‘What exactly is Jamie supposed to have done to you lot be so hated?’
Michael spluttered, as if this was like asking why Mexicans didn’t rate Donald Trump.
‘Tell me,’ Laurie said. ‘All I hear is bitching about his suits being too flash and expensive.’
‘I assume we’re speaking in confidence,’ Michael said, eyes blazing.
‘Yes of course,’ Laurie snapped. ‘I’m still capable of independent thought.’
‘When he first turned up and wanted to make his mark, he was a total tosser. He poached loads of Ant’s caseload and then badmouthed his work.’
‘I thought he was given Ant’s caseload, because Ant was off with his Crohn’s?’
‘Yeah, Ant was off sick and came back to find Jamie Carter’s all but taken his job. There’s big trials that Ant has prepped for, like the drugs four-hander, and Carter waltzes in, gets two suspended sentences and takes the credit with Statler and Waldorf. Swaggering around like a cock.’
Laurie saw how the trick was worked: the alleged villainy was entirely subjective, a matter of taste not substance: waltzing and swaggering. She increasingly suspected Jamie’s offence was his refusal to play the popularity game.
‘So, essentially, his big misdemeanour is that he efficiently took care of the work he’d been asked to cover?’
Michael’s eyes bulged.
‘He’s really done a number on you, hasn’t he? There’s a theory, it’s a rumour, but – rumblings that he might be going for a partnership. Can you imagine? He’s been here five minutes, and tries to get made our boss. The nerve of the little twat.’
‘Surely not? He’s too young for that.’
Michael appeared to simmer down by a degree, with this remark. Possibly as it implied it was an unfounded rumour, if Laurie wasn’t corroborating it.
‘Young, dumb and full of …’ He shot her a revolted, pained look.
Laurie had been vaguely aware that Michael had a soft spot for her, but she had no idea she’d spark this sort of possessiveness.
Unless … He had harboured notions. That Laurie might not be interested in him wasn’t a factor in his accounting. If she was seeing Jamie, then she must have also been available to Michael, because Michael was the better man. Laurie was property and Michael was an honest broker, who had been sexually gazumped. It was revolting, discovering the antediluvian attitudes and values that lurked just beneath the surface.
‘… And that’s before we get on to him fucking Salter’s niece who he was specifically warned not to fuck. Someone saw him in the Principal Hotel with her, so I think we all know how that ended. She was practically a teenager, for God’s sake. That’s who you’re dealing with, someone who’ll take what he wants, no matter the cost to others.’
Hmmm. Laurie saw them in the bar of this hotel. Had he been seen elsewhere in the building too? Brandishing their key cards? It was hard to tell, as Michael would naturally exaggerate to make it sound more damning.
‘I don’t think he did anything with her, did he?’ Laurie said. It helped she had no real skin in this game – Michael wasn’t in control of his emotions, she was.
‘Get real, Laurie. Seriously. Of course he did. You think a man like that passes when it’s on offer, on a plate, from a young pouting innocent? She was following him around like a schnauzer. And he immediately discards her when he’s got what he wanted. Bastard.’
Laurie said nothing. Innocent schnauzer wasn’t how Jamie had characterised Eve, but then she might be dealing with two unreliable narrators here. She had a feeling that the less she said, the sooner Michael would run out of steam.
‘You’re very highly thought of here, you know,’ Michael said.
Ah, Laurie thought, now the manipulation changes tack to Good Cop. It was as if she’d never been in a custody suite.
‘Thanks.’
‘I’m unclear why you’d risk tearing so much down for so little. Carter will have fucked off to some practice in London by next summer and you’ll be left picking up the pieces, in more than one way.’
‘I thought he was trying to be made partner?’
‘You know what I mean. His sort rape and pillage the village, then move on to the next one. He’s a plunderer. Why would a smart woman like you want to be another of his meaningless trophies?’
‘OK. First of all, no one’s raping or pillaging anyone. Secondly, I think you might be way over the line in telling me who I can and can’t spend time with, out of work.’
Michael scowled. Laurie had never been into Michael’s vicious archduke in BBC costume drama type of good looks, and right now she was very glad. She had a suspicion that Michael hated Jamie because he reminded him too much of himself.
‘OK, I’ve tried to warn you, Loz. What can I say. Ditch him now, while you can still repair this. We all know you’ve been through a tough time and we’d be prepared to chalk it up as an indiscretion, if it stopped now.’
‘The Royal we? The whole criminal department gets a veto on my love life?’
‘It’s not love and it’s no life. You heard.’
He threw the door open and stalked off. Laurie spotted the tactics: the flourish of a dramatic exit gave him the upper hand. A ‘do as I say or else,’ when you didn’t want to spell out the ‘else’.
Laurie’s chest was heaving with indignation, and the things she still wanted to say. Her fingers clenched and unclenched into fists.
Whenever she and Jamie decided to end this, she’d have learned things about other men that she couldn’t un-know.
Laurie hoped the day would pick up after Michael’s counselling session, but in vain.
A district judge in an extremely foul mood gave her city centre bin arsonist a three-month custodial sentence, out in six weeks, after Laurie argued for a suspended one due to it being a first offence for criminal damage and the pigeon not being harmed. He added tartly that ‘his counsel would have better spent their time engaging with plausible outcomes than trying to achieve extraordinary things at the expense of reality’.
The prosecutors smirked.
Her client didn’t quite follow the language or the argument but he could tell the judge was saying Laurie had fucked up, and he flipped her the finger while the cuffs were being put on. Yes, yes, it’s my fault you tried to ‘send a message’ with a ‘cleansing fire’ to the ‘consumerist chimpanzees’ of the Arndale.
Laurie messaged Jamie on her way back to tell him about Michael’s hostility and didn’t expect anything other than a few sympathetically chosen emojis of bells and clowns, so tossed her phone into her bag after sending.
Seconds after she took her seat at her desk, Jamie appeared in the doorway of their office, filling the frame, a hand braced on the door jamb.
‘Laurie, you got a minute?’
Bharat and Di both gawped. Not only was he bonking Laurie, he was prepared to approach her desk and speak to her, asking for private audiences! Absolute libertine.
Laurie had already forgotten how ludicrously pretty he was: dark hair against snow white skin, expensive ink blue suit jacket gaping open to a slim midriff, clad in narrow cut, pale blue designer shirt. You could whip out a Nikon and snap him, standing there as he was, and probably win an award.