Breath of Corruption (17 page)

A little before one, and after much cursing and arguing over the A to Z, Viktor’s driver dropped Viktor off on the Embankment, at the foot of Middle Temple Lane.

‘Be back here in half an hour,’ said Viktor, thinking that it was time to get a new car with satnav. He turned and began to walk up Middle Temple Lane. He was mildly impressed by but not much interested in the stately elegance of his surroundings, being more preoccupied with what he would say and do when he met Leo Davies.

Leo, loitering by the corner of Crown Office Row, saw Viktor coming. There was no mistaking that dreadful coat. He watched as Viktor approached, waiting for the moment of recognition. There was something mundane about this encounter, here in the open, surrounded by lawyers and office workers on their lunch hour, compared to the night that Viktor had forced his way into his house. Leo sincerely hoped he could achieve enough today to make sure he never saw Viktor Kroitor in his life again.

‘Let’s take a walk,’ said Leo.

They made an incongruous pair as they strolled along Crown Office Row – the dapper, silver-haired lawyer in his elegant pinstripe suit walking next to the big, bulky six-
foot-four
Eastern European with his hands thrust into the pockets of his leather coat. A couple of acquaintances nodded to Leo as they passed, giving his companion a curious glance. A client, they supposed.

‘You said this would be neutral,’ remarked Viktor. ‘You seem to know a lot of people.’

‘Do you feel unsafe?’ asked Leo, as they approached the wrought-iron gates of Inner Temple Garden.

Viktor didn’t deign to answer this. He walked with Leo through the gates and into the ornate, spacious gardens. They found a bench and sat down.

Viktor lit a cigarette, and blew a casual plume of smoke into the bright September air. ‘How is Sir Dudley’s case going?’ he asked.

Surprised by the insouciance of this enquiry, Leo replied, ‘It’s proceeding. I imagine we’ll win. I wouldn’t have thought you’d be interested in that aspect of Sir Dudley’s business.’

Viktor narrowed his eyes and smiled. ‘You think you know everything that’s going on, don’t you?’

‘Hardly. But I know enough.’

Viktor smoked for a few seconds. ‘So, this deal you wanted to talk about—’ He paused, giving Leo an appraising glance. ‘You don’t look like a man who cuts deals, I have to tell you.’

‘I do it every day for a living,’ replied Leo. ‘It’s all a question of negotiating the obstacles, finding a way to the result you
want. I imagine you know all about that, in your line of work, though you probably use a little less finesse than I do.’

‘Finesse? What is that? Tell me – I like to know new words.’

‘Subtlety. Sophistication.’

Viktor laughed and nodded. ‘OK.’ He took a final drag of his cigarette and ground it beneath his shoe. ‘Now, tell me your deal.’

‘I’ve brought you here to extract from you a promise – a promise that you will stay away from my son and his mother, never to threaten them, or me, in your life again. Forget they exist.’

‘And if I promise to do this – you give me the girl Irina and that son of a bitch Marko? Is this your deal?’

‘The deal is that if you
don’t
agree, then I solemnly promise you I will bust Sir Dudley wide open – and if I do that, you and your operation are unlikely to survive very long, knowing Sir Dudley.’

Leo had no idea how Viktor was going to respond to this. He seemed neither angry nor surprised. He just sat there in silence for a few moments. Then he nodded and said, ‘Sir Dudley gives me a lot of problems. He gives me grief – is that what you say?’

‘That’s what we say.’

Viktor met Leo’s disconcertingly clear gaze. Despite his undemonstrative manner and conservative appearance, there was a ruthless and uncompromising quality about Leo which intrigued Viktor. It commanded his respect. ‘I don’t get this. I don’t get this at all. If you are so sure, if you know so much, why don’t you just go to the police?’

‘Because to be honest, Viktor, you frighten me. I don’t for one minute believe that if I were to go to the police, and they were to pick you up, that it would end there. You’d find a way to carry out your threats, or get someone to carry out your threats for you. I would have an enemy for life, and I can do without that. Frankly, I don’t care about your sordid operations, or your criminal activities. I just want to be kept out of them, and to keep my family out of them. Not the attitude of a responsible citizen, perhaps, but I care more about their safety than what you do for a living. I don’t like you, but I’d rather stay on your side. Do you follow me?’

‘I follow.’ Viktor chuckled. ‘You are an interesting man. But you know what? If you were ever to carry out your threat to bust Sir Dudley, and the police found their way to me—’ Viktor shrugged.

‘You’ve arrived very neatly at the point. Our interests are perfectly balanced. As is the way with all good settlements, it depends upon both parties respecting their sides of the bargain. You stay away from my family, and I do nothing about Sir Dudley.’

‘But for this deal to work, I need to know where Irina and Marko are. I want them.’

‘I don’t know anything about Marko, except that he’s clearly none too bright. He helped Irina to get out of the hotel, and then she dumped him. The reason she found her way to me is because my name and address were in your wallet, which she took, along with Marko’s phone. As for Irina herself – well, she’s another of my bargaining tools, but not in the way you seem to think. She’s somewhere you can’t find her for the moment, but once I have your word and
her passport, she’ll be straight on a plane back to Ukraine.’ Viktor made an angry sound of impatience, and Leo dipped his hand into his pocket. ‘Come on, what’s one prostitute more or less to you, Viktor? I’d have thought your wallet and credit cards were worth more.’ He took out Viktor’s wallet and held it up.

Viktor hesitated, then put out his hand. ‘Her passport,’ Leo reminded him.

Viktor sighed grimly. ‘OK – let the girl go.’ He reached into his inside pocket and pulled out Irina’s passport. He handed it to Leo, who gave him his wallet in return. ‘You’re right, Marko was always a dumb prick,’ said Viktor, frowning thoughtfully at the wallet. Then he turned to Leo and said, ‘You know what I think? I came here thinking you were the problem. Now I think the problem – the real problem – is Sir Dudley.’ He shook his head. ‘He’s not a reliable trading partner. He started this, with his stupid invoice. Then he tried to tell me it was my fault, but it was his people. I know that. You’ – he jabbed a finger at Leo – ‘you never wanted to get mixed up in this. I understand that.’ Viktor put the wallet away, pulled out another cigarette and lit it. ‘Anyway,’ he went on conversationally, ‘I’ve been thinking. There are better ways of moving money than using Sir Dudley. Ways that are less clumsy. Internet gambling – it’s legal in Britain now. That’s a way.’

‘How would that work?’ asked Leo. He was fascinated by the complexities of Viktor’s character – evidently regarding himself as something of a sophisticate, a man of the world, yet at the same time exhibiting an almost puerile candour in relation to his criminal dealings.

‘OK,’ explained Viktor, with some modest pride in his scheme, ‘you open a gambling account, put money in under a false name, then you make a few small bets. After a while you withdraw the money.’ He shrugged. ‘Or maybe you just open an account and store funds for a few months, then transfer the money to a clean account, pretend it’s winnings.’

Leo reflected that it was going to turn out to be something of an embarrassment for the government to find that its gambling reforms were facilitating criminal activity and money laundering. Still, the best laid schemes would always provide opportunities to enterprising individuals, and without doubt Viktor Kroitor was one of those.

‘I don’t know why I tell you this,’ remarked Viktor as an afterthought.

Leo didn’t either, but he replied, ‘Because we have an understanding. And perhaps because, fundamentally, our professional ethics aren’t so very disparate.’

‘Disparate – what is that?’

‘It means different, far apart. Take prostitution, for instance – that’s one of your rackets. The work I do as a barrister isn’t so far removed from prostitution.’

Viktor frowned. ‘How is that?’

‘Oh—’ Leo gave a sigh, glancing around at the lawyers strolling through the gardens. ‘The degradation of applying one’s intellect to say what one doesn’t necessarily believe, much of the time. Doing for money the most unacceptable things for the most unacceptable people.’

Viktor smiled and shook his head. ‘You’re a funny guy.’ He stood up, dusting cigarette ash carefully from his leather coat.

‘So,’ said Leo, ‘have we a deal? Do you give me your promise?’

Viktor shrugged. ‘OK, you have your deal. Like I said – Sir Dudley is my problem, not yours.’

They walked back in silence to the gates of the garden, and Viktor, glancing round, observed, ‘You work in a nice place. A beautiful place.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Leo. ‘It is.’

Without another word Viktor walked back down Middle Temple Lane towards the Embankment, and the last Leo saw of him he was standing by the busy roadside, cigarette in hand, scanning the road for his driver and his car.

Leo went back into the gardens, past the neatly clipped lawns and well-tended beds of glorious late-summer flowers. He sat down again on a bench, letting the warmth of the September sun creep into his skin and bones, drinking in the elusive fragrance of the roses. As he looked round the gardens, he wondered idly what kind of day it had been all those centuries ago, when Richard Plantagenet and the Earls of Suffolk and Warwick, having become embroiled in argument in Inner Temple Hall, had come out to these same gardens and plucked the red and white roses which had become symbols of their factions before the commencement of the Wars of the Roses. Had it been a mellow day such as this one, or in the bright heat of early summer? His knowledge of history was insufficiently particular. He wondered, too, if the gardens had looked so very different then. Somewhat, he supposed – much larger, with the Thames waters lapping at their lower reaches in the days before a river wall was built, or the Embankment
conceived of, but still a calm, fragrant retreat from the noisome hubbub of the busy streets.

Leo closed his eyes and let his thoughts wander over the events which had troubled 5 Caper Court over the last few days. It was a burdensome business, being head of chambers, but he wasn’t sure he was quite ready to relinquish it yet. The sounds of the city, like those of a constant tide, rose around him. He opened his eyes and looked around. The greatest and deepest of London’s many qualities, he had long since decided, was the sense of rolling history with which it was imbued. Buildings rose and crumbled, people lived and died, institutions grew and dwindled, yet the city carried on relentlessly, the changes and erosions of the passing ages only serving to mark more deeply the pattern of its story. It made sense that Pudding Lane, that tiny vennel of history, was no more now than a lifeless alley flanked by the vast concrete walls of office buildings. Its meagre length, the repository of great events, had endured, but the city made no concessions; it was too busy with its own teeming, ever-shifting progress. This place where he now sat, the buildings round him, were part of that history, and he was as well, in his insignificant way. At any rate, he was as long as he lived and worked here, as long as his name was still listed among those of the other tenants on the hand-painted board outside 5 Caper Court.

He rose and strolled to the foot of the gardens and along the broad gravel walk, then across the grass towards the pond and the statue of the little boy which stood as a memorial to Charles Lamb. The pond had been rebuilt in the millennium year, and a fountain added, and Leo reflected
that its bright waters might still be splashing two hundred years hence, and seem as much a part of the Inn’s history as the rest of it. The little boy in the statue was holding an open book – although he had passed it many times, Leo had never looked to see what might be written on its pages. He did so now, and saw Lamb’s words engraved there: ‘
Lawyers, I suppose, were children once
.’

He walked back round the gardens, and by the time he had reached the gates once more, he had decided that he had no real wish to join Roger in his virtual chambers, with its efficient working practices, its members toiling away in the seclusion of their own ambitions for greater profits, their working days shorn of the pleasures of a place such as this. What would his working life be, after all, without the stimulus of the Temple and its inhabitants, and the beauty of its buildings, courts and gardens? It would be work and no more, and solitary work at that. No, thought Leo, Oliver would have to forego the pleasure of being picked up by his father each day from school. He wasn’t ready to jack this all in just yet.

He glanced at his watch, saw it was ten to two, and went back to chambers. Anthony was returning to his room with a cup of coffee as Leo came upstairs, looking subdued. ‘You OK?’ Anthony asked him.

‘Sort of. Remember that Ukrainian I told you about – the one who came to the house? I’ve just been taking a stroll round Inner Temple Gardens with him.’

‘Good God,’ said Anthony, opening his door. ‘Come in and tell me about it.’

Leo sat down in a chair opposite Anthony’s desk and told
him about Irina’s arrival at his house, and his meeting with Viktor Kroitor.

‘I don’t understand,’ said Anthony. ‘Why didn’t you just call the police?’

‘I had no idea of his whereabouts. The girl Irina was pretty much disoriented – she had no idea where she’d been kept. All I had was this mobile phone which the girl gave me. At least it was a way of getting hold of him.’

‘But the police might have been able to trace him through the phone. I don’t know. Or maybe if you’d let them speak to the girl—’

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, Anthony! Don’t you understand? I don’t care about Viktor Kroitor! I don’t care whether he’s selling girls, drugs or AK-42 rifles! I only care about my son, and putting a stop to the threats to his safety. Christ, ever since that conference on Tuesday with Sir Dudley, when I indicated that I knew what he was up to—’

‘I told you – you did the right thing.’

Leo gave an irritable sigh. ‘So you’ve already said. But it was only later that I realised that I’d put the wind up Sir Dudley, and that I might just have achieved the opposite of what I’d intended. What if he told Viktor Kroitor to do as he’d threatened? I had to talk to Kroitor, to convince him he had everything to lose.’

‘And did you?’

‘Yes – I think so. Kroitor doesn’t work for Sir Dudley. As I had suspected, it’s rather the other way round, though they have shared interests. He uses Sir Dudley’s company – or companies – to launder his criminal profits. He’s by no means a stupid man.

‘I’ve pretty much made him see that I’m irrelevant. In fact, I get the impression that it’s Sir Dudley he blames for jeopardising affairs.’

‘Oh dear.’

Leo shrugged. ‘I don’t care. Just as I don’t care about Kroitor.’ His eyes met Anthony’s. ‘You think that’s immoral, don’t you? You think I’ve shirked my duty to help put a stop to organised crime by putting my interests first.’ He rose from his chair with a sigh. ‘I don’t know what’s bloody well right or wrong these days. I just know I want to get on with my life in peace.’ He paced the room for a moment, detesting the silence, and the sense that Anthony was judging him. At last he said, ‘Oh for God’s sake – say what you think.’

Mildly surprised, Anthony replied, ‘I’m sorry, I was thinking about something else entirely. I was thinking about Roger’s proposal, and wondering if you’d come to a decision yet. But you probably haven’t had time to think about it, with all that’s been going on—’

‘No, no,’ sighed Leo, ‘I’ve been thinking about it in the last half hour, as it happens.’

‘And?’

‘I don’t think I’m going to buy into it, after all. They all see it as an escape, a way of avoiding all the unsatisfactory aspects of chambers life. But that means leaving behind all the good things – things which don’t necessarily manifest themselves in terms of money or efficiency. This place, for instance. This world. I like it too much. I like talking to people, and seeing them every day. I like seeing you.’ He glanced at Anthony’s face, unable to decipher his expression. ‘What? Are you disappointed?’

‘In a way.’ Anthony hesitated. ‘I had this idea, you see – OK, probably utterly ridiculous—’ He stopped again, evidently mildly embarrassed.

‘Go on. Tell me.’

‘Well, I had this idea that if we left Caper Court and joined Roger’s virtual chambers, that we might work together. Be together. You and I.’ His eyes met Leo’s.

‘It would be nice,’ said Leo. How inadequate the words were. How ridiculously paltry as a means of expressing how much he would have liked to share his entire world with Anthony. But such a step, such an enormous emotional and physical step, would destroy the fragile compromise with Rachel, who had the power to remove Oliver from his life for good, if she chose to. It wasn’t a risk he could ever afford to take, no matter how much he might have wanted to. ‘It would have been nice, I mean. But as things are—’ Leo moved away from the window, aware that he mustn’t, above all, let this become a moment of weakness. ‘The status quo must prevail, I’m afraid.’

Anthony nodded. He had just about laid his heart on the line. Leo’s pragmatic response had left him numb. ‘Of course.’

‘Anyway, I have to get on. See you about.’

Leo left the room. He stood on the landing for some moments, listening to the various sounds of chambers – a door closing somewhere, Peter whistling as he went downstairs with a stack of briefs, the faint sound of two of the girls talking as they made coffee in the kitchen – and fought the urge to go back into Anthony’s room and say, yes. Yes, come and be with me, work with me, exist
with me. Love me. No good, he thought at last. No good. Where Anthony was concerned, it was all too little or not enough.

After a few moments he turned and went upstairs to his room. Too much of the day had been spent on other business. He had to get some work done before the chambers’ meeting at half five.