East of the City (28 page)

Instead what I found was that most of the correspondence from our syndicate came from me, and on the WardSure side, from Nigel Chambers. All of it absolutely standard.

‘Two minutes is up,’ Lee called from the bedroom.

Disappointed, I slid everything back into the folder and closed the briefcase. There was nothing in there that was going to help me. Rain was falling now, and the windows rattled, shaken by the wind.

Sebastian and Justine. Had I been a bit quick out of the traps? Maybe Lee right, they were both grown-ups, couldn’t they do what they liked in private together? But all I had to do was think about it for ten seconds and I was back where I started. An idiot could see that something just had to be going on. And that photo showing up at the Aston Kennels like it had. I thought now that maybe Tubs had the right idea when he’d suggested to me that Eddie Pike wasn’t above a bit of blackmail. But where did that get me? Nowhere, unless I could speak to Pike.

‘I’ll phone a taxi,’ I called back through Lee’s bedroom door. Then crossing the room, I said, ‘You should keep that case locked.’ No answer from inside.  ‘Lee. I’m getting a taxi home.’

When I started dialling for a taxi on my mobile, there was a sound from inside the bedroom. I stopped punching buttons. I put a hand on the doorframe and leant in. ‘Lee?’

She couldn’t hear me, not over the noise of the shower.

I hesitated. Hesitated and thought, What goes on here? Then after a brief struggle with my conscience, I convinced myself I wasn’t taking too much of a liberty. I went in. Without the tapestry on the far wall, the bedroom looked bare. Boxes I hadn’t noticed before were lined up at the foot of her bed, with dresses draped over them. And there, at the back, the bathroom door was ajar.

I said her name again but it hardly came out, my throat was suddenly dry and tight. I slid my mobile into my pocket. The bedroom door open. And the bathroom door ajar. Signs everywhere, if only I could read what they I meant. I stood by her bed wondering if that was where she wanted me to be, or if she thought I was still in the lounge, calling a taxi.

Lee Chan. The first time I slept with her it was kind of surprising, this small Chinese body wrapping itself around me with a fierce American desire. Lust, even. And that’s what I felt then, standing in her bedroom, heart hammering, and listening to the shower. Desire. Lust. A great surge of life, the kind of thing I hadn’t felt in months.

And then the shower stopped. No noise now but my breath, short and shallow, and the windows rattling, and I thought, What the hell am I doing here? Lee was packing to leave the country. She was engaged to another man, and I was tip-toeing around her bedroom like a teenager with an itch.

Pivoting silently on the carpet, I took a step towards the lounge.

‘Ian.’

I stopped. Then I hung my head a moment and tried to breathe easily. After a second I faced the bathroom door. There was just silence, then a brief trickle from the shower, and silence once more. After a long time I took a step towards the bathroom door. Then another. I reached out, rested a hand on the door and it swung gently back.

Steam hung over the shower cubicle, the frosted-glass walls dripping with condensation. And through the glass, a figure standing very still.

As I stepped into the bathroom the heel of my shoe clicked once against the tiles. She didn’t move. I heard her breathing now, behind the glass. The smell of soap was like sweet flowers in the steam.

I reached, watched my hand grip the handle of the cubicle door. The heat ran through my fingers, and then I knew there was no way, just no way I could stop this. I leant my weight on the hand and with a slow swishing noise the door slid open.

Her wet hair clung to the sides of her face and her neck, the water trickling down her, and she stood still, not reaching for me or doing anything, just watching me take her in. The sarong clung to every curve of her, like a shining wet skin. And staring straight at me, she tugged at the sarong above her breasts. Under its own weight, the wet cotton began to roll and peel down. She kept her eyes on mine as the sarong passed over her nipples and her ribs and her waist, it caught on her hips and she reached down and touched it again, and it slid over her thighs, down her calves to her ankles. And then, so very quietly, she said my name again, and I felt my throat contract, my heart slam against my ribs, and there we were, where I never dreamed we could ever be again.

I reached for her. Lee. Lee Chan. And when my fingertips touched her wet skin, I was gone.

W
hen I got home around six thirty the next morning, I grabbed a carton of orange juice fiom the fridge and headed for my room. Katy’s door was closed and there was no sound from her radio so I didn’t have to poke my head in and turn it off. I had a shower, put on my dressing gown, and pulled up a chair by my bedroom window. Sipping from the carton of orange juice, I watched the morning come in. The big NOW SELLING sign on Cooper’s Dock was gradually lit by the sun. My penthouse. My bloody nightmare, the way things were going.

The morning after the night before, and I wasn’t quite sure I knew what had happened back there with me and Lee Chan. Those T-shirts she’d asked me over to pick up, did I really buy that now? But if it was a set-up it was a hell of a lot more pleasant than the one Fielding had going. The only trouble was I just couldn’t see where this put us now, and I wasn’t sure that Lee Chan knew either. Before I’d left her flat I’d asked, casually, if she was still going back to San Fran. Too late, I realized it wasn’t a question she expected me to be casual about. Glaring, she told me she had a wedding to get to. When I bridled at that, she pulled the sheets up over her head and rolled over to face the wall. We really had laid the bruises down too deep to be healed in one night tumble.

Finally I came to the conclusion that we were pretty much where we’d been yesterday; Lee on her way to California and marriage; me still trying to deal with my problems here in London. After that dismal reckoning, I tried to think about something else.

Once I'd finished the orange juice I phoned Wainwright.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ I told him, ‘about that photo.’

‘Mm?’

‘I showed Angela.’

There was a pause.

‘Clive? I showed Angela.’

‘I heard you.’ The call had caught him asleep, but you could tell he was wide awake now. I went to my cupboard and ran a hand over my suits and ties. ‘I’m guessing she’s had a word with Allen about it.’

Clive made a sound of agreement. If Angela had done it already, Clive wouldn’t have to give the bad news about Justine to his biggest client. ‘So all cleared up then,’ he said, relieved.

I looked at the phone. Then I said, ‘No, Clive. Not all cleared up. Remember I told you where we found the photo? Remember I said Nigel Chambers’s card was there?’

‘Mm.’

‘And remember I told you how I saw Chambers out at the airport with Mehmet?’

He took a few seconds with that. Then he made the connection that I’d just made, one I should have made a lot sooner. If there were more copies of that photo of Justine and Sebastian, or others like it, and they’d gone from Chambers to Mehmet, then Mehmet was bound to use them against us. And the best place to use them against us was in court.

‘Oh shit,’ Clive said.

I told him I’d see him in his office in an hour. ‘You'd better call Allen,’ I said, and then I hung up.

While I was getting dressed I heard Katy out in the kitchen. Early for her. The first month she moved in with me she was never up before I left for work, and on the weekends she was never out of bed before ten. But gradually, as the weeks went by, she’d got better. But even now, early mornings still weren’t her best time. In the early morning, actually, my pretty twenty-one-year-old sister could look like a sixty-one-year-old slob.

And right then I didn’t feel up to the ribbing she was going to give me either, about not coming home the previous night. So I hung around in my bedroom waiting for her to go back to bed. Instead of that, I heard the sound of a pan being shoved around on the stove, and a radio coming on. I knew then that she was going to interrogate me over breakfast. I really couldn’t face that, so I picked up my briefcase, opened my door very quietly, and crept silently through the lounge. Something sizzled in the pan. I was about halfway to the door when Katy shrieked. It trailed into a laugh. Hesitating, I turned toward the kitchen. Then, deciding it must have been some joke from the breakfast DJ, I carried on towards the front door. I was almost there when she laughed again. This time it was followed by another laugh, a man’s, and it wasn’t the DJ. I faced the kitchen again. Just the radio now.

I went over there. When she saw me standing in the doorway she pointed at me, saying, ‘Here he is.’

The bloke in the suit turned: it was Bill Tyler.

‘Morning, Ian,’ he said.

‘You were in the shower,’ Katy explained. ‘I told Bill he might as well come up and wait.’

Bill asked me if I was ready for the big day in court. Ready enough, I said.

Katy poured some coffees, but when she started on my cup I told her I’d pass. I glanced at my watch, I really didn’t want to miss Clive.

Bill asked me why I hadn't made it back for the afternoon session at court the previous day. I explained that I had been checking up on something with Angela.

‘Well, you missed a good one,’ Bill told me. He started to give me a run-down on how he’d handled the Ottoman barrister. Clive, I thought, might have a very different story.

Katy asked me if I wanted some bacon and eggs. I shook my head, but Bill said, ‘Don’t mind if I do,’ and Katy laughed and went and opened the fridge.

While she was poking around in there, I asked Bill what he was chasing. He said to me quietly, ‘I came to pick up the three grand. The lads got the hump when I told them you turned it down. You were serious, yeah?’

Nodding, I asked Katy what she’d done with the bag Bill had dropped off the other day. She said she’d dumped it in her room.

‘Well, give it back to Bill before he goes,’ I said. I looked at Bill, it seemed he was really settling in. He was twice divorced, and I’d sometimes heard him complaining about how all the alimony payments were keeping him poor. The chance of a cooked breakfast had made his day. When I asked if he'd be in court later, he shook his head.

Then as I reached down for my briefcase, he said, ‘Hey, you don’t look the best, Ian. You look a bit tired.’

I glanced over to Katy by the stove, hoping she’d missed it. Some chance. She had a grin on her that almost split her face. ‘Yeah,’ she said, like she was really concerned. ‘Yeah, Ian, you do. Not a great sleep?’

‘Just fine,’ I told her, and before she could give me any more needle I picked up my case and left.

‘What if Angela hasn’t shown him the photo?’ Clive said.

We were in his office. I was sitting on the black leather couch, flicking through the latest
Lloyd’s List
, and not taking in a single word.

‘If she hasn’t shown him,’ I said, ‘then we’ll have to tell him.’

‘We?’

‘Me then, okay?’ Dropping the magazine, I got to my feet and wandered to the window. ‘But don’t do a runner on me, Clive. If I have to tell Allen, you sit tight.’

Clive nodded. He’d get to see what was happening without having to take responsibility for any of it, a real lawyer’s approach. He told me that Bill’s afternoon session in court the previous day had been a lot better than the morning session. The way Clive read it, the Ottoman case was nearly over, and we were just ahead on points. In his opinion, the only thing that could cock it up was that photo. The judge would be less than impressed to discover that the broker and the underwriter were, quite literally, in bed together. If that photo was produced in court, Ottoman was bound to look like the injured party. The judge, Clive thought, would crucify us.

‘Heard any more from that DC?’ Clive said. He meant Fielding.

‘He’s checking up some old policies I’ve written.’

‘Oh? The purpose of that would be?’

‘Policies brokered by WardSure.’

Clive gave me a look. This poking around by Fielding was damaging me all over the place. First with Lee Chan, and now Clive. I couldn’t blame them for having doubts. But unlike last night with Lee, I didn’t have the time to argue my case now with Clive.

So in the end I just said, ‘Clive, it’s bullshit.’

Then Allen came through the door without knocking. Clive leaned forward and hit the buzzer telling his secretary, ‘No calls.’

Unbuttoning his jacket, Allen sat and rested an ankle on his knee. I hadn’t seen him since the golf club carpark. I felt a little awkward after what had happened there, but he seemed to have forgotten all about it. He cracked some old joke about lawyers and whores, and Clive tried to smile. Then there was a silence.

Allen asked Clive, ‘Is this chargeable time?’ He wasn’t someone who joked about money. Clive said, ‘Ian’s got one or two concerns about what happens in court today.’

‘Angela and me went to see that bloke yesterday, Mr White,' I said. 'The Name who wrote that note, the business about not trusting Sebastian.'

‘The pig-sticker,’ Allen interrupted.

‘Yeah. Anyway, this guy White says Sebastian offered to cut him in on an insurance scam.’

Allen’s eyes never flickered.

‘Not recently,’ Clive reminded me.

‘Not recently,’ I agreed.

‘And the supposed scam,’ he added, ‘was paltry.’

What was he trying to do, soften the blow? I said, ‘It wasn’t a lot of money, and it was a long time ago, but that’s not the point.’

Allen said levelly, ‘What is the point, Ian?’

‘I’ve heard it from other sources too,’ I told him, remembering what Nigel Chambers had said. ‘From inside WardSure, his own brokers, there were a lot of people who weren’t happy with how Sebastian was running the company.’

Allen readjusted himself on the sofa, legs crossed now, and arms folded. ‘I couldn’t care less how Sebastian was running his company. What business would that be of ours? Not our worry.’

Turning, I glimpsed an army of suits through the window. Men pouring into the City, ready for battle. In an hour I’d be sitting in the witness seat at St Dunstan’s. Still facing the window I said, ‘Did Angela show you the photo?’