When Aubrey called, just after 9.30, Conrad Rainer was in his kitchen. Nothing had changed. He had not yet brought himself to clean up the blood spatters, and Greta Thiemann’s body was still in his storage area, competing for space with the vacuum cleaner and the brooms. He had once again fortified his front door using his sofa and coffee table. To his relief, he had seen no sign of anyone taking an interest in him on the way home from the Old Bailey, and tonight he had at least made arrangements for food. At lunchtime, when his court reporter had gone out for her sandwich, he had pressed money into her hand and asked her to buy one for him, plus a packet of crisps. He had lunched in the judges’ mess, so a light supper would do him no harm, and he still had a small supply of chocolate biscuits. No one had tried to force their way into his flat, and he felt more composed than he had the previous evening as he sat nursing his glass of whisky.
All the same, something had to be done. He knew that. He had called Gerry Pole and they had had a lengthy conversation. Now, all that remained was to finish the trial of Henry Lang.
‘Conrad,’ Aubrey began, ‘how are you? How are things going?’
‘Oh, bearing up, Aubrey, bearing up.’
‘Has there been any sign of…?’
‘Cleary? No, none at all.’
‘Good, good.’
There was a silence.
‘Conrad, I need to talk to you. I saw the three members of your chambers this afternoon, and we need to talk about it.’
Conrad felt his stomach muscles tighten and tried to relax.
‘How did it go?’ he asked.
‘Not over the phone, Conrad. I need to see you in person.’
He closed his eyes. The last thing he wanted was to leave the sanctuary of his flat at night, to expose himself in the darkness, without a rush-hour crowd to provide him with cover.
‘Does it have to be tonight?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘It’s just that I hadn’t planned on going out again tonight, Aubrey. I’m not properly dressed and…’
‘I can come to you if you prefer,’ Aubrey suggested.
His heart skipped a beat.
‘No. No.’
‘It’s no problem.’
‘No. I’ll meet you somewhere… let’s go to… to the Club.’
‘Yes. Yes, all right, if you prefer the Club.’
‘I’ll get a taxi; say about 40 to 45 minutes?’
‘See you then,’ Aubrey replied.
Conrad dressed hurriedly, and wrapped himself in a raincoat with a silk scarf over his mouth. He added an old trilby hat, pulled down over his eyes. He was nervous about standing still on the kerb, making an easy target of himself, but if he was to flag down a taxi he had no choice. Mercifully, he was able to hail one almost immediately. He looked around him as the driver sped away from his building. He saw nothing suspicious, but that did little to calm his nerves.
Dinner had ended and the Club was quiet. Luke was prowling around an empty lounge, and seemed relieved to have something to do when he brought their drinks, fussing unnecessarily about cleaning their table, and making sure they had mats and a clean ashtray. Aubrey had to encourage him gently to leave them alone.
‘As I said, Conrad, I spoke to Frank, Jonathan and Martin this afternoon,’ he said. ‘Stephen was there as head of chambers. There was nothing I could do about that, but I doubt it made any difference. I gave them details of the cheques, and explained the situation you were in with Daniel Cleary – I didn’t use names, of course, but I painted the picture – and I explained why you had to deal with Cleary before you could pay them back. They listened politely, and they told me that they would have to discuss it and get back to me. I waited in chambers, and they called just after 9.15.’
He paused.
‘And…?’
Aubrey shook his head.
‘I’m sorry, Conrad. In a nutshell: it’s too much money; it’s too great a breach of trust; and most of all, it’s too much of a gamble with the reputation of chambers if they’re seen to condone serious criminal offences to get their money back. They’re not going for it. It was a reasonable strategy, but it didn’t work. I’m sorry.’
Conrad nodded. He felt winded. He lit another cigarette and took a drink of his whisky.
‘Not your fault, old boy. You tried, and I’m grateful to you.’
He was silent, smoking and inhaling deeply, for some time.
‘So, what now?’
‘It’s likely that they will go to the police first thing tomorrow,’ Aubrey replied. ‘They have no reason to delay, especially as they’re so worried about their reputation.’
He paused awkwardly.
‘Conrad, as I said before, there are some things I can’t know…’
‘Understood.’
‘But if you were, unbeknownst to me, contemplating any evasive action, you would have to do it tomorrow. If you leave it any longer, you may be too late. Stephen will give the police more than enough evidence to arrest you – certainly more than enough to take you in for questioning – and once that happens, everything falls apart.’
Conrad nodded.
‘I can’t do anything tomorrow.’
Aubrey stared at him. ‘Why on earth not? Don’t you understand what I’m saying to you?’
‘Yes, I understand perfectly well. But I have a trial to finish, the trial of Henry Lang.’
Aubrey laughed out loud.
‘Conrad, I hardly think the trial of Henry Lang is the most important thing here…’
‘We’ve already had the prosecution speech. It will finish some time tomorrow.’
‘It’s still too much of a risk.’
‘It’s a risk I have to take.’
Aubrey stared again.
‘You’ve lost me.’
‘I know how ridiculous this is going to sound, Aubrey, after all I’ve told you about myself recently. But the fact is: I haven’t lost all my professional pride. I’m a judge. I want to do what I took an oath to do. I want to do justice to Henry Lang, to make sure he gets a fair trial. Amid all the wreckage my life has been reduced to – entirely through my own fault – that’s the one thing I still have left to cling on to. If I can prevent any injustice to Henry Lang, at least I will have done something useful in the short time I have left as a judge.’
‘There will be no injustice, Conrad,’ Aubrey insisted. ‘Lang will be tried again before another judge, that’s all. It happens all the time.’
‘A retrial is not the same animal as a first trial, Aubrey. You know that as well as I do; and another judge won’t understand the case in the same way I understand it.’
‘Why does that matter? You’re not deciding Lang’s guilt or innocence. He is being tried by a jury.’
‘A jury directed by a judge. In this case, the judge’s summing-up will make a difference.’
Aubrey was shaking his head, frustrated. Conrad smiled.
‘Aubrey, Henry Lang and I have a lot in common.’
‘I seriously doubt that.’
‘No, really, we do. For one thing, we’ve both been victims of Daniel Cleary, and in a strange way our lives have been running on parallel lines, both of us lurching from crisis to crisis. We have both called down the storm on to our heads, and now it has arrived, and it’s about to obliterate us both. But there is one difference, one chance of salvation: I’m lost; no one can give me any shelter from the storm – not now – but I may just be able to shelter Lang and pull him to safety.’
Aubrey did not speak for some time.
‘You won’t be able to do that if they arrest you tomorrow morning,’ he said, in due course.
Conrad smiled again.
‘The police don’t arrest people just because someone makes a complaint: especially in my case. One of the advantages of being a High Court judge is that I enjoy a heightened presumption of innocence. They will think very carefully before they come after me. They won’t make a move without consulting the Director of Public Prosecutions, and the Director won’t make a move without an opinion from Treasury Counsel, and they are going to dot all the Is and cross all the Ts. That’s not going to happen overnight, is it? I don’t think I will have any problem finishing the trial.’
He took a deep drink.
‘And after that…’
‘And after that…?’ Aubrey asked.
‘You can’t know what happens after that.’