“Just before we begin, I will be recording this conversation, is that acceptable?”
“Fine.”
A tablet, laid down on the glass table between them, a glimpse of words and images; is that the blasted remnants of Dani Cumali’s head that she swipes away, quick, searching for more pertinent things?
“Thank you—yes, please send Ms. Atkins in.”
A command issued to her watch, Theo thought for a moment that Mala Choudhary had gone mad, but no, the watch records her heartbeat, steps walked, calories burned, emails received and of course links to her assistant’s assistant, for all matters where her assistant is busy with more important assisting.
They waited.
Theo felt his fingers ripple, once along the desk, looked to see if Mala had spotted the movement, saw no sign, put his hands carefully in his lap, folded into a fist one over the other so tight it hurt.
Seph Atkins entered the room. She wore a white shirt and blue jeans. She had no jewellery, no make-up, knew that their absence made her handsome. She glanced at Theo, turned her attention to Mala, smiled a smile of tiny white teeth, glanced back to Theo and paused.
Stopped.
Looked again.
Theo stood up, nodded. “Ms. Atkins.”
“Ms. Atkins, this is Mr. Miller,” exhaled Mala, smooth as single cream, pulling back a chair for her client. “He’s from the Audit Office.”
Seph sat without taking her eyes off Theo’s face. Mala swung her tablet round, tapped tapped tapped, looked up with a burst of practised brightness, all smile and eye, announced: “Shall we get down to business? Our office has done a preliminary assessment of the case but before sharing our conclusions I was wondering where the Audit Office was currently at in processing this matter?”
Through the dry heat in his skin, a familiar phrase to carry him through. “We have conducted the initial assessment, and are looking at premeditated first-degree murder as our initial—”
“Mr. Miller I have to stop you right there, we will of course not be accepting that charge in this case.”
Theo met Mala’s eyes. Her eyes were easier to meet than Seph Atkins’, and there was that within them that stirred a memory of something resembling… was it anger? He wasn’t sure. He found it hard to remember having felt anything of anything much for a very, very long time.
“We are confident of success in a first-degree charge. Ms. Atkins entered Ms. Cumali’s house for no other purpose to kill her. Her motivation was—”
“Self-defence.”
“Ms. Atkins had a gun. No fingerprints were found on it; Dani Cumali certainly did not clean her fingerprints off the weapon after she was dead. The room had been searched, the bullets were fired at close range to centre mass, there was no attempt to disable, Dani was…”
He stopped himself.
Uncoiled his fingers, aching in a clump in his lap. Looked away. Felt Seph Atkins’ gaze on him still, silent, smiling.
Words from Mala Choudhary. Second-degree, manslaughter, there are mitigating circumstances you see, Ms. Cumali was in fact—if you’ll look at these documents yes there—a history of criminal activities of…
Theo half-listens.
There was a case he worked once, a boy, seven, was run over by three teenagers. They hit him, then rolled over him four more times, laughing, and he died. They filmed the whole thing; it was great, it was hilarious it was…
But the teenagers had money, and the boy was autistic and assessed as being unlikely to contribute very much to society. Then it turned out his mother was an immigrant anyway so it wasn’t like the boy was even a citizen just a scrounger on the nanny state, and that had been Theo’s first case, his first proper homicide as a senior auditor and how much had that cost?
How much had the boys paid?
He thought… if he closed his eyes… maybe £35,000 each?
Maybe a little more, because they’d also damaged a neighbour’s car, and it was a Volvo.
“If you look here you’ll see that our initial assessment of Dani Cumali’s life was that actually she was barely worth £17,000, and that’s with the societal cost of her demise thrown in, she was in fact a burden on the exchequer and I have seen reports from her managers saying that she was a disruptive element, even with the good fortune to have got parole she was…”
The parents had paid their children’s indemnity, and one of the kids had been sent off to boarding school on the Isle of Man. The other two had been grounded for a month. They’d also paid for a discretion clause, and no records were retained.
“A drug user, there are reports that Cumali had been found with—”
He stood up. “Excuse me,” he barked, cutting through Mala’s flow. “May I use the bathroom?”
“Of course,” she replied, leaning a little away from the desk, surprised, reassessing. “All the way down on the right.”
“Thank you.”
He marched through the office, beautiful, glass and acrylic canvas, comfy sofas in a comfy break room for people to put their feet up and choose a magazine from the extensive and frequently updated collection of lifestyle guides, adventure fables and fashion gloss; the kind of office every kid raised through every corporate—educational partnership school dreamed of working in. Even in Shawford they’d been shown pictures of Budgetfood’s corporate HQ and three students who’d completed their Gold Enterprise Certificates were taken on a tour as a special treat.
He locked himself in a cubicle in the bathroom and felt
he felt
once upon a time he’d had these feelings he’d felt things there’d been a case a woman raped repeatedly by her partner, that was before they changed the law so that rape within relationships was just a misdemeanour because frankly common sense
the indemnity had been £7800, but he made that every week with extras so he paid it and did it again
and again
and again
and she
“You’ve already got the previous case file, just use that!” exclaimed Edward. “We can’t be clogging up the system!”
what happened to her she jumped in front of a train she
Theo had felt something then, hadn’t he?
The old guy beaten to death in his flat the kids who did it couldn’t pay the indemnity but that’s all right the Company sponsored them, put them on its Special Securities team, they’re doing well now they’re big shots in the world of private peace solutions…
Dani Cumali with her brains blown out not like her case is special not like it matters more or less or differently or
The man called Theo Miller stares at a grey toilet wall and is grateful that it is not a mirror.
A swoosh of door. The door is heavy, with a furry strip at its bottom that picks up grey felted dust. Footsteps. A tap. A squelch of soap. The tap stopped. A hot-air dryer, rippling skin like tissue paper in a storm. Stopped. No footsteps. No door. Theo waited. Silence in the bathroom. Theo opened the door of the cubicle.
Seph Atkins looked at him through the mirror, hands framing the sink on which she leaned, smiling. “I saw you,” she breathed. “I saw you.”
“Ms. Atkins, you appear to have the wrong bathroom, this is the—”
“At the enclave. You were in the door. You made like a heron.”
Not turning, she straightened up, stuck her arms out to the side, elbows bent at ninety degrees, stood on one leg and waggled her tongue. For a moment she wobbled there, eyes popping, then relaxed, beamed, and walked away.
In the office, Seph Atkins did not speak. Mala Choudhary talked and talked and Theo pretended to listen.
And at the end Mala said, “Well that was all very interesting. If you persist with this first-degree nonsense we will of course take you to court where I have no doubt you’ll lose, meanwhile there is the discretion clause…”