Theo’s face flickered, the first movement it had manifested for nearly an hour. Seph Atkins examined the rim of her fingernails, cut short and lacquered an unnatural shade of natural pink. “The discretion clause. Yes. Talk me through that.”
“My client is interested in ensuring that no records of this matter are kept and that all files are removed from the system, I believe if we look at previous judgements that a standard cost is £45,000 for a case of this kind…”
“£45,000 for manslaughter,” he retorted. “£80,000 for murder.”
“As the charges are going to be manslaughter,” Mala breezed on brightly, “I don’t think we need to consider the worst-case here.”
“The judge will decide if—”
“Mr. Miller,” she cut through, harder than he’d heard her speak before. “It will be manslaughter. Now £45,000 and that’s the expunging of all records including police, and Dani Cumali’s death will be registered as drug overdose…”
“It’s an extra £700 to alter the death certificate.”
“There’ll be drugs in her system.” Mala shrugged. “She was that kind of woman.”
Seph Atkins watched Theo, who did not look her in the eye.
He walked back to the office, very, very slowly.
Chapter 26
Edward Witt came to Theo’s desk, which was unusual and did not bode well.
“…fucking Cumali case why isn’t it cleared why haven’t we got…”
As the words rolled over him, it seemed to Theo that he was hearing, not language, but shaped sound on the air, and it was strangely beautiful, even calming. His serenity only appeared to enrage his employer, who had decided a long time ago that his own presence was terrifying. Years of protein shakes, teeth-whitening treatments and secret acting classes with an unemployed actor called Reg had given Edward the physicality and voice to dominate a room.
“She sells sea shells on the sea shore!” he snarled at the mirror every night, trimming nasal hair with a pair of fine steel scissors. “The shells she sells are surely sea shells!”
Dozens of management guides had taught him that the secret to success wasn’t about being right, merely about appearing to be more right than everybody else. He knew he had the intellectual and physical prowess to cow anyone before him. Grown men had been reduced to tears by Edward’s cutting wit. He seduced women to prove a point, and could bully the gates of hell into opening, if it suited him.
But where others flinched before Edward’s wrath, Theo sat implacable. He was implacable when delivering good news, implacable when receiving bad. He endured rage and condemnation, insults that should have had him walking from the office in disgust with a tilt of the head as if trying to discern a hidden secret, not in the words, but in the soul of the man who threw them. He smiled politely without humour, spoke when spoken to, worked without complaint, achieved nothing spectacular and never failed beyond average. He was… harmless. There was almost nothing more to be said about him, and that caused Edward a great feeling of unease.
Over the years this unease had built, reinforced by Theo’s repeated failure to show any reaction to Edward’s management style whatsoever. If Theo was aware that Edward’s anxiety on this point had grown into animosity, he showed no sign of that either, and this passivity made Edward’s fury all the greater, so that he barely found himself speaking to the other man except in roars, barks and sarcastic snaps, an undignified yapping dog rather than the prowling wolf he believed himself to be.
And now he was doing it again: howling in Theo’s face, spittle flying, waving papers in front of the other man’s nose, and fucking Miller just didn’t fucking seem to care the total…
“There’s actual cases with actual profit on the desk! There’s actual indemnities that will bring something for the fucking department so you get your head out of your arse and fucking get the Cumali job cleared—I’ve got Mala Choudhary on the phone, do you have any idea what Faircloud Associates does, they’re the Company, do you understand, they’re the Company, the people who keep the lights on the water running the petrol in the pumps and you want to give them shit over some drugged-out little patty-line whore and—”
Did Theo flinch?
Edward stopped dead.
He had never seen a reaction on Theo’s face before and… was that a flinch?
Probably not. Stone again. Impassive, patient, stone. He didn’t even smile that nervous smile of stupid boys hoping that if they show willing the abuse will stop. Nor did he scowl, or glare, or retreat inwards. He simply waited, like pebbles before the sea, for the storm to pass.
“Close the Cumali job, and get on to a case with some real fucking money in it,” Edward hissed. “Or I’ll get someone else to do it.”
He threw the papers down across Theo’s desk and stalked away.
It was a great gesture, really dramatic, other people would have at the very least run outside for a shaky cigarette. But Theo stacked the papers in a pile and returned to his computer screen. Later Edward had to send his secretary to get them back, as there were documents in there he needed.
Chapter 27
Once
this was before he learned how to grow a beard
the boy who would be Theo was taken to a party in London by the boy who was actually, in fact and from birth, Theo Miller.
“It’ll be great, just the ticket. You need to be thinking about corporate sponsorship—you’ll never make it, never achieve what you need to achieve and
well yes you could wear that but tell you what and I say this with the greatest possible love why don’t you try wearing something else—you know you’re roughly my size let me see if I haven’t
splendid! Splendid! We’ll drive. No, as in my father’s driver is going to collect us and he’ll take us to…
…a train? I’ve never taken the train before isn’t it terribly crowded isn’t it full of people who are a bit…
isn’t this exciting!”
The party was at a club in Kensington. Theo’s father had some sort of connection with the place—more than a member, less than a founder, a giver of money perhaps, without the possession of the kind of excessive wealth that would make him a distraction. Theo’s father was not there. Theo’s father was very rarely in England at all these days, but Theo didn’t seem to care. He wasn’t sure when he’d last seen his parents. He wasn’t sure it mattered.
They arrived just after eight, two boys in shiny shoes, the boy who would be Theo hiding behind his dining partner, who swept up the stairs and exclaimed, “Come come come!” and like a dog at heel, the boy came.
A sickly smell of dried-out petals from a fish bowl on the entrance desk. You could leave your business card or take a chocolate liqueur from within the crispy blossom—but all the best treats were gone.
A man all in white bowing and smiling and nodding to the young gentlemen as they entered, of course, follow me.
Stairs that rose straight up towards a portrait of the queen, then split in two beneath her knowing stare, amused at a secret only she could know. Then the curving stair bent back on itself in two parts and reunited at a long landing where a ten-piece jazz band played, silver glittering off their coats, a crown woven into the hair of the lead singer, sweat on their faces, something hot and mad in their eyes.
A room that the boy who would be Theo assumed was a ballroom and was in fact a mezzanine. The great, the glorious, his tux is new, hem hem, her dress was shop-bought, tut tut, come with me come with me there are some people you simply have to meet there are…