Law and Disorder (33 page)

‘Oh, it was nothing.’ Then, before finishing up, I couldn’t resist asking, ‘So what are you going to do to ThirdSix?’

‘Oh, don’t worry about that. As if he’s not already dead in the water. Rest assured that once I’ve withdrawn and have no interest in the race, the rumour mill will be rife with made-up stories about our rugby-playing friend.’

Hmm, like it’s not already.

Tuesday 11 September 2007

Day 240 (week 50): Losing the war

It’s been all go today. First Worrier came to tell me that TopFirst had officially withdrawn from the race for tenancy. She also told me that she’d heard from a friend of a friend that ThirdSix had been caught in possession of cocaine at one of the county courts before joining this chambers. My, TopFirst has been working quickly. I wonder what other malicious gossip he has been spreading. Then ThirdSix came round. Smug in his pyrrhic victory over TopFirst. ‘At least I’ve got him back for stitching me up over all that business with my last chambers.’

Well. Quite.

In the meantime, Ginny received an email from TopFirst telling her where to go, which in the circumstances I kind of admired. He wasn’t going down without keeping at least a part of his dignity. I left it at that with no further reply.

So, it would all have been going perfectly were it not for the fact that TheBoss is still spitting blood about FakeClaims and for some reason remains determined to take it all out on me at his forthcoming disciplinary hearing. Here I was, having taken in so many of the lessons he’d taught, having won the battles against my fellow pupils . . . and still about to lose the war.

Wednesday 12 September 2007

Day 241 (week 50): Eh oop

‘All right BabyB, you’re going to cheer up whether you like it or not.’ It was a hungover, caffeine-fuelled, hyperactive Vamp. The last person I wanted to be against this morning.

‘What you need is a distraction,’ she said.‘Let’s play a game.You can either take a northern or a west country accent.’

I gave in and chose northern.

‘And bonus points for the words ‘‘flat cap’’,‘‘whippet’’ and ‘‘grim’’ for you and ‘‘cider’’, ‘‘wurzel’’ and ‘‘combine harvester’’ for me.’

I didn’t do too badly with the odd ‘eh oop’ and ‘by ’eck’ but TheVamp really excelled herself. The judge, I figure, twigged, but without proof could do nothing. The highlight came when TheVamp put it to a witness that his car was travelling ‘slower than a combine harvester being driven by a cider-drinking wurzel’.

Thursday 13 September 2007

Day 242 (week 50): Underbellies

‘Ah, UpTights. I see you’ve had your quarterly refill of botulism. I’ve always enjoyed the irony of your great desire to fill yourself full of poison.’ It was OldSmoothie in chambers tea. It had clearly been a bit of an overdose since despite her anger, UpTights’s face hardly changed other than in its complexion.

‘And your hair implants are different, I suppose?’ she fired back.

‘I don’t know whether anyone ever warned you about pulling faces and the wind changing but it looks to me that that’s exactly what’s happened.’

He chortled to himself in a very self-satisfied manner and went to get his cup of tea, leaving UpTights fuming. Conversation then turned to a party being hosted by a north London firm of solicitors whose invitation stated, ‘Please bring a party trick’. This led to speculation as to what people would be taking. Innocently, TheCreep turned to UpTights and asked, ‘So, have you learnt any new tricks for the party, UpTights?’

Quick as a flash and before she was even able to start an answer, OldSmoothie was in there for the kill and even the less progressive members of chambers winced as he made his strike. ‘New tricks? You what? Everyone knows you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.’

This time, though, a defiant answer came back from a rather unexpected corner. ‘What is it you’ve got against women, OldSmoothie?’ It was BusyBody and she meant business.

‘What on earth do you mean? I love all women. Every one of them. Well, except perhaps the fat ones.’

‘You see, that’s my point. Every time you open your mouth you reveal your misogynistic underbelly.’ She looked him up and down. ‘And if I may say so, it’s rather an over-sized underbelly at that, wouldn’t you say? So, go on, what is it? Mother not cuddle you? Too ugly to get a girlfriend before you were rich? Or is it simply that we threaten you?’

For the first time since I have known him, OldSmoothie had no answer to give. After a moment he bowed his head slightly, an expression of utter resignation on his face. BusyBody chose this moment to deliver the killer blow with a smile and a twinkle in her eye: ‘One little voice answers back and suddenly he’s got the look of a beach donkey.’

There was no escaping the accuracy of her description of his face at that moment. BusyBody turned to UpTights and received a beaming smile. Well, it would have been a beam had her stretched features allowed. She had found the helper she so badly needed in the fight against her foe.

Friday 14 September 2007

Day 243 (week 50): Price of justice

‘We’ve got to win, UpTights. My whole financial future depends on it.’ It was JudgeJewellery and today was the hearing of the abuse of process arguments.

‘I should say. If you’re convicted, you’ll be saying goodbye to that cushy judicial salary for a start.’

‘No, not that. I’ve decided I’m going to quit the bench anyway. It’s far more important. I’ve been offered the lead in a huge ad campaign by CheapnNasty along with a television show of my own in which I sit in judgement on various domestic disputes between celebrities. Kind of
Celebrity Judge Judy
. The deal’s already done both in this country and the States. Between them they’ll pay more than twenty years of sitting on the bench. Oh and I’ll be allowed to take whatever I want from any of the CheapnNasty stores for life.’

She seemed more pleased with the offer of free swag than the huge financial deal, but either way it was obvious that UpTights disapproved despite trying to look supportive of her old friend. Then JudgeJewellery added, ‘The only problem is that it all falls away if I’m convicted.Then I’ll fall foul of the laws against profiting from my own crime. But if you get me off, even with one of your technicalities, then legally speaking, at least, I will be innocent. I will have committed no crime from which I could profit. I will instead be profiting from the crime I didn’t commit. If you see my point. Anyway, you can understand my concern.’

Oh, UpTights understood that all right. With their being old friends and all, you’d have thought that JudgeJewellery would have had a little more insight than to put pressure on this highly strung monster at such an inopportune moment. ‘Yes, I get the point. Anyway, I think we ought to be getting into court.’

Thankfully for her, the Crown Prosecution Service could not afford to pay for OldSmoothie for such a small case and made do with one of their in-house muppets over whom she ran roughshod. All of which confirmed to me something which has been apparent for the whole of the last year – that you get the result you pay for. Which was good news for JudgeJewellery but as for justice, I think it’s time we’re honest and simply stick it on eBay and see what it fetches. Sell it down the Swanee river once and for all and be done with it.

Tuesday 18 September 2007

Day 245 (week 51): VirusCard

‘Come to beg me not to drop you in it, have you?’ It was TheBoss and as usual he was on the money.

‘Well it can hardly help your case to be seen to have brought your pupil down with you, can it?’

‘I don’t think you understand, BabyB. If I go down next week, there’ll be no room for mitigating factors. It’ll all be over. Finished.
Which leaves me with nothing to lose by getting you involved, and as they say, two minds are always better than one. I’ve told you enough times, BabyB. It’s all there in the magic book. Life itself, BabyB, is war.’

As I was telling Claire over lunch, she said, ‘We still do have the virus card, BabyB.’

That was true although neither of us had held out much hope with that one. It had been Claire’s idea months ago when TheBoss’s own expert had examined chambers’s hard disk. An afterthought, really.‘Let’s add a virus to the disk so that it’ll crash say in a couple of months’ time,’ she’d said.

This hadn’t been too difficult to manage since we’d picked a friendly expert who had given us access to his office and technologically it was pretty basic. The real weakness of it all was that both experts having examined the hard disk, the court wouldn’t normally need to see the original.

‘It’s worth a bit of sabre-rattling at least,’ said Claire now. ‘Unlikely to get FakeClaims to change their mind about bringing the complaint but it might at least show TheBoss that you’ve done absolutely everything possible to help him.’

So after lunch I went to TheBoss and suggested that he make a last-minute request for his own expert to re-examine the hard disk this week.

Thursday 20 September 2007

Day 247 (week 51): Almost there

TheBoss did as I suggested on Tuesday and yesterday he received a response from FakeClaims stating that it was too late in the day to be making such a re-examination. TheBoss replied that he insisted. Given the crucial importance of the hearing to his whole career, lateness was not something which would necessarily sway the Bar Standards Board.

Perhaps surprisingly for such a dodgy outfit as FakeClaims, today they’ve come clean and ’fessed up that in fact the mainstay of their evidence has been destroyed. Though it’s extremely unlikely to affect the case, TheBoss was nevertheless delighted. ‘You know, BabyB, I don’t know how you did it and nor do I really want to know. But it does look like you may well have pulled it out of the bag. Nice one.’

Taking advantage of his rush of over-optimistic hyperbole, I asked whether I could rely upon him not to drop me in his mire at the hearing?

‘I’ll have to think about that, BabyB. Let’s see how it all pans out. I have to say that you haven’t done yourself any harm in the last couple of days. Let’s see what happens next week.’

Which wasn’t quite the answer I’d been hoping for, but was at least a better position than I’d been in earlier in the week.

Friday 21 September 2007

Day 248 (week 51): TheParrot

With all the pressure of tenancy decisions and finance, Worrier has

turned into a parrot.

‘How’s it going, BabyB?’ she asked this morning.

‘Oh, not bad, considering.’

‘Not bad, considering. What have you got on today?’

‘Just a small application in Wandsworth.’

‘Small application in Wandsworth. Oh.’

‘Should only take ten minutes,’ I went on.

‘Ten minutes, yes.’

‘How about you?’

‘How about me? Oh, you know.’

Sadly, I do know. Anyway, you get the picture. If it was anyone else, it’d have been tempting to throw in an insult just to hear it repeated back before it registered with the brain. But not with Worrier.

Monday 24 September 2007

Day 249 (week 52): Counter spin

Since he withdrew from the race, TopFirst has been busy wreaking his revenge on ThirdSix. Going round chambers collaring anyone who’ll listen and making up a different bit of malicious gossip about ThirdSix for each one. To his credit ThirdSix has shown resilience with his counter-spin. First he painted a picture of TopFirst as a bitter, twisted liar who still hasn’t come to terms with the first failure of his life. Given that this is in fact true, it resonated and ThirdSix took on the mantle of official victim. This then allowed him to start suggesting that it was TopFirst who deliberately swapped those papers and set him up to fight the wrong case on the wrong day. Which, ironically, means that ThirdSix remains in the race.

Tuesday 25 September 2007

Day 250 (week 52): SkinsParty

If he hadn’t quite managed it so far, TopFirst outdid himself in the revenge stakes last night. He might not have destroyed ThirdSix’s tenancy chances but he certainly destroyed his swanky Islington flat. By way of background, he’s the only one of us who owns his own flat, and despite his initial unassuming demeanour he’s never missed an opportunity to boast. Lording it over the rest of us who are all sharing, even TopFirst. Last night he was hosting a quiet little soirée for a few of his close friends. Drinks and a few of Marks and Spencer’s best canapés. You see, despite the fact that he’s a rugby player, truth be told, he’s actually more an ice and a slice than a ten pints of lager kind of guy and he thought he was having a civilised little get-together. Except it was hardly civilised. Not once TopFirst became involved. If you haven’t heard of them before then let me tell you about them now:
Skins
parties. They tend to be held by teenagers whilst their parents are away and they involve smashing up a house beyond even what the Yellow Pages might be able to fix. All this is advertised online and then broadcast to the world via webcam. Well, yesterday TopFirst took the
Skin
s party upmarket and advertised ThirdSix’s little wine-and-cheese do.

I went with Claire who was celebrating having been taken on in her own chambers. It’s something she thoroughly deserves and I’m so pleased for her.