Breath of Corruption Read Free Page A

man, Sir Dudley seemed to have peculiar difficulty in listening dispassionately to his lawyer rehearsing the arguments of his opponents.
    ‘I didn’t come here to listen to you telling me the other side have a good case, Mr Davies – quite the opposite!’
    ‘Sir Dudley, I’m merely trying to approach the matter realistically. I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t explore fully the respective strengths and weaknesses of both sides’ arguments. Forgive me if, in so doing, I occasionally seem to stray into their territory. I have to do so to maintain a proper perspective. I’m on your side.’ Leo’s smile was charming and entirely without condescension. ‘That’s why we’re both here.’
    Sir Dudley, slightly mollified, tried to contain his impatience, but the conference grew laborious. Sir Dudley felt he understood the rights and wrongs of the case better than anyone else, and found it difficult to accept Leo’s advice with any humility. In the end Leo did what he always did with clients of similar intransigence – he held his peace and listened as Sir Dudley told him how to run the case, while he made up his own mind on the issues.
    Sir Dudley departed at the end of the meeting with his vanity satisfied, and a sense that he was in control of matters. Leo felt merely wearied by the difficult and somewhatconfrontational nature of the afternoon’s business, and by the knowledge that there would be more such conferences throughout the duration of the case. Not for the first time that week, he found himself wondering if it was all really worth it. Perhaps in his younger days he had possessed some kind of immunity to vexatious clients, but these days he found people like Sir Dudley extremely tiresome.
    I’m getting old, thought Leo. If it weren’t for the mortgage on the Chelsea house and Oliver’s education … he’d what? Pack it all in? Hardly. Work was his existence. It was his world, his meat and drink. Everything else was a mere diversion. He was probably just feeling jaded because he’d taken on so much lately. Time for a bit of relaxation. There were papers to read on a new reinsurance case, but they could wait till Monday.
    Leo took his mobile from his pocket and tapped in Anthea’s number, but it went straight to voicemail. He left a message suggesting dinner. After sending a couple of emails to solicitors, he put his papers together and left chambers. He walked through Cloisters and down the cobbled slope of King’s Bench Walk to where his car was parked, and ten minutes later his Aston Martin was weaving its slow way through the early-evening traffic towards Chelsea.
    When Anthea picked up Leo’s voicemail message, the urge to call him back and agree to meet him was almost irresistible. Despite what she’d said to Lolly, she was a little in love with him. But that was just the point. If she made herself available every time he wanted to see her, he’d lose interest. Men like Leo preferred to make the running, and maintaininguncertainty and unpredictability in an affair was an art. She mustn’t make herself too hard to pin down, or he might get bored – she needed to remain just elusive enough to keep things tantalising and hot. She gave a little anguished sigh, trying not to think of what she was missing, and focused on the most effective response. She could text him to say she was busy. Or she could just stay silent.
    In the end she opted for the latter as being cooler, and switched off her phone for the rest of the evening so that she didn’t have to face the temptation of a further call from him. For Anthea, this was indeed a sacrifice – the first of many she was prepared to make to hold the attention of Leo Davies. In the long run, she was sure it would be worth it.
    Leo’s house stood in a quiet Chelsea crescent, in the expensive hinterland between Cheyne Walk and the King’s Road. With five bedrooms, it was too big to meet the requirements of a single man, but he had bought it