Rumpole and the Reign of Terror Read online

  It was the Mad Bull, I remembered, who had given lunch to She Who Must Be Obeyed in the hallowed precincts of the Sheridan Club. What was that all about? Had he done it simply to irritate Rumpole? If so, it seemed a curiously circuitous and costly way of doing it. He had every opportunity of doing that at public expense when we were in court together. Could it be, could it possibly be, that the recently appointed Mr Justice Bullingham had taken something of a shine to Hilda? And hadn't she, after their lunch together, spoken unreasonably well of him? I found this line of thought disturbing, even life-threatening, like the small jolt at the start of an earthquake. Could it be … could it possibly be? I decided to dismiss this train of thought from my mind and cross the road to the comfort of Pommeroy's Wine Bar.

  I was foiled in this pursuit by a rap at the door and the immediate entrance of another, far more personable judge, Mrs Justice Phillida Erskine-Brown, once my pupil and the Portia of our chambers, fresh off the bench and apparently on her way home.

  'I thought I'd just pop in and say hello, Rumpole,' she said. 'Keeping busy, are you?'

  'Up to my eyes. Two extremely heavy cases.'

  'I'm glad to hear it. And how are things in chambers?'

  'How are things? Sam Ballard is as pompous as ever and is insisting on enquiring into any failure to contribute to the coffee-making. Henry has fallen in love with a secretary from Paper Buildings and forgets to collect fees earned long ago. Miss Gribble thinks I'm ruining my image by defending in a terrorist case. And the upstairs loo is out of order again.'

  'So it's all much as usual?'

  'Yes. Much as usual.'

  'I want to have a word with you about that terrorist case you're doing.'

  'Oh, do you?'

  'I know you had a word with Fred about it at our party.'

  'Yes, I did. Mr Sugden was very cooperative.'

  'Fred is. He believes passionately in British justice and our legal system.'

  'He does now. He wasn't so keen on a fair trial for my client before your party.'

  'He's an important politician, Rumpole. He has to deal with Special Branch and the Foreign Office and public opinion, which wants to see people like Dr Khan locked up without question. But he saw your point and there's going to be a trial. I think that was very brave of him.'

  'Very brave.' I was going to tell my former pupil the reason for Sugden's sudden change of heart, but decided not to.

  'You must have been very persuasive.'

  'I can be persuasive.'

  'I know you can, Rumpole. And I'm sure you'll agree that Fred has behaved very well in this situation.'

  I began to have an idea of what was coming, so I looked at her without answering for a while and then I said, 'Claude says you've taken rather a shine to him.'

  Phillida wasn't fazed by this remark. She simply said, 'I do find his personality attractive.'

  'What does Claude think about that?'

  'Oh, Claude has other interests, doesn't he?'

  'Not at the moment. He seems deeply in love with his strange job at SIAC.'

  'He's doing well there. Fred says they're very pleased with him.'

  'Well, that's nice for everyone, isn't it?'

  She ignored this and said, 'Come along, Rumpole. Your doctor hasn't got a hope in hell, has he?'

  'I don't know about hell. However, we have hope until the jury come back and say he's guilty.'

  'Aren't those letters absolutely conclusive of his guilt?'

  'Of someone's guilt perhaps.'

  'I think that what Fred feels is that he's allowed the matter to go before the court.'

  'Very decent of him …'

  'Yes. And of course Special Branch are dead set on a conviction. If you're planning any lawyer's tricks you think might get him off …'

  'What sort of tricks is he suggesting? It might be helpful to know.'

  'Isn't this a case, Rumpole,' she chose to look straight into my eyes, 'when a guilty plea is probably in the best interests of the client?'

  'He tells me he's innocent.'

  'But you don't really believe that, do you?'

  'I have to put his case.'

  'It's in no one's interest, Rumpole.'

  'Your precious Fred wants to see him shut up.'

  'It's not just Fred. I've told you what I think too.'

  'Et tu, Portia?' Soon after that she left.

  31

  'MR MOLLOY, THE hatred between the Timsons and the Molloys is legendary, is it not? It exceeds the hatred of the Montagues and the Capulets.'

  'Mr Rumpole,' a friendly voice called gently from the bench. It was old Denny Densher, once and quite briefly of our chambers, who was probably the most tolerable of the Old Bailey judges. 'Your literary allusions may be lost on the jury. Try Arsenal and Spurs.'

  'I'm much obliged.' I really was. 'Does your family hate the Timsons as much as the two football teams?'

  'We found the Timsons a load of creeps as a general rule, yes.'

  'What do you mean by creeps? That they had a tendency to grass, become police informers, anything like that?'

  'That among other things, yes.'

  'What other things?'

  'Well, you just wouldn't trust them.'

  'And yet you became friends with Will Timson.'

  'We met at a party and had a few drinks. He was all right.'

  'So much all right that you suggested he join you in a job at the shop in Heckling Street.'

  'I've already admitted that.'

  'A shop on the Edgware Road was far out of the Timson area of operation, wasn't it? Was the whole thing your idea?'

  'Will Timson agreed to it. Only too pleased, he was.'

  'I suggest he didn't agree. He looked at the shop with you by daylight and said it wasn't safe, it was too near the main road. He had all sorts of objections.'

  'He was only too pleased to do the job with me. That's what I told the inspector.'

  James Molloy was short with broad shoulders that seemed unusually high so that his face seemed to sink between them. His thick black eyebrows were fixed in a perpetual frown. He spoke in a husky voice, a sort of outraged whisper.

  'You got a lot of advantages from what you told the inspector, didn't you?'

  'I don't know what you mean.'

  'Oh yes, you do. Eighteen months' sentence already passed on you. Less than half of the normal tariff.'

  'I told him the truth. That's all.'

  'Let's see if you did. Did you take your van to the shop that night?'

  'Will didn't have a van.'

  'So it was yours. You'd had a look at the burglar alarm on a previous visit. Was it you who disconnected it on the night?'

  'Will didn't know much about burglar alarms.'

  'So you did it?'

  'I had to.'

  'And after you'd loaded your van, you drove it back to your house?'

  'Yes.'

  'And not to Will's?'

  'No.'

  'In fact you only took it to Will's three days later. Why did you take it to him?'

  'Because he's got more room round his garage and that.'

  'Or was it so that he would be arrested if anything went wrong?'

  'I expected him to dispose of it. To get the best price he could.'

  'He didn't dispose of it, did he? The goods you stole were still in his garage when the police arrested him.'

  'Not my fault he was so slow on the job.'

  It was an unusual morning in court. The judge was listening and not interrupting, the jury were listening carefully and I had the best of my cross-examination to come.

  'You were caught because the CCTV camera got a picture of you driving your van away. It was a picture that was pretty clear to the police.'

  'I reckoned without that camera.'

  'Exactly. But there was no picture on the cameras showing that Will was in the van with you.'

  'He was in the back of the van. The camera wouldn't see him.'

  'Is that what you're tell
ing this jury?'

  'That's what I'm telling them, yes.'

  I allowed the jury a moment's silence before I delivered the punchline.

  'Mr Molloy, you just told me that members of the Timson family grass and aren't to be trusted.'

  'That's right. That's what they do. Yes.'

  'And you have proved yourself the biggest grass in this case.'

  'Just in this case.'

  'And, as a grass, I don't suppose you really expect this jury to trust you.'

  I sat down then, and a flurry of re-examination from the prosecution didn't do much to restore anyone's confidence in James Molloy. After that I didn't put Will Timson, whom I had persuaded to plead guilty to the charge of receiving stolen property, in the witness box.

  I relied on a speech to the jury to persuade them that Mr James Molloy was not a reliable witness, and they didn't need a great deal of persuading. Will Timson was acquitted on the robbery charges.

  So far as the receiving went, Denny Densher successfully found that he wasn't a professional fence, that there were no previous convictions for receiving and he was disposed to pass a sentence of eighteen months suspended, in view of the fact that all the property had been recovered and Will had spent a considerable time in custody.

  'Suspended sentence!' Outside the court Will seemed truly amazed. 'So I walk free?'

  'Unless you do another crime,' I reminded him. 'Then they can make you serve the eighteen months.'

  'I don't recollect any of the family getting a suspended before.'

  'Neither do I.'

  'I've got to thank you, Mr Rumpole. Anything I can do for you?'

  I looked at him. Did I trust him? Of course I didn't. All the same I tried. 'You can tell me all you know about the letters found in Dr Khan's desk.'

  'Nothing. I don't know anything about that. All I know about that man is that he's a bloody terrorist. They're not going to give him a suspended sentence, are they?'

  'No,' I assured the man who hated the doctor. 'No one's going to get him anything like that.'

  •

  I began these memoirs with a Timson case lost and am drawing towards the conclusion with a Timson case which was, at least, more successful. Will had gone off wearing his suspended sentence as though it were some kind of award, distancing him from the rest of the family. But I couldn't forget his hatred of Dr Khan, or the fact that he had been indirectly responsible for the enigmatic doctor's move from the sunny side of Kilburn to Brixton Prison. Was there any way, any conceivable way, that he could have been connected with the packet of Urdu letters found in Dr Khan's desk?

  The successful result in Will's case had put a certain amount of spring in the Rumpole step and the autumn sun seemed to shine more brightly. But now we were moving into darker skies and no doubt far less happy months. Terrorism and fear of terrorists had increased in the world. Every news bulletin brought details of new explosions, assassinations, religious hatred and wanton death. If there was any doubt in Dr Khan's case, I didn't expect he'd get the benefit of it.

  But my investigations were not complete. Fig Newton was still beavering away and at last he was ready with his report. He had made further enquiries into the affairs of Baltistan-British Services Ltd. The company had been founded some fifteen years ago to take possession of a number of shops and 'retail premises', including the shop in Heckling Street. Fig had written down the names of the original founder and chairman of the company (now deceased) and the names of the present chairman and the directors. I read all this with considerable interest.

  After I had read his report I met Fig with Bonny Bernard in Pommeroy's to ask for further details. He sat nursing his ginger beer ('Keep off the alcohol,' he said, 'if you want to be an efficient private detective') and sniffing with his perpetual cold.

  He had been to the Heckling Street shop, where he met the Pakistani manager, Ali Raza. When he asked Mr Raza about the notes in Urdu which had been stolen from his shop, Fig Newton said that he was a detective, which was true, and that he was just checking up on a few facts. Mr Raza, apparently anxious to cooperate with the police, gave Fig a great deal of information of extraordinary interest.

  It was when Fig had finished his account of the interview in the Heckling Street shop that I felt that a shaft of light had pierced the gloom surrounding Dr Khan's case. I thanked heaven for Mr Raza and his innocence in assuming that Fig was a member of Special Branch. I told Bonny Bernard to issue a witness summons and, for the first time, I was looking forward to R. v. Khan with something like eager anticipation.

  32

  Extract from Hilda Rumpole's Memoirs

  I DON'T KNOW WHY, but we have now entered a period when Rumpole is cock-a-hoop, which is something I find rather irritating. So far as I can see he's got absolutely nothing to be cock-a-hoop about. It's November, very windy and dark most of the time. There is a simply enormous bill for the electricity which Rumpole seems reluctant to pay; he has a tendency to keep bills to mature as though they were old bottles of wine. The bridge club has got dull since Leonard has been on the High Court bench, or away on circuit, and I still haven't quite forgiven Dodo for what she said about Leonard and her fat little (I'm sure he must be fat) sketching teacher, who is apparently more important than a High Court judge because he's a 'great artist'. Like Monet indeed! Well, I bet there won't be queues waiting outside the Tate to see Dodo's sketching teacher's haystacks in fifty years' time. Of course I shall make things up with Dodo in the future, but in the meantime I'm going to let her stay where she is, which is Lamorna Cove.

  I also can't understand why Rumpole should feel cock-a-hoop about the Khan case, which is due to come on at the end of the month. Everyone from the Lord Chancellor to Mrs O'Mally, who comes to clean three times a week, must be absolutely certain he's guilty and we're only going through the motions of a trial to show the world how fair British justice is, even to terrorists.

  All the same, Rumpole stays cock-a-hoop. I heard him sing as he cleaned his teeth in the bathroom one morning what must now be one of the oldest songs in living memory.

  'He'd fly through the air with the greatest of ease,

  That daring young man on the flying trapeze.'

  When he emerged I said, 'Rumpole, what on earth's the matter with you? Have you fallen in love with somebody?' I have had that trouble in the past, particularly concerning a girl he met in the air force called Bobby Dougherty, married to an ex-policeman, Sam 'Three Fingers' Dougherty, whom Rumpole took every opportunity of visiting in a dreadful pub they kept at some ghastly seaside resort.

  'Yes,' he said. 'I love someone.' He's not usually so frank when I ask him that sort of question.

  'Not that awful RAF woman again?'

  'Nothing like it. This is a man with a perpetual cold and who goes by the name of Ferdinand Ian Gilmour Newton. A private detective.'

  'Rumpole, I wish you'd stop talking nonsense.'

  'It's not nonsense, it's a defence. Some sort of a defence at least.' And then he looked anxious. 'If only I knew how to make it work.'

  'You mean you're going to fight R. v. Khan?'

  'Of course I am.' He looked quite insulted. 'What did you think I was going to do?'

  A fight, I thought, and who was it going to be between? Leonard and Rumpole, whom I suppose you might call the men in my life. I suddenly had an absurdly romantic picture of the Elizabethan ladies who sat holding their fans or eating sweetmeats while a couple of knights crashed swords with each other for their favours. If the Khan trial wasn't going to be as dramatic, it couldn't be duller than sitting in the flat with a frozen vegetable curry and the ten o'clock news.

  'Rumpole,' I said, 'it's a long time since I saw you in action.'

  To my surprise, he looked a little sheepish. 'I've been tired in the evenings,' he said, 'and the pressure of work …'

  'I mean, it's a long time since I saw you in action in court. Doing an important case. I used to go to court to see Daddy's important cases. Of course, you don't have as
many as he did, but this is one that's bound to get into all the papers. I thought I might come along, just to see how you and Leonard deal with the whole affair. You wouldn't have any objections to that, would you?'

  It seemed to take him a while to think about it, but then he said, 'No objection in the world, Hilda, but you do realize I shall be rather busy?'

  'Of course you will. And Leonard will be very busy too. It'll just be interesting to watch you both at work.'

  33

  'SO WE MEET AGAIN.'

  'Yes indeed, we met at Philippi.'

  'Philip what?' Peter Plaistow, QC, MP, dressed in full courtroom fig, looked painfully confused.

  'Julius Caesar,' I explained. 'The place of the final battle. I take it that Shakespeare is not one of New Labour's favourite authors.'

  'Really? Who won?'

  'Look it up for yourself.' If I'd answered his question I'd've had to admit it was the government, the establishment in the shape of Mark Antony and Octavius Caesar and Lepidus the moneybags, so I said, 'More to the point, let's see who's going to win this battle. Now we've got a fair trial.'

  'I expect to get a bit of help from the learned judge.' Peter Plaistow gave me his most charming smile. 'Dear old Bullingham's the last person to be soft on terrorists.'

  'I don't know. I've got a feeling that the Mad Bull has shown a tender side of his nature lately.'

  'Don't be ridiculous. There isn't a tender side to Bullingham. By the way, Rumpole, there's a woman waving at you from the public gallery.'

  I looked up and who should I see but Hilda, whom I had left after breakfast two hours before, looking down at me from beside the clock in the front row of the circle. She raised her hand in a sort of salute and I raised mine back. She looked vaguely imperial and I remembered the circus in ancient Rome. I thought of the gladiators' cry of 'We who are about to die salute you.'

  'That happens to be my wife,' I told Plaistow. 'So you better watch it. And let me tell you, her father was a notable QC, so she has high standards and isn't afraid of letting her views be known. And also let me tell you, my client isn't a terrorist. He's innocent now and will be until …'