Rumpole Rests His Case (12 page)

‘All I'm trying to say, Mr Rumpole,' Bunty leaned forward and spoke now in a low, eager voice, almost as if she were making a declaration of love, ‘is that this country has to maintain reasonably friendly relations with countries and people... all over the world.' Here she spread out her hands as though to embrace Mormons, Seventh Day Adventists, practitioners of Sharia law and worshippers of the Reverend Moon in one cosy and politically correct embrace.

‘So you're in favour of women being denied education and treatment in hospital, or being whipped for wearing trousers?'

‘Of course I'm not,' she explained patiently, as though to a child. ‘I was brought up in a different cultural tradition.'

And damned lucky for you, I thought, as I inspected her page-boy cut and scarlet nails; you might have a bit of a tough time in Kabul. ‘You don't believe in a justice which transcends all cultural traditions?' I asked them both in a voice so unexpectedly resonant that several of the assembled old boys and their girlfriends turned to look at me in alarm.

‘Of course you'll say that in Court, and we'll all respect you for it.' Once again Bunty sounded as though she were soothing a difficult child. ‘But we don't want the Tribunal used as a platform for politicians or, worse still, political terrorists! We don't want that, do we?'

It was a question, I thought, that didn't deserve an answer, and I gave her none. Bunty put her bright fingers against her mouth and, apparently, thought profoundly.

‘Ours is a government of barristers,' she told me, ‘but we're always needing more.'

‘Are you?' I thought I knew what was coming.

‘So many tribunals, committees needing chairmen. We're facing an alarming shortage of stipendiary magistrates.'

‘That doesn't alarm me,' I had to confess.

‘The Lord Chancellor's always looking for someone to appoint.'

The approach had been made, and I let it dangle in the air until Archie came crashing in with, ‘At your age, Rumpole, don't you want a steady job? Get your feet under some reasonably well-paid desk?'

‘I don't think so. I fully expect to die with my wig on. Now I'd better get back to the mansion flat, before it's made over.'

‘Great to meet you, Mr Rumpole.' Bunty was all smiles again. ‘You know we have a kind of connection. I was at Saint Elfreda's. Long after your wife, of course, but we met briefly at the OE dinner.'

So Bunty had received the same kick-start in life as She Who Must Be Obeyed. That piece of news, I have to confess, didn't surprise me in the least.

 

 

‘Mr Minter is here, Sir. And he's got a doctor with him.' My clerk, Henry, rang me in my room, where I was considering the possibility of lighting an outlawed cheroot and getting away with it.

‘Doctor Nabi?' I asked him.

‘I don't know, Sir. I'll just check.' I slid the small cigar out of its packet while listening to the ensuing silence. Then Henry said, ‘That seems to be his name, Sir.'

I had scarcely lit up before my door opened. The possibility of it being Bonzo Ballard and the smoke police caused me to dispose of the evidence. As I did so, Ted Minter and his briefcase came shambling eagerly in, accompanied by a tall, thin, brown-eyed stranger with a shy smile.

‘Found him at last. This is the missing Doctor.' Ted was understandably triumphant.

I waved the Doctor towards my client's chair and asked Ted, ‘How did that happen?'

‘I got a call from Jamil saying he was coming to my office. That was yesterday.'

‘We were worried about you, Doctor,' I said. ‘No one could find you.'

‘I also was worried, Mr Rumpole. I was afraid all the time they would kill me.' He spoke with a pleasant, rather breathless accent, but seemed to have, I was relieved to discover, a reasonable command of English. I wouldn't have to examine him through an interpreter.

‘We may not treat refugees particularly well,' I advised him. ‘Our government seems anxious to get rid of them as quickly as possible. But we don't actually cull them. We save that honour for the sheep. Now tell me, Doctor, what were you so afraid of ?'

‘Excuse, Mr Rumpole.' The Doctor seemed obsessed with something even more important. ‘I think your waste-paper basket is on fire.'

He exaggerated. There was only a slight smouldering and a certain amount of smoke. A complete burn-out was prevented by Ted fetching a glass of water from the clerks' room on the pretext of the Doctor feeling faint. This emergency having been satisfactorily dealt with, our client went on with his story.

‘They wanted twelve thousand dollars to bring me to England. I scrape for eleven in Kabul. All my saving. All I can sell or borrow. So I promise one thousand dollars from a friend. A doctor in England. But when I telephone he is gone. Gone to America. I can no longer find him. So I know they will come to find me.'

‘Who will come?'

‘Afghan or Russian. We call them the Travel Agents, Jamil knows. He told me to move all the time. So they don't find me easily.'

‘Do you always do what this fellow Jamil tells you?'

‘Jamil is a good man. He helps all those coming from my country. And he knows the Travel Agents, so he can warn us ... Also he told me I must come to see you. You are the one chance I have of staying in your country.'

Well, I thought in all modesty, that was probably true, and I failed to remind our client, or myself, that I had never, ever appeared in front of an Appeals Tribunal before.

So I did what I do in every case, from Uxbridge Magistrates to the High Court of Justice. I went through my client's statement with him slowly, carefully, underlining every essential fact and warning him of all awkward questions. It was the usual story of a government which believes that having God on your side excuses all brutality. The Doctor had been warned, arrested, tortured and was about to be tortured again. His refusal to take part in the maiming of prisoners had led to further warnings. He went into hiding, and then, with the help of a Russian representative of the ‘Travel Agents', escaped. If he were sent home, he would face further prison and more torture. When we had finished, the Doctor did something rather strange: he blew out his cheeks, lay back in his chair and said, ‘I hope I can remember all that.'

‘I should have thought,' I told him, ‘that you'd find it all too difficult to forget.'

Then I told Ted Minter to have the Doctor medically examined for the signs of his various interrogations in police custody. We told him the date of his Appeal hearing and I asked if his friend Jamil would be there to help him.

‘Oh no,' he said. ‘Jamil is a shy man. He doesn't want to come out before the public at all.'

There is a cupboard at the end of the passage in the mansion flat in which Hilda stores old newspapers, sometimes for months on end, in case she should suddenly need to remember a recipe, or a new way with a cashmere scarf, or some juicy slice of gossip. I spent that evening turning over the copies of Hilda's tabloids until I found what I wanted — the one with the photograph of Afghan refugees being turned out of the chutney wagon. I took it into the sitting-room and studied it for a long time under the light, then I crept in beside the sleeping Hilda in our as yet unmadeover bedroom.

 

 

The Appeals Tribunal was held in a gaunt concrete and glass building off the Horseferry Road. I found a room with a notice ‘Lawyers Only'pinned to the door. I went in and was preparing myself for the day ahead when an eager young man wearing glasses, a blue suit and dark hair brushed forward in a curious manner, so that he seemed to have a villainously low forehead, came in and called loudly, ‘Hi, Rumpole. I'm your Hopo.'

I looked at him in a mild surmise. Did this eccentric imagine he was some strange tropical bird? ‘I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about.'

When he explained, I was not much wiser. ‘I'm your Home Office Presentation Officer.'

‘Does that mean you're on my side?'

‘I'm afraid it means I'm against you.'

‘So you're counsel for the prosecution?'

‘Oh, I wouldn't say that,' he said modestly. ‘I just present the facts to the Court in a totally fair and balanced manner.'

‘Sounds fatal.'

‘I must say it usually is. You chaps don't win many cases. Is this your first time?'

‘In this particular jurisdiction,' I admitted, ‘yes. I appear at the special request of our guest from Afghanistan.'

‘He might be here for rather a short stay,' my Hopo smirked. ‘Of course, I knew it was your first time because of the fancy dress. No one uses wigs and gowns down here.'

Reluctantly, I removed the ancient props of my profession. Was this a Court of Law, I wondered, or another arm of the bureaucracy? I was a little reassured when we were called into the hearing to see a proper Judge seated behind a table on a small platform, even though the Judge in question was our one-time Head of Chambers, that Conservative-Labour politician (I could never quite remember which) Guthrie Featherstone QC MP, now Mr Justice Featherstone, whose judicial capacity was constantly frustrated by a deep-seated reluctance to make up his mind. Guthrie, wearing a three-piece suit and an unusually cheerful tie, was seated between a grey-haired woman, who looked as deeply concerned whether she was listening to me or my Hopo, and a middle-aged solicitor, who smiled at me throughout in a manner I found particularly dangerous. Such smiles from Judges often precede a particularly stiff sentence.

‘Good morning, Mr Rumpole,' Guthrie greeted me politely. ‘Glad to see you here at last.'

‘Thank you, my Lord,' I answered him, ever courteous.

‘Sir!' Guthrie said firmly.

I looked at him in amazement. Why was he calling me‘Sir'? Did he think I'd been promoted, knighted perhaps? Had I misheard the fellow?

‘I beg your Lordship's pardon?'

‘“Sir”. You call me “Sir” here. Even though you'd call me “my Lord” in Court. I'm sure it's difficult for you, doing one of these cases for the first time.'

I looked nervously at my client the Doctor. Had he understood? If so, was it the end of my reputation in Afghanistan? He was listening attentively with one hand cupped behind his ear, and seemed to be nodding in agreement. Without further ado, I opened my case.

Some people tell their stories in Court compellingly, clearly and with the utmost conviction. They make their listeners feel the wrongs they have suffered, their fears, and well-founded outrage at any possible injustice that might be done to them. Such ‘good witnesses' are often accomplished liars. Others stumble, hesitate, look fearfully round the Court as though seeking ways of escape and convince nobody, even though they may be, and sometimes are, telling nothing but the truth.

The Doctor, as he told his story, was in a category of his own. He was reasonable, controlled, clear and concise. He described moments of torture with a restraint that made them sound even more horrible. His English was surprisingly good and his manner to the Tribunal was respectful but not deferential. I would have had no hesitation in putting him into the ‘good witness' class, except for one thing. His account sounded, to my ears, strangely impersonal, as though it had all happened to someone else, a close friend perhaps, who had suffered greatly but wasn't, somehow, exactly him.

Turning to Ted Minter behind me, to get another copy of another completed form, I saw a familiar figure among the few spectators. It was the bulky presence of my old friend and sparring partner Detective Inspector Grimble, who had been promoted out of his South London manor, where the Timson family carried on its business, to some more powerful position which was, apparently, shrouded in secrecy. All he'd told me, when I'd joined him for a farewell drink in the pub opposite his local Magistrates' Court, was that he was ‘going international', which he hoped might entail trips abroad with lucrative expenses, in collaboration with Interpol. He was still young enough to go far. He was, I noticed, paying particular attention to the Doctor's evidence when it came to deal with money owed to the Travel Agents.

The Hopo had questions, many of which made considerable demands on my patience.

‘Doctor Nabi, you say you were tortured after your first arrest.'

‘Yes, I was.'

‘You have seen the medical report on your condition?'

‘I have.'

My heart sank a little. The medical evidence was not entirely helpful.

‘It says the scars to your back were quite superficial and might have been caused recently. What was the date of your first arrest?'