Dick Francis's Refusal

by Felix Francis

  “What now?” I asked her.

  She seemed as surprised as I was that the interview had been stopped so abruptly. “I’m not quite sure. He might want to talk to you again, or they may think they have enough evidence to charge you with the possession of indecent images. Or else they’ll release you on police bail, pending further inquiries.”

  “What does police bail mean, exactly?”

  “It means you are released, but you have to report to a police station on a given date and time. It’s used a lot, especially when the police don’t have enough evidence to charge and they want more time to investigate. There are often conditions attached, and you may have to surrender your passport to stop you from running away to somewhere abroad.”

  Somewhere abroad sounded rather attractive to me at that moment.

  “How about if I’m charged?”

  “Then you’ll be kept here at the police station until you’re taken before a magistrate. That would most likely be tomorrow morning.”

  “Then what?”

  “The magistrate would probably grant you bail.”

  I didn’t much like her use of the word probably.

  18

  I was released on bail at four o’clock that afternoon. But, as expected, there were conditions.

  Not only did I have to surrender my passport but I was forbidden from knowingly coming within two miles of Annabel Gaucin, and also from being anywhere alone with my daughter.

  “But that’s crazy,” I said to the custody sergeant who read out the conditions. “I live within two miles of Annabel Gaucin.”

  “Then you’ll have to live somewhere else,” he replied unhelpfully. “You can always refuse to accept the conditions, but you’ll then go before a magistrate who may remand you in custody. It’s your choice. The conditions have been requested by social services, and they know best.”

  I privately thought that, in this case, social services clearly didn’t know best, but there was nothing I could do about it.

  Once again, I signed a paper with which I didn’t agree.

  • • •

  CHARLES CAME to collect me in his aging Mercedes. I’d asked him to use his spare key to our house and bring with him my passport from the top drawer of the desk, which I then solemnly handed over to the custody sergeant in exchange for my false arm, my belt, my wallet, and my liberty.

  They kept my phone as potential evidence.

  Charles and I walked out of the police station straight into a barrage of reporters and photographers, all shouting questions at me and firing off their multiple flashguns. There was even a TV crew, with a camera and microphone pressed close to my face.

  I was taken completely by surprise and almost ducked back into the police station, but I knew I wouldn’t get much sanctuary there. It had probably been one of the custody staff that had tipped off the press in the first place.

  So Charles and I suffered the discomfiture of the paparazzi scuttling along beside us, snapping away, as we walked the fifty yards or so to his car.

  “Get in,” Charles shouted at me over the roof as he unlocked the Mercedes, but closing the doors wasn’t that easy, as the photographers kept trying to pull them open again to get a better shot.

  In the end, Charles pulled away from the curb with the doors still open.

  “Mind out,” I shouted at him as he drove straight towards the TV crew. “For God’s sake, don’t run them over or we’ll both be back in clink.”

  Fortunately, the crew had the good sense to scamper to one side as the car accelerated away.

  “Bloody hell,” Charles said with a laugh. “Just like running the gauntlet of the PLA.”

  “The PLA?” I asked.

  “People’s Liberation Army,” he said. “The Chinese. Down the Yangtze. Only, this lot weren’t firing live rounds.”

  It had felt like it, though, and I was sure that the film and photographs they had taken would end up on tonight’s TV news bulletins and in the pages of tomorrow’s national dailies.

  “Why didn’t you warn me?” I asked. “You must have seen them on the way in.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t notice,” Charles said. “And I probably wouldn’t have realized they were waiting for you anyway.”

  Why would he?

  “Are we being followed?”

  Charles looked in the rearview mirror. “I don’t think so, but I’ll make a few turns to be sure.”

  We spent the next ten minutes or so snaking through Oxford’s one-way system until Charles was satisfied that no one was following, and then he set the nose of the Mercedes on a northwesterly heading towards Aynsford.

  “How was it in the police station?” Charles asked.

  “Dreadful,” I said. “I was treated like a pervert.”

  At least Charles didn’t ask me if I was one.

  “What’s all this about not being able to live in your own house?”

  I had tried to explain the conditions to him in the brief telephone call that I’d been allowed to make from the custody sergeant’s phone. I’d only called Charles because I was unable to contact Marina either at home or on her cell, and the sergeant hadn’t been pleased by the delay.

  “Thanks to bloody social services, I can’t go within two miles of Annabel Gaucin, and she lives only a mile from us.”

  “Where, exactly?” Charles asked.

  “In Eastlake. Next to the school.”

  “You’d better come home with me, then,” Charles said. “My house is at least three miles from Eastlake School.”

  “Can I borrow your phone to try Marina?” I asked.

  “I don’t own a cell phone,” he replied. “I’ve never liked the damn things. You can call her when we get to Aynsford.”

  How did anyone manage these days without a cell phone? I had now been separated from mine for a mere twenty-four hours and I felt bereft and entirely lost without it. I thought about asking Charles to stop at a phone box but decided that when we got to Aynsford would be soon enough. I couldn’t think that Marina was going to be pleased about things anyway.

  “How are they?” I asked.

  “Marina was pretty angry.”

  “With me?”

  “With everyone, I think, though with social services mostly. But I haven’t spoken to her since last night, when you called. Saskia was being cared for by social workers, and Marina was still trying to find out where she was.”

  I bet Marina was pretty angry. So was I, and mostly because I had been unable to establish from the police who had made the initial complaint against me and for what.

  I’d been bailed only on suspicion of making and possessing indecent images of children. There had been no further mention of any actual abuse.

  “Why, then,” I had asked the custody sergeant, “is there a condition not to go near Annabel Gaucin, or be alone with my daughter?”

  “Social services can’t be too careful,” he’d said in reply.

  I personally thought the conditions had been imposed just to be bloody-minded, but it was no good me saying so. He’d have probably laughed.

  • • •

  I CALLED Marina’s phone as soon as I arrived at Aynsford.

  “Where are you?” she shouted, sounding stressed.

  “At Charles’s place. Where are you?”

  “At some dreadful children’s home outside Oxford.”

  “Do you have Sassy?”

  “They say I can take her soon. Why aren’t you at home?”

  I tried to explain that I’d only been released because I’d agreed to various conditions, but she didn’t really understand. She was concentrating too much on getting Saskia back.

  “Come straight to Aynsford when you’ve got her,” I said. “We’ll talk here.”

  • • •

  MARINA WAS in tears when sh
e and Saskia eventually made it to Charles’s house soon after seven o’clock, tears of anger, relief and tiredness all rolled into one.

  I went out to meet them in the driveway. Marina ran towards me and began thumping me hard on the chest with her fists, but I grabbed her and held her tight as she sobbed into my shoulder.

  “Oh, Sid,” she moaned, “what is happening to us?”

  If only I knew.

  Charles came out and took Saskia by the hand.

  “What’s wrong with Mommy and Daddy, Grandpa?” she said.

  “Nothing’s wrong, darling,” he said. “Come on inside. I’m sure Mrs. Cross will have some biscuits for you.”

  The six-year-old and the octogenarian went into the house hand in hand while Marina and I stayed where we were on the gravel.

  “Sid,” Marina said, calming down and pulling away from me, “tell me honestly, have you anything to do with those photos the police found in our shed? I need to know the truth.”

  “My darling,” I said, “I swear to you I’d never seen them before the police showed them to me. Someone planted them in the shed for the cops to find. I absolutely promise you I have nothing to do with them. I cross my heart.” I crossed my heart with my forefinger.

  “And hope to die?” Marina said with a wan smile.

  “That too.” I smiled back at her. “I think the police must believe it as well or they would have surely charged me.”

  And, I thought, social services wouldn’t have let Sassy back into our care.

  “So are you now free?” Marina asked.

  “I’m out on police bail. I’m technically still under arrest, but I don’t need to be held in custody while they make more inquiries. But I will have to report back to the police station in a couple of weeks.”

  “So can we go home now?”

  “Come on inside,” I said, “it’s cold out here.”

  We went in and sat at the kitchen table while I explained to her in detail what had happened and the reasons why I couldn’t go home.

  “But surely no one could believe that you would do anything to Annabel,” Marina said. “And I was there all the time. Why didn’t they ask me?”

  “Perhaps they still will,” I said, stroking her hand. “But what I can’t work out is how the police knew Annabel’s name.”

  “That was probably my fault,” Marina said. “While the police were searching our house, one of them asked me about a photo of two little girls covered in soap bubbles that had been found on your phone. I laughed and told them it was our daughter and her best friend playing around in our bath, but then they asked me for the name and address of the other little girl. I didn’t think there was anything wrong in giving it to them.” She suddenly looked worried again.

  “It’s fine,” I said, stroking her hand again. “It was only an innocent snap of the girls having fun.”

  But the police had thought differently and that had almost been enough to get me charged with making indecent images of children.

  “Just because I can’t go home doesn’t mean that you and Sassy can’t. I don’t mind staying here on my own.”

  “Not bloody likely,” Marina said, making me laugh. “Not with that dreadful Irishman still on the loose.” She shivered. “We’re staying right here with you—that’s if Charles will have us.” She turned to him.

  “Of course, my dear,” Charles said with a broad smile.

  “It may be for some time,” I said by way of warning. “At least for the next week or two.”

  “No problem,” he said, still smiling. “Stay as long as you like. But I may not have enough food to feed you all, even for tonight. I know dear Mrs. Cross is capable of most miracles in the kitchen, but I fear that, on this occasion, I have not a single loaf or fish for her to work with.”

  He held his hands wide with his palms uppermost, and I smiled at the biblical reference. I also marveled at his steadfastness and unflappability in a crisis and supposed that it stemmed from many years of command in the Royal Navy.

  “I have a fridge full of food at home,” Marina said. “I’ll simply go and fetch it. I’ve got to go and feed Rosie anyway. She must be wondering what’s happened to us all.”

  And so it was decided.

  Marina would drive the two miles to our house to collect food, Rosie, changes of clothes and our toiletry bags.

  “I’ll come with you,” Charles said, “just in case.”

  “Just in case of what?” she said, looking worried.

  “The press were waiting outside the police station earlier, and, now that I think of it, there may have been someone outside your house when I went to collect Sid’s passport. I’d hate you to get caught up with them on your own.”

  “The press?”

  “Photographers and a TV crew,” I said. “They were waiting for us outside Oxford police station. I think Charles is right. In fact, I think he should drive you in his car. You can sit in the back and put a blanket over your head if there is anyone there.”

  “Isn’t that rather over-the-top?” Marina said.

  “Trust me, having camera lenses thrust right in your face isn’t funny. If there’s no one, all will be fine, but . . . Let’s not take unnecessary chances.”

  Who was being “risk-averse” now, I thought.

  Off they went in the Mercedes while I played sardines with Saskia, nominally under the supervision of Mrs. Cross to ensure we were never left alone together, although, of course, we were, as Mrs. Cross stayed firmly in the kitchen throughout, refusing to enter into the game. Sardines with just two people didn’t make sense and hence reverted to hide-and-seek.

  At least Sassy didn’t seem to be too perturbed by her experiences at the hands of social services. They had obviously been more kind to her than the police had been to me.

  • • •

  MARINA AND CHARLES were away nearly an hour, some of which I spent in Charles’s drawing room watching the television news while Mrs. Cross rustled up some baked beans on toast for Saskia’s supper.

  Sid Halley’s arrest for child sex abuse was the second story after the lead item about unemployment and the state of the economy. The reporter didn’t seem to know many actual facts, other than I’d been arrested and then released on bail without charge, but it didn’t stop him speculating about the reasons for my arrest. It all sounded pretty slanderous to me but was, no doubt, couched in words that would escape the wrath of the law like allegedly and supposedly.

  The film of Charles and me walking from Oxford police station to the car was shown prominently not once but twice, and it made for uncomfortable viewing.

  If I’d been charged, under English law, the TV company wouldn’t have been able to show the images or make their speculations. The lid of sub judice would have come down with a clang to prevent it.

  So an innocent man, released on bail pending further inquiries, can have his reputation torn to shreds more effectively than someone who admits his wrongdoing and is charged.

  It was strange how British justice worked.

  “The press were at the house,” Charles said, carrying a box of groceries into his kitchen. “A couple of photographers and a TV crew. Marina hid under the rug. There was also a policeman standing guard at the gate.”

  That would make the neighbors talk, I thought, except they would already be talking if they’d watched the news.

  “I think it was a bloody cheek,” Marina said. “He came in with us and insisted on us showing him everything we were removing from the house. What on earth has it got to do with the police what I’ve got in my fridge?”

  Nothing, I thought.

  Not unless there were more indecent pictures of young girls hidden amongst the lamb chops and the pots of yogurt.

  • • •

  THAT NIGHT, lying awake in an unfamiliar bed, Marina told me how awful it had be
en when she had arrived at Saskia’s school to find her once more being taken away by strangers.

  “I thought she was being kidnapped again,” she said. “I was so frightened.” I held her hand tightly under the bedclothes.

  “Then I saw a policeman who was there as well. He told me they were going to arrest you for sexually abusing her. Of course, I didn’t believe him, but he assured me it was true. He had the paperwork to prove it. I have to admit that I then lost my cool a bit. There was lots of shouting.”

  “I’m not surprised,” I said, trying my best to be comforting. “It must have been horrible.”

  “It was,” she said, “especially with all the other mothers watching. The policeman had to physically restrain me as the social service women took Sassy to their car and drove her away. He even threatened me with arrest if I didn’t calm down. But it’s not nice watching your baby being taken away from you.”

  I squeezed her hand again, and we lay in the darkness for a while not speaking.

  “Sid, what is going on?” Marina said finally. “Why won’t this man leave us alone?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But it has to be about more than that damn report. I’ve signed that, and still he won’t leave us alone. I think it’s now about control of me, and I am bloody determined that I will not be dictated to about how I work and to whom I speak. But what I don’t understand is that in getting at me in this way, he’s also harming my usefulness to him in the future.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, he was so keen to get me to sign that report and send it in to the BHA because, I assume, if Sid Halley said there was nothing amiss going on, then it was safe for the BHA to assume that there was, indeed, nothing amiss going on. My reputation for incorruptibility was such that I was once told that ‘OK’d by Halley’ was racing slang for honest and reliable.”

  “So?”

  “With all this publicity, McCusker will only succeed in getting me labeled as a child abuser, and my word won’t be worth tuppence in the eyes of the BHA—or anyone else, for that matter. Then I’ll be of no further use to him. ‘OK’d by Halley’ will mean something completely different, and nothing complimentary.”