Charles holds out his hand across the table toward Sally’s mother. ‘Mrs Fisher,’ he says.
He detects a slight hesitation before she answers and notes the guarded look in her eyes, in contrast to the open and curious welcome of the younger members of the family.
‘Mr Holborne,’ she replies, taking his hand. ‘Take a seat. Can we offer you a drink? There’s sherry, and some brown ale.’
Charles pulls out one of the two remaining chairs and sits at the table. It’s set for Sunday lunch and Charles guesses from the smell of silver polish faintly detectable under the roast dinner that he’s looking at the best cutlery, not often used other than at Christmas and other special occasions.
‘It’s Charles, please, or Charlie,’ he insists. He nods at the mugs dotted around the table. ‘And I’d quite like a cup of tea, if that’s OK.’
‘I’ll do it,’ offers Tracey, getting up. ‘Want one, Sal?’
‘No thanks. Mum, what’s still to be done?’
Sally puts her bag down and starts working around them, putting the finishing touches to the meal, and it becomes clear from the conversation around the table that Nell Fisher has a problem with her back which makes standing and walking very difficult.
Sally keeps one ear on the conversation, concerned lest Charles feels awkward, but she needn’t have worried. It’s as if he’s known her family for years. He speaks their language, contributing effortlessly to discussions about the dog races at Walthamstow, the state of Romford market and the chances of West Ham winning the FA cup under Ron Greenwood.
She smiles to herself as she makes the gravy. Charles is as much at ease with her family as he is with his colleagues in chambers and the judges before whom he pleads his cases. She notes that even his accent has changed subtly. There’s no hint of the precise speech he uses at work; he speaks simply, using familiar vernacular expressions, and there’s a faint echo of cockney she hasn’t heard before.
When she first came to know Charles, when he was a guvnor in her chambers at Chancery Court, Sally thought she’d never met anyone so comfortable in any social or professional situation; he always seemed to fit in effortlessly. It’s only now, some months after their relationship began, that she’s beginning to appreciate that in fact the opposite is true: despite all his social skills, Charles doesn’t fit in at all. He doesn’t feel as if he belongs anywhere, and so he hides beneath a series of shifting masks, one thrown up after another with a magician’s sleight of hand; he’s a chameleon.
Now, like the assistant who has learned to see past her master’s smoke and mirrors, Sally glimpses flashes of a bewildered and slightly lost little boy. It is that Charles who makes her heart ache and with whom she thinks she may be in love, not the slick social performer who can mimic a dozen accents and even unconsciously alter the way he walks depending on the company.
The dinner table is noisy and boisterous with lots of teasing and laughter, and even Mrs Fisher thaws a little. A call comes from Tracey’s husband saying there’s been a problem at the bus depot where he works and to start lunch without him, and so the meal is served.
After the main course Charles and Frank go out into the small backyard to have a cigarette. Charles had managed to give up smoking completely, but the events surrounding Henrietta’s death and his run from the police led to him start again, and he hasn’t been able to shake the habit since.
Frank offers Charles a Rizla and some tobacco and they roll their cigarettes in silence. Charles looks up to see Frank studying has face. Frank strikes a match against the kitchen wall and offers the light to Charles. Charles inclines his head and inhales, watching the end of his rollup glow red. He looks up, taking the cigarette from his mouth.
‘Yes, Frank. I do remember you.’
Frank smiles wryly. ‘Yeah, thought so. Thanks for keeping schtum. Sorry about the “Charlie”.’
‘It’s my name. You’re not my client anymore.’
‘Still feels odd, Mr Holborne.’
Charles nods backward to the kitchen. ‘What do they know?’
‘Michelle knows I had some trouble a few years back and that I did some bird, but that’s all. The others don’t even know that.’
‘You straight now?’ asks Charles.
‘On my honour. Been working as a stevedore at the Port of London for three years. Meeting Michelle made the difference. And now we’ve got the kid…’
‘I’m pleased for you, Frank. It’s not often that my ex-clients turn things around. Good for you.’
‘Yeah, well, I didn’t get on with being inside. But please — not a word to the others. Nell’s very protective of her girls, and we get on fine at the minute. It would upset the apple cart if she knew the truth.’
Charles nods. ‘I shan’t say a word.’
The two men smoke in silence, listening to the women’s voices drifting through the kitchen window and the more muffled voices of the families living on either side of the Fisher household who are also at Sunday lunch.
‘You’re not what I expected at all, Charlie.’
‘What did you expect?’
‘I dunno. A lot posher for a start. You was the proper barrister when we met … well … professionally.’
‘Yeah, well, I grew up in the East End.’
‘And maybe I was expecting … someone less straight? The press did you no favours.’
Charles laughs briefly but without humour. ‘You don’t have to tell me. Murderer, robber, con artist; I was called all of them.’ Frank remains silent but his brow contracts into a frown and Charles can see him struggling with something else. ‘What’s up?’ he encourages. ‘Spit it out.’
‘We’ve heard a lot about you from Sally over the last few months. She’s pretty smitten, you know?’
‘So’m I.’
Frank studies Charles’s face. ‘Yeah? Well that’s great. But you probably noticed that Nell’s a bit cool towards you.’
‘Maybe, yes. I’m a lot older than Sally, I’m Jewish, I’m a barrister and I have a history. I can see why she’d be protective.’
‘None of that would bother her. She … well … we, was worried about the connection with the Krays.’
Charles shakes his head. ‘There isn’t any connection.’
‘Well, it turns out there was, so far as Harry Robeson was concerned.’
Charles sighs, wondering how much Frank actually knows.
The previous year Charles represented a high-profile criminal solicitor, Harry Robeson, on an indictment for conspiracy to rob. Unknown to Charles at the time, Robeson was Sally’s father. Also unknown to Charles at the time, Robeson was the Kray twins’ legal fixer, an important cog in their machine which laundered and reinvested the proceeds of their criminal ventures.
Robeson’s eventual conviction and incarceration had caused Ronnie Kray such fury that he put Charles on his “List” — a list of people to be “dealt with”. But nothing had happened in the following months and, at least until the last week or so, Charles had begun to think it was either an empty threat or that the Colonel had bigger fish to fry.
‘Harry Robeson was up to his gills with the Krays, but he was just my client,’ Charles explains. ‘I had no idea at the time that he was Sally’s father. I’ve got no other connection with them.’
Frank pauses again, still obviously chewing something over. ‘Please don’t be offended, Charlie, but you need to understand that, for years, Nell and the girls had no man in their lives ’cept me. No one to look out for them. So I do me best, right?’
‘I understand.’
‘Well, then. The word on the street is that you was working for the Krays and you fell out with ’em. And that’s why you’re now on Ronnie’s List. Is it true?’
‘Is that what everyone’s been saying?’
Frank nods, and Charles detects embarrassment and a flicker of fear in the other’s face.
‘Where did you hear this?’ asks Charles.
‘Loads of people are talking about it. At
the Stow, up the Lane, everywhere.’
‘Does Sally know?’
Frank shrugs. ‘I’ve not talked to her about it personally, but I can’t see how she wouldn’t have heard the same as everyone else.’
‘Right.’
Charles pauses and stares at the weeds growing from cracks in the concrete at his feet. He drops his cigarette end and grinds it out, his heart sinking. Yet another difficult issue to be addressed with Sally.
‘Do you think I need to worry?’
‘I’m sorry to say it, mate, but I do.’
Charles casts his mind back a few days to the time he thought he was being followed, and then, more recently, to the event at the Old Bailey robing room. So, Ronnie’s in earnest. But what to do? He can’t spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder. Report it to the Filth? Against his nature, and old habits die hard. If he had no love for the police as a teenager, his experience at the Bar has only made him more cynical still. So many of them in the Met are bent, he wouldn’t trust them as far as he could spit. And in any case, with half of them still convinced he murdered Henrietta, and the other half equally certain he’s on the Twins’ payroll, he doesn’t see much help coming from that quarter.
‘From what I hear,’ Charles says, ‘you can’t exactly reason with Ronnie nowadays.’
Frank considers. ‘I’ve not had much to do with the Firm,’ he replies. ‘They financed that warehouse job where you represented me and handled the stuff afterwards, but I only met the brothers once, and made sure I kept me mouth shut while everyone else did the talking. I think the only way you might get through to Ronnie is through Reg. He’s got a better business head and if you can persuade Reggie, he might get Ronnie to see reason. But even then, not always.’
The conversation is interrupted by Michelle’s head emerging through the kitchen window. ‘You two coming in for sweet? Our Tracey’s made a trifle!’
‘And it’s me first!’ calls Tracey’s voice behind her.
‘Coming,’ replies Charles. He leans his head towards Frank’s. ‘Will you keep me informed if you hear anything?’
‘Will do. But watch yourself, Charlie. You can’t afford not to take this serious.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
Charles turns off Fleet Street and walks swiftly under the arch and onto the cobbles of Old Mitre Court. The gates into the Temple, normally left open during daylight hours, are closed and guarded. Then Charles remembers a notice in Chambers alerting tenants of the Inn of the possibility of some delay today. On a single day each year the Temple exercises its legal right to control entry and exit, thereby preserving the private nature of the thoroughfare.
Charles takes his place in a queue of lawyers waiting to enter the Inner Temple and watches with a faint smile as a sweating man in uniform opens the door to each barrister in turn and then closes it again for a couple of seconds before letting in the next.
Charles waits patiently for the half dozen or so barristers ahead of him in the queue to be let in, almost identical from the rear in black jackets and black and white pinstriped trousers. The weather has suddenly turned warmer, and Charles takes off his overcoat and folds it over his arm. He’s happy to wait and let the spring sunshine warm his face.
‘Good evening, sir,’ says the official as Charles approaches the gate.
‘Evening. And a very nice one it is, too,’ replies Charles cheerfully. ‘It’s Richard, isn’t it?’ Charles has met the official on a handful of occasions, but he’s a relatively new employee at the Inn.
‘That’s right, sir.’
Charles steps down into the Temple as the gate clangs shut temporarily behind him. He walks through the arch into King’s Bench Walk. The Temple has not quite fully donned its spring garb, but the tall plane trees are almost in full leaf and Charles can see a scattering of yellow from the few remaining daffodils on the manicured green sward sloping down to the Thames.
He resists, as he does most afternoons, the enticing smell of toasted muffins from the Inner Temple common room as he passes the corner of Crown Office Row and heads towards Chambers. When Charles first started at the Bar the common room had been the regular haunt of a large group of pupils just out of military service, and butter-laden toasted muffins and tea had been an afternoon ritual. Pupil barristers would gather for an hour or so to discuss the horrors of their pupil masters’ personal habits, their unreasonable working demands, which often included such tasks as polishing their shoes or collecting their snuff or laundry, and the incomprehensible cases on which they had been set to work. They would blow off steam and horse around as if they were still at university or, as in Charles’s case, at an RAF dispersal hut waiting to scramble, minded by a rota of indulgent middle-aged tea ladies.
Several of the young men then starting in practice still carried physical and psychiatric injuries from the war, and the tea ladies, all of whom had served themselves, were more like nurses or nannies than waitresses in their ministrations to their young battle-scarred charges.
In 1950, shortly after being called to the Bar, Charles had been present at Chelmsford Assizes when a colleague still suffering from combat stress took refuge under the barristers’ bench when startled by a clerk dropping a stack of books behind him. The barrister concerned climbed out from under the bench, puce with embarrassment, but the evidence had continued without a word being said by anyone in court. Everyone present, including the ex-marine on trial, had understood.
Charles climbs the stone steps to Chambers, passing the board on which his name has risen by reason of increasing seniority to halfway up the list. He hadn’t intended going into the clerks’ room, knowing that it’s the busiest part of the day and having already received his brief for the morrow but, as he goes past the door, he hears his name shouted.
‘Sir!’ calls Clive, squeezing between two barristers returning from court.
‘Yes?’
‘Message for you,’ he says, handing Charles a folded piece of paper.
‘Thank you,’ replies Charles, turning to walk up the stairs to his room. He flips open the message, pauses, and then calls after the young man who has disappeared back into the clerks’ room.
‘Clive?’ The youngster reappears in the doorway. ‘Who took this message?’
‘I don’t know, sir. It was on my desk when I got back from tea.’
‘This isn’t Barbara’s writing, is it?’ asks Charles.
‘No, sir. She’s been out all afternoon. And I asked JJ, and they didn’t write it or see who left it. Perhaps one of the other members of chambers? Some of the younger guvnors do tend to pick up the phones, even though we’ve asked them not to.’
‘OK, thanks.’
Barristers are prohibited from the menial task of answering telephones, in case they expose themselves to the risk of discussing such grubby matters as their fees or whether they’re available for court on a certain date. Instead they’re supposed to remain cosseted in their ivory towers and reach deep insights into the law, while their clerks actually run the business and sully their souls with matters of money. Charles finds this nineteenth-century demarcation of duties ludicrous, but he’s in the minority in his dangerous modern thinking.
Charles re-reads the message: ‘Message for CH: Tried to reach you while you were at the Bailey but must have missed you. Need to talk urgently. I’m in Ct No 10. S.’
Sally. They often meet at the “Magpie and Stump”, the pub in Old Bailey so close to the court and so popular amongst lawyers that it had acquired the nickname “Courtroom No 10”. Whatever her reason for needing to speak to him, it must be really important for her to abandon her desk at this time of day, when the Daily Cause lists must be checked, tomorrow’s briefs assigned and the constant calls from solicitors needing a barrister the next morning answered.
Charles turns on the stairs, pushes through the doors and starts jogging towards the Temple’s Tudor Street exit, still carrying his coat and court robes.
It takes him ten minutes to reach
the pub. He pushes open the door to the saloon bar and stands just inside the threshold. It takes a few seconds for his eyes to adjust from the bright afternoon sunshine to the gloom of the smoky bar.
The pub has only been open for a few minutes. A group of keen legal drinkers is in the process of ordering drinks, but there’s no sign of Sally. Charles notices but does not mark the man sitting in shadow in the panelled booth immediately behind the door. The man watches as Charles walks through to the public bar. It’s deserted. Damn! Charles curses to himself; he must have missed her.
Charles turns right out of the pub and is about to return to the Temple when he spots a red telephone box fifty yards away down Bishop’s Court, the narrow, cobbled passageway to the side of the pub. He hesitates for a second and decides to ring Chancery Court to see if she’s returned.
He walks down the gloomy alley towards the telephone box, the ancient buildings on each side leaning over the cobbles and cutting out much of the light, fishing awkwardly in his trouser pockets for change.
As Charles opens the door his nose is assailed by the acrid stench of urine and stale tobacco and he’s reluctant to let the door close completely behind him, so he jams his foot against the door near its hinge while he tries his jacket pockets. He’s hampered by his overcoat, still folded over his left forearm, and his robes, contained in a large cloth bag with a rope drawstring used by barristers to carry their court dress.
He looks at the damp and fag-end littered floor of the telephone box and decides immediately against putting the bag down. Instead he opens the loop of the rope drawstring and hangs the bag around his neck so it’s bumping against his chest. At least he now has one hand free.
So engrossed is Charles in searching for change that he’s completely unaware of the silent approach of the young man who followed him from the pub. Then he feels a sudden blow in the area of his right kidney. Charles’s initial thought is that someone else has tried to get into the telephone box behind him and has merely bumped into him, but as he turns to explain to the impatient newcomer that he’s about to make a call, a searing blade of hot pain shoots from the area of his belt up his ribcage.
The Lighterman: The Kray Twins are out for revenge... (Charles Holborne Legal Thrillers Book 3) Page 6