Prisoner at the Bar Page 5

“Why?” She spoke in a rush. “But you’ll have to tell them you were there with me.”

  “I’ll say I was with someone. I won’t name you.”

  “What would happen if they found out it was me? You know what they’d think — that we were making love.”

  “They’ll only think that if they don’t know you,” he said lightly.

  “Please, don’t do it.”

  He spoke more seriously. “I don’t think you quite understand. When the police make a request like this it means they’re pretty certain it’s a case of murder or manslaughter. When we were in the lane we didn’t see anyone, although I thought the bush was waving about oddly — and although that’s negative evidence, it’ll be useful to them. Many a case has been solved by knowing what wasn’t.”

  “But what will they think we were up to?”

  “Can’t you…” He stopped speaking as the waiter came along with coffee and milk to ask them if they would like some more. They refused and he left. “Katherine, it’s immaterial what the police think.”

  “Is it?”

  “Of course it is.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I only want to help justice,” he said.

  “You can’t. You didn’t see anything.”

  “That can help the police almost as much as if I had. It gives them a definite period when nothing happened.”

  “Suppose Elmer learns about it?”

  “He won’t.”

  “Suppose he does?”

  “He knows you go out with me.”

  “He doesn’t know we’ve ever been to a place called… called Lovers’ Lane. Bob…” She reached across the table and rested her fingers on his hand. “It makes it all seem so… so sordid. You know what the name Lovers’ Lane means to people, what usually goes on in such places. Now I know what it’s called, I feel as if I’d done something terrible.”

  “That’s illogical. The name of the place can’t change anything.”

  “Why did we have to go back there a second time?”

  He didn’t answer.

  She removed her hand, sat back, and fidgeted with the strap of her crocodile-skin handbag.

  He called the waiter over and paid the bill. Then he and Katherine left, crossed the road, and went along the seafront to where he’d parked the car.

  It was a clear night and although there was no suggestion of frost, the stars sparkled as brightly as if there had been. The tide was in and the sound of the waves breaking on the pebbles and the rush of the retreating water was often audible above the noise of the traffic.

  He opened the near-side door of the car and she got in. He went round to the off-side, sat down behind the wheel, turned, and looked at her. She was beautiful, so beautiful that sometimes he felt in awe of her. How could Elmer treat her coldly? Hadn’t he ever begun to realise her great need for love and her capacity for loving? Yet to him she was just one more possession that others would covet, one more visible proof of success.

  “Bob, I’m sorry,” she said, in a low voice. “I got all worked up back in the restaurant. It’s a terrible thing to do at a celebration dinner.”

  He put his arm along the back of the seats and caressed her neck. “All forgotten.”

  “Shall I tell you something?”

  “If it’s nice.”

  “When I look at you I feel as if I were sixteen again and about to elope with The Laughing Cavalier.”

  “Why him?”

  “Because when I was sixteen I saw the painting and his eyes said he was a wicked old man who’d make the most exciting lover.”

  “Elope with me and see how wicked I can get.”

  “I’m not sixteen anymore.”

  “Pretend you are.”

  “I’m no good at that sort of pretending.”

  A crowd of teenagers went by. The boys had been drinking and were larking about, the girls were giggling and pretending to be furious every time their bottoms were pinched. A two-note siren rose in volume and an ambulance drove past at speed and although the lights further on were at red, it crossed them. Out at sea two large ships, almost on the horizon, were steaming eastwards whilst inshore and to the east of the bay a number of fishing boats were marked by gently bobbing white lights. A green flashing wreck buoy showed where a Liberty ship had sunk with heavy loss of life towards the end of the last World War. A couple walked past, arms round each others’ waists, transistor wireless playing raucously.

  “Please don’t tell the police, Bob,” she said.

  “I must,” he answered.

  “But why?”

  “To help them in their investigations.”

  “You can’t help them — you don’t know anything.”

  “I’ve explained that.”

  “You’ve explained,” she repeated, with sudden bitterness. “You’ve also made it only too clear that if I beg you to do something that’s not of the slightest consequence.”

  “It’s not like that.”

  “To me it is.”

  “You won’t see my point.”

  “Then tell me, how does it matter how the police get on?”

  “They’re partially responsible for seeing justice is maintained.”

  “And they get paid for doing that, so leave them to earn their money.”

  “They can’t succeed on their own.”

  “Just because they can’t do their job is no reason for telling them we were in that horrible lane so that they think…”

  “Katherine, we’re all concerned with justice and justice means everything: it’s the whole basis of our civilisation. You can have our kind of civilisation without anything else, even without religion, but you cannot have it without justice. I suppose I’m now being incredibly pompous?”

  She did not answer.

  “I’m a barrister. I serve justice. I can see what it really means, how overwhelmingly important it is. It doesn’t mean merely the carrying out of laws: laws can be totally unjust. It means giving each person the right to live his own life as he wants to, subject only to his not interfering with the rights of others to live their lives. In this country, we’ve reasonably good laws, incorruptible judges, honest lawyers and policemen, to give us a justice that is probably as good as any large modern country can have. But it’s only like that because most people are on the side of justice. If most people are against it, or indifferent to it, you can have perfect laws, incorruptible judges, honest lawyers and policemen, and yet the most awful injustice.”

  “So?”

  “A man’s died, probably murdered. Anyone who can, must help the police over this because the criminal has, if possible, to be caught and punished.”

  “That is your concept of justice?”

  “It’s the only practical one.”

  “So according to you, if even one guilty man isn’t dragged before a court to be punished, justice will suffer and civilisation will be shattered? Any man’s injustice diminishes me, because I am involved in justice?”

  “One criminal escaping detection won’t shatter anything: a hundred thousand might.”

  “We’re only concerned with one criminal.”

  “And if everyone said that, you’d have your hundred thousand.”

  “Have you never defended a man you believed guilty?”

  “No man’s guilty until a court of law says he is.”

  “That’s pure Jesuitry. You’ve defended people you’ve been certain were guilty — you’ve told me so. Yet that means on your own definition you’ve been doing your damnedest to destroy the justice you say you so passionately believe in. Please, please, Bob, forget your ideals and your duty to everyman. Come down to earth and remember it’s us we’re talking about. I’m begging you not to tell the police we were there.”

  “You’re asking me to be a traitor to myself.”

  She stared sadly through the windscreen. “Haven’t you gone on and on begging me to be a traitor to myself — every time you’ve tried to get me to leave Elmer?”


  *

  Bladen returned to his flat at eleven-thirty. He went through to the sitting room which, although one of the windows had been open, had the stuffy atmosphere of an unused room. He poured himself out a stiff whisky.

  What a hell of a celebration dinner that had turned out to be! From the moment he had said he was going to the police, they had failed to understand each other. For the first time ever, there had been real bitterness between them.

  He drank, then lit a cigarette. He’d probably expressed himself badly over his belief in justice: made himself sound like a really pompous lawyer. Yet how else could he have explained to her some of his innermost feelings? The British public seldom stopped to think how lucky they were to have true justice and how relatively few other countries had it: the great mass of people, though, didn’t care. Perhaps George Orwell had been right in gloomily believing the average person was sufficiently indifferent to justice to stand by and watch its being destroyed: hadn’t Parsons actually condemned himself in order to excuse his captors’ injustice? Yet their indifference was frighteningly dangerous: the fight to maintain justice must be unending.

  Katherine had even accused him of betraying his own ideals by representing in court people he could be certain were guilty: but justice demanded that each man be given the right to be defended and without such right there could be no justice.

  One unsolved murder meant nothing. If the murderer in the Lovers’ Lane case were not brought to court, nothing shattering would immediately happen to the English legal system, justice would remain. Yet, as in timber attacked by the death watch beetle, damage would have been caused that one day might become catastrophically apparent. Also, he would have betrayed himself and no one could do that and remain the same man.

  He finished the drink and crossed the room to pour himself another. The impersonal — and therefore hostile — atmosphere of the flat made him curse. Solitude bit deep into a man’s soul.

  *

  Whicheck lived in a police house, five minutes’ walk from the police station. It was a solid, unpretentious, faintly ugly brick built semi-detached. The sitting room was furnished cheaply, the chairs and settee were odd, and the curtains were faded — but it possessed an air of quiet domestic contentment. In the top shelf of the glass-fronted cupboard were a number of medals and three replica cups, all won at rugger, whilst on top were two framed photographs of rugger teams and one of Whicheck diving for the line with the ball held in outstretched hands.

  Elizabeth looked across at him and saw that he was staring into space. “Hey, hey, come back here!” She was a small woman with a personality that quite transcended her ugly face, so that people seldom remembered her looks.

  He grinned. He lay sprawled out in the armchair, looking rather knobbly, as if arms and legs didn’t quite fit.

  “Is work being a swine?” she asked.

  “No more than usual. I was thinking about the peeping Tom case.”

  She came to the end of the row of the sweater she was knitting for their five-year-old daughter. “That kind of thing makes me shiver.”

  He shrugged his broad shoulders. “There’s a lot worse goes on. They very seldom do any physical harm.”

  “But to get a thrill out of watching people… Ugh!”

  He laughed. “If you’d had a look at the collection of blue movies we picked up last week…”

  “Which, no doubt, you all saw through half a dozen times?”

  “Have to study the evidence.”

  “You’re a great big dirty-minded man and I love you.”

  “Even though my name’s Whicheck.”

  “Even though you’ve given me a name that’s outlandish and people think I’m a foreigner and begin to shout at me to make me understand them.” She checked on the knitting pattern, then began the next row. “What’s wrong with this horrible case?”

  “It’s too early for anything to be really wrong yet, but we’ve uncovered a notebook he kept which lists the initials of some of the people he spied on and I was just wondering who the people might be.”

  “You surely can’t have much of a chance of finding that out?”

  “No.”

  “Or of tracing the killer?”

  Whicheck sighed. “Nor that.” He picked up a pewter mug from the floor by his chair and looked inside.

  “There’s another can of beer in the larder.”

  “I’ve really had enough.” He looked across at her and his eyes twinkled. “The last couple of initials listed in the book were B and C. D’you reckon they could be Daphne and George?”

  She giggled.

  Chapter 6

  Bladen entered chambers and went into the clerk’s room. Premble was sitting at the desk, typing. “Morning,” said Bladen.

  “Good morning, sir. Are the papers in the Chill case ready yet?”

  “They are not.”

  “I promised them for yesterday.”

  “That makes you a liar.”

  “If you would have them ready by lunchtime, please, sir.”

  “I don’t know what else…”

  “You’ve nothing of greater importance in hand, sir.” Premble spoke quite severely.

  Bladen turned and studied the briefs on the mantelpiece. “Hasn’t anything fresh come in?”

  “Not yet, sir.”

  “You’re slipping, especially as yesterday you were described to me as a cunning old bastard.”

  Premble looked slightly embarrassed by the praise.

  “I’ll be going out for a while,” said Bladen.

  “Not, I hope, before you’ve done the papers in the Chill case?”

  “Stop fussing. It’s only a statement of claim.”

  “I am privately assured that it’s a case the plaintiffs want to bring to court and if they do your brief will be very well marked. It’s therefore worth expediting the matter, sir.”

  Bladen grinned. There were times when Premble’s manner could irritate, but when it came to judging the guineas a brief was potentially worth, he was in a class on his own. Bladen went through to his room. Wraight was there, at the second desk, and wished him a cheery good morning: evidently, Wraight had temporarily run out of women.

  Bladen un-taped the Chill case and read the papers. It was a breach of contract for a large sum, but straightforward in law. He drew up the statement of claim, then took the handwritten sheet of paper through to Premble to type. After that, he left chambers and walked up Market Road to the High Street and along to Andover Road. The police station, a rambling two-storey building, was just past a large furniture store. He went through the main entrance and turned left into the general room. Here, there was a narrow area used by the public and this was separated from the room beyond, which spread out in a L shape, by a counter with a folding flap. The walls of the public area were plastered with police notices, some yellowing with age. A sergeant and a constable worked behind the counter.

  The sergeant looked up. “Hullo, sir. There’s surely no court today?”

  Bladen failed to recognise the sergeant, who so obviously knew him, but made out he did. After a few words of greeting, he said: “I’d like to see the detective inspector if he’s free?”

  “He’s certainly in, sir, and I’ll check whether he can see you.” The sergeant had a very brief conversation over the internal telephone. He replaced the receiver. “He’ll be pleased for you to go up, Mr. Bladen.” He lifted up the counter flap, swung back the door, and stepped out. “Come this way, will you? Grand weather we’ve been having, considering the time of year. I’m due for a spot of leave with the missus next week — I keep wondering if the weather can hold.”

  Bladen followed the other along a narrow, dark corridor and then up some well-worn stairs, bare of carpet. They walked through what was obviously a games area, it was an enlarged landing in which was billiards table and darts board, and along another corridor. The sergeant knocked on the end door and opened it. “Mr. Bladen, sir.”

  Whicheck came round
his desk and shook hands. “Hullo, Mr. Bladen. Care to have a seat? It’s actually a little more comfortable than it looks.” Whicheck smiled and his knobbly, battered face became warm in expression. “The rates won’t run to anything better — I don’t know if you can persuade the finance committee to divvy up some extra cash?”

  “Knowing the members, that is most unlikely.”

  “Then if you can’t, no one will.”

  Bladen wondered how much irony was contained in that last sentence? He had last seen the D.I. in an assize case in which he had been defending. His brief had called on him to prove Whicheck a liar. He had never pressed this line of attack as hard as some counsel would have done, but the other might not have been quite as philosophical about it all as he had appeared to be.

  Whicheck went round his desk, sat down, and rested his elbows on the arms of his chair. “How can I help you, Mr. Bladen?”

  Bladen hesitated. It was one thing to declaim on the supreme importance of justice and the need for every person to serve it, but it was quite another voluntarily to involve two people, however lightly, in an unpleasant criminal case. “I read in the papers last night you’ve got a homicide on your hands,” he said finally.

  “The dead man up in the hills — yes.”

  “Is it murder?”

  Whicheck picked up a pencil and rolled it round in his fingers. “We don’t know yet. It could be murder or it could be manslaughter. I suppose, in fact, at the moment a clever counsel might even argue a case for G.B.H.”

  “But not accident?”

  “The dead man was hit on the head with something very solid and then kicked in the face and chest. Our laws are getting more liberal every year, but they aren’t yet that liberal.”

  “Was the dead man a peeping Tom?”

  “I think we can go that far.” Whicheck stopped rolling the pencil around. “Can I ask what your interest in the case is, Mr. Bladen?”

  “I was there Monday night.” To his annoyance, Bladen felt his face redden.

  “Do you mean in Lovers’ Lane?” Whicheck spoke with studied casualness.

  “Yes.”

  Whicheck leaned forward and searched amongst the many papers on his desk until he found a dean sheet. He wrote. “In a car?”