‘You’re not much cop at this either, Ninu,’ Charles would answer, but to no avail.
Charles’s present instructions, which arrived on his desk from a well-known firm of solicitors two days before, are slightly different to Ninu’s usual lorry thefts and warehouse burglaries. Ninu had been lifted by officers of the Dirty Squad — the Obscene Publications Squad — while collecting money-stuffed envelopes from Soho bookshops. Charles’s instructions are that Ninu will plead guilty to three specimen charges of conspiracy to extort: he was collecting money to be distributed to other, unnamed, officers in the Squad. Otherwise, Charles’s papers are strangely reticent about the circumstances of both the offence and Ninu’s arrest. Charles is looking forward to obtaining further instructions from his client. Hence the pre-hearing conference in the cells.
Bob enters with a chipped plate bearing a bacon sandwich and a mug of steaming tea and places them on the table. To Charles’s surprise he pushes the door almost closed with his foot.
‘Got a bit of a problem with your client, Charles, I’m afraid,’ he says, keeping his voice low.
Charles frowns. ‘What’s that?’
The custody officer makes a twirling movement with his forefinger against the side of his temple. ‘Gone a bit funny. Says he’s going to kill himself. Prison guard says he was weeping all the way from Pentonville. I’ve asked if there’s a police surgeon in the building.’
‘Ninu Azzopardi?’ asks Charles, in disbelief. ‘I don’t believe it. He’s a simple soul, big smile, always cheerful.’
Bob shrugs. ‘What can I tell you? They’re bringing him along now. We’ll have to leave the cuffs on.’
As if on cue the door opens and a little olive-skinned man in his early forties enters wearing handcuffs, flanked by two prison guards. He is manoeuvred to the chair at the table. One of the prison guards places a hand firmly on his shoulder and forces the little man to sit down. He complies without making eye contact with anyone in the room, his manacled hands in his lap and his shoulders slumped. Charles notices that one hand is heavily bandaged and blood is seeping through the dressing.
‘All right?’ asks one of the prison escorts.
Bob nods. ‘I think we can cope from here,’ he says, and the two prison escorts shuffle out.
‘Hello Ninu,’ says Charles, offering his hand. The Maltese doesn’t look up. Charles looks over to Bob. ‘All right if I have a few moments with him?’ he asks.
‘Yes, but leave the door open. I’ll let the court clerk know there may be a delay. We won’t take him up till he’s been assessed.’
‘I doubt there’s a surgeon available,’ comments Charles. ‘And I can’t let him enter a plea if there’s doubt about fitness to plead.’
Bob shrugs. ‘We could probably get the case put back to this afternoon, but after that he’ll be sent back to Pentonville to be produced after an assessment.’
The custody officer slips out of the room, leaving the door slightly ajar. Charles regards his client, looking for eye contact, but Ninu continues to hang his head. Charles notes that his eyes flick briefly to the bacon sandwich before settling again on his lap.
‘Here,’ says Charles, reaching over and trying to tear the sandwich in half. The bacon inside makes the division impossible, so Charles takes a single bite out of it, puts the rest back on the plate, and pushes the plate towards his client. ‘I bet you’ve not eaten yet.’
As if in confirmation the Maltese’s stomach grumbles and Charles sees a trace of the smile that usually illuminates the guileless face.
‘Go on, take it,’ encourages Charles, swallowing, and Ninu reaches up with his manacled hands and grabs the sandwich, taking a large bite. ‘Shall I get some tea?’ asks Charles. Ninu nods, mouth full.
Charles stands and goes to the door. The custody desk is deserted. Charles returns to the conference room.
‘Bob’s not there. I’ll ask in a minute. You can have mine,’ he says, pointing to the untouched mug. ‘Now, Ninu, what’s going on?’
Ninu is licking his fingers, the sandwich quickly consumed. He looks up slowly into Charles’s face. ‘I’m in big trouble, boss,’ he says, his mouth still full of bread and bacon.
‘Tell me.’
Ninu reaches for the mug and takes a sip of steaming tea to clear his palate. ‘My Angelina’s not been well … defiċjenza ta 'ħadid ... how you say, iron missing from blood, you know, tired all the time? She begs me not to do another job. So I ask around and the Messina brothers said they have some work up West, just running errands, collecting stuff from their dirty bookshops, you know?’
Charles shakes his head. ‘They’re trouble, those boys. I’ve had dealings with them.’
The Messina brothers, also from Malta originally, were heavily involved in prostitution and pornography in Soho. They’d carved out their territory with violence — firebombs and knives — and had a reputation for brutality matched only by the Richardson brothers.
Ninu shrugs. ‘They promise me, no trouble, and it kept me in London so I could look after Angelina. It was OK for a few weeks, moving stock, driving a van to and from Lowestoft, that sort of thing. Then a man comes into shop on Frith Street. He says he’s there to collect an envelope. I hand it over. That goes on for a few days. Then the brothers give me a handful of envelopes to deliver…’
‘To coppers?’
Ninu nods again. ‘I think. But it’s a set-up, or something goes wrong. I’m waiting for one lot to turn up and then others, other coppers, arrive and arrest me. They say they’re Dirty Squad too. So I don’t know if I’m in the middle of two lots, you know, fighting over their share, or the second lot’s clean and onto the first lot.’
‘Clean?’ snorts Charles with derision. ‘There’s not an honest bobby amongst them.’ He nods to the other man’s damaged hand. ‘Did they do that?’
Ninu shakes his head. ‘No. The Messina brothers. One held me down and the other put a bayonet through it. But it not get better.’
‘Why did they do it?’
‘They don’t believe me. They think I was working with some Dirty Squad on the side, and I got a cut. They want all the money back, a grand, and if I don’t get it they kill me. And hurt my Angelina.’
Charles sits back in his seat to consider the information. It wouldn’t have surprised him if Ninu was indeed taking from both ends, but as he’s about to ask if the Messina brothers’ suspicions were accurate, Ninu’s little face creases in the middle and tears well in his eyes. Charles reaches into his jacket pocket and comes up with a clean paper tissue — standard equipment when visiting remand prisoners — and he pushes the tissue across the table. He changes tack.
‘I need to ask you an important question before we go any further, Ninu. You do understand, don’t you, that if you plead guilty, you are accepting you knew what was in the envelopes, and who they were going to?’
Ninu nods, picks up the tissue and blows his nose loudly. ‘Sure,’ he snuffles. ‘I’ll be putting the Dirty Squad in the frame.’
‘Which would make Soho a very dangerous place for you.’
‘Is already dangerous for me.’
Charles nods and sits back again. He wouldn’t want to be caught between The Dirty Squad and the Messina brothers either.
‘Today’s been listed for plea. Are you ready to enter a plea today?’
Ninu looks up and shakes his head vigorously. ‘No, boss! I need more time.’
Accused men often delay entering a plea. The prison regime is much more comfortable on remand — they can wear their own clothes, have more visits, be supplied by family with food and smokes — but the price of delay is a longer sentence. The sooner an accused pleads guilty, the greater credit he gets. Charles suspects he knows why Azzopardi wants to delay arraignment, and it’s nothing to do with home cooking. Charles studies the little man’s face intently, and plays a hunch.
‘When did Angelina last visit?’
‘Two, three weeks, maybe.’
‘Why so long
?’ Charles leans forward, his elbows on the table, and keeps his voice low. ‘You’ve sent her away, yes?’ There’s no response. ‘Ninu, you can trust me. Nothing you tell me goes outside this room, you know that.’
‘She has family in Sicily. They’ll never find her there.’
Charles leans back again on the bench, satisfied he understands. ‘You need to buy time.’
‘When I plead, they deport me, yes?’
Charles nods. ‘If you still have no papers —’ Ninu shrugs, his hands spread wide in eloquent gesture — ‘then very likely. But, of course, you can’t enter a plea…’ begins Charles.
‘…if I crazy man,’ finishes Ninu. ‘I see psychiatrist first, yes?’
‘Yes, I get it. That can take days, even a week or two. But I can’t lie to the court, Ninu, you know that. If you’re just faking to get an adjournment…’
‘I’m not faking, Mr Holborne!’ His face creases again and tears start to run down his cheeks and land with little splashes on the wooden table. If it’s an act, it’s a good one, thinks Charles; the man looks genuinely distressed. I suppose being caught between two squabbling groups of Dirty Squad police and a gang of Maltese pornographers who’ve already run your hand through with a bayonet could well cause depression, concedes Charles to himself. And I’m no psychiatrist. So, let’s leave it to the experts.
‘OK,’ concludes Charles, ‘if those are your instructions. It’s not my job to make psychiatric assessments. And I’d be amazed if they can find a police surgeon for a mental state examination this morning.’
And for the first time since he entered the room Ninu Azzopardi’s face brightens up. ‘That’s fine with me, boss.’
An hour later the hearing has been adjourned and Ninu, humming quietly to himself, is back in the Old Bailey cells awaiting transport back to Pentonville where he will eventually be psychiatrically assessed.
Charles returns to the robing room to change into his day wear. He pushes open the doors and the familiar smell of leather and stale coffee greets him. Charles makes his way across the newly-laid thick carpet, past the bookcases laden with frayed leather books, and the comfy armchairs to an enormous polished table in the centre of the room. It is covered with glossy black oval wigs tins, each bearing the name in gold lettering of the barrister whose wig it houses. They resemble a shoal of black fish glinting in the sunshine filtering through the floor-length net curtains.
It’s still before noon and the place is deserted; all the other barristers in the building are engaged on their cases. The two robing room attendants sit in their cubbyhole drinking tea and reading newspapers. From the small transistor radio sitting on the table between them Charles can hear Roy Orbison telling his faithless love that “It’s Over”.
Charles takes off his wig and places it delicately in his wig tin. Unlike all the others on the table, inside the lid of Charles’s tin is the name “Ravenscroft”. Mr Ravenscroft was a well-known wigmaker and inventor of the horsehair wig, who, in 1850, joined forces with Ede & Co, the oldest tailoring business in London, founded in 1689. The partnership thus became “Ede and Ravenscroft”, but the sole name “Ravenscourt” inside Charles’s tin demonstrates that his wig dates from before 1850.
At the time of his call to the Bar, Charles couldn’t raise the money to buy a new wig. He was forced to acquire a blackened, sweat-stained second-hand one through unofficial channels, namely, a High Court robing room attendant whom his uncle had befriended on the terraces at Upton Park, and who operated an unofficial cash business recycling court garb. The professional cleaner commissioned to resurrect Charles’ new acquisition informed him that she’d had to rebuild it once it was stripped of the years of grease and dandruff which formerly held it together.
While Charles is aware that his Jewish ancestry goes back in unbroken generations for five thousand years, he finds great difficulty identifying with it; on the other hand, there is something about the thread of English history represented by his wig and its circuit tin which appeals to him much more, and still makes him fiercely proud to be a member of the Bar. He carries that pride to this day, notwithstanding the anti-Semitism and class prejudice displayed to him by some members of his honourable profession since he was “called” by the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple in 1949.
Charles replaces his wing collar with a clean newly-starched Windsor and tries to force the collar stud through the button holes. It’s always difficult with a freshly laundered collar as the launderers’ starch tends to close up the holes, requiring the stud to be pushed forcibly through a sealed buttonhole. As he pushes, the brass neck of the stud snaps off the mother of pearl stud and falls somewhere inside his shirt.
‘Shit!’ curses Charles quietly.
He is focused on fishing inside the shirt and so doesn’t notice as the robing room door opens silently. A young man steps into the room. He’s young and very pretty, with a wide voluptuous mouth. The thick straight hair swept up from his forehead is held in place with a large dollop of glistening Brylcreem. He wears a grey suit and well-polished winklepicker shoes.
Had Charles noticed the young man he might initially have identified him as a junior clerk sent to collect his guvnor’s papers from the robing room at the end of a case, but closer examination would have made him doubt that first impression. The suit is much too expensive for a junior clerk and the man seems unfamiliar with the room, as he stands just inside the door scanning the rows of lockers and the dressing tables with darting pale blue eyes, as if to get his bearings.
Had Charles looked very carefully, he might also have noticed that the young man has something in his hand, half-tucked into his cuff, something that glistens like polished silver.
The man’s casing of the room complete, his eyes land on Charles and he moves immediately. In three silent steps he halves the distance between the oak swing doors and Charles’s back. As he walks he allows the silver object to drop completely into his right palm and, with a precise click, the blade of a flick knife springs into place.
Concluding that the stud has fallen out of his shirt and is somewhere on the floor, Charles bends down to look under the table. He’s still wearing his gown, and it’s suddenly pulled up over his upper body and he finds himself enveloped in black material.
‘Hey!’ he shouts, imagining for a moment that one of his more idiotic colleagues is horsing around. He stands up blindly, trying to fight his way out of the cloth that restricts his upper body, but his arms are being pulled above his head.
Less than a second later he hears voices and the tension on the gown is suddenly released. It takes him a few seconds to get his head free. Three barristers have entered the double doors, laughing loudly and chatting. Charles whirls around: there’s no one else in sight.
‘What’s the matter, Holborne?’ asks one of the barristers, looking at Charles’s dishevelled gown and white face. ‘Can’t find a way out of your gown?’
The others laugh and Charles flushes.
‘Someone just…’ he starts. ‘Did you see anyone leaving as you came in?’
‘Yes, a young chap pushed past us,’ replies one of the three. ‘A clerk, I think.’
Charles barges past them and throws open the doors. One of the young barristers elbows another and they all smirk. The corridor outside is deserted.
Charles returns to the robing room, slightly embarrassed, his thudding heart slowly subsiding into a normal rhythm. Could it have been a practical joke? Of course it could, he reasons; probably was. But he’s had the sensation of being watched over the past few days and, once, he could have sworn he was being followed. A nagging doubt remains, buzzing away in the corners of his mind like a persistent fly trapped behind a window. He tries to swat it away and starts to pack his bag, but it’s still there. And it’s linked to a name: Ronnie Kray.
CHAPTER TWO
Charles shoulders his robes bag and pushes open the doors of the Old Bailey, stepping down the marble steps into bright sunshine. He squints and sca
ns the street, but apart from two suited young men disappearing through the doors of the pub opposite, it is deserted. Charles checks his watch: still only twelve twenty, and forty minutes until he is to meet his brother for lunch.
This will be their third such meeting since Charles re-established tentative and awkward contact with his family. David is an accountant and, since his recent promotion, finds himself in the firm’s Ludgate Circus office twice a week. Encouraged by the ease and convenience of a quick lunch which doesn’t have to be mentioned to their mother, for whom Charles’s name still provokes persistent bile, David and Charles have begun to rebuild the close relationship they enjoyed as boys, until Charles’s last year at Cambridge when he committed the unforgivable sin of Anglicising his name and “marrying out” and was as a consequence wiped, apparently forever, from the Horowitz family history. When Millie and Harry Horowitz learned of their eldest son’s betrayal they sat shiva; tore their clothes, covered every mirror in the house, and recited prayers for the dead for seven days. Then they acted as if Charles were dead.
The venue for today’s meeting is special: David is to be Charles’s guest at Middle Temple Hall. There, David will be able to eat lunch — as kosher as possible for Charles’s observant brother — under the same Tudor hammer beam roof that saw the first ever performance of Twelfth Night in 1602. He may even be able to take his coffee from “the cup-board” a table made from the hatch of Sir Francis Drake’s Golden Hind. As they eat on long trestle tables surrounded by judges, benchers and barristers, Charles will be able to point out the stained-glass windows and the heraldic shields of former members of the inn, including Sir Walter Raleigh and no fewer than five signatories to the American Declaration of Independence.
The Lighterman: The Kray Twins are out for revenge... (Charles Holborne Legal Thrillers Book 3) Page 2