‘This is only a guess, mind you,’ said the old man. ‘It was quite dark. Luckily, he left the door open when he got out of the car so the courtesy light was on. That meant I saw him clearly.’
‘Did you recognise him?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘And the number of the car?’
‘I think it was W848 MJK.’
‘Any idea of the make?’
‘A Mondeo. But don’t ask me the colour, Tom.’
Fallowell wrote down the details on a slip of paper and handed it to a colleague. The latter immediately picked up a telephone to trace the owner of the vehicle. The Chief Inspector turned to Old Bag Dad.
‘Why didn’t you tell us this before?’
‘I was held up by a legal technicality.’
‘Would his name happen to be Ken Latimer?’
‘No wonder you became a detective!’
‘Thanks for coming forward, Bag Dad,’ said Fallowell. ‘This may be the breakthrough that we need. But next time you have evidence,’ he stressed, ‘make sure that you give it immediately. In a murder inquiry, we expect help from the public.’
The old man winked. ‘Oh, I think you’ll find that I’ve given that.’
Ten minutes later, Chief Inspector Fallowell was in a police car, leading a convoy to an address that they had been given. When they reached their destination, they found the house in a quiet cul-de-sac. Standing on the drive was a blue Ford Mondeo with the correct registration plate. The Inspector leapt out of the car and deployed his men around the property. He rang the bell but got no response. When he pounded on the door with his fist, he still elicited no reply. Standing back, he nodded to a waiting police officer who smashed down the door without ceremony. Armed detectives surged into the house to be met by a sight that made them stop in their tracks.
Chief Inspector Fallowell was as astonished as the rest of them. The man they wanted to interview could not have answered the door, even if he had wanted to do so. Sitting in an upright chair, he was bound and gagged. The look of desperation in his eyes was a confession of guilt in itself. He was untied, asked his name then formally arrested on a charge of murder. Fallowell ordered his men to take the prisoner out. Others were told to search the premises. One of the detectives sniffed the air. He wrinkled his nose. ‘What’s that?’ he asked. ‘Smells like aftershave lotion.’
‘Funny,’ said Fallowell with a knowing smile. ‘Can’t smell a thing.’
Douglas Pym soon got to hear how a brutal murder had been solved with the help of a tramp who was trespassing on council property. He was delighted to learn how Old Bag Dad had wrested a vital concession from the new head park keeper. The tramp had the freedom of the park once more. Pym caught his friend on his usual bench, finishing the last chapter of War and Peace. The old man let out a chuckle of satisfaction.
‘I always wondered how the book ended,’ he said.
‘What’s it to be with Ken Latimer from now on – war or peace?’
‘Peace with honour, Doug.’
‘Be careful. He bears grudges.’
‘I fancy that he’ll keep out of my way from now on.’
‘Until the cold weather sets in,’ noted Pym. ‘Even you won’t stay around the Memorial Park then. You’ll be up and away.’
‘Following the sun.’
‘But where to? I do wish you’d tell me that.’
‘Then I’ll let you into the secret, Doug. I go to the Middle East.’
‘The Middle East?’
‘My spiritual home.’
‘Are you pulling my leg?’
‘Of course not. There’s only one place I could go.’
‘Is there?’
‘Yes,’ said the tramp with a grin. ‘Old Baghdad.’
Rumpole and the Christmas Break by John Mortimer
I
‘We must be constantly on guard. Night and day. Vigilance is essential. I’m sure you would agree, wouldn’t you, Luci?’
Soapy Sam Ballard, our always-nervous Head of Chambers, addressed the meeting as though the forces of evil were already beating on the doors of 4 Equity Court, and weapons of mass destruction had laid waste to the dining hall, condemning us to a long winter of cold meat and sandwiches. As usual, he longed for confirmation and turned to our recently appointed Head of Marketing and Administration, who was now responsible for the Chambers’ image.
‘Quite right, Chair.’ Luci’s north country voice sounded quietly amused, as though she didn’t take the alarming state of the world quite as seriously as Ballard did.
‘Thank you for your contribution, Luci.’ Soapy Sam, it seemed, thought she might have gone a little further, such as recommending that Securicor mount a twenty-four hour guard on the Head of Chambers. Then he added, in a voice of doom, ‘I have already asked our clerk to keep an extremely sharp eye on the sugar kept in the coffee cupboard.’
‘Why did you do that?’ I ventured to ask our leader. ‘Has Claude been shovelling it in by the tablespoonful?’
Claude Erskine-Brown was one of the few barristers I have ever met who combined a passionate affection for Wagner’s operas with a remarkably sweet tooth, continuously sucking wine gums in court and loading his coffee with heaped spoonfuls of sugar.
‘It’s not that, Rumpole.’ Soapy Sam was getting petulant. ‘It’s anthrax.’
‘What anthrax?’
‘The sugar might be. There are undoubtedly people out there who are out to get us, Rumpole. Haven’t you been listening at all to government warnings?’
‘I seem to remember them telling us one day that if we went down the tube we’d all be gassed, and the next day they said, “Sorry, we were only joking. Carry on going down the tube.’“
‘Rumpole! Do you take nothing seriously?’
‘Some things,’ I assured Soapy Sam. ‘But not the government.’
‘We are,’ here Ballard ignored me as an apparently hopeless case, and addressed the meeting, ‘especially vulnerable.’
‘Why’s that?’ I was curious enough to ask.
‘We represent the Law, Rumpole. The centre of a civilised society. Naturally we’d be high on their hit list.’
‘You mean the Houses of Parliament, Buckingham Palace, and number 4 Equity Court? I wonder, you may be right.’
‘I propose to appoint a small Chambers emergency committee consisting of myself, Claude Erskine-Brown, and Archie Prosser. Please report to one of us if you notice anything unusual or out of the ordinary. I assume you have nothing to report, Rumpole?’
‘Nothing much. I did notice a chap on the tube. A fellow of Middle Eastern appearance wearing a turban and a beard and muttering into a Dictaphone. He got out at South Kensington. I don’t suppose it’s important.’
Just for a moment I thought, indeed I hoped, our Head of Chambers looked at me as though he believed what I had said, but then justifiable doubt overcame him.
‘Very funny,’ Ballard told the meeting. ‘But then you can scarcely afford to be serious about the danger we’re all in, can you Rumpole? Considering you’re defending one of these maniacs.’
‘Rumpole would defend anyone,’ said Archie Prosser, the newest arrival in our chambers, who had an ill-deserved reputation as a wit.
‘If you mean anyone who’s put on trial and tells me they’re innocent, then the answer is yes.’
Nothing alarming happened on the tube on my way home that evening, except for the fact that, owing to a ‘work to rule’ by the drivers, the train gave up work at Victoria and I had to walk the rest of the way home to Froxbury Mansions in the Gloucester Road. The shops and their windows were full of glitter, artificial snow, and wax models perched on sleighs wearing party dresses. Taped carols came tinkling out of Tesco’s. The Chambers meeting had been the last of the term, and the Old Bailey had interrupted its business for the season of peace and goodwill.