Rumpole Rests His Case (13 page)

‘Two years ago.'

‘Did you inflict some sort of wounds on yourself in order to impress this Tribunal?'

‘No, of course not.' The Doctor was not outraged, only slightly amused at the accusation.

‘Even if you were tortured, as you say, two years ago, have you any reason to suppose that you'd be tortured again if you returned to your country?'

‘My Lord,' I rose in free-flowing outrage to object and was stopped by Guthrie's smiling ‘You mean “Sir”.'

‘I mean “Sir”. Isn't it obvious that if he's been tortured before, he's going to receive even worse treatment if he's sent back after trying to escape abroad? The regime hasn't changed. The country hasn't signed up to the Charter of Human Rights. That wasn't a question, it was simply a ludicrous assumption based on a wilful refusal to face the facts.'

‘Mr Rumpole,' Mr Justice Featherstone was clearly gathering his wits for some sort of rebuke, ‘as you see, we are sitting here without a Jury. No doubt a full Jury box at the Old Bailey might have been impressed by one of your floods of indignation. We, and I speak here for my two colleagues — ' (the bookends on either side of him nodded sagely) ‘have to decide this matter without emotion strictly in the terms of Immigration Law on which I'm sure the Prosecutor — ' here he looked at the Hopo with untarnished approval, ‘will give us the benefit of his knowledge and experience. Yes. You may ask the questions again.'

The Hopo accordingly did so and the good Doctor, having given the matter some thought, replied, ‘No. You're right. I don't fear torture if I return. I fear death!'

As a piece of advocacy, I thought this was considerably more effective than my objection.

 

 

‘Just keeping an eye on your client, Mr Rumpole. We're interested in the Travel Agents, of course. They're making their millions transporting human misery. That's about the size of it, if you want my honest opinion.'

D. I. Grimble often used this expression as though we might, from time to time, quite enjoy his dishonest one. Together with Ted Minter, we had sought refuge in a Horseferry Road pub which promised reasonable Guinness and beef sandwiches, a delicacy which I thought might, given the present government's handling of animal disease, become as rare and expensive as caviar. At the other end of the bar my Hopo, apparently satisfied with his performance, was laughing loudly with three distinctly personable young Home Office secretaries. Doctor Nabi had remained in the Tribunal building and, after swallowing a handful of vitamin pills and a glass of water, was refreshing his memory from his notes.

‘Our chap has a lot to say about the Travel Agents,' I reminded Grimble. ‘Russian Mafia, some of them.'

‘He's in fear for his life if he can't pay them.' Ted was looking for help from a friendly officer.

‘I think we may have got very close to one of the principal villains.' The Inspector sounded justifiably satisfied. ‘That's why we want to keep an eye on your client, now he's emerged from the shadows, Mr Rumpole. Entirely for his own protection, of course.'

He was looking at me steadily. I had a curious feeling that the pieces of what had seemed a haphazard jigsaw had locked together, and I thought I knew what the Detective Inspector really meant.

 

 

The police observation, by WPC Mary Longcroft and DS Stewart, wearing casual clothing and driving an unmarked Ford Fiesta, was tactful but efficient. After he left the Court at five-thirty p.m., my client took a taxi to a discreet address in Devonshire Place which was known to house a massage parlour offering more exotic services to regular and affluent clients. He emerged and took another taxi to an Indian restaurant in Kensington High Street, where he ate Tandoori chicken with vegetable curry and drank mineral water and strong black tea. He walked to the Kensington Odeon, where he chose the screen presenting
Message in a Bottle
starring Kevin Costner. He left the cinema shortly after ten, visibly moved.

From the Odeon, the object of scrutiny walked down towards Earls Court Road and then, turning into Longridge Road, he stopped outside a door next to, of all things, a travel agency. He had a key to unlock the door. Seconds later, a light went on in the room over the shop. The subject was seen drawing the curtains, although chinks of light revealed that the room was still occupied.

Watch was kept by WPC Longcroft and DS Stewart for fifteen minutes, and then they heard a sudden cry, perhaps a cry for help but in a language they couldn't understand. It echoed down the empty street and then died in silence. The watchers called for assistance and, when the police car arrived, the door was broken down. The subject was found apparently alive in the upstairs room.

In the search that followed, a cupboard in the wall was found locked. When the police forced the door, they saw a sight familiar, perhaps, in the prisons and police stations of some cruelly intolerant regime. A tall man with light-brown skin and soft, pleading eyes was confined in the darkness, bound to a chair, seated in the stench of his own excrement, with his mouth shut and silenced by adhesive tape.

So the real Doctor Nabi was released from custody and later found to have marks of torture on his body which could in no way have been self-inflicted. My Appeal before the Tribunal was adjourned, pending the completion of police enquiries.

 

 

‘Jamil was the Travel Agent, of course. He made a fortune transporting his fellow citizens, most of whom never got to stay here, in a succession of chutney runs. Grimble and his team were nearly on to him. He was desperately in need of a new personality.'

‘So he decided to become the Doctor.' Archie Prosser, the new Boy Wonder of our Chambers, had got the point.

‘Exactly.'

‘But if he was the Travel Agent, didn't the Doctor know him?' Elsie Prosser, the Boy Wonder's wife, was a large, motherly woman of what used to be called a ‘homely' appearance. She had a sense of humour and, apart from an inexplicable attachment to Archie, considerable common sense.

‘Oh, he didn't know him as the Travel Agent, or one of them. He knew him as Jamil, the kindly refugee adviser and social worker who helped him fill in all his forms and send them off.'

‘What happened to the answers?'

‘Jamil got them. But he told Nabi he'd heard nothing. He was getting ready to become the noble, persecuted Doctor.'

‘He never turned up before the adjudicator.' The Boy Wonder was quick to spot our case's weakest link.

‘Grimble doesn't think Jamil was ready then. He'd just got the Doctor out of the council house by telling him the Travel Agents were after him and he was making him a prisoner in Longridge Road.'

‘He was lucky to get leave to appeal.'

‘Lucky all the way. Until the end.'

‘When he deceived everyone. Including you, Rumpole,' Hilda was delighted to say.

‘I had my suspicions. I looked at the picture in your paper. I couldn't see anyone who looked much like our client. And then, there was something about the way he gave his evidence...'

‘Oh, nonsense, Rumpole!' Hilda, as ever, was determined to make the most of Rumpole's fallibility. ‘You know perfectly well you were completely taken in.'

There was a silence then. The Boy Wonder took in his surroundings, cast an eye round the sitting-room, helped himself to an after-dinner mint bought by Hilda for the occasion, and said words which were music to my ears. ‘You know, Hilda, you've got this flat of yours exactly how I like it.'

‘There's a real feeling of home here.' The admirable Elsie Prosser backed him up.

‘I can't bear the way some people do their places up nowadays,' Boy Wonder further improved the situation. ‘Bubbling lights in coloured tubes and plants all over the shop.'

‘See-through sock drawers,' I suggested, turning the screw.

‘A chap I was at school with, works in the City,' Boy Wonder was laughing in a way I found delightful. ‘He's even got a hole in his sitting-room floor, like a sort of grave, you're meant to sit in it and chat!'

‘What a ridiculous idea!' I heard Hilda's voice of surrender, and heard it with relief.

‘What I like about this place,' Mrs Prosser kept to the theme, ‘is that every dear old article of furniture looks thoroughly loved.'

‘They're all things that have seen us through our married lives, aren't they, Rumpole?'

‘For better or worse. Yes.'

‘You know, in some ways this place reminds me of the good old Sheridan Club.'

Down at heel? I felt like saying but resisted the temptation. Inviting the Boy Wonder and his wife to dinner had proved to be a blessing in excellent disguise.

‘You know, Rumpole had some sort of an idea we needed a makeover.' I was fascinated by the devious mind now revealed by She Who Must Be Obeyed.

‘Oh no, you can't! Don't do it, Rumpole.‘ The Prossers spoke in unison.

‘Well, it was just an idea...' I was only too pleased to cooperate with Hilda.

‘I really think,' she said firmly, ‘that we should tell those decorator people they're not needed. Would you agree, Rumpole?'

‘Oh yes, Hilda, I most certainly would.'

It was a moment of thankfulness, and sanity returned. I lit a small cigar and Mrs Prosser accepted one also.

‘I only wonder,' Archie asked, apparently innocently, ‘why this arch crook and ruthless exploiter Jamil suggested you do the Appeal. I mean, he wasn't going to get a new life if you messed it up, was he?'

‘I can only suppose,' I said, ‘that he had heard something about me that convinced him I could win.' And at that moment I didn't know whether to feel proud or ashamed.

 

‘Finally, Sir, with respect to the Tribunal, may I say this. There may be people, perhaps people of power and influence, who say, or think, or might wish you to find, that if an independent state inflicts horrible cruelty on its citizens because of its sincerely held religious beliefs, or because such cruelties are part of its traditions, or are believed to be for the common good, we should close our eyes, fail to condemn it, and send its refugees who come here expecting protection back to face torture and probably death. We would submit that there are values higher than local customs or traditions, or even the demands of various religious beliefs. There is a justice which believes that persecution is persecution, cruelty is cruelty, torture is torture, murder is murder, in whatever country and for whatever motive it is carried out. With those thoughts, I leave the future of Doctor Mohammed Nabi with confidence in the hands of this Tribunal.'

It was some while later that I made this final speech in a new hearing. I had spoken to Guthrie and the bookends exactly as if they were a Jury. And it worked.

Shortly after that, the Boy Wonder left Chambers for a job in the Home Office. I had a spell of gout and extreme pain. I called on the real Doctor Nabi at his practice in the Clerken well Road and the stuff he gave me worked extremely well.

‘Absolutely right! I quite agree. That's the only way to treat them.'

It was breakfast time in the mansion flat and She Who Must Be Obeyed was pleased to find herself in complete agreement with her
Daily Beacon.

The way to treat whom? I wondered. Husbands? Plumbers who make you wait at home all day on the off-chance that they might condescend to call? Supporters of the European common currency? I wondered which of Hilda's betes noires was in for it at the moment.

‘First-time drug users! Dope fiends in the making. We're too tolerant, Rumpole! We're soft on cannabis.'

‘You, Hilda? I didn't know you were soft on anything.'

‘We need more like him.'

‘Like who?'

By way of answer Hilda passed me her paper. The centre pages were dominated by the photograph of a burly, square-shouldered man with a broken nose and bushy eyebrows. He was staring at the camera in a hostile and challenging manner and the article was headed ‘PUT FIRST-TIME DRUGGIES INSIDE, by Doctor Tom Gurnley MP, the voice of common sense!'

‘He could have any job he wants for the asking, if he weren't so wonderfully
loyal
! He prefers to speak his mind from the back-benches.'

Dr Gurnley's views on the death penalty (strongly in favour), the European Union, erotic advertisements in the Underground, one-parent families and asylum seekers (strongly against) were trumpeted from every chat show on radio, television and most of the newspapers on a daily basis. If they weren't interviewing him or publishing his articles, they were reporting that there was a strong movement to make the Doctor leader of his Party after its forthcoming electoral defeat.

‘The thing about him is he's prepared to crack down on crime from the outset. He understands the nature of evil, which I sometimes think is more than you do, Rumpole.'

‘You may be right.' Is evil a word used too frequently to explain the apparently inexplicable? Does it exist, not only in the dock but along the corridors of power, among the law-givers as well as the cracked-down-on? I could have discussed King Lear's pertinent question: ‘Handy Dandy. Which is justice, which the thief?' but breakfast wasn't the right time for such debates, nor would Hilda have enjoyed a closer exploration of this subject.

‘And he's such a handsome chap, isn't he, Rumpole? I mean, he looks a real
man.
Not like some of the variety we see around the House of Commons nowadays. He's got the look of a gladiator about him. Someone with a cause to fight for! Don't you agree, Rumpole?'