Breath of Corruption Read Free

Davies was. She passed Jeremy Vane puffing up the staircase – the QC, on his way back from court, looked hot and pink in his bands and courtroom attire, a bundle of papers under his arm. ‘’Lo, Mr Vane,’ said Felicity brightly. ‘Lovely day!’
    Jeremy muttered some ill-tempered acknowledgement of her greeting and carried on up to his room. Fat tosser, thought Felicity. Like a few others in chambers whose names she could mention – patronising, toffee-nosed, public-school-and-Oxbridge-educated gits – he treated the clerks with the utmost condescension, as though his living didn’t depend on them. Not like Leo, who didn’t share the illusion that a privileged upbringing somehow conferred social and intellectual superiority. He understood and got on with people like Felicity, and the other clerks, because he didn’t think himself any better than they were – just luckier.
    A grammar-school boy from Wales, Leo Davies had workedhis way to the top of his profession through a combination of brilliance and grinding application. Such tastes as he had acquired along the way – a penchant for expensive cars and clothing, and a passion for collecting pieces of modern art – were real and unaffected, and perhaps because of his lack of pretension he was entirely fearless, in court and out of it. The one weakness in his otherwise robust character – and Leo himself, having no regard for moral conventions, considered it a susceptibility rather than a weakness – was his sexual ambivalence, for he found men just as attractive as women. His past was littered with casual affairs with both sexes, and although he had always endeavoured to be as discreet as possible, the consequences had occasionally proved dire. He had often promised himself that he would mend his ways – for the sake of his infant son, Oliver, if for no one else – but temptation invariably proved irresistible. As a philanderer, Leo was far from heartless. He could be ruthless in his manipulation of lovers for his own ends, as testified by his short-lived marriage, but he found emotional entanglements exhausting, and had this past year vowed to indulge only in the most meaningless and light-hearted relationships. Hence his recent dalliance with Anthea Grieves-Brown, whose vacuity and beauty he found both refreshing and undemanding. He thought of her as he slipped on his jacket and left his room to go in search of lunch. It was a Friday, and although they had made no arrangement to meet, he decided he would call her later and suggest dinner.

CHAPTER THREE
    The conference with Sir Dudley Humble lasted a little over two hours, and was trying for a number of reasons, not least of which was that Sir Dudley was an intractable individual, an ex-army man with a strong controlling streak which made it difficult for him to surrender the management of his affairs, including his legal ones, to others. He had built up Humble Construction Services from scratch, and had earned his knighthood, and a couple of lucrative government contracts into the bargain, through his military connections and in the time-honoured tradition of extending discreet but generous donations to the governing political party of the day. He sat at the other side of the conference table in Leo’s room, a tall, square-faced man with shrewd eyes and grizzled white hair and eyebrows, and listened closely as Leo brought him up to date on progress. The case itself was, from Leo’s point of view, dreary enough. Three years ago Humble Construction Services had contracted to build an aluminium smelting plant in Ukraine, and a row had broken out with one of thesubcontractors, with the result that Humble Construction were now suing for breach of contract.
    Leo went through the niceties of the contract at some length – often interrupted by terse observations from Sir Dudley – and then set out the arguments of the respective parties as he saw them. Here it was that the problems began. For an intelligent