Rumpole Rests His Case

by John Mortimer

  ‘Excuse, Mr Rumpole.’ The Doctor seemed obsessed with something even more important. ‘I think your waste-paper basket is on fire.’

  He exaggerated. There was only a slight smouldering and a certain amount of smoke. A complete burn-out was prevented by Ted fetching a glass of water from the clerks' room on the pretext of the Doctor feeling faint. This emergency having been satisfactorily dealt with, our client went on with his story.

  ‘They wanted twelve thousand dollars to bring me to England. I scrape for eleven in Kabul. All my saving. All I can sell or borrow. So I promise one thousand dollars from a friend. A doctor in England. But when I telephone he is gone. Gone to America. I can no longer find him. So I know they will come to find me.’

  ‘Who will come?’

  ‘Afghan or Russian. We call them the Travel Agents, Jamil knows. He told me to move all the time. So they don't find me easily.’

  ‘Do you always do what this fellow Jamil tells you?’

  ‘Jamil is a good man. He helps all those coming from my country. And he knows the Travel Agents, so he can warn us… Also he told me I must come to see you. You are the one chance I have of staying in your country.’

  Well, I thought in all modesty, that was probably true, and I failed to remind our client, or myself, that I had never, ever appeared in front of an Appeals Tribunal before.

  So I did what I do in every case, from Uxbridge Magistrates to the High Court of Justice. I went through my client's statement with him slowly, carefully, underlining every essential fact and warning him of all awkward questions. It was the usual story of a government which believes that having God on your side excuses all brutality. The Doctor had been warned, arrested, tortured and was about to be tortured again. His refusal to take part in the maiming of prisoners had led to further warnings. He went into hiding, and then, with the help of a Russian representative of the ‘Travel Agents’, escaped. If he were sent home, he would face further prison and more torture. When we had finished, the Doctor did something rather strange: he blew out his cheeks, lay back in his chair and said, ‘I hope I can remember all that.’

  ‘I should have thought,’ I told him, ‘that you'd find it all too difficult to forget.’

  Then I told Ted Minter to have the Doctor medically examined for the signs of his various interrogations in police custody. We told him the date of his Appeal hearing and I asked if his friend Jamil would be there to help him.

  ‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘Jamil is a shy man. He doesn't want to come out before the public at all.’

  There is a cupboard at the end of the passage in the mansion flat in which Hilda stores old newspapers, sometimes for months on end, in case she should suddenly need to remember a recipe, or a new way with a cashmere scarf, or some juicy slice of gossip. I spent that evening turning over the copies of Hilda's tabloids until I found what I wanted – the one with the photograph of Afghan refugees being turned out of the chutney wagon. I took it into the sitting-room and studied it for a long time under the light, then I crept in beside the sleeping Hilda in our as yet unmadeover bedroom.

  The Appeals Tribunal was held in a gaunt concrete and glass building off the Horseferry Road. I found a room with a notice ‘Lawyers Only' pinned to the door. I went in and was preparing myself for the day ahead when an eager young man wearing glasses, a blue suit and dark hair brushed forward in a curious manner, so that he seemed to have a villainously low forehead, came in and called loudly, ‘Hi, Rumpole. I'm your Hopo.’

  I looked at him in a mild surmise. Did this eccentric imagine he was some strange tropical bird? ‘I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about.’

  When he explained, I was not much wiser. ‘I'm your Home Office Presentation Officer.’

  ‘Does that mean you're on my side?’

  ‘I'm afraid it means I'm against you.’

  ‘So you're counsel for the prosecution?’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn't say that,’ he said modestly. ‘I just present the facts to the Court in a totally fair and balanced manner.’

  ‘Sounds fatal.’

  ‘I must say it usually is. You chaps don't win many cases. Is this your first time?’

  ‘In this particular jurisdiction,’ I admitted, ‘yes. I appear at the special request of our guest from Afghanistan.’

  ‘He might be here for rather a short stay,’ my Hopo smirked. ‘Of course, I knew it was your first time because of the fancy dress. No one uses wigs and gowns down here.’

  Reluctantly, I removed the ancient props of my profession. Was this a Court of Law, I wondered, or another arm of the bureaucracy? I was a little reassured when we were called into the hearing to see a proper Judge seated behind a table on a small platform, even though the Judge in question was our one-time Head of Chambers, that Conservative-Labour politician (I could never quite remember which) Guthrie Featherstone QC MP, now Mr Justice Featherstone, whose judicial capacity was constantly frustrated by a deep-seated reluctance to make up his mind. Guthrie, wearing a three-piece suit and an unusually cheerful tie, was seated between a grey-haired woman, who looked as deeply concerned whether she was listening to me or my Hopo, and a middle-aged solicitor, who smiled at me throughout in a manner I found particularly dangerous. Such smiles from Judges often precede a particularly stiff sentence.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Rumpole,’ Guthrie greeted me politely. ‘Glad to see you here at last.’

  ‘Thank you, my Lord,’ I answered him, ever courteous.

  ‘Sir!’ Guthrie said firmly.

  I looked at him in amazement. Why was he calling me ‘Sir’? Did he think I'd been promoted, knighted perhaps? Had I misheard the fellow?

  ‘I beg your Lordship's pardon?’

  ‘“Sir”. You call me “Sir” here. Even though you'd call me “my Lord” in Court. I'm sure it's difficult for you, doing one of these cases for the first time.’

  I looked nervously at my client the Doctor. Had he understood? If so, was it the end of my reputation in Afghanistan? He was listening attentively with one hand cupped behind his ear, and seemed to be nodding in agreement. Without further ado, I opened my case.

  *

  Some people tell their stories in Court compellingly, clearly and with the utmost conviction. They make their listeners feel the wrongs they have suffered, their fears, and well-founded outrage at any possible injustice that might be done to them. Such ‘good witnesses' are often accomplished liars. Others stumble, hesitate, look fearfully round the Court as though seeking ways of escape and convince nobody, even though they may be, and sometimes are, telling nothing but the truth.

  The Doctor, as he told his story, was in a category of his own. He was reasonable, controlled, clear and concise. He described moments of torture with a restraint that made them sound even more horrible. His English was surprisingly good and his manner to the Tribunal was respectful but not deferential. I would have had no hesitation in putting him into the ‘good witness' class, except for one thing. His account sounded, to my ears, strangely impersonal, as though it had all happened to someone else, a close friend perhaps, who had suffered greatly but wasn't, somehow, exactly him.

  Turning to Ted Minter behind me, to get another copy of another completed form, I saw a familiar figure among the few spectators. It was the bulky presence of my old friend and sparring partner Detective Inspector Grimble, who had been promoted out of his South London manor, where the Timson family carried on its business, to some more powerful position which was, apparently, shrouded in secrecy. All he'd told me, when I'd joined him for a farewell drink in the pub opposite his local Magistrates' Court, was that he was ‘going international’, which he hoped might entail trips abroad with lucrative expenses, in collaboration with Interpol. He was still young enough to go far. He was, I noticed, paying particular attention to the Doctor's evidence when it came to deal with money owed to the Travel Agents.

  The Hopo had questions, many of which made considerable demands on my patience.

  ‘Doctor Nabi, yo
u say you were tortured after your first arrest.’

  ‘Yes, I was.’

  ‘You have seen the medical report on your condition?’

  ‘I have.’

  My heart sank a little. The medical evidence was not entirely helpful.

  ‘It says the scars to your back were quite superficial and might have been caused recently. What was the date of your first arrest?’

  ‘Two years ago.’

  ‘Did you inflict some sort of wounds on yourself in order to impress this Tribunal?’

  ‘No, of course not.’ The Doctor was not outraged, only slightly amused at the accusation.

  ‘Even if you were tortured, as you say, two years ago, have you any reason to suppose that you'd be tortured again if you returned to your country?’

  ‘My Lord,’ I rose in free-flowing outrage to object and was stopped by Guthrie's smiling ‘You mean “Sir”.’

  ‘I mean “Sir”. Isn't it obvious that if he's been tortured before, he's going to receive even worse treatment if he's sent back after trying to escape abroad? The regime hasn't changed. The country hasn't signed up to the Charter of Human Rights. That wasn't a question, it was simply a ludicrous assumption based on a wilful refusal to face the facts.’

  ‘Mr Rumpole,’ Mr Justice Featherstone was clearly gathering his wits for some sort of rebuke, ‘as you see, we are sitting here without a Jury. No doubt a full Jury box at the Old Bailey might have been impressed by one of your floods of indignation. We, and I speak here for my two colleagues –’ (the bookends on either side of him nodded sagely) ‘have to decide this matter without emotion strictly in the terms of Immigration Law on which I'm sure the Prosecutor –’ here he looked at the Hopo with untarnished approval, ‘will give us the benefit of his knowledge and experience. Yes. You may ask the questions again.’

  The Hopo accordingly did so and the good Doctor, having given the matter some thought, replied, ‘No. You're right. I don't fear torture if I return. I fear death!’

  As a piece of advocacy, I thought this was considerably more effective than my objection.

  ‘Just keeping an eye on your client, Mr Rumpole. We're interested in the Travel Agents, of course. They're making their millions transporting human misery. That's about the size of it, if you want my honest opinion.’

  D. I. Grimble often used this expression as though we might, from time to time, quite enjoy his dishonest one. Together with Ted Minter, we had sought refuge in a Horseferry Road pub which promised reasonable Guinness and beef sandwiches, a delicacy which I thought might, given the present government's handling of animal disease, become as rare and expensive as caviar. At the other end of the bar my Hopo, apparently satisfied with his performance, was laughing loudly with three distinctly personable young Home Office secretaries. Doctor Nabi had remained in the Tribunal building and, after swallowing a handful of vitamin pills and a glass of water, was refreshing his memory from his notes.

  ‘Our chap has a lot to say about the Travel Agents,’ I reminded Grimble. ‘Russian Mafia, some of them.’

  ‘He's in fear for his life if he can't pay them.’ Ted was looking for help from a friendly officer.

  ‘I think we may have got very close to one of the principal villains.’ The Inspector sounded justifiably satisfied. ‘That's why we want to keep an eye on your client, now he's emerged from the shadows, Mr Rumpole. Entirely for his own protection, of course.’

  He was looking at me steadily. I had a curious feeling that the pieces of what had seemed a haphazard jigsaw had locked together, and I thought I knew what the Detective Inspector really meant.

  The police observation, by WPC Mary Longcroft and DS Stewart, wearing casual clothing and driving an unmarked Ford Fiesta, was tactful but efficient. After he left the Court at five-thirty p.m., my client took a taxi to a discreet address in Devonshire Place which was known to house a massage parlour offering more exotic services to regular and affluent clients. He emerged and took another taxi to an Indian restaurant in Kensington High Street, where he ate Tandoori chicken with vegetable curry and drank mineral water and strong black tea. He walked to the Kensington Odeon, where he chose the screen presenting Message in a Bottle starring Kevin Costner. He left the cinema shortly after ten, visibly moved.

  From the Odeon, the object of scrutiny walked down towards Earls Court Road and then, turning into Longridge Road, he stopped outside a door next to, of all things, a travel agency. He had a key to unlock the door. Seconds later, a light went on in the room over the shop. The subject was seen drawing the curtains, although chinks of light revealed that the room was still occupied.

  Watch was kept by WPC Longcroft and DS Stewart for fifteen minutes, and then they heard a sudden cry, perhaps a cry for help but in a language they couldn't understand. It echoed down the empty street and then died in silence. The watchers called for assistance and, when the police car arrived, the door was broken down. The subject was found apparently alive in the upstairs room.

  In the search that followed, a cupboard in the wall was found locked. When the police forced the door, they saw a sight familiar, perhaps, in the prisons and police stations of some cruelly intolerant regime. A tall man with light-brown skin and soft, pleading eyes was confined in the darkness, bound to a chair, seated in the stench of his own excrement, with his mouth shut and silenced by adhesive tape.

  So the real Doctor Nabi was released from custody and later found to have marks of torture on his body which could in no way have been self-inflicted. My Appeal before the Tribunal was adjourned, pending the completion of police enquiries.

  ‘Jamil was the Travel Agent, of course. He made a fortune transporting his fellow citizens, most of whom never got to stay here, in a succession of chutney runs. Grimble and his team were nearly on to him. He was desperately in need of a new personality.’

  ‘So he decided to become the Doctor.’ Archie Prosser, the new Boy Wonder of our Chambers, had got the point.

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘But if he was the Travel Agent, didn't the Doctor know him?’ Elsie Prosser, the Boy Wonder's wife, was a large, motherly woman of what used to be called a ‘homely' appearance. She had a sense of humour and, apart from an inexplicable attachment to Archie, considerable common sense.

  ‘Oh, he didn't know him as the Travel Agent, or one of them. He knew him as Jamil, the kindly refugee adviser and social worker who helped him fill in all his forms and send them off.’

  ‘What happened to the answers?’

  ‘Jamil got them. But he told Nabi he'd heard nothing. He was getting ready to become the noble, persecuted Doctor.’

  ‘He never turned up before the adjudicator.’ The Boy Wonder was quick to spot our case's weakest link.

  ‘Grimble doesn't think Jamil was ready then. He'd just got the Doctor out of the council house by telling him the Travel Agents were after him and he was making him a prisoner in Longridge Road.’

  ‘He was lucky to get leave to appeal.’

  ‘Lucky all the way. Until the end.’

  ‘When he deceived everyone. Including you, Rumpole,’ Hilda was delighted to say.

  ‘I had my suspicions. I looked at the picture in your paper. I couldn't see anyone who looked much like our client. And then, there was something about the way he gave his evidence…’

  ‘Oh, nonsense, Rumpole!’ Hilda, as ever, was determined to make the most of Rumpole's fallibility. ‘You know perfectly well you were completely taken in.’

  There was a silence then. The Boy Wonder took in his surroundings, cast an eye round the sitting-room, helped himself to an after-dinner mint bought by Hilda for the occasion, and said words which were music to my ears. ‘You know, Hilda, you've got this flat of yours exactly how I like it.’

  ‘There's a real feeling of home here.’ The admirable Elsie Prosser backed him up.

  ‘I can't bear the way some people do their places up nowadays,’ Boy Wonder further improved the situation. ‘Bubbling lights in coloured tubes and plant
s all over the shop.’

  ‘See-through sock drawers,’ I suggested, turning the screw.

  ‘A chap I was at school with, works in the City,’ Boy Wonder was laughing in a way I found delightful. ‘He's even got a hole in his sitting-room floor, like a sort of grave, you're meant to sit in it and chat!’

  ‘What a ridiculous idea!’ I heard Hilda's voice of surrender, and heard it with relief.

  ‘What I like about this place,’ Mrs Prosser kept to the theme, ‘is that every dear old article of furniture looks thoroughly loved.’

  ‘They're all things that have seen us through our married lives, aren't they, Rumpole?’

  ‘For better or worse. Yes.’

  ‘You know, in some ways this place reminds me of the good old Sheridan Club.’

  Down at heel? I felt like saying but resisted the temptation. Inviting the Boy Wonder and his wife to dinner had proved to be a blessing in excellent disguise.

  ‘You know, Rumpole had some sort of an idea we needed a makeover.’ I was fascinated by the devious mind now revealed by She Who Must Be Obeyed.

  ‘Oh no, you can't! Don't do it, Rumpole.’ The Prossers spoke in unison.

  ‘Well, it was just an idea…’ I was only too pleased to cooperate with Hilda.

  ‘I really think,’ she said firmly, ‘that we should tell those decorator people they're not needed. Would you agree, Rumpole?’

  ‘Oh yes, Hilda, I most certainly would.’

  It was a moment of thankfulness, and sanity returned. I lit a small cigar and Mrs Prosser accepted one also.

  ‘I only wonder,’ Archie asked, apparently innocently, ‘why this arch crook and ruthless exploiter Jamil suggested you do the Appeal. I mean, he wasn't going to get a new life if you messed it up, was he?’

  ‘I can only suppose,’ I said, ‘that he had heard something about me that convinced him I could win.’ And at that moment I didn't know whether to feel proud or ashamed.

  ‘Finally, Sir, with respect to the Tribunal, may I say this. There may be people, perhaps people of power and influence, who say, or think, or might wish you to find, that if an independent state inflicts horrible cruelty on its citizens because of its sincerely held religious beliefs, or because such cruelties are part of its traditions, or are believed to be for the common good, we should close our eyes, fail to condemn it, and send its refugees who come here expecting protection back to face torture and probably death. We would submit that there are values higher than local customs or traditions, or even the demands of various religious beliefs. There is a justice which believes that persecution is persecution, cruelty is cruelty, torture is torture, murder is murder, in whatever country and for whatever motive it is carried out. With those thoughts, I leave the future of Doctor Mohammed Nabi with confidence in the hands of this Tribunal.’