The Tournament Trilogy Read online

  “Yes, Draden,” Auldborne replied, emphasizing the name on purpose. Very few people called him Alex and it sounded odd and disrespectful to him. “It is what I’m doing.”

  “Then you a stoopid basta’d. You an Aie? We fuckin’ done.”

  Draden hung up with a single click.

  Auldborne was intrigued. No one had ever spoken to him like that before. He filed the experience away, unperturbed.

  The next morning he was pulled out of class and arrested on charges of supplying a class A narcotic, which carried a maximum penalty of life in prison and an unlimited fine. It wasn’t hard to find the evidence. Auldborne hadn’t bothered to hide it very well. Doing so never occurred to him.

  But this was Eton, the Crown Jewel of preparatory schools. Princes were educated here. Boys worth millions were placed on the waiting list well before they were even conceived. What was the faculty to do? Let this, the oldest and most respected of boarding schools in all of England, become synonymous with drugs? Let it be known that one of their own had run over a thousand grams of cocaine through their hallowed halls, and that all of it was eagerly snatched up? No. It simply would not do. They would quietly usher Alex Auldborne out, let the law deal with him, but nowhere near Eton. Auldborne took in his situation mechanically, scientifically, for future reference: so this is what happens when rich people panic. He filed it away.

  They quietly passed him through, handed him his A levels, and told him never to return under any circumstances. He left Eton under subtle police escort.

  He was not surprised to learn that the law held no power over him—not because he was above it, but because for Auldborne the law hadn’t the presence it held for others. For most, the law of the land was the nameless stitching in the fabric of society, a gigantic, untouchable thing synonymous with modern living. To Alex Auldborne the law was a person, frail but regal, and ultimately fallible like all humans are.

  Madeleine Auldborne presided over some of the highest profile cases brought before the courts of England and Wales, but she was also Alex Auldborne’s mother, and so for him the line between High Court Judge and mother blurred. As a justice she rarely faltered—she was as pithy and decisive as she perceived the law itself to be—but as a mother she would always be marked by what Auldborne perceived as her one great failure: his father.

  Peter Auldborne, a portly, ruddy man, was too fond of wine and did nothing but live off the wealth and status that Madeleine had earned. This made him absolutely worthless in the eyes of his only son. If the law was his mother, and his mother could make a mistake like Peter, then the law, by extension, had to be fallible as well.

  Madeleine was well aware that certain rulings accrued certain favors from certain unsavory elements in her profession, but she also knew better than exploit them, because that path, once trodden, is often impossible to backtrack out of again. For over thirty years she never once pandered to the darker side of jurisprudence, until the day that the very law she served threatened to jail her only child for the rest of his life. Aside from the fact that she genuinely loved her troubled son, she would not allow it to be said that she had failed as a mother, even if she had. She decided that she would break herself to wipe his slate clean, if that’s what it came to.

  Marcus Pinkton, the prosecuting barrister for her son’s case, was a man who Madeline had dealt with in the past and would no doubt preside over in the future. In the end it was a remarkably easy operation. She simply approached him one afternoon after proceedings in which he was involved. A deceptively clean looking fellow, long and neat in his three piece suit under full barrister regalia, he seemed to know what was coming and yet smiled politely, fully aware of what a woman in Madeleine’s position could offer. He was young, only in his early thirties, his face smooth and square with not a speck of stubble. He had a deep, unnatural tan and smelled of heavy aftershave that masked another subtly cloying scent that Madeleine couldn’t pinpoint.

  “Justice Auldborne,” he said, looking expectantly at her through peering, dark brown eyes. Madeleine suddenly abhorred him but she shoved the revulsion down inside of her. The only sign of her distaste was a subtle thinning of the lips, but it was not lost on Marcus.

  “You are prosecuting my son,” she said, and then stopped. He cocked his head in mock misunderstanding. Madeleine realized that he was going to force her to say it. She clasped her elegant hands in front of her and softly sighed.

  “I need you to make his offense probationary.”

  “Done,” he said quickly, flashing a straight but slightly tea-stained set of teeth. Madeleine cocked one eyebrow, wary.

  “We can’t very well have a High Court Judge’s son go up for narcotics charges, can we?” he asked. Madeleine remained silent; it was with effort that she endured his gaze.

  “All sorts of questions would arise, including those into your own person, My Lady. As a mother. As a public figure.”

  Madeleine looked into him much as she would look into a defendant, trying to separate the truth from the lies, but Marcus was too shrewd. His smile was of the vacant sort that wraps just as easily around both truth and lies, and his tone was disconcertingly congratulatory.

  “Naturally,” he continued, dipping his countenance a bit, as if almost embarrassed to continue, “Naturally I’ll have to do some... maneuvering. I’ll have to put up with a few unwelcome questions.”

  He leaned in a bit closer to Madeleine and she instinctively leaned away. He appeared to take no notice.

  “But I’m more than happy to take the brunt of them, your ladyship. People will eventually tire of questions. They always have in the past.” His mouth was balanced between a leer and a smile. His expression seemed to change as he moved.

  “Thank you,” she said haltingly, unsure of how to further proceed, only sure of wanting to be elsewhere.

  “Of course,” he said, and then, seemingly as an afterthought, “Please keep this in mind, if you would, in the future.”

  Then he whisked off without a word, leaving behind only his musk. Madeleine was left looking at the floor and suddenly she felt as if her very footing was in danger of shifting out from under her at a whim.

  Auldborne’s offence was forgotten, shuffled off into a twelve month probationary sentence that was then shuffled off into nothing, lost amidst piles of paperwork never to be seen again. Madeleine didn’t know how and she didn’t ask. Auldborne himself had his diploma from Eton and from there went on to attend the London School of Economics, where in mere months he had endeared himself to those he wished with his fluid charm, and yet already he was probing his surroundings, looking for his next opportunity to experiment, to add an ingredient and step away. It was both a fortunate and an unfortunate return to normalcy for Auldborne. On the one hand, he was in no legal trouble. On the other, he was once again mired in the very status quo that made him increasingly bored.

  Once beyond the confines of Eton, Alex Auldborne had taken to women extremely well. His mechanic reasoning had always been glossed with a charming exterior, but in the slick streets of London this charm was allowed to flourish, and the result was a cool approachability that endeared him to a certain type of woman. The kind that preferred to hold to their own wild speculations about him. The kind that preferred not to know anything more about the man they were with other than what they saw. What they saw was a slim, well dressed, wealthy young man. He often sat at a reserved table in the choicest of clubs with his own bottle of liquor, surrounded by people who leaned in to listen to him. His light skin and small, barely colored lips spoke of a type of aristocratic refinement of old, while his storm gray, unblinking eyes and close cropped hair, sharply widow peaked and already peppered with the same gray as his eyes, hinted at something darker, something to inspire a second glance. It wasn’t just women who often watched him in these settings. Those that recruited for England’s team in the Tournament did as well, and they increasingly liked what they saw.

  Then, midway into Auldborne’s first year at t
he LSE, Marcus Pinkton called in his favor.

  One of Pinkton’s associates was defending a man accused of supplying amphetamines, a class B narcotic, in a case over which Madeleine would never preside. Pinkton asked that the court appointed solicitor be replaced for reasons “best left unspoken.” He told her who was to be replaced by whom, and that was that. Madeleine Auldborne had sway in slating solicitors, and could, should she wish, change the council. It was rarely done and would arouse suspicion, especially considering her rank and the relative unimportance of this case, but the man had taken care of her son, after all.

  Madeleine rearranged some dates, effectively suspending the hearing until there was a scheduling conflict with the slated solicitor. Then she dismissed the man in lieu of the prior engagement. Later that week Madeleine heard that, for one or another reason she dared not delve into, the defendant had been found innocent. Regardless of whether the defendant was actually innocent or not, Madeleine felt soiled. But if shuffling around some lawyers was all it took, then she figured her son’s freedom cheaply bought.

  Then Pinkton called in his favor again. This time he asked that she mitigate the sentencing of a man in a case over which she was presiding, a high profile trial in the Crown Court, and in which Pinkton had no visible part.

  “You needn’t let the man walk free. Simply reduce his sentencing to the minimum.”

  “I won’t do that,” she hissed. “It’s too much Marcus. It’ll cause an outrage. We’re even.”

  “I suppose I’ll have to let a few things slip then? Perhaps let others take a bit of a closer look at Alex’s file?” His voice slid into a rougher intonation as he spoke, unpolished, but clearly more natural. Madeleine stepped back, mouth agape.

  “Are you threatening me?”

  Marcus said nothing.

  “Marcus, you’ve nothing to do with this case.”

  “With all due respect, My Lady,” he said, all polish returned, as if he had briefly stepped off stage and was now back. “You cannot possibly know what I am and am not involved in.”

  Alone in her study at home, Madeleine wracked her brain for any way to do as Pinkton had asked, but she couldn’t think of anything that wouldn’t raise outright objection, much less creeping suspicion. The evidence in question was perfectly in order. The man was guilty. There was simply no way to reject any of it to mitigate.

  And it wouldn’t end there. She’d been a fool. Marcus Pinkton had her under his thumb and they both knew it.

  Once a week Alex Auldborne hopped on the Temple Tube stop and exited Westminster to meet his mother for lunch. Usually Madeleine Auldborne was forthcoming about her work, proud of her job and her position of influence, so when she began to steer the topic elsewhere during their conversations, Alex knew something was wrong. He could read concealed despair in her face, in the deepening lines about her small eyes, and in the way that her cheekbones became more pronounced. Her mouth was slack when once it was prim and compressed, as if she longed to speak but could not. His mother was beaten down. It didn’t take him long, either, to realize that her dismay was the result of unusual circumstances surrounding the dismissal of his drug dealing case. The fact that he had paid nothing for his crime was not lost on him, and he figured she had sacrificed dearly for him. Still, he never spoke of it to her, and she, too proud, never spoke of it to him.

  Auldborne felt no remorse for his crime. Nor did he feel guilt for his mother’s current position. He had made a decision and had gotten caught just as she had made a decision and chosen to absolve him. He saw only the immediate circumstances: Someone, somewhere, was taking advantage of his mother. Someone was using her power to raise themselves above their station, possessing it as if it was their own, getting something undeserved.

  A cold, hard fury stirred inside him at this thought, a fury that threatened to explode if he couldn’t control it, so control it he did. He compressed it and pushed it in on itself, snapping his emotions shut like an overstuffed suitcase. But every time his gray eyes saw his weary mother, something inside very nearly snapped.

  The most Madeleine could do for Marcus Pinkton was delay the trial to better assess the submitted evidence, and even this raised concern. The evidence had been submitted earlier to no interest; why was a deeper probe suddenly needed? It seemed unlike Madeleine to quibble over details like this. She was generally decisive, forgoing bureaucracy in favor of letting the law work its course.

  This was not enough for Pinkton, and Madeleine could tell he was losing patience. Several times they ran across each other in Parliament Square and he eyed her coolly, allowing his gaze to linger as she passed. She didn’t acknowledge him. She had nothing to say; nothing she could say.

  In fact, Pinkton was livid. It was all he could do to control himself when he saw her in all of her judicial livery. He had more tied up in this case than she knew. He had made promises to people. He had been paid in advance. He had spent in advance. For a High Court Judge she was terribly daft, he thought. Did she not comprehend the situation? He could have both her and her son disgraced and jailed. It was the scandal of the decade, and he was the one working the strings. What about this did she not understand? He said what to do and she did it, or she suffered the consequences.

  He had seen this Alex Auldborne out at night. He often went to the same clubs as the boy. He had seen him at his table upstairs, looking down upon everyone. Pinkton could see in the boy’s face that he didn’t care about what he’d done. He would, in all probability, do it all again. He was a criminal. He deserved jail. They were all the same, these rich, young punks, surrounded by their things, crying out for attention. It made him sick. Perhaps he should take a different approach? Perhaps he should have a few words with Alex the next time he saw him. He would probably quiver behind his imported bottle of vodka at the first mention of his little issue. He probably thought everything was over and done with, but he was about to find out otherwise. Yes, that’s what he would do—go straight to the problem himself. That just might shake things up enough to get his old bird of a mother moving.

  That very weekend Marcus saw Auldborne at The Meridian, a popular night spot just off of Covent Garden. It played deep beats with Middle Eastern flair and specialized in infused vodka concoctions. The bar itself was darkly lit with warm colors and made of brick and wood. The overall impression was that of drinking and dancing in a large wine cellar or a hollowed tree.

  Pinkton had seen Auldborne here twice before, and had correctly guessed he would eventually return. When he saw him, he finished his drink at the bar, straightened his coat, and excused himself from a woman to whom he wasn’t listening. He moved directly over to Auldborne’s table upstairs, figuring that this approach would be even more likely to intimidate him.

  Auldborne was sitting back in his chair, sipping his drink and talking quietly to the woman on his left. His head moved every now and then, nodding or shifting, always engaged. He was leaning slightly in her direction and she seemed enthralled. Around him several other men and women chatted amongst themselves, occasionally glancing at him, looking for an opening to speak. He held a measure of control over everything about him, like a man playing several games of chess at once.

  Pinkton crested the stairs, moved over to the edge of the nearest table and blatantly glared at Auldborne until eventually one and then another of the conversations surrounding him dropped off. Last of all to acknowledge Pinkton was Auldborne himself.

  With a small smile, Auldborne politely excused himself from his conversation. Auldborne leveled his gaze at Pinkton with eyes the light gray of sleeping coals, flecked here and there with a darker ash.

  “I think you and I need to talk,” Pinkton said.

  “What about?” Auldborne replied, still sitting.

  “Your mother.”

  And in that moment Auldborne knew who this man was and what he was doing here. The anger he had packed away stirred dangerously, expanding and creaking, but his face betrayed nothing. In one fluid motion he rose
and casually walked around the table to Pinkton, where he stood level with him. His companions at the table looked awkwardly at them both and, sensing their need for some privacy, started up insignificant conversations of their own.

  “I was wondering if you might ask her...what the bloody hold up is!”

  Auldborne just looked at him.

  “She’ll understand my meaning.”

  Auldborne ran his right hand smoothly down the left side of his jaw, but still said nothing. Pinkton was growing annoyed at Auldborne’s lack of emotion; he looked like he was studying a particularly intriguing piece of art, not confronting a man who held his wellbeing in the palm of his hand.

  “You might also tell her, ‘My welfare hinges upon it,’” Pinkton suggested.

  “Yours?”

  “No you fucking ponce, not mine. Yours,” he spat back, leaning in close to Auldborne’s face.

  “And hers,” Pinkton added.

  He then straightened himself and brushed absently at his front, as if to dust himself of the whole encounter. Auldborne continued to watch.

  “Is that all?” Auldborne asked congenially. Pinkton simply shook his head in disbelief, in pure exasperation at the inherent idiocy of today’s youth. Turning away, he walked back towards the bar down in front.

  For a moment Auldborne stood where he was, watching him go. Then he moved back to his seat and sat down. The women and men around him looked at him questioningly and he reassured them each with a glance and a small smile and a few words, but as he reached for his drink and took a sip he seemed preoccupied, his jaw set itself and he worked it loose with a subtle grinding motion. His eyes, slate gray now, were elsewhere: watching Pinkton as he paid his tab, watching Pinkton as he said goodbye to his companions, watching Pinkton as he made his way to the door and stepped out.

  Auldborne took a small, wistful breath, and set his drink back down. “Pardon me a moment, will you. I’ll be right back.”