PI Brief Update

Amending the record

I gave OldSmoothie my note of his, er, case conference with BigMouth today. Basically it consisted of telling BigMouth that he should declare all the cash he’s received from his banker friend both to Parliament and probably also the taxman. However, he’d then gone on on to whisper that although that was his strict advice, it was of course up to BigMouth whether he wanted to follow it or not and of course, if he chose not to then OldSmoothie would still back him to the hilt.

From my very accurate note there was certainly no need to add in stage directions of nods and winks, since it was blindingly obvious what OldSmoothie was saying: “I’m covering myself by telling you this, but actually if I were you I’d try and wing it.”

“Why on earth did you write down every detail, BabyB?” he demanded. “You were there to take a note to protect me, not to implicate me.” He proceeded to delete the last half of my note before printing it off and handing it back. “There. That’s an accurate record of the advice I dispensed. The rest was simply two friends having a chin wag.”

“Oh.” I looked a little surprised and was definitely unsure as to what I should do. I certainly didn’t want to pick a fight with probably the most powerful person in chambers and that’s before you add a Tory MP into the mix. All the more so over something which was almost certain not to come out and anyway, it’s privileged, I figured a little uneasily.

“Excellent. Sign here BabyB.”

At that moment I had little choice but to sign my name and hope that the details of the meeting never came into question.

BabyBarista is a fictional account of a junior barrister written by Tim Kevan. You can buy the latest BabyBarista novel, 'Law and Peace' on Amazon. The cartoons are by Alex Williams, author of The Queen's Counsel Lawyer's Omnibus.