Blood Loss

by Andy Maslen

  I went inside and approached the reception desk. It was manned – and I used that word advisedly – by a most curious-looking fellow. Very short and quite fat; unkempt appearance, wearing a disgusting, ratty old jumper that looked to have been hand-knitted, and not by anyone possessed of much talent in that department. He wore pebble-lensed glasses made almost opaque by a greasy film over the glass. God knows how he could see out of them. Beyond the glasses were eyes of a burning intensity, a very deep blue, almost purple, under unkempt eyebrows that tangled and grew in all directions at once. The backs of his hands were tattooed with script; I couldn’t read it as I looked down at them, but it wasn’t English – and executed in that old font called Black Letter, like a Gothic manuscript. And his fingernails. My God, they were filthy. Long, ragged things like talons and completely black beneath as if he’d been working in the garden. Why a woman like Peta Velds had hired this monstrously ugly creature to greet her guests, I couldn’t imagine for a second, but here he was, and here I was too, seeking an appointment with his mistress.

  He looked up at me with those burning eyes and growled at me.

  “You are Caroline Murray. Ms Velds is expecting you. Sign here. Wait there.” He pointed to a low leather sofa by a coffee table piled high with magazines and books then pushed a leather-bound visitors’ book at me. I jotted down my name, Audrey’s registration number and P. Velds in the column headed, “Visiting”. As I did so, I noticed a few small specks of white on the surface of the reception counter. They looked like sugar crystals. Curioser and curioser. Then I took a seat, supposing as I did so that they mustn’t get very many visitors if he could so confidently identify me before I had even spoken. While I waited, I flicked idly through one of the magazines. It was a dense medico-scientific journal called Cell. I gave up trying to understand anything written between its covers and considered, instead, how I would approach the looming conversation with Peta Velds. I supposed I might begin by expressing my gratitude on David’s behalf for her having named the whole facility after him. I know David – if he noticed at all it wouldn’t have crossed his mind that gratitude was in order. He probably just thought it would make it easier to find his way to work. One less thing to remember.

  Apart from the somewhat odious – and odorous – did I mention he had a funny smell, of wet earth, about him? – receptionist, I was alone. I looked all around. Just a white-painted space decorated with the usual bland corporate art that says, “We have culture, as well as money”. It was quite silent, too. The man at reception merely sat inside his little enclosure, staring into space. If there were scientists they were presumably well tucked away, and to judge from my journey here, there was certainly nothing worth venturing outside for. I hadn’t even seen a bench or grassy area on which one might eat lunch on a sunny day.

  I felt something, a fly, perhaps, land on my neck and put my hand up to dislodge it. Then a woman’s voice, cultured, East European, maybe, startled me. It came from right behind me. I whirled in my seat and there stood, I assumed, Peta Velds.

  “You must be Caroline. Please, come this way. You must be thirsty after your trip from London.”

  Her accent was hard to place. Russia to Mayfair, by way of MTV, I’d say, if I had to guess.

  She held out a hand to shake. It was cold to the touch. She must have circulation problems, I thought. Her skin felt strange. Not sweaty, like some of those awful no-win-no-fee solicitors, but not dry either. A slippery sensation, like silk running through your fingers. Not unpleasant, far from it. But unsettling. I sensed something else, too. Immense strength. There was just something about the way the muscles and tendons of her fingers enfolded mine. I do believe that, had she wanted to, she could have crushed my hand inside hers until every single bone was broken. And her appearance. My goodness!

  In my line of work, I meet many people whose looks and demeanour render them quite unremarkable; all the more ironic given the crimes of which they stand accused and, when I am victorious, are convicted. I have faced, in court, a child-killer who looked like a bank clerk. A man with the bland good looks of an American TV sitcom star who beat his wife to death with a fire iron, then chopped her body up into pieces before disposing of them at the council tip in black bin liners. A pair of people traffickers – a man and a woman – who brought young girls into London and sold them into the sex trade, who looked as if they might spend their leisure time growing prize dahlias or breeding poodles. Yet here was a bona fide one-percenter, a tycoon, a philanthropist. She had even contributed to an anthology of poems for a children’s charity. I had seen it the previous Christmas in the review section of the paper and nearly puked at the ersatz sentiment these “celebrities” managed to cram into their introductions to their selections. And she looked, well, what did she look like? She looked dangerous.

  Her brow was high and entirely smooth – Botox, I assumed. A high hairline, with dark brown, almost black, hair swept back from her face. Her eyes were set wide apart creating a disturbing effect of being looked at by two people at once; they were grey, perfectly elliptical. She had one of the hardest, most direct stares I have even met, in or out of the courtroom, though this may have been a side-effect of her not seeming to need to blink. And her mouth! Full lips accentuated still further with a lipstick of the deepest red. As she smiled at me she revealed a mouthful of tiny white teeth, almost like a child’s. The effect was unsettling: a Victorian porcelain doll, grown up and made real. I am not a short woman – I’m five eight in my bare feet, plus I had changed in the car into a pair of heels, so I was my court-dominating 5’11” – but she loomed over me. She was wearing a pair of impossibly high stilettos – black patent Prada – that must have taken her height to over six feet.

  I followed her into the lift behind the reception desk. It was very small – no bigger than a downstairs cloakroom. I hate confined spaces, especially when I am with other people. I like to keep a big space around me. Now I found myself standing almost shoulder to shoulder with Peta Velds. To look at a woman like that, you would expect her to be wearing Chanel No. 5 or some other expensive perfume. May I be candid? She stank.

  Last Christmas, we found a dead fox in the field beyond David’s parents’ garden. It was writhing with maggots. Their dog, Rufus, rolled in it, and despite repeated shampooings, he still smelled of carrion: a sickly sweet odour mixed with something earthy and meaty. The smell coming off Peta Velds was like that, masked by a heavy, musky scent. I tried to breathe through my mouth. She turned and looked at my parted lips.

  “You don’t like my perfume.”

  It was a statement, not a question, but I felt compelled to reply, to apologise, caught out in a social faux pas.

  “No, no, it’s just, you know, in the lift. It’s lovely. What is it?”

  “Roja,” she pronounced the name with a rough exhalation as she pressed her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “Parfum de la Nuit. It is supposed to release your inhibitions. Maybe I will give you a spray in my office.”

  “It’s OK,” I said. “I tend to stick to boring old L’Air du Temps, I’m afraid.”

  “No matter. Though experimentation is a good thing, you know. Sometimes.”

  I watched the floor buttons light up in turn. The lift was agonisingly slow and I could feel sweat prickling in my armpits. I assumed her office would be on the fourth floor. Just one to go and I would be out of the little box and the miasma of Peta Velds’s body odour. Then, with a loud bang and a screech from somewhere above us, the lift jolted and stopped. The light went out, too.

  “I will kill those maintenance men,” she said. It should have sounded like anyone’s normal, exasperated expression of dismay when something mechanical fails. From Peta Velds’s carmine lips, it sounded as plain and fact-driven as a weather forecast. A declaration of intent. “Please, stay calm. I will call Renfield.”

  “Renfield? Is that the maintenance company? How long will they take to get here? Are they based near here?” I could hear the panic in my voi
ce, but I didn’t care whether she found me amusing, ridiculous or both. I was struggling to hold my anxiety in check and I doubted I could for more than a few minutes. My heart was starting to beat harder and I could hear a rushing in my ears.

  “No. Renfield is my factotum. You met him when you signed in. He can go to the basement and restart the machinery from the control cupboard. Now, be quiet please, while I call him.”

  I stifled a scream as her elbow nudged my side when she brought her phone out. The bright glow from the screen illuminated her face. For a second, I could have sworn she was licking her lips. She swiped and tapped to bring up his number and then spoke.

  “Renfield. The lift has malfunctioned. Please would you work your magic in the basement?” She paused. “We’ll see. Later. But for now, the lift. I have Miss Murray with me and I feel she would prefer not to spend too much more time trapped in this coffin.” She laughed, then, a silly, girlish sound, and ended the call. “So, Caroline, what shall we do to pass the time?”

  “Could you put your phone back on, please?” I said. “The dark. It’s not my favourite thing.”

  “Oh, I think my phone has not enough charge. Don’t worry. Here, hold my hand.”

  Now, that I really didn’t want to do, but I felt I had backed myself into a corner. Literally, as well as figuratively. I felt her hand slide around mine and squeeze. I admit, I am not really much of a tactile person. With David, it’s OK, because I know him, but I hate all this public kissing and arm-patting that seems de rigeur nowadays. I’m sure some of my friends have noticed and do it excessively, just to watch me squirm. I overheard a QC in chambers last year saying she thought I must have learned how to greet a friend from a book. She was correct. Well, not a book: a course. I went on a weekend seminar called, “Let Your Body Speak For You”. A dreadful experience from start to finish, led by this awful American woman called Misty or Sunshine: some meteorological name, anyway. She kept telling us to embrace our bodies’ ability to communicate. To be honest I had no idea how to do it but I did get to practise kissing “in the European manner”, as Breezy called it, and all those other physical rituals of social intercourse that flummox me, even as I attempt to perform them correctly. I reciprocated her grip, feeling faintly like a couple of girl guides telling ghost stories in the tent with the lights out.

  “Caroline. While we wait, let me tell you a story. Would you like that? It is my story.”

  Quite frankly, at that point, I would have cheerfully screamed until I fainted, rather than stand still holding another woman’s hand while waiting for my incipient panic attack to arrive, but what choice did I have?

  “OK, fine. But I do wish your Mr. Renfield would hurry up. It’s getting hot in here.”

  It was hot, and her charnel-house aroma was choking me.

  “So. Perhaps you have been wondering about my name?” She continued without waiting for my answer. “Velds is a corruption of an old Wallachian name – Feldsalen. It means field of scarlet. My family were aristocrats. We ruled an area of over 2,000 square kilometres in an area that is now torn between Bulgaria, Serbia and the Carpathian Mountains. You know this part of the world at all?”

  I confessed that I didn’t. Such travelling as I do tends to be France or Italy. Holidays, and the very, very occasional trip to the Costa del Sol if I am defending one of the old “tan and tats” brigade.

  “Well, it is rich in history. My family were good rulers. Kind to the peasants who farmed our fields and grazed their livestock on our pastureland. They were patrons of the arts, too. Music has always been a passion of the Feldsalens and we sponsored the first symphony orchestra in Wallachia. They played for the Hapsburg Emperors on more than one occasion. But all that changed in 1503.

  “Our traditional enemies were the Ottomans: Muslims from the south. In that year, they surged northwards and deposed a relative of mine. Our lands were seized for a time by the Ottomans and we were forced to seek exile with other families loyal to the Wallachian princes. But we were not to be separated from our land for long. In a bloody battle called the Night of Terror, we were resurgent, recapturing our castle and executing the leader of the Ottomans in that part of Wallachia, Mehmet the Hawk. Our family name stood for the red background of our coat of arms, but after that night, the field of scarlet was understood to refer to the battleground. The following day, 10,000 corpses littered the field and their blood had stained the earth.

  “Since that time, we have prospered and never again were we torn away from our land. You see, Caroline, land is like blood. It is what makes us a family. It is what connects us to our forbears. You do see that, don’t you? The Feldsalen name underwent a series of transformations until in the late 18th Century we adopted a simpler, easier to pronounce version: Velds. This change coincided with the rise of the Dutch East India Company, which, as I am sure you know, dominated the Asian spice trade for almost 200 years. I can assure you, a Dutch-sounding surname was a boon in those years and we established ourselves as one of the wealthiest families in Europe until the unfortunate demise of the company in 1800. More corruption, I’m afraid, though financial rather than linguistic.

  “Then, we expanded our interests in the burgeoning world of industrialisation and technology. Ah, it was a good time to be alive, Caroline, let me assure you of that. We worked with Thomas Edison, with Rockefeller, with Brunel, with J.P. Morgan: all were our partners in business ventures that brought wealth and influence.

  “Even war could not slow our ascent. In both the Great War and the Second; Korea and then Vietnam; and on into the Middle East, the Velds name was pre-eminent. Our munitions experts designed and manufactured some of the best and most successful killing machines of the Twentieth Century. Oh, our name was not on the rifles or the bullets, the gas canisters or the napalm shells: we had many subsidiaries by then. But it was Velds money, Velds expertise, Velds insights that led to those engines of war being developed at all. Our chief accountant once calculated that two in every three deaths in wartime since 1905 were caused by a Velds product. Impressive, no?”

  I had been given an opportunity to speak and found I was unable to. Normally, eloquence is not something with which I struggle. It is one of the pre-requisites of my profession and I was preternaturally good at extempore argument even before taking up the law. My parents always said I would be an actress or a lawyer.

  “From an economic perspective,” I finally stuttered out, “undoubtedly, yes. But is it really something to be proud of? That your family’s munitions have led to so much killing? So much injury? So many maimed soldiers – and civilians?”

  “Of course to be proud is good! Did we start those wars? No. Was it a Velds who murdered the Archduke Ferdinand? No. Anyway, he was a distant cousin of mine, so of course not. Did we send American troops into South East Asia to chase away Communists? No again. Was it a Velds who spent the 1990s trying to remove one leader in favour of another all over Africa and the Middle East? No again. I seem to remember it was presidents and prime ministers. Councils of ministers. Committees. Governments and their security agents. How could a traditional old European family of aristocrats lead to global mass murder? We simply traded. Built relationships. Offered help. And shall I tell you something else? We were rewarded for it. Not just the money; that was merely their end of the bargain. But with honours, too. In my home, I have photographs of my family with Lincoln, Churchill, Stalin, Eisenhower, Kennedy. With the crowned heads of half the kingdoms of Europe. They showered us with honours. Orders of this, crosses of that: distinguished, meritorious, valorous and true. No, Caroline, the Velds name is synonymous with honour, not death. People die all the time. Everybody dies, in the end. The means of their passing is less important than the way that they lived. So a Velds bullet or child’s toy at the top of a staircase; the heroic or the banal: it matters not.”

  “But to trade in death. Your profits are linked to conflict. More young men killed means more return on investment for your shareholders. Surely you must agree th
at your family’s business needs wars to stay profitable?”

  “Perhaps. But, there were wars before there was Velds Industries. We are an old family, Caroline, but we did not count Attila the Hun among our customers. Or Genghis Khan. Or Alexander the Great. Or Nero, Caligula, Julius Caesar or Marcus Aurelius. I dare say, were we to quit the defence industry tomorrow, Peace on Earth would not be the headline on the following day’s news.”

  I was furious. I was being bested in debate by an industrialist. I should have been winning. It was my training. I tried again.

  “Perhaps not. But can you sleep at night knowing that so many people lie dead on battlefields having been killed by a weapon or a shell bearing your name?”

  “I do not sleep at night. I prefer to work then. But my conscience is clear Caroline. Is yours? Do you know where your pension funds invest your money? I can tell you right now, every major pension fund in the world has millions invested in Velds Industries stock. And your profession. Do you sleep at night, knowing you are defending rapists, child-killers, murderers?”

  “That’s completely different. For a start, I am not defending rapists, child-killers or murderers, only people accused of those crimes. One of the fundamental principles underpinning Anglo Saxon law is the concept that one is innocent until proven guilty. Therefore, I defend innocent people. Second, we take cases on the taxi-rank principle – the next case to the next lawyer. No choice in the matter. I merely serve the law.”

  “Oh, I think that is just a little sanctimonious, don’t you? Are you telling me you have never sat in a client conference and known, in your heart, that the person facing you was a monster? That blood was on their hands? Your job is to find loopholes in the law, weaknesses in your opponents’ case, feeble witnesses or anxious police officers, and exploit them ruthlessly. Is that not so?”