Rumpole and the Angel of Death (31 page)

‘And if he had said that?' Far, far away I heard the caressing voice of the Irish.

‘If he had, we'd have all known where we were. The Jury could have marked its disapproval of such views by a not guilty verdict. I could have made considerable use of them in my final speech. Justice would not only have been done, but would clearly have been seen to have been done! But what did Judge Bloxham do?' I leant forward and whispered secretly to the Court through the microphone, in tones calculated to make its collective flesh creep. ‘He decided to dissemble! He made up his mind to deceive. He set about to defraud. He very deliberately acted the part of a totally unbiased Judge, something which hardly exists in this imperfect world. And so, when he belatedly showed himself in his true colours, what was the unfortunate Mr Hashimi to think? What
could
he think? Except that his trial had been an elaborate charade performed by a Judge with the clear intention of deceiving the Jury, which was bad, and Counsel for the Defence which was, in my humble submission, unpardonable.'

My head had cleared and, as I spoke, I felt healthier, saner – even elated. I gave them my views on the perfidy of the Court of Appeal, only anxious to protect the reputation of a judge at the expense of justice. Peter Fishlock's resume of the leading cases on bias came back to me and I took them through it. I even touched on the subject of human rights about which I had heard so much since I went into Europe. By the end of it, I thought that I had won over the Irish, although the Portuguese looked doubtful, and the Slovene had laid down his earphones and seemed to have fallen into a light doze. I turned up the volume of my peroration. ‘Let us go on,' I told the seven, ‘to a community of tolerance, a community which has shut the door on prejudice. To quote a great poet, who, like so many great poets, happened to write in English:

Forward, forward let us range,

Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change.

Thro' the shadow of the globe we sweep into the younger day:

Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay!

Then I sat down and applied the red-and-white spotted handkerchief to the slightly less fevered brow. Fishlock whispered, ‘Well done!' Jameson gave me an admiring look and Betsi's eyes were glowing. And then Soapy Sam Ballard completely ruined my triumph by more or less throwing in the towel.

‘Having heard Mr Rumpole,' the faint-heart representing Her Majesty's Government began, ‘we cannot argue that the words spoken by the learned Judge at the rugby club dinner wouldn't be considered prejudiced by any reasonable man or woman. This must be borne in mind by the Court when considering if Amin Hashimi received a fair hearing by an impartial tribunal, within the terms of Article Six of the Convention for the protection of human rights . . .'

So there it was. I had taken a battering ram to the door of a castle which had been unlocked by its so-called defenders. It couldn't be called a famous victory. As we stood to bow and the Judges filed out, Betsi said we should get the result in three to six months and there was little doubt what it would be. On the other side of the Court the man from the consular service and Lady Mary were grouped round Billy Bloxham, as though he was the victim of a serious road accident. Sam Ballard, who had been looking gravely downcast, raised his eyes to smile across to Betsi. I noticed that she didn't smile back.

‘So, Mr Rumpole. You have fought the good fight!'

‘Too easy. Sam Ballard chucked in his hand.'

‘He is very conscious of the importance we all attach to human rights. I told him that we need lawyers with such a fine record as you have, Mr Rumpole.'

‘And did you tell him that a lot of European cases might come his way if he showed himself a good libertarian?'

Betsi Hoprecht and I were standing by a table in the airport bar. Jeremy Jameson was waiting in line to pay for the last round of European Court drinks, and Poppy had gone off shopping. Now Betsi gave me a smile which I can only describe as conspiratorial and put a brown hand on my arm, a touch so light I hardly felt it. ‘He might have thought that. I don't know what went through his mind.'

‘You had a good many little chats with Soapy Sam, didn't you?'

‘It's always best' – Betsi was still smiling – ‘to get to know the opposition.'

‘You were in his room at night, weren't you? Painting a rosy picture of his future as an international lawyer.'

‘We drank beer out of his refrigerator, certainly.'

‘And Article Six of the Convention was your pillow talk?'

‘Pillow talk? I think I don't know that phrase. Pillow talk?'

‘Were you and Sam' – I put the question direct – ‘in bed together?'

‘Me and
Mr Ballard?
In bed together? What a ridiculous idea! You must be making a very big joke, Mr Rumpole.' Betsi wasn't just smiling then; she threw back her blonde hair and laughed loudly and clearly enough to scare the dwarf and startle the maidens on the other side of the Rhine. Jeremy Jameson was coming towards us with his hand round three eaux de vie and I felt an immediate need to slip off to the gents.

When I came back the bar was even fuller. I pushed my way towards the table in the corner and saw Betsi and Jameson with their heads together. My hearing isn't altogether what it was, and I can't be sure of this, but I think I heard the M.E.P. say, ‘He won't talk now. He'll soon be on his way home.' Then they clinked their glasses together, drank and Betsi turned and saw me. I had the distinct feeling that I wasn't, at that moment, a welcome sight.

‘Who won't talk now?' I asked her.

‘Oh, no one you know, I think. We were discussing another case altogether.' And then she fell back, as she had with the unfortunate Ballard, on promises. ‘But perhaps you will be asked to argue it for us. When the time comes.' Then the crackling, amplified voice of Europe announced that the flight to London Heathrow was boarding immediately from gate number three. I was, I must confess, quite relieved to hear it.

A bright spring turned into a long, wet summer and then, in September, pale sunshine returned. During those months Ballard complained that none of the promised briefs in international cases arrived on his desk, but I had almost forgotten the weekend in Europe until Peter Fishlock rang to say that we had won an almighty success in Strasburg, and Betsi and Jeremy and all our friends sent greetings and congratulations. I sat at breakfast that Saturday morning and felt curiously little elation. Was that because it all seemed so long ago and had none of the immediate excitement of a jury verdict on the last day of the trial? My
joie de vivre
was at a low level that weekend anyway as Hilda's old schoolfriend, Dodo Mackintosh, was inhabiting the mansion flat in return for the hospitality she had shown to She Who Must in Cornwall during the Hashimi appeal.

‘Dodo has suggested a trip to Kingslake, Rumpole. She says the garden has been thrown open to the public.'

‘Sounds exciting. I'm sure you'll both have a rattling good time.' I saw a fine prospect of a solo lunch in the pub, and a snooze by the gas fire, opening before me.

‘Of course you're coming too, Rumpole. It's about time you got a little fresh air into your lungs. And the herbaceous border at Kingslake will come as a nice change from all those squalid little criminals you spend your time with.'

‘I don't suppose Rumpole can tell a mahonia from an azalea, can he, Hilda?' Dodo Mackintosh, with what I took to be an evil glint in her eye, piled on the agony.

‘Dodo's going to drive us to Sussex, Rumpole. It's very good of her. So you'd better gulp down that coffee. We're going to make an early start.' I saw it was no time for argument. She has to be obeyed.

Always distrust people who have nicknames for their motor cars and, when my wife and her old schoolfriend were strapped into the front, and I had poured myself into the back, where I found precious little leg-room, Dodo switched on the engine which coughed, spluttered and started, my heart sank when she chirped, ‘Buzzfuzz
is
in a good mood this morning.' It remained at a low level during the journey by reason of Dodo's habit of driving very slowly along clear and straight roads, and then accelerating wildly at intersections or dangerous corners.

When, after what seemed a lifetime of alternating bursts of boredom and terror, we got to Kingslake, it proved to be a greenish-grey Regency house in a poor state of repair – and full of draughts, I should imagine – with gumboots in the hallways. Dodo and Hilda had been gossiping about various mistresses and ex-pupils from their old school, and this less than fascinating conversation continued as we paid our duty call to the dahlias and chrysanthemums in the wide herbaceous border. It was around midday and the alcohol content in the Rumpole blood had fallen to a dangerous point. Muttering something about a search for the gents, I stole away through the rose garden and down the gravel paths between the greenhouses which looked in dire need of a lick of paint.

Round a corner I came to what I took to be a back door of the house. It was open and I had a view of a stone passageway, the regulation number of gumboots and pegs for tweed caps, battered panamas and some disintegrating macs. I also saw a wooden table with a tray-like top holding a welcoming collection of bottles, some glasses and a corkscrew. A desperate plan crossed my mind; I would pour myself a large snort, leave a more than adequate supply of money and retreat to a quiet refuge behind the cucumber frames. I had put my hand in my pocket and was advancing on the drinks table when a door opened further down the hallway and a voice boomed, ‘The house is not, repeat not, open to the public!' It was Lady Mary Parsloe, looking windblown and armed with what I took to be an extra large gin-and-tonic. She narrowed her eyes, looked at me as though I were a serious blight on the roses and said, ‘By God, it's you!'

‘I'm sorry. Is this your house?'

‘Eddie's house. His family house, as it so happens. He's in London, trying to assess the damage you've done.'

‘Damage?'

‘Peddling human rights. What human rights? The right to get us all blown up. I suppose that's your idea of freedom?'

‘You're talking about the Hashimi case?'

‘
And
I'm talking about your friends Fraulein Hoprecht and that dreadful fat Member of the European Parliament. I bet they're celebrating! Why aren't you with them, with your nose in the trough?'

‘I thought they were your friends, too. You and your husband were at dinner . ..'

‘Eddie was there to see what they were up to. He knew perfectly well, of course. Not that we'll ever prove anything now that your Mr Hashimi has walked away from us. With a life sentence in front of him, Eddie thinks he'd've talked eventually. Oh, you know what I'm talking about.'

‘I'm afraid I don't.'

‘The bloody great mess you've got us in!' She made an expansive gesture with her hand holding the glass, slopping some of the drink which settled the dust on the stairs of the hallway.

‘Can I ask you a question?'

‘I suppose so. I don't promise I'll answer it.'

‘Can I have a drink?'

She stood looking at me, an old, untidy woman, swaying slightly like an unpruned shrub in a high wind. ‘I'll pay for it,' I told her.

‘Pay for it? You think that makes it all right, don't you? You think everything's all right if you pay. Or someone pays you. How much did they pay you? The gun-runners?'

‘I got legal aid from the Court in Strasburg. Who were the gun-runners exactly?'

‘Not guns, was it? Something much more than guns. You honestly don't know?'

‘Honestly.'

‘Then you should. You should know what you've done to the world.' She moved unsteadily to the table. ‘What is it you want?'

‘A brandy-and-soda,' I suggested, ‘would be very welcome.' If I was going to be operated on, I needed an anaesthetic. I saw her pick up a bottle and wave it vaguely in the air. ‘I'll pour it out,' I told her.

‘You pour it out,' she said, ‘and come into the kitchen. Don't let it go any further. Eddie would kill me, but I think you bloody well ought to know.'

A quarter of an hour later I walked across the garden alone. Should I have guessed? Were there moments that should have told me the truth? Betsi grabbing a newspaper? A car threatening Ballard – an incident Betsi Hoprecht said was ‘unnecessary'? A few words overheard in the bar at Strasburg airport? Should these things have told me the truth, and was I getting too old to take the hint?

The sky had darkened as if in warning of a storm but the earth, the grass and the dahlias, golden chrysanthemums and blue Michaelmas daisies were still bright and stood out vividly against the gun-metal grey of the sky. Hilda and Dodo were walking towards me.

‘Rumpole! Where on earth have you been?'

‘Here and there. I had a look inside the house.'

‘You've been drinking.'

‘I've been listening.'

‘Who to?'

‘A woman who owns this garden. I met her when I was doing a case.'

‘Oh, was it one you lost?'

‘No, I won it. Unfortunately.'

‘Dodo knows a place where we can have lunch in Haywards Heath.'

‘They do homemade soups.' Dodo opened an unexciting prospect.

Whose fault was it that the truth never emerged and that deadly Russian weapons were still being traded to Iraq? Was it my fault, or Ballard's fault when he was tempted to show his libertarian principles in the hope of future briefs? Was it all because Billy Bloxham let his prejudices show at a rugby club dinner, or because a cub reporter heard what he said? Or because a new Court had been invented to take care of the Rights of Man? Who should I blame – or was I to blame myself?

These questions would never have occurred to me but for an encounter with a half-drunk woman who had thrown her garden open to the public. What she had told me were official secrets, and included the fact that the arms trade was being financed through Netherbank in London, and that George Freeling was an investigator reporting back to some modestly retiring Department of State. So my young Iraqi client, a servant of the arms dealers, among whom Betsi and Jameson were numbered, was chosen to silence him for ever. My job had been to get him out of prison before he decided to talk in exchange for parole. These important facts, like Billy Bloxham's racist opinions, never saw the light in the Old Bailey.