Rumpole Rests His Case (3 page)

‘That depends.'

‘On what?'

‘How well you have understood the Christmas message.'

‘Which is?'

‘Perhaps, generosity.'

‘I see. So you want your bung?'

‘Oh, not me, Dicko. I've been paid, inadequately, by Legal Aid. But there's an impoverished church tower in urgent need of resuscitation.'

‘That Eric Longstaff, our Rector - he's not a patriot!'

‘And are you?'

‘I do a good deal of work locally for the British Legion.'

‘And I'm sure, next Poppy Day, they'll appreciate what you've done for the church tower.'

He looked at me for a long minute in silence, and I thought that if this scene had been taking place in a back room in Soho there might, quite soon, have been the flash of a knife. Instead, his hand went to an inside pocket, but it produced nothing more lethal than a cheque book.

‘While you're in a giving mood,' I said, ‘the Rectory's in desperate need of central heating.'

‘This is bloody blackmail!' Dicko Perducci, now known as Donald Compton, said.

‘Well,' I told him, ‘you should know.'

 

 

Christmas was over. The year turned, stirred itself and opened its eyes on a bleak January. Crimes were committed, arrests were made and the courtrooms were filled, once again, with the sound of argument. I went down to the Old Bailey on a trifling matter of fixing the date of a trial before Mrs Justice Erskine-Brown. As I was leaving, the usher came and told me that the Judge wanted to see me in her private room on a matter of urgency.

Such summonses always fill me with apprehension and a vague feeling of guilt. What had I done? Got the date of the trial hopelessly muddled? Addressed the Court with my trousers carelessly unzipped? I was relieved when the learned Phillida greeted me warmly and even offered me a glass of sherry, poured from her own personal decanter. ‘It was so kind of you to offer, Rumpole,' she said unexpectedly.

‘Offer what?' I was puzzled.

‘You told us how much you adored the traditional British pantomime.'

‘So I did.' For a happy moment I imagined Her Ladyship as Principal Boy, her shapely legs encased in black tights, her neat little wig slightly askew, slapping her thigh and calling out, in bell-like tones, ‘Cheer up, Rumpole, Portia's not far away.'

‘The twins are looking forward to it enormously.'

‘Looking forward to what?'

‘Aladdin
at the Tufnell Park Empire. I've got the tickets for the nineteenth of Jan. You do remember promising to take them, don't you?'

‘Well, of course.' What else might I have said after the fifth glass of the Erskine-Brown St Emillion? ‘I'd love to be of the party. And will old Claude be buying us a dinner afterwards?'

‘I really don't think you should go round calling people “old”, Rumpole.' Phillida now looked miffed, and I downed the sherry before she took it into her head to deprive me of it. ‘Claude's got us tickets for Pavarotti.
L'Elisir d‘Amore.
You might buy the children a burger after the show. Oh, and it's not far from us on the Tube. It really was sweet of you to invite them.'

At which she smiled at me and refilled my glass in a way which made it clear she was not prepared to hear further argument.

 

 

 

It all turned out better than I could have hoped. Tristan and Isolde, unlike their Wagnerian namesakes, were cheerful, reasonably polite and seemed only too anxious to dissociate themselves, as far as possible, from the old fart who was escorting them. At every available opportunity they would touch me for cash and then scamper off to buy ice cream, chocolates, sandwiches or Sprite. I was left in reasonable peace to enjoy the performance.

And enjoy it I did. Aladdin was a personable young woman with an upturned nose, a voice which could have been used to wake up patients coming round from their anaesthetics, and memorable thighs. Uncle Abanazer was played, Isolde told me, by an actor known as a social worker with domestic problems in a long-running television series. Wishy and Washy did sing to electric guitars (deafeningly amplified) but Widow Twankey, played by a certain Jim Diamond, was all a Dame should be, a nimble little cockney, fitted up with a sizeable false bosom, a flaming red wig, sweeping eyelashes and scarlet lips. Never have I heard the immortal line, ‘Where's that naughty boy Aladdin got to?' better delivered. I joined in loudly (Tristan and Isolde sat silent and embarrassed) when the Widow and Aladdin conducted us in the singing of ‘Please Don't Pinch My Tomatoes'. It was, in fact and in fairness, all a traditional pantomime should be, and yet I had a vague feeling that something was wrong, an element was missing. But, as the cast came down a white staircase in glittering costumes to enthusiastic applause, it seemed the sort of pantomime I'd grown up with, and which Tristan and Isolde should be content to inherit.

After so much excitement I felt in need of a stiff brandy and soda, but the eatery the children had selected for their evening's entertainment had apparently gone teetotal and alcohol was not on the menu. Once they were confronted by their mammoth burgers and fries I made my excuses, said I'd be back in a moment, and slipped into the nearby pub which was, I noticed, opposite the stage door of the Empire.

As the life-giving draught was being poured I found myself standing next to Washy and Uncle Abanazer, now out of costume, who were discussing Jim the Dame. ‘Very unfriendly tonight,' Washy said. ‘Locked himself in his dressing-room before the show and won't join us for a drink.'

‘Perhaps he's had a bust-up with Molly?'

‘Unlikely. Molly and Jim never had a cross word.'

‘Lucky she's never found out he's been polishing Aladdin's wonderful lamp,' Abanazer said, and they both laughed.

And as I asked the girl behind the bar to refill my glass, in which the tide had sunk to a dangerous low, I heard them laugh again about the Widow Twankey's voluminous bosom. ‘Strapped-on polystyrene,' Abanazer was saying. ‘Almost bruises me when I dance with her. Funny thing, tonight it was quite soft.'

‘Perhaps she borrowed one from a blow-up woman?' Washy was laughing as I gulped my brandy and legged it back to the hamburgers. In the dark passage outside the stage door I saw a small, nimble figure in hurried retreat: Jim Diamond, who for some reason hadn't wanted to join the boys at the bar.

After I had restored the children to the Erskine-Browns' au pair, I sat in the Tube on my way back to Gloucester Road and read the programme. Jim Diamond, it seemed, had started his life in industry before taking up show business. He had a busy career in clubs and turned down appearances on television. ‘ “I only enjoy the living show,” Jim says. “I want to have the audience where I can see them.”' His photograph, without the exaggerated female make-up, showed a pale, thin-nosed, in some way disagreeable little man with a lip curled either in scorn or triumph. I wondered how such an unfriendly-looking character could become an ebullient and warm-hearted widow. Stripped of his make-up, there was something about this comic's unsmiling face which brought back memories of another meeting in totally different circumstances. It was the second time within a few weeks that I had found an old familiar face cast in a new and unexpected part.

The idea, the memory I couldn't quite grasp, preyed on my mind until I was tucked up in bed. Then, as Hilda's latest historical romance dropped from her weary fingers, when she turned her back on me and switched out the light, I saw the face again quite clearly but in a different setting. Not Diamond, not Sparkler, but Sparksman, a logical progression. Widow Twankey had been played by Harry Sparksman, a man who trained as a professional entertainer, if my memory was correct, not in clubs, but in Her Majesty's prisons. It was, it seemed, an interesting career change, but I thought no more of it at the time and, once satisfied with my identification, I fell asleep.

 

 

‘The boy couldn't have done it, Mr Rumpole. Not a complicated bloody great job to that extent. His only way of getting at a safe was to dig it out of the wall and remove it bodily. He did that in a Barkingside boutique and what he found in it hardly covered the petrol. Young Denis couldn't have got into the Croydon supermarket peter. No one in our family could.'

Uncle Fred, the experienced and cautious head of the Timson clan, had no regard for the safe-breaking talent of Denis, his nephew and, on the whole, an unskilled recruit in the Timson enterprise. The Croydon supermarket job had been highly complicated and expertly carried out and had yielded, to its perpetrators, thousands of pounds. Peanuts Molloy was arrested as one of the lookouts, after falling and twisting an ankle when chased by a night watchman during the getaway. He said he didn't know any of the skilled operators who had engaged him, except Denis Timson who, he alleged, was in general charge of the operation. Denis alone silenced the burglar alarm and deftly penetrated the lock on the safe with an oxyacetylene blowtorch.

It had to be remembered, though, that the clan Molloy had been sworn enemies of the Timson family from time immemorial. Peanuts' story sounded implausible when I met Denis Timson in the Brixton Prison interview room. A puzzled twenty-five-year-old with a shaven head and a poor attempt at a moustache, he seemed more upset by his Uncle Fred's low opinion of him than the danger of a conviction and subsequent prolonged absence from the family.

Denis's case was to come up for committal at the South London Magistrates' Court before ‘Skimpy' Simpson, whose lack of success at the Bar had driven him to a job as a stipendiary beak. His nickname had been earned by the fact that he had not, within living memory, been known to splash out on a round of drinks in Pommeroy's Wine Bar.

In the usual course of events, there is no future in fighting proceedings which are only there to commit the customer to trial. I had resolved to attend solely to pour a little well-deserved contempt on the evidence of Peanuts Molloy. As I started to prepare the case, I made a note of the date of the Croydon supermarket break-in. As soon as I had done so, I consulted my diary. I turned the virgin pages as yet unstained by notes of trials, ideas for cross-examinations, splodges of tea or spilled glasses of Pommeroy's Very Ordinary. It was as I had thought. While some virtuoso was at work on the Croydon safe, I was enjoying
Aladdin
in the company of Tristan and Isolde.

 

 

‘Detective Inspector Grimble. Would you agree that whoever blew the safe in the Croydon supermarket did an extraordinarily skilful job?'

‘Mr Rumpole, are we meant to congratulate your client on his professional skill?'

God moves in a mysterious way, and it wasn't Skimpy Simpson's fault that he was born with thin lips and a voice which sounded like the rusty hinge of a rusty gate swinging in the wind. I decided to ignore him and concentrate on a friendly chat with D. I. Grimble, a large, comfortable, ginger-haired officer. We had lived together, over the years, with the clan Timson and their mis-doings. He was known to them as a decent and fair-minded cop, as disapproving of the younger, Panda-racing, evidence-massaging intake to the Force as they were of the lack of discretion and criminal skills which marked the younger Timsons.

‘I mean the thieves were well informed. They knew that there would be a week's money in the safe.'

‘They knew that, yes.'

‘And was there a complex burglar-alarm system? You couldn'tput it out of action simply by cutting wires, could you?‘

‘Cutting the wires would have set it off.'

‘So putting the burglar alarm out of action would have required special skills?'

‘It would have done.'

‘Putting it out of action also stopped a clock in the office. So we know that occurred at eight-forty-five?'

‘We know that. Yes.'

‘And at nine-twenty young Molloy was caught as he fell, running to a getaway car.'

‘That is so.'

‘So this heavy safe was burnt open in a little over half an hour?'

‘I fail to see the relevance of that, Mr Rumpole.' Skimpy was getting restless.

‘I'm sure the officer does. That shows a very high degree of technical skill, doesn't it, Detective Inspector?'

‘I'd agree with that.'

‘Exercised by a highly experienced peterman?'

‘Who is this Mr Peterman?' Skimpy was puzzled. ‘We haven't heard of him before.'

‘Not Mr Peterman.' I marvelled at the ignorance of the basic facts of life displayed by the magistrate. ‘A man expert at blowing safes, known to the trade as “peters”,' I told him and turned back to D. I. Grimble. ‘So we're agreed that this was a highly expert piece of work?'

‘It must have been done by someone who knew his job pretty well. Yes.'

‘Denis Timson's record shows convictions for shoplifting, bag-snatching and stealing a radio from an unlocked car. In all of these simple enterprises, he managed to get caught.'

‘Your client's criminal record!' Skimpy looked happy for the first time. ‘You're allowing that to go into evidence, are you, Mr Rumpole?'

‘Certainly, Sir.' I explained the obvious point. ‘Because there's absolutely no indication he was capable of blowing a safe in record time, or silencing a complicated burglar-alarm, is there, Detective Inspector?'

‘No. There's nothing to show anything like that in his record...'

‘Mr Rumpole,' Skimpy was looking at the clock; was he in danger of missing his usual train back home to Haywards Heath? ‘Where's all this heading?'