Walden of Bermondsey

by Peter Murphy

  ‘No, sir. In fact, I had never seen him before that morning, and I have never seen him since.’

  ‘Do you know a solicitor by the name of Ellis Lamont?’

  Jessop thinks for a moment or two.

  ‘It rings a distant bell, sir. I can’t put a face to the name, but it does seem somewhat familiar.’

  ‘But not one of your regulars?’

  ‘Oh, no, sir. I know all my regulars by name.’

  ‘Yes, I am sure you do. Can you tell the jury how Mr Moffett’s signature came to be on your sign-in sheet?’

  ‘As far as I remember, sir, I was standing outside court one. It was still only about nine-fifteen, nine-thirty at the latest. I’d just put the list up a few minutes before. He came up to me, handed me a business card, and said “Abdul Khan”. I remember that; just the name, “Abdul Khan”. I looked down the list, pointed the case out to him, and he signed the sheet. Simple as that.’

  ‘Did Mr Moffett say anything at all apart from “Abdul Khan”?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Now, you said he handed you a business card?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Look at this, please.’

  Dawn has it in Jessop’s hands in a flash.

  ‘Do you recognise this?’

  ‘Yes, sir. That is the card he gave me.’

  ‘Exhibit three, please, your Honour. I’m sure there is no dispute about it. Does it say: “Ellis Lamont and Co, Solicitors” and does it give an address, telephone number, fax number, and email address?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Is there any other name on the card?’

  ‘There is, sir. Just under the name of the firm it gives the name Wilbraham Moffett.’

  ‘Yes. Just hold that up so that the jury can see, would you, Mr Jessop? You will be able to see it at closer range later, members of the jury.’

  ‘Mr Jessop, how was Mr Moffett dressed when he approached you?’

  ‘He was wearing a dark suit and a tie, sir.’

  ‘Did he look like a solicitor?’

  Susan is on her feet even before Aubrey has finished the question.

  ‘Oh, really, your Honour!’

  A look from me is all it takes.

  ‘I will ask it differently,’ Aubrey concedes, with a grin which acknowledges that he was trying to get away with one. ‘Mr Jessop, given the defendant’s appearance, the fact that he asked you about the case of Abdul Khan, the fact that he gave you a business card for Lamont and Co, and the fact that he signed the sign-in sheet by case number thirty-two, what conclusion, if any, did you reach about Mr Moffett?’

  ‘I assumed he must be Mr Khan’s solicitor,’ Jessop replies.

  ‘Were you present in court when Mr Khan’s case was called on?’

  ‘I’m really not sure, sir. I don’t think so. With such a busy list, I have to keep running in and out of court all the time, checking that I have the defendants and lawyers and witnesses ready to go when they are called on. I can’t keep track of all the cases after they are called on.’

  ‘No, of course. Do you remember seeing Mr Moffett again that morning?’

  ‘Just once, sir. It was just before lunch, I think. I saw Mr Moffett with two police officers, apparently about to leave the building. I learned later that he had been arrested. I didn’t know why at the time. I can’t remember seeing him again, apart from that.’

  ‘Do you remember whether you noticed him sitting in any particular place in the courtroom at any time during the morning?’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. I may have seen him. I just can’t remember.’

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ Aubrey says. ‘Please wait there. There may be some more questions.’

  Susan gets slowly to her feet.

  ‘You assumed that Mr Moffett must be Mr Khan’s solicitor, did you, Mr Jessop?’

  ‘That’s correct, Miss.’

  ‘Because you can spot a solicitor a mile off, right?’

  ‘Well…’

  ‘That’s what you told my learned friend Mr Brooks.’

  ‘Well, yes, I can usually tell… yes.’

  ‘Did Mr Moffett ever tell you that he was a solicitor?’

  Jessop thinks about this for some time.

  ‘Well, he signed the…’

  ‘Please listen carefully to the question, Mr Jessop. Did Mr Moffett ever tell you that he was a solicitor?’

  ‘No, Miss. He just gave me his card.’

  ‘Ah yes, the card,’ Susan says. ‘Do you still have the card in front of you, Mr Jessop? Exhibit three?’

  ‘Yes.’ He holds the card aloft.

  ‘Thank you. Read it over to yourself carefully for me, if you would. Does it anywhere describe Mr Moffett as being a solicitor?’

  Jessop appears to search every inch of the card with his eyes, holding it up, directly in front of his face.

  ‘No, Miss.’

  ‘Thank you. At any time that morning, did you hear Mr Moffett address the District Judge for any purpose at all?’

  Jessop shifts uncomfortably.

  ‘Well, as I said, Miss, I had to be in and out of court …’

  ‘I am not criticising you, Mr Jessop. I understand that you had a busy morning. I am just asking whether you heard Mr Moffett address the District Judge.’

  ‘No, Miss.’

  ‘One last thing. Did Mr Moffett have a briefcase with him?’

  ‘I believe he did, Miss, yes.’

  ‘Thank you. I have nothing further, your Honour.’

  As Jessop leaves court, Carol turns around to face me.

  ‘I think there is a note from the jury, your Honour.’

  She dispatches Dawn to collect the note from juror number seven. It is always a dramatic moment in court as the folded note is brought to the bench, even if it is only to ask for a smoking break. I open it. It reads: ‘Are we going to hear evidence from the District Judge?’ It is a perfectly reasonable question. I had wondered about it myself. I did not see a witness statement from Jungle Jim anywhere in the file, and Aubrey did not advertise him as a witness in his opening – both fairly clear indicators that at least at present, the answer to the jury’s question is no. It seems a strange omission. But it is a question for the prosecution, not for me, so I really need to hear from Aubrey before going any further.

  ‘Members of the jury, why don’t you take a short break for coffee?’ I suggest, ‘and I will discuss your note with counsel.’

  The jury having left court, I read the note, and Aubrey stands silent for some time, as if in meditation.

  ‘Your Honour,’ he replies eventually. ‘I may need some time to consider how to respond to that question.’

  ‘I’m not sure why, Mr Brooks,’ I say. ‘I am sure the prosecution must have given some thought to this. It does seem rather a basic question.’

  Susan is grinning wickedly at Aubrey.

  ‘Your Honour, I want to put this as diplomatically as I can,’ Aubrey says. ‘We are dealing with Ju… with Mr Tooley.’

  The light begins to dawn. Jungle Jim is acting up, not cooperating. Perhaps he has gone off his malaria meds.

  ‘Yes, I see,’ I reply. I consult with Carol. We have a sentence to do at some point which may well take the rest of the morning. I can give Aubrey time without any real problem. I release the trial of Mr Moffett until two o’clock.

  The sentence is of one Josh Gavel, a forty-year old with a shaved head wearing green combat trousers and black army boots. He has pleaded guilty to having two dogs dangerously out of control in a public place. I have photographs of both dogs, which rejoice in the names of ‘Beast’ and ‘Mangler’ and look ferocious. The veterinary expert who examined them confirms this in his report, saying that both animals tried to bite him during his examination. One is a Staff, the other some American breed,
any example of which is prohibited in this country, whether individually ferocious or not. Gavel was in charge of them on a walkway on the south bank of the River, near HMS Belfast, where he judged it would be safe to let them off their leashes. They took advantage of this to savage someone’s King Charles Spaniel within an inch of its life before being restrained.

  Chummy is accompanied by an entourage of three young women with spiked hair in gothic dress, who sit sullenly in the public gallery. After listening to a long opening from the prosecution, and an impassioned plea from the defence, I give him a suspended sentence with unpaid work; order him to pay compensation to the owner of the King Charles; order Beast and Mangler to be destroyed; order Chummy to pay costs; and disqualify him from owning a dog for five years. I’m half expecting it to kick off. This is the only form of capital punishment we still have in our courts, and Chummy and friends don’t look like the sort to take the death sentence without some form of protest. I’m grateful we are not in court three. But in fact, Chummy collapses in the dock in floods of tears, and has to be comforted by the matronly dock officer. His entourage seem embarrassed to witness this, and stalk quickly out of court, as if disowning him publicly as the pathetic loser he obviously is.

  And so to lunch, an oasis of calm in a desert of chaos.

  There is a conservative culinary mood in the mess today. Apparently, yesterday’s dish of the day, described as paella, was almost too terrible to describe. Because paella is, to say the least, exotic by the standards of the Bermondsey judicial mess, everyone voted to try it. It was unanimously condemned. Marjorie says she felt sick for the rest of the day, and even Hubert, who alone among us is generally tolerant of the dish of the day, found it too much. I, of course, was spared because of my meeting with the Grey Smoothies, and the general feeling is that I have dodged a bullet. The kitchen have officially blamed the paella on a Spanish assistant cook, who made it to celebrate her last day at court before returning to Madrid, presumably to poison her own countrymen rather than ours. Legless has opted for the cheese salad, which he is eying suspiciously. Marjorie has a dish from home, which looks like bean sprouts in soy sauce in a Tupperware container. Hubert is starting on a baked potato with baked beans. I have brought in a ham and cheese bap from Jeanie and Elsie.

  ‘So, what happened with the Grey Smoothies?’ Legless asks. Of course, I haven’t had the chance to tell him about it.

  ‘I’m afraid it was the usual nonsense,’ I reply. ‘They don’t see a business case.’

  Marjorie is outraged.

  ‘What’s it got to do with a business case?’ she demands. ‘Court three is downright dangerous.’

  ‘We don’t have any statistics to back up our position,’ I reply.

  ‘But Legless had that shoplifter chap who was always trying to escape,’ she insists.

  ‘Yes I know, but he didn’t succeed in escaping, and more importantly, he didn’t kill or maim anyone. That’s the kind of statistic they say they need.’

  ‘Perhaps we could offer some defendant a reduced sentence to fake an escape,’ Legless suggests bitterly. ‘We could get some fake blood and ask one of the ushers to feign an injury.’

  ‘If we had supplies of yesterday’s paella,’ Marjorie says, ‘we could fake an environmental disaster. Every defendant in the building could escape. Can you have someone extradited from Spain for ABH?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘It’s not completely hopeless. They did say they would look at it again.’

  ‘Is that like the cheque being in the post?’ Legless asks sadly.

  ‘Something like that,’ I reply.

  There is a depressed silence for some time. Then Hubert brightens up.

  ‘I hear you’re trying a chap for impersonating a solicitor,’ he says.

  ‘Yes,’ I reply, glad to change the subject. ‘It seems a strong case, but the jury has sent a note asking whether the prosecution is going to call the District Judge.’

  ‘Who is it?’ Legless asks.

  ‘Jungle Jim.’

  There is loud laughter, good to hear.

  ‘Well, of course, they wouldn’t call Jungle Jim, would they?’ Legless asks. ‘I wouldn’t if I were prosecuting. Not unless I was desperate. God only knows what he might come out with.’

  ‘I know,’ I say, ‘but I’m not sure what else they have. The actual charge is exercising the right of audience, but the only witness they’ve called so far, the usher, didn’t know whether Chummy had opened his mouth in court or not. The legal adviser suggests in her statement that he gave his name, but she’s not very clear about anything else.’

  ‘Was it just the one occasion?’ Hubert asks.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, that’s not very serious, is it?’

  ‘Not particularly, but to hear Aubrey Brooks open it to the jury, you would think the whole system of criminal justice was under attack.’

  ‘Aubrey is such a poseur,’ Legless says.

  ‘He’s got a point, though,’ Marjorie responds. ‘You can’t just have every Tom, Dick and Harry traipsing around the courts pretending to be lawyers, can you?’

  ‘Why not?’ Legless grins. ‘It happens here all the time.’

  ‘There was a chap at the old Marlborough Street Magistrates Court who got away with it for two years,’ Hubert says.

  ‘What?’ I say.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Hubert replies. ‘I forget the chap’s name, but he used to appear in front of the regular Stipendiary Magistrate – that was in the days when they were still called “Stipes” instead of all this modern nonsense about District Judges. Roddy Coverdale was the Stipe. Marvellous chap. It was a real treat to see him with all the drunks and ladies of the night at Christmas. They had an arrangement with him, the ones who were down on their luck and had nowhere to go. They would put a brick through the window of some shop or other, they would come before him on Christmas Eve, and Roddy would put them inside for fourteen days, so they got a warm bed and a bit of Christmas dinner to tide them over. You wouldn’t get one of these new-fangled District Judges doing that, would you? He knew them all by their first names, did Roddy. Did your heart good to see him at work. I used to go down to Marlborough Street on Christmas Eve if I was free, just to watch him.’

  ‘But what about the solicitor?’ Marjorie asks.

  ‘What? Oh, yes. Well, I heard about that from Roddy at dinner at the Garrick one evening. This chap got away with it for two years or more. He used to turn up beautifully dressed, immaculate dark suit and tie, perfect manners. He seemed to know the law, and Roddy says he was always very persuasive. Roddy thought he was better than most of the real solicitors who appeared before him.’

  ‘So how was he found out?’ Marjorie asks.

  ‘If I remember rightly,’ Hubert replies, ‘he didn’t turn up one day for an adjourned hearing for one of his clients. It turned out later that he intended to be there, but he wasn’t feeling very well. So Roddy asked the defendant who his solicitor was, and wanted a phone number, and the man didn’t have one, of course, so the whole thing came to light. The strange thing was that, as far as Roddy could discover, he never charged his clients a penny. Apparently, he just enjoyed being in court.’

  ‘How long did he get?’ Legless asks.

  Hubert seems surprised.

  ‘Oh, Roddy didn’t have him prosecuted,’ he replies as if it were the most obvious proposition in the world.

  ‘What?’

  ‘No, of course not. Well, he didn’t do any harm to anyone, did he? He probably saved the legal aid fund a small fortune over a year or two. No, Roddy gave him a fiver out of the poor box and sent him on his way, told him he was going to check with all the other courts in the area to make sure he wasn’t trying it on somewhere else. He did confiscate his tie, of course.’

  We are gazing at Hubert in wonder.

  ‘The chap used to wear an
Army and Navy Club tie,’ Hubert explains. ‘The Army and Navy wasn’t Roddy’s club, of course. He was a Garrick man through and through. But he was a stickler for protocol; he couldn’t have Chummy running round in a club tie when he wasn’t a member, even if it wasn’t Roddy’s club.’

  To my surprise, I find myself feeling some sympathy with Roddy Coverdale.

  ‘I suppose one could take the view that if a defendant doesn’t have a solicitor, an impersonator will have to do,’ Marjorie laughs.

  ‘I suppose so,’ I say. ‘At least, until the real thing comes along.’

  * * *

  Tuesday afternoon

  Aubrey is not ready yet to reveal whether Jungle Jim will be going into the witness box, and at my invitation he tells the jury this when we resume at two o’clock. The jury look, not annoyed exactly, but exasperated. In his absence, at least for now, Aubrey calls the legal adviser to the magistrates, Nadia Hepple, a precise, competent woman in her late thirties, dressed in black as she would appear in her own court.

  ‘Mrs Hepple, could you just help the jury to understand what your function is as a legal adviser?’

  ‘Yes, of course. As the title suggests, my main job is to ensure that the magistrates understand the law, and to answer any questions they may have about the law, court procedure, evidence, and so on.’

  ‘Would I be right in thinking that your job is somewhat easier when you are sitting with a legally qualified District Judge rather than a bench of lay magistrates?’

  ‘Usually,’ she smiles, ‘though not invariably.’

  This produces a chuckle around the courtroom. Mrs Hepple is charming as well as competent, and I see the jury warming to her.

  ‘Now, is it right,’ Aubrey continues, ‘there is no dispute, that on the morning of the seventh of May last year you were sitting in court one with District Judge Tooley?’

  ‘That is correct.’

  ‘What kind of list did you have that morning?’

  ‘As I recall, it was a long list of bits and pieces, overnight charges like drunk and disorderly, a few bail applications, then a list, road traffic mostly if I remember rightly. On mornings like that my job is really court management, to assist the District Judge in getting through everything as efficiently as he can.’