Felix in the Underworld

by John Mortimer

  ‘You can’t plead provocation if you’d been planning it for a long time’ – Quentin turned the pages of a bundle of prosecution statements – ‘like the client in the instant case.’

  ‘Remind me, Quentin. Refresh my memory. Merely refresh it.’ Chipless was doing his best to sound like someone who’d read his brief.

  ‘“You can drop dead, Gavin. Drop dead!” The client was heard to say that to a man answering descriptions given of Gavin Piercey outside a bookshop in Covent Garden. That is the statement of Sir Ernest Thessaley.’

  ‘I was talking to the officer in charge,’ Septimus told him. ‘Apparently Ernest rang the police to give them that little nugget.’

  ‘Really? Why would he want to do that?’ Chipless was shocked.

  ‘He doesn’t like other authors,’ Septimus told them, as though that explained it all.

  Hearing the evidence of Sir Ernest Thessaley, to his great relief, Felix felt as angry as when he was approached by Gavin in Covent Garden. He intruded on the private consultation, saying loudly, ‘I’d better make it quite clear that I never saw Piercey in his van. He never tried to blackmail me and, once and for all, will you get it into your heads that I never hit him with a spanner!’

  The lawyers turned to look at him as though a strange apparition had just wandered into the room. Then, as the apparition said no more, they returned to their intimate conversation. ‘I notice,’ Quentin Thurgood said, ‘that the client denies striking the man Piercey on the head with a heavy weapon.’

  ‘We shall be in deep shit’ – Chipless had no doubt about it -‘if we attempt to deny the attack. It will create an extremely bad impression.’

  ‘Always best,’ Septimus agreed, ‘to accept as much of the prosecution evidence as possible. Confess and avoid always looks better than barefaced denial.’

  ‘Barefaced denial,’ Chipless agreed, ‘never sits well with the jury.’

  ‘I don’t care who it sits with,’ Felix intruded once more. ‘I never hit Gavin.’

  ‘The client wishes to go for denial.’ Septimus was saddened.

  ‘The client would do far better to leave things to his legal team,’ Chipless agreed, ‘and not go wandering off on a line of his own.’

  ‘A particularly hopeless line,’ Quentin, the junior, was delighted to point out, ‘because of the fingerprint evidence.’

  ‘Ah! The fingerprint evidence. Just remind me.’ Chipless settled back in his chair, preparing to enjoy it, while Quentin made another search through the depositions.

  ‘The client’s fingerprints’ – Quentin found the place – ‘found on the door-handle and side window of Piercey’s van.’

  ‘I tried the handle,’ Felix told them.

  ‘Trying door-handles, dear me!’ Chipless was greatly amused. ‘Not trying to pinch cars, are you, when things are a bit slow in the writing trade?’

  ‘I called at Gavin’s flat. I wanted to see him. Urgently.’

  ‘You will recall that the client was seen going in and coming out of the flat,’ Quentin reminded his leader, who said, ‘Of course I recall,’ as convincingly as possible. ‘No doubt to utter more threats. We shall have to deal with the message on the answering machine.’

  ‘ “I’ll be compelled to take steps to silence you”,’ Quentin read out the bit in the evidence he’d highlighted in pink.

  ‘I meant legal steps, of course,’ Felix assured him.

  ‘If the client meant legal steps,’ Septimus murmured, his attention directed at the ceiling, ‘one wonders why he didn’t say so.’

  ‘And then wasn’t there a final note left in the flat?’ Chipless remembered.

  ‘“Don’t think you can get away with this. I’ll be back.’” Quentin had that highlighted also.

  ‘And of course’ – Chipless was still smiling – ‘the client came back.’

  ‘No, I didn’t! I didn’t see any point. I got a train back to Coldsands and went home.’

  ‘Did he see anyone who might remember him on the train?’

  ‘I don’t think so. There was no one I knew.’

  ‘Or meet anyone in the street?’

  ‘The town was fairly empty.’

  ‘Does it come to this’ – Chipless was looking, seriously now, at his instructing solicitor – ‘that we can’t call any witness to support an alibi?’

  ‘Naturally we’ve made inquiries,’ Septimus told him.

  ‘Naturally you have as a first-class defence solicitor. And drawn, I suppose, a blank?’

  ‘A complete blank!’

  ‘So we’re left with the fingerprints on the door of the van?’

  ‘There must have been all sorts of fingerprints,’ Felix protested.

  ‘But the client’s prints were the ones the police have put in evidence.’ Quentin sounded quietly satisfied. ‘And then we have the fact that the client sought to avoid arrest.’

  ‘By seeking refuge,’ Septimus agreed, ‘among the poor and dispossessed.’

  ‘And the murder weapon was never found?’ Chipless’s questions were quiet now but, he clearly thought, probing.

  ‘I didn’t dispose of it. Anyway, if I’d’ve attacked Gavin like that, I’d’ve been covered in blood . . .’

  ‘You went home. Plenty of time for a bath,’ Quentin suggested.

  ‘My clothes?’

  ‘You live by the sea, don’t you? Mightn’t you have dropped them in?’

  ‘But on the train . . .’

  ‘A quick wash-up in the Victoria Station Gents?’

  ‘Anyway, I told you’ – Felix was looking at Septimus – ‘after all this was meant to happen I saw Gavin Piercey alive. At least. . .’ And as he spoke he felt his certainty draining away, ‘At least I think I saw him.’

  ‘I offered the client insanity,’ Septimus Roache told Chipless. ‘I offered him Broadmoor but he didn’t seem too keen.’

  ‘I must have seen him!’ Felix found a sudden confidence in his defence. ‘I was in a telephone box on Waterloo Station. Yorkie Bar – that’s a boy who slept in the street – Yorkie tapped on the glass. He said he’d seen Gavin, who wanted to meet me by the National Gallery in the morning. That’s why I went there. Because Yorkie Bar told me that.’

  There was a long silence during which the three lawyers now looked at him steadily. Then Chipless began to speak, quietly, in the way he always began his most effective cross-examination of a hostile witness. ‘Didn’t you think it rather odd that when you went to the National Gallery, police officers were there to arrest you?’

  ‘Not particularly. I assumed they’d been following me.’

  ‘Knowing where you were on the Embankment?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘But not arresting you until you got to Trafalgar Square? Can you think of a reason for that?’

  ‘Well, not really.’ Felix knew he was sounding lame.

  ‘Well, let me help you.’ Chipless was all smiles. ‘Let me suggest a reason. Someone had tipped them off. Someone made sure you’d be at the National Gallery at precisely six o’clock in order to be arrested.’

  ‘Someone?’

  ‘Someone who spoke to you when you were telephoning at Waterloo.’

  ‘Yorkie Bar?’

  ‘I think you ought to know we’ve been served with some additional evidence by the prosecution. I will ask my learned junior to read you the relevant passage. Give it to him, Quentin.’ And Chipless, lolling back in his chair, gave his junior the statement, a gesture a retired bullfighter, who has entertained the audience by a series of dazzling passes with the cape, might make to some underling to whom he has handed over the sword.

  ‘Statement of William Mansfield, otherwise known as Yorkie Bar, aged sixteen, of no fixed address.’

  ‘He had an address,’ Felix told him. ‘The pavement. Between the theatres in the Strand . . .’

  ‘Never mind about that. Blah, blah, blah . . .’ Quentin read on. ‘Oh yes, here it is. “Anton”. It seems you gave him a false name. “Anton had told
me that he was supposed to have killed this bloke Gavin, but Gavin was still alive!”’

  ‘You see! He bears me out.’

  ‘Not quite so fast!’ Chipless warned him. ‘My learned junior will continue.’

  ‘ “As a result of what Anton told me, I had a conversation with PC Basil Bulstrode of the Homeless Squad. After this conversation, I went in search of Anton and when I found him I told him that I had seen Gavin Piercey who wanted to meet Anton next morning on the National Gallery steps. This was quite untrue but designed to get Anton to a place where he would be arrested.”

  ‘ “Although homeless I am reading books on economics to better myself and am always willing to cooperate with the police, who are doing a grand job looking after those of us compelled to sleep rough round the area.”’

  It was at that moment that Felix knew total defeat. A huge conspiracy, embracing Miriam, Gavin, Sir Ernest Thessaley and his lawyers, had been mounted against him and, now it was joined by Yorkie Bar, he knew he could no longer fight it.

  ‘So you see,’ his QC ended the cross-examination, ‘it is much better for you to take our advice and go for manslaughter by reason of provocation. You have a wise and experienced solicitor who would agree. Wouldn’t you, Septimus?’ And the wise and experienced Septimus agreed.

  ‘Why should I get five years for something I didn’t do?’ Felix protested half-heartedly, a final spasm before helplessness set in.

  ‘Because’ – Chipless now sounded gently reasonable – ‘it’s better than doing life for something you didn’t do.’

  As they left the prison Septimus Roache reminded himself to be out of court, engaged on an important case in Chelmsford, on the day that William Mansfield, otherwise known as Yorkie Bar, gave his evidence.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  ‘I just can’t wait for my kids to take up crime! I mean, I’m longing for them to do a bit of mugging so they can be locked up for their own good. And mine. Or at least be taken into care.’ Brenda looked at Terry’s wife and wondered if she was joking. For the sake of her peace of mind, she decided that she was. ‘Are they such little criminals then, your children?’

  ‘No. That’s the whole trouble! They’re law-abiding. They take after me. I’m completely honest. I can’t pluck up the courage to pinch a pair of fancy tights from Tesco’s. So they never get into trouble. They’ll be home straight after school to get under my feet and drive me round the twist. Oh shit!’ Terry’s wife cried out in genuine distress as the never switched-off West London radio announced that it was two o’clock and time for the news. ‘Only half an hour and it’ll be time to fetch Sheena from nursery. Bloody soft these nurseries nowadays. They won’t even keep them in after school for misbehaving. Can you really spare a fag? Thank you. I’d be ever so grateful.’

  Brenda had found the address by telephoning and promised to bring the money claimed by Terry as expenses, cash reluctantly released to her by Don Giovanni in Accounts. This had assured her of a warm welcome by a woman who, although well into her thirties, looked at first sight like a young and fairly attractive boy. She had straight, straw-coloured hair, high cheekbones and lines at the corners of her eyes which might have been printed there by laughter or grief. She wore an old tweed jacket, designed for a small man but which was too big for her so she had turned back the sleeves, and jeans. Her voice was husky and she chainsmoked as many as she could get of Brenda’s cigarettes. She had short, blunt fingers with bitten nails. Having been christened, and she said it was worse luck, Antonia, she preferred to be addressed as Tony.

  Tony and Terry had lived together before his disappearance in a semi-detached on an Acton estate called Woodlanders. The next-door neighbours had gone, Tony said, berserk with their front garden. It was a blinding mass of dahlias, late roses, geraniums, hollyhocks and Michaelmas daisies. A crazy-paving path led over a handkerchief of lawn to a gleaming front door, beside which stood a white plaster lion couchant. Tony and Terry’s front garden looked like a patch of the Somme brought back as a memento of the 1914 war. A gaunt swing and a seesaw stood on the bare and muddy earth. Indoors, toys that must have once been expensive were broken and abandoned. Little piles of washing – clean knickers, vests and T-shirts – lined the staircase. Inside the front door there were assorted children’s shoes, and small sweaters and anoraks which had fallen off the banisters. In the kitchen plastic buckets full of dirty clothes stood in front of a washing-machine which throbbed constantly. Brenda and Tony sat at the kitchen table smoking and drinking the cooled bottle of Kalinga Creek Chardonnay Brenda had bought at the offy down the road to loosen Mrs Whitlock’s tongue.

  ‘So you’ve no idea where Terry’s got to?’ Being among the uninitiated so far as children were concerned, Brenda had decided not to waste time discussing the names, ages, personal habits and talents for destruction of the Whitlocks’ brood. She came straight to the point after handing over the money and a celebratory glass of Chardonnay.

  ‘Hiding, I expect. He did that before. When PROD were after him.’

  ‘And they’re after him again?’

  ‘Oh, yes. I had to go for income support because of the kids and they made me set PROD on Terry. Pity, because we do get on sometimes. In spite of all the problems, Terry and I do get on.’

  ‘You mean the problems with money?’

  ‘No. I mean the problems with sex.’

  ‘What problems?’

  ‘Basically, the fact that Terry’s gay.’

  ‘But’ – Brenda looked at the whirling, vibrating machine

  ‘all this washing . .

  ‘Well, I know. You see, the only person Terry feels in the least bit bi with is, well, me. I suppose I look like a boy.’

  ‘He must have thought you looked very like a boy!’ Brenda refilled their glasses.

  ‘Hardly any tits and a small bum,’ Tony admitted. ‘Well, I suppose he did. It seems hardly fair, does it? PROD chasing him so much when he’s gay basically. I mean if he’d only stuck to that he’d never have got into trouble.’

  ‘Were you fond of Terry? I mean are you?’

  ‘Well, you’d be surprised. You wouldn’t guess it but he can be very loving, very gentle. I do love him. I suppose that’s why I got so mad when he bolted without telling me.’

  ‘Don’t you get jealous?’ Brenda was genuinely interested.

  ‘What? You mean other blokes?’

  ‘Well, yes.’

  ‘Not really. They’re no sort of challenge to me. Know what I mean? I’m different. The one thing he couldn’t get anywhere else. Mind if I pinch another fag? No, I never got jealous of his boyfriends. They came and went, after all. They couldn’t provide what I gave him.’

  ‘You mean children?’

  ‘I’m not so sure he thought that was an absolute plus. Nice mouthful, this wine. Good of you to bring it.’

  ‘Compliments of Llama Books.’

  ‘No, the only time I got jealous of Terry is when he started mucking around with this girl.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I don’t remember her name. She used to ring up here and he’d told her I wouldn’t mind if she were a bloke, so she put on a ridiculous, deep bass voice and said, “Would you mind telling Terry that Fred called?” I nearly tore his head off when I found out about that.’

  ‘When Terry disappeared last time because PROD were after him

  ‘The time he got locked up for non payment, you mean?’

  ‘Yes, that’s when I mean.’ Brenda registered the fact that Terry, the rep, had been sent to prison, filed it away for further reference and asked, ‘Did you know how they caught him?’

  ‘I had an idea. I think he slept in his car sometimes. Sometimes round his sister’s. I never told PROD that, though. I didn’t want to get him into real trouble. It was one of the other drivers that shopped him.’

  ‘One of the drivers at Llama?’

  ‘No, not in Terry’s job. But you know the book reps round London. They have evenings. Get togethers. Piss-ups,
I suppose you’d call them.’

  ‘I know.’ Brenda shuddered at the memory of one such social occasion. Terry had pressed her to come, promising wine, cheese and good music. She had ended up in a cellar somewhere near Ludgate Circus with slopping pints, doner kebabs and a karioke.

  ‘Well, Terry got pissed I suppose and told one of the other reps where he was staying to keep away from PROD, and this rep gave him away. I think he was a bloke in trouble over child support himself and wanted to butter up the authorities. And he wasn’t a rep for any proper firm either. Some sort of vanity publishers or a dirty book merchant.’

  There was a silence and then Brenda decided to try it. ‘Not Epsilon Books by any chance?’

  ‘Yes ... Yes, I think that’s what Terry said.’

  ‘And you wouldn’t remember the bloke’s name? Did Terry tell you that?’

  ‘Funny you should ask that. I saw it in the paper the other day, bloke that got murdered.’

  ‘Not Gavin Piercey?’

  ‘That’s right! Wherever he is, I bet Terry was glad when he read it in the paper. I bet he gave three small cheers when he read that!’

  On her way back to Llama Books, Brenda stopped her Golf in Chandos Street outside a tobacconist and newsagent squashed between an office block and the Last Chance Saloon. Inside, a Mrs Singh, a gentle woman with a caste mark and a cardigan, was warming her hands at a small electric fire behind the counter and viewing, with mild disapproval, those members of the Sheridan Club who had come in after a late lunch to search, on her top shelf, for the magazines which were suited to their particular interest.

  In the shop window Brenda saw cards advertising rooms to let, cleaning ladies wanted and strictly supervised ballroom dancing lessons offered. She went into the shop and, after a certain amount of money had changed hands, Mrs Singh confirmed that her shop had been nominated as an address for letters by a Mr Terry Whitlock. After a further exchange of money she agreed to ring Llama Books, or Brenda’s home, if this Mr Whitlock, whom she was no longer able to describe accurately, called in for his post.