‘Of course it does.’
‘In the description column is there a name?’
‘There is.’
‘Tell the court what is the name recorded against these payments.’
‘As the jury can again plainly see with their own two eyes,’ Tancred said wearily, ‘the name is Oscar Sleaven.’
‘Yes,’ Mordecai agreed. ‘Oscar Sleaven. The late Oscar Sleaven, who got the lucrative contract for the armoured personnel carriers even though he’d not put in the lowest tender and who last week blew out his brains shortly before the start of this trial.’ He waited, watching the jury turning the pages, several of them nudging the companion sharing the bundle, then looking up at Tancred, the young Asian woman in particular, with a half-smile on her face. Mordecai turned back to face Tancred. ‘So from your own personal bank account records – which so fortuitously came into our hands – we can see that during these two years you were receiving scores of thousands of pounds from Oscar Sleaven?’
‘You can.’
‘Let me try on you a little more of my simple arithmetic on which you have so complimented me. First, there are the payments of a thousand pounds on the first day of each of twenty-four months. Total twenty-four thousand pounds. Correct?’
‘Quite correct, Mr Ledbury,’ Tancred replied.
‘With a further eighty thousand, making a hundred and four thousand pounds. Isn’t that correct?’
‘It is.’
‘All received by you from Oscar Sleaven in two years and at a time when you were a minister of the Crown?’
‘Yes. It is all very clearly set out in the statements.’
Price who had been sitting with his hands folded and head lowered, turned to look at Mordecai, nodding his head and smiling grimly.
Mordecai went on, ‘So you don’t deny, you cannot deny, that while you were a minister of the Crown and Sleaven Industries was one of the commercial enterprises with which your Ministry was contracting the Chairman, Oscar Sleaven, paid you personally in excess of a hundred thousand pounds?’
‘I do not deny it. There was no need, Mr Ledbury, to go through such a prolonged exercise—’
‘Whether the exercise was prolonged or not is a matter for me,’ Mordecai snarled. ‘I need no lecture from you on how I choose to conduct this cross-examination. Do you admit that Oscar Sleaven paid that sum into your personal account?’
‘I do.’
Walter Morrison leant forward and handed Mordecai a document. Mordecai examined it and said, ‘Yes, let me remind you again what Richmond recorded you as saying. That you intended to get money from politics.’ He let slip the paper, which fell to the floor in front of his desk. The usher came to pick it up. ‘Leave it,’ Mordecai commanded and turned back to face Tancred. ‘You have done just that, have you not? You have succeeded in getting a great deal of money from your position in politics, from your position as a minister?’
‘No, I have not.’
‘In the face of those documents alone, how can you stand there in that witness box and swear under oath that you did not get money out of politics – as Richmond claims you said that you would?’
‘First, as I told you I did not say what he recorded me as saying. He was wrong about that. Second, I was not getting money through politics.’
‘How can you dare say that? You were getting a great deal of money from Oscar Sleaven. And no one would ever have known about this money’ – Mordecai picked up the file and wagged it at the jury – ’if some public-spirited person had not sent these documents to the newspaper. Is that not right?’
‘Probably.’
‘And we can also see from the bank statements that as quickly as the money came into your account, it went out again. The money didn’t remain long in your account, did it?’ Mordecai was still holding up the bundle, looking now at the jury. ‘A great deal of money was being received by you, but your account was only ever marginally in credit at the end of each month. You were drawing it all out in cash. Isn’t that correct?’
‘It is.’
‘All this money coming in and going out. You must have been living pretty well, Mr Tancred, to have spent so much money?’
‘No. I was not.’
‘Not what?’
‘I was not living particularly well. I had my flat in Chelsea. That was all.’
‘Were you salting it away offshore so that when the time came you could retire to some place where you could enjoy it and not be reached by extradition?’
‘No, I was not.’
‘Tell me,’ asked Mordecai, ‘is the money still flowing in from your friend, Mr Oscar Sleaven – or rather, was it still flowing in until his death?’
‘He was not my friend and the money ceased in April last year.’
Mordecai paused. ‘April?’ he said ruminatively. ‘April last year? Was that shortly after you had ceased to be a minister of the Crown?’
‘It was.’
‘So it ceased when you were no longer of any use to him? It ceased after you’d been shown up by the Sunday News. Was that the reason the payments from Oscar Sleaven ceased? Because you were no longer a minister of the Crown and had been exposed?’
‘No. The payments ceased because the reason for them had ceased.’
‘Certainly, the reason for them had ceased. It ceased because you could no longer give your friend the help for which he was paying you. Isn’t that right?
‘No, it is not right.’
Mordecai said nothing. It had, of course been easy. The bank statements revealed it all, the sums of money, the name of the person who had paid them. He had only prolonged the questioning so as to make sure that the least numerate of the jury could grasp the extent of the large sums Oscar Sleaven, a man whose contracts with the Crown would bring him in many millions, had been paying regularly into the personal account of the Minister for Defence Procurement. Those were undisputedly correct records and there was at least one contract when a Sleaven tender had been accepted by the Ministry although other tenders were lower. And Sleaven and Tancred were meeting mysteriously, secretly. And just before the trial when all this was certain to come out into the open, Tancred had gone to visit Oscar’s brother, Sebastian Sleaven. And four days after that visit Oscar Sleaven had killed himself. What could all that mean? What did it point to if it was not a guilty and corrupt association?
With Mordecai momentarily silent, the court waited for the final answer to the final question. If the monies paid to Tancred were not corrupt payments, what were they? The spectators leant forward. Tancred, ivory pale, stood erect in the witness box. Still Mordecai waited.
‘Yes, Mr Ledbury?’ said the judge.
Mordecai turned so that he had his back to the witness box. Something held him back. But he knew that he could not avoid the final question. He took a stumbling pace or two away from the jury, his stick thumping on the floor. All that the jury could see of him was the humped back and the rear of the grey, almost black, wig. At last he said quietly, over his shoulder, almost to himself, ‘Then tell us what you say was the reason that Oscar Sleaven’s payments to you ceased.’
Tancred did not reply, waiting for Mordecai to turn and face him.
Mordecai swung round. ‘Tell the jury why the payments ceased,’ he repeated loudly.
‘Because the child had died,’ Tancred said.
A gasp arose in the courtroom, followed by complete silence. Price jerked his head round to look at Goodbody beside him. Anna leant forward in her seat, her chin on her hands. Patrick sat as rigid as a statue. The judge waited, his pencil poised over his notebook.
Mordecai drew a deep breath. ‘The child had died,’ he said at last. ‘What child? What has a child to do with it?’
‘Everything,’ Tancred replied.
Mordecai stared at him. Then he asked, ‘What are you talking about? What child?’
‘My daughter’s child, the child that had been born to my daughter when she was barely fifteen years old.’
Mor
decai stood motionless. He stared at Tancred, willing him to go on, willing him to explain. But Tancred didn’t go on and Mordecai knew that Tancred was waiting – for him. Still Mordecai said nothing. And still Tancred remained mute.
It was the judge who broke the silence. ‘Yes,’ he said quietly to Tancred, ‘the child. Please go on. Explain what you mean.’
Tancred turned to the judge. ‘The child, a boy, was eight years old when he died. Once he was dead there was no further cause for more payments.’ He stopped and turned towards Mordecai and remained silent.
The judge, Mordecai prayed, he must take it on. But the judge said no more. The courtroom was breathlessly still. The pause seemed interminable. Then almost wearily, spelling out the words one by one, Mordecai asked, ‘What has the death of this child to do with the payments made to you by Oscar Sleaven?’
‘Everything. Oscar Sleaven was the father of the child.’
A noise arose in the courtroom like the wind rustling the leaves of trees as spectator after spectator turned to his or her neighbour. The judge tapped with his pencil.
‘Sleaven! Oscar Sleaven?’ Mordecai asked. ‘You say that Oscar Sleaven was the father of the child that died?’
‘Yes,’ Tancred replied simply.
‘Sleaven was the father? Your daughter, you said, was barely fifteen and Oscar Sleaven was a man of—’ Mordecai did not complete the sentence.
Tancred had interrupted. ‘Yes, Sleaven was much older. But he was the father of her child.’
‘But the money. The money was coming to you,’ Mordecai said savagely. ‘If what you say is the truth, why was the money from Sleaven coming to you? Why not to her?’ Then he made a mistake. ‘Was it to keep you quiet?’
‘How dare you!’ Tancred shouted, colour for the first time flooding into his face. He leant forward over the edge of the witness box, towards where Mordecai stood, thumping the edge with his fist. ‘How dare you!’ he repeated. The loudness of his shout, the contrast between his former icy composure and now his anger, rang around the courtroom. For almost a minute there was total silence. Then he straightened, squaring his shoulders, the colour fading from his face. He spoke quietly. ‘The child’s mother, my daughter, had died shortly after she’d given birth. She was not alive to receive the money. These were payments for her child, a boy, to keep him at the home where he was cared for, where he had to be cared for day and night.’ He paused. ‘Oscar Sleaven provided the money. He could afford it, but at least he did that. With the child’s death, the obligation ceased.’
Mordecai stood very still, as though shocked by his own error and Tancred’s reaction.
Tancred went on ‘From birth the child was damaged. He understood nothing. He was born without a brain. He had to be looked after, night and day. As he was – thanks to the money provided by Sleaven, the money I demanded that Sleaven must pay.’ Tancred paused; then turned in the witness box, looked at Mordecai and added, ‘He began paying eight years ago, when the child was born. So, you see, I had very good reason from time to time to see or speak to Oscar Sleaven. The meeting in the Tate of which you have made so much was to persuade him to establish a trust in favour of the child.’
He switched his gaze and spoke directly to Price, who was staring up at him, the smile long gone from his face. ‘Her mother had abandoned my daughter when she was an infant. That was twenty-five years ago. I did not even know I had a daughter. I did not know she existed. A relative of the mother arranged for the girl to be brought up. I only knew my daughter existed when eight years ago, aged a little over fifteen, she gave birth to her gravely disadvantaged son. As I said, the child was born without a brain. The condition of the child shattered his mother, my daughter. Shortly after the birth—’ He paused, bent his head and looked down at his hands, folded before him on the edge of the witness box. ‘Shortly after the birth,’ he went on, ‘when my daughter saw the child she had borne and was told about his condition, she took an overdose of drugs and killed herself. Only then was I informed of her existence and of her fate.’ He lifted his head and spoke directly to Mordecai. ‘That is the answer to your question as to why the money came to me. It came to me because my daughter was dead.’
Again the noise filled the courtroom, this time louder than before, more like the sound of the ocean breaking on the shore as the listeners turned and whispered to each other. The judge tapped again with his pencil to quieten the noise and said quietly, ‘And Oscar Sleaven? You say he was the father of your daughter’s child?’
Tancred turned to him. ‘He was. My daughter, I learnt later, had been brought up in Australia although she had been born in Hong Kong. Her mother was Hong Kong Chinese.’
The name, Mordecai thought. The name Tancred had thrown out yesterday afternoon. The name he’d spoken so deliberately, so menacingly. Cheung. The name of Price’s friend in Paris!
‘She was raised in Sydney by a lady called Elspeth Turville, a close friend, as she still is, of a gentleman who came from Hong Kong, a half-brother of my daughter’s mother.’ Tancred pointed directly at Price who half rose from his seat. ‘Yesterday Mr Price was disturbed when he heard the name, for he recognised it. My friend, Harry Cheung.’
‘No,’ said Price aloud. ‘She doesn’t know a Harry Cheung.’
Goodbody put his hand on Price’s as Price sank back in his seat, shaking his head, then leaning forward with his face between his hands.
‘Oh, but she does,’ Tancred went on. ‘Harry Cheung is her half-brother – and she was the mother of my daughter.’
Tancred had turned to face the jury, who had cast aside the bank statements. They were of no interest to them now. Some of the bundles had even dropped to the floor of the jury box and were left where they had fallen. Every member of the jury was staring at Tancred, riveted. Even the red-faced pugnacious juryman, who sat with his mouth open.
‘My daughter was not an easy child, difficult to control, perhaps because she’d been abandoned by her mother as an infant and never knew who her father was. They lived in Sydney and in adolescence she grew increasingly wild. When she was a teenager she took to slipping out of the house, staying out until the early hours of the morning. She got mixed up with an older group, going with them, joining the hostesses in the bars and nightclubs in the King’s Cross area of Sydney, experimenting with drugs, meeting men who came there, some who were visiting the city on business. From the clubs they used to go with the men to drink and take drugs in the hotels. That was how she met Oscar Sleaven. When Elspeth Turville discovered that the girl was pregnant she took her to France, Elspeth Turville’s native country, sending her to a detoxing centre, urging her to have an abortion. But the girl refused stubbornly. She insisted on bearing the child. When the baby was born and she saw what she had borne and realised the kind of infant he was, the tragedy followed. Only then was I told that I had been her father. I repeat, until then I did not even know she existed.’ He paused. ‘I was also told the name of the man who had made her pregnant.’ He stopped.
Mordecai was standing with both hands, now, on his one stick, his head bowed. Oliver Goodbody, beside the bent figure of Digby Price, stared straight ahead, his features rigid and immobile. There was a sudden scramble from the press box, journalists rushing noisily down the side aisles of the court to get to the telephone boxes or to where they could use their mobile telephones.
‘Silence,’ the usher shouted as the pressmen pushed their way noisily out of the courtroom and with the exit of the press silence did indeed return to the courtroom. ‘So you see’ – Tancred turned from Mordecai to the jury – ‘I had good reason now and then to meet Oscar Sleaven. The gossip monger, the diarist, Francis Richmond, a silly, malicious man, had a grudge against me because years ago he had visited Bangkok when I was serving there as a diplomat in charge of security. I had to warn him about his activities in the city. He dragged me into his diary in which he recorded false and malicious gossip, as people of his kind often do. But the reason why I met Oscar Sleaven was no
t for the corrupt one Richmond thought but because of the defective child of whom Sleaven was the father. I had not the means to give the child the care he needed and the child was Oscar Sleaven’s responsibility. I made sure that he accepted that responsibility. Then, when Richmond’s diary was brought to News Universal, Mr Price’ – here Tancred pointed directly at Price – ‘Mr Price thought he’d been handed a weapon that would destroy me and he was glad to have it and to use it. He was another I had encountered in my previous life. It goes back to what happened to him in Zambia in Africa many years ago, for which he believed I was responsible. That was his reason. He did not know, however, that twenty-five years ago Helena Cheung, with whom he lives, was the mother of my daughter.’
‘That is not true.’ Price had risen and was shouting at Tancred. ‘It is a lie.’
‘Sit down, Mr Price,’ the judge said, ‘sit down at once or you must leave the court.’ Oliver Goodbody pulled Price back into his seat.
Mordecai seized the opportunity of the commotion caused by Price’s interruption. ‘My Lord,’ he called out, almost shouting above the noise in the court, which then subsided. ‘My Lord, in view of what the court has just heard, I must consult with my clients. I ask Your Lordship to adjourn to give me time to do so.’
The judge looked at Patrick Foxley, who rose to his feet. ‘I have no objection, my Lord,’ he said. Mordecai glared at him but Patrick ignored him, standing quite still, his face grave, looking at Tancred.
‘I suppose that it is possible, I cannot say more,’ Mordecai continued, ‘but it is possible that there could be developments in the case. If there were, I would of course immediately inform Your Lordship.’
This time Jack Traynor did not hesitate. ‘Very well. I shall adjourn now. I’ll be in my room and remain there until I receive word from counsel.’ He turned to the jury. ‘Please follow the jury bailiff to your room.’ Swiftly and without another word he rose and disappeared.
The court exploded in a crash of sound. The jury filed out. ‘What’s going on?’ the spinster jurywoman asked plaintively of another as they went. ‘I don’t understand what’s going on.’
The Richmond Diary Page 23