This time when she paused I knew it was simply because she was finding it hard to find the right words. I sympathised totally. There are no right words, really. I had already heard enough descriptions of these kind of games, often directly from the children involved, to last me a lifetime.
‘Stephen told me that his father liked him to play with his “joystick”,’ Claudia Smith continued, and she did not sound quite so coolly confident now.
It would have been funny if it weren’t so sick. Baby words and pet names are a common part of the child abuser’s repertoire. Everything Claudia Smith described to us indicated a classic case of paternal abuse. Proving it, however, would be something else. Less than five per cent of police investigations into child abuse result in a prosecution. Trying to get to the truth in these cases is always a minefield, and this time we were up against an expert in the field.
The team investigating Richard Jeffries came up with nothing at all suspicious in his past. If there was anything then it was certainly going to take more than two or three days to unearth. In fact the doctor’s record and his character appeared to be exemplary. His father had been a doctor before him and after gaining his medical degree Dr Jeffries had taken a paediatrician speciality at a London teaching hospital before returning to his home town of Bristol where he had become a popular and respected GP and a pillar of local society. His marriage of fifteen years seemed solid enough and he and his wife Elizabeth were generally regarded as having coped admirably with the birth of their Down’s Syndrome son which had come as a complete surprise as Elizabeth Jeffries had been well below the danger age. There was a second unaffected child, five-year-old Anna.
For us the next stage was to pay the Jeffries family a visit and arrange for their children to be interviewed on video at Lockleaze. We always try to do this by agreement with parents, and we normally do get co-operation. Parents, innocent or guilty, generally realise that not allowing their children to be interviewed will almost certainly just make matters worse.
In accordance with Titmuss’s instructions I continued to take an active role personally in the Jeffries case and it was Mellor and I who, a couple of days after talking to Claudia Smith, went around to the Jeffries’ home in the Clifton area of Bristol. The house was an imposing Victorian villa with views across the city.
It was just before six thirty on a typically cold and wet November evening and already dark when Elizabeth Jeffries answered the door. We had chosen the time of our visit carefully – late enough to stand a good chance of catching both parents at home on a day when Dr Jeffries had no evening surgery and his wife was not at the hospital where she worked occasional shifts as a night nurse, and not so late as to be provocative – and we had got it right. Hearing strange voices, no doubt, Richard Jeffries quickly appeared in the hallway behind his wife, and as the couple stood at the door, almost silhouetted in the bright light from within the house, both seemed ill at ease – although perhaps not more than anyone would be when confronted unexpectedly with a brace of police officers.
They led us into an immaculate sitting room which was tastefully if unimaginatively decorated in cream and white and formally furnished with a smattering of what I guessed to be genuine antiques. The curtains were not drawn and through the French windows I could see an attractively lit landscaped garden which even in the late Autumn, when gardens invariably look at their worst, contrived to give the impression of being well-cared for.
Richard Jeffries was a pleasant-faced man with thinning sandy hair, gentle grey eyes, and an obvious tendency towards plumpness that appeared to be only just under control. He was about five feet nine inches tall, dressed in dark blue slacks and a comfortable-looking paler-blue pullover with a string of multi-coloured elephants striding around it. As he stood in the middle of his thick-pile fitted carpet gesturing to Mellor and I to sit, I thought that he looked the picture of middle-class niceness. I knew him to be aged forty-three, and that his wife was five years younger. Elizabeth Jeffries was about the same height as her husband but slimmer and darker. Her brown eyes were bright and intelligent and I somehow suspected at once that she might prove more difficult to deal with than the man we were investigating.
I told them both in matter-of-fact language that there was concern at Balfour House about their son’s welfare, that one of the teachers felt the boy was showing telltale signs of sexual abuse.
‘Have you any idea what may have happened to lead to this, Dr Jeffries?’ I asked quietly.
At first Richard Jeffries just seemed stunned. He shook his head and glanced anxiously at his wife who sat in shocked silence. Or maybe she merely wasn’t ready to speak. I wasn’t sure of Elizabeth Jeffries yet.
‘There’s nobody, I can’t believe it,’ Dr Jeffries began falteringly, then his voice hardened. ‘I’d kill anyone who hurt that child,’ he said.
‘You should know that Stephen has related some rather disturbing incidents to his teachers,’ said Mellor in an expressionless voice.
Richard Jeffries seemed merely mildly perplexed. ‘But he’s never said anything to us, has he, Liz?’
His wife murmured her agreement, and continued to sit quite still staring straight ahead. However, I reckoned I could see the beginning of hostility in those intelligent brown eyes. She was ahead of her husband, I was quite sure of it.
Ultimately a flush began to spread across Richard Jeffries’ benign features as realisation dawned.
‘You’re accusing me, aren’t you?’ he said suddenly.
‘No, Dr Jeffries, we don’t go around making accusations of this kind of gravity,’ I told him levelly. ‘We need to talk to everyone who would have had even the opportunity to abuse Stephen. And as his father you obviously have the maximum opportunity.’
Richard Jeffries glanced at his wife again. For just a few seconds he looked quite frightened. Then his anger erupted.
‘What the hell is going on?’ he asked suddenly. ‘This is a disgrace, Detective Chief Inspector. Look at my children, come on, see for yourself if they look abused.’
One side of the sitting room took the form of big sliding doors. He flung them open to reveal his two children playing contentedly in a playroom which seemed to contain everything conceivable for their entertainment ranging from a Victorian rocking horse to a state-of-the-art computer.
Stephen and Anna were sitting on the floor in the middle of a toy railway track. The boy was wearing jeans, trainers and a bright red Thomas The Tank Engine tee shirt while his younger sister was dressed ready for bed in snug-looking pink pyjamas. They both looked up and beamed at their father who introduced me and Mellor without mentioning that we were police officers.
‘Come and say hello,’ said Richard Jeffries.
Both children obediently got up from the floor and came towards us. I studied Stephen Jeffries carefully. He had the typical features of Down’s Syndrome children and, it appeared, just as Claudia Smith had told us, the typical affectionate nature.
The boy stared at Mellor and I nervously and after taking a few uncertain steps towards us went straight to his father, took his hand, and, his shyness now overcoming him, half hid behind Dr Jeffries who spoke to him soothingly and ruffled his spiky fair hair. The little girl, as if unwilling to let her brother have all the attention, also then went to her father and grasped him by the leg.
Jeffries, his face still pink from shock and anger, looked down at them both with fondness, and in turn the children looked up at him with what appeared to be complete adoration. Certainly it seemed to me that neither child showed any sign of awkwardness or unease with their father.
Abruptly Richard Jeffries crouched down and put an arm around each child hugging them to him. A gesture to which they responded eagerly.
‘Is this the problem, Detective Chief Inspector?’ he asked me. ‘Physical contact is particularly important to Down’s Syndrome children, perhaps you know that. I like to cuddle my children. Have we got to the stage where a man cannot do that any more? If so then I
reckon we live in a pretty sick place.’
He was obviously very distressed. To be honest, at that stage I found his reactions to be quite understandable, and also almost exactly what I would expect from an innocent man accused of something so abhorrent. But you don’t take risks with child abuse.
‘It’s a little bit more than that, I’m afraid, Dr Jeffries,’ I said. Although I wasn’t entirely convinced.
He knew the ropes of course, knew as well as I did that the next stage was for his children to be interviewed by a police officer and a social worker on video in the victim suite at Lockleaze. I had never before dealt with a suspect accused of a crime which it was part of his job to try to prevent, and I rather hoped I wouldn’t have to do so again. Certainly I had no idea whether or not he would choose to co-operate. Fortunately he did, which I suppose I might have expected. After all Richard Jeffries would be well aware how lack of co-operation could rebound and possibly result in children being judged at risk and even taken into care at a much earlier stage than would otherwise happen during an investigation. He also knew the lengths which were gone to, even if sometimes this jeopardised the construction of a case, not to upset children in any way. He stood up, still holding Stephen by the hand.
‘All right, DCI Piper, talk to my children,’ he said coldly. ‘We have nothing to hide in this family.’
Elizabeth Jeffries had remained sitting on the sofa by the fire. She got up then, walked to her husband’s side, took his free hand, and began to speak for the first time.
‘I haven’t said anything before because I can barely trust myself,’ she announced. Her eyes were very dark now, her lips trembled as she spoke, yet her voice was controlled and even colder than her husband’s. ‘I just don’t believe that anyone could suspect Richard of such a terrible thing. He has devoted his life to children. He adores Stevie, look at the boy, just look at him . . .’
I did so. Little Anna had again grasped one of her father’s legs and Stephen appeared to be trying to climb up the other. He was laughing and giggling to himself, the picture of a happy contented child, although, picking up on his mother’s distress, he did glance at her anxiously.
‘It’s all right, darling, everything will be fine,’ said Richard Jeffries to his wife. ‘We must just keep things normal.’ He gestured down at Stephen and Anna. ‘Whatever we do, we mustn’t upset the children.’
Elizabeth Jeffries visibly pulled herself together then. ‘You’re right, of course, Richard,’ she said at once. Then, with some difficulty, she proceeded to extricate Stephen and Anna from their father’s legs. ‘Come along, you two,’ she instructed, leading them out of the room. ‘Let’s leave your father to talk to the nice lady and gentleman.’
I don’t suppose either Stephen or Anna detected the heavily laden sarcasm in her last phrase, but Mellor and I certainly did, which had no doubt been her intention.
It was nearly seven when we left the Jeffries’ Clifton home, having arranged for the two children to be interviewed at the victim suite at Lockleaze the next day. I went straight back to my own place not far away – one untidy rented room with kitchen area and its own small bathroom, somewhat laughably described as a studio flat.
My first four days back at work had been quite busy and fraught enough to keep any normal person’s mind occupied, and certainly, one would have thought, to stop any nonsensical fantasising about Robin Davey – a man quite clearly and literally otherwise engaged. And one with whom I had been seriously angry when I had finally left his island.
Nonetheless, during the week or so since I had returned from Abri, almost every time the phone rang, certainly at home, I had wondered fleetingly if the caller might be Robin Davey. Ridiculous. I gave myself a number of stern and rather cruel lectures, along the lines that I was behaving in a way the likes of Titmuss would consider quite typical of a childless emotionally battered old bag fast approaching middle age. However, I still couldn’t quite get Davey out of my thoughts – although I did cross Abri Island, much as I had loved the place, off my list of possible future holiday destinations.
The next day Elizabeth Jeffries accompanied young Stephen and Anna to Lockleaze as arranged. A woman detective constable in an unmarked car picked them up at their home, drove them to the station and escorted them in through the plain blue painted door, which faces the row of shops to one side of Gainsborough Square, and up a flight of stairs directly into the victim suite. The Lockleaze suite, used for interviewing adult victims of rape and other sexual offences as well as children, is converted from the old Inspector’s flat, dating from the days when district inspectors used to live over the shop, and its separate front door means that it can be accessed without having to enter the police station proper at all. Mellor and I and Freda Lewis, one of the most experienced and respected social workers in the district, greeted Mrs Jeffries and her children in the sitting room with its soothing blue and grey colour scheme, big squashy sofa and armchairs, and play area equipped with an inviting selection of toys. The room is designed to be unlike anything you would expect to find in a police station and as unintimidating as possible. Only the two video cameras bolted into a corner of the ceiling – one in a fixed position to give an overall view of the room and a second which can be manoeuvred by remote control from the technical room next door for close-ups and angle shots – give any indication that it is in any way different to a normal sitting room.
Stephen Jeffries homed straight in on a big plastic Thomas The Tank Engine, obviously a favourite of his, while his sister, after a little coaxing, found paper and wax crayons and began to draw, giving me chance to explain the procedure to their mother.
I told Elizabeth Jeffries that we would wish to interview each child separately, and that she could stay with the child being interviewed if she wished or wait with the second child in our family room where she could watch the interview on a monitor. Fortunately she opted for the family room which all of us in the CPT prefer, because children, even in perfectly innocent situations, tend to be far less forthcoming in the presence of their parents.
Mrs Jeffries was protective and affectionate towards her children and cold and dismissive towards Mellor and me. She did not, however, seem to know quite what to make of Freda Lewis, a quietly spoken woman in her mid-fifties who had an ability to deal with the most emotive issues with simple logic and cool common sense. Freda had long, straight, rather straggly greying hair and part of her still existed in a kind of sixties’ time warp. Summer and Winter she wore full-length flowing floral skirts with lace shawls. She looked a bit like an overgrown schoolgirl and she had about her a natural warmth and childlike forthrightness to which children instinctively responded.
I had called in Freda to interview the Jeffries children along with Peter Mellor. It is normal procedure for a police officer to be joined by a social worker, and I knew that Peter was rather better with children than I was.
The first interview was to be with Stephen. Elizabeth Jeffries and her daughter were settled into the family room with its TV monitor and yet more toys, while I prepared to watch the proceedings on another monitor in the technical room where two note-taking DCs operated the cameras and a double recording machine.
Unlike Stephen’s teacher, Claudia Smith, Mellor and Freda Lewis were not allowed to ask the children leading questions. This had been found in the past to produce some highly suspect evidence. Children sometimes give answers for effect, or even merely the answers they think adults want to hear. And interviewing a Down’s Syndrome child is fraught with the greatest dangers of all.
Mellor and Freda spent almost a couple of hours with Stephen, watching him at play, gently probing into his day-to-day home life. Eventually the subject of bathtime did arise. For just a moment Stephen seemed uneasy. I thought he was reluctant to look either Freda or Peter Mellor in the eye, but I could not be sure that this was not just his natural shyness.
Ultimately ‘I like to bath with my daddy’ was the nearest we got to the story Claudia Smit
h had come up with. Stephen would take this no further, and certainly made no mention of secret games or his daddy’s ‘joystick’.
It was more or less lunchtime when Freda Lewis eventually escorted Stephen to join his mother and sister in the family room, so I despatched a DC to the McDonald’s drive-in just up the road for a bag of Big Macs, which the children attacked energetically while none of us adults seemed to have much appetite at all.
The afternoon interview with Anna Jeffries was even less productive. The little girl, although probably even more shy than her brother, gave no signs of any unease at all when Mellor and Freda Lewis probed as much as they dared into her relationship with her father. But the interview had to be brought to a premature close when after half an hour or so she began to whimper and ask for both her mummy and her daddy.
As soon as it was all over, Elizabeth Jeffries, still coldly uncommunicative, asked to be driven home.
‘Neither of my children could tell you anything to back up these extraordinary allegations because they quite simply have nothing to tell,’ she said.
I was beginning to think she might be speaking the truth, but we certainly couldn’t halt the investigation yet. I explained to Mrs Jeffries that it was standard procedure under the circumstances for the children to be medically examined by a police forensic doctor, and that in order to cause as little distress as possible, I would like this to be done on another occasion in the medical room at the Lockleaze victim suite. For a moment I thought she was going to refuse, but she didn’t.
‘I’ll make appointments and be in touch,’ I said. Then I led Freda and Peter into my broom cupboard for a case discussion.
As we squeezed into the tiny office, with Mellor perched on a corner of the scarred wooden desk as there was room for only two chairs, I first sought Freda’s opinion.
‘It’s so hard with a Down’s Syndrome child,’ she said. ‘It would be that much easier for an abuser to convince a boy like Stephen that whatever was going on was just normal behaviour.’
For Death Comes Softly Page 5