The Brief: Crime and corruption in 1960s London (Charles Holborne Legal Thrillers)

by Simon Michael

  ‘What’s there to think about?’

  ‘Everything ... you, me, us, Charlie, Marjorie.’

  ‘What have Charles and Marjorie got to do with it?’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Laurence, we’re married to them! What’s more, Marjorie’s my friend, my best friend, for that matter.’

  ‘Look, let me pull in and talk to you sensibly. This is ridiculous,’ he says, indicating their two cars standing side by side with their engines running. ‘I feel like we’re about to start a race.’ He applies his most winning smile but she’s not to be budged.

  ‘No! Stay there!’

  She suddenly realises that, above all, she does not want Laurence Corbett in her car. She knows what will happen. He will start whispering in her ear and stroking her neck; his other hand will travel up her thigh under her skirt; he’ll nibble her earlobes; his index finger will start making little circular motions, and she’ll be lost. In separate cars, with the cold night air on her face from the open window, she can be resolute. He regards her with suspicion, trying to decipher her expression in the darkness. Then his face hardens.

  ‘Are you telling me it’s over?’ he demands.

  ‘No,’ she says uncertainly, ‘at least ... I don’t know. Maybe I am, but I haven’t realised it yet.’

  ‘Well, you can get that out of your head immediately,’ says Corbett aggressively. ‘You’re not dumping me!’

  Henrietta stares at him, astounded. ‘What the hell do you mean by that?’ she demands. ‘If I don’t want to see you again, I bloody well won’t!’

  ‘You’re being completely unreasonable! Everything was fine this morning, and suddenly you spring this on me.’

  ‘I’ve nothing more to say, Laurence,’ she says, closing her window.

  ‘Well, I’ve got something to say to you,’ he says, getting out of his car, ‘you gin-soaked, spoilt little —’

  But Henrietta doesn’t hear the rest. She lets out the clutch and her car shoots forward, narrowly missing him, and swerves into the road. She puts her foot down hard, and races off. She looks back in her mirror and can see him standing in the road, staring after her. She catches sight of her face, white and frightened.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Charles sits at the kitchen table, reading the Sunday papers. The first arrests have been made in what is now being called the Great Train Robbery. Charles isn’t surprised. He knows Detective Chief Superintendent Butler, the officer heading the London end of the investigation. Butler is a strange man, but Charles has enormous respect for his policing skills.

  He drains his coffee cup and looks at his watch. Rachel will arrive in ten minutes. He again scans the tiny apartment to ensure everything is tidy.

  Charles phoned Rachel and they met for a drink during the week after work to swap outlines of their lives over the last sixteen years. It was comfortable, and the following evening they met for dinner. That was better still, but nothing overtly romantic; no kiss goodnight, no touching, not even accidentally during conversation. At the end of that evening, standing outside the restaurant, Charles asked if she would take him round her gallery on her next day off. She agreed, and there’d been a pause. Charles had wanted to kiss her and sensed that the moment might be right, but he’d hesitated and it was gone. Rachel said goodnight and walked away.

  As Charles walked back to Fetter Lane he wondered if she’d have bolted anyway, and was relieved he’d not tried. He’d told her about his marriage and his suspicions concerning Henrietta’s affairs and Rachel had been sympathetic, but the fact is, he’s married and, until he has some clarity with Henrietta, it makes him uncomfortable even to consider another relationship, no matter how attracted he might be to Rachel. He senses ambivalence in her, too. He thinks she’s interested in him, but not in an affair. So, he’s not sure how to characterise this meeting, the fourth “date” in less than three weeks; something is happening, but what?

  Charles hasn’t been back to Thame during the week or spoken to Henrietta. He has filled his evenings with working late in the Temple, going for long runs on the embankment and sparring at the gym, and he’s felt dislocated and out of sorts. However bad things have been previously, he has never before spent a week away from Henrietta unless away on a case, and even then he’d call every night from his hotel room. The fact that she has neither phoned nor made any comment about his remaining in London speaks volumes. Charles has started to wonder if divorce is inevitable and to imagine what life would be like without her. He’s resolved to go to Thame and get things sorted out.

  Charles stands and rinses his cup, leaving it on the draining board. There’s a light tap on the door. Charles takes the two strides necessary to take him from the kitchen to the front door, and opens it.

  ‘Hello,’ says Rachel. Charles frowns, puzzled. ‘One of your neighbours let me in downstairs,’ she explains. She stands on tiptoe and kisses Charles on the cheek. She wears sandals and a summer dress printed with large pink roses on a white background. She carries a pink beret in her hand. For the first time since Charles met her, she is wearing make-up. She looks younger than her twenty-seven years.

  ‘You look lovely,’ says Charles. ‘Come in.’

  Rachel enters the tiny lobby and the two of them dance round each other while Charles shuts the door and takes her bag.

  ‘Would you like a drink before we go?’

  ‘No thanks.’

  ‘OK. Take a seat. I’ll just get my jacket and some money.’

  Charles disappears and Rachel sits where he’d been reading the paper. She notes the article about the Great Train Robbery. ‘Do you have any professional interest in this?’ she calls.

  ‘What, the train robbery? Not yet, but I have my fingers crossed. Every criminal barrister in the Temple wants one of those briefs. That’s the sort of case on which careers are made.’ He returns to the room, pulling on a jacket, and smiles at her. ‘Shall we?’

  The Holbornes’ house at Putt Green, Buckinghamshire, was once a large farmhouse on the edge of the village. The last farmers of the land, brothers, were killed in action and their executors sold the herd of dairy cattle, the land and the house to different purchasers. By the time the Holbornes acquired the house in 1955 it was badly rundown, but a gift from Henrietta’s parents helped restore it and now it’s a stylish well-appointed family home, ideal for a couple with three or four children. It’s too large and isolated for a young wife who spends much of her time there alone.

  The garden, carved originally from one of the fields, is huge. Someone has clearly spent a great deal of time working on it, as the lawns are well manicured and the flowerbeds colourful and orderly. Outside the French windows, on a patio that runs the width of the house, stands an oak garden table and six chairs. A long, striped seat with its own awning swings back and forth in the gentle breeze. The far end of the garden is separated from the rest by a massive clipped beech hedge through which there is an archway. Beyond the archway the garden is semi-wild, the grass taller and dotted with wild flowers. There is the stump of a huge old oak, now long dead, and several apple trees, ideal for climbing. It would have been an exciting place had there been any children in the household. Through the fence at the wild end of the garden is a stile leading to open fields.

  Vehicles pass the front of the house infrequently and the noise of their engines is only just audible at the back. Children’s voices can be heard in the distance, and occasionally the sound of horses’ hooves float over from the stables in the lane.

  Beside the stile at the rear of the house, hidden from the house by the hedge, a man keeps watch, shuffling from one foot to the other. He wears an anorak, heavy comfortable boots and thick socks, for his work often requires waiting patiently in uncomfortable situations. He is short, with a round, jovial face and ruddy cheeks. He looks as if in another life he should have been an innkeeper. He’s been standing there for over two hours and is getting tired. He takes a pad out of his jacket pocket and makes a note with a small stub of pencil
. He replaces the pad and chews the pencil thoughtfully. It’s been a dull shift. The subject sat reading in the garden until the wind picked up and it got a bit too cold, and then made herself a drink. Thereafter she spent most of the time in the kitchen. He looks at his watch; another two hours before he is relieved at 2 p.m., when he will return to his car where a hot flask of tea and a sandwich await him.

  The telephone rings in the house, and the watcher leans out slightly to obtain a better view of the kitchen windows. The subject sits at the kitchen table. She picks up the receiver and speaks slowly, calmly at first. Then her voice starts rising until she is shrieking into the receiver. She stands and starts pacing back and forth as far as the telephone cable will allow. The call ends with her slamming the receiver down. There’s a pause, then a further scream — frustration or anger, the man can’t tell — then a fast movement followed by the sound of an object smashing, a vase perhaps. The watcher grins. Temper, temper, he says quietly to himself, as he records the event in his notebook, in slow careful pencil strokes.

  INTERIM REPORT No. 4 to BSI ON OBSERVATIONS AT ‘The Old Farmhouse’, Putt Green, BUCKS.

  Surveillance continued. Subject apparently retired for the night and surveillance about to end when at 22.23 hours lights were seen in the master bedroom. At 22.41 hours the subject left the house and jogged to the junction of Church Road and the A428 bypass. Waited for ten minutes. Red Mercedes Saloon, index mark. LUC 800 approached travelling east on bypass, stopped, and subject got in. Vehicle drove into church car park without direction from subject, suggesting the car park had been used for venue in past. Due to lack of cover, an approach to vehicle deemed not safe, and observation continued from corner of church at distance of 150 yards. Driver: male Caucasian, late-thirties/early forties, light colouring, no facial hair. Driver attempted to kiss subject, was resisted, although parties clearly familiar with one another. Discussion in car for ten minutes. Driver continued to press himself on subject. Raised voices heard, but distance too great to decipher words. Impression: driver attempting to persuade subject. At 23.05 hours subject descended from car, slammed door, and began to run out of church car park. A few feet from car, subject turned and shouted to driver. Subject’s back was turned to operative, but words appeared to be: “And don’t phone anymore. I mean it. I’ll tell —” and here subject used a name, possibly “Melanie” or “Marjorie”. Subject ran back to house. Vehicle remained stationary until 23.10 hours, then rejoined the A428 and continued in an easterly direction.

  INTERIM REPORT No. 5 TO BS1 ON OBSERVATIONS AT ‘The Old Farmhouse’, Putt Green, BUCKS.

  Surveillance recommenced at 08.45 hrs. Subject seen to be up and about house. Visit from female neighbour 10.45 hrs. to 11.13 hrs. Subject left address driving Jaguar index mark CLH 7 at 11.54 hrs. Followed to local shops. Returned to address 12.48 hrs. Jaguar broke down outside address. Subject enlisted two male workers from adjoining farm to push it into garage. Subject returned to house. Worked in rear garden until operative relieved. No further incident.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The phone rings in the clerk’s room and Stanley picks it up. ‘May I speak to Mr Holborne, please?’

  ‘Is that Mrs Holborne?’

  ‘Yes, Stanley? How are you?’

  ‘Not bad, thank you. A bit rushed this week as Sally’s on holiday. Just putting you through. Mr Holborne? Your wife for you, sir. And your nine-thirty conference has arrived.’

  Charles hears a click on the line.

  ‘Charles?’

  ‘I haven’t time for another row, Henrietta. I have a conference starting right now.’

  ‘The bloody car’s broken down.’

  ‘OK. Where?’

  ‘Just outside the house, thank God. I’d been shopping, and it conked out as I was driving back into the garage. I got some of Jim’s men to help push it back in, but I’ve tried it since and it won’t start at all.’

  ‘What do you want me to do about it?’

  ‘It’s your bloody car.’

  ‘Then I’ll bloody manage without it until the weekend, won’t I?’

  ‘What am I supposed to use in the meantime?’

  ‘You just said it was my bloody car. What you mean is, it’s my bloody car, but you want to drive it.’

  ‘Charles, you know very well how isolated it is here. There’s no way I can get around without transport. Particularly if you’re not proposing to come up again until Friday. I’ve got arrangements this week.’

  Charles takes a deep breath and adopts as reasonable a tone as he can command. ‘I’m really sorry, Henrietta, but I can’t get there before Friday. If you need it urgently, book it into Breck and Co on the village green.’

  ‘They’re Volvo dealers.’

  ‘They repair other cars, too. They’re very good. You might even persuade them to lend you a car while the Jag’s in for repair. But I’m afraid I really have to go; my conference is waiting to begin.’

  ‘You’re a real bastard sometimes, you know that, Charles?’

  ‘That’s a bit unfair, don’t you think?’ starts Charles, but Henrietta has hung up.

  It is 3.30 a.m., a dark and damp night. No lights show from any of the houses in the deserted lane. A thin blanket of mist rises gently from the brook running parallel to the lane opposite the houses. The clear water usually gurgles over its rocky path under a line of willow trees, but tonight the mist seems to muffle the sound and the lane is unusually quiet. A man wearing overalls and a woolly hat pulled low over his ears stands patiently under one of the willow trees and observes the Holborne residence. He is completely still and almost invisible. Heavy drops of water drip from the leaves of the willow onto his head and face. The house is in darkness. Satisfied, the man steps lightly across the lane and walks up the drive of the Holbornes’ house towards the garage. He tries the main doors but finds them locked. He skirts round the garage, keeping to the shadows, and enters by the rear door. A minute later the main doors swing silently open. Then, like the silver snout of a large animal, the nose of the Jaguar emerges silently from the shadows. The man pushes the motor car from the driver’s door, steering it with one hand. It’s slow going at first and takes an enormous amount of effort, but the drive slopes gently down towards the brook and after a couple of car’s lengths the vehicle picks up speed and the man has to jog to keep up with it. Where the drive joins the lane he expertly steers to the left and allows the vehicle to roll to a stop. He walks on a few paces to the tow-truck in which he arrived, gets in the cab and let’s off the handbrake so that it rolls silently backwards to within a few feet of the front of the Jaguar. Then he walks quickly back up the drive and closes the garage doors, returning to the tow truck.

  Curled on the back of the truck is a steel hawser with a hook at its end. The man uncurls the hawser, crawls under the front of the Jaguar and attaches the hook to the front axle. He returns to the tow-truck and operates the electric winder for three or four seconds, tightening the hawser, and the front of the Jaguar rises smoothly off the ground. The noise makes this the riskiest part of the operation, but he keeps his eyes on the darkened upstairs windows for signs of movement or light, and is satisfied that all remains still. The man then climbs swiftly into the cab of the truck, starts up, and drives off, towing the Jaguar behind him. The operation has taken less than four minutes, and within seconds of the tail lights of the tow truck disappearing, the lane is again completely silent.

  By mid-morning in the Temple the early rush of barristers dashing off to court has slowed, and the ancient courtyards have resumed their sedate pace. 2 Chancery Court is silent with concentration as members of Chambers settle down to draft documents and research the law in Chambers’ library.

  Charles tries to work for a while but throws down his pen, stands and paces about the room. He’s been trying to draft what should have been a very simple Advice on a personal injury matter, but has written and crossed through the first paragraph four times. He can’t concentrate and when he look
s at the uncharacteristic chaos of papers and instructions lying on his desk, he realises that he’s achieved little in the last few days.

  He reaches for the telephone. ‘Peter?’ he says as he dials.

  Peter Bateman, Charles’s pupil, looks up from the papers on which he is working.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Make yourself scarce for a few minutes, eh?’

  ‘Sure,’ replies the young man, and he scurries off for a quick cigarette. Charles doesn’t permit smoking in the room, and the chance for a coffee and a smoke with the other pupils in Chambers is always gratefully received.

  The call is picked up at the other end.

  ‘Henrietta?’

  ‘Yes?’ she says, recognising his voice, and truculent.

  ‘Do you agree that it would be sensible for us to have a discussion about the future?’

  There’s a long pause at the end of the line but Henrietta’s voice when it comes is sadder and gentler than Charles expects. ‘What do you propose?’

  ‘I can come up tonight, if you’ve got no plans.’

  Another pause. At first Charles can hear breathing but then the line falls silent. Just as he’s about to check that she’s still there, he hears a sob and realises she’s crying.

  ‘Etta, don’t cry. I’m sure we can sort it out, whatever the outcome. But we can’t carry on like this, can we? We’re just making one another completely miserable.’

  ‘Yes,’ she agrees, gathering herself somewhat. ‘I’ll make something for dinner. You’ll need to get a cab from the station.’

  ‘Have you booked the car in?’

  ‘Yes, but as it needs towing, they’re too busy to come for a couple of days.’

  ‘OK. I’ll be there around seven.’

  Henrietta replaces the receiver and allows herself to cry. She thinks of calling her mother, but can’t stand another hour’s worth of “I told you so”s. So she dries her eyes and goes into the garden. Gardening normally calms her, but even that’s no good. After fifteen minutes she decides instead to cycle into the village and pick up something nice to cook. She puts her gardening gloves on the garden table and goes to the garage for her bike.