A Week on Mount Olympus E-Book

Peter Murphy

• Herausgeber: No Exit Press
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Serie: Walden of Bermondsey
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 531

Beschreibung

Charlie Walden is the Resident Judge of the Bermondsey Crown Court, where he had hoped for a quiet life, but has found it to be anything but. With the job of balancing the needs of prosecutors, judges, 'Grey Smoothies', the humourless grey-suited civil servants, and the overall needs of a Crown Court he soon finds himself struggling to keep the peace and his own delightful humour. Charlie is confronted by a number of topical issues he hadn't anticipated; invited to join the Court of Appeal he finds himself faced with a case involving the 'confusion' of one of his team. In another a teacher must be penalised for defacing a statue, a huge and mysterious cat comes to the rescue in yet another case, and so the harassed Judge must pick his way through this minefield of exasperating cases in order to keep everyone from the cannabis lobby to the anti-slave traders happy with his judgements. No hope of a quiet life for Charlie then, but, as ever, he deals with the issues of the day with satirical good humour, insight and wit. Another entertaining and insightful look at the British court system and the long-awaited sole Walden novel.

Leseprobe

Praise for Peter Murphy

‘Racy legal thrillers lift the lid on sex and racial prejudice at the bar’ – Guardian

‘Murphy paints a trenchant picture of establishment cover-up, and cannily subverts the clichés of the legal genre in his all-too-topical narrative’ – Financial Times

‘Peter Murphy’s novel is an excellent read from start to finish and highly recommended’ – Historical Novel Review

‘An intelligent amalgam of spy story and legal drama’ –Times

‘A gripping, enjoyable and informative read’ – Promoting Crime Fiction

‘The ability of an author to create living characters is always dependent on his knowledge of what they would do and say in any given circumstances – a talent that Peter Murphy possesses in abundance’ – Crime Review UK

‘Murphy’s clever legal thriller revels in the chicanery of the English law courts of the period’ – Independent

‘The forensic process is examined in a light-touch, good-humoured style, which will evoke a constant stream of smiles, and chuckles from non-lawyers and lawyers alike’ – Lord Judge, former Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales

‘A gripping page-turner. A compelling and disturbing tale of English law courts, lawyers, and their clients, told with the authenticity that only an insider like Murphy can deliver. The best read I’ve come across in a long time’ – David Ambrose

‘If anyone’s looking for the next big courtroom drama… look no further. Murphy is your man’ – ICLR

PART ONE

A WEEK ON MOUNT OLYMPUS

A Week on Mount Olympus

A few weeks ago

I was flattered, of course. Well, who wouldn’t be, in my position? When you’re labouring away on a daily basis at the coalface, as a circuit judge in the Crown Court, the prospect of consorting with the gods on Mount Olympus for a week or two is bound to be seductive, and your instinct is to shout ‘yes’ as loudly as you can before they can change their minds. That was exactly my reaction when Mr Justice Gulivant called me one day just before lunch, and suggested that I might like to sit with him in the Criminal Division of the Court of Appeal for a week. A minute or two later, after the call had ended, I felt the chill hand of reality on my brow, as I reflected on what would actually be involved in sitting in the Court of Appeal. But by then, the trap had been sprung: the temptation was irresistible: I’d already said ‘yes’.

The idea of a mere circuit judge sitting in the Court of Appeal would have been unthinkable until relatively recently. Traditionally, the Lord Chief Justice presided with two High Court judges, and lesser mortals never darkened the Court’s door. But, given that the function of the Criminal Division is to hear appeals from the Crown Court, it does make a certain amount of sense to have one judge who actually sits in the Crown Court and has some idea of what goes on there. High Court judges tend to come mainly from the refined world of commercial law, and although they are expected to try cases of serious crime from day one, many of them have never been involved in a criminal case before, and have absolutely no idea what they are doing. Some, though by no means all of them, will admit as much over dinner in their Inn of Court after a glass or two, but it doesn’t seem to deter them. Oddly, the Establishment seems to regard this madness as a loveable eccentricity, a quirk of English life that sets us apart from bureaucratic foreigners who insist on submitting to the tyranny of experts. In England, the gods love an amateur and will smooth his path regardless of the potential collateral damage. Stephen Gulivant himself is a case in point. A former planning Silk, Stephen came to sit with us at Bermondsey for several days not long after he was appointed, and I had to hold his hand through a simple offensive weapon case, which took two days longer than it should have, and came perilously close to bouncing back to us from the Court of Appeal. I don’t know whether Stephen has tried a criminal case since then, but now he’s hearing appeals from those who do.

But before I go any further, I ought to introduce myself. I’m Charles Walden, Charlie to my family and closest associates. I’ve been a circuit judge for twelve years or thereabouts, and I’m currently the RJ – Resident Judge – at Bermondsey Crown Court in South London. According to the job description, an RJ is a judge who takes on the overall administrative responsibility for the work of all the judges at a court, in addition to his or her own work. In fact, the RJ’s main role is to be the person to blame whenever something goes wrong. When I say ‘something goes wrong’, I mean that the Grey Smoothies think we could be doing whatever it is more efficiently than we do.

The ‘Grey Smoothies’ is the name we have adopted at Bermondsey to refer to the civil servants who oversee the working of the courts. The Grey Smoothies’ main goal seems to be to make the RJ’s job ever more difficult, if not actually impossible. In the name of their mantras of ‘value for money for the taxpayer’ and ‘business case’ – without which phrases most of them find it difficult to compose a sentence – they launch assault after assault on the already sparse resources of the court, which as RJ, I do my best to repel. Among the rearguard actions I’ve fought with the Grey Smoothies over the years are: their refusal to spend money on a secure dock to prevent defendants from absconding and assaulting court staff during a case; their attempt to close down our cafeteria, the only safe place for jurors and witnesses to have lunch during a trial; and even a campaign to close Bermondsey Crown Court altogether for economic reasons. With a certain degree of good fortune, I’ve held them off so far, but RJs elsewhere have been less fortunate, and I can’t shake the feeling that it’s only a matter of time before resistance becomes futile.

Being an RJ carries with it no extra pay, no administrative support, and no protected time, and it’s a legitimate question why anyone ever agrees to do it. Some circuit judges take it on as a career move, hoping that it will lead to an assignment to the Old Bailey, or even promotion to the High Court bench. But in my case, I confess, it’s a simple matter of lifestyle. You see, my good lady wife, the Reverend Mrs Walden, is priest-in-charge of the parish of St Aethelburgh and All Angels in the Diocese of Southwark. Being priest-in-charge is just like being an RJ, really, but with different robes. Her living carries with it the privilege of residing in a huge Victorian vicarage, which has many fine architectural features; a large weed sanctuary, euphemistically referred to as a garden, at the rear; and no modern amenities whatsoever. It is hot in summer and freezing in winter, and generally looks as though it hasn’t been decorated since the First Boer War. And with both our daughters having long since flown the nest to make their way in the world as single career women, it is a fair bit bigger than we need. But it is close to work for us both, and I enjoy my short stroll to court in the morning.

Along the way I stop at a coffee and sandwich bar run by two ladies called Elsie and Jeanie. The bar is secreted in an archway under the railway bridge, not far from London Bridge station, and it gets crowded if they have more than two customers at a time. But they do a wonderful latte, and a nice ham and cheese on a bap – a temptation if, as is often the case, I’m not relishing the thought of the dish of the day in the judicial mess. The only downside is that I have to listen to their various woes while the process of latte-making is going on. Elsie has a couple of grandchildren who get themselves into occasional scrapes with the law, about which I have to be non-committal because I suspect it’s only a matter of time before we see one of them at Bermondsey. Jeanie has a husband who seems to spend most of his time, and most of his benefits, at the pub and the betting shop. So, one way or another, they are rarely short of things to grumble about, and they usually take full advantage. Next door to Elsie and Jeanie is George, the newsagent and tobacconist, from whom I collect my daily copy of TheTimes, and who is always ready with my newspaper, a cheerful greeting, and a penetrating insight into the shortcomings of the Labour Party.

But, to return to my story: after Gulivant’s call, I go into lunch in the judicial mess, and, with a growing sense of trepidation, wonder whether I should share the news with my colleagues. Bermondsey is a small court, and there are only three other judges in addition to myself.

There’s Judge Rory Dunblane, mid-fifties, tall with sandy hair, a proud Scotsman, and devoted rugby enthusiast, who still plays a good game of squash and enjoys his nights out with ‘the boys’ (whoever they may be). No one calls him Rory. He has been known to all as ‘Legless’ for as long as I have known him, and that is quite a while now. The nickname dates back to an incident during his younger days while he was at the Bar, something to do with the fountains in Trafalgar Square after a chambers dinner. No one, including Legless himself, seems to remember the details of the incident, but the name has stuck. Legless is what you would call a robust judge, who likes to get through his workload without any nonsense.

Then there’s Judge Marjorie Jenkins, slim, medium height, dark hair and blue eyes. In her late forties, she has already been on the bench for eight years. When she was appointed, Marjorie was an up-and-coming Silk doing commercial work, representing City banks and financial institutions, and everyone was surprised that she took what, in her world, would be seen as a menial job. Marjorie is what they used to call a super-mum, a perpetual motion machine who balances a high-powered career with her family and various voluntary works. Her husband Nigel speaks six languages fluently and does something very important for an international bank. They spend holidays in Provence, where they have a house, or in Lausanne or Rome or Cape Town, as the muse leads them. Their two children, Simon and Samantha, are away at boarding school. It seems to be generally assumed that becoming a circuit judge is a kind of career break for Marjorie, and that she will resume her upwardly mobile path once the children are older. She does tend to disappear without much warning if anything goes wrong at school. But she is a great asset, particularly for fraud cases, in which she effortlessly assimilates tons of material which would take the rest of us weeks even to read, let alone digest.

Finally, there’s Judge Hubert Drake. Hubert is what you might call ‘old school’. He would have made a first-rate colonial magistrate in India in the days of the Raj, his approach to sentencing certainly being reminiscent of that era. Many is the time when we have had to talk him down over lunch in the judicial mess, to restrain him from passing a sentence the Court of Appeal would strike down instantly with howls of indignation. But he has a seemingly inexhaustible fund of intriguing stories about the old days, which he is always ready to share with us, and which always seem to illustrate some point we’ve been discussing perfectly. We suspect that many of them have the additional merit of being true. Hubert has been widowed for some years. He has a nice flat in Chelsea, and divides his time more or less equally between the flat and the Garrick Club, of which he is a devoted member. Altogether, despite – or perhaps because of – the eccentricities, we regard him as a treasure, as do the many who know him, far afield from Bermondsey. I know it’s a cliché, but they don’t make them like Hubert any more.

But Hubert is also a bit of a problem. No one seems sure exactly how old he is, and he shows no inclination to enlighten us. Apparently, some official record has him down as sixty-eight, but I would bet good money that the train left that station some time ago. Our main worry is that he is determined never to retire, and he says they can’t make him. When he reaches the age of seventy-two, they can in fact make him, and I have nightmares about the scenes we will have when that happens. In Hubert’s good old days, there was no retiring age for judges, but that changed when Parliament finally realised that there were judges clinging on when they were, shall we say, rather past their sell-by dates. That’s not true of Hubert. The Bar grumble about him quite a bit, but that’s because they see him as being extremely right-wing and reactionary – which he accepts, and regards as an accolade. So far, nobody has suggested that he is losing the plot, which is reassuring in one sense, but doesn’t offer a solution to the approaching retirement dilemma. At some point, I will have to make a serious effort to find out how old Hubert is, and I’m not looking forward to it.

Over my ham and cheese bap from Jeanie and Elsie’s, I finally decide to tell my fellow-judges about Stephen Gulivant’s call. To my surprise, instead of incredulity, their reaction is positively enthusiastic.

‘Marvellous, Charlie,’ Marjorie enthuses, ‘well done. You’ll be brilliant – just what they need up there to keep them on the straight and narrow.’

‘Couldn’t agree more,’ Legless adds. ‘They need more like you.’

‘You can talk a bit of common sense into them,’ Hubert agrees, looking up from his oriental chicken with noodles, the guise in which the dish of the day presents itself. Hubert is known for his fortitude in tackling the dish of the day on a regular basis, whatever it may be - something the rest of us prefer not to commit to these days, given the vagaries of the kitchen in a time of high turnover among institutional chefs. ‘Good for you, Charlie.’

‘I’m not at all sure I should have agreed to do it,’ I confess. ‘I’m thinking of calling Stephen Gulivant back and saying I have a trial I can’t get out of.’

‘Why on earth would you do that?’ Marjorie asks.

‘Marjorie, you know what goes on in the Court of Appeal. We’re used to having juries to do most of the hard work for us, and we don’t have to write judgments. But up there, you have to give several judgments a day – extempore, as soon as counsel have finished their arguments. No time to think about it. “His Honour Judge Walden will deliver the judgment of the Court,” Stephen will announce, and there I’ll be, on stage, exposed, for all to see. What if I make a compete fool of myself? I’ll never live it down.’

‘Why should you make a fool of yourself?’ Legless asks. ‘Charlie, you’ve forgotten more criminal law than Stephen Gulivant will ever know. Your judgments will be the highlight of the day.’

‘Absolutely,’ Marjorie chimes in. ‘And they don’t just spring it on you, Charlie. Stephen will assign cases to each judge in advance each day, and you’ll have a conference before court sits, so you’ll know which files you have to concentrate on before you start, and which counsel you really need to listen to and ask questions of. It’s no different from what we do here every day of the week, like deciding whether or not to admit evidence.’

‘I don’t think you can get away with, “I think the evidence should come in” or “stay out”, with that lot,’ I protest. ‘I think they expect a bit more substance in the Court of Appeal, a touch of law. I think they expect you to explain why.’

‘Marjorie’s right, Charlie,’ Legless insists. ‘Most of the cases they get up there are about evidence anyway. There won’t be anything you don’t know inside out.’

‘It’s not that difficult, Charlie,’ Hubert says. ‘It’s not so much what you say as how you say it.’

‘How so?’ I ask.

‘The secret is to sound confident,’ Hubert replies, ‘even if you’re talking complete nonsense. That’s the important thing.’

Marjorie smiles. ‘There’s a bit more to it than that, Hubert.’

‘No, not at all. I got it from one of the true masters,’ Hubert replies. ‘I had dinner with Sandy Froggett at Lincoln’s Inn one evening – years ago now – and I asked him how he did it. Of course, he sat in the Court of Appeal for years – in the Civil Division in his case, but I don’t suppose it’s any different in the Criminal Division. Sandy told me that the way he did it was: he would decide which way he wanted to go, and then, if he wasn’t sure he understood the law, instead of buggering about with it, he would just say that the rule was “self-evident” or “axiomatic” or “well established”. As long as you said something like that, no one would question it, and you moved on to the next case.’

‘That may have worked for Sandy Froggett back in the dark ages, Hubert,’ I say, gloomily. ‘I don’t think you can get away with it today.’

‘You won’t need to get away with anything, Charlie,’ Marjorie replies comfortingly. ‘You’ll be the best criminal lawyer on the panel. You’ll do just fine. Once you’ve got one or two cases under your belt, you’ll wonder why you ever worried yourself about it.’

‘And in addition to everything else,’ I whine, ‘I don’t have the right outfit. I can’t wear the robes we wear here, can I? You have to have the Silk’s black gown and all the rest of it. God only knows how much that will set me back.’

‘You don’t need to buy all that stuff,’ Legless suggests. ‘You can borrow it from somebody.’

‘Even better,’ Marjorie says, ‘try the circuit judges’ website. There are retired judges advertising second-hand robes for sale all the time. You can pick them up for a song. Just make sure you buy them from a judge about the same size as you.’

I look at her, surprised. ‘Why would retired judges sell off their robes?’ I ask.

‘Why not?’ Hubert asks. ‘Better than having them cluttering the place up at home. I’d try selling them to a theatre company or a film studio. They’re always on the lookout for costumes, aren’t they?’

Marjorie shrugs. ‘If that doesn’t work, ask Stephen Gulivant. He’ll find you something. It doesn’t have to cost a fortune.’

‘Well, that’s something, I suppose,’ I concede.

* * *

Monday Morning

As Marjorie promised, I am not to be thrown in the deep end without any warning. I have been assigned small, but functional temporary chambers, so that I have a quiet corner in which to flick through the case files before the morning conference. Two of the files have a red sticky on them, which doesn’t register as significant at the time, but, as I will learn shortly, is actually rather important. The conference begins at nine o’clock in Stephen Gulivant’s chambers, with Stephen, myself, and the third member of the court, Mr Justice Julius Hendry, whom I haven’t met before, but who seems perfectly pleasant and introduces himself cheerfully as a recent appointment from the marine insurance Bar.

‘I know sweet Fanny Adams about crime, Charles,’ he confides. ‘I’ve only done this once before myself. So I’m very glad you’re here.’

‘Charles taught me all I know about crime,’ Stephen Gulivant adds, ‘when I sat at Bermondsey for a few days. I was supposed to do a nightmare of a case about whether the defendant could claim sovereignty over an island – well, more like a lump of rock, really – off the south coast. He was claiming that we couldn’t try him because he was a foreign head of state. But it turned out I had a conflict of interest, and I had to hand it over to Charles, and take over his – what was it, Charles?’

‘Offensive weapon.’

‘Offensive weapon, that was it. They say there’s no real law in crime, but my word, there was lots of law in that one, terribly complicated stuff. But Charles walked me through it, and we got there in the end, didn’t we?’

‘We did,’ I agree.

‘Well, let’s make a start then,’ Stephen suggests. ‘We have ten cases in the list today. Charles, since it’s your first day, we’ll go easy on you. I’ve got two cases for you to deliver the judgment, and they both seem pretty straightforward. The first one is Ledbetter, an appeal against a sentence passed by a recorder at Birmingham.’

My Ledbetter file has a red sticky attached to it – my first indication that this isn’t a coincidence. I make a note to study the files bearing red stickies rather more carefully in future.

‘I’m no expert,’ Stephen comments, ‘but it does look a bit on the high side.’

I open my copy of the file to remind myself. He is absolutely right. The sentence passed by the recorder – a part-time judge of the Crown Court – was not so much high as stratospheric. Chummy, who was gainfully employed, and of good character except for a couple of previous for shoplifting and possessing cannabis, hit the victim over the head with a chair during an altercation in a pub, apparently caused by a dispute over someone’s girlfriend. The victim sustained a couple of nasty cuts to the head, and one or two bruises when he fell down, but they didn’t keep him in hospital overnight and he made a full recovery within a few days. The charge was assault occasioning actual bodily harm. The defendant pleaded guilty at the first available opportunity.

The recorder, after pontificating in his sentencing remarks for some time about how the country was going to the dogs, and about how there was too much mindless violence, and other such amateur stuff, weighed Chummy off for four and a half years. It was a sentence out of line with the sentencing guidelines – of which the recorder seemed to be only dimly aware – as well as one lacking in any sense of proportion. He also ignored the one-third reduction the defendant was entitled to for his early plea of guilty. I quickly calculate that, taking into account the absence of any previous for violence, and the one third discount, I would probably have given him six months, and on balance, I would have suspended the sentence for two years, ordering him to do a hefty chunk of unpaid work for the benefit of the community, and pay the victim some compensation. I suggest to Stephen that we should allow the appeal and substitute that sentence for the one imposed by the recorder. Both he and Julius Hendry agree immediately, without any debate.

My second red sticky file, a case called Winters, is slightly more challenging. It’s an appeal against conviction. Chummy, who is forty-five, was convicted at Norwich of a sexual assault on his seventeen-year-old stepdaughter. The prosecution asked the highly experienced trial judge to allow them to tell the jury about a previous conviction he had for an offence against another girl, one that sounded somewhat similar but was some twenty years old. Another complication was that the earlier conviction had been by way of a plea of guilty in the Magistrates’ Court, so there was no detailed record of the proceedings. The only indication of its history was a note on the court file, probably made by the clerk of court, which was a bit vague about the details, including the age of the victim. Besides, that kind of evidence would only be relevant to the current case if it tended to prove that the defendant had engaged in very similar behaviour in the not-too-distant past, a conclusion which, at first glance, seems less than compelling.

‘The previous matter is a bit on the old side, isn’t it?’ Stephen observes. ‘And the judge wasn’t given much in the way of evidence about it. I must say, Charles, I’m not at all sure she should have let it in.’

He’s hit the nail on the head, and initially I’m disposed to agree with him. But I know the judge who tried this case, and she’s a first-rate lawyer. Not only that, but when I put myself in the judge’s shoes, and ask myself what I would do, I know exactly what was going through her mind. You just know that Chummy has been trying to portray himself to the jury as the perfect stepfather, not at all the kind of bloke who would interfere with young girls, and without the previous conviction, it’s an image the prosecution might have some trouble debunking. Any judge would love to show the jury the other side of the coin. I’m acutely aware that in her position, I would have been itching to let the evidence in. I might well have given myself a good talking to and done my best to resist the temptation, but I’m by no means sure I would have succeeded.

I glance at the extract from the judge’s summing-up to the jury, in which she deals with the previous conviction. As I would have expected, it’s impeccable. She makes it clear that it was all some time ago, the details are rather sparse, and she warns the jury in the clearest terms not to give it too much weight. She explains, equally clearly, what its relevance is, and isn’t. I couldn’t have improved on her directions at all. All the same, the evidence was there when perhaps it shouldn’t have been, and the jury couldn’t have ignored it.

I’m almost ready to agree with Stephen that we should think about allowing the appeal, when it occurs to me that not only was the summing-up impeccable, but also, the evidence against Chummy, leaving aside the previous conviction, was more than enough for any jury to convict. And I can’t shake off my sympathy with the judge.

‘On the other hand,’ I venture tentatively, ‘the evidence as a whole was quite strong, wasn’t it? If we felt that the conviction was safe overall, we could uphold the conviction. I don’t know about you, but I would say the judge’s summing-up was right on point. She went out of her way to warn the jury to be cautious in looking at the evidence. I honestly couldn’t improve on it.’

‘If your experience leads you in that direction,’ Julius says, graciously, ‘I wouldn’t dissent.’

Stephen shrugs. ‘He obviously did it, didn’t he?’ he comments. ‘But is that something we should take into account?’

‘No,’ I reply. ‘But the real question is whether the conviction is safe. If the judge hadn’t been so clear in her directions, I would probably take a different view. But she got it absolutely right, and with the rest of the evidence, there was a solid basis for the jury’s verdict. I will understand if you disagree, but that’s the way I’d go.’

‘If you’re comfortable giving that judgment, Charles,’ Stephen says, ‘I don’t mind climbing on board.’

And so it comes to pass. I ask prosecuting counsel a number of questions designed to illustrate just how strong the case against Mr Winters was, and by the time I come to deliver the judgment, I feel I’m starting to get the hang of this appellate stuff. And then, for the rest of the day, I’m listening politely to cases in which one of my colleagues will give the judgment, joining in now and then with the odd question. I must say, my first day on Mount Olympus hasn’t been nearly as daunting as I’d expected.

* * *

Tuesday Morning

On Tuesday, there’s no longer any hesitation, or sense of ‘going easy’ on me. Stephen immediately assigns me all four of the appeals against sentence we have in our list. Fortunately, there’s nothing too difficult about them. All four sentences are on the high side, but they are either in line with, or not too far away from, what you’d expect under the guidelines. They are sentences the judges concerned were fully entitled to pass, and we quickly agree to dismiss the appeal in each case.

Stephen also assigns me one appeal against conviction, which is not quite so straightforward. Chummy was convicted of several counts of fraud at Newcastle, the gist of the offences being that he duped some elderly and other vulnerable victims out of thousands of pounds of savings and pensions, by luring them into a bogus investment scheme, which had no substance at all. To bolster his credibility with his victims, he falsely pretended to be a man of the cloth, and sometimes wore a dog collar when making his sales pitch. He told them that a large proportion of any profits he made would go to charity.

Chummy gave evidence in his defence. Having taken the oath on the New Testament, which is quite usual, he then refused to return the book to the usher, and insisted on holding it tightly to his chest for the whole of the one and a half court days for which his evidence lasted – which is not at all usual. The prosecution suggested to the judge that, in so doing, he was trying to mislead the jury into thinking that he was a man of good character, and argued that they should be permitted to tell the jury about his three previous convictions for theft. The judge agreed. He was duly convicted, and the judge duly weighed him off for a richly deserved four years.

As counsel point out to me in the course of argument, this is not a novel point. There is already a certain amount of precedent – previous decisions of the Court – the gist of which seems to be that it would be a bit over the top to let in previous convictions just because a defendant wants to hold the New Testament while giving evidence. Defence counsel argues that given the highly prejudicial effect of telling the jury about convictions for theft in a case where Chummy is charged with fraud, the appellant was not given a fair trial and the Court has no alternative but to allow the appeal. But the prosecution counters, equally cogently, that the defendant’s behaviour was such an obvious attempt to give the jury a false impression of his character that the judge was right to allow them to hear the full story. Although I started the hearing with an open mind, as the argument proceeds, I find myself agreeing more and more with the prosecution. But I’m also acutely aware that I haven’t spent enough time on Mount Olympus yet to be comfortable about suggesting that the Court might have got it wrong on earlier occasions. On the other hand, if my two colleagues feel the same way, it might just be possible. I ask Stephen if we can rise to consider our decision in chambers.

‘So, you think the current authorities are wrong do you, Charles?’ Stephen asks, once we are safely in chambers with the door closed. ‘You think we ought to depart from them?’

‘No reason why we shouldn’t,’ Julius observes, ‘is there, technically speaking?’

‘No,’ Stephen agrees, ‘well, not if we have a good reason. But we would need a good reason.’

They are both looking at me expectantly.

‘I think this case is different, factually, from the earlier cases,’ I say. ‘For one thing, he’s charged with thoroughly dishonest conduct – serious, repeated instances of fraud – during which he wore a dog collar, cloaking himself in the trappings of religion.’ As I’m saying this, I can’t help thinking of the Reverend Mrs Walden, and what she would have to say about it, which would not be at all favourable to the appellant, and would very likely be couched in distinctly non-liturgical language. ‘And when he holds the book while giving evidence, he reinforces that impression. Essentially, he’s trying to con the jury in exactly the same way he conned his victims. I think it would have been wrong for the judge not to let the prosecution put the record straight.’

‘That makes sense to me,’ Julius says. ‘He’s obviously a nasty piece of work. Look at all that money he took from those poor people – in some cases, their entire savings.’

Stephen is nodding. ‘If we can distinguish the earlier cases factually, I’m happy to dismiss,’ he says.

So, there I am, back in court, ready to rewrite the law as if I were one of the Olympian gods. The only problem is that I now have to give a reasoned judgment based on the law. I experience a few moments of panic as I begin the chronological recitation of the facts, but suddenly, as I’m staring at my notes, getting ready to move on to the law, from somewhere, an image of Hubert comes into my mind. I pause for effect.

‘It is well established,’ I say, ‘that where a defendant seeks to mislead the jury by making a false claim of good character, it is proper for the prosecution to rebut that suggestion by adducing evidence of the defendant’s actual character. In fact, one might say that it is axiomatic.’ Glancing to my right, I see my two colleagues on the bench nodding. ‘Whatever may have been the position in the earlier cases to which counsel referred us, we are satisfied that in this case, given the appellant’s reliance on religious imagery to perpetrate his frauds, the learned judge was entirely correct in allowing the jury to hear about his true character. Accordingly, this appeal fails.’

Chummy hasn’t had the gall to appeal against his sentence, so there is no more to be said, and I’m off the hook for the rest of the day. Wednesday and Thursday prove to be straight-forward, and by now I’m carrying my full weight in terms of giving the judgments. I’m actually starting to think that perhaps I have found my true vocation. I could get used to this appellate way of life.

But then comes Friday.

* * *

Friday morning

There’s only one case in our list today, and it is sporting a red sticky. I open the file and start to read. It stops me in my tracks. ‘Appeal against Conviction and Sentence,’ the heading announces, ‘The Queen v Leo Bradley, Len Bradley and Lance Bradley, on appeal from the Crown Court at Bermondsey, His Honour Judge Hubert Drake and a jury.’

I know all about this case. Stella consulted me about it because it seemed to have a few distinctly tricky issues involving identification, on which basis we decided that it should go to Legless, who is very solid in tricky identification cases. But when the day arrived, Legless was immersed in a trial that had already overrun by several days, Marjorie and I had fixtures we couldn’t hand off, and so with some misgivings, she had to assign Bradley to Hubert. I have a terrible premonition of what I’m going to find as I explore the file, and as I begin to read, I watch the premonition take solid form and rise up to confront me.

The brothers Bradley are members of a large family which migrated to south London from Hong Kong in the 1950s, to became one of Bermondsey’s celebrated ‘disorganised crime families’, also known to the Bar as ‘le Cinque Famiglie di Bermondsey’. I represented members of one of the Cinque Famiglie, the Fogles, myself when I was at the Bar. I never acted for anyone from the Bradley family, but I heard a lot about them from the Fogles. The Fogles detested the Bradleys, not only because they were rivals, but because of the Bradleys’ fondness for gratuitous violence, which was a feature of almost every crime they committed. To their eternal credit, the Fogles had no truck with violence, and were not above quietly grassing a Bradley up from time to time, when they thought the violence had gone too far.

The case Hubert tried was one of robbery, and featured a familiar Bradley modus operandi. The three brothers were alleged to have carried out the robbery at a small, family-owned 24-hour supermarket, late at night, armed with baseball bats and one firearm. They got away with about £400 and a quantity of cigarettes, leaving the father and son, who were manning the shop at the time, bruised and battered, though mercifully, nothing worse. There had been several customers in the shop at the time, and between them, they gave the police fairly detailed descriptions of the three robbers. But needless to say, the Bradley brothers were the beneficiaries of an alibi provided by numerous family members, who maintained that, at the relevant time, they were at a family party in honour of a great-uncle’s ninetieth birthday. Nonetheless, each of them was identified in a formal procedure at the police station by at least one witness as having been one of the robbers, so the prosecution was certainly viable.

As I delve deeper into the file, I begin to find my worst fears confirmed. Fairly early in the trial, Hubert has lost track of which brother was which, and which brother was alleged to have done various things – such as threatening those present with the firearm, assaulting the father and son, emptying the till, and stuffing cartons of cigarettes into bags. Even worse, when it comes time to sum up, he is far too cavalier about the very real issues of identification. Visual identification is a notoriously dangerous kind of evidence. Even honest and conscientious witnesses can be mistaken about an identification, while at the same time, because they are honest, they are often very credible witnesses. It’s a natural breeding ground for miscarriages of justice, and the history of the law is replete with them. The Court of Appeal has said over and over again that, in his summing-up, the judge must warn the jury fully about the dangers of identification evidence, and even withdraw the case from the jury if the evidence seems too tenuous.

Hubert decided not to withdraw the case, and reading through the file, I find myself agreeing with him. But his summing-up is another matter. He doesn’t come close to warning the jury in strong enough terms, and he is obviously still confused about who is alleged to have done what. Even worse, there are two sentences in which, while he doesn’t actually say so in so many words, he seems to imply that they all – meaning, presumably, people of Chinese ethnic origin – look the same, which is not the kind of warning the Court of Appeal had in mind. The three brothers were convicted, they all have form for similar offences, and Hubert weighed them off for seven years each. I can’t argue with the sentences. But they are probably academic. The convictions on which they depend seem to be fatally compromised by the problems with the summing-up.

The outcome of the appeal seems inevitable. But that’s not my only concern. This was a serious case. Hubert lost control over it at an early stage, and never recovered. The record suggests that counsel did their best to intervene and put him straight, apparently without success, because Hubert was adamant that he understood the facts and didn’t need their help. That in itself is worrying, because we all need counsel’s help sometimes, and the only sensible reaction when they offer it is to engage with them. Hubert knows that perfectly well. What was he thinking? Suddenly, the case feels ominous, bringing to mind his earlier episode of confusion and the vexed question of his retirement. I’ve always been determined that, if Hubert does ever reach the point where he can’t go on, he should have the option of deciding to retire with dignity. The alternative, of course, is that the Grey Smoothies decide for him, regardless of considerations of dignity. Now, in fairness, they would only do that as a last resort. Even the Grey Smoothies would normally allow a judge to bow out gracefully, rather than being removed. But there’s a problem with that in Hubert’s case. Hubert has always made it abundantly clear that he has no intention of bowing out under any circumstances, and I’m by no means sure that he would take the hint – which means that Yours Truly would have to embark on a diplomatic campaign to persuade him to change his mind. It’s not going to help that campaign if I have to give the judgment in this case myself.

I decide to raise my concern with Stephen Gulivant as soon as we begin our morning conference. I don’t allude directly to the question of retirement, of course. I don’t want to plant the idea in his mind if it hasn’t occurred to him. I do my best to couch it in terms of the potential embarrassment involved in my giving a judgment so critical of one of my colleagues in a small court such as Bermondsey; how bad for morale it will be; and how it will affect my relationship with my colleagues as RJ. It cuts no ice at all.

‘Oh, it’s something we all have to do, Charles. As you know, I’m a presiding judge on the South Eastern Circuit, so I know every judge on the circuit quite well. But I’ve still had to allow appeals from cases they’ve tried from time to time. It’s nothing personal. It’s part of the job – might as well get used to it. If you come back to sit with us again, you’re bound to allow appeals from judges you know from time to time.’

I try my best to couch the judgment in moderate terms, but just reciting the factual background to the appeal tells its own story vividly enough, without any need for embellishment. Defence counsel pulled no punches during the hearing of the appeal, and the prosecutor’s muted response amounted to a tacit acknowledgement that there was only one possible outcome. I have no alternative but to tell like it is, as they say.

‘In the judgment of this court, the learned judge failed to give the jury the clear warning this court has said, time and time again, is necessary when dealing with evidence of visual identification. The summing-up must make clear that such evidence is potentially dangerous, and must explain clearly what the dangers are. The jury must be told to exercise the utmost caution in evaluating evidence of that kind. Not only did the learned judge’s summing-up fail to make those matters clear, but in effect, it invited the jury to give considerable weight to the identifications of the appellants made by the witnesses, while mentioning the evidence of alibi only in passing, and in a way which the jury may have found suggestive that the judge was sceptical about it. It must at best have confused the jury, and at worst, misled them.

‘In addition, it is clear that the learned judge himself became confused during the trial about the evidence dealing with the roles said to have been played in the robbery by the three appellants. This is reflected in the way in which he reminded the jury of the prosecution’s allegations against the appellants during the summing-up, which, as counsel have pointed out in the course of argument, was inaccurate in a number of important respects. We make no criticism of the learned judge for experiencing some confusion about the evidence. All of us who sit in criminal trials have that experience from time to time, especially in a case of some complexity. But in that situation, the proper course is for the judge to confer with counsel in the absence of the jury at some convenient moment during the trial, and to ask counsel for their help in clarifying the matters he is finding difficult. It has been our experience that counsel are always ready to assist the judge in that way. In this case, not only did the learned judge not seek the assistance of counsel on his own initiative, but he gave every indication of being reluctant to hear from them when they asked to address him in the absence of the jury, before the closing speeches and the summing-up. In the course of argument, counsel on both sides of the case told us candidly that they were concerned that the learned judge’s command of the evidence was not adequate to allow him to sum the case up to the jury properly. Unfortunately, the summing-up shows that counsel’s concerns were amply justified.

‘In the circumstances, we cannot say that the convictions in this case were safe. In the case of each of the appellants, the appeal against conviction is allowed, and the conviction quashed.’

Three armed robbers are going to walk free because the trial judge made a hopeless mess of the case, and the worst of it is that I can’t be sure it won’t happen again.

We have finished our list just before noon. Stephen insists on taking Julius and myself to lunch at Lincoln’s Inn to celebrate the end of the week, and in my case, the end of my sojourn on Mount Olympus. I’m not feeling in much of a mood for a celebratory lunch, but I don’t want to be a wet blanket, so I go along and join in the conversation as best I can.

* * *

Friday afternoon

After lunch, I return to Bermondsey, to see Stella and find out what awaits me next week. I haven’t heard anything from the court during my week away – which is a good sign. Marjorie always fills in for me as RJ when I’m away from court. She is a safe pair of hands, and she would let me know if anything untoward was going on; and even if she didn’t, Stella would. So, silence doesn’t concern me. But I still have some pangs of conscience about having once left her in charge in a week during which threatening demonstrations were going on outside the court on a daily basis. There was no way we could have anticipated the demonstrations in question, and Marjorie dealt with it all admirably; but there’s this cloak of responsibility you wear as an RJ, and it’s one you can never quite take off. Fortunately, nothing bad seems to have happened this week.

‘Hello, Judge,’ Stella says cheerfully as I knock and enter her office. ‘Welcome back. How was the Court of Appeal?’

Stella is our list officer, the only person at any Crown Court without whom the court would, literally, fall apart. She has the almost impossible task of planning the work of four judges over a prolonged period of time, without the advantage of a crystal ball to tell her which cases will fold, which will go the distance, which will overrun, and so on – not to mention that all the players, counsel, solicitors, the CPS, and even we judges, who should know better, are always ready to offer their unsolicited advice, to which Stella listens patiently before explaining why something can’t be done. As a result, Stella always has an air of doom about her, as if she is anticipating disaster around every corner. I’ve got used to that – and in fact, I’ve concluded that it’s simply a realistic state of mind for any list officer. It’s an almost impossible job, and Stella is absolutely bloody brilliant at it.

‘It was interesting,’ I reply.

‘I’m sure it must have been. Well, nothing much to report here. It’s been quiet.’ She picks up two files from the pile on her desk. ‘Judge Drake finished his trial, and I’ve got an ABH for him to start on Monday.’

‘How many defendants?’ I ask.

She looks up at me curiously. ‘Just the one. Why?’

‘Oh, nothing.’

‘Judge Jenkins and Judge Dunblane are both part-heard, juries likely to go out on Monday or Tuesday, and I’m listing two sexual assault cases for them when they become free, which have been hanging around for too long and really need to be tried.’

She selects two more files.

‘I have a GBH for you next week, Judge.’ She opens the file. ‘Name of Remert. It’s a weird case. A 55-year-old wife deliberately boils a kettle of water and pours it all over her husband’s head.’

‘Ouch,’ I say, grimacing.

‘Yes. The photographs are horrible. But the odd thing is, no one seems to know why she did it. She’s of previous good character – actually, she was a probation officer in her younger days – and there was no prior warning at all.’

‘And she’s not pleading?’

‘No. It’s a trial.’

‘What’s her defence?’

‘She’s blaming her cat,’ Stella replies, enigmatically.

‘Of course she is.’

‘And then, the following week, we’ve got O’Finn – another strange one. It’s been moved to us from Ipswich because local feeling is running too high for her to have a fair trial there.’

‘She can’t get a fair trial in Ipswich? What is the world coming to? What’s the charge?’

‘Affray and ABH. It’s all to do with a dispute about whether a statue should be taken down in a nearby village. Apparently, things got out of hand when the local council decided to leave the statue where it was. The defendant’s the leader of the group trying to take it down. Ipswich thinks we might get an influx of locals for the trial, and we may have to keep the two sides apart, so I’ve assigned it to you, and I thought I’d better give you advance notice. I’ve warned security, of course.’

‘All because of a statue?’

‘So it would seem, Judge.’

‘All right.’ I pause. ‘Stella, do you remember that case of the three Bradley brothers we wanted to give to Judge Dunblane, but had to give to Judge Drake?’

She nods. ‘The robbery at the corner store? Yes. They were convicted.’

‘Not any more,’ I say.

She looks at me, and then holds her head in her hands.

‘It was in your list, was it?’

‘It was worse than that, Stella. Stephen Gulivant made me give the judgment.’

‘Oh, dear. How bad is it?’

‘Very bad… Look, I know we’ve talked about this before… but…’

She nods. ‘I do keep my eyes and ears open, Judge. Counsel and court staff talk to me, and I always listen. But apart from that one incident – you remember, he thought he’d seen his wife in court – apart from that there’s been nothing of concern. I mean, there’s always the usual whining, you know, his sentences are too high and he takes the prosecution’s side too much. But that’s just par for the course with Judge Drake, and for all the grumbles, he’s hardly ever been appealed – not successfully, anyway.’

‘Well, he has now,’ I say.

‘Yes.’ She thinks for some time. ‘Will you speak to him? I suppose there’s no way to avoid it now, Judge, is there?’

‘No,’ I reply. ‘I’m going to have to talk to him. Hopefully he will have something to reassure me.’

‘Yes… Judge, do you think it might help to talk to the Grey Smoothies or the presiders first?’

I shake my head vigorously. ‘No. I want to keep this in-house, if possible. I’m not sure it will be: Stephen Gulivant is one of our presiders, as you know. But we have to try.’

‘You might try our regular counsel, ask if they’ve noticed anything unusual,’ Stella suggests. ‘They might tell you things they wouldn’t tell me.’

I smile. ‘I’m not sure about that, Stella. It might be the other way around. And we’d have to trust them not to…’

‘They’re a discreet bunch, Judge.’

‘Yes, they are.’

We sit silently for some time.

‘If there’s anything really wrong,’ Stella resumes eventually, ‘someone will have noticed. They don’t miss much.’

I nod. ‘What I’m dreading is the thought of having to suggest to Judge Drake that the time may have come for him to retire.’

Stella sighs. ‘Yes. He’s so…’

‘Stubborn…?’

‘Dedicated. He loves the work so much, Judge. I’m not sure he’ll ever retire unless they make him.’

‘Well, if the worst comes to the worst, we may have to persuade him otherwise.’

‘May I make a suggestion about that, Judge?’

‘Of course.’

‘You might consider enlisting Judge Jenkins’s help. I know she and Judge Drake get on well, and she’s…’

I laugh. ‘You don’t have to say it. She’s more of a diplomat than I am.’

Stella’s face has turned slightly red, but she can’t suppress a shy smile.

‘I was going to point out that she didn’t give the judgment in the Bradley case,’ she adds.

‘Good point,’ I concede.

We are silent again for some time.

‘So, Judge, apart from Judge Drake’s case, how did you like the Court of Appeal?’

‘Apart from that, Mrs Lincoln, how was the theatre?’

We laugh.

‘Would you do it again?’

‘Yes,’ I reply. ‘I think I would. I’m not sure I’d want to do it all the time, but now and then a week on Mount Olympus with the gods can be quite uplifting.’

* * *

Friday Evening

My spirits have revived by tea-time, because the evening promises to be very agreeable. Marjorie and her husband, Nigel, have invited the Reverend Mrs Walden and myself to dinner, to celebrate the conclusion of my week on Mount Olympus. We don’t see a lot of Nigel. He spends a good deal of his time in Geneva, where his bank is based, but he is on one of his periodic visits to London, and we shall have the pleasure of his company this evening. The only slightly odd thing about the invitation is that the venue is to be the Delights of the Raj. Marjorie and Nigel are generally to be found in far more upmarket establishments. But as the Reverend Mrs Walden points out when I mention it to her, it is probably an act of kindness. The Delights is one of our two favourite local haunts when we need to unwind after a hard day, or can’t be bothered to cook, the other being its Italian counterpart, La Bella Napoli. Marjorie is well aware of our fondness for both, and it was thoughtful of her to indulge us.

The owner and head chef of the Delights is Rajiv, who can always be relied on to serve up a splendid repast. There are few things better calculated to restore morale at the end of a long day than a selection of delicious samosas, a powerful Chicken Madras with a side of Saag Aloo, and a Cobra or two to wash it all down: the only comparable remedy being the Insalata Caesar and sea bass at La Bella Napoli. There’s another, fortuitous factor, too. Our usual table is set in an alcove presided over by a small statue of the Hindu elephant god, Ganesh. Odd as it may sound for one in her line of work, the Reverend Mrs Walden is a huge fan of Ganesh. The elephant god is associated with wisdom and benevolence, and she willingly concedes that we could do with some influence like his in Christianity. She would gladly adopt Ganesh and take him into the Church of England’s pantheon if she could, although I suspect that her bishop, who cheerfully tolerates most of her theological eccentricities, might see that as a step too far. On the other hand, of course, her enthusiasm is music to Rajiv’s ears, as a result of which we always benefit from his personal attention.

We are settling in with a selection of samosas and onion bajis, and Cobras all round, served personally by Rajiv, when the Reverend Mrs Walden happens to ask Nigel about his flat in Geneva, which, to her surprise, and Marjorie’s amusement, prompts him to take her on a comprehensive virtual tour of the place, using his phone.

‘All you have to do is ask him,’ she says, confidentially, ‘and he’ll go on about it for hours. To be perfectly honest, Charlie, between the two of us, I’ve never thought there was anything very special about the place. Still, each to his own, I suppose. Perhaps that’s the real reason he spends so much time in Geneva – nothing to do with the bank, just that he loves the flat so much he can’t bear to leave it.’

We laugh together. She continues in confidential mode.

‘Charlie, Legless heard a rumour that you gave judgment quashing a conviction in a case of Hubert’s: is that right?’

I nod. ‘That’s not the half of it. We reversed him because he got totally confused in a four-handed visual identification case, and refused to let counsel help him recover – as a result of which he made a complete dog’s dinner of the summing-up. I kept it as low key as I could, but I had to explain why we were allowing the appeal, and I’m afraid it won’t make pleasant reading for him.’

‘Oh, dear,’ she replies. ‘Is it something we have to worry about – you know, longer term?’

‘I don’t know, Marjorie. The real question is whether the presiders and the Grey Smoothies think it’s something to worry about. Stephen Gulivant was presiding on my panel, as you know, so it’s possible I might hear something from him next week.’

‘Who was the third member of the panel?’

‘Mr Justice Julius Hendry, late of the marine insurance Bar.’

She shakes her head. ‘The name rings a vague bell. I don’t know anything about him.’

‘Neither do I, except for the fact that, in his own immortal words, he knows sweet Fanny Adams about criminal law. At least he didn’t get in the way, I’ll say that for him.’

Seeing the Reverend Mrs Walden’s eyes about to glaze over, Marjorie reaches over to touch Nigel’s arm and bring the virtual tour to an end.

‘I think Clara’s seen all she needs to see of the flat, darling, don’t you?’

Before Nigel can protest, Rajiv and his merry band of waiters appear, as if from nowhere, bearing dishes of Chicken Madras, two different vegetable curries, Saag Aloo, bowls overflowing with perfectly boiled white rice, and assorted heaps of breads, chapatis, and naans, plain and garlic – not to mention another round of Cobras. The Geneva flat is quickly forgotten. The conversation dies down while we do justice to this wonderful feast, and I really do begin to feel the cares of the week receding. As we sit back contentedly with the remains of the Cobras, there is a silence for some time, before Marjorie and Nigel exchange meaningful looks, and Marjorie suddenly sits forward in her chair.

‘Actually, Charlie, in addition to congratulating you on your first week in the Criminal Division – the first of many, I’m sure – there is something else I want to tell you. It’s supposed to be confidential for a few more days, but you’re my RJ and you should know, and I can’t see any harm in telling you and Clara…’

‘Our lips are sealed,’ I reply.

‘They’ve offered me an appointment to the High Court,’ she says, ‘and obviously, I’ve accepted. Queen’s Bench Division.’

The Reverend and I exchange smiles.

‘I am delighted, Marjorie,’ I say, and I mean it. ‘Not that it was ever in doubt. It was always a question of when, not whether.’

‘I thought they were getting close, after all the sitting I’ve been doing as a deputy, but they called me on Tuesday, and asked me to come in for a final interview.’

‘Well, we will be sorry to lose you, that goes without saying, but I couldn’t be happier for you.’

‘That’s marvellous, Marjorie,’ the Reverend adds, ‘very well done. And doesn’t that mean you will soon be Dame Marjorie Jenkins?’

She smiles. ‘Yes. I haven’t had much time to digest it all yet. I suppose I’ll have to work out what to wear for the occasion.’

‘I’m sure they will let you know,’ the Reverend replies reassuringly.

‘When do you take up your appointment?’ I ask. ‘I’m sure that will be Stella’s first question.’

‘I’m sure it will. They haven’t given me a firm date yet, but probably about two months. So, Stella will have plenty of time to lobby for my replacement.’

‘It’s all so bloody unfair,’ Nigel whines, with a grin. ‘If they were giving me a K, Marjorie would be entitled to call herself Lady Jenkins. But when she becomes a Dame, I get nothing at all. I’m still plain Mr Jenkins. It’s a clear case of gender discrimination.’

‘Nigel,’ Marjorie replies, ‘if you ever want to call yourself Lady Jenkins, I promise you, you’ll get no objections from me.’