An Immoral Code (3 page)

He took off his tie and threw it over a chair, unbuttoning his shirt. Then he lay down next to Rachel. Oliver, sated, eyes still closed, moved his head away slightly from her breast, exhaling a little bubble of milk. Rachel opened her eyes and looked at Leo. He gazed at her and traced her lips with his finger, then slid his hand down to caress her. This was the moment. If she was going to say, ‘Don’t touch me, don’t ever come near me again,’ she would say it now. But she said nothing.

‘Put him in his cot,’ murmured Leo. Wordlessly, she picked Oliver up and went through to the nursery. Then she came back and lay back down next to Leo, and let him kiss and draw her body against his, enveloped by a sense of passion that nothing could extinguish, not even the worst of his actions.

Two hours later, while Leo slept beside her, Rachel still lay awake, staring into the half-darkness. With an odd sense of detachment, she wondered why the events of the evening had not made her weep, why the pillow was not wet from her sobbing. Wasn’t that the natural reaction? But crying was easy. It was for small griefs, not for something as shattering as this.

It was clear to her that she must do something. If this was to be her life – with Leo or without him – then she could not allow herself to depend on him any longer. The last few months had been an illusion. She had even thought, in a blind and stupid way, that they might have another baby. At the thought of this she tried to laugh, but it sounded only as a whimper of pain. Life would not be the safe and certain thing she had once hoped for. The first thing to do was to regain something of herself, her
old life, and prepare herself for eventualities. She would go back to work. Nichols & Co were holding her job open for her for her period of maternity leave, and that expired in a fortnight’s time, when Oliver would be six months old. In that instant she made her decision. Tomorrow morning she would ring her senior partner and tell him. She would have no compunction about spending as much of Leo’s money as might be necessary to find the best nanny possible. Then, when she had recovered something of her independence, she might feel strong enough to make whatever decisions had to be made about the future.

She turned and glanced at the outline of Leo’s sleeping face. How could he be so at peace with himself, so untroubled by his actions? What was it like to live inside his mind? And why did all that he had told her this evening not make her hate him? If anything, the realisation of how tenuous her position was made her love him all the more helplessly. At that moment Oliver’s thin waking cry broke the silence. Rachel sighed and pushed back the bedclothes. Before she got up to go to the baby, she leant over and kissed Leo lightly on the side of his head, without knowing why, and felt, for the first time, like weeping.

Anthony arrived in chambers on Monday morning to discover that he had been loaned the services of Camilla, the pupil of one of his colleagues, Jeremy Vane, while Jeremy was on holiday. They were services which he felt he could happily have dispensed with. Camilla was fresh from Bar School, and had struck Anthony from the first as being a typical bluestocking. She was quite pretty, with reddish chestnut hair that was constantly falling in her eyes, but she was astonishingly untidy, wearing baggy black suits and crumpled white blouses, and heavy black shoes. Most women at the Bar managed to make the regulation black and white outfit into something passingly feminine, but not Camilla. She blushed a lot and always seemed to be bumping into people and things, but she made up for all of this by being supernaturally bright. She had been Jeremy’s pupil for three months now, and the other members of chambers were rather impressed by the fact that, as the first female barrister ever to be admitted to the hallowed precincts of 5 Caper Court, she was managing to handle its most arrogant and work-driven member pretty adequately. Jeremy was famous for his vanity,
his loquaciousness and his unpopularity with judges, but it had to be admitted that he was very able, and seemed set to become the chambers’ youngest QC next year, when he would be just thirty-seven. He expected Camilla to work as hard as he did, but she was robust and energetic and stood the pace.

‘Only Jeremy thought that I should keep busy while he’s away, you know,’ said Camilla, smiling radiantly at Anthony and following him into his room. It was common knowledge in chambers that Camilla was hopelessly in love with Anthony. Even Anthony was aware of this, and he returned her shining gaze with a rather dismal smile as he unwound his scarf and dumped his papers on his desk. Camilla stood before him, hands clasped behind her back, ready to do his bidding. It was rather like having an eager puppy waiting for one to throw a ball, reflected Anthony. He looked around at the mess of documents, and then glanced at her thoughtfully. Actually, maybe she could be quite useful. ‘Tell you what,’ he said, ‘we’ve got a hearing in the House of Lords on Wednesday. You can help with that.’

She nodded. ‘What’s it about?’

‘It’s this Lloyd’s Names case I’ve been involved in for a few months now. Do you know anything about it?’

‘Not really.’

‘Right,’ said Anthony, sitting down and feeling quite magisterial as he recounted the facts of the case to Camilla. ‘Our clients are all members of the Capstall syndicate, which unfortunately is one of the long-tail syndicates at Lloyd’s. Do you know what one of those is?’

Camilla, with her double first from Oxford, didn’t like to profess ignorance in any area, but here she was forced to. ‘No,’ she admitted.

‘Well, a syndicate is a group of Lloyd’s investors, and a long-tail syndicate is one specialising in insuring long-term risks, like latent disease and pollution, which might result in claims
years after the insurance was written. Now, Lloyd’s syndicates operate a three-year accounting period, and when a syndicate’s accounts are closed at the end of that three-year period, one of the decisions which the underwriter has to make is the amount of internal reinsurance to close. It’s called an RITC. It’s the amount required to reinsure any outstanding risks, and it’s the amount the Names on one year pay to the Names on the next year to take over liabilities. Sort of selling the risks on, if you like.’

‘But if you have a syndicate specialising in latent disease claims, like Capstall’s, how can you assess the amount of reinsurance to close? I mean, how can you possibly know the extent of future claims?’

Very quick on the uptake, thought Anthony, with a flicker of admiration. ‘Precisely. On long-tail syndicates, like Capstall’s, the amount of RITC has to be judged very finely by the underwriter, because the Names on the new year may be different from those on the old years. So if the RITC is too low, the Names inheriting the risks lose out, because the premium’s too low to pay the claims, but if it’s too high, the old Names lose out by having paid too much. Now, run-off contracts, which are what Capstall was writing, are similar to RITCs, but whereas RITC is an internal syndicate transaction, a run-off is an arm’s-length policy written by another reinsurer. Our fellow Capstall wrote a load of run-off policies in the eighties, as a result of which the Names were exposed to massive claims arising out of asbestos and pollution actions, mainly in the States. And the Names’ argument is that Capstall was negligent when he wrote all those run-off contracts, because he completely failed to make adequate provision for the latent disease claims which were looming, particularly asbestosis. Which is why they’re trying to recover some of their losses by suing him.’

‘But I don’t understand how he could write those run-offs.
It must have been obvious to anyone the kind of risks he was running. Why did he do it?’

‘A variety of reasons. Premiums were high and potential profits must have appeared good. Plus, he probably took the view that such claims as might be made would only arise over a very long period, and in the meantime profit would pile up on the investment income. Unfortunately, it didn’t turn out that way.’

‘But as an underwriter surely he had a duty to investigate the risks he was assuming on behalf of the Names?’

‘You would have thought so, given the amount of concern there was in the market at that time about asbestosis, but he seems to have been too lazy, or too arrogant. Or both. When you get a reputation as a high-flier, a risk-taker, you tend to live by that code. He’s a character – flamboyant, daring, all that stuff. Not exactly a man of prudence and caution. Anyway, you know the motto of Lloyd’s –
Uberrima Fides.
The utmost good faith. That seems to have been conspicuously lacking here. Now,’ sighed Anthony, ‘the asbestos and pollution claims are literally piling up in the American courts, and the courts are using any device they can to get at the insurers. Our Names are the poor suckers who have underwritten those risks. They’ve already paid out a small fortune in claims, and God knows how many more demands will be made on them. Most of them hadn’t a clue what kind of risks Capstall was underwriting.’

‘If you’re a Lloyd’s Name, your liability is unlimited, isn’t it?’ said Camilla.

‘Quite. Most people didn’t appreciate the dire implications of that, even though they were told it when they became members. The fact is,’ sighed Anthony, ‘a lot of our Names were suckered into joining Lloyd’s. I feel a bit sorry for most of them. They had no business becoming Names. But they’d heard that there was nice easy money to be made, and decided they’d like some of it.’

Camilla was thrilled to be having her most sustained
conversation with Anthony so far. She was happy just to sit and listen to him, to watch him. She found something romantic in the fact that Anthony didn’t come from the same background as the other people in chambers – people like Roderick Hayter, Cameron Renshaw, and Jeremy, who had all been to public school and Oxbridge – but had struggled to become the excellent barrister he now was, with a brilliant career ahead of him. She had heard that his mother was a primary school teacher, and that he’d only just managed to get by on scholarships and handouts when he’d first started. As Anthony swivelled around in his chair, talking about run-offs and under-reserved risks, Camilla gazed at his lean, tall figure, at his expensively cut suit and silk tie, and marvelled.

‘What’s the hearing on Wednesday about?’ she asked, forcing herself to concentrate on the case in hand and trying not to gaze too fixedly into Anthony’s wonderful brown eyes.

‘It’s a preliminary point, but pretty much a vital one. Capstall’s lawyers are saying that there’s no duty of care owed by Capstall to the Names. We say there is, and that there’s also a parallel duty in tort. We won at first instance in front of the blessed Sir Basil, but lost in the Court of Appeal.’

‘Do you think you’ll win in the House of Lords?’

Anthony grimaced. ‘God, I hope so. Because if we don’t, our claim is finished before it even gets off the ground. At any rate, Godfrey Ellwood – he’s our leader in the case – seems fairly sanguine. But you can never be sure about these things.’

‘So what can I do?’ asked Camilla, preparing to throw herself into the task of learning everything there was to learn about reinsurance and the complexities of Lloyd’s underwriting. She wanted very much to demonstrate to Anthony how able she was.

Anthony smiled. She really was rather sweet. ‘Well, you can start by putting all those files in date order, and then you can
photocopy these three bundles. Not very exciting I know, but very useful.’

She nodded, gazing apprehensively at the heaps of documents which lay stacked around Anthony’s desk. Oh, well, at least she was doing it for Anthony, which made it worthwhile. And maybe he would let her come to the hearing. She could sit in the House of Lords in her wig and gown – she didn’t think the thrilling novelty of appearing robed in court was ever going to wear off.

‘How’d it go?’ asked Felicity two days later, as Camilla puffed into chambers behind Anthony, bearing bundles of documents, her cheeks red from the cold air and the excitement of having been in the House of Lords. She had sat next to Anthony, feeling pretty important, even though she’d had nothing to do except carry things in and take notes. Anthony hadn’t had much to do either, since the leader, Godfrey Ellwood QC, had done all the talking, but she could see from the way that Ellwood spoke to him, asked his advice in an undertone while the other side’s counsel was on his feet, that Ellwood respected his views and regarded Anthony as important to the case. For Camilla, it had been bliss just to be so near to him, to smell the wondrous faint scent of his aftershave, to watch the way he held his pen, crossed his legs, yawned … all for two whole hours.

Felicity was able to gather this much just by glancing at Camilla’s face, and added, ‘The hearing, I mean.’ Felicity had already been the recipient of Camilla’s shy coffee-break confidences regarding her hero.

‘Oh, fine! Ellwood is really brilliant. We’re bound to win.’

‘I’m delighted that you think so,’ remarked Anthony, flicking through his mail and handing a couple of things to Felicity. ‘If you’re right, I’ll buy you a drink to celebrate as soon as we get the judgment.’ He strolled off to his room, and Felicity grinned and arched her eyebrows meaningfully at Camilla.

A week later, it turned out that Camilla’s confidence had not been misplaced. Godfrey Ellwood rang Anthony at the end of the day to tell him that the House of Lords had found in their favour.

‘Our clerk brought the judgment up a moment ago,’ said Ellwood. ‘I think this calls for a small celebratory drink, don’t you?’

‘Absolutely,’ agreed Anthony, recalling his promise to Camilla.

‘Shall we say, the Edgar Wallace at six?’

‘Fine.’ Anthony hung up and went in search of Camilla, anticipating with a certain kind-hearted vanity her pleasure at being taken for a drink by him. He found her in the clerks’ room, with Felicity and Henry, the head clerk, gossiping the end of the afternoon away. Deciding that an enigmatic approach might boost Camilla’s ego, he gave her his best mysterious smile and simply said, ‘How about that drink, then?’

As he left with Camilla, Henry shot a questioning look at Felicity.
‘Really?’
he asked.

‘Don’t be daft! Anthony? He’s just at that age when it does his ego good to have an adoring young thing in tow,’ replied Felicity, in her twenty-three-year-old wisdom. She shook her head as she thought of Camilla. ‘Isn’t love beautiful?’

Henry said nothing. Felicity had been at 5 Caper Court for just a year. Henry, who was only thirty, but had been made head clerk when the old clerk, Mr Slee, had retired with heart trouble, had wrestled uncomfortably with his feelings for her throughout that time. She had just been another typist at first – nice, admittedly, with her curly brown hair and infectious laugh, but in the beginning he had been too busy keeping chambers’ business flowing smoothly and cultivating an air of knowing authority to pay much attention. But there was something about Felicity that was irrepressible. She had enthusiasm,
took an interest in everything and everyone, and refused to be intimidated by the loftier senior members of chambers. For those reasons, when Henry had realised some months ago that he needed an assistant if life at 5 Caper Court was not to descend into chaos, he had promoted Felicity to the post. This had not gone down well with the word-processing sorority, but that didn’t trouble Felicity. She had taken to her new job like a duck to water. She had the right blend of savvy and common sense, she was energetic, and she was good with people – all the right qualities for a barrister’s clerk. What she lacked in organisation she made up for in quickness of thought and tongue, managing to negotiate good fees for the barristers and taking no nonsense from solicitors. In any event, Henry often thought that the typing pool was better off without her, since her spelling and secretarial skills left much to be desired. Admittedly, she did not possess that quality of polished deference which was the hallmark of the old school of barrister’s clerk, like Mr Slee, but Henry realised that that was probably becoming a thing of the past, in these days of high-tech and egalitarianism. She handled the members of chambers firmly and with cheeky good humour, and they liked her for that.

But, in addition to his appreciation of Felicity’s practical and intellectual merits, Henry had rapidly grown aware that feelings of an altogether more lyrical kind stirred within him. He was an unremarkable young man, of medium height, with thinning dark hair and a pleasant oval face, softly spoken and mildly jovial, but he possessed a passionate heart. Such girlfriends as he had tended to be mild-mannered, unexciting girls of his own type, but in Felicity, with her volatile ways and raucous spirit, he felt he had met the woman of his dreams. She was unpredictable, often vulgar, and occasionally bad-tempered, but Henry had discovered that he loved all of these qualities, just as he loved her shocking pink angora sweater and her black lycra
micro-skirts. But he felt she was far beyond his reach. He knew all about her turbulent life with her boyfriend, Vince, and felt he could never compete. Felicity obviously adored Vince. Besides, Henry was keenly aware of the conventions of chambers, and knew that the fact that he and Felicity worked together in a professional capacity precluded any possibility of romance. He consoled himself with this notion, telling himself that if they had not worked together, things might be very different. Henry accepted that his feelings must stay unrequited, but they remained to trouble him every working day.