Walden of Bermondsey

by Peter Murphy

  I then release the jury until after lunch. Fortunately, the morning is not entirely wasted. Stella has found me a sentence to do. Stella is in her early forties and what we call, in the judicial mess, MFX – married but whatever you do, don’t bring up the subject of family. She favours blouses and slacks in autumnal colours regardless of the season, and has short-cropped straw-coloured hair. And she is absolutely bloody brilliant. The job of list officer is an extraordinarily difficult one, calling for a high degree of organisation and planning. She has to list trials, sentences, and other hearings for four judges. This means looking months ahead in the diary, predicting which trials will fold and go short; negotiating with the CPS – the Crown Prosecution Service; fending off pushy solicitors and counsel’s clerks; factoring in the absence of judges and staff who are away on leave; and generally keeping the court’s workload moving forward. There are many days when a crystal ball would be just as useful as the administrative skills. Stella excels at the job, almost as if she had been born to it. But she does have an air of perpetual anxiety, as if she is always anticipating disaster around the next corner. For a list officer, this may simply be a realistic approach to life, because there is a lot that can go horribly wrong, but it tends to make me nervous whenever she appears in my chambers. Under Stella’s influence, I have become accustomed to expecting the worst.

  My colleague Marjorie Jenkins was supposed to do the sentence, but another matter she has in her list has turned out to be more complicated than thought, and she is anxious to start a trial. It doesn’t take long. The defendant, a native of a foreign country in his late thirties, turned up at a bank with a false passport, which he tried to use for identification purposes to open an account. These days, banks and cash converters and the like can spot false passports a hundred yards down the street on a foggy day. They seem to have some kind of homing device for them. It is almost uncanny. Without the benefit of ultra-violet light and all the rest of it, they do just as good a job of weeding them out as the Border Agency. The bank called the police. Chummy made an immediate confession and pleaded guilty as soon as he had the chance. He entered the UK on a student visa three years ago, and is an overstayer. He is of previous good character, and has been working hard at various cash-in-hand jobs to make ends meet for himself, his partner (also an overstayer) and their four-year-old daughter. He was offered a much better job recently, but it was one for which he needed a bank account to receive his salary. An acquaintance offered him the false passport, with an endorsement for indefinite leave to remain in the UK, for twelve hundred pounds. Foolishly, he accepted it. Now, it’s not to be. Regardless of what I do, Chummy will be deported. I give him the usual four months, allowing him a third off for his early plea. It’s a standard result. We do several of these a month. I disdainfully deposit the sentencing survey form, unsullied by my pen, in the waste paper basket.

  And so to lunch, an oasis of calm in a desert of chaos.

  The judicial mess – what normal people would call the judges’ dining room – is a rather small space, almost all of which is taken up by a huge circular table and correspondingly huge chairs. If you were planning this room from scratch, you would opt for a much smaller table. But it was free, surplus to requirements from the Ministry of Work and Pensions some years ago, so our court manager, Bob, took possession of it without worrying about details such as the size of the room. Free is a big thing with Bob, whose previous career had something to do with fund-raising for a theatre company, and much of our court management seems to depend on largesse and cheap solutions, including the recording and video equipment I referred to earlier. We have just about managed to squeeze in a small sideboard in the corner, on which there is just about room for the coffee machine.

  The mess leads directly into the kitchen. As for the food, the less said the better. The official line is that the caterers do their best with a limited budget. Perhaps they do, but the thought of the jury, advocates, and court staff – not to mention the judges – putting their lives on the line each day in the court canteen or the mess is disquieting. The main area of risk is the dreaded dish of the day, which may be advertised as anything from lasagne to curry to fish and chips. Slightly safer are the omelettes, salads, and baked potatoes, which we judges tend to prefer on the assumption that there is less potential for things to go wrong. But there are many days when Elsie and Jeanie’s ham and cheese seems the best option to me. Regardless of the food, lunch is important. It is usually the only chance we get to talk and pick each other’s brains during the day.

  As I am the last to arrive today, I take the seat just inside the door. There is just about room for the door to close behind the rear legs of my chair.

  To my left is Judge Rory Dunblane, early fifties, tall with sandy hair, a proud Scotsman, still plays a good game of squash and still enjoys his nights out with ‘the boys’ (whoever they may be). Divorced for almost a decade, he has a bewildering succession of girlfriends, none of whom seem to last very long. No one calls him Rory. He has been known to all as ‘Legless’ for as long as I have known him, and that is quite a while now. The nickname dates back to an incident during his younger days while he was at the Bar, something to do with the fountains in Trafalgar Square after a chambers dinner. No one, including Legless himself, seems to remember the details of the incident, but the name has stuck. Legless is what you would call a robust judge, who likes to get through his workload without any nonsense.

  Opposite me is Judge Marjorie Jenkins, slim, medium height, dark hair and blue eyes. In her mid-forties, she has been on the bench for five years already. When she was appointed, Marjorie was an up-and-coming Silk doing commercial work, representing City banks and financial institutions, and everyone was surprised that she took what, in her world, would be seen as a menial job. Marjorie is what they used to call a super-mum, a perpetual motion machine who balances a high-powered career with her family and various voluntary works. Her husband Nigel speaks six languages fluently and does something very important for an international bank. They spend holidays in Provence, where they have a house, or in Lausanne or Rome or Cape Town, as the muse leads them. Their two children, Simon and Samantha, are away at boarding school. It seems to be generally assumed that becoming a circuit judge is a kind of career break for Marjorie, and that she will resume her upwardly mobile path once the children are older. She does tend to disappear without much warning if anything goes wrong at school. But she is a great asset, particularly for fraud cases, in which she effortlessly assimilates tons of material which would take the rest of us weeks even to read, let alone digest.

  To my right sits Judge Hubert Drake. Hubert is a bit of a problem, mainly because no one is sure exactly how old he is. Apparently, the official records have him down as sixty-six, but I would bet good money that the train left that station some time ago. As far as I can tell, he is still all right in court. The Bar complain about him as being too right-wing and reactionary – which he accepts, and regards as an accolade – but I am not yet hearing that he is losing the plot. Nonetheless, I have a nasty suspicion that it is only a matter of time. As to judicial style, Hubert would have made a first rate colonial magistrate in India in the days of the Raj. He has been widowed for some years. He has a nice flat in Chelsea, and divides his time more or less equally between the flat and the Garrick Club. My main worry is that he is determined never to retire, and he says they can’t make him. When he reaches retiring age they can in fact make him, and I have nightmares about the scenes we will have when that happens.

  ‘Thanks for taking my sentence, Charlie,’ Marjorie says. ‘Any problems?’

  ‘No,’ I reply. ‘Bog standard false passport to open a bank account. I gave him the usual four months on a plea, and he will be departing our shores before too long. Keep the Home Secretary happy.’

  ‘Should have been two years,’ Hubert mutters, looking up briefly from his lamb jalfrezi, the guise in which today’s dish of the day presents
itself.

  ‘That’s a bit over the top, isn’t it, Hubert?’ Legless asks.

  ‘Certainly not,’ Hubert replies. ‘Too much of that kind of thing going on, by far. It’s about time we did something about it.’

  We allow the subject to drop. We have tried to take Hubert on about his attitude to sentencing in the past, and it’s usually not very successful.

  ‘Can I get some advice on something?’ Marjorie asks. ‘I’ve got an actual bodily harm. Chummy says it was self-defence. It all happened at a rugby match. Apparently, Chummy and the complainant were on opposing teams, one of them a loose head and one a tight head, whatever the hell that means. Counsel did try to explain it to me, but it didn’t make much impression. Anyway, the two of them got into a fight towards the end of the match, and the complainant ended up with a broken nose, a broken tooth, and some cuts and bruises. The question is whether –’

  ‘Chummy was charged with ABH just for that?’ Legless interrupts, aghast. Legless played a bit at outside centre for Rosslyn Park during the amateur era, and still takes himself off faithfully to Murrayfield for internationals during the Six Nations.

  ‘The referee was an off-duty police officer,’ Marjorie explains. ‘It happened right in front of him and he didn’t think he could ignore it.’

  ‘You see, this is the kind of nonsense that’s killing the game,’ Legless protests. ‘You can’t have a bloody rugby match without the odd fight. It’s part of the game. You shake hands in the bar afterwards and buy each other a pint, and that’s the end of it.’

  ‘Not when there is a serious injury, surely?’

  ‘It doesn’t sound very serious. In any case, you said he was only charged with ABH.’

  ‘Be that as it may,’ Marjorie insists, ‘he was charged and I have to try it. The question is, whether the prosecution are allowed to tell the jury that Chummy had already received two yellow cards during the same season.’

  ‘You mean, as evidence of bad character?’ I ask, ‘evidence of propensity to be violent?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  We all ponder this jurisprudential conundrum for some time.

  ‘Well, yes, I should have thought so,’ I offer.

  ‘No, not necessarily,’ Legless counters. ‘It all depends on why he got the yellow cards.’

  ‘Presumably for beating up someone else,’ Marjorie says, ‘a hooker, or whatever you call them.’

  ‘You can’t assume that,’ Legless replies. ‘You can get yellow cards for all kinds of reasons.’

  ‘Such as what?’

  ‘Well, almost anything, if it prevents the other side from scoring a try. If you fail to release the ball near your own line, or tackle a man without the ball, and the other side would have scored, you will get a yellow card.’

  ‘So, I should ask for evidence about what the cards were for?’

  ‘Absolutely. They may not be relevant at all.’

  Marjorie nods. ‘Right, thank you.’

  But Legless is still shaking his head.

  ‘I wouldn’t let it go to trial,’ he insists.

  Marjorie laughs. ‘How can I stop it?’

  ‘It’s a question of consent,’ he replies. ‘When you agree to play in a rugby match, you consent to a certain amount of violence. You can’t then complain about it afterwards.’

  ‘But only in accordance with the rules of the game, surely?’ I ask.

  ‘The rules of the game make the odd fight inevitable,’ Legless replies. ‘It’s what rugby is all about. That’s why people go to watch it. If it’s nothing worse than a broken nose, it’s a case for a pint, and perhaps a suspension for a game or two. But that’s it.’

  ‘But according to the House of Lords in Brown,’ Marjorie says, ‘you can’t consent to injury at the level of ABH or more serious.’

  That’s the kind of thing Marjorie would know, without even looking in Archbold.

  ‘Well, tell the prosecution to reduce the charge to common assault, and give him a conditional discharge,’ Legless pleads.

  ‘Thanks for the help,’ she replies. ‘Must rush.’

  ‘Why didn’t Stella give that case to me?’ Legless asks plaintively after Marjorie has departed. ‘I know all about the kind of things that happen in rugby matches. I would have sorted it in no time.’

  I know the answer to that question, but I’m not about to tell him. There are few people more dangerous in this world than a judge who thinks he has some personal insight into the subject-matter of the case. They tend to ignore the evidence and substitute what they think they know. Far better to have a judge who is totally ignorant of subject-matter, and has no choice but to rely on the evidence. Stella and I decided long ago that Marjorie was getting this one.

  ‘I can’t imagine,’ I reply.

  * * *

  Monday afternoon

  When I said that the case of Tony Devonald had become interesting, what I meant was this. With any case of arson, you are going to need a psychiatric report at some point. Arson is a very strange offence, almost always committed by very strange people. I have always found it helps to have a report sooner rather than later. Legless ordered one when the case first came to us from Wood Green, and it is in my file. It was prepared, as usual at Bermondsey, by our local shrink, Dr Mohammed Rashid. Like all psych reports, it goes on at great length about the defendant’s history from conception onwards, his relationship with his parents, his history at school, his employment record, any personal relationships, any involvement with drink or drugs, and so on and so forth. Even for someone of Tony Devonald’s tender years, it runs to some thirty-five pages. Following my usual practice, I turn first to the conclusions at the end of the report, intending to skim the rest later to the extent necessary, if I have time. The conclusions are contained in paragraph 52, which states, intriguingly:

  Despite the incidents referred to in paragraph 34, I have found no evidence that Tony is suffering from any psychiatric illness or personality disorder. He is fit to stand trial, and if convicted, to be sentenced as the court may think appropriate.

  Naturally, I turn back with some interest to paragraph 34, in which Dr Rashid has recorded the following.

  Both Tony and his father described an occasion on which the father consulted their parish priest, Father Stringer, because of a concern that Tony might have been the subject of some form of demonic possession. Apparently, the family was concerned that some objects, such as knives and forks, appeared to move along the dining table of their own accord while Tony was seated at the table. This concern appeared to rest mainly on the observation of Tony’s six-year-old sister Martha. Also, there was an occasion when a small fire began mysteriously in the garage one morning shortly after Tony had stormed out of breakfast following an argument with his mother, though the mother spotted the fire and it was extinguished without difficulty, no damage being caused. Tony told me that Martha must have been mistaken, and that he has no supernatural power to move objects without touching them. He also denied setting a fire in the garage. He said that, on Father Stringer’s insistence, he permitted the priest to pray with him in St Giles’s church, a process he considers to have had no effect at all. He told me that he has no particular feelings about Father Stringer or the church one way or the other, and he vehemently denies setting fire to the church.

  I sit and ponder this for some time while waiting to go into court. I thumb through the file. I don’t expect the prosecution to mention it. The prosecution hasn’t made an application to allow evidence that Tony had set other fires, and the evidence linking Tony to the garage fire seems a bit vague, to say the least. Quite apart from that, demonic possession is something we try to avoid at Bermondsey whenever possible. My court clerk, Carol, comes to tell me that court is assembled. Carol is in her fifties. She is amazingly good at her job, has a frightening grasp of detail, and she seems to love every moment she spends
in court. Her other passion in life is football. She and her husband Ray never miss a home game at Millwall and I usually hear all about it on Mondays. They lost at home to Blackburn Rovers on Saturday, so her mood today is a bit low.

  As I enter court I see Tony Devonald directly in front of me in the dock. He is a thin, frail-looking lad. He is wearing a suit which doesn’t fit him terribly well, and a crumpled shirt and tie. I wonder why his parents haven’t done a better job of getting him turned out properly for court. He looks very nervous.

  I look down towards counsel. Roderick Lofthouse is prosecuting. He might be just what the case needs if we are going to get into demonic possession. I don’t mean that the way it sounds. Roderick is generally regarded as the doyen of the Bermondsey Crown Court Bar, which is a polite way of saying that he may have been around for just a little too long. He takes advantage of his seniority to wear a two-piece grey suit which is rather too light in colour for court and about half a size too small, the jacket remaining closed rather precariously, relying on a single overworked button. He is not always as well prepared as he should be these days, relying on his instinct for a case, rather than on reading the papers, as his main method of preparation. But he is always calm and has sound judgment. He won’t get flummoxed or carried away, whatever happens. Defending is Cathy Writtle, small and energetic, with disorganised hair and large brown tortoise-shell spectacle frames, who will have read every shred of paper and will know the case inside out. That also is good. Cathy’s only failing is that her default setting is all-out attack, which works better in some cases than others. I’m not sure it is quite the right approach in this case.

  Roderick rises ponderously, looking every inch the doyen he is, to begin his opening speech. He is as smooth as ever. He begins by showing the jury the indictment and telling them that the prosecution has the burden of proving the defendant’s guilt so that they are sure, failing which they must find young Tony Devonald not guilty. That’s the way we do things in England, always have, no matter what goes on in other parts of the world. Fine, heart-warming stuff. Next he explains what arson is, intentionally starting a fire, keep it simple. So far, so good. But then, he accounts for the element of recklessness about endangering life by claiming that, for all the defendant knew, the members of the choir might have been in church that evening, as they usually would on a Wednesday. Now, as the fire was set inside the church, and it would take a rather careless arsonist not to notice an entire choir belting out ‘O God, Our Help in Ages Past’ to the accompaniment of a pipe organ, this strikes me as not the most persuasive of arguments. Cathy Writtle apparently agrees. She ostentatiously raises her eyebrows, not quite directly at the jury, but in such a way that they could hardly miss the gesture. We haven’t heard the last of that.