fit to be questioned.’
Nic strained to catch bits of the murmured reply. Head injury… not severe… badly shocked… keeping him in for observation… you never know.
‘This won’t take long.’
Nic heard the doctor sigh and then his footsteps, departing. The policeman bent over him; he smelt of curry. When his shoulder was jogged, Nic grunted, turned on his side, allowed his lids to ease apart. The overhead light was harsh, made him blink. The policeman resembled a slab-faced scion of the Kray family. Nic guessed he would be more at home kicking the shit out of football hooligans or anarchist agitators than conducting a murder enquiry. Assuming it was a murder enquiry.
‘Mr Gabriel, we have to ask you about what happened.’
Nic’s head was swimming. He was afraid of what he was about to be told, but he had to know. He muttered, ‘Dylan. He’s dead, isn’t he?’
The sergeant nodded. ‘Yeah, Mr Rees died at the scene.’
Nic wanted to throw up, but he felt too weak to manage it. He buried his face in the pillow, uttered a silent scream. How could he not blame himself for what had happened?
‘Sorry,’ the policeman said unapologetically, ‘but I have to press you. Can you take me through what happened at this cocktail party?’
Eventually Nic forced himself to say, ‘What happened to Ella?’
The sergeant leaned closer. Nic felt as though about to be suffocated by the fumes from a stale takeaway meal. ‘Ella?’
‘She cut his throat.’
The sergeant breathed out, a fearsome tandoori gust. ‘So you know the woman who did this?’
‘Ella Vinton, yes. She’s dead.’
‘No, Mr Gabriel, she’s still alive.’ The sergeant scratched the stubble on his chin. ‘But only just. She’s in intensive care.’
‘You don’t understand. She died five years ago.’
The policeman took his statement but made it plain he didn’t like what he was hearing. When Nic said he’d been getting pissed at the party, the interrogation became perfunctory. Even before he confessed to being a writer by profession, his credibility was already in tatters. Somehow he felt it wouldn’t help if he said he hadn’t published anything for ages. Lazy as well as unreliable; scarcely the ideal witness.
Later, a sister came to check him over. Middle-aged, spookily cheerful, like someone out of a propaganda broadcast. He half-expected her to reel off the cuts in hospital waiting times, to tell him that recruitment of nurses was at an all-time high.
‘You’ll be right as rain in no time.’
Wasn’t this the hospital where bodies had been piled high on a mortuary floor because of staff shortages? Where a gynaecologist had molested a hundred patients before being struck off? Where one in five patients contracted a fresh ailment whilst under its roof? He wasn’t reassured.
He tried raising himself up on the pillow. Every muscle in his body seemed to protest at the same time. He had a blinding headache but he didn’t want to mention it in case they told him he had to stay here.
‘I’m fine. When can I leave?’
She ignored him with the ease of long practice. ‘There. You’ve over-excited yourself. What you need now is a jolly good rest.’
Phil’s heart-shaped face, looming over his. Her expression, a characteristic mixture of irritation and excitement.
‘It’s me, Phil.’
He wanted to say Of course it bloody is, we’ve been sleeping together for months. I haven’t lost possession of all my faculties.
He managed a hoarse, ‘Hi.’
‘It’s incredible. Dylan dead. At the hand of a mystery assassin. Wow, who would believe it?’ He could almost see her mind working, wondering how it would play in the media. ‘You were almost a hero.’
‘You’re so good for my ego.’
‘Don’t be like that, you know what I mean. Anyway, frankly he’s no great loss.’
But he was my friend.
He muttered, ‘I couldn’t save him.’
That was what tormented him, so much more than the knock which had caused him to finish up here. He’d kept his eyes on the dead woman since she’d walked into the room, but he’d been too concerned with trying to fathom how she had risen from the grave. He should have stopped her carrying out her revenge.
‘Of course you couldn’t.’ Her tone suggested that someone else might have. Someone with more focus, the sort of man she’d once thought he was. But it didn’t matter since she’d never liked Dylan. She frowned. ‘I wonder who the woman was.’
He didn’t want to tell her about Ella and when he feigned sleep, she didn’t hang around. His brain was fuddled, but one clear thought formed as the door closed behind her. It was never going to work with the two of them. He’d realised a long time ago that they didn’t actually have much in common, but he’d fought against the knowledge, wanting to make the thing work without being sure why.
Phil was a Public Relations agent who specialised in advising companies in crisis on how to limit the damage to their reputation occasioned by fraud, scandal and other calamities. He supposed she was what they used to call gamine. No breasts or bum, but she was beautiful. They had met at a publishers’ party and she’d told him the story of a law firm she acted for. The senior partner had sent an inflated bill to a woman client who ran a small business. The morning it arrived she drank three tumblers of whisky and pulled a plastic bag over her head. According to Phil, her clients were neither greedy nor callous, just ordinary decent folk who wanted to make an honest living and made a mistake once in a blue moon.
When he suggested that the senior partner’s gravestone ought to be licensed for dancing, she said, ‘I suppose the pressmen of the day thought the same about Hawley Harvey Crippen.’
‘Touché.’
‘I adored your book. Not that I believed a word of it. I’m sure he was as guilty as hell. But I love a good whitewash.’
‘Should I be flattered?’
‘Don’t laugh! The way you reinvented the little shit is brilliant. It’s spooky, meeting someone who can not only think himself into the mind of a murderer but even make out that he’s been sadly misunderstood. You give the old stuff a new spin. Take an all-time loser and re-brand him as a captive of the heart, I love it. Perhaps you and I ought to go into business together.’
Instead they finished up in bed together. The sex was great. She was an inexhaustible lover who liked to do fun things with strawberries and cream, handcuffs and leather, silk scarves and whips. For a while he believed the relationship might work. He understood his mistake the first time she complained about his unwillingness to repeat the formula that had made his book a word-of-mouth phenomenon. When he told her there wasn’t a formula, she’d stared as if he’d spoken in Swahili.
‘There’s a formula for everything.’
‘Not for this. I just wrote the book the way it had to be written.’
‘Fine.’ She shrugged: it was so simple. ‘Do it again.’
He didn’t want to keep thinking about her. Dylan was dead. He would never cringe again at Dylan’s lousy jokes. They would never speak again about anything. And it was his fault.
In his mind he played back that call to his mobile. Dylan’s voice booming in his ear. The king of bullshit, at the top of his form.
‘You’ll love it, I swear.’
‘A reception for learner litigators? If I wanted to commune with lost souls, I’d sign up for a pagan mass.’
Dylan guffawed, a deafening blast of noise. ‘Why are you always so cynical? Look, those kids’ souls aren’t lost. They’re about to be sold and they won’t be cheap. Come on. Think of this as a trip down memory lane. You were a hungry young advocate once. Give tomorrow’s gladiators an idea what it’s like out there in the real world. Private practice.’
‘What if I tell them to quit the law and get a life?’
‘Frankly, what else would they do?’ A conspirator’s chuckle. ‘You can spell out what a good deal I can swing for those kids. Assuming they sign up with us, that is. Valentines are sponsoring the whole shebang, no expense spared. It’s an investment. I swear, after a couple of drinks, you’ll come over all nostalgic. Reminiscing about victories snatched from the jaws of defeat. Wondering about what might have been.’
‘Balls.’
‘You were a loss to the profession, everyone says so. Can’t imagine why you gave it up. This true crime stuff is all fine and dandy, but when are you going to write another book? You can’t live on the royalties from Crippen
