The Queen v. Karl Mullen (6 page)

“Yes,” said Mullen unhappily.

“
So it’s got to be stopped.
”

“By claiming diplomatic privilege, you mean? What do you think the chances are?”

“Silverborn’s working on that now. We’ll see what he has to say about it in a moment. There’s something else I wanted to tell you first.”

He brought out the three folders that Mullen had seen before, but this time he selected the red and green ones. He said, “I agreed, you remember, that your historical record of Katanga started sooner than ours and was more detailed. But history, to paraphrase Mr. Ford, isn’t everything. This—” he laid his hand on the green file —“deals with personal affairs. Katanga’s household in Putney, his wife, his wife’s father in Norfolk and like matters. The red file, however, is in some ways the most interesting of the three. It contains medical information. Now, if I have gathered the facts of that unfortunate bookshop incident correctly, the one essential witness for the prosecution is Katanga himself.”

“That must be right. He’s the only one who claims he saw me touch the book.”

“So that if, for any reason, he was unable or unwilling to come forward, the case would fall to the ground.”

“Of course he’ll come forward. Why not? He’ll make a meal of it.”

“Because it’s just possible that he might die before the case comes on.”

Mullen stared at him. If this statement had been made to him in South Africa he would have understood its implications. But in England?

Yule, who had read his mind said, with a slight smile, “No, Colonel. I was not talking about – what is the cant expression? – expedient demise. What I meant was that he might die at any moment from natural causes. Basically, he is a very strong and healthy man, but there are certain precautions he has to take. The details are all in the folder. It seems that, about two years ago, he had an accident. He was, by that time, a regular, possibly a fairly heavy drinker. His preferred tipple was whisky. Sometimes he poured it out himself. Sometimes his wife poured it out for him. On this occasion he came in hot and tired, picked up a glass that was on the table and took a large gulp of its contents, which unfortunately for him, consisted of disinfectant, slightly diluted with water. It had been got ready by his wife to dress the paw of their dog. The result was serious, but not fatal. When he reached hospital it was discovered that his gullet was badly scarred. His windpipe, was not, of course, affected, or not directly. You’ll understand that better if you look at the sketch our doctor drew for me. The red one is the gullet, the blue one is the windpipe. Food down one, air down the other.”

“I’d no idea they were so close to each other.”

“Not just close, actually touching. That’s the whole point. Katanga was warned that the scarring in his gullet could lead to oedema.”

“Come again.”

Yule, who was enjoying the opportunity of displaying medical expertise, said, “Oedema is the technical name for an unhealthy mass of swollen tissue. If it was allowed to accumulate around the gullet it would not only make swallowing difficult, it
might
start to exert pressure on the windpipe also.”

“And that is what it is doing?”

“Not at the moment. Because, as I said, he is taking precautions. Every two or three days he uses a bougie. That is a plastic affair which can be swallowed and brought up again. It can’t be a very pleasant operation. To help it slip down I understand that it’s dipped into a bowl of olive oil, which is kept handy in the sideboard for this purpose. You get the picture?”

“I understand what you’re saying,” said Mullen. “What I don’t understand is where you got all this information from. Not from his doctor, surely.”

“Not from his doctor, no.” Yule closed the red file gently and opened the green one. “The information came to us in the course of our routine enquiries. You must not imagine that we sit about all day doing nothing. No, no. When Katanga arrived in this country five years ago, by a most irregular route, incidentally, and with no proper papers, we naturally devoted close attention to him. Our first endeavours were directed to getting him sent back to Mozambique.”

“Mine, also.”

“Quite so. We have been working on the same lines. With an equal lack of success. Our next step was to find out as much as we possibly could about Katanga himself. If we could deflate his popularity, both within establishment circles here and with the general public world-wide, that would be an important step forward. And we had one piece of luck. For the first three years of his stay he lived in a small rented house on a road just south of Hammersmith Bridge. The housework was shared between his wife and a worthy widow called Mrs. Queen, who lived next door. Two years ago, for some reason – possibly an upsurge of anti-black feeling in the locality, who knows? – he decided to move. An increasingly busy programme of writing and speaking was putting a fair amount of money into his pocket. I suspect, also, that he was being handsomely subsidised from Mornington Square. Anyway, he took a step up the social ladder. He rented a small house in the Putney area. It was a somewhat isolated property on the fringe of the Heath. The move meant that he had to look elsewhere for help in the house. This was our chance. We were able to supply him with just what he required.”

Yule paused to locate the paper he wanted in the green folder. Mullen could see that he was enjoying himself. He did not grudge him his pleasure. He had a feeling that this development would be to his advantage.

“So. Let me introduce you to Anna. Full name, Anna Masai, a Basuto girl from Maseru in Lesotho. Her ‘father’ – I use the word in inverted commas – is Leon Macheli, a professor of applied science at Durban University and a world expert in physical crystallography. A certain unfortunate event in his home town – you may know the incident I’m referring to—”

Mullen did indeed know about it. It was a cross-border attack into Lesotho in search of ANC supporters.

“It decided him to cut adrift and come to England. In view of his fine academic record he had no difficulty in getting a residence permit for himself and his wife and for Anna, who was included by him as his daughter. Our information was more accurate. She was neither his natural nor his adopted daughter. Simply a girl in whom he had taken an interest and who had adopted his name. Pretty enough, in a snub-nosed immature way and intelligent. He had taught her some English. In short, she was his protégée. He wanted her with him in England and in getting her there committed himself to the mis-statement that she was his daughter. A criminal offence in both countries.”

“I see,” said Mullen. The possibilities of the situation were becoming increasingly apparent.

“I interviewed her myself and made the situation quite clear. Either she did what I told her, or she and the Professor – to whom, I fancy, she was sincerely attached – suffered the consequences. It did not take her long to make up her mind. We equipped her with excellent references and told her to be prepared to accept a very reasonable wage. Before long she was installed in the Katanga household. To the satisfaction of Dorothy Katanga, because Anna was a hard worker, and to Jack Katanga for – possibly – other reasons.”

“You mean—?”

“I mean what you’re thinking. Katanga was by now a virile, forceful, mature man. I can easily suppose that his little missionary-reared wife had lost most of the original attraction she had for him. You will have noted that they had no children.”

“So he seduced the hired help.”

“If he did – and it is only a presumption – he was both careful and tactful. His wife, with their newly acquired wealth, was able to enjoy long shopping mornings in the West End. And the house, remember, was isolated. Also he did not make the mistake that some men have made – read your criminal cases – of degrading or insulting his wife. On the contrary, he behaved more courteously to her – particularly in public – than he had, perhaps, done before.”

“Are you suggesting that Katanga’s wife welcomed the importation of a mistress into the household?”

“I don’t know whether she welcomed it. She may not even have known what went on when she was out shopping. However, that is not the real point. What we have to look at—” he had touched the bell on his desk and said to Mrs. Portland, “Would you ask Mr. Silverborn to step in? Thank you. — What we must look at very carefully are the chances of keeping this deplorable case out of court altogether. Ah, Lewis, you have some news for us.”

“Views, not news,” said Mr. Silverborn. “I find that we are in a curiously unexplored field of the law. Most of it stems from the Vienna Conventions of 1961 and 1963 and there are very few decided cases to help us. In fact, most of the decisions and statements are American. Not binding on our courts, of course, but since the Americans have adopted both Conventions on almost exactly the same lines as we have, they could be regarded as persuasive.”

“And what is the answer at the end of the day?”

Like all lawyers this was the sort of question that Mr. Silverborn disliked. He said, “The only answer I can give you is that
if
Mr. Mullen can be regarded as a diplomatic agent, then he would be totally immune from the criminal jurisdiction of our courts.”

“And how would it be decided whether he was a diplomatic agent or not?”

“That is a question for experts in international law. I have already had a word—” he turned to Mullen, who was showing signs of impatience —“with your English solicitor, Mr. Roger Sherman. He fully appreciates the difficulties of the position and, no doubt, has already sent a set of instructions to Counsel. If we are denied the protection of diplomatic privilege in the Magistrates’ Court, we should have to appeal to a Divisional Court. Indeed, if the Divisional Court found against us, we might have to take the matter on to the Court of Appeal. In either case Counsel will be needed. In the end, senior Counsel.”

Mullen, who had been coming quietly to the boil, now exploded. He said, “For God’s sake, how long do you think this legal hurdle-race is going to take?”

“The court will usually expedite such matters if there is a valid reason for doing so.”

“Valid reason! Do you realise I only came here to try to get Katanga extradited? I’ve got to be back in Pretoria by the end of the month to give evidence at the U.D.F. terrorist trial. I never anticipated being here for more than a few weeks at the outside.”

“I promise you that we’ll waste no time,” said Mr. Silverborn. He tried not to let the fact that he disliked Mullen colour his reactions.

In the room next door, Kathleen was saying to Rosemary, “You’ve been scribbling very busily. What’s it all about?”

“Something I’m getting up for the big white chief,” said Rosemary. She had stopped scribbling, but her pencil was still poised.

“How’s the hag-ography going?” said Mavis. A big, cow-like girl, she was secretly rather impressed by Rosemary’s pursuit of learning and therefore missed no opportunity to make fun of it.

At this point Mr. Silverborn came out of the inner office on the way back to his own room. He beamed vaguely at the three girls. Rosemary put down her pencil and shut her shorthand notebook. She said, “Yesterday evening we got to the point where the Pope decided that St. George couldn’t keep his sainthood, on the grounds that he never really existed.”

“The Pope actually said that?” said Mavis.

“About
our
St. George,” said Kathleen.

“Apparently so.”

Mavis said something very rude about the Pope.

In the early evening of that Friday a cabinet meeting was being held at No. 11 Mornington Square. Captain Hartshorn was in the chair, with Andrew Mkeba beside him and the three departmental chiefs opposite.

Hartshorn said, “You will all have seen copies of the cable which I sent to the press chief at the ANC. It went through the Eastern Tourist Agency and will, with luck, have reached Lusaka by now.”

“I noticed,” said Govan Kabaka, “that you didn’t ask them to take any particular action.”

“There was no necessity. They are not stupid. They will appreciate the possibilities of the situation as clearly as we do. The publishers managed to supply them with nearly a thousand copies of Katanga’s book. I am told that the open demand through Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Botswana, coupled with an even larger underground demand in South Africa – particularly in the Transvaal – has already forced them to ask for a further two thousand copies. The book has, of course, been banned by Pretoria and possession of a copy is a criminal offence. That won’t stop people reading it.”

“On the contrary. Splendid publicity,” said Govan.

“I agree,” said Hartshorn, “and it puts us on our mettle. Our job is to see that this case gets as much publicity as the book.”

“If Mullen is convicted,” said Kabaka, “the publicity will be self-generating.”

“Maybe. But this is no time for relaxing. We may be winning, but we haven’t won yet.”

“In a tug-of-war,” said Sesolo, in his deep voice, “if you stop pulling, you find yourself on your back.”

“We’ve been presented,” said Hartshorn “with a wonderful chance of demonstrating, to the people of this country, just what sort of characters are running your country. And it’s a two-way chance. If Mullen is convicted, a senior police-officer will have been found guilty of a mean piece of petty thieving. If he wriggles out under diplomatic privilege, that’s not going to make him popular, either. Far from it.”

“It would be better if he was convicted,” said Kabaka. “It’s just that I don’t quite see what we can do about it.”

“I think we may be able to help the prosecution. I’ve had two reports from my daughter. You all know what she’s doing and are all, I hope, aware of the need for absolute discretion.”

This was aimed primarily at Sesolo. Discretion was not his strongest point.

“The first report is of a conversation on Wednesday afternoon. You must understand that when Yule is talking to Mullen, the conversation is in Afrikaans and my daughter can only pick up a general idea of what is said. There was something about an accident with a drink and treatment in hospital and she picked up the name Anna Masai. The second part of the conversation, which started with the arrival of their legal man, was all in English. My daughter took it down in shorthand and you have seen the transcription.”