An Immoral Code by Caro Fraser

their point, of course, but it makes me bloody angry, after the months of work and preparation.’ Ellwood was trying to contain his temper, aware that he was powerless to do anything.
    ‘This is awful,’ said Anthony. And it was. Godfrey Ellwood had been a guiding spirit in the case so far. Anthony, as he tried to digest this staggering information, felt as though he had been cut adrift. ‘Do you have any idea who they’re going to replace you with?’
    ‘Not a clue,’ sighed Ellwood. ‘It’s a bloody mess. I’m just sick and depressed by the whole thing. And no doubt our ever loyal instructing solicitor, Fred Fenton, will use it as an excuse for a discount.’
    ‘I can believe it,’ said Anthony unhappily. When they had finished speaking, Anthony hung up and sat back in his chair, pondering the possibilities. This would mean a new leader would have to be instructed, and they would be back at square one. Worse than that, there was a hearing coming up in two weeks’ time on another preliminary matter, involving a time-bar, and any new leader was going to have his work cut out to read all the papers by then. The action group committee weren’t going to be best pleased when they learnt about Ellwood. They had staked all their faith in the brilliance of their leading counsel, and now he was being booted out only months before the full hearing. Anthony covered his face with his hands and groaned. When word of this reached Freddie Hendry, a positive torrent of faxes would doubtless be unleashed on 5 Caper Court.
     
    The offices of Nichols & Co stood in Bishopsgate, not far from St Mary Axe, affording an excellent view of the soaring chrome and glass tower of the new Lloyd’s building. The coffee pot, Fred Fenton called it. Fred was a twenty-seven-year-old solicitor who had been with Nichols & Co for six years, and as he now stood in the office of his colleague, Murray Campbell, waiting for Murray to get off the phone so that they could discuss this latest catastrophe to befall the Capstall case, he cast a malevolent gaze through the window at Richard Rogers’ monstrous edifice. He now loathed anything to do with Lloyd’s of London. When he had been assigned to this case six months ago, he had been quite excited at the prospect of becoming involved in such an enormous piece of litigation. Now he wished that that dubious honour had been bestowed upon any other assistant at Nichols & Co except himself. He slept, ate and breathed the Capstall syndicate and its miserable history, and longed for a return to days filled with a variety of different pieces of work, instead of the dragging weight of this great albatross of a case.
    Murray, a tall, overweight Scot in his late thirties, put down the phone at last. ‘Sorry about that. Now – this business with Ellwood. We’ll have to find another leader pretty damned quick, someone who’s not already involved with some other piece of Lloyd’s business, and someone bloody good. Any ideas?’
    ‘One or two,’ replied Fred. ‘I had originally thought of Mark Dempster, at 4 Essex Court’ – Murray nodded approvingly – ‘but from what his clerk says – and this is only reading between the lines, mind – there’s a chance he could be made a judge within the next six months, and then we’d be scuppered twice.’
    ‘Quite. To lose one leader may be regarded as a misfortune, but to lose two …’ Murray sighed and rubbed his chin. ‘Who else, then?’
    ‘Well, neither Eric Wilson nor Leo Davies has anything major going on at the moment.’
    ‘Davies only took silk a few months ago, didn’t he?’ asked Murray. He got up, hitching his trousers, and began to pace the room slowly.
    ‘Well, yes, Wilson is a bit more seasoned, and he’s first class, but I reckon he’s not so good on his feet as Davies. There’s no one better in a courtroom than he is, and that’s important in this case, especially when it comes to cross-examining Capstall and the other side’s