Page 42 of Behind Frenemy Lines

Charles

Shaw rang Tuesday afternoon. He tried my personal phone first. Then my office phone started ringing.

Didn’t pick up. Farah had popped by my office first thing in the morning to talk about the Shaw instruction.

Explained Kriya’s concerns, though I didn’t identify them as hers. Focused on the reputational risk to the firm of taking the matter on.

Farah got the point: “This needs to go to the risk management committee. The CDD team should escalate it, since the prospective client is a politically exposed person. But can you drop them a line and check they will do it? Who’s the relationship partner for Blackmount, can you remind me?”

CG: “Robert Anderson.”

Farah pursed her lips. “He’ll put up a fight, if we say we’re not going to act. All right, leave it with me.”

CG: “If the client chases, I’ll put him off, shall I?”

Farah: “That’s right. Tell him it’s going through our processes, if you must. But it’s probably best to avoid engaging until we’ve got a better sense of where it’s going to fall out.”

So I let my office phone ring until it stopped.

Then my personal phone buzzed. Shaw had sent a WhatsApp message. Notification read:

Call me when you’ve got a moment

Put my phone aside without tapping into the message, so Shaw wouldn’t know I’d read it.

Felt unnatural ignoring a client, but I was following instructions, after all. Irrelevant that I wasn’t particularly keen on talking to Shaw. Hadn’t enjoyed it the last time. And if I’d known it was going to upset Kriya…

Nothing I could do about it. She’d seemed all right at dinner the night before, not angry at me or anything like that.

But if that was the last time I was going to see her—which didn’t, at the moment, seem out of the question—I could wish our disagreement about the case hadn’t been hanging over it.

Stop thinking about Kriya. Path to nowhere.

Shaw got me the next day, Wednesday morning. Was waiting to hear from chambers about trial dates when my work mobile rang. No caller ID. Picked up, assuming it was the clerk coming back to me.

Shaw: “Morning, Charlie. I tried to catch you yesterday, but I didn’t get through. Did you see my message?”

CG, clearing throat: “I haven’t been checking my phone, sorry. It’s been busy.”

Shaw: “No worries. I’m at Swithin Watkins now, came by to talk to Rob about a deal we’re doing. We’re wrapping up now, but I wanted to grab you while I’m here. You free to talk? It’s to do with this case you’re picking up for my client. We’ve got a little problem on our hands.”

Shaw’s tone was light, but I felt a sense of foreboding.

CG: “We’re still in the process of doing our checks, so we aren’t cleared to act yet. It’s probably best if we avoid discussing the case till we’ve completed the processes to register Mr. Jamaludin—”

Shaw: “Call him ‘the boss,’ that’s what I do. He doesn’t appreciate having his name bandied around. Look, mate, you do what you have to, we understand that. But I need to talk to you. Won’t take two minutes. Hold on.”

Could hear Shaw conferring with someone else, before his voice came back on the line.

Shaw: “Rob says he’ll walk me down to your office.”

Looked around my office. One does less on paper now than twelve years ago when I started as a trainee. But I was still surrounded by stacks of files with clients’ names on them, papers crammed with confidential information, notes on my noticeboard with sensitive internal data.

What was Robert Anderson thinking? Hardly correct practice to agree to walk a client through the working areas of the firm. But then again, Shaw was hard to say no to.

CG: “There’s no need for that. I’ll come and meet you. Are you on fourteenth floor?”

Shaw: “I’m outside the building. We went for a coffee. You good to come out now?”

It was only Shaw waiting on the pavement outside the firm when I got out.

Shaw: “I sent Rob back to his desk to get on with things. Blackmount’s bid two hundred million for a major fashion brand”—told me the name.

“All very hush hush till the deal’s announced, but I know you won’t say anything.

We want to get it through ASAP, so Rob won’t be sleeping for the next few weeks.

” Laughed. “But he’s all right. He made equity partner last year on the strength of our fees. Got to make him work for it, eh?”

He glanced around. “Mind if we walk? Trying to keep my steps up.” Held up his wrist to show me his fitness tracker.

Patek Philippe on his other wrist. I recognised it because Ba got me a fake for my twenty-first birthday. He was proud of it: “This dealer, he sources the best fakes for the foreigners to buy. I got this one for $5,000. If it was real, it would cost over $1 million.”

Had to stop wearing the watch: it kept losing time. A year after Ba gave it to me, I took it out of a drawer and found the fake leather coming off the strap in flakes. Didn’t tell him.

Shaw’s watch probably cost over a hundred grand pound sterling. No fakes for him.

Shaw: “We could go along the river. It’s not too far from here, is it?”

We walked along the curve of Victoria Embankment, dodging City workers and the occasional tourist. Bikes whizzed past us. Cars, taxis, and vans queued on the far side of the cycle lane, inching along as the traffic lights changed.

Shaw wanted to be by the water, but there were construction hoardings up along the river. We stayed on our side of the road, looking for a gap.

It was muggy, the sky greyish white. Shaw took off his jacket and slung it over his arm.

I kept mine on. Felt the need for protection, somehow.

CG: “You said there’s a problem with the case?”

Shaw: “I’d say so, yeah. I had a surprise call late last night. Got rung up by the old bat herself, Helen Daley.”

My face went rigid. Could feel Shaw’s eyes on me.

Shaw: “She said she’s received a tip-off, heard I’m instructing a major London law firm to sue her. Wanted to give me the chance to comment before posting about it on her blog.”

Could only hope the fact I’m bad at emotions was helping me now: often other people can’t seem to tell what I’m feeling, any more than I can guess what they’re feeling.

Couldn’t fault them. I can’t always guess what I’m feeling myself. On this occasion, though, I knew. Main thing I felt was guilt, that I hadn’t tried harder to reassure Kriya. There must have been something I could have said, so she wouldn’t have felt she needed to do this.

CG: “What did you say?”

Shaw: “I told her she’d hear from my lawyers. Then I hung up and blocked her.”

CG: “That seems sensible.”

Shaw: “What I can’t work out is, how’d she get my number? I’m not one for the limelight. I stay behind the scenes. That’s where I’m most useful to the boss. So I’m asking myself, who put Helen Daley on to me?” Gave me a sidelong look. “You got any ideas, Charlie?”

CG: “You don’t have any mutual contacts?”

Shaw: “That’s what I’m wondering.” Eyed me in a pointed way.

Did he think I’d done it? Would be better than it being pinned on Kriya. Should I say it was me?

But did this leak have anything to do with Kriya? She’d talked about it, but that didn’t mean she’d done it. Besides, I couldn’t imagine she’d agreed to pass Shaw’s number to Helen Daley, so Daley could ring Shaw and give her away.

Shaw: “There must be something we can do. Can we sue whoever leaked the number? It must be some kind of, what d’you call it, a data protection crime?”

CG: “We’d have to think about what the cause of action would be.” That’s the formula Farah uses when she means You haven’t got a case. “Though we’d have to know who it was, in order to mount a claim.”

Shaw: “That’s what I’m saying. There’s got to be a leak somewhere. I didn’t give the bloody woman my number.”

We’d come to the end of the hoardings. The brown waters of the Thames could be seen past the low wall on the other side of the road. We crossed the road.

Shaw came to a stop by the wall along the river. We were opposite the Oxo Tower, its grey tower rising up from the brick fa c ade. The sun had emerged, shining down through chinks in the clouds, sparking light off the waves.

Was sweating in my jacket. Shaw unbuttoned his cuffs and pushed up his sleeves.

Shaw: “That Indian girl you were with on Monday. She’s Malaysian, yeah?”

CG: “I believe so.” Said it quite naturally, as though I didn’t know for certain.

Shaw: “You didn’t mention her before.”

CG: “She stepped in to help get the advice note over the line. There wasn’t much spare capacity in the team, and she volunteered.”

Would have said something about Kriya’s cross-border experience in the ordinary course of things, to make it sound less like she was a warm body we’d chucked at our resource problem.

But this wasn’t an ordinary conversation. Whatever it was Shaw was driving at, I didn’t want Kriya to have any part in it.

Shaw: “She hasn’t been with the firm for long. I looked her up online.”

CG: “No, she was a recent hire, from Brown, Rosenburg and Cushway.” That much he already knew, if he’d seen her LinkedIn profile.

Shaw was smiling. Familiar feeling: He was in on the joke, and I wasn’t. Because I was the joke. “You’d vouch for her?”

CG: “Yes. She’s an excellent lawyer.”

Shaw: “You’re wondering why I’m asking all these questions.”

Wasn’t the only thing I was wondering. Was chiefly ruminating on what a psychiatric assessment would make of Shaw.

Shaw: “I pride myself on my judgment of character. It’s never let me down. And I trust you, Charlie. But this Kriya… I’m not so sure about her involvement. You know, she might think she knows more than she does.”

CG: “She’s leaving the firm, so she won’t be involved in this matter going forward.”

Shaw raised his eyebrows. “Oh, is it? Now, see, this is why we came to you.” Clapped me on the shoulder. Seemed genuinely pleased. “You anticipate what we want, and you make it happen.”

CG: “Kriya resigned for unrelated reasons.”