Dead And Buried

Forty-one

Alex checked her time sheet at the end of the day: it did not look good. Curle Anthony and Jarvis billed by the quarter-hour and staff below partner level were expected to charge out virtually all of their working day. Her meeting with McIlhenney and Steele had overrun and she had been caught in a traffic jam on the way to her next client appointment, with Paula Viareggio, to finalise the transformation of the family trust into a limited company. Paula had been good about it, and had even taken her to lunch, but that had dragged on too. As a result she found herself looking at an hour and three-quarters of her day that had fallen into the sort of black hole that Mitchell Laidlaw, her boss, did not like to see.

She was finalising the record when she realised that he was standing behind her looking over her shoulder. ‘Sorry,’ she said, lamely, glancing up at him. ‘Today was a succession of disasters.’

‘Alex,’ he replied, ‘I keep separate lists of all the days when the members of my department bill out, on one hand, less than their allocation, and on the other, more than one hundred per cent of their standard hours by working late. You’re at the foot of one list and the top of another, and I won’t insult you by asking you to guess which is which. You’re my best fee-earner, so I’m not going to worry about that.’

‘That’s a relief,’ she exclaimed. ‘I enjoy my lifestyle.’ She began to clear her desk. ‘Did you want something in particular, Mitch?’ she asked.

‘No, no,’ he insisted. ‘I just called by to ask how you were doing.’

‘I’m fine,’ she told him. ‘Why shouldn’t I be?’

‘No reason, no reason.’ Suddenly, the firm’s chairman looked unusually flustered.

‘Has my dad been talking to you?’

The portly lawyer’s face became slightly ruddier than usual. ‘Well, yes. To be honest, he did. He told me about the unpleasantness you’ve been having at home, with all these phone calls.’

Alex felt her hackles rise. ‘And I’ll bet,’ she fumed, ‘that he asked you to do a workplace check.’

‘Well, er, yes, in fact he did.’

‘I will bloody kill him! Mitch, I’m really sorry, he had no business bringing any of that to you.’

‘Of course he had. Anyone in that position can come to me, and I’ll do what I can to assist. The soundings I took were as discreet as possible. . obviously so, since this is the first you’ve heard of them. You’ll be glad to hear they came up with nothing, no potential candidates.’

She laughed lightly. ‘That’s almost a disappointment. You’re saying that even in a firm this size there’s nobody secretly lusting after me.’

Laidlaw beamed. ‘Actually,’ he chortled, ‘you’re quite wrong. There are several, but they don’t make any secret of it.’

‘Thank you, sir. My self-confidence is restored. To put you in the picture, I think the thing’s blown over. I’ve told the police to stop listening in to my calls as of now.’

‘Are you sure that’s wise, if they haven’t caught the fellow?’

‘Mitch, I’m in no danger: trust me on this.’

‘If you say so.’ He smiled, awkwardly. ‘But you can’t blame me for worrying. After all. .’

‘Don’t say it! I’m your best fee-earner.’