Rumpole and the Angel of Death (27 page)

‘I hadn't heard about the square strawberries.'

‘Well, you've bloody well heard about them now. You can't be too happy about it.'

‘Mr Rumpole is contented because he can enjoy a good dinner and also serve the cause of justice.' Betsi had also appointed herself my official spokesman. ‘But there's someone over there who's not so happy, I'm just thinking.'

Our company turned to glance at the man sitting under an elaborate mural depicting an unfortunate and bloodstained moment during the Thirty Years War. I didn't turn. I had seen his Honour Billy Bloxham when he came in; he had stared past me as though he hoped I didn't exist.

‘The Judge,' Peter Fishlock said with scarcely suppressed excitement, ‘is looking as though he's waiting to be sentenced.'

At which point a waiter, who looked as though his day job was Euro Minister in charge of Strawberry Shapes, came up to point out that to
fumer
was
absolument défendu.

‘Eddie' – Lady Mary made what I felt was a rare appeal to her husband – ‘can you tell me the French for piss off?'

It all started at the Bank Underground. It should seem a long time ago, for I have reached the age when every day must be savoured and cherished. In fact, the years flash by like stations at which the train doesn't stop, and the year which it took Amin Hashimi's case to reach the dizzy eminence of the European Court of Human Rights seemed to take up no time at all. I don't know how slowly it went for Mr Hashimi, but then he was in prison for life.

George Freeling was forty-three years old, with a wife and two children in Buckhurst Hill. He worked as a middle manager at Netherbank, a huge glass and concrete tower which dwarfed a Wren church not far from the Mansion House. Each night at approximately five forty-five Mr Freeling joined the population explosion which surged away from their computer screens and, leaving the world's markets to enrich or ruin their clients, struggled down the tube. On the evening in question the platform for the eastbound Central Line resembled the Black Hole of Calcutta. Most of the sufferers at least had a safe journey home but George Freeling, standing on the edge of the platform, fell in front of the train as it rattled out of the darkness on its way from St Paul's. He was found to have been shot in the back: a revolver with a silencer and a single blue glove made of polyester and wool were lying between the lines and beside his dead body.

This method of public assassination had, I later discovered, been copied from a detective story where it attracted less attention. Sandra Atherton, a secretary at Citibank, saw a young man of Middle-Eastern appearance apparently push Freeling in the back before he fell. She lost sight of him in the crowd, but then she saw him again, running towards the exit. She called to the guard, who gave chase, followed by some other passengers who also thought they'd seen Freeling pushed – among them Vernon Wynstanley, a young stockbroker, and Emily Brotherton, a tea-lady. For a very short time these witnesses lost sight of the supposed assassin in the tiled and echoing underground passages, but the guard managed to communicate with ground level. Amin Hashimi was stopped as he was leaving the station and the City police were sent for. The three named witnesses made a positive identification. Later, when Hashimi was examined forensically, fibres similar to those in the blue glove were found, in a microscopic quantity, under the fingernails of his right hand. Peter Fishlock got the case, thanks to a friend in the Magistrates Court, and, as I had just won a rather tricky affray and criminal damage for him, he was wise enough to instruct Horace Rumpole for the Defence. During the complicated course of the proceedings he got the idea of Rumpole as the champion of the underdog, or at least of a student of Middle-Eastern extraction, which led us to the choucroute and the eau de vie – and to my international acclaim in Strasburg.

The case came on before his Honour Judge Bloxham, a person who, I think, deliberately cultivated his likeness to a pallid bulldog. His skin was curiously white and his forehead was perpetually furrowed, as were his jowls. With these similar lines above and below, and his eyebrows matching his moustache, he had one of those faces which could make sense either way up, like the comical drawings that once appeared in children's books.

I can't say I had embarked on the Defence of Mr Hashimi with any high hopes of success. I could only do my poor best, although I have to say, in all modesty, that my poor best is considerably better than the poorer best of such learned friends as Claude Erskine-Brown and Soapy Sam Ballard, Q.C. The most I could do, I thought, was to unsettle the identification evidence, have a bit of harmless fun on the subject of wool and polyester fibres, and point to the great weakness of the Prosecution case: the complete absence of any sort of motive for the alleged assassination of George Freeling.

‘You had never met this man Freeling?'

‘Never. Never had I spoken to him.'

‘Or seen him?'

‘Perhaps. Travelling on that Underground line you see many faces. Perhaps his was among them.'

‘You use that line every day?'

‘Back and forwards. To my college in Holborn, where I take business studies and office management. I am reading during the journey; I don't notice many people.'

‘Did you know anything about Netherbank where Freeling worked?'

‘I have heard of it, of course. Not much more.' We were sitting in the interview room in Brixton and I thought that Mr Hashimi might appeal to the women on the Jury. He looked young enough to be mothered and his large brown eyes gave him an expression of injured innocence. He had long, pale fingers and, even in the disinfected atmosphere of Brixton, he seemed to give off a faint smell of sandalwood and spices. I told him that I would do my best for him.

‘We are in the hands of Allah the Compassionate and Merciful. He ordains life and death and has power over all things.'

‘You pray to Allah?'

‘Of course.'

‘Well, ask him to be particularly compassionate and merciful down the Old Bailey next week, why don't you?'

As the gates of the prison house closed behind us and we squeezed into Peter Fishlock's small Japanese motor, I said, ‘We have one bright spot in a rather gloomy prospect.'

‘The absence of motive?'

‘No. The presence of his Honour Judge Bloxham.'

‘I thought Billy Bloxham disapproved of foreign students using the Health Service.'

‘Better than that. He's allergic to any sort of alien. Visitors from what was once our far-flung empire bring him out in a nervous rash.'

‘How's that going to help Amin?'

‘Because if we can get Billy to show his hand, if we can needle the old darling into a quaint little display of racial prejudice, then we can present a bigoted Bloxham to the Jury and they might decline to obey orders. In fact, there's an outside chance, I say no more than that, my fine Fishlock, that we might just scrape home to victory!'

‘Of course, their evidence on the fibres is very unconvincing.'

‘The fibres are one thing. But Bloxham's prejudices are something else entirely. He never stops talking about being British and living in the U.K. He's a fellow who sings “Rule Britannia” in his bath and wants the Kingdom to be reserved strictly for Bloxham look-alikes, their lady wives and white children. If Allah the Compassionate wants a way for Amin Hashimi to walk, then Billy's going to lead him to it.'

‘Miss Atherton. You say you saw a young man of Middle-Eastern appearance push the victim's back as the train was about to stop.'

‘I saw the man in the dock do that.'

‘That's what I'm trying to test, Miss Atherton. Just bear with me, will you? I suggest the first time you got a good look, face to face, at my client Mr Hashimi was when he was stopped on his way out of the station. You came up then and identified him?'

‘I did, yes.'

‘Are you quite sure that was the same Middle-Eastern gentleman you saw push the man on the platform?'

‘Yes. I'm sure.'

‘You had lost sight of him during the chase?'

‘For a short while, yes.'

‘And might not you and the others have ended up pursuing another Middle-Eastern young man?'

‘I don't think so.'

‘Come now, Miss Atherton. Don't all Middle-Eastern young men look rather similar to you? Are you sure you could have told the two of them apart?'

‘Mr Rumpole.' I smiled towards the Bench, waiting for Billy to let his prejudices show. To my dismay he did nothing of the sort. ‘Mr Rumpole,' he said, surprisingly gently, ‘this Court is colour-blind! Where in the world this young man came from is a matter of no significance. He's fully entitled to the fair trial which I'm sure this jury is going to give him. I'm also sure that this very intelligent young lady can identify an assailant without going into racist characteristics. Isn't that so, Miss Atherton?'

‘Of course I can.' Sandra Atherton was delighted to agree with the not so learned Judge.

‘Very well, then. Let us continue, Mr Rumpole. And let us do so without reference to creed or colour.'

My heart sank. I could see the Jury, a mixed bag from the Hoxton area, looking at the pallid Bloxham and rather liking what they saw. He had decided, I now realized, to play a particularly mean trick on the Defence. He was going to give us a fair trial.

Vernon Wynstanley, the stockbroker, and Emily Brotherton were hardly less sure of their identification. Mrs Brotherton, the image of the jolly tea-lady about to be replaced by a mechanical dispenser, was particularly popular with the Jury. I let them both go as soon as possible, but spent a good deal of time cross-examining the fibre expert on the amount of wool and polyester mixture available in London, and the vast number of garments which might have left innocent traces under my client's fingernails. I stopped when I noticed that number three in the jury-box had dropped off to sleep.

In my final speech, given, I had to say, with even more than my usual eloquence, I dwelt on the uncertainty of identification evidence at the best of times, and particularly when the incident took place in an Underground station during the rush hour and must have been a horrific shock to all concerned. I gave the Jury at least twenty minutes on the absence of motive. What was my client, Amin Hashimi, meant to be? A criminal lunatic who killed at random just for kicks? Nothing in his history, his success at his studies and his hitherto unimpeachable behaviour could support such a theory. After I had imitated the Scales of Justice, and put in the ounce of reasonable doubt which would weigh them down on the side of the Defence, I sank into my seat, tired and sweating. I had done my best and I could only hope that Billy Bloxham would put his foot in it.

He didn't. He told the Jury that, although the Prosecution didn't have to supply a motive, they should take full account of all Mr Rumpole had said about the apparent purposelessness of the crime. He told them that identification evidence was often unreliable and they should approach it with great care, but whether they believed the secretary, the stockbroker and the tea-lady was a matter entirely for them. He said they should think about whether the fibres helped prove the case and that they mustn't convict unless they were quite sure. In fact, it was an appallingly fair summing-up.

I said goodbye to my client after Allah the Compassionate, the Merciful, had failed to come up trumps. Amin Hashimi, as calm as ever, thanked me politely and said, ‘The hypocrites will not be forgiven. He does not guide the evildoers. And he has knowledge of all our actions. I have nothing to regret, Mr Rumpole, so please give my best wishes to your lady wife.' I had no doubt that, three or four weeks later, he would wake up to the reality of life imprisonment and his soft, brown eyes would fill with tears.

A few weeks later, however, the Compassionate one arranged something that might possibly provide an escape route for my imprisoned client. His Honour Judge Bloxham was invited to a rugby club dinner somewhere near his home in the Midlands, and he was asked to sing for his supper.

END IMMIGRATION TO END CRIME. JUDGE THANKFUL TO HAVE GOT ONE MORE ARAB STUDENT BEHIND BARS.
So screamed the headline in Hilda's
Daily Telegraph
which I saw as we sat at breakfast in the mansion flat.

‘Your Judge Bloxham,' she said, crunching toast, ‘seems to have been rather a Silly Billy.'

‘He seems to have said it all a bit too late.' I borrowed Hilda's paper. ‘Anyway, he's not my Judge. I want no part of him.'

I suppose it was bad luck in a way. Billy Bloxham had no doubt expected the speech to be a private affair, and in this simple faith he must have let himself go with the pink gin, the claret, the brandy and the port. He stood up to address those used to scrumming down and tackling each other perilously low, and let the real Billy Bloxham bubble to the surface. He wasn't to know that some eager young rugby-playing reporter, fresh from the local
Echo
and anxious to make a name for himself in the world of journalism, was writing shorthand on the back of a menu and would communicate the highlights to the Press Association. The report in the
Daily Telegraph
of what Bloxham had said was fairly full:

A great many of these towel-headed gentry come here as so-called students to escape the tough laws of their own countries. No doubt they find a short stretch of community service greatly preferable to losing a hand if they're caught with their fingers in the till. No doubt they prefer our free Health Service to the attentions of the Medicine Man in the Medina. I don't know how much studying they do, but they certainly have time for plenty of extra-curricular activities. They take special courses in drug-dealing and the theft of quality cars.

Coming from a part of the world where scraps were always breaking out, they are easily drawn into violence. This is not so bad when they do it to each other, but not, repeat not, when a law- abiding subject of Her Majesty gets shot in the Underground. I have to tell you, gentlemen, that when my jury brought in a guilty verdict on the murderer Hashimi, I had a song in my heart. I retired to my room and invited my dear old usher, ex-Sergeant Major Wrigglesworth of the Blues and the Royals, to join me in a glass of sherry. ‘Well done, sir,' Wrigglesworth said. ‘You managed to pot the bastard.'