The Queen v. Karl Mullen (4 page)

“If it comes to active resistance the blacks would need a military leader.”

“A military genius, I should say.”

“Nelson Mandela?”

“No. He is an old man and in bad health.”

“But Jack Katanga might take his place.”

“He is young and vigorous. He writes articles and addresses meetings. And he is bolstered by his romantic background of adventure and escape. Like the young Winston Churchill, yes? But at the moment his name is not widely known. Not yet. However, the blatant and unchallenged publication of this book could be an important step upwards. At the very least it will be a resounding propaganda success.”

“Are you suggesting that its publication can be prevented?”

“Recent events,” said Mullen with a wintry smile, “have demonstrated that any such attempt is the most effective form of advertisement imaginable.”

“So. Being unable to suppress the book you are going to suppress its author.”

“With a measure of luck, and a certain amount of resolution—” Mullen shot a look at Mr. Silverborn—”that should not be beyond our powers.”

O eternal God, before whose face the generations rise and pass away, thyself unchanged abiding, we bless thy holy Name for all who have completed their earthly course in thy faith and fear and are now at rest.

Roger Sherman had come to the law later than most solicitors. After reading for a degree in history at Oxford he had spent some time wandering round the world before signing on for a short-term commission in the army. At the end of it, seeing few prospects in peacetime soldiering, he had entered into articles with Bantings, the well-known Lincoln’s Inn solicitors, and although he had been qualified for less than three years was already tipped for a partnership.

On this fine October afternoon he had given up the opportunity of seeing his son play rugby football for St. Paul’s, a treat for which he had been given leave of absence, and had come, instead, to the Temple church.

We remember before thee this day Marshall Fitzhugh, rendering thanks to thee for his life of devoted and fearless service. To him, with all the faithful departed, grant thy peace and work in them the good purpose of thy perfect will.

A great lawyer, thought Roger, and (which is not always the same thing) a great man; notable, among other virtues, for courage and integrity. He had defended the Chatham bombers, in the face of massive prejudice, securing a disagreement from two successive juries and the abandonment of the case against them. He had defied the wishes of the government when he signed the minority report on the sentencing of sexual offenders; and that at a time when his own elevation to the Bench was known to be under consideration.

When Roger was at law school he had heard Marshall Fitzhugh lecture – occasions when it was difficult to find a seat. He had seen him as combining in himself the finest ingredients of the English legal system; impartiality and humanity, lightened with a touch of humour. Now he had come to pay his last respects.

Bring us, O Lord, to enter into the house and gate of heaven, where there shall be no darkness nor dazzling, but one equal light; no noise nor silence but one equal music; no fears nor hopes but one equal possession; no ends nor beginnings but one equal eternity.

The Temple church was packed with people filling every seat and standing, two deep, against the south wall. Most of them were barristers and solicitors. Roger wondered whether it was possible, simply by looking at their faces, to make out which were which. A hundred years ago it would have been easy. The barristers superior in every way and conscious of it. Two world wars had changed that, as they had changed many things. And now that the solicitor was encroaching on the barrister’s preserves, denied only the privilege of pleading in the highest courts, such differences as remained were fast disappearing. He wondered how long it would take before they adopted the more logical American system. Twenty years? Perhaps thirty. Things moved slowly in the law.

After the blessing the ‘Trumpet Tune’ of John Stanley ushered them out into the October sunlight; some conscious that they had fulfilled a social obligation; a few, perhaps, wondering whether, if all barristers and judges were of the stature of the Right Honourable Sir Marshall Fitzhugh, the law might have less reason to be self-critical.

Roger recognised the boy who was sidling through the crowd towards him as their newest office boy. He said, “Hullo, Charlie. Were you looking for me?”

“I was. Mr. Banting wants you. And my name’s Cedric.”

“You’re wrong about that. Bantings is a very old-fashioned firm.
All
our new office boys are called Charlie.”

The boy grinned and trotted ahead of him, past Dr. Johnson’s Buildings, across the Strand and up Chancery Lane into Lincoln’s Inn. The speed at which he went suggested that the summons from the senior partner was an urgent one. When he went into his office the man who was sitting in the client’s chair got up, with a half smile on his face which indicated that he expected Roger to recognise him; which he did, after a few seconds.

“It’s Mullen, isn’t it?”

“Right.”

“Must be nearly twenty years.”

“All of that. I went down the year after you did.”

They had not been close friends at Oxford, but with rooms on the same staircase and attending some of the same lectures, they had necessarily seen quite a lot of each other.

“I was surprised when I happened to see your name in the Law List. I always thought you meant to go into the army.”

“I did,” said Roger. “In, and out again.”

Mr. Banting smiled benevolently upon him. He did not regard Roger’s deferred entry into the law as a drawback. Far from it. As a member of the R.N.V.R., he had found himself in the navy in September 1939, quitting it, after a number of exciting but satisfactory episodes, at the end of 1945. Whereupon he had got down to work and had rebuilt the firm, which had been founded by his grandfather and was tottering into senility. By forty-five years of intelligent effort he had rescued it from obscurity and it was now one of the leading firms in Lincoln’s Inn.

He said, “It occurred to me, Roger, that since you knew each other, you’d be the appropriate person to look after Mr. Mullen. Take him along to your room and get him to tell you the story he was just starting to tell me. It sounds as though you’ll need help from our litigators. Keep Palmer in the picture.”

When they were seated in Roger’s office, a tiny apartment at the back of the rambling seventeenth-century building, he said, “Bring me up to date a little. You went straight back to South Africa when you left Oxford?”

“Correct.”

“And took up some official job there.”

“I became a policeman. Or perhaps half a policeman and half a soldier. In our security forces there’s very little difference between the two. My official rank is colonel. The nearest equivalent in your police would be chief superintendent.”

“Let’s settle for colonel.”

Roger was trying to sum up his visitor. He realised that it must be something fairly important to have brought him to seek outside aid. His consulate would have its own legal department able to advise him on routine matters. The passage of time had certainly changed the rather lumpy young man he had known at Oxford. For better or for worse? Difficult to say. A security job in South Africa would be an emphatic moulder of character, in one direction or another.

“And it’s some business connected with your job that has brought you over here?”

Mullen’s mouth hardened. More used to cross-examining than being cross-examined, thought Roger. After a fairly long pause he said, “Yes. And since what happened this morning was connected, in a way, with my current job, I’d better tell you about that first.”

When he had finished, omitting much but giving the essential points of his mission, Roger said, “It will be for better brains than mine to advise you about the extradition point. That’s for counsel, who will make your application to the High Court. I could find the best man for you. But I imagine it’s something else you want to consult us about just now.”

“Yes, it is. I was taken, this morning, to one of your police stations and charged with shop-lifting.”

Roger was experienced enough not to show either surprise or disbelief. He simply said, “Which shop?”

“It’s called Lampards.”

“I know it well. The big bookshop in Duke Street.”

“They were making a great show of this book.” Mullen opened the bag he was carrying and pulled out a copy and pushed it across the desk. It had a striking wrapper depicting a vertical cross-section of a mine. In a gallery at the bottom a skeleton was lying, with its knees drawn up and its arms extended as though in agony. On the surface, above the mine, a stout civilian was shaking hands with a grim-faced policeman.

“You’d hardly need to read the book to get the message,” said Roger.

“Infantile propaganda. One of Lampards’ windows was stacked with copies and the front room was crowded with people. I was told that the author was in a side room, signing copies. I managed to get through the scrum to the cash desk and paid for the three copies I wanted.”

“I imagine you didn’t get Katanga to sign them.”

The hard lines of Mullen’s mouth relaxed, for a moment, into the ghost of a smile. He said, “I thought about it, but considered that it would have been inappropriate. I was given this plastic bag for the three books and a receipt, which our legal people had told me I must keep, and then – you say you know the place well?”

“Very well. I’ve sometimes spent hours there wishing I had enough money to buy all the books I wanted.”

“Then you’ll remember how the place is arranged. You go down a couple of steps through an opening in the corner of the front room to get to the back part. That’s split up into several smaller rooms, three of them, all opening onto a sort of central reservation where there’s another cash desk. The room on the right is for limited editions in fine bindings, you know the sort of thing. I wandered in there to have a look at them. They were attractive, I agree, but too expensive for my purse.”

“When you say you looked at them—?”

“I picked one or two of them out and put them back again when I saw what they cost.”

Roger said, “You were alone in the room at the time?”

He had a shrewd suspicion of what was coming.

“Yes. Unfortunately.”

“What happened next?”

“I thought I’d go home. I didn’t fancy fighting my way through the front room, which was more crowded than ever, but I’d an idea that one of the rooms on the other side of the central area had a door leading out to a side street.”

“And so it has,” said Roger. “I’ve often been in and out that way myself. Nineteenth-century classics in that room, as I remember it. Dickens, Thackeray, Trollope and such.”

“I didn’t stop to examine the books. I simply wanted to use the door, which had been left ajar by the last person who’d been that way. I pushed through, out onto the pavement and then – well, a lot of things happened rather fast.”

“If they happened fast,” said Roger, “let’s take them slowly.” He noticed that Mullen’s face, normally a healthy brown was now red and that he was sweating.

“Well, the first thing was, I saw this man. He’d been standing at the corner, where the side road runs out into Duke Street. As soon as I saw him I knew that he was some sort of policeman. Being one myself, I suppose I’ve got an instinct about it. I also knew that he’d been stationed on guard, where he was, so that he could keep both of the shop exits under observation.”

“Quite likely,” said Roger. He was not troubling to make notes. All of his attention was fixed on Mullen.

“I was carrying this bag of books in my left hand and at that moment I happened to put my right hand down to my jacket and I touched something in my right-hand jacket pocket which should certainly not have been there. It felt like a thinnish book.”

“You were wearing the jacket you’ve got on now? And no overcoat?”

“Correct. And I was absolutely certain that my jacket pockets had both been empty when I went into the shop.”

“So someone must have slipped this book – if it was a book – into your pocket.”

“It was a book, all right,” said Mullen grimly. “A copy of Oscar Wilde’s
Salomé
with the Beardsley illustrations. And I knew very well how it had got there. Someone had slipped it into my pocket when I was pushing through the crowd in the front room. No difficulty about that. We were packed like sardines and there was a lot of jostling and pushing going on. And I realised exactly what was happening. There are people in this country who have no cause to love me. They guessed I should be at the shop and were ready for me. I was to be caught by that detective on the corner and charged with shoplifting.”

“So what did you do?”

“There were only two choices. Move off and throw the book away. Or get back into the shop and replace the book before anyone noticed it was gone. I didn’t fancy the first course. The man I’d spotted was a bulky brute and was already moving towards me.”

“A chase and an undignified capture. Not an attractive idea,” agreed Roger. “You might, I suppose, have gone back into the shop, insisted on seeing the manager and explained what had happened.”

“Easy to be wise after the event,” said Mullen sourly. “I can only say that such a proceeding never occurred to me. All I wanted to do was to get rid of the bloody book. As quickly as and they warned me that I’d have to turn up at their stupid little court the next day – that is, tomorrow. Shall I have to go?”

“I’m afraid so. The proceedings will be formal. I shall be there and I shall ask for an adjournment, which will certainly be granted, so that the question of diplomatic immunity can be properly considered.”

“You don’t think there’s any doubt about it?”

Roger said, with a smile, “It’s not a branch of the law that I know much about. But don’t worry. By the time the matter comes up I shall have briefed a barrister for you who has specialised in the subject and knows all about it. I’ll fix a con for us.”