Public Enemy Number Two

My counsel was a thin, gray-haired man called Wilson. We’d met before the trial and I’d asked him how he was going to get me off the hook. He’d laughed at that. He didn’t laugh often. You almost expected to see cobwebs at the corners of his mouth.

“Get you off?” he asked. “I can’t get you off. The evidence against you is overwhelming. It’s rock solid. It’s massive!”

“But I was framed.”

“So was the old lady you attacked. A picture fell on her.” He mopped himself with the handkerchief. “All I can do is persuade the judge that, at heart, you’re a nice boy,” he said. He looked at me and wrinkled his nose. “Of course, that won’t be easy. But this is a first offense. Perhaps he’ll go easy on you.”

“How easy?” I asked.

Wilson shrugged. “Six months . . . ?”

“Prison!” I stared at him. “I can’t go to prison! I’m innocent!”

“Of course.” He sighed. “Until you’re proven guilty.”

So Wilson set out to prove that, despite appearances, I was a nice boy. Unfortunately for me, he’d chosen the wrong witnesses. I knew this the moment I saw the first of them. It was my brother Tim.

He’d dressed up in a suit for the occasion and I noticed he was wearing a black tie. Had he put it on by accident, or did he know something I didn’t? I could see that he was trembling like a leaf. Anyone would think he was on trial.

The court bailiff handed him a Bible. Tim took it, nodded, and tried to put it in his pocket. The bailiff snatched it back. I thought there was going to be another fight, but then the judge explained that Tim was meant to use the Bible to take the oath. Tim blushed.

“Sorry, Your Highness,” he muttered.

The judge frowned. “You can address me as ‘Your Worship. ’”

“Oh yes . . .” Tim was going to pieces and he hadn’t exactly been together to start with. “Sorry, Your Highship.”

The bailiff moved forward and tried again.

“I swear to tell the truth,” he said.

“Do you?” Tim asked.

“No—you do!” The bailiff closed his eyes.

“Just repeat the words, Mr. Diamond.” The judge sighed.

At last the oath was taken. Wilson got up and walked over to the witness box, moving like an old man. Tim smiled at him.

“You are Herbert Timothy Diamond?” Wilson asked.

“Am I?” Tim sounded astonished.

“Are you Herbert Timothy Diamond?” the judge demanded.

“Yes . . . yes, of course I am, Your Parsnip,” Tim said.

Wilson took a deep breath. “Could you describe your brother for us?” he asked.

“Well, he’s about five-foot-two, dark hair, quite thin . . .”

Counsel for the defense shuddered and I thought he was going to have some sort of attack. His cheeks were pinched and his wig was crooked. “We know what he looks like, Mr. Diamond,” he whimpered. “We just want to know what sort of person he is.”

Tim thought for a minute.

“Answer the question,” the judge muttered.

“Certainly, Your Cowslip,” Tim said. “Nick’s all right. I mean . . . for a kid brother. The one trouble is, he’s really untidy. He’s always leaving his books in the kitchen and—”

“We are not interested in your kitchen!” Wilson groaned. He was fighting to keep his patience. But it was a losing battle. “What we want to know is, looking at him now, would you say he had it in him to brutally assault an old lady and steal a priceless jewel?”

Tim gave me a big smile and nodded. “Oh yes. Absolutely!”

Wilson was about to ask another question but now he stopped, his mouth wide open. “You can’t say that!” he squeaked. “He’s your brother!”

“But you told me to tell the truth,” Tim protested. “The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”

There was another uproar in the court. The judge banged his gavel. Tim had cooked my goose all right— feathers and all. After his testimony, the judge would throw the book at me. But that was nothing compared with what I planned to throw at Tim.

Wilson sank back into his seat. “No more questions,” he said.

“Does that mean I can leave the witless box?” Tim asked.

Nobody stopped him. The trial was more or less over.

The jury took forty-five seconds to reach its verdict. Guilty, of course. Then it was time for the sentence. The policemen made me stand up. The judge glared at me.

“Nicholas Martin Simple,” he began. “You have been found guilty on all five charges. It is now my duty to sentence you.

“Your crime was a particularly unpleasant one. You are, if I may say, a particularly unpleasant criminal. You stole a priceless object, part of the national heritage. You viciously assaulted an old lady and a lion. You caused thousands of dollars’ worth of damage. And for what? Doubtless you would have squandered your profits on pop music, on violent video-cassettes, on glue, which you would then sniff.”

He sniffed himself. Then he bent his fingers until the bones clicked.

“Society must be protected from the likes of you,” he went on. “If you were older, the sentence would be more severe. As it is, it is the sentence of this court that you will go to a young offenders’ institution, for eighteen months.” He banged his hammer. “Court adjourned.”

Things happened very quickly after that.

The two policemen dragged me out of the courtroom, down a flight of stairs. My hands were cuffed in front of me and I was led along a passage to a door. Outside, in an underground parking garage, a van was waiting.

“In you go,” one of the policemen said.

On my way up—before I’d been tried—I’d been “son” or “Nick.” Now I didn’t have a name. A hand pushed me in the small of my back. And my back had never felt smaller. It was like I’d somehow shrunk.

“But I’m innocent,” I mumbled.

The policemen ignored me.

Two of them got in after me. The doors were locked and the van drove away. There was one small window in the back, heavily barred. The frosted glass broke the whole world up into teardrops. We reached the surface. The Old Bailey, Holborn ... London slipped away behind me. The policemen didn’t speak. One of them was reading a newspaper. My own face smiled at me from the front page.

But I wasn’t smiling now. It had begun to rain. The water was pattering down on the tin roof like somebody had dropped a bag of marbles. The policeman yawned and turned a page. I shifted in my seat and the handcuffs clinked.

We drove for almost an hour, heading west. Then we slowed down. I saw a gate slide shut behind us. The van stopped. We had arrived.

The prison was an ugly Victorian building: rust-colored bricks and a gray slate roof. It was shaped like a square with a wall running all the way around and a watchtower at each corner. The watchtowers were connected to the main building by metal drawbridges, which could be raised or lowered automatically. A glass-fronted guardhouse stood beside the central control gate.

I was led in through a door in the side of the prison. And suddenly it was as if I’d stepped off the planet. All the street sounds, even the whisper of the wind, had been cut out. The air smelled of sweat and machine oil. The door clicked shut.

The policemen led me to a counter where a man in guard’s uniform was waiting for me.

“Simple?” the guard asked.