Walden of Bermondsey

by Peter Murphy

  WALDEN OF BERMONDSEY

  When Charlie Walden took on the job of Resident Judge of the Bermondsey Crown Court, he was hoping for a quiet life. During his short walk from the vicarage to court, there’s a latté waiting at Elsie and Jeanie’s archway café, and The Times at George’s news stand. After a hard day of trial, he and the Reverend Mrs Walden can enjoy a curry and a couple of Cobras at the Delights of the Raj, or a pasta with a decent valpolicella at La Bella Napoli. But a quiet life? Well, not exactly…

  Charlie soon finds himself struggling to keep the peace between three feisty fellow judges who have different views about how to do their job, and about how Charlie should do his: Judge Rory ‘Legless’ Dunblane, a proud Scotsman and former rugby player who takes what he likes to think of as a no-nonsense approach to judging; Judge Marjorie Jenkins, judge and super-mum, a brilliant lawyer with a whiz-kid husband in the City, the queen of the common sense approach to the job; and Judge Hubert Drake, nearing retirement, with a host of improbable stories about judges and trials past, and representing an approach from a bygone age – namely, that of the Raj.

  And as if that’s not enough, there’s the endless battle against the ‘Grey Smoothies’, the humourless grey-suited civil servants who seem determined to drown Charlie in paperwork and strip the court of the last vestiges of civilisation, such as the notorious court canteen. With the connivance of his list officer, Stella, Charlie wages a stealthy rear-guard action against their relentless attacks, but the Grey Smoothies never go away.

  No hope of a quiet life for Charlie, and there are times when his real job – trying the challenging criminal cases that come before him – actually seems like light relief.

  About the author

  After graduating from Cambridge University Peter Murphy spent a career in the law, as an advocate and teacher, both in England and the United States. His legal work included a number of years in The Hague as defence counsel at the Yugoslavian War Crimes Tribunal. He lives with his wife, Chris, in Cambridgeshire.

  FOREWORD

  By HH Judge Nicholas Hilliard QC

  The Recorder of London

  I remember speaking to Peter Murphy when I first learned that he was writing novels which would draw on his many years of experience in the criminal courts. I asked him to be merciful in his portrayal of the Resident Judge. I had an interest of my own because I was at the time the Resident Judge (‘RJ’) at Woolwich Crown Court and Peter was one of the judges there. I had no idea that he was in fact contemplating a whole book written from the RJ’s perspective.

  Peter is of course perfectly placed to write these stories because he moved on from Woolwich to become the RJ at Peterborough. The job title is rather misleading. As readers will discover, the fictional Judge Charlie Walden no more lives at Bermondsey Crown Court than any other RJ lives at their court centre. But the RJ is a permanent presence and runs the operation, and all this combines to provide some rich seams, over and above the particular drama of the courtroom, which Peter has artfully mined. We place a high value on judicial independence, and running anything which involves judges as participants provides plentiful opportunities for individuals to come into conflict with ‘group think’.

  Peter has recorded it all with an accurate eye and an authentic ear. In doing so, he has created a series of interesting characters and highly entertaining narratives. And Charlie Walden, hard-pressed but invariably well-meaning in the face of conflict and dilemma, deserves a place in the pantheon of fictional legal figures. Of course, I have no doubt that, as always, any resemblance to actual people and events is at least meant to be entirely coincidental.

  So I am glad that Peter has been kind to the RJ. I very much hope that Charlie Walden agrees and may perhaps be persuaded to share some more of his experiences in the future. I am only sorry that the Old Bailey where I am now the Resident Judge sometimes manages to irk him just a little. I shall see what I can do in case there is a further instalment.

  Nicholas Hilliard

  Recorder of London

  Central Criminal Court

  WHERE THERE’S SMOKE

  Monday morning

  At about 8 o’clock on a brisk, clear October evening, Father Osbert Stringer, parish priest of the Anglican church of St Giles, Tottenham, and a confirmed bachelor, was in the kitchen in his vicarage enjoying his supper: a cheese omelette and home fries, washed down with a bottle of Old Peculier. The vicarage is next to the church, on its south side. According to his witness statement, Father Stringer happened to look out of his kitchen window and thought he noticed flashes of light coming from the direction of the church. Moments later he thought he saw smoke, and moments after that, he thought he heard a loud noise, as in heavy objects falling to the ground. Leaving the remains of his omelette, he rushed out of his back door, only to see, to his horror, flames inside the church. He immediately called 999. By the time the fire brigade brought the fire under control, the interior of the church was gutted, with the loss of all the furniture and effects inside. There were serious questions about the stability of the whole structure and it was clear that it would not be usable again for a very long time, if ever.

  Fortunately, no one was using the church at the time. It was a Wednesday, and usually there would have been choir practice, but it had been cancelled. The church was generally considered an architectural monstrosity both inside and out, and was not greatly mourned. It was also fully insured. The charitably-inclined nearby Methodist church offered accommodation to Father Stringer’s congregation. So it could have been worse.

  But in his witness statement, Father Stringer also said that as he ran out of the vicarage he distinctly saw a young male running from the church into the street, throwing away some kind of metal can as he did so. The police later recovered the can, which contained white spirit, a highly flammable substance often used as an accelerant. The spectre of arson raised its head. Arson investigators turned their attention to the church, and quickly found evidence of the use of an accelerant at three different sites within the church. These sites appeared to be the points from which the fire had spread.

  The police were, naturally, anxious to know whether Father Stringer had recognised the young male he saw running away. He had. He told the police that the culprit was Tony Devonald, nineteen years of age, a local lad. Tony’s family were members of Father Stringer’s congregation, and he knew the young man well. Tony was arrested later the same evening, and when interviewed under caution, admitted that he had been in the vicinity of the church at about eight o’clock. He told the police he was there because he had received a call at home from a man whose voice he did not recognise, telling him that Father Stringer needed his help with something at the church. When he arrived at the church, he immediately saw the fire. He ran to the south door, the door nearest to the vicarage, which he found unlocked. He called out, but no one replied. He saw a metal can standing by the door. He picked the can up, and noticed that it smelled strongly of white spirit. Seeing no lights in the vicarage, he ran from the church with the intention of summoning help, and took the can with him to ensure that it was out of reach of the flames. He dropped it by the side of the road. He was unable to call for help because he did not have his mobile with him, but he heard the sirens of the approaching fire engines, and went home. He gave no explanation for failing to remain on the scene to talk to the police or the fire brigade about what he had seen. But he insisted that he had nothing to do with starting the fire.

  A forensic examination of Tony’s clothing revealed evidence of contact with the same accelerant as used to start the fire in the church, and his fingerprints were found on the can, though not on any item inside what was left of th
e church. No scorch marks or soot were found on any of his clothes, and there was no smell connected with the fire other than the white spirit. A few days later Father Stringer formally identified him at a properly conducted identification procedure at the police station. He was charged with arson, being reckless as to whether life would be endangered, a very serious offence carrying a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. The magistrates sent the case to the Crown Court for trial. Its natural home would have been the local Wood Green Crown Court, but someone at Wood Green thought that there might be too much local feeling around Tottenham for there to be a fair trial, on which rather pathetic pretext – way over the top, if you ask me – they passed it on to us; which is when it started to get interesting.

  But before I go any further, I ought to introduce myself. Charles Walden is the name, Charlie to my family and closest associates. I admit to having passed sixty a couple of years ago. I have been a circuit judge for about twelve years, the last four of which I have spent at the Bermondsey Crown Court as the RJ – Resident Judge. According to the job description, an RJ is a judge who takes on the overall administrative responsibility for the work of all the judges at a court, in addition to his or her own work. In fact, the RJ’s main role is to be the person to blame whenever something goes wrong. When I say ‘something goes wrong’, I mean that the Grey Smoothies think we could be doing whatever it is more efficiently than we do.

  The ‘Grey Smoothies’ is the name we have adopted at Bermondsey to refer to the civil servants who oversee the working of the courts. The name derives from the standard grey office suits they wear, and from their infuriatingly self-assured belief in their own infallibility, which continues undiminished despite their tenuous grip on reality when it comes to what is actually going on in the courts. The Grey Smoothies think, speak and write in a language of their own, which bears a passing resemblance to English, but not to any form of English used by normal people. For example: they refer to anyone to whom they write as ‘stakeholders’ in whatever it is they are writing about. Instead of ‘doing’ something, they ‘action’ it. Instead of communicating information to others, they cause it to ‘cascade down’ on them. Instead of starting a project, they ‘roll it out’, or ‘deliver it’. Any project not to be rolled out immediately – for example because ‘the jury is still out on it’ – is ‘parked’. And then, of course, there are the two most important expressions in Grey Smoothie vocabulary: ‘business case’ and ‘value for money’. Most Grey Smoothies find it difficult to compose a sentence without using one or both of those expressions.

  Their charge that we could be doing things more efficiently than we do is, of course, perfectly true; and if they gave us the staff and equipment we need, we would do better. But questions of staff and equipment are prime business case territory, in which the Grey Smoothies reign supreme. They govern this territory using a form of magical thinking, according to which the courts should be able to function just as well, regardless of how little they give us in the way of money and resources, if only we would all just get on with it and work hard enough. So, the sad truth is that the necessary staff and equipment will not be forthcoming at any time before the ravens leave the Tower of London, or the apes leave the Rock of Gibraltar, whichever is the later.

  When confronted with this reality, the Grey Smoothies get very defensive, and retaliate by demanding endless statistics: how many cases have been disposed of? Were any of them trials which collapsed at the last moment? What is the average time for every kind of case to be heard? How many hours a day did each court sit? What was the reason for any short days? How many jurors did we summon, and how many attended? How long did they wait to be assigned to a trial? And there is a statistical survey form for every sentence we pass. About the only thing they haven’t asked yet is how much time we spend in the loo. We expect that request at any moment.

  The court staff and I could easily spend almost every hour of our days buggering about with this nonsense, in which case, of course, there would only be one statistic, namely that the court has no time to do anything except compile the bloody statistics. So in cahoots with our list officer, Stella, I devised Bermondsey’s defence against attacks of the Grey Smoothies soon after I took up residence. The defence is that we basically ignore them. This obviously annoys the Grey Smoothies, and eventually I get an irate email from a presiding High Court judge for the Circuit telling us to pull our fingers out; at which point Stella and I fabricate a few reasonable-looking numbers for them, which seems to keep them happy for a while. We are particularly proud of having the third worst record in the country for returning the sentencing survey forms; we have managed to get it down below twenty per cent. At least, this way, I have time to be a judge.

  In mitigation I wish to point out that, in return for shouldering the administrative burden of the court, the RJ receives no extra remuneration, no extra recognition, and no administrative assistance whatsoever. It’s a miracle that anyone ever agrees to do it. Some get bullied into it by the presiding judges. Others do so in the hope that it will give them an eventual leg up to the High Court or even the Old Bailey; and yet others out of a sense of duty. In my case, the reason is simpler. I wanted to sit at Bermondsey because it’s an easy commute to and from work, and the only vacancy at the time was for an RJ; so being RJ was the price I had to pay.

  You see, my good lady wife, the Reverend Mrs Walden, is priest-in-charge of the parish of St Aethelburgh and All Angels in the Diocese of Southwark. Being priest-in-charge is just like being an RJ, really, but with different robes. Her living carries with it the privilege of residing in a huge Victorian vicarage which has many fine architectural features; a large weed sanctuary, euphemistically referred to as a garden, at the rear; and no modern amenities whatsoever. It is hot in summer and freezing in winter, and generally looks as though it has not been decorated since the First Boer War. And with both our daughters having long since flown the nest to make their way in the world as single career women, it is a fair bit bigger than we need. But it is close to work for us both, and I enjoy my short stroll to court in the morning.

  Along the way I stop at a coffee and sandwich bar run by two ladies called Elsie and Jeanie. The bar is secreted in an archway under the railway bridge, not far from London Bridge station, and it gets crowded if they have more than two customers at a time. But they do a wonderful latte, and a nice ham and cheese on a bap – a temptation if, as is often the case, I’m not relishing the thought of the dish of the day in the judicial mess. The only downside is that I have to listen to their various woes while the process of latte-making is going on. Elsie has a couple of grandchildren who get themselves into occasional scrapes with the law, about which I have to be non-committal because I may well see them at Bermondsey one of these days. Jeanie has a husband who seems to spend most of his time, and most of his benefits, at the pub and the betting shop. So, one way or another, they are rarely short of things to grumble about, and they usually take full advantage. Next door to Elsie and Jeanie is George, the newsagent and tobacconist, from whom I collect my daily copy of the Times. George has never quite forgiven me for giving up smoking two years ago, since when he has been unable to sell me cigarettes as well, but he is usually prepared with my newspaper, a cheerful greeting, and a penetrating insight into the shortcomings of the Labour Party.

  Sitting in my chambers waiting for the trial of Tony Devonald to begin, I am reminded of why I decided to write down some of my experiences and reminiscences as RJ. As much as anything, it is to keep my mind occupied during the long periods of each day when I am sitting around waiting for something to happen. Why would a judge be sitting around waiting for something to happen? I hear you ask. The Grey Smoothies ask the same question. Let me count the ways.

  The prison van breaks down, so they can’t bring the defendant to court. The prison officers haven’t bothered to read the daily court list, so they don’t know that the defendant’s attendance is required. The co
urt’s recording equipment, essential for making a record of the proceedings, isn’t working. The video equipment, essential for playing CCTV footage to the jury, isn’t working. Alternatively, the video equipment, essential for playing CCTV footage to the jury, is working but is not compatible with the DVD. The defendant is on bail and hasn’t turned up. The interpreter hasn’t turned up. Counsel is stuck on a train somewhere, or is double-booked. We don’t have enough jurors, and can’t begin a trial until a jury returns with a verdict in another court. I could go on. There are times when it is a bloody wonder we get anything done at all. How is that for a statistic? So rather than just sit here feeling my blood pressure rise, I have decided to tell a few tales about life at Bermondsey Crown Court, in the hope that we can all happily while away the hours together.

  This morning, I am told that the prosecution have forgotten to warn Father Stringer that he would be required as a witness today, and he is not available until two o’clock. I grab a jury panel before anyone else can snatch them all away. We quickly select a jury at random from a panel of the good citizens of Bermondsey, and I explain to them that they are not allowed to conduct any inquiries of their own into the case, such as doing internet searches about the events or the people involved; or discussing the case with anyone outside their number; or doing anything else any rational person would naturally be inclined to do in this electronic age. There is no way to tell whether juries obey these directions, except in the rare case where a juror is stupid enough to talk about his or her research and gets done for contempt. But we have to try. The evidence in most criminal trials is dicey enough as it is, without contamination from internet sources that can’t be checked. But reaching for the nearest laptop or tablet is as much an instinctive human reaction these days as raising a spear to a sabre-toothed tiger, and I suspect that once you tell a jury not to take to the internet, it is a hard temptation for them to resist.