Confessions of a Lawyer

by Russell Winnock

‘I’m meeting Charlie Parkman,’ I told him. ‘He’s going to lead me in a case.’

  ‘Oh, I didn’t realise you did family work.’

  ‘No, it’s a criminal case,’ I told him and watched as Eddie’s expression turned from one of surprise to one of interest.

  ‘How well do you know Charlie?’ he asked me, his eyes scrunching slightly in contemplation.

  ‘Not well at all.’

  ‘Do you know about the case of Mark Griffin?’

  ‘No,’ I said, though the name rang a quiet bell somewhere in the part of my brain that stored the stuff I’d learned at Law School.

  Eddie continued, ‘Charlie was a brilliant junior, you know,’ he said, ‘he was a Silk after fifteen years call, he couldn’t have been much more than about 38.’

  ‘Gosh.’

  ‘He did a lot of crime then: prosecution and defence.’

  I nodded.

  ‘He was junior in the case involving the maid who’d been stealing from the Queen.’

  Again, another faint bell rang, this time from my childhood.

  ‘Then, not long into Silk, he was instructed in a case involving a dispute over the turning off of a life support machine for a young lad who’d been in a car accident. The boy was only thirteen. Terrible business. He was diagnosed as being in a vegetative state.

  ‘The mum wanted to keep the life support machine on, the dad wanted to turn it off. Charlie was for the dad. Alan Harper was for the mother, or Mr Justice Harper as he now is.’

  I nodded again.

  ‘Harper, as you know, is a brilliant lawyer. He used everything he could to persuade the court to keep the machine on. They spent about a month arguing before the High Court, a month in which Charlie was arguing just as vociferously in favour of bringing to an end the life of a thirteen-year-old boy.’

  ‘Did he win?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said Eddie, ‘he won and the life support machine was turned off, but Charlie was never really the same again. He stopped doing any criminal cases, stopped doing cases involving children, and has, as far as I know, spent the last twenty years doing high-end divorces.’

  ‘So why change now?’ I asked. ‘I don’t really get it.’

  Eddie shrugged. ‘Perhaps he feels stronger, perhaps he needs a new challenge, I don’t know. I don’t think it’s about the money though, he’d get far more for his divorce work than he would for a legal aid case. What is your case about?’

  ‘Murder,’ I said, ‘and the Crown have got Roger Fish, and he’s slippery, clever and battle-hardened. I don’t want to lose.’

  Eddie pondered this. ‘Well, my advice is to trust him and help him as best you can, because he might just come up trumps for you.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Somehow this story made me feel more confident about my leader.

  A little while later I went into the library for our meeting. Charlie Parkman was already sitting at the table. He was a slight man of about 60, who was well served by his still dark and thick hair, which gave the impression he was about ten years younger than he was. Spread out on the table in front of him were the papers in the case of R v Roux. Behind him were the packed library shelves containing the dark and brooding law books that have been collected by chambers for over a hundred years: the All-England Law Reports, the Weekly Law Reports, the Legal Review, Halsbury’s Laws. These books contain words written by long-dead Judges and politicians; the judgements of Lord Denning, Lord Lane, Lord Upjohn and numerous forgotten Masters of the Rolls; the Acts drafted by Privy Counsellors and Government Ministers. The brains who decided the cases and drafted the statutes which frame all of our lives, tell us what we can and can’t do; the words that determine the parameters of our relations with our fellow citizens – written down and recorded in these dusty books is the law.

  And sitting quietly in front of them was the man who had argued every day for a month that, in law, a dying boy’s life should be ended. I felt the massive weight of all their words and the ghosts of the men who had written them.

  How would I have coped with such an argument?

  Could I have done it? Just put my wig on and taken a side in a dispute in which neither side would ever be happy with the outcome? I wasn’t sure.

  But I was sure that a case as tragic as that of Mark Griffin gave Charlie Parkman a humanity that I liked.

  He stood up when I entered and shook me warmly by the hand. ‘Ah Russell,’ he said, ‘how nice to see you again.’

  For a brief moment I was confused, I didn’t know whether to shake his hand or not. You see, barristers don’t normally shake hands, we are supposed to trust one another implicitly without the need to shake hands. Parkman’s gesture, though, was natural, instinctive and warm. I grasped his proffered hand and shook it firmly.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘brilliant. What do you think about the case then?’

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘first, I’m delighted that you’ve asked me to lead you.’

  ‘Pleasure.’ Obviously, I didn’t tell him that I didn’t so much as select him as have him selected for me.

  ‘I know you’ll be concerned that I haven’t done a great deal of crime in the last few years.’

  ‘No,’ I lied, ‘I’m not bothered at all.’ Then added, ‘What do they say about footballers – form is temporary, class is permanent.’

  As soon as I said it, I realised I’d taken the rule about telling your leader how good they are to an Olympic level of sycophancy within the first five minutes of meeting him. Charlie looked embarrassed. ‘I’m not sure about that,’ he said, and we both cringed silently for a couple of seconds.

  After that, and for the next twenty minutes, we sat there in the library talking about the case. He spoke in an informed way about the law and the evidence and how he proposed to deal with each of the witnesses. He was impressive.

  I watched and nodded and chipped in with my own views when they were invited. I noticed that he had small nimble hands that moved around his papers with a strategic expertise.

  ‘This Dickinson sounds like a real piece of work,’ he said, ‘and I agree with you that our problem is the Irishman who says he saw Miss Roux run towards Dickinson. My view,’ he continued, ‘is that we have to cast as much doubt as we can on that evidence, whilst painting a picture of our girl as a victim. We want to make it as easy as we can for the jury to acquit her.’

  I nodded, I was becoming increasingly excited by the presence of my leader.

  ‘You say that Tasha told you that he may have been seeing other women?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘she was very clear about that.’

  ‘I wonder what they think about this? I wonder if he was doing to them the type of things he was doing to Miss Roux?’

  I nodded as Charlie smiled at me. ‘I can’t see any harm in tracking one or two of these girls down, what do you think?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, effusively, ‘absolutely.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘well, can I leave that to you?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ I repeated, ‘leave that to me.’

  ‘Great.’

  We agreed to visit Tasha together, and to meet again in a week or so. I left the library enthused and excited. I walked away from the law books, I walked away from the dusty ghosts of Judges and politicians, and went back into the real world.

  I was pleased with Charlie Parkman QC. Of course, I was yet to see how he was in court, but I realised that he cared about his clients and that he would come to care about Tasha and that was good enough for me.

  The queue at HMP Stoneywood and the case of Sam Wheldon

  Stoneywood is a modern prison, set in the middle of nowhere, that caters for young prisoners, remand prisoners and lowest category prisoners. If it wasn’t for the barbed-wire fences, you could easily take HMP Stoneywood as a call centre or a factory, making high-end computer equipment. The inmates call it Butlins because they are allowed games consoles in their cells and they aren’t banged up for twenty hours a day, which is the case i
n higher security prisons.

  Oddly, some of the old lags hate it; they can’t cope with such a liberal regime. They prefer bars and screws and the quickening of the pulse when it’s your turn to shower. I suppose they prefer a pecking order and a prison in which they know their place.

  I arrived at Stoneywood at 8.30 in the morning for a conference at nine and took myself to the visitors centre to go through the rigmarole of security. It was a freezing cold, grey and damp morning but already there was a long line of young women dressed as though they were queuing to get into a nightclub: a long line of short skirts, massive heels, fake tan and lipgloss. Lurid colours against the dim, gloomy morning. Some pushed prams, some laughed and joked with newly made friends, some looked lonely and pissed off as they shivered in the morning mist. These are the ‘Mrs’, the girls left behind whilst their errant boyfriends and partners do their time.

  I felt sorry for them, they are under massive pressure. They have to turn up looking happy, but not so happy that their bloke thinks that they are up to no good; they have to look concerned, but not so concerned that their bloke thinks that they are unable to cope without them; they have to put aside the problems they have about paying the bills, and looking after the kids and putting up with his bloody mother, who keeps coming round pestering them; and, they have to look drop dead gorgeous and give the impression that they are desperate to shag them, even in the least romantic environment known to man that is the visiting room of a prison.

  Interspersed amongst the line of ‘Mrs’ are the mothers. These are the hard-faced women who turn up week after week to show solidarity with their daft offspring who’ve managed to get themselves locked up. The mothers eye the ‘Mrs’ with suspicion.

  The mothers don’t look quite so glamorous.

  And to cap it all, there are always a couple of uncontrollable toddlers charging around like it’s playtime. It always amazes me how easily they take to the environment, how they find getting strip searched, and sniffed by a dog, just another fun part of their lives.

  As a legal visit, I’m allowed to the front of the queue, which doesn’t, as you might imagine, provoke a torrent of abuse and cat-calls from those freezing in the queue behind me, which makes me wonder if some of the girls are happier gossiping in the queue than they are having to endure the hour-long visit inside.

  I was taken to a booth where my client, Sam Wheldon, would be waiting for me. I was accompanied by a rather nervous trainee solicitor called Brian Simmonds. We made our way through the security barriers and up the endless disinfected corridors towards the bay reserved for legal visits – our footsteps squeaky against the linoleum floor.

  ‘Fair bit of flesh on show in the queue today, Brian, eh?’ I ventured with a wink.

  He smiled weakly. This is clearly one of his first visits to a prison and he is far too petrified to contemplate the visitors in the queue.

  ‘Do you know if they’ve organised a DVD player?’ I asked.

  ‘I hope so,’ he said, ‘I’ve telephoned a few times to remind them.’

  Thankfully, when we arrived at our designated booth, there was a DVD player and a client.

  ‘Good morning Mr Wheldon,’ I said.

  The client nodded back at me.

  ‘I’m Russell Winnock, I’m the barrister who’s going to look after you. This is Mr Simmonds, he’s from your solicitors.’

  I then told Sam Wheldon what I tell all my clients – that it is their case and I’ll do what they tell me, but I will be honest and straight with them when I go through the evidence that they face.

  Sam Wheldon nodded at this and I could tell that this was going to be one of those forgettable cases.

  Sam Wheldon faced an allegation of affray – he’s committed one of the most common crimes known to young British males. He, together with about five of his mates, have got themselves completely pissed in various pubs in the suburban town where they live; they have then gone out into the streets and for some reason managed to get into a massive fight with a gang of similarly pissed lads, after one of them made a comment about a girl who happened to be with them.

  The fight was caught in splendid technicolor by the increasingly effective CCTV cameras that patrol our streets.

  Now for those of you who don’t know, it’s very very easy to be guilty of affray. If you go up to someone in a pub or on a street, and you raise your fist or throw a punch whilst shouting the odds, and this causes, or might cause, someone to fear violence, then that’s enough, you have committed an affray. Which means that for a generation of young lads, like Sam Wheldon, who’ve grown up causing mayhem on our streets, CCTV has made it very difficult for them not to be guilty of an affray pretty much every time they leave the house.

  ‘Now, Mr Wheldon,’ I continued, ‘you’ve been charged with an affray, following the ruckus outside Wetherpools Pub.’

  ‘I wasn’t involved,’ he said immediately and with confidence, ‘I wasn’t there that night, I was at home with the Mrs.’

  ‘Okay,’ I responded as brightly as I could, ‘in that case, you have a potential alibi and potential defence and we’ll have a trial.’

  He seemed pleased with this. ‘But,’ I added, ‘I have here a DVD of the CCTV taken on the night. Now the police have said that the man wearing a distinctive stripy yellow and green jersey trying to hit someone over the head with some scaffolding is you. Okay?’

  He nodded and I placed the DVD into the machine. The three of us sat and watched it in silence.

  We watched as the camera zoomed in on the Essex street where this took place. At first everything was quiet. Then the camera panned towards a couple who were having a rather full-on snog in a bus stop. Then, as the couple suddenly stopped snogging and looked up the street, the CCTV followed their gaze and we saw the man in the yellow and green stripy top leading his mates into battle. They strutted like young baboons towards the camera, which zoomed in on one of them, who had his mouth open and was clearly shouting the battle cry of choice for this generation – ‘come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough.’

  The camera then panned back up the road to the recipient of the threat, introducing us to the rival gang, who were making their way up the street with similar haste and intent. We then went back to the other gang and there was a close-up of the man in the stripy top who had now armed himself with a scaffolding pole.

  ‘I’m going to stop the DVD here,’ I said and I pressed the pause button. ‘Have a look at this person carrying the scaffolding pole.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Sam Wheldon.

  ‘Now,’ I ventured carefully, ‘I’ve got to be honest with you, Sam, that person looks uncannily like you.’

  Wheldon looked at me with a rather blank defiance as I pointed this out to him.

  ‘And, the fellas who have also been arrested are all your mates.’

  I looked at him closely now, I was aware that one of my eyebrows had managed to raise itself.

  ‘And, when the police arrested you at your house a couple of hours later, you were described as wearing a yellow and green stripy top, by not just one, but six police officers.’

  ‘What are you trying to say, Mr Winnock?’ asked Wheldon.

  ‘I’m saying that you’re going to find it very difficult to win a trial, Sam.’

  Wheldon sighed. ‘But I can’t go to prison, Mr Winnock, my Mrs will leave me.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘I understand that. But, well, you already are in prison.’

  ‘Yes, but I could be out if I get a not guilty, couldn’t I?’

  Now it was my turn to sigh. ‘That’s not going to happen, Sam, not with that CCTV. All a jury have to do to find you guilty is to consider firstly, is that Sam Wheldon in that stripy top? And secondly, if I saw that person running around with that scaffolding post shouting “have this, you fucker”, would I be scared? Now Sam, let’s be realistic. What’s the likely answer to those questions going to be?’

  Wheldon looked down, he looked downhearted.


  ‘What am I likely to get?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘Eighteen months tops,’ I said, ‘you’ll be out in nine months, you’ve already done six weeks on remand, so that’ll come off. You’ll be back to your Mrs in no time.’

  ‘She wants to have a baby,’ he said, looking forlornly at me.

  ‘Well I can’t help there can I,’ I smiled, I was trying to be warm, not flippant.

  And Wheldon gave me that resigned smile that young men do when they realise that they’re going to have to plead guilty to the charge.

  I walked back with Brian Simmonds, by now the glamorous girls were making their way out of the visiting hall. There was a chorus of ‘Love you babes’ and ‘Say bye to Daddy,’ as they tottered towards the exit.

  A couple of them immediately pulled jumpers out of their bags as they emerged from the building and braced themselves against the cold, ready for another week on their own.

  Disclosure

  The queue to the Women’s Prison in Holloway was decidedly different. Sure, there was a consternation of mothers, but they didn’t look quite so hard, just forlorn. There were a few ‘Mrs’ I suppose, but they didn’t look quite so glamorous, and the children queued in grim and unhappy silence. This wasn’t a happy weekly visit to see their exciting Dad, no, this was a horrible reminder of their absent mother.

  I was there to visit Tasha. It was her first conference with myself, Kelly and her QC, Charlie Parkman.

  Charlie came with no papers and no pens – he didn’t need them. With incredible precision he spoke gently to her about her case for over an hour. Clearly every fact and detail was now in his head.

  The jealousy that I had expected to feel when another, more experienced barrister came into my case had completely dissipated, giving way to a feeling of contentment and confidence: Tasha was happy and impressed and that was good enough for me.

  She gave her account to Charlie in exactly the same way she had given it to me – and he listened and nodded and looked softly at her and told her that we would do all we could for her. I was happy with the use of the collective noun ‘we’, it made me feel part of everything. We were a team.