The Allegations

by Mark Lawson

  Forcing a route through was like trying to exit a Tube during rush hour, a disconcerting combination of violence and intimacy, your body suddenly pressed against the soft or solid outline of strangers. Yelled questions – ‘Are you a rapist, Professor?’, ‘Are you a paedophile?’, ‘Is this the end of your career?’, ‘Did you know Jimmy Savile?’ – peaked, faded from earshot and then were repeated more loudly as Ned and Claire forced their way across the pavement, dodging a long curl of sun-baked, flybuzzed dog shit, and made the haven of the taxi. Stoop-stumbling in, Ned caught his head on the edge of the door.

  Claire had given the address of a school in the road behind the police station, a probably pointless precaution now. And if it was an infant school, he would probably be locked up on sus. The driver was sure he knew Ned from somewhere, but they had almost reached their destination before he shouted: ‘Got it! The Hitler Guy!’

  Ned touched the sting on his scalp and checked his fingers. Blood.

  The English Witch Hunts

  Like a newsreader, DI Dent squared papers on his desk, checked a line, then met the eyes of his audience.

  ‘This complaint relates to 2005,’ he said.

  Although Ned tried hard to show no reaction, Claire noted that he was visibly whiplashed by this date. The more distant an allegation, the easier it was for the accused to dismiss, with the additional reassurance that, if it came to it, juries were reluctant to follow cold trails. But nine years ago was recent history. Toby was how old? Ned must have been with Emma by then.

  When they had left the police station after the Hessendon allegation, he had been shocked but convinced by her that the charges were a brief surreal interlude in his usual life. But the media rat-fuck outside his house had jolted him and the recency of the latest claim landed as a punch on a fresh bruise.

  Claire saw a lot of clients in extremis. She had represented two people who had taken their lives while under police investigation: both teachers accused of sexual abuse of students. One of the suicides, she suspected, was guilty and sentenced himself to death to avoid a trial; the other, she feared, had been entirely innocent but unable to endure the public scrutiny. Two accusers might or might not, she reminded herself, make her client more likely to be guilty. The claims of the state must always be tested.

  In a gesture of solidarity, she rested her hand on Ned’s arm. His instant tensing interested her because it suggested a man suspicious of tactility from women. She wondered if this was a reaction against past mistakes.

  ‘As this date is relatively distant, I am going to mention three events that happened in that year within the range of dates given by the victim.’

  ‘Complainant,’ said Claire. The detective carried on but at least she had put the objection on the tape again.

  ‘Within the time-range of the complaint,’ Dent went on, ‘the Live 8 concerts took place at Wembley. London was awarded the 2012 Olympics and fifty-three people were killed in a series of terrorist suicide bombings on the London Transport system.’

  Although her client was the historical expert, Claire’s recollection was that those events had happened in close succession – she had a memory of the Mayor of London talking about the bombings from abroad, where the Olympic decision had been announced – which was worrying: it looked as if this woman had given a precise date.

  Claire wondered if any of the allegations made to Yewtree or Millpond were supposed to have happened on November 22, 1963, or August 31, 1997, when the accused would be forced into the tricky position of insisting that they couldn’t remember what they were doing on the days that President Kennedy and Princess Diana died.

  ‘DS Walters,’ said Dent, ‘will read the victim’s …’

  ‘Complainant’s?’ Claire offered.

  ‘Victim’s statement into the record.’

  The detective sergeant played this role neutrally, with no apparent attempt at characterization: ‘My name is Jess – short for Jessamy – Pothick – P-O-T-H-I-C-K …’

  Claire glanced at her client and, on the basis of the face he made, pledged never to partner him in the world poker championships.

  ‘In 2005,’ Walters read on. ‘I was twenty-four and employed by Ogglebox, a television production company, as a researcher on a four-part documentary series called The English Witch Hunts. The presenter was Professor Ned Marriott. I had never met him before working with him but had grown up watching his work on TV and knew some of his books from when I was a history student.’

  The line about having seen Ned’s shows as a child was potentially ruinous with a jury, seeding the idea of him as a predator and her as vulnerable. Its inclusion – perhaps even its extrusion through a question from the detectives – suggested that the police were trying to give the CPS dirt to work with. Claire subtracted a decade from Ned’s age now: fifty versus twenty-four wasn’t legally anywhere near child abuse – it was a common enough age-gap in showbiz marriages – but fell into the category that Claire thought of as Twitter Criminality: the sort of relationship that the more conventionally romantic, many of whom made up the pool of jurors, found creepy or, in some communities, even blasphemous.

  ‘The word in the industry was that he could be very difficult but he was always pretty easy and funny with me. In July 2005, we were filming in Hertfordshire for the section dealing with Jane Wenham, who was tried for witchcraft in the early eighteenth century. We were on location for three days at Hertford Castle. The production team – including Professor Marriott – stayed for two nights at the County Hotel in Hertford. I can be fairly certain that the night in question was July 7th–8th, 2005, because I had become very upset during that day about the fact that London seemed to have had its “9/11 attack” and I was frightened at going back to London, where I lived, and travelling on public transport. At dinner in the hotel – and afterwards in the hotel bar – I became upset and Professor Marriott was kind to me, telling me that he had lived through the time of the IRA attacks on London and that Islamic terrorists’ – another police rabbit punch, Claire noted, encouraging judges of the evidence to label Ned a racist rapist – ‘were harder to deal with but that the campaign was unlikely to be as sustained. At that point, he put his arm around me and kissed the top of my head, saying that he had already had to reassure his teenage twins on the phone and was happy to do me for free.’

  At that detail, Ned scowled and shook his head in either rebuttal or regret. An incestuous racist rapist, Claire thought, but what she wrote on her pad was: his twins? Notoriously phobic about the term, Ned was unlikely to have used it in the conversation quoted and so its appearance raised the possibility that either the complainant or the detectives had subsequently done some Google-gilding.

  ‘At around midnight, there were four of us left in the bar: myself, Professor Marriott, the producer-director Dominic Ogg and a camera or sound guy whose name I can’t remember but I think was possibly called Dave.’

  Ned interrupted the testimony for the first time: ‘That wouldn’t narrow it down very much in broadcasting.’ Claire laughed supportively and Dent gave a small smile but Walters glared before resuming: ‘Dominic Ogg said that he was going to bed and that Professor Marriott should probably call it a night as well, as he didn’t want him looking puffy-eyed on screen the next day. Professor Marriott said that he would switch to water but that he wanted to just run through his links – which meant his speeches to camera – for the next day with an audience. He was looking at me when he said that. The techie stayed as well. He had made it fairly clear throughout the shoot that he was interested in me and so I think he was trying to do that thing that guys do at university of trying to be in the last two still up. As soon as Mr Ogg had gone, Professor Marriott ordered another bottle of red wine.’ An alcoholic incestuous racist rapist. ‘Professor Marriott poured a glass for each of us and then started practising his links about Jane Wenham’s arrest by Sir Henry’ – Walters hesitated over the pronunciation – ‘Chauncy? – C-H-A-U-N-C-Y.’

  Walte
rs said H as haitch.

  ‘I forget how it’s pronounced,’ Ned said. ‘It’s a long time ago.’

  The level of detail in the statement would impress the CPS but, at any litigation stage, it would be easy to raise the suspicion that the complainant had constructed or bulked-up her memory with a viewing of the DVD: a known risk factor in cases involving the publicly visible.

  ‘Professor Marriott spoke the links to me, ignoring the techie, who, after a few minutes, said that he had to listen to this stuff all day and he wasn’t going to listen to it all night as well.’ DI Dent began, then abandoned, a laugh. ‘He left his glass of wine almost full. When he had gone, Professor Marriott tipped half into each of our glasses. While he was rehearsing one speech, I queried a date and the full name of the judge at Wenham’s trial. I said I had the research file and copies of the books I’d used – he was always insistent about knowing where everything came from – in my room and that I would check and tell him in the morning. Professor Marriott said he wouldn’t sleep from worrying that he’d memorized the wrong stuff and so why didn’t we go and put our heads together now?’

  Unable to obey her advice about maintaining a brave or at least straight face under accusation, Ned was bent forward, looking down at the table.

  ‘I did worry about letting him come back but he was such an old guy and he had mentioned his daughters.’ As Ned’s head fell even lower, Claire sensed the heat on his cheeks. ‘Before we left, he ordered two more bottles of red wine, specifying twistable caps rather than corks because, he said, “There’s nothing worse than being stuck in a hotel room without a screw.” He said “screw” not “cork screw”. I said I wouldn’t want any more to drink but he said that it would “lubricate your hunt”. I remember very clearly the phrase he used.’

  Claire tried to follow her own rules of facial dissimulation – except when it suited you to ridicule police tactics – but she feared that her eyes had at least started a roll. She would reassure Ned afterwards that you couldn’t be prosecuted for schoolboy smut but, while this remained true of the statute books, you were increasingly at risk from jurors who followed online law, where giving offence to anyone at all over anything was a capital crime.

  ‘I was worried about refusing him because of the effect he could have on my career.’ Unsustainable innuendo, Claire scribbled. ‘So I let him come back to my room. I can’t remember the room number but I recollect it being on the first floor, up one flight of stairs. On the stairs I stumbled. I wasn’t used to drinking that much.’ WT search? Claire wrote, as illegibly as possible because she hated herself for even thinking about it. ‘He took my arm to steady me and didn’t let go.’ Which might be enough these days, Claire thought, to constitute sexual touching. ‘We got back to my room, which had a single bed: the firm had a reputation for being stingy with the junior staff. Professor Marriott looked at it and told me that he had a suite with a four-poster. I didn’t say anything. I think I probably smiled nervously. The research files and the history books I had used were stacked on the bedside table. Professor Marriott sat on the bed, picked up a book and then lay back in the middle of it. I remember that the bed was so small that his legs stuck over the end. Professor Marriott said: “So what about our date?” I asked him what he meant. He said that we were going to look up a date. I asked him to pass me English Witchcraft, I think it was, and he told me to come over and get it. We had a bit of to-andfro about that and eventually – because of who he was – I went over. As I reached for the book, he grabbed my arm – not sharply, but against my will – and guided – pulled really – me into a sitting position on the bed. He looked over my shoulder as I was flicking through the book and rested his head on my shoulder. He pulled himself up from the bed and sat beside me on the edge. He had placed the two bottles of wine on the floor beside the bed and he picked one up and wedged it between his thighs – suggestively, I thought – to open it, even though he wasn’t using a corkscrew. Without asking, he went into my bathroom and came back with the only plastic toothbrush glass. He filled the glass, handed it to me and drank from the bottle himself. We checked a couple of other facts. I tried to avoid body contact with him but the bed was squishy and had a dip in the middle and I kept finding him with his thigh against mine, especially when I had to move to put the glass on the floor or pick it up. He tried to go over some of his PTCs – pieces to camera – but he kept forgetting lines and his speech was very slurred. I told him that he needed his beauty sleep before tomorrow, actually, today by then. He said: “Oh, you flatterer.” I suppose he meant the word “beauty” but I had only intended it as an expression. The last thing I clearly remember of the time he was in my room’ – though she showed nothing to the cops, Claire was calculating the advantage of the allegation being the reconstruction of a drunk – ‘was that, when he was drinking the second bottle, he kept trying to refill the tooth glass, even though I asked him not to, while taking slugs from the bottle himself – he put the empty to his mouth and sucked the neck of it in a strange slurpy way.’ Claire checked on her client, who was bent over the table, with his chin resting on paired fists. ‘I woke up at 3am, with a terrible headache, a horrible taste in my mouth and feeling very sick. I was alone in the room. When I was able to stand, I went to the bathroom and vomited. While I was cleaning myself up, I noticed that my blouse buttons were open to below my breasts. I had not been wearing a bra as I found them uncomfortable in summer. There was a sticky substance on my breast, neck and clothing, which I am sure was semen.’ Claire rehearsed in her mind the car-crash moment in court when defence counsel had to ask her if she had tasted it to check. ‘Because I had vomited, I could not be sure if any had entered my mouth. However, it was my assumption that Professor Marriott had forced me to perform – or attempt to perform – a sex act against my will. I vomited twice more during that night. Subsequently, I wondered if Professor Marriott had drugged the wine.’

  Claire sighed and double underlined her note about innuendo. In the days before the cops and prosecutors took the decision to accept everything they were told, a sneering DCI would have asked the complainant just how Professor Marriott would have ensured that only the wine poured for the complainant was spiked.

  ‘When we were filming the next day at Hertford Castle, Professor Marriott was cold and distant with me’ – yeah, and, if we locked up every guy who was like that after an unwise night, the jails would be even more bulging – ‘and constantly found fault with my work: blaming me for the fact that he was having trouble remembering his links, telling the producerdirector, Dominic Ogg, that it was because I had printed out the location copies in too small a font, although, in my view, it was more likely to have been because he had drunk so much. I recall that the PTCs also took a long time to shoot because it was difficult to frame the shot due to Professor Marriott having a large cut on his chin. I don’t know how he got that.’ Claire’s writing of how? coincided with the spoken word. ‘I completed my work on the series – Professor Marriott was distant and chilly, but never behaved inappropriately on another occasion – but I was subsequently never employed to work with Professor Marriott again, although I was a specialist historical researcher and later AP (Assistant Producer) and Producer on history series with presenters including Professor Simon Schama, Lucy Worsley, Dan Snow and Dr David Starkey. Subsequently, I was never offered another contract of employment by Ogglebox, until this year when I was hired to do research and development on possible new presenters for historical TV series. During a discussion on a shoot about historical abuse by broadcasters including Jimmy Savile and Stuart Hall, I mentioned the broad outline of my experience in 2005 to [Name redacted] and was advised that the police should be spoken to.’

  A pause was broken by Dent saying: ‘That is the end of the statement from Victim B. Mr Marriott, do you have any response to what you have heard?’

  Ned turned to her: ‘Could I speak to my solicitor alone, please?’

  Dent informed the recorder that he was stopping it a
nd then did so.

  A Winslow Man (2)

  PA NEWS: 04–06–14: 15:30. In response to media inquiries, Buckinghamshire police have confirmed that a sixty-year-old male from Winslow, previously arrested and questioned in connection with an historic claim of serious sexual assault, following a complaint passed to Operation Millpond, has been arrested and interviewed in connection with a second allegation of sexual assault arising from the same investigation. He was released on police bail until October 1st. Police refused to comment on speculation about the suspect’s identity, citing the protection of a continuing investigation.

  Present Tense Presentiment

  Because her sister went through an adolescent spell of loving horror movies – another issue on which they differed – Phee was more familiar with the art form than she would have wished. And, because of this, lodged in her memory with the usual chunks of poetry from school and pop songs with special meaning, was a line of dialogue that seemed almost obligatory in the genre.

  At the moment when the school janitor peeled back his face to reveal an underlying set of features in green slime, or the mother placing a temperature strip on her eight-year-old’s forehead noticed the burning numbers 666 etched into the skin above eyes of hellfire, someone – in the most extreme cases, the Pope, his own eyes suddenly glowing red – would announce, ‘It is beginning,’ or, occasionally: ‘It begins.’

  So, when Emma texted her to warn that there had been reporters outside the London flat when Daddy was leaving to give his defence to the police, Phee set up an alert for his name. Supposed to be reading a book for her thesis, she tried to take notes but would look away from a half-read, zero-comprehended sentence to the corner of her laptop, where new messages arrived. And, after thirty-five minutes, he broke on BBC News: TV Star Arrested Over Sex Allegations.