Gavin Lyall - Honourable Intentions

“It seems,” he began slowly, “to be mostly what I think you call ‘circumstantial’ evidence – though unless you’ve got someone who saw Langhorn strike a match, I imagine that’s what you’d expect. So far, all we’ve got is that he bought the petrol-”

“He bought some petrol.”

“Sorry, some – and was off duty at the relevant time. I imagine this afternoon’s witness will implicate him more deeply . . . Is he the one you want to tear apart in cross-examination?”

Quinton, his mouth full, just nodded.

“And, of course, he fled to London. I don’t know how much inference one can legally draw from that, but I don’t see how anyone can ignore it.”

Quinton swallowed. “A fair enough summary. Any gaps or weaknesses?”

“Simply as a story, I’d like to know who told the French police he’d gone to London and who told our police where to find him.”

“You’ll see winged pigs first. That’s the police on both sides protecting informers.” He was about to take another mouthful when there was a scuffling sound outside and they looked up to see the chauffeur trying to hustle away a dumpy girl in a big hat and ankle-length coat the vague colour of an Army blanket. Quinton said: “Oh, damn it,” handed Ranklin his lunch and got out of the car.

Ranklin watched through the open door and tried to listen, but in the busy street all he heard was that they were speaking French. Quinton had called off the chauffeur and seemed to be pacifying the girl. Her features weren’t exactly coarse, just not refined, except for an upper lip in an exaggerated medieval bow shape that gave her a natural pout. Right now, she was pouting fit to bust, her dark eyes adding sullenness. She also had an unnaturally upright stance, as if she were balancing her big hat rather than wearing it. A few untidy strands of brown hair dangled from under it.

After a time, Quinton gave an exaggerated hands-and-shoulders gesture and turned away. She went on pouting but didn’t follow as he climbed back into the Lanchester.

“That’s the girl-friend of the accused. Apparently spent her own money following him over here.” He shook his head. “Young love’s seldom any use in court.” He reclaimed his lunch and added: “She says she was in bed with him at the time the offence was committed.”

At least this promised a more interesting afternoon in court, and Ranklin cheered up. “She’s going to say that?”

“Of course she’s not.” Then, seeing Ranklin’s disappointment, he went on: “Captain, this world spends half its time denying it was fornicating when it was, and the other half claiming it was fornicating when it was doing something worse. Every magistrate’s heard it a thousand times. She’d only label herself a whore and thus unreliable as a witness.”

Ranklin nodded, understanding, but a little regretful. The girl was standing back on the pavement, still unnaturally upright but now looking lost and somehow alien. A man raised his hat to her and made some inquiry. Ranklin couldn’t hear it or her terse reply, but the man recoiled and walked away quickly.

“D’you know her name and address?” Ranklin asked.

Quinton looked at him warily. Ranklin said firmly: “Government business.”

“Her name’s Mademoiselle Berenice Collomb,” Quinton said, “and she doesn’t speak any English. I’ve no idea where she’s staying in London.”

Ranklin wrote down the name, then asked: “And you said that Langhorn isn’t going to say what he was doing, either?”

“His is not.”

Ranklin thought this over for a moment, then: “May I ask: is he innocent?”

There was no change in Quinton’s expression. Just the sense that he had withdrawn into himself and was thinking that just when Ranklin had been showing signs of intelligence, here came the usual naive old question.

So Ranklin asked it again “You’re a man of experience: does your experience tell you he’s innocent or guilty?”

Clearly, Quinton’s experience had been carefully trained to avoid such emotive thinking. “If you’re asking whether or not he’ll be extradited -”

“I’m not. I’m asking-”

“- on the face of it – and that’s what prima facie means – the case against him is good so far. I still think it may fall apart in a French court, but that’s not my concern. He wants me to save him from being extradited, so that’s what I’m trying to do. No evidence has been given that he himself is an anarchist, and a rather half-hearted attempt to burn a police station seems only explicable as a political gesture.”

“Thank you. Now may we go back to my original question?”

Quinton looked at him for a while, then shrugged quickly and spoke just as quickly. “All right, he’s acting as if he were innocent. He’d like to get this over with: stand up, say his piece, be believed and walk out a free man. But that’s no way to conduct a defence, as any experienced criminal knows. You take your time: time for something to turn up, for witnesses to forget – sometimes even be persuaded to forget. So, yes, Langhorn’s acting as if he were innocent – of this charge.

“But there are degrees of innocence. If I let him be cross-examined this afternoon, I’ll tell you just what he, in that innocence, would admit. First, that of course he’s an anarchist. Second, that he left a good, respectable job (did you know he’d been a steward on an Atlantic liner?) to work in a filthy dive among other anarchists and known criminals – I’ve learnt that much about the Cafe des Deux Chevaliers. And lastly, that he thinks the police are the sheepdogs of cruel government shepherds herding the workers to slaughter, and thoroughly deserve burning. That is not my own phrase. Now you should see why I don’t want that on the record. And perhaps it answers your question.”

“Very fully, thank you.”

“And incidentally, remember that someone did set fire to that police station, and if Langhorn didn’t do it, he probably has a very good idea who did. As I said: degrees of innocence.”

There was a gentle rap on the window and Quinton looked up with an impatient sigh. But it was just one of his clerks with a couple of papers to sign.

Ranklin asked: “Then we won’t be hearing any of Langhorn’s story?”

Quinton smiled briefly. “Oh, we’ve got nothing to hide. He needed the petrol because he’s helping put a motor in a boat in the nearby canal, as I shall tell the court. And at the time of the fire, he was resting in his room. But this isn’t a case that turns on an alibi. The facts all depend on this afternoon’s witness.”

“And Langhorn hasn’t said any more about his threat . . . ?”

“Captain, I hope you aren’t relying on me for any more explanation of that. As I suggested yesterday, I have a certain amount of experience at not being told what I don’t want to hear.”

Mildly annoyed, though without any justification, Ranklin said: “Never mind. Tomorrow we may well have our own man sharing his cell.”

“In Brixton? You won’t, you know. Things have changed since Dickens’s day. Whenever I go down there, each prisoner has a cell to himself and a number of empty ones left over. They don’t like prisoners on remand talking to each other and cooking up mutual alibis.”

Blast. And the Commander would say it was another of Ranklin’s half-baked, unthought-out wheezes, quite ignoring how eagerly he’d adopted it himself.

Pleased at ending the conversation on a winning note, Quinton smiled and said: “We’d better be getting back. Wish me luck.”

“ Hals und Beinbruch ,” Ranklin murmured, and if Quinton really had broken his neck and legs at that moment, he wouldn’t have minded at all.