There had been a long silence. Aubrey had lost interest in the sandwiches, and was pouring himself more wine. Conrad was well into his bottle of whisky and had eaten nothing. A new sprinkling of cigarette ends was accumulating, despite Luke’s attentive replacements of the ashtray.
‘All right, Conrad,’ Aubrey said, ‘let’s see where we stand. You are in the hole for a lot of money – let’s say somewhere in the region of £30,000 to £40,000. Yes?’
‘Something like that.’
‘But it’s something you could sort out with Deborah, isn’t it? That’s the good news. There’s no need for any of this to become public knowledge. At least you’re in debt to her, not to John Aspinall, and I imagine there’s still something worthwhile left in the trust fund?’
Conrad smiled. ‘I can just imagine having that conversation with her.’
‘It’s better than talking about reaching the end and finding a way out, for God’s sake,’ Aubrey said. He had raised his voice without intending to, and he looked anxiously around him, but most of the members were at dinner, and the few left in the lounge seemed to be absorbed in their newspapers or books.
‘Conrad, the answer is staring you in the face. Break it off with Greta now, stay away from the Clermont, and make a clean breast of it to Deborah. You’ve got your judicial salary. You have fees still coming in from your practice. You will get back on an even keel. It may take a while, but time is one thing you have on your side. And it will all remain a private matter.’
‘Will it? I don’t think so, Aubrey. You don’t know Deborah. She would divorce me in the blink of an eye, and take me for what little I have left. She might even tell the police I forged her signature on the mortgage deed. And that would be a very public matter.’
Aubrey smiled thinly. ‘I thought Baptists were supposed to believe in forgiveness.’
‘They believe that God will forgive you,’ Conrad replied. ‘That doesn’t mean they have to.’
He smiled grimly for a second or two.
‘Besides,’ Conrad said, ‘I’m afraid the mortgage wasn’t quite the end of the story.’
Aubrey felt his stomach begin to twist.
‘I was sick with worry about the mortgage,’ Conrad said. ‘I had all the correspondence sent to chambers, of course, not to the house; but even so, it would have been easy for Deborah to find out about it if she suddenly began to take even the slightest interest in our bank accounts. It was about the time the Lord Chancellor was making overtures to me about going on the bench, and obviously anything like that coming out would have scuppered my chances completely. I needed to find a way to pay off the mortgage. I couldn’t try winning at the Clermont again – I had nothing left to play with. Even I could see that. But Greta was on my case all the time. So eventually, I told her the truth.’
Aubrey gasped.
‘About everything?’
‘About everything – the trust fund, the mortgage, the whole nine yards. I knew it was unwise –’
‘Unwise?’ Aubrey had raised his voice again. He lowered it anxiously. ‘That wasn’t unwise, Conrad, it was insane. What were you thinking?’
‘I wasn’t thinking – well, certainly not clearly. I was desperate, Aubrey. I was clutching at straws. I thought, if I told Greta the truth, she could hardly blame me for not wanting to chase the money I’d lost. I hoped she might even have some sympathy for me.’
‘And did she?’
He smiled. ‘Yes, in a manner of speaking, I suppose she did. But she didn’t show it in quite the way I’d hoped. She laughed. She was almost offhand about it. It was as if I’d told her I wanted to borrow a tenner. She asked me how much I needed to chase my losses. I told her £20,000. She said she could arrange it for me.’
‘Arrange it for you? What did she mean by that?’
‘Well, she wasn’t talking about going to the bank, Aubrey. And she wasn’t talking about lending it to me herself. What do you think she meant?’
Aubrey sat back in his chair.
‘Oh, my God. You didn’t…’
‘Two days later she introduced me to a gentleman who said he represented what he called a syndicate. In view of my well-known success at the Bar, and their confidence in my ability to repay them, the syndicate was prepared to lend me up to £20,000, unsecured, to be repaid in monthly instalments, the money to be provided in cash, and the payments to be made in cash, no questions asked on either side.’
‘You idiot,’ Aubrey breathed.
‘His name was Cleary,’ Conrad said. ‘Pleasant enough fellow if you like that charming South London brogue. He didn’t say it in so many words, but let’s just say he left me in no doubt that it wouldn’t be a good idea to be late with the payments.’
Aubrey felt his blood run cold.
‘Did you say “Cleary”?’
‘Yes.’
‘Not… not Daniel Cleary, by any chance, also known as “Danny Ice”?’
Conrad paused in the act of lighting a cigarette, and looked up sharply.
‘That’s the fellow. How on earth do you know him? Aubrey, don’t tell me…’
‘Don’t play games with me, Conrad, please. Daniel Cleary’s name came up in your trial today, as you well know.’
Conrad inhaled deeply from his cigarette and watched the smoke thin out as it rose towards the room’s high, ornate ceiling.
‘How would you know that?’
‘Because Harriet Fisk was in court this morning, and she told me. Besides, criminal proceedings are a matter of public record. Why shouldn’t I know?’
Conrad laughed.
‘And I suppose now you’re going to tell me that I should withdraw from the case because of a conflict of interest, and let it start all over again in front of another judge? I can just picture that scene, can’t you? “I regret to inform counsel that I am unable to continue as your judge because I’m on the hook to the same villain who was threatening Henry Lang, over a small matter of £20,000 I borrowed from him to cover my gambling debts.” What would the Lord Chancellor think of that, I wonder? I might as well throw myself straight under a train and have done with it.’
Aubrey was silent for some time.
‘I shouldn’t be telling you this,’ he said, ‘and you didn’t hear it from me, but you might as well know. You haven’t heard the last of Cleary. You will probably have to rule on an application to admit some evidence involving him.’
Conrad nodded.
‘I’m sure I can manage that – just as long as they don’t want to call him as a witness.’
‘I don’t think there’s any danger of that. But what happened? Did you borrow the whole £20,000?’
‘Yes.’
‘The rate of interest?’
‘You don’t want to know. It would make your eyes water. Usury’s not a strong enough word.’
Aubrey refilled his wine glass.
‘Why didn’t you use it to repay the mortgage, or put a few thousand back into the trust fund?’
‘I told you. I needed it to chase my losses.’
‘Conrad –’
‘I had to, Aubrey. I needed some seed money to get back in at the Clermont. In any case, Greta would have beaten me within an inch of my life if I’d got all that money and not taken her to the Clermont again. That’s why she set me up with Cleary. She didn’t give a damn about my mortgage. She wanted to make sure I could still play – and besides, I still believed that my luck was bound to change. I’d had a bad run. I was due for a break.’
‘Of course you were. Did you get one?’
‘No.’
Aubrey drank deeply from his glass.
‘How long ago was this?’
‘February, not long before I was appointed to the bench.’
‘So, by February you still had something owing on the mortgage, and you had to start making payments to Cleary?’
‘Yes.’
‘How much?’
‘Two and a half a month.’
‘How did you plan to do that?’
Conrad was lighting another cigarette.
‘The original plan was to pay from my winnings once my luck changed. When it didn’t change, I used my salary, and I dipped into the trust fund again.’
‘Have you kept up with the payments?’
‘More or less. I missed once. Cleary sent me a message suggesting that I should make every effort not to miss again.’
Aubrey nodded.
‘Well, I understand why you’re feeling desperate,’ he said.
‘That’s not quite all,’ Conrad said.
Aubrey swallowed hard.
‘After I lost the £30,000 from the trust fund and the mortgage, Cleary wasn’t my only source of money,’ Conrad said. ‘Some other money became available, unexpectedly. But I’m afraid it meant crossing the line.’
‘What line?’ Aubrey asked.