‘Was there a counsel for the defence?’ asked MacGregor.
‘No, Knapper had to look out for himself. He was allowed to speak and ask questions and make statements on his own behalf but, of course, he’d no chance to call witnesses and no time to prepare a reasoned answer to the charges that were brought against him – up to and including the fact that he was Jewish.’ Dover pried one eyelid open. ‘It’s beginning to sound like something out of a bloody book!’ he charged, unable to think of anything more disparaging than that.
‘It was for real all right!’ retorted Osmond grimly. ‘They were accusing Knapper of infiltrating the Steel Band for the sole purpose of betraying its innermost secrets to some sort of Israeli security agency. Knapper denied it, of course.
‘Hey, just a minute!’ Dover had been working things out. There were, after all, some subjects upon which he was the acknowledged expert. ‘If you’d got this What’s-his-name trussed up like a chicken, how did he get over to the dining room for his venison dinner?’
Osmond blinked. ‘Well, he didn’t. I brought a tray back for him. And for Mike Ruscoe, too. He stayed behind to guard Knapper.’ Osmond shivered slightly. ‘It beats me how Knapper had the appetite to eat anything, but he did. He downed half a pint of beer, too. Maybe the poor bugger thought we were going to find him innocent or something.’
‘But you didn’t?’ MacGregor was not taking notes. Somehow he felt that the two Special Branch men would prefer things this way.
‘Find him innocent? Not bloody likely!’ Osmond’s attempt to laugh the question off fell very flat. ‘All the so-called evidence against him was just a load of rubbish. Mostly it was just friend Pettitt shouting accusations and abuse at the top of his voice. Mind you, the case for the defence wasn’t much better. That was all denials and counter-abuse and counter-accusation. Half the time I couldn’t follow what was going on at all, and I don’t reckon my fellow judges could, either. Not that it made a monkey’s one way or the other. We had to register our verdict by a show of hands. Well, nobody wanted to be standing in Knapper’s shoes so, naturally, we all voted with great enthusiasm for guilty.’
Sven felt that some comment might not come amiss at this point. ‘It was all most unfortunate,’ he explained smoothly, ‘but these things happen. It’s a question of deciding where the greater good lies. Even if Trill, here, had played the hero and spoken up, it wouldn’t have saved Knapper’s life, would it? It would merely have cost Trill his, and ruined several years of painstaking and dangerous work into the bargain.’
Nobody seemed to have any response to this and Osmond nervously pulled out another cigarette and borrowed a light from MacGregor. ‘Pettitt congratulated us on our verdict,’ he went on, exhaling a deep lungful of smoke, ‘and then informed us that we had to decide on the sentence as well. Well, we’d no bloody choice, had we? It was treason, and traitors always get the chop. It’s an occupational hazard. Well, we thought that was the end of it. Mrs Hall wrote it all out – verdict and sentence – and we signed it. I’m not saying anybody felt particularly happy about it, especially with Knapper blubbering away there and whining and tugging at his handcuffs. Of course, we none of us realised at this stage that we weren’t only judge and jury, we were the bloody executioner as well.’
‘’Strewth!’ said Dover. ‘You mean Knapper was murdered by a bloody collective?’
‘No, I don’t!’ said Osmond quickly. ‘We drew lots for it.’
‘’Strewth,’ said Dover again. He was a man of few words. ‘So that means you actually know who
‘It means nothing of the. sort!’ snapped Osmond irritably. ‘If you’d just keep quiet for a minute, I’ll explain!’
Now, if there was one thing that Dover was a stickler for, it was proper respect from his subordinates. He appreciated that Osmond was under something of a strain and was prepared to make allowances. Which is why he restricted himself to the promise to come over there and ram the young ponce’s snout through to the back of his bloody head should there be any further manifestations of lese-majeste.
It was Sven who eventually offered the abject apology which Osmond, for some reason, seemed strangely reluctant to make. In due course the previous atmosphere of goodwill and harmony was restored, though both Osmond and Dover had the air of men who were making some quite extensive mental reservations. In Osmond’s case these probably didn’t amount to much, but Dover prided himself on bearing his grudges untarnished to the grave.
‘We drew cards for the job,’ said Osmond, taking up his story again in a low, tight voice. ‘Well, we were dealt the cards, actually – like a game of bridge. Pettitt produced a brand-new pack and discared all the jokers and the deuces. That left him with a deck of forty-eight cards – eight for each of us. Pettitt included himself in the deal, too, you see.’
MacGregor checked the arithmetic. Pettitt and Osmond made two. Mrs Hall made three. And there were the other men who had not yet been interviewed: Ruscoe, Braithwaite and Valentine. That made a total of six. So, there were six players in this gruesome game and forty-eight cards. That, indeed, meant eight cards each. MacGregor nodded his approval.
One can see why, from time to time, he did tend to get right up Dover’s nose.
‘We were each allowed to cut and shuffle the
