Four heads nodded.
“I’d like to draw your attention to something which comes at the end of the morning’s transcript. It’s not long. Please read it, to see if you get the same impression that I did.”
There were a few minutes of silence, broken only by the rustle of pages and the hard breathing of Boyo Sesolo, whose grasp of English was not on a par with that of his colleagues.
Mkeba, who had finished a lap ahead of the others, said, “What I make of it is that this legal chap – what’s his name? – Silverborn – doesn’t know what the hell the answer to the diplomatic point is. And like all solicitors when they don’t know the answer, he’s going scuttling off to Counsel.
The others nodded. Hartshorn said, “So you’ve all missed it. I did, the first time I read it. Look at what Mullen says right at the end.”
“You mean when he’s getting annoyed about the law’s delays?”
“Right. His exact words are, ‘I never anticipated being here for more than a few weeks at the outside.’”
“I think I see what you’re getting at,” said Mkeba, slowly. “The best chance Mullen has is to make out that he’s come here on some sort of diplomatic posting. But
if
he was only planning to be here for a week or two at the outside, that knocks out any suggestion that he’s come here to take up a post. Right?”
“Exactly right. I don’t say that it’s conclusive. But if it was sprung on him in court it would give Mullen a very difficult question to answer.”
“
If
it was sprung on him,” said Govan. “How do you intend to arrange that?”
“I don’t know,” said Hartshorn. “Not yet. But I’m going to find out.”
On that same Friday and at about the same time Bantings were shutting up shop for the week. The younger members of the firm were chattering happily as they went down the steps outside the senior partner’s window and headed for the delights of the weekend. Filing cabinets were being slammed and word processors and fax machines locked away. Complicated, expensive and superfluous toys, thought Mr. Banting and smiled when he suddenly remembered that his grandfather had said exactly the same when typewriters had first been introduced.
He was in no hurry to leave the office. Since the death of his wife he had lived in a set of chambers above Old Square and returning to them had no particular attraction for him. His eye was caught by a headline in the
Evening Standard
which his secretary had brought in with his five o’clock cup of tea.
SOUTH AFRICA – MAGISTRATE’S ATTACK
When he had skimmed through the item, which was not as exciting as the headline (had he visualised, for a moment, one of the more pugnacious London stipendiaries piloting a bomber over Johannesburg?) he dialled Roger Sherman’s number on the office line. Roger said, “If you’ll give me five minutes, sir, to finish signing my letters, I’ll be right along.”
“Take as long as you like,” said Mr. Banting.
As has already been suggested, he approved of Roger, and this for a number of reasons unconnected with the law; because he was easy to talk to and had a sense of humour; because he had married an attractive girl called Harriet whom Mr. Banting had monopolised at the last firm’s dinner; above all because he had lived a chunk of his life in very different surroundings before coming into the law. Mr. Banting was honest enough to admit that it was only the happenstance of war breaking out in 1939 that had enabled him to do the same himself, but this did not affect his outlook on the matter. He realised that not all of his partners shared his feelings.
When Roger arrived he, too, had a copy of the
Evening Standard.
He said, “We all knew that the hearing this morning was a formality. We were up before Lauderdale, in the Southwest London Court. As usual he looked as though his breakfast had disagreed with him.”
“Gastric ulcers, I’m told.”
“Is that right? Anyway, there was really no need for anyone to do more than apply for an adjournment, which he was bound to grant. The Branch Crown Prosecutor was a man called Totten—”
“I remember him. Face like a King Charles Spaniel.”
“He was a very worried spaniel. When we were having a chat afterwards he wasted a quarter of an hour telling me that he was so overworked that he hardly had a moment to sit down. I must say, it does sound as if he’s got a considerable workload. He has to look after cases from West End Central and Horseferry Road, as well as South-West London—”
“My heart bleeds for him,” said Mr. Banting. “But how did the Press get in on the act? I thought you’d applied for a reporting ban.”
“So we have. And if Mullen had kept quiet we’d have been in and out in a couple of minutes. But what did he have to do but stand up and shout his mouth off.”
“Indeed. What did he say?”
“He said that he objected to all this dillying and dallying. He was a man with a lot of work to do, even if they weren’t. Why couldn’t they simply take note of the undeniable fact that he was entitled to diplomatic privilege and kick this misconceived prosecution out of court?”
“He said that?”
“In so many words.”
“To Lauderdale! Well, well. What happened?”
“I thought, for a moment, that the old boy was going to blow up. Then he took a deep breath and said, ‘You committed this alleged offence yesterday, Mr. Mullen?’ Mullen grunted something. ‘And you were charged on the same day and have been brought before this court on the following day. Did it not occur to you that it might be an improvement if alleged offences in
your
country were dealt with as expeditiously?’”
“Good,” said Mr. Banting. “Very good.”
“Of course this was lapped up by the press boys. They were barred from reporting the case itself, but there was nothing to stop them dealing with off-the-cuff remarks made by the Magistrate. There were only two of them there and they were both scribbling like maniacs. It was a bit of a scoop for them. I can tell you one thing. When this comes up next week it’ll be standing-room only in the press-box.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Banting thoughtfully. “I’m sure you’re right. This case is going to make a big splash. What are your ideas about the next move?”
“We shall have to ask for the diplomatic point to be taken first. Totten more or less admitted that he was out of his depth and I’m sure next time we shall see someone more effective on the Crown side. They’ll probably produce an expert on that sort of question.”
“Which means that we have to do the same. Who had you in mind?”
“I’ve taken a few soundings. The general view seems to be that Martin Bull is the man we ought to get. Something of a specialist in international law and a good fighter.”
“Whose chambers?”
“De Morgan’s.”
“Is he, though? Well, that gives us some fairly heavy metal if we have to go higher. Tell me, suppose we go down on this point and have to fight the case on its merits. What do you think the chances are?”
“I’m not too happy about that, sir. Mullen has told me one story and wants us to tell a different one to the court.”
“That does happen,” said Mr. Banting. “Counsel can usually wriggle out of it somehow. But it brings me to what I really wanted to say. We had a partners’ meeting this morning. The normal one we have on Friday mornings, to moan about how little money we’re making. But John Benson did say that he’d heard from someone or other about this case and that he wasn’t absolutely happy about a firm like ours being involved in police court wrangling and particularly not when we were acting for a South African thug.”
“Did he actually say ‘thug’?”
“Either thug or bully. I can’t remember which.”
“Wasn’t he rather prejudging the issue. What does he know about Mullen?”
“He knows that he comes from South Africa and is some sort of policeman and that’s all most people in this country need to know in order to make their minds up.”
“You mean, in order to be prejudiced.”
“Don’t take it out of me, my boy. I’m older than John and more broad-minded.”
“Then you don’t want me to tell Mullen to go somewhere else? There are firms in the City who would jump at the case.”
“No doubt. Particularly since Mullen will have South African government money behind him. No. All I’m saying at the moment is, cross the first bridge first. The diplomatic point is a very interesting one. No one could blame us for pursuing that, and Counsel will make a meal of it.”
“I’m glad you’re not ordering me off altogether,” said Roger. “I’ve had a six-page letter from my son, at St. Paul’s. Harriet must have told him about the case. He was tremendously bucked that I was acting for a character like Mullen. He said that it showed that the law of England was old enough and steady enough to stand up for unpopular people.”
“That sounds like a quotation.”
“It is. I got it from one of Marshall Fitzhugh’s speeches and put it in one of my letters to him. Now he’s played it back to me.”
“It’s a curious thing,” said Mr. Banting, “how children are always far to the left of their parents.”
The headlines in the
Evening Standard
had caught the eye of other, more influential, people.
The News Editor of the
Sentinel,
that bible of the radical intelligentsia, said to his deputy, “What’s all this about?”
“South Africa,” said the deputy.
“Explain.”
“Old Lauderdale had obviously heard that Mullen was a South African policeman and therefore naturally a Beast of Belsen and took the first opportunity of tearing a strip off him.”
“Will it develop?”
By this the News Editor meant, as his deputy well understood, will there be a fruitful fall-out from which subsequent stories can be garnered, one leading to another, until it finally peters out in the correspondence columns having fulfilled the destiny of News which is to occupy the maximum amount of space with the minimum of readership boredom?
“I think it might come along nicely,” said his deputy. “Anything to do with police brutality is news.”
“You think so?”
“Well, isn’t it?”
“It’s news of a sort,” said the Editor, “but is it
vital
news? Is it the sort of thing that stirs the heart of the great British public? Because in my experience the heart of the great British public is about as difficult to stir as my grandmother’s Christmas puddings.”
“Then you think that it’s only category ‘B’ stuff?” He was disappointed, but willing to learn.
“The top of category ‘B’, certainly. But you’ll soon find out that category ‘A’ news – the stuff that gets right home to readers – has to be something that worries
them.
A lot of people are interested in South Africa. I’m not denying it. They read about the sort of things that are going on in there and they say, ‘bloody bad show, killing women and children’, and then they get on with something that really interests them, golf or bridge or whatever. Dean Swift had the right of it. What a newspaper man he’d have made, if he hadn’t happened to be a clergyman! You remember his poem about the old ladies chatting over their cards? ‘My female friends . . . Receive the news in doleful dumps. The Dean is dead
(and what is trumps?)
’.”
“Then what
do
you put in category ‘A’?”
“Well, take the King’s Cross disaster. That
was
news. After all, any one of our readers might have been on that train and could be on the next one. Or the two planes which collided outside Heathrow. That sort of thing. I was a boy in the thirties and I can tell you this. Every single thing that Adolf Hitler said or did was top news. Why? Because young men could see it leading them straight back to the Somme and Passchendaele.”
“I understand that,” said his deputy reluctantly, “but surely if people in this country aren’t worried enough about South Africa, isn’t it our duty to do something about it? Oughtn’t we to be leading public opinion, not following behind it?”
He was not long down from Cambridge and still retained some of his light-blue idealism.
His opposite number on that popular sheet,
The Comet,
saw the headlines. He said to his deputy, “Lauderdale had better be careful. He’ll be in trouble with the Lord Chancellor if he starts shooting his mouth off.”
The matter was also under discussion at West End Central Police Station, where Chief Inspector Ancrum had received a visit from Chief Superintendent Baron, Head of the Special Branch.
Ancrum said, “Sheridan is a very experienced officer. I don’t think he had any option. Once he heard that Mullen had nearly made a break for it he had to take him along. Of course, he was given bail as soon as the formalities were finished.”
“Who said he nearly made a break for it?”
“That was old Ratter. He works for City Tecs now.”
“Ratter? Do you mean a fat chap who used to be in ‘V’ Division at Wimbledon?”
“That’s the one. They got a new Assistant Commissioner in No. 1 District – as it was then. He was dead nuts on physical fitness. Mile runs before breakfast. The Monty touch. Ratter didn’t go for that at all. He said if he tried to run a hundred yards he’d die, so he got out.”
“But apart from his weight problem, you’d say he was a reliable man?”
“Reliable and experienced.”
Baron said, “I’m not criticising what Sheridan did. I don’t think he had any option. What I’m saying is that when a case has a political angle to it, you have to be dead careful.”
“If there is a political angle,” said Ancrum, “the case goes straight to you. It’s the sort of thing you’re paid to look after.”
On the following morning Captain Hartshorn walked down from Mornington Square into the City. It was lovely autumn weather and he was in no hurry. He enjoyed the City at weekends when the streets were almost empty, when the towering business blocks had been deserted by the black-coated, striped-trousered lemmings and the shops and cafés which catered for them were mostly shut.
Of set purpose he directed his course more to the west than he need have done. Crossing Smithfield Market and steering by the dome of St. Paul’s he came out at the point where Newgate Street meets Paternoster Row. He had heard a lot from his daughter about Fischer Yule’s office, but had not yet seen it himself. His present intention was to fix its location in his own mind and to see whether it would be possible to have it watched.