One Law For the Rest of Us

by Peter Murphy

  ‘That’s what people like you always think,’ Audrey said. ‘Does it make it easier to sleep at night?’

  ‘Audrey…’ Julia whispered, touching her hand.

  Chapman smiled. ‘You would be Mrs Marshall, I suppose?’ He offered his hand. She took it reluctantly. ‘I understand how you feel.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Yes. I do, as a matter of fact. We’re not all quite as evil as you seem to think. We have a duty to uphold the national interest – someone has to. But that doesn’t mean we don’t care about people. Knowing what I do about your case, I have every sympathy with you, and, of course, with your daughter. Don’t quote me on this,’ he added quietly, glancing towards the defendants, ‘but personally, I wish you every success.’

  ‘You have a strange way of showing it,’ Audrey replied.

  Chapman nodded. ‘I understand.’ He turned to Ben and Ginny. ‘I’m glad to meet you, Schroeder, Miss Castle. I heard all kinds of good things about you during the Digby case. Baxter was very impressed with you both. He approved.’

  ‘Did Baxter approve of this?’ Julia asked.

  Chapman stared without answering. ‘Do excuse me, Julia. I think the judge is coming back to court,’ he said, walking quickly away.

  Mr Justice Roberts took his seat, handing the affidavit to his clerk, from whom it made its way quickly back to Harry Chapman.

  ‘Mr Chapman,’ the judge said, ‘I have listened carefully to your submission, and I’ve read the affidavit you handed up, which I have now returned to you. What exactly are you asking me to do?’

  ‘I’m asking your Lordship not to allow Bishop EF’s statement to the police to be used in evidence, and to order that no reference to it be made in these proceedings, or indeed, outside court, for any purpose whatsoever.

  ‘I’m also inviting your Lordship to dismiss the case against Bishop EF, on the ground that if it continues, he may feel obliged to give evidence. If he has to give evidence, he may be unable to defend himself without disclosing facts which may jeopardise the national interest, and perhaps put the safety of certain individuals, including himself, at risk.’

  ‘My Lord,’ Ben protested, rising quickly to his feet, ‘this is outrageous. The affidavit my learned friend gave your Lordship must have read like the script for a James Bond film. I wouldn’t know, of course, because in this secret proceeding, I haven’t been allowed to see it. But nothing my learned friend has said in court comes close to justifying the orders he’s asking your Lordship to make. Frankly, I’m not sure how such orders could even be legally proper.’

  Mr Justice Roberts smiled. ‘You needn’t be concerned, Mr Schroeder. Mr Chapman, I have no intention whatsoever of making the orders you invite me to make. Without disclosing the matters dealt with in the affidavit, they are matters that would have no real relevance to the action I am asked to try. I’m not sitting with a jury. I’m perfectly capable of confining this case to relevant evidence. I’ve read Bishop EF’s police interview, so there will be no need to refer to it in detail during the trial. If the Bishop decides to give evidence, I will not allow him to be asked irrelevant questions. I have every confidence that I can conduct the trial fairly in the interests of all the parties, while at the same time not compromising the national interest, or anyone’s personal safety.’

  ‘As your Lordship pleases,’ Chapman replied quietly.

  ‘As I indicated earlier,’ the judge said, ‘I shall now adjourn this case for four weeks, to consider the statute of limitations, and to allow the parties to present further evidence, in the form of expert opinions, if they wish to do so.’

  ‘You can’t win them all, Mark,’ Julia smiled as Henderson passed her on his way out of court with Harry Chapman.

  They stopped and turned to look at her. ‘You know how this works, Julia,’ Henderson replied. ‘This was just round one. We lost this round, but we’re still in the fight. You know that.’ He got close enough to whisper in her ear. ‘Take my advice. If your girl gets the chance to settle this case, she should take it.’

  ‘Is that a chance someone is going to offer her?’ Julia asked.

  ‘You never know,’ Henderson replied.

  ‘Mark’s giving you very good advice, Julia,’ Chapman added.

  ‘Give my best regards to Baxter, Harry,’ Julia said, walking away.

  52

  Andrew Pilkington was relaxing in his room in chambers in Temple Gardens, nursing a large mug of strong tea made for him by his clerk, Lawrence. Compared to other barristers, Andrew spent relatively little time in chambers. As Treasury counsel, he was based at the Old Bailey, where he and his colleagues had their own work rooms, and where they kept their often highly sensitive case papers away from the risk of prying eyes. But tonight there was to be a dinner in honour of a long-standing member of chambers who had recently retired. Andrew kept his evening dress in chambers for such occasions. He had an hour in which to dress and make his way to the Reform Club in Pall Mall, where the dinner was to be held. He gulped the tea gratefully; as it went down, he felt the warm liquid revive his body, infusing a welcome burst of fresh energy. It had been a long day, spent poring over papers for a forthcoming case of municipal corruption. He was also pondering a strange phone call he had received earlier in the afternoon from a civil servant, who seemed to be inquiring, in the most oblique manner imaginable, whether he might be interested in a vacancy on the Old Bailey bench which was expected to arise during the next year or two. Lawrence interrupted his reverie with a discreet knock on the door.

  ‘Sorry to disturb, Mr Pilkington, but there’s a DI Steffie Walsh on the line, asking if she could have a word. She says it’s urgent, sir.’

  ‘DI Walsh? Yes, of course, Lawrence. Put her through.’

  ‘Hello, sir,’ Steffie said. She sounded slightly breathless. ‘It’s been a while since we last spoke. I hope you remember me.’

  Andrew laughed. ‘Of course, I remember you.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re busy, sir, but do you have a few minutes to talk?’

  ‘Yes,’ Andrew replied. ‘What is it?’

  She hesitated. ‘I don’t know whether you’ve heard the news, sir… about Father Gerrard – the headmaster in the Lancelot Andrewes case?’

  ‘Father Gerrard? No. What’s going on?’

  ‘He’s dead, sir.’

  Andrew sat upright in his chair. ‘Dead? How? When? What happened?’

  ‘Well, sir, Ted – DI Phillips, that is – and I were called to Lancelot Andrewes School early this morning by a DC Bristow from Cambridge CID. Agnes Reilly, Father Gerrard’s personal secretary, went into his rooms as usual to give him his morning cup of tea, and found him dead in the chair behind his desk. Apparently, he was supposed to be at the High Court today for the civil case.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Andrew said. ‘I remember, it was due to start today.’

  ‘Yes, sir. When we arrived, we noticed that there were five medicine bottles on the desk. The labels said that they were prescription pain killers and sleeping pills. There was also a bottle of whisky – with a lot of the whisky gone.’

  Andrew sat back again in his chair, and looked down from his window out on to the Middle Temple gardens.

  ‘So, he committed suicide?’

  Steffie hesitated. ‘That’s the way it seemed to us, sir. There was no sign of violence, and DC Bristow didn’t find any indications of forcible entry, or anything out of place. But…’

  ‘Go on…’

  ‘Well, sir, he didn’t leave a note – or at least, there was no note to be found when we arrived. Now, Agnes seems to be a very religious woman, and she was obviously very shocked at the idea of a priest taking his own life, so at the risk of being unfair to her, it’s not out of the question that she disposed of it before she called the police: you never know. But as I say, she told us there was no note, and we didn’t find one.’r />
  ‘He might well have been feeling some pressure because of the case,’ Andrew suggested. ‘After all, he’d already been through the strain of being arrested and going through a trial – and he was very nearly put on trial a second time, wasn’t he? And now it was all about to happen again. That’s a lot of stress. Perhaps it was too much for him.’

  ‘That’s what we thought, sir – at first. But this afternoon, the pathologist hinted that it might not quite so straightforward.’

  ‘What did he mean by that?’

  ‘She, sir, actually.’

  Andrew smiled. ‘She. Sorry.’

  ‘She’s not saying. Everyone’s being a bit tight-lipped about it at the moment, but some question has come up about the cause of death. They’re doing a post-mortem, of course, and there will be an inquest. We’ve made it clear that we need to know what’s going on as soon as possible. We should hear back in a day or two.’

  ‘Well, let me know,’ Andrew said.

  ‘I will, sir. But… there’s more.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘When DI…’

  ‘“Ted” is fine,’ Andrew said, smiling again.

  ‘Yes, sir. When Ted and I arrived, John Singer was there – you remember him?’

  ‘The school’s solicitor?’

  ‘Yes, sir. He’d been going through Father Gerrard’s papers, and he was getting ready to remove a large quantity of documents from the room.’

  ‘What, with Father Gerrard’s body still there?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Agnes told DC Bristow the doctor was on the way, but there was no sign of him, and we eventually had to call him ourselves. Anyway, DC Bristow saw what was happening, and he didn’t let Singer out of his sight until we arrived. Singer told us that it was all to do with the trustees appointing an interim headmaster, but we weren’t convinced: so we arranged for a search warrant, and made Singer leave the documents in place until it arrived. I hope we weren’t out of line, sir. We were aware of the Attorney General’s order, but… well, there was just something about it that didn’t feel right.’

  ‘I don’t think you were out of line at all,’ Andrew reassured her. ‘If anyone questions it, I’m sure you’d say you had reason to believe that further offences had been committed, or were about to be committed: wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, sir: and I’m pretty sure we would be right.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘We executed the search warrant, and took the documents Singer had collected, plus a few more, back to Parkside nick. Ted and I have spent the afternoon going through them, or making a start, anyway: we still have a long way to go, and it looks like it’s going to be a long night. But we’ve already turned up some interesting stuff. Gerrard kept a personal file, which is obviously concerned with the abuse at Lancelot Andrewes School.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘It has copies of the records belonging to some of the girls who were abused. It has a list of names and addresses – in a kind of code, just a first name, an initial for the last name, and a phone number. It wasn’t hard to crack. The Three Musketeers were listed, and there was a Father K. There was no number for Father K, so we don’t yet know who he might have been. But there were a number of men we haven’t come across before. Some we’ve already identified, and a couple of them have a high public profile – Parliament and the Church. We expect to identify the others without too much trouble.’

  Andrew thought for some time. ‘I’m not sure that would be enough to persuade the Attorney General to let us go ahead. But we could try.’

  ‘Oh, that’s not the best part, sir,’ Steffie said. He could almost see her smiling. ‘The Lancelot Andrewes file is only the beginning.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘We also found a number of other files, containing much the same kind of material – pupils’ records, names and phone numbers. But these files relate to five other schools in different parts of the country. We haven’t delved into them very far yet, but we believe we will find the names of a considerable number of men, some of them very much in the public eye.’

  ‘My God,’ Andrew whispered into the phone.

  ‘Ted is arranging for a copy to be made of everything we seized,’ Steffie continued. ‘We would like to bring the papers to you, so that you can see for yourself. I don’t want to seem pushy, sir, but how would tomorrow afternoon be? If we burn the midnight oil we should have a provisional list of names for you by tomorrow; and I can’t really give you a reason, but I have a gut feeling that it wouldn’t be a good idea to let the grass grow on this.’

  ‘Yes, all right,’ Andrew replied. ‘I’m not in court tomorrow. Bring the papers to the Old Bailey, and we’ll keep them there for now.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ she said. ‘That’s a load off my mind.’

  Andrew smiled. ‘If you don’t mind my asking,’ he said, ‘how did you come to be up in Cambridge this morning? Were you working on another inquiry?’

  There was a silence for a few seconds. ‘Oh, no, sir: I just… happened to be here for a… long weekend,’ she replied.

  ‘Right. Well, see you tomorrow, then.’

  After some minutes of contemplation, Andrew called Julia Cathermole. He repeated to her what Steffie Walsh had said.

  ‘We found out about Gerrard this morning,’ Julia replied. ‘Norris informed the court as soon as the news came through. The case had to be adjourned.’

  ‘How did Audrey take another adjournment?’

  ‘I think “resignation” is probably the best word to describe it. It’s almost as though she’s got used to these continual disappointments, but she’s still got plenty of fight left in her. Harry Chapman turned up to represent the security services, and she gave him a piece of her mind while the judge was off the bench.’ She laughed. ‘For a moment, I thought she might actually land one on him.’

  ‘Has she gone back to Ely?’

  ‘Yes, there’s nothing she can do here for the moment.’

  Andrew was silent for several moments.

  ‘What did Harry Chapman want?’

  ‘He wanted the judge to order that we couldn’t use Bishop EF’s police interview as evidence, or refer to it in any way.’

  ‘What? Don’t tell me Evans Roberts went with that.’

  ‘No, not at all. He told Chapman to get stuffed, almost in so many words. But even so, I’m…’

  ‘Yes. I have a bad feeling about this, Julia.’

  ‘So do I. What do we do?’

  ‘Get in touch with Ben and Ginny and tell them about the new files, but make sure they understand they’re not to talk to anyone else. I will need your input on this before I decide what to do next. Can you be with us when Steffie brings the papers tomorrow?’

  ‘No problem,’ Julia replied.

  She paused, then chuckled. ‘So that’s what our good Musketeer Bishop EF meant.’

  ‘Come again?’

  ‘In his interview, remember? EF said Gerrard told him that Lancelot Andrewes was the tip of the iceberg. Perhaps, now, we know what he meant.’

  53

  Tuesday 4 March 1975

  When her secretary put the call through, Julia was about to leave her office for the Old Bailey. She was running late because of a frustrating morning meeting that had dragged on and on without any resolution, and she was anxious not to keep Andrew waiting: but something told her it was a call she ought to take.

  ‘Hello, Julia,’ Mary Forbes said. ‘How are you?’

  ‘I’m well, Mary, thank you. How are you? How is Toronto?’

  ‘We’re both doing fine,’ Mary replied.

  ‘Still working on the same case?’

  She laughed. ‘Oh, yes, I’m afraid so. It’s like War and Peace. I’m beginning to think it will never end.’

  ‘So, what can I do for you?’

  She sensed
a hesitation in Mary’s reply.

  ‘I’m sure you know all about this already. But I thought I ought to call, just to let you know that I received one, too.’

  Julia stared blankly at her phone.

  ‘One of what? Mary, what are you talking about?’

  There was a silence.

  ‘Oh, God, don’t tell me you don’t know. I’m talking about the letter from Lancelot Andrewes School. It arrived yesterday, by telecopier.’

  Julia suddenly felt a cold chill run up her spine. ‘Letter?’

  ‘It’s a letter from the trustees of Lancelot Andrewes School, marked, “Strictly private and confidential”. It’s signed by the chairman, a Mr Dixon, and by John Singer, the school’s solicitor. It’s what you and I would call a “without prejudice” letter. They’re offering to settle all claims for child sexual abuse at the school, even in historic cases that would be barred by the statute of limitations. It says they’ve set up a settlement fund – though it doesn’t say how much. It’s all without prejudice: the school makes no admission that anyone was abused, or that it has any liability to anyone. They invite us all to submit a short statement about what happened, and to sign a form, agreeing that we will not disclose the facts of our cases, or the fact that we have received a settlement. If we ever disclose it, the whole agreement becomes void, and they can sue to recover the amount of the settlement. Offer valid for one month, after which it lapses. You know the kind of thing, Julia. It’s the usual stuff: we see it all the time.’ She paused. ‘You have a telecopier, don’t you? I’ll send it over to your office.’

  Julia recovered, with an effort. ‘Yes. That would be very helpful, Mary. Thank you.’

  ‘You didn’t know about this? I can’t believe they would send this out without letting you know.’

  ‘Neither can I,’ Julia said. She hesitated. ‘Look, Mary, strictly speaking, it’s none of my business, but do you mind if I ask whether…’

  Mary laughed. ‘Good God, no. I know what’s going on here, as well as you do. They’re trying to buy off your witnesses. Well, you’ve got to admire their consistency: it is in the best Lancelot Andrewes tradition, isn’t it? But they’re not going to buy me off. I was going to write back, telling them where they could stuff it, but on mature reflection, I think I’ll probably just ignore it. You’ve still got me, Julia. You know that.’