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Brancaster kept step with him.
“So Sabri put the dynamite in the Princess Mary, and he detonated it and then leaped over in time to escape the explosion. Do you think he did it to protect somebody?”
“It’s possible. And we still don’t know who picked him up,” Rathbone added. “That wasn’t left to chance.”
“That’s the whole issue, isn’t it?” Brancaster sighed. “Who else was part of it at the time, and—even worse—who else covered it up afterward?”
“I know,” Rathbone said quietly. They were now on a side street and there was no clatter of traffic to drown their voices.
“The other thing that is troublesome,” Brancaster went on, “is that we still have no motive. Sheer hatred of Britain can be powerful, but why this particular reaction, and why now? If the jury is going to believe me, then I need to show a reason they can understand.”
“Not only that,” Rathbone warned him. “You need to have something that speaks to ordinary human passion, not something financial or to do with trade routes and shipping, if that’s what it turns out to be. And I would advise you very seriously not to get into a political train of thought that may end by painting Britain in general as being greedy, exploitative, and destructive of other people’s lives and homes, in order to increase our own profits. It may well be true, but your jury will not wish to accept it.” He glanced sideways at Brancaster as they crossed the road. “You can force them to accept it, if the weight of your evidence is heavy enough, but it will be against their hearts, and they’ll make you pay for it. No one wants their dreams broken. Patriotism is a very powerful force. God only knows how many people, what families down the ages, have given their lives for their country. Don’t try telling them now that they did it for an unworthy cause.”
Brancaster stopped, his face bleak, mouth pulled tight. He stared at Rathbone. “Why the hell did Sabri do it? Am I going to end up with nothing better than a plea of insanity? Play to their belief in a foreigner having a different and baser morality than ours? That’s not only untrue, it’s …” He struggled for a word. “Degrading myself. I’m not sure I’m prepared to do that, even for a conviction.”
Rathbone looked back at him. “And what about our justice system that latched on to Habib Beshara because he’s an unpleasant character, and was prepared to twist and distort, overlook or misrepresent the facts, a detail here, a detail there, to convict him? Hang him and get the whole thing out of the way? Are you prepared to take off the garments clothing our system’s less public parts, and expose that for what it is?”
“How the devil else can I put this right?” Brancaster asked with a note of desperation in his voice.
“I don’t know,” Rathbone said frankly.
THE TRIAL RESUMED ON Monday morning. Brancaster knew that if he did not discredit the conviction of Beshara he had no chance of having Sabri found guilty in his place. He and Rathbone had debated the wisdom of a preemptive strike. Would it seem unnecessarily spiteful? Might it even betray a sense of vulnerability in their own arguments to defend them before they were attacked?
Rathbone looked across at the table where Pryor sat waiting, listening, his pencil ready to take notes. There was a keen doggedness in his face. His heavy jaw was clenched so the muscles showed very slightly in the slant of the light from the windows.
Brancaster called a young policeman by the name of Rivers, who gave an account of his search for witnesses, when the case had been given to Lydiate’s men. He seemed both serious and candid. He was very polite.
Brancaster treated him gently.
Rathbone sat fidgeting, aware that it was a mass of detail, and inevitably boring. He saw the attention of the jury begin to wander.
Pryor yawned and hunched his shoulders, then relaxed them.
It was more than time that Brancaster elicited something of value. Much longer and it would fall on deaf ears, regardless of its relevance.
“Can you describe this particular witness, Sergeant Rivers?” Brancaster asked pleasantly.
Pryor had had enough. “My lord, how can it possibly matter what the witness looked like? I began to fear that Mr. Brancaster is stretching this out to impossible lengths in the hope of boring us to death!”
Antrobus looked inquiringly at Brancaster.
“Not at all, my lord,” Brancaster said respectfully. “Were Mr. Pryor to die, we should have to begin all over again, and I, for one, have no wish to do that.”
There was a titter of amusement around the gallery.
“Nor I,” Antrobus agreed. “I doubt I should survive that myself. Perhaps you will be good enough to reach your point, on the assumption that you have one?”
“Yes, my lord,” Brancaster said obediently. “You were going to describe the witness for us, Sergeant Rivers.”
Rivers looked puzzled. “He was very ordinary, sir. A trifle portly around the middle. A sort of a … blunt kind of face.”
“Was he dark or fair?” Brancaster asked.
“I … don’t recall. Medium. Sort of brownish, I think.”
Pryor waved his arms. “My lord!”
Brancaster ignored him. “And what sort of age?”
