The Judge then turned his attention her husband and said:
“Mr Blagden, please stand. I am satisfied that despite the success of your business, you became a thoroughly greedy and dishonest man. You cheated your fellow partners and created false documents to cheat the Inland Revenue. You also allowed your employee Mr Hoare to commit multiple frauds through the company for a slice of his profit. When confronted by the police you lied pathetically and continued to lie for eight weeks to the Jury in your trial. You corrupted your wife into doing things which she otherwise would not have done and you did not think of the welfare of your son in the event of her being imprisoned. Mr Blagden, your sentence is four years on count six of the indictment, two years for count seven and eighteen months for count twelve. Those sentences will run concurrently. Sit down.” Mr Blagden sat and stared blindly in defeat.
The Judge began again:
“Mr Aiden Hoare please stand. Your offending falls into three identifiable categories. The first; as a creator of forged documents, the second; as the broker of fraudulent mortgages and the third; defrauding the Inland Revenue.” Hetty gasped as the judge handed down a total of twenty eight years imprisonment but heard the Judge say that the sentences would also run concurrently.
“Mr Newman please stand. I have taken into account the fact that you pleaded guilty to all ten Counts on the indictment. You are guilty of fraudulent mortgage and loan applications and of taking the identity of your absent brother to commit deception. In respect of the multi million euro Spanish mortgage, which you conspired to obtain in Mrs Champion’s name without ever considering how she could re-pay the loan….” Hetty listened to the Judge and totalled an overall sentence of twenty two years running concurrently. The Judge pulled a face of distain and said:
“You three gentlemen may now go down.”
“Mrs Henrietta Champion, you may remain seated. I have, as you know, a pre-sentence report from the probation officer who interviewed you. I have read the psychological report requested by your defence barrister and have seen your medical records but the fact that none of these have been relied on by your Counsel today diminishes the value I thought they actually had. Therefore it is now impossible for the Court to analyse your relationship with Mr Newman. I have seen fraudulent documents created by Mr Hoare which give a false representation of your financial affairs for the purpose of committing fraud and Mr Newman says it was you who signed for the multi-million euro mortgage and there is no proof that it was not. We know that you had given all of your wealth to Mr Newman and again we cannot speculate why you did that….” he gave a bemused look over the top of his spectacles, shook his head slightly and continued “…but by that time you had no visible means to pay that mortgage. I am aware that you took these matters to the Police and a much larger criminal case has been brought to light with your help and I take that into account. You have previously made a limited plea to part of Count 19 on the indictment which is a count I am reliably informed by the prosecution, should carry a minimum term of three years imprisonment. I accept that Mr Newman was the prime mover and motivator in that crime but by submitting your plea, you have admitted an involvement. I have considered suspending your sentence or how I might reduce it but I regret, sadly, that due to recent changes in sentencing guidelines, I cannot. Mrs Champion, the least sentence I can pass in your case is one of fifteen months imprisonment of which you will serve half of that period and will in addition be entitled to be released on licence. I am very sorry but I have no alternative, you must now go down.”
Everyone stared in disbelief at the Judge who grimaced in apology. He had a flushed face and a bad taste in his mouth but the black line of the law was to be followed and administered within very narrow parameters even if some casualties fell by the wayside in the overall interest of the justice system.
Henrietta was unable to stand and had a powerful dull ache in her chest which was so tight it felt corseted. The court guard at her side helped her out of the dock with her belongings. Behind the door was a small lift lobby with a bench bolted to the floor.
“Would you like to sit down for a while, dear?” The female guard gestured toward the bench. Hetty lowered herself gingerly and stared at her like a zombie. She continued; “Obviously a bit of a shock?” Hetty nodded but could not speak. “I didn’t think he was going to send you down, he let the other woman off. Maybe you don’t have youngsters? The others are locked away now you and you won’t see or hear them. Do you understand?” Hetty again nodded. The guard called the lift and escorted Henrietta to the bowels of the Court and unlocked several sturdy gates until they arrived at a reception.
Hetty’s handbag was taken from her grip and emptied onto the desk and itemised onto a receipt. The money from her purse was put into a clear cashier bag.
“Can I suggest that you give all valuables to your solicitor when they come down to you, especially things like those?” The reception officer pointed towards Henrietta’s diamond earrings. Henrietta nodded again in submission as the officer clearly knew best where she was going and what would be safe. The guard produced another little plastic bag and held it open as Henrietta was expected to remove all her jewellery and place it inside. She sobbed as her jewellery was itemised and logged for dispatch to her solicitor. The guard looked at her watch:
“Are you sure you want to keep that on you? You are allowed watches but that looks expensive.” Henrietta could not bear to be without a watch and resolutely hung on to it before she was taken to a cell to wait for her lawyers.
She heard distant rattling and her hair bristled until she heard the familiar voice of Kevin who was admitted to the cell with Sarah and accompanied by a male guard. They sat on hard chairs on opposite sides of the steel topped table. Hetty was surprised to see that Sarah had been crying and had mascara stains in long wavy lines down her white shirt and dark smudges noticeable upon her face. Kevin gave Hetty a kiss on the cheek which disturbed the guard who had no experience of how to respond, but shuffled into life and gestured that the Barrister should down. Kevin struggled to take a hold of his palpable emotions and dabbed his eyes with his monogrammed handkerchief and thrust his shoulders back for the sorrowful task:
“I’m sorry Hetty we didn’t think that could happen. We didn’t know that the rules had changed when we did the deal with the prosecution. We were stitched up by Farnell, the cunning bastard!”
Kevin explained that during the summing up Mr Farnell had referred the Judge to the recently changed guidelines for any act of fraud valued at over £100,000 and that Hetty was lucky because the Judge had paired down the required sentence as far as he possibly could without goading the prosecution into an appeal of his lenient judgement.
“I don’t know what to say to you but I want you to promise me that you will take care and be brave.” Fresh tears also rolled down the solicitors face as even she felt guilt and shame for what had been allowed to happen to her client. Hetty looked Kevin in the eye and wished she had never signed the stupid plea just so that the sordid abuse upon her would not be recanted in court for the press and the world to snigger about. It was too late now, even though the Judge had insinuated that Hetty’s barrister should have run with the defence of duress. Sarah asked if there was anything she could do and Hetty asked her to collect her handbag and jewellery and give it to Simon and asked her to cancel an appointment with her hairdresser on Friday, as she would not be able to attend.
The legal team got up and left their client in the cell with no notion of how to get her out of the mess they had compounded and went to face the formidable man who had originally asked them to defend her. Kevin loosened his clammy collar as they walked to meet him outside the main entrance. As soon as Simon saw Kevin approach he shouted loudly:
“You blithering bloody idiot, you were shanghaied!” He was so overcome with anger and emotion and didn’t know what he could say to Oscar or her mother.
Sarah stepped in front of Kevin and timidly handed over Hetty’s handbag
and valuables to Simon, which was as harrowing and as poignant as if she had handed him an urn of her ashes. Simon held the bag and felt a lump in his throat and engulfing grief as his chin trembled. The two lawyers apologised to him and admitted they were shocked by the verdict, particularly as the Judges summing up indicated that he was minded to hand out the suspended sentence which they had relied upon. The barrister apologised for advising Henrietta to accept the plea which the prosecution barrister had created. Simon wiped his eyes blew his nose on his handkerchief and asked about the possibility of an appeal as he wanted to believe that there was something that could be done. Kevin similarly blew his nose on his handkerchief and all three of them tried to rise to the mental challenge of what to do next. Kevin tried to explain that it was now technically impossible to appeal or retract a plea and he did not want to cause more suffering for his client.
While the little group conferred and consoled each other Terry Newman’s deflated family and girlfriend walked past them, as empty vessels of a hollow victory, as it was now a matter of public record that Mr Newman was indeed the arch criminal and confidence trickster that Henrietta had discovered and tried to warn everyone about. They looked over towards the group and in unspoken words they acknowledged that Terry had his comeuppance and Hetty had been the unsuspecting victim. They meandered off into the distance to find a private place to grieve and consider their own potentially vulnerable positions.
The Meat Waggon.
Henrietta was handcuffed and led by to the loading bay where she was dragged into a large blue G4 van and told to get into one of the cubicles. She stepped inside the white plastic space was told to sit down and stick her left arm out of the door whilst a security chain was hooked into place to protect the guard and only then was she unshackled and allowed to withdraw her arm. She stroked her wrist and shuffled her bottom on the cold plastic bench and tried to move her legs which proved difficult as her knees jarred against the facing plastic wall. To her right was a small window with toughened one way glass through which she could see the world outside, to her left was the door which had a six inch gap at both the top and bottom for ventilation. She heard the sound of three other women being loaded into the ‘meat waggon’ and the guard confirm that all were present and correct.
The van driver started the diesel engine and trundled out of the loading bay and into Southwark’s ring fenced yard as the huge metal gates were opened by the man inside the sentry box. The large van rolled away from the Court and towards Tower Bridge Road in the semi-darkness of early evening in springtime. Hetty cried as she looked out of the porthole and watched people walking or riding bikes in the street and she longed to be at liberty, not a human animal being transported to a prison zoo. She tried to remember when she had ever seen a prison van on the roads and realised that she had never even noticed one and like all the people who drove beside this van today, she too had never considered who might be inside and what turmoil and grief that person endured. She envied even the lowliest citizen in the street with whom she would never have previously considered trading places. At that point in time if she had been offered her term of imprisonment or lethal injection, it would have been a complete no-brainer, death would have been easier to bear. She gazed out at the world as the journey took her into the desolate parts of London that she had been fortunate enough to never have seen and thirty minutes later it slowed down at another set of twelve foot high electric gates which drew back for the G4 van to enter into Holloway Prison yard.
The security van bleeped its reverse into a loading bay and cut the engine. The loud and uncouth black prisoner shouted out;
“Miss, Miss, am I home? Are we ‘ere Miss? Get me out first Miss, I need a piss Miss.” Henrietta cringed and closed her eyes in an attempt to transport herself back in time to polite and civilized society. She felt a heavy wet blanket of despair fall upon her, as there seemed to be no way to go back in time and explain herself better to the authorities to whom she had turned for help and protection.
The female van guard shouted;
“Behave Lola, you have to wait, you know the routine by now!” Lola it seemed had many trips to-ing and fro-ing from court and prison. Keys rattled on the end of the guards’ chain and another guard stomped up the steps into the vehicle. The guards exchanged greetings and clip boarded notes. Lola continued to voice her urgent wish to be ‘home’ with her friends and go to the lavatory. Additional guards appeared from inside the prison and each of them escorted a handcuffed prisoner.
A female officer led Henrietta into what looked like a small third world airport and felt scrutinised by the numerous officers inside the reception area who watched as the women were admitted and Henrietta was taken to a tiny room off the main concourse, un-cuffed and told to wait. The officer propped the door wide open and Hetty sat on the hard bench, read the miss-spelled graffiti carved into the wood and cried as she wondered what sort of women she would meet. After a while Henrietta was given a clear plastic pot and taken to the toilet to provide a urine sample for a drugs test. She continued to sob and a member of staff asked ‘what was wrong’ but Hetty did not know how to answer such a ludicrous question.
After about an hour Henrietta was taken into a room where she was thoroughly frisked and told to sit on what looked like a large plastic arm chair called the Boss to be x-rayed for smuggled drugs. She was asked to remove her shoes and socks and whilst the shoes were x-rayed, a guard wearing blue latex gloves checked between her toes. She was then told to stand beside a large table where the contents from her suitcase were tipped out and checked. Whist one guard described every item and read out the label, colour and size, another wrote on the prisoner property card. Any toiletries or make-up or cigarettes were confiscated as all personal items other than a limited quantity of clothes and a diary had to be bought from the overpriced prison shop.
Once the process was complete and her clothes were screwed up in a large plastic sack and her ironing was wasted, she asked politely what she should do with her jewelled cufflinks. The jolly male guard feigned a scream and clenched his fists in frustration and defeat.
”Well, beggar me! I’ve been in this job for thirteen years and I’ve never been asked that. I thought I had a tick box on my sheets for everything! He smiled at Hetty who sobbed.
“Don’t worry luv, they’re very nice but we don’t get many like you, you know. Let’s think….. Are they valuable? Would you be happy if I put them in a little plastic bag and lock them in your case for when you go home?” She sanctioned his proposal and ached for home.
She was returned to the little room where she had previously waited and was given a prison issue grey jersey tracksuit, a towel and a pair of new flip flops for the shower. She was also given two plastic bags; one containing toothpaste, a bar of horrible soap two sachets of shampoo, a cheap toothbrush and a plastic comb and another plastic bag containing a bar of chocolate, a bottle of orange squash, a packet of custard creams and a lollypop. She was told that the money she came with had been credited to a phone card for use on the communal phone. This process she was assured would only take 48hrs. She was told that all prisoners were called by their Christian names and each had a six figure number which they were all expected to remember. She was given hers.
The newcomers were then led in crocodile fashion to the induction wing whilst home comers like Lola were taken back to the wing they had left briefly for their attendance at court. The induction wing had a couple of six bedded rooms with a communal sink and toilet cubicle, six single ‘secure’ cells and a communal shower room with showers. There was a medical examination and dispensary room and a small dining room and a serving area for the food which was delivered at meal times. By the time Henrietta and the two other new girls had arrived on the ‘soft’ wing, supper was long gone but inmate Mariette, whose job it was to help, had reserved four meals in the warming cupboard. The late arrivals ate with plastic forks out of foil cartons and then returned to their allocated beds.
He
nrietta was relieved to be isolated from the others in a solitary ‘safe’ room as she was noticeably traumatised and non-communicative and was frightened to sleep in a room with strangers. The officer on duty showed her the panic button ‘for emergencies only’ and then locked the large metal door. Hetty was utterly bereft and alone. Her eyes were hot and sore and her chest hurt and she wanted to shut her entire body down and fade away. She dragged herself over to the window and stared outside. It was raining heavily and the droplets were illuminated by the huge halogen lights from the prison roof. She leaned against the wall and stretched her arm through the bars as far as she could to try and feel some connection with the outside world and began to cry again in long low pitiful moans. She was exhausted and started to fall sleep whilst propped against the wall until she realised she needed to go to the loo. She hovered as best she could above the stainless steel fixture for fear of catching any germs and then washed her hands and face at the wall mounted steel basin with push taps. She went over to the solid ledge of a bed with a four inch thick blue plastic mattress and spread out the sheets which had been left for her. The pillow was a piece of latex coated foam which was as comfortable as a brick.
She hardly slept as the mattress was as soft as a park bench and the prison guard shone a torch through the small observation hatch every hour to make sure she had not harmed herself. Henrietta lay in the dark and tried to make sense of her demise and reminisced about her life in the picture postcard village where she had been a respected member of the local community and where she had bought that damned phone.
The Unsuspecting Housewife Page 23