I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Can we focus and not snipe at each other?” I could feel the worst tension headache coming on.
“I’ll get us all a drink of something to cool down,” Ollie said and left the table.
“God, is he always this obtuse?” Simon muttered.
I was tempted to remind him that Ollie was a lawyer and got paid by the hour.
Ollie returned with three glasses of water. He put mine down in front of me and rubbed my shoulder. “You cut your head when you fell, as well? Ouch.” He reached up and ran his fingers through my hair to look at it.
I could feel Simon trying not to fly into a rage next to me. I smiled at Ollie and removed his hand. “We’ve not much time. Could you … Could you check with Janet? Maybe she knows the name?”
“Sure, but I’m limited to what I can tell you. Honestly, Arden, you know they can disbar me for this sort of stuff.”
I pulled a face. “You once said the Bar Standards Board would let Charles Manson practise, whereas solicitors get struck off if they so much as blow their nose on the wrong side of the road.”
“Yes, well, that was before my chambers realised about my digging into Miles Sweet. They sacked poor Tim even though he hadn’t done anything wrong.”
I shivered. That man’s name.
Ollie sighed but then grabbed his phone. “I’ll give Janet a ring.” He went into the study.
Simon was silent. I pushed his glass towards him. “London tap water. Drink it all up, it’s the yummiest in the world.”
“You let him call you ‘babe’ still.”
I shrugged. “Force of habit.”
“You slept with him after the photos were leaked. But you won’t tell him about where you got your bruises.”
“I …” I didn’t want to talk about this. “It’s private. Ollie and I are complicated. We were basically married and … we’re detangling ourselves. Slowly.”
“What does that make Tarquin then?”
“Ollie and I are broken up, okay?” I growled. My temper was close to snapping. “It was a relapse.”
It was a million degrees, my entire body ached, I was lying to Ollie, and Simon was being a prick. Today could, quite frankly, sit on it and swivel.
Ollie came back into the room, and I prayed he hadn’t heard what I’d said. “It’s the weirdest bloody thing. Janet has never heard of S Murray. Nor do we have any record of them on file as a client.”
“But … how?” I asked.
“She has to be lying,” Simon said. I shook my head. Nope, Janet was painfully loyal to Ollie. That I knew all too well. Simon stood up and started pacing. Christ, the man must wear out carpets.
Ollie was staring at his phone as if the answer would magically jump out at him. “Janet is the only person at the chambers who is allowed to sign letters in my name. It’d be their job instantly if anyone else did so. Everyone knows it, and we’ve never had cases of people doing it.At other chambers, it crops up sometimes, but the partners at mine are so strict they’d never stand for it.” He shook his head. “But even the wording used here, it’s Janet’s voice. This is the exact phrase she uses in all her generichi, chasing this up for you, sirletters. She sends ten per day.”
Simon paced harder.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” Ollie said. “Why was Riz looking for dirt on you in the first place? You said you only met him that one time at the village hall.”
Simon stopped pacing, and we looked at each other. I took a deep breath. “Riz was the person who leaked the photos of Guy Frobisher.”
Ollie’s reactions were going to be seared into my brain for all time. At first, he went bug-eyed and made a choking noise, then he took a long gulp of water. Then he went slightly red and put his head between his knees. Then he joined Simon in pacing, and then he sat down again very suddenly and was quite pale.
“This full story,” he said.
“Yes?”
“I think you should tell me.”
