Law and Disorder (28 page)

‘Of course,’ came the reply.

‘Thank you. Now, if we can just go over a few of these details again . . . You say the defendant came from the left?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you actually see him come from the left?’

‘Er . . .’

‘Or did you simply assume it because you heard the shout coming from the left?’

‘Er . . .’

One by one he addressed each detail and exposed the little assumptions upon which so many of them were based, reaching into thin air and finding those little stitches added by the imagination.

On such details is a man’s liberty determined.

Monday 16 July 2007

Day 200 (week 42): VampCard

UpTights has a big case tomorrow and this afternoon she was told which judge she would be appearing before, which sent her into something of a tizzy.

‘He’s the most lecherous, chauvinistic pig of a judge in the whole country. Decides by the attractiveness of the legal team rather than the strength of the case.’

‘So how do our opponents shape up?’ I asked, trying to lighten her mood.

‘It’s not funny, BabyB, I’m afraid. Not for you anyway. Now that we know he’ll be hearing it, I have no alternative but to play a VampCard. You’ll be no help whatsoever.’

Oh. Dropped. Just like that. Who cares that I’ve spent the last few weeks slaving over these papers for her? ‘Sorry, BabyB, but you just don’t have what we’re looking for.’

UpTights called TheVamp down and simply told her that she was needed for a hearing with this particular judge. ‘Oh. I see,’ she said, in an understanding tone. Not that it’ll be much fun for her, but apparently she gets paid twice her usual rate to make her feel better for cases such as these.

‘You know what’s required,’ was all that UpTights said to her about the case. Of course she did.

Tuesday 17 July 2007

Day 201 (week 42): Foiled

I was the bag carrier for UpTights and TheVamp today as they arrived at court done up to the nines. They were greeted by OldSmoothie.

‘You know, UpTights, each time you lower yourself like this you just feed that little self-hatred monster which gnaws away at your brain each day.’

She ignored him.

‘You know that they’ve changed our judge, I assume?’

She didn’t ignore him on that one.

‘Yes. Shame really. Feels there’s a conflict of interest given that he and I sit on the same golf-club committee. He’s passed the case over to his learned colleague.’

UpTights’s mouth dropped. Well, it moved as far as it was able. To make it worse, not only was the new judge female but she, like the rest of the legal community, knew the stories about the lascivious nature of her fellow judge and it didn’t take much of her female intuition to sniff out what was going on. In fact, going by the pungent smell of expensive perfume coming from UpTights and TheVamp as they entered the courtroom, ‘sniff out’ would probably be extremely accurate.

‘How long has your junior been instructed on this case, Ms UpTights?’

‘That is not relevant, Your Honour.’

‘Even so. Humour me. How long?’

‘Since yesterday afternoon.’

‘And when did you find out who would be hearing this case?’

‘Er. Yesterday afternoon.’

‘And would there, by any chance, be any correlation between these two happenings?’

‘Your Honour. M’learned friend is extremely experienced in matters such as this.’

‘Yes,’ she took a long look at TheVamp before continuing, ‘I’m sure she is.’

The case was lost before it had even started and UpTights and TheVamp were left looking like two women out on the pull who’d been turned away at the door of the only nightclub in town.

Wednesday 18 July 2007

Day 202 (week 42): Yo, dude!

It might be the pressure but TopFirst is starting to turn into a parody of himself. He’s like the class nerd who’s become so full of his own self-importance that he’s even started to believe he’s cool. There have been a number of affectations over the months but his new catchphrase does him no favours whatsoever. He’s started saying, ‘Juglandaceous, dude’ in the style of Bill and Ted. He immediately follows it up with, ‘Great word, huh? Means something to do with walnuts, believe it or not. Thinking of putting it in one of my closing speeches.’

Righteous. Dude.

As for UpTights, she’s been working on JudgeJewellery’s case.The difficulty is that CheapnNasty, the shop where she was caught, has come back with a load of CCTV evidence showing her stealing all sorts of other jewellery on numerous occasions in the past. They’re also threatening to go to their competitors to ask them if they have any similar footage. So for now her only hope is going to be that of the last resort for the desperate, an abuse of process argument. Seems they didn’t read her her rights properly after she’d given them the old, ‘Do you realise that I’m a member of Her Majesty’s judiciary?’ line. Thought there was no need. Which of course there wasn’t, since she knew full well what her rights were. But if there’s a technicality to be had, there’ll always be a lawyer there to take it.

Whilst UpTights was in conference with JudgeJewellery I received a call from FakeClaims&Co telling me that they’ll need another medical report after which they’ll be able to get me some cash for both my injuries. Recorded the call using the loudspeaker on my phone and a small tape recorder and then took it straight round to TheBoss.‘Just the job, BabyB. Can’t see how they’ll continue in the face of all this evidence.’

I hope he’s right for my own sake. Despite the fact that it would be a cowardly, low-down, two-faced thing to do, I have no doubt that he means it when he says that if he goes down, I go with him.

Monday 23 July 2007

Day 205 (week 43): Facebooked

Been checking out TopFirst’s network of friends on Facebook. Interesting that he hasn’t yet removed Ginny, which made me think that there may be some scope for causing trouble there in the future. That then got me wondering. Tried signing in as TopFirst himself. I already have his personal email address from his dealings with Ginny and so all I needed was his password. Ginny’s name failed as did that of his fiancée. Then I tried his football team, his Cambridge college and a few obscure legal terms as it wouldn’t have surprised me to find his password was something like ‘estoppel’ or ‘Mareva’. All to no avail. Then it dawned on me. His favourite word of the moment. His naff Bill and Ted bodacious take-off. I typed in ‘juglandaceous’ – and bingo. Access to his most intimate 459 friends from Cambridge and beyond.

So, just a few small changes to make to his profile. ‘Relationship status’ was changed from ‘engaged’ to ‘single’. A broken heart next to his name immediately indicated this on the newsfeeds of his friends. Then, I changed his ‘looking for’ section from ‘friends’ to ‘anything I can get’. Lo and behold, another newsfeed instantly appeared. This I followed up by Googling a paparazzi picture of someone doing a drunken moonie outside a nightclub and uploading it as his profile picture. With his new profile sorted, I set up a group called ‘The Great Singles Lurve Shack’ and sent out an invitation to join it to all of his friends. After that I thought maybe I’d leave a message on the wall of each of his female friends (excluding his fiancée) saying:

Hi, I’ve often regretted having fallen into that ‘just good friends’ thing and wondered, now that I’m single, whether we should perhaps see if the chemistry’s there on a more romantic level? How about a romantic dinner? x

Facebooked. Oh, and just in case anyone tried to trace what had been done, which is admittedly unlikely, I did it all from ThirdSix’s computer which he’d left on and available for anyone to use.

Tuesday 24 July 2007

Day 206 (week 43): Damage limitation

As one of TopFirst’s Facebook friends I received a message from him late this afternoon both on Facebook itself and also to my Hotmail account.

Hi, it seems that someone hacked into my Facebook account
yesterday. I would like to confirm the following.

1. I have not just split up with my fiancée.

2. I do not want to have a romantic dinner with all my female friends.

3. The photo of a man pulling his trousers down outside a nightclub is not me.

4. I did not set up the group ‘The Great Singles Lurve Shack’. I have instructed defamation lawyers and I hereby give formal notice that I will take legal action against anyone repeating any of this.

And that’s supposed to make it better? Anyway, he’s trying to get to the bottom of ‘The Case of the Facebook Fiend’ as he’s calling it. Worrier says he suspects it was probably . . . guess who? ThirdSix of course. Who else? Thinks he’s getting him back for intercepting his post the other day.

Thursday 26 July 2007

Day 208 (week 43): Battleships

Today I went along to a settlement conference with UpTights. She was representing an insurer who I’ll call Sundance and her opponent was once again OldSmoothie. As we were all sitting around a table ready to start FanciesHimself came into the room carrying a box in front of him like it was the crown jewels. I looked more closely. It was a game of Battleships.

‘Set ’em up then, OldSmoothie,’ said Sundance. ‘Your turn to go first, I believe?’

At this point no one had yet explained exactly what was going on,but it was slowly starting to dawn on me.‘Don’t worry,BabyB,’ said Sundance after it was all up. ‘This is no more random than putting your case in front of a judge and it’s a heck of a lot cheaper.

If OldSmoothie wins, his client gets half a mill in this case. If I win, he only gets a hundred thou. Simple as that, really.’

He noticed that I looked towards UpTights. ‘Why brief counsel on our own side, you ask?’

‘No, I wasn’t wanting to suggest . . .’

‘I’ve known OldSmoothie here for years. Fought hundreds of cases against each other. He only ever agrees to Battleships if UpTights can be the referee.’

OldSmoothie looked very pleased with himself. UpTights on the other hand was less than amused at being paraded around as the most expensive Battleships referee in the world ever.

‘If you insist on playing these schoolboy games, the least you can do is to get on with it, don’t you think?’

‘Oh but UpTights, don’t you enjoy the build-up? These settlement conferences are always the highlight of my month.’

‘Me too, actually,’ said Sundance.

Then they both sat down at the table and stared at each other like a couple of old gunslingers. Silence descended and the duel began. Today it was OldSmoothie who was victorious and he rang his solicitor from the room to report on what a tough negotiation he had been through.

As I was leaving work I noticed in the chambers diary that ThirdSix is booked in on a case against Teflon on Monday and by coincidence he’s also in the same court on a different case the next day. He’s currently away in Manchester until tomorrow evening and both briefs were waiting for him in his pigeon-hole. I quickly took them out and went back to my room. Satisfied that in both cases he was defending claims which ultimately would be paid by an insurer (as if this somehow made what I was about to do slightly less bad), I made the switch. Actually, it was only the date on the front of each brief which I changed – making the 30th look like the 31st and vice versa. Very simple, but potentially very effective.

We’ll see how he gets on.

Monday 30 July 2007

Day 210 (week 44): SuperBlag

The joy of having Teflon as ThirdSix’s opponent today was that I could absolutely count on him spreading any malicious gossip that may have arisen as soon as his non-stick little wig landed back in chambers. Sure enough, come 4 p.m., we all received a blow-by­blow account by email:

If it wasn’t enough that our super-clever third six pupil seduced a client at his last chambers, today it got worse. He arrived at court with completely the wrong set of papers. Pretty bad, you might think, but there was more to come. The penny suddenly dropped halfway through the hearing. But rather than stopping and ‘fessing up, he only dug his hole deeper. I assume he arrogantly thought he’d be able to blag the whole hearing off the back of the wrong papers. Which he might well have done if he wasn’t such a lousy blagger. Now I admit I have no proof of this other than his dreadful performance and the look of realisation on his face when I referred to a particular witness statement. All I can say is that this man is a danger to the public.

Tuesday 31 July 2007

Day 211 (week 44): A quiet word

‘HeadofChambers called ThirdSix in for a quiet word this morning.’
It was TopFirst gossiping over lunch. ‘How did he get on?’ ‘Denied it all, apparently. Said that Teflon was mischief-

making.’ ‘Perhaps he was.’ ‘Apparently that’s an end to it as there’s no proof either way.’ In which case the whole thing needed a helping hand. I

knew already that ThirdSix’s client had been a Brummie due to Teflon’s further reports of the hearing. So, after a little practice with the accent I made the call from a phone box and blocked the identity of the number. ‘Hello, can I please speak to the head of chambers?’