The Waxwork Corpse: A legal thriller with a chilling twist (Charles Holborne Legal Thrillers Book 5)

by Simon Michael

In bed, Charles reads his battered Times for a while but even the shooting of Freddie Mills, whom he knew well, can’t prevent his eyes drooping after only a minute, so he turns out the light.

  Despite the sagging mattress and the bri-nylon sheets, Charles sleeps well and is woken by light penetrating the curtains which do not quite close. He rolls out of bed and dons his dressing gown, opening the door to the corridor to take his place in the queue for the bathroom, when he notices an envelope which has apparently been slid under his bedroom door. From Jones, thinks Charles, as he picks it up.

  There is nothing written on the front of the envelope. Charles tears it open and takes out a single sheet of A4 paper. On it, in irregular letters cut from a newspaper, is the message: Murderer. £10,000 ensure silence.

  ‘Excuse me,’ croaks a large man, also in his dressing gown and bearing a plastic bathroom bag, as he squashes past Charles in the narrow corridor.

  Charles steps back into his bedroom and shuts the door, leaning back on it. He’s aware that he’s holding his breath and his heart rate has doubled. For so long he has dreaded the fall of one axe, and now he hears the swish of a much more ancient blade swooping towards his neck. He turns the letter over: nothing on the reverse. It’s a sheet of cheap paper torn along perforations, apparently from an exercise book. Charles realises that his thumb and forefinger are slightly sticky, and he takes the letter to the window, opening the curtains fully to let in the maximum amount of light. The glue fixing the letters to the notepaper is still damp in places. Charles sniffs the paper and the envelope: cheap gum, the sort he used to use at school; it can take a couple of hours to dry completely, even on a porous surface.

  He peers closely at the tiny squares and rectangles of newspaper print. The words have been compiled with letters of different sizes and fonts, and appear to have been taken from random pages of newsprint, with one exception: the word “murderer” is a single rectangle of paper and has been lifted complete from its source. It also appears to have some coloured ink, perhaps, red, on the reverse. Someone got lazy, or was in a hurry.

  Charles re-folds the letter, replaces it inside the envelope, and slips the envelope into the back of his Archbold, the criminal practitioners’ bible that he carries everywhere when on a case.

  Having bathed and dressed, he descends to the ground floor and locates the hotel reception. A young woman he has not seen before greets him.

  ‘Good morning,’ says Charles, ‘my name’s Holborne. Has anyone left a message for me?’

  The woman turns to the pigeonholes behind the reception desk, scans them quickly, and shakes her head. ‘Not that I can see, sir.’

  ‘Is the main hotel door locked after a certain time?’

  ‘Yes, from midnight until six o’clock in the morning. But we can give you a key if you’re planning on coming back late.’

  Charles thinks back to the previous night; no, he was still reading in his room until after midnight, and the letter certainly wasn’t there when he put the lights out. So, someone from the hotel itself? Or possibly another guest?

  ‘No, that’s fine thank you,’ he replies. ‘Do you mind me asking what time you came on duty?’

  ‘About an hour ago, why?’

  ‘Does the hotel deliver newspapers to guests?’

  ‘Yes. Would you like one? We usually have a few spares —’

  ‘No, thank you, but is it possible to speak to whoever was responsible for putting them outside the rooms?’

  The woman frowns, puzzled, but nods. ‘I should think so.’ She turns and calls behind her into an office. ‘Spencer?’

  An elderly man appears, in the act of cleaning his gold rimmed spectacles. He is smartly dressed in waistcoat and plaid trousers, and wears elasticated metal sleeve holders. Charles addresses him directly. ‘Did you take the newspapers up to the bedrooms this morning?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Did I miss you out or get it wrong perhaps? There was a gentleman who wanted The Telegraph —’

  ‘No, there’s nothing wrong. What time did you distribute the newspapers?’

  ‘Why do you ask, sir?’ asks Spencer.

  ‘Someone slipped a letter under my door, and I was wondering if you saw who was responsible.’

  ‘What room are you in?’

  ‘102.’

  Spencer shakes his head. ‘I came on duty at ten past six, and did the papers straight away. I got to your floor by six fifteen or six twenty and there was no one there then.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you saw if there was an envelope sticking out from my door?’ Spencer shakes his head again. ‘OK. But once you come into the hotel, the doors are open?’

  ‘Don’t follow you, sir,’ says Spencer with a trace of irritation.

  ‘What I mean is that once you come in, guests can come and go because the doors are then unlocked for the day.’

  ‘Yes, that’d be right.’

  So perhaps not a guest after all, just an early bird.

  ‘Thanks for your assistance,’ says Charles.

  He turns to enter the dining room for breakfast. ‘One last thing,’ he says, playing a hunch. ‘Do you have a local newspaper by any chance?’

  The young woman reaches under the reception desk and comes up with a newspaper. ‘There’s Tuesday’s Cumberland News if you’re interested. I wouldn’t have thought it of much interest to someone from London, though.’

  ‘That’ll be perfect,’ replies Charles, taking it from her. ‘I’ll return it after breakfast.’

  Charles looks around the dining room; Jones isn’t yet down for breakfast. Charles orders coffee while he waits for the solicitor and opens the newspaper. He strikes lucky, finding what he’s looking for on the inside of the front page. The word “murderer” appears in the middle of a report of a court hearing involving a Seascale man, and the font and size seem identical to that on the letter. Moreover, on its reverse is the corner of a box advertisement on the front page for men’s patent leather shoes, in red ink.

  Charles closes and folds the paper with a small satisfied smile. The damp glue, the hurried compilation of the demand, its arrival that morning — all point to someone in a hurry, an opportunist. Charles guesses that he was spotted by someone in the bar the night before, presumably someone from his past — and it would have to be someone from almost twenty-five years in the past — who recognised him. Furthermore, he guesses, probably someone who is now a local. Visitors from out-of-town are unlikely to be interested in a local newspaper containing out of date parochial news. Then he reconsiders that last conclusion; on the other hand, someone just looking for an old newspaper to cut up might use the first that came to hand.

  In any case, Charles can do no more for the present. He’s not certain how seriously to take the threat. Maybe whoever recognised him just thought it’d be fun to frighten the tearaway they used to know as Charlie Horowitz, now an uppity London barrister. On the other hand, he can’t afford to be complacent.

  Charles mulls it over while drinking his coffee. It’d be a mistake to act the private detective in a rural part of the country where he knows no one; he’d stand out like a sore thumb. In any case, he’s due to return to London in a few hours’ time; if the mis-spelling putative blackmailer is serious, he’ll have to make his next move quickly.

  Jones arrives, his hair wet and slicked to his small round head, and the two lawyers eat breakfast in an otherwise deserted dining room, the other guests having hurried off in their windcheaters and walking boots to enjoy the Lakes while the weather is favourable.

  Jones drives them out to Wastwater and parks in the gravel carpark. The two men descend to the water’s edge and wander round the lake for a while, comparing the witness’s descriptions of the topography with their ordnance survey maps, but as Charles had predicted, the visit reveals nothing they don’t already know.

  Charles accompanies Jones while he returns the hired car and they take a taxi directly to the station. As their train pulls out of Seascale on the first leg of the journey sout
h, Charles wonders if he might not be worrying unnecessarily. Whatever; the rest of the game, if it continues, will be played out on his turf in London, where he has home advantage.

  CHAPTER 15

  Charles jogs through the traffic on Queen Victoria Street towards the extraordinary four-storey building which houses the City of London Magistrates Court. Built in the Italianate style in 1873, it resembles a triangular slice of cake constructed of ornately decorated, honey-coloured stone. Charles is always struck by the contrast between the edifice itself, its classical columns, balustraded balconies and pointlessly pleasing pediments, and the quotidian display of venality accommodated within: beautiful exterior icing hiding interior putrescence. From the pointy end of the slice in which are set gracious double doors, the court opens its lovely mouth to chew up, digest and then defaecate into the waiting prison vans the worst examples of flagitious humanity the Metropolis can offer.

  Charles climbs the stone steps and pushes open the doors to be assailed by a wall of sound. The entrance hall, stairs and galleries are packed to overflowing with journalists, photographers, members of the public and lawyers, and the air is thick with cigarette smoke. He pushes and shoves his way through the throng to force his way to the courtroom.

  It’s little better here. The bench usually reserved for solicitors and their clerks has been usurped by the press too and barristers and solicitors are squeezed onto benches too small for their ample rumps on the front bench alone. Charles sees a hand waving above the heads of the pressmen and steers towards it. Jones is gesticulating wildly from the front bench where, amazingly, he has managed to reserve space for Charles.

  ‘Morning,’ he shouts, his squeaky voice almost wholly lost in the din.

  ‘What a circus!’ shouts Charles, dropping his papers on the desk. ‘Why on earth did they let all this rabble in?’

  ‘I think some of them’ll have to move. There’s a six-hander on after us, and nowhere for the lawyers to sit at all.’

  ‘Any sign of the Defence?’ Jones shakes his head. ‘Still the “dream team”?’ asks Charles.

  ‘As far as I know, yes: Beaverbrook and Day. I tried to speak to James Day this morning but he’d already left his chambers.’

  Steele’s legal team have instructed Robert Beaverbrook Q.C., one of the most formidable silks in the profession. The head of the very set of chambers to which Jones had originally thought of sending the prosecution brief, the set in which Steele had himself practised as a silk, Beaverbrooks’s instruction finally proved to Jones that the Crown’s choice of an outsider like Charles was essential.

  Beaverbrook, a ponderous man with a low, cultured voice and an unerring ability to smell the weakness in an opponent’s case, is the very essence of uprightness and probity. His record of prosecuting for the Crown in countless high-profile cases makes him the perfect defence advocate in this case. The jury will recognise him as the straight, honourable, establishment man who, for years, has been protecting them from gangland murderers, serial rapists and Russian spies. If he says Steele’s innocent, he probably is.

  His junior, James Day, is the same call as Charles. Practising from the same high-profile set as Beaverbrook, as long as he’s not caught kerb crawling or doing anything else stupid, Day will almost automatically get silk within a year or two.

  Jimmy Day and Charles have been mates since Cambridge and Bar School and have a healthy respect for each other. In fact, in Charles’s opinion, Jimmy is a better advocate even than Beaverbrook. His advocacy style is more like Charles’s own, more modern, peppered with references to the Beatles and the Stones, football gossip, and gentle ridicule of the other side’s witnesses. Like Charles, he has a deft understanding of how juries think and can reduce an opponent’s well-constructed arguments to rubble with a single rhetorical question. Thus the Crown has a noted defence junior to present its case, and the defence has a team of establishment prosecutors, an odd circumstance, and one not missed by the tabloids which have been running profiles of the main actors ever since Steele was arrested.

  A door behind the magistrates’ bench opens and silence spreads out from that quarter of the court like ripples on a pond. But it’s only an usher, who descends into the well of the court to order the journalists out of the solicitors’ bench. They comply, reluctantly and complaining, and gather at the back of the court to stand with their backs to the wood panelling. They are forced to move again as the main doors open and in sweeps Robert Beaverbrook Q.C. followed by James Day and their solicitor. Beaverbrook ignores the shouted questions from the reporters and takes his seat at the other end of the bench occupied by Charles. Jimmy winks at Charles, a signal spotted by Beaverbrook, who turns and glares briefly at his junior.

  ‘Morning, Holborne,’ says Beaverbrook.

  So that’s how it’s going to be, thinks Charles.

  Beaverbrook, chosen for his moral rectitude, will be playing his part on and off stage. He let it be known, in one of his very few reported comments, that he views the charges brought against his client as the most scurrilous slur against the very fabric of the English judicial process, and Charles leads the most mistaken prosecution it had ever been his misfortune to encounter. Accordingly, to hob-nob with Charles while British Justice stands, defenceless, in the dock of public opinion, would be an indefensible levity, a scandal. He has no intention of condescending to Christian names. Accordingly Charles understands the rebuke Jimmy receives for his wink and smiles to himself. It will be “Beaverbrook and Holborne”, and not “Bob and Charles”. So be it.

  ‘Still no leader?’ asks Beaverbrook, one eyebrow raised archly.

  ‘No, not at present.’

  ‘Do you not think that a Queen’s Counsel is more appropriate for a case of this significance?’

  Charles smiles grimly. ‘That depends on how one views the case. If British justice were indeed on trial, as your friends in the press insist, you might’ve had an argument. But as it’s a grubby domestic quarrel that ended in bloody murder, any competent advocate could present it. Indeed, I’ve advised Mr Jones here to conduct the trial. Advocacy overkill risks distracting the jury from the evidence, don’t you agree?’

  Jones laughs slightly hysterically. He often instructs Beaverbrook and doesn’t want the grand man to think he agrees with Charles, but he can’t quite bring himself to reprimand his own counsel in public.

  Further embarrassment is avoided as the usher calls ‘All rise!’ and the magistrate enters the court. Sir Winston Kinsey, formerly a judge of the Court of Appeal, has been persuaded out of retirement to resume his former role as stipendiary magistrate for this case alone.

  The Lord Chancellor’s department decided that a safer pair of hands would be required for such a sensitive case than might be offered by the lay magistrates in Maidstone and, in any case, the public interest was so great that the court facilities in Kent were completely inadequate. Thus the case was moved to London. Charles was grateful; he’ll avoid the usual British Rail frustrations involved in commuting to and from Kent.

  Everyone takes their seats and the courtroom subsides.

  ‘The first case on the list,’ says the clerk, turning in his chair to speak to Sir Winston, ‘is the police against Steele. Mr Holborne represents the police, and the defendant is represented by Mr Beaverbrook and Mr Day.’

  The clerk turns to the usher and nods. The usher climbs two steps to a door set in the wood panelling and opens it. ‘OK,’ he calls.

  The clinking of keys can be heard echoing in a stairwell beyond the door, and footsteps approach the courtroom. Sir Anthony Steele appears in the doorway and steps into the dock. He is accompanied by a prison officer but apparently deference to his rank was sufficient to prevent him being manacled, as would usually be the case for a man brought up from the cells. The door closes behind him and he is left standing in the dock, facing the magistrate.

  Forty-eight hours have elapsed since he was charged. His silver hair is dishevelled and rather greasy and his suit crease
d and marked. He looks as if he hasn’t slept, for his eyes are bloodshot and ringed with heavy circles, and he’s evidently not been given facilities to shave.

  ‘Are you Anthony Michael Steele?’ asks the clerk.

  ‘I am,’ replies the judge, his voice clear and strong.

  The clerk makes sure that his papers accurately record the accused’s address, and sits.

  ‘What are you seeking today, Mr Holborne?’ asks Sir Winston.

  ‘The Crown are not ready to proceed this morning, sir,’ replies Charles as he stands. ‘There are further investigations to be made, and we still await the results of some scientific tests. We therefore request a short two-week remand. At the end of that period, I expect the papers to be ready for committal.’

  ‘Two weeks?’ asks the magistrate in surprise.

  ‘Every effort is being made to ensure the case proceeds as soon as possible, bearing in mind the circumstances. The accused was in fact in the middle of a lengthy trial which has had to be adjourned at great inconvenience to all concerned.’

  ‘Are you seeking a remand in custody?’

  ‘I am,’ affirms Charles, waiting for the expected hubbub to die down before continuing. ‘I shall call an officer to assist the Bench, but in a nutshell, this a very serious offence by a man of some wealth, who has close contacts abroad where, for example, his brother lives. The principal prosecution witness is the nanny of the accused’s children. She and the accused enjoy a very close relationship, and it is feared that he might try to influence her —’

  Charles gets no further before Beaverbrook stands to interrupt him.

  ‘This is utterly outrageous!’ he booms in his deep bass tones. ‘The “accused” is one of Her Majesty’s most senior judges with a glittering career of thirty years behind him! As I am sure you are aware, sir, many of the decisions which guide and bind this court were actually his! He is known throughout the English-speaking world as a judge of incomparable fairness and integrity. To suggest that this man would interfere with a witness is —’