Felix in the Underworld (20 page)

‘All right. But what's it like in here?' Felix, already feeling queasy, was anxious to change the subject.

‘It's good. Very good. They tell you what to do. Like the army. No worries if they tell you what to do. I never got on well down the Embankment. It was all up to you where you went for breakfast. It's better here or in the army. Give me a bit of quiet now, and don't dare use the toilet.'

That night Felix lay entombed on the bottom bunk, conscious of the inconvenient stirrings in his stomach and listening to the heavy breathing of the young giant who, it seemed, killed at random.

Weeks later, he was told he had a visitor. He combed his hair carefully in the little square of a mirror and, doing his best to look cheerful, went off to his date with Brenda Bodkin.

She stood looking at his desk, empty and waiting for him, and was struck by his sense of order. Hers was always piled high with books, shoes, ashtrays, half-drunk mugs of tea and coffee, opened packets of biscuits, letters, photographs and ideas for point of sale publicity. On Felix's desk the long, ruled sheets of paper were lined up in a neat block, the clock and the metal duck stood like sentries on each side of the photograph of Chekhov, lolling on a verandah in the sunshine with his dog – a smiling writer with tired eyes on his way to death. She pulled down the fat paperback collection of plays and put it in the bag in which she collected shirts and trousers, socks and boxer shorts, and the suit for Felix's day in court.

She had called on Mrs Ives in Mermaid Crescent, the cleaning lady, who had handed over the key in response to Felix's note with a trembling hand and a look which meant Good luck, Miss. Rather you than me! Mrs Ives hadn't been in to clean since the arrest. What, Brenda wondered, did she expect to find? Dead bodies, severed limbs, floorboards tom up for the concealment of butchered victims? She said she'd make sure everything was in order and that she'd see Mrs Ives got paid for regular visits and for keeping his place as no doubt Mr Morsom would have wanted it kept. She got to the flat and blinked at the lightness of it, the low autumn sunlight bouncing off white walls and the tidiness everywhere. She went into the bedroom and, opening a cupboard, found the stack of clean shirts, kept in order by a man who was interested in laundry.

She zipped up the bag full of Felix's possessions and looked round his writing-room as though to say goodbye to it. The window in front of the desk was filled with his view of the sea: a greenish colour with a gold burnish where the sunlight struck it. She looked at the shelves, the neat row of box-files and notebooks, and the press-cutting albums in which Felix pasted his good notices. (He could smell out the bad ones almost without reading them and destroyed them rapidly.) There was a shelf for tapes and compact discs, under which stood the black box which was the centre of his Orpheus sound system. On top of the box lay a tape, unmarked but perhaps recently played. What was it? Some favourite piece of music? The tune he'd take to the desert island if he were only allowed one? She was in no hurry and so far the flat hadn't divulged any secrets about an author who had managed to land himself in such sensational trouble. She slotted in the tape and pressed a few buttons. A red light glowed, the Orpheus hissed and Gavin spoke.

‘They told me to get in the motor. I would describe their manner as peremptory. They were hostile. You might say unpleasant. . .' Brenda was listening so intently that the cigarette between her lips was unlit, the lighter with its flame was flickering in her hand, as Gavin continued, ‘. . . The police cell was by no means spacious and a great deal of room in it was taken up by a man wearing a crumpled blue suit and a number of heavy rings. On one of them I noticed was a sphinx's head which might have come into use as a knuckleduster. I do not exaggerate when I say that he smelled like a bar parlour on the morning after. I noticed in particular that his hands were not clean and his fingernails were what my mother used to call “in mourning for the cat's mother”. By this time I was in considerable distress and I asked if he objected to my making use of the very inadequate toilet facilities provided. His words to me, spoken in a slurred voice, were, “Be my guest, sunshine.” It was while I was relieving myself that my cell mate approached, pulled down my clothing and bent me over the toilet. The next thing I was aware of was a sharp pain in my rear passage and a feeling of resentment.'

Brenda lit her cigarette and listened until the voice said, ‘I shall watch your future career with interest.' Then nothing could be heard except another faint hiss. She remembered the
Sentinel
literary lunch and the drink in the bar where she had noticed the heavy, silvery ring with the plump face of a sphinx. It was on the hand of Terry, the missing rep, and no doubt it would come in useful as a knuckleduster.

Lying in the bunk under Dumbarton, who had now sunk back into silence, Felix read
Uncle Vanya.
He was disturbed by the depths of despair and the cruel depiction of life by an author whom he had come to regard, he now realized quite mistakenly, as gentle. He closed the book, turning away from such remorseless creations and, when let out of his cell, joined the other prisoners in watching Australian soap operas on the big television set at the end of the gallery. He sat enthralled by their undemanding plots. The next time he visited the library he took out
Grand Slam
by Sandra Tantamount.

‘I don't know, Mr Roache, if the chent appreciates. . .' Chipless Warrington, QC was tall and sturdy, the descendant of a long line of dustmen who had carried overflowing bins of rubbish. His yellowish hair toned with the colour of his skin and flowed gently over the top of his ears and down to his collar so that he looked more like a trendy banker or a person in advertising than an Old Bailey hack. He had a prominent, fleshy nose, a generously rounded chin and the sharp, white teeth of a carnivore. He spoke in the upper-class drawl in use when Lord Curzon, whom he somewhat resembled, was Viceroy of India – and he managed to avoid speaking to Felix or looking at him directly. ‘. . . I mean, I don't know if the client fully understands that if we establish provocation we might reduce it to manslaughter?'

‘I think you can take it,' Septimus Roache assured him, ‘that the client understands absolutely nothing whatever about the law.'

‘If the chent were to tell us – and I do say
if
– that he went round to see Piercey to stop him giving the tabloids the story about his bastard child, and if – and, once again, I must stress this
if
– the client should tell us that, when he saw him in his van, Piercey was abusive and then started to blackmail him, demanding, shall we say, twenty or twenty-five grand as his price of silence, and even if – and again I lay stress upon the
if
– we should be instructed by the client that Piercey upped the ante and asked for, well, let us suppose thirty grand, or that he'd tell the papers quite untruthfully, of course, that the client raped the infant's mother or gave her a transmittable sexual disease,
if
as I have quite clearly said, those are the instructions from the client, well, then, bingo, Piercey becomes a blackmailer and juries don't at all mind blackmailers being bonked on the head with spanners.'

‘What would be the tariff?' Septimus wondered. ‘If we reduce it to manslaughter?'

‘Five years. Maybe four, given a fair wind and a soppy judge. I understand the client is of good character.'

‘He was nominated for the Booker Prize.'

‘Are you suggesting that's a criminal offence?'

They laughed, Chipless and his junior, Quentin Thurgood, and Septimus Roache. They were grouped round a table in the glass-walled prison interview room. Felix, looking at them, thought they were as remote and patendy artificial as the characters in Australian soap operas.

‘I just don't see it,' Chipless's junior said when they had stopped laughing. ‘I just don't see manslaughter.'

‘All the same, perhaps we could get them to accept a plea to it.' Chipless was still jovial. ‘Who's prosecuting?'

‘Marmaduke Pusey,' Septimus told him.

‘Dear old Marmalade! There was a girl in his chambers pestering him and I took her off his hands. Marmalade owes me a favour.' But Quentin Thurgood still didn't see it at all. ‘Provocation,' his junior told Chipless, ‘has to be instant, on the spur of the moment. You know the law.' Chipless conceded, ‘One relies on one's junior for that.'

‘You can't plead provocation if you'd been planning it for a long time' – Quentin turned the pages of a bundle of prosecution statements – ‘like the client in the instant case.'

‘Remind me, Quentin. Refresh my memory. Merely refresh it.' Chipless was doing his best to sound like someone who'd read his brief.

‘“You can drop dead, Gavin. Drop dead!” The client was heard to say that to a man answering descriptions given of Gavin Piercey outside a bookshop in Covent Garden. That is the statement of Sir Ernest Thessaley.'

‘I was talking to the officer in charge,' Septimus told him. ‘Apparently Ernest rang the police to give them that little nugget.'

‘Really? Why would he want to do that?' Chipless was shocked.

‘He doesn't like other authors,' Septimus told them, as though that explained it all.

Hearing the evidence of Sir Ernest Thessaley, to his great relief, Felix felt as angry as when he was approached by Gavin in Covent Garden. He intruded on the private consultation, saying loudly, ‘I'd better make it quite clear that I never saw Piercey in his van. He never tried to blackmail me and, once and for all, will you get it into your heads that I never hit him with a spanner!'

The lawyers turned to look at him as though a strange apparition had just wandered into the room. Then, as the apparition said no more, they returned to their intimate conversation. ‘I notice,' Quentin Thurgood said, ‘that the client denies striking the man Piercey on the head with a heavy weapon.'

‘We shall be in deep shit' – Chipless had no doubt about it -‘if we attempt to deny the attack. It will create an extremely bad impression.'

‘Always best,' Septimus agreed, ‘to accept as much of the prosecution evidence as possible. Confess and avoid always looks better than barefaced denial.'

‘Barefaced denial,' Chipless agreed, ‘never sits well with the jury.'

‘I don't care who it sits with,' Felix intruded once more. ‘I never hit Gavin.'

‘The client wishes to go for denial.' Septimus was saddened.

‘The client would do far better to leave things to his legal team,' Chipless agreed, ‘and not go wandering off on a line of his own.'

‘A particularly hopeless line,' Quentin, the junior, was delighted to point out, ‘because of the fingerprint evidence.'

‘Ah! The fingerprint evidence. Just remind me.' Chipless settled back in his chair, preparing to enjoy it, while Quentin made another search through the depositions.

‘The client's fingerprints' – Quentin found the place – ‘found on the door-handle and side window of Piercey's van.'

‘I tried the handle,' Felix told them.

‘Trying door-handles, dear me!' Chipless was greatly amused. ‘Not trying to pinch cars, are you, when things are a bit slow in the writing trade?'

‘I called at Gavin's flat. I wanted to see him. Urgently.'

‘You will recall that the client was seen going in and coming out of the flat,' Quentin reminded his leader, who said, ‘Of
course
I recall,' as convincingly as possible. ‘No doubt to utter more threats. We shall have to deal with the message on the answering machine.'

‘ “I'll be compelled to take steps to silence you”,' Quentin read out the bit in the evidence he'd highlighted in pink.

‘I meant legal steps, of course,' Felix assured him.

‘If the client meant legal steps,' Septimus murmured, his attention directed at the ceiling, ‘one wonders why he didn't say so.'

‘And then wasn't there a final note left in the flat?' Chipless remembered.

‘“Don't think you can get away with this. I'll be back.'” Quentin had that highlighted also.

‘And of course' – Chipless was still smiling – ‘the client came back.'

‘No, I didn't! I didn't see any point. I got a train back to Coldsands and went home.'

‘Did he see anyone who might remember him on the train?'

‘I don't think so. There was no one I knew.'

‘Or meet anyone in the street?'

‘The town was fairly empty.'

‘Does it come to this' – Chipless was looking, seriously now, at his instructing solicitor – ‘that we can't call any witness to support an alibi?'

‘Naturally we've made inquiries,' Septimus told him.

‘Naturally you have as a first-class defence solicitor. And drawn, I suppose, a blank?'

‘A complete blank!'

‘So we're left with the fingerprints on the door of the van?'

‘There must have been all sorts of fingerprints,' Felix protested.

‘But the client's prints were the ones the police have put in evidence.' Quentin sounded quietly satisfied. ‘And then we have the fact that the client sought to avoid arrest.'

‘By seeking refuge,' Septimus agreed, ‘among the poor and dispossessed.'

‘And the murder weapon was never found?' Chipless's questions were quiet now but, he clearly thought, probing.

‘I didn't dispose of it. Anyway, if I'd've attacked Gavin like that, I'd've been covered in blood . . .'

‘You went home. Plenty of time for a bath,' Quentin suggested.

‘My clothes?'

‘You live by the sea, don't you? Mightn't you have dropped them in?'

‘But on the train . . .'

‘A quick wash-up in the Victoria Station Gents?'