by James Hazel
‘Tell me about your poison experiments, Dr Schneider. That was your specialism, wasn’t it?’ Ruck said, tearing his eyes away from the woman in the corner.
‘Ah, so you’re a chemist, Herr Ruck?’
Ruck took another drag. ‘We heard some intriguing rumours. That you were experimenting with poison, something so powerful that victims would mutilate themselves just to stop the pain from spreading through their bodies.’
Schneider didn’t respond but fixed Ruck with an expression of mild indifference.
‘Further evidence was found that other SS officers and camp guards would gather to watch the administration of this drug. Now why would that be?’
‘You would not understand.’
‘Try me.’
Schneider laughed. ‘Herr Ruck, you flatter yourself. How could you possibly comprehend something you have never witnessed?’
‘What was it, Doctor?’ Ruck taunted. ‘What was your audience deriving from the proceedings? Pleasure? Entertainment? Enlightenment?’
‘You want to know how to make the poison, Herr Ruck? Fine – I will show you. Give me your pen. And, Scribe, a piece of your writing paper.’
Schneider turned his head as far as he could and motioned towards the woman. Ruck waited a moment, chewing on his cigarette. He wasn’t going to unshackle his prisoner and arm him with a pen without careful thought. After a short while, he nodded at the two guards. The first covered Schneider with his Lewis gun while the second undid the cuffs and placed a piece of paper on the desk. Schneider expectantly looked up at Ruck, who hesitated before tossing it in the doctor’s direction. Schneider took it and scribbled something on the page, then threw the pen back.
Ruck took the paper and examined it. ‘You’re modifying strychnine. Why? It is already an efficient killer, is it not?’
‘Perhaps too efficient.’
Ruck grimaced. He had had the misfortune of witnessing death by strychnine, a naturally occurring alkaloid extracted from the seeds of the native Indian strychnine tree. The poison worked quickly but death was agonising – the victims would spasm and contort grotesquely as though they were possessed.
‘What was the purpose of these modifications?’
‘Quite simply to keep death at the door without opening it and letting him in.’
‘A poor way to carry out interrogation,’ Ruck observed. ‘If that was the intention.’
‘It was not.’
‘Then what? What was the point?’
Schneider looked vaguely amused. ‘For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.’
‘John 3:16.’
‘You know your Bible, Herr Ruck. How quaint.’
‘My father was a rector. A good, honest man. Right up until the Nazi bomb exploded in his face and killed him.’
Schneider shrugged. His face was a mask. The skin around his eyes and mouth was drawn so taut there was little room for expression.
He leant forward and said in a low tone, ‘How familiar are you, Herr Ruck, with Him?’ He pointed upwards.
‘God?’
‘Of course. God.’
‘Well enough to know that He was absent from Buchenwald during your reign.’
‘No.’ Schneider shook his head emphatically. ‘That is naive. What I achieved offered those who believed in His existence the opportunity to leave this world temporarily and look upon the Holy Trinity.’
‘You saw God? Through the torture of a human being?’
‘A useless eater – not a human being.’
Ruck sat back in his chair, thoughtful. He glanced over at the typist. For the first time, her fingers slipped on the keys. The guards shuffled their feet. Outside, a gust of wind rattled the barn doors – a storm was approaching.
6
The offices of Priest & Co took up four floors of a narrow segment of a Grade II listed building less than fifteen minutes’ walk from the Royal Courts of Justice on a street aptly named The Nook. The road served no purpose other than as an appendage to the Strand and Charlie Priest’s office represented the only apparent point of interest, other than the absurdly small establishment opposite known as Piccolo Café, which Priest regularly frequented. He tended only to order tea, much to the disgust of the incumbent barista.
Priest took the office steps two at a time, bounding past the small bronze placard affixed to the wall, which was the only way of identifying the building’s occupants, and into a plush reception area. The smell of old leather hung in the air. The furnishings were dark mahogany and oak. One wall was entirely occupied by ink-pen caricatures of famous lawyers and judges, the other by an old bookshelf filled from floor to ceiling with law reports. There was a faded poster advertising the famous Carbolic Smoke Ball.
Priest hated it – right down to the fake flowers on the mantelpiece – but the look was for clients, not for him.
Maureen looked up from behind the front desk. Gave him a where-the-hell-have-you-been look. He had had a meeting with the bank this morning, which he had asked her to rearrange. They weren’t happy, apparently. Having said that, Priest had no borrowings over the building, had never touched the overdraft and ran only a very limited client account. He was hardly the bank’s number one concern.
He threw Maureen a sorry-it’s-been-a-complicated-morning look in return and swept into his office before she could speak, then closed the door behind him.
Priest’s was the biggest room in the building, although this had come about by chance rather than design. It just so happened that he had the most files to store.
He collapsed into the chair behind a large, modern desk on which sat two computer screens and a jumble of papers. There was a flat-screen TV on the wall to his left showing a muted Sky News broadcast. He examined a mug hiding between the two monitors and found it to have become home to a foamy layer of unidentifiable fungus.
Must have a word with the cleaner. Perhaps introduce a pay-by-results incentive scheme.
He flicked the mouse. Both monitors clicked and whirred and he was presented with lockout screens. He tapped in the password idly but his fingers were on autopilot. He needed thinking time. Somebody had gone to an awful lot of trouble last night to try to kill him in order to recover something that he didn’t have. Or wasn’t aware he had. That constituted a bad night. Moreover, his assailant was still out there somewhere, lurking in the metropolis. Priest shivered. He could hardly move his incinerated wrist.
He should call the police, of course. He knew that. But he wouldn’t. Priest had spent eight years of his life excelling as a policeman before he had committed what his former colleagues judged to be the ultimate betrayal by becoming a lawyer. As if the natural mistrust that existed between law enforcers and law manipulators wasn’t enough, Priest had rubbed salt in the wound by making an awful lot of money in the process.
Lucky I don’t care about what people think about me. Those that aren’t trying to kill me, at least.
Priest doubted that being assigned a crime reference number would help much. Besides, he had far better resources at his disposal than the local blue. If he needed someone found, he would do it himself. A matter which the pain in my head is seriously impeding, although a hot cup of tea in a clean cup might be a good starting point.
A curt knock preceded the door opening. An enormous black man filled the doorway. Glossy grey suit, no tie. Custom lime-green shirt matching the handkerchief protruding from the breast pocket. The flash of a Rolex.
The career of Vincent Okoro, Priest & Co’s in-house counsel, was as big and impressive as he was. Admitted to the Bar in 1995, the Nigerian-born barrister had, like Priest, come to the law late, having run his own development company for ten years before retraining and eventually accepting a tenancy at an upcoming Lincoln’s Inn chambers. There he had thrived, specialising in complex commercial litigation and gaining a reputation as a ruthless cross-examiner and a savvy tactical thinker.
Okoro shut the door behind him and took the seat opposite Priest. It groaned under his weight. Not fat but muscle – a lot of muscle. Priest often speculated that Okoro was just one big muscle. And this morning, he was one big, grim-looking muscle.
‘I’ve spent the last hour on the phone to Monroe,’ Okoro said. His voice was as exquisite as his suit – majestic – the growl of a king, each word perfectly pronounced in soft Nigerian tones.
‘Who?’
‘Monroe. He’s our bank manager.’ Okoro nodded patiently.
‘Oh, him.’
‘They want another cash-flow forecast.’
‘What was wrong with the last one I did?’
‘You haven’t done one, Priest. In fact, in all the years I’ve known you, you’ve never done one.’
‘So they don’t want another one then. They just want . . . one.’
Okoro smiled and nodded slowly, as though he was listening to some soft music that pleased him. ‘You look like shit, Priest.’
‘Bad night.’
Okoro raised an inquisitive eyebrow. ‘A bad weekday night. Wow. So, it’s come to this?’
‘Is it past twelve yet?’ Priest asked, glancing at his wrist and seeing only the horrific burn marks. He hastily covered them up.
‘What?’
Priest fished around in the bottom drawer and eventually picked out a bottle of blended malt Scotch. He wasn’t sure how it had ended up in his drawer – probably a gift from a grateful client – but he was pleased he’d remembered it was there. He poured two glasses and pushed one across the desk to Okoro. Downed his and poured another one. Downed that and then looked up at Okoro expectantly.
Okoro regarded the glass suspiciously. ‘Is this a new firm policy? Midday drinking?’
Priest took another shot. Drinking wasn’t a habit or a hobby for him. In all likelihood, a thirteen-year-old girl could drink him under the table, but right now he felt like he needed something to dull his anxiety.
‘Is something bothering you, Priest?’
Priest shook his head, but kept his hand on the bottle.
‘What happened last night?’
‘Nothing much. Usual kind of night. Repeats of The Saint, KFC, fed the fish, played the piano a bit. Then someone tried to bust my head open. Next thing I know, I’m strapped to my own fucking chair and there’s this guy waving a drill in my face.’
There was a moment of silence while Priest rubbed the back of his head where the T-baton had made contact. There were two lumps the size of golf balls – it was a miracle his head had held together.
‘You don’t play the piano, Priest.’
‘Does that detail matter?’
‘Want to tell me what you’re babbling on about properly? I’m in court next week.’
Priest sighed and took another shot of whisky. The amber liquid burnt his throat and a thought struck him. I hate whisky. He shook that thought away and launched into last night’s events, scene by scene, careful not to omit a single detail. After he’d finished, there was another silence.
Okoro breathed heavily. ‘And you didn’t know this gentleman?’
‘Nope.’
‘Never seen him before?’
Priest shook his head. ‘No.’
‘No idea what he wanted?’ Okoro raised an eyebrow and Priest sensed his scepticism.
‘A flash drive.’
‘Containing what?’
‘No idea.’
‘Uh-huh. Why did he think you had it?’ Okoro rubbed his bald head as if he was in pain.
‘He mumbled something about somebody else telling him I had it, but he didn’t say who.’
‘Did you recognise him?’
‘No.’
Okoro kept on nodding slowly.
Okoro’s big break had come in 2003 when he’d been offered the role of Deputy Prosecutor of the then newly established International Criminal Court, the international tribunal founded so that, for the first time, cases against the perpetrators of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity could be heard where national courts lacked jurisdiction or, more likely, the stomach for it. Okoro had found himself in the midst of an elite company of lawyers whose job it was to uphold the rule of law in territories that recognised no such notion, and to impose it on individuals who held the rest of humanity in nothing but the lowest form of contempt.
He was hardly a stranger to ruthlessness.
‘Are you OK?’ Okoro finally asked.
‘I can barely move my wrist and my head feels like a travelling circus just moved into my frontal lobe. My eyes are sore. I’ve had two random nose bleeds this morning. Things feel funny when I taste them.’
‘But are you OK?’ Okoro pressed for confirmation.
Priest looked at Okoro for a few moments. Behind the half-smile, he saw genuine concern in the barrister’s eyes. Okoro was putting on a front – staying calm, maintaining eye contact, not moving around too much. Priest always found it strangely relaxing to be in the gentle giant’s company, and today of all days, he was grateful to have Okoro’s counsel.
‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ he said, eventually. ‘Bit annoyed that I didn’t see it coming. It was a bullshit story. Good replica suit, mind. I wonder where he got it.’
‘You can get anything if you know the right people, Priest. You know that. But it means he’s well connected. Which means you have to be careful. You might want to revise your decision not to contact the police.’
‘How do you know I’ve made that decision?’
‘Because I know the great Charlie Priest better than he knows himself.’
‘Mm.’ Priest looked reflective but he had no intention of changing his mind. ‘I’ll think about it.’
Okoro nodded.
The computer pinged, hailing the arrival of another email behind the lockout screen. Luckily, it was a quiet week. Priest & Co worked for only a few very select and very lucrative clients: transnational companies trying to identify corruption in their ranks of middle management, dot-com companies with a rogue director taking backhanders, firms accusing their competitors of illegal practices, bribery, anti-competitive cartels. The occasional bent MP.
The key to Priest & Co’s business model was results. Deliver what you say you’re going to deliver, when you say you’re going to deliver it. And the key to the one hundred per cent success record was simple, too. Careful case selection. There might only be one or two cases running at one particular time. Allocation of resources was critical. So Priest only took on what he thought he could handle and what he thought he could win.
In some ways, Priest had been lucky. The fake policeman’s visit had coincided with the lull that comes about between the mopping up after a major trial and the start of the next one. The deep breath before the plunge. The previous success had been Theramere International Plc, a FTSE 100 listed company. They sold experience packages – track days, balloon rides, dinners cooked by celebrity chefs. The company had grown and mutated so quickly that the founders had lost their way, pledging their faith to a CEO poached from a competitor then wondering why he’d become richer than they’d been paying him. Three weeks in front of a red-robed judge and Priest & Co had shown that the reason was because the CEO had had control of three other companies offering similar services in Morocco, Germany and Holland and he’d been playing them off against each other for his own gain. Now he was paying his secret profit back to Theramere and it would take him the rest of his life.
Okoro stirred in his chair, shifting his gigantic weight to one side. The chair complained audibly underneath him. He mused, ‘So this guy spent a lot of money and invested a lot of time into setting up an operation designed to recover something from you – electronic data of an unknown nature – and he executes his plan but he doesn’t get what he wants . . .’
‘Yes.’ Priest nodded, completing Okoro’s assumption. ‘So he’s going to try again.’
‘You need to be careful.’
‘We need to be careful.’ Priest reiterated.<
br />
‘What do you mean, we?’
‘He knew a lot about me, Okoro. Probably knows who you are too.’
Okoro chuckled. ‘I can look after me. It’s you I’m worried about. Are you going to let the others in on what’s happening?’
Priest let the question hang in the air. By ‘the others’, Okoro meant Priest & Co’s two other associates – Simon ‘Solly’ Solomon and Georgie Someday. Priest had already decided he would tell Georgie. At twenty-five, she was the youngest of the team but what she lacked in age she made up for in mental agility; rarely had Priest encountered a legal brain as fine as Georgie’s.
Solly, Priest & Co’s in-house accountant, was a more complicated question. Socially impotent, a hopeless conversationalist and probably autistic, Solly was a numbers man and, as he was fond of saying in rare moments of lucidity, ‘People are not numbers, Priest.’ It’s a good job they weren’t, too – Solly could spot a pound moving between eight different accounts across four different jurisdictions hidden in six hundred pages of audit.
If people were numbers, then Simon Solomon would be the world’s greatest psychologist; but since they weren’t, Priest didn’t like to worry him about things like drill-wielding maniacs.
‘I’ll mention it to Georgie. We’ll think about Solly later.’
‘You’ll mention it? Like you just thought of a new recipe for lemon drizzle cake?’
Priest shrugged. Okoro rose to his feet, a vast storm cloud suddenly filling Priest’s office.
‘I’ll start digging around for you. In the meantime, if you need a place to stay . . .’
Priest waved him away.
‘No, no. I’ll be fine. Besides, your wife hates me.’
‘My wife hates your social awkwardness, your poor table manners and your intellectual arrogance. She doesn’t hate you, per se.’
‘It’s a long list of hate.’
‘Yeah, it’s my damn list, too. Watch your back, Priest.’ Okoro loped out.