was tamped down with a lot of force and the lid stays just barely on most of the time.
‘And Professor Mulbridge?’
On the other side of the court, another woman who’d been scribbling notes in a ring-bound notebook looked up, flicked the book closed and stood. She was older than Pen, and she made a strong contrast to her in a lot of ways. Matt-grey hair – the same grey as Whistler’s mother’s, or a German helmet – in a well-sculpted bob; grey eyes flecked with the smallest hint of blue; an austere, thin-lipped face, but with a healthy blush to her cheeks that suggested a warm smile lurking there under the superficial solemnity. She was dressed in a formal, understated two-piece in shades of dark blue, looking like a probation officer or a Tory MP, whereas Pen was wearing flamboyant African silk. The older woman’s cool self-possession was clearly visible under the self-effacing smile and polite nod. Clearly visible to me, anyway: but then, I go back a long way with Jenna-Jane Mulbridge, and I know where most of the bodies are buried. Hell, in a few cases I even dug the graves. People who don’t know her so well are apt to take away from their first meeting a vague sense of heavy-handed maternal benevolence: and to be fair, if I were going to describe Jenna-Jane to someone who didn’t know her, ‘mother’ might well be the first couple of syllables I’d reach for.
‘Here, your honour,’ Jenna-Jane said mildly. Her voice said ‘Trust me, I’m a doctor’: and she is, as far as that goes. Then again, so were Crippen and Mengele, and they both sold patent medicines in their time.
The magistrate tapped the stack of papers in front of him. ‘And I presume Doctor Smart and Mister Prentice are also in attendance?’
‘Yes, your honour’ and ‘Here, your honour’ came from somewhere off to my far right. The magistrate acknowledged them with a curt nod.
‘Thank you,’ he said dryly. ‘You can all be seated again. Now, from what I understand, this is a question of the disposition of an involuntarily held mental patient. A Section 41 case, Mister . . . Rafael Ditko.’
Someone who looked like an extra in Judge John Deed, impossibly young and suave and dark-suited, stood as if on cue on Jenna-Jane’s side of the courtroom, and the magistrate flicked him a glance but went on without giving him a chance to open his mouth. ‘Has there been a tribunal hearing?’ he demanded, lingering on the word
‘Your honour,’ the barrister said, holding up his own wodge of papers as if to prove that he was earning his salary here too, ‘Michael Fenster, representing Haringey health authority. Yes, the review tribunal met three weeks ago. If you look in the court papers, you’ll see the minutes of that meeting. It took place at the Charles Stanger Care Home in Muswell Hill. In attendance were Doctor Smart, Mister Prentice, and your colleague Mister Justice Lyle.’
‘And the recommendation?’ The magistrate rummaged in the depths of the paperwork again, looking a little put out.
‘The issue, your honour, is the transferral of Mister Ditko from the Stanger Home to a separate secure facility under the management of Professor Mulbridge – the Metamorphic Ontology Unit at Saint Mary’s in Paddington.’
‘I’m aware of the issue, Mister Fenster. I asked about the recommendation.’
‘Of course, your honour. But as you’ll also note from that document, the tribunal did not in fact manage to complete its deliberations. Miss Bruckner, who represents herself here today –’ he glanced across at Pen ‘– was also in attendance, and claimed – somewhat forcefully – that the tribunal was not properly convened.’
The Honourable Mister Runcie had found his place now. He scanned the pages in front of him, tight-lipped. ‘Yes,’ he said. And then, a little later, ‘Oh yes.’ After reading on for a good half-minute longer, while the rest of us examined our fingernails and the paint on the walls, he put the paper down and stared at Pen.
‘You disrupted the hearing, Miss Bruckner,’ he said, with a slightly pained emphasis. ‘You’re facing criminal charges as a result.’
Pen stood up again. ‘I had to, your honour,’ she said, levelly. ‘They were going to break the law. I needed to stop them.’
I listened carefully to her words, or rather to the tone of them, trying to assess how tightly she was wound up. I estimated about three to four hundred pounds of torque: not terrible, for this stage of the proceedings. If anything she managed to get an apologetic note into her voice, and she bowed her head slightly as she spoke, in an understated pantomime of guilt. She knew she’d blown it at the Stanger hearing, and she was trying to undo the damage she’d done there.
‘You needed to stop them,’ Mister Runcie repeated. ‘Indeed. Well, I’ve no doubt you feel very strongly about this. But still – the transcript suggests that you shouted and scattered documents, and you’ve been accused of actually threatening Doctor Webb, the director of the Stanger Home.’
‘I’m really sorry about that,’ Pen said meekly. ‘The threat, I mean. I did say all those things. But I didn’t mean half of them.’
For a moment I could see the proceedings being derailed by an itemised discussion of which threats Pen
‘That case is pending, your honour, and it will be decided elsewhere. The crux of the matter here is that Miss Bruckner was asserting a power of attorney over Mister Rafael Ditko’s affairs and estate, and therefore over the legal disposition of his person.’
‘On what grounds?’ the magistrate asked, still looking at Pen. He was obviously trying to square the butter- wouldn’t-melt picture of penitence in front of him with the written account of her exciting adventures at the Stanger. It didn’t compute.
Pen answered for herself, again with really impressive restraint and civility. ‘On the grounds that I’m the one who signed the forms committing Rafi to the Stanger in the first place, your honour,’ she said. ‘And I pay his bills there, along with a Mister Felix Castor. Doctor Webb has dragged me in every other week for two years, whenever he needed a signature on something. The only reason he doesn’t want me to have a power of attorney now is because it’s not convenient any more. Because now he wants to sign Rafi over to that woman, and he doesn’t want anyone to be able to say no.’
On ‘that woman’ she flicked a glance across the court at Jenna-Jane Mulbridge, the demure mask slipping just for a moment as her eyes narrowed into a glare. Jenna-Jane inclined her head in acknowledgement, the ironic glint in her eye barely perceptible.
‘I see,’ said the magistrate. He turned to the barrister now. ‘Well, if this
‘Your honour, no,’ the barrister said, waving his wodge again. ‘Miss Bruckner further alleges improper collusion between Doctor Webb, Professor Mulbridge and Doctor Smart, who as the medical member of the tribunal would have been making the initial recommendation as to its decision. That is where I come in, since the authority – which convened the panel – feels compelled to rebut these charges.’
‘Charges of collusion?’
‘Just so, your honour.’
The magistrate looked back at Pen with a frown.
‘Miss Bruckner,’ he said, with very careful emphasis, ‘may I ask on what basis you are questioning the credentials and integrity of –’ He scanned the paper that was still in his hand. ‘– of a judge, a doctor and a trained psychologist?’
It was time for me to take some of the pressure off Pen before she could get any closer to blowing. I stood up and gave the bench a friendly wave. ‘Can I answer that one, your honour?’ I asked.
He gave me a slightly nonplussed look. Jenna-Jane looked around too, and I took an unworthy pleasure in the way her thin lips thinned a little more at the sight of me.
‘And you are –?’
‘Felix Castor. Like Miss Bruckner said, I’m the other side of the coin when it comes to paying for Rafi’s fees at the Stanger and signing off on his monthly reviews.’
‘I see. And what is it that you do, Mister Castor?’
Anything honest, I thought. Which lets out most of what you do. ‘I’m an exorcist, your honour.’
‘An –?’
‘Exorcist. Ghostbreaker. Provider of –’ I ran my tongue around the white-bread phrase with a slight reluctance. ‘– Spiritual Services.’
