I’d almost died, but that was mainly the systemic shock of having to get up at half past six in the morning and put in a full day’s work. I was pretty sure that my destiny lay elsewhere: God couldn’t be that cruel.
That was eighteen years ago, but the place hasn’t changed much. The war memorial with its winged Victory is still standing in the forecourt. The foyer is as imposing and unwelcoming as ever, with its massive Doric columns designed to put generations of junior clerks firmly in their place. And the elevators still play Dvorak’s Slavonic Dances with enough crackle and hiss to drown out the music, which makes you wonder if in some secret chamber in the heart of the building they’ve got an endless supply of identical pre-Dolby eight-track tapes that Mr Cunard boosted from some fire sale in a spirit of waste not, want not.
A single phone call to Nicky from the Orrell Park had established the fact that Steven Seddon, MSSP, worked as a law clerk for Sedgewick & Stacey, a firm of solicitors specialising in contract law, with three partners on permanent retainer to half a dozen Liverpool-based shipping lines.
‘Brother,’ I confirmed.
‘He’s been there three years and a month. Should have been promoted last year when he got his paralegal diploma, but he squeaked in with the lowest pass grade you can get. It was a skin-of-the-teeth kind of thing, and they decided to bump him a year.
‘You got all that from their website, Nicky?’
‘Nope. I’m in their personnel files. It’s all up on the office intranet. Restricted log-in, but what’s a password between £sswm"" friends? I’m currently one of the senior partners, a Mister John Loose. As in “fast and . . .” Oh, and by the way, guess which demon-haunted estate in South London made the news last night?’
I felt a prickling on my scalp and the back of my neck. ‘What happened?’ I demanded.
‘There was a fight.