As soon as I’d put the phone down it rang again. This time it was Clifton.
‘I really would like to make one last appeal to you. Ignore what my client says; he is undoubtedly an unstable man. I have personal reasons for believing that he has fallen under the influence of people who are …’ his voice trailed off ‘… evil. I urge you to come to Snaresbrook for 10.30. Mr Stonehouse needs help. He is not a man who will adjust well to prison.’
When Clifton had rung off, I sat at the desk spasmodically ripping up my wadded Post-it notes. After a while I looked at my watch, it was 9.50. I ran out of the office and down into the street. I was on the Gray’s Inn Road before I managed to find a cab.
‘I need to be at Snaresbrook Court by 10.30 — do you think we’ll make it?’
‘Hard to say, mate.’ It was a flat, laconic statement. The cabby’s hand circled lazily and brought the cab neatly into the traffic stream. ‘We could do it, it really depends on getting through past Clapton.’
‘Why not head north and cut across the Marsh to Leyton.’
‘Nah, nah, not worth it.’
‘But …’
‘Trust me. Anyway, what’s the hurry?’
‘It’s a friend, he needs me as a character witness, he could go down.’
‘Oh, I see.’
We sat in silence. The cab juddered its way through the morning traffic, purring noisily like a vast, bronchitic panther. I fidgeted with my lip, my cheeks. Smoked and flicked, squinted out the window at the facades of buildings growing and retreating. The cabby took my advice after all. We turned off Green Lanes and cut across Stoke Newington to Tottenham High Road. The rows of semis and villas gave way to unfinished areas of warehousing and light industrial premises as we dog-legged round on to the Lea Bridge Road. It was 10.25. I sat forward in my seat, willing the traffic ahead to part for us.
‘What’d he do then, this friend of yours?’
‘He got fed up with waiting.’
‘Ha! If that was a crime we’d all be bloody banged up, wouldn’t we?’
‘Yeah, well, I suppose so. He reacted rather drastically though. He shunted some bloke’s van and then took a poke at him, then when the Bill came to get him he took a poke at them as well.’
‘I bet he did. Listen, that’s nothing. I was at this wedding on Saturday down the Roman Road, and one of the guests took a knife to the bride’s father ’cause he couldn’t stand waiting for a drink.’
‘Really …?’
‘Straight up. Gave him it in the neck. Poor man’s still in a coma. The bloke then ran out into the road. But some of the other guests caught up with him. They held him down and then one of them ran him over in his car. Now he’s in a coma too.’
‘Too?’
‘Like the bride’s father.’
‘Nice friends you have.’
‘Well, they weren’t anything really to do with me. The groom was a mate of my son’s. I just went along for the hell of it.’
‘That sounds about right.’
We relapsed into silence again. The cabby was doing his best. Every time we got mired in the traffic he got his A — Z out and started looking for a shortcut. It wasn’t his fault that this part of north-east London was one tortuous, twisting high street after another. There were hardly any alternatives.
It was 10.30. We were stuck in a jam on Leyton High Road. I’d more or less given up. There was sixteen quid plus up in red on the meter. An artic was stranded across the intersection. A roar from behind us and a file of motorcycles came dodging through the stalled traffic, very fast. A blur of dayglo faring, leather shoulders, dirty visors, vinyl tabards and in front, already fast disappearing, the flapping flares of some familiar corduroys.
There was a jolt in the queue. The lights changed and two minutes later we were pulling up outside the court. I leapt out and shoved some bills at the cabby. Jim was being sentenced in Court 19, in the modern annexe. I ran through the car-park and into the building. I slowed to a walk going up the stairs, labouring to capture my breath. In the upper hall a tall black man with a wispy beard approached me. It was 10.40.
‘You must be …?’
‘Yes, yes …’
‘I’m Clifton.’ He extended his hand. It was Jim’s brief. Carol was in a corner with a knot of people standing around a robed barrister.
‘But the case …?’
‘We’ve had to ask for a slight postponement. Mr Stonehouse isn’t here yet.’
‘Isn’t here! Then where the bloody hell is he? The judge is going to take a pretty dim view of this.’
‘I should imagine he will.’
I went over to the corner where Carol was talking to the barrister — a rather hepatitic-looking woman.
‘Oh, hello,’ said Carol and introduced us.
‘Didn’t Jim stay at home last night?’
‘No, I was just saying. He’s more or less moved in with Carlos now. He’ll have been coming from Acton. It’s a long haul across town.’
‘I hope he’s at least managed to put a suit on for the occasion.’
At that moment, the devil we spoke of appeared at the end of the room and walked down it, erect, head swivelling mechanically from side to side. He beamed contempt at the motley bunch of defendants, lawyers, plaintiffs, witnesses and police who waited their turns.
‘Sorry I’m late. Got stuck in the lift. I had to wait for an hour before they let me out.’
Just at that moment the swing-doors from the courtroom swung open and a small throng appeared. The hepatitic barrister pressed through and I saw her lean over and talk to the clerk. I turned to Jim. ‘It looks like we’re on.’ We passed through and into the courtroom.
Jim took his place in a rather long dock to the right of the courtroom. In fact the dock stretched the whole width of the room; there was enough space in it to contain terrorist and stock market multiple defendants. Carol and I took our place at the back of the four rows of tip-up seats immediately to the right of the door we came in by. Together, the seats and the dock faced off two sides of the court. Opposite the dock was the bench; and in the main area, the pit of the court, were rows of desks for the lawyers. The whole place was well lit by flat, flickerless, strip lighting. Every surface — the front of the dock, the lawyers’ desks, the witness box, the bench — was fronted with a light varnished wood. It reminded me of the Old Lecture Theatre at Houghton Street, except that there, all was dark with obscurity. Here, everything was light: truth, the panelling seemed to say, albeit of a particular, restricted, keyline-boxed variety, is about to be pursued.
The presiding judge gave a diffident tap with his little mallet and the court was in session. The clerk of the court rose and read the charges:
‘… that you on the 21st of August did wilfully cause damage to the vehicle belonging to Mr Takis Christos of 24 Rosemount Avenue, Crouch End; that you did thereafter assault Mr Christos; that you did fail to report the accident or to stop after the accident; that you did assault a police officer who came to interview you concerning the accident on the 22nd of August at your place of work. How say you to these charges, guilty or not guilty?’
‘Guilty.’ Jim sounded like a large plastic doll, the word ‘guilty’ wheezed out of him in a breathy, strangulated voice about an octave higher than I’d expected. It was clear that all his bravado had deserted him, he was frightened. A sharp toothpick of compassion entered my heart. My friend was on trial. It was painfully ridiculous.
‘Mr Stonehouse.’ This was the judge, a dormouse figure perched up on his high chair. He was little and pink; a quivering snout quested out from under his wig, his pink eyes blinked as if they had been recently washed in tea. ‘Can you tell the court why you were late arriving here this morning?’ The judge had an incongruously weighty and judicial voice. Imposing and threatening in equal measure, he must have practised a lot when he was by himself.