Fit Up

by Faith Clifford

  A few days later her reply came. She did not know what document the SAG/1 was, astonishing given that this was part of the information pack circulated to police forces around the UK. The answer to our second question was short and to the point, ‘because DC Hopkins told me’. ‘Do you believe everything you are told?’ we wanted to ask.

  We would have to investigate further about SAG/1 but in the meantime we were gathering other information and we sent a further letter to Grundy to request a copy of the tape of the 21 June interview with WPC Swain as we had to consider whether we should put this incident into the claim as well. Grundy’s response was obstructive: we would not be receiving a copy and that the claim for harassment would be denied. We were hitting a bit of a brick wall and it was obvious that Hertfordshire Constabulary were somewhat reluctant to be transparent.

  Chapter 22

  THE FEAR WITHIN

  We had so much paperwork from the criminal case and our civil claim against Hertfordshire Constabulary that we needed to put it all in some sort of order, rather than just dating it. Jeremy had been reading the Green law books which gave examples of how to lay out an ‘Index to Brief’ with various headings and place papers within relevant sections. This would make it easier for us when having to revert to various documents when asked for disclosure and in court. However, we didn’t put in everything, just the papers that we thought were relevant to the structure of our case. What we should have done was to reference everything we had, but we were not to know this at the time. I think we had done quite well to come this far and by the time we had finished it was a thick lever-arch file in fourteen sections:

  Pleadings

  Claimant’s Evidence

  Police Documents – General

  Police Documents – Property

  Police Documents – Experts

  Credit Cards

  Expert Evidence – Duncan Campbell

  Operation Ore

  Correspondence – Solicitors/Police

  Correspondence with IPCC

  DVDoctor Material

  Terms of Agreement – Gerard/Clifford

  Lloyd Gerard Emails to DVDoctor.net

  Audio material

  We called it ‘the Bible’ and hoped it would be our very own ‘good book’.

  Despite what was going on in my private life, I felt I had been coping rather well. Christmas was fast approaching and one of the tasks under my Office Services hat was to put up decorations in the reception and dining areas and it fell to me to purchase them. I was aiming to get the trees in place by 1 December as in my mind that is really when the Christmas countdown begins.

  I had a quick lunch at midday and went back to my desk to pick up my bag and car keys. However, I found myself sitting down, looking at the clock and thinking it would be very busy out there at the moment and to leave going out until 2 p.m. I don’t know why but my stomach did a little lurch and a shiver went down my spine. Perhaps I was sickening for something.

  Two o’clock came and went. I started to fixate on the clock and said to myself I would go out at 3 p.m. but then I had a cup of tea and thought ‘just after this cup’. By this time it was 4 p.m. and I started to map out the short journey to Tesco but what was ridiculous is that, in my head, it was all planned out in minute detail. What lane should I be in when I got to the roundabout, would someone let me in at that tricky junction? I could always go past and come back on myself. Then it was, where should I park? Now that was stupid, the car park was enormous and the image of it came to my mind. It filled me with terror! I looked out of the window. It was now dark outside and I knew that I could not face going there today, I would go in the morning when it was light. I felt reassured by my decision, all the while trying to ignore the pounding of my heart and the uncomfortable pulse in my neck. What was wrong with me?

  I started to calm down and finalise my work for the day before leaving. Then I felt fine and laughed at myself for being so stupid. I would go to the store first thing in the morning before going to the office.

  However, the next morning I felt I couldn’t be bothered and decided to go out around 10 a.m. after dealing with the first issues of the day. I was still at my desk at 2 p.m. staring out at the car park and going through the journey route to Tesco. Perhaps I should go to ASDA, that was nearby, and started to go through the steps of that journey finishing with the formidable car park. The feeling of terror was back, my chest felt like I had a stone slab across it as I tried to take control of my breathing. Then I thought I should take someone with me but Ray was out of the office and how stupid did it sound asking if someone would come to the shops with me? I was a grown woman, for goodness sake, and I was mindful that the next day was 1 December and people were expecting to see the Christmas trees up.

  Finally, I took courage and made my way down to my car in the underground car park. I was shivering but it was not a particularly cold day for this time of year and it wasn’t until I was inserting the key into the ignition I realised that I was trembling quite badly. Taking slow deep breaths I set off and made my way quite easily to Tesco and parked up. ‘Now that was OK, you’ve got here,’ I thought and berated myself for my weakness.

  If the car park seemed relatively quiet and calm, the inside of the store was not. The world and his wife were here and there was so much noise from the background Christmas music, children shouting and screaming and the annoying beeps of a thousand products going through the tills. I was not very familiar with this shop and had to look for signage to direct me to the Christmas decorations. There was a whole section displaying just fairy lights and as I scanned the boxed products on offer I felt an overwhelming urge to cry. As I looked at the top shelf I could feel the fat tears build up on my lower lid and blinked rapidly to get rid of them. In my concentrating on this the palpitations were back and this time my chest hurt. I was aware that the beeping from the tills was now so loud it filled my ears to the detriment of anything else and my vision was clouding. It had always been a fear of mine to faint in a public place and in my terror I grabbed two boxes of fairy lights, put them in my basket and headed for the first till nearest the exit doors. Seeing the daylight outside steadied me somewhat and I managed to make my purchases. I walked quickly to the car and got in leaning back against the head rest and gripping the steering wheel. In calming down I realised that I had a problem and was going through experiences that I had never had before which could only be attributed to the stress of the last couple of years. I did not tell Jeremy about the incident as I did not want to worry him plus I was not impressed with myself that I was not as strong as I thought I should be.

  The next day I put up the Christmas trees and found that the fairy lights I had bought were far too short with heavy, ugly baubles covered in rough glitter that flaked onto the floor. The receptionist looked at me and I knew she was thinking, ‘These are not very good.’ She was right. I would have to get some more but I would get Jeremy to go with me at the weekend, which was only a couple of days away.

  That following Saturday, the first one of December, we were at Brent Cross Shopping Centre. As I was with Jeremy I had not given a thought as to what happened two days previously. We had set off early and on arrival we went our separate ways. Jeremy said he would like to shop around on his own for a little while and I took the hint that he was looking at a gift for me and that we would meet up in half an hour. It was only about fifteen minutes off my rendezvous with Jeremy when I started to feel palpitations. Feeling a modicum of control because I had my mobile I called him and waited to hear his voice. There was silence at the other end and it appeared that I had not connected so I dialled again this time getting his voicemail message. Suddenly I remembered that Brent Cross had a terrible reception area for mobiles. No worries, I thought, keep calm and find a pay phone. It then occurred to me that I had never seen any phones at Brent Cross and with each increasing obstacle I could feel the fear rise. I struggled again to think where I had seen a map of the shopping centre and realised it wa
s back on the first floor near the escalators. Getting my bearings with the ‘You are here’ sign and proximity to the public phones it seemed quite a trek in my state but I had to get there. If I passed out now how would Jeremy find me? I needed to get a grip. As I made my way I thought I would try my mobile again and see what happens, at least it would give me something to focus on. ‘Hi, darling, what’s up?’ I almost cried with relief when I heard his voice. ‘I don’t feel good, please come for me.’

  Jeremy sat down, enveloping me in his arms and looking concerned at my pale face. I told him what had happened, together with my experience at Tesco and he said it must be the stress of what we were going through but hopefully this would pass. Jokingly he said that he was a lucky man in that his wife couldn’t cope with going to the shops. We left Brent Cross, I’d had enough for that day. It would be many months before I could come to terms with going to large shopping centres again, and I realised that my symptoms were panic attacks.

  Over the next couple of weeks, the Gerard case was still going through its letter-exchanging phase between the solicitors, which was becoming tiresome. Jeremy suggested we put our toe in the water and asked our solicitor to put in a ‘Part 36 offer’ to the Gerards of £40,000 plus costs.

  A Part 36 offer is a formal offer of settlement typically for a fixed sum of money in compensation claims which stays open for twenty-one days. It is made in accordance with Part 36 of the Civil Procedure Rules 1998, hence its name.

  This was immediately rejected and a letter from Fiona Campbell on 20 December 2005 set out that they needed more time due to the Christmas holidays coming up, the complications of the administration of Gerard’s estate and the need to assess the viability of the claim. She would, she said, come back to us on certain points by 10 January 2006.

  The extension of time they requested also related to the issue of whether the court had jurisdiction to hear a claim of defamation and/or malicious falsehood against a deceased person’s estate. She had thrown in a bit of Latin in italics but the basis of it was that no action may be commenced against the estate of a deceased’s defamer and any action that had previously commenced abates upon the defendant’s death. In our case, our claim was not made until after Gerard had died, thus making our claim invalid.

  If this was the case, surely Mark would have seen this? we thought. He was, after all, the one who had gone through his law books to tell us that there was indeed a case to answer.

  She finished off her letter with a couple of threats, one of which was that she considered that we had wrongly issued proceedings and that the costs incurred by the Gerards would be sought from us. It all appeared to be much more complicated than we had thought, but we put our trust in our counsel’s advice and that Mark Afeeva had not called it wrong.

  Chapter 23

  JANUARY–JUNE 2006

  Barely had the first week of January passed when Fiona Campbell made contact with our solicitor requesting disclosure of documents that were referred to in Jeremy’s Particulars of Claim. She had put the word ‘allegedly’ in front of each point, namely the publications of the defamatory and maliciously false emails, the consultancy agreement between Gerard and Jeremy, emails to Bob Crabtree, the material on the Tiny computer from the criminal case, the witness statement made by Gerard in the criminal case and the recordings of the calls. These items were duly sent to her and the Gerards to consider and by the end of January she was asking for an extension of time until 8 February for the service of their defence.

  However, a further letter from Ms Campbell indicated that she anticipated applying to stay the proceedings, or at least some substantial parts of Jeremy’s claim, and that it would be sensible for the parties to consent to a further extension of time to enable the issues to be resolved. We agreed to this but a week later she wrote to say that they were seeking an application to strike out parts of the claim relating to harassment, saying that we had come nowhere close to identifying an arguable case. Also, she threatened a further application to stay the proceedings generally as an abuse of process.

  The letters were relentless and ferocious in their content but our solicitor and barrister were not bothered by it and they never rose to the bait. Their responses were always courteous and informative. It was unfamiliar territory for us as it was not in our nature to behave in this way. If we had been defending ourselves I don’t think we would have sustained the onslaught. That is why we had hired the professionals, albeit at a cost.

  A week or so later Jeremy received an email from Bob Crabtree, who informed us that Ms Campbell had contacted him and had asked for his cooperation. Bob, to our relief, had declined her offer. We thought that was a cheek as Bob was our witness but we later found out that there is no ownership when it comes to witnesses and either party is free to contact them. Whether they are prepared to assist voluntarily is a separate matter and Bob would have to deal with matters as he deemed appropriate. Obviously, for Jeremy, Bob deemed it appropriate not to assist her in any way whatsoever. In fact, he told her that he was very hostile when speaking about Gerard and that ‘very few mourned his passing’. He said he also knew that Jeremy was suing Gerard despite his death and declined to be interviewed or to disclose any information because he didn’t want to waste time on this unless he was made to. The only person fighting for Gerard’s miserable reputation was Ms Campbell and she was only doing it because she was being paid large sums by his family.

  Our solicitor also received a letter, again impressing upon Jeremy that he desist from claiming harassment, stating:

  …if we do not have your client’s confirmation that the claim of harassment has been discontinued within 14 days then we shall be constrained to apply to the court for it to be struck out. We trust that the costs of such application can be avoided by your client discontinuing forthwith.

  Our solicitor responded, ‘We note what you say. While we disagree with your analysis, nothing can be achieved with an argument over it other than an unnecessary points scoring exercise.’ He then went on to ask Ms Campbell why Jeremy’s claim was liable to be struck out to enable them to consider the Gerards’ position.

  Eleven days later Ms Campbell replied: ‘We do not propose to engage further in relation to our client’s invitation that your client forthwith discontinues the harassment claim. It discloses no viable cause of action or at least any that has any reasonable prospects of success and is vulnerable therefore to be struck out.’

  It was like letter ping-pong, backwards and forwards, not really getting anywhere and frustratingly we were waiting for our barrister to return from his holiday to get his opinion on all this.

  On 9 March, Jeremy finally spoke to Mark, who said the harassment claim would remain and that it would be unlikely for Finers to succeed in getting this part of the claim struck out by way of an application at this early stage. He had already sought the opinion of another barrister who confirmed the same. As for the rest of the defence by Ms Campbell, Mark was not too worried and expected them to try to dish some dirt.

  In exchanges of information we noticed that Finers had estimated their costs to date to be £25,000 against ours of £10,000. Whereas we had estimated our overall costs would be between £20,000 and £30,000, theirs was an astronomical £80,000 to £100,000! Ms Campbell had clients with deep pockets. In the correspondence that followed she hinged on this aspect, stating: ‘Our client will hold him to this estimation as to such costs that Mr Clifford anticipates are likely to be incurred.’ This meant that should the Gerards lose they would only pay a maximum of £30,000 to our costs. She also pointed out that the Gerards’ costs for defending this ‘spurious claim’ could amount to £100,000, which they would look to Jeremy to recover. Reading this, my heart sank. I prayed that Mark had got his facts right about Jeremy’s case, as to lose would finish us. Even if we called a halt to proceedings now and decided to cut and run, we would have to pay the Gerards £30,000. That was totally unacceptable. Gerard had already caused us too much damage and so filling
his family’s coffers even further was definitely not something we were prepared to consider.

  Ms Campbell suspected that Jeremy would not be able to pay the Gerards’ costs and was currently investigating his financial affairs. Now, not only was she harassing us about the harassment claim, she was now banging the drum about costs – and she never failed to bring up our shortcomings. I had been putting my trust in the information and opinions coming from Mark but I had to confess that I was starting to get frightened by the possible prospect of losing the case, given that it would result in us having to sell our home. Nothing was definite in law.

  By mid-May, the correspondence between our solicitors and the Gerards had increased both in volume and ferocity of words. Judging from her tone, Ms Campbell seemed to be as fed up with the time it was taking as we were and was pushing for an end to it all. She had made sure that a hearing would be arranged for the week commencing 22 May where she would be taking the opportunity to strike out our case there and then. At almost the same time we received a thick A4 lever-arch file of exhibits of her disclosure. This included a lot of papers which were of no concern and came as no surprise to me, such as our company details and accounts, which were public record anyway, the script of the Gerard conversations with Julie Cullivan, various letters of correspondence and statements from court. However, as I turned the pages further, what I found in one section horrified me. There in black and white were details from the Land Registry of our house, detailing ownership and, more poignant, of all the area of our land edged in red, seeming to emphasise that this was up for grabs. I read this as a sign from the Gerards: ‘Desist or we’ll take this.’