Rumpole and the Reign of Terror Read online

  As I have said before, I don't know what's worse, Rumpole cock-a-hoop or Rumpole in the dumps. When he's cock-a-hoop he bangs round the flat, singing old songs like 'Smoke Gets in Your Eyes' or 'The Man on the Flying Trapeze', which were popular donkey's years ago when he was young and listening to Radio Luxembourg. He also takes over the washing up, using so much soapy water it all has to be done again. When he's in the dumps he just sits around quietly, occasionally saying, 'I think it's time I retired from the bar.' Perhaps, having thought about it, the dumps are better, or at least quieter.

  Anyway, I met Leonard at the local cinema in Ealing, where he now lives in what he calls 'solitary splendour'. We sat together in the dark while around us everybody seemed to be eating. Some of them held huge bags of popcorn, others were unwrapping sweets. A man in the row in front of us was apparently pouring what was left of a drink from a thermos flask into a china mug. When the film came on it was a 'romantic comedy' about a couple who were always quarrelling. They had a dog and a child. About halfway through the film the dog disappeared and then the child who went off in search of it disappeared too. After numerous adventures, some comical and others scary, the child and the dog and the parents were all reunited.

  As the lights came up in the cinema I saw that Leonard had taken off his spectacles and was wiping what were apparently tears from his eyes.

  'Moving, wasn't it?' he said. 'Extremely moving.'

  'Well, at least it ended happily.'

  'The moment they found the dog! I thought that was very moving indeed.' Leonard blew his nose and put his spectacles back on. 'Now, what do you say to a dish of tandoori chicken, vegetable curry and all the trimmings?'

  The Indian restaurant in Ealing was just like an Indian restaurant anywhere else. It had golden-flock wallpaper and a big colour photograph of the Queen, with a couple of brass elephants on each side of the bead curtain that led to the kitchen.

  After the tandoori chicken, when we were polishing off some ice cream and the remains of a couple of lagers, Leonard said, 'I have had some extraordinarily good news.'

  'I'm glad to hear it.'

  'I've had the news but of course I'm not allowed to tell anyone until it's published officially. But if my wife had been here tonight, joining in, I'd've told her on the strict understanding that she didn't spread it around or tell anyone else. If it got spread around, then I might not get it.'

  'So you can't tell your wife?'

  'My divorced wife? I'd be mad to tell her.'

  There was a pause. Leonard took a swig of lager, then he said, 'I think that our friendship is such that we have learned to trust each other.'

  'I suppose so.'

  'Then in the enforced absence of my wife, I think I shall tell you, Hilda.'

  'Please don't.'

  'Why ever not?'

  'Too much responsibility,' I began to say, but he started telling me regardless.

  'This government, and I never thought I'd be able to say this of a Labour government, is turning out to be extremely sensible. The Home Office has no faith in the usual brand of judge material, civil lawyers who know all about libel or slander but turn out to be soft on crime and soft on the causes of crime. They have decided to go where it is well known that the judges are tougher, where we don't let crooks slip through the net by relying on some outdated legal theory. The Old Bailey's a place where we have learned to modernize. So you know where I shall find myself when the announcement is made?'

  'Where's that exactly?' I knew he wanted me to ask.

  'On the High Court bench – Mr Justice Bullingham – in scarlet and ermine,' and he added what he had said of the Indian dinner, 'and all the trimmings.'

  No sooner had he said it than he looked afraid of what he'd done. 'You won't tell anyone, will you?'

  'Not a soul,' I tried to reassure him.

  'Particularly, you won't tell Rumpole?'

  'I won't tell him,' I promised.

  'Does Rumpole know we're going out together this evening?' Leonard still seemed distinctly nervous.

  'Rumpole,' I assured him, 'has no idea.'

  'Just as well,' Leonard said, and drained his lager.

  When I got home I found Rumpole reading the papers in some new case he was doing. He seemed cheerful, on the way to cock-a-hoop perhaps, but not yet annoyingly there. He asked me how I'd got on with Patsy O'Neil.

  'Oh, fine,' I told him. 'She cried in the cinema when they got reunited with the dog.'

  That was all I told him. I didn't tell him Leonard's news because I knew it would put him right down in the dumps.

  25

  I TURNED A PAGE of The Times newspaper and laughed so hard that I almost spluttered out a mouthful of toast and knocked over my breakfast egg.

  'Rumpole! Whatever's the matter?'

  'The world's gone mad!'

  'That's nothing new, is it? You're always saying it.'

  'I know I am, but not quite as mad as this. They've gone and made the Mad Bull a High Court judge.'

  'The Mad Bull?'

  'Mr Injustice Bullingham. That's what he's become.'

  'Oh, I know that.'

  I looked at Hilda amazed. 'How on earth did you know?'

  'Oh, I think they were talking about it at the bridge club.'

  'The Mad Bull must've been shouting his mouth off as usual. Well, well! The Lord Chancellor must've been drunk to appoint him.'

  'The Lord Chancellor doesn't get drunk, Rumpole.'

  'How do you know?'

  'We had quite a long chat at the Erskine-Browns' summer party. He stood in the pudding queue for me. He was absolutely charming and perfectly sober. I'm sure he wasn't drunk when he appointed Leonard Bullingham.'

  'All right. If you say so.' It was clear that She Who Must Be Obeyed mixed in legal circles far above me.

  •

  When I got to chambers there was another bundle of papers on my mantelpiece. These contained the first blast of the prosecution evidence against Dr Khan. He had received and preserved letters which clearly stated that he supported and encouraged terrorism and was aware of a terrorist plot to place bombs in the Tower of London and other national monuments and failed to inform the police.

  I lit a small cigar and started to read the translation of the letters apparently found in Dr Khan's possession. If these documents were to be believed, the quiet doctor, Tiffany's beloved husband and the father of her kids, was a brother in the Holy Jihad, who wished to spill as much Jewish and 'Kaffir' blood as possible before he had to appear before his God. Not only were famous buildings to be targeted but wherever people congregated, for instance on New Year's Eve in Trafalgar Square.

  Dr Khan was thanked for his financial contributions (cash transactions only) and for his offer to help as a doctor for anyone injured in the Holy War.

  Even more chillingly, one of the letters suggested an attack on the Oakwood Hospital, or any part of it which treated Jewish patients. In another letter Dr Khan was thanked for his visit to a 'safe home' when further plans had been discussed. This letter, like most of the others, expressed the hope that the good doctor would, at the end of his life, be able to face Allah with a sufficient amount of blood on his hands.

  The letters, and I have only given a brief synopsis of them, were indeed sickening and I felt an unusual surge of loathing for my client, the quiet doctor who watched cricket, respected the Queen and wanted to die with as much innocent blood on his hands as possible. I had won him a fair trial, but thought that once the jury had read half the letters they were clearly sure to convict.

  For at least five minutes even my faith in Magna Carta wavered. Was the pugnacious Sugden in fact right? What was so wrong with locking such an offender away in Belmarsh for the safety of the innocent Jews and Kaffirs he was plotting to kill? But then I lit a small cigar and came to my senses. The letters had to be dealt with as though they were run-of-the-mill prosecution evidence in any other case with any other client. I rang Bonny Bernard and told him that we must have an
immediate conference to get our client's explanations of these letters found, according to the written evidence of the Special Branch officer, in the desk drawer in his office in the Oakwood Hospital Relatives' and Visitors' Centre. I tried not to betray, by my tone of voice, the fact that I was beginning to hold the same view of our client as that expressed with such certainty by She Who Must Be Obeyed and her old schoolfriend Dodo Mackintosh.

  'So we'll have to make another visit to the desirable residence in Kilburn,' I told my instructing solicitor.

  'Not much point in that,' he said. 'Dr Khan's no longer there.'

  'They set him free?'

  'Hardly. He broke the conditions of his house arrest. He made a telephone call, a personal call to someone outside. So the doctor's in the nick.'

  'Which nick exactly?'

  'Brixton.'

  'Along with most of our clients. Make a date, Bonny Bernard, for the usual interview room.'

  •

  'I know nothing about these letters, Mr Rumpole, sir. I know nothing whatsoever.'

  Dr Khan had smartened up again since he left home. He had shaved, his hair was neatly brushed and he looked neat in a prison shirt and trousers.

  'These letters,' I reminded him, 'were found in a locked drawer of your desk in the Relatives' and Visitors' Centre at Oakwood Hospital. What do you usually keep in there?'

  'Notes about patients.'

  'What else?'

  'Perhaps letters from ex-patients about their progress. Some letters from GPs. A bit of loose cash sometimes. Perhaps a few private letters.'

  'Private letters like these?'

  'No, Mr Rumpole. No private letters at all like these.'

  'There must be an explanation for the letters. Mr Bernard has seen the originals. Can you tell Dr Khan about them?'

  'Special Branch showed them to me. They're all typed in what's apparently Urdu, no envelopes and no dates. There are about ten letters on cheap lined paper. No fingerprints.'

  'Produced by a typewriter and rubber gloves. With no handwriting anyone can recognize. But Dr Khan, you must have seen these letters before in your desk. How do you explain them?'

  'I told you, Mr Rumpole, I can offer no explanation.' He smiled then, as though once again he found the situation unfortunate but comical. 'I can offer no explanation for most of the things that have happened to me since the morning of my arrest.'

  'Do you deny that you know of these terrorist plots to bomb national monuments?'

  'Utterly.'

  'Or that you gave terrorists money?'

  'How could I? Tiffany and the children's school fees take most of my salary. I have a beautiful wife, Mr Rumpole, who likes to dress well. I don't begrudge her any of it, but it doesn't leave us with much.'

  'Were you considering an outrage on some Jews and Kaffirs – I take that to mean Christians?'

  'I am a doctor, Mr Rumpole. I have sworn the Hippocratic oath – how could I possibly commit murder?'

  In the way many doctors have, I thought of saying, from Dr Crippen onwards. I didn't say that, but I felt that I was losing faith in my client. It's not a difficult thing to do. Indeed, with clients like mine faith is difficult to maintain. My own beliefs are of course quite irrelevant. It's for a jury, properly directed, to decide guilt or innocence. If barristers were to decide cases, the whole of our adversarial trial system would grind to a halt. I do my best not to bring my beliefs into court with me. My belief, like my disbelief, is suspended together with my hat and old raincoat in the robing-room cupboard. There is no other way you can function as a criminal defender.

  And yet, even if it was breaking the rules, I began to disbelieve Dr Khan. His answers were too pat, his disarming smile too readily available, to carry complete conviction. A doctor might be expected to know the contents of his own desk.

  'Did you always keep that drawer locked?' I asked him.

  'Yes.'

  'And the key?'

  'I kept it on my keyring.'

  'Where's the keyring?'

  'In my house. With my things Tiffany is looking after in Kilburn. I didn't want my unfortunate keyring to follow me into custody.' He gave a little polite laugh, but I didn't join him. Things had gone beyond a joke.

  'By the way, and while we're on the subject, who did you telephone? I want to know about the call you made which ended your house arrest.'

  'That,' Dr Khan had stopped smiling, 'is a private matter.'

  'You've been charged with a most serious offence, Dr Khan. Nothing about you is private any more.'

  'I phoned the authorities here. In Brixton Prison.'

  'What on earth about?'

  'About a prisoner here. He was using his precious phone calls to ring my Tiffany and telling her to leave me. Now everyone knew I was a terrorist, she should "kick me out", he said.'

  'And who is this prisoner?' I was afraid I knew the answer.

  'A man called Will Timson. On remand also. I know he's always had a thing for Tiffany and he wanted to marry her. But his calls began to annoy her.'

  'Have you seen him in here?'

  'Not as yet. Perhaps he's on another wing.'

  'Just as well. I think you should do your best to avoid his company.'

  Of course, I remembered what Will Timson had said to me. He wanted Dr Khan incarcerated for a long, preferably an indefinite, period.

  26

  Extract from Hilda Rumpole's Memoirs

  I HAD EXPECTED, ever since I went to the flicks with Leonard, that my life might get more exciting. The fact is that ever since the piece appeared in The Times about Leonard being appointed to the High Court bench and becoming a Red Judge, things have been more than a little slow. I got a rather boring email from Dodo, saying she was 'sketching in the Dordogne'. I don't suppose she gave a thought to the question of whether or not I might have liked a trip to the Dordogne, even considering the number of times that she's had my hospitality here. She says she's met a really fabulous Frenchman who takes their class and does 'watercolours in the manner of Monet'. I bet he's some fat little person in a beret who'll dump Dodo as soon as the trip's over. I've completely decided not to take her into my confidence on the subject of Leonard. She knows nothing, and it's not her business anyway.

  I was having lunch all by myself in the kitchen (cheese on toast and a cup of decaff) when the phone rang in the sitting room. When I almost ran to answer it (I really wanted something to happen that day) a voice said, 'This is Mr Justice Bullingham's clerk speaking. Is Mr Rumpole at home by any chance?'

  'No!' I said. 'Mr Rumpole is not at home.'

  Then I heard a voice which I took to be Leonard's saying, 'Ask if he's coming home for lunch.'

  'Will Mr Rumpole be home for lunch at all?' the obedient voice took over.

  'No, he will not. He's been in Brixton Prison. He'll probably call in at some ghastly pub on the way back to chambers.'

  'The lady says he's probably out at some ghastly pub, My Lord,' I heard the voice report. And then Leonard's voice saying, 'Give me the phone, Barnes.' And the newly appointed High Court judge said to me, 'Are you there, Hilda?'

  'Yes,' I said. 'And I've been here all along.'

  'I just had to make sure that Rumpole wasn't there with you. We're alone. What I have to say is going to be difficult enough anyway.'

  'Why is it so difficult?'

  'Difficult, and I'll find it extremely painful. By the way, what did Rumpole say when he read of my appointment?'

  'I'm afraid he laughed.' I shouldn't have said that, but I was still a bit annoyed at all the mystery.

  'Rumpole must have the most extraordinary sense of humour.'

  'I'm afraid he has.'

  There was a long pause so that I thought he'd gone away and then Leonard spoke in a sort of whisper, I imagined with his mouth very near the phone. 'Hilda,' he said, 'we must face up to the fact that we mustn't meet for a considerable time.'

  I was puzzled. At last I said, 'Even at the bridge club?'

  'I shall ha
ve to avoid the bridge club now for the next … well, it may be months. It will be very hard for me to do so, but it's a professional necessity. It's a matter of duty.'

  'You mean Red Judges aren't allowed to play bridge?'

  'No, it's not that. It's just that I've been selected to try a case Rumpole's in. I think they wanted someone tough who wouldn't stand for any nonsense. It would be quite wrong for me to be seen consorting with his wife, up to and during the trial.'

  'Consorting?' I wasn't sure I liked that word. 'Is that what we've been doing?'

  'After the verdict of course,' Leonard avoided my question, 'we can do as we like. I look forward immensely to dining with you at the Sheridan. What a wonderfully happy time we had there, didn't we?' And then in a loud voice I heard him say, 'All right, Martin, I'll be with you in a moment.' He explained in a final whisper, 'That's the Master of the Rolls. We're both going across to the Inn for lunch. I'll be thinking of you, Hilda.' And the line went dead.

  I didn't know what to think. I went back to the kitchen and did something I rarely do. I poured myself a large glassful of what Rumpole calls his Château Thames Embankment. I thought it tasted rather nice, so I gave myself another glass as I tidied up the kitchen.

  27

  'THE POLICE DIDN'T COME and ask you if they could go through Dr Khan's desk? Perhaps when he was away on his holiday around Christmas last year?'

  'Nobody came.'

  'Nobody with anything so old-fashioned as a search warrant?'

  'No one at all. I've talked to the other members of staff. They can't remember anyone asking to go through Mahmood's desk and papers. Of course, no one will have been allowed to search unless they had a warrant.'

  'Perhaps Special Branch was doing a little unauthorized breaking and entering. They rather enjoy that.' I was with Bonny Bernard and Barry Whiteside in the Relatives' and Visitors' Centre at Oakwood Hospital. It was a small house at the end of a garden, originally perhaps a dower house set apart from the main building, which had been pulled down when the hospital was built. The front door had an old-fashioned lock, not even a Yale, which was opened by a key which was kept overnight up at the hospital. It was not, however, a lock which would have given much trouble to a policeman or a criminal approaching it without a key. There was a fairly large hall under a staircase in the Relatives' and Visitors' Centre, where families were waiting, with children hanging about, bored, demanding attention. A trolley with tea, coffee and soft drinks was being pushed around, a baby was crying. Barry took us into Dr Khan's office, where a young doctor was seeing off a worried mother whose son was still unconscious after an operation. She left the room slowly, unconvinced by his cheerful assurance, and then I had a chance to inspect the desk.