The Queen v. Karl Mullen

by Michael Gilbert

  “She worked with me at Yule’s office. She left a week after I did.”

  “And now she’s got this job at the Newspaper Library at Colindale.”

  “Andrew told me you’d put a detective onto watching that solicitor – I forget his name—”

  “Sherman.”

  “That’s the one. He followed him to the library, didn’t he? But he wasn’t able to get in, so he never found out what Sherman was looking for. Would you like me to find out?”

  The Captain looked at his daughter thoughtfully. So much had happened since then that he had almost forgotten why he had considered this particular piece of information important. However, it would get his daughter out of the flat.

  He said, “How would you set about it?”

  “If you look at the last page, she says that being the new girl she’s naturally landed the dullest job. Checking the slips.”

  “Yes,” said the Captain. He had skipped the last page. Now he read it more carefully.

  It seemed that anyone requiring a newspaper had to sign a slip which identified the paper required and also gave the name and address of the enquirer.

  He said, “I see. So your friend could find out which papers Sherman had out and could produce them for you. I’ll have to get hold of a library card from one of Sesolo’s students. What won’t be easy is spotting what Sherman was after, since you haven’t any idea what he was looking for. It might have been nothing to do with the Mullen case at all.”

  “It’s a long shot,” agreed Rosemary. “But it’ll be better than sitting round here all day twiddling my fingers.”

  “What a filthy idea,” said Chief Inspector Ancrum. West End Central had got the pencil story twenty-four hours after it hit the Stock Exchange. He had been told it twice already. Neither of his informants had thought it funny.

  Inspector Brailey said, “I mentioned it to a doctor friend of mine yesterday evening. He said that if you did something like that to someone and weren’t very careful you’d be likely to kill him. Pain and shock.”

  “It isn’t going to make our job any easier.”

  “You mean that we’ll have to arrange to protect that bastard?”

  “Fortunately, no. It’s only because the shop-lifting occurred in our area and the case being heard at Bow Street, that we were landed with the job of seeing that he gets in and out of Court without being lynched.”

  “A quick lynching would solve all our difficulties.”

  “However,” said Ancrum, being senior to Brailey he tended to take a more responsible view of the situation, “fortunately he lives in Axe Lane, which is in the City.”

  “So the City boys have got to look after him. That’s the first bit of good news I’ve heard.”

  “Possibly. On the other hand it’s one of the duties of Special Branch to guard eminent foreign visitors. Baron won’t be happy about that.”

  “As long as it’s someone else, not us,” said Brailey.

  “I hope you’re fully prepared to do battle,” said the Attorney General. He felt much happier now that he had Wyvil behind him.

  She said, “The other side has put in a long list of authorities they intend to refer to. Some of them are American.”

  “Can they do that?”

  “I haven’t had time to read them all. But I’m not sure that, on balance, they aren’t more helpful to us than to them. If I decide that they are—” she showed her excellent teeth—”I shan’t object to them being put in.”

  “I had a word with the P.M. in the House this morning. Make no mistake about it. This is a case he wants us to win.”

  “Is there a political angle to it?”

  “There’s a political angle to everything these days,” said Sir Humphrey gloomily. “What he wants is quite clear. He wants the case remitted to Bow Street, Mullen to be found guilty, fined and kicked out of the country. If, by any chance, he escaped on a technicality, the press – or certain portions of it – will immediately imply that it was a put-up job to save the government from embarrassment with their friends in South Africa.”

  “I’ll bear it in mind,” said Wyvil. She did not sound worried.

  That same afternoon, at about four o’clock, Mullen, who had been up to the West End to get his hair cut, turned into Axe Lane from the Gresham Street end. He had set out without raincoat or umbrella and had been caught by one of the short, but violent, showers which had been plaguing Londoners that autumn. The rain had stopped as suddenly as it had started and the sun was now reflected from wet pavements.

  Bloody weather, bloody country, bloody people, thought Mullen. The desire to be out of it and back in South Africa had gone far beyond wishing and hoping. It was a passion.

  As he rounded the corner he saw a crowd of young men approaching from the far end of the Lane. They seemed happy enough, God rot them, and were roaring with laughter at something said by a thickset character who was limping along with them.

  As they came closer he saw that they all seemed to be equipped with new-looking, newly-sharpened pencils. Most of them had two or three sticking out of their top pockets. Clerks, he supposed, but he was puzzled to make out what they could be doing loafing about the streets in mid-afternoon. He was still puzzling about it when two of them grabbed him.

  Mullen reacted instinctively. A scything blow felled one of his captors and as the other loosened his grip he shook him off and jumped for the nearest shelter. This was the entrance to one of the banks which flanked the South Africans’ office. At that hour the heavy double doors were shut, but considered as a place of refuge it had advantages. It was too narrow for more than two men to come at him at a time and the jutting door handles behind his back offered him a useful pivot.

  Holding one of them in his left hand, he swung out anticlockwise at the first man who tried to rush him. Mullen was thickset and powerful and bad temper added weight to the blow which landed squarely in his opponent’s stomach and sent him to the ground, crowing and retching. Quickly reversing his hands and swinging clockwise, he hit the one who was coming up on the other side, in the throat.

  There were now twenty or thirty men in front of him, but none of them seemed anxious to try their luck. Their leader shouted, “Go for his legs.” This was not a happy idea. Supported by the useful door handles, Mullen kicked the first one who dived for him full in the face.

  As the opposition showed signs of demoralisation, Mullen decided to make for home. His own door was only ten yards away. He charged forward, bellowing like an enraged bull. He might have made it, too, and was nearly there when his foot slipped on the wet pavement. The next moment he was flat on his face with two or three men on top of him.

  The thickset man who seemed to be the leader had stood back, so far, from the action. Now he edged his way forward and shouted, “Pull off the bugger’s trousers. Then you can use your pencils. Stick ‘em in anywhere you like.”

  To de-bag a man who had no thought of submitting was not a simple matter. And they were still rolling together on the ground when there was a shout of, “Police!” Alerted on the telephone by Yule, squads from Wood Street and Cloak Lane had arrived. A van load stopped at each end of the lane and the men jumped out. There were only eight in each party, but they knew their job. The front ones linked arms, the others formed a wedge behind them and they went in like a human tank. The outer fringes of the crowd offered little resistance, but when the police reached the heart of the disturbance they met opposition and half a dozen private fights developed.

  By now the narrow lane was a scene of the wildest confusion, added to by the shouts of the spectators who leaned dangerously out from the windows on both sides of the street, cheering or hooting the police as their sympathies directed. An enterprising young man in the block at the far end, who had an excellent camera with a telescopic attachment took a number of pictures which he subsequently sold to the Evening Standard.

  For some minutes the fight was a level one. Then a further reinforcement from Wood Street settled
the matter.

  Whilst this was going on, Mullen seemed to have been forgotten. Now he was back on his feet, with blood running down from a cut on his forehead, but still full of fight. He was feeling really happy for the first time since his arrival in England.

  He forced his way back to the doorway of the Bank where three of his opponents were still being looked after by their friends. Mullen said to the Inspector who had come with him, “I identify these three as men who attacked me.”

  “Splendid,” said the Inspector. “We’ll take them back and charge them.”

  “There was one other. Seemed to be the leader. Limped a bit. I can’t see him anywhere.”

  Ronnie Jepson, Norman Hicks and two of their principal aides had left the scene of the battle some minutes earlier. Their instructions had been that if they got into trouble they would find help in No. 15. This was one of the few doors giving onto the street which had not been barred as soon as the trouble started.

  Ratter, who was waiting behind it, had it open in a flash and slammed it shut behind them. Then he led them up to the third floor. They met no one on the stairs. The occupants of the other offices where still craning out of their windows.

  “I was told you boys might be paying us a visit,” said Ratter. “Better keep your heads down until the street’s clear.”

  Rosemary examined, with distaste, the thick folder which contained the twenty-six weekly numbers of the Oxford News and Journal, each of between forty-eight and fifty-two pages.

  She had finished with the University Gazette, which had contained short lists of university and ecclesiastical appointments, and long lists of examination results, and with the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Recorder which ignored the City and concerned itself mainly with the difficulties and complaints of the farming community.

  The News and Journal certainly promised to be more interesting. But there was an awful lot of it. Rosemary gritted her teeth and plunged in.

  The battle of Axe Lane was given some coverage in the press. It was not a lead story, but most of the papers had it. The three students who had been charged had admitted that the general objective had been to de-bag Mullen. No mention was made of the idea of following this up by sticking sharpened pencils into private parts of his body.

  The tone of the reports was that it was a reprehensible example of misplaced undergraduate humour, but that if people like Mullen came to this country they must expect to encounter expressions of popular dissent.

  The Times reminded its readers that, in 1850, when an Austrian general with a talent for flogging women had visited London, the draymen of Barclays Brewery had chased him down Bankside and bombarded him with mud pies. The Sentinel which seemed to be heading the anti-Mullen crusade commented, in a second leader, that the scratches he had sustained in this romp (a carefully selected word) had to be multiplied a thousand times before one could begin to compare them with the damage which South African policemen and soldiers had inflicted on the townsfolk of Soweto.

  On the following morning Max Freustadt summoned Mullen to King Charles II Street. When he came in Max noted that Mullen seemed to be in better spirits. There was a sparkle in his eye and an aggressive jut to his chin. Apparently his experience of combat had boosted his slipping morale. It was clear that if more fighting was called for he would go into it with all the vigour and lack of scruple that had raised him to his commanding position in the Pretoria hierarchy.

  Just as well, thought Freustadt.

  He said, “I gather that no one has much faith in your lawyer’s last-ditch attempt to wriggle out of this shop-lifting case by a backdoor. It could succeed, but I wouldn’t put money on it myself.”

  “So?” said Mullen.

  “So we have to face facts. If you are found guilty and fined, or sent to prison – yes, that’s possible in the current state of feeling – we all read about what happened yesterday—”

  “So?” said Mullen again.

  “If you go back to South Africa with any sort of penal sentence, even if it’s only a fine, you’re finished. I can’t put it more clearly than this. Either you kill the case, or the case kills you.”

  “You’ve told me nothing that I didn’t know already,” said Mullen coldly. “Naturally I’ve been thinking about it and I realised, very early on, that Katanga mustn’t give evidence. He is the only witness that matters. The charge of shop-lifting is far-fetched enough. Without him it falls flat on its face.”

  “And you think you can do something about it?”

  “Yes, I do. I shall have to speak to my office in Pretoria and I shall need a line which is absolutely secure.”

  “I think I can manage that,” said Freustadt thoughtfully.

  On Tuesday, October 30th, the second day of the hearing of Regina v. The Chief Metropolitan Magistrate ex-parte Mullen was in full swing. It had originally been set down for October 25th and had been twice postponed owing to the difficulty of assembling three High Court judges.

  For most of the first afternoon the Lord Chief Justice, flanked by Mr. Justice Lord and Mr. Justice Attenborough, had listened patiently, if unenthusiastically, to the attempts of Martin Bull to persuade them of something which they felt, in their heart of hearts, was a legal wangle.

  Martin had done his work conscientiously and had scoured the authorities on both sides of the Atlantic for legal comment and judicial precedent. He had been particularly pleased with a paragraph in the American Law Institute Restatement of 1983 which started, ‘It is increasingly accepted that immunities like those enjoyed by diplomatic agents are accorded to high officials of a foreign state when on an official visit.’ He had emphasised the last five words.

  “Even if, therefore, your Lordships conclude that Mr. Mullen was not himself a consular agent and are convinced by the arguments put forward in the Lower Court, to the effect that he was only in this country to carry out certain negotiations over the extradition of Katanga, is it not clear that he must be accorded the same protection as a diplomatic agent? Surely it is not disputed that he is a high official and he was certainly here on official business—”

  On de Morgan’s advice he had deliberately drawn out the preliminaries so that he was able to make this his strongest point when they resumed on the second morning.

  “They’re old men,” said de Morgan. “By the end of the day they’re so tired that they hardly listen to what you’re saying. All they want to do is get back to the Club for their evening gin. Save it for the morning. Then they may listen to you.”

  Then Eileen Wyvil, adjusting her wig with one finger in exactly the gesture of a lady bringing an Ascot hat into prominence, had taken the wind out of all their sails by stating, “I could have saved the Court a great deal of trouble if I had been allowed to make it clear that it is not disputed that Karl Mullen is a consular agent.”

  This broadside was homed accurately onto the Lord Chief Justice who responded with a gratified smile.

  “I noted,” continued Eileen, “with some surprise, that my learned friend had called in aid a document which, as you will see from the copy in front of you, is no more than a restatement of the law submitted, for discussion, to the members of the American Law Institute. However, since my learned friend has laid this document before you, perhaps I may be allowed to look a little further into the cases which it cites.”

  Martin Bull said, “Damn,” under his breath. As soon as she mentioned cases he knew what was coming.

  “The point at issue and the only point is whether the alleged offence took place when Karl Mullen was engaged on his consular duties. There would seem to be no decision in this country which helps us. However, American case-law does provide us with some assistance. I am at page 63, paragraph 264.”

  The three Lord Justices busily leafed through the pages of the document in front of them.

  “You will see the reference there to the case of the United States and Velasco. The facts were as follows. It seems that the Argentine Consul General was attending a diploma
tic drinks party when it suddenly occurred to him that he was overdue at a committee meeting at the Panamanian Embassy. Excusing himself hurriedly to his hosts, he sped from the building only to find that, although his official car was there, his official chauffeur was not. Luckily Louis Velasco, one of his consular aides, had come out with him and he offered to drive the car. No doubt the Consul instructed him to drive as fast as he could and although it appears that he jumped several lights and caused a number of innocent pedestrians to leap for safety, he did no actual damage until, arriving at the Panamanian Embassy, he could find no room in the limited space available to park his car. So he decided to make a space for himself. Which he did by the simple device of ramming a car in front of him and driving it across the pavement. At that moment the owner of the car arrived – as also did a policeman. In the proceedings, for what we should call criminal damage, which ensued, immunity as a consular agent was claimed for Velasco.”

  Eileen Wyvil paused while the judges scribbled vigorously.

  “The point which the judge had to decide was precisely the same as we have here. Was Velasco driving the car in his capacity as a consular agent? In other words, was it a necessary part of his consular duty? The judge seemed to have had little difficulty in deciding that it was not. Would you ask yourselves, therefore, the same question? Was Karl Mullen fetching these books from Lampards Bookshop as a necessary part of his consular duty? Surely not. It was a chore which could have been carried out by any minor functionary or even entrusted to a messenger service. I do not think I need labour the point—”

  The warm smile on the face of the Lord Chief Justice assured her that her point needed no labouring. Martin Bull gathered together his papers with the gesture of a poker player who has bid as high as he dared on a weak hand and throws in his cards.

  The result of the Divisional Court hearing was featured briefly in the late edition of the evening papers and dealt with more fully in the morning papers on the following day.