Silks

CHAPTER 19

I took Josef Hughes and George Barnett to lunch at the Runnymede Hotel, in the restaurant there overlooking the Thames. Nikki Payne, the solicitor’s clerk from Bruce’s firm, came to join us. I had chosen the venue with care. I wanted somewhere peaceful and quiet, somewhere stress free and calming. I wanted somewhere to tell Josef and George what I had discovered and what I needed them to do to help me.

The four of us sat at a table in the window, with Nikki next to me and Josef and George opposite us. For a while we made small talk and chatted about the weather as we watched the pleasure boats moving up and down through the lock, and we laughed at a duck and her brood waddling in a line along the river bank. Everyone relaxed a little, and a glass of cool Chablis further eased their anxieties.

Finally, after we had eaten lunch from the buffet, we sat over our coffee while I told them about the murder of Scot Barlow. I told them how Steve Mitchell had been arrested for it, and how he was currently on trial at Oxford Crown Court.

‘I’ve seen reports in the papers,’ George said, nodding. ‘Doesn’t seem to be much doubt he did it, if you believe what you read there.’

‘Never believe anything you read in the papers,’ I said seriously. ‘I have no doubt whatsoever that Steve Mitchell is innocent, and he is being framed.’

Both Josef and George looked at me with that same expression of incredulity that people have when a politician says that he really cares about drug addicts, or illegal immigrants.

‘It’s true,’ I said. ‘And I believe he’s being framed by this man.’ I placed a copy of the photograph I had shown to Patrick Hamilton on the table in front of them.

The effect was immediate. Both Josef and George shied away from the image as if it could somehow jump up and hit them. Josef began to take fast, shallow breaths, and I feared he was in danger of passing out, while George just sat there grinding his teeth together, never once taking his eyes off the man in the picture.

‘It’s all right, guys,’ I said, trying to lighten the moment. ‘He isn’t here. And he doesn’t know we’re here, or even that I know either of you.’

Neither of them was much mollified by my assurances. They went on looking scared and uncertain.

‘With your help,’ I said. ‘I can put this man behind bars where he can’t get at you.’

‘Julian Trent was behind bars,’ said Josef quickly. ‘But…’ He tailed off, perhaps not wanting to say that it had been he who had helped get him out. ‘Who says he can’t still get at us from there? Where’s the guarantee?’

‘I agree with Josef,’ said George with a furrowed brow. ‘Julian Trent would simply repay the favour and get him out, and then where would we be?’

I felt that I was losing them.

‘Let me first explain to you what I want to do,’ I said. ‘And then you can decide if you’ll help. But, I’ll tell you, I’m going to try and get this man, whether you help me or not. And it will be easier with your backing.’

Between us, Nikki and I told them everything we had discovered.

‘But why do you need us?’ said Josef. ‘Why don’t you just take all this to the police and let them deal with it?’

‘I could,’ I said. ‘But, for a start, in this sort of case the police would take ages to do their investigating and, in the meantime, Steve Mitchell would be convicted of murder. And, as you both well know, it is easier to get someone acquitted at the first trial than to have to wait for an appeal.’

‘So what do you intend to do?’ asked George.

I told them.

I had to trust them all, including Nikki, not to tell anyone of my plans. So I didn’t tell them quite everything. I did think about showing them the other photos, the ones of the wreckage of my house, which were still in my jacket pocket. Then Josef and George would understand that I was in the same position as they were. But it would also mean telling Nikki the inconvenient truth that I was being intimidated to influence the outcome of a trial, and that might put her under an obligation to tell the court, or, at least, to tell Bruce, who was her immediate superior. I didn’t want to have to ask her to keep more confidences than I already had, and certainly not to do so when it would be so blatantly against the law.

When I had finished, the three of them sat silently for quite a while, as if digesting what I had said.

Eventually it was George who broke the spell.

‘Do you really think it will work?’ he said.

‘It’s worth a try,’ I said. ‘And I think it might if you two play your part.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Josef, all his unease returning in full measure. ‘I’ve got to think of Bridget and Rory.’

‘Well, I’m game,’ said George, smiling. ‘If only to see his face.’

‘Good,’ I said, standing up. ‘Come on. Let’s go. There’s something I want to show you.’

Bob drove us the half a mile or so to the far end of Runnymede Meadow and then waited in the car while the rest of us went for a walk. It was a bright sunny spring day but there was still a chill in the air, so the open space was largely deserted as we made our way briskly across the few hundred yards of grass to a small round classical-temple-style structure set on a plinth at the base of Cooper’s Hill, on the south side of the meadow.

It had been no accident that we had come to lunch at Runny-mede. This was where King John had been forced to sign the Magna Carta, the Great Charter of 15 June 1215. The Magna Carta remained the basis of much of our common law, including the right to be tried by a panel of one’s peers, the right to trial by jury.

The Magna Carta Memorial had been built in 1957 and paid for by voluntary donations from more than nine thousand lawyers, members of the American Bar Association, in recognition of the importance of the ancient document in shaping laws in their country, and throughout Western civilization. The memorial itself is of strikingly simple design with eight slim pillars supporting an unfussy, flattish, two-step dome about fifteen feet or so in diameter. Under the dome, in the centre of the memorial, stands a seven-foot-high pillar of English granite with the inscription: TO COMMEMORATE MAGNA CARTA, SYMBOL OF FREEDOM UNDER LAW.

Every lawyer, myself included, knew that most of the clauses were now either obsolete, or had been repealed or replaced by new legislation. However, four crucial clauses of the original charter were still valid in English courts, nearly eight hundred years after they were first sealed into law, at this place, by King John. One such clause concerns the freedom of the Church from royal interference, another with the ancient liberties and free customs of the City of London and elsewhere, while the remaining two clauses were about the freedom of the individual. As translated from the original Latin, with the ‘we’ meaning ‘the Crown’, these two ran:

No freeman shall be seized, or imprisoned, or dispossessed, or outlawed, or in any way destroyed; nor will we condemn him, nor will we commit him to prison, excepting by the legal judgement of his peers, or by the laws of the land.

and

To none will we sell, to none will we deny, to none will we delay right or justice.

These clauses provided for freedoms that most of us took for granted. Only when the likes of Julian Trent or his godfather came along, acting above and beyond the law, did we understand what it meant to have our rights and justice denied, to be destroyed and dispossessed without proper process of the laws of the land.

I had spent the time we had been walking telling the others about the great meeting that had taken place so long ago on this very spot between King John and the English barons, and how the king had been forced to sign away his autocratic powers. And how, in return, the barons, together with the king, had agreed to be governed by the rule of law, and to provide basic freedoms to their subjects.

Now, I leaned against the granite pillar and its succinct inscription.

‘So will you help me?’ I said to Josef. ‘Will you help me get justice and allow us freedom under law?’

‘Yes,’ he said, looking me straight in the eye. ‘I will.’

Bob took Josef and George back to their respective homes in north London, while Nikki drove me to the railway station at Slough.

‘Mr Mason?’ Nikki said on the way.

‘Yes?’ I replied.

‘Is what you’re doing entirely legal?’ she asked.

I sat silently for a moment. ‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘In England, I know that it’s not against the law not to tell the police about a crime, provided that you didn’t stand idly by and let it happen, when informing the police might have prevented it. Other than where stolen goods are involved, and also for some terrorism offences, members of the public are not under any legal obligation to report something that other people have done just because they know it was unlawful.’ She sat silently concentrating on her driving, and probably trying to make some sense of what I had said. ‘Does any of that help?’ I said.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That’s fine.’

‘Is there a problem?’ I asked her.

‘No,’ she said uncertainly. ‘I don’t think so. I just don’t want to get into any sort of trouble.’

‘You won’t,’ I said. ‘I promise.’ It was me, not her, who might get into trouble for not having told the court about the intimidation.

She dropped me at the station and gave me a small wave as she drove off. I wondered if she might go and talk to Bruce after all. I looked at my watch. It was quarter past four on Friday afternoon and the case would resume at ten on Monday morning. Even if she called Bruce now, would it stop me on Monday? Maybe. I would just have to take my chances. I had needed to tell Nikki my plans. I still wanted more help from her.

As I waited on the platform at Slough my phone rang in my pocket.

‘Hello,’ I said.

‘What does it take to get you to do as you’re told?’ said the whispering voice.

‘More than you could ever know,’ I said, and hung up.

What he probably didn’t realize was how frightened I had been at what he might do. In fact, I still was.

I called Eleanor.

‘Are you free from now on for the night?’ I asked.

‘All weekend,’ she said happily.

‘Good,’ I said. ‘Please will you pack a bag now. Put everything from your room that you absolutely couldn’t bear to lose in your car and go to Newbury station and wait for me there.’

‘Geoffrey,’she sounded worried. ‘You’re frightening me again.’

‘Eleanor, please,’ I said. ‘Do it now and quickly. Get away from the hospital and the house and then call me.’ I was thinking fast. ‘Are you in your room or in the hospital?’

‘In my room,’ she said.

‘Is there anyone else with you?’

‘No. But there are still a few in the hospital.’

‘Call them,’ I said. ‘Get as many as you can to come over to the house and be with you while you pack. Ask someone to get your car to the door and then go. Do it. Go now.’

‘Right,’ she said. ‘I’m on my way.’ The urgency of my voice had clearly cut through her reservations.

‘And make sure you’re not followed,’ I said. ‘Go round roundabouts twice and stop often to see if anyone stops behind you.’

‘Right,’ she said again.

‘I’ll be at Newbury in forty-five minutes,’ I said. ‘Try and keep on the move until then and don’t take lonely lanes. Main roads only.’

‘OK,’ she said. ‘I get the message.’

Good girl, I thought.

I sat restlessly on the train until Eleanor called to say she was safely away from Lambourn and she was now on the M4, travelling eastwards between junctions fourteen and thirteen.

‘Is anyone following you?’ I asked her.

‘Not that I can see,’ she said.

‘Good,’ I said. ‘I’ll see you at Newbury station.’

‘Right,’ she said. ‘There are two exits at Newbury. Come out of the station on the same side as the platform you get off the train. I’ll be there.’

She pulled up outside the red-brick station building as I struggled through the narrow doorway with my suitcase and the crutches. I tossed the suitcase onto the back seat of her car and climbed into the passenger seat. Eleanor leaned over and gave me a kiss.

‘Where to?’ she said, driving away.

‘Oxford,’ I said.

One of the good things about having a room in an ex-prison was that it was just as difficult to break into as it had once been to break out of. My room at the hotel was as safe a place as I could think of to spend the weekend, especially as the cell-door locks were now controlled by the person on the inside.

I made Eleanor drive twice round the roundabout where the A34 crosses the M4 but, if there was someone tailing us, I couldn’t see them.

‘Do you really think that someone would have come to Lambourn looking for me?’ asked Eleanor.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I do. I think these people will stop at nothing. It’s no longer about Steve Mitchell any more, it’s to do with them not getting convicted for the murder of Scot Barlow. Once you’ve killed one person, it’s much easier to kill again.’

I’d once been assured by one cold-bloodied client, following his well-deserved conviction for a string of murders, that, after the first couple, it had been as easy as stepping on a spider.

For the rest of the journey Eleanor spent almost as much time looking in the rear-view mirror as she did watching the road in front, but we made it to the hotel safely without hitting anything, and also without seeing anyone tailing us.

As we pulled up at the hotel entrance, Eleanor’s phone rang.

‘Hello,’ she said, pushing the button. She listened for a few moments. ‘Suzie, hold on a minute.’ She put her hand over the microphone and turned to me. ‘It’s Suzie, one of the other vets at the hospital. Seems a young man has turned up there asking for me, says he’s my younger brother.’

‘And is he?’ I asked her.

‘I’m an only child,’ she said.

‘Does the young man know that Suzie is making this call?’ I asked.

Eleanor spoke into the phone, asked the question and listened for a moment.

‘No,’ she said. ‘The young man has talked his way up into my room and is waiting there. Suzie is downstairs.’

‘Let me talk to her,’ I said.

Eleanor spoke again into the phone and then handed it to me. I tossed my own phone at Eleanor. ‘Call the police,’ I said to her. ‘Tell them there’s an intruder in the house there with a girl on her own.’ That should bring them coming with the sirens blazing.

‘Suzie,’ I said into Eleanor’s phone. ‘This is Geoffrey Mason, I’m a friend of Eleanor’s.’

‘I know,’ she said, laughing. ‘She’s talked of nothing else for weeks.’

‘Are you there on your own?’ I asked her, cutting off her laughter.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Except for him upstairs. The others have gone down the pub, but I didn’t feel up to it.’

‘Suzie, this is a serious situation,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to alarm you too much, but the young man is not Eleanor’s younger brother. She doesn’t have any brothers. And I fear he could be dangerous.’

There was silence from the other end of the line.

I went on. ‘Eleanor is talking to the police now.’

‘Oh God!’ she said shakily.

‘Suzie,’ I said urgently, not wanting her to go into a complete panic. ‘As he’s asked for Eleanor, go and tell him that she’s gone to stay with her boyfriend in London. He might then go away.’

‘I’m not going up there again,’ she said with real fear in her voice.

‘All right,’ I said calmly. ‘If you can leave the house without him seeing you, then go straight away. Go round to the pub, and stay there with the others.’

‘OK,’ she said rapidly. ‘I’m going now.’

‘Good. But go quickly and quietly,’ I said. ‘Are you talking on a mobile phone?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Then keep talking to me as you leave the house. Do it now.’

I could hear her breathing and also the squeak of a door being opened, and then it slammed shut.

‘Bugger,’ she said to the world in general.

‘Quietly,’ I hissed into the phone, but I don’t think she heard me.

There was the sound of her feet crunching on the gravel as she ran down the path.

‘Oh my God,’ she screamed. ‘He’s coming after me.’

‘Run,’ I said.

I didn’t need to say it. I could hear Suzie running. Then the running stopped and I heard a car door slam.

‘I’m in my car,’ she said breathlessly. ‘But I haven’t got the damn keys.’ She was crying. ‘Help me,’ she shouted down the phone. ‘Oh my God,’ she said, her voice again in rising panic. ‘He’s walking down the path.’

‘Can you lock the doors?’ I said to her.

‘Yes,’ she said. I heard the central locking go click.

‘Good,’ I said. ‘Does the horn work?’

I could hear her bashing at the button but there was no noise.

‘It won’t work,’ she cried, still bashing. It obviously needed the key in the ignition.

‘Where’s Eleanor Clarke?’ I could hear Julian Trent shouting, his voice muffled by the car doors and windows.

‘Go away,’ screamed Suzie. ‘Leave me alone.’

It was like listening to a radio drama – all sound and no pictures. The noise of Trent banging on the windows of the car was plainly audible and I could clearly visualize the scene in my mind’s eye.

‘Go away,’ Suzie screamed at him again. ‘I’ve called the police.’

‘Where’s Eleanor?’ Trent shouted again.

‘With her boyfriend,’ shouted Suzie back at him. ‘In London.’

Well done her, I thought. It went quiet, save for the sound of Suzie’s rapid shallow breathing.

‘Suzie?’ I asked. ‘What’s happening?’

‘He’s run off,’ she said. ‘He’s disappeared round the corner of the hospital. Do you really think he’s gone?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘But stay in the car. We’ve called the police. They are on their way. Stay in the car until they come.’ I hoped that Trent hadn’t disappeared round the corner of the hospital simply to get his trusty baseball bat, so he could smash his way into Suzie’s car.

‘Who the hell was it?’ she asked me.

‘I don’t know,’ I lied. ‘But he definitely wasn’t Eleanor’s brother. I think he may have been someone on the lookout for women.’

‘Oh my God,’ she said again, but without the urgency of before. ‘He might have raped me.’

‘Suzie,’ I said as calmly as possible. ‘Be happy he didn’t. You’re fine. Describe him to the police and they will look after you. Ask them to get the others back from the pub to stay with you.’

‘But I don’t think I want to stay here,’ she said.

‘OK, OK,’ I said. ‘You can do whatever you please.’

By now she had calmed down a lot. Vets were obviously made of stern stuff.

‘The police are here.’ She sounded so relieved.

‘Good,’ I said. ‘Give Eleanor a call later, after you’ve spoken to them.’

‘OK,’ she said. ‘I will.’ She sounded quite normal, almost as if she was now rather enjoying the situation. It must be due to the release of tension, I thought.

I hung up and passed the phone back to Eleanor.

‘Why didn’t you tell her that it was Julian Trent?’ she said, almost accusingly.

‘We don’t absolutely know for certain that it was him, even if we are pretty sure that it was. The police are bound to be in touch with us soon because it was my phone you used to call them, so they’ll have the number, and you must have had to give them your name.’

She nodded.

‘If we want, we can give them Trent’s name then as a possible suspect,’ I said. ‘But I certainly will not be telling them that I think he went there intending to threaten you so that I would purposely lose the Mitchell case.’

‘No,’ she said with conviction. ‘Nor will I.’

Good girl, I thought, again.

Next, I called my father.

‘Hello,’ he said.

‘Hi, Dad,’ I said to him. ‘How are things in sunny Devon?’

‘Boring,’ he said. ‘When can I go home?’

‘Soon,’ I said. ‘I’ll let you know when. But please stay there for a bit longer.’

‘Why?’ he said. ‘Why do I have to stay here?’

I hadn’t explained everything to him about Julian Trent. Perhaps I should have, but I hadn’t wanted to worry him. These days he tended to live in a more gentle world of pottering about in his garden and playing bridge with his neighbours. Baseball-bat wielding maniacs were not his typical concerns.

‘I’ll tell you everything next week,’ I said. ‘In the meantime, can’t you go off on a drive somewhere? Go and visit Dartmoor or something.’

‘I’ve been there before,’ he said unhelpfully. ‘Why would I want to go again?’

I gave up. ‘Just stay in Sidmouth for a few more days,’ I said sharply.

‘Don’t you tell me what to do,’ he said with irritation.

‘Please, Dad,’ I said more gently.

‘You’re a strange boy,’ he said. It was his usual answer for everything.

‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘But please, Dad, stay there. It’s important. Please just do as I ask.’

‘All right,’ he said reluctantly. ‘At least you’re paying.’

Indeed I was, and the Victoria Hotel in Sidmouth wasn’t cheap. I’d had to give them my credit-card details over the phone, and send them a signed fax guaranteeing the full amount.

With the knowledge that Julian Trent had been in Lambourn only fifteen minutes previously, Eleanor and I felt quite relaxed as we made our way into the hotel with the stuff from her car, which was then taken away to the hotel car park.

I closed and locked the room/cell door with us securely on the inside, and felt safe for the first time in hours. Then I called down to the front desk and ordered a bottle of red wine and some glasses. Eleanor and I may need to be locked up in a prison cell for the weekend, but it didn’t mean we couldn’t have a few of life’s little pleasures to while away the time.

When the room-service waiter delivered the wine, we ordered some food as well. I then asked the receptionist to ensure that I wasn’t disturbed and that no calls were put through. ‘Certainly sir,’ she said.

‘So tell me,’ said Eleanor finally. ‘Why do you suddenly think that I am now in danger from Julian Trent when I wasn’t before?’

‘Because since the witness summonses were delivered, he now knows for sure that I won’t do what he wants. I think he would try to use you as a lever rather than as just an implied threat.’

‘And it seems you are right,’ she said. ‘So now what?’

I glanced around our prison-secure room. It had been created out of three old cells knocked together, complete with the high-up barred windows that had been intended to give the prisoners only light rather than a view. Thankfully, a modern bathroom had been added during the conversion so ‘slopping out’ was no longer required.

‘Eleanor,’ I said, turning to look at her face. ‘No one, not even you, has really understood what sort of people we are dealing with here, although I think you might now be beginning to. We are not living here in some television drama where the blood is fake and the characters mostly behave in a fairly decent manner. This is a story of blackmail and murder, where seriously nasty people would as easily kill you as they would a fly.’ She stared at me with wide eyes. ‘But I don’t intend to let them do either.’

‘But how?’ she said.

I told her. Some of it she knew, and some she didn’t. I spoke for more than an hour with her listening intently to what I said.

Only after I stopped did she ask me the big question. ‘Why don’t you just take all this to the police?’ she said.

‘Because I want my day in court,’ I said. And I didn’t want to have to admit that I had been intimidated for so long without saying anything. I valued my career.

I told her what I proposed to do on Monday morning when the trial resumed.

‘Just as long as we are both still alive on Monday morning,’ she said.

Now, for a change, she was frightening me.