“Mine, also.”
“Quite so. We have been working on the same lines. With an equal lack of success. Our next step was to find out as much as we possibly could about Katanga himself. If we could deflate his popularity, both within establishment circles here and with the general public world-wide, that would be an important step forward. And we had one piece of luck. For the first three years of his stay he lived in a small rented house on a road just south of Hammersmith Bridge. The housework was shared between his wife and a worthy widow called Mrs. Queen, who lived next door. Two years ago, for some reason – possibly an upsurge of anti-black feeling in the locality, who knows? – he decided to move. An increasingly busy programme of writing and speaking was putting a fair amount of money into his pocket. I suspect, also, that he was being handsomely subsidised from Mornington Square. Anyway, he took a step up the social ladder. He rented a small house in the Putney area. It was a somewhat isolated property on the fringe of the Heath. The move meant that he had to look elsewhere for help in the house. This was our chance. We were able to supply him with just what he required.”
Yule paused to locate the paper he wanted in the green folder. Mullen could see that he was enjoying himself. He did not grudge him his pleasure. He had a feeling that this development would be to his advantage.
“So. Let me introduce you to Anna. Full name, Anna Masai, a Basuto girl from Maseru in Lesotho. Her ‘father’ – I use the word in inverted commas – is Leon Macheli, a professor of applied science at Durban University and a world expert in physical crystallography. A certain unfortunate event in his home town – you may know the incident I’m referring to—”
Mullen did indeed know about it. It was a cross-border attack into Lesotho in search of ANC supporters.
“It decided him to cut adrift and come to England. In view of his fine academic record he had no difficulty in getting a residence permit for himself and his wife and for Anna, who was included by him as his daughter. Our information was more accurate. She was neither his natural nor his adopted daughter. Simply a girl in whom he had taken an interest and who had adopted his name. Pretty enough, in a snub-nosed immature way and intelligent. He had taught her some English. In short, she was his protégée. He wanted her with him in England and in getting her there committed himself to the mis-statement that she was his daughter. A criminal offence in both countries.”
“I see,” said Mullen. The possibilities of the situation were becoming increasingly apparent.
“I interviewed her myself and made the situation quite clear. Either she did what I told her, or she and the Professor – to whom, I fancy, she was sincerely attached – suffered the consequences. It did not take her long to make up her mind. We equipped her with excellent references and told her to be prepared to accept a very reasonable wage. Before long she was installed in the Katanga household. To the satisfaction of Dorothy Katanga, because Anna was a hard worker, and to Jack Katanga for – possibly – other reasons.”
“You mean—?”
“I mean what you’re thinking. Katanga was by now a virile, forceful, mature man. I can easily suppose that his little missionary-reared wife had lost most of the original attraction she had for him. You will have noted that they had no children.”
“So he seduced the hired help.”
“If he did – and it is only a presumption – he was both careful and tactful. His wife, with their newly acquired wealth, was able to enjoy long shopping mornings in the West End. And the house, remember, was isolated. Also he did not make the mistake that some men have made – read your criminal cases – of degrading or insulting his wife. On the contrary, he behaved more courteously to her – particularly in public – than he had, perhaps, done before.”
“Are you suggesting that Katanga’s wife welcomed the importation of a mistress into the household?”
“I don’t know whether she welcomed it. She may not even have known what went on when she was out shopping. However, that is not the real point. What we have to look at—” he had touched the bell on his desk and said to Mrs. Portland, “Would you ask Mr. Silverborn to step in? Thank you. — What we must look at very carefully are the chances of keeping this deplorable case out of court altogether. Ah, Lewis, you have some news for us.”
“Views, not news,” said Mr. Silverborn. “I find that we are in a curiously unexplored field of the law. Most of it stems from the Vienna Conventions of 1961 and 1963 and there are very few decided cases to help us. In fact, most of the decisions and statements are American. Not binding on our courts, of course, but since the Americans have adopted both Conventions on almost exactly the same lines as we have, they could be regarded as persuasive.”
“And what is the answer at the end of the day?”
Like all lawyers this was the sort of question that Mr. Silverborn disliked. He said, “The only answer I can give you is that if Mr. Mullen can be regarded as a diplomatic agent, then he would be totally immune from the criminal jurisdiction of our courts.”
“And how would it be decided whether he was a diplomatic agent or not?”
“That is a question for experts in international law. I have already had a word—” he turned to Mullen, who was showing signs of impatience —“with your English solicitor, Mr. Roger Sherman. He fully appreciates the difficulties of the position and, no doubt, has already sent a set of instructions to Counsel. If we are denied the protection of diplomatic privilege in the Magistrates’ Court, we should have to appeal to a Divisional Court. Indeed, if the Divisional Court found against us, we might have to take the matter on to the Court of Appeal. In either case Counsel will be needed. In the end, senior Counsel.”
Mullen, who had been coming quietly to the boil, now exploded. He said, “For God’s sake, how long do you think this legal hurdle-race is going to take?”
“The court will usually expedite such matters if there is a valid reason for doing so.”
“Valid reason! Do you realise I only came here to try to get Katanga extradited? I’ve got to be back in Pretoria by the end of the month to give evidence at the U.D.F. terrorist trial. I never anticipated being here for more than a few weeks at the outside.”
“I promise you that we’ll waste no time,” said Mr. Silverborn. He tried not to let the fact that he disliked Mullen colour his reactions.
In the room next door, Kathleen was saying to Rosemary, “You’ve been scribbling very busily. What’s it all about?”
“Something I’m getting up for the big white chief,” said Rosemary. She had stopped scribbling, but her pencil was still poised.
“How’s the hag-ography going?” said Mavis. A big, cow-like girl, she was secretly rather impressed by Rosemary’s pursuit of learning and therefore missed no opportunity to make fun of it.
At this point Mr. Silverborn came out of the inner office on the way back to his own room. He beamed vaguely at the three girls. Rosemary put down her pencil and shut her shorthand notebook. She said, “Yesterday evening we got to the point where the Pope decided that St. George couldn’t keep his sainthood, on the grounds that he never really existed.”
“The Pope actually said that?” said Mavis.
“About our St. George,” said Kathleen.
“Apparently so.”
Mavis said something very rude about the Pope.
5
In the early evening of that Friday a cabinet meeting was being held at No. 11 Mornington Square. Captain Hartshorn was in the chair, with Andrew Mkeba beside him and the three departmental chiefs opposite.
Hartshorn said, “You will all have seen copies of the cable which I sent to the press chief at the ANC. It went through the Eastern Tourist Agency and will, with luck, have reached Lusaka by now.”
“I noticed,” said Govan Kabaka, “that you didn’t ask them to take any particular action.”
“There was no necessity. They are not stupid. They will appreciate the possibilities of the situation as clearly as we do. The publishers managed to
supply them with nearly a thousand copies of Katanga’s book. I am told that the open demand through Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Botswana, coupled with an even larger underground demand in South Africa – particularly in the Transvaal – has already forced them to ask for a further two thousand copies. The book has, of course, been banned by Pretoria and possession of a copy is a criminal offence. That won’t stop people reading it.”
“On the contrary. Splendid publicity,” said Govan.
“I agree,” said Hartshorn, “and it puts us on our mettle. Our job is to see that this case gets as much publicity as the book.”
“If Mullen is convicted,” said Kabaka, “the publicity will be self-generating.”
“Maybe. But this is no time for relaxing. We may be winning, but we haven’t won yet.”
“In a tug-of-war,” said Sesolo, in his deep voice, “if you stop pulling, you find yourself on your back.”
“We’ve been presented,” said Hartshorn “with a wonderful chance of demonstrating, to the people of this country, just what sort of characters are running your country. And it’s a two-way chance. If Mullen is convicted, a senior police-officer will have been found guilty of a mean piece of petty thieving. If he wriggles out under diplomatic privilege, that’s not going to make him popular, either. Far from it.”
“It would be better if he was convicted,” said Kabaka. “It’s just that I don’t quite see what we can do about it.”
“I think we may be able to help the prosecution. I’ve had two reports from my daughter. You all know what she’s doing and are all, I hope, aware of the need for absolute discretion.”
This was aimed primarily at Sesolo. Discretion was not his strongest point.
“The first report is of a conversation on Wednesday afternoon. You must understand that when Yule is talking to Mullen, the conversation is in Afrikaans and my daughter can only pick up a general idea of what is said. There was something about an accident with a drink and treatment in hospital and she picked up the name Anna Masai. The second part of the conversation, which started with the arrival of their legal man, was all in English. My daughter took it down in shorthand and you have seen the transcription.”
Four heads nodded.
“I’d like to draw your attention to something which comes at the end of the morning’s transcript. It’s not long. Please read it, to see if you get the same impression that I did.”
There were a few minutes of silence, broken only by the rustle of pages and the hard breathing of Boyo Sesolo, whose grasp of English was not on a par with that of his colleagues.
Mkeba, who had finished a lap ahead of the others, said, “What I make of it is that this legal chap – what’s his name? – Silverborn – doesn’t know what the hell the answer to the diplomatic point is. And like all solicitors when they don’t know the answer, he’s going scuttling off to Counsel.
The others nodded. Hartshorn said, “So you’ve all missed it. I did, the first time I read it. Look at what Mullen says right at the end.”
“You mean when he’s getting annoyed about the law’s delays?”
“Right. His exact words are, ‘I never anticipated being here for more than a few weeks at the outside.’”
“I think I see what you’re getting at,” said Mkeba, slowly. “The best chance Mullen has is to make out that he’s come here on some sort of diplomatic posting. But if he was only planning to be here for a week or two at the outside, that knocks out any suggestion that he’s come here to take up a post. Right?”
“Exactly right. I don’t say that it’s conclusive. But if it was sprung on him in court it would give Mullen a very difficult question to answer.”
“If it was sprung on him,” said Govan. “How do you intend to arrange that?”
“I don’t know,” said Hartshorn. “Not yet. But I’m going to find out.”
On that same Friday and at about the same time Bantings were shutting up shop for the week. The younger members of the firm were chattering happily as they went down the steps outside the senior partner’s window and headed for the delights of the weekend. Filing cabinets were being slammed and word processors and fax machines locked away. Complicated, expensive and superfluous toys, thought Mr. Banting and smiled when he suddenly remembered that his grandfather had said exactly the same when typewriters had first been introduced.
He was in no hurry to leave the office. Since the death of his wife he had lived in a set of chambers above Old Square and returning to them had no particular attraction for him. His eye was caught by a headline in the Evening Standard which his secretary had brought in with his five o’clock cup of tea.
SOUTH AFRICA – MAGISTRATE’S ATTACK
When he had skimmed through the item, which was not as exciting as the headline (had he visualised, for a moment, one of the more pugnacious London stipendiaries piloting a bomber over Johannesburg?) he dialled Roger Sherman’s number on the office line. Roger said, “If you’ll give me five minutes, sir, to finish signing my letters, I’ll be right along.”
“Take as long as you like,” said Mr. Banting.
As has already been suggested, he approved of Roger, and this for a number of reasons unconnected with the law; because he was easy to talk to and had a sense of humour; because he had married an attractive girl called Harriet whom Mr. Banting had monopolised at the last firm’s dinner; above all because he had lived a chunk of his life in very different surroundings before coming into the law. Mr. Banting was honest enough to admit that it was only the happenstance of war breaking out in 1939 that had enabled him to do the same himself, but this did not affect his outlook on the matter. He realised that not all of his partners shared his feelings.
When Roger arrived he, too, had a copy of the Evening Standard. He said, “We all knew that the hearing this morning was a formality. We were up before Lauderdale, in the Southwest London Court. As usual he looked as though his breakfast had disagreed with him.”
“Gastric ulcers, I’m told.”
“Is that right? Anyway, there was really no need for anyone to do more than apply for an adjournment, which he was bound to grant. The Branch Crown Prosecutor was a man called Totten—”
“I remember him. Face like a King Charles Spaniel.”
“He was a very worried spaniel. When we were having a chat afterwards he wasted a quarter of an hour telling me that he was so overworked that he hardly had a moment to sit down. I must say, it does sound as if he’s got a considerable workload. He has to look after cases from West End Central and Horseferry Road, as well as South-West London—”
“My heart bleeds for him,” said Mr. Banting. “But how did the Press get in on the act? I thought you’d applied for a reporting ban.”
“So we have. And if Mullen had kept quiet we’d have been in and out in a couple of minutes. But what did he have to do but stand up and shout his mouth off.”
“Indeed. What did he say?”
“He said that he objected to all this dillying and dallying. He was a man with a lot of work to do, even if they weren’t. Why couldn’t they simply take note of the undeniable fact that he was entitled to diplomatic privilege and kick this misconceived prosecution out of court?”
“He said that?”
“In so many words.”
“To Lauderdale! Well, well. What happened?”
“I thought, for a moment, that the old boy was going to blow up. Then he took a deep breath and said, ‘You committed this alleged offence yesterday, Mr. Mullen?’ Mullen grunted something. ‘And you were charged on the same day and have been brought before this court on the following day. Did it not occur to you that it might be an improvement if alleged offences in your country were dealt with as expeditiously?’”
“Good,” said Mr. Banting. “Very good.”
“Of course this was lapped up by the press boys. They were barred from reporting the case itself, but there was nothing to stop them dealing with off-the-cuff remarks made by the Magistrate. There were only two
of them there and they were both scribbling like maniacs. It was a bit of a scoop for them. I can tell you one thing. When this comes up next week it’ll be standing-room only in the press-box.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Banting thoughtfully. “I’m sure you’re right. This case is going to make a big splash. What are your ideas about the next move?”
“We shall have to ask for the diplomatic point to be taken first. Totten more or less admitted that he was out of his depth and I’m sure next time we shall see someone more effective on the Crown side. They’ll probably produce an expert on that sort of question.”
“Which means that we have to do the same. Who had you in mind?”
“I’ve taken a few soundings. The general view seems to be that Martin Bull is the man we ought to get. Something of a specialist in international law and a good fighter.”
“Whose chambers?”
“De Morgan’s.”
“Is he, though? Well, that gives us some fairly heavy metal if we have to go higher. Tell me, suppose we go down on this point and have to fight the case on its merits. What do you think the chances are?”
“I’m not too happy about that, sir. Mullen has told me one story and wants us to tell a different one to the court.”
“That does happen,” said Mr. Banting. “Counsel can usually wriggle out of it somehow. But it brings me to what I really wanted to say. We had a partners’ meeting this morning. The normal one we have on Friday mornings, to moan about how little money we’re making. But John Benson did say that he’d heard from someone or other about this case and that he wasn’t absolutely happy about a firm like ours being involved in police court wrangling and particularly not when we were acting for a South African thug.”
“Did he actually say ‘thug’?”
“Either thug or bully. I can’t remember which.”
“Wasn’t he rather prejudging the issue. What does he know about Mullen?”
“He knows that he comes from South Africa and is some sort of policeman and that’s all most people in this country need to know in order to make their minds up.”
The Queen v. Karl Mullen Page 5