Flashpoint

by Michael Gilbert

“And then?”

  “Then a car drove up. The accused was dragged into it, and the car went off.”

  “Thank you,” said Marcus Hoyle.

  The inspector said, “I understand, Mr Goodbody, that you are a regular attender at this Court.”

  “I am.”

  “And that you were here last Tuesday when the accused was giving us his account of what occurred?”

  “I was.”

  “So that you would have heard, on that occasion, most of the facts which you have related to us this morning?”

  “I certainly heard what he said. And as I had been present myself, I thought it my duty to come forward.”

  The Inspector considered the reply, looked speculatively at the Magistrate and then said, “I have no further questions. But in view of some of the statements which have been made this morning, I ask leave to recall Sergeant McGillivray.”

  “You have no objection, Mr Hoyle?”

  “None at all,” said Marcus Hoyle with the ghost of a smile.

  “Very well.”

  “You have been sworn in these proceedings. There is no need to take the oath again. Now, Sergeant. On the night in question, was there a full moon?”

  “No, sir. It was a new moon.”

  “How far away from this sand-bin we have heard about is the nearest street lamp?”

  “Approximately twenty yards. Perhaps a little more.”

  “You heard the last witness mention a bench. Is there any bench in the vicinity?”

  “I believe there is a bench inside Corfield Gardens.”

  “But the gardens are locked up at night?”

  “That is so, sir.”

  “And if the witness had been sitting on that bench, would he have had a view of what was happening in the vicinity of the sand-bin?”

  “He might just have been able to see it if he stood on the bench.”

  “And would he have been able to recognize people at that distance, and in those circumstances?”

  “I should have said it was quite impossible, sir.”

  “Thank you, Sergeant.”

  The sergeant made a half turn as if to leave the box, but the long figure of Marcus Hoyle was observed to be unfolding itself once more.

  “Well, Sergeant,” he said blandly, “so we meet again.”

  “I beg your pardon, sir?”

  “I’m sure you haven’t forgotten. I had the pleasure of cross-examining you in the case of the Police against Carbutt. The Court did not believe your evidence and Major Carbutt was acquitted.”

  The laugh which followed was so well synchronized that it might have come at the flick of a conductor’s baton.

  Mr Gazelee beat once with his gavel on the desk in front of him and the laughter ceased as suddenly as it had begun. He said, the anger thickening his words, “That was a most improper observation, Mr Hoyle.”

  “I am always prepared to accept correction from the Bench, sir, but I think that in this case, I was within my rights.”

  “It was an absolutely irrelevant comment.”

  “It is some years since I studied the laws of evidence, but it was my impression, I stand ready to be corrected if I am wrong, that when the prosecution attack the character of the accused, their own witnesses are open to similar attack. In this case the prosecution has accused my client of drunkenness and if not actual immorality, of boorish behaviour to a young lady. I must surely be allowed to remind the witness that he committed perjury.”

  The word hung for a moment, and then the Inspector leapt up. “I protest most emphatically, sir.”

  “Then I withdraw the word perjury,” said Marcus Hoyle before Mr Gazelee could speak. “It was, however, indisputable that in the case in question, had the sergeant been believed, the accused must have been convicted. It may have been, of course, that the Bench did not think the witness was lying. They may merely have concluded that he was confused.”

  “I rule,” said Mr Gazelee, “that this line of questioning is entirely improper. I shall disregard it when coming to a conclusion.”

  “That is your undoubted privilege,” said Marcus Hoyle.

  “Have you any more questions?”

  “There are one or two other matters.” Counsel referred to his notes – “When giving evidence in the original hearing you said that you and Detective Roper were on a routine patrol.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “At two a.m.?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And what particular routine calls for a sergeant and a detective of the Criminal Investigation Department to be walking the streets together at two o’clock in the morning?”

  “There had been a number of cases of breaking and entering offices reported in that neighbourhood.”

  “But surely, Sergeant, that is a matter for the uniformed branch.”

  “Normally, that would be so, sir. But we had been instructed to assist them in this particular matter by keeping our eyes open.”

  “Then why did you not do so?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “In the course of your patrol you must have covered High Holborn.”

  “Yes.”

  “Where a case of breaking and entering an office occurred on that particular night. Well, Sergeant?”

  “I believe that is so, sir.”

  “And was not noticed by you? Why was that? Was it because you were too engrossed in following the accused?”

  “We were not following the accused, sir.”

  “You remember that you are giving evidence on oath, Sergeant.”

  “I do.”

  “And that if you lie on oath you commit the crime of perjury.”

  Sergeant McGillivray, dark red in the face, suddenly said so loudly that it was almost a shout, “We – were – not – following – the – accused.”

  Marcus Hoyle looked down at his notes for a moment, and said, “You stated in evidence that the accused was annoying this girl. What was he doing?”

  The sudden switch disconcerted the witness who said, “Well, he was – she was obviously upset.”

  “Yes. But what was he doing?”

  “It was too dark to see exactly what he was doing.”

  “Could you hear what he said to her?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “But Sergeant, if you couldn’t see what he was doing, or hear what he was saying, how could you tell that he was annoying and frightening her?”

  “I could judge that from the girl’s demeanour.”

  “And what was her demeanour?”

  “She looked annoyed and frightened.”

  This seemed to amuse the audience. Mr Gazelee rapped his desk again and said, “If there is any more disturbance I shall clear the Court.”

  “You try it,” said a voice from the back.

  While Mr Gazelee was trying to locate the speaker he observed that Counsel had resumed his seat.

  He said, “If you have no questions, Inspector–” The Inspector shook his head, “Then it only remains for me to say that I reject, entirely, the evidence that the defence has produced at this late stage. I’m afraid I don’t believe a word of it. And I reject and regret the attack which Counsel has seen fit to make on these police officers. I find the accused guilty and–”

  “Shame,” said a voice from the back of the Court.

  “Guilty and I–”

  “Why don’t you listen to the evidence?”

  “Officer, remove that man.”

  The crowd at the back made no effort to obstruct the policeman, but neither did they help him. They simply stood. When the policeman had battled his way through them he found himself faced by two or three impassive men, any of whom might have been the interrupter.

  “Now then,” he said, “which of you was it?”

  “It was him,” said Ben Thomas, indicating Syd Marvin.

  “That’s a lie,” said Syd. “It was him.”

  “It wasn’t either of them,” said a third man, “it was me.”

 
“Now then, Cecil,” said Ben, “you mustn’t go taking the blame.”

  These exchanges appeared to amuse the crowd, who applauded.

  Mr Gazelee, red in the face, said, “I’ll have the Court cleared.” He signalled to the sergeant at the door, who could be heard shouting down the passage for reinforcements.

  There was no trouble. The spectators filed out in perfect order. Marcus Hoyle, followed by his junior and his instructing solicitor, marched out with them.

  It was in a courtroom occupied only by reporters and the police that Mr Gazelee sentenced Patrick Mauger to a fine of fifty pounds with twenty pounds costs.

  18

  “A nice splash,” said John Charles. He was studying the early afternoon editions of the evening papers spread out on his desk. ‘QC accuses Police.’ ‘Unprecedented scenes in Court.’ ‘Counsel walks out.’ Good descriptive stuff. You won’t get the real reactions until tomorrow morning. By that time people will have started to work out the implications.”

  “I expect we shall be helping them to do that,” said Patrick.

  “Such is our duty.”

  “How on earth did you find Maximilian Goodbody?”

  “We didn’t have to find him. He found us.”

  Patrick stared at him.

  “Do you realize that we had more than a dozen people itching to give evidence. Three of them actually claimed to be the girl you talked to.”

  “But why wasn’t I–?”

  “We didn’t need to bother you. One was in her middle fifties. One had a cleft palate and persecution mania. The third came from Tanzania. She wanted to protest against police brutality.”

  “Is everybody incurably mad?”

  “It’s a specialized form of madness,” said Charles. “A desire to share in any limelight that happens to be going. Actresses and politicians sometimes suffer from it too.”

  “If you had all that talent, why did you pick on Goodbody? He was terribly unconvincing.”

  “We selected him because he was unconvincing.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “For maximum effect, we had to drag one of those policemen back into the witness box. The difficulty was that they had both concluded their evidence, and there were no plausible grounds for recalling them. Hoyle reckoned that the only way of doing it was to put up a witness of our own who would be grossly insulting and totally implausible. Then they might be provoked into getting back into the box to shoot him down.”

  “Which they were.”

  “Which,” agreed Charles with a grin, “they certainly were.”

  Jonas read the same reports on his way up to London to see Edward Lambard. He was not particularly interested in them. They merely confirmed his opinion that no policeman was to be relied on when he got into the witness box. He was more interested in a very small item which he found tucked away at the foot of the home news page. It was a report from Thorpe Common near Sheffield, of a burglary at the house of a Mr Mason, who was described as a retired businessman. The intruders had been interrupted by Mr Mason’s sister who had attacked the intruders with remarkable courage; and with some success, since they had apparently left without taking anything of value.

  Jonas was still pondering this account when he arrived at Lambard’s office. He was in one of his less offensive moods, and accepted Lambard’s apologies and explanations graciously.

  “Interesting,” he said. “I agree. It should be technically interesting. Who are we briefing? A leader, of course. I may say that I now have an unexpected source of funds available.”

  “Fine,” said Lambard. “For Counsel, I doubt if we could do better than Wilfred Cairns. I’ve had a word with his clerk. He’s free at the beginning of next week.”

  “Next week?”

  “We had a bit of luck there. The appeal in the Wayland Steamship case folded up unexpectedly yesterday. It had been booked to run for at least a fortnight. The Clerk of the Lists has offered us Monday, with Tuesday if we need a second day. You realize that if this hadn’t happened we might have been held over until the autumn?”

  “We shall have to move quickly.”

  “The main thing will be your affidavit. We’ll get that roughed out now. And we shall have to put together the various exhibits. We had a bit of luck there. The Watchman has offered us a verbatim account of the original hearing. One of their men was in Court and took down every word that was said. We’ll have an affidavit from him, and exhibit the statement to it. The other side will kick, but we might manage to get it in that way.”

  “I also have some news for you,” said Jonas. “You may remember that one of the main points I was criticized for was producing copies of documents and not originals. Particularly that last set of ACAT accounts.”

  “I mentioned it to Cairns. He thinks we might persuade the Court to accept copies.”

  “There’s no need,” said Jonas. “I now have the original.” He produced from his briefcase a green-covered set of accounts and laid them on the table.

  Lambard looked at him speculatively and said, “Would it be better if I didn’t enquire how these came into your possession?”

  “So far as I’m concerned, I have nothing to hide. They arrived, by post, this morning.”

  “With no covering letter?”

  “There was a typed card with them. It said, ‘From a well-wisher.’ Nothing else.”

  Lambard thought about it. He said, “It may be a bit tricky to produce them at this stage. We’ll have to leave the decision to Cairns. I’ll fix a consultation for after Court on Friday. That should just give us time to get ready.”

  The editorial which appeared in the Watchman on Thursday morning was headlined, ‘The Mind of Mr Gazelee’. It was unmistakably the Editor’s own work.

  John Charles’ friends used to say that he would have made a successful political bishop. His enemies called him a confidence trickster. There was justice in both verdicts.

  It is true that his more solemn utterances had the clang of the pulpit about them; and he had a knack of framing platitudes so that they sounded like deep and original truths. But what he excelled in was construction. Like a crafty boxer he kept his opponent’s eye fixed on his right hand, and hit him hard and suddenly with his left.

  The article started by summarizing the case of the police against Mauger. It did not disguise the fact that the Watchman had a personal interest in the matter, Mauger being one of their own men. “Knowing Mauger as we do, enables us to judge more justly than an outsider of the extreme unlikeliness of the prosecution case. When the verdict of a magistrate is greeted with open dissent from the public in the body of the Court, it is not always the public who are wrong. Surely we are entitled to ask” – here the flutes sounded a new motif – “what made Mr Gazelee change his mind? For change it he certainly did. A week ago he decided that the evidence against Mauger was not conclusive. The evidence of the police was contradicted by the accused. And so, very reasonably, Mr Gazelee asked for outside evidence to support one or other of the versions he had heard. He wanted the girl in the case to come forward. If she supported the police, that was an end of the matter. What happened?” – Pause, for a rumbling of drums – “A witness appeared. But he did not support the police. He entirely corroborated the version of the accused. Yet, curiously enough, Mr Gazelee now found the charge proved. What made him change his mind? What influence had brought him to so radical a change in his views?” – A menacing whisper from the strings on the word ‘influence’ – “Is it too far-fetched to suggest that Mr Gazelee’s attention may have been drawn to a recent article written in this paper by the accused? An article in which the accused had the temerity to criticize, by implication, a decision of Mr Gazelee’s brother magistrate in the West London Court. Are our magistrates so resentful of criticism that an arrow aimed at one of them will wound one of his fellows by proxy? We cannot, of course, know what curious considerations influenced Mr Gazelee. The devil himself, said an eminent lawyer, knoweth not the mind of
man. But this much is clear” – Full orchestra – “An injustice has been done. It must be put right. We call upon the Home Secretary to institute an independent enquiry into the matter. Justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be done” – Bang. Bang.

  The editors of rival journals in and around Fleet Street read this remarkable effusion with attention. “So that’s what the old devil’s up to,” they said. “Some link between the Dylan case and this one? Police being used as Government pawns? Not very probable. But suppose it were true? Political dynamite. Particularly with an election in the offing. But dynamite, mishandled, as we all know, can blow up in the face of its user.”

  The national press decided to follow the hunt, but to follow it, for the moment, at a safe distance.

  The papers which supported the Government deplored another attempt to blacken the reputation of the finest police force in the world, and deplored even more a personal attack on a magistrate who, being a public official, could not defend himself.

  The Opposition papers were not so sure. They had studied once again the reports on the original hearing. They reminded themselves, at some length, that they were debarred from comment on the case, since it was under appeal and therefore sub judice (thus, in fact, commenting on it both fully and safely). But as a general principle, they said, and quite apart from specific instances, was it right, in the case of a man seeking a remedy against a member of the Government, that the availability of that remedy should depend upon a magistrate? After all, a magistrate had not got the same absolute safety from removal as a High Court Judge. It was, of course, true that a magistrate’s decision could be tested by the process of mandamus in the High Court, but this was a complicated and expensive procedure. Surely it would be better, if any doubt at all existed, for the summons to be granted, so that the matter could be tried by due process of law.

  The Times refrained from comment.

  At eleven o’clock that morning the Director of Public Prosecutions left his office in Buckingham Gate. The sun was already very hot. He had both windows of his official car wound down, and told the chauffeur to drive slowly. He wanted time to think. The car proceeded, at a sedate pace, down Birdcage Walk, round Parliament Square and past the façade of both Houses before it turned in at the Lord Chancellor’s gate. The policeman on duty, who was expecting him, pressed the button which raised the automatic barrier. The big car slid through the archway with not more than a foot to spare on either side, crossed the small courtyard, and came to rest in the larger courtyard beyond.