Corrupted: Murder and cover-up at the heart of government (Charles Holborne Legal Thrillers Book 4)

by Simon Michael

  ‘I’m so sorry I’m late, Mum,’ he says. He skirts the table, still carrying the flowers, to bend and kiss Sally too. ‘Sorry, Sal,’ he whispers in her ear as his lips land somewhere on the side of her head.

  Sonia leans over, gives Charles a kiss and holds out her hands to take the flowers. He gives the bunch to her distractedly and she disappears into the kitchen. Charles reaches into his pocket, takes out the same yarmulke he has used since he was bar mitzvah, and sits next to Sally.

  ‘Dad, Davie,’ he announces, ‘you’re not going to believe what’s happened!’ Charles’s face is alight with excitement and Sally wonders if there might, after all, be some excuse for his tardiness.

  ‘Well?’ she answers.

  Charles takes her hand in his lap and squeezes it but speaks to his father and brother. ‘Guess who I met at the gym?’

  ‘You went to the gym?’ exclaims Sally, releasing Charles’s hand. ‘You told me you had paperwork to do!’

  ‘Sonny Liston!’ announces Charles, watching his father’s expression.

  Harry Horowitz has never himself boxed, but two of his brothers and one brother-in-law were founder members at Rupert Browning and two of the three went on to professional careers. It was Harry who encouraged his sons to take up the sport and who, until they were old enough to make the journey alone, took them on the bus twice a week to train. It was he who travelled up and down the country to share their successes and failures at schoolboy championships. He made many friends in the East End club, and although he hasn’t been there in years, is still an avid boxing fan. He listened to the Liston-Clay fight on the wireless, sitting in his favourite armchair with his head inclined to the brown gauze covering the speaker, trying to block out Millie’s chatter from the kitchen.

  Harry’s mouth drops open and his eyes widen. ‘Seriously? At the Institute?’ Charles nods enthusiastically. ‘You spoke to him?’

  ‘Yes. And I shook his hand.’

  A big grin slowly spreads across the little tailor’s face as he absorbs the news. The unspoken disappointment he felt on behalf of his wife at Charles’s lateness is forgotten.

  ‘You shook his hand? What’s he like?’

  Charles shrugs. ‘He seemed shy in front of the cameras, like they say, and gracious. The total opposite of Clay.’

  ‘Such a braggart, that man,’ comments Harry.

  ‘Yes, but what a fighter,’ adds David. ‘We saw excerpts from the fight on the newsreel, didn’t we, Sonia? I’ve never seen any boxer move like that. What was Liston doing in Kennington of all places?’

  Harry’s eyes narrow as he studies his elder son carefully across the table. ‘The Krays,’ he suggests softly. ‘Liston’s connected to organised crime in Philadelphia.’

  Charles nods. ‘So they say.’

  ‘So this is the reason you keep us all waiting?’ says Millie’s voice from the other end of the table.

  Everyone looks at Millie. She is standing, the box of matches in one hand and an unlit match in the other. ‘You would rather spend time with criminals and thugs than with your own parents at the Shabas table?’

  Sally has heard Charles speak often enough about his ongoing battle with his mother and how, somehow, he has become the personification of all her disappointment, anger and resentment. That was the principal reason Sally was so nervous about this evening; she knew it’d take only the smallest spark, the most innocuous comment from Charles, to light the blue touch paper of Millie’s antagonism.

  ‘Do you know how often, in all the years your father and I have been married, I’ve been late lighting the candles? Well, do you, Charles?’ demands the upright grey-haired woman at the end of the table.

  ‘No, Mum.’

  ‘Never. Never once; ’til tonight. That’s your doing.’

  ‘Now, now, Millie,’ interjects Harry quietly. ‘That’s not quite right, and you know it. During the War there were many occasions we didn’t light the candles at all.’

  ‘So, it took a war already,’ responds Millie.

  ‘And when we’ve been on holiday,’ adds Harry.

  ‘Whose side are you on?’ demands Millie angrily. ‘He’s late, right? He let this poor girl— ’ she gestures towards Sally — ‘come on her own. The very first time she’s invited too! So who’s in the wrong here? Is it me? If so, God forgive me, I’m so sorry —’

  ‘I am, Mum. It’s my fault,’ says Charles, cutting across his mother’s thick sarcasm. ‘And I’m sorry. Really I am.’

  Silence falls over the group again. Harry stands. He opens the bottle of wine and pours some into the goblet. He waits. David and Sonia stand, followed by Charles and, finally, Sally. At last, when everyone around the table is on their feet, Harry looks up at his wife.

  ‘So? Light the candles, already,’ he says softly, bringing the conversation to an end.

  Millie casts one further angry look at her husband and strikes the match. The candles glow. She puts down the matches, closes her eyes, and moves her arthritic hands over the top of the flames in gentle circles as if wafting their heat to her face. Then she places her hands over her eyes — an elderly child playing hide and seek — and mutters a prayer in Hebrew.

  ‘Amen,’ she says, finishing.

  ‘Amen,’ reply the members of her family.

  Harry picks up the goblet of wine and says a blessing in Hebrew, to which all again reply amen and then the goblet is passed round the table for each person to take a sip. Charles takes a sip of the sweet kiddush wine and hands the goblet to Sally with a tentative and apologetic smile, but he has misjudged the depth of her upset and the smile bounces off her blank face.

  Sonny Liston may well be a big deal, but Charles knew how nervous she was; she needed his support and he let her down because it was more important to meet this boxer. She takes a sip from the cup of sweet wine and hands it back. She studies Charles’s face. I love him, she reminds herself. He’s funny, intelligent and sexy. But he’s selfish and I don’t think he’s ever going to commit to me. Perhaps I’ve made a mistake?

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Monday, 6 July

  The phone bell echoes round the cavernous hall at Charles and Sally’s Hampstead home. Charles walks swiftly from the kitchen and lifts the receiver.

  ‘Mr Holborne?’

  ‘Hello, Barbara,’ he says. ‘In early?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you have a nice weekend?’ asks Charles.

  ‘Yes, thank you, sir. And you?’

  ‘Just peachy.’

  Barbara pauses for a moment and Charles imagines her debating whether or not to probe his sarcasm. She evidently decides against. ‘I thought you’d like to know that Mr Wiseberg’s instructions in your juvenile murder case are here. Hand-delivered over the weekend, I guess. I’ve skimmed them, and there are some unusual features we need to discuss. Are you coming in this morning?’

  Damn! curses Charles inwardly. With the fight less than forty-eight hours away, he hoped to take the day off and spend it at the gym doing some light training and sparring. ‘Yes,’ he says with a sigh, ‘I’ll be there by about ten.’

  He hangs up and walks back to the kitchen table to finish packing his briefcase.

  Raincoat and hat donned, he pauses at the foot of the staircase wondering whether he should call out to Sally. She’s now spent three nights in the spare room and, when they occupy the same space during the day, she is polite but uncommunicative. Charles has tried getting her to talk; he has apologised repeatedly for his lateness on Friday night; he has asked if this is about the fight; he has offered to go out, immediately, and buy a new kitchen sink. No amount of schmoozing, apology, comedy or discussion moves her. Her only response: she needs time to think, and can’t do that while sharing his bed.

  Charles decides that leaving without speaking will only up the ante. ‘I’m off now!’ he calls. There’s no answer, and no sound from upstairs. ‘Sally?’

  Suddenly the quality of the silence makes Charles wonder, and he drops his
bags and runs up the staircase two at a time. He opens the door to the spare bedroom. The curtains are open, the bed has been made and the new bedspread is creaseless and immaculate. He goes into the en suite bathroom. There are droplets of water drying on the inside of the shower cubicle, but otherwise it is neat and tidy. Charles strides back to the bedroom where he spent the night, but that too is empty. Sally has already left for the day, without a word.

  Charles knows instantly that something is amiss as he opens the door to the clerks’ room. For one thing the room is unusually full for that time in the morning when most of the barristers should be in court and the rest at their desks starting the day’s research and paperwork. More obvious still is the silence that descends on the room as everyone realises who stands on the threshold.

  Charles stops short, holding the door open with his hand. ‘What?’ he asks the room in general, an innocent expression on his face.

  At the centre of the room, leaning over Barbara’s desk, is Murray Dennison QC. His arms are outstretched and between them on the scuffed leather inlay of Barbara’s desktop lies an open newspaper. The tall redhead stands on the other side of her desk next to her chair, frowning, and crowded round the newspaper are all the junior clerks and one or two other barristers.

  Dennison is the last to look up. He is tall and bony, with sharp features, a narrow nose, thin lips and a grey complexion. A humourless bachelor with no apparent vices except his insidious jealousy and ambition, he puts Charles in mind of a Knight Templar. Dennison would make a worthy member of the warrior monk order that once resided at this very spot in London; schooled in abstinence, birching himself nightly to exorcise ungodly thoughts and at the same time plotting to supplant his abbot. Charles wonders if Dennison has considered the sin of covetousness of others’ practices to be grounds for self-flagellation. No, he decides; casuistry is another of the QC’s strong suits.

  Dennison shakes his head sadly. ‘What, you say? Are you serious, man? I would’ve thought that even you could see how this’ll bring Chambers into disrepute.’

  Charles looks up at Barbara, the person in the room he most trusts, but even she avoids his gaze. ‘What are you talking about, Murray?’ he asks.

  Dennison raises his eyebrows in disbelief at Charles’s protested innocence, but turns and jabs his finger at the newspaper on the desk behind him. ‘This.’

  Charles lets the door close behind him and steps forward, the junior tenants and clerks parting as he approaches the newspaper on the desk. It’s a copy of that morning’s Sketch, the front page open. There, taking up the top half of page 2, is a large photograph. In it, facing the camera and looking ready for a fight, stands Charles. Approaching him and caught in half-profile is Reggie Kray. Kray wears a smile and is holding his hand out as if to offer it to Charles to shake. Just in shot on the left of the photograph is Sonny Liston, his eyes wide but otherwise wearing a blank expression. The headline proclaims, simply: Mr Reginald Kray and his famous friends meet the boys at Kennington Boxing Club.

  Charles’s eyes skim to the copy below the black and white photograph. It’s anodyne enough. The first paragraph relates how Messrs Reginald and Ronald Kray, benefactors of the famous old gym, took their celebrity friends to meet the sporting youth of London. Most of the rest of the article is taken up with Sonny Liston and his life story, his poor start in life, his previous criminal connections, and how he is now reputed to be one of the richest boxers of all time. It finishes with a discussion of his chances against Cassius Clay in the planned rematch. Charles’s name is not mentioned.

  Charles turns to the waiting group. ‘I was just training, that’s all,’ he says. ‘All this commotion happened just as I was leaving.’

  Dennison smiles grimly, his washed-out blue eyes as hard as flint. ‘You’re described as a friend of that thug, Holborne, and you’re shaking his hand.’

  The eyes of the other occupants of the room swing to Charles, awaiting his response, as if watching an unusually dangerous tennis match. The room crackles with tension.

  ‘Believe me, Dennison, that man is not my friend. He and his brother have already tried to have me killed, as pretty much everyone in the Temple knows. I can’t be held responsible for how some idiot journalist describes me. And I wasn’t shaking his hand. If you look properly, you’ll see I was expecting a fight. He was approaching me, not the other way round.’

  Dennison snorts dismissively. ‘Tried to have you killed? Are you really serious?’

  For the first time Barbara speaks. ‘Actually, sir, that is true. It was just before you joined Chambers —’ but Charles cuts her short, whirls round and yanks up the back of his jacket and, with it, his tunic shirt. Overlying the position of Charles’s right kidney, in a long curve disappearing into the waistband of his trousers, is a wide pink scar with parallel pairs of stitch marks along its length. It’s almost semi-circular, as if someone has tried to carve a large steak out of Charles’s flank. There’s an audible gasp from the onlookers and Jennie, the shy junior clerk, pales and looks away.

  ‘Does that look like friendship to you, Dennison?’ asks Charles, softly.

  ‘The Krays did that?’ asks Dennison, his tone one of disbelief and, to Charles’s satisfaction, shock.

  ‘One of their men, on Ronnie Kray’s instructions,’ replies Charles, tucking his shirt back in.

  ‘Well,’ procrastinates Dennison, aware of the shock in the room and unwilling to be seen as unsympathetic, yet at the same time reluctant to give up his attack, ‘I’m surprised I didn’t hear about the prosecution. But I don’t think it changes anything. You’ve obviously some sort of relationship with these criminals, for better or worse, as this photograph tells the whole world. I can’t imagine any worse publicity for Chambers, can you?’

  Charles examines the photograph again and draws a deep breath. Dennison’s right. Charles has endured prejudice at the Bar from the day he qualified, derived from his Jewish heritage and his impoverished East End upbringing. He has never fitted in and in representing Harry Robeson, an associate of the Krays, a year earlier he acquired a reputation as bent, a reputation which took months, and an astonishing turn of events at Robeson’s trial, to eradicate. This photograph is certain to stir the rumour-mill of the Temple, ever a hotbed of gossip and backstabbing.

  ‘Yes,’ concedes Charles. ‘I can see how damaging it looks, even though the interpretation placed upon it is completely false.’ He looks up and addresses Barbara. ‘Do we have anyone who instructs Chambers in libel matters?’

  Barbara shakes her head. ‘No, Mr Holborne. Why don’t you try your previous chambers?’

  Charles locks eyes with the Scotswoman and smiles with gratitude. Barbara, ever the diplomat, has chosen not to describe his old chambers at Chancery Court as the chambers where Sally is senior clerk. Relationships between barristers and clerks are frowned upon. In the stuffy nineteenth-century atmosphere of the Temple, it’s akin to a titled son walking out with one of the below-stairs maids.

  Barbara and Sally have met in the course of their professional lives but they’re not close. Barbara is twenty years older, from a comfortable middle-class family of Edinburgh physicians, and had a good education. Although Sally has smartened up her act since becoming senior clerk and shed her Cockney accent, she comes from a working-class single-parent household in East London and has no qualifications beyond her native wit. The two have little in common except the bond of being odd women out in a very traditional male profession.

  ‘Good idea, Barbara, thank you. Yes, they have libel specialists there.’ He casts his eye towards his pigeonhole — empty — and turns to leave.

  ‘Just a moment, Holborne,’ calls Dennison. Charles turns. ‘I feel honour-bound to bring this up at the next Chambers meeting.’

  ‘Honour-bound? Is that what you are, Dennison?’ replies Charles, leaving the room.

  Charles places a cup of tea on his desk, throws himself into his ancient creaking chair and opens the pink ribbon round his new inst
ructions. First the difficulties with Sally and now this. But within minutes of starting to read, the intellectual demands of the case have, as always, enabled Charles to forget his personal problems.

  THE QUEEN v. E

  INSTRUCTIONS TO COUNSEL

  Enclosures:

  1. Draft Proof of Evidence of Edward Smith

  2. Copy charge sheet

  3. Report of Dr Jorgen Larsson, Home Office pathologist

  4. Toxicology report of Dr Linda Greene

  5. Medical notes

  Counsel is instructed on behalf of the juvenile whom he knows as “Teddy”, hereinafter referred to as “E”. At the first remand hearing on Friday 4 July, Instructing Solicitors were successful in persuading the Juvenile Court to make an anonymity order under Section 39 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1933. As Counsel knows, that section protects the accused from being identified in any case where there is conduct alleged which is contrary to decency or morality. The officer in the case, who represented the Crown on that occasion, repeatedly emphasised that homosexuality was an issue in the case and accordingly played into Instructing Solicitors’ hands. However the only charge faced by E is the murder of Maurice Drake on or about 29 June 1964. Accordingly Instructing Solicitors anticipate an application to lift the anonymity order at some time prior to trial.

  E has continued to insist that his surname is Smith and that he is an orphan. Although both Instructing Solicitors and the police believe that E has not revealed his true identity, his fingerprints have not yet yielded a match and there is nothing among his meagre belongings to throw light on his true identity. He gives his date of birth as 1.1.1949, making him 15 years of age, which may be true, but those details cannot be matched to any person reported missing.

  Accordingly the Crown proceeds against the boy with the identity as given by him. A social worker from the City of London and a probation officer have been appointed by the Court but E refused to speak to either. Dr Felix has accepted instructions and it is to be hoped that she will have greater success. In the absence of any psychiatric opinion that E is fit to plead, the only evidence on the subject is that of E’s treating doctors, namely that his suicide attempt last week was genuine, and therefore that E may still be suffering from some disturbance of the mind. The medical notes that counsel saw at the hospital are copied herewith as Enclosure 5.