Petrella at 'Q' by Michael Gilbert Page A

girls, and it was over a girl that the original trouble arose. There were other differences as well. Bruno had an unexpected streak of obstinacy. When he was not paid as much as he had been promised for a job he had done for Art Lamson, he spoke his mind, and spoke it loudly and publicly.
    Lamson had decided that he must be disciplined. The disciplining took place in a quiet back street behind the goods depot.
    Whilst Bruno was in hospital, having his jaw set and the bottom half of his right ear sewn back on, he came to certain conclusions. He told no one what he proposed to do, not even Jackie, the girl he was secretly engaged to. He went one evening to a quiet public house in the Tooley Street area, and in a back room overlooking the river he met two men who looked like sailors. To them he talked, and they wrote down all that he said, and gave him certain instructions.
    A month later Bruno said to Jackie, “I don’t think any of the boys know you’re my girl, so you ought to be all right, but you’d better lie low for a bit. I’m going to have to clear out of London.”
    Jackie said, “What are you talking about, Bruno? What’s going to happen? What have you done?”
    “What I’ve done,” said Bruno, “is I’ve shopped Art Lamson. The Regional boys are picking him up tonight. With what I’ve been able to tell them, they reckon they’ve got him sewn up.”
    Jackie put both arms round Bruno’s neck, her blue eyes full of tears, and said, “Look after yourself, boy. If anything happened to you, I don’t know what I should do.”
    Very early on the following morning two cars, with four men in each of them, slid to a stop opposite Lamson’s house. Two men went round to the back, two men watched the front, and four men let themselves into the house, using a key to unlock the front door. Petrella was one of them. Grendel Street was in his manor and it was his job to make the actual arrest, and to charge Lamson on information received, with the crime of conspiring with others to demand money with menaces and to commit actual bodily harm.
    The nature of the information received became evident at the preliminary hearing in the Magistrates’ Court. It was Bruno. And it was noticed that never once, whilst he gave his evidence, did he look at Lamson or Lamson at him.
    This was in March.
    The trial started at the Old Bailey in the first week of June. Bruno was brought to the court, from a safe hideaway in Essex, in a police tender which had steel bars on its windows and bullet-proof glass.
    On the second afternoon, he gave his evidence to the Judge. Under the skilful questioning of his own counsel he repeated, even more clearly and comprehensively, the facts which he had already stated to the Magistrate. At four o’clock he had finished, and the Judge said, “It will be convenient if we break now. We can begin the cross-examination of this witness tomorrow morning.”
    Counsel bowed to the Judge, the Judge bowed back, the Court emptied, and Bruno was taken down a flight of steps to the basement where the van awaited him.
    As he stepped out of the door, a marksman on the roof of a neighbouring building, using an Armalite rifle with a telescopic sight, shot him through the head.
    “And that,” said Watterson, “was that. The jury had heard Bruno’s evidence, and they convicted Lamson. Of course, there was an appeal. The defence pointed out that although plenty of people had given evidence of being intimidated, the only witness who actually identified Lamson as the head of the organisation was Bruno.”
    And Bruno had not been cross-examined.
    “How can you accept his evidence,” said Mr Michaelson, Q.C., in his eloquent address to the Court of Criminal Appeal, “when it has not been tested, in the traditional way, by cross-examination. Bear in mind, too, that the witness was himself a criminal. That he had, by his own admission, taken part in more than one of the offences with which the accused is charged. The