"Right then. For now, I'm bailing you to appear at the magistrates' court on Thursday, ten o'clock in the morning, in the same sum as before, namely fifty pounds in your own recognisance. You know what that means?"
"Yeah, Alan, he knows what that means," put in Bly. "Come on, Christopher. I want to talk to you and your parents. That it, Al?" The inspector nodded. Bly took Christopher by the elbow and led him out into the front office, with the solicitor following them. From there he propelled Christopher into the small interview room beside the counter. He motioned Christopher's parents, huddled miserably in the far corner of the counter, to go into the room through the other door. He sat Christopher down, then emerged into the front office again in search of an extra chair. Taking it into the little room, he sat in it back-to-front, resting his bony arms on the back-rest, and surveyed the three scared, unhappy people in front of him. "Right, then," he said. "I'd better explain what happens next."
***
"I've got to go and see his solicitor," said Jamie, quietly and without a hint of emotion. Edith thought she had not seen him this self-possessed for weeks. The pressure's on, she thought, and he's responding to it. She remembered her husband remarking that boys not two years older than Jamie had gone to the front in the first world war, and thought to herself that she could see Jamie doing just such a thing. She looked at her husband's face, assessing what he was going to do.
Lane, for his part, glanced across at her, raising his eyebrows questioningly. She hesitated, then made up her mind, and nodded.
"Very well, then, Jamie," he said, seeming to make up his own mind suddenly. "Edith will take you in to see the man this morning, if he's free. Will you ring him, Edith?"
"Yes, John, of course. I don't suppose he'll get to his office before nine, do you? No, well, I'll ring him just after that, and take Jamie in as soon as he can see him. Do you want him to come into school afterwards, or if the man isn't available?"
Lane wrinkled his brow in thought. "If he can't see Jamie at all, yes." He turned to Jamie. "Will you be able to manage school, Jamie? From second period?"
"Yes sir," said Jamie calmly.
Lane looked hard at him, but could not read his expression. "All right, then come into the second period, if you get back by then. Otherwise, come in this afternoon." He looked searchingly at the boy once again. "You're sure you're up to this, Jamie?"
"Oh, yes, sir. I must speak to the man. I must say what I can for Chris," he said, quietly but with such an adult air of determination that both Lanes saw at the same moment that he would not be dissuaded, even if they had proposed any such thing.
"Very well," said Dr Lane. "Well. I must be gone." He rose and headed for the door. "There is one other thing, sir," said Jamie, respectfully but with the same very adult intonation in his voice. "Yes, my dear boy," said Lane, turning and looking down at his small, set face.
"May I have my diary, sir, please," he asked. "I should like to show it to the man. It will prove that Christopher never did anything that I didn't ask him to do. Then they'll never be able to do anything to him, will they?"
Lane felt his heart go out to the boy. He stood before him, small, neat, pale-faced but exuding an unbending, iron will. "If maturity was all, I could make him Head Boy tomorrow," he recollected himself saying some time in the very recent past. He stood for a moment in thought. Then, making up his mind once again, he nodded brusquely. "Very well, Jamie. I don't know if I'm being altogether wise, still less whether you are. But I think we must give you your head in this matter, my boy. I'll send someone across with it the moment I get to school."
He came back into the room and drew Jamie's slender form to him, squeezing his shoulders in a brief, and uncommon, gesture of affection. "Goodbye for the moment, Jamie, my dear boy. And good luck." He went into the hall and picked up his case. Jamie watched him crossing the field for a few moments before dropping back into his chair at the kitchen table and sinking his head into his hands in deep thought. Edith left him alone for a long time. Eventually she touched him gently on the shoulder. "Would you like some more tea, dear?" she asked softly. To her utter amazement, he looked up and bestowed on her, for almost the first time, his beautiful smile at full voltage. "Yes, please," he said, brightly. While she was still trying to assess the significance of it he said, as if reading her thoughts, "It's better than waiting on tenterhooks, isn't it? If I go and tell them it was all my doing, they can't possibly blame Chris, can they?"
She felt herself close to tears, and could not look him in the face. "I hope not, dear," she said very quietly. "I hope not."
***
Edith Lane pulled up on a double yellow line and looked about for traffic wardens as Jamie scrambled out, clutching his diary. "There you are, dear," she said. "Now, are you absolutely sure you wouldn't like me to come in with you?" For a moment he looked a little forlorn, and she thought he was about to change his mind and permit her to go with him, but his face quickly cleared and returned to the expression of slightly blank determination that he had worn all morning. "No, thank you very much all the same, though," he said, and in a moment he was out of sight among the morning shoppers. Edith sighed and put the car into gear.
Jamie climbed a flight of stairs in an antiseptic-smelling building off the High Street. The carpets were a dull light green that reminded him of the powdered paint of the noxious shade known as terre verte used in the school art room. He got to the first floor, pushed through some steel and glass double doors and into a reception area, and approached a desk where a girl was clacking at a huge document in a typewriter. "Yes, what can I do for you?" she said, looking up without ceasing from her ferocious assault on the machine.
"I've got an appointment with Mr Hope-Thomson, please, miss," he said, smiling at her. She stopped typing abruptly, becoming the second to fall to his smile that morning. "What's your name, please?"
"Potten, miss. Jamie Potten."
"Will you have a seat," she said, waving at a deep sofa in dark green leather. Jamie dropped into a corner of the sofa and watched her carefully as she picked up a telephone. "Mr Hope-Thomson? There's a young man in reception to see you. Says he's got an appointment. Oh, right." She put the receiver down and looked at him with interest. "He'll be down straight away," she said, smiling at him. "He says you're his star witness." Jamie grinned, pleased.
A few moments later a door opened across the reception area and an angular man with wild, thinning blond hair and fierce gold-rimmed glasses came across to Jamie. "Jamie Potten?" he said pleasantly, extending a hand. Jamie heaved himself with some effort out of his floor-level seat and shook the hand with cool aplomb. "How d'you do, sir," he said.
"How d'you do yourself, Jamie," said the man, smiling a thin smile at the boy's grown-up air. "It's very good of you to come. Please come with me." He courteously gestured to Jamie to precede him through the door from which he had emerged and Jamie went through, feeling the receptionist's eyes on him. The clacking of the typewriter resumed as the door closed behind the two of them. Hope-Thomson showed him to a large, airy office. It was lined on two sides with leather-bound and gold-blocked books. A large grey steel safe occupied half a third wall, and the office was dominated by a huge desk covered mountainously with tottering piles of dog-eared papers, folders, books, three telephones and an intercom. Have a seat, Jamie, please," he said, sliding into a swivel chair across the expanse of desk. He pressed a switch on the intercom, and the reception girl's voice came on instantly.
"Yes, Mr Hope-Thomson?"
"No calls for one hour, please, Brenda," he said. "Right, sir," came the crackled reply.
He swept several of the piles of papers to either side to make room for his elbows, propped them on the desk and looked keenly, but with considerable respect, straight at Jamie. "Now, then. How do you think you can help us?"
Jamie swallowed hard, feeling suddenly very nervous, but quickly pulled himself together. "I'd like to tell you all about Christopher Rowe and me," he said.
***
The clerk to the Oldacre justices was a slender and attractive girl with long, straight blonde hair and large blue eyes. She stood up, drawing admiring glances from the three or four policemen, two local journalists and half a dozen citizens
with nothing better to do who were sitting on the hard wooden benches for the public. "Christopher Martin Rowe," she said in a pleasant, conversational tone that accorded ill with the words she addressed to the pale young man in the dock, "you are charged that on one or more dates between the fourth and the tenth of last month you did commit an act or acts of buggery with a male person under the age of twenty-one years. To that charge do you plead guilty or not guilty?"
"Guilty," said Christopher, barely audible in the small, modem courtroom.
The chairman leaned forward from his chair behind the slightly elevated bench and murmured to the clerk, "What did he say?"
"He pleads guilty," murmured the clerk back to him. She turned back to Christopher again. "Will you speak up a little, please. The magistrates must hear you." Christopher, who was doing his best to control the trembling that was threatening to turn his legs to rubber underneath him, said nothing, wiped a damp film of sweat from his forehead with the upper part of his sleeve, and fidgeted with the knot of his unaccustomed tie. "You may sit down," said the clerk, seeing that he was about ready to fall down. Christopher sat down hard, rocking the flimsy little dock.
The clerk stood up, having to stand on tip-toe to lean across the Bench, whispering for some time to the chairman. When she sat down the chairman looked sternly at Christopher. He was a bulky man in his fifties, a local general practitioner with no bedside manner. He was known for being a hard sentencer, and he surveyed Christopher with evident dislike. "You understand, Rowe, that this charge may be heard only by a judge at the Crown Court?" Christopher said, slightly more audibly, "Yes, sir."
"Stand up when you speak to the Bench," said the clerk, and Christopher struggled in confusion to his feet. "Do you understand what that means, Rowe?" asked the chairman. "You have pleaded guilty to this... to this charge here before us, but you must be remanded to the Crown Court for sentence."
"I understand that, sir," said Christopher, his voice becoming a little stronger as he got used to the surroundings and the ordeal. "Does the defence wish to say anything?" asked the chairman gruffly. "Not at this time, sir," said Hope-Thomson smoothly, "except that we ask for bail on the same terms as the police bail hitherto."
The chairman turned his eyes and his heavy black-rimmed spectacles on the wispy little sandy-haired man representing the Crown Prosecution Service. "Does the Crown have any objections?" he asked, his tone clearly suggesting that he would have rather liked it if the Crown had. "No objections, your worship," said the man. "We request that the conditions include the stipulation that the accused make no attempt to make contact with the patient involved in the offence."
"Humph!" said the chairman, as if cheated of his prey. "Order granted. Bail in the same terms as before." He glared at Christopher. "You heard that, Rowe, and understand what it means? If you try to make any sort of contact with the victim of your offences, you'll be brought back before this court and answer for your conduct."
Christopher, who had sat down, got to his feet again. "I understand," he said. It was clearly audible to everyone in court that his voice had suddenly become stronger, and one or two of the police officers and journalists turned to look at him with a slight quickening of interest. The more observant of the two reporters noticed immediately that his bearing had, equally suddenly, become much more upright, and his eyes were no longer fixed on a point a couple of feet in front of the dock, but looking directly at the chairman. He had a little more colour in his face, and, more than anything else, his expression now registered anger. The journalist nudged his colleague. "Kid's beginning to show a bit of spirit," he whispered, and made a note on his pad.
The chairman saw the slight movement out of the corner of his eye and turned towards the two reporters in their box. "I suppose I don't have to remind you gentlemen that the name of the - ah -" he leaned forward and beckoned the clerk to lean across. They whispered briefly, then he sat back again. "Yes, the patient, as the law strangely chooses to refer to the other boy involved in the unnatural acts that are the substance of the charge, may not be identified in any way." The reporters nodded as he turned back towards the front of the court. "Very well, remanded to the next session of the Crown Court. Let him stand down." He looked straight through Christopher as if he was a hole in the air.
Christopher flushed, and slipped gratefully out of the dock. Hope-Thomson came round from his place and hurried him through a door into the passage that led to the gaoler's and other court officials' offices at the rear of the building. "Okay, we're over the worst of it," he murmured to Christopher as they went down the corridor. "I'd say we're fortunate in not being tried here. That doctor would've volunteered for the Bloody Assize." Christopher managed a faint, grateful grin. "He didn't take much of a liking to me, did he?" he said, gulping slightly in his relief at the end of his ordeal.
"You won't find that people who commit your kind of offence are very popular anywhere," said Hope-Thomson drily. Christopher looked sharply at him, looking for condemnation, but the man's face was neutral. Christopher swallowed and asked the question he had been trying to pluck up the courage to ask throughout his meetings with the solicitor. "What do you think I'll get?"
Hope-Thomson glanced at him, ran a hand through his straying hair and thought as they entered an office and leaned on a counter. "Hard to say," he said. "Depends in part on which judge you get. Personally, I should say we're likely to get a term of probation. With the mitigation we can produce, coupled with your previous good character, I'd say it's as good as a certainty that you won't receive any custodial sentence." He rubbed his chin. "Yes, I'm inclined to the view that you'll most likely receive something like probation for, oh, I don't know, probably two years, I'd guess. Or possibly a conditional discharge. You know what that means?"
"I think so," said Christopher, not liking the sound of it much, but glad to be reassured once again about the impossibility of prison.
"It means that you have been discharged without any actual penalty - that they are taking into account the fact that you haven't got any previous convictions, your youth and the mitigation - especially that provided by the other boy. The sting in the tail is that if you commit any other criminal offence, but especially another of a similar kind to this one, during the period of suspension, you'll be brought back before the court and some sentence will then be imposed for this offence, on top of anything you may get for whatever other offence you commit."
"I shan't be committing any other offences," said Christopher fervently. "I shan't ride my bike without lights after this."
"I don't think we need worry too much about that," said Hope-Thomson with the trace of a grin. A court official finished dealing with another solicitor and client and turned to the two of them. Hope-Thomson dealt rapidly with the matter of Christopher's bail, and five minutes later delivered the boy to his parents, waiting in great distress outside the building. On Hope-Thomson's instructions they had slipped out by a rear entrance, through which he and Christopher now followed them.
"With a bit of luck we may just evade the photographers," he muttered to Christopher as he hustled him down an alley to the street. He was right, and they walked quickly to put a quarter of a mile between themselves and the court building.
"What happens now?" asked Robert Rowe.
"Could we go somewhere for a drink, Dad, please," asked Christopher. "Somewhere away from here."
"Er, well, yes, all right, I suppose we could," said his father doubtfully. He looked at the solicitor. "Will you come with us, Mr Hope-Thomson?" he asked. "I'd like to go into what happens next in a bit more detail."
Hope-Thomson consulted his watch. "I don't see why not," he said. "I haven't got any appointments until two, and I can understand Chri
stopher's needing a drink. I should think you could perhaps do with one yourselves." They looked gratefully at him. "You drove here, I suppose?" said Rowe. The solicitor shook his head. "I walked from the office. How about the Cherry Tree?" he suggested. "It's a pleasant enough place, and it's on my way back. It's only a short walk from here." They walked together towards the High Street, where Hope-Thomson turned down a narrow passage, then ducked into a door into a pleasant, dimly-lit inn.
Robert Rowe went to the bar while the others ensconced themselves in a far comer, and came back with a pint of bitter for Christopher, whiskies for himself and his wife and half of lager for Hope-Thomson. He sat for a quarter of an hour repeating in substance what he had told Christopher in the court passage. Then Audrey Rowe voiced the dread that loomed most fearsomely in their minds. "What about the papers?" she said, tremulously. "Will Chris's name be in the papers?"
Hope-Thomson looked round and saw three pairs of eyes focussed intently on him. He hesitated, steeling himself to give them the answer they were least hoping to hear. "I'm afraid it will," he said eventually. There was a hiss as all three of them expelled the breath they had unconsciously been holding at once. "Oh, God!" moaned Audrey. Christopher's head dropped, and he looked up from under his eyelashes, unable to meet the eyes of his parents for shame at bringing this on them.
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