Part Twenty
It was that night when Brian Cantwell had been drinking the fourth night time whisky alone that he finally decided to throw in the towel on the Atkins Merriman case. His favourite place to work at home was seated at his carved oak table in the dining room which was a room far removed from the general thoroughfare in his mock Georgian home in Esher. The papers were strewn on his desk in front of him and all his past jottings in the days when he was confident of his case looked up at him in disbelief. Then he felt confident that his verbal powers could persuade twelve good men and women of England in the English jury of his client's innocence. Now his notes which spoke back to him ceased to inspire him with any confidence. The ornate clock on the wall rang out nine o clock and counted down the hours till he knew in advance that he must quit.
The first doubts started to insinuate themselves into his self belief on the first day in Mrs Atkins's testimony. He instinctively believed what she said that the fifty thousand pounds that his client Ritchie Atkins had scammed off her was paying for his defence. It was the tones of bitterness and betrayal that were ripped out of the very hard faced woman on the stand as if under torture. Normally she was the last sort of person he would believe being the sort of distasteful godmother Eastend character out of a third rate gangster film. Brian Cantwell was a cynic about human feelings and had grown an armour plated shell around himself that convinced himself that nearly all tear jerking performances from the dock were designed to get the client off the hook for crimes that the criminals had actually committed. He had seen people walk off Scot free from crimes where he himself had engineered their freedom. He didn't mind that as his job was simply a forensic exercise of which side of the case he stood and, as a prosecuting council, he might as easily be a defence council and could put himself in the hands of that other barrister.So long as the clients paid handsomely, that was one thing that mattered, the other being his frustrated ambition to become a Circuit Judge. They all came from the same club, after all, except………..naïve campaigning crusaders like Jo Mills, still wet behind the ears and that insufferable prig, Deed who was old enough to know better but didn't and occupied that throne on high which he deserved to sit in by rights. The thought of that made him take a deep swallow from his whisky goblet.
The memory of the Prison Officer as he approached him came to mind. When he had introduced himself with a firm handshake and friendly manner, the thought struck him as to what was this man's game? He was James Fenner, witness for the prosecution that, by rights, ought to steer clear of him as if he had leprosy. He could hardly believe his ears especially as the man was up on the stand the next day. He was on the other side, dammit. He shouldn't really complain and later, remembered with a feeling of pleasure that, for whatever reason, the man was feeding him with a nice juicy titbit which he knew well enough to exploit to the hilt.
He was on a roll when he cross examined Miss Betts today and he savoured the exact moment when he let her know for public knowledge the one matter which , by the expression on her face, ought to have broken her credibility. He was that close to the case going his way if it weren't for that damned accursed fellow, Deed at his most priggish. It was as if he had had a cold bucket of water thrown over him at the moment that he was approaching a climax, which, these days with his wife the way she was, was becoming a distant memory.
When all the anger was driven out of him by a sufficient amount of alcohol, his mind was made up. Today was one of Jo Mill's chief witnesses' experience of treading on an unexpected banana skin and falling headlong. Tomorrow, it might be his turn for one of his, who can tell? The whole thing was becoming too damned unpredictable and better someone else picked up the poisoned chalice and that he seek some nice 'no blame' case in an insurance fraud trial, some sound, cut and dried business case.
In any case, an unaccustomed twinge of conscience came to his mind, the thought that Mrs Atkins was paying for her guilty son's defence. That was a bad sign. When he first saw the clients, Ritchie Atkins had made himself out to be a young man with easy if indefinite ways of making a lot of money which quite frankly grated on him from his generation's ingrained values of working for his money. He carried himself with the air of someone who had had it too easy. Now he knew the truth and he had had enough.
"This is too much," John Deed stormed and raved. "The further this case goes on, the more it is riddled and interwoven with corruption as only a …as a …British Government could get."
The last words were dragged from John Deed's mind as a sudden revelation as to how things had gone to the dogs, another inevitable old-fashioned phrase. Only it wasn't some onward march of 'trendy lefties' dismantling the world of Empire but a new corrupt spirit of political expediency that forced itself more and more on his mind. Only a few years ago, he would have invoked the words of a 'banana republic' as his exemplar of a society totally rotted from within. By implication, Great Britain still stood as an example of justice and the rule of law. He could no longer sustain that belief and that was what cut him to the core. He could only sustain the standards which he passionately believed in.
"The British Constitution is unique in its separation of the executive, the legislature and the judiciary, "his old teacher, Mr Charlton had spoken many years ago. He could still picture the enthusiastic charismatic teacher, slightly grey haired who swept the brighter more idealistic pupils, himself included, along the magic carpet ride of his ideals. He hadn't seen his old teacher for so many years and didn't even know if he was still alive. In his mind he and his boundless enthusiasm was still very much alive. That was another age, John Deed thought ruefully and he is one of the few witnesses to the beliefs in England that once was, or had never been or which must be if there was any prospect of a better world. It was this guiding light that had illuminated the complicated path in life he had trod. It was sickeningly, horrifyingly obvious that all three branches of government were all tightly and corruptly knit together. My God, that in such disconnected events, the crime by James Fenner against Karen Betts, not brought to book and the attempts to derail this trial, Sir Ian Rochester was implicated up to his neck in a swamp of corruption.
Jo Mills knew from experience when to speak when John Deed had calmed down and laid her hand gently on his brow. He had stared blindly into the distance at some vision that only he could see. She wasn't even sure that he was aware that she was in the room. It was finally that touch of human feeling which brought him to himself.
"I think you ought to know, Jo, that Neil Grayling had spoken to Sir Ian when he dissuaded your client Karen Betts from pressing rape charges against a fellow witness, James Fenner. Neil Grayling deliberately lied to Karen Betts when he said that he'd talked to a friend of his in the CPS, called Michael Hendry, who had said off the record, that they weren't going to take up the case. I have since established to my satisfaction that no such person has ever worked for the CPS. Only I have now been informed by Ian Rochester himself that, in reality, Neil Grayling spoke to that very same weasly corrupt man who, between them, concocted the whole cover up. And I am being repeatedly pressurized by them to collude with them in another cover up. By God they won't get away with this one, not while I have one breath in my body."
Jo Mills turned white with shock at the deadly game being played out against them and the widening dimension of cover up. She felt a wave of real concern for John Deed to see how much of an effort that ingrained habits of the law just barely controlled him to recount in terse logical order what had happened and the way at the end that the lid on the emotional pressure cooker threatened to blow off and reveal the complex, deeply emotional man that she totally knew him to be. About how she felt about what John was saying, she couldn't even begin to guess. She would have to catch up with her own feelings later on.
"Can I stay the night with you, Jo." He spoke almost in a little boy voice, so unlike his normal manner of the self assured older sometimes lover that she knew him to be.
"Of course, John." Her sometimes stern voice at the bar gave way to the tenderness she always felt for him no matter how exasperating and contrary she knew him to be. For one night, this was not the pupil and master relationship at work even though the next day this would inevitably reassert itself when John Deed had returned to normal.
Suddenly the phone rang and John Deed leant over out of bed to pick it up. Jo lay on her side; her hand resting on John's shoulder in a moment of tenderness after an evening of lovemaking which was partly to comfort each other.
"Deed, here." He announced in flat tones.
"John darling," George Channing's voice made John Deed jump. It was if he were out for a stroll in the Essex countryside and a red London bus suddenly turned the corner, a combination of the sudden shock and the sheer incongruity. Her normally very elegant and bossy tones had an undercurrent of the seductive. "I thought I'd be the first to tell you that you are about to have me come back into your life."
John Deed at this point became very nervous and unsettled. Was the woman proposing remarriage after the bitter fighting cat and dog union that limped its way with relief into the divorce courts? After all, look what had happened to Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in their remarriage many years ago.
"I mean, darling, welcome to the new defence barrister in the Crown versus Merriman and Atkins case. It will be like old times."
When John Deed brought the conversation to as rapid a close as politely as he could do so, he reflected that, for once George was right. But those old times were nothing to get nostalgic about, certainly not on a case as slippery as this and which was subject to political interference almost as a routine. And added to the diabolical brew was a new defence barrister with, via her bed, a hot line to a Government Minister, one Neil Houghton.
Jo Mills looked at John Deed with an anxious and protective gaze.
"Just when you thought that life was incapable of bowling you another googly at you, it suddenly does." John smiled shaking his head. The matter was fast becoming some kind of grotesque farce which provoked a twisted reaction to laugh at, rather than metaphorically to fall on his sword. "We now know for certain that Cantwell has resigned and who will be his successor. Let that wait to the morning, Jo. We have better things to do."
Who other than John Deed could she share sex with discussing legal cases, Jo shook her head in disbelief as he came to her? The whole thing was mad. But in that case, why was she sharing John Deed's bed if she or him were entirely sane.
It was that night when Brian Cantwell had been drinking the fourth night time whisky alone that he finally decided to throw in the towel on the Atkins Merriman case. His favourite place to work at home was seated at his carved oak table in the dining room which was a room far removed from the general thoroughfare in his mock Georgian home in Esher. The papers were strewn on his desk in front of him and all his past jottings in the days when he was confident of his case looked up at him in disbelief. Then he felt confident that his verbal powers could persuade twelve good men and women of England in the English jury of his client's innocence. Now his notes which spoke back to him ceased to inspire him with any confidence. The ornate clock on the wall rang out nine o clock and counted down the hours till he knew in advance that he must quit.
The first doubts started to insinuate themselves into his self belief on the first day in Mrs Atkins's testimony. He instinctively believed what she said that the fifty thousand pounds that his client Ritchie Atkins had scammed off her was paying for his defence. It was the tones of bitterness and betrayal that were ripped out of the very hard faced woman on the stand as if under torture. Normally she was the last sort of person he would believe being the sort of distasteful godmother Eastend character out of a third rate gangster film. Brian Cantwell was a cynic about human feelings and had grown an armour plated shell around himself that convinced himself that nearly all tear jerking performances from the dock were designed to get the client off the hook for crimes that the criminals had actually committed. He had seen people walk off Scot free from crimes where he himself had engineered their freedom. He didn't mind that as his job was simply a forensic exercise of which side of the case he stood and, as a prosecuting council, he might as easily be a defence council and could put himself in the hands of that other barrister.So long as the clients paid handsomely, that was one thing that mattered, the other being his frustrated ambition to become a Circuit Judge. They all came from the same club, after all, except………..naïve campaigning crusaders like Jo Mills, still wet behind the ears and that insufferable prig, Deed who was old enough to know better but didn't and occupied that throne on high which he deserved to sit in by rights. The thought of that made him take a deep swallow from his whisky goblet.
The memory of the Prison Officer as he approached him came to mind. When he had introduced himself with a firm handshake and friendly manner, the thought struck him as to what was this man's game? He was James Fenner, witness for the prosecution that, by rights, ought to steer clear of him as if he had leprosy. He could hardly believe his ears especially as the man was up on the stand the next day. He was on the other side, dammit. He shouldn't really complain and later, remembered with a feeling of pleasure that, for whatever reason, the man was feeding him with a nice juicy titbit which he knew well enough to exploit to the hilt.
He was on a roll when he cross examined Miss Betts today and he savoured the exact moment when he let her know for public knowledge the one matter which , by the expression on her face, ought to have broken her credibility. He was that close to the case going his way if it weren't for that damned accursed fellow, Deed at his most priggish. It was as if he had had a cold bucket of water thrown over him at the moment that he was approaching a climax, which, these days with his wife the way she was, was becoming a distant memory.
When all the anger was driven out of him by a sufficient amount of alcohol, his mind was made up. Today was one of Jo Mill's chief witnesses' experience of treading on an unexpected banana skin and falling headlong. Tomorrow, it might be his turn for one of his, who can tell? The whole thing was becoming too damned unpredictable and better someone else picked up the poisoned chalice and that he seek some nice 'no blame' case in an insurance fraud trial, some sound, cut and dried business case.
In any case, an unaccustomed twinge of conscience came to his mind, the thought that Mrs Atkins was paying for her guilty son's defence. That was a bad sign. When he first saw the clients, Ritchie Atkins had made himself out to be a young man with easy if indefinite ways of making a lot of money which quite frankly grated on him from his generation's ingrained values of working for his money. He carried himself with the air of someone who had had it too easy. Now he knew the truth and he had had enough.
"This is too much," John Deed stormed and raved. "The further this case goes on, the more it is riddled and interwoven with corruption as only a …as a …British Government could get."
The last words were dragged from John Deed's mind as a sudden revelation as to how things had gone to the dogs, another inevitable old-fashioned phrase. Only it wasn't some onward march of 'trendy lefties' dismantling the world of Empire but a new corrupt spirit of political expediency that forced itself more and more on his mind. Only a few years ago, he would have invoked the words of a 'banana republic' as his exemplar of a society totally rotted from within. By implication, Great Britain still stood as an example of justice and the rule of law. He could no longer sustain that belief and that was what cut him to the core. He could only sustain the standards which he passionately believed in.
"The British Constitution is unique in its separation of the executive, the legislature and the judiciary, "his old teacher, Mr Charlton had spoken many years ago. He could still picture the enthusiastic charismatic teacher, slightly grey haired who swept the brighter more idealistic pupils, himself included, along the magic carpet ride of his ideals. He hadn't seen his old teacher for so many years and didn't even know if he was still alive. In his mind he and his boundless enthusiasm was still very much alive. That was another age, John Deed thought ruefully and he is one of the few witnesses to the beliefs in England that once was, or had never been or which must be if there was any prospect of a better world. It was this guiding light that had illuminated the complicated path in life he had trod. It was sickeningly, horrifyingly obvious that all three branches of government were all tightly and corruptly knit together. My God, that in such disconnected events, the crime by James Fenner against Karen Betts, not brought to book and the attempts to derail this trial, Sir Ian Rochester was implicated up to his neck in a swamp of corruption.
Jo Mills knew from experience when to speak when John Deed had calmed down and laid her hand gently on his brow. He had stared blindly into the distance at some vision that only he could see. She wasn't even sure that he was aware that she was in the room. It was finally that touch of human feeling which brought him to himself.
"I think you ought to know, Jo, that Neil Grayling had spoken to Sir Ian when he dissuaded your client Karen Betts from pressing rape charges against a fellow witness, James Fenner. Neil Grayling deliberately lied to Karen Betts when he said that he'd talked to a friend of his in the CPS, called Michael Hendry, who had said off the record, that they weren't going to take up the case. I have since established to my satisfaction that no such person has ever worked for the CPS. Only I have now been informed by Ian Rochester himself that, in reality, Neil Grayling spoke to that very same weasly corrupt man who, between them, concocted the whole cover up. And I am being repeatedly pressurized by them to collude with them in another cover up. By God they won't get away with this one, not while I have one breath in my body."
Jo Mills turned white with shock at the deadly game being played out against them and the widening dimension of cover up. She felt a wave of real concern for John Deed to see how much of an effort that ingrained habits of the law just barely controlled him to recount in terse logical order what had happened and the way at the end that the lid on the emotional pressure cooker threatened to blow off and reveal the complex, deeply emotional man that she totally knew him to be. About how she felt about what John was saying, she couldn't even begin to guess. She would have to catch up with her own feelings later on.
"Can I stay the night with you, Jo." He spoke almost in a little boy voice, so unlike his normal manner of the self assured older sometimes lover that she knew him to be.
"Of course, John." Her sometimes stern voice at the bar gave way to the tenderness she always felt for him no matter how exasperating and contrary she knew him to be. For one night, this was not the pupil and master relationship at work even though the next day this would inevitably reassert itself when John Deed had returned to normal.
Suddenly the phone rang and John Deed leant over out of bed to pick it up. Jo lay on her side; her hand resting on John's shoulder in a moment of tenderness after an evening of lovemaking which was partly to comfort each other.
"Deed, here." He announced in flat tones.
"John darling," George Channing's voice made John Deed jump. It was if he were out for a stroll in the Essex countryside and a red London bus suddenly turned the corner, a combination of the sudden shock and the sheer incongruity. Her normally very elegant and bossy tones had an undercurrent of the seductive. "I thought I'd be the first to tell you that you are about to have me come back into your life."
John Deed at this point became very nervous and unsettled. Was the woman proposing remarriage after the bitter fighting cat and dog union that limped its way with relief into the divorce courts? After all, look what had happened to Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in their remarriage many years ago.
"I mean, darling, welcome to the new defence barrister in the Crown versus Merriman and Atkins case. It will be like old times."
When John Deed brought the conversation to as rapid a close as politely as he could do so, he reflected that, for once George was right. But those old times were nothing to get nostalgic about, certainly not on a case as slippery as this and which was subject to political interference almost as a routine. And added to the diabolical brew was a new defence barrister with, via her bed, a hot line to a Government Minister, one Neil Houghton.
Jo Mills looked at John Deed with an anxious and protective gaze.
"Just when you thought that life was incapable of bowling you another googly at you, it suddenly does." John smiled shaking his head. The matter was fast becoming some kind of grotesque farce which provoked a twisted reaction to laugh at, rather than metaphorically to fall on his sword. "We now know for certain that Cantwell has resigned and who will be his successor. Let that wait to the morning, Jo. We have better things to do."
Who other than John Deed could she share sex with discussing legal cases, Jo shook her head in disbelief as he came to her? The whole thing was mad. But in that case, why was she sharing John Deed's bed if she or him were entirely sane.