The Allegations

by Mark Lawson

  ‘So,’ said the detective inspector. ‘Do you want time to discuss with your solicitor or are you prepared to answer questions on the statement now?’

  In mime, Ned and Claire debated the question and agreed to continue.

  ‘The allegation relates to 1976,’ DI Dent resumed. ‘As this date is now distant, I am going to mention three events that happened in that year within the range of dates given by the victim.’

  For Ned, 1976 meant Harold Wilson resigning mysteriously and being replaced by James Callaghan, and Viv Richards blasting England’s bowlers across and over outfields parched brownish-yellow by an infernal summer.

  ‘These events may provide a context for your memories,’ DI Dent said. ‘Do you understand what I mean?’

  ‘Yeah. I think.’

  ‘1976 was the year,’ the detective began, sounding like the voice-over on a documentary (The Rock n Roll Years: Operation Millpond Special), ‘when the teenage gymnast Nadia Comăneci became a star of the Montreal Olympics, Princess Margaret announced her separation from Lord Snowdon, and twenty thousand women took part in a peace march in Northern Ireland.’

  He must ask Claire afterwards if they always used such prompts, or only for historians. Perhaps, if the accused were a lorry driver, they read out fuel prices from the year in question.

  ‘Mr Marriott, did you live in 1976 at Redbourne Avenue, Finchley, North London?’

  ‘Er, yeah. That would be the year I came down to London. I was there, I think, until I finished my second degree two years later.’

  ‘Which number did you live at?’ asked Walters, very casually.

  Ned was about to answer when Claire raised her hand. ‘Because my client is a public figure, about whom a great deal of information exists in the public domain, the origin of knowledge may become an issue at a later stage.’ His solicitor smiled and addressed Dent. ‘Why don’t you ask the complainant which number it was and then we’ll tell you if she got it right?’

  With a little oof of amusement, Dent conceded the point. Ned was impressed by Claire’s sharpness; once mentioned, it seemed striking that the complainant knew the road but not the number.

  ‘Mr Marriott,’ Dent said. ‘Were you, during 1976, involved in a sexual relationship with Wilhelmina “Billy” Hessendon.’

  ‘Um, yes. I think people still said “going out” then, not “seeing”. We went out for a bit.’

  ‘What are your memories of the victim?’

  Ned looked at Claire. ‘Well, obviously, that isn’t how I think of her.’

  ‘Can we settle on “alleged victim”?’ Claire asked.

  ‘We’re following agreed protocols.’

  ‘Can we just use her name, then, okay, Rich?’ his solicitor asked the DI. The first name gave Ned a sense of being an outsider in a club.

  Dent sighed. ‘What are your memories of Ms Hessendon?’

  ‘She was a really nice girl. Young woman, I think we have to say now. Look, I was single, she was single; it was – don’t lock me up for saying this – no big deal.’

  ‘Is she right to think it wasn’t an exclusive relationship?’ asked Walters.

  Before the final vowel, Claire interrupted. ‘Come on, this isn’t Iran or the Vatican. I didn’t know Millpond was investigating infidelity.’

  Ned guessed that the question was an attempt to find character assassination evidence for use in any – he still could not believe that it would ever come to this – trial.

  Dent removed his spectacles, as if to emphasize that he was looking Ned in the eye, for this question. ‘What is your memory of the specific sexual encounter described by the, by Ms Hessendon?’

  ‘Oh, look. I’m not suggesting that I was any kind of stud or anything. But I had the sort of sex-life of the average man of my time. My generation missed the ’60s but we were just before Aids.’ He had unconsciously dropped into the tone of a Radio 4 discussion programme. ‘But, I mean, can you remember in detail what you did in bed thirty-eight years ago? Yeah, I know, before you say it, that you’d have been six or so and DS Walters hadn’t been born, but you understand what I’m saying?’

  Unsmiling, Walters asked him, ‘Would you have been in the habit of having unprotected sex?’

  Fact cop / sleaze cop seemed to be their agreed teaming.

  ‘As I’ve said, this was pre-Aids. Most girls, women, were on the Pill.’

  ‘Do you ever remember using protection with Ms Hessendon?’

  ‘It was a very short relationship. We weren’t, you know, going to a Family Planning clinic or anything. Thinking back, I think I would probably have left it up to her.’

  DS Walters gave what he took as a disapproving look. ‘Because of the nature of the allegation, we have to ask some pretty, er, graphic questions. The alleged victim says that she asked you to, um, pull out and you didn’t?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Claire tapped a pen on the table in a code he thought he cracked. ‘By which I mean that, yes, she does say that. But I have absolutely no memory of that happening.’

  ‘It’s sometimes not easy to stop,’ Walters followed up. ‘Is it possible that you just couldn’t?’

  Forcibly developing the instincts of a criminal, Ned saw a trap: an admission that he had inadvertently been unable to obey her instructions involved an acknowledgement that she had given them.

  ‘I have absolutely no memory of ever being asked to stop,’ he said.

  Dent joined in again. ‘And can you recall cases – in other relationships – when you were asked and did so?’

  ‘Come on, Rich,’ said Claire. ‘Why don’t you re-name it Operation Angler? You’ve got one woman. Let’s stick to what supposedly happened to her.’

  Dent dipped his nose towards Walters; like players in a string quartet, they seemed to have agreed signals.

  ‘You’re a very big guy, Mr Marriott,’ the woman detective said. ‘Tall, broad. You look like you work out …’

  ‘Thank you,’ he stupidly interrupted.

  ‘A woman of even average size might find you frightening? Certainly would be unable to stop you?’

  ‘I admit I’ve been on holiday recently,’ Claire cut in. ‘But I seem to have missed the introduction into the legal system of guilt by build?’

  ‘Look, this is bonkers,’ Ned said. ‘If we were all fitted with erotic black boxes – like the recorders aeroplanes have – then we could play back every shag we’d ever had’ – he wished he hadn’t said shag – ‘and the porn industry would collapse’ – he wished he hadn’t mentioned pornography, but his punditry impulse had switched on – ‘but we haven’t and the average man, woman, can’t fill in a questionnaire on who did what to whom on a random night when Margaret Thatcher was leader of the opposition!’

  At the start of his speech, he had felt his solicitor’s warning fingers on his arm but the pressure lessened as he went on, as if she were approving anger as a tactic. Refusing to answer, he suspected, was the riskiest tactic in this room.

  ‘I appreciate this is stressful for you,’ Dent said. ‘But we have to take these allegations seriously. We’re almost done here. But can I just ask you to cast your mind back to 1976 and tell me if there is anything else at all you can recall that might be helpful?’

  Ned almost physically closed his eyes but then felt selfconscious and stared at the floor in the corner of the room as he searched his memory files.

  Richards smashing Underwood back for six over his head at the Oval. An Olympic commentator (Ron Pickering? No, someone Weeks, Alec?, Alan?) shouting: Gold for little Nadia! And then sex, though not Billy H at all, but Vicky Atkinson, curtain of long black hair as she crouched over his. No, no, no. Did all men reach the point where they wished they had cut off their cock long ago and gone into a monastery?

  ‘Because you have no memory of the events,’ said Walters, ‘then you can’t be sure that they did not take place?’

  Ned thought of mentioning Kafka but was finding the giving of evidence like writing for a tabloid newspaper, constan
tly worrying whether the references would be got. As he hesitated, Claire spoke: ‘Oh, stop this! Does the fact that one of DI Dent’s hands is under the table at the moment mean he might be playing with himself?’ The detective instinctively lifted his arm clear. ‘Come on, Rich, I think it’s time my client had a break.’ She turned to Ned: ‘You are denying any knowledge of the alleged offences?’

  Looking directly at the detectives, he said: ‘Yes. I do not recognize this account of my brief relationship with Miss Hessendon. And I am not – and have never been – a …’ He found it impossible to voice the word, even in denial, and worried that this would be taken as guilt. He eventually succeeded in saying: ‘a … a … rapist.’

  But the word was muffled by a burp of bile that burned his throat.

  The Truth About Ned

  Three times, Tom chose HOME on speed dial, the tremor in his fingers a preview of the Parkinson’s to come if he lived long enough to get it. But, as he tried to script the conversation with his wife, the lines he gave himself consisted of false chronology (‘There’s a bit of an investigation going on in the department’), optimistic euphemism (‘I think it will be fine, but I may be in a bit of trouble’) or gangsterish bravado: ‘You know I’ve told you about Special and Daggers and Horny? Well, the bastards have kippered me up.’

  His attempts to give the dialogue more detail failed because, while it was possible to imagine saying ‘insubordination’ with a mocking laugh, he could not bring himself to spell out the meaning of the letters ‘b & h’, and the allegations were so vague that, even if he told Helen everything he knew, she would surely assume he was holding something back. What had happened to him that afternoon was so odd and astonishing that it would be like coming home with a dent in his head and claiming that a rainbow had fallen on him. So he decided that he would tell Helen only when he knew what the charges were.

  It was Ned that he had tried first from outside the Adapted Lavatory – but the mobile, uncharacteristically, had been turned off completely – and so he moved the cursor over NOD and pressed again. Still dead. Tom looked into the glossy, younger features of his friend: a promotional poster from The Fabulous Fifties was Blu-tacked among the framed degree certificates and book covers in the middle of the ego wall opposite.

  On the desk was a big, boxy office telephone, its black plastic sun-dulled and chipped: equipment had been one of the first costs the university had cut during the ‘efficiency savings’. Beside the receiver, ten horizontal panels held paper strips, on which Ned had typed words including HOME, MUM, TOM, DEAN, OGGLE. Taking satisfaction in being ranked third, Tom thought, Special can pay for this call, and pressed HOME. Listening to the drilling of the dialling tone, he was preparing an opening comment, something like: ‘Nod, you thought Senator McCarthy was an essay topic. Turns out he’s running the fucking department!’

  But it was Emma who answered, and she said: ‘Darling!’

  Though no less prone than most men to the delusion that his friends’ wives were secretly plotting to seduce him, Tom was still startled by the greeting.

  ‘Er, hi. This is Tom. Tom Pimm.’

  ‘Oh, God, I’m sorry. It came up on the creep screen, for some reason, as Ned’s office.’ Her voice sounded tired and strained. ‘I’ll have to get someone to …’

  ‘No, no. That’s where I am.’

  ‘Oh, God! Is he okay? Has something happened? Is he there with you?’

  ‘Whoo, Em, take it easy. I don’t think there’s anything to worry about. I needed a safe phone to call him about some … some office gossip. His thought-pod was empty and so, as he wasn’t here and his mobile’s off, I thought he must be nursing a birthday head …’

  ‘Oh-kay. Don’t you have an office?’

  ‘Shared. Only big potatoes like Nod get their own.’ He was trying to sound like himself, but could hear the distortion from the tension in his neck and face. ‘Okay, so he isn’t with you and his moby’s off. Any clues to when and where he might … ?’

  ‘I … I’m not sure I can help you, Tom. He did say he was busy, telly meetings I think. Is it anything I … is it urgent?’

  ‘No, no, no. Just tell him to ring me if … oh, and great party last night …’

  ‘Yes. Yes, it was …’

  She seemed to be choking on the words and Tom was yet again envious of the passion in a second marriage. Until a second explanation occurred to him: his mobile off, Emma having no idea where he was and sounding as if she might have been crying. Ned, Tom became convinced, was with another woman.

  Short Game / Long Game

  London reacted to the first warm evenings of the year with a panicked impression of Paris. Long stretches of pavement were narrowed by hastily-placed tables, smokers winning the bonus of sun, tan-addicts paying the penalty of the fumes now outlawed indoors.

  Coming down the Paddington Green steps, Claire had made to hail a taxi, but Ned stopped her, from an atavistic instinct to breathe free air. An image came to him of chemo-bald patients sitting in hospital grounds, basking in breeze and warmth, the everyday suddenly cherished because of its imminent perishability.

  Leaving home in a supervised hurry that morning, Ned had scrambled wallet and phone into his pockets but had no time to find the baseball cap he wore when a series was going out or there was a person or place that he preferred not to be Instagrammed or Tweeted. So his only defence against recognition was to avoid eye contact when he sensed he had been spotted. His stare-radar bleeped repeatedly but he accepted that the settings might be affected by paranoia.

  He had started several sentences, but Claire raised a hand that she then pointed in warning towards the lines of people queuing to edge past the outside diners. Ned and Claire forced their way down another crowded side-street. Barbecue smells of grilled meat and fish rose from plates but, although Ned had drunk two half-cups of police tea and eaten nothing that day, the meals made him nauseous rather than hungry.

  His phone repeatedly vibrated in the jacket slung over his shoulder. Convinced that there would already be journalists calling, he was terrified to check for messages. The scroll of missed calls when Ned’s phone was returned by the custody sergeant had been filled with Em and Tom P, the almost quarter-hourly persistence of the latter convincing him that the story must already be out, either online or, only marginally better, the departmental intranet. He had phoned neither Emma nor Tom, finding it impossible at the moment – and perhaps ever – to imagine the conversations he might have.

  At the end of the interrogation, he had been released on police bail until September 1, on condition of surrendering his passport, although he might be permitted to travel outside the UK on request. In addition to the search of the Kensington flat and the Winslow house that had already taken place, the detectives advised that they were also seeking warrants for the Cotswolds cottage and the offices of both Emma’s agency and the television production company Ogglebox. Everyone is going to know, he appreciated stupidly late.

  Eventually, after a series of turns from the High Street, they reached a side-road of closed or closed-down offices and factories.

  ‘You okay?’ asked Claire. ‘You absolutely have to tell me if you’re not. I’m no doctor but I know people who are.’

  ‘It’s … I hate the way everything these days gets called surreal.’ His mouth was so dry that he felt he was gouging the words out of his throat one by one. ‘But … I’ll be okay …’

  They took a short-cut across an industrial estate, deserted by workers drawn out early by the sun. On chained gates, sealed with rusted padlocks, notices warned of dog patrols. This distance from the main road, Claire’s deep throaty laugh rang loudly.

  ‘Hessendon Castle – she sounds more like a tourist attraction than a complainant!’

  ‘The stuff she said about sex acts that she found – all she meant was …’

  ‘Hold it there, partner! This isn’t an episode of Girls.’

  ‘Storming into buildings after all these years, and taking
away files and computers, presumably, like something you see …’ In a reversal of his previous concern about not being famous enough, he reassured himself that he was not enough of a celebrity for there to be much publicity. ‘What the fuck do they think they’ll find after thirty-eight years?’ He tried to pump saliva across his palate. ‘The Rough Guide to …’ He couldn’t say the word. ‘Non-Consensual Sex stuck down the back of a sofa?’

  ‘I know. Everyone always reacts like that.’

  ‘So you’ve done these before?’

  ‘Have I? You wouldn’t want me discussing your case with others. Look, if you don’t know where the mouse is – or even whether there is a mouse – you put traps down in as many corners as possible. And it’s a kind of cop motto these days that, if you don’t have very much, you’ll always find more on a harddrive. E-mails, diaries, searches …’

  Ned wondered if the list was a question. ‘Look, I … I suppose every man …’

  ‘Woh, no thank you!’ his solicitor cut in. ‘If you want to make a confession, find a priest, or an IT specialist. If stuff comes up, we’ll deal with it. But not until.’

  They passed an L-plated car, joltingly attempting turns in an empty factory car park. As if sensing that the temperature was wrong for England, the evening was suddenly getting colder. Ned optimistically picked up on her earlier comment. ‘So you don’t think they’ve got very much?’

  ‘Well, to put it in a kind of perspective, I actually wasn’t born when this thing allegedly happened. So the trail is sort of cold? Which leads to their working assumption that there’s something suspicious in not remembering exactly what you were doing when you first heard Abba’s “Dancing Queen”. But, at the bottom of their socks, Millpond know that life doesn’t actually work like that and no jury is going to conclude that it does.’

  He swallowed, suffering the sensation of choking on a lump of meat. ‘Jury? You think it will get to that?’