Judge Walden: Call the Next Case E-Book

Peter Murphy

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

Seitenzahl: 627

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

The Third Judge Walden Novel 'Warm, witty and endearingly entertaining' Joanne Owen, LoveReading 'Wickedly addictive read' Yvonne Bastian Charlie Walden, the irrepressible Resident Judge (RJ) of Bermondsey Crown Court is back to preside over five new cases. As ever, there is little rest for the RJ as he does his best to deal with: the church-going carer who steals from the old lady under her care, the cleaver-wielding chefs wth different ideas about how to make a Caesar salad, the man with a penchant for 'marrying' multiple women, and the astrological guru accused of fraud. Not to mention the shock-horror when colleagues get into trouble - Judge Hubert Drake for writing an angry letter to the press, and Judge Marjorie Jenkins for storing suspected pornography on her judicial computer. Oh, and the ongoing wars against the Grey Smoothies, who try to frustrate Charlie at every turn with their bureaucracy and their endless quest for value for money for the taxpayer.

Leseprobe

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CRITICAL ACCLAIM FOR PETER MURPHY

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

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

‘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, goodhumoured style, which will evoke a constant stream of smiles, and chuckles from nonlawyers and lawyers alike’ – Lord Judge, former Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales

‘No one writes with more wit, warmth and insight about the law and its practitioners than Peter Murphy. He has no equal since the great John “Rumpole” Mortimer’ –David Ambrose

‘Though his exasperation is sometimes palpable, what triumphs over everything is his sense of humour. And it is the humour that makes Walden of Bermondsey such a delightful read. Think of him as what “Rumpole” would be like if he ever became a judge, and you get some idea of his self-deprecating wit and indomitable stoicism. Add a dash of Henry Cecil for his situation and AP Herbert for the fun he has with the law, and you get a sense of his literary precedents’ – Paul Magrath

To all our Circuit Judges everywhere, especially our Resident Judges, who, without recognition or tangible reward, labour every day, against overwhelming odds, to save what is left of our court system from the wrecking ball.

FOREWORD

By Baroness Hale of Richmond,

President of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom

When Peter Murphy and I were Law students together at Cambridge University, from 1963 to 1966, did it occur to either of us what our later careers would be? Perhaps Peter always knew that he would qualify as a barrister and practise as an advocate, but surely not at the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague, or that he would crown his career as Resident Judge in the Peterborough Crown Court. It certainly never occurred to me, as I went off to teach Law at the University of Manchester, with a bit of practice on the side, that I would end up as any sort of judge, let alone President of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom.

Life in an appeal court, especially the top appeal court for the whole United Kingdom, is very different from life “at the coal face”, as those who work in trial courts up and down the land tend to call it. We deal in erudite points of law of the sort that Judge Walden, Resident Judge in the Bermondsey Crown Court, tries to avoid if he possibly can. So who would you rather be? Lady Hale, in the Supreme Court, deciding whether outlawing bigamy is incompatible with the rights of (for example) Mormons to manifest their belief that bigamy, indeed, polygamy, is justified in scripture? Or Judge Walden, benignly advising the jury whether duress (of the shotgun sort) is a defence to bigamy? He has a lot more fun than we do.

Bermondsey is an imaginary Crown Court with four permanent judges who fit each of the stereotypes – the wise, benign and seriously cunning Resident Judge, Judge Walden; the elderly, rather old-fashioned but still fundamentally sound member of the Garrick club; the buccaneering barrister turned Judge, still for some unknown reason nicknamed “Legless”; and the seriously clever who-should-go-further-but-with-family-responsibilities woman Judge. All are supported by some wonderful court staff – the hugely savvy listing officer, Stella, who knows everything that is going on, and Judge Walden’s usher, Dawn, always brightly dressed beneath her gown. We all owe these heroines a great debt of gratitude.

What comes over loud and clear is that, despite their differences, each of these judges is equally committed to what the legal process – especially in criminal cases – is all about: the fair trial of those accused of offending against the law. And what also comes over loud and clear is that so are the advocates who appear in front of them. They play by the rules and neither side does dirty tricks – or if they do, they will be found out soon enough and no good will come of it. These stories are a fine description of some sensible and honourable advocacy.

But you mustn’t believe that everything that goes on in these pages would really go on – trial judges in disputes between neighbours do not conduct mediations in nearby pubs while the case is going on, for example – but that does not detract from the essential truth of all these stories, that the law and the courts should always be looking for the right solution, wherever and however it may be found.

Nor must you believe that the “Grey Smoothies” from the Ministry of Justice are always out to undermine the independence of the judiciary. They have their role and Judge Walden has his. But somehow he seems to outsmart them every time, which is just as it should be. That his wife is the local vicar, the Reverend Clara Walden, and he buys his daily coffee, sandwich and newspaper from the local market traders, shows how grounded he is in the life of his local community.

But above all, these stories are really funny! His Honour Judge Walden is surely the next Rumpole, a modern, sensible, fair and compassionate judge, not stuck in the past, even when it comes to mastering the new technology and the “paperless court”, but staying faithful to the values we both learned all those years ago.

PROLOGUE

by Judge Rinder

This book is the closest one can get to the authentic first hand action of a judge’s chambers without having to qualify (perhaps the main reason I love it). The dry wit of Walden and the richly drawn characters, especially his – often frustrating – colleagues, set against the interference of the civil service, make it feel incredibly contemporary.

I don’t especially like comparisons, but working in TV, I am often asked to describe a book or a programme. Walden defies description. It’s like Rumpole meets Agatha Christie, with a bit of Judge John Deed thrown in – only with none of the absurdity. It could only have been written by someone with years of first hand experience, an acute sense of irony, and an ability to listen and absorb facts and convey them to a jury (or reader) with the type of effortless mastery of detail that only the great advocates possess.

Peter Murphy gives the reader an insight into the hidden – often mundane – world of the court with its eccentricities and often amusing banalities, and never forgets that at the heart of any case (and good book) is the story. The mystery is so utterly absorbing: I found myself walking into a train door. I don’t want to give too much away, but Walden is impossible to put down. As soon as you’ve finished, I challenge you not to order the rest in the series immediately.

FEELING ONE’S AGE

Monday morning

In sooth, I know not why I am so sad:

It wearies me; you say it wearies you;

But how I caught it, found it, or came by it,

What stuff ’tis made of, whereof it is born,

I am to learn…

Like Antonio in Venice, I arrive at court in Bermondsey this morning in a rather subdued mood. It’s a beautiful spring day, and I have all my usual comforts – my latte from Jeanie and Elsie’s coffee and sandwich bar in the archway near London Bridge and my copy of The Times from George’s newspaper stand nearby. But neither the aroma of the latte nor the fresh, cool breeze blowing up off the river dispels the mist entirely. While I do hold the world as a stage where every man must play a part, I don’t often see my part as a sad one; and unlike Antonio, I’m pretty sure how I caught it, found it, or came by it. Every year at about this time, my good wife, the Reverend Mrs Walden, priest-in-charge of the church of St Aethelburgh and All Angels in the diocese of Southwark, declares a week to be ‘Remember the Elderly Week’. During Remember the Elderly Week everyone has to be nice to anyone older than they are: so we have all manner of events going on in and around the church for our senior citizens – Take your Nan to Church Day, coffee afternoons in the vicarage, bingo evenings in the church hall, slide shows with reminiscences of Bermondsey in the old days – all of them featuring parishioners full of years, escorted by relatives who would never ordinarily darken the door of a church, and who look bored and out of place. The Reverend Mrs Walden is wonderful with them: she can chat away for hours about the old days, and about their families, and about how things aren’t what they used to be, and about how the country’s going to the dogs, without sounding in any way patronising.

It’s a gift I haven’t been blessed with, I’m afraid. I’m not sure why. Obviously, I have nothing against the elderly: it’s a condition we all face in life barring a worse alternative, and I flatter myself that I can have a decent one-on-one conversation with any elderly person. But I just can’t relax when they descend on the vicarage in their hordes. Perhaps it’s the inevitable stark confrontation with impending decline – mine as well as theirs. Perhaps it’s because I’m only too well aware that some counsel who appear in my court consider me to have reached that stage of life already, my modest age in the mid-sixties notwithstanding, simply because I wear the judicial robe. But whatever the reason, sitting through two services for which the elderly turn out en masse with their minders isn’t my favourite way to spend my Sunday.

Yesterday too, I was aware of the trial I’m starting this morning, and it’s enough to depress even the most cheerful of souls. The Reverend Mrs Walden, rounding off the Week in her climactic Sunday evening sermon, was exhorting the parish to take better care of the elderly: to make sure they are kept safe, are enabled to attend church, and have enough human contact to prevent loneliness and isolation. But my mind was drifting to a different kind of human contact the elderly may encounter in church – and it’s one they need to be protected from rather than exposed to. In my case, the human contact is a woman called Laura Catesby, and her victim is a ninety-two-year-old widow by the name of Muriel Jones. Reflecting on Remember the Elderly Week, I can’t help thinking that my reaction to it has a lot to do with my fear that somewhere down the road, when the Reverend and I are in our dotage and have been put out to pasture, we may fall victim to something similar ourselves. Age and frailty, I reflect, can make a Muriel Jones of any of us. I suppose I’ve reached the point where I’m beginning to feel my age.

There’s another, even more immediate reason for this dampening of my spirits. This morning is one I hoped would never dawn; one I hoped I might be spared. This morning I truly expect to feel, not just older, but like a man becoming a dinosaur, a relic of the past: because today, after years of false starts and unfulfilled promises – or perhaps threats would be a better word – the Grey Smoothies are poised to introduce the ‘Paperless Court’. The Grey Smoothies are the civil servants responsible for the running of our courts. Their twin governing principles, and mantras, are ‘business case’ and ‘value for money for the taxpayer’. Intoning these mantras, they govern the courts using a form of magical thinking, according to which the courts would run just as efficiently, regardless of how much of our infrastructure and resources they degrade or take away, if only we would all just work harder and get on with it. In the universe of the Grey Smoothies, the quality of the courts and of the work we do lacks any quantifiable value. Like Wilde’s cynics, the Grey Smoothies know the price of everything and the value of nothing; and sadly, I fear, by the time they have finished with us, there may be little left of a court system that was once the envy of the world.

The Paperless Court is the Grey Smoothies’ current value-for-money project, and obsession. It is a system in which all court documents are filed, disseminated, and accessed electronically, so that no longer do we need the traditional court file with its huge piles of dog-eared papers stuffed into overworked cardboard folders. The Paperless Court is touted by the Grey Smoothies as a breakthrough akin to penicillin or the theory of relativity; and I must admit, its potential advantages are obvious even to me. You save on the cost of paper, you make documents available with far less delay, you reduce the risk of losing the documents, and best of all, no one has to carry all those heavy files around. All you need is your computer. But that’s where the other side of the equation comes into play.

The Grey Smoothies fondly imagine themselves as inhabiting the same plane as the bankers and commercial wizards of the world, and accordingly, think that the courts should be working with the same technology they use in Canary Wharf or on Wall Street. And unfortunately, someone has convinced them that this is the path to the Grey Smoothie Holy Grail – reducing the cost of running the courts to almost nothing in the interests of value for money for the taxpayer. Unfortunately, whoever told the Grey Smoothies that computerisation was the Holy Grail of cheap and efficient court administration omitted to add an important proviso: that it only works if you spend the money to buy computers and programmes adequate to the complex task of running a court. We’ve been threatened several times before with the advent of the Paperless Court – it’s been an ongoing saga ever since I took over as RJ – but the prototypes the Grey Smoothies have introduced in the past have had the unmistakeable whiff of underfunding about them. They haven’t worked very well, and have been abandoned shortly after being trumpeted as the salvation of the court system. None of these failures has been cheap, and after a while you have to question how much value for money the taxpayer is actually getting out of it all.

In addition to those technical concerns, the Grey Smoothies tend to overestimate the human aspects of making the system work – in other words, the talents of those of us on the bench when it comes to computers. Of the four judges at Bermondsey, only Marjorie Jenkins can claim any real expertise with computers. As a busy commercial silk before she became a judge, she mastered modern forms of communication in a way that most of us who spent our lives at the criminal bar did not. It’s expected in the world of banking and commerce, which has always seemed to me to revolve around three basic assumptions: that the continuance of human existence depends on the availability of twenty-four-hour phone and internet access; that the sum of all human knowledge can be expressed as a multi-coloured pie chart; and that all information must be capable of being transmitted instantaneously to any place on earth – how mankind survived until these conditions could be fulfilled being something of a mystery.

In the world of crime, that’s not exactly the tradition. We work at a slower pace, using such outdated, but time-honoured technology as pens and paper; and most of us think that we are not losing anything because of it. As barristers, many of us were members of chambers that didn’t even have a typist until we were getting quite senior in the profession; and even a few years ago, while most barristers had acquired personal computers, you were still looked on as a bit pretentious if you knew much more than how to turn it on. My colleague Hubert Drake, who is not too far from retirement – and, as far as computers are concerned, a confirmed Luddite – may not even know how to do that. Rory ‘Legless’ Dunblane and I are a little more advanced. We’ve mastered the art of emails and (at least in Legless’s case) texting, and we understand the basics of cutting and pasting and so on. But that’s about it. There is some mitigation, at least for those of us, like Hubert, old enough to have been on the bench for a good few years now. If you started your primary school education writing in chalk on a slate tablet, and were already of mature years when the original steam-powered personal computers were making their debut, I think you can be forgiven for not keeping up with every nuance of the computer revolution. Marjorie, by way of contrast, is up with most of them and so by comparison with most judges she is something of an expert. Typically, when my computer is doing something I don’t understand or can’t control, she’s the person I go to for advice, and usually whatever she tells me to do works.

I had hoped that the old paper system might last just long enough for me to retire and allow a new, more computer-savvy generation of judges to get to grips with the new technology. There are some such judges in place already, like Marjorie; and you can see judges-in-waiting, as counsel, with their laptops on the bench in front of them, their PowerPoint presentations in court, and so on. That’s what I mean when I say that I’m beginning to feel like a relic of the past, a dinosaur in a post-meteor world. But there’s to be no reprieve. We judges, products of another time as we may be, will have to cope with change as best we can. In fairness to the Grey Smoothies, they have done their best to educate us. We’ve received screed after screed of information – electronically, of course – and several seminars from visiting computer nerds; and we have learned something. But it’s a bit like learning a foreign language. If you grow up speaking a language, it’s effortless; if you try to learn as an adult, you may achieve a certain fluency, but it will never become second nature. Or perhaps, at the end of the day, it’s a cultural question: something to do with teaching an old dog new tricks – it’s not that the dog doesn’t understand them; it’s more that sometimes he just doesn’t feel inclined to play ball. I suspect that most of us, when faced with the relentless march of progress, have something of Mr Fezziwig about us.

But you can’t tell the Grey Smoothies any of that. As far as they’re concerned, they’re on the road to the Holy Grail, and now they think they’ve ironed out the teething troubles that held back Sir Lancelot, Sir Gawain and the rest of them. So the Paperless Court is about to be rolled out, as the phrase is in Grey Smoothie-speak; and Stella, who’s done a whole day of training in Cardiff to prepare her for this new era of technological wonders, has been deputed to show all of us how it works this morning, so that we can take our computers into court for the first time. Her presentation ends just before ten thirty – the appointed hour at which the Paperless Court is to be switched on for us simultaneously, rather like the Blackpool Illuminations.

All four judges will be doing a test hearing with our computers in place on the bench. Mine is a plea and case management hearing in the case of a thirty-something defendant called Gerry Farmer. Gerry Farmer is charged with three counts of handling stolen goods, to which Emily Phipson, who’s prosecuting, tells me he is about to plead guilty. I’ve got Stella sitting up on the bench with me, just to make sure that I get off to a good start. Stella is our brilliant list officer, who almost single-handedly keeps the work of the court flowing: scheduling trials and pleas of guilty, and applications of every kind; making sure that each of the four judges has the right amount of work; arguing with solicitors, the CPS, and anyone else who tries to stand in her way. She’s also my confidante in sensitive matters, such as those affecting the other judges and the court staff. She is the one person in the building without whom the place would actually fall apart.

Stella has summoned up the file in Mr Farmer’s case for me on the screen. I’m feeling less than comfortable about having my computer with me on the bench. It’s invading my personal space, taking up room in front of me and to my left, room I’m used to having available for Archbold and my notebook. Once the file has come up, Stella whispers to me that if I want to take notes, there’s another file I can go to. Together we press a letter on my keyboard, and sure enough up it comes – a blank screen inviting the taking of a judicial note. But I’m not sure I could find my way back to the case file without Stella, and I’m aware of Emily and Piers Drayford, who’s defending, grinning up at me. They’ve been told what’s going on, and asked to be patient: but to them, switching between files is second nature and their patience isn’t going to last indefinitely. Besides which, I can’t spend all day on Gerry Farmer. I need to get on with the case of Muriel Jones before lunch if I’m to finish her evidence today and not have to drag her back to court tomorrow. So the habit of a lifetime prevails: I grab a pen and make my notes in my notebook. Now I need to go back to the Farmer file to look at the indictment, but when I try to return, the screen goes a bright blue colour and there’s a message saying, ‘Please sign in’. I glance at Stella, panicking slightly.

‘I have signed in,’ I protest quietly.

‘Enter your password again,’ she whispers.

Recently, I’ve taken a simple approach to passwords. Until someone told me that the Grey Smoothies insist on frequent changes of password, I opted for rather complicated ones designed to thwart even the most ingenious hacker – like Marjorie, who is working her way through the pantheon of Greek and Roman deities. But when I had to change them regularly, it all started to seem unduly complicated and since then I’ve resorted to CharlieWOne, CharlieWTwo, and so on. That seems to work well enough. But not today. When I type in ‘CharlieWFour’, the current version, I get the message, ‘Incorrect password: try again’.

‘No, it’s asking for your new “Paperless” password,’ Stella whispers; and belatedly, I remember that Paperless requires a second password, beginning with a capital letter and containing at least eight digits and including at least one numeral and one other symbol. I duly selected such a password this morning, and I confess that in frustration I went with ‘Sodthis!1’. I duly type this in the space provided, and the Farmer file pops back up. Stella smiles benevolently, and points to where it says ‘Indictment’. I tap again, and hey presto, there it is.

Perusing the indictment, I see that we have a problem we never seemed to have before draft indictments were sent electronically: namely, that no one ever seems to proofread them before sending them to the court. In the present case, Emily is in the embarrassing position of having to ask for leave to amend the statement of offence in count one, so that it reads: ‘Handling stolen goods, contrary to section 22(1) of the Theft Act 1968’ in place of the current text, ‘Ask counsel to insert appropriate details’. I allow the amendment with a deliberate show of ill grace; only to move to count two and find something that doesn’t feel quite right in the particulars of the offence. The particulars of offence in count two allege that Mr Farmer: ‘Dishonestly received a solar gorilla, knowing or believing the same to be stolen goods’. My court clerk, Carol, duly puts count two to Mr Farmer, who looks a bit bemused, but as Piers has advised, duly proffers a plea of guilty.

‘Are we sure that’s correct, Miss Phipson?’ I ask.

‘Your Honour?’

‘Has anyone been in touch with the London Zoo?’ Both counsel are staring at me. ‘To ask whether they have a record of such a creature going missing,’ I explain. ‘It sounds like the kind of thing they would notice, don’t you think?’

They both look at count two again, and Emily mutters something under her breath. Piers is also looking a bit embarrassed – as he should. Emily turns behind her to consult the CPS representative and the officer in the case, DC Martindale, and after some whispered discussion – and, ironically, some shuffling of old-fashioned paper – it emerges that the item dishonestly received by Mr Farmer was in fact a solar-powered grill. I allow the amendment, and ask Carol to arraign the defendant on count two again. He pleads guilty again, this time more confidently.

And so it goes on. By the time I’ve released Gerry Farmer on bail pending preparation of a pre-sentence report, I’ve just about mastered the art of accessing case files and individual documents, and to my delight, I find and open the Laura Catesby file without any assistance whatsoever from Stella. She leaves, assuring me that she is only a phone call away if I need her. For the first time, I find myself alone in the Paperless Court.

‘May it please your Honour, members of the jury, my name is Susan Worthington and I appear to prosecute in this case. The defendant Laura Catesby, the lady sitting in the dock at the back of the court, is represented by my learned friend Mr Roderick Lofthouse.’

Susan appears regularly at Bermondsey, both for the prosecution and the defence, but I’ve always felt that prosecution is her forte. She is naturally quite tall and imposing, and when on the prosecution side, has the habit of drawing herself up to her full height and giving the court, defence counsel and defendant alike a particularly menacing stare through her dark brown tortoiseshell glasses. Sometimes she gives the jury the same treatment if she thinks their attention may be wandering a bit; but thus far this morning she has reserved the stare for Roderick.

That’s not going to put Roderick off his game – during his long career he has been faced with many menacing stares, including a fair number from me. He will react as he always does, smiling blandly and giving every appearance of ignoring it: nothing new there. What’s more interesting about Roderick in this case is that he isn’t prosecuting. For some years now he has spent most of his time trying to get convictions rather than prevent them, and I’m curious. Glancing through the file, I see that my first instinct is correct: Mrs Catesby is not in receipt of legal aid. Roderick will have been retained privately, and I’m sure his clerk will have negotiated a very decent fee for her defence. Mrs Catesby comes from monied respectability – it’s one of the more puzzling aspects of the case – and I’m sure the prospect of a prison sentence had her solicitors scrambling to retain the most senior member of the Bermondsey Bar before the CPS could snatch him from them. No wonder Roderick is looking so pleased with himself. That’s the kind of attention to warm the cockles of any barrister’s heart.

‘Members of the jury, I’m going to ask the usher to hand out copies of the indictment, which you heard the clerk read to you a few minutes ago.’

Dawn, our usher, also the court’s first aid person and expert on home remedies and today wearing a bright orange dress under her gown, flits around the courtroom with truly astonishing speed. Despite her lack of height, she moves like a human dynamo; in a matter of a few seconds, she has furnished the jury with copies of the indictment, one between two, casually retrieving and restoring a pen one of them had dropped over the front of the jury box along the way.

‘If you look at the indictment with me, you will see that Laura Catesby is charged with five counts of theft and a sixth count alleging attempted theft. These counts represent what the prosecution say is a pattern of dishonest conduct over a long period of time. You will hear that over a period of about four years, Mrs Catesby stole money from a woman called Muriel Jones. Mrs Jones, members of the jury, is an elderly lady, a widow now almost ninety-three years of age. You will hear that Mrs Catesby met Mrs Jones at the church they both attend, the church of St Mortimer-in-the-Fields, here in Bermondsey.

‘Although Mrs Jones is in remarkably good health for her age, like anyone aged eighty-eight, as she was when they first met, she was glad to accept offers of help from friends, doing things like shopping and cleaning, which had become harder for her over the years. Mrs Jones’s own family live far from London; she has one son in Yorkshire, and the other living abroad, in South Africa. She didn’t see much of them, and her friends replaced them in her life to a large extent. She numbered Mrs Catesby among her friends. But the prosecution say that, far from being a true friend, Mrs Catesby made a pretence of befriending Mrs Jones, so that she could win her trust and pave the way for a campaign of theft which, over a four-year period, enabled her to steal a total of over ten thousand pounds. Mrs Jones was not a rich woman, members of the jury, but her husband, Henry, had left her reasonably well provided for after his death. Sadly, a large chunk of that provision is now gone, stolen by Mrs Catesby.

‘How, you may ask, was Mrs Catesby able to steal so much before what she had done came to light? Members of the jury, it was, as I said, a question of building trust. She started by insinuating herself into Mrs Jones’s life, volunteering to run errands for her, doing some shopping, picking up cleaning, washing up, making her a sandwich and a cup of soup at lunchtime, and so on. At first, you will hear, Mrs Catesby paid for any shopping out of her own money, presented Mrs Jones with the receipts, and was then reimbursed in cash. But as time went by she persuaded Mrs Jones that it would be easier if Mrs Jones trusted her with her debit card when she went out shopping. Seeing no reason to doubt this woman she knew from her church, Mrs Jones did as Mrs Catesby suggested.’

I see some members of the jury looking in the direction of the dock, and I follow their eyes. Laura Catesby is sitting next to the dock officer with a faraway expression that suggests that the proceedings are boring her. She is dressed in a frilly purple blouse with a black skirt, and she’s flaunting a string of pearls around her neck, not to mention a gold watch and two or three impressively sized rings. Now in my experience, regardless of what you’re charged with, it’s probably not a great idea to appear in front of a Bermondsey jury looking like that; but in a case where you’re charged with stealing more than ten thousand pounds from an elderly widow it seems almost reckless. I’m surprised that Roderick or her solicitor didn’t send her straight back home to change. Perhaps they tried. She doesn’t look like a woman who likes being told what to do. A middle-aged man in a grey suit and a red tie is trying not to look too conspicuous in the public gallery – the husband, I deduce, from the occasional furtive exchange of glances between public gallery and dock. Appearances can be deceptive, of course, but he strikes me as a man who spends more time following orders than giving them.

‘Count one,’ Susan continues, ‘is a count covering the whole four-year period. It deals with all the known occasions on which Mrs Catesby used Mrs Jones’s debit card improperly when she went shopping. There are many examples of Mrs Catesby taking more than the cost of the items she bought and gave to Mrs Jones. Her main method of stealing money was to ask for cash back in the amount of twenty-five or fifty pounds, which she then kept for herself. On other occasions she purchased items for herself and used Mrs Jones’s money to pay for them. The total amount she obtained in this way over that long period of time, the prosecution say, is in the region of eight thousand pounds.

‘Counts two to five relate to specific occasions on which Mrs Catesby stole money from Mrs Jones by inventing stories involving her two daughters. Members of the jury, in many ways this is the most distressing and puzzling aspect of the case. Mrs Catesby didn’t need the money she stole. She had a good job as a business manager in a large accountancy firm. Her husband is a fund manager in the City. She has two daughters, Sophie, now aged sixteen, and Emma, now aged thirteen. You will hear, members of the jury, that Mrs Catesby told Mrs Jones a number of blatant lies involving her two daughters. Count two deals with an occasion on which she told Mrs Jones that Emma was seriously ill and needed money for private surgery. She told Mrs Jones that it was just a loan, that it was necessary only because of a temporary financial difficulty, and that she would repay the money as soon as she could. Mrs Jones told Mrs Catesby to take what she needed out of her savings account, and gave her the authorisation to do so. On that occasion, Mrs Catesby took one thousand pounds. That sum was never repaid. Members of the jury, Emma has never needed surgery, and, as far as the prosecution is aware, has never been seriously ill.

‘Counts three, four and five deal with similar requests for money, also dressed up as loans, and also involving thefts from Mrs Jones’s savings account. In each of these cases, Mrs Catesby told Mrs Jones that because of temporary financial difficulties she was unable to pay school fees for Emma or Sophie at a well-known Christian school for girls in Surrey. She told Mrs Jones that she might have to take the girls out of that school and send them to an ordinary London comprehensive where, Mrs Catesby insisted, they were likely to encounter drugs and immorality. On hearing this, Mrs Jones gave Mrs Catesby the money she asked for: five hundred pounds on each of the occasions dealt with in these three counts. Members of the jury, neither Emma nor Sophie has ever been educated privately. Both girls attend a state comprehensive school in South London.

‘The thefts came to light because, when the so-called loans were not repaid, Mrs Jones started to worry, and became suspicious. She contacted Ronald, her son who lives in Yorkshire. Ronald will give evidence, members of the jury, and he will tell you that when his mother voiced these concerns, he came to see her, took charge of her bank statements, and immediately saw the scale of the money that was missing. Rather ingeniously, you may think, having a certain technical expertise as an engineer, he also installed a hidden camera and voice-operated recorder in Mrs Jones’s kitchen, where Mrs Jones and Mrs Catesby talked when Mrs Catesby visited. He then arranged for Mrs Catesby to visit Mrs Jones in the kitchen while he concealed himself in one of the bedrooms. As luck would have it, the camera caught Mrs Catesby rifling though Mrs Jones’s purse while she was at the stove making coffee, and on his monitor in the bedroom Ronald was able to watch her do it in real time. Ronald left the cover of the bedroom, confronted Mrs Catesby, and saw that she was holding fifty pounds in cash. Members of the jury, that is count six, the charge of attempted theft. Ronald immediately called the police, and detained Mrs Catesby until they arrived.’

Susan scans her notes for a few moments.

‘Members of the jury, I needn’t take up your time going through the police investigation now. You will hear all about it from the officers. To put it shortly, they carried out a thorough examination of Mrs Jones’s bank accounts. They would have liked to go through the receipts Mrs Catesby gave her when she returned from shopping, but the receipts were not in Mrs Jones’s flat. The police did find two or three receipts in Mrs Catesby’s house when they searched it, but that was all. The prosecution say that she made sure to remove them from Mrs Jones’s flat when she left, so as to cover her tracks. It was to be a paperless crime. But fortunately, DC Benson, the police forensic accountant, was able to reconstruct the amounts from the records of two stores where most of the shopping was done. The police also applied to a judge to order the disclosure of the Catesby family’s bank accounts. An examination of those accounts revealed no payments either for private surgery or for private school fees.

‘Mrs Catesby was arrested and interviewed under caution at the police station in the presence of her solicitor. She told the police that Mrs Jones had given her permission to take “a little something for herself” whenever she did the shopping. She also claimed that the payments in counts two to five were outright gifts from Mrs Jones to Emma and Sophie, gifts made for no better reason than that she liked the girls and wanted to help them. She denied any mention of loans for surgery or school fees. Members of the jury, the prosecution say that her explanation is patently false and dishonest.

‘With your Honour’s leave,’ Susan concludes, ‘I will call the evidence.’ She turns to me. ‘Your Honour, Mrs Jones is here at court. She’s been waiting with one of our volunteers from the victims and witnesses unit. She’s in good health, but she has told us that she can’t sit in one place for too long. I’ve promised her that we will give her frequent breaks. Would your Honour rise for a few moments, so that we can bring her into court and make her comfortable?’

With any elderly or vulnerable witness, trials move rather more slowly than in other cases and of course, I’ve had Gerry Farmer and the Solar Gorilla to deal with this morning before I became free to start the trial. But it’s something you can’t avoid – you have to work on the witness’s schedule until her evidence is concluded.

‘Certainly, Miss Worthington,’ I reply. ‘Coffee break, members of the jury. Fifteen minutes.’

The jurors give me a cheerful nod, but one or two cast rather dark glances in the direction of the dock on the way out of court. I’m finding it hard to resist the temptation to do the same.

Muriel Jones looks small and frail, not quite invisible but hard to see clearly in the witness box. But she has no difficulty in making herself heard. She takes the oath in a strong, clear voice.

‘Mrs Jones,’ Susan begins, having elicited her name and age, ‘do you know the defendant, Laura Catesby?’

Mrs Jones directs a sad look towards the dock. ‘Yes, I do.’

‘Would you tell the jury how you first met Ms Catesby?’

‘It was at church.’

‘Is that St Mortimer’s church in Bermondsey?’

‘Yes, that’s right.’

‘How long have you been a member of the congregation at St Mortimer’s?’

Mrs Jones smiles thinly. ‘Oh, goodness, now you’re asking, aren’t you?’

Susan returns the smile. ‘I don’t mean exactly. Roughly how long?’

‘Well, I’ve been going to St Mortimer’s all my life. My parents started taking me there when I was just a little girl; I went to Sunday school, I had my first communion, and I was confirmed there, and I’ve been going ever since.’

‘Thank you, Mrs Jones. Do you remember when you first met Mrs Catesby?’

At which point, for the first time, Mrs Jones seems hesitant. Susan knows that some patience will probably be required this morning. She gives her a moment, and doesn’t press her immediately.

She shakes her head. ‘I couldn’t tell you exactly.’

‘All right, just tell us as far as you remember. We don’t need an exact date.’ Still, the witness hesitates. Susan glances up at me. ‘Would it help you to see your witness statement?’

‘Yes. I think it would.’

Witnesses are always allowed to read their witness statements before giving evidence – after all, evidence is supposed to be a test of accuracy, not memory. But if a witness is having trouble remembering the court may permit her to refresh her memory even while giving evidence, and today judges almost always allow it if asked. Roderick could make a bit of a song and dance about it, but we’re dealing with a witness in her nineties, and he knows that I’m not about to keep her statement from her if she needs it. Wisely, he decides to keep his powder dry. In any case, an early hint of memory problems does his case no harm.

‘No objection, your Honour,’ he replies. Dawn quickly takes the statement from Susan and gives it to the witness. Mrs Jones takes her time reading through it.

‘She and her husband and her two girls used to come to church most Sundays,’ she replies eventually, ‘so I can’t give you an exact date, but it must have been at least four or five years ago. Her husband was one of the churchwardens for a while.’

‘And how did you come to talk to Mrs Catesby?

Another look down at the statement. ‘It was when the vicar gave a sermon one Sunday about helping one another.’ She pauses, and glances up at me. ‘That was the former vicar,’ she adds cautiously, ‘Mr Canning. He had to leave because of a… well… a scandal, so he’s not with us any more. We’ve got a lady vicar now, who’s very nice.’

The jury snigger, and I’m sure they’re curious about the details, as we all are when a minister is involved in a scandal. The Reverend Mr Canning had developed the habit of visiting a dominatrix called Madam Rosita and paying her fees from church funds, in respect of which he was convicted of theft in my court, resulting in a premature end to his clerical career. But that’s not on the agenda today.

‘It was Mr Canning who gave the sermon. And I remember I was standing outside church after the service, and Mrs Catesby was standing there with her husband and the girls, and she asked if she could give me a lift home. So I said yes, that would be very kind, and so they gave me a lift home; and from then on they started taking me to and from church almost every Sunday.’

‘Yes. Did Mrs Catesby offer to help you in any other ways?’

Mrs Jones nods. ‘Yes, after they’d been giving me a lift for some time, she asked if she could do some shopping for me. She told me she worked for a company that had an office not far from my block of flats, so she could run some errands for me during her lunch hour or after work. She said it was no problem.’

‘Did you accept that offer?’

‘Yes, I did. Well, I’m not as strong as I was, you know. I’ve got my shopping cart on wheels and Tesco is only a few minutes’ walk. I’ve been going there for years, but as you get older, you know…’ her voice trails away.

‘Yes, of course,’ Susan says. ‘Sadly, Mrs Jones, you’re a widow, aren’t you?’

‘Yes. My Henry’s been dead ten years and more now. I’ve got the two boys, of course, but they’re too far away.’

‘Your sons?’

‘Yes. Ronnie lives up in Yorkshire, near Scarborough, so he does come down to see me now and then. But Jamie’s in Durban – he works for a big international engineering company – so I’m lucky if I see him once a year. He’s got his own family out there in South Africa.’

‘So they can’t help on a regular basis?’

‘No.’

Susan pauses. ‘Mrs Jones, tell the jury how it worked, Mrs Catesby doing the shopping for you. How did you arrange the money and so on?’

She consults her witness statement again.

‘Well, I would make a list of what I wanted. I would give her the list, whenever she came, at lunchtime or after work, or whenever, and she would go and get it for me. She would bring me the receipt, and I would give her the money in cash. I still had to go out myself sometimes, of course. She wasn’t getting everything for me. I would still go to Tesco and the bank, and so on, at least once a week. But she was a big help. I must admit that. She was very helpful.’

‘Yes, I’m sure. Did there come a time when Mrs Catesby suggested a simpler method of dealing with the money?’

‘Yes.’

‘What was that? Explain to the jury what she suggested, please.’

Back to the witness statement for some seconds.

‘She said it would be easier if I just gave her my debit card when she went out shopping for me. I must admit, there were times when I didn’t have enough cash to pay her for the shopping, if I hadn’t got out to the bank, and then I would have to ask her to wait until the next time. It was only a couple of times, but of course I felt bad about it because she was doing me a favour, so at the time, what she suggested seemed like a good idea.’

‘And did you agree to that arrangement?’

‘Yes. I would give her the debit card. I’d told her the code, you know, the four numbers, so she could use it.’

‘Did she still bring the receipts back for you?’

‘Yes, always.’

‘Did you look at them at the time?’

Mrs Jones shakes her head sadly. ‘At first, I did, you know, when I was giving her the cash. But as time went by, when we’d been doing it all regularly for a while, I suppose I didn’t think I needed to. It all seemed to be going well, and I’d met her at church, you know, and I never thought…’ again, her voice trails away.

‘No, of course. Do you know what happened to the receipts she gave you?’

‘Not really. When the police asked about them I didn’t have them, so I expect she walked off with them.’

Roderick is rising to his feet. Susan holds up a hand.

‘But you don’t know? You didn’t actually see her taking receipts from your flat?’

‘I didn’t see her doing it.’

‘All right. Were you checking your bank accounts regularly?’

‘No,’ the witness replies quietly, embarrassed. ‘Not like I should. I have, what d’you call it, that electronic banking. They don’t send me the bank statements any more, do they? I have to go on the computer, or use that little plastic thing. I don’t… I mean, the manager explained to me how to do it, but I’m not really comfortable with it, and when I try to do it, I seem to make mistakes and it doesn’t seem to work properly.’

Paperless, I think to myself, without Stella to help her.

‘I understand,’ Susan says, but I doubt she does. Susan is one of the new generation of computer-savvy judges-in-waiting, who’s been using such technology all her life and probably can’t imagine the world without it. ‘Did Mrs Catesby ever help you in other ways, in addition to doing some shopping for you?’

‘She would collect my cleaning once in a while, and to be fair to her, she was always ready to tidy up a bit for me when she came round, and she would sometimes make me a sandwich and some soup for lunch. As I say, she was very helpful.’

‘Let me turn to something different,’ Susan says. ‘As well as getting to know Mrs Catesby herself, did you come to know her family at all?’

‘I never really got to know her husband, Larry,’ Mrs Jones replies after some thought. ‘He never came round to the flat. But Laura sometimes brought the girls if they weren’t at school, so I did talk to them from time to time. Very nice girls they are, too. They were always very polite and they seemed very well brought up.’

‘Did Mrs Catesby ever mention money in connection specifically with the girls?’

‘Several times,’ Mrs Jones replies.

‘When was the first time, do you remember?’

She thinks for some time, turning over one or two pages of her statement. ‘It must be about three years ago now, at least. She came to do some shopping one lunchtime, and she seemed very upset, teary and so forth.’

‘Did she tell you why?’

‘Yes. She told me that the younger girl, Emma, had some serious medical condition.’

‘Did she tell you what that condition was?’

‘Not as far as I remember. I assumed it was probably cancer.’

‘Why did you assume that? Did she say anything like that?’

‘No, but that’s always the way, isn’t it? No one wants to say the word “cancer”, do they? I mean, if someone has a heart attack or a stroke, they will tell you. But it’s like bad luck if you actually say “cancer”. So they just say that someone’s seriously ill. I suppose I just assumed it.’

‘And how did the subject of money come up?’

She thinks for some time. ‘As far as I remember, Laura said they couldn’t get Emma in for surgery on the NHS because of the waiting times. They thought it was dangerous to delay it, so they wanted to go private, but they didn’t have the money to hand.’

‘But, as I understand it,’ Susan interjects, ‘both Mr and Mrs Catesby had well-paying jobs, didn’t they?’

‘As far as I knew, yes.’

‘So, why was Mrs Catesby talking to you about money?’

‘It was something to do with their investments. If she told me, I can’t remember the details. But it was something to do with, they’d made some expensive investments and they had to rebuild their savings. She said it would only be a couple of months because they were due to get dividends from their investments, but they were a bit strapped for cash until then, and could I loan them some money to tide them over and make sure that Emma could have her operation?’

‘And did you?’

‘Yes, I loaned her a thousand pounds, which is what she said she needed.’

‘How did you arrange to make that money available to her?’

‘I arranged with the bank to take it out of my savings account, and I gave Laura an authorisation to collect it from the bank.’

‘Has Mrs Catesby ever repaid that loan?’

A look towards the dock. ‘No. She has not.’ Following her eyes, I note that Laura Catesby is still looking faintly bored.

‘Is there any question in your mind that it was a loan? Might it have been that you were making a gift of that thousand pounds to Mrs Catesby?’

‘What, a thousand pounds? No. It was a loan. I’m not made of money.’

‘Did Mrs Catesby ever follow up with you, tell you whether Emma had the surgery, how it went, and so on?’

‘She did thank me, and she told me it had been a success, and Emma was fine. But the odd thing was, I didn’t see Emma at church for a long time, and she never thanked me personally, which I thought was very strange, because she was always such a nice, polite girl.’

‘Before you made that loan to Mrs Catesby, how much money did you have in your savings account?’

‘It was something like twenty thousand pounds that my Henry had left me. That was what I had – in addition to my pension, of course. And I do own my flat that I still live in, where I used to live with Henry before he died. But I didn’t have any other money.’

‘Was that the only occasion when Mrs Catesby raised the subject of money in connection with her daughters?’

‘No.’ She’s turning over pages in her statement again.

‘What other occasions were there?’

‘There were times when she told me she couldn’t afford to pay their school fees.’

‘Did she tell you where they were at school?’

‘She said it was a Christian school for girls, St Somebody’s in Surrey…’

‘St Cecilia’s?’ Susan asks.

‘Something like that.’ She looks down at her statement. ‘Yes: St Cecilia’s, in Surrey. She said it was quite an expensive school, but she and Larry were keen on it because they didn’t want the girls going to the comprehensive, because there was a drug problem and the discipline wasn’t what it should be. She was afraid they would be exposed to bad influences: that’s what she said.’

‘Over what period of time was she complaining about not being able to afford the fees?’

‘Over the last two, two and a half years or thereabouts.’

‘And again, did Mrs Catesby explain why she and her husband couldn’t afford the fees?’

‘It was due to their investments, and the dividends hadn’t been as much as they’d hoped. And then Laura’s mother had been very ill, she said, and she’d had to take care of her. So they still didn’t have the money. But she was still insisting that it was just a temporary loan, and she would be able to repay me before long.’ She looks very sad. ‘But she didn’t.’

‘How much did you loan to Mrs Catesby for school fees?’

‘Five hundred each time. She asked me three times.’

‘So, fifteen hundred pounds in total?’

‘Yes.’

‘Plus one thousand for the surgery?’

‘Yes.’

‘That makes two thousand five hundred pounds, doesn’t it? And after looking at your bank accounts and discussing them with your son and with DC Benson, are you now aware that another eight thousand or so…’

‘I’m sorry, your Honour,’ Roderick intervenes, rising ponderously to his feet, as is his way. His rather-too-light single-breasted jacket has been too tight for him for some time now, but as the acknowledged doyen of the Bermondsey Bar, he is allowed some leeway. ‘I must object to that. This witness has no personal knowledge of that amount, or indeed of what happened to it.’

Roderick is right, technically. I’m not sure there’s much point in his objection in the long run. Susan shouldn’t have any trouble proving it through her police witness and the son, Ronald; but if Roderick really insists, that’s what she’ll have to do. But I don’t think that’s Roderick’s real agenda. I’m pretty sure he’s more interested in taking another early pot shot at Mrs Jones’s memory and her credibility as a witness about what happened to her money. Either way, he’s made a good point. I glance at Susan and she nods.

‘I’ll deal with that later in another way,’ she replies. ‘So far, then, Mrs Jones, we have a total of two thousand five hundred pounds, is that right?’

‘Yes.’

‘Any of it repaid?’

‘Not a penny.’

Susan pauses for some time. ‘Mrs Jones, the jury may want to know why you parted with so much money to someone you didn’t know all that well, why you trusted Mrs Catesby enough to loan her so much money? What do you say about that?’

I know how Muriel Jones is going to answer that before she opens her mouth, and it’s what’s made me into such an Antonio today.

‘I feel so stupid,’ she replies quietly. ‘I feel like a complete fool. I can imagine what Henry would have to say about it all.’ She bows her head for some seconds before continuing. ‘All I can say is that I met the family in my church, they seemed very respectable, they both had good jobs, they had two well brought up children. They were very nice to me, or so I thought, and I fell for it, hook, line and sinker. I’m sure they’ve been laughing at me, thinking I’m a real mug. It just breaks my heart.’

‘I think there came a time,’ Susan continues after a suitable pause, ‘when you contacted your son Ronald and told him that you were worried about Mrs Catesby. How did that come about?’

‘It was after I’d loaned her so much money, and she hadn’t repaid a penny,’ Mrs Jones replies. ‘I just started to get this feeling that something was wrong. It was always, she needed more time, not long, just a few weeks, and everything would be all right. But it never was. So I went to my vicar and I told her in confidence what was going on, and she advised me to ask someone I knew I could trust to look into it. So I asked Ronnie to come down and tell me what he thought. He has a good head on his shoulders. I just needed to know what was going on.’

‘And did Ronnie come down to London to see you?’

‘Yes.’

‘What did he do?’

‘He made an appointment to see my bank manager, and got copies of my bank statements going back a few years, my savings account and my ordinary account, and we sat down together and went through them, and he told me…’

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.’