The Untouchable Read Free Page A

twenty-seven months, fraud, in Pentonville prison and met Packer there
    - twenty-four months, aggravated robbery. In the twenty-eight years since then his client had never been convicted. He finished his glass of Pepsi and lemonade, wiped his mouth with the paper napkin, and eased himself heavily off the high stool. As a twenty-two-year-old, fresh from college and his degree, learning criminal-case law, he had been a fierce drinker; not any more. He had been 'dry' since he had met Mister. He was on call twenty-four hours, day and night. For his retainer, which ratcheted up each year, it was demanded of him that he be constantly available. Mister was his meal ticket, and abstinence from alcohol was the price to be paid.
    He left the pub and sheltered for a moment in the doorway to gauge the strength of the rain.
    Opposite was the main entrance to the Old Bailey, the Central Criminal Court. Word travelled fast.
    Photographers were gathering at the principal security entrance. Two police cars were parked at the kerb in front of the entrance, and the armed men were already loading their machine pistols into the secure compartments behind the front seats, their job over.
    There had been armed police on the corners of the building since the trial had started. He shuffled across the street. Because of his heavy gut he walked badly.
    He went inside and flashed his card. The Eagle knew the way it would end, had known for days.
    The prosecution case had originally involved the identification by Customs & Excise - the Eagle called it the Church - of his client in a car, his client's fingerprints in the car, and the evidence of an informer also in the car. While Mister had been on remand, the Eagle had systematically demolished the case with the help of the big man's enforcers. The Protected Witness Unit was supposedly secure and secret.
    Money had bought the location of the gaol where the PWU was housed, and the number given inside the unit to the informer. Big money had bought the prison officer who had contaminated the man's food.
    A stomach pump had saved his life, but not his resolve. 'If they can get me here,' he had whined, 'they can get me anywhere.' He had withdrawn his evidence, refused to testify.
    Mister was standing at the far end of the corridor, wreathed in dull light. The cell door beside his client was the only one in the block that was open. At his shoulder were the clerk, Josh, and a prison officer who clutched the bin bag, as if he were a hotel porter.
    The Home Office Forensic Laboratory was at Chepstow, across the Welsh border. The fingerprint evidence had been there. A technician with a predi-lection for gambling at the roulette tables of a Newport casino had been offered a choice: for co-operation his debt of nine thousand pounds would be paid off, for obstruction his mother's legs would be broken with such baseball-bat severity that she would not walk again. The fingerprint evidence had gone missing.
    'All right, then - shall we go?' There was a watery smile at the Eagle's mouth.
    The Church's identification of his client by their surveillance team had been a greater challenge. He couldn't buy the Church and couldn't threaten it, so the Eagle had had to burn late-night oil to work meticulously through the surveillance logs for the fissure in that part of the case. Having found the point of weakness, he had then diverted the attention of the enforcers, the Cards - Mister's hard men - to the leafy suburban detached home of the Crown Prosecution Service lawyer on the special-case desk . . . It was all worked out, it was the power of his client.
    Mister never looked round. The prison officer passed the bag to the clerk. The Eagle led them back up the steps. At the first landing, instead of turning left and waiting at a barred grille gate for it to be unlocked and taking the route up to Number 7 Court, he turned right. At that gate, he showed his pass, as did his clerk, and the youngster pushed the discharge document