Part One Hundred And Four
It was the self important tread of Neil Houghton's footsteps along the echoing corridors of the Lord Chancellor's Department that told Sir Ian that he was going to be interrupted again. He laid down his papers with a sigh. If he knew one thing about the workings of the civil service in relation to ministers, it was that they would expect his time to be theirs but God forbid that he intruded into their space, their schedule, their time, their anything. The expectation that civil servants were to be obsequious and to deliver the impossible was the norm these days. Old timers told him when he was a young Administrative Trainee that it was all the dratted fault of that handbag swinging fearful woman Margaret Thatcher who first asked the question of a prospective official "Is he one of us?" As a fast stream young hopeful, he could remember those cold blue staring eyes turn round in his general direction and that grating female 'disgusted of Tonbridge Wells' voice reach out to his Head of Department and tare him off a strip. He had not given her the views which she wished to hear, so she told him, and she threatened him with a swift transfer to the outer reaches of the then Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries. He would be banished forever to negotiate fiddly details with Iceland over the cod quota. He never forgot the way that he grovelled in apology to her and after that, the threat was never made again to him. Nor did it ever need to be made. The circus animal jumped before the ringmaster had need to crack the whip. He never forgot that important lesson. No matter who had come and gone at 10 Downing Street and which political party was in control, nothing had really changed. The ability to summon up a false smile of agreement with some of the ridiculous outpourings of these ministers was the same basic survival skill as being equipped with a double barrelled shotgun in going out into a jungle with man eating lions on the loose. The trouble was, no matter how the policies were changed from year to year, nothing ever got better. The golden rule was, don't let the minister ever hear of any possible bad news.
All that worked very well until the day came when Sir Ian's career move, coinciding with his knighthood, took him to the Lord Chancellor's Department and, in turn, into the province of judges who, to his prim and proper way of thinking, were flamboyant would be actors. Donald Sinden would find himself in fine company with the very mannered, eccentric, Old Etonians with their very prickly individualism. Deed, of course, was the worst of all of them.
"Ian," Neil demanded peremptorily of him. "Have you heard of this mad plan to start a civil action against Prison Service area management about some prison officer who was supposedly raped."
Sir Ian raised his eyebrows at this. There was the expectation that whatever the politician breezed in through the door with, he would have instant awareness and knowledge. Sympathy with their views and an ability to put a spanner to lock tight together the nuts and bolts of their enterprises was taken as read. The politicians were there for the grand designs while the likes of Sir Ian were there for the technicalities.
"Perhaps you had better start from the beginning, Neil." Sir Ian's smile was especially fixed and insincere.
"I would have thought that you chaps would keep your ears to the ground," Came the brusque reply. "Still, if you must know, it's about this perpetual source of bad news, Larkhall Prison and one of the witnesses in the recent Atkins Pilkinton trial. A civil action being concocted to say that this man had been guilty of a series of misdemeanours and that some area management personnel people were a bit lax in not reining in this man. Of all the prisons up and down the country, every prison toddles on, day in day out, well enough and this hellhole causes trouble, left right and centre."
"Let's put a few names to faces, Neil," Sir Ian talked in a suspicious tone. "I sat in the public gallery getting a stiff back on those hard benches following that trial. It might help, Neil. Who is the name of the accused?"
"James Fenner," Neil replied shortly.
"Ah, Neil. This is starting to make sense. I wouldn't buy a used car from that man. And who is the woman concerned?"
"Karen Betts."
"I remember her as well. If there is a civil action being taken, there must be either a solicitor or a barrister involved, and especially where an area administration of the Prison Service is concerned. I can hardly imagine Claims Direct taking on that sort of work," Sir Ian continued in his inquisitive way.
"There is a barrister involved, Ian," Neil replied shortly.
Sir Ian was growing more and more suspicious as time went on. He cast a longing sidelong glance at his papers on the side of his mahogany title and yearned to bury himself in the abstractions of the administration of the LCD. However, the matter in hand started the process of making connections in his mind.
"Do I or you happen to know the name of this barrister, Neil?"
The Cabinet Minister abruptly got up from his seat and did a short walk round the office to control his growing anger. He was getting the feeling that those in his life who were at one time, 'on board' and could be relied upon were asking too many awkward questions. At one time, his word was given and the deed would be done but there was an increasingly restless spirit around. The focus in his mind of his troubles was John Deed's aristocratic expression of disdain and he was the serpent who offered Eve the apple of temptation so that his ordered heaven was disturbed forever. There was a dangerous infection of spirit abroad that was a threat to his security as this new 'winter of discontent' had spread. First of all his money loving barrister and socialite ex partner who had always followed his lead had turned her powers of sarcasm on him, cast him out and seemed bent on some vindictive crusade. And now, this toadying official in the LCD had given him the brush off over George last time and seemed to be making awkwardness as a personal development plan.
"You are asking a lot of difficult questions, Ian. I had expected you to be more helpful. You ought to be more careful."
The whiplash of words lashed across Sir Ian's shoulders and instinctively, his head felt as if it was sinking into his shoulders as old painful memories came flooding back. He was becoming indiscreet of late and strange impulses burst through his mandarin reserve from time to time. But he was still able to ask the question that his curiosity demanded an answer too.
"Just who is this barrister, Neil. I must know," Sir Ian asked meekly.
"If I must humour your typical Civil service obsession with detail, George Channing."
A light of understanding dawned in Sir Ian like an incandescent illumination which made everything clear. He shook his head in astonishment that this mere mortal with feet of clay could order him about.
"Now I understand you, Neil. You do seem to have got yourself into a hole. You have an argument with George, you strike her and you wonder why she is not well disposed towards helping the government out. if you behave in such an ungentlemanly fashion, what do you expect?" Sir Ian stood up from his chair to confront the increasingly angry politician.
"What possible connection is there between a little domestic upset and a barrister who seems to have got the bit between her teeth to indulge in some senseless, wrecking campaign?"
"You mean, like the way that Deed behaves?"
Neil laughed out loud in total incredulity at such a comparison. He could not imagine the slightest thing in common between George and that priggish man with using the law to stir up trouble and especially victimising the wealth creators who were the life blood to this country's economy. George's frequent trips to the shops around Oxford Street, her love of all the fine things in life and her mercenary approach to her work as a source of luxuries. Her sympathies towards the wealth creators was well known. She was no rabble rousing revolutionary, it was just that she had just gone off the rails a bit.
Sir Ian could not believe the blindness of this man. Excellent though he might be at shuffling papers around at Cabinet meetings, he had no conception that his actions had driven George away. Who knows where this will end?
"If you want my opinion, Neil, then I can see every reason why George might take up such a case. She has the ability, she may well have had enough of some of the cases you have steered her way and wants to prove herself as a barrister on her own. Most of all, there is no fury like a woman scorned or didn't anyone tell you that?" Sir Ian finished with a note of contempt as he gradually took courage into his hands, bit by bit.
"You need to make the personal approach to her. Then you might get somewhere and maybe she'll drop the case."
"She won't listen, dammit," Neil said, getting red in the face.
"Then you have to work out a way to get her to listen," Sir Ian said calmly. He nearly said that this was the sort of task that Ministers routinely and arrogantly handed down to him but that would be definitely indiscreet.
Neil stalked out without saying another word.
With a sigh, Sir Ian returned to his papers.
"So, how did you get on in your conversation with Deed, sir?" Lawrence James asked him.
"Not bad, Lawrence," Sir Ian said with a certain amount of satisfaction. "Deed was vociferous in his support of his ex wife in pursuing the legal action against the prison Service and daring me to put a spoke in George's wheel. I said that this was a remarkable turnabout as to my recollection, I imagined that he himself would love to see his dream realised of putting his ex wife behind bars once and for all. He denied it hotly, saying it was only as Ms Channing transgressed the rules of standards of adversarial representation."
"Does the man not see that he has no right to talk about transgressions?" the puritanical nature of Lawrence James waxed eloquently. "Has he no shame?"
Sir Ian smiled thinly. While Lawrence James had every reason to violently object to John Deed's idiosyncratic nature and was fond of expounding at length on the subject, he carried on long after the point when Sir Ian was bored with talking about it and wished he would shut up. Zealous though he might be, Lawrence James could irritate him.
"I pointed out to him that he seemed singularly well informed about his ex wife's thoughts and feelings and expressed my hopes that their relationship in court might be more harmonious in future. He smiled and said that there was just a reasonable chance that his ex wife's tempestuous nature might be tamed."
"He was joking of course, sir Ian. What did you say?"
"I told him 'Like the Taming of the Shrew' but he laughed that off. You never quite know where you are with him when he appears to make a joke. Anyway, we talked about the prison service and I dared him to visit a prison of his choice seeing that he has sent many people to prison in his time but had never seen the consequences of his actions."
"Isn't that a little rash, sir," A worried Lawrence James interposed. "You do not know what he is capable of when let loose in any institution."
"It's a calculated risk, Lawrence. I am banking on Deed making contact with the sort of flotsam and jetsam of society that might take the edge off his campaigning zeal. He might as well be enabled to go to the prison which is most in the news, this Larkhall Prison. For the first time in my life, I think that I had him wrongfooted as he did not expect this sort of reaction from me."
"But what about the civil action that Ms Channing is bent on dragging the prison Service through, sir."
Sir Ian stretched himself in his comfortable chair.
"The situation hasn't changed essentially since I last had words with Deed. At that time, it appeared that Miss Betts, the woman concerned, was going to pursue this through the criminal courts. As the evidence hasn't properly come up to scratch, a civil case is being planned instead," Sir Ian explained
"This will not involve the CPS or prejudice our harmonious relationship with them but if sufficient evidence arises in trial, a criminal case may still be brought. It is a risk, sir."
"I don't know. I've worked in the Civil Service all my life to further my career which means to play everything safe. I am not bound to save a Cabinet Minister from the consequences of his actions in raising a hand to his partner any more than I was bound to do a favour for an unscrupulous Prison Governor who enabled a very dangerous man to be let off the hook in the rape of a fellow Prison Officer. I made a mistake at the time and, for once, our policy is 'hands off.' I've nannied too many politicians over the years and I just want an easy life."
"It is strange for you to speak so, sir Ian. Ever since I have worked for you, I have felt that you have never tired in your efforts to maintain the Greater Good of this nation. You have changed."
"You're young and ambitious, Lawrence, with a long way to go. I felt like you once but perhaps I'm getting old and tired. You may feel the same one day. Care for a drink?"
Sir Ian reached out and poured a drink for Lawrence James and they relaxed in the subdued lighting and quiet of the office bearing the title stretching back to antiquity.
It was the self important tread of Neil Houghton's footsteps along the echoing corridors of the Lord Chancellor's Department that told Sir Ian that he was going to be interrupted again. He laid down his papers with a sigh. If he knew one thing about the workings of the civil service in relation to ministers, it was that they would expect his time to be theirs but God forbid that he intruded into their space, their schedule, their time, their anything. The expectation that civil servants were to be obsequious and to deliver the impossible was the norm these days. Old timers told him when he was a young Administrative Trainee that it was all the dratted fault of that handbag swinging fearful woman Margaret Thatcher who first asked the question of a prospective official "Is he one of us?" As a fast stream young hopeful, he could remember those cold blue staring eyes turn round in his general direction and that grating female 'disgusted of Tonbridge Wells' voice reach out to his Head of Department and tare him off a strip. He had not given her the views which she wished to hear, so she told him, and she threatened him with a swift transfer to the outer reaches of the then Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries. He would be banished forever to negotiate fiddly details with Iceland over the cod quota. He never forgot the way that he grovelled in apology to her and after that, the threat was never made again to him. Nor did it ever need to be made. The circus animal jumped before the ringmaster had need to crack the whip. He never forgot that important lesson. No matter who had come and gone at 10 Downing Street and which political party was in control, nothing had really changed. The ability to summon up a false smile of agreement with some of the ridiculous outpourings of these ministers was the same basic survival skill as being equipped with a double barrelled shotgun in going out into a jungle with man eating lions on the loose. The trouble was, no matter how the policies were changed from year to year, nothing ever got better. The golden rule was, don't let the minister ever hear of any possible bad news.
All that worked very well until the day came when Sir Ian's career move, coinciding with his knighthood, took him to the Lord Chancellor's Department and, in turn, into the province of judges who, to his prim and proper way of thinking, were flamboyant would be actors. Donald Sinden would find himself in fine company with the very mannered, eccentric, Old Etonians with their very prickly individualism. Deed, of course, was the worst of all of them.
"Ian," Neil demanded peremptorily of him. "Have you heard of this mad plan to start a civil action against Prison Service area management about some prison officer who was supposedly raped."
Sir Ian raised his eyebrows at this. There was the expectation that whatever the politician breezed in through the door with, he would have instant awareness and knowledge. Sympathy with their views and an ability to put a spanner to lock tight together the nuts and bolts of their enterprises was taken as read. The politicians were there for the grand designs while the likes of Sir Ian were there for the technicalities.
"Perhaps you had better start from the beginning, Neil." Sir Ian's smile was especially fixed and insincere.
"I would have thought that you chaps would keep your ears to the ground," Came the brusque reply. "Still, if you must know, it's about this perpetual source of bad news, Larkhall Prison and one of the witnesses in the recent Atkins Pilkinton trial. A civil action being concocted to say that this man had been guilty of a series of misdemeanours and that some area management personnel people were a bit lax in not reining in this man. Of all the prisons up and down the country, every prison toddles on, day in day out, well enough and this hellhole causes trouble, left right and centre."
"Let's put a few names to faces, Neil," Sir Ian talked in a suspicious tone. "I sat in the public gallery getting a stiff back on those hard benches following that trial. It might help, Neil. Who is the name of the accused?"
"James Fenner," Neil replied shortly.
"Ah, Neil. This is starting to make sense. I wouldn't buy a used car from that man. And who is the woman concerned?"
"Karen Betts."
"I remember her as well. If there is a civil action being taken, there must be either a solicitor or a barrister involved, and especially where an area administration of the Prison Service is concerned. I can hardly imagine Claims Direct taking on that sort of work," Sir Ian continued in his inquisitive way.
"There is a barrister involved, Ian," Neil replied shortly.
Sir Ian was growing more and more suspicious as time went on. He cast a longing sidelong glance at his papers on the side of his mahogany title and yearned to bury himself in the abstractions of the administration of the LCD. However, the matter in hand started the process of making connections in his mind.
"Do I or you happen to know the name of this barrister, Neil?"
The Cabinet Minister abruptly got up from his seat and did a short walk round the office to control his growing anger. He was getting the feeling that those in his life who were at one time, 'on board' and could be relied upon were asking too many awkward questions. At one time, his word was given and the deed would be done but there was an increasingly restless spirit around. The focus in his mind of his troubles was John Deed's aristocratic expression of disdain and he was the serpent who offered Eve the apple of temptation so that his ordered heaven was disturbed forever. There was a dangerous infection of spirit abroad that was a threat to his security as this new 'winter of discontent' had spread. First of all his money loving barrister and socialite ex partner who had always followed his lead had turned her powers of sarcasm on him, cast him out and seemed bent on some vindictive crusade. And now, this toadying official in the LCD had given him the brush off over George last time and seemed to be making awkwardness as a personal development plan.
"You are asking a lot of difficult questions, Ian. I had expected you to be more helpful. You ought to be more careful."
The whiplash of words lashed across Sir Ian's shoulders and instinctively, his head felt as if it was sinking into his shoulders as old painful memories came flooding back. He was becoming indiscreet of late and strange impulses burst through his mandarin reserve from time to time. But he was still able to ask the question that his curiosity demanded an answer too.
"Just who is this barrister, Neil. I must know," Sir Ian asked meekly.
"If I must humour your typical Civil service obsession with detail, George Channing."
A light of understanding dawned in Sir Ian like an incandescent illumination which made everything clear. He shook his head in astonishment that this mere mortal with feet of clay could order him about.
"Now I understand you, Neil. You do seem to have got yourself into a hole. You have an argument with George, you strike her and you wonder why she is not well disposed towards helping the government out. if you behave in such an ungentlemanly fashion, what do you expect?" Sir Ian stood up from his chair to confront the increasingly angry politician.
"What possible connection is there between a little domestic upset and a barrister who seems to have got the bit between her teeth to indulge in some senseless, wrecking campaign?"
"You mean, like the way that Deed behaves?"
Neil laughed out loud in total incredulity at such a comparison. He could not imagine the slightest thing in common between George and that priggish man with using the law to stir up trouble and especially victimising the wealth creators who were the life blood to this country's economy. George's frequent trips to the shops around Oxford Street, her love of all the fine things in life and her mercenary approach to her work as a source of luxuries. Her sympathies towards the wealth creators was well known. She was no rabble rousing revolutionary, it was just that she had just gone off the rails a bit.
Sir Ian could not believe the blindness of this man. Excellent though he might be at shuffling papers around at Cabinet meetings, he had no conception that his actions had driven George away. Who knows where this will end?
"If you want my opinion, Neil, then I can see every reason why George might take up such a case. She has the ability, she may well have had enough of some of the cases you have steered her way and wants to prove herself as a barrister on her own. Most of all, there is no fury like a woman scorned or didn't anyone tell you that?" Sir Ian finished with a note of contempt as he gradually took courage into his hands, bit by bit.
"You need to make the personal approach to her. Then you might get somewhere and maybe she'll drop the case."
"She won't listen, dammit," Neil said, getting red in the face.
"Then you have to work out a way to get her to listen," Sir Ian said calmly. He nearly said that this was the sort of task that Ministers routinely and arrogantly handed down to him but that would be definitely indiscreet.
Neil stalked out without saying another word.
With a sigh, Sir Ian returned to his papers.
"So, how did you get on in your conversation with Deed, sir?" Lawrence James asked him.
"Not bad, Lawrence," Sir Ian said with a certain amount of satisfaction. "Deed was vociferous in his support of his ex wife in pursuing the legal action against the prison Service and daring me to put a spoke in George's wheel. I said that this was a remarkable turnabout as to my recollection, I imagined that he himself would love to see his dream realised of putting his ex wife behind bars once and for all. He denied it hotly, saying it was only as Ms Channing transgressed the rules of standards of adversarial representation."
"Does the man not see that he has no right to talk about transgressions?" the puritanical nature of Lawrence James waxed eloquently. "Has he no shame?"
Sir Ian smiled thinly. While Lawrence James had every reason to violently object to John Deed's idiosyncratic nature and was fond of expounding at length on the subject, he carried on long after the point when Sir Ian was bored with talking about it and wished he would shut up. Zealous though he might be, Lawrence James could irritate him.
"I pointed out to him that he seemed singularly well informed about his ex wife's thoughts and feelings and expressed my hopes that their relationship in court might be more harmonious in future. He smiled and said that there was just a reasonable chance that his ex wife's tempestuous nature might be tamed."
"He was joking of course, sir Ian. What did you say?"
"I told him 'Like the Taming of the Shrew' but he laughed that off. You never quite know where you are with him when he appears to make a joke. Anyway, we talked about the prison service and I dared him to visit a prison of his choice seeing that he has sent many people to prison in his time but had never seen the consequences of his actions."
"Isn't that a little rash, sir," A worried Lawrence James interposed. "You do not know what he is capable of when let loose in any institution."
"It's a calculated risk, Lawrence. I am banking on Deed making contact with the sort of flotsam and jetsam of society that might take the edge off his campaigning zeal. He might as well be enabled to go to the prison which is most in the news, this Larkhall Prison. For the first time in my life, I think that I had him wrongfooted as he did not expect this sort of reaction from me."
"But what about the civil action that Ms Channing is bent on dragging the prison Service through, sir."
Sir Ian stretched himself in his comfortable chair.
"The situation hasn't changed essentially since I last had words with Deed. At that time, it appeared that Miss Betts, the woman concerned, was going to pursue this through the criminal courts. As the evidence hasn't properly come up to scratch, a civil case is being planned instead," Sir Ian explained
"This will not involve the CPS or prejudice our harmonious relationship with them but if sufficient evidence arises in trial, a criminal case may still be brought. It is a risk, sir."
"I don't know. I've worked in the Civil Service all my life to further my career which means to play everything safe. I am not bound to save a Cabinet Minister from the consequences of his actions in raising a hand to his partner any more than I was bound to do a favour for an unscrupulous Prison Governor who enabled a very dangerous man to be let off the hook in the rape of a fellow Prison Officer. I made a mistake at the time and, for once, our policy is 'hands off.' I've nannied too many politicians over the years and I just want an easy life."
"It is strange for you to speak so, sir Ian. Ever since I have worked for you, I have felt that you have never tired in your efforts to maintain the Greater Good of this nation. You have changed."
"You're young and ambitious, Lawrence, with a long way to go. I felt like you once but perhaps I'm getting old and tired. You may feel the same one day. Care for a drink?"
Sir Ian reached out and poured a drink for Lawrence James and they relaxed in the subdued lighting and quiet of the office bearing the title stretching back to antiquity.