Part One

Assembly

1

“I don’t like it, Lion,” said Mr. Norrie. “I want to know what’s behind it and it’s your job to find out.”

Anthony Leone, who had long ago got used to different English versions of his name, sighed and said, “I’ll do my best, sir.”

Mr. Norrie was the Stipendiary at Reynolds Road Magistrates Court, in the South-eastern District of London. Anthony was the senior Probation Officer working at the court. He had seen this assignment coming his way and was not keen on it.

“If it had been a crowd of West Indian hunkies,” said Mr. Norrie, “we’d have expected trouble and been ready to deal with it. But these kids are Indians—”

“Pakistanis.”

“No different. They all come from the same neck of the woods, don’t they? Indians are usually peaceful folk, who do their jobs and make no trouble. When they do get into trouble their Community Relations Council can usually deal with it.”

“They’re very helpful,” agreed Anthony.

“Another thing, the police don’t like handling things like this themselves. To start with, it means bringing in an interpreter.”

“Actually – not in this case. The Rahmans and the Kahns have been here a long time. These are third-generation boys. They speak better English than most of their friends.”

“Then that’ll make your job all the easier, won’t it?” said Mr. Norrie. “Although, come to think of it, didn’t someone tell me you speak their lingo yourself?”

“I’m not fluent,” said Anthony. “I taught in two Pakistani schools before I took on this job. One in Abbottabad and the other, up in the north-east, at Rawalpindi.”

“Right,” said Mr. Norrie, pleased that he had remembered this item. “It makes you just the man for the job, doesn’t it?”

“I did wonder if we oughtn’t to involve Sergeant Ames. After all, he is our Local Community Liaison Officer.”

“Sergeant Ames,” said Mr. Norrie, “is useless. He’s as soft and wet as my bath sponge. Do you know that the first thing Brace had to do when he took over this Division was to tell Ames to get his hair cut. Think of that. A police officer being told to get his hair cut.”

Anthony saw that he had lost. He said, “Well, sir, all I’ve got so far is Monty’s story.”

“Monty?”

“Sorry. Sergeant Montgomery.”

“Does everyone call him Monty?”

“Most people do.”

“I was never really sold on that chap. The General, I mean; Bit of a charlatan. Sorry, go on.”

“He was on his way to the Observatory, where they’d had an attempted break in – the third in two months. He was using the divisional van. He was crossing Lyndoch Square and he saw this crowd. Two boys fighting and a lot of other boys watching them. Some of them were Pakistanis and others were Brits and he guessed they’d all soon be joining in if he didn’t do something, so he and the driver jumped out. The two boys were rolling on the ground by this time, trying to bash each other’s heads on the pavement. They hauled them to their feet, told them they were committing a breach of the peace and several other offences and bundled them into the van. Then they took them straight back to the Station and charged them.”

“Good,” said Mr. Norrie. “Good marks for Sergeant Montgomery.”

“I quite agree. He stopped what might have been a sizeable race riot.”

“One of the boys—” Mr. Norrie was inspecting the charge sheet which would be the basis of that morning’s proceedings. “I call him a boy, but I see he’s over eighteen – is Edward Drummer. His father must be the Abel Drummer who keeps the shop in Camlet Road.”

“Lovebirds, snakes, tortoises, hamsters and tropical fish. A member of the British Legion and a past chairman of the Rotary. And an honorary member of the TA branch of the Royal Engineers. Did five years territorial service with them in the fifties.”

“A solid citizen,” said Mr. Norrie.

One of the things he liked about his Probation Officer was that he produced facts, not theories. To begin with, he had been a bit suspicious of him. A foreign name. Some sort of Italian? And a schoolmaster, in India, too. But these prejudices had faded when he found that the man was prepared to work a fourteen-hour day looking after his difficult charges, finding out about them and their families and backgrounds; and above all, that he had the clarity of mind to present his results concisely. As facts, not theories. Mr. Norrie preferred facts to theories.

“The only thing I know to his discredit – if you can call it that – is that he’s got a bee in his bonnet about Punjabis.”

“How come?”

“It’s ancient history now, but his friends all know, because he still talks about it. Particularly when he’s got a couple of beers under his belt at the Social Club. Seems his father was in the Engineers, too. Did very well in the war and reached the rank of Warrant Officer. Unusual for a war-time soldier. His crowd was attached to 4th Indian Division in the North African fighting. There was a Punjabi Regiment on their left at Wadi Akarit. They reported one of the tracks clear. Well, it wasn’t. Sergeant Major Drummer was blown up on a teller mine. Lost an arm and a leg and died soon after he got home. Abel would have been – let me see – about ten when that happened.”

“When boys of that age get ideas in their heads, they stick,” agreed Mr. Norrie. “All right. Now tell me about the Pakistani boy.”

‘I’ll know more about the Kahns when I’ve had a chance to talk to their father. But I can tell you one thing. They came originally from the Sabeh Kehl mountains, on the northern frontier of Pakistan and that makes them Pathans.”

“Pathans? You mean the people who live in Afghanistan?” Mr. Norrie’s mind traversed fragments of history remembered from his schooldays. Kabul, Kandahar, Bobs, the Khyber Pass, soldiers being disembowelled by Pathan women. “We used to have a lot of trouble with them at one time, didn’t we?”

“Like the Russians are now,” said Anthony happily. “But there are plenty of Pathans outside Afghanistan. This particular lot joined the infant Pakistan State when it was created. Being Muslims, there were no difficulties about religion, you see.”

“I don’t see,” said Mr. Norrie. “I don’t know anything about their religious beliefs. What I can see is two tough crowds of boys who’ll make trouble if we don’t nip it in the bud. Usually, with kids, it’s half the battle if we can get the fathers on our side. So what’s their attitude?”

“That’s something I shall have to find out, sir. They were both round the Station pretty quickly, asking to see Brace. It was practically a dead heat. He decided to see them separately and asked me to sit in on it. In fact, he might as well have seen them together, because they both said exactly the same thing. It wasn’t their boy’s fault. The other boy started it.”

“Natural reaction.”

“Yes. But the odd thing was that they were both keen to stress that their boy was winning. It seems to have become a sort of challenge.”

“When you talk about it in that way,” said Mr. Norrie, “it sounds harmless enough. If it had been two English boys, I might have given them both a smack on the bottom and let them go. But we’ve got a tricky situation here. You’ve only got to look at a street plan to see it. The Pakis all live in that triangle north of Plumstead High Street and south of the railway.”

“And keep themselves to themselves. They’ve got their own place of worship in Rixen Road and a meeting-hall in Bisset Street.”

“They’ve given no trouble so far,” agreed Mr. Norrie. “And it’s up to us to keep it that way. I can’t tell you what I’m going to do until I’ve heard what the police have got to say, but you’ll certainly be involved. Yes. What is it?”

A policeman in uniform had put his head round the door.

“Good heavens. Is it ten o’clock already? All right. Tell Combs I’m coming.”

“If I might?” said Mr. Nabbs.

He was a local solicitor and appeared in most of the cases in Mr. Norrie’s court.

“Yes, Mr. Nabbs.”

“The police have asked me to make an application on their behalf. It would be of great assistance to them if you would take the cases of Kahn and Drummer first. Their principal witness is Police Sergeant Montgomery. He is wanted urgently at the Royal Observatory. He was, in fact, on his way there yesterday afternoon when he was diverted to take a hand in the present matter.”

“I think that’s reasonable,” said Mr. Norrie. “Very well, Sergeant.”

Sergeant Blascoe, who had a voice which could be heard across the Thames at Wapping Old Stairs, bellowed, “Drummer and Kahn” and the two boys, who had been sitting on a bench outside the court room, silent and not looking at each other, appeared and were shepherded into the low-railed dock. Mr. Combs, the Clerk of the Court, read out the charge against both of them, which was one of assault occasioning actual bodily harm. He then invited them to plead.

The boys looked blank.

Mr. Nabbs rose swiftly to his feet. He said, “I am instructed on behalf of Drummer. In view of the fact that the assault – it might perhaps be described as a mutual assault – took place in public and that the bodily harm” – he motioned towards the dock – “is all too apparent on the faces of the contestants,” Ted Drummer had a black eye and a split lip and Salim Kahn had a red and purple bruise on his cheek, “I have advised my client that he should plead guilty and I am instructed so to do.”

“Is Kahn represented?”

“Apparently not, Your Worship.”

A figure rose in the public benches.

“I’ve told him he should plead guilty, My Lord.”

Mr. Norrie, undisturbed at being addressed as a High Court Judge said, “And who are you?”

“I am the boy’s father.”

“Very well.” He turned to Salim. “You understand what your father says?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you plead guilty to this charge?”

“Yes, sir.”

Mr. Norrie said, “Very well. Sergeant Montgomery.”

The Sergeant entered the box and explained that he had been on his way to the Royal Observatory, on duty, when his attention had been drawn to a hold-up in the traffic at Lyndoch Square, where the High Street crossed the top end of Reynolds Road. It seemed that the hold-up had been caused by two boys fighting in the road.

“In the road?”

“Yes, Your Worship. Rolling together on the ground. I also saw a group of boys on each pavement who appeared to be supporting the contestants.”

“Shouting, do you mean?”

This question seemed to puzzle Sergeant Montgomery. He said, “No, Your Worship. I didn’t hear much shouting.”

“Then how did you know they were supporting them?”

How had he known? An instinct born of years of street work. Second nature, impossible to explain.

He said, “To tell you the truth, sir, I thought they looked like two packs of wolves waiting for the signal to join in.”

Mr. Norrie, who knew and respected the Sergeant, accepted this flight of fancy without comment. He sat for some seconds in silence. He had taken note, almost subconsciously, of the boys’ demeanour. Prisoners, particularly prisoners up for the first time, normally looked either frightened or aggressive. The two boys were exhibiting no such reactions. They were standing upright and still, like sentries on an important post, who had been trained to disregard the crowd which gaped at them and concentrate on the job in hand.

Mr. Norrie found this disquieting.

He said, “Thank you, Sergeant. If that’s all, you’d better get along to the observatory.”

After the Sergeant had stumped out there was a further moment of silence whilst Mr. Norrie made up his mind. He said, “I’m standing this case over for three weeks for reports. The accused can have bail. I shan’t ask for sureties. But they are both to be available for my Probation Officer whenever he wishes to see them – or their friends. That’s all.”