Breath of Corruption (7 page)

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 got 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.

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 up 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.’

‘It sounds as though your plans are pretty far advanced,’ said Leo. He finished his beer. ‘My inclination is to tell you you’re all mad – but I’ll do as you ask and think about it.’

‘Good,’ said Marcus. ‘More drinks, everyone?’

‘Not for me,’ said Leo. ‘I have to go. I’ll leave you lot to it. Thanks for the drink. Night.’

He put on his raincoat and left. As he walked down the steps to Fountain Court, heading for his car, he tried to identify the feeling of melancholy which the discussion had induced in him. I’m getting old, he thought. To people like Roger, Marcus, Simon and Alison, all under thirty-five, it was self-evident that progress dwelt in ever-advancing communications, in the flexibility they gave to life, the scope for living without reliance on others. But what about the importance of familiarity, of shared experience and surroundings, the comfort of being part of something
constant, and yet permanently changing? He turned his collar up against the rain as he passed Middle Temple Hall, and glanced up at its dark, high portals. Not for the first time, it struck Leo that the Temple, his place of work for over twenty-five years, represented more of a home to him than any place he had ever known. And such a home. Its emblem alone dated back to the twelfth century, to the Knights Templar. Chaucer had depicted one of his characters as Middle Temple cook. One of the chief aims of Wat Tyler and his followers during the Peasants’ Revolt had been to sack the Temple and throw out all the lawyers – not so far removed from the aims of Roger and his merry band, reflected Leo. How could they contemplate leaving a place of such history, such sentimental magnificence, merely to earn a few extra thousand and get up a little later in the mornings?

On the other hand, he had to admit there could be certain attractions in working from home. As he unlocked his car and got in, Leo recalled his conversation with Alasdair the previous weekend. Hadn’t Al said that if he had his time over again he’d do it differently, shaping his work round his life, instead of the other way round? Leo drove along Embankment through the evening traffic, thinking it all through. One could see the advantages, certainly. No getting into chambers early to beat the rush hour, which seemed to get worse with each passing month. None of the hassle of being head of chambers – a job where the burdensome responsibilities far outweighed any notional prestige. No need to worry about billing figures, about Maurice, or having to chair endless committees. He’d even be able to collect Oliver from school – in fact, come to think of it, work commitments 
permitting, he might be able to do it just about every day. Rachel could hardly object, since the present arrangement involved a childminder picking Oliver up and having him for a few hours till Rachel got back from work. Leo recalled the acrimonious conversation they’d had last Sunday night, Rachel’s self-confessed desire to limit Leo’s influence on Oliver. That would scupper her plans. He would become a proper part of Oliver’s life, helping him with his homework, getting to know about his friends and teachers, instead of just being an every-other-weekend fixture. By the time he reached Chelsea, he’d decided that maybe Roger was right. Perhaps the idea of their new venture possessed attractions which hadn’t been apparent at first glance.

Leo drove home, showered and changed, and went out to a birthday party being thrown by a friend in a restaurant in St James’s. Anthea had been in Bermuda since Wednesday, and wouldn’t be back until Sunday, so he was glad of the diversion. Lately he had begun to find evenings spent on his own in the house long and tedious.

Just before midnight, as he was leaving the restaurant, his mobile rang. At the other end was a young woman whose voice he didn’t recognise, but who seemed to be in a state of some agitation.