Breath of Corruption

by Caro Fraser

  ‘I’ve already said it’s fine. I’m sure you could do with some relaxation and pampering. You’re looking a bit fed up these days.’

  Rachel looked down at her hands. ‘I am, I suppose.’ She paused and then smiled. ‘It’s sweet of her to arrange it, really.’ There was another pause. ‘So is it all right if I drop him off with you on Saturday morning?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘And I’ll pick him up on Sunday evening.’

  Leo nodded. ‘You could have told me all this tomorrow. I’ll be seeing you in the morning, remember? You and Oliver?’

  Her expression was vague, slightly guarded. ‘Oh – yes, of course.’

  Leo turned and headed back towards the hallway. ‘The little guy’s very excited about starting school. I just hope he’s going to enjoy it.’

  ‘Of course he will – it’s a lovely school.’

  ‘I’m sure it is. By the way’ – he turned as he reached the door – ‘I meant to ask you. What about the fees? Just let me know how much, and I’ll let you have the money.’

  ‘Leo—’ Rachel hesitated for a moment. ‘You were very generous when we split up. More than you had to be. And I earn a pretty good salary, you know. I can afford his school fees.’

  ‘Well, let me make a contribution. He’s my son, too, you know. It was bad enough that you went ahead and chose a school without involving me, so at least I’d like to feel his education isn’t completely out of my hands.’

  ‘That isn’t fair. You know I do the best for him.’

  ‘Exactly – you. It’s all you. What say do I have? None.’

  ‘You did your bit after the divorce, Leo. Leave it at that.’

  ‘Leave it at that? Rachel, I need to feel I’m part of his life. I’m his father, for God’s sake, not some kindly uncle. If I can’t help to pay for his schooling, then I’m not really entitled to have any say, am I?’

  There was a long pause. Rachel folded her arms and said quietly, ‘That’s right. That’s what I want.’

  Leo laughed in disbelief. ‘Oh, I get it. I’m just someone who borrows him every other weekend. Apart from that, he’s nothing to do with me.’

  ‘More or less.’ Rachel had been avoiding Leo’s gaze. Now she looked directly at him; her expression was pinched and nervous, and had lost any trace of vulnerability. ‘I don’t really want you to have any say in what happens to him, Leo. He goes to you every other weekend against my better judgment. He loves you, and I would never deny him contact with his father. But I do have the right to restrict the influence you have on him, so far as I can.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘You know what I’m talking about. The life you lead.’

  ‘Oh, please!’

  ‘You went down to the Oxford house this weekend – how do I know who else was there? One of your lovers? Maybe more? Men? Women?’

  ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake! We went blackberrying! We fed the horses! I had friends to dinner – and no, we didn’t go on to have a full-blown orgy in the living room! When will you get it into your head that I’m a responsible parent? That I love my son? That I want to contribute to his life and well-being in every way I can? And that I’d like to have a say in choosing his school and paying the fees, if you don’t mind!’

  ‘Well, it’s too late. I’ve paid them. It’s not important, anyway.’

  ‘No, what’s important are all the things – the inaccurate things – you’ve just implied about the way I live.’

  ‘So sue me, Leo. You’re such a great fucking lawyer – go on.’

  Leo shook his head. He might as well have had the coffee – this was always coming. Or had he started it? He had no idea. He glanced to the top of the stairs, anxious that Oliver might hear their raised voices. He lowered his tone, trying to be calm and moderate. ‘Enough. This is going nowhere. I shall be outside his school tomorrow at eight forty-five. On the dot. And don’t try to smuggle him in without letting me see him. I mean it.’ He went to the foot of the stairs and called up. ‘Oliver!’

  There was a thump from above, then feet crossing the floor, and then Oliver appeared on the landing. ‘Come and give me a hug before I go.’ Oliver bounced downstairs and hugged his father. ‘I’ll see you in the morning, old fellow,’ said Leo, and dropped a kiss on his head. Then he left, saying nothing more to Rachel.

  As he drove back, he tried to bank down his anger. Was this a cumulative thing? Was she going to start poisoning Oliver’s mind against him in a few years’ time? He wouldn’t put it past her. Her mother had been a bitch of the first order, as he recalled, so maybe Rachel was headed that way. No – not possible. No matter how badly their relationship might have ended, she was essentially a fair, decent person. So was there some justice in what she said about his influence on Oliver? Perhaps in the past, but not any more. It was just a question of making her see that, of eradicating these notions she had about the way he lived his life. Easier said than done.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  In a cheap hotel room somewhere in Bayswater, Irina Karpacheva sat on the edge of a bed, picking listlessly at the worn candlewick bedspread. Through the thin wall she could hear the muted rumble of men’s voices, together with the reedy sound of some other girl crying. She had done her own crying. She felt empty of tears, utterly drained. The fact of her own naive stupidity lay upon her like a dead weight. Just a week ago she had willingly, smilingly, handed her passport to Viktor Kroitor so that he could buy her plane ticket to England. She had sat next to him on the plane; everything had been fine and friendly. Then when they’d got to the hotel in London, things had changed. He’d asked her for the money for the plane ticket and the hotel, which of course she didn’t have. Viktor had told her she’d have to pay off her debt, that he’d keep her passport until she did – and by work he didn’t mean dancing in a cabaret. That job had never existed.

  Since then she had been moved twice, but the shabby hotels were much alike, and she had no idea where she was. She knew nothing about London. The last place had been better because she’d been with other girls, and they could talk, in between men. The men. It had got to the point where Irina wished it might be Viktor, instead of these strangers, because at least she knew him. At least he had once seemed like a friend. But that first time with Viktor had taught her how wrong she was. He was a beast.

  She got up and went to the window, pushed one of the short, plush purple curtains aside and tried to look down, to see what was below and where it led to. But the room was high up, and the building next door was so close that her vantage point was poor; all she could see was a black metal fire escape leading down from the other building. What was the point of thinking about getting away? She was watched constantly. Viktor had her passport. He’d told her that everything about her situation was illegal, and that if she tried to leave, she’d be arrested and put in jail. Then she’d never get home.

  There was a light knock on the door. Irina moved away from the window, eyes fixed apprehensively on the door as it opened. It was Marko, the big guy who was employed by Viktor to fetch cigarettes, guard the girls, and perform any menial criminal tasks which might crop up. Irina didn’t know whether to be relieved or frightened. So far Marko had been decent to her, in a gruff way. But why was he here, in her room? Had Viktor and his gangster friends decided to offer her for free as a reward for some service or other?

  Marko closed the door and stood there for a moment. ‘Hi,’ he said.

  ‘Hi,’ replied Irina cautiously. ‘What do you want?’

  He shrugged his beefy shoulders. He seemed a little awkward. ‘I’m off my shift. I wondered if you’d like a game of cards.’ He paused. ‘In case you’re bored.’ He shrugged again. ‘I’m bored.’

  It was a pleasure to Irina to hear someone speaking in Ukrainian – not brutally, or peremptorily, but in a casual, offhand way. Such a small thing to make her heart glad. Still, she was suspicious. It was impossible to trust anyone who had anything to do with Viktor. ‘I haven’t g
ot any playing cards,’ she replied.

  ‘It’s OK – I have some,’ said Marko. He fumbled inside his jacket pocket with a bear-like candour which was somehow reassuring, and produced a battered pack of cards.

  Irina nodded. Anything to relieve the tedium. And if he tried to push his luck – well, she’d worry about that when it happened. ‘Yeah, fine,’ she said, and sat down on the bed. Marko pulled a chair over from the dressing table, sat down, took the cards from the pack, and began to shuffle them.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  As September crept on, Leo began to detect certain tensions growing in chambers. One Monday he had to chair three committee meetings – finance, management and recruitment – and all of them seemed remarkably ill-tempered. What, Leo wondered, was the reason for the current general air of dissatisfaction? Was he to blame, as head of chambers? He didn’t recall all this disharmony when Roderick had been head, or Cameron Renshaw. Perhaps his ‘people-management skills’, as Maurice like to call them, were to blame. As for Maurice – things were not good with Maurice. He was now quite unapologetically two months behind on his rent, on top of which one of the pupils had come to Leo to complain that Maurice had groped her – well, not quite, but near enough – and the last thing they needed in chambers was a sexual harassment suit. Maurice had continued to make low-level mutterings about bringing contempt proceedings against Leo in relation to the anti-suit injunction, and then on Wednesday Roger and Maurice had had a stand-up row on the staircase, which ended in doors being slammed and a hush of embarrassment descending on the building. That kind of thing didn’t help.

  By Friday, Leo was feeling somewhat depressed.

  ‘What the hell am I doing wrong?’ he asked Anthony.

  ‘It’s not you. It’s the rumblings of revolution. I think you’ll find out pretty soon. I gather Roger is planning to talk to you.’

  And indeed, an hour later Roger put his head round Leo’s door and invited him to go for a drink that evening. ‘Marcus is coming, and Alison and Simon.’

  A delegation, thought Leo, and felt apprehensive.

  Since the weekend the weather had gone from mild and showery to grey and thundery, and the four of them sat in a corner of the pub while the rain outside splashed on the flagstones of Devereux Court. Simon bought drinks for all, and after a few moments of uneasy chat, Roger took the initiative.

  ‘We have a proposition for you,’ he told Leo.

  ‘Oh?’ Leo looked from face to face. He had assumed they’d brought him here to make some kind of private complaint. ‘What kind of proposition?’

  ‘A business one.’ There was a long pause, then Roger said, ‘We’re thinking of setting up another set of chambers.’

  Leo digested this information. Was he surprised? Perhaps he should have seen it coming. He took a sip of his beer and said, ‘I see.’

  ‘A set of virtual chambers,’ continued Roger.

  Leo frowned. ‘I don’t follow. What do you mean – virtual?’

  ‘In the sense that it wouldn’t really exist. Only it would. That is to say, the nexus would exist, but not the physical reality.’

  ‘Roger, I know you’ve always been a big fan of The Matrix, and perhaps you see yourself as the Keanu Reeves of the Middle Temple, but—’

  ‘A limited company,’ interrupted Marcus, a handsome black barrister who had been listening impassively till this moment. ‘Instead of the traditional set-up, where all chambers liabilities are those of the head of chambers, who is indemnified, the idea would be to take the functions of chambers and devolve them to a company – a service company, if you like. It would take a regular payment from each tenant, rather in the way we presently pay chambers’ rent, in return for which the company would be responsible for all the administrative decisions.’

  ‘I still don’t understand the “virtual” part.’

  ‘There would be no chambers. No building. No rooms. Everyone would work from home.’

  ‘But how would you bring in work? Who’s going to do that?’

  ‘We’d still have clerks. They’d be the people running the company. Peter Weir reckons we’d need two—’

  ‘Peter Weir?’ exclaimed Leo, somewhat surprised. Peter was a clerk in his early thirties who had joined 5 Caper Court a couple of years ago. Smart and capable, he was a member of a new breed of clerk, who had none of the old belowstairs ethos – they saw themselves not so much as clerks as facilitators, business managers.

  ‘A lot of this was his idea,’ said Roger. ‘Two clerks responsible for marketing chambers, for billing, credit control, returning briefs, and general admin, and someone to handle incoming briefs.’

  ‘Well, stop right there. What about briefs? How would they be distributed?’

  ‘DX – documents exchange,’ said Alison. ‘Either that or email. People just pick up instructions from a post box, or on their computers.’

  For once in his life, Leo was struggling to grasp something. ‘But you couldn’t – I mean—’ He fought for words, trying to imagine the unimaginable – the sweeping away of chambers, the very fabric of every barrister’s existence, the physicality on which they depended. ‘What about conferences, meetings?’

  ‘Easy enough to rent a place for the purpose of conferences and arbitrations. You don’t need a whole building.’

  ‘And court? You lot spend half your time in court.’

  ‘Not that much,’ replied Alison. ‘Some of it, admittedly. But I haven’t been in court at all this week. More and more hearings in judges’ chambers take place by phone, and it’s only a matter of time before we have video conferencing.’

  ‘Have you ever conducted a contested application at an interlocutory stage by phone?’ asked Leo. ‘It’s an appalling business. You lose everything that’s valuable about face-to-face advocacy – body language, inflections, expression. I don’t see that as a tremendous advance.’

  ‘It does allow you to stick two fingers up at the other side if you feel like it,’ said Simon with a grin.

  ‘The fact is,’ went on Marcus, ‘all of us could work perfectly well at home and simply come up to town when we have a court hearing. There’s no need to spend all day in a building full of people working for themselves and getting together only to make decisions about rent and coffee machines.’

  ‘Think about it – if you wanted to run a business efficiently, the last people you’d ask to do it would be a bunch of barristers,’ said Roger. ‘All this “one man, one vote” business produces complete stasis, as often as not. Just think – no more problems with rent, or with people not paying on time. Prompt payment of fees. More money all round – the amount each tenant would pay the service company would be a lot less than the amount we currently pay in rent, obviously. And there would be the joy of not having to struggle in with the rest of the commuting world to the Temple every day.’

  ‘Exactly,’ agreed Simon. ‘My life’s a logistical nightmare since we had the new baby. I have to drop my son off at school and then struggle in to work. I hate it.’

  ‘It’s the same for me,’ said Alison. ‘I’m paying about two-thirds of my earnings to employ a full-time nanny. If I worked from home, I could come to a much more flexible, cheaper arrangement, and I’d see more of my daughter. I’d rather adjust my work to fit my life.’

  ‘Which is exactly what a virtual chambers is all about – you work where you like, when you like. In short, individually we run our own show, and the collective business is taken care of by the company.’

  All four of them sat over their drinks, gazing at Leo like school kids who had just produced to a teacher incontrovertible arguments in support of an outlandish proposition.

  There was silence for a moment. Then Leo asked, ‘What about pupils? How do you train the next generation of barristers outside the context of chambers?’

  ‘Admittedly that’s not easy. But it’s not beyond the realms of possibility to have someone working with you at home.’

  ‘Hardly ideal. And it points u
p the big flaw in your idea – in exchange for all the convenience and administrative efficiency and cost-saving, you lose everything that’s valuable about people working in a shared environment. There’s loss of tradition, conviviality – the collegiate spirit, as dear old Cameron used to call it.’ Leo turned to Simon. ‘Remember last night when you came to my room to ask me about that limitation of liability point? How are you going to do that in your virtual chambers?’

  ‘I could always ring you up.’

  ‘Yes, but you’d only ring me because you know me, and you only know me because we work alongside one another in the same set of chambers. That pool of knowledge is invaluable – and leaving aside the question of exchanging ideas and advice, there’s the social aspect to consider. Putting your head round someone’s door to have a chat, or invite them for a drink, for instance – the way you did this afternoon, Roger. And afternoon tea, the chambers’ Christmas party. These things are not insignificant. They oil the wheels of life.’

  ‘We’d still have the Christmas party,’ said Alison. ‘We could all get together in whatever place we use for cons, and stuff.’

  ‘Wonderful. What a joy that would be.’

  ‘Anyway,’ said Roger, interrupting the silence that had fallen, ‘that’s our plan, and we wondered if you’d be interested.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Well, yes.’ Roger seemed mildly embarrassed. ‘One thing we would lose by leaving 5 Caper Court is prestige. We rather hoped we might make that up by having someone like you join us. Your name carries a lot of weight.’

  ‘So you gain from my presence?’ Leo was bemused. ‘And what do I stand to gain?’

  ‘Money. Flexibility. Same as the rest of us. And you wouldn’t have the burden of responsibility you have now. Look, it’s just an idea we’re floating at present. Apart from you, we’ve only mentioned it to Anthony Cross and Juliet Gummer. We don’t need an answer straight away. Just give it your consideration – there might be certain benefits that don’t occur to you immediately.’