City of Spades

by Colin MacInnes

  Through watching this, I did not at first see Inspector Purity until he stepped into the box. My heart sank. He gave evidence of arrest in a clear, manly, honest voice and immediately asked for a remand.

  ‘For how long, Detective-Inspector?’ said the magistrate, as if asking a neighbour how long he wanted to borrow the lawnmower.

  ‘We should be ready in a week, sir.’

  ‘Very well. What about bail?’

  ‘We oppose bail, your Worship. The accused showed violence when under arrest, and we fear intimidation of the prosecution’s witnesses.’

  ‘I see. Have you anything to say?’ the magistrate asked Johnny.

  As soon as Johnny spoke, the court stiffened slightly, and all of them – audience, Press, lawyers and innumerable coppers – glanced curiously towards the dock. This was evidently not the ordinary African.

  ‘I wish to ask that you grant me bail, sir, in order that I take law advice, prepare my case, and see my witnesses to defend me. Two white friends of good reputation are here in the court to bail for me.’ (Everyone looked towards the public box.) ‘I undertake no violence to anyone, unlike what has been stated by the police evidence.’

  The magistrate mused, then turned. ‘What do you say, Detective-Inspector?’

  ‘An additional reason that we have, your Worship, for opposing bail, is that the prisoner refused to have his fingerprints taken. We also know the accused consorts with coloured merchant seamen, and have reason to believe he may try to stow away and leave the country without standing trial.’

  Laddy Boy muttered something in African.

  ‘Why wouldn’t you have your fingerprints taken?’ the magistrate asked Johnny, as if he had thereby deprived himself of a curious and amusing experience.

  ‘My belief, sir, is that here in this country no man is forced to have prints taken of his fingers unless he has been convicted of some crime, which in my life I never have been at any time for any reason.’

  The magistrate contrived both to frown and raise his brows. ‘But don’t you think you ought to help the officers in their enquiries?’ he said, in a mild and fatherly way. ‘You know, of course, I could always make an order for you to have them done.’

  ‘If, sir, you say I must submit to fingerprints, I will. But what is most important to me is that you give me bail, because in my cell I cannot fix to be defended as I should be. I am not a stowaway, and came to England here as proper passenger paying my own fare; and shall not wish to leave in any other way before I stand my trial.’

  This speech of Johnny’s seemed a little too voluble, and syntactically unsound, to please the magistrate.

  ‘No, I don’t think so,’ he said finally. ‘You’ll have every opportunity to prepare your case and take legal advice in custody. Bail refused.’

  I turned in a rage to Theodora, but found she’d gone. I went outside the court with Laddy Boy.

  ‘They put him in Brixton for remand,’ the African said. ‘We go and see him there and bring him liquor.’

  ‘In prison?’

  ‘Port wine is allowed for only on remand, but not some spirits,’ he told me. ‘We also take some chicken.’

  This seemed to me so irrelevant to the major problems that I wanted to clout Laddy Boy. ‘The thing is to get him a good lawyer and get him out!’ I said crossly.

  ‘Oh, yes, lawyer,’ said Laddy Boy. ‘You fix him that.’

  Theodora reappeared, red-faced and furious. ‘They wouldn’t let me see him,’ she exclaimed. ‘But I spoke to the jailer. He says we can go down to Brixton this afternoon and see him there.’

  We walked out in the chilly sun, breathing great gulps of air. I stopped Theodora on the pavement.

  ‘Doesn’t one thing stick out a mile?’ I said.

  ‘What sticks out a mile is that the magistrate’s a moron.’

  ‘Forget about the magistrate, Theodora! Isn’t it obvious that if we can get Muriel to go into the box, he’s free?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why? Because if he lived off her moral earnings in the shirt factory, he couldn’t have been living off her sister Dorothy’s immoral earnings on the streets.’

  ‘He could persuade Muriel – but can we? That’s why they refused him bail,’ cried Theodora. ‘Why isn’t Muriel here, anyway? She’s ratted on him.’

  ‘You speak of Muriel?’ said Laddy Boy. ‘She leave Johnny some many weeks now.’

  ‘And who’s he been living with since?’ asked Theodora sharply.

  ‘Sometimes Dorothy, I think, but he leave her too.’

  ‘My God!’ cried Theodora. ‘The imbecile!’

  ‘Laddy Boy,’ I said. ‘You don’t think he did this with Dorothy, do you?’

  The sailor looked vaguer than ever. ‘Thing is to get him free,’ he said. ‘What he do, not matter. What matter is get him free.’

  ‘We’d better go and see Muriel, anyway, and find out,’ I said.

  ‘Muriel, she with her mother now, Johnny tell me,’ Laddy Boy said, rather indifferently.

  We had a not very agreeable lunch together at a fish-and-chip place. Laddy Boy went out shopping, and, when he came back, spent much time making mysterious little bundles of what he’d bought.

  ‘These Africans are hopeless,’ said Theodora in a whisper like a scream.

  ‘What are you up to, Laddy Boy?’ I asked.

  ‘I tip out the port wine from the bottle, and put in whisky,’ Laddy Boy said proudly. ‘He like that better. And in these chicken wing, I put some weed beneath the skin of it.’

  ‘Good heavens! Don’t they examine everything?’

  ‘Oh, yes. But I do it very clever.’

  ‘Let’s hope to God you do.’

  We set off to Brixton in dejected silence, only Laddy Boy undismayed. He pointed out landmarks on the way. (‘That the Oval station, there,’ for example.) Outside the prison gates, the taxi driver was facetious. (‘Don’t stay in there too long, mate, will you?’ etc.) We were kept waiting in the waiting-room inside by a jailer whose face had to be seen to be believed. Laddy Boy carefully handed over his parcels, which the warder dumped like offal in a cardboard case. At last, behind the partitioned wire-netting that ran down one half of the room, Johnny Fortune made his sad appearance.

  And it was sad: the buoyancy had dropped, and for the first time since I knew him I thought he looked afraid. He wasn’t much interested in Theodora and in me, and talked most of the time to Laddy Boy in African. Theodora grew increasingly enraged. ‘We must get the information out of him, Montgomery. Do interrupt that wretched African, and talk to Johnny.’

  ‘The lawyer will see him for all that, Theodora. Don’t be angry – just try to cheer him up.’

  Almost at once, the warder said, in tones like a funeral bell, ‘Time up!’ At this Laddy Boy seemed suddenly overcome with hysteria and, clutching the wire-netting, cried, in English, ‘My brother! Bless you, my brother! Oh, my brother!’ – and tried to kiss Johnny through the grille. The warders tore him away, and Johnny was marched off.

  ‘Any more of that,’ the jailer said, ‘and you’ll be coming inside to keep him company.’

  Out in the street, as soon as we’d turned the corner, Laddy Boy let out a roar of laughter. ‘I do it!’ he cried. ‘I do it.’

  ‘Do what, you idiot!’ Theodora shouted.

  ‘Theodora!’

  ‘The five-pound note, he get it! I kiss it to him through the bar!’

  When the ingenious seaman’s mirth abated, he told us he’d screwed the note up in a ball, put it in his mouth, and passed it through the grille into Johnny Fortune’s. ‘But is money all that much use when you’re in jail?’ I asked the sailor.

  Laddy Boy stopped in his tracks, and said: ‘Man, in that place, loot is everything. You can buy anything if you have loot.’

  ‘It’ll make him more cheerful, then. He didn’t look too happy, did he.’

  ‘Understand me, man,’ said Laddy Boy. ‘It is his family he think of. Wounding or even thieving, tha
t is nothing; but this charge they put upon him is the top disgrace.’

  Nearby Lambeth town hall, Theodora insisted on entering a phone box to call up again Sir Wallingford whoever-it-was, her family solicitor. I was not surprised when she came out and told us, ‘He wasn’t there, but his chief clerk says it’s not the sort of case they handle.’

  ‘Very helpful. Let’s stick to Zuss-Amor.’

  ‘You want me to come with you to see him?’

  ‘Not unless you really want to. I think it’d be much easier if I call on him alone. But first of all I’m going to try to contact Muriel. I know where her mother lives in Maida Vale.’

  ‘I shall come too.’

  ‘No, Theodora, you will not. The last thing likely to encourage Muriel to help Johnny is to hear a rival pleading for him to her.’

  ‘What else can I do, then?’

  ‘Go to your office and write some enormous memos. I’ll call you as soon as I’ve seen Zuss-Amor.’

  ‘I might ask the Corporation to let me appear in court as a witness to his character.’

  ‘Suppose he gets convicted, Theodora.’

  ‘He won’t get convicted. He’s innocent.’

  ‘Yes, but if he were convicted, and you’d appeared in court, you’d lose your job.’

  ‘I wouldn’t. No one is ever dismissed from the Corporation.’

  ‘No doubt; but I can’t believe you’d rise to any further dizzy heights there if you got mixed up publicly in this case.’

  ‘You’ve no guts, Montgomery. No moral fibre.’

  ‘Oh, SHUT UP, Theodora. You’re beginning to get on my tits.’

  ‘Easy now,’ said Laddy Boy.

  I seized his hand, shook it, waved to Theodora, and leapt into a taxi on the rank. Then, remembering I had no money for the lawyer, had to climb ignominiously out and borrow it from her. I set off northwards in a rage.

  But I got no help from the Macpherson family. A horrible old woman who admitted to being the mother refused to let me in, and though I shouted through the door for Muriel, she wouldn’t come.

  ‘She’s finished with him – finished!’ Mrs Macpherson yelled, sticking her face and body out at me like the figurehead of a ship. ‘I don’t care if they hang him for what he’s done, my daughter wouldn’t lift her little finger for him!’ And she banged the door.

  15

  Wisdom of Mr Zuss-Amor

  Mr Zuss-Amor didn’t receive me at the appointed hour: he kept me waiting in a corridor upon a kitchen chair, with nothing to regale me but yesterday’s daily newspaper. The typist with ornamental spectacles who’d let me in vacated her cubby-hole from time to time, stepped indifferently over my legs, and went through a door of corrugated frosted glass inscribed in black cursive letters with the name of this man on whom we now pinned our hopes.

  I was reduced to reading the opinions in the leading articles when the glass door was opened from inside and a voice said, ‘I’m ready for you now. Quite ready.’ When I went in, the door closed and a man stood between me and it, looking me up and down. He was wispy-bald, clad in a rumpled suit of good material, cigarette ash smothered his lapels, and his hands dangled by his sides. His face, which looked battered, sharp and confident, wore a tired and hideous smile. ‘I’m your guide, philosopher and friend from now on, Mr Pew,’ this person said. ‘Come and tell me all about it.’

  I did. He listened silently till I had nothing more to say.

  ‘Have a fag,’ he said, offering me one from a battered pack. ‘I chain-smoke myself – that’s why I don’t like appearing in court. I prefer the work here.’ He lit my cigarette. ‘Right. In the first place, you should understand I can’t be instructed by you. You’re not the accused, fortunately. It’s his instructions I have to take, you see.’

  ‘But he asked me to come here.’

  ‘I don’t disbelieve you. But if I accept this case, I’ll have to send someone down to the jail to see our friend. And whatever he wants me to do, I’ll have to.’

  ‘Am I wasting my time, then?’

  ‘No – nor mine either, altogether. The more I know about the background in a case like this, the better. So. A point. What is the relationship between the accused and you? I mean the exact relationship?’

  ‘I am his friend.’

  ‘For what reason?’

  ‘Because I like him.’

  ‘Like him?’

  ‘That’s what I said.’

  ‘You like him. Oh. What I mean is – is there anything at all I ought to know you haven’t told me?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘I see. Another point. Why did you come here to me?’

  ‘I told you. Mr Alfy Bongo gave your name to me.’

  ‘Alfy. He told you I was a snide lawyer, I suppose?’

  ‘He said you were a solicitor who wins cases.’

  ‘Flattering! Right. Now, most important of all. Have you got any money?’

  ‘Yes. Some.’

  ‘Pay twenty to my secretary when you leave, will you? That’ll do nicely to go on with. In notes, please – no cheques, or I can’t fiddle my taxes.’ He gave me a frosty grin, folded his fingers, and said, ‘Very well, then. From what you’ve said, I can practically guarantee you something: which is that your friend will lose this case.’

  ‘Why will he? He’s innocent.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t doubt it! I don’t doubt it one little bit! But these cases are always lost before they go to court. Believe the expert.’

  ‘Then we might as well have no defence?’

  ‘Not at all – why shouldn’t you? I’m here to advise you. For example. You don’t always have to fight a case, Mr Pew. You can also buy it.’

  ‘Sorry …’

  ‘Though it may be expensive. You say that two police officers were involved?’

  ‘Yes …’

  ‘And they’ll have their chief to remember …’

  ‘Do you mean …’

  ‘That’s just exactly what I mean.’

  ‘But they’ve already brought the charge.’

  ‘I know they have. You wouldn’t be here if they hadn’t. But for a consideration, they might not press it in the courts. There’s evidence and evidence, you know.’

  ‘What sort of consideration?’

  ‘I’d have to see. But you’d better be thinking in terms of hundreds: not more than two, though, I dare say.’

  ‘Can you arrange that?’

  ‘It can be arranged. I haven’t said by whom.’

  ‘But if they got the money … wouldn’t they double-cross us?’

  ‘Why should they? It’s not an important case to them. And they know if they do they’d lose good business of the same description in the future …’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I know what’s in your mind: you think I’ll take a cut.’

  ‘Well, I suppose you would, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘How right you are, Mr Pew! Think of what’s involved! Professional conduct of a disgraceful nature, and so on and so forth. I’d be quite reasonable, though. I’d not kill the goose that lays the golden egg …’

  Mr Zuss-Amor’s dentures gave me an amiable, impatient smile. He clearly had other interviews in his diary.

  ‘I’m not sure I can raise that much money all at once.’

  ‘Oh. We can forget it, then.’

  ‘And in any case, I think it’s better to fight them.’

  The solicitor ran his hand up and down his waistcoat buttons. ‘It’s not exactly you who’s fighting them, but your friend,’ he said. ‘All the same, I think your decision’s perfectly right.’

  ‘Oh? Why do you?’

  If you take it to court, you’ll almost certainly go down, as I’ve told you, though there’s always a chance, if slight. But if you give these gentlemen a little something, they’ll see to it you give them some more sooner or later. And probably sooner.’

  ‘I don’t get it, I’m sorry, Mr Zuss-Amor.’

  ‘I’ve no doubt your life is blame
less, Mr Pew. All the same, if they decided to scrape around and look for some dirt, they’d possibly find you’d done something or other. We all have, at one time, I expect. Even the bench of bishops have a blot on their consciences somewhere, I shouldn’t be surprised.’

  ‘But how would they know it was me the money came from?’

  ‘Now, Mr Pew! Don’t underestimate the Law! They know you’re the friend of the accused, they’ve seen you in court this morning, they know – well, I dare say they know quite a lot of things.’ He took off his spectacles and wiped them with his fingers. ‘Or perhaps,’ he went on, ‘you think I’d tell them who paid up. Well, even if I did, I wouldn’t have to: they’d just know.’

  ‘So that’s ruled out, then.’

  ‘Very good. Right. So we go to court. The question arises: which court do we go to?’

  ‘Isn’t that automatic?’

  ‘To begin with, yes, it is. Everyone appears before a magistrate initially. Even if you murdered the prime minister, that’s where you’d first appear. But you needn’t be tried by the magistrate if you don’t want to be.’

  ‘What else can you do?’

  ‘You can elect to go before a judge and jury.’

  ‘And which is better?’

  ‘There are naturally pros and cons in either case.’

  ‘Well, tell me the pros and cons.’

  Mr Zuss-Amor leant back with his hands behind his head. ‘My God!’ he said, ‘how often I’ve had to explain these simple facts! Don’t laymen know anything?’

  ‘Perhaps, Mr Zuss-Amor, it’s to your advantage that they don’t.’

  ‘Oh, quick! Below the belt, but excellent! Right. Here we go. You elect to go before the magistrate. Advantages. It’s over quicker, one way or the other. Less publicity, if that should happen to matter. The sentences aren’t so high as a judge can give, if you’re convicted.’

  ‘And the cons?’

  ‘No appeal – except to the bench of magistrates. From the judge, you can go up to the House of Lords, if all is well, but as you’ve not got the cash, the point’s academic. Trial by jury takes much longer: it may be weeks before your young friend’s face to face with my Lord and his merry men. Also, it’ll cost you more. There’ll be more for me, of course, and we’d have to get a barrister.’