Silks

by Dick Francis

  ‘Where to now?’ Bob asked me.

  ‘Hendon,’ I said.

  We picked up George Barnett from outside the Hendon bus station as he had requested. He didn’t want me going near his home, he’d said, in case anyone was watching. He, too, looked all around him as he climbed into the car.

  I introduced him to Bob, and also to Josef.

  ‘Where now?’ asked Bob. I purposely hadn’t told any of them where we were going.

  ‘Weybridge,’ I said to him.

  Josef visibly tensed. He didn’t like it, and the closer we came to Weybridge the more agitated he became.

  ‘Josef,’ I said calmly. ‘All I want is for you to point out where you were told to go and tell the solicitor about approaching the members of the jury in the first Trent trial. We will just drive past. I don’t expect you to go back in there yourself.’

  He mumbled something about wishing he hadn’t come. The long finger of fear extended by Julian Trent and his allies was difficult to ignore. I knew, I’d been trying to do so now for weeks.

  As we went slowly along the High Street Josef sank lower and lower in the seat until he was almost kneeling on the floor of the car.

  ‘There,’ he said breathlessly, pointing above a Chinese takeaway. COULSTON AND BLACK, SOLICITORS AT LAW was painted onto the glass across three of the windows on the first floor.

  Bob stopped the car in a side street and then he helped me out with the crutches. I closed the door and asked Bob to try and ensure that neither of his remaining passengers lost their nerve and ran off while I was away. I also asked him to get Josef out of the car in precisely three minutes and walk him to the corner and stay there until I waved from the window. Then I walked back to the High Street and slowly climbed the stairs to the offices of Coulston and Black, Solicitors at Law.

  A middle-aged woman in a grey skirt and tight maroon jumper was seated at a cream-painted desk in the small reception office.

  ‘Can I help you?’ she said, looking up as I opened the door.

  ‘Is Mr Coulston or Mr Black in, please?’ I asked her.

  ‘I’m afraid they’re both dead,’ she said with a smile.

  ‘Dead?’ I said.

  ‘For many years now,’ she said, still smiling. This was obviously a regular turn of hers, but one that clearly still amused her. ‘Mr Hamilton is the only solicitor we now have in the firm. I am his secretary. Would you like to see him?’

  ‘Yes please,’ I said. ‘I would.’

  ‘Accident, was it?’ she said, indicating towards the crutches. ‘Personal injury case is it?’

  ‘Something like that,’ I replied.

  ‘What name shall I say?’ she asked, standing up and moving as if to go through the door behind her.

  ‘Trent,’ I said boldly. ‘Julian Trent.’

  The effect on her was startling. She went into near collapse and lunged at the door, which opened wide and sent her sprawling onto the floor inside the other room. There I could see a smartly dressed man sitting behind a rather nicer desk than he provided for his secretary.

  ‘Patrick,’ the woman managed to say. ‘This man says he’s Julian Trent.’

  There was a tightening around the eyes but Patrick Hamilton was more in control.

  ‘It’s all right, Audrey,’ said Mr Hamilton. ‘This isn’t Julian Trent. Julian Trent is only in his early twenties.’ He looked from Audrey up to my face ‘Who are you?’ he said. ‘And what do you want from me?’

  ‘Tell me what you know about Julian Trent,’ I said to him, walking across to his desk and sitting down on the chair in front of it.

  ‘Why should I?’ he said.

  ‘Because otherwise,’ I said, ‘I might go straight to the Law Society and report you for aiding and abetting a known offender. I might tell them about your role in getting Julian Trent off an attempted murder conviction.’

  ‘You can’t,’ he said. ‘You don’t have the evidence.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said. ‘There you might be wrong. I assume you’ve heard of Josef Hughes?’

  He went a little pale. I stood up and went to the window. Bob and Josef were both standing on the corner opposite.

  ‘Would you like me to ask him to come up and identify you?’ I said to Hamilton.

  He stood up and looked out of the window. Then he sat down again, heavily, into his chair. I waved at Bob.

  ‘Now, Mr Hamilton,’ I said. ‘What do you know of Julian Trent?’

  In all, I spent forty-five minutes in Patrick Hamilton’s office listening to another sorry tale of petty greed gone wrong. As before, the chance of a quick buck had been the carrot dangled in front of his nose. Just a small thing had been asked for, to start with. Just to collect a statement from someone who would deliver it with no questions asked and to notarize it as a sworn affidavit. Then had come the further demands to attend at the High Court and, if necessary, commit perjury in order to convince the appeal judges as to the truth of the statement. There was no risk, he’d been told by his persuasive visitor. Josef Hughes would never tell anyone, the visitor had guaranteed it. Fortunately for him, he hadn’t needed to testify, so technically he was in the clear. That was, until the next time.

  I showed him the pictures of my house.

  ‘This is what happens to those who stand up and fight,’ I said. ‘Unless we all do it together.’

  I showed him another photo and he seemed to visibly shrink before my eyes. I didn’t need to ask him if the photo was of the visitor. I could tell it was.

  I stood up to go.

  ‘Just one last question,’ I said. ‘Why you?’

  I didn’t really expect an answer, but what he said was very revealing.

  ‘I’ve been the Trent family solicitor for years,’ he said. ‘Drawn up their wills and done the conveyancing of their properties. Michael and Barbara Trent have now moved to Walton-on-Thames, but they lived in Weybridge for years.’

  ‘But your visitor wasn’t Julian Trent’s father?’ I said to him.

  ‘No, it was his godfather.’

  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 pi
cture.

  ‘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.’