The Lighterman: The Kray Twins are out for revenge... (Charles Holborne Legal Thrillers Book 3)

by Simon Michael

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  It’s daylight by the time Charles waves his thanks to Piper and watches the tug slip back into the stream and head for Tilbury. Charles turns and climbs the slippery steps from the pier to the Embankment and heads towards Fleet Street. It takes less than ten minutes to reach the flat on Fetter Lane.

  As Charles pushes open the door to the apartment he hears a sliding noise, the sound of something trapped under the door, and he looks down. A note has been slipped under the front door. He bends to pick it up, pushing the door closed behind him.

  I thought you might be lonely, so I popped round. I was surprised to find you out at midnight on Saturday night, but then perhaps I shouldn’t have been. Don’t call me again. I need time to think. S.

  ‘Shit,’ curses Charles quietly to himself. Sally. She must have arrived just after he left. One didn’t “pop round” from Romford; she would’ve had to make arrangements for her mother’s care and then either got a night bus or, at considerable cost, a cab. She’d gone to a lot of trouble. Could she really think he was out on the razzle over this weekend? Or was that just her anxiety talking?

  Charles reaches for the telephone and then remembers the injunction against calling. In any case Sally will almost certainly still be asleep at this hour on a Sunday morning. The thought occurs that he should simply present himself at Romford armed with a bag of fresh croissants and explain everything. But he can’t; he’s spent the night breaking the law and intends to blackmail a government officer into withdrawing evidence in a murder prosecution. He has no hesitation doing it; his life and that of Merlin depend on it and, in any case, he believes completely that Merlin is innocent. But he also acknowledges that he loved every second of his night’s work. His heart often thunders when the foreman of the jury rises to deliver a verdict, but that is nothing compared to the prolonged adrenaline rush he experienced over the last few hours.

  Charles recognises that he needs the danger, the sense of being completely alive, that he has in the ring or when, as a youth, he was sprinting through bomb-damaged London streets, leaving policemen trailing in his wake. But he’s a very long way from being able to admit any of that to Sally. He portrays himself — God, he even sees himself! — as “The Honest Brief”, an upright member of an honourable profession, for whom integrity is the one essential stock in trade. In his own imagination he is a man alone, swimming in a sea of corruption, criminality and prejudice, trying to maintain a moral course. So how can he admit to Sally, who looks up to him so much, that he’s just as prepared to bend or break the rules as everyone else? In any case I’ve got to stay here in case Vermeulen calls, he justifies.

  ‘Why won’t you trust her, Charles?’ asks Henrietta’s voice behind him. ‘Has it occurred to you that she might love you anyway?’

  ‘Not now, Etta,’ replies Charles out loud, his exhaustion and painful face making him irritable. ‘I’ve a lot on my plate, if you hadn’t noticed.’

  He strips off, leaving his clothes on the floor where they land. He spends the next ten minutes taking a long, hot shower to get the chill from his bones, gulps down the last inch of whisky straight from the bottle, and collapses onto the bed.

  Charles wakes. For a moment he is cold and disorientated. He’s supine on his bed, lying naked on a damp towel, the curtains open with light streaming across him. Then he remembers the night’s activities and realises he must have simply collapsed asleep on the bed without even getting into pyjamas. He sits, and a little man in his head starts up with a jackhammer. Charles groans; that slug of whisky on an empty stomach had been a bad idea. Only then does the ringing of the telephone from the lounge percolate through his muddled brain. Charles rolls off the bed and runs towards the telephone. It stops ringing as his hand reaches out to it. The tiny miner in his skull redoubles his efforts.

  ‘Fuck!’ cries Charles. ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck!’ but then, instantly, the phone rings again. He lifts the receiver before the second ring.

  There’s a prolonged pause before either correspondent speaks.

  ‘Who’s that?’ asks a male voice.

  ‘Lost property,’ replies Charles, in his most officious minor functionary cockney accent, and wondering if the response might be too elliptical to be understood.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I think we have something of yours. A notebook.’

  ‘Who is this?’ demands the voice. Charles can hear both suspicion and suppressed fury.

  ‘You’ll find out soon enough, Mr Vermeulen. It is Mr Vermeulen, isn’t it?’ Eloquent silence from the other end. ‘There’s enough in that notebook to send you and your chums to prison for years.’ More silence. ‘You know I’m right, don’t you?’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Nothing much. You’ll be giving evidence against Isaac Conway at the Old Bailey some time this week. You’re going to change that evidence.’

  ‘Ah, I get it. Does that Yiddisher poofter think he can get round it this way? He’s wasting his time.’

  ‘You’re not dealing with any “Yiddisher poofter”. You’ve no idea who you’re dealing with. But in the end, it makes no odds who’s got your notebook as long as they know how to hurt you with it. And we do, chum, we do. There’s the Met, Customs and Excise — oh, and the press. Some of your colleagues might close ranks, try to protect you, but not all of them. And the press’ll have a field day.’

  The quality of the silence at the other end changes. Charles can almost hear the Waterguard thinking.

  ‘I can’t,’ he finally responds. ‘It’ll be obvious. And then I’m facing perjury charges.’

  ‘We’ve thought about that,’ replies Charles evenly. ‘All you need to do is change a particular time in your evidence. We’ll do the rest.’

  ‘How can changing a single time make all that difference?’

  ‘Trust me,’ says Charles. ‘Sometimes it makes all the difference.’

  ‘Why on earth should I trust you?’

  ‘Because you have no choice. Because don’t want to go to prison. Because you don’t want your picture splashed all over the newspapers. Because you don’t want to lose your pension. And because if you do as you’re told, you can go back to your little smuggling operation as if nothing happened, and divide everything three ways as against four.’

  ‘What do you want me to change?’

  ‘In your witness statement you say that you interviewed Mr Conway at 07:14 hours on the morning of fourth November. Change it so it says the interview occurred at 03:14 hours.’

  ‘I can’t. My original notes say 07:14 hours.’

  ‘But where are your original notes? Not the typewritten version in the prosecution papers, but your original handwritten notes?’

  ‘In my pocket book.’

  This is exactly what Charles expected. Policemen retain their pocketbooks once the accounts in them have been transcribed into depositions; he expected the same for the Waterguard.

  ‘Which you still have.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, then. Just rewrite your note exactly as before, but time it at 03:14 hours.’

  Charles hears a deep breath being drawn at the end of the line and knows he is making progress.

  ‘And how can I trust you to return the notebook?’

  ‘You can’t. You’re going to have to take a punt on us. It’s that or face the certainty of disgrace, dismissal and imprisonment.’

  ‘I want time to think about it.’

  ‘That’s fine. You’ve got till tomorrow at ten thirty. But you’d better make up your mind before you step into the witness box. You’ll be asked to produce your pocketbook, and if the original handwritten notes aren’t timed at 03:14 the notebook in our possession will be shown to the judge and the prosecution. In open court, Court 4 of the Old Bailey, before the public and the press. There won’t be any way back. By lunchtime your career’ll be over.’

  When Vermeulen speaks again, there is no resistance or anger left in his voice; he sounds like a b
eaten man. ‘I understand.’

  ‘Make sure you do, sunshine,’ replies Charles, breaking the connection.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  It’s Monday morning just before ten, and Charles waits for Merlin to join him in the interview room in the basement cells at the Old Bailey. He nurses a mug of tea, his elbows on the table. He stands as Merlin is shown into the room and the door shuts. The lighterman is wearing an ill-fitting dark suit which Charles had delivered to Brixton Prison from Juniper Street. Charles guesses, correctly, that Merlin has only ever worn it once before, at his father’s funeral. The two men regard one another’s injuries. Merlin looks like a panda, the bruising having come out under both eyes. His nose is swollen but looks more or less straight to Charles’s untrained eye. The gash on his cheek and the split lip have both been stitched, and the black sutures are very obvious, reminding Charles of Frankenstein’s monster.

  ‘I don’t know which of us looks worse,’ says Charles with a grin.

  ‘I do. But don’t make me smile, Charlie,’ mumbles Merlin, trying not to stretch his lip. ‘It hurts too much.’

  The two men sit down.

  ‘Well?’ asks Merlin.

  ‘Well, the good news is that I got into the Harpy OK, thanks to Piper, and got a good look round Vermeulen’s office. I found something, a notebook. It’s not conclusive proof by any means, but it’s enough to damage him.’

  ‘And Chicken?’

  Charles shakes his head. ‘Sorry, Izzy. He won’t do it. He’s in a really bad state. He’s lost most of his front teeth and he’s still bleeding, you know, from his backside.’

  Merlin drops his head and stares unseeing at the table between them, carved with graffiti and years of pain. Then he nods. ‘I can’t say I blame ’im. He’s only a kid, and that bastard Evans fucked him over good and proper.’ He looks up into Charles’s face. ‘Are we OK, Charlie?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, do you … do you think …well, less of me? Now you know … the sort of life I’ve been leading.’

  Charles puts his great paw over Merlin’s elegant hand on the table, and squeezes it gently. ‘Of course I don’t, you fucking idiot. It’s how you were born, right? Part of who you are, and you can’t change it. I get that. I don’t think the law should interfere with what people do with their privates, as long as they’re adults and they do no harm to anyone else.’

  Merlin smiles wryly and winces as the stitches pull. ‘Not many people think that way.’

  ‘Yes they do, Izzy. Look at the Wolfenden report. Times are changing.’

  Merlin shakes his head in disagreement. ‘Not where I come from. I could never have told anyone on the Thames; or at the “Prospect”.’ Charles is surprised to see tears glistening in his cousin’s eyes. ‘But I wish I’d told you ages ago.’

  ‘Forget it. To be honest, I think I kind of knew when we were kids on the river. I just didn’t think about it; I was having too much fun.’ Charles gives Merlin a moment to regain his composure. ‘You going to be okay?’ he asks.

  Merlin sniffs. ‘Yeah. I’m fine.’ He straightens his shoulders, takes a deep breath and focuses on Charles. ‘So, what’s the plan?’

  ‘Well, the first thing is, are you fit for trial today?’

  ‘Why? Do you need more time?’ replies Merlin. ‘I could get a lot worse suddenly if you like, when I’m taken up.’

  Charles shakes his head. ‘I’ve been turning it over. I think we’re in as strong a position as we’re ever going to be. Vermeulen’s only had overnight to come up with a credible explanation. If we’re lucky, he mightn’t have spoken yet to the others in his team. Right now, we’ve managed to get a grip on a slippery snake; let’s not give him time to wriggle free.’

  ‘Good. I agree.’

  ‘And you’re OK about not giving evidence?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘I’m sure it’s the right decision. I’m going to have to attack Vermeulen’s honesty, and once I do that, as soon as you step into the witness box the Crown will be allowed to put all your previous convictions before the jury which, let’s face it, would be a disaster.’

  ‘Yes, I understand. What’s made the decision for me is simpler: I reckon that explaining what happened will only make the jury hate me. Telling them … you know … the type of man I am…’

  Charles nods. ‘I agree. It would be extremely risky. And even if we took the risk, I doubt they’d accept your account anyway, not without Chicken, and perhaps even with him. He’d have to be warned against self-incrimination, as he could end up in prison too. So he’s unlikely actually to support you when push comes to shove.’

  ‘That’s what I thought.’

  ‘But you do understand, don’t you, that if you don’t give evidence, it becomes nigh on impossible for us to raise self-defence? You’re putting all your eggs in one basket: discrediting Vermeulen.’

  ‘Yes, I understand. You still think we’ve got a chance, then?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  There’s a bang on the door, and it opens immediately.

  ‘Time to take him up,’ announces the gaoler.

  Charles stands and offers his hand to Merlin. Merlin takes it, and a silent look, laden with meaning, passes between the two men.

  ‘Best of luck,’ says Merlin.

  ‘You too. I’ll see you upstairs,’ says Charles, fixing a smile in place which he hopes is reassuring.

  Charles is checked out of the cell area and goes through the formal processes, deep in thought. He climbs the stairs to the beautiful marbled hall on the ground floor.

  He is not a superstitious man but he makes sure, as he does before the start of all his cases, to look up at the mural depicting the building following the Blitz in December 1940. He knows that the ritual is unconnected to his forensic successes but, as he tells himself, now’s not the time to take chances. His father, back in London for a fortnight to arrange storage of some of the surviving stock from his factory, had offered himself for duty that terrible night. Together with his fire warden colleagues he helped put out the fires and carry the dead and wounded out of the rubble to waiting ambulances as bombs and pieces of burning building rained around them. Remembering the courage of his father, that quiet little East End tailor, always stiffens Charles’s resolve.

  Charles climbs the stairs to Court 4, pushes open the polished oak doors, and walks down the carpeted aisle between the benches to the well of the court where the barristers sit. Two robed barristers await him, one on the bench for juniors whom he does not recognise and, on the bench in front and slightly closer to the judge’s high position, Collin Montgomery QC. Montgomery is busy scrawling incomprehensible notes in his counsel’s notebook, all arrows and scribble and, as always, his wig is on askew and scraps of paper protrude from several jacket pockets.

  Traditionally Queen’s Counsel sit on the front bench with their juniors in the row behind, but in a case of this sort, where a junior barrister such as Charles is not being led by a QC, the opposition QC sometimes invites the junior to sit in the front bench, thereby doing him the courtesy of according him equal status. That is exactly what occurs in this case.

  ‘Good morning, Charles,’ says Montgomery, as Charles makes to slide into the bench behind him. ‘Why don’t you join me here? Much more room.’

  Charles inclines his head in acknowledgement. ‘Very kind.’

  ‘Not at all, dear fellow.’

  Montgomery then looks properly at Charles’s face and does a classic, almost cartoon, double-take. ‘Good God! What on earth happened to you?’

  ‘It’s nothing. I’ve a new sparring partner and he’s a little over-enthusiastic. It looks a lot worse than it is.’

  ‘If you say so,’ replies the QC, doubtfully. ‘Now, about this: are you applying for an adjournment? I think it’s a bit rough on you, having so little time to prepare a capital case, and I shan’t oppose any application too vigorously, despite my instructions.’

  ‘Thanks, Colli
n, but I think we’re ready.’

  Montgomery raises an eyebrow in mild surprise. ‘Very well. Do you know Simeon O’Connell?’ He gestures to his junior.

  Charles turns and regards the junior barrister. He looks very young, certainly no older than twenty-five or twenty-six. He’s either very bright or very lucky, thinks Charles; to be instructed for the Crown, even as a junior, on a murder trial at only two or three years’ call is quite an achievement. ‘No, I don’t think so. Pleased to meet you,’ says Charles.

  Charles puts his papers on the bench and looks around the court. People are still filing in but the press benches are already full and the last few seats are being filled in the public gallery. There’s an anticipatory buzz in the court, as there always is in cases of high public interest.

  Charles knows there will have been a queue going round the block for places in the public gallery, and he notices more barristers sitting on the benches behind him than is usual. Normally, when a trial is listed for a complete day or more, the only barristers in the benches are those representing the parties, but in this case the benches behind Charles are half-full with barristers who have no business to attend that court.

  Charles can guess what’s happened, imagining only too well the gossip that raced round the Temple at the end of the week: ‘Did you hear? Holborne’s picked up a dock brief … in a murder! And guess who his judge is: Fletcher J!’ So, with fireworks anticipated, barristers with nothing on that morning have decided to come and be entertained by Charles’s discomfiture.

  Charles’s eye travels back to the public gallery, looking for someone in particular. He thinks it unlikely that the Krays will attend in person but he knows what to look for. Ronnie’s scouts divide into two groups: the first are little more than scruffy street urchins, teenagers or younger, who pass on titbits of information picked up in the back alleys, markets and billiard halls of the East End. The second are usually well-dressed, pretty and violent young men with whom Ronnie enjoys a much closer relationship.

  Charles expects that the man who attacked him in the telephone box is still being kept well out of the way, but he knows Ronnie’s type. Sure enough, there, in the top row right at the end, looking down on the barristers and the still-empty dock, is a young man with blonde hair, long eyelashes and a full pouting mouth, wearing an expensive suit and gold rings on most of his fingers. Oh, yes, thinks Charles, just the sort for Ronnie Kray.