Silks

by Dick Francis

  Eventually the intensity of the pain in my groin diminished, only to be replaced by a dull ache from the backs of my thighs where the baseball bat had first caught me. The shaking also gradually abated and I was able to roll over onto my knees. It didn’t seem to help much but at least I was looking at the world the right way up. My computer was well beyond repair and all my previously neatly ordered court papers were blowing along the road in the rain, hiding beneath parked cars and flying up into the branches of the leafless trees. My gown and wig, which had also beenin the box, were soaking up the water from another puddle. But I didn’t really care. It was as much as I could manage to stand approximately upright and stagger the few yards to the door of my chambers. And still nobody appeared.

  I leaned up against the board with all the barristers’ names painted on it and looked at the blue front door. I couldn’t remember the code for the security lock. I had worked in these chambers for almost thirteen years and the code hadn’t been changed once in all that time, but still I couldn’t recall it now. So I pushed the bell and was rewarded with Arthur’s friendly voice from a small speaker.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Geoffrey,’ I croaked. ‘Geoffrey Mason. Can you come and help?’

  ‘Mr Mason?’ Arthur asked back through the speaker. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  Almost immediately the door opened and Arthur, my rather tardy Good Samaritan, at last came to my rescue, half carrying me through the hallway into the clerks’ room. He pulled up a desk chair and I gratefully sat down, but carefully so as not to further inflame the problems below.

  I must have been quite a sight. I was soaked through and both the knees of my pinstripe suit were torn where I had landed on the rough tarmac. My once starched white shirt clung like a wet rag to my chest and my hair dripped rainwater down my forehead. It is surprising how quickly one becomes wet from lying in persistent rain.

  ‘Goodness gracious,’ said Arthur. ‘What on earth happened to you?’

  I hadn’t expected Arthur to be a ‘goodness gracious’ sort of chap, but he did spend his working life in close proximity to barristers who acted like they lived in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries, and some of it must have rubbed off.

  ‘I was mugged,’ I said.

  ‘Where?’ he asked.

  ‘Outside,’ I said. ‘My stuff is still on the road.’

  Arthur turned and rushed outside.

  ‘Be careful,’ I shouted after him, but I didn’t really expect Julian Trent still to be there. It was me he had been after, not my clerk.

  Arthur returned with my gown in one hand and my wig in the other, both dripping onto the light green carpet. He had just a few of my sopping papers stuck under his arm, and I suspected that most of the others had flown with the wind.

  ‘Is that your computer?’ he asked, nodding his head towards the door.

  ‘What’s left of it,’ I agreed.

  ‘Funny,’ he said. ‘Muggers normally steal things, not break them. Is anything missing?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so,’ I said patting myself down. I could feel both my wallet and my mobile in the soggy pockets of my jacket.

  ‘I’m calling the police,’ said Arthur, moving round the desk and lifting the phone. ‘Do you need an ambulance?’ he asked me.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘But a change of clothes would be good.’

  Arthur spoke to the police, who promised to send someone round as soon as possible, though it might be some time.

  While we waited I changed out of my sodden clothes into a track suit that Arthur found in one of my colleagues’ rooms, and then I tried to make some sort of order from the saturated paperwork. After a second attempt, Arthur had recovered about half of what had been in the box and I spent some time laying the sheets out all over my room to dry. I couldn’t reprint them as nearly all the files had only been on my computer.

  I thought that calling the police would be a waste of time and so it turned out. Two uniformed constables arrived about forty minutes after the call and they took a statement from me while I sat in the clerks’ room with Arthur hovering close by.

  ‘Did you see the mugger?’ one of them asked me.

  ‘Not at first,’ I said. ‘He hit me from behind with a baseball bat.’

  ‘How do you know it was a baseball bat?’ he asked.

  ‘I saw it later,’ I said. ‘I assumed it was what he hit me with.’

  ‘Whereabouts did he hit you?’

  ‘On the back of my legs,’ I said.

  They insisted that I show them. Embarrassed, I lowered the track-suit trousers to reveal two rapidly bruising red marks half way up the backs of my thighs. Arthur’s eyes were almost out on stalks.

  ‘Funny place to hit someone,’ said the other policeman.

  ‘It knocked me over,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, it would,’ he agreed. ‘But most muggers would have hit you on the head. Did you get a look at his face?’

  ‘Not really,’ I said. ‘It was dark.’ Why, I thought, had I not told them that it had been Julian Trent who had attacked me? What was I doing? Did I not stand up for justice and right? Tell them, I told myself, tell them the truth.

  ‘Would you know him again?’ the policeman asked.

  ‘I doubt it,’ I heard myself say. Next time, I’ll smash your head, Trent had said. Next time, I’ll cut your balls right off. I had no wish for there to be a next time. ‘It was all a bit of a blur,’ I said. ‘I was looking mostly at the bat.’

  ‘But you were sure it was a man?’ he asked.

  ‘I think so,’ I said.

  ‘Black or white?’ he asked.

  ‘I couldn’t say.’ Even to my ears, it sounded pathetic. I hated myself, again.

  They asked me if I wanted hospital treatment for my injuries but I declined. I’d had bruising worse than this due to an easy fall in a steeplechase, and I had ridden again in the very next race. However, there was a big difference this time. Racing falls were accidents and, although the laws of chance might imply that they were inevitable, the injuries produced were not premeditated, or man made.

  The two policemen clearly thought that I was not a helpful witness and I could sense from their attitude that they, too, thought that the process was a waste of time and that another mugging would go unsolved, just another statistic in the long list of unsolved street crimes in the capital.

  ‘Well, at least you didn’t have anything stolen,’ said one, clearly bringing the interview to a close. He snapped shut his notebook. ‘If you call the station later they’ll give you a crime number. You’ll need one for any insurance claim on your computer.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Thanks. Which station?’

  ‘We’re from Charing Cross,’ said one.

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘I’ll call there.’

  ‘Good,’ said the other, turning for the door.

  And with that, they were gone, no doubt to interview some other victim, on another street.

  ‘You weren’t much help,’ said Arthur, rather accusingly. ‘Are you sure you didn’t see who it was?’

  ‘I’d have told them if I had,’ I said quite sharply, but I wasn’t sure he completely believed me. Arthur knew me too well, I thought, and I hated myself again for deceiving him more than anyone. But I really didn’t want a ‘next time’, and I had been frightened, very frightened indeed, by my confrontation with young Mr Julian Trent. This time, I was alive and not badly damaged. And I intended to keep it that way.

  ∗

  I sat at my desk for a while trying to recover some of my confidence. ‘Be a good little lawyer,’ Trent had said. What had that meant? I wondered. If I really had been a good little lawyer I would have told the police exactly who had attacked me and where to find him. Even now, he would be under arrest and locked up. But for how long? He wouldn’t get any jail time for hitting me once on the back of the legs and smashing my computer. I had no broken bones, not even a cut, no concuss
ion or damaged organs, just a couple of tears in my trousers and a rain-spoilt barrister’s wig. A fine, or maybe some community service, would be all he’d get. And then he’d be free to visit me again for ‘next time’. No thanks. And was he anything to do with the ‘do as you are told’ whispered phone message? I couldn’t imagine so, but why else would he attack me? Something very strange was going on.

  Arthur knocked on my open door and came in, closing it behind him.

  ‘Mr Mason, he said.

  ‘Yes, Arthur,’ I replied.

  ‘May I say something?’ he said.

  ‘Of course, Arthur,’ I replied, not actually wanting him to say anything just at the moment. But there would be no stopping him now, not if his mind was made up.

  ‘I think it is most unlike you to be so vague as you were with those policemen,’ he said, standing full-square in front of my paper-covered desk. ‘Most unlike you indeed.’ He paused briefly. I said nothing. ‘You are the brightest and sharpest junior we have in these chambers and you miss nothing, nothing at all. Do I make myself clear?’

  I was flattered by his comments and I was trying to think what to say back to him when he went on.

  ‘Are you in any trouble?’ he asked.

  ‘No, of course not,’ I said. ‘What sort of trouble do you mean?’

  ‘Any sort of trouble,’ he said. ‘Maybe some woman trouble?’

  Did he think I’d been attacked by a jealous husband?

  ‘No, Arthur, no trouble at all. I promise.’

  ‘You could always come to me if you were,’ he said. ‘I like to think I look after my barristers.’

  ‘Thank you, Arthur,’ I said. ‘I would most definitely tell you if I was in any sort of trouble.’ I looked him straight in the eye and wondered if he knew I was lying.

  He nodded, turned on his heel and walked to the door. As he opened it he turned round. ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘This came for you earlier.’ He walked back to the desk and handed me an A5-sized white envelope with my name printed on the front of it, with By Hand written on the top right-hand corner.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, taking it. ‘Do you know who delivered it?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘It was pushed through the letter box in the front door.’

  He waited but I made no move to open the envelope, and he eventually walked over to the door and went out.

  I sat looking at the envelope for a few moments. I told myself that it was probably a note from a colleague in other chambers about some case or other. But, of course, it wasn’t.

  It contained two items. Asingle piece of white paper folded over and a photograph. It was another message and, this time, it left me in no doubt at all that the whispered telephone calls and Julian Trent’s visit had both been connected.

  Four lines of printed bold capitals ran across the centre of the paper:

  BE A GOOD LITTLE LAWYER,

  TAKE THE STEVE MITCHELL CASE – AND LOSE IT.

  DO AS YOU ARE TOLD

  NEXT TIME, SOMEONE WILL GET BADLY HURT.

  The photograph was of my seventy-eight-year-old father standing outside his home in Northamptonshire.

  CHAPTER 4

  An Englishman’s house is his castle, at least so they say. So I sat in my castle with the drawbridge pulled up and thought about what was happening to me.

  I had decided against my usual walk through Gray’s Inn to the bus stop in High Holborn, the ride on a number 521 to Waterloo and a crowded commuter train to Barnes, followed by the hike across the common. Instead, I had ordered a taxi that had come right to the front door of chambers to collect me, and had then delivered me safe and sound to Ranelagh Avenue, to my home, my castle.

  Now I sat on a bar stool at my kitchen counter and looked again and again at the sheet of white paper. TAKE THE STEVE MITCHELL CASE – AND LOSE IT. From what I had heard from Bruce Lygon there wouldn’t be much trouble in losing the case. All the evidence seemed topoint that way. But why was someone so keen to be sure that it was lost? Was Steve correct when he said he’d been framed?

  DO AS YOU ARE TOLD. Did that just mean that I must take the case and lose it, or were there other things as well that I would be told to do? And how was the attack by Julian Trent connected? Next time, I’ll smash your head, he’d said. Next time, I’ll cut your balls right off. Maybe being beaten up had absolutely nothing to do with Trent’s trial last March. Perhaps it was all to do with Steve Mitchell’s trial in the future.

  But why?

  I had once had a client, a rather unsavoury individual, who had told me that the only thing better than getting away with doing a crime was to get someone else convicted for having done it. That way, he’d explained, the police aren’t even looking any more.

  ‘Don’t you have any conscience about some poor soul doing jail time for something you did?’ I had asked him.

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ he’d said. ‘It makes me laugh. I don’t care about anyone else.’ There really was no such thing as honour amongst thieves.

  Was that what was going on here? Stitch up Steve Mitchell for Scot Barlow’s murder and, hey presto, the crime is solved but the real murderer is safe and well and living in clover.

  I called my father.

  ‘Hello,’ he said in his usual rather formal tone. I could imagine him sitting in front of the television in his bungalow watching the early evening news.

  ‘Hello, Dad,’ I said.

  ‘Ah, Geoff,’ he said. ‘How are things in the Smoke?’

  ‘Fine, thanks. How are things with you?’ It was a ritual. We spoke on the telephone about once a week and, every time, we exchanged these pleasantries. Sadly, these days we had little else to say to one another. We lived in different worlds. We had never been particularly close and he had moved to the village of Kings Sutton, near Banbury, from his native urban Surrey after my mother had died. I had thought that it had been a strange choice but perhaps, unlike me, he had needed to escape his memories.

  ‘Much the same,’ he said.

  ‘Dad,’ I said. ‘I know this is a strange question, but what have you been wearing today?’

  ‘Clothes,’ he said, amused. ‘Same as always. Why?’

  ‘What clothes?’ I asked.

  ‘Why do you need to know?’ he demanded suspiciously. We both knew that I was apt to criticize my father’s rather ageing wardrobe, and he didn’t like it.

  ‘I just do,’ I said. ‘Please.’

  ‘Fawn corduroy trousers and a yellow shirt under a green pullover,’ he said.

  ‘Does the pullover have any holes in it?’ I asked.

  ‘None of your business,’ he said sharply.

  ‘Does it have a hole in the left elbow?’ I persisted.

  ‘Only a small one,’ he said defensively. ‘It’s perfectly all right to wear around the house. Now what is this all about?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said lightly. ‘Forget it. Forget I asked.’

  ‘You’re a strange boy,’ he said. He often said it. I thought he was a strange father, but I kept that to myself.

  ‘I’ll call you on Sunday then,’ I said to him. I often called on Sundays.

  ‘Right. Bye for now then.’ He put down the receiver at his end. He’d never liked talking on the phone and he was habitually eager to finish a conversation as soon as it had started. Today we had been briefer than usual.

  I sat and stared at the photograph in my hand, the photograph that had accompanied the note in the white envelope. It showed my father outside the front door of his bungalow wearing fawn-coloured trousers, a yellow shirt and a green pullover with a small hole clearly visible on the left elbow, the yellow of the shirt beneath contrasting with the dark green of the wool. The photo had to have been taken today. For all his reluctance to buy new clothes, my father could never be accused of wearing dirty ones, and he always put on a clean shirt crisp from the local laundry every morning. I suppose he might have had more than one yellow shirt, but I doubted it.

  But how, I thought, had they, whoeve
r they were, managed to get a photograph of my father so quickly? Julian Trent had been released from custody only on Friday, and Scot Barlow murdered only yesterday. I wondered if the one had been dependent on the other.

  Bruce Lygon still hadn’t called me, so I didn’t even know if Steve Mitchell had yet been charged with murder, but here I was, already being told to make sure he was convicted.

  As if on cue, my telephone rang.

  ‘Hello,’ I said, picking it up.

  ‘Geoffrey?’ said a now familiar voice.

  ‘Bruce,’ I replied. ‘What news?’

  ‘I’m on my way to have dinner with my wife,’ he said. ‘They charged Mitchell with murder at six this evening and he’ll be in court tomorrow at ten.’

  ‘Which court?’ I asked.

  ‘Newbury magistrates,’ he said. ‘He’s sure to be remanded. No provincial magistrate would ever give bail on a murder charge. I’ll apply, of course, but it will have to go before a judge for there to be any chance, and I think it’s most unlikely, considering the cause of death. Very nasty.’

  ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘I agree, but you never know when there is a bit of celebrity factor.’ Under English law the granting of bail was a basic right for all accused and there had to be a good reason for refusing it. In this case the reason given might be that the ferociousness of the attack provided reasonable grounds to believe that the accused might do it again, or that, owing to the seriousness of the charge, he might abscond. Either way, I would bet my year’s pay that Steve Mitchell would find himself locked up on remand the following day.

  ‘Mr Mitchell is very insistent that you should defend him,’ Bruce Lygon went on.

  How ironic, I thought. Did Steve also want me to lose?

  ‘I’m only a junior,’ I said. ‘Someone of Steve Mitchell’s standing would expect a silk.’