Judge Walden

by Peter Murphy

  Roderick is halfway to his feet to object to the looming hearsay, but Susan raises a hand and deals with it herself.

  ‘I’m not allowed to ask you what Ronnie told you, Mrs Jones,’ she explains. ‘It’s to do with the rules of evidence. But as a result of what Ronnie found when he looked at your bank accounts, what did he do?’

  ‘He went out and bought one of those, what d’you call them, miniature cameras, and a recorder, and he installed them in my kitchen.’

  ‘Why in the kitchen?’

  ‘That’s where I always talked with Laura when she came to the flat.’

  ‘Did he do anything else?’

  ‘Yes. He told me to invite Laura to come round to the flat the next day, which I did. I told her I needed some help putting up some curtains.’

  ‘Did Mrs Catesby come the next day?’

  ‘Yes, she did.’

  ‘And what happened?’

  ‘Well, Ronnie told me to behave normally, and I did have some curtains I wanted put up, so I was talking with Laura in the kitchen and I made her a cup of coffee, and Ronnie was in my bedroom, watching and listening to us.’

  ‘He’d set it up so that he could watch and listen from a distance?’

  ‘Yes. He’s always been clever with his hands. He’s an engineer, you know. Both my sons are engineers, like their father before them.’

  ‘Yes. And what happened next?’

  ‘All of a sudden I see Ronnie running into the kitchen. I was a bit taken aback because it all happened very suddenly and I was turned with my back to Laura. But I see Ronnie run straight over to Laura and grab her arm. She tells him to let go of her, and she’s asking him who he is. But then I see that she’s got hold of my handbag, which I’d left on the kitchen table, and she has some money in her hand. She’d got it out of my purse. She’d taken fifty pounds, two twenties and a tenner: right under our noses. The cheek of it…’

  Glancing towards the dock, I see Mrs Catesby smile briefly before resuming her look of boredom.

  ‘Mrs Jones, did you give Mrs Catesby permission to take any money from your purse on that day?’

  ‘No. I did not.’

  ‘What happened next?’

  ‘Ronnie called the police. Laura tried to leave, but Ronnie wouldn’t let her. He told her she had to wait for the police to come.’

  ‘And did the police come, and did they arrest Mrs Catesby?’

  ‘Yes, they did.’

  ‘Mrs Jones, did you ever give Mrs Catesby permission to take money over and above what she needed to pay for the shopping she did for you?’

  ‘No. I did not.’

  ‘Did you ever invite her to take “a bit for herself”, or “a little something for herself”, or anything like that?’

  ‘No. I did not.’

  ‘Or to take cash back using your debit card?’

  ‘No. I did not.’

  ‘Or to buy things for herself or her family at your expense without telling you?’

  ‘No. I did not.’

  ‘Did you ever make a gift of money, as opposed to a loan, to Mrs Catesby or to either of her daughters?’

  ‘No. I did not.’ She pauses for a few moments. ‘I didn’t mind helping her out because I believed her when she told me why she needed the money. Having met her at church, and with her husband being a churchwarden, and with her girls being so nice and polite, and…’

  ‘Yes,’ Susan replies. ‘Thank you, Mrs Jones, that’s all I have. Your Honour, I see the time. It’s a bit early to break for lunch, but …’

  ‘I’m sure Mrs Jones would welcome a break,’ Roderick agrees immediately. ‘May I cross-examine at two o’clock?’

  And so to lunch, an oasis of calm in a desert of chaos.

  I’ve brought my own lunch today, as three out of the four Bermondsey judges, myself included, do a good deal of the time, to lessen the risk from exposure to the canteen food. When I take my place at the huge table in the judicial mess, Marjorie is playing unenthusiastically with a mackerel salad. Rory Dunblane, known to us all as ‘Legless’ because of a now dimly remembered episode after a chambers dinner in his days at the Bar, has brought in some kind of posh-looking soup in a heavy-duty plastic container, and a couple of bread rolls. Only Hubert Drake consistently risks the dreaded dish of the day, which today seems to be some kind of Chinese concoction with noodles and vegetables. Hubert, whose age is somewhat in dispute, is the oldest of us and (according to my calculations, though not his) within sight of retirement; but his constitution seems to cope with the food in the mess remarkably well, and he often claims that he needs his ‘proper’ lunch to tide him over until his nightly ritual of dinner at the Garrick Club.

  ‘That’s a nasty little case you’ve got, Charlie, that Catesby woman,’ Legless observes. ‘I did her plea and case management hearing. She turned up dressed to the nines and gave the impression that she couldn’t care less about being in court.’

  I nod. ‘She’s giving the same impression now.’

  ‘Is Roderick still defending her?’

  ‘Yes. He’s due to cross-examine the widow Jones after lunch.’

  ‘Well, at least you can trust Roderick to be nice to the widow Jones,’ Legless says. ‘He’s not going to beat her up the way some younger members of our bar would.’

  ‘What are you going to give her if she goes down?’ Hubert asks. ‘I’d give her five years straight inside, and that would be for starters. Taking advantage of the elderly like that: far too much of it going on; absolutely disgraceful.’

  ‘I’m not sure you can get to five years under the sentencing guidelines, Hubert,’ Legless replies, with a grin towards me. Over the years, we’ve had many lunchtime debates over Hubert’s views on sentencing, which in general date from the Raj era, but we’ve long since given up trying to convert him to contemporary practice. The Court of Appeal has also made several attempts without success, and if they can’t persuade him, what chance do we have?

  ‘That’s what’s wrong with the bloody courts these days,’ Hubert protests. ‘You can’t pass a decent sentence without someone telling you it’s not allowed under the guidelines. Stuff and nonsense. When you have a case like yours you have to be firm. Otherwise, all the older people are going to go the same way as Harry Buller.’

  Hubert returns to his dish of the day without elaborating.

  ‘Who is Harry Buller?’ Legless asks after a few seconds.

  ‘What? Oh, Harry’s a member of the Garrick. Known him for years. He was telling me about it the other night at dinner. He got one of those, whatsits, emails, apparently from a friend of his, saying the poor blighter was in Tanzania or somewhere on a safari trip, and he’d been kidnapped by these bandits, who were demanding fifty thousand pounds in ransom, and so on; and he’d got two other friends to help him, but he still needed fifteen thousand, and would Harry please transfer it to a numbered account in some bank in the Cayman Islands.’

  ‘You’re kidding,’ Marjorie says, looking up from her salad.

  ‘But it turned out the email wasn’t from his friend at all; it was from some fellow in Nigeria. Complete bloody fraud from start to finish.’

  ‘Imagine that,’ Legless murmurs.

  ‘Don’t tell me he fell for a story like that, Hubert,’ I add.

  Hubert shrugs. ‘Harry’s getting on a bit, Charlie,’ he explains. ‘He’s not as quick as he used to be. It wasn’t about the money. Harry’s made of money, so he wasn’t too bothered about losing the fifteen thousand, but he was asking me what we judges were going to do about it. He was saying that when you catch people like that, you should send them inside for a good long stretch, so they can’t defraud people who are less well off; and I agree with him, guidelines or no guidelines. And that’s exactly what you should do with the Catesby woman.’

  He returns briefly to the dish of the day,
but then suddenly looks up. ‘It’s easy enough to laugh at Harry, but it comes to us all eventually, you know, Charlie,’ he adds.

  I nod. I’m only too well aware of that today. It’s time to change the subject. ‘How did you all get on with the Paperless Court?’

  ‘Fine,’ Marjorie replies immediately.

  ‘I think I’ve just about got the idea,’ Legless replies. ‘But it’s taking me forever to find a particular document when I need it; and sometimes it shuts down if it’s a big file, and I have to put my password in again. Bloody nuisance.’

  Marjorie looks up. ‘Oh, not that again’, she says. ‘That’s what happened with the last version. How did you get on, Charlie?’

  ‘Oh, fine,’ I reply quickly, and obviously, not entirely truthfully. ‘Hubert, were you all right?’

  ‘Right as rain,’ Hubert replies with a smile.

  ‘Really?’ Marjorie asks. ‘Are you sure, Hubert, because if you like, I can always show you…’

  ‘No, thank you,’ Hubert replies at once. ‘Absolutely fine. No problem.’

  The three of us exchange glances.

  ‘How did you manage?’ I begin tentatively. ‘I only ask because…’

  Hubert looks up from the dish of the day. ‘Perfectly simple, Charlie,’ he replies. ‘I got my clerk to print the files out for me.’

  * * *

  Monday afternoon

  ‘Would it be fair, Mrs Jones,’ Roderick begins quietly, almost diffidently, ‘to say that your memory isn’t quite what it used to be?’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with my memory,’ Mrs Jones protests.

  ‘It’s just that I couldn’t help noticing that you were reading your witness statement quite a lot when you were answering questions from my learned friend. Is that because some of the detail escapes you when it comes to events a long time ago?’

  ‘Everybody has trouble remembering things from a long time ago,’ she insists.

  ‘Of course,’ Roderick agrees reassuringly. ‘I wasn’t being critical, Mrs Jones. But as you know, I’m representing Mrs Catesby and I have to try to make sure that the jury know how well you remember what happened between you and Mrs Catesby. I’m sure you understand.’

  ‘If you say so’, she replies grudgingly.

  ‘Would it be fair to say that when you first met the Catesby family, you were rather lonely?’

  She thinks for some time. ‘I suppose so, in a way,’ she replies eventually. ‘I think most people feel they’re on their own by the time they get to my age.’

  ‘Of course,’ Roderick concedes. ‘Sadly, you’d lost your husband, and your two sons were rather far away, weren’t they?’

  ‘Yes. That’s true.’

  ‘So when you met people in church who spoke to you and took an interest in you, it must have made a big difference to you, mustn’t it, brightened your day a bit?’

  ‘I talk to a lot of people in church, including the vicar. St Mortimer’s is a very friendly church, always has been.’

  ‘But the Catesbys went out of their way to take an interest in you, didn’t they? They offered you a lift to and from church, offered to do shopping for you, and so on?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you responded to them; you welcomed the attention?’

  ‘I was grateful to them for offering to help me, yes.’

  ‘Do you have any grandchildren, Mrs Jones?’

  ‘Jamie, my son who lives in South Africa, has two children, a boy and a girl. They’re almost grown up now, seventeen and fourteen. I don’t see them very often.’ Once again, she looks sad.

  ‘But you saw quite a lot of Mrs Catesby’s two daughters, Sophie and Emma, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so. I saw them at church, and once in a while Laura would have them with her when she came to see me.’

  ‘And you told the jury earlier that you found them to be very polite, well brought up?’

  ‘Yes, they were: always.’

  ‘Did you come to see them, in a way, as the granddaughters you didn’t have – at least, you didn’t have close to you, here in London?’

  Mrs Jones has to think about that one. ‘I suppose I did get quite fond of them,’ she admits. ‘Yes. But I didn’t see them often enough to think of them as my grandchildren.’

  ‘But if Mrs Catesby had told you that Sophie or Emma needed something, something that cost money, you would have helped, wouldn’t you – to the extent you could?’

  She looks down for just a moment. ‘I did help them,’ she points out.

  ‘That’s my point, Mrs Jones…’ Roderick begins.

  ‘The only trouble was, she wasn’t telling me the truth.’

  ‘Well, Mrs Catesby told you, didn’t she, that she and her husband were having some problems because of investments they’d made – they were strapped for cash, I think you told the jury?’

  ‘Yes. That’s what she told me.’

  ‘Do you have any reason to doubt that?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have any way to know, would I?’ she replies after some time.

  ‘So you believed her?’

  ‘At first I did, yes.’

  ‘Yes, and you agreed to help out, didn’t you?’

  ‘Not just because they were short of cash. I helped out because she told me they had to pay for an operation or school fees.’

  ‘Are you sure about that, Mrs Jones?’ No reply at first. ‘If you need to refer to your statement again, please do.’

  ‘I said about that in my statement. It’s right here, on page three.’

  ‘You did indeed, Mrs Jones, that’s quite right. But if you would turn over to page four with me for a moment…’

  ‘What was that? Page four?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  She’s turning over the page slowly.

  ‘Got it? Five lines down from the top, do you say, “I liked Sophie and Emma, and I wanted to make sure they didn’t suffer just because their parents had made a bad investment.” Is that what you told the police?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Weren’t you saying there that you would have helped them anyway? It wasn’t tied to operations or school fees, was it? You were just helping to make sure they were all right for money?’

  ‘Yes, but it was because of the operation and the school fees. That’s why they needed the money.’

  ‘You told the jury earlier that at some point Mrs Catesby had said something about her mother being ill?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is it possible that you got a bit confused – that it was her mother who was ill, not Emma?’

  ‘No… I don’t think so… no, I’m sure it was Emma…’ but there’s some hesitation.

  ‘When the girls came to see you, was it after they’d left school for the day?’

  ‘They sometimes came in the afternoon: yes.’

  ‘When they came in the afternoons, would they be wearing school uniform?’

  She searches her witness statement: in vain; it’s not there. I know this because I’m following it on my screen, and feeling rather pleased with myself.

  ‘They may have done. I can’t remember.’

  ‘Do you know Wood Lane Comprehensive School?’

  ‘I know where it is, yes.’

  ‘It’s quite close to your flat, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you see children walking or cycling to and from Wood Lane sometimes? Would you recognise their school uniform?’

  She thinks. ‘I’m not sure. I think it’s a black blazer with a shield on the pocket, a red shield, I think.’

  ‘Something like this?’ Roderick asks, holding up a blazer matching that description.

  ‘It could be,’ Mrs Jones replies. ‘I can’t be sure. I see them at a distance, mostly, from my window.’

/>   ‘Fair enough,’ Roderick replies.

  ‘Is my learned friend offering it as an exhibit?’ Susan asks, probably for the sole purpose of interrupting Roderick’s flow a bit.

  ‘I’d prefer not to,’ Roderick says with a smile. ‘I don’t want Sophie to catch a chill going home.’

  The jury chuckle. Susan shoots Roderick one of her looks.

  ‘Mrs Jones, you also told the jury that Emma never said thank you for the money for her operation, is that right? And that surprised you because she’s a polite, well brought-up girl?’

  ‘Yes, it did surprise me.’

  ‘But if she never needed an operation in the first place, that would explain the fact that she never thanked you for paying for an operation, wouldn’t it?’

  No reply.

  ‘Mrs Jones,’ Roderick continues, ‘what I’m suggesting to you is this: you were understandably lonely; the Catesbys befriended you after you met at St Mortimer’s; Laura was very helpful to you, shopping, tidying up, making lunch, and so on; naturally, you were grateful; you came to like Sophie and Emma; and you gave them money – as a gift, out of friendship and gratitude. It’s all perfectly natural, perfectly understandable. There was no mention of operations or school fees, was there?’

  She stares at him for some time.

  ‘Did you understand my question, Mrs Jones?’

  ‘Yes… no… it was a loan… it wasn’t a gift… she kept saying she needed more time to pay me back…’

  ‘And didn’t you say to Mrs Catesby, when she went shopping for you, that she should take “a little something” for herself, just for helping you. That, again, would be quite natural, wouldn’t it? After all, she was giving up her lunchtime or her early evening to help you, wasn’t she? She was giving you her time, her family’s time?’

  ‘I suppose she was, yes… but that doesn’t mean I gave her permission to take money out of my bank account, or go shopping for herself using my card.’

  ‘She always brought you the receipts when she came back with the shopping, didn’t she?’

  ‘Yes, she did.’

  ‘Did you ever, in that four-year period, challenge her about the receipts?’