by HRF Keating
‘No.’
‘No? You have no idea?’
‘Can’t …’
Then, slowly seeping in, a deeper torpor.
Harriet leant even nearer.
‘What can’t you, Mr Roughouse? Try to tell me. We must stop this individual, or whoever may be behind him. You could be in danger again. Please.’
‘Don’t … think … can.’
‘Why not, Mr Roughouse?’ Harriet was unable to keep anxiety out of her voice. ‘Is it that you simply don’t know? Or …? Is there some reason why you feel you can’t tell me, can’t tell anyone?’
Out of the corner of her eye she saw the nurse at the foot of the big bed peer forward as, once more, the head on the starched pillow began to twist and turn, almost feverishly now.
‘Please, Mr Roughouse. Please, it’s vitally important.’
A muttered word — or was it? — from the exhausted lips below her.
Something. Something almost impossible to make out.
‘Mr Roughouse, what is it you’re trying to say?’
‘Loyal …’
The blood-webbed blue eyes closed. Shutters now all but down. And, in a moment, staying down.
Harriet looked across to the nurse.
‘I think you should leave now.’
Object to that? Object to a too easily imposed edict?
No. Right’s on her side.
She pushed herself up off the little chair.
One last look at the paper-dull face half-concealed by the heavy bandages.
No, plainly if he’s to speak again, it’ll have to be later. Perhaps hours and hours, even more than a day, later. Plainly, the doctors, if not dragon Fishlock, were too optimistic in allowing me in here.
But what was that word, that half-word, that he murmured? Loyal? But loyal to what? And it might have been something else, anything else. Loyal, royal, spoil, boil. Boil? But it could have been anything.
Poor bugger, she thought as the nurse softly closed the door behind her.
Chapter Ten
Back in her office, Harriet called Charity Nyambura and gave her as reassuring a report as she could. Then, swinging this way and that in her desk chair, she went over and over every last syllable Roughouse had uttered, had barely uttered, every least movement of his bandaged head. But pound away as she would, nothing came to light. Nothing that clearly said anything at all. Loyal, royal, spoil?
She took her Policy File from its drawer and simply recorded the facts. She drew no conclusions, suggested to herself no new way forward. Impasse.
File snapped shut, drawer pushed home and locked, she found her mind was scratching away at the little group of Zealots that Robert Roughouse had told Charity he belonged to, together presumably with Matthew Jessop. Was that dab hand as an organiser, Tigger Drummond, a member? And, yes, up-and-coming surgeon, Jackson Edgeworth? What was that name Charity had given the group? Yup, the Cobbles. Could the Cobbles — did she really have that name right? — be behind Roughouse being targeted by that purple egg bomb?
For what it is, this is perhaps the best lead I have.
Then she remembered someone else Charity had mentioned. A judge who was — yes — president of all the Zealots. Cotmore. That had been the name. Now could I learn something from him? If he’s president of the whole society of the Zealots, with any luck he’ll know at least something about the secretive Cobbles. If that’s really the name? Charity, after all Kenyan by birth, could have misheard.
She turned to her computer, which produced quite quickly a magic answer. A London phone number for Mr Justice Phillip Cotmore.
*
But when Harriet kept her appointment with Mr Justice Cotmore, at precisely eleven next morning, she found him in a state of excessive confusion. He had given her the appointment over the phone himself, and she had expected from the plummy, pondering voice she had listened to that she would be received with some ceremony. Instead when she was shown into the study at his Knightsbridge house she found him looming bulkily over a papers-strewn desk. His big, flabby face, glistening with perspiration, had on it a look of something like despair.
‘Oh, Superintendent, it’s you,’ he said, almost moaning as with a wide, hectic gesture he indicated the chair in front of the desk. ‘I am afraid you have caught me at a very bad moment. You — You see — well, this is the point. Just this morning when the post came, disgracefully late as usual nowadays … really, I cannot think why the Post Office, which is after all charged with delivering the Royal Mail, Her Majesty’s mail, cannot carry out its duty as, in my young days and in my father’s before me, it invariably did. One got one’s post at breakfast. That was how — oh, but, dear me, I have now been led somewhat astray. You must forgive me.’
Tremendous emphasis on the must.
Harriet was driven to think why actually must I forgive him? Shouldn’t he have simply asked for my forgiveness, if he felt it was needed? But, no, out comes the formula, from high to low. You must: it’s a law.
‘You seem to be in some complicated trouble,’ she said to him. ‘Would you like me to come back in, say, an hour?’
The judge puffed out a billowing sigh, somewhere between exasperation and politeness, if veering strongly towards the former.
‘No, no,’ he said. ‘I gave you an appointment for this time, and I note that you have kept it to the minute. The least I can do is to give you my fullest attention.’
Then, with another barely suppressed groan, he proceeded to do the complete opposite.
‘It’s this letter. As you can see, a formal document. Yes, you could say that. A formal document. It requests me to provide the name by which, when I attend the ceremony of the conferring of my knighthood, I wish to be called by. You will know, of course, that I have recently been elevated to the High Court. And it is the rule that one is given a knighthood on that occasion. But this is the trouble. You see, I am never known other than by the second name I was given at my christening, Phillip. I am known as that to everybody. Everybody, except my late parents, I suppose. You see, I was in point of fact christened Cecil, and as a boy at home I was called by that name. Yes, Cecil.’
Will this ever end, Harriet asked herself. But it was clear that an ending, if it was to come at all, would not be reached for some time.
Can I crudely butt in, point out that I am here on police business? No. There are things one can do, and things one can’t. Or not at least to someone just made a High Court Judge.
‘But, and this is my difficulty, you understand,’ the judge went relentlessly on, ‘when I went up to Cambridge I thought — well, I thought that Cecil was not perhaps the sort of name to ensure one a certain amount of friendship. Naturally, at school I was known simply as Cotmore. Cotmore. But at Cambridge … Of course, I was very young then. Comparatively young, and even a little unsure of myself. So … Very well, I elected to be called there by one of my other names, and I chose Phillip. I even put it about that I should be known as Phil. Phil. But now, you see, I have had this request for my name, the name that is to appear on the official record, that will be pronounced by Her Majesty herself when she pleases to dub me. And I cannot decide what name I ought to set down. I believe, if I wished, I could be known as Sir Phillip Cotmore. But, after all, my formal name is Cecil. Cecil. So should I be Sir Cecil Cotmore? You know, I really feel that is my duty. But then there are all the people who have known me as Phillip … I indicated, you know, when I had reached a certain eminence in society, when I became a judge in fact, that Phil was perhaps not altogether suitable, but —’
And now Harriet’s patience did come to an end.
‘Sir Cecil,’ she said firmly. ‘Might I say that name seems altogether right for you? Speaking, of course, as a mere observer.’
The judge subsided into the wide, padded chair behind his desk.
‘It seems extraordinary,’ he said slowly, ‘that two or three words from — how shall I put it? — a chance visitor should decide me in what is, after all, a matter
of some importance. But — But it seems that they have. Thank you.’
‘I’m glad to have been of help,’ Harriet replied, conscious she was adopting much the same weighty tone, if underneath she was wickedly pleased to be able at last to get the man to talk about what she wanted to discover. Did he, possibly, know anything of that close-knit group going by the unlikely name of the Cobbles?
But jump in at once, or the old boy will be off again.
‘It’s good of you to give me a few minutes of your time,’ she said hastily. ‘As I told you on the telephone, I am investigating the attack that took place in Gralethorpe last Tuesday on Mr Robert Roughouse.’
‘Yes, yes. A disgraceful business. Roughouse is a prominent member of the Zealots, that is former pupils of the Zeal School, which doubtless you know of, and —’
‘Yes, I do know about the Zealots,’ Harriet darted in before the judicial windbag could get fully airborne. ‘You are their president, I believe.’
‘I have that honour. Indeed, I am wearing a Zealots tie at this moment, as I usually do. As I usually do.’
Harriet, scarcely giving the judge’s earth-red and white tie a glance, bounced in again.
‘It’s in connection with the Zealots that I have come to see you, sir,’ she said. ‘It appears that a small number of Mr Roughouse’s fellow Zealots may be at least tangentially involved, and —’
‘Impossible. Impossible, my dear lady. You must have acquired a very wrong impression of the Zealots to have thought such a thing. I assure you that any boy who has had the unique experience of having been educated at the Zeal School has been imbued with the highest standards of probity and, more, of mutual loyalty. We pride ourselves on that. Pride ourselves.’
OK, Harriet said to herself, it was a bit of a stretch to say that some Zealots were somehow linked to the attack on Roughouse. But I can’t help suspecting that the three of them who spirited him away to the Masterton in all that hurry were not acting purely in the interests of his recovery. Matthew Jessop, after all, never really provided a pertinent reason for the way he was taken away in such an excessive hurry.
‘I am sure you are right, sir, to take pride in that education, that sense of loyalty,’ she quickly slipped in. ‘I have been talking to Mr Matthew Jessop, who was with Robert Roughouse when he was so nearly killed on Tuesday, and he told me a good deal about the Zealots. In fact — I don’t know if you are aware of this — it was Mr Jessop who, with admirable loyalty, immediately arranged for Mr Roughouse to be transferred from St Oswald’s, the Birchester hospital, to a private clinic.’
She watched the flabby red face intently.
‘No, no, I am not, as a matter of fact, aware that Robert has been placed in a private clinic. But I have no doubt that his fellow Zealots would have been acting altogether in his best interests. Loyalty, that is our keynote and mainstay.’
Abruptly he placed a large red forefinger on a dark grey paper-covered book among the chaotic strew of documents on his desk.
‘The Register of every Zealot who has ever passed through the school,’ he said. ‘And I think I can safely assure you that not one —’
The booming voice abruptly faded away.
‘I can assure you, Superintendent,’ he resumed in a moment, ‘I can assure you there is scarcely a person named here with whom I would not trust my life.’
He favoured Harriet with a look of deep-hued sincerity. Only to allow it once more to waver.
‘No, I must tell you the absolute truth. There have never been within the Zealots any of those congeries and cabals one reads of in other societies, even in the most respectable of organisations, the unpleasant consequence of jealousies and distrust. No. But, it is true, there may be one or two names in this register in whose impeccable loyalty one could not put the fullest trust. But those names are from the earliest days of the Zeal, men now long in their graves. No, there is no one — well, yes … perhaps there is one — er — renegade in the list, still active in the world. Indeed, active in the legal profession, I am sorry to say.’
Harriet knew she ought not perhaps to pursue this. The judge had brought himself to make an admission which it must have pained him to utter. It would be kindest to pass over it. But she thought she would very much like to have that name in her head, if only learning it was yielding to an imp of malice. Seldom was she able to resist poking a pin into any passing balloon.
‘And who would that be, Sir Cecil?’ she asked sharply.
‘Ah, no, no, dear lady. Not Sir Cecil. You must remember I am not Sir Cecil until Her Majesty has deigned to dub me such. One must adhere to protocol, you know.’
Harriet decided to give that no further acknowledgement, but to put her more sneaky question once more.
‘You were about to tell me who the renegade gentleman is?’
‘Yes. Well, I suppose it is hardly a matter of slander, under its legal definition, to tell you that. Doing so will, in fact, simply reinforce the claim I have made, nothing more. He is a Bengali gentleman. A Mr Kailash Gokhale.’
Harriet did her best not to let manifest itself the sudden dazzling view she had had of a way to bypass the convoluted, loyalty-obfuscated path through the inflated ego in front of her.
‘Thank you, sir, for that extremely honest answer,’ she said as impressively as she could. ‘With what you have told me altogether about the Zealots, I think I can assure you now that any doubts I had about Mr Roughouse’s friends from his schooldays have firmly been put to rest. Thank you.’
As she made this little speech, she reached forward and slid her neat, black handbag down to the floor under her chair. Then she got to her feet.
‘Allow me to show you out,’ her host said. ‘And may I thank you again for helping me to resolve the little difficulty brought to me by my post today. Sir Cecil, it shall be. Yes, Sir Cecil.’
So, when they had almost reached the heavy front door, Harriet produced her prepared gasp of dismay.
‘Oh, good gracious. I must have left my handbag behind. Yes, I remember I put it underneath my chair. How silly of me.’
And, a skittish schoolgirl, she ran rapidly back into the judicial study.
One second to snatch up from the desk the slim grey paper-covered Zeal School Register. Two or three seconds to flip expertly through the pages to the big letter for Section G, mercifully not a long one. And there it was. Gokhale, Kailash Q.C., 62 New Square, Lincoln’s Inn. Followed by two telephone numbers, Home and Office and two e-mail addresses.
Chapter Eleven
Harriet knew at once who, at her ring on the bell, had opened the outer door of Kailash Gokhale’s Lincoln’s Inn chambers. Despite the informality of jeans and a fine-knit roll-neck green pullover, she had no doubt the plumply dapper man there was the Bengali QC himself.
‘Detective Superintendent Martens?’ he asked, brown eyes brightly glowing.
‘Mr Gokhale, it’s very good of you to see me at such short notice.’
‘Oh, not good at all. I am interested, curious. But come in, come in. You find me alone in these gloomily impressive quarters, the only person in the whole establishment, from the head of chambers to the tea lady, who delights in working on a Saturday. All of them, except perhaps Mrs Harris who presides over the tea trolley, hidebound by that never promulgated rule which says Saturdays and Sundays are what my Catholic friends might call Holidays of Obligation. I am the sole heretic, I fear.’
Harriet during all this had spotted to her left a solid oak door and she now turned towards it.
‘Ah, no, no,’ Kailash Gokhale said. ‘No, that leads to the Clerk’s Room and the waiting room. My room is on the second floor, something of a climb I’m afraid. We have yet to acknowledge the lift as a means of access. But let me lead the way.’
Harriet saw now that in the darkness beyond there was a flight of bare stone stairs.
‘And you’re happy for me to interrupt the labours you undertake on this sacred day?’ she asked as she followed the plump QC.
Harriet obediently sat in front of the large desk, which she saw had on it just a single sheet of thick, words-weighty paper.
Hopping round to the other side, the little barrister rubbed his hands briskly together.
‘Yes, yes,’ he went happily chattering on. ‘My dear lady, you come as a breath of fresh air into this lawyers’ world that I, and countless others, have allowed ourselves to be sucked into. A swamp. Yes, a veritable swamp. The law, you know, becomes so impregnated in every corner of one’s mind from the earliest years of one’s studies that one finds it eventually impossible to think in any other terms. One comes to believe the only way the world’s problems can be dealt with, and indeed one’s own too, is by following the law’s laid-down precepts. Many of them necessary if society is to be carried on, though not perhaps all. Who was it who said — it must have been in the early years of the twentieth century — All history is an effort to find clear rules? I don’t recall. But, alas, yes, I do regularly recall those somewhat grandiose, and only half-accurate, words.’
Harriet smiled. She couldn’t help it.
‘No, no, it’s perfectly true about all us lawyers being held fast in that swamp,’ the chubby QC raced on. ‘No, wait, let me illustrate with a little anecdote, something that happened to me only last week.’
‘Please do.’
‘Very well. Walking along to my club on my way to lunch, I encountered an old college contemporary, a well-established solicitor, and since we were just outside the club I invited him to join me. But, just at that moment, a van came driving by quite close to the curb. And, as there happened to be a deepish puddle right beside us — we had been having a lot of rain, remember — it sent up a great swish of dirty water. All over the trousers of my friend, whom for the purposes of this account we shall call Freddy, which happens to be his real name. Very good, what would you have done in those circumstances? Emitted a most unladylike expression, I venture to say, and glared at the retreating vehicle.’
