Running Blind / The Freedom Trap - Plot & Excerpts
He was introduced to me just before the charge was laid and did not seem at all perturbed at the prospect of acting for a criminal. The law is a strange profession in which ordinary morality goes by the board; a well liked and generally respected barrister will fight like a tiger for his client, who may well be a murderer or a rapist, and will receive well-merited congratulations on an acquittal. Then he will go home and write a letter to the editor of The Times fulminating about the rise in crime. A schizophrenic profession. I said as much to Maskell once when I knew him better. He said gently, ‘Mr Rearden, to me you are neither guilty nor innocent—the people who decide that are the twelve men in the box. I am here to find out the facts in a case and to present them to a barrister who will conduct the argument—and I do it for money.’ We were in court at the time and he waved his hand largely. ‘Who says crime doesn’t pay?’ he asked cynically. ‘Taking all in all, from the court ushers to his Lordship up there, there are at least fifty people directly involved in this case, and they’re all making a living out of it.
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