‘Don’t count any chickens,’ said Rashidi, checking the marmalade was Frank Cooper’s Oxford before he removed the lid. ‘Although my QC says the biggest problem has been taken care of, as Warwick will discover when he takes the stand.’
‘I’m surprised he’s still alive.’
‘Booth Watson didn’t give me a lot of choice. But once the trial is over...’
‘What about the good doctor? He might still prove a problem?’
‘Not when the jury discovers just how bad a doctor Sangster was. I’m more worried about my tailor,’ said Rashidi, touching the lapel of his jacket, to check the initials A.R. were sewn on the inside.
‘Don’t worry, he’s been well stitched up,’ said Tulip, laughing at his own joke.
‘Your car has arrived, Mr Rashidi,’ said a duty officer, appearing by his side.
‘Remember to send my mother some flowers,’ said Rashidi before he drained his coffee.
‘Will she be in court?’
‘I hope not,’ said Rashidi.
Rashidi got up from the table. ‘What’s my escort looking like?’ he asked one of the officers who accompanied him out of the canteen.
‘Three armoured cars, a dozen outriders and a helicopter. No one’s had that sort of treatment since the Kray twins were on trial.’
‘It doesn’t matter who drives me there,’ said Rashidi. ‘Only who drives me back.’
‘Sorry about this,’ said the warder, clapping a pair of handcuffs on the prisoner. ‘Regulations.’
As Rashidi stepped out into the prison courtyard, two police officers took him firmly by the arms and led him towards the second of three armoured cars.
Grace skipped breakfast so she could be in chambers before her father arrived. She knew she’d have to be up very early in the morning to achieve that. It didn’t help that he had a comfortable flat in Lincoln’s Inn that he always stayed in the night before a major trial.
Her partner, Clare, would have chastised her for skipping breakfast — Go to work on an egg was the first advertisement Grace remembered as a child — but Clare had already left for Brent, where she was appearing in a child-protection case, so she’d never know. Clare had called to wish her luck just before Grace left for chambers.
It was still dark when Grace closed the front door of her flat and headed for the Tube station. The sun was only just making an appearance when she stepped out at Chancery Lane twenty minutes later. She cursed as she hurried across Lincoln’s Inn’s cobblestone courtyard in her high heels, not because of the slight drizzle but the sight of a glowing lightbulb in the head of chambers’ office.
When she reached 1 Essex Court, she dashed up the stairs to the third floor and knocked on senior counsel’s door, as she always did, before entering her father’s domain.
Like a Roman orator, Sir Julian was proclaiming his opening lines to the rising sun.
‘M’lud, members of the jury, I appear before you today on behalf of the Crown, while my learned friend Mr Booth Watson QC represents the defendant. I would like to open the Crown’s submission by declaring that in all my years at the Bar, I have never come across a more dastardly criminal.’
‘Almost your exact words when you prosecuted Faulkner,’ said Grace, as she began to unpack her bag in search of her amended copy of the opening address.
‘A different judge and a different jury,’ said Sir Julian, ‘so no one will be any the wiser.’
‘Except for Booth Watson. And “dastardly criminal” sounds Victorian, not Elizabethan. I’ve suggested “evil individual” instead,’ said Grace.
Sir Julian nodded, and made the change. ‘Assem Rashidi,’ he continued, ‘is a well-educated and gifted man who could have succeeded in any profession he chose, but decided instead to use his undoubted talents not to benefit his fellow men, but to—’
‘And women?’ suggested Grace. ‘There will be several of them on the jury.’
‘—fellow men and women, but to harm them. Never forget, members of the jury, his sole and single purpose was to—’
‘Sole and single are synonymous. You should ditch one of them.’
‘His only interest was to make more and more money while showing no interest in the suffering he caused to others.’
‘You’ve used “interest” twice in the same sentence. His overriding desire?’ suggested Grace.
Her father nodded, and made a further emendation to his script, before continuing. ‘Mr Rashidi was the chairman of a respectable family company that already made more than enough profit for him to enjoy a way of life far beyond most people’s wildest dreams.’ He jotted down, Look directly at the jury. ‘However, that was not enough for this greedy and self-indulgent man, who chose instead to lead a double life. A respectable tea merchant by day, and a merchant of death by night. A modern Janus.’
‘Will the jury know who Janus is?’
‘Possibly not, but His Lordship will,’ said Sir Julian. ‘One always needs the occasional line for the judge,’ he said before continuing. ‘Every Monday afternoon he would leave his office in the City, and without any of his colleagues or his secretary knowing, would travel to Brixton by Tube, where he entered his other world. But such was his vanity and arrogance that he could not forgo life’s luxuries, and that will surely prove to be his downfall. On the nights he remained in Brixton, he lived in a millionaire’s apartment in the next block to his drugs factory. Members of the jury, once you have seen photographs of that apartment for yourselves, you will be in no doubt about how much he was making from the alternative life he chose to lead. And perhaps more importantly, who lived there?
‘On the top three floors of the adjoining block, a world away from his luxurious apartment, were the squalid headquarters of his illegal drugs business. Not one that specialized in importing selected grades of tea from Malaysia and Sri Lanka for sale in the high street, but one that imported heroin, cocaine and cannabis resin from Colombia and Afghanistan for sale in the back streets.
‘In the City he employed thirty people who returned to their families at five o’clock every evening extolling his virtues. In Brixton, he imprisoned thirty illegal immigrants who toiled for him through the night, fearful of being reported to the police if they did not carry out his bidding.’
‘Carry out his demands,’ interrupted Grace. ‘ “Bidding” is too old-fashioned. More F. E. Smith than J. N. Warwick.’
‘At that moment I will pause,’ said Sir Julian, ‘which should give you enough time to put the large floor plan of Rashidi’s drugs factory on an easel so I can describe what was taking place there, while you point to each of the rooms in question. That way the jury can’t fail to appreciate the sheer size of the operation. Be sure to put the chart at an angle so they and the judge can see it clearly. No one else matters.’
Grace nodded.
‘The twenty-third floor of that block,’ continued Sir Julian, turning a page of his script, ‘was where the sordid deals were carried out. Cash changed hands, and in return drugs were supplied. An average day’s takings were around ten thousand pounds. Ten times as much as Mr Rashidi could expect to earn in a week as chairman of Marcel and Neffe. And don’t forget, not a penny would be paid in tax.’
‘That allusion has always worried me,’ said Grace. ‘It hints, if somewhat obliquely, that you might approve of the sale of drugs as long as the profits were taxed. I came up with an alternative last night that I hoped you might consider.’
Sir Julian raised an eyebrow.
‘In his position as chairman of a respectable tea-importing company in the City of London, Mr Rashidi’s business was conducted in the open and above board, while in his role as a drugs baron in Brixton, it was conducted in the dark and out of sight.’