When he reappeared the Prime Minister sighed. ‘That is a most unpleasant man. The more I see of him, the more unpleasant I think him.’
‘And he owns some very unpleasant newspapers, Prime Minister.’
‘So they tell me. As you know, I don’t read them, except when you force me to. However, he assures me that he intends to continue to support the present policies of Her Majesty’s Government, more especially now that the former Minister for Defence Procurement has gone. He was also very confident that he would make our former colleague regret that he is suing.’
‘Mr Price believes he will win?’
‘He appears to.’
‘That must mean, sir, that he thinks he can prove the former Minister for Defence Procurement was corrupt, which could be a grave reflection upon the reputation of your administration.’
‘I am aware of that, Alan. I can only pray that in the end the case may never come to court, that one or other may see sense and withdraw. That, at any rate, is my hope.’ He rose from his chair. ‘Now, as to my weekend plans. I have to pay another visit to my constituency.’
‘Of course, Prime Minister.’
‘I plan to visit this Saturday, arriving in the early afternoon. I shall go on from there to Chequers. Warn, if you please, my constituency.’ Then, as Alan Prentice was leaving the room, the Prime Minister added as if it were an afterthought, which it certainly was not, ‘Perhaps you should also warn Mrs Wills, as tea might be agreeable.’
Was it bearable, he thought as he climbed the stairs to the small flat, to go on with this performance week after week, when he could retire with his books to his comfortable library in his house in Somerset? No more performances, no more attendance on the whims of fools. Peace, quiet, leisure. He’d be especially glad to be done with his Cabinet colleagues and their intrigues. The hidden dagger in politics, Robbie Bruce Lockhart had said, was to remember that the friend of today was the enemy of tomorrow. He himself had been wielding the dagger very effectively for thirty years. It was time to give it up. But, as he had thought so many times since Price’s visit to Chequers, he did not wish to leave with the whiff of scandal about him.
As he settled down in his armchair in the flat and picked up The Last Chronicle of Barset, he pondered on what he’d miss in retirement. If anything, he thought with a smile, it would be the captive audience that had been obliged to listen to his soliloquies. But then, he reflected, the world is not altogether unamused by tales of times past and battles long ago. So La commedia might not be altogether finita. He laid his book in his lap. But Penny Wills would. There’d be no excuse to visit her after his retirement to Somerset. He would no longer be able to see much, if anything, of her.
Penny Wills! It had been a long romance, starting when he had first been elected. To begin with it had been passionate. Aidan, dear Aidan, he reflected complacently, dear Aidan had been very good, very good indeed. Then, as the years passed, so had passed the hurly-burly of Penny’s sofa and it had become … comfortable. That was it exactly. She had been a great comfort, so different from the blue-blooded, tweed-garmented Joan, smelling, not altogether disagreeably, of lavender and garden loam. Penny had been a romp: warm, vulgar, sensual and wholly delightful. And loyal. That was rare nowadays. Even when he retired she could, if she wished, make money. The ex-PM’s mistress. Her story. The newspapers would buy it and print it, quoting extracts from his speeches to the Party Conference on marriage and morality. But Penny would never betray him, not loyal Penny. So the loss of her would be the only real loss when he went, as soon he would.
But not quite yet. The court case might never come to trial. Then it might all blow over. A new political crisis would arrive, the Richmond diary would be forgotten and he could depart with grace. So long as Price kept his word and Penny stayed loyal. Unless, of course, Richard Tancred defeated Price in the courts. Then Price’s malevolence might have no bounds.
Chapter Thirteen
When News Universal disclosed to Richard Tancred’s lawyers, as they were obliged to do, the documents Goodbody had so mysteriously received, Tancred immediately returned to London. He made no secret of his departure from France, crossed under the Channel through the Tunnel, sped up the M20 and parked the Jaguar in the lock-up garage in Clapham. For a few hours thereafter the watchers lost him but later he was seen to arrive at his flat in Chelsea.
The following morning they saw him take a number 11 bus to Fleet Street and then walk to Patrick Foxley’s chambers in Paper Buildings. He remained there for an hour and a half before he returned to Chelsea. He made some purchases in the King’s Road, collected his car in Clapham and set out again for the Channel Tunnel on his way back to Pontaix. He’d been in England for less than twelve hours.
When Tancred departed from the conference in the Temple, he left all three of his lawyers, Patrick Foxley, the junior counsel Ian French, and Cranley Burrows, grave and uneasy.
‘We do nothing, say nothing and leave it to them to prove their case,’ said French at last, shaking his head.
Patrick rose from his desk. ‘He’s told us what he wants.’
‘Will he get away with it?’ French asked.
‘He’s relying on his performance in the witness box.’
‘And that depends on Mordecai’s cross-examination,’ said Burrows quietly.
‘All we can do is warn him,’ said Patrick looking out of the window at the Temple garden far below. ‘And that we have done. Now we must do as he instructs us.’
He could not conceal his disappointment. The case was not going to turn out as he had thought and hoped. It would not now be a battle royal between Mordecai, the veteran whose weapon was the bludgeon, and him whose weapon was the rapier. Because of what Tancred had laid down, all would now turn upon his client and his performance under cross-examination. And, worst of all, Tancred had not provided him, his counsel, with any explanation. He had simply declared that this was to be the strategy, these the tactics.
Patrick knew he could refuse to be used in such a way but that would mean withdrawing from the case – and this he would not do. He could not. It was still an important case to take part in. But when it came to the trial it would be Mordecai against Tancred. Only if Tancred survived that cross-examination might it later become Foxley against Price. If Tancred did not, if Mordecai triumphed, they would be finished.
Since Sylvia’s dance in May Patrick had been seeing Anna regularly. He couldn’t see enough of her. Anna knew that the case on which he had set such hopes was approaching and tried to dissuade him from taking her out so often, but he refused. ‘Will you come to court?’ he asked her.
‘Of course, if you would like me to.’
‘I would, very much.’
She laid her hand on his face. ‘I couldn’t stay away. I know how much it means to you. And as I watch I shall think of the angst under that icy exterior.’
‘I’m not now very confident,’ he admitted. ‘News have got their hands on some pretty damning evidence and Tancred won’t explain it, not even to me, his counsel.’
Perhaps he can’t, she thought. And for the first time she, too, began to worry that he would lose and News Universal would win.
By now it was being widely rumoured around the Temple that the News people were supremely confident. Why, it was wondered, had Richard Tancred taken such a risk in suing News Universal? Presumably, it was said, because he had never suspected that News Universal would obtain the evidence against him. Tancred had gambled – and lost. He would not have been the first to do that. There were always those who believed they were smart enough to deceive the court and were eventually found out. Tancred was just another.
Lunching one day at the centre table in the Garrick Club, Patrick himself had been told by a journalist acquaintance that Digby Price was now telling everyone that he was going to strip Tancred of every penny he possessed and every shred of reputation. Then he’d call for the Director of Public Prosecution to prosecute and Tancred would end up in jail.
‘Mind you, he’d better be right,’ the journalist added, ‘for word is also going around that the News Universal Group is pretty shaky. The Telegram is murdering them over circulation. If News is hit for heavy damages and costs that, with the blow to their prestige, could bring them down.’
‘You can’t be serious,’ Patrick protested.
‘I am. Before News got this new evidence there were rumours of influential investors selling stock.’ He paused and chuckled. ‘But even if News Universal goes down, Digby will be all right. Illegal diamonds, probably in South Africa.’ The journalist pushed back his chair. ‘But it won’t come to that. The bookies are laying odds against Tancred. You’re on to a loser, Patrick,’ he said as he went to the desk to settle his bill.
Tancred heard the news on his car radio when he was fifteen kilometres short of the Tunnel on his way to London. It was BBC Radio 4 at midnight, thirty-six hours before the start of the trial. The car swerved violently to the right as he pulled it into a lay-by with a squeal of braking tyres. He turned up the volume and listened. When the announcer moved on to another item, he switched off the radio and sat silently in the dark, lit every now and then by the lights of the camions as they thundered past on their way to Calais. After half an hour he drove on.
Patrick was in the study of his flat when he heard the news, working on his note for his opening statement at the start of the trial. Earlier he had been with Anna but she had sent him home. ‘The Italians’, he’d grumbled, ‘believe that sex before a game is good for their footballers.’
‘You’re not an Italian.’ She had kissed him and led him to the door.
He had got up from his desk, stretched and gone to the bedroom. He’d switched on the radio, Classic FM, Midnight Classics, while he undressed, music to take him to bed. Instead he got the news. He listened, standing rigid. Then he sank abruptly into a chair and he put his head in his hands.
Mordecai was asleep. He was woken by the telephone. ‘Yes,’ he growled angrily. ‘Who is it?’
‘It’s Oliver. Sleaven is dead. I’m coming round.’
Mordecai greeted him in his pyjamas beneath his flamboyant black dressing gown. Goodbody thrust a paper into his hands. ‘The PA report,’ he said. ‘Read it.’ He flung himself into a chair.
Mordecai began to read. ‘English couple die in Acapulco.’
‘Couple?’ he questioned, looking up at Goodbody.
‘Read on,’ Goodbody urged.
And Mordecai did, aloud.
In a luxury apartment just behind the famous Acapulco beach, the bodies of Oscar Sleaven and his wife, Ethel, have been discovered, dead of gunshot wounds. The servant found them when he came to work in the morning. An automatic pistol lay beside the bodies. There was no sign of any break-in and foul play is not suspected. The police say that the woman, Ethel Sleaven, died first with a shot to the heart that killed her instantaneously. Her husband, the police are confident, fired the shot. Oscar Sleaven had then put the barrel of the gun into his own mouth, pulled the trigger and blown off his head.
Mordecai lowered the newspaper. ‘Go on,’ said Good-body.
Until eighteen months ago when he resigned, purportedly on the grounds of ill health, and left the country seeking, it was said, medical treatment, Oscar Sleaven was the Chairman of Sleaven Industries which, among its other activities, manufactured arms and equipment supplied to the Ministry of Defence. Since he left England for France, no one has known of his whereabouts. He and his wife disappeared from New York shortly after their arrival on a flight from Paris when, it was suggested by Mr Sebastian Sleaven, the brother of Mr Oscar Sleaven, Oscar Sleaven was to attend the Mayo or some other prestigious clinic for treatment. However, enquiries at the Mayo Clinic and other similar establishments have been met with a denial that any person of that name had been a patient at any of them.
It has now been ascertained that Oscar and Ethel Sleaven had come to Mexico from Rio in Brazil and had been living in a luxury flat in Acapulco for the past three months. Oscar Sleaven’s next of kin, Sebastian Sleaven, is presently on his way to Mexico.
Oscar Sleaven is named in the proceedings in the libel action being brought by the former Minister for Defence Procurement, Richard Tancred, who is seeking damages from News Universal for allegations in the Sunday News that when he was a minister he was receiving money in exchange for favours granted to Sleaven Industries in respect of contracts for defence equipment. Oscar Sleaven denied this in a statement issued just after he left England. The case is due to be heard in the Law Courts in the Strand on 20 July.
Mordecai laid down the paper.
‘He must have thought it better than prison,’ said Goodbody grimly.
‘Why the wife?’ Mordecai asked softly. ‘Why kill her?’
‘Perhaps she didn’t wish to live when she realised he was intending to kill himself? But the significance for us is that Tancred’s co-conspirator has killed himself thirty-six hours before everything comes out in court.’
Mordecai nodded gravely.
Goodbody went on, ‘Now you have what Waite describes as the “smoking gun”. First the documents, then this suicide—’
‘And murder,’ said Mordecai quietly.
Goodbody got to his feet. ‘I’ll leave you.’ He shook his head. ‘If I brought you Tancred’s confession, signed, sealed and witnessed, I don’t believe it would satisfy you. I think you dislike Digby Price as much as he dislikes Tancred.’
‘Price is my client and I shall do my best for him. But it’s my job to keep a cool head,’ Mordecai replied as he limped in front of Goodbody to the door. With his hand on the latch he said, ‘It must have been something very grave to have driven Oscar Sleaven to do what he did.’
Goodbody stared at him, then shrugged his shoulders and walked down the short path to the central alleyway. Mordecai watched him, before closing the door and returning to his drawing room. For several minutes he stood by the open window, before limping back to the bedroom and his bed.
Part Four
Chapter One
At the start of the Easter term that year Mr Justice Holyoak, the judge in charge of the jury list in civil actions to be tried in the Royal Courts of Justice in the Strand, fell ill. He would be away until the autumn. Normally actions in the civil divisions of the High Court were tried by judges sitting alone without a jury, and juries were only retained in cases affecting personal liberty, such as claims for false imprisonment or wrongful arrest by the police; and cases affecting reputation, namely libel cases. There were always many libel cases in the jury list each term but few ever came to trial. At some stage the parties settled.
The Lord Chief Justice now had to find another judge to preside over the civil jury list until Mr Justice Holyoak returned. Judicial business at the time was unusually brisk, especially in the provinces, while several judges were away from the courts presiding over official enquiries and he was hard pressed to find a replacement. Eventually he settled on Mr Justice Traynor. When the Chief told him, Jack Traynor complained that his experience with juries was limited to criminal cases in the north of England. Was the Chief certain he was the right man for the task?
The Chief was irritated. Traynor provided a neat solution to his difficulties. ‘Juries’, he replied testily, ‘are all the same. What is needed is common sense.’ He did not add ‘and the ability to make the jury understand what you are saying’. Personally, he found Mr Justice Traynor’s ‘Geordie’ or north-east accent so pronounced as to be, to his ears, sometimes almost unintelligible, but he reflected that those who served on juries might not. In any event there was no one else.
‘I’ve never even appeared in a libel case as counsel,’ Jack Traynor went on.
‘Nor had I before I tried my first libel,’ the Chief replied airily. ‘In fact, I had never addressed a jury before I became a judge.’ Indeed he had not. With a distinguished academic record and a Fellowship of All Souls, he had been marked out for early promotion to the Bench. After a few years he was appoint
ed the Junior Counsel to the Treasury, ‘the Treasury devil’, as it was called, acting on behalf of government departments engaged in litigation. After six years in that post he had been made a judge of the High Court and, for the first time in his life, found himself in a court with a jury. When he summed up in the first criminal trial in which he’d ever taken part as either counsel or judge, the jurors had not the slightest idea what the clever gentleman on the bench was going on about, retired to their room shaking their heads and returned with a verdict quite contrary to what the clever judge thought was right. He was, however, soon plucked away from such mundane matters and appointed to the Court of Appeal where he could analyse and theorise about law to his heart’s content. From there he had been made – a controversial appointment – Lord Chief Justice.
‘You’ll pick it up quickly enough,’ the Chief went on. ‘Most cases in the jury list settle, while the law of defamation is basically judge-made law. It’s all in Gatley, an excellent textbook, and you’ll get good help from the libel Bar. You’ll do it splendidly.’
In his room a dispirited Mr Justice Traynor sent for the clerk of the civil jury list to bring him the printed jury list for the forthcoming term. The clerk produced the list and immediately pointed to the case ‘Rt Hon Richard Tancred v. News Universal, Ms Shirley Eaton (editor of the Sunday News) and Digby Price.’ ‘This is a libel action set down to last five working days, due to commence on 20 July,’ the clerk of the jury list said. ‘It will be the only case in the list likely to “stand up”. All the others would almost certainly settle.’ He paused, then added, ‘It is a case that will undoubtedly attract great public interest. The claimant used to be a Cabinet minister and the defendants are the publishers of the Sunday News.’
The Richmond Diary Page 16