Chapter 21
We all took seats at the dining table. Ollie sat across from me and Simon.
“Right, well, there’s this letter,” I said.
“Start from the beginning,” Ollie interrupted.
I inhaled through my nose. “Okay, fine. Right, um. Right, so Riz and Simon” – I gestured at Simon, and both men rolled their eyes – “got back together in February. They’re engaged. But it was set up by Riz’s campaign manager, Marina.”
“Okaaaaay,” Ollie said. “Already not liking this.”
“Oh, it gets so much worse,” I said. “So, the campaign starts. Riz is twenty points behind Guy and the Lib Dem candidate, Suzy. But that’s to be expected because it’s Dorset.”
Ollie nodded. “Can I get either of you a drink?”
“No, please pay attention – Arden, show him the letter.”
I sighed. “Fine.” I grabbed it out of my pocket. It had become crumpled. “Long story short, we found this in Riz’s possessions the other day.”
I slid it across to him. Ollie read it. “This is from my office,” he said.
We both nodded.
“We’d gathered that,” Simon said. Ollie glared at him.
“Be nice,” I whispered. Simon rolled his eyes.
“This is taking too long. Look, did Riz come to visit you or not? He may have wanted information about Arden.”
Ollie was puzzled. “Why would he want information on Arden?” He looked at me. “You’re not in danger, are you? And what happened to your arm?”
“Oh, that. I fell over on a run.”
“We don’t know why he wanted info on Arden,” Simon interrupted. “We think he may have been looking for dirt to smear him with.”
“So, he came to me?” Ollie asked. “Hm. I don’t remember writing this letter. It’s a fairly generic response, so I probably would have asked Janet to draft it. I don’t recognise the name.”
“Yes, it’s addressed to a Mrs S Murray.”
“And we don’t know who that is. Do you have any clients called that?”
Ollie shook his head. “Ard, babe, you know I can’t tell you that.”
Simon glared at this answer. “Can’t or won’t?”
“Excuse me?” Ollie turned to me. “Can you call off your ginger hound, please?”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Can we focus and not snipe at each other?” I could feel the worst tension headache coming on.
“I’ll get us all a drink of something to cool down,” Ollie said and left the table.
“God, is he always this obtuse?” Simon muttered.
I was tempted to remind him that Ollie was a lawyer and got paid by the hour.
Ollie returned with three glasses of water. He put mine down in front of me and rubbed my shoulder. “You cut your head when you fell, as well? Ouch.” He reached up and ran his fingers through my hair to look at it.
I could feel Simon trying not to fly into a rage next to me. I smiled at Ollie and removed his hand. “We’ve not much time. Could you … Could you check with Janet? Maybe she knows the name?”
“Sure, but I’m limited to what I can tell you. Honestly, Arden, you know they can disbar me for this sort of stuff.”
I pulled a face. “You once said the Bar Standards Board would let Charles Manson practise, whereas solicitors get struck off if they so much as blow their nose on the wrong side of the road.”
“Yes, well, that was before my chambers realised about my digging into Miles Sweet. They sacked poor Tim even though he hadn’t done anything wrong.”
I shivered. That man’s name.
Ollie sighed but then grabbed his phone. “I’ll give Janet a ring.” He went into the study.
Simon was silent. I pushed his glass towards him. “London tap water. Drink it all up, it’s the yummiest in the world.”
“You let him call you ‘babe’ still.”
I shrugged. “Force of habit.”
“You slept with him after the photos were leaked. But you won’t tell him about where you got your bruises.”
“I …” I didn’t want to talk about this. “It’s private. Ollie and I are complicated. We were basically married and … we’re detangling ourselves. Slowly.”
“What does that make Tarquin then?”
“Ollie and I are broken up, okay?” I growled. My temper was close to snapping. “It was a relapse.”
It was a million degrees, my entire body ached, I was lying to Ollie, and Simon was being a prick. Today could, quite frankly, sit on it and swivel.
Ollie came back into the room, and I prayed he hadn’t heard what I’d said. “It’s the weirdest bloody thing. Janet has never heard of S Murray. Nor do we have any record of them on file as a client.”
“But … how?” I asked.
“She has to be lying,” Simon said. I shook my head. Nope, Janet was painfully loyal to Ollie. That I knew all too well. Simon stood up and started pacing. Christ, the man must wear out carpets.
Ollie was staring at his phone as if the answer would magically jump out at him.
“Janet is the only person at the chambers who is allowed to sign letters in my name. It’d be their job instantly if anyone else did so.
Everyone knows it, and we’ve never had cases of people doing it.
At other chambers, it crops up sometimes, but the partners at mine are so strict they’d never stand for it.
” He shook his head. “But even the wording used here, it’s Janet’s voice.
This is the exact phrase she uses in all her generic hi, chasing this up for you, sir letters. She sends ten per day.”
Simon paced harder.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” Ollie said. “Why was Riz looking for dirt on you in the first place? You said you only met him that one time at the village hall.”
Simon stopped pacing, and we looked at each other. I took a deep breath. “Riz was the person who leaked the photos of Guy Frobisher.”
Ollie’s reactions were going to be seared into my brain for all time.
At first, he went bug-eyed and made a choking noise, then he took a long gulp of water.
Then he went slightly red and put his head between his knees.
Then he joined Simon in pacing, and then he sat down again very suddenly and was quite pale.
“This full story,” he said.
“Yes?”
“I think you should tell me.”
“I thought you didn’t need to know?”
“That was before I knew you were connected to the biggest fucking story to hit British politics since the Profumo Affair! Jesus, Arden, that Birmingham MP got caught trying to flee the country after the photos of her dogging got leaked!”
“We don’t have time to give him the whole story!” Simon snapped. “It’s already gone five o’clock. Look.” He held up his phone. “Do you recognise this man?”
He had Riz’s photo on his screen.
“Yes, that’s Riz Patel. The chap who was murdered.”
“Did you ever meet him, or did he come to your office?”
“No, I only saw him on TV.”
“Right.” He pressed buttons frantically. “What about this woman?” He held up Marina Holt’s photo. Ollie shook his head.
Suzy Rabbit? A head shake.
Errol Mottley? A head shake.
“What about this man?” he said, holding up another photo.
“Who’s that?” I asked.
“Peter Holt. Marina’s husband.”
“Isn’t he in prison?”
“It’s worth a shot. That letter could be old.”
I held it up. “It’s dated last month.”
Simon slammed his fist down on the table, and both Ollie and I jumped. “I meant, fuck, that the person could have had an appointment with Ollie months and months ago – years ago – and they only asked the letter to be sent now.”
There was a long silence. Simon crossed the room and stood by the window, his hands resting on the panes of glass, his head bowed.
I didn’t dare move a muscle. Ollie shifted the paper out of the way of the water that had spilt from his glass when Simon banged the table.
I could hear Simon breathing heavily from the window.
Counting backwards from one hundred, maybe, so he didn’t kill both of us.
“In two days,” Simon said after the silence had dragged on for longer than any of us were comfortable with, “Suzy Rabbit is going to get elected to Parliament, and I need to know she was not part of this. I cannot let that happen. I will not have a murderer sitting in the House of Commons.”
Spies. Deep down, they’re patriots, really.
Ollie gave a large exhale. He grabbed his phone.
“Janet, me again. Look, massive favour. I need a list of every client and matter I’ve handled since joining chambers couriered over to my place.
Yes, I know it’s five thirty. Look, I— yes, I know, I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t super important.
Yes, thank you, yes, grab whoever you can, promise everyone in the office a bottle of their favourite tipple on me if they help you. Thank you.”
He hung up. “So, who wants a takeaway?”
Reader, if anyone ever says, “Hey, you know what’d be fun?
”, the answer they are not looking for is: “Digging through your ex-boyfriend’s near-ten-year-long list of clients spanning almost the length of his career, and cross-referencing every name and address searching for people who may or may not have been plotting to kill someone. ”
At midnight, we took a break.
I moved the rice in my bowl of chicken korma around. Simon was on the sofa swigging a beer, while Ollie and I sat on the floor around the coffee table, munching on the last dregs of our curries.
“This isn’t as good as normal.” I let the rice fall off my fork.
“Yeah,” Ollie said. “Spice Palace closed last year. I’m trying, slowly but surely, all the other Indian places nearby. This is from Punjabi Dreams.”
I pulled a face. “With the terrible neon elephant in the window next to the Nigerian weave shop? God.”
“I know. But they’re better than Taj Ma-hungry. Their jalfrezi and I were not the best of friends.”
“How many more boxes do we have?” Simon asked. It was the first time he’d spoken in an hour or so.
“A lot,” Ollie said. “But those are all years old. Unless your ex was plotting this back in 2010, I don’t think he’ll be in there.”
“He’s not my ex,” Simon muttered. He reached forward and then paused.
Ollie pulled an awkward face at me. “Sorry,” he mouthed.
Simon was still frowning at the takeaway boxes. “Who ate all the poppadoms?” he asked.