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SAME MONTH - AUGUST 1976
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CAROLINE SEWELL PUSHED her way aboard the crowded Tube train before the doors closed. It was hot in there and full of perspiring bodies, some of whom enjoyed the close proximity to her female shape a little too much. It was a common experience for her and many other attractive women to feel a male groin thrust in to her shapely backside. Over the years she had developed a reflex response – a sharp blow from her elbow to the sleazeball’s ribs. Thank God I only have a few stops, she thought.
Miss Sewell, as she was known to her clerks in her chambers, and similarly addressed by judges in the courtroom, had delivered her jury speech the previous afternoon. Caroline could now relax. Nothing to do the next day except to listen to the judge’s summing up and wait for the jury’s verdict.
After leaving the Inner London Sessions courthouse close to the Elephant and Castle, she had spent the entire evening in a Fleet Street wine bar with colleagues. The Criminal Bar of England and Wales, especially in London, is as prone to gossip as many other walks of life, if not more so. As the evening drew to a close, she became the centre of gossip. Some may have called it speculation. It was the time in the legal calendar when new Queen’s Counsel were announced. Although many of her colleagues deemed her to be a racing certainty to be on the list, Caroline could only dream. It was the penultimate step to her ambition – becoming a Circuit Judge. She believed she would look good in that red sash. But what really attracted her was the pension.
She was ruthless and didn’t care much about colleagues or friends. All she cared about was her career. It had been like that since she graduated from the London School of Economics, right through Bar School and honed through all her days practising law. She was bright, sassy, attractive with a line in humour that was ... well, non-existent. Caroline saw everything and everybody as black and white. There were no shades of grey. She had realised at an early stage that remaining a barrister, even a silk, was not for her. As a barrister, she was essentially an independent contractor. A self-employed practitioner who would have to fund her own future in the shape of a pension. She had learned from Daddy the importance of a pension in her old age. Although circuit judges were not paid excessive sums of money, the pay was more than adequate. It was at retirement age she found the income to be at its most attractive, owing to a judicial pension.
Caroline soon established a steady practice within a few years of qualifying as a barrister. After ten years she was earning a high-end five figure salary. Like many at the Criminal Bar, she both prosecuted and acted as defence counsel. Of the two, she preferred to prosecute and knew it would help in her ambitions. A pleasant flat in Chelsea overlooking the River Thames soon became affordable. That is where she now lived, to all intents and purposes alone, except when she had invited male guests. They sometimes stayed one night, sometimes more and occasionally for a whole week. Part of that depended on how good they were in bed. Caroline liked strong men. She liked rough sex. If a man passed the audition, he may stay more than one night. Caroline liked a change. She didn’t want steady until she met Bill Morris. He also passed the audition in spite of his porcine looks Caroline often fantasied about rape in her sexual liaisons. Bill was so good at that she thought sometimes he was raping her before reminding herself it was merely role playing between two consenting adults.
But steady was not an option with Bill. She had met him through his work with Customs and knew he was frequently away from London, sometimes abroad, for long stretches of time. There was something about Bill that attracted her like no other man she had met. He was as ruthless as she was. Bill also had connections. Those connections came as a surprise to her but she welcomed the surprise.
Running up the solid stone stairs of the old Inner London Sessions courthouse, Caroline heard her name called. Turning around, she saw her old friend Suzie . They had been at Bar School at Gray’s Inn together and shared many a secret from those heady days of hard study and even harder partying.
“Hi, Suzie!”
“Caroline, do you have a moment?”
“Sure, what gives?”
“Got any powder?”
Caroline looked beyond her colleague, checking if anyone was in earshot. She turned her head and repeated the process for what or who lay behind her. Caroline grabbed Suzie’s shoulders and shook her.
“Never, never talk about that to me in public. Got it?”
Suzie’s ashen face changed to puce. “Yeah. Sorry. Just so hung over and I need a buzz to do my jury speech.”
Grabbing her hand roughly, Caroline pulled Suzie into an empty room normally reserved for barristers to interview their clients. The door slammed shut behind them. Inside, Caroline spoke in hushed tones. Hushed but fierce at the same time. Her eyes bore into Suzie’s skull.
“Listen to me and listen good. You are two weeks into a month’s product and you are asking me for more! What the fuck, Suzie!”
“Sorry, Cee,” she replied as her eyes moistened.
“Don’t start fucking crying on me. Pull yourself together, woman.”
Suzie wiped away the teardrops. “I’m just so stressed, Cee. Using more than I usually do. You know what it’s like.”
“Well, no, I don’t, actually. For once only you can have some. Follow me.”
Like a dutiful puppy, Suzie followed Caroline to the WC used by female barristers next to the female only robing room. Caroline didn’t care if they were disturbed. She had already planned to embrace and kiss Suzie in the event they were surprised. Caroline produced a small plastic sachet and tipped half the white powder content on top of the low-level WC flush. She then chopped it with a safety razor she also kept in her purse, arranging it into two straight lines. Suzie had rolled a five pound note into a cylindrical shape. The two barristers each snorted one line of cocaine with relish. Caroline Sewell threw back her blonde hair and Suzie did the same with her long auburn hair, like an alcoholic throws back the head siphoning whiskey dregs from a near empty glass.
“Thanks, Cee.”
“Don’t ask again. You will have to wait to next month for some more. Usual or do you want more?”
“Better double it up.”
“Okay. Same routine, same money, but double.”
“Yeah, no worries.”
Caroline was certain of her supply chain. That was the surprise of Bill’s connections.
Suzie and Caroline entered the female robing room separately to don their court attire, including the horsehair wig and barrister’s gown. Next stop for both was a coffee in the barristers’ dining area then to their respective courtrooms. They sat sipping their coffees with Callum Colhoun, a Scottish barrister. Callum and Caroline knew each other well. They had plenty in common.
All three barristers finished the coffee and went to their respective court rooms. Suzie delivered a rousing jury speech. No one suspected it was inspired by drugs. Caroline sat quietly as the judge in her case summed up the case both for and against the accused for the benefit of the jury. His Honour Judge Pinderford finally gave the jury directions to the relevant law. The jury then retired to consider its verdict.
The last jury member had left the courtroom when Judge Pinderford said, “Miss Sewell.”
Caroline rose to her feet, at the same time replying, “Your Honour?”
“I suppose congratulations are in order.”
“Sorry, Your Honour, I have no idea why.”
“Permit me to be the first then. You will be taking Silk.”
“Your Honour, I am ....” Caroline spluttered and was, for once in her life, at a loss for words.
The walk back to the robing room seemed to take an age. Caroline was deep in thought. The leaked news of her impending elevation to the ranks of Queen’s Counsel, taking silk, was the next step to her ultimate goal – a judgeship. It was now imperative she kept the lid on her extra-curricular activities. Even better, she mused, time to offload them as a part of history, her personal history – baggage she would not wish anyone to discover. Who could she trust?, she thought. The answer came to her in a flash. She had earlier been drinking coffee in his company in the barristers’ dining room.
Caroline Sewell looked and talked the part of a London barrister. For work, she dressed in the uniform black skirt, black jacket and black court shoes. The white blouse was part of the barrister look. Her long blonde hair tied back with a black ribbon gave her a somewhat severe look, but was still attractive. She had clawed her way up through the thousands of hopefuls practising criminal law in London. Most were no real competition to her. They had their heads turned by the fanciful romantic notion that life at the Criminal Bar was exciting, just like those TV programmes. Caroline had soon discovered there was no romance, no excitement. It was a mixture of hard work and wearing out shoe leather travelling from one court to another.
It was the tiring nature of the profession that first led to Caroline using cocaine. It made her feel good. The problem was that she liked it too much. It was addictive and expensive. Like most problems she encountered, Caroline found an answer. She started dealing in coke to other barristers also in need of a regular toot. Initially, it was to a select few in London. It had grown to a network of fifty and upwards throughout London, Birmingham and Manchester. She was known as ‘Lady C.’ Like Topsy, it had grown. Her driving thought now was how to end her cartel before it destroyed her ambition.
Caroline Sewell picked up the phone once she got home. She dialled and waited for someone to pick up. “Callum, it’s me, Cee. Just be a good boy and do as you are told. Don’t ask me any questions over the phone. Understood?”
Callum said, “Of course, darling.”
“Okay, come to my place at 3 pm Saturday.”
Callum Colhoun was a London barrister with a fierce cocaine habit. He spent most of his time defending out on circuit – in the provinces – involving weeks at a time on lengthy trials away from home. Those weeks were spent in hotels, a lonely existence. Callum whiled away the leisure hours entertaining local prostitutes in the seclusion of his hotel room. They were content with the price he paid for sexual services and the copious amounts of coke he shared with them. In turn, he was content, as this way he could forget his stint in the court room defending murderers and rapists .
Caroline trusted him. He was one of her oldest customers. She spelled out the finality of her proposal to Callum. Opening the wall safe in her Chelsea flat, Caroline handed him a small black book. He now had the telephone number of a man called Dash, one of her dealers, and all her regular customers. She had two dealers. The book did not contain the name or number of the second dealer. Those details were imprinted on her memory. She knew him well. It was Bill.
“The business is yours. I just demand one thing. Never, never breathe a word to anyone about me. It’s as simple as that. Do you understand?”
Callum nodded.
“I can’t hear you,” she spat.
He said, “I hear you, loud and clear.”
“Needless to say, this meeting never happened.”
“What meeting?”
Caroline moved over to Cullum and gave him an air kiss, “Mwahhhh!”
Callum thought, Bitch! He had never liked her. He only tolerated her because she was the source of his regular supply of cocaine.
Once her colleague had left, she made a phone call from the safety of her flat. It was to the dealer she had ‘given’ to Callum. Caroline had noted it before giving away the black book. The dealer was now aware that Callum was “the man” and she had retired.
Caroline found the corkscrew in the open kitchen and thrust it into the virgin cork of a bottle of fine claret. Time to relax, she thought. But first she went back into the wall safe and removed her own personal stash. This was ninety-five percent pure Colombian sourced from someone neither Callum, nor anyone else would ever know about, Bill.
Part of the white powder was released onto the ebony table in the living room. Chop, chop, chop - she arranged it into two similar white lines, took out her tube kept for these occasions and snorted both lines of powder.
Boom! went her brain. God that feels good, she thought.
