Different Class (41 page)

The evidence was pretty thin. And I never
said
it was him. But I had seen Lee at the clay pits, and I told them – reluctantly, under oath – of how the boy had boasted to me that he knew of a bloke in the Village who would pay for sex with sweets, marijuana and alcohol. Lee had described Harry to me, as I described him to the court. And when Harry denied all knowledge of ever meeting Lee Bagshot, the people in the courtroom booed like at a pantomime.

Poodle tried to defend him, of course. But by then, no one believed him. The son of a politician; privileged and wealthy; and on top of that, a little queer – he just wasn’t the kind of person juries find appealing. He never spoke above a whisper, and often had to be asked to repeat himself. He never made eye contact. His tics and twitches had returned, making him tremble and stammer. With the help of his parents, who described him as
a troubled young man
; the Chaplain of St Oswald’s, in whom I had once confided, and to whom Harry had already confessed his version of the story; the Head of St Oswald’s, who came across, as always, as a bully; and all the staff of St Oswald’s who came out
en masse
as character witnesses for the accused, Poodle ended up doing more harm than good as far as Harry was concerned.

Oh, I remember them, Mousey. All lined up like senators in their academic gowns and with their Oxbridge accents. There was Straitley, more like a toothless lion than ever, saying over and over again how Harry just
couldn’t
have done those things; then Mr Bishop, the Head of Year, with his rugby-school physique; then the Head, like a Juggernaut, addressing the crowd the way he spoke to his boys in Assembly.

I noticed Mr Scoones wasn’t there, even though he’d been Harry’s friend; nor was Dr Devine, whose room was so close to Harry’s. But standing in front of a jury of ordinary folk from the estate, who had always mistrusted
the posh school
, those witnesses all came across as shifty, smirking and arrogant. You could tell that most of them weren’t taking the business seriously. Straitley, with rumpled suit and his Latin that the jury didn’t understand; trying to explain that you can’t hide secrets in a school, that if there’d been something going on, he would have
known
it, somehow. The Chaplain, looking confused; Mr Fabricant, with his book on the Marquis de Sade, saying boys weren’t to be trusted and looking like a vampire.

Then Mrs Bagshot came to plead for justice for her dead son, triggering a battle between the Shifty-but-Rich and the Honest-but-Poor, fought on the pages of tabloids all across the country. St Oswald’s was portrayed nationwide as a hotbed of privilege and vice. Mrs Bagshot wasn’t ideal, but her grief was genuine. And everyone loves an underdog. I played the part to perfection.

But Johnny Harrington was the star. I could understand why, of course. He was handsome; articulate; spoke of his deep faith in God; blamed himself for not having seen what was happening to his friends; remembered how Poodle and Ziggy had always seemed so secretive; played down his own involvement with the rats and the rabbits, but said how he’d always suspected
something
sinister was afoot. He, too, had seen the signs. He, too, had suspected something amiss. He cited Mr Fabricant’s book; Straitley’s Latin profanities; quietly painted a picture in which
all
of St Oswald’s was riddled with vice and corruption, an Old Boys’ club that preyed on the young; a place in which no questions were asked, and where colleagues would cover for even the vilest of abuse. Then he told the jury how he had come to Mr Straitley for advice after the thing with Poodle and me, and how Mr Straitley had laughed at him.

And the jury swallowed everything. Johnny’s sincerity; his remorse; the fact that his northern accent had not quite vanished (at least for the trial); his portrayal of himself as the boy who’d never fitted in. Everything was perfect. He never faltered, even under the most aggressive cross-examination, but always kept eye contact and spoke quietly, but firmly. Charlie Nutter and I came across as crazy; damaged; uncertain. But Johnny Harrington came across as sincere, as well as totally sane. Of
course
, people believed him. Johnny believed the story himself. He couldn’t have done a better job if I’d actually coached him.

After that, Harry didn’t have much of a chance. He denied all knowledge of my abuse; denied having known Lee Bagshot; denied offering boys money for sex; denied sleeping with Charlie Nutter until the boy had turned twenty-one. But none of that swayed the jury, all of them comfortable northern folk who found it hard to believe that a deviant like Harry might have any kind of moral code. Most of them thought that buggery should be illegal anyway, and mistrusted Charlie Nutter, with his ridiculous name, and his twitch, and his wealth, and his father, with his seat in the House of Commons and his look of pompous outrage.

And Harry would not accuse me. That, and not his words, was what hurt. His damn superiority. His refusal to engage when his lawyer tried to destroy me. He stood behind his screen, looking old, and all he said when questioned was:

‘David was a special case. I should have seen he needed help. I’m sorry. I should have helped him.’

I
knew what he meant, of course. But that was enough to condemn him. The rest of his words were forgotten, as the headlines did their worst.

I’M SORRY!
screamed the tabloids. The rest printed watered-down versions.
PERVERT TEACHER BREAKS DOWN IN COURT. HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT! HOMOSEXUAL ENGLISH TEACHER MAY HAVE ABUSED HIS CHARGES FOR YEARS!
And the most damning headline of all, flanked with a picture of Harry:
DID THIS MAN KILL LEE BAGSHOT?

That, and not my testimony, was what turned the tide that day – not that it needed much turning. Malbry still remembered the sorry death of Emily White, and although the cases weren’t the same, there were enough parallels to give the press some ammunition.

Troubled Boy Speaks Out
, they said.
Thousand-Pound-a-Term School Was a Hotbed of Vice
, they said. And, faced with a chance to get even for generations of social supremacy, the jury voted with their hearts, and Harry was sentenced to twenty years.

Sometimes you need a sacrifice in order to stamp out evil. The Bible is full of reminders of this. Abraham and Isaac; the Gadarene swine; the story of the scapegoat. In this case, it was Lee Bagshot, who went to his death so that others might live purer, better, happier lives. And although Harry Clarke didn’t kill him, as such, I now understood, after seven years, that he’d died in part
because
of Harry, which made Harry almost as guilty as if he’d done the deed himself.

Under the rule of reasonable doubt, they should have gone for an acquittal. But they didn’t. Is that my fault? Call it the work of Providence.

4

October 14th, 2005

Some stories enter the public eye like splinters. The Moors Murders. The Yorkshire Ripper. Malbry’s Emily White affair. And to see Harry Clarke in such company – yes, it hurt. It still does. Sixteen years later, it’s still surprisingly hard for me to look at those old headlines, those photographs. So many people have had their say over the Harry Clarke affair. So many bits of graffiti scrubbed off lavatory walls; so many casual references in newspapers and magazines. There was even a book, you know, by a man called Jeffrey Stuarts – a hack journalist, specializing in character assassination – in which it was suggested that Harry’s victims were more numerous than anyone suspected, and which attempted to link him – and, by association, St Oswald’s – with a number of disappearances. No one protested openly, even though Harry was on a School trip to France at the time of at least one of these. None of Harry’s ex-colleagues – including Eric, including myself – were brave enough to stand up for him. And why? Because an unstable young man had made a vague accusation, abetted by his therapist; his church; his parents; a prominent MP – and supported by Johnny Harrington, the boy who kept on coming back.

Everything begins with
him
. From that first visit to the Headmaster’s office; from that first complaint; from the church; from that first mention of the word
possession
, back in ’81. You might still wonder why I blame Harrington over Spikely. Perhaps because Spikely
was
disturbed; everything about his testimony pointed to his delusional state. But Harrington was presentable; boyish; confident; even charming. He gave his testimony in much the same way as he had spoken to me that day when talking about his troubled friend; with an air of polite sincerity. And when that Sports Day photo emerged, with Harrington looking so neatly pressed, and Harry, sweaty and grinning, the papers had a field day, and Harrington (forever fourteen in the eyes of the public) became a perpetual poster-child; the final nail in poor Harry’s coffin.

Without his confirmation of David Spikely’s story, there would have been no reason to give Spikely any credence. It would have been Harry’s word against – at best – the fractured and inconclusive account of a pupil who hadn’t named him directly, who clearly had mental issues and who had spent less than a year at the School. Without Johnny Harrington’s corroboration, there would have been no inquiry; no search; no link to the death of Lee Bagshot – a tenuous link at best, and based on nothing but circumstance. In short, the case would have been thrown out of court. Harry would never have been condemned.

In retrospect, we were
all
to blame. It was all so ridiculous. Harry’s arrest; his suspension from School; then, ten months later, a trial that none of us expected to see. And even when the trial began, we were still complacent. In all St Oswald’s history, no one had ever struck out as hard against the body of the School. No one expected Harry to lose. No one believed that a jury, faced with so little evidence, would reach a guilty verdict.

We were wrong. History has a habit of awarding the victories to small boys armed with slingshots. St Oswald’s was the giant; powerful, untouchable. The boys were Spikely and Harrington – and the ghost of Lee Bagshot, of course. Gilded by Time and circumstance, the gawky little rat-faced boy with the outdated mullet, grinning at the camera as if he has all the time in the world, had become an icon of everything that was tragic and doomed. Belatedly, the clay pits were marked for urban renewal; flowers were left at the scene of the crime; money was sent to the family. The tragedy had become something else; the symbol of a class war. And the jury – all from Sunnybank Park, Pog Hill, Abbeydale and the estates; consisting of the unemployed; housewives; old-age pensioners – were ready to believe the worst; as easily swayed by Mrs Bagshot’s tears as by Spikely’s tale of suffering.

And so Harry was sent to serve his time at Her Majesty’s pleasure. We corresponded for a while, but I soon ran out of things to say. Eric had left St Oswald’s to work at King Henry’s, our rival school; the Old Head had retired at last, and I had a department to run. Time just got away from me. I know how terrible that sounds; but St Oswald’s is a heartless old frigate. If a man falls overboard, the ship cannot afford to wait. The sailor sinks or swims alone.

I tried to explain this to Winter, as I worked methodically through his blue file. It was getting late by then. The fire had died down to a glow. The bottle of brandy I’d opened looked dangerously close to the dregs. Well, I’d needed
something
to give myself the courage to speak. Winter was still on his first glass, looking polite and attentive. Gloria, with the Spanish eyes, had raised an excellent listener.

The last item in the folder was printed on pink paper. It took me a moment to recognize it – the font was slightly different, the paper more expensive, but the text was almost identical to that little pamphlet:
HOMOSEXUAL, HELLBOUND
– printed and distributed by the Church of the Omega Rose.

‘Where did you get this?’ I asked him.

He indicated the logo on the back of the pamphlet. A stylized S, made to look like two mirrored figures, linking hands, with this year’s date printed underneath. I knew that logo. I’d seen it before, on collecting tins and posters.

‘Survivors.’ The organization to which Dr Blakely, aka Thing One, aka the Abuse Guru, has links. Until now I’d only thought of him as another cut-out soldier, to go with Johnny Harrington’s growing fortress of paperwork. But to see that little pamphlet again, published by Survivors—

‘What does it mean?’ I asked Winter.

‘I’ve been looking into Survivors,’ he said. ‘It was formed in ’88, soon after Harry Clarke’s arrest. Initially a phone helpline, staffed by a handful of volunteers. It was called—’

‘Survivors Speak Out.’ I remembered it vaguely now: its public face had been Liz McRae, David Spikely’s therapist. During the trial, she had been called as an expert witness. A young thing, I remembered now; surely no older than twenty-five, with a sensible honey-brown bob and a crowd-pleasing earnestness. It was she who had instigated the initial investigation, alerting the social services following a series of conversations with her charge, during which he had mentioned a member of St Oswald’s staff, and certain unsavoury events. The fact that Spikely had never actually
named
Harry as his abuser was seized upon by Harry’s counsel, but Miss McRae had kept her calm, pointing out that survivors of traumatic events were often unable to speak out, or even to articulate apparently trivial details relating to the experience.