The Veteran by Frederick Forsyth Page B

reasonable explanations. I feel our first consultation is in order. I would like to see them at the Ville.”
    Slade was jolted. This was damned quick.
    “I am afraid I am in court all day on Monday,” he said. “Tuesday is the further remand in custody. We could see them in the interview room at Highbury Corner before they are taken away.”
    “Y-e-e-e-s. I had hoped to make an intervention on Tuesday.
    Better if I could know the nature of the ground under my feet before then. I hate to interfere with a chap’s weekend, but would tomorrow suit?” Slade was jolted again. Intervention? He had no idea a highflying QC would even want to be present for a formal renewal of remand in custody. The meeting at Pentonville Jail was agreed for ten o’clock the next day. Slade would make the arrangement with the prison authorities.

DAY TWELVE
    SATURDAY
    There must have been some confusion. Mr. Vansittart was at the prison at a quarter to nine. To the prison officer at visitor reception he was polite but insistent. The appointment was for nine o’clock, not ten, and he was a busy man. The solicitor would doubtless come along later. After conferring with higher authority, the man asked a colleague to show the barrister to an interview room. At five after nine the two prisoners were shown in. They glowered at the lawyer. He was not fazed.
    “I’m sorry Mr. Slade is a bit late,” he said. “But no doubt he will be along later. Meanwhile, my name is James Vansittart and I am your defending barrister. Do sit down.”
    The escorting warder left the room. Both men sat across the table from Vansittart. He took his seat and produced the prosecution file. Then he flicked a packet of cigarettes and a book of matches across the table. Both men lit up greedily.
    Cornish pocketed the pack. Vansittart gave them a genial smile.
    “Now you two young men have got yourselves in a bit of trouble here.”
    He flicked through the file as they both watched him through a haze of smoke.
    “Mr. Cornish ...” he glanced up at the lank-haired Harry Cornish, “one of our problems is the wallet. Apparently it was found last Sunday morning by a dog-walker, lying in waste ground, deep in the grass, just over the fence from Mandela Road. No question it belonged to the dead man; it had his prints on it. Unfortunately, it also had yours.”
    “Dunno,” said Cornish.
    “No, well, memory fades when you are busy. But there has to be an innocent explanation. Now, I suppose you are going to tell me that on the Wednesday morning, the day after the attack, you were walking along Mandela Road to get some lunch at a caff when you saw a wallet lying in the gutter?”
    Cornish may have been the brains of the outfit, but he was not really clever, just sly. Nonetheless, something gleamed in his eyes.
    “Yeh,” he agreed, “thass wot ‘appened.”
    “And if that is what you wish to tell me, then as your brief I shall, of course, believe it. And no doubt your version is that, as anyone would naturally be, you were curious to see a wallet in the gutter, so you bent down to pick it up, thus putting your prints on it.”
    “Right,” said Cornish. “Thass wot I done.”
    “But unfortunately, the wallet was empty? Not a damn thing in it. So, without thinking, a man might just spin it like a playing card high in the air, over the fence into the waste ground, where it lay in the grass until a dog discovered it. Something like that?”
    “Right,” said Cornish.
    He was beginning to like his new brief. Clever geezer. Vansittart produced a sheaf of sheets of lined legal paper from his briefcase. He speedily wrote out a statement.
    “Now, I have taken notes of this explanation. Please read them through and if you agree that this is what really happened, well, that would be a pretty fair defence. So you could sign it.”
    Cornish did not read fast, but he scrawled a signature anyway.
    “Now, our second problem is your nose, Mr. Price.”
    The plaster had gone, but the