Rumpole and the Reign of Terror Read online

  Rumpole

  and the

  REIGN OF TERROR

  JOHN MORTIMER

  VIKING

  MORTIMER RETURNS WITH A SECOND RUMPOLE NOVEL, READY TO TACKLE A TRULY RELEVANT ISSUE WITH HIS SIGNATURE WIT AND STYLE

  While defending a mind-numbingly dull theft charge, Rumpole finds that the new terrorism laws have hamstrung his beloved courts. Meanwhile, a Pakistani doctor has been imprisoned without charge or trial under suspicion of aiding Al Qaeda in its plans for a terrorist attack. With the doctor's wife begging him to help her husband, the Great Defender is determined to bring the case before a jury.

  Trouble is also brewing at home as Hilda – She Who Must Be Obeyed – sits down to write her memoirs describing her view of Rumpole and her own love life. Rumpole's battle on the home front threatens to derail his case … but where there's a Rumpole, there's a way!

  Contents

  1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35

  To Jon Lord

  'Behold, I will make thee a terror to thyself, and to all thy friends.'

  Jeremiah 20:4

  'The terrorist and the policeman both come from the same basket.'

  Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent

  1

  SO MANY CASES WON and lost, so many small cigars smoked, so many occasions when a cold wind seemed to blow between myself and my wife, Hilda (known to me only as She Who Must Be Obeyed), so many cups of Old Bailey canteen coffee nervously consumed while waiting for a jury to come back with a verdict, so many devastating cross-examinations (the art of cross-examining is not the art of examining crossly but the gentle task of leading a witness politely into a fatal admission), so many bottles of Château Thames Embankment have come and gone since I was a white wig and sprang to fame for my conduct of the Penge Bungalow affair, in which I scored a win alone and without a leader, that sometimes I can't believe my luck in having had a life so relatively free of a dull moment.

  Now my wig isn't only a darker shade of grey, it has undergone a sort of yellowing at the roots. However, I have not, thank God, been forced into any sort of retirement. I deeply pity those who have not been called to the bar. They are forced into retirement at an early age to die of boredom on some unchallenging Surrey golf course, whereas I have still kept going and am known to many as 'Rumpole of the Bailey', and can die in the wig, however yellowing, swathed in the gown, however frayed, and perform as effectively as I hope you'll agree I did during what to many people was a reign of terror.

  Looking back on it now, I was, perhaps foolishly, less afraid of having a fist full of anthrax thrown in my face in Pommeroy's Wine Bar or finding our chambers in Equity Court blown up on the instructions of al-Qaeda than I was of a malignant judge or She Who Must Be Obeyed's prolonged disapproval.

  It was the start of a new year and there was one disturbing fact about our home life at this period. Our mansion flat boasts three bedrooms. The largest, which I will call 'the matrimonial', is equipped to accommodate myself and She Who Must Be Obeyed in separate beds. Next to it is the guest room, prepared to receive visitors such as Dodo Mackintosh and others from Hilda's wide selection of old schoolfriends. The third, at the end of the passage, I called the 'boxroom', as it was used to accommodate bits of broken furniture, abandoned crockery, outdated telephone directories and unwanted presents from our (long-ago) wedding. There was also a stuffed elk's head from an over-grateful client, a fondue set from the Erskine-Browns for a birthday which they thought would mark my retirement and a framed quotation from the Book of Ecclesiastes presented to us by Soapy Sam Ballard, who was similarly mistaken. There was little furniture in there except an old desk, a dining chair and a camp bed, once erected for another of Hilda's schoolfriends and never folded up again.

  One day, when I thought I was alone in the mansion flat, I heard noises apparently emerging from this disused room. I tried the door but found it locked. As I did so, the familiar voice of Hilda called in an exhausted and irritated tone, 'Do go away, Rumpole!' Of course I did so, but after that there were many occasions when I suspected that my wife was locked away in the boxroom. Any enquiries on the subject were met with 'Minding my own business, Rumpole, and I'd thank you to mind yours.' I didn't find out the reason for this for a long time and when I did it was not an altogether welcome revelation.

  •

  Like all the chambers in the Temple, 4 Equity Court had a list in the doorway which announced, to a criminal, adulteress or otherwise interested public, which barristers were available to help them through their troubles. As Head of Chambers, Samuel Ballard, QC, led the list, but as the oldest inhabitant Horace Rumpole's name led all the rest.

  When I reported for work quite early one morning I found, to my surprise, that strips of cardboard had been stuck over this white board, quite obliterating all our names. Soapy Sam was at my heels on this occasion and I pointed it out for his explanation.

  'Terrorists, Rumpole!' He spoke as though stating the obvious.

  'You mean terrorists came and stuck cardboard over our names?'

  'No, no. I stuck on the cardboard. Well, I asked our clerk Henry to do so.'

  'May I ask with what particular end in view?'

  'If the terrorists get to know that these are the chambers of a well-known barrister, let us say, one of the leaders of our profession, they might well be tempted to leave a bomb in the building. Of course, it would be a propaganda triumph for them if they were able to murder such a person.'

  'It's very good of you to take such precautions on my behalf, Ballard. I may have acquired a certain notoriety through various sensational victories and a long career down the Old Bailey, or in such far-flung criminal courts as Snaresbrook and London Sessions, but I very much doubt whether al-Qaeda would think it worthwhile to launch an outrageous terrorist attack on me.'

  'Oh, not on you, Rumpole. Certainly not you.' Soapy Sam was about to return to his usual irritating self. 'I don't suppose any terrorist would bother with a junior, however elderly and notorious, who never took silk. But blowing up a leading QC and a senior representative of our great legal system such as …' He seemed to be searching for a name and then remembered his own. 'Well, for instance, myself, would be a distinct feather in al-Qaeda's cap!'

  'Cheer up,' I advised our leader. 'I don't suppose Bin Laden has ever heard of you. I don't believe you'd ever get a mention in the mosques of Afghanistan.'

  'I don't think any of us has any idea,' Soapy Sam's smile was rigid, 'of what goes on in the terrorist's head. Now you go along in, Rumpole, and Luci Gribble will search that old portmanteau for you. We can't be too careful.'

  So our fairly recently appointed Director of Marketing and Administration dug into the bag I'd bought on my earnings from the Penge Bungalow Murders and discovered a treasure trove consisting of a couple of large clean handkerchiefs, a tube of 'Suck-Us-N-C' cough sweets, a tattered copy of The Oxford Book of English Verse (the Quiller-Couch edition), an assortment of pens and pencils, a large notebook and the brief in Regina v. Timson, with details of Her Majesty's latest attack on yet one more member of that family.

  There was another group of tireless workers who had no use for the word 'retirement'. They were the many members of that respected clan of south London villains, committing what has come to be known in this age of drugs, knifings and blackmail as 'ordinary decent crime'. There was little or no violence in the Timson records, only straightforward breaking and entering, burglary and the receiving of stolen property; unlike the Molloys, their rival family in the area, who left a trail of wounded, sometimes murdered citizens and persons dep
endent on exotic herbs in their wake.

  I must admit, if I have to be honest, that the day-to-day financing of the Rumpole household, with Hilda's indulgence in such luxury items as furniture polish, Fairy Liquid, scrubbing brushes and Vim, would become considerably stretched if the Timson family ever did take it upon themselves to retire.

  2

  I TOOK MY HABITUAL walk from Equity Court in the Temple down Fleet Street, an area greatly impoverished since all the journalists have decamped to some distant tower block. Life there seemed much as usual and there was no hint of a terrorist attack. Ludgate Circus, when I crossed it, was similarly uneventful. Then I turned off towards the familiar grey-stone building with the dome, where Justice stood, blindfolded and carrying a sword. Sometimes, I thought, she was a great deal too blindfolded for my liking and she failed to see the results of some of her wilful acts.

  Then I pushed my way in through the Old Bailey doors to where a further search of myself and my bag took place, presumably to make sure I wasn't a suicide bomber. I assured the searchers I hadn't felt even the slightest temptation to commit suicide and I'd prefer my death to take place while I was wearing a wig and gown and had just completed my final speech to the jury.

  In contrast to the unusual amount of searching which now went on, my appearance at that day's Timson trial was reassuringly familiar.

  We were all in our usual places and Percy Timson occupied the dock. Like me, he was long past the age for retirement, but also, I suppose like me, he still couldn't resist the excitement of getting into trouble. I thought his present predicament showed a certain lowering of the Timson standards and a loosening grip on the plot. What Percy had done, according to the prosecution, was to break and enter an empty house. It was hardly a crime for which it seemed worth the putting on of wigs and gowns, let alone occupying one of the less glamorous courts at the Old Bailey.

  The prosecutor, however, thought differently and opened his case as though he was dealing with high treason, or at least the murder of the year. The Queen's case against Percy was in the slippery hands of my learned friend Colin Chertsey. He was, in fact, not at all learned or in the least bit friendly, a tall barrister with a long neck, large pointed ears and a protruding jaw who had, I thought, the personal appearance of an ill-tempered camel.

  This was far from my lucky day. The case was being presided over by the judge who was often, round the Old Bailey, known as Injustice Bullingham. The facts of the case on which the Mad Bull was to be let loose were unsensational and would hardly win a place in these memoirs of mine if they didn't form a background to more extraordinary events to come.

  The house at number 7, Royalty Avenue, near to Clapham Common, had been put up for sale and contained no furniture, pictures or indeed anything at all. It was this improbable venue that Percy, in his declining years, had apparently decided to break and enter by night. It seemed that Royalty Avenue had the remarkable privilege, unlike most streets in London, of having a police constable patrolling it at night. It was about two o'clock in the morning when PC Simpson saw Percy with his arm in an open window at the back of number 7.

  'The prosecution will prove that Timson was entering the house for the purpose of stealing.' Chertsey of the long neck nodded his head in deep satisfaction. 'I will call a witness who will say that he heard a story current in the Needle Arms, a public house in the Camberwell area apparently frequented by the defendant and his family. This witness will say, members of the jury, that a friend told him that Percy Timson was talking about an empty house with a valuable collection of silver.'

  'The witness will say no such thing.' I rose up on my hind legs to object. 'What the friend of a witness says is pure hearsay.'

  'Mr Rumpole doesn't seem to be aware of the fact,' Chertsey looked condescendingly down his nose, 'that the rule against hearsay evidence has been abolished by Mr Sugden, the present Home Secretary. Your Lordship will of course have read the recent Criminal Justice Act.'

  'Of course, I have it very well in mind.' The Mad Bull was protesting too much. 'We must keep up with recent developments in the law, Mr Rumpole.'

  'Developments? I'd call them steps back into the Dark Ages. Whatever the new Criminal Justice Act might say, I shall tell the jury that secondhand hearsay is very unreliable evidence.'

  To this the Bull said nothing, but his stubby fingers danced on the keys of the word processor with which all judges are now equipped. No doubt he was rubbishing Rumpole's submission. He then told Chertsey to carry on with his speech and my unlearned friend consulted the screen on his machine to check what he meant to say next. I was more proficient in the use of a pen and notebook, a process which seemed to me to save a lot of time.

  After I had made my note, I glanced up at the public gallery. It was sparsely populated: another Timson case in an inferior court was hardly a crowd puller. But from the very front row, just above the clock, a youngish woman was smiling down at me as though I was, for her at least, an object of extraordinary interest.

  •

  'It's Tiffany, my cousin Raymond's youngest. We don't see much of Ray nowadays. She worked in a hospital and married a Paki doctor. Reckon she considers herself a cut above. What's she come here for? Just to gloat at my bit of bad luck?'

  Leaning over the rails of the dock at the start of the lunchtime adjournment, Percy Timson identified my apparent fan in the public gallery. When we left the court at the end of the day the young woman whom he had called Tiffany came up to me and my solicitor, Bonny Bernard. Gloating seemed to be the last thing she had in mind.

  'My whole family's always talking about you, Mr Rumpole. The way you stand up to the judges. I came to see you in action. I must say I wasn't disappointed.'

  She was looking at me critically, as though still weighing me up. She was darker than most of the fairish-haired Timsons and she spoke in a way which may have caused her to be dismissed by that clan as a 'cut above'.

  'Are you in trouble?' I was wondering what sort of a 'cut-above' crime she might have committed.

  'Not me. It's my husband.'

  'Your husband the doctor?'

  'You know that?' She almost smiled for a moment, but then her voice became hushed. 'They've taken him away. They won't tell me where. They won't tell me anything. I think it's some sort of prison.'

  'What for? What do they say he's done? And who are they anyway?'

  'The police, I suppose. I suppose that's who they were. They said they were holding him.'

  'What for?'

  She spoke very quietly then, as though she hardly dared speak the words. 'They said he was a terrorist.'

  3

  Extract from Hilda Rumpole's Memoirs

  WELL, AT LAST I've done it. Gone out and bought the laptop. It was on offer at a reasonable price in Dixons, where a really helpful salesperson assured me it was an excellent buy and it would do all my spelling for me. I told him that wouldn't be necessary as I was always in the As for spelling at school.

  He laughed and said I could write long letters on it, but I told him I wouldn't need it for that either. Anyway, I took it home and it fitted quite nicely into the big drawer in the old desk we keep in the boxroom.

  Of course, I did all that while Rumpole was away in court, once again trying to help one of the ghastly Timson family to escape their just deserts. I can't show my laptop to Rumpole, not yet at least. He would only disapprove and give me a long lecture on the pleasures of writing with a pen. 'Much quicker,' he always says. I didn't say that my little machine would help him with his spelling, which is often eccentric, particularly when he writes in a hurry, which he always does. One day soon I suppose I'm going to have to drag Rumpole kicking and screaming into the age of new technology but not yet, not quite yet. I've got better things to do.

  And I'm going to do it. I'm going to lock myself away in the boxroom and plug in my new laptop, because I'm going to write my memoirs.

  Well, I've done it. At last I've done it. I've started this journal so that at le
ast, at some future time, people may know how things really were and what it was like to live with Rumpole night and day and particularly over the weekends, when he had no Old Bailey to go to, in Froxbury Mansions.

  Rumpole writes his memoirs. Of course he does. And don't think that I don't know perfectly well that he calls me 'She Who Must Be Obeyed', as though I issued him orders instead of making suggestions to him, entirely for his own good, on such non-controversial subjects as his filthy habit of smoking small cigars which pollute the atmosphere, or staying too long on his way home in that awful little wine bar he frequents, where he spends so much on bad wine that he pleads poverty when it comes to household necessities. I never heard of a man so reluctant to pick up reasonable amounts of Vim, Fairy Liquid and J-cloths on our Saturday morning visit to Sainsbury's. Fairy Liquid is a bigger luxury than champagne in Rumpole's book.

  Of course, it's all very well for Rumpole. He can put on that dirty grey wig of his, wrap himself up in that tattered old gown and step into a world that is far more exciting to him than anything that goes on in Froxbury Mansions. Ask Rumpole if he'd rather spend the afternoon with a murderer or with me helping to shell the peas and peel the potatoes, or even redecorating the bathroom, and you know perfectly well what his answer's going to be. This seems to me to be a special sort of infidelity. I don't believe Rumpole carries on with the secretaries, or even the young women barristers like that irritating Liz Probert – we all know he's not exactly Gregory Peck reborn – but it's a worse sort of infidelity in my opinion. It's hard to know that he cared more about that woman accused of poisoning her husband's beef stew than he does about someone like me, who has never even been fined for speeding.

  I don't think that Rumpole completely understands this but I'm going to make it perfectly clear in my memoirs. He won't like that, of course. He probably wants me to go down in history as 'She Who Must Be Obeyed', the power-crazed, ruthless dictator of Froxbury Mansions. I suppose he'll find out eventually, whenever my memoirs get published, and I think they may come as a bit of a shock to him. So I sit in my new home while he watches the telly in the living room. The boxroom has a good strong lock to the door and Rumpole never comes in here anyway. He tried rattling the door the other day and found me in here, but of course he had absolutely no idea of what I was up to. It was just another minor eccentricity by 'She Who Must Be Obeyed'. It's the same old story. He seems to be such a good judge of who really killed who in a pub brawl in Camberwell, but he has absolutely no idea of what goes on in his own boxroom.