‘Oh, come on. Think of the increase in circulation. Even if this woman is completely nuts and has made it all up, they hardly lose out.’
‘I’d be straight round to Carter Ruck, if I were Davies,’ said Marcus, still poring over the juicier bits of the story.
‘Let’s have a look.’
Marcus passed the paper to Ann. She scanned the contents, which were admittedly pretty bad, and glanced across at Maurice.
‘You and I both know Leo,’ she said. ‘None of this sounds remotely true.’
Maurice shrugged, but said reluctantly, ‘I have to say I agree with you. Much as the story adds to the gaiety of our nation, I suspect that, reading between the lines, most of it is fabricated. There may be some basis to it, perhaps they did have an affair, but certain things don’t ring true. I don’t believe he’s the type to behave violently towards anyone. More to the point, all that stuff she comes out with about his professional insecurity is so much crap. He’s one of the best lawyers around. And one thing they fail to mention in that article is that Davies obtained an injunction against her a couple of months beforehand because she’d been harassing him.’
Ann gave a small smile. Maurice had certainly done his homework. He’d probably been ferreting away at this all morning.
‘So you believe him when he says that he was never involved with her?’
Maurice grinned. ‘Well, to quote another unreliable female – he would say that, wouldn’t he?’
While the four of them sat discussing the scandal over lunch, the same topic had been exercising the members of the clerks’ room at 5 Caper Court.
The Sun
was not a newspaper which any of the barristers in that august set of chambers would deign to purchase, but everybody, on their way in and out of the clerks’ room, normally paused for a few moments to glance at the copy belonging to Robert, the junior clerk. On this particular morning, however, Robert had been at the House of Lords, and didn’t come into chambers until ten forty-five, until which time the inhabitants of 5 Caper Court remained blissfully unaware of the events which were about to overtake them. When Robert did finally come in, newspaper in hand, he was agog.
‘Have you heard?’ he asked Henry, the senior clerk.
Henry, a harassed man in his early thirties, with thinning hair and an expression of almost permanent dejection, looked round from where he sat at his computer, screen in his shirtsleeves.
‘What?’
Robert dropped his copy of
The Sun
on to Henry’s keyboard. Henry glanced down at it, smoothing it out. He gazed at the headline, then at the photograph of Leo, in disbelief.
‘I would have thought plenty of people in the Temple would have been on the phone to you about it,’ said Robert.
Henry shook his head slowly as he read the story.
‘Then again,’ said Robert, ‘it’s so bad they probably didn’t like to.’
Oh, Mr Davies, thought Henry – oh, Mr Davies, what have you gone and done? His heart sank as he digested the details. As though this bunch didn’t give him enough grief.
It was bad enough trying to keep their work in order, without them getting their sodding love lives all over the papers.
Continued on pages 5, 6, 7 and 8
… He couldn’t bear to look. What would this do to business? A scandal like this was bad publicity, whichever way you looked at it. The work was bound to suffer. Clients didn’t like seeing their barristers’ faces in the papers, especially not a story like this, beating up his girlfriend, driving her to suicide … He glanced back at the picture of Melissa Angelicos. No, not Mr Davies. Not his style. Mind you, whether it was true or not was completely beside the point. Henry groaned aloud.
‘Pretty bad, isn’t it?’ said Robert, agreeably thrilled by the sensation. This was about the most exciting thing that had ever happened in chambers. By and large, barristers were a boring bunch, not given to all the stuff this woman claimed Leo got up to. Bunking off with blokes, for instance – mind you, Robert had always thought there was something a bit fruity about Mr Davies.
A third clerk, Felicity Waller, came through the swing doors at that moment and caught Robert’s last remark.
‘What’s bad?’ she asked.
Felicity was a buxom and very pretty twenty-three-year-old,
with a cheeky, brisk manner which endeared her to most, if not all, of the barristers at 5 Caper Court. Even those who didn’t entirely approve of Felicity’s plunging necklines and
thigh-skimming
skirts were appreciative of the fees she negotiated for them, a skill which Felicity put down to genes inherited from her South London market trader father.
Henry had long nursed a silent, hopeless and unrequited passion for Felicity, and would normally have given her his full attention, particularly as she was wearing a
figure-hugging
summer dress of some brevity, but today he didn’t even look up. He just shook his head and stared despondently at the paper.
Felicity put her cup of coffee down on her desk and came over.
Robert indicated the paper and endeavoured to mask his excitement with a tone of regret. ‘Mr Davies has got himself into a bit of trouble.’
‘Let’s have a look.’
Henry’s phone began to ring. He answered it, handing the paper to Felicity, who took it over to her desk.
‘Bloody hell …’ She took in the headline, the picture of Leo, and sank slowly into her seat. She looked long and hard at the picture of the faded blonde which dominated the page, then began to read through the sordid list of her allegations against Leo. That he’d hit her. That he’d had affairs with other people during their relationship, men as well as women. That he’d neglected his son by his ex-wife, failing to turn up on access visits. That his professional life was a mess. That he drank. That he
rubbished colleagues. She glanced up at Robert, who’d sidled over to assess her reaction.
‘This is crap,’ said Felicity. ‘It’s total and utter crap. Mr Davies isn’t like that.’
‘Not the point, though, is it?’
‘He’s a lovely man. He wouldn’t do any of this.’ Felicity’s view of Leo was somewhat coloured by the fact that when her erstwhile boyfriend, Vince, had been up on a manslaughter charge two months ago – through no fault of his own, Felicity always averred – Leo had spared no effort to help her and advise her. Not that it had been of much help, since Vince had gone down for eight years. Still, Mr Davies was her champion, he’d got her this job in the first place, and he was bloody lovely to look at as well, so she would hear no ill of him. Like Henry, she knew in her heart that this was not Mr Davies’s style at all. ‘Poor bloke. Not going to do his practice much good, is it?’
‘Is he in?’ asked Robert.
‘No, I haven’t seen him all morning – thank God,’ said, Felicity. ‘He’s probably got wind of this and is steering well clear. Can you imagine having to walk around the Temple, knowing everyone’s seen this and is talking about you? He’ll probably lie low for a couple of days.’
Henry, engrossed in morose speculation about the way in which this scandal was likely to tarnish the reputation of 5 Caper Court, clicked on his computer screen and brought up, out of curiosity, the list of tenants who were in chambers that morning, witnessed by the swiping of their electronic tags as they came into the building. There was Leo’s name.
‘He’s in,’ said Henry, puzzled.
In fact, at five-thirty that morning, as dawn light pearled the eastern sky and crept across the silent cobbles of the lanes and courtyards of the Temple, Leo had come into chambers to do some work on a skeleton argument in one of his cases. He had parked his Aston Martin in the deserted car park at the bottom of King’s Bench Walk and, apologising to the dosser in the doorway of 5 Caper Court for disturbing his slumber, had come into chambers to enjoy a few hours of steady, uninterrupted work before the telephones began to ring and feet and voices to sound on the stairs. Since no one was aware of his presence, no one had troubled him all morning.
Now, at ten to eleven, fatigued even by his own industrious standards, Leo Davies closed his books, rose, stretched and yawned. His lean figure was trim and athletic for a man in his mid-forties, his features clean-cut and handsome, his blue eyes sharp and intelligent. The premature silvery-grey of his thick hair, in the eyes of Felicity and other admirers, only added to his attractiveness. He stood now at his window, gazing down at the figures hurrying to and fro across Caper Court, his mind paused in a rare state of idleness, and decided to have a coffee and go downstairs to collect his mail and catch up on the gossip.
Down in the clerks’ room, speculation was rife.
‘D’you think he knows about it?’ asked Felicity.
‘Dunno,’ said Robert. ‘Depends. What a way to start the week.’
The door of the clerks’ room opened at that moment, and all three clerks turned as Leo came in. They looked at him in horrified uncertainty. The cheerful expression on his face suggested that he knew nothing of this calamity.
‘Morning, troops,’ said Leo mildly, going to his pigeonhole to extract the bundle of letters which lay there. Then he glanced round at them in puzzlement, surveying their silent faces. ‘Some problem?’
Henry took it upon himself to deliver the blow. He rose from his desk. ‘Robert’s just brought the paper in, sir. You’d better have a look at it.’ He picked up the newspaper from Felicity’s desk and handed it to Leo, who took it wonderingly.
They stood in stricken fascination as Leo scanned the front page carefully. His expression didn’t falter, except for one moment when he raised a brief and quizzical eyebrow. He might as well have been digesting the contents of an interesting, but not very remarkable brief. They waited.
Leo tossed the paper on to Robert’s desk and passed a hand across his brow. He looked up at Henry. ‘That’s a bit of a nuisance, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, sir,’ replied Henry, somewhat nonplussed by Leo’s reaction.
‘It’s a complete load of balls, of course. Some journalist rang me up a week ago and asked me about the contents of this suicide note, whatever it is, that she’d written, and I told them then. I didn’t expect them to print it.’ As though the import of it had only just hit him, Leo sat down. ‘Holy Christ.’
‘It’s not good, Mr Davies,’ said Henry.
‘I knew it was rubbish when I read it,’ said Felicity. ‘I said, none of this is Mr Davies’ style.’ She glanced at Robert for support. ‘Didn’t I?’
Leo gave a wan smile. ‘Thank you, Felicity.’ He drew the paper towards him again and studied the photograph of Melissa Angelicos. That vindictive bitch. It was like being pursued to the very depths of hell by a madwoman. She’d seemed innocuous enough on their first meeting as cotrustees of a recently opened museum of modern art, but what had seemed like a mild crush on her part had turned, over the course of a few months, into a full-blown obsession. She had stalked him, lain in wait for him outside his flat at night, pestered him with letters and gifts, followed him in her car to his country home, turned up during court proceedings … The thing had become a nightmare. It was when she began to harass Rachel, his ex-wife, and their baby son that Leo had taken legal steps to obtain an injunction against her. He had thought that, plus a few quiet threats, had done the trick. But no. A failed suicide attempt, this farrago of lies and fantasy committed to paper and sent off to a daily newspaper which was stupid and evil enough to print it, and she was succeeding in wrecking his life once again. In reality, Melissa was no more than a B-list celebrity – a fading personality from television’s intellectual hinterland – but that, coupled with the fact that Leo’s involvement in a major fraud case had earned him a flattering profile piece in the
Evening Standard
just over a year ago, had been enough to ensure frontpage coverage.
He flicked through the pages to where the story continued, embellished by another picture of himself emerging from the Law Courts, and glanced through the contents. That they had actually had the
gall
… Didn’t they have any respect for privacy or decency, let alone the truth? He felt a hot surge of anger. He would make those bastards, and Melissa Angelicos, pay for every lying word printed here. He’d have a writ issued before the day was out.
The phone rang and Robert went to answer it. Leo folded up the paper and rose. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said to Felicity and Henry. ‘This isn’t going to make life very easy for you people.’
‘We’ll cope, sir,’ said Henry. ‘Not the first damage-limitation exercise we’ve had to carry out.’
‘What will you do?’ Felicity gazed at Leo with big, anxious eyes.
‘The first thing I’m going to do,’ said Leo, ‘is to go home and consider my options. Field my calls. Don’t tell anyone where I am.’
As he left the clerks’ room, he passed Simon Barron, a junior tenant, without saying a word. Simon, who had heard about the scandal from friends on his way back from a con in Paper Buildings, gazed after him.
‘I hadn’t expected to see Leo in chambers today. Not after the news.’ He glanced at the clerks. ‘I take it you’ve all heard?’
Henry nodded grimly. ‘Mr Davies has only just found out himself. He’s going home.’
‘Best place for him,’ sighed Felicity.
Leo drove back to his flat in Belgravia. The summer air was heavy with the threat of thunder, and the first drops of rain were pattering on the leaves of the plane trees in the quiet garden square as he parked his car in the mews garage. In the flat he opened one of the long windows in the drawing room and let the scent of rain, now splashing heavily on to the pavements and parks, fill the room. He stood there, watching, listening, thinking.
He turned from the window, loosened his tie, and sat down in an armchair. The room was large,
high-ceilinged
, expensively furnished in a restrained, minimalist fashion, the walls hung with works of modern art from Leo’s own collection – and to Leo at that moment it felt nothing like home. The place never had. Like the house where he and Rachel had lived during the brief months of their marriage, he had never felt any proper sense of belonging. Neither to the house, nor to Rachel. Only Stanton, his house in Oxfordshire, felt like a safe haven, though pressure of work meant he’d had precious little time to visit it of late. Now, in this moment of isolation and humiliation, with a hungry world outside feasting on fabricated stories of his licentious doings, he badly wished he was there, safe and far away. He closed his eyes, trying to work his way through his anger to thoughts of how best to deal
with the situation. The phone rang several times, but he ignored it.