by Peter Murphy
‘That’s right.’
‘I think your husband, Larry, is a fund manager in the City of London?’
‘Yes, he is.’
‘And would it be fair to say that, while you may not be rich, you are a fairly well-off family?’
‘Yes, that would be fair.’
‘Do your two daughters attend Wood Lane Comprehensive School here in Bermondsey?’
‘Yes, they do.’
‘How old are they now?’
‘Sophie is sixteen, and Emma is thirteen, almost fourteen.’
‘Has either of your daughters ever attended a private fee-paying school?’
‘No. They’ve both always been to state schools.’
‘Mrs Catesby, how and when did you meet Mrs Muriel Jones?’
For the first time, the air of boredom recedes a little, and there is a slight air of concern. She thinks about her answer.
‘It was at St Mortimer’s church, at least four years ago, closer to five, I would think.’
‘Did you and your family get to know Mrs Jones?’
‘Yes. We felt a bit sorry for her. She was on her own, you know, and we noticed that she wasn’t as solid on her feet as she had been. So we approached her and got talking to her. We started giving her lifts to and from church; and from there one thing led to another and I offered to do some shopping for her if she didn’t want to go out. It wasn’t a problem for me. She lives not far from my office, so I could go round to see her during my lunch hour, or more often, after work before I went home. I often went shopping myself on the way home at Garner’s or the Coop, so it was no trouble to pick up a few things for her at the same time.’
‘Mrs Jones told the jury that at first you would show her the receipts for what you bought for her, and she would give you the amount in cash: is that right?’
‘Yes.’
‘But after some time, she entrusted you with her debit card?’
‘Yes.’
‘How did that come about?’
‘It was Muriel’s idea. There were a couple of times when she hadn’t got out to the bank and she didn’t have enough cash to pay me back. I wasn’t going to take her last pound, obviously, so I would tell her I would wait until I next saw her. It didn’t bother me at all, but I think she was a bit embarrassed about it, so she just gave me her debit card and told me the passcode.’
Roderick pauses. ‘Mrs Catesby, you’ve been in court to hear the evidence of DC Benson, and you’ve seen the schedules he’s produced, have you not?’
‘Yes. I have.’
‘We know that there are instances where you took cash back when paying for the items you bought, usually twenty-five or fifty pounds. Is that also correct?’
‘Yes.’
‘What was the purpose of the cash backs?’
She hesitates. She looks as though she’s finding it a difficult question.
‘What I mean,’ Roderick continues, ‘is: would you keep the cash back, or would you give it to Mrs Jones?’
‘I usually gave it to her,’ the witness replies. ‘She would ask me to get cash for her if she didn’t think she would be going out to the bank for a few days. But there were times when I got some cash back for myself.’
I look up. Susan is tight-lipped and is shaking her head. She stands.
‘Your Honour, I’m sorry to interrupt, but this was never put to Mrs Jones. I am grateful to my learned friend for not putting all the detailed instances to her during his cross-examination, but she should have been given the opportunity to deal with this. It’s not a trivial point. It goes to the heart of the case.’
I have to agree. If Roderick was expecting his client’s last answer, it was naughty of him not to cross-examine Muriel about it while he had the chance, so that she had the chance to respond to it. It could be the key to the jury’s verdict on count one: if Muriel was the recipient of the cash back, how can she complain that it was stolen? But both Susan and I suspect that he wasn’t expecting the answer he got: the implication of which, of course, is that the smartly turned-out Laura is going off-piste, making it up as she goes along. So now, Roderick has to deal with the possibility that his client is spinning the jury a yarn; and although she knows there’s nothing I can do about it at the moment, Susan quite rightly wants to make sure the jury get the message that there’s something amiss.
‘My learned friend will be free to make that point during her cross-examination of the defendant,’ Roderick replies stiffly, his manner confirming our suspicions.
‘Very well,’ I say. ‘Let’s continue.’
‘I’ll take you through the instances in the schedule a little later,’ Roderick promises. ‘But if I understood you correctly, you said a moment ago that there were times when you took the cash back yourself. Why would you do that?’
The witness hesitates again.
‘Muriel always told me to take a little something for myself,’ she replies eventually.
‘Why would she tell you that?’ Roderick asks cautiously.
Laura shrugs. ‘She was grateful to me for helping her,’ she suggests. ‘She wanted me to have a little something, to say thank you. It was for the girls, really. I never took anything for myself. It was always for the girls. Muriel was very fond of the girls. She was always telling me how nice and polite they are. I think she saw them as her grandchildren, because the only grandchildren she has live abroad.’
I get the sense that something is going on. The two girls are exchanging glances, and look rather disturbed. Also, I think I’m seeing the prosecutor in Roderick imagining the cross-examination he would be planning if he were on that side of the case – the cross-examination Susan is undoubtedly planning as she sits listening, and taking copious notes. And he is anticipating, as am I, that her first question will have something to do with why an elderly pensioner would give this fairly well-off business manager twenty-five or fifty pounds a time for her daughters in recognition of her charitable services as a shopper. Abruptly, Roderick changes the subject.
‘Mrs Catesby, was there a time when Mrs Jones provided you with a thousand pounds out of her savings account?’
‘Yes,’ she replies, almost inaudibly.
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Catesby, please keep your voice up.’
‘Yes.’
‘Under what circumstances…?’
But before Roderick can even complete the question, the witness has collapsed in tears in the witness box, and is sobbing uncontrollably. Two or three times, she says she’s sorry. Her family and her vicar are again staring at her. The jury are exchanging glances. Roderick puts down his notebook, and turns to me.
‘May Mrs Catesby have a few moments, your Honour?’
‘Of course,’ I reply immediately. ‘Let me know when you’re ready to resume.’
I take advantage of the break to call Marjorie at home and check on her. Needless to say, she’s not in the mood for much conversation. Nigel is quietly returning from Geneva today and she has a solicitor on call, ready to come to court tomorrow in case of need. I encourage her as far as I can with assurances that it’s all going to be all right, but I know it doesn’t offer her much comfort.
When I’m invited to return to court after about half an hour, I see that Laura Catesby has left the witness box and is sitting in the dock. Her family and vicar are still occupying the front row of the public gallery, and sitting beside them is none other than Mrs Muriel Jones, widow of this parish. Roderick remains standing when Carol invites those in court to sit.
‘Your Honour,’ he begins, ‘we are grateful for the time. It has been put to good use. I would ask your Honour to have the jury brought back into court. Mrs Catesby does not propose to continue her evidence. Once the jury are back, I will ask your Honour if the indictment may be put to her again.’
I must admit that I’m fairly taken aback at first
, but thinking back to Laura Catesby’s evidence it occurs to me that perhaps I shouldn’t be too surprised; at least I was right in thinking that something was going on. I call for the jury to be brought into court. Once they are in place, Carol puts all six counts of the indictment to Laura Catesby in turn, and asks how she pleads. She pleads guilty to each count. I explain to the jury that, as they have been put in charge of the case they must return a verdict on each count; but as they have heard the defendant freely change her pleas and admit her guilt, after receiving legal advice, the only proper verdict would be one of guilty, and they are to answer the clerk accordingly when she asks for their verdicts. This seems to come as no surprise to the jury. They have already, it turns out, elected a foreman, a woman in her thirties, who without hesitation returns verdicts of guilty on each count as prompted by Carol. It seems pretty clear that the case was travelling in that direction at a speed of knots, regardless of the defendant’s change of heart.
‘Your Honour,’ Roderick says, once the verdicts have been returned and Susan has confirmed that Laura Catesby is a woman of previous exemplary character, ‘this is a serious case, and I don’t mean to suggest otherwise. But it’s also, as your Honour will appreciate shortly, a rather unusual one. I’m sure that in the normal course of events, your Honour would adjourn the case now for a pre-sentence report. But I’m going to ask your Honour not to make that decision yet. What I would like to do is to call a small number of witnesses, very briefly, and when your Honour has heard from them, I may well invite your Honour to pass sentence today. If your Honour still feels that he needs a pre-sentence report, then, of course, that option is still open.’
A pre-sentence report is a prerequisite in almost all cases today, certainly in any case of this kind, and I wouldn’t accede to the suggestion Roderick has just made if it were made by just any counsel. But I’ve known Roderick for years, and I know that he can be trusted not to take up the court’s time with frivolous suggestions. Besides, I am really curious to hear what’s coming.
‘Yes, very well, Mr Lofthouse,’ I reply.
The first witness is the husband, Larry, fund manager in the City, who tells me that his wife has been going through an extended ‘bad patch’ for the last five or six years. She’s been ignored and generally treated with a lack of respect at work; she’s had a difficult menopause and has been treated for depression (I’m told that some medical reports have been sent to me – electronically, naturally – via Carol); the whole family has been worried about her. It’s the depression that makes her appear bored with whatever is going on around her. She had been behaving strangely for a long time, Larry adds, but the family had no idea what was really going on until she was arrested. They knew, of course, that she was shopping for Muriel Jones and generally assisting her, but they were pleased about that, thinking that it was taking Laura out of herself to some extent. The couple have separate bank accounts, so he wasn’t aware of any unexpected monetary credits. He had never seen any receipts from the shops: it was, as Susan observed, a paperless crime.
Last, but of course not least, Larry has come to court bearing a cheque in the amount of fifteen thousand pounds in favour of Muriel Jones, which he is prepared to hand over to the court for onward transmission to Mrs Jones, and which is intended to cover her losses, plus interest, plus some slight compensation for what she has suffered. If Laura is sent to prison, he pleads, it will drastically affect the two girls, who are both at very sensitive stages of their development, as well as Larry himself. She will, of course, lose her job in any case, but if she serves a prison term she may become permanently unemployable, not to mention suffer even more terrible bouts of depression.
Both daughters then give evidence, also pleading with me not to send their mother to prison. Both deeply regret that Muriel Jones was given the impression that they needed money for private school fees; they can’t believe that their mother would do such a thing; and Emma, in particular, is mortified that Muriel Jones was led to believe that she needed an operation when she has enjoyed excellent health throughout her life. She actually apologises to Muriel from the witness box, even though what her mother did is in no conceivable way her fault.
The daughters are followed into the witness box by the Reverend Mrs Amy Lock, whom I suspect, without any hard evidence, of playing the ‘I know your wife; we work together’ card. It’s not what she says; it’s more the way she says it. I can almost see the two of them together talking about the case over a cup of tea at one vicarage or the other. But I don’t dwell on it – I can’t blame her even if she is invoking the spirit of the Reverend Mrs Walden – because what she is saying would be interesting enough even if it came from a wandering Russian Orthodox priest who’d never met either of us. The pleas of guilty that have just been tendered, she reveals, are not a bolt from the blue; on the contrary, they have been under discussion within the family, and with her as the family’s religious advisor, for some time now. Everyone was urging Laura Catesby to admit what she’d done, and it was only fear, the vicar confides, that stood in her way – fear and the difficulty of admitting to herself that she had taken advantage of Muriel Jones so shamelessly. Once she reached a place where she could admit to herself what she had done, admitting it to others finally became possible.
For some time, she tried to persuade herself that what she had done, she had done not for herself but for her daughters; but when Sophie and Emma told her in no uncertain terms that they were horrified by it and wanted no part in it, she began to see the light. The family, in particular her daughters, had urged her to plead guilty on Monday morning, and they have continued to urge her ever since. This morning, as the prospect of giving evidence grew ever closer, she began to respond. She tried to give evidence, but the task proved too much for her, and as I saw for myself, she collapsed under the weight. She has been punished – she has punished herself – enough, the Reverend Mrs Lock suggests; and now is the time for forgiveness, in the spirit of the church of which they are all members.
In that same spirit, Muriel Jones has also agreed to give evidence on her behalf.
‘She’s not a bad person, sir,’ Mrs Jones tells me. ‘She’s made mistakes; but then, we all do, don’t we, sir? I know I have, and so did my Henry during his time. But she’s obviously had problems I didn’t know about, and she’s admitted what she’s done, so, as the vicar says, perhaps it’s time to forgive and forget. She did try to be helpful to me, and as you get older, that’s something you really appreciate, sir, isn’t it? So I think she ought to be given a second chance, sir, if you’re willing.’
So now what do I do? She’s admitted to a long-running and serious breach of trust; and surely she could have reached the place where she could admit what she’d done before she put Muriel Jones through the additional anguish of having to give evidence and submit to cross-examination about her memory. But, judging from Muriel’s demeanour this afternoon, the experience doesn’t seem to have done her any harm, and she’s going to get her money back, with a generous bonus for her trouble. After a minute or so of reflection, I tell Roderick he needn’t say any more, and that I don’t think I would learn anything from a pre-sentence report that I haven’t learned this afternoon.
I ask the court probation officer to join us, and with her input I give Laura Catesby a sentence of twelve months imprisonment suspended for two years, concurrently on all six counts. I attach conditions: she is to continue under the supervision of a probation officer throughout the two years; seek treatment for her depression under the guidance of her vicar; perform one hundred and fifty hours of unpaid work for the benefit of the community – not to include shopping for the elderly; and pay compensation to Mrs Jones in the sum of fifteen thousand pounds. The details of the sentence will be transmitted paperlessly to whoever needs them.
* * *
Wednesday afternoon
Stella has found me a couple of applications to lend a pretence of industry to my af
ternoon, but the main business after lunch is to read and digest the voluminous file in the case I have coming up later. At the unusual time of five o’clock this afternoon, I am due to sentence a young man calling himself Brian Greene, and it’s going to take some time. Not that you would know this from reading the list, because you will find no mention of the case of Brian Greene there, and the timing of five o’clock is designed to ensure that the building will be as quiet as possible. Moreover, I will have no court staff with me except for Stella, who will be doubling as both clerk and usher, and one or two security persons from an outside agency.
Brian Greene has pleaded guilty to six offences – the tip, I’m told, of a rather large iceberg – of what is politely termed computer misuse. But in the context of this case, the term ‘computer misuse’ is a massive understatement, which doesn’t even begin to address the scope of young Mr Greene’s offending. The Grey Smoothies –not Sir Jeremy Bagnall and his crowd this time, but some people from the same agency as the security personnel – have left Stella and myself in no doubt about the sensitivity of the case. The only reason we’ve got the case at Bermondsey, they confided to Stella last week, is the hope of avoiding the publicity it would get at the Old Bailey or Southwark. So this afternoon, yours truly, rather than a High Court or Old Bailey judge, will be dealing, in closed court, with a case whose existence isn’t officially acknowledged.
The reason for this subterfuge is that it’s the government’s only chance of avoiding loud demands for Greene’s extradition to any one of the several politically important countries his offences have damaged. The government doesn’t want that because Brian Greene is generally judged to be, if not the most gifted, certainly one of the most gifted computer hackers in the world; and regardless of the sentence I pass on him today, he will be starting a new job within the week with the government agency I mentioned a moment or two ago, for which he has agreed to deploy his talents in a better cause. And I’m sure it won’t surprise you to know that Brian Greene isn’t his real name. It’s all a bit nerve-racking, but I am gratified that we have our uses at Bermondsey and are occasionally attracting a better class of work.