Silks

CHAPTER 10

I sat at my desk in chambers reading through the paperwork for an upcoming disciplinary hearing at which I would be representing one of a group of senior doctors who had been accused of professional misconduct over the untimely death of a patient in their hospital.

The phone on my desk rang. It was Arthur.

‘Mr Mason,’ he said ‘There’s someone here to see you. He’s in the clerks’ room.’

‘Who is it?’ I asked.

‘He won’t say,’ said Arthur, clearly disapproving. ‘He just insists on talking to you, and only you.’

How odd, I thought.

‘Shall I bring him along?’ Arthur asked.

‘Yes please,’ I said. ‘But will you stay here until I ask you to leave?’

‘All right,’ he said. ‘But why?’

‘Just in case I need a witness,’ I said. But I hoped I wouldn’t. Surely Julian Trent wouldn’t show up and demand to see me in my room.

I put the phone down. It was a general rule hereabouts that members of chambers met with clients and visitors only in one of the conference rooms on the lower ground floor but, since I had returned to work after Cheltenham, Arthur had been kind enough to grant me special dispensation to meet people in my room. Climbing up and down even just a few stairs on crutches wasn’t easy, particularly as the stairs in question were narrow and turning.

There was a brief knock on the door and Arthur entered, followed by a nervous looking man with white hair wearing the same light coloured tweed jacket and blue and white striped shirt that I had seen before in court number 3 at the Old Bailey. However, his shirt had then been open at the collar whereas now a neat red and gold tie completed his ensemble. It was the schoolmasterly foreman of the jury whom I had last glimpsed when I’d had my foot in his front door in Hendon.

‘Hello, Mr Barnett,’ I said to him. ‘Come on in. Thank you, Arthur, that will be all.’

Arthur looked at me with a questioning expression and I smiled back at him. Eventually, he turned on his heel and left me alone with my visitor. I stood up clumsily and held out my hand. George Barnett approached cautiously and briefly shook it.

‘Please sit down,’ I said to him, indicating the chair in front of my desk.

‘Did Trent do that?’ he asked, pointing at the cast that stretched from my left foot to my upper thigh.

‘No,’ I replied. ‘I had a fall.’

‘I had one of those last June,’ he said. ‘In my bathroom. Cracked my pelvis.’

‘Mine was from a horse,’ I said. ‘In a race.’

‘Oh,’ he said.

‘Smashed my knee,’ I said.

‘Oh,’ he said again.

I didn’t bother telling him about the cracked vertebrae, the broken ribs and the collapsed lung. Or the concussion that, seven weeks later, still plagued me with headaches.

We sat for a moment in silence while he looked around at the mass of papers and boxes that filled almost every available inch of space in my room.

‘Mr Barnett,’ I said, bringing his attention back to my face. ‘How can I help you?’

‘I thought it was me who needed to help you,’ he said.

‘Yes, indeed,’ I said, slightly surprised. ‘Yes, please. Would you like some coffee or tea?’

‘Tea would be lovely,’ he said. ‘Milk and one sugar.’

I lifted the phone on my desk and asked one of the junior clerks if he would be kind enough to fix it.

‘Now, Mr Barnett,’ I said. ‘Tell me everything.’

He was reluctant at first but he relaxed when the tea arrived, and the whole sorry story was spilled out.

‘I was initially pleased when I received the summons for jury service,’ he said. ‘I had been retired for about four years and I thought it would be interesting, you know, stimulating for the mind.’

‘What had you retired from?’ I asked him.

‘I was in the Civil Service,’ he said. I had been wrong about him having been a schoolmaster. ‘I was a permanent undersecretary in the Lord Chancellor’s Department, but it’s called something else now, Constitutional Affairs or something. They change everything, this government.’ It didn’t sound like he approved.

‘Had you done jury service before?’ I asked.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I was called once, years ago, but I was exempt through my work in the administration of justice. But they’ve changed the law on that now too. Even judges and the police now have to serve on juries if they are summoned.’

I knew. Lawyers used to be excluded too, but not any more.

‘So tell me what happened,’ I encouraged.

He looked around him as if about to tell a big secret that he didn’t want anyone else to overhear. ‘I turned up at the Old Bailey as I had been asked to and there were a whole load of us. We sat around for ages in the jury area. Then we were given a talk about being a juror and it was all rather exciting. We were made to feel important, if you know what I mean.’

I nodded. I suspected that, as a permanent under-secretary, he had indeed been quite important in the Civil Service but retirement had brought a return to anonymity. Like the headmasters of the great British public schools who may have princes and lords hanging on their every word while they are in post, only to be turned out to fairly low-paid pasture and obscurity on the day they depart. George Barnett would have enjoyed once again being made to feel important, as we all would.

‘In the end,’ he said. ‘I spent the whole of the first day sitting in the jury collection area reading the newspapers. When I was told I could go home, I was rather disappointed. But the following day I was selected for a trial. I remember being so excited by the prospect.’ He paused. ‘That was a mistake.’ He smiled ruefully at me.

‘The Trent trial?’ I said.

He nodded. ‘It was all right for a while,’ he said. ‘Then during the first weekend a man came to see me at home.’ He paused again. ‘He said he was from the jury service so I let him in.’

‘Did he give a name?’ I asked him.

‘Not at first,’ he said. ‘But then he said he was Julian Trent’s father, but I don’t think he actually was.’

‘Why not?’ I said.

‘I called him Mr Trent a couple of times and I didn’t think he realized I was talking to him.’

‘What did he say?’

‘Well, when he gave me that name I immediately told him to leave,’ he said. ‘I knew that we shouldn’t talk to anyone about the case, especially notto the defendant’s family. But he wouldn’t go away. Instead, he offered me money to vote not guilty.’

I sat quietly, waiting for him to continue.

‘I told him to go to hell,’ he said. ‘But…’ He tailed off, clearly distressed by the memory. I waited some more.

‘But he just sat there on a chair in my living room and looked around him. He said that I had a nice place and it would be a shame if I lost it all, or if my wife was injured in an accident.’ He stopped again. ‘I asked him what he meant. He just smiled and said to work it out.’

‘So did you vote not guilty?’ I asked.

‘My wife has Parkinson’s disease,’ he said. ‘And a bad heart.’ I assumed that meant yes, he had. ‘I knew that you only need ten of the twelve people on the jury to vote guilty in England to convict, so my vote wouldn’t really matter.’ I suppose he was trying to justify himself, and to excuse his behaviour. But he must surely have realized that the man would approach other jurors too.

‘So what happened in the jury room?’ I asked him. It was against the law for him to tell me and I could quite likely get disbarred for even just asking him, but what difference did one more misdemeanour matter, I thought. I could have been disbarred for lots of things I had done, or not done, recently.

‘There was a terrific row,’ he said. ‘Nine of them said straight away that they thought he was guilty as hell. There were three of us who didn’t.’ He stopped and looked up at the ceiling. ‘I think now that the man must have been to see all three of us. None of us could give any reason for saying he was not guilty. We just did. The others thought we were mad. One or two of them got really angry as the time dragged on and on.’

I remembered. I’d been really angry as well.

‘But you did return a guilty verdict in the end,’ I said.

‘I know,’ he said. ‘And it was me who had to say it in court as they had made me foreman right at the start. It was terrible.’

I remembered back a year, to the nervousness with which he had delivered the verdicts.

‘Who cracked?’ I said, trying to make light of the situation.

‘One of the other two,’ he said. ‘A woman. She did nothing for days and days but cry. It was enough to send anyone mad.’

I could imagine the emotions in that room. It had taken more than six days for one of the three to change their vote to guilty.

‘I was so relieved,’ he said. ‘I had often so nearly changed my vote, but every morning the man had called me and reminded me that my wife would have an accident if I didn’t stay firm. I just couldn’t believe that it went on for so long.’

Neither could I. I had fully expected the judge to declare a mistrial because the jury couldn’t make a decision. But he hadn’t. He had kept calling the jury back into court to ask them to try again to reach a verdict on which at least ten of them agreed. We would never know for how much longer he would have persevered.

‘So what happened afterwards?’ I asked him.

‘Nothing for ages, at least a month,’ he said. ‘Then the man turned up at my door and pushed me over when I tried to shut him out. He simply walked into the house and kicked me.’ It was clearly painful for him simply to describe it. ‘It was awful,’ he went on. ‘He kicked me twice in the stomach. I could hardly breathe. Then he went over to Molly, that’s my wife, and just tipped her out of her wheelchair onto the floor. I ask you, who could do such a thing.’ His eyes filled with tears but he choked them back. ‘Then he put his foot on her oxygen tube. It was absolutely horrid.’

I could see that it was.

‘And he told you,’ I said, ‘to go to the police and say that you had been approached by a solicitor who had asked you to make sure you found Trent guilty?’ It was a question but, as all barristers know, one should never ask a question to which you don’t already know the answer.

He nodded and looked down into his lap.

‘It was dreadful, lying like that in the court,’ he said. ‘The appeal judges kept asking me if I was telling the truth or was I saying it because I had been told to do so by someone else. I was sure they knew I was lying. I felt so ashamed.’ He said the last part in little more than a whisper. ‘That’s why I’m here,’ he said more strongly. ‘When you came to my house I was afraid of you. I’ve been afraid of nearly everyone for the past year. I’ve hardly been out of the house since the trial. I’ve been looking at your business card for weeks and been trying to pluck up the courage to come here.’

‘I’m so glad you did,’ I said. He smiled a little. ‘And how is your wife?’

‘They took her into a nursing home yesterday, poor thing. The Parkinson’s is beginning to affect her mind and it’s becoming too much for me to manage on my own. She’s so confused. That’s another reason I’m here today,’ he said. ‘She’s safe now. The security at the nursing home is pretty good, mostly to stop the patients wandering off. Now I only have to worry about myself.’

‘And what would you like me to do about what you have told me?’ I asked.

‘What do you mean?’ he said, looking nervous again.

‘Do you want to go to the police?’ I asked him.

‘No,’ he said quite firmly. He paused. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Are you still frightened of this man?’ I asked.

‘Damn right I am,’ he said. ‘But you can’t live your life being too frightened to step out of your own house.’

Bridget Hughes was, I thought.

‘So what do we do?’ I said.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have come here. I’m sorry. I think I should go now.’ He stood up.

‘Mr Barnett,’ I said to him. ‘I won’t tell anyone what you have told me, I promise. But if I try to stop this man and put him behind bars where he belongs, will you help me?’

‘How?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know yet,’ I said. I didn’t even know who the enemy was. ‘Would you recognize the man again?’

‘I certainly would,’ he said. ‘I’ll never forget him.’

‘Tell me what he looked like,’ I said.

Mr Barnett did his best but he often contradicted himself. He said he was big but then he also said he was shorter than me. He described him as muscular but also as fat. He was a little confused himself, I thought. In the end I had very little idea about the man who said he was Julian Trent’s father other than he was white, middle aged and fairly average in every way. Much the same as Josef Hughes had said and not very helpful. Short of getting a police artist or a photofit expert, it was the best he could do.

He departed back to his home in north London, again looking nervously from side to side. I was left to ponder whether I was any further on in finding out how, and why, Julian Trent had his fingers into the Scot Barlow murder.

Steve Mitchell’s trial was now less than a week away and we still had almost nothing to use in his defence except to claim that he definitely didn’t murder Scot Barlow, that someone else did – someone who was making it appear that our client was responsible. A classic frame-up, in fact, that no one else could see, not least because Steve Mitchell was not the most likable of characters and people didn’t seem to care enough whether he was convicted or not. But I cared. I cared for the sake of justice, and I also cared for the sake of my personal survival. But were the two compatible?

I could foresee that the trial was unlikely to fill the two weeks that had been allocated for it on the Oxford Crown Court calendar unless we came up with something a bit more substantial, and quickly.

After a sandwich lunch at my desk, I took a taxi to University College Hospital to see an orthopaedic surgeon, with my left leg resting straight across the back seat. Seven whole weeks had now passed since I had woken up in Cheltenham General Hospital with a pile-driver of a headache that had made my skull feel as if it were bursting. With a return to consciousness had also come the discovery that I had to remain flat on my back, my left leg in traction, with a myriad of tubes running from an impressive collection of clear plastic bags above my left shoulder to an intravenous needle contraption in my forearm.

‘You are lucky to be alive,’ a smiling nurse had cheerfully informed me. ‘You’ve been in a coma for three days.’

My head had hurt so much that I had rather wished that I had remained so for another three.

‘What happened?’ I had croaked at her from inside a clear plastic mask that had sat over my nose and mouth and which, I’d assumed, was to deliver oxygen to the patient.

‘You fell off your horse.’

I had suddenly remembered everything – everything, that is, up to the point of the fall.

‘I didn’t fall off,’ I had croaked back at her. ‘The horse fell.’ An important distinction for every jockey, although the nurse hadn’t seemed to appreciate the difference.

‘How is my horse?’ I had asked her.

She had looked at me in amazement. ‘I have no idea,’ she had said. ‘I’m only concerned with you.’

Over the next few hours my headache had finally succumbed to increasing doses of intravenous morphine and the roaring fire in my throat had been extinguished by countless sips of iced water via a green sponge on a stick.

Sometime after it was dark, a doctor had arrived to check on my now-conscious form and he had informed me of the full catalogue of injuries that I had sustained, first by hitting the ground at thirty miles and hour and then having more than half a ton of horse land on top of me.

My back was broken, he had said, with three vertebrae cracked right through but, fortunately for me, my spinal cord was intact, thanks probably to the back protector that I had been wearing under my silks. Four of my ribs had been cracked and one of those had punctured a lung that had subsequently partially collapsed. My head had made hard contact with something or other and my brain had been badly bruised, so much so that a neurosurgeon had been called to operate to reduce the pressure inside my skull by fitting a valve above my right ear that would drain away the excess fluid. My left knee had been broken, the doctor had explained, and he himself had operated to fix it as best he could, but only time would tell how successful he had been.

‘So will I live?’ I had asked him flippantly.

‘It was a bit touch and go for a while,’ he had replied seriously. ‘But I think you will. There was no real damage to your main internal organs other than a little bruising to the left kidney, and a small tear in your left lung that will heal itself. Yes, I think you’ll be fine in time, especially now you are conscious and there doesn’t appear to be any major damage to your brain either.’

‘And will I ride again?’ I’d asked him more seriously.

‘More difficult to say,’ he’d replied. ‘Again, time will tell. I suspect it will depend on how mad you are. I personally think that all you jump jockeys have a screw loose. The same ones come in here year after year to be patched up and plastered.’ He shook his head. ‘They’re completely bonkers.’

‘How about my horse?’ I had asked him.

‘I don’t know,’ he’d said. ‘But surely it wasn’t your own horse you were riding?’

‘Yes it was,’ I’d said. I had tried explaining about being an amateur jockey and the Foxhunter Chase but he hadn’t really been interested, and he had no idea whether Sandeman had been injured or not, or even if he was alive. It had only been when Paul and Laura Newington had come to see me later that evening that I had heard the full story of the disaster.

They had been watching the race from the stands and they were just getting excited about the prospect of another famous win when Sandeman and I had so spectacularly disappeared in a flurry of legs, and then we had both lain prostrate and unmoving on the turf.

Paul, it seemed, had run the half-mile from the grandstands, down the course, to where we had both been hidden from the sight of the thousands of spectators behind hastily erected green canvas screens. Sandeman, it appeared, had been badly winded and had also damaged his back. He had taken a full fifteen minutes to get gingerly to his feet and only Paul’s personal intervention had prevented the racecourse vet from putting him down there and then. Fortunately for me, no questions had been asked about whether or not to shoot the jockey. Paul told me that I had been lying on the turf being attended to by the paramedics and the racecourse doctor for nearly an hour before being lifted ever so carefully into an ambulance and driven away at a snail’s pace. The following race had been required to bypass the fence and was nearly abandoned altogether.

‘There was someone else down there as well,’ he had said. I had thought he must have meant Julian Trent but I’d been wrong. ‘Agirl. Ran all the way down the course in high-heeled shoes. Nice looker. Called herself Eleanor. Do you know her?’

I’d nodded to him.

‘She seemed a bit cut up about you,’ he’d said, almost surprised. ‘I thought she must have the wrong guy but she was certain it was you. She said she had met me before at that do at Newbury in December but I don’t remember.’

‘What happened to her?’ I’d asked him.

‘I think she went in the ambulance with you but I don’t know. I was so busy trying to get Sandeman sorted out.’

‘How is he?’ I’d asked him.

‘Not great,’ he’d said. ‘He was taken straight to the equine hospital in Lambourn. They are treating him for a badly strained back and severe bruising.’

I’d laughed at him. ‘Eleanor is a vet at that hospital.’

‘What a coincidence,’ he’d said laughing back.

But I didn’t like coincidences.

‘I think that cast can come off your leg,’ said the orthopaedic surgeon. ‘The X-rays show the knee mending well and there’s no reason why it needs to be immobilized any longer. How long is it now?’

‘Seven and a half weeks,’ I said.

‘Mmm,’ he pondered. ‘Should be fine, but you will need to keep using the crutches and just put a little weight on it for a while. Build up the weight over the next few weeks.’

‘What about my back?’ I asked him.

‘The scans show that the bones are mending slowly but you still need to keep that straightjacket on for another six weeks at least.’

He was referring to the hard white plastic shell that I wore to prevent me bending my back. The damned thing reached from just below my neck almost to my groin in the front and from my shoulder blades to the top of my buttocks behind. It was very uncomfortable and made sitting at a desk near impossible, but wearing it had at least allowed me to walk around. Without it I would probably still be lying flat on my back.

‘Six weeks?’ I said in exasperation.

‘You broke the T10, T11 and T12 vertebrae right through and you don’t want to finish now what your fall started,’ he said. ‘You are a very lucky man. With that injury you could have so easily been paralysed, or dead.’

I would just have to put up with the discomfort, and the ignominy of having to ask my downstairs neighbour to come and help me get out of the wretched thing at night and back into it in the morning. The shell was actually made in two halves that had been heat moulded to fit my torso exactly, the two parts being held together round my upper body by half a dozen Velcro-covered nylon straps that needed to be fed through metal loops and pulled tight. I even had to shower in the damn thing.

The surgeon inspected the device before I gratefully hid it again from sight beneath my shirt.

‘It’s damned uncomfortable, you know,’ I said to him. ‘It makes me itch all the time.’

‘Better than being paralysed,’ he replied.

And there was no answer to that.

‘How’s the head?’ he asked. It wasn’t technically his department.

‘Getting better slowly,’ I said. ‘I saw the neurologist last week and he is happy with my progress, but I still have some headaches.’

‘Do you still have the valve implant?’ he asked.

‘No,’ I said putting my hand up to my right ear. ‘He took it out four weeks ago now.’

‘No problems?’ he asked.

‘A little dizziness at first,’ I said. ‘But that went after a couple of days. No, I feel fine, just a few headaches and they are getting more infrequent and less troublesome.’

‘Good,’ he said looking down and making some notes.

‘When can I start riding again?’ I asked him.

He stopped writing and looked up. ‘Are you serious?’

‘Absolutely,’ I said.

He put his pen down and looked at me with his head inclined to the side. ‘Well, I suppose from my point of view, all your bones will heal and they’ll be as good as new in a few months, but I would be worried about your head. The brain can only take so many knocks like that.’

I had to admit that it had been quite a bang. I had seen what was left of my racing helmet and it was cracked right through from front to back. Without it, I would have certainly died.

‘But I don’t intend to ever land on my head again,’ I said.

‘No one intended there to be a second world war after the first one. But there was.’

‘That’s a bit different,’ I said.

‘OK,’ he conceded. ‘But you should never try to predict the future.’

I knew that well enough. Especially in the law.

When I returned to chambers later that afternoon I felt I was walking on air, albeit with only one leg. In spite of the fibreglass and polyurethane material being much lighter than the old-fashioned white plaster of Paris, the full-length cast had still been very heavy and annoyingly restrictive. Without it, I felt at least partially released from the cage in which I had been existing.

The surgeon had told me that I would need lots of physiotherapy to get the knee back to full movement, and I still had to walk using the crutches, but it was such a joy to once again scratch an itch in my thigh, or to rub away an ache in my kneecap.

Arthur looked up at me from his desk as I hopped my way through the clerks’ room. ‘On the mend, I see,’ he said.

‘Slowly,’ I agreed. ‘I still have to wear this body armour for another six weeks.’ I tapped the hard shell beneath my shirt.

‘Still need the recliner then?’ he said, smiling.

He referred to the new chair I had acquired from a friend that sat behind my desk. It allowed me to lean right back and reduce the pressure that the shell made on my groin.

‘I might just keep it anyway,’ I said to him with a laugh. He had found me asleep in the chair two or three times when I had first returned to chambers about three weeks previously.

‘There’s another one of those hand-delivered envelopes in your box,’ Arthur said, immediately wiping the smile from my face. ‘It came while you were out.’

‘Right,’ I said. ‘Thanks.’

Arthur looked me in the eye and I thought for a moment that he was going to ask me straight out what was in the envelope, but he didn’t, instead returning his attention to something on his desk.

I went over to the boxes and looked into mine. I had been temporarily promoted to the top row as I was unable to bend down to my usual level, and there, on its own, was a slim A5-sized white envelope, just as before.

I was sure that Arthur was watching me so I picked it up casually and stuffed it into my trouser pocket before negotiating the corridor on my crutches to the safety and privacy of my room. Thankfully, the two others junior barristers who also shared this space with me were both away in Manchester acting for a big local football club that was up to its neck in a taxevasion scandal involving half a dozen of their most highly paid players.

I sat in my recliner chair and carefully opened the envelope. As before there was a single sheet of folded paper, and a photograph. On the sheet of paper there were just two short lines, again in black capital letters.

JUST REMEMBER, LOSE THE CASE

MITCHELL GETS CONVICTED

The photograph showed Eleanor in her blue scrub tunic and trousers walking along the gravel path between the house she lived in and the equine hospital in Lambourn.