Walden of Bermondsey

by Peter Murphy

  ‘I would submit not, your Honour. That doesn’t advance the client’s case at all. If he had addressed the court about the case, even if only to ask for an adjournment, I concede that would be enough. But he didn’t.’

  A memory comes to me, and I decide without any real reflection to offer it as a possibly relevant argument. In two minutes or less, I will regret having done so.

  ‘I remember when I was a pupil in my first six months,’ I say. ‘My pupil-master, who practised mainly in the Family Division, was very able but had a very active social life. It was not at all unusual, when we were in the High Court, for him to have a luncheon appointment, and arrive back at court a few minutes late for the afternoon.’

  This is all perfectly true, by the way. Basil was a delightful man, and could be quite brilliant in court, but he was a man of independent means and had a clear sense of his priorities. In particular, he never allowed his practice to stand in the way of his social life. That is one reason why it was such a brilliant pupillage. I did most of the work of preparing our cases, and as a result I learned an incredible amount – even if my overriding memory of my first six months is of a long period of unending panic. Counsel are looking at me rather strangely.

  ‘The point is,’ I explain, ‘that whenever he was late back, I had to stand up in front of a High Court judge, not to mention opposing counsel, and ask the judge to rise for a few minutes to accommodate him. Fortunately, they were always very nice about it. But in six months, I must have made that application to every judge of the Division. Was I conducting part of the client’s case in court?’

  ‘I think that supports my argument, your Honour,’ Susan smiles, ‘and I would say, no, of course not.’

  She looks at Aubrey, who is also smiling, albeit for a different reason.

  ‘Your Honour, I’m afraid I can’t agree with my learned friend there. As my learned friend herself conceded a moment or two ago, asking for an adjournment is enough. That is conducting a part of the case.’

  ‘All I did was ask the judge to rise for a few minutes,’ I protest. ‘That hardly amounts to asking for an adjournment.’

  No one responds to this plea, and I feel myself going hot and cold.

  ‘I’m sure no possible harm could have come of it, your Honour,’ Aubrey continues soothingly after an awkward silence, ‘and there must be a statute of limitations of some kind after so many years. I see no need for us to remind your Honour of the caution.’

  ‘What it comes to, your Honour,’ Susan says, quickly changing the subject, ‘is that there is no evidence that the defendant conducted any part of Mr Khan’s case. At worst, he may have intended to do so, and taken certain preparatory steps towards doing so, but the quick thinking of the District Judge’ (she gives me a sly grin as she says this) ‘prevented him from carrying out his intention. He has acted stupidly, of course, but he has not committed this offence.’

  She sits down.

  ‘Your Honour,’ Aubrey begins, ‘even accepting my learned friend’s definition of “exercising a right of audience”, your Honour himself made the point earlier. Where a defendant dresses like a solicitor, acts like a solicitor, signs in as a solicitor, positions himself in the solicitors’ row, and tells the court that he is a solicitor when the case is called on, he conducts a part of the case…’

  He is interrupted by the quiet but noticeable ringing of the phone on the clerk’s desk. Carol picks up and answers. Aubrey is continuing to speak, but I am somewhat distracted. Replacing the receiver, she calls quietly to Dawn, who quickly walks the short distance between her chair and Carol. They whisper furiously for some seconds before Dawn throws off her gown, makes a very half-hearted bow in my direction and hurries from court. Aubrey stops now. The phone rings again and Carol confers with someone briefly. She turns to me.

  ‘I’m sorry, judge, but I need you to rise. Now. Stella will meet you in the corridor.’

  ‘Why? What’s happening?’ I ask. ‘I’m in the middle of…’

  ‘Please, Judge. It’s important. I will take care of things here.’

  I have no idea what is going on. I can’t see or hear anything untoward. If there were a fire or a bomb threat, surely Security would have activated the alarms? But Carol is obviously deadly serious. I stand.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, ‘but it appears that I am needed urgently elsewhere. I will be back as soon as I can.’

  As I leave, I hear Carol ordering everyone not to leave court, to stay where they are.

  Stella leads me quickly along the corridor to the judge’s entrance to court three. She holds the door open for me and we enter. It is the most astonishing sight I have ever seen. The judicial chair has been pushed back to the far end of the bench. In the place where the chair should be, two security guards are holding down a man whose arms are handcuffed behind his back. In the well of the court, a dock officer is sitting in a chair, holding a blood-stained handkerchief to his head. Clare, the court clerk working court three today, is doing her best to comfort him. Two barristers are sitting in their places, looking rather shell-shocked. To my immediate right, I see Legless sprawled full length on the floor, fully robed except for his wig, which is lying against the wall at his feet. He seems to be trying to get up, but Dawn, our designated first-aider, is trying to keep him down.

  ‘Bit of bother, Charlie, nothing to worry about,’ he says. ‘All under control now. Police are on the way. They will be here any moment.’

  This announcement seems to irritate the man in handcuffs, who lets loose with a barrage of abuse. There is then a flurry of movement from the security officers, and what looks like a punch or two in the direction of the solar plexus, whereupon the man suddenly quietens down again.

  ‘Would someone please tell me what is going on?’ I ask.

  Clare leaves the dock officer and comes to stand next to me.

  ‘The jury came back with a verdict of guilty a few minutes ago,’ she explains. ‘We excused them and Judge Dunblane started hearing argument about sentence. He said he would order a pre-sentence report, but as custody was virtually inevitable, he would remand the defendant in custody for the report to be prepared.’

  She looks questioningly at Legless.

  ‘My very words,’ he confirms.

  ‘Then, all of a sudden,’ Clare says, ‘the defendant kicks off. He throws poor Bert to the ground in the dock and kicks him in the face. I push the panic button, and so does Judge Dunblane. It doesn’t take Security very long to respond, but before they can get here, the defendant has charged the bench. There were some people blocking the public entrance to the court, you see, Judge. Anyway…’

  I have already guessed the rest. If the public entrance was blocked, Chummy must have been heading for the judge’s entrance, hoping to get out of the building from the judicial corridor. He is probably reasonably fast, but he is not very big, and to get to the judge’s entrance he would have to attempt an inside break against a former centre for Rosslyn Park. Not a chance. Legless would have felled him with a textbook tackle.

  ‘He picked the wrong judge, Clare, didn’t he?’

  ‘He certainly did, Judge,’ Clare replies, eyeing Legless with unmistakable pride and admiration. ‘Judge Dunblane is a real hero. He will probably be in all the papers tomorrow morning, perhaps even the six o’clock news on the BBC tonight.’

  ‘I can see the headline in the Sun now,’ I say. ‘“Have-a-Go Judge nabs Runaway Crook.”’

  Legless moans. He is not a big fan of the Sun. But the groan makes me look at him more closely. He seems a bit pale.

  ‘Are you all right, Legless?’ I ask.

  ‘I’ve sent for an ambulance, Judge,’ Dawn says. ‘They are on the way.’

  Legless is trying to fight Dawn off and lift himself up.

  ‘I don’t need a bloody ambulance,’ he insists. ‘I am perfectly all right. All in the course of a day�
�s work. Where’s Clare? Ask her to call on the next case.’

  ‘I think he’s concussed,’ Dawn says to me. ‘Will you speak to him, Judge? He is not going to listen to me, but he needs to stay down until the paramedics can look at him.’

  ‘Dawn is right, Legless,’ I begin. But before I can say any more, Legless makes a massive effort to push himself up using his right hand. This is followed by a blood-curdling scream, after which he collapses in a heap back down to the floor, holding his right arm with his left.

  ‘I think he may have broken his right arm as well,’ Dawn observes.

  ‘He was thrown against the wall with quite a jolt when he made his tackle,’ Clare adds. ‘The defendant hit his head and went out like a light until after Security arrived, but I think Judge Dunblane banged his arm just as hard.’

  ‘I think court three is adjourned for the afternoon, Legless,’ I say. ‘Just stay there until the ambulance arrives. Then you can take all the time you need off to recover. Stella will get us a Recorder to sit for as long as you need to take off.’

  ‘No need for that,’ Legless insists, rather breathlessly. ‘You can list me at ten o’clock tomorrow morning.’

  But he makes no further effort to get up. Two police officers have arrived and are now carting Chummy away to custody. I see Hubert and Marjorie standing at the judge’s entrance. Apparently, all courts have been adjourned for the afternoon. No matter, I think. Thank God it isn’t any worse.

  ‘This happened at Winchester, years ago,’ Hubert says. ‘Or was it Aylesbury?’

  Mercifully, before he can get any further with this reminiscence, an ambulance crew arrives and starts seeing to Legless and the dock officer. I get out of their way and return to the judicial corridor. Stella is waiting for me. She has already noted the need for a Recorder. As we are about to go our separate ways, she stops me.

  ‘You do realise what this means, Judge, don’t you?’

  I must have looked blank. In all the excitement, and my concern for Legless, I can honestly say it had not crossed my mind. It crosses it now with the speed of a Japanese high-velocity express train.

  ‘We have our statistic,’ I reply. ‘Don’t we?’

  ‘We certainly do,’ she says. ‘I’ve already alerted the media. Would it be appropriate for me to contact the Grey Smoothies and inform them of the afternoon’s events – as a matter of courtesy, so they don’t have to read about it for the first time in tomorrow’s Mail?’

  ‘I think that would be entirely appropriate,’ I beam, before returning contentedly to my chambers.

  * * *

  Thursday morning

  Elsie and Jeanie have been reading about Legless in the Sun and the Mail, and they have all kinds of questions about him, most of which I’m not about to answer. I have asked for an extra shot of espresso in my latte, which I may need to keep me awake and alert in court this morning, and while it is prepared I release a few anodyne biographical details about Legless, without disclosing any of the more colourful aspects of his history, such as the origins of his nickname, which I’m hoping the papers won’t dig into.

  ‘We need a few more people like him, don’t we, sir?’ Jeanie asks, ‘people who will stand up to criminals and have a go. Do you think they will give him a reward?’

  ‘I really couldn’t say…’

  ‘Well, they should.’

  ‘He’ll get a commendation, more likely, won’t he?’ Elsie says. ‘That’s what they did with my Uncle Albert during the War when he burned down the NCOs’ mess at Kettering.’

  Jeanie and I look at her for a few seconds.

  ‘Why would they give him a commendation for doing that?’ Jeanie asks.

  ‘He didn’t intend to burn it down, did he?’ Elsie explains. ‘Someone had locked the doors, leaving the lights on one night, hadn’t they? This was during the Blitz, and there was an air raid warning. Someone had to get in there and put the lights out before the bombers came, which Uncle Albert did. Unfortunately, he had to climb in through a window, and he threw his cigarette on the ground before he went in, and they’d spilled petrol outside when they were refuelling the big lorries earlier in the day, hadn’t they? So it all went up. The bombers were heading straight for them, but when the pilots saw the fire, they thought they must have hit that target already, and they went home. So they gave Uncle Albert a commendation for his quick thinking and his bravery in climbing into a burning building.’

  George thinks Legless should get the OBE, if not a knighthood. I give him a bigger order than usual. I think it may be prudent to have a copy of the Sun and the Mail, in addition to the Times, just to check on what’s being said. I am amused to see that my prediction of the Sun’s headline has come true, almost word for word. I feel somehow encouraged. And there is good news even before I go into court.

  ‘Message from the Grey Smoothies,’ Stella says, ‘from someone very highly placed. Statistic delivered, business case made. The Ministry prides itself in taking prompt action whenever a situation of danger comes to its attention, and will be taking immediate steps to install a secure dock in court three at Bermondsey Crown Court. This to be confirmed by the Minister himself at a press conference later this morning.’

  ‘How splendid,’ I reply. ‘I hope you’ve told Judge Dunblane. He really took one for the team, didn’t he?’

  ‘You can tell him yourself,’ she replies. ‘He’s in his chambers with his arm in a sling and a huge bottle of aspirin. He insisted on being listed at ten o’clock.’

  I shake my head.

  ‘What if something kicks off today? He can’t make a tackle with only one arm.’

  ‘In that case, they will probably close court three to start construction this afternoon,’ Stella smiles.

  ‘Has he seen the Sun?’ I ask.

  ‘We thought we would keep that from him until after court this afternoon,’ Stella replies.

  Once in court, I tell counsel that I agree with Aubrey, and that I’m going to leave the case to the jury. It’s not a decision I have taken lightly. In fact, I lay awake a good deal of the night thinking about it, which isn’t like me at all. Usually, I make a decision and move on without worrying about it unduly. And it’s not that I’m unsure about the law. Even without hearing what Aubrey would have said if he hadn’t been interrupted by events in court three, I feel I have no alternative but to agree with him. As she always does, Susan made a forceful and attractive argument, but it flies in the face of the daily reality of the courtroom. On any common sense view of the matter, Wilbraham Moffett exercised a right of audience at least once on the fateful day.

  But there’s something about this case that disturbs me. I can’t help feeling some sympathy for Moffett. All right, obviously, he’s a complete idiot, and he was the architect of his own downfall; but I derive little comfort from that. Even if he is an idiot, he is nothing worse than an idiot, and he doesn’t deserve to be hauled before the Crown Court. He was abused and taken advantage of by a dishonest solicitor, and then abused further by a mindless District Judge who could have solved the problem, if there ever was a real problem, with a few words of warning. If Moffett goes down for this offence, his hopes of a career in the law will be gone, and all he will have to remember them by will be the large debt he has already acquired in the course of two years of study towards a law degree. Unfortunately, I can’t see what I can do about it, other than hope that the jury will take a charitable view.

  Once I’ve decided to leave the case to the jury, it moves forward with truly astonishing speed. Susan announces that Wilbraham Moffett will not be giving evidence, thereby opening and closing the defence case in a single breath. It’s probably a good call. In law, no defendant is under any obligation to give evidence. In practice, though, juries like to hear the defendant say he didn’t do it and regardless of the law, it’s usually a good idea for the defendant to humour them. But in this case,
there’s nothing useful Moffett can tell the jury that they haven’t already heard from the prosecution witnesses; and based on my view of the law, none of that offers him much chance of an acquittal. I will have to direct the jury that, even on the facts as Susan presented them, he seems to have exercised a right of audience. In the circumstances, calling him to give evidence and allowing Aubrey to savage him in cross-examination isn’t an attractive prospect. Susan has calculated that her best chance is to let the jury convict if they must, and go up to the Court of Appeal to argue that I’ve got the law wrong. If the Court of Appeal agrees with her, they will reverse the conviction. Almost certainly, it’s her best shot.

  So we’re ready to move to closing speeches. Both Aubrey and Susan are short and to the point, and in almost no time at all it’s my turn. I sum up as sympathetically as I can. I have to be firm about the law, of course, but I certainly don’t suggest that the jury have no alternative but to convict. In fact, I travel some distance down the other road, as far as I decently can while trying to remain neutral as between prosecution and defence. I try my best to paint Moffett in a positive light, and I remind them more than once of what Susan has said about the various shortcomings of Ellis Lamont and about the prosecution’s failure to call Jungle Jim. I’m not sure whether any of this has made an impression. They’re not giving anything away. I get them out just before lunch.

  * * *

  Thursday afternoon

  Stella has transferred a sentence to me from Hubert’s court, a dangerous driving, but it doesn’t take long, and the rest of the time I’m reduced to sitting in chambers waiting for the seemingly inevitable disaster in the life of Wilbraham Moffett to materialise. Despite Ellis Lamont and Jungle Jim, I can’t see what would detain the jury for long. Even if they have some sympathy for the defendant, I’ve left them little choice; their verdict ought to be a foregone conclusion. But, as I ought to know by now, it doesn’t always work that way with juries.