"Mortimer, John - Rumpole and the Alternative Society" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mortimer John)

' Saturday night in the Crooked Billet and a bloody good piss-up. It's the nearest he gets to the old days in the R.A.F.'

'You want to be careful... he doesn't rush out and bomb Torquay,' I warned her, and was delighted to see her laugh.

' You're not joking! The point is... should I tell Sam?'

'Won't your Doctor Mackay tell him?'

'You know how Sam is. He won't see hide nor hair of the doctor. So what should I do?'

' Why ask me ?' I looked at her, having no advice to give.

'You're the bloody lawyer, darling. You're meant to know everything!'

At which point I was aware that, behind us, a man had come into the bar. I turned and saw him scowling at us. He was wearing a blazer, an R.A.F. scarf in an open shirt and scuffed suede shoes. I saw a good-looking face, grey hair and a grey moustache, all gone slightly to seed. It was none other than ex-Pilot Officer Sam' Three-Fingers' Dogherty.

'We're not open yet!' He seemed to have not yet completely awakened from a deep afternoon kip, as he advanced on us, blinking at the lights round the bar.

' Sam! Can't you see who it is ?' Bobby said, and her husband, who had at last identified the invasion, roared at me.

'My God, it's old grounded Rumpole! Rumpole of the ops room!' He moved rapidly to behind the bar and treated himself to a large Teachers which he downed rapidly. 'What the hell brings you to this neck of the woods?'

'He wrote us a letter.'

'Never read letters. Here's to the good old duke!' He was on his second whisky, and considerably more relaxed.

'What brings me? A lady... you might say, a damsel in bloody great distress.'

'You're not still after Bobby, are you?' Sam was only pretending to be suspicious.

' Of course. Till the day I die. But your wife's not in distress exactly.'

'Aren't I?' Bobby looked down into the depths of her gin and tonic, and I filled them in on the nature of my mission.

'The lady in question is a certain Miss Kathy Trelawny. One of the lotus eaters of "Nirvana", 34 Balaclava Road. Done for the possession of a suitcase full of cannabis resin.'

I had put up, as we used to say in the old days, a Black. If I had asked the Reverend Ian Paisley to pray for the Pope, I couldn't have invited an icier gaze of disapproval than Sam gave me as he said,' You're defending her ?'

'Against your crafty constabulary. Come in here, does she?'

'Not bloody likely! That crowd from Balaclava Road wouldn't get past the door. Anyway, they don't drink.' The glass of Teachers was recharged to banish the vision of the lotus eaters invading the Crooked Billet.

'Dear me. Is there no end to their decadence? But you know my client?'

'Never clapped eyes on her, thank God! No doubt she's about as glamorous as an unmade bed.'

'Oh, no doubt at all.' Gloomily, I thought he was almost certainly right, something peering through glasses, I thought, out of a mop of unwashed hair. Sam came out from behind the bar and started to bang about, straightening chairs and tables, switching on more lights.

' How can you defend that creature?'