by Peter Tonkin
A towering wave washed past, much taller than the tall bridgehouse on whose ground floor she was standing. It was so close she could see into the glassy heart of it. The angle of the ship as the wave rolled by brought the quivering curve of water almost to the rail a metre or two in front of her. She even heard the hissing whisper it made against the side of the ship and the distant thunder of its crest against the bridge wing five storeys above her head.
And, that close, that close, she found herself looking into a face. She stood, crucified in the door, looking out across little more than a metre of quiet air at a cliff of water sliding past her, seemingly as solid as an iceberg. And standing in the wave, exactly level with her, staring out through it, as clear as a reflection in a looking glass, stood a man. Suspended, frozen, like a fly in amber.
It was Reynolds.
She never knew whether he saw her when their eyes met. Or if he was capable of understanding what he saw. He seemed to know her when he saw her looking at him, but that must have been a trick of that frozen stare. He must have been dead already, she thought; please God let him be dead already.
She screamed with all the strength in her lungs. Then he was gone.
LeFever came in through the door in an avalanche of foam with so much power that their safety lines snapped off. Writhing together like lovers in flagrante, they were washed along the corridor floor, choking and drowning, in a deep river of salt water. The stem of the ship swung round viciously and the whole hull seemed to plunge backwards as though Atropos had reversed off a cliff.
The movement threw Ann and LeFever down the stairwell into the engineering section where the water, at least, washed away.
But the movement was short and came to an abrupt cataclysmic halt. The stem of the ship slammed into something solid with almost unimaginable force. The two bruised bodies found themselves hurled across the corridor towards the engine room. The sound of the engines — and it had been there, in among the cacophony of the storm —stopped. The ship hesitated in her forward passage and slid back again. The second impact made the first one seem like nothing at all.
Ann was in deep shock. She was badly bruised and mildly concussed. She was almost insensible, but the words that the young third engineer yelled as he ran past them to alert the crew cut through the icy fog in her head. His face was almost as white as Reynolds’s face had been in the heart of the wave. His eyes had the same glassy stare of shock. And his words were babbling out of him, almost beyond his control, nearly drowned by the terrible noise going on around them. But what he said brought her out of her shock more quickly than anything else could have done.
‘The propeller’s gone!’ he screamed. ‘We’ve hit hard ice and the propeller’s gone!’
8 - Day Six
Monday, 24 May 11:00
The solicitors’ chambers were on the second floor of Viscount Astor’s tiny Gothic gem of a building at No. 2, Temple Place, and Brian Chambers’ office occupied a corner. One window looked south over the Embankment and across the Thames. Another looked eastwards over a tiny car park full of Jaguars, Porsches and Mercedes Benzes toward the red-brick façade of Queen Elizabeth Buildings in the Middle Temple, where the maritime sets of barristers worked. Richard stood moodily at the second window looking towards the Temple as though if he looked hard enough he could see into Magdalena DaSilva’s office. Brian’s phone jangled. In this as in so much, Brian was militantly old-fashioned. Until Maggie made the point at dinner, Richard had never noticed. Brian lifted the black Bakelite handset and listened for a second or two before hanging up.
‘We’re off,’ he said crisply and stood up. His military bearing, emphasised by a clipped salt and pepper moustache and a short back and sides haircut, gave added inches to his slim, bantam-weight frame. Even when he came very close to Richard, he was not dwarfed by the size of his client, and would not have cared a damn if he had been.
Coming out onto the street, they turned left and went through the gate and across the car park. The door into Queen Elizabeth Buildings gave on to a narrow, slightly dingy corridor with stairs rising on their left and a wall on the right covered with lists of names. These were the names of the barristers practising in each set of chambers in the building.
‘Look at that,’ said Brian in disgust as they passed. His finger traced a line of fresh paint where a name had been painted out. ‘They used to end these lists with the names of the judges associated with each practice. They’ve had to paint them all out. Security. Bloody terrorists everywhere.’
For once, Richard was not concerned about terrorists. Magdalena DaSilva had only agreed to take the case if she could apply for an adjournment. Even if she worked every waking hour, she felt that she would not do justice to such a potentially complicated action in the time she had left to prepare for it — particularly as Sir Harcourt’s agreed submissions had already tied her hands to such a great extent. They were going up to the law courts to apply for that adjournment now.
As they climbed the dark stairs towards the second floor, Richard actually found he had his fingers crossed. How he wished he had Robin here. She would tell him not to worry and he would listen to her. He had forgotten how heavy it could all seem, running Heritage Mariner without her indomitable optimism to rely on. But that optimism had been in short supply lately. God, he hoped she was all right. He had missed her 8:00 broadcast — it was due in at this very moment, as a matter of fact, for London time was three hours ahead. She had been tired and somehow guarded the last time they talked. He knew she felt guilty for enjoying her holiday from the twins but at the same time she said she felt out of touch where she was. Harcourt’s death had worried her; she knew how much it would have affected her father.
They arrived at Maggie’s chambers. They reported to the clerk’s office and were shown through at once. The atmosphere of the place was one of ancient and hallowed halls, but the building was in fact quite new, having been built since the Second World War and dedicated to Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. And the same atmosphere pervaded Maggie’s office, with its wall of leather-bound volumes and its long, dark refectory table piled with briefs, each substantial pile of paper bound with a simple pink ribbon — the famous red tape. Richard looked at it almost superstitiously. He hoped they wouldn’t get bound up in any red tape today. But then Brian gestured towards one of the bound bundles. Richard could see the names on the plain white typed cover sheet: CZP vs Heritage Mariner. His pious hope had come too late. There they all were, bound up in red tape after all; and no way out, as Maggie had said, except time and money. Neither of which he had.
Maggie entered carrying a substantial robing bag. In court she wore the special black frogged jacket and waistcoat with the white legal collar and stock of a woman barrister, and the bag contained the costume. The only real concessions to her dashing sartorial reputation were the tightness of her tailored court-length skirt and the fact that her shoes had something of a heel. Her junior followed, also lugging wig and gown. Richard had met the junior counsel before, a quiet, intelligent young woman of Indian extraction called Lata Patel, and he nodded and gave her a tight smile. There was no hanging around with Maggie. As soon as she entered the room she was in action; her meter was running and she wanted to give value for money. ‘Right,’ she said, rapping out her words with all the military curtness which Brian Chambers used. ‘The judge has squeezed us in. We’ll be putting our case for an adjournment to him in his court — that’s court thirteen — while he’s got a few minutes between two other cases on his calendar. He’s busy and we’ll have to be brief. If we manage to convince him, then he’ll move us to September or October: new term, new court. But if we fail to convince him, we’ll be back in court thirteen next week. Let’s go. We don’t want to keep him waiting.’
The four of them were off at once, Maggie in the lead, sweeping past the clerk’s office and leaving Lata Patel to pop her head round the door and make sure the clerks knew what was going on. With the men in tow, Maggie thundered
down the stairs and strode out onto the pavement overlooked by Brian’s office, just behind the car park. It was a bright, warm afternoon with more than a promise of summer in it, but Richard noticed nothing of the weather. He strove to keep pace with his impulsive barrister and Brian almost danced at her far side. ‘I shall be pleading Sir Harcourt’s death, of course, and trying to convince His Lordship that it would be unacceptably to your detriment if he proceeds according to his calendar. Whether he listens or not could depend upon almost anything. Whether I make a good case. Whether he is in a position to listen to it. Whether CZP’s silk makes a good case for proceeding — he will, I’m sure; Clive Standing is an excellent man — and whether His Lordship is inclined to listen to that. Pleas like this have been known to be settled on the fact that the judge has a particularly good spot on a salmon river in Scotland for a particular week in October. That sort of thing doesn’t happen too much nowadays, but it can all still turn on luck, if the balance of arguments is really fine.’
They bounded up the steps into Middle Temple Gardens. ‘This is where the two sides in the Wars of the Roses chose their roses,’ Maggie announced suddenly. ‘Lords Suffolk and Somerset chose the red rose. Warwick and York chose the white. And so the Wars of the Roses began. Right here. Shakespeare says it, so it must be true.’
Richard was silent. I hope we have a less destructive outcome, he thought. The Wars of the Roses lasted nearly twenty years, if his memory served.
Maggie fell silent as they went on up past Fountain Court and Middle Temple Hall into the Elizabethan red brick of the 1500s, not the 1950s. Richard was in no mood to appreciate the architecture or the history with which they were surrounded. He accorded the Round of the Temple, the church erected by the Knights Templar in 1185, only the briefest of glances, then he plunged on after Maggie and Brian into the narrow thoroughfare leading to the Middle Temple gate.
The four of them came out into the bustle of Fleet Street, crossed the busy thoroughfare at once and plunged left into a throng of people. Conversation here was impossible. The noise of traffic — mostly big red buses, black cabs and motorcycle delivery men — was compounded by the bustle of early tourists brought out by the sun.
The pace did not slacken and the silence between them remained unbroken until the cathedral silence of the main chamber of the Royal Courts of Justice claimed them. They went through the security gate in single file. Lata completed some hurried business with an official and the two women disappeared to the robing room while Richard and Brian Chambers were off again up the stairs to the courtrooms on the upper levels. Richard had never been here before — like many who lived in London, he did little sightseeing in his own city, and he had never been forced to face litigation before. Apart from an incongruous impression that he was, in fact, in Westminster Abbey, the building made little impression on him that day and he was content to study the patterns on the black and white flags of the floor. And, all too soon for his taste, the ornate wooden door, with Court Thirteen written in copperplate handwriting on a white board on the wall beside it, opened.
The courtroom made little more impression on him than the building itself had. He was an observant man and an active one, used to using his eyes, used to moments of crisis. But being so helpless in this place, and relying on someone else under such circumstances, his mind concentrated upon the matter in hand rather than the location. It was a small room with a bank of seats stepping up like those in a cinema balcony or theatre. It reminded him of the lecture theatres of his university days, except that there was an undeniable air of pomp and power here. Maggie plunged down to the front bench. Lata went in behind her and Brian went behind Lata. Richard sat further up the slope of seats, towards the back. No sooner had he sat down than the opposition bustled in. Maggie looked across the courtroom and nodded coldly at CZP’s barrister, who deigned to grace her with the very slightest, curtest of responses. His name was Clive Standing, Richard recalled.
The clerk of the court glanced around and went up a set of steps to vanish through a door behind the judge’s bench. In an instant she was back, pausing at the end of the long wooden dais to intone, ‘Please be upstanding in court ...’ and the judge swept in.
In the centre of the bench he turned to face them, then, fastidiously arranging his scarlet robes about himself, he bowed to the court and sat. They all bowed and sat in a courteous mirror-image. The judge was a thin, grey-faced man, whose pallor was accentuated by his grey wig and the grey eyebrows which sat beneath it. And, indeed, by the thin gold frames of the half-glasses he settled on his nose, an action which served to frame his face with the deep, pale grey cuffs of his robe.
‘Now,’ he said, drawing the word out and giving himself an air of deep deliberation, ‘we have an application for adjournment of this case, which is on my diary to begin one week today.’
He spoke, apparently, to nobody at all, but Maggie was on her feet immediately. ‘That is so, my lord. As I am sure Your Lordship is aware, this case has been in the hands of my learned friend Sir Harcourt Gibbons for the nine months since the suit was first brought.’ She paused for an instant. ‘I am also sure that you are aware of the tragic accident which befell Sir Harcourt last Friday at Brampton golf course in Cumbria.’ Again she paused, and this time the judge filled the brief silence with his thin, deliberate voice.
‘And your contention, Ms DaSilva, is that you would not be able to pick up where Sir Harcourt, ah, left off, so to speak, at such short notice.’
‘Precisely so, my lord.’
‘And when would you have gathered together all the pieces to your own satisfaction, do you think?’
‘A further six weeks might —’
The judge was gently shaking his head and actually clucking his tongue.
‘My lord?’ she asked when he had stopped.
‘Six weeks is a long time, Ms DaSilva. I am sure that you are as well aware as I am myself just how busy the courts will be in June. My calendar will be particularly full then, I know. Effectively, you are asking for a postponement until next term, are you not? Realistically, until the middle of October, perhaps even until November. Thus, Ms DaSilva, does your six weeks become six months. As I’m sure you have calculated.’ He shook his head again, then looked to his left. ‘Mr Standing, what do you think of this idea?’
CZP’s barrister rose slowly, portentously, to his feet. ‘I believe it to be an utterly unwarranted delay, my lord. Particularly as so much work has been done in the preliminary hearings before Your Lordship, and so little work is actually left to do. While I regret the tragic circumstances which have transferred this brief into my learned friend’s most capable hands, I cannot but deplore this brazen attempt to make the suit collapse through unwarranted delay. May I remind Your Lordship that it has been two years already since the loss of the ship which is the cause of this action. And, indeed, I understand that there may be other actions, in other courts, which hinge upon the deliberations of this court. I ask, therefore, that there be no delay.’
Richard sat up at that, for these words were unexpected, and confirmed his darkest fears. There was the slightest hiss upon the air and he did not know whether he or one of his legal team had caught their breath with surprise.
Standing rolled smoothly on. ‘As you are all too well aware, my lord, what we have here is a very simple situation. My client, the firm CZP, is a shipping company in a small way of business in a shrinking market. I am sure I need not explain to Your Lordship the sad facts underpinning the circumstances of commercial shipping nowadays. This small firm, on the verge of bankruptcy, has a suit against one of the largest independent shipping companies in Europe over the matter of a hull. One small, battered, fairly elderly ship. Heritage Mariner could easily afford half a dozen such ships and in any case carries full insurance to indemnify such payments should the case against them be found. And yet, instead of coming to court so that the case may be heard and such payment awarded or negotiated, they linger and delay, knowing that it is on
ly a matter of time — a very short time — before my client goes bankrupt and his threatened suit collapses.’
‘You are saying, in short, that Heritage Mariner are callously using the death of Sir Harcourt as a tactic to delay the hearing of this case until such time as your client is bankrupt and no longer a threat?’
‘Exactly so, my lord.’
‘Ms DaSilva?’
‘This is, of course, a complete fabrication, my lord. My learned friend has interpreted the circumstances with extreme partiality. And if there is callousness being used in this courtroom, it is not I who am using it. The fact is, my lord, the case is complex. I would no more be able to do it justice in seven days than seventy-two hours. To prepare this defence adequately under the circumstances, I must beg the court for more time.’
‘Mr Standing, you see the matter as being much simpler than does Ms DaSilva. Does this view stretch to an estimate of how much time it will take to hear the case?’
‘My lord, as you are aware from the ground we have already covered, the final section of my case will rest on the submissions of a very few witnesses. As it will be heard in front of yourself, without the time-consuming necessities of selecting a jury and directing them as to law, I would be surprised if the whole process took more than a day or two of your time.’
‘Ms DaSilva?’
‘I am not sure that I can concur, my lord. My reading of the relevant documents so far has convinced me that the case as it stands needs more support. I would in all probability be asking for leave to present a broad spectrum of defence witnesses, whose testimony would be both expert and eyewitness.’
‘I see,’ said the judge. ‘So, Ms DaSilva, you have had the opportunity to go through the relevant papers.’